Hellboy and the competing resident 'gods' fall into a triangle of increasingly shady negotiation. (Reviewers will be thanked!)

"The hand," Gray purred through gravelly depths. "The blood bearing demon returned – the red stone prize, delivered up to me!"

Hellboy sidestepped the last of the molten rebounds sizzling beyond the rim of Gray's lava trench, while keeping a sharp lookout on its liquid surface, on the dying away of concentric ripples. He wondered which way to jump, now that the bombastic invisible blowhard had located to an unknown somewhere else. He felt a wave of heat massing above, just before it dropped and arrowed down on him. For the sheer joy and release of it, Hellboy threw a right cross into the presence and kept on dishing out his burly brand of interference. Yeah – Gray was a scorchy radiator, too; even hotter when he began to buzz a searching arc around Hellboy's body. But Gray suddenly broke it off, then blew on past with an escalating indignant growl, away to something else that demanded his immediate intervention. The object of Sister's new infatuation had been moved a distance off from the hazards of the pit, and Hellboy knew that's where she'd be – smack up territorial beside it.

"Esteemed mistress of crafts!" Gray snorted. "What is this? My sister has assembled another work of grotesque imagination." His attention snapped back to Hellboy, for the likely obvious reason. "The red mauler – who vowed to again find this way to his dissolution-"

"Annnd your sloppy, wet welcome." With a sting of his own, Hellboy killed the cresting of yet another grandiose diatribe. "Stuck-up. Overcooked." He shoved aside the right facing of his coat, squared back his shoulders and clapped his stone palm over the holstered Samaritan. "I heard you didn't believe in me."

"I've since had talk with those who do." Gray punched up the attitude with his trademark drama. "Now, you think to lay insult with your slave's wage of iron..."

It was too early to know the details, but Hellboy read that slimy intent to impress him with the peril behind his hint of insider collusion. Still, Gray stayed off him, then changed his tune to one of oozing charm, saying, "I find merit in your artisan skill, Sister. You've well captured the tyrannical, demonic horned visage. The imposing physique and aspect of domination. The exaggerated mechanism of a hand and arm inscribed with symbols of a truly infernal cabal. Yet, you do not only embellish the mauler...but represent the very being of my own recent acquaintance."

Her reply burned with sarcasm. "No doubt, a royal warlord undiscovered amid the confusion of your historical studies. Leave off the flattery. I feel your coveting. I will have this one, and you may deal with him that stands here now."

"Generous," he sneered, "that you designate the superior for yourself. This I personally know – he is far beyond your ambition to engage. When I move to capture his service, rest assured that you will enjoy a share."

"You gamble.." she said, "to lure the superior brother to surrender himself, and betray the Red! I will learn my desire's name, and bind him to me."

"A precipitous boast. Considering that your desire is not yet here in body, mine are the better odds." His next exclamation gnashed at Hellboy. "Tribute for your trespass, infidel!"

Coolly unhurried, Hellboy sauntered up to stand beside his 'brother' image, smirking privately at Sister's readiness to trade him off at a moment's notice. He assigned Gray's overt lie the same due significance. "It's been settled – with the lady."

"She," Gray's voice descended to a guttural hiss, "owns no right of negotiation..."

"She does with me." Hellboy firmed the set of his jaw, and crossed his arms.

"The Red sides with me." Her bratty tone jabbed at the boundaries of Gray's tolerance.

"What benefit does he bring? What is there to recommend him?!"

"You think to shake me. You ought sleep less, Brother, as much has transpired and escaped you. It is your sloth to regret."

"And you, Sister, are ignorant of what I have laboured to gain in blessed privacy!"

Listening attentive and amused to the escalation of their jealous exchange over his comparative value, Hellboy took offhand notice of how vast sections of the revolving sky's black streaks had now stretched into faint, spidery veins above them. He'd raised a credit to keep afloat – that his newly invented brother must be quite the guy to be haggled over this way. Was it his mega-thuggish looks? The super-sized arm? Gray was falling all over himself to use his first sight of her sculpture to shine up his own inter-dimensional high roller chops. Lizard brain. Wasn't everyone jonesing for top of the food chain? Ramping up the glory couldn't hurt.

"The prince," Hellboy cut in with a casual aside, "could take this over, as Sister's dowry."

"Not possible!" spat Gray.

"Could be a nice vacation place," he went on, surveying through his hands. "Change it up...put his circus maximus right over there..."

"No hellion, no djiniri, will disrupt the balance of my territories!"

"Brother, you've never before shown such fear that I could!" In her apparent flush of triumph, she swept immediately to Hellboy with a hushed purr of excitement. "The prince..my Lion.." Again, she sounded pleasured with renewed favour toward him. "Ignore the bleating goat," she whispered. "Come away!"

He felt clutching force applied to his shoulders, but this time she gave him no level direction. And he went down. Zip-lined through a drop in blackness. When his feet struck solid base, a dense flurry of fine dust displaced high upward and hung about him in a powdery cloud. As it sifted back to ground, he opened his eyes and found the space lit enough to see that he'd landed in a low roofed cavern that seemed to stretch infinitely off to his left and right. He had little time to wonder if he'd been stranded alone when her heat streamed by him and away, guiding her demon copy.

"What's this place?" he asked her, wiping fine grit from his mouth with the back of a gloved hand.

"My own, my very own retreat. My gallery, and more." Her inflection brightened as she advised, "Pay them no mind. They will keep their distance, unless provoked."

He waited in stillness for the new mystery to make itself known and heard first, a chorus of overlapping high and low pitched hooting, and bestial snuffling sounds. The cryptically unidentified subjects slinking up as apparent live things from the knee deep dust medium, behaved like a pack of docile family dogs.

"Hyenas," he remarked when the last of them had arrived. "Why here?"

"Because my brother hates them so." Her escaped giggle mimicked the hyenas' subdued, witless mutterings. Then, she tersely directed, "Remain here. I go alone to pray."

On his own, Red surveyed his dim, colourless surroundings of oddly smooth rock ceiling and walls, mapping out to memory whatever was visible. Above him, he saw no breakage caused by the forced entry of his entirely solid self. He counted fourteen striped hyenas lazing around him – some laid out asleep, some sitting on their haunches, some licking themselves; none showing any particular interest in him. But while he studied them, he marked intervals of their living substance seeming to flicker in and out. At times, their noise and movements froze, and they appeared as no more than outlines of particle transparencies like the others she'd formed. Two of the animals vanished entirely in an episode of fluctuation.

Surfacing was the djiniri's earlier mocking suggestion. His return for the chance to save his 'weak underling'? He'd get out of her what she meant; if there was any possibility of making it real. So far as she'd taken him to her place to hold off Gray, he was in a position to investigate whatever opportunities might turn up, and choose when to tip that hand.

The stream of his contemplations was shattered by the intrusion of an imperious echoing demand. Gray.

"Send Soraya to me!"

From off somewhere, Djiniri retorted with extreme annoyance, "Soraya tends to her young in the nest, and here she will stay! Brother, accept that you've lost this stage of the contest. You'll trick no chink for sly entry!"

Hellboy caught the movements of another creature taking shape on a high ledge some twenty feet away – a fine large falcon pushing food morsels into the open beaks of eager, unfledged chicks. She veered her piercing raptor gaze for some seconds to stare in his direction, then resumed her nurturing duties. Two loud voices rattling from wall to wall seemed not to disturb her.

"I will speak with the Red," Gray crossly insisted.

"You torment as a sandstorm!"

"You cannot prevent his hearing and response. He is to be mine, as agreed!"

As Hellboy heard the continuing arguments fly, he saw a second falcon glide out of the far darkness and alight at the ledge to deliver a limp captured rodent to his mate and family.

"As agreed," she affirmed, "yet, I did not specify when."

The djinn siblings weren't bothering to hide any communicated intentions, as far as he could tell. He was the 'simple brute'. Just another captive game piece – either the prize or the hot potato, subject to the switchups of pushing and pulling between them. He kept an urge to laugh under wraps.

"You'll not hold him from me!"

"In due time, fond Brother!"

"By means of his true name, I'll bind his service to me!"

"Proof!" she shot back, "The name!"

He felt her sidle up next to him. Smelled her, too. Back from wherever she'd been, doused in sweet frankincense.

"Djinni!" Hellboy crashed in with what he knew for sure. "All you've shown me is how big you can splash and holler and -"

"And practice brilliant arts of death in ways fashioned to entertain!"

"Real original – ambush kill of one man.."

"In the game of blood, the blood is all. The blood of untold thousands of dying hearts have drenched me. What should I care for your single unremarkable human?"

"Way to put a stink on it," Hellboy snarled.

No answer.

He ground out the challenge. "Say.. my.. name."

Again, silence hung apparently confounded, ahead of Gray's boast. "From the ranks of Pandemonium, the Beast will furnish me your own true name, shabby imitator. I know of the power of the Key!"

"Old news," Red chuckled darkly at Gray's implied parlay with no less than 'the Beast'. "A spirit of the Djinn – scraping your nose in the ashes, begging trades from my high level order. Nobody handed you a solid. Get real." He let two seconds lapse, then goaded, "I hear them laughing."

"Received as an equal, I begged of no demon!" Gray blurted in a face saving attempt. "By what fraud do you bear such a right hand? You, who are not the Beast prince?"

Hellboy could feel Gray chomping at the bit to be taken as a made friend of the hell region. This match came narrowed down to who was best at bluffing on the fly. He raised his stone arm and clenched his fingers into a solid club. "His seal, welded to me...as his right hand."

"He is the one true Key, and you – the mere shadow. His scout, his mercenary! What are you, who once ran from me with your weak minions?"

Hellboy grinned to infuriate. "Favourite brother of the Beast."

"Ahhh.." Entertained by the Red's insolence and the brazen lashings of his tail, Djiniri drew out a sigh of approval.

The silence held as Gray abandoned the argument.

"Djiniri, do you let him in?"

"Never, when I seal all space between us. He is odious to me." She paused. "How does my prince come to be called 'the Beast'?"

"Your lion," he offered convincingly. "No difference."

"What key do you speak of?" She laced her chagrined tone with suspicion of her exclusion.

"Just yanking his chain," Hellboy dismissed.

"No chain binds smokeless fire," she said, then returned to a subject of current high importance. "May he truly have gained a confederate against us?"

"Not unless he's found some traitor to buy off.." Couldn't let her get too comfortable.

She changed moods in a capricious flash and called out, "Soraya! My beauty.." The falcon launched from her nesting ledge and soared gracefully across the divide. Hellboy saw her talons curve to grip a mid-air perch as she folded down her speckled wings. "Sweet treasure," her mistress cooed. "For the present, you will not hunt in the open above. I have provided."

The bird's head movements suggested that she was being nuzzled, kissed and petted.

"Bless her," she whispered, then extended the falcon closer to him on her invisible arm. "What think you?" Soraya bristled and flared her shoulders in agitation.

"I think she hates hyenas, too," Hellboy chuckled.

"And your differences. Her trust must be earned." Lofted upward, Soraya took flight and returned to her nest.

The Beast model was being made to move. "We will go farther, this way," she began.

Hellboy held back. "I want quiet here, for a short time. But you can stay."

"Do you speak with my prince?" she whispered in undisguised delight, "and offer prayers?"

"That's right."

"As you stand?" She couldn't resist putting the question. He had not faced to the east.

"As I stand. Now, quiet!"

He wanted to get straight the exchanges he'd had with her and Djinni Gray, the lies and deceptions on all sides, and to think over the possibility that he'd actually sent out appeals to Hell's capital city. Whose brains he'd tried picking there, Hellboy had no idea. And right in front of him was the crux of it, the Beast-prince that Djiniri dragged everywhere she went, like a seven foot tall pull-toy. He looked it in the face. "If I ever wanted a brother, it sure ain't you."

But it strangely gave him focus. If he or anyone else learned that name, and used it – was he this close to finding out if becoming that guy was a one-way sentence? Nobody could make him do it. Until the game was won, he'd have to stay the best friend of his infernal 'brother' and keep up appearances. It looked like Gray didn't yet have what he wanted, and maybe never would – maybe.

"Son!"

It impacted like a punch straight into his central brain. Djiniri would be watching, but she asked nothing of him. He kept his yellow eyes open and untroubled, and his stance relaxed as he searched his memory for any recognition of the voice. "Now, what?"

"What fresh hell is this?!" A chuckled quote replied.

"Another player?" he assumed. "What's the use of you throwing in?"

"I was of great use in siring you, favourite son, before you were stolen from the circle of your elders."

He absorbed the stun of that identification, and stood without answer. He couldn't argue it away.

"Come home." The invitation both urged and commanded.

"What for?"

"Take up the reign of the prince you are meant to be."

"You can keep it."

"Realize the pride that I preserve in you as the Beast entrusted to bear, guard, and soon wield the ultimate power of the Right Hand."

Without dropping his calm watchful gaze, Hellboy flexed the wrist of his permanent stone arm. Damn this unseen demon for existing; for knowing him this well.

"The Dark Matter, the Dark Energy," continued the visitor, "stymies all humankind, and the vacuous Djinn. Through these, is the painful and hazardous channel to our eternal home. I would have you leave this broken plane before.."

"You've heard of free will. Thanks for dropping by."

"Do I stand aside and withhold advantage, knowing that the foreign and plebeian connive to enslave my son and the Prince within him? Kill them off. Finish it. Remember, and hold it close. I arm you with your true name –"

"No.." There was no shutting it out.

"Speak it, and return to us. Anung un Rama – your true father Azzael, does not abandon you."

The voice quit as abruptly as it had come. The piece of reinforcement thrust upon him by the initiated demon was calculated to convince the djinn of his ties to the hell region's nobility. He was now better equipped to field and counter Gray's moves on that front. But for Hellboy, it was the most personally damaging confirmation, and his distrust of all three entities' agendas sharpened his guard. He'd put himself out there as a wild card. He, and anyone and anything else, were up for barter.

Growing tired of his preoccupied silence, Djiniri piped up with a firm proposition. "You are never again, to listen to my brother. He seeks only for himself."

Hellboy looked in her direction, more steely than before. "No. I'll hear him. I'm aware that your djinn possessions can't be worked on me. I'm staying open to better offers, same as you are." Now accustomed to her ways, he felt how she flounced in frustration beside him. He pointed a stone finger. "If you've got a mind to cuff me, no more," he warned. "I've allowed all your pushing me around only because you're – a lady. It stops now!"

"Better offers?" she despaired.

"You, and your brother – want a lot from me. You both tell me what you think I am."

"If I have not, I will show respect." Treading softly, she introduced praise. "I judge it most admirable that such a prince assigns you; and surely, you are otherwise uniquely gifted?" Her polite show of interest sounded forced as she awaited poised for reply.

"I do all right."

"I would know more?" she prodded coyly.

"That's all I've got," he grinned, knowing for them both, where her real curiosity lay.

"Then, the more of my Lion?"

"What do you offer to be accepted? He's nobody's lap dog."

"Accepted," she mused. "Of wives and concubines, how many?"

Hellboy swiftly decided the numbers. "Now, eight and twelve."

"I have lived much of my past as both."

"A word to the wise – no one ever puts hands on him the way you -"

"In this, I have wisdom! Do not presume to counsel me on such!"

"And about your habit of jumping to argue.." He threw up his hands. "Why waste my time?"

"I am pleasing," she fawned, "and will curtail myself. Tell more."

"If it makes you happy. I know he said..." He let her dangle while he toyed with retrieving the forgotten remark. "He said.." At last, he recited, "He called you a - a bountiful, buxom beauty."

"My prince's true words?" she murmured in appeased wonder, savouring. "You must relate all that my Lion says of me, as you receive it – and to him, give my acceptance of terms. A contract for lands. And you," she proposed, "I will treat respectfully, if by other means, you follow me.."

Things began to move, fast. He watched a desert mirage spin shimmers of heat. They lengthened, swirled into a column of fire and stood on end, whipping up a vortex of cavern dust, exciting the hyenas into maniacal gibbering. Within the glowing nucleus, a visible creature came alive, commanding Hellboy's attention as she transformed into a white-furred bipedal being. A woman sized mammal, with silky haired arms upraised to roll back a fine fabric cowling from the dome of her canine head. Delicately, she flicked out a long tongue to moisten her black nose, and the lips of her muzzle. Her vertically set djinn eyes, rimmed with black fringes of interlocking lashes, blinked up at him for the first time.

She awaited the one reaction that Hellboy must supply. And he knew what it had to be. "Djiniri," he said, "your prince spoke true."