"Fetch me another one!" Raem shouted, blood on his claw. "Another human!"

The demons bowed before him, quivering. One dared approach, a bloated red thing like a living boil with legs. "But my lord!" The creature bowed. "There are no more humans. All have fled. They hide in holes, or they hide in the desert, or they fled to find your daughter, the Priestess Issari, or—"

"You will not mention my daughter here!" Raem roared, swiped his claw, and tore into the demon. Blood spurted and entrails spilled. As the hall erupted with screams, Raem looked toward the others. "Fetch me another human to kill. Dig through the ruins of Eteer and find me a coward who hides. Trawl the coast for fishermen. Comb the desert for exiles. Whoever fetches me a mortal will feed upon his heart!"

The demons clawed over one another in their race toward the tunnel. Several dozen blasted out from the hall, traveling the darkness toward the great crack in the earth, the crack leading up into Eteer, his fallen kingdom.

Eteer was a ruin now, of course. A cesspool. A broken toy. Raem gazed around him as his hall. Now I am king of a greater realm. Of a—

The craving flared inside him so powerfully he nearly doubled over. The damn disease was growing stronger. It had been moons since Raem had shifted into a dragon. Back in Eteer, he would travel into the cisterns, he would shift in the shadows, would release the tension. But here in the Abyss there was no privacy, and the magic ached for release.

He stormed out of his hall, walked down a corridor carved into the living stone, and entered the nursery. Veined membranes coated the walls like tapestries, quivering and pumping with blood. A dozen of Raem's children sat here, curled up, sucking from fleshy tubes that ran from the walls to their mouths. The nephilim's throats bobbed as they drank, and the red light gleamed upon their warty skin, long jaws, and gleaming green eyes.

My children, Raem thought, looking at the half-demons. My legacy.

Among them lay Angel, Queen of the Abyss, and she held a nephil to her bosom, nursing the rotting creature. Raem marched toward her, tore the nephil off her breast, and tossed the child aside.

Angel sneered at him and snapped her teeth. Smoke rose from her nostrils. Since feeding upon human flesh in Eteer, she had grown to monstrous size, a woman twenty feet tall, her wings wide as sails. Lava leaked from cracks in her stone body.

"We make more," Raem said. He gripped her arms. "Now."

She growled. "I am feeding your children now, my husband. I—"