Amanda Sims walked casually down Decatur Street, carrying a worn brown leather satchel over her shoulder. As she moved among the morning tourists, she took in the multitude of aromas the various humans gave off, patted her engorged stomach, and covered her mouth to burp.

How rude and not very ladylike! She grinned, but she was no lady. Eyes gleaned in the bright light, hiding the red glow that emanated from them, and Amanda's throat rumbled lightly in Rygen's demon tone. Well fed on the bodies of Amanda and Stefon, it had helped to calm his rage at being under the control of Samedi, and he even relished in the plan he was about to carry out. As he turned the corner, his strong sense of smell picked up the lingering scents of Cassie, Angel, and the bitch herself coming from the witchcraft shop a few storefronts down.

Rygen reached up and felt the beaded necklace around his neck, which held a spell to mask his mystical presence. It was the same spell Samedi had used in the warehouse, so they knew it would keep the princess from sensing him as he carried out his plan. Now, it would all depend on her not being with Angel when he approached him under his current guise as their friend, Sims. Taking a deep whiff, Rygen's eyes drifted up towards the roof above the shop and sensed that she was up there and that Angel's smell was not among them. He grinned and moved at a quick pace to reach the shop and take care of business.

Inside the shop at the main counter, Davis sat perched on a shop stool and sipped on an iced coffee as he flipped through the pages of a geometry book, taking notes on a notepad next to him. The morning had been very slow with almost no customers, and while Davis enjoyed the interactions, he was grateful for the peace and quiet to get ahead on some of his studies. Focused on solving an equation, he almost did not hear the front door bell chime and actually jumped a bit as the bell's sound broke the silence. He looked up, noticed the young woman who'd walked in, and smiled in greeting.

"Welcome to 'Charmed, I'm Sure'. May I help you with anything?"

With a quick cursory glance around the store, Rygen confirmed that they were alone and offered a genuine smile at the young man. "You might. Are you the shop owner?"

Davis shook his head, "No, I just help Cassie out part time. Were you looking for her?"

"Not particularly." Rygen smirked as he took a few steps into the shop. He eyed the various trinkets and artifacts on display, noticing that most were worthless junk but also taking a keen interest in some of the items that he could tell held real power. Whether this Cassie knew the difference between the two, he couldn't guess, but he would not dismiss her outright. "There are quite a variety of magical items in here. Are you a practitioner yourself?"

Davis let out a laugh. "Afraid not. Cassie's the one with the gifts. I just enjoy learning about the different branches of witchcraft, from herbology to the casting of spells, and even a bit of the summonings sounds intriguing."

So. Rygen thought to himself, The witch knew her stuff. He moved among the displays as he continued to interrogate the human. "Summonings? You mean like calling up a demon from Hell?"

"Something along those lines, I suppose." David shrugged as he watched the young woman approach the counter, her eyes gazing over every inch of the store. "I guess I more enjoy the work that goes into creating a circle, the materials needed, and the lore behind it. We have a few books on the subject if it interests you."

"Honestly," Rygen's voice cooled, "I am not very fond of summonings. They bind the demon to the summoner like a slave. It's pathetic."

Sensing he'd offended the young woman but having no idea how, Davis bowed his head solemnly. "I didn't mean to offend you, miss."

As he peered down into the cabinet with the crystals and amulets on display, Rygen let his eyes drift up to Davis, and he gave him Amanda's sexy smile, "You did not. It's just a personal quirk of mine." She then added with a generous lick of her lips, "Have you ever seen a demon before?"

Grateful he'd not offended the lady, and surprised by her behavior, Davis chuckled nervously, "No. As much as I love the study of magic, it's difficult to believe that summonings, or demons, could be a real thing."

"Oh, they're very real." Rygen grinned, his facade's smile looking cool and predatory, which startled Davis. Out of sight of Davis's eyes, Rygen's hand performed a small figure-eight circle, and the lock on the shop door turned with a silent click. "Would you like to see one?"

"Miss?" The air in the shop turned cold, and Davis felt fear creep along his spine. The woman's eyes seemed to subtly change while she pulled out a strange-looking glass ball out of her satchel.

"Do you know what this is?" Rygen gleefully asked. The young man's fear made Rygen's stomach growl.

"N…no?" Davis found his gaze pulled towards the ball, despite the warning bells going off in his head. "What is it?"

"It holds a particularly fun spell." Rygen rolled the ball under his finger along the glass top of the case. "When released, it creates a silent bubble that muffles all the sounds within it from the outside world. Once you speak the spell, all you have to do is tap the ball three times to activate it."

To demonstrate, Rygen spoke a spell that Davis could not understand, "Absorbe omnes sonitus intus," then tapped the top of the ball three times. Davis watched in awe as the glass ball pulsed and a soft grayish light burst out of the ball and bathed the entire store in its flickering light for a few seconds. Rygen picked up the ball and dropped it into the satchel. "Now, no one outside of the room will hear a thing."

"Uh." Davis started to slip off the stool. "What purpose does such a spell serve?"

With a laugh, Rygen asked, "Isn't it obvious, meat?" Quickly, he lashed out with a clawed hand and grabbed Davis by the collar of his shirt, pulling him hard against the counter, "It's so no one can hear the sound of your screams."

Davis did indeed scream, as the woman before him changed into something incredibly frightening. He saw a creature that he recognized from one of the books he had read during the research he'd done for Cassie, and a name slipped from his lips: "Rygen!?"

Rygen blinked in surprise. "You've heard of me, human?"

"I…" Davis choked from the pressure on his throat as Rygen's claw slipped around his neck. "I have seen you in one of the books. You're a hellhound, one of the deadliest in the texts. It called you 'The Devourer'!"

"Mmmmm!" Rygen licked his lips, "That I am."

Rygen dragged Davis over the counter, slammed him harshly on the floor in front of it, and leaned down as his shape continued to morph back into his natural form. He watched Davis struggle to sit up against the counter, and he let him have the moment to do so. Davis' voice cracked with fear. "Please. What do you want?"

Rygen sniffed hungrily at Davis's scent, which was now saturated in fear and despair, his favorite seasonings. He shook his head, "Unfortunately, time doesn't grant me what I really want. To feast on you slowly and savor every morsel. I have too much to do and too little time to do it. Harumph. Plus, I'm rather full, so I'm afraid you'll just have to go to waste."

Hyperventilating, Davis watched Rygen's claw trace up from his groin to his throat, Tears streaming down his face, he wept, "Please, please don't."

Rygen's maw turned into a wicked, dark grin as he pushed his foreclaw deep into Davis' throat and pulled downward, splitting Davis' torso open from throat to groin. Davis' arms flailed about helplessly as his eyes rolled to the back of his head. Blood poured out and down both sides of Davis' quivering body as his eyes rolled back in his head and blood gurgled out of his choking mouth. Rygen watched the man suffer as life seeped from his mutilated body before he took his other claw and, with both hands, pulled his chest apart. Cracking his ribs out of the way, Rygen plunged his claws into Davis' body and ripped out his heart. Sniffing it lovingly to draw in the scent, Rygen allowed himself a bit of dessert and bit deep into the tissue, chewing it slowly.

Once finished with his morsel, Rygen reared up on his hind legs to his full height, burped loudly, and let himself return to the form of Amanda Sims. He then retrieved the satchel he'd dropped while killing Davis. Drawing his hand out of the satchel, Rygen gripped a large vial of red fluid and pulled the stopper off the top. Whispering a spell under his breath, Rygen flicked the vial outward in a semicircle towards the middle of the shop, and the vibrant red fluid expanded into torrents of mystical fire, coating over and along all of the merchandise in the shop.

Rygen watched as the books shriveled up in the fire, which burned cold and quietly. He smirked as the incense began to burn in bulk, the artifacts and jewelry melted, and the stands themselves became scorched. Rygen looked down into the counter where the crystals and amulets lay and shook the vial. A bit of the red liquid dripped onto the case, immediately melting the glass and falling onto the collection of crystals, and they started to explode like popcorn shells.

Laughing with vicious glee, Rygen kicked the various stands over and danced between the flickering fires, tossing items that were missed into the fires. He watched the entire shop all but disintegrate before his eyes. It took mere minutes before the entire shop had been destroyed, and satisfied that Cassie would not be able to salvage anything, Rygen walked casually over to Davis' body and knelt beside him, careful not to get Amanda's skirt in the blood. Sliding a delicate finger along the ridge of his mangled rib cage, Rygen brought a bloody finger to his lips and sucked on it, cleansing it of the blood. "I'm sorry I couldn't finish you, my dear boy. Especially to honor you for knowing who I am."

Rygen turned his eyes upward and looked at the ceiling. From what Samedi had told him, Cassie lived in the apartment above, and that is where he would find Angel, or what was left of him after what Rygen had done to 0him. He looked to the side door, smirked, and thought, Let's go see how much damage we did to the meat.

Standing, Rygen walked over and grabbed the door knob and pulled hard, which broke the lock, and he opened it slowly. With a sniff, he confirmed no one was in the hallway and stepped out. With another strong whiff, Rygen's eyes opened wide in surprise. Angel was not upstairs, as he expected, but outside in the back. This did not make sense to Rygen. He expected Angel to be laid up in bed, dying, and easy to pluck from under the nose of the princess. With care, Rygen moved to the door that led to the back parking lot and opened it slowly. Eyes that could see in pure darkness peered through the crack, and real shock ran down Rygen's spine. There, next to the car he'd crashed into the night before, he saw Angel moving with ease and looking healthy, removing bags from the back seat of the car.

How!? Rygen growled deeply, thinking, How is he not near death? Where are the wounds I gave him?

With careful movement, Rygen closed the back door and closed his eyes. This changed things. He had intended to use a trance spell on Angel and whisk him away in silence. Since the bubble spell had been confined to the interior of the shop, if Angel got off any kind of warning, it would reach the princess on the roof. He considered trying to get Angel up to the apartment itself, where he could use another bubble spell discretely and then subdue Angel with the sleep spell, but again, it could catch the attention of the two on the roof.

Fuck! Rygen glowered. He would have to lure Angel into the destroyed shop, act distraught, and hope the act would work long enough to catch him off guard. It would be a mix of luck and timing to carry out this modified plan, but Rygen saw no choice. Moving back towards the door to the shop, Rygen closed his eyes and opened his ears fully. He would just have to wait for Angel to come through the back door, and then he could begin his act.