Broken by Love - Mark Howard Jones
. . . Runs Out Like Sand - Mark Howard Jones
Black Wings - Jeffrey Thomas

Excerpt from "Black Wings" by Jeffrey Thomas

The palace was called Urian, though amongst themselves the Demons liked to joke that it was Castle Urine. It was a great square block worked from a single stone, its luridly red-orange surface pocked and pitted as pumice, with no towers, no carven decorations, just far-spaced slits for windows and only a single door. This red cube rested at the heart of a desert of red sand, and on the rare occasion that it rained, the scarlet powder would reveal itself to be d ehydrated blood, and would liquefy, become a sludgy mud flat of gore. From the desert sprouted a dense forest of bare, tree-like growths as white as coral. The surfaces of these coral trees were so rough that to rub against them was to draw blood, like the rasping skin of a shark. Their leafless, lifeless arms wove jagged thickets of bone that had never worn flesh.

There was a path through the coral reef, however, that ran to the door of the castle. From one of the narrow windows, the Demon named Xaphan peeked out at the approach of the carriage that was delivering Urian's latest guests. The carriage itself was a featureless, black iron globe between two huge wheels, pulled by a harnessed team of two dozen naked Damned children, so Xaphan could not as yet spy the guests themselves.

He started as another figure slipped beside him; he had been so intent he hadn't heard Vjeshitza's approach. She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, and bit him hard there without breaking his dark skin. While doing so, she held onto his folded wings, which like her own were feathered and black as a crow's, though the wings did not permit their species of Demon to fly. Xaphan and Vjeshitza both possessed skin of a deep chestnut hue and luster, both of them hairless, even without eyebrows. And both wore no garments. Their only embellishments were black onyx rings pierced through their nipples – and on their upper chests, raised keloids like the healed wounds of a tiger's slash, four of these tracks above each breast, where they had marked themselves with their retractable talons upon having completed their warrior's training in the city of Tartarus, where all the Demons in this region of Hell were mass produced before marching to their assigned cities, forts and outposts.

Vjeshitza lifted her face, smiling, and traced her tongue – more tender now – along the rim of Xaphan's ear. "They're newly dead," she purred, "and this is their first visit to Hades."

"Their first vacation?" Xaphan snorted. "Are they bored with their celestial pleasures so soon?"

"The man wants to hunt. His wife will be entertained here. Come away now, before you're seen loitering about. We must all be prepared to serve them."

"I hate when their kind come," he said.

"Shh," hissed Xaphan's lover, looking over her shoulder in case one of the Baphomets might be near. "You mustn't appear sullen."

"Should I appear giddy, then? I'm a Demon."