The smell of smoke was the first and only warning that he received. He barely had time to set his quill aside before the door was broken down.

He knew immediately how much trouble he was in. The grotesquely misshapen bodies of the new arrivals were impossible to mistake. Youma. The village had been captured.

"It's a priestling," leered one of the creatures. He closed his eyes. The seminary hadn't been his choice, but this hadn't been the way that he wanted to get out of it!

"Kill him," another of the youma suggested.

"No, let's have some fun first," a third replied. "He isn't all that bad looking, for one of these shaven-headed pulpit- pounders."

"I wish we could, but we're required to take all prisoners to the officers," the first youma said. "Do you think a moment's fun is worth having the King rip your throats out? If so, I'll leave you to it."

He heard groans and displeased muttering before one of them grabbed him by the arm. He tried to fight, but a lord's bastard earmarked for the priesthood wasn't taught such things, and his slim build and delicate physique were against him. All he succeeded in doing was earning himself a clout on the side of the head, which stunned him and allowed one of the youma to hoist him over her shoulder. He rode there uncomplaining, not even trying to reach for the knife that she carried stuck through the back of her sash. Not even though this would probably be his last chance to die in human world, which he had been taught was his only hope of salvation.

If I'm destined for Hell one way or the other, what does it matter how I get there? he thought, green eyes narrowed into slits. Father Daniel would say that this is a punishment for hating the seminary and my father, who condemned me to it. Then again, Father Daniel is probably dead, so what did he know, anyway?

They ripped the robe off his back before dumping him in what had once been a pigpen. It now served as a holding area for captured humans. Almost everyone else there was female. The men had long since been called to the duke's fortress, to help defend it against these selfsame Hosts of Hell. And he knew what the invaders did to children.

He lay there in the mud, stripped to his underlinen and still a bit in shock, and watched the youma come to the gate and pull the others out, one by one. None of them ever came back.

And then it was his turn. He struggled again, earning himself another clout and another uncomfortable transit while slung over a youma's shoulder.

At the end of it, he was once more dumped ignominiously to the ground, this time landing on earth only lightly slimed with mud from the recent rain. A booted foot prodded him in the ribs, and he struggled to his feet, hearing laughter from somewhere above him.

"You have spirit. I like that."

The prisoner looked up when he heard the voice. Oh, my . . .

He'd known that the demon lords were supposed to be beautiful, but he had never expected anything like this. The face he now saw, boyishly handsome, blue-eyed and framed with thick, auburn hair, might have belonged to an angel and not a devil had the taller man not been wearing the dull grey uniform of an officer in Hell's army.

He lowered his hands in front of himself to conceal his reaction to the impact of all that beauty, hoping that the other would think it was only a casual gesture, wouldn't be aware of his secret shame. He knew that this sort of reaction was supposed to be reserved for women and not other men, but he had never been able to help himself. He'd never seen a woman that he considered beautiful, or who affected him the way this handsome demon lord did.

A cruel smile altered the contours of that beautiful face ever-so-slightly. He even has perfect teeth, the prisoner thought dazedly.

"Yes, you'll do perfectly," the demon lord said. "Tell me, little boy, what is your name?"

"They call me John," the prisoner whispered, wanting only to please this so-perfect being.

A white-gloved hand cracked against the side of his face. The prisoner stumbled back, the ache in his groin diminishing, the awe in his emerald green eyes metamorphosing into pain and betrayal.

"I can see that you're going to be a difficult one to train, just like all other Western savages," the demon lord murmured, "but the youma will soon teach you the proper forms of address for one of my station, I am certain. In the meanwhile . . ." The white- gloved hand beckoned one of the misshapen monsters over to join them. "Have this one branded with Kunzite's symbol, not mine. I have in mind to give our dear First King a present."

The youma bowed. "As you wish, Nephrite-sama."

By this time, the pain in the prisoner's eyes had congealed to something else entirely. The demon lord tilted the young man's chin up and took one last look at his face.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Hate me, little boy. Hate all of us. Just never forget that we are your masters now."

It took two youma to restrain the young man as they took him away to be branded.