The long-legged hound traveled on stilted limbs. His fiery gaze snatched at any passing figure that had piqued his interest. Still, he did not linger for long. Ithrik slunk forward, waiting for the one that would draw his need. While he could feel the hunger and ache in his gut, he had not tasted the meat he craved for some time. More importantly, he had left behind his small stash of keepsakes in Blackfeather forest, and his irritation had climbed to the point of blind rage. The longer he continued at his pace, the more he felt himself slip into carelessness. 

It did not take long before he found a mark. His glowing gaze locked on the stranger with a wicked glint. The devil was quick to close the distance between them, but once he had, he prowled to a slow and watched without making a sound. 

Paranoia and instinct pricked at the female – or it must have – as the female cast her head to one side and beckoned out in the darkness for the brute. The words would have brought a laugh to his lips if he had been in a better mood. Instead, he swayed some short distance behind her and then began to close some of the space between them in a wide-enough circle. His fiery gaze drew over her frame with interest and his fur rose excitedly along his neck and down his spine. Twitching his tail, Ithrik stopped once more, sitting at a fair distance to the west of her. The length of his legs stood rigidly as he regarded her shape, wondering if she would fit nicely beneath his limbs.

Something certainly was there, and the devil watched with a quiet curiosity as his desires grew inside of him. He should like to torture this one; she seemed like she would be difficult to break, but he was eager to test how long it would take him.

The dark-furred female seemed to pose a condescending comment to the male as he emerged from the trees. His eyes sparked with a fever and he curled his lip over his rotten teeth with a deep timbre of a snarl. Ithrik was not interested in formalities, and so he disregarded the comment that she had made in favor of closing more of the space that they shared. If he could get close enough, the devil believed that he could wrap his frame around the woman with little effort. He seemed to slither like a serpent over the stones beneath his feet until he paused several yards away from the woman. He wondered what her screams would sound like, and what the taste of her buttocks would be when he finally killed her. The thought was so tantalizing that he could hardly refrain from shuddering. Instead, he focused on the woman with a narrowed brow and a slowly curling smile.

It seemed almost silly to think that one could imagine what Ithrik's intentions were. While he was as vile as any wicked thing that roamed the earth, not all of his motives were the same. For this dark woman – should she have been able to see into his mind – would have found a disturbing painting of what could have been. Ithrik would have intended to chase her down and chew at her feet until they were raw and bloody. He would have raped her and filled her with his seed so that she would spill his pups and he would do the very same to them. It mattered very little where they came from, so long as he was able to partake.

“You talk too much,” he rasped to her. His smile vanished and he bore into her with jack-o-lantern eyes and a cold, distant expression on his dark-haired face. Words were useful when trying to obtain something, but Ithrik did not see the need in most of his interactions. This was why he would remove her tongue first and swallow it while she watched him.

The sinister creature regarded her with a single whiff of her aroma and snorted against it. She had – at least – silenced herself, and he was not interested to hear any more that she would want to say. Surely, the voices in her head would have played well with those in his own, but Ithrik did not intend to compare their company. Something on her was undesirable to the piebald devil. The boogeyman curled his lip and sneered at her with crooked teeth before concealing his canines with a curtain. He did not want her; she was tainted. Fixing the ground with a cold stare, Ithrik turned from the woman and said nothing more to her. His limbs carried him in a prowl from where they had stood, not having bothered to turn back even once.