He holds himself open to receive her blood, and tastes naught but air upon his tongue.

She is gone.

Curses catch in the demon's throat, bewildered fury at his prey's escape and furious disbelief at the pain in his haunch. He snarls a scream into the empty air, wincing even as he takes delight in the thud of his daggers upon her side. The pain in his spine shoots bitter needles down neurons and synapses, fires blossoms of rage from his muscles to his brain. He lands upon the ground, undignified and shuddering as massive hooves kick up clouds of dust; his sea foam mane and leonine tail are stained with the stuff, barely visible beneath the sunless sky; he can taste it in the back of his throat, smell it caked about his nostrils. Fuck the desert, the demonchild decides, and fuck the rats who call this hell their home.

Impatience is a virtue earned from a wretched sire. The demon's dam is a serpent in the grass, waiting without pain for the flicker of her prey; not so the mahogany brute. He pivots quickly as his bulk allows, but the cherub has already taken to the haven of her sky, her dark silhouette accompanied by some small, darting thing that the demon hasn't noticed until now. A deep, harsh snort escapes his nares, bright eyes narrowed with pain and rage. “Fool” he snarls to her fleeing form, reason lost and rage now lord, his voice a vessel of hate and despair. “You think the sky shall keep you safe, wretched cherub? You think yourself a servant of Heaven, bound to prevail in the Serpent's fall?” Tail lashes at the dark ground, whipping furiously to accent his words. The cloven fore rends troughs through the earth - her earth - tearing it, bleeding it, as he shall make her bleed. His voice projects over distant screams, echoes off the failed wall and bounces back to strike her down. “You fight the legion of Heaven and Hell; I have spat at the Devil and threatened God; I am the Seraph's son, kin of the Reaper, Cinnoru's heir; and you...”

He stops when she is moments from him, her body an imminent barrier to his mouth. She is falling perpendicular to him, another attempt to strike from above, a drone sent out of the falling helicopter in a desperate attempt at a nuclear strike. He flings himself towards her as she falls to his right, those wretched hooves poised to strike the demon's face- nay, not today shall she delight in the crunch of bone and rend of skull.

The demon roars and does not flee, but rears his body up to meet hers in a terrible display of power and mass. He can feel the protest of his aching spine, the clenching bruise upon his haunch; he screams his pain into her face, lashing hooves towards her body and feeling hers upon his breast, a smash of blood upon the left, mirroring and bloody to the mark laid minutes before. He flails as he can, tries to throw his right leg across her wither, to catch her forelimbs with his left, to entangle her within his longer limbs, his stronger grasp. He know he cannot sustain the rear for more than moments, too great is the strain where the rat struck him last, too blind is his rage and unplanned his attack. Like his namesake Belial will fall, but, if he can help it, not without taking the pegasus with him.

He descends, and as he falls his head throws forward, black daggers searching for the flesh of her neck. If not with limb than with horn he shall hold her, drag her down to the ground and watch her bleed. He hopes to skewer her, and this time to catch flesh upon his horns, puncture deep and expose brittle bone.

[ 652 words, post 3 of 4, defense 0 of 1. Sorry this took forever <3 ]