go and hide tonight

You promised yourself you wouldn’t go scrying. He’s no longer your responsibility, and furthermore, it would be an invasion of privacy and trust. The second he returned your Grimoire marked the end of your association, as he’d made clear by his scathing words and storming exit. Along with the Asmodeon Crystal you have conceded any excuse to rush to his rescue, should anyone interrogate you on your following actions.

 

And yet.

 

The charm you’d never brought yourself to remove jingles painfully against your skull, sounding like a small animal in distress. You respond accordingly, rushing to the kitchen sink and nearly overflowing it with water. The image, while being projected from clean and clear water, is dark enough for you to lean in for a closer look.

At the moment it’s daylight in hell, but the scene seems to take place in the deepness of a moonless night. Once your eyes adjust, what had triggered the charm becomes clear. He, and the rest of I.M.P are lashed shoulder to shoulder against a tree, limbs and tails cocooned by angelic rope that provides a muted reprieve against the otherwise suffocating darkness. They are surrounded by caped figures that seem to be… dancing? Or contorting? To what must be the tune of something you can’t hear. Religious zealots, you surmise. Humans who think they can commune with the dead, the demonic and never seem to learn their lessons when proven wrong.

 

You shouldn’t offer help that’s probably not wanted, but the more you watch him and the other two struggle, the less pressing logic seems to be.

 

With the cracking of your neck and straightening of posture, your body dissolves painlessly into smoke, and then shadow. Unlike using a portal, there’s no flashy opening of space rifts, only the instinctual jumping from one world to the next that you’d perfected as a shadow. This time the humans that’ve cornered your beloved are alive. You can feel the thrumming of beating heats, the heat that emanates from stinking flesh. That is no matter.

 

You allow some of your presence to spread thin and descend upon the mortal forms like a swarm of locusts. Bones strain and crackle, veins pop as their bodies protest, only to cave into your will. They carve your sigil into dirt, a familiar dance of crouching and shuffling until your chosen human vessel is contained within the circle. He’s an almost comically normal looking man, average height, sporting a weak chin and receding hairline. He is wearing slacks and a button down under his robes. Something tells you, without words, that he is the leader.

 

You have the grimoire. You don’t need to do this. You shouldn’t do this. And yet, as you take ownership of the human’s every cell, every nerve, alter the tides of his blood, you feel a savage joy. A bone deep satisfaction only rivaled by nights spent being restrained and flogged and fucked with no regard for the way you squeal in pain.

 

Fitting yourself within a human feels a bit like squeezing into a too small outfit but that’s fine. You don’t restrain yourself for long.

 

Surging forward, you use magical influence to let the body swell. Bones splinter under pressure, arteries spurt, skin is pulled taught before being shredded until all that’s left is an advancing tidal wave of flesh. Right before borrowed eyes rupture, you finally survey the predicament your beloved found himself in from a personal vantage point, almost intimately.

 

The humans are still beholden to your will. They can do nothing but gawk. For a second you consider sparing them. Knowing you resigned them to a traumatic life going forward would have been enough to assuage your rage.

 

Would have, had you not spotted the various gleaming white blades held in shaking hands and hanging from utilitarian belts. The audacity to wield angelic weaponry is what pushes you to balloon the mass of flesh you’re piloting. They can’t run, but they can scream as gelatin flesh overtakes their fragile bodies, suffocating them until the screams make way to the sound of popping, bursts of blood squirting from meaty folds. You relish in their last moments as they struggle in the embrace of overpowering muscle and unspooling organs.

 

The massacre, when you finally lay your vessel to rest and step out as if exiting a limo, has skirted around the assassins, leaving not so much as a speck of gore on them.

 

After months, you directly face Blitzo. His eyes are shining.

 

“Fuck,” he says eloquently.

 

“I suppose so,” you agree, even though that doesn’t make much sense. Even now he seems capable of reducing your thoughts to mush. You know you shouldn’t, he’s probably been relieved beyond words to not have to touch you anymore, but you can’t resist stepping forward, and cradling his head In your hands. Turning it and brushing a discerning gaze down the rest of his body, trying to spot Injuries. Had this been before you’d flirtatiously suggest he join you at home to bathe together, to give you a way to catalogue any damage, but now it is after and you’ll have to settle for trusting an over the clothes examination.

 

“Stols,” he says. This time his voice is softer than you’ve heard from him in a while.

You don’t have an excuse to ask, “Are you alright?” But you do so anyway.

 

You’re still holding his head, and he raises hands to cover your own. Thumbs brushing against the back of your hand. His employees and daughter might be saying something, but you can’t hear them over the rushing that’s sounding in your ears. You can’t register anything else when he tugs you down to his height and kisses you in leu of an answer. Or maybe as an answer.

 

He isn’t gentle and his fangs dig into your tongue like a punishment, and you gratefully take it, guiding him closer for more. Neither of you come up for air until it’s necessary. He doesn’t want to let you go this time you think, and you hope he can feel how you’ve never wanted to let him go.