Ira had been to a club only once before in his life, and it had not been for fun. There was just nothing quite appealing to him about the concept. The flashing lights made him dizzy. The volume of the music left him nauseous. He wasn't old enough to drink, either, so there was no bitter pull into the loss of senses that seemed to drive the people around him towards the outlet. 

An elbow connected with his ribs, knocking him a step forward. He whirled to confront his attacker, but in the crowd there were no discernable figures. Just a mass of limbs, a cloud of overwhelming perfumes, and a chorus of voices at least twice as loud as the music. Ira's hand drifted towards his belt. His fingers closed over the empty space where his daggers had once rested, sending up a painful sting behind his ribs. 

He'd lost them. Last summer, he'd charged into a lake of holy water and his demon-bone blades had melted. The gift Father Pine had given him before his pilgrimage, and Melchior's crafted throwing knife made of his own demonic tooth. All Ira had left was the wooden handles, which he'd left to collect dust on the desk in his bedroom. Painful reminders of his own inadequacy. Things he couldn't bear to part with. They rested inside him as memories, just as Melchior did. 

Ira's palm ran up to the flat bones encasing his racing heart. Beneath his black Bishop cloak, there were scars. Rounded punctures, tracing an outline of his chest from where Melchior had nearly killed him. Not that Ira blamed him--considering that Ira had almost killed him, too. But what relationships came without a little hardship? 

His fingertips curled, dragging his blunt nails across the stiff material of his simple black dress shirt. One which had been lined in red fabric around each cuff. His throat and wrists, his most vulnerable flesh, was lined in spilled blood. His dedication to the service of the Progeny. The end of demons, which just so happened to be his current company. 

A girl tipped on her six-inch heels. She tumbled into Ira's path, manifesting from the crowd compressing him on all sides. She windmilled her slender arms in a futile attempt to regain her balance. Ira snapped forward, catching her with an arm around her waist. He pulled her back to her full height, which was at least a head over him. The girl laughed, fanning her red cheeks with her hands. 

"Sap, thanks!" She breathed out between her tulip-pink lips. "I guess I'm a little drunk." 

"Must be." Ira answered bluntly. 

He slipped his arm free from her lower back, stepping back to escape her body heat. He looked up at her, his blue eyes squinting to seem much beneath the fluorescent lilac lights. She had pale blonde hair, piled up on her head into a braided crown. Which was hardly the most interesting thing about her. Outlined above her, carving a space of shadow out of the lavender glow emanating from the club ceiling, were two horns growing from her braids. Just hardly opaque enough for Ira to discern the very edges of them--his stomach clenched, his heart thudded. Looking at them made him dizzy. Ira blinked, shaking his head. When he opened his eyes again, they were gone. 

Replacing the ghostly illusion was something much more tangible; a look of horror and disgust reflected in her wide brown eyes. "You--you're a-" 

"Oh, right." Ira sighed. "Could you tell me where I can find a He-Goat? Mayvalt Chital." 

She swung around on her six-inch daggers and stormed back into the crowd. Ira snorted, thinking of a sheep disappearing into a herd to escape the bruising teeth of the shepard's dog. Her abrupt exit sent a shiver through the patrons, a pulse which could be felt through the entire club. The crowd became frenzied, shoving in an even more extreme matter to escape his wake. He strolled forward, carving a path through the demonic party-goers. 

Ira walked towards the bar, stomping just shy of the polished mahogany table. Behind the counter, a small crew of three bartenders stood shivering in their boots. One, a young man with bleached platinum hair, dropped the glass he had been wiping dry, it landed on the floor and shattered into a shower of shards. Someone had shut off the music, just in time to send the echo of the broken cup through the suddenly catacomb-quiet club. 

"Excuse me," Ira said. "I'm looking for Mayvalt." 

The platinum haired demon pressed the back of his palm to his forehead and stumbled back on his heels, landing with a thud into an empty stool. Ira winced, gritting his teeth behind his frowned lips. 

"I come in peace?" He offered, shrugging his shoulders. 

"Bone-snatchers never come in peace." A woman snarled. She stepped towards the bar, easing over the shards of broken glass without a second glance. She placed her flattened palms on the table and leaned slightly forward, her lips dragged back to show her sharp teeth. "You only mean you can't take action--because the Prince is here." 

"No," Ira muttered, attempting very little to keep the disdain from dripping down into the length of his words. "I mean I really do come in peace." 

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, ruffling the soft waves of her oak-brown hair. She seemed lit with confidence, but Ira could see the rapid speed of her pulse just beneath the thin skin of her curved throat. He-Goats were always like that--timid, skittish, and remarkably easy to put an end to. 

Ira had. And so had Father Pine, and the Cardinal, and the children he went to preschool with before he'd been pulled out to be homeschooled. He'd killed creatures of her kind. So, he knew why she hated him--but he didn't have time. Melchior didn't have time. 

"Do you remember me?" He asked. 

She blinked, flinching away from his words as if they could scald. 

"I remember you." Ira pressed forward. "I came here last summer, looking for the Prince. You were working then, weren't you? You and some guy. He told me how to find the Prince while you just stood there. And do you know what happened next?" 

She pressed her pink lips down into a silent frown. Her eyes fell to her shoes and did not rise again. 

"The Prince and I fought Legion. While you--while all of you--did nothing. What were you doing as the knights of the Progeny gave up their lives to protect the world? Did you dance? Did the music even stop? What drinks did you serve that night?" Ira didn't know when his voice had begun to rise. Only that, very suddenly, he realized he was shouting. His voice echoed from the walls, from the sticky floors, and from the glass bottles lining the shelves behind the bar. "We suffered--we died! I lost someone who meant more to me than you could ever possibly imagine. So, tell me where I can find Mayvalt Chital--or I will act as I should and I will slaughter you." 

She tensed her throat, flexing it hard to swallow the knot Ira had formed with his words. She took a step back, raising her trembling finger towards the staircase behind the bar. 

"Thanks." Ira snapped. He mounted the bar in one swift movement, swinging his legs over the table top. He landed on his boots with a thud and the music of crunching glass. He glanced down, toeing the rubber soles of his shoes against the shards of glass glittering against the black floor. "Someone should clean this up. It's not safe." 

He put the Faun to his back and moved forward, slipping between the stunned and still bartenders. Ira wrapped his fingers around the iron railing of the metal stairs, and he climbed. He tampered down the wild beating of his heart with thoughts of Peter, of Father Pine, of Melchior's sweet rainish scent. He did not stop, not pausing for a single moment--he was too afraid the fear would consume him if he hesitated. So he didn't. Not until the stairs pittered out to a landing before him.

Ira mounted the final step, freezing in the presence of the looming figure seemingly waiting for him. He glanced up, rather sheepishly, into a gaze full of confusion and disapproval. She was camped in the open doorway, her shoulder propped against the side of the frame. She had crossed her arms over her chest--stoic and moody--but the rapid thumping of her boot betrayed her jittery nerves.

"Really?" She asked. "You couldn't wait for me to come get you? Wait, no, more importantly--did I just hear you threaten to murder the employee of the month? Grenvalt makes the best martinis in New York, you know." 

"She was being a headache." Ira muttered.

"Then take an advil!" Mayvalt snorted, throwing her palms up in the air. "Don't kill people!"

"I didn't." Ira glanced over his shoulder, pointing down unhelpfully with his finger. She was behind the bar, sweeping shards of glass into a dustpan. "Look, she's fine."

"Sap." Mayvalt sighed. It was a Faunish word. One Ira hardly recognized, only that Mayvalt said it a lot and in the sort of incantation that Ira cursed his angels with. "Coming in?"

She took a half step back, allowing enough space in the doorframe for Ira's body to slip through. He nodded with a sharp jerk of his chin and stepped into the office.

He had been here before, and it hadn't changed since. The floors were bare wooden panels, polished to glistening perfection. Ira was a little worried he'd slip. Near the left wall, a small two-seat couch had been pushed against the scratch wall. A small coffee table completed the look of a tiny living room.

From the fashion magazines, empty latte cups, and take out containers littering the surface of the oak table--Ira imagined it was a space that Mayvalt commanded for herself.

Which left the desk, stacked high with documents and nothing else. The dark mahogany wood was home to tax forms from every century, and lurking behind it was the creature Ira hadn't quite prepared himself to run into. Funny, since this was his home turf.

Ira's eyes skipped quickly past, moving over his shoulder to the furthest wall. The back of the office was transparent. A massive circular window with a stunning view of the Hudson below. Ira sucked in a gasp and crossed towards the glass, pausing just at the windowsill to gaze down at the city lights sparkling across the surface of the black water.

He needed the time to refocus, to channel himself back into the imposing Bishop he'd entered Eden as--but he didn't have to lie about the beauty of New York at night.

"Well," the voice interrupted. Ira's fingers flinched towards his empty belt before he could stop himself. "Nice to see you again, dear."

"Ira." He corrected sharply. "Ira Rule."

"Okay," The Third Prince surrendered. "I didn't mean anything by it--just difficult to remember so many names."

"Wow, okay." Mayvalt breathed. "This is kinda tense, right? Like, I'm getting super bad energy in this office right now. Should we open the window?"

"Why, so you can fumigate my office with the city smog? No thanks."

Ira released the breath he had been holding in his lungs and turned on his heels. He looked across the dimly lit office--into the golden eyes staring back. His heart whalloped painfully behind his ribs. He had dreamed of those eyes--actually dreamed. They appeared in every nightmare he'd had since he'd opened the door in the back of his mind.

He could still feel the ache in his wrist from where the Prince had broken it during their struggle. Ira's struggle--when the Prince had told him not to let go, and he had. Because behind the door in the back of his mind, he'd seen the Prince attack him with a sword.

Ira squeezed his eyes shut and flexed his stiff wrist. "So, the plan? Has he agreed?"

"Partly." The Prince answered. "I still think this is a waste of time. Far too much risk for far too little payout." 

"Saving the world is too little payout?" Ira scoffed, forcing his eyes open in honest bewilderment. 

The Prince shrugged. "Your world."

"Oh, yeah," Ira snarled. "'Cause you two haven't totally been using it, too!" 

The Prince paused for a moment. Mayvalt slapped her open palm against her forehead, where it stuck beneath her pink curls and velvety antlers. "Seven Princes." She muttered, whimpering in exasperation. 

Ira knew how flies felt. Sunken into soft white silk, struggling until they tore out their fragile wings. That was how he felt then--as the Greater Demon in the room pierced him with his golden cat eyes. He'd fallen into silence, propping his hip against the corner of his thick desk. He folded his arms over the chest of his gray tuxedo suit and tilted his head slightly towards his shoulder. It was a posture that dripped with apathy, as if everything in the room bored him. Likely it did, Ira realized. 

He rolled his neck, letting his gaze fall down to the tops of his polished black shoes. His oil-black hair--where it was slightly longer on the tops away from the base of his skull--fell down to conceal the last glimmering remains of his yellow eyes. His skin might have once been a vibrant olive tone, but it had gone sickly pale. If Ira had been some naive laity, he'd think the creature before him was an average indonesian businessman. With riches, and style, and wealth. But Ira knew the truth--that he was the Third Prince of Hell Beelzebub. 

"Okay, look." Ira breathed out, rushing his words out before his courage could fold. "I can get the Vestige-" maybe. 

"I can find Melchior," he prayed. 

"I'll face off against any Greater Demon I have to-" until one finally killed him, he added to himself.  "But I can't open a portal to Hell, and I certainly can't make it on my own there. I. . . I need help." 

The Prince sighed. He lifted his slender fingers to his silky black hair and ruffled it back from the edges of his face. "To open a portal, I'd need more magic than I currently have. To get that magic, I'd have to take it back from all the Faun I gave it to. Faun who currently possess it because it's all that protects them here. They'd be vulnerable and exposed without it." 

"So I'll talk to the Cardinal." Ira said. "I'll make him promise not to harm any He-Goats." 

The Prince laughed. It was a sound as cold as ice and as sharp as glass. "Is that really a demand you have the power to make? If I, the Third Prince of Hell, couldn't get that sort of assurance, who are you to command it?" 

Ira squared his jaw, tilting his head in a way that he hoped screamed defiance and not tantrum. "I'm Ira Rule. He's going to listen to me."

The Prince smirked, a playfully pink smile painted on over his sharp white fangs, and tipped his head back in hollow laughter. "Well, I admire the confidence--but why? What makes you so special? How am I supposed to believe that your word means anything at all?" 

Ira's heart swelled, slamming into the bones encasing it. His pulse became drums whalloping in his ears, so loud he knew that the demons in the room could hear it, too. 

I'm the Soul of the Progeny--I'm someone you knew.

In every single one of Ira's past lives, the Prince had found him. They'd become entangled--until the day Ira would die, until the day they'd meet again. It was for the crime of being bewitched by him that Ira had been told he'd been punished, sent into an endless loop of being. And now, here he was. Standing willingly before the Prince again, but with a head full of the truth of who he was, and with a heart torn somewhere between New York and Hell. 

His eyes flickered past the shoulder of the Prince, to the demon girl hovering to his back. She met his gaze, eyes wide and unwavering. She knew it, too. She had figured it out--who he was. Who he had been. She shook her head once, casting a flicker of light from the golden ring she wore at the base of her antler. His secret was his to use, it served to say. 

"The deal hasn't changed." Ira answered. "I came here a year ago to get help saving someone I care for. He still needs me--until I can guarantee his safety, nothing will stop me. I'll do anything. I'd do everything." 

"Anything," the Prince repeated, "everything." 

"Yes." Ira swore. 

The Third Prince pressed his fingertips to his eyelids. "It won't be enough." 

"I-" 

"You are trying." The Prince interrupted. "I can see that. It took courage coming here, maybe a little stupidity too. I admire that, one helpless fool to another, but you don't understand what you're going up against." 

"The opener of the gate?" Ira guessed. 

The Third Prince nodded, letting the gesture merge into the casual rise of his shrugged shoulders. "Yes and no. There will be the opener of the gate, my big brother. His army, whatever he's managed to gather. Not to mention to even reclaim the Vestige we'll need your friend. If he's in Hell--which, let's be honest is just a guess--then he'll be where all the wolves in Hell go; the Deireadh." 

"Tachtadh." Mayvalt piped up. "That's what the wolves call it." 

"Doesn't really matter, darling." The Prince said blankly. "By any name, this rose is no sweeter. It's the worst of the worst. The place all Beasts go. The place that gate beneath Lake Seneca is leaking into." 

"Why?" Ira asked. "How do you know he'd be down there?"

"He's a Ze'ev." The Third Prince said, as if Ira had been confused about the meaning of wolf.

"Yes." Ira growled. "So--why?"

"It's complicated, kid." Mayvalt answered. "Like, Hell politics. A lot of history. But, basically, Avernians felt that wolves were detrimental to them, up for debate and I don't much care to rehash it--but the solution was that they'd go voluntarily into exile. For thousands of years, they've kept to themselves in the Tachtadh."

"So, you think Melchior would go looking for them? He wouldn't just give up on finding his way back to me. He's not down there trying to join their league!" Ira argued.

Mayvalt frowned, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. "No, no. I don't think he would. . . but, well, that's the thing. They don't have a choice. To keep the wolves in the Tachtadh, their king rules quite. . . ruthlessly."

"A king? Of the wolves?" Ira repeated--he blinked, suddenly remembering something Mayvalt had said to him the first time she had approached him about a plan to defeat Mammon. "The Wolfking."

"That's right." Mayvalt nodded. "He's blood of Mammon. A wolf so twisted he murdered his father and siblings just to keep his crown. If your Melchior is down there causing negative press for the wolves--who are supposed to be in the Tachtadh--then the Wolfking might take him as a threat."

"A-a threat?" Ira squeaked. He thought of a boy with soft curls and a sweet laugh that infected the air around him. "Melchior isn't-"

"He is." The Third Prince interrupted. "He's rare. . . it makes him valuable. Dangerous."

"Rare?" Ira scoffed. "Stop talking about him like some hunted animal!"

"He's one of a kind, darling." 

"Ira."

"Whatever." The Prince dismissed, waving Ira off with a fluttery flick of his wrist. "He's at least half Heimrian, but more importantly he's a silver-tongued wolf." 

"Silver-tongued?" Ira echoed, his pale eyebrows rising up in confusion. 

"He can use magic." Mayvalt explained. "That's how he's turning himself back and forth, a wolf body when he needs it but a human one beneath." 

"Wait." Ira said, shaking his head to diffuse the fuzz building up behind his skull. "Can't all Ze'ev? Like, how the He-Goats look human? Uh, besides you, Mayvalt."

"The Faun appear human because I conceal their demonic traits." The Prince answered. "I could do the same for a wolf, make them appear human, but it wouldn't make them human. You could reach right past what you think you see and give them a belly rub." 

"Then what makes Melchior change? Is it because he's human?" Ira asked.

"No, wolfcurse passes down only the power the inflictor had. Human or not, the way he is now is because the one who infected him was a silver-tongued wolf." The Prince attempted to explain, but upon seeing Ira's eyebrows rise he continued. "Mammon created the first wolf. His daughter Alukah, a silver-tongued shapeshifter. She passed down her gift, over and over and over. Infecting thousands of demons, turning them into wolves. The wolves cling to some story of her as their savior, but the truth is that she was a virus. Those she made sick became her dogs."

"And the silver-tongued wolves?" 

"Her direct lineage." He answered. "Wolves with Ely blood, who have managed to obtain some sickened version of the gift."

"Wolves she made in the traditional sense." Mayvalt shrugged, forcing a wince from Ira at her joke. 

"What gift?" Ira asked.

The Third Prince sighed, pushing himself up from the slump he'd nestled into against the top of his desk. "The gift of the Ely. It's the ability to manipulate the thin invisible walls of the world around us all. We can make rips, opening gates between realms. We can bend light, turning horns invisible. Silver-tongued wolves are tapping into the potential of that gift, using it to change the matter of their bodies from fur and teeth to milk-intolerances and awkward bipedal limbs." 

"Wait--can they open gates?" 

"No. The gift wasn't meant for them, it's for the heavens." He said. "They can't go any further than shifting themselves, the power is completely internal. No gates, no illusions." 

Ira sat back against the chilled window, thinking of something Mayvalt had told him a year ago. That Heimrians had been given a gift--the best gift, which meant there were others. Later, he learned that the gift he'd been given was this cursed looping existence. And the angels could control the Trammel, plus manipulate what Ira could see. He glanced at Mayvalt, tipping his head slightly in curiosity. "What about a demon? What gifts do they have?" 

"Um, I'm really good at playing the spoons?" She shrugged. "Oh, plus we live forever. I mean, until a hunter kills us. A body that will never die by itself." 

Ira knew what she meant. That he was a body that would die, and come back to another. He glanced at the Prince. "But he's immortal, too. Doesn't seem so fair-" 

"I'm not." The Prince interrupted, startling the Bishop into silence. He glanced over with his glimmering yellow eyes, sending chills zapping down Ira's spine. "Ely don't live forever. They live until they run dry--and then they fade away." 

"R-run. . . dry?" 

"Expended of their magic, or just their will." 

"I've heard that it's beautiful to see an Ely's last moments." Mayvalt murmured somewhat dreamily. "I've heard it's like. . . a supernova. Or the death of galaxies. Brillant, and then nothing." 

"Ah," he muttered, "well, at least I have that to look forward to. Bezel-flavored fireworks." 

The office frosted over, filling with distant club music from the resumed party downstairs. Mayvalt bowed her head, dragging her fingers in light touches around the golden cuff in her hair. Ira flexed his throat, forcing down the knot forming there to replace it with words. 

"So," he coughed, "then there are more wolves like Melchior? Silver-tongued descendants?"

"Not anymore." The Prince answered. "On account of the Wolfking killing all of them."  

"His family?" Ira guessed.

"Yep." The Prince nodded. 

Ira held his palms up in weak surrender. "Then this Wolfking is blood of your brother? He's your family." 

"Shocking, I know." The Third Prince of Hell shrugged blankly. "We've found another enemy to face--and he's my relative. Thanksgiving dinner is going to be awkward." 

"Well," Ira laughed. "Mine first. If we're going to do this, we have to convince the Cardinals." 

The Prince bowed his head in thought, turning as frozen and still as cement. Ira held his breath, letting only the rapid thumping of his heart betray him. If the Prince refused to help--then what? Watch as Beasts bubbled in the blessed waters of Lake Seneca? Pray for each day that a new army wouldn't crash into New York? Forever wonder where Melchior was? If he was hurt, if he was safe?

The thoughts terrified him. They chilled his blood and zapped all his nerve endings--he didn't know how long his body could survive this state of constant full-fledged panic. He needed the Prince, as much as it pained him to admit. He needed the Third Prince of Hell to end it.

When, finally, the Prince blew a cold breath from his nose, stirring with the first signs of life he'd shown in minutes, Ira almost pressed his palms to his ears to delay the verdict. 

"It's been so long since I've been to church." The Third Prince shrugged. "Maybe I should make a confession while I'm there."