Donna Kaiser lay sleepless in her bedroom, studying the billowing drapes over her window, listening curiously, enviously, a little fearfully, to the party noises from the well-lit patio and from the more distant living room of her family's rambling, luxurious ranch-style home. She could hear the muted pounding of the Pacific at the base of the cliff ... the drone of a jet as it followed its flight pattern over exclusive Palos Verdes Peninsula to Los Angeles International Airport.
She slowly worked her legs free of the bedclothes. She was too warm! She rolled over onto her belly, but her thin nightie twisted and bunched uncomfortably. She pressed her face hard into the soft pillow. Her loins were glowing ... glowing ... Her nipples-She tried to sleep! She abruptly twisted around onto her back. Her nightie was a strangling, itchy torment to her hot, smooth skin. Donna clenched her fists. She sobbed and scrambled from her bed. She straightened her nightie and sat on the edge of her bed. She closed her eyes and sighed. She licked her full, petulant lips.
Donna trembled inexplicably when she heard her father's loose, drunken, bull-like laugh dominate a sprinkle of guest laughter. His voice carried for a moment on the erratic breeze: " ... believe it. Where the fuck'll we find a virgin in this crowd?"
Donna blinked rapidly. She let herself fall backward, arms wide, onto the bed. The nightie, for a second, billowed, then settled down onto her lush, prematurely developed breasts. Her button-like nipples were crinkled and hard, aching, itchy! Her round, firm, tanned thighs began to press together rhythmically. The glow in her loins sharpened deliciously. It was so tantalizing. She clenched her fists and jerked open her legs. NO! Something TERRIBLE would happen if she let herself do that! She struggled to sit up again. She looked at the luminous dial of her new watch. Her father had given it to her on her fifteenth birthday, three days before.
Her breasts were so hot! She hated the nights, the trying to sleep, the struggle to keep from touching herself. Every other girl she knew admitted doing it-masturbating. Donna's thighs inched together. The urge in her lower belly ... that awful, alluring, promising sweet tension ... became stronger. But a quivering tension, a fear rose up and kept her from giving in. She sprang to her feet and pressed herself roughly against the wall. She turned and twisted, rubbing her large, round, upturned breasts roughly against her closet door frame. It hurt some, and that drove away the need for a few minutes.
The puffing wind carried her father's voice again: " ... virgin, a virgin, my kingdom for a virgin!"
Donna began to cry. She hit her lower belly and triangle with a trembling fist. "Stop it, stop it!" She glanced at her watch again. It was almost one A.M. Donna knew her father's Friday night parties often lasted until dawn. They always disturbed her. Her body always seemed to burn worse than ever during these endless weekend nights. This night was awful for her. The last year ... as her breasts had grown so alarmingly, had swelled out, had deepened and rounded ... The impulse seemed to whisper in her mind: Do it. You used to do it. You did it a lot, and it felt so good ... When she was twelve and her nipples, like pink buds, had blossomed on her undeveloped chest. And she had discovered her clitoris ...
MOTHER, I'M SORRY-She threw herself, sobbing, onto her bed.
The drapes puffed inward to bring a laughing scream-a woman-her delighted cry: "Frank!"
What had her father done now, Donna wondered. She had often spied on him and his parties. She could now if she wanted to. The 7 x 50 binoculars were in her drawer, waiting. She could stand by the right side of the window and peek behind the drapes and see half the patio, in stunning, intimate detail with the glasses.
One night a man and woman had made swift, frantic, animal love in the bushes under her window. Donna had crept, snakelike, across her bed to her side of the partly open sliding window and listened ... and had even seen ... The man had been bald, with wisps of dark hair spread very thinly over the bare skull. He had worn heavy-rimmed glasses, a madras sports coat, a green tie. The woman had been a redhead, overweight in a tight white gown cut deep to show her big, fleshy no-bra breasts. Her nipples had projected shamelessly. They had kissed wetly, greedily, and the woman's hands had fumbled and groped at the man's pants. He had unzipped and whispered huskily, "Suck." The woman had hiked up her dress and gone to her knees. In the deeper shadows, amid the bushes, she had taken the man's white, stiff organ into her red-lipped mouth. She had sucked noisily, uninhibitedly.
Donna had peered out, almost unable to breathe, shivering, incredibly tense, eyes saucers. Strange chills and heats had sprung to life in her young body. The woman had sucked the man for a long moment, then taken her mouth from him. She had whispered, "That's enough. I want it in me." She had stood and hiked her gown up to her hips. She had leaned back against the window frame. The man had pressed close ... there had been fumbling ... and the woman had caught her breath as he entered and obviously went deep. Donna had had shivers as she interpreted the woman's gasp. And then had come the heavy, erratic breathing, the rustling of cloth and flesh, the bump-bump-bump against the house.
Donna had been thirteen. She had never forgotten the sight/sound of that intense, furtive coupling ... or the explosive, suppressed climax of the woman-the gut-deep grunts and heavings, the animal joy in the woman's muffled cries. And the man's hissed breath as he came, too, and battered her against the wall and window. Donna had been left limp and trembling, biting her lower lip, clutching the bedclothes with tight fists, her thighs tight together, rhythmically tightening and loosening.
Donna turned over onto her stomach and tried again to sleep. The party sounds interfered. She rolled over onto her back. The breeze puffed over her naked thighs and cooled her sticky cleft. She opened her legs wide, then swiftly closed them. She decided to read. She reached up and found the switch to her headboard reading lamp. She squinted in the sudden yellow glow. She pinked and worked her sleeping gown back down under her buttocks and over her knees. She reached for the book she had been reading off and on for a week: Eros and Evil by E. E. L. Masters. She knew her father would not approve. But she had been interested in witchcraft and the occult for over a year. She was a moon child-July 13th-and Venus was also heavy in her astrological make-up. She had just begun to read when she heard the characteristic heavy, limping tread of her father in the long hallway leading to her far-end bedroom. She plunged the book under the covers and switched off her lamp.
His draggy steps came to her door. He rapped lightly. "Donna? Asleep?" His voice could not be lowered to a quiet, non-penetrative level. It was a baritone that could be heard through the thickest walls. Everyone told him he should have been a stage actor. He owned a successful brick factory. Frank Kaiser opened her door slightly and looked in, a crooked smile on his wide lips. At thirty-six he was graying, but he didn't care. He wore his thick brown hair in a disciplined, long style, with elaborate mutton-chop sideburns.
"No, Daddy." Her heart thumped. Her throat tightened and she didn't know why. Her Persian kitten, Tribble, darted by her father's shoes and trotted to the bed. He leaped up, clawed to keep from falling back, and began to purr. He came into her arms. She scratched his ears and stroked his back.
Frank said, "We have a problem." He entered her room. He was a big, heavy man, six foot two, two hundred twenty pounds, and he walked heavy. He came to her bed, the hall light behind him casting his face and front in shadow, in darkness.
Donna tensed. "What's the matter?"
"Well, honey ... " He held a drink in his left hand. He stirred the cubes and amber liquor with a long, thick, manicured finger. He smiled and showed his two gold front teeth. He loved the startled looks he got from staid fellow businessmen when he smiled. He said, "I've got a crazy guest who claims he's a warlock. That's a ... "
Donna breathed, "A male witch."
"That's it. Right-O. Though if his wrist was any limper, I'd wonder about ... Well, he says he has a formula-or a spell-or an incantation, or something that he can recite that will raise the Devil from Hell." He sat on the edge of her bed. Frank paused to swallow from his glass. He coughed. His eyes slid over Donna's bust. Her nightgown was thin and clinging enough to reveal with startling fidelity the size and thrust of her buoyant flesh. Tribble lay against the warm curve of her right breast. He was purring, rubbing his head against her.
Donna noticed the slant of his gaze and flushed in the semi-darkness. To her further embarrassment, her nipples surged with crinkling, puckering stiffness and began to ache slightly with arousal.
Frank shrugged. "This guy is weird. He says he has to have a virgin laying on the rug inside a pentagram he's going to draw around her. She's supposed to tempt the Devil ... like a worm on a hook." Frank threw back his head and boomed a laugh. "Trouble is there isn't a virgin in the house except you, honey." He gazed at her with mock doubt. "You still are, aren't you?"
"Yes." She giggled.
"Would you like to be part of this little game? Everybody chipped at me to come and ask you. We're all drunk as skunks."
"Okay. Should I get dressed?"
"No, come as you are. That's decent enough." He stood up to let her climb out of bed. Tribble jumped off to the carpet. Frank watched Donna swing her long legs out from under the covers. Her nightgown rode up her thighs as she slid to the edge ... almost revealing her triangle. Donna stood and let the nightie settle to its normal ankle length. She went to her make-up table and turned on the mirror light. She drew a comb through her long, honey-blonde wavy hair. There was a funny fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach. She knew she was afraid and didn't know why. She glanced at her father in the mirror. Frank stood a little off-center because of his war-damaged left leg. It was an inch and a half shorter than his right, and a mass of scarred, oddly shaped muscle below the knee. She had seen it twice. Her gaze darted at his loins and saw the ever-present bulge. She knew he was huge there. She had never seen her father naked, but she just knew!
Donna was proud of her lovely hair and body. She knew she was something special, and she had never gone out on a date, never let a boy get close to her, never mixed well with other teenagers. Not since her mother had died. Donna couldn't look at herself, especially at her face, too long in a mirror. Her blue eyes, staring back, reminded her too much of mother's dead blue eyes.
She turned off her mirror light and went with her father down the long hall to the main body of the house. She held his big, strong hand. Voices and party sounds and bright lights increased. Holly Barnes, Frank's girl friend for the past two months ... the only woman friend he'd had since his wife had died ... came out of the bathroom as they passed.
"Oh, Frank, you're not going to do it!"
He grinned loosely, more than a little drunk. "Sure! Donna's game-aren't you, baby?"
Donna nodded, then nervously licked her lips. She liked Holly. She said, "That's a far-out outfit."
Holly wore a shimmering blue culotte with a big front and no back. The sides of her loose, small breasts were pale white in contrast to a light tan on her back and arms.
Frank put his left arm around Holly's narrow waist. "It's only a joke. Come on." His voice pierced the house. It brought guests to meet them as they entered the large, sunken living room.
CHAPTER TWO
Donna was uncomfortable and embarrassed at the focus of curious, envious, resentful, lustful eyes. The men stripped her with their eyes; the women recognized her youthful beauty and suffered pangs of self-comparison.
Frank called, "WEBSTER! Here's your virgin! Now put up or shut up!"
A tall, lean, bearded man with drilling, mocking gray eyes entered from the patio. He wore a severe black suit, an orange shirt, a white tie. His straight hair curled up at his shoulders. He carried an old, leather-bound volume under his arm. He held a tall drink. Webster took in Donna and his fat, sensuous mouth quirked. "The last one in Los Angeles, and oh, so ripe ... if true."
"Casting aspersions will only get your head knocked off, my friend; it won't get you off the hook. Start your wizardry, wizard!"
"My pleasure. But first ..." Webster came to Donna and took her hands in his. He penetrated her soul with his eyes. "This will be a genuine Summoning, my dear. The elements are virginity and purity. In these days virginity is rare and purity ... " His heavy lips twisted. "Purity is unknown."
Donna's heart was thudding. Her mouth was dry. "I am a virgin!"
"Perhaps that will be enough. Ideally I would need the purest of candles, the purest of oils and scents. I would need a toad and a cat to sacrifice. But ... people, even drunks ... " his eyes swept the amused, dull-eyed guests. " ... these days squeamish and fearful of stripping away their skin of civilization. Yet they want to see Hell's Master!" He laughed wryly. "We'll see what happens. I promise nothing."
Frank laughed. "Crawfishing."
Webster ignored him. He took a thick hunk of blue chalk from his coat pocket. He knelt on the beige, sculptured Wilton carpeting and drew a large pentagram. He did not quite close the last connection. He motioned to Donna. "Step inside now and lie flat on your back, hands at your side, feet together."
Donna felt sick to her stomach, but she obeyed. As she stepped into the pentagram her skin goose-bumped. The air suddenly felt cold. She lay as he had directed. She watched him take plain white candles, light them and erect them in small saucers. He placed a saucer just outside each point of the five-pointed diagram. Webster commanded, "Kill the lights."
Guests scurried about turning off lamps. In a moment the house and patio were in darkness except for the flickering pool of yellow light around Donna. She was breathing deeply, quickly. The air was colder within the pentagram; she was sure of it! The candles guttered and dimmed as wind poured into the house. Someone slid the patio doors shut. Someone said, "Creepy ..."
Webster stood outside the pentagram and took a small, jeweled, old-fashioned crucifix from his coat and placed it on the carpet between his feet and the pentagram. He said, "I must have quiet while I invoke. This will take a while. If you wish to leave, do so silently. Do not under any circumstances attempt to enter the pentagram or poke anything into it, or throw anything into it."
Frank put his arm around Holly. His fingers teased the side of her left breast. He said, "Get on with it, Webster."
Donna lay in the fluttering pool of candlelight and stared at the coved, painted ceiling. She shivered. She felt terrible apprehensive. Webster took up the blue chalk again and drew the last, incomplete line of the pentagram. Donna trembled. I'm sealed in. I'm doomed!
Webster returned to his position behind the glittering crucifix. He opened the worn leather volume he had kept pressed to his side under his arm. Without any further preamble, he began to read, in a strong, certain voice.
"Emperor Lucifer, Master of all the rebellious spirits, I beg you to be favorable in the invocation that I make to your great Minister Lucifuge Rofocale, as I wish to make a pact with him. I beg you also, Prince Beelzebub, to protect me in my enterprise."
"O Count Astorath! Be propitious, and bring it to pass that, this very night, the great Lucifuge appear to me in human form and without any evil, odor, and that he grant me, by means of the pact that I shall offer him, all the wealth that I need."
"O great Lucifuge! I beg you to leave your abode, in whatever region of the Earth it may be, to come and speak to me. Otherwise I shall constrain you by the power of the great living God, his Son and the Holy Spirit."
"Obey promptly, or I shall torture you eternally by the force of the potent words of the Great Key of Solomon that he himself used to bind the rebellious spirits to accept his pact."
Donna felt dizzy. She heard her breathing grow louder, and Webster's voice grow weaker ... more distant. She was cold! She wanted to sit up, to stop what was happening! Her mouth was dry with panic! Her heart was going so fast!
But she could not move! She lay rigid. From the corners of her eyes she could see the chalk lines of the enclosing pentagram glowing with a strange luminescence. A clammy terror slimed her stomach. Donna tried to speak, but her throat was paralyzed.
Webster and the other guests seemed not to notice the glowing chalk lines. Webster continued his invocation. "So come forth instanter! Or I shall torture you endlessly by the force of these powerful words of the Key: Agion, Telegram, vaycheon, stimulamation y ezpares retragrammaton oryoram irion esytion existion eryona onera brasim moym messias soter Emanuel Saboot Adonai, te adoro et invoco!"
Donna lay in a pulsing silence. She could hear nothing! She watched Webster's lips move, but his voice was soundless. The air within the pentagram was thickening, beginning to stink of rotten eggs. Her hair rustled with static electricity. Her skin felt invisible feathery touches. Donna heard ... a deep, guttural, evil chuckling. Not her father's voice. It was too close! It was coming from within the now blazing lines enclosing her! Her breasts were touched-as invisible, hot, scaly, rough claws slowly clamped onto her flesh. Her nightgown bulged and crawled there. A fetid breath from a creature she could not see enveloped her face. The smell made her stomach turn. Donna's throat strained against its paralysis. Her eyes rolled wildly. She screamed in her mind. WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO HER?
A hissing voice-sound: "Virgin cunt. Yes, a fresh, beautiful virgin cunt!"
Donna's heart was racing! She was gasping, panting with fear. A terrible dread sickened her. Vomit surged into her throat from her clenching roiling stomach. She closed her eyes and shuddered as the unseen claws tightened cruelly on her breasts. Talons seemed to be sinking into her flesh. Her nipples were sandpapered by rough, dry, hot, leathery skin.
The horrible, sibilant voice crooned in her ear, "A virgin's soul is tender and juicy with innocence. A sweet young body to use ... "
Donna couldn't believe it was happening! Yet she was entombed in silence, alone with ... what? THE DEVIL?
"No, I am only a demon. I am a slave to Pruslas who obeys Anmon, who obeys Barbatos, who obeys Satanachia, Grand General to Lucifuge Rofocale, all of whom serve Emperor LUCIFER."
The claws twisted Donna's breasts as the voice intoned Lucifer's name.
"And now you, Donna Kaiser, virgin, will serve our Master, for as long as it amuses me!"
Talons scraped her sensitive nipples ... and her nipples perversely responded. The constant glow in her lower belly caught fire and flared. Some of the guests had noticed the movement under Donna's nightie. They pointed. Their mouths formed words she could not hear. She saw her father staring.
"Open the way for your defloration. Part your lovely white thighs, bitch! You tempt me! My prick is now Lucifer's prick!"
Donna felt a pressure, a force, wedging between her legs. She gasped. The claws mauled her breasts and caused a strange internal heat. Her nipples crinkled to buttons of fire. She fought the unseen strength that was slowly parting her thighs. She panted and perspiration beaded her forehead. Her fear was a constant, sick pool in her stomach. Donna rolled her wild blue eyes to her father in mute appeal. She still could not speak.
Frank frowned and growled at Webster. "What the hell's happening to her? What are you up to?"
Webster was standing rigid, riveted, white-faced. "My God."
A male guest laughed. "Great act." The candles flickered and nearly went out, yet there was no wind.
Frank gripped Webster's thin arm in an iron hand. "What are you trying to pull?"
"You wanted a demonstration of black magic. You wanted a calling up of Lucifer ... Maybe you got more than you bargained for. Something weird is happening to that girl." Webster looked down at the old leather book in his right hand. "I didn't think it-"
Their attention was drawn to the candlelit pentagram. They saw Donna's knees raise jerkily, as if her leg muscles were in conflict. Her face was a mask of terror. Contorted. Her chest rose and fell very fast. A pulse showing in her neck betrayed a heartbeat well over 100. Abruptly, her knees jerked wide apart-with such power that her nightgown was ripped open. The rent extended to her chest and obscenely revealed her belly and loins. The guests stirred and made comments. Was this girl really Frank Kaiser's daughter-or an actress hired for an elaborate joke?
Frank stared at his daughter's nakedly revealed vulva-the light fuzz of curly blonde hair on the plump mound, the slightly parted pink lips, the shocking wetness of arousal! He swore, "Jesus! DONNA! Get up! Stop it!" He took one limping stride to the blue chalk diagram and reached to pull the girl up. He grunted, staggered and lurched backward. He fell heavily and lay stunned. "I couldn't get in. I couldn't touch her. Something shoved me away!"
Holly was scared but afraid to show it. "Frank-this is a put-on, isn't it?"
The guests looked from Donna within the pentagram-the silent, weird five-sided star drawn on the carpet-to the ashen-faced Frank. They didn't know what to think. Their hair prickled and they wiped sweaty palms.
Donna heard nothing of this. She had resisted to the utmost, but then the evil, whispering, invisible beast had triumphed and spread her knees with terrifying strength. His claws now were probing at her vulnerable, naked center. A leathery body was between her thighs. She felt hot, stinking breath on her bare belly. The voice crowed lasciviously, "Lovely cunt. I love virgin cunt juice."
She gasped as a slithery, hot, sand-papery tongue slid between the spread lips of her vulva. Her hips jerked upward. A shameful thrill of pleasure mixed with pain darted through her belly. "She likes it. Oh, the virgin cunt bitch likes goat tongue!" The invisible creature laughed. Its claws reached into her torn gown and pulled at her glowing breasts. The talons nipped hurt-fully at the swollen nipples. The beast's tongue, pointed, burning, spread into Dona's vagina. She screamed. Her raw howl of pain and shock was loud in the pentagram, but unheard beyond the glowing borders.
Donna felt the abrading tongue penetrate deeply, snakelike, so hot! She writhed and twisted, but the thing-the body-restrained her, and the claws dug into her breasts till she felt her lush white and pink flesh was surely cut and bleeding. Donna squirmed with shame and embarrassment, too. She could see everyone watching! She could see their expressions of mingled fear and avid fascination, the amazement, bafflement, cynical disbelief.
The demon snuffled and drooled as it took her virginity with its sawing, darting tongue. She felt its teeth-fangs?-gnawing at her tissues. Bristles from its face-muzzle?-scraped her inner thighs. Her mind reeled with shock and horror. She yelled, "DADDY! DADDY!" But she knew he couldn't help her. She was doomed.
Frank saw her mouth contort in a soundless cream, saw her flailing and struggling ... and saw the inexplicable illusion of her nightie being torn open farther to reveal her proud, fully developed young breasts-creamy mounds of flesh that were indented, squeezed, twisted ... mauled! as if by an invisible rapist. He grated to Webster, "Stop this! Whatever you did to her-STOP IT!"
Webster gasped, "I warned you-I don't understand ... " He wiped his mouth with his hand and tore his eyes from the scene in the pentagram. He dropped to his knees before the nearest wildly flickering candle and intoned, "I am pleased and contented with thee, Prince Lucifer, for the moment. Leave thou in peace now ... " He stumbled and faltered. "Leave thou in peace now and ... " He began to search frantically through the old book.
Donna was close to fainting. Her mind swirled. She felt that awful tongue curling farther and farther into her body ... into her womb!
And somehow the demon's voice came into her mind while its mouth continued to engulf her vulva. "Sweet juices! Ah, the taste of virgin cunt! But now I'll fuck you! My prick will be Lucifer's prick! You'll be my wife, Donna! You shall obey me in all things! What fun we'll have! What pleasure in doing Lucifer's work!"
The horribly long, sand-papery tongue withdrew. Donna sobbed with relief, but could not close her thighs. She remained wide open ... and felt a scaly body move up onto her ... felt the claws mold her large breasts into exaggerated, painful shapes ... felt the terrible probing of a cold, stiff something at her vulva.
She cringed! She wept. "No ... please ... "
The sibilant voice hissed laughter in her mind. "Devils always have hot tongues and cold pricks, bitch!"
Her arms and hands were unable to affect the immensely strong thing that crouched over her. She smelled and felt again the foul breath. The odor of rotting flesh bubbled vomit in her throat. A huge, icy knob entered her vagina. Her opening was distended by its size. She bucked helplessly. She howled. The immense thing went deeper and deeper, stretching her, thrusting ruthlessly, cold, cold, cold! Donna was totally impaled by an unseen, frigid organ of huge length and thickness. She lay shuddering, weeping, in a pool of agony. Yet there was no blood. Even when the demon began to move with terrible plunges, slowly, slowly, with excruciating power ... cackling and drooling with lust in her quivering, reeling mind.
Webster found the chant he was looking for. He did not see what the others saw-the incredible opening of Donna's vulva, the impossible gaping of her vagina, the sucking of her belly, the pressuring of her thighs and breasts-the total illusion of intercourse! Webster began again. "I am pleased and contented with thee ... "
Donna grunted under the loathsome creature's vile thrusts. The penetrations were faster now and even deeper. She was a vast shrieking agony between her thighs, in her belly. The demon was panting, crooning its obscene pleasure into her brain.
" ... Go in quiet and without trouble. Do not forget our pact or I shall blast thee with my wand. Amen."
"Webster has the wrong incantation!" The demon bellowed with joy. Donna's mind felt split, rent, bulged by the infernal laughter. "It was too late once I got Lucifer's prick into you, piglet! NOW IT COMES! HE COMES!" The great organ, invisible, chilled, swept up into her tortured belly, to the hilt! Donna's neck muscles stood out like iron bands as she screamed her throat raw. An unseen ice-like spurting was inundating her womb! The cold substance spread through her loins, her belly, lancing tendrils farther and farther ... as ever more chilling semen jetted into her body as the terrible laughter filled her mind.
Frank threw himself again and again at the pentagram-that silent, inviolate diagrammed space-within which his stark-naked fifteen-year-old daughter was being ravished by an invisible monster. He believed it!
The bubbling pain was in Donna's chest ... spreading up into her neck. Her body flung itself, convulsing, in a travesty of intercourse. Her unnaturally wide-spread thighs trembled visibly. Her belly bloated and concaved with the giant unseen thrusts. The awful, icy devil's semen was in her brain, spreading, tainting every cell ... curdling her mind, permeating every part of herself! Donna changed. The demon took her. The demon became her. The demon settled in ...
CHAPTER THREE
Frank Kaiser led the way into Donna's room. She appeared to be asleep. Her left arm was flung limply to the edge of her twin bed, the fingers slightly curled, twitching as if readying for typing. Frank whispered to the doctor, "She came home last night from a date-babbling and acting ... funny. Crazy. Her clothes were torn and it looked ... I thought she'd been raped."
It was a lame story. But the truth would be ridiculous. Doctor Holder wasn't the kind of man you could tell strange truths to-he was old, had always worn a vest, and snorted derisively at words like supernatural, psi, E.S.P. and the occult. The doctor glanced keenly at Frank. "Didn't call the police, though, did you?" He opened his bag and looked closely at the girl asleep in the bed. He took out his stethoscope.
Donna lay as if dead. There were no eye movements under her lids. Only her chest rose and fell slowly as she breathed; her twitching fingers had stilled.
"There wasn't any blood or ... anything. She wasn't scratched or bruised anywhere. But she raved ... "
"You examined her?" the doctor asked.
"I had to undress her and put her to bed. I noticed-"
Donna had opened her vivid blue eyes. She stared up at her father and the doctor. One corner of her full, petulant mouth smiled. She said sweetly, in a normal voice, "The girl was royally fucked last night. She didn't enjoy it much, but virgins rarely do. Her enjoyment is beside the point now."
Frank's chest tightened. Donna had spoken that way last night, too, after the weird power of the pentagram had somehow gone and he had been able to cross those blue chalk lines, lift her into his arms, and carry her back to her bed. He had been terrified, crying, as he slipped another nightie on her limp, exhausted body and listened to her voice speak of herself as another person.
Doctor Holder sat on the edge of the bed. He took her wrist in his hand and found the pulse. "How do you feel, Miss Kaiser?"
"She is locked away. The controls are in other hands now."
The doctor's eyes flickered. "Interesting. Mind if I examine your body?"
She chuckled lewdly. Her hand turned adroitly in his grasp and her middle finger tickled his palm. She kicked the covers violently away and revealed herself. Her pink nightie was rucked up about her slim hips. She spread her knees obscenely. "Fill the cunt with your wrinkled old prick, Doctor." She laughed dirtily. Her voice was deeper than normal, now. It was as if a foul-mouthed man were speaking with her larynx. "It's only good for fucking. It's still tight and new."
Frank said, "God, Donna-"
"God is dead, father of the girl. Don't you know that yet? God is dead and all's evil with the world."
Doctor Holder freed his hand and began a swift, gentle examination of Donna's exposed genitals.
She stopped speaking and watched, her blue eyes narrowed. "Lucifer's prick leaves no traces, does it, Doctor? Slide your hand in, feel around."
Holder had inserted a finger after having slipped on a thin plastic sanitary glove. He made no comment. He peeled it off. He pressed his stethoscope to her heart.
"Want me to speed it up for you?" The pulse in her throat speeded dramatically. Her eyes brightened. She studied the doctor intently.
He withdrew the listening piece from her soft young breast. "With a pulse like that, young lady, you should be in a hospital, under close observation. Tachycardia is a serious business."
She changed. Her pulse slowed. "No, I don't want to go to a hospital. I'll be good, honest." She turned worried blue eyes to Frank. "Don't put me away, Daddy. I've been nasty and I'm sorry." Her voice was normal.
Frank didn't know what to think. He said nothing. The old doctor sat studying her for long seconds. Finally, he reached down and drew the covers back over her nakedness.
She said, "Oh!" and drew the coverings higher, to her throat. She blushed. Her thighs closed under the bedclothes.
Doctor Holder stood up slowly. He rubbed his back and rotated his left shoulder. "Like to talk to you in the kitchen over some coffee, Frank." To Donna he said, "Stay in bed. I'm going to prescribe a tranquilizer for you."
"Can I watch TV?"
"Yes, do watch TV." Holder and Frank left the room.
In the modern, plasticized, blue and white kitchen, Frank and the doctor sat opposite each other in the breakfast nook. They sipped from hand-painted yellow coffee mugs. Sunlight poured through the curtained window.
Holder tapped his mug and pursed his lips. "Hysteria or she's playing a particularly vicious game with you."
"If she was raped last night-"
"You didn't wash her off last night?"
"No."
"Maybe she did during the night. There was no evidence of secretions ... male secretions. Her hymen has very recently been torn open, however." He sipped coffee noisily. "She should have felt that examination. She should have jumped when I touched those torn membranes. For that matter, there should have been at least traces of blood." He shook his head. "The mind can use the body in strange ways."
Frank remembered Donna in the pentagram. He closed his eyes and saw her gaping vulva, the terrifyingly real illusion of intercourse-of rape! He rubbed his eyes. "Doctor, is it possible for the mind to command genital muscles ... I guess vaginal muscles ... to the extent of tearing a hymen like that?"
"I've never heard of it having been done. It would have to be an extraordinarily deep hysterical conversion: I'm an old-fashioned doctor, Frank. You're asking psychiatric questions. Not in my line. I've seen girls go blind, paralyze themselves, develop ulcers, suffer hearing loss, you name it, through repressed emotions. Psychic and physical energy combined with guilt or shame or fear ... God knows what can be done."
Frank watched Holder write a prescription on a pad. "Should I take her to a shrink?"
"I would." Holder smiled. " 'Shrink.' I like that." He slid out of the breakfast booth. "Have you talked with the young man she was out with last night?"
"Oh, yes! I ... I called him right after I put her to bed. Came close to calling the cops on him, but she was so clean ... He denied anything beyond kissing her a few times. He's a good boy. I know him, and I believe him."
"Well ... then a psychiatrist. This probably has something to do with your wife's death last year."
"I suppose ... yes." Frank remembered Donna's hysterics. She had found Ellen.
Doctor Holder arched his back slowly. He picked up his bag. "That prescription is for a mild Valium. Three times a day. Don't let her go out."
Frank nodded. He asked, "Can you recommend a good shrink?"
"I suppose Granger is about as good as they come. Beverly Hills, of course."
When he had seen Holder to the door, Frank turned to go to the phone. He had to make an appointment with the shrink, had to call his factory and tell Babs to route business around him for a few days, if possible. Jenks could take over operationally.
He didn't want to go into her room. He was suddenly afraid of her. He stood indecisively in the house entrance way and stared at the hallway that led to her room.
"Daddyyyy ... "
Frank limped across the living room-across the still visible chalk markings on the carpeting-and into the hallway. As he entered the bedroom, Donna's kitten, Tribble, trotted down the hall and entered with him. It was a cute gray and white Persian. It mewed softly and crossed to the bed. The girl lay as he and the doctor had left her, but with the covers pushed down to her waist. She had slipped down her nightie and was examining her left breast. Frank stopped just inside the door. He didn't like his inability to look away from that luscious flesh. He said harshly, "What are you doing?"
"Examining. This is a lovely body, isn't it?" Her blue eyes rose to his. They were alien, somehow. "You lust for it, don't you ... Daddy?" She laughed.
"Don't talk that way, Donna." He kept his distance. He was sick at how she talked and acted. She did need attention! She was deranged.
Tribble gathered himself and jumped up onto the bed. He made a small half mew and walked onto Donna's hip, expecting to be petted. The girl made a face and casually, brutally, knocked the kitten off the bed to the floor. The kitten didn't understand. He jumped up onto the bed again.
Donna watched the kitten innocently move toward her chest. "Kitty want to suck tit?" She offered a breast to the small Persian. Tribble, as if it understood, put a soft paw on her naked chest and licked the white, globular side of her right breast. Abruptly Donna seized the kitten by the throat. "I do not like cats!" She threw it across the room. Tribble squalled and twisted in mid-air-but hit the side of the walnut-finish pine student desk and dropped to the carpet. It raced out of the bedroom.
Then Donna experimentally stroked her left nipple with her left palm. Her right hand cupped the full, firm breast. She said, not looking at Frank, "What did you think of what happened inside the pentagram last night? Did you think your innocent, virginal daughter was being fucked by an invisible being?"
"I don't know what to think. Except, Donna, I want you to see a psychiatrist."
"A Freudian witch doctor or a Jungian witch doctor? Perhaps a Reichian? Would you go along with orgasm therapy, Daddy?"
She had stroked the nipple to full, wrinkled prominence. "That feels nice, that tickling. It's been well over a thousand years since I've had possession of a young female body. Demons of my class aren't given the opportunity much during this so-called rational age. Our time is coming back, though. As soon as you run through the major, easily acquired minerals. Your vaunted scientific civilization will soon crack and crumble and then ... the Old Truths and the Old Ones will return."
Frank limped a step closer to the bed. He scowled. His stomach was in knots. "What's happened to you?"
The girl's face rippled and sagged-then seemed to reform to a mask of stricken terror. Her eyes were pools of weeping blue. Her voice came pure and real: "Help me, Father! It's like being in jail. I can't control anything! There's a monster in my head!"
Frank knew that was his daughter speaking, the real Donna. He went to her. He sat on the bed and took her into his arms. He held her and soothed her. "I love you, honey. I'll help you. I'll help you. Fight the monster, Donna. Fight hard!"
She clutched at him. Her arms went around his neck. She sobbed brokenheartedly. "Daddy, it's horrible! He makes me say things, and do things ... "
They were both not recognizing the heat of her breasts against his shirt. Frank felt the soft, warm pressures but ignored them. Abruptly, seconds after they had embraced, Donna jerked and emitted a weak scream that faded ... as if she were receding, falling away from him down a deep, dark well. He pulled from her arms. Her face had wiped clean of emotion. Then it set into the subtle alienness of a moment before. The soft mouth twisted cynically, the appealing gaze narrowed. Frank shivered. A different, evil intelligence seemed to look out at him. The transformation was so convincing ... so horrible.
She smiled lopsidedly. Her voice was different again. "Kiss me, Daddy." She lifted her mouth. Her arms crept around his neck again and tightened with incredible strength. She whispered harshly. "I want you to fuck me, Daddy. Fuck your sweet, innocent daughter."
Frank's stomach roiled. He tried to draw back. Her arms tightened-her soft, hot lips pressed against his mouth. He turned his head. He reached up to pull her arms away from his neck: He grunted as he had to exert all his strength to break her hold. She possessed maniacal strength!
"Stop it, Donna!" He held her wrists in his powerful hands. It had only been three years since he had stopped working at the kilns. He still occasionally put in an hour in the yards working up a good sweat, keeping in condition. He knew he was a strong man. He knew a slight fifteen-year-old girl could not normally have the strength he had just fought. He felt a very fast, heavy pulse in one of her wrists.
She tore her right hand free of his grip. She arched her back and cupped her left breast invitingly. "Come on, Frank, suck the tit. Do what you really want to do for once." Her thumb stroked over the erect, flushed, button nipple.
He gritted, "Stop it!" He dragged his gaze to her amused, calculating young face.
Suddenly, her hand dove to his crotch and groped for his genitals. "Got a hard-on, Frank?"
He leaped up, away from the bed. He listened to her laughter. What could he do? What would she do next? What would it do next?
"Well, shit, it you don't want to play-" She threw the bedclothes aside and slid from the bed. She pulled the long nightie up and off. She was startingly, beautifully naked.
Frank said helplessly, "Donna, get back in bed. You can't go anywhere."
She walked sensuously to her closet. Her hips waggled enticingly. Her large, round breasts swayed and jiggled slightly as she moved. Her long, honey-blonde hair rippled over her shoulders. She slid open the closet. "If you won't fuck me, I'll find someone who will. The first walking prick I come to. I'm not going to waste any time. This body is ripe for sex." She took a pair of orange hip-huggers from a hanger and a blue-striped t-shirt from a drawer.
"You're not going out!" Frank thought he'd have to tie her down. God ... God ... He turned and headed for the utility room. He had a work bench there, tools, twine. He limped heavily across the kitchen toward the utility room door. He heard a faint slap-slap of bare feet behind him. Frank turned and saw Donna, still stark naked, a blonde young goddess, pulling open the knife drawer in the work table beside the tall, modern, white chrome-trimmed stove. He froze as she drew out a long butcher knife.
She faced him, an alien smile twisting her mouth. "No, father-of-the-daughter. You don't tie up this nice body. You don't call a psychiatrist. You obey me if you want to stay alive. You obey me if you want this daughter's face to stay as beautiful as it is." She placed the steel blade between her pink, full lips, razor-edge inward. "One slice and her smile will be very wide-and bloody."
Her strange blue gaze riveted Frank. He licked his lips. "Don't." His voice trembled.
She took the knife from her mouth. "I am master of this body and I am master of you, Frank Kaiser. You'll obey me or this knife-" She placed the long, glittering blade against her chest, under the smooth, soft thrust of her left breast. She cupped and lifted the breast gently. "Would you like to see your Donna with a left tit? Would you like to see her cut it off and eat it?"
"No-Jesus, God ... " A terrible sinking sensation claimed the pit of his stomach. She was insane! Insane ... or ... actually possessed by a demon.
"I am here, having been legally Summoned, with your full permission and assistance-" She laughed. "-and I have been given this body, this sweet young daughter of yours, with your full permission and assistance ... you did take her from her bed, did you not, and persuade her to enter the pentagram? ... and I will use this body and this opportunity, to do my master's will."
She used the knife to make a cabalistic sign in the air. She muttered throaty, guttural words. Her eyes glowed. She stepped slowly toward Frank. The blade gleamed in the morning sunlight. She grinned. "Now a bit of incestuous evil to start the day right. Yes. I'll grant your secret desire, Frank, and hers."
The butcher knife weaved before Frank's face. He was hypnotized by her eyes, by the force that poured from her. He barely heard her words. "Into the master bedroom, gimpy father. Move!"
He lurched out of the kitchen, across the sunken living room, and up to the angled passageway that gave onto the double doors of the large bedroom. He knew she followed. He stopped beside the massive king-size bed and turned. His daughter's exquisite tan and white nakedness was like a physical blow.
"Strip!"
Frank felt his face twitch. He tensed. Could he grab the butcher knife away? She was insanely strong ... probably her reflexes were faster than his ...
"Strip, or six inches of this knife will be buried in your gut!"
He pleaded, "Donna, don't do this to yourself."
"You still haven't accepted me, have you? You will." Her electric blue eyes locked with his.
Frank felt himself sinking back into his brain, retreating before the power of her ... of its will. He felt dizzy. Her voice echoed in his skull: "OBEY ME! OBEY ME IN ALL THINGS!"
He nodded. His hands began to unbutton his shirt. Two minutes later he straightened after having stepped from his white briefs. He felt foolish, embarrassed, and scared. As long as Donna held that butcher knife she was dangerous to herself and to him.
She lounged on the big bed, her tanned thighs casually open. "Well, well, Frank. You are a stud, aren't you? Make it hard."
"I ... can't."
She pricked the chocolate and raspberry striped bedspread with the blade. "Here, beside me. Doesn't the prospect of fucking your daughter excite you?"
"You're not my daughter."
She chuckled. "True, 'I' am not. But this-" She caressed her naked breasts and then cupped her lightly fuzzed mound. "-is." She never let go of the knife. It was always gripped tightly, alertly, in her right hand.
Frank had no choice but to lie beside her. He stretched out on his back. He couldn't get an erection, not under these conditions. There was no way ...
She put her soft, curious left hand on him. His stomach muscles went tight. He closed his eyes as she manipulated his soft penis. She whispered, "Donna is curious about her daddy. Let it get hard, Frank. She wants to see it hard."
He lay as if dead. He didn't answer. Her hand, he had to admit ... her hand was clever and knowing. Her hand was warm and soft and skilled. Her fingers caressed the sensitive underside of his glands. She squeezed and pulled gently. He clenched his teeth. No, damn it, NO!
On a purely physical level his body was responding. He felt the slight initial stirring of his penis, the first flow of hot blood into the soft, shrunken, spongy length. He groaned. He kept his eyes closed. He heard her lewd chuckle. His penis was growing now ... filling dramatically, tingling from her expert fondling. She was slowly pumping him, finger tipping the glands with brief, exciting touches. He knew she was seeing the full eight and a quarter inches of his full erection. Her hand swept up and down in triumph. She said huskily, "This will be fun! I'll let her feel this in all its glory."
Frank felt the knife point dig into the side of his chest. "Climb on, Daddy. Fuck your daughter now. Give her a thrill."
He gritted his teeth and shook his head. The razor edge of the butcher knife came cool and deadly to his throat. It began to saw gently. He felt a line of terrifying pain cutting across his Adam's apple. He croaked, "All right." He rolled over on top of her, blindly. He crouched on knees and elbows. Unwilling to see. He knew his erection was leaving him. He felt her legs part, her knees raise and spread wide. His genitals touched her center.
"Lost it, haven't you?" She was contemptuous. Her free arm went around his neck and drew his head down. Her soft, warm mouth pressed against his tight lips. Her tongue flicked enticingly, seeking entrance. He refused. The knife tip pricked the side of his back. Gradually, the pressure behind it increased. The point entered his flesh. It was a deepening agony. He opened his mouth slightly. The knife retreated, and her tongue slipped into his mouth. Her lips were sweet and yielding and now hot. Her tongue fluttered devilishly ... yet he was turned off. It repulsed him.
She sensed this and stopped. She released his head. "Open your eyes, Frank." Her gaze smote him, held him. Her pupils were dilated. "You will fuck Donna, sooner or later. You will obey me in all things! You will not resist my will!"
He fought the slave words that formed in his mind, on the tip of his tongue.
She smirked. "If it's too soon for you to fuck your precious daughter, you can eat her. That should make you both happy." She cupped her right breast. Her hand coned the white flesh to greater prominence. "Suck her tit, Frank." The knife weaved menacingly.
He obeyed. He rationalized. At least he had avoided intercourse. He refused to think of what was to follow. He closed his eyes again and let his mouth find the offered breast. The pink, button-like nipple seemed to pop into between his lips. It was crinkled and stiff.
Without realizing it, he slipped into his usual lovemaking techniques. His tongue rolled the nipple, flicked it, grazed it. He sucked it deeper into his mouth. Frank became aware of his daughter's sighs, of her restlessness under him. He stopped.
She whispered throatily, "You're good. Now the other one." She shifted and pressed her left nipple against his wet lips.
Reluctantly, he began kissing and sucking again. He didn't enjoy it ... yet he did. And when she commanded, "Use your hands on them," he obeyed her immediately.
Donna's breasts were incredibly smooth, the skin like warm, taut silk. He couldn't resist their perfection, their full roundness, the sensual beauty of their youthful, upward thrust. Her body was so ripe ... so ripe ... so well developed. Frank almost succumbed. His erection began to return, then faded. The knife cut in his back stung too much to be ignored. The agonizing knowledge that this was his daughter-Donna!-overlay his mind like a black fog. The situation was impossible; it couldn't be happening! Yet when he took his hands from her lovely breasts and took his mouth from her nipples, she growled, "Don't stop!" in that strange, ruthless, alien tone.
He crouched over her and filled his hands with those twin, arching mounds of white flesh, and drew first one stubby pink nipple, then the other into his mouth. Frank had secretly fantasized this situation a few times ... he conceded many times since Donna had begun to develop physically in her twelfth year ... but now that it was reality it wasn't exciting. It was ruined ... by his conscience and by the awful circumstance of her derangement.
She squirmed under his hands and mouth. She whispered, "She likes it, Frank. Now ... now lick down the body. Eat your daughter, Frank. Lick ... drink from her sweet cunt!"
He moaned, "Oh, Christ-" He reared up to lunge off the bed-
Her blue eyes drilled him. Her left hand clamped on his right arm with steely strength. The point of the butcher knife was suddenly weaving a fraction of an inch from his left eye. "You will obey me in all things!"
Where did this terrifying force of will come from? He couldn't resist it. He felt in the presence of pure Evil and total bestiality. He believed she would plunge the knife into his brain as casually as into a grapefruit. He was not worth anything to her. She was no longer human. She was no longer his daughter.
Frank licked dry lips. It wasn't worth getting killed over. "Okay ... I will." He moved backward down the bed like a great white beetle. He dipped his head and tongued her sunken, tanned belly. He tasted the salty residue of her sweat from the night before, from the time in the pentagram. Her thighs opened for him. Her knees rose and the pink and white lips of her vulva parted stickily.
Frank settled down. He lowered his head into the soft V of her thighs. His arms slipped under her lifted thighs and embraced them. He stared at the pouting, moist vertical slit and saw the tiny glistening pink pea that was her clitoris peeping out at him.
He closed his eyes. He hesitated. Then he pressed his mouth against the musky lips and licked his tongue between the flushed labia. She tasted acidy. He sent his tongue deep to the opening of her vagina. He felt her loins surge against his open mouth.
In spite of himself, Frank experienced a thrill. He loved to do this for young, slim women. He loved to give pleasure and to receive it. He loved the interaction of lovemaking, of feeling a woman tremble as he plunged his large penis into her and the uninhibited shaking of a woman in orgasm.
He wondered, if Donna had an orgasm, would the shock of it, the turmoil ... be enough to bring her back to sanity? Did she need this incestuous trauma to drain her of an adolescent sexual madness? He hugged her smooth, slim thighs more tightly in his arms and burrowed his tongue into her vagina. He heard her soft gasps, her swift exhalations, and felt their jerky tensions in her belly and thighs.
Frank existed in a dual role-lover automatically doing his job, using his knowledge and skills-and horrified father forced at knifepoint to sexually service his daughter. He licked upward in the warm, wet pink gorge of her vulva and grazed the tiny, swollen knob of her clitoris. It was a remarkably well-developed clitoris, he thought, almost clinically, as large and protruding as Ellen's had been.
He tried not to think of his dead wife. He still wasn't over her completely. An ache was reawakened.
When his tongue slid over her clitoris, Donna gasped loudly and her loins spasmed against his mouth. "There! Eat there, more!"
The guttural, lewd command shook him. He obeyed. In the moments that followed, she became more and more agitated. She moaned and panted. Her body writhed, her belly fluttered and she spasmed. She loosed full-throated cries of ecstasy. Her loins bumped furiously against his clinging mouth. She quieted. He lifted his wet mouth from its long, gaping contact with her pulsing center. She grabbed his hair and roughly pulled his head down again. Her thighs closed in. "More! This time for Donna!" She laughed evilly.
His jaws and his tongue were tired. But he delved into the juicy pink wound again and soon she was gasping and moving again. He could hear her approach another orgasm. He could feel the gradually increasing tension in her muscles.
As she panted into the irreversible torrent of a powerful climax she abruptly went loose for a split second-
Then a huge, wrenching convulsion wracked her body as she sobbed and screamed, in her true voice, "OH! OH, DADDY! DADDY!" She howled with shame and rapture. "I CAN'T HELP IT! I DIDN'T-"
Frank went into shock. He jerked his head up. He stared into the hysterical eyes of his daughter-her normal, fifteen-year-old self was there, surfaced, trapped in a humiliating orgasm, knowing how she had been brought to it. She flushed violently as the pleasure ran its course. She turned her face away. She panted helplessly.
"Donna," Frank croaked. "Oh, Jesus, baby-" How could he explain? But if she were herself now-
A rippling spasm shook her. She began to shake. He thought she was sobbing silently, but her head turned toward him and a terrible skin-crawling horror goose bumped his skin. She was laughing. The demon was back in her eyes, in her mind. The shaking broke into sound. Peals of derisive, mocking laughter hammered at him. Frank bowed his head. He wept. She wasn't through with him. When the laughter subsided she commanded, "Now over onto your back!"
The knife. He had no choice. He turned. The bedspread was initially cool against his back and legs. The small wound between his shoulder blades stung. He felt exposed. His penis was limp between his thick, well-muscled thighs, but he was afraid she would be at it again. He closed his eyes tightly. He was right. She quaked the bed as she moved around. He felt her straddle his right thigh. A cold, slimy knot formed in his gut. He felt her soft, warm, cunning fingers touch and toy with his genitals. He felt the wet, hot lips of her vulva crushed down on his hairy leg.
She chuckled and gathered his genitals in one hand, as if they were a fleshy plant she was about to pull from his body. He felt the cold, chill length of the butcher knife against his pubes. He lifted his head, eyes wide. She seemed about to cut off his manhood. A queer, twisted smile was on her lips. "This gets your attention, doesn't it, Frank? Did you enjoy eating your daughter? I thought it a nice touch to let her out and know what it's like to come from your tongue. You're an excellent tongue man, Frank. I'm sure Donna will want more of it."
He lay rigid, barely breathing.
"No, I won't do it. I have plans for you. I've killed so much in the past-it's no great thrill anymore. I enjoy using people against their will. That's the delicious tang of power."
He could say nothing. He relaxed as she took the knife from his scrotum.
"Now let's see ... let's see how good a cock-sucker your lovely Donna is."
"No-"
But she bent over and scooped the whole of his softness into her mouth. The evil smile lingered as her lips and tongue gently, with incredible lascivious skill, began an irresistible, warm, liquid, caress.
Frank's mind swirled with conflicting emotions. No inexperienced teenage girl could suck like this! Where could, Donna have learned? NO! She-It had to be a malevolent spirit-Fantasy! God-it was impossible to keep from enjoying.
He began to breathe faster. His hands lay palm up at his sides, then slowly closed into fists as he fought the gentle sucking that was eroding his self-control. His penis began to fill and lengthen. He gasped and gritted his teeth. He tried thinking of work ... of Ellen ... But it was useless. She had conquered him. His full eight and a quarter inches towered up from his loins, held by her hand at the base. Her fingers squeezed rhythmically as she sucked. She somehow was taking more than half of it ... to the back of her throat ... long gliding strokes of her mouth and slithering tongue. He watched, like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. Her blue eyes watched his expression, fed on his emotions. Her head dipped and rose slowly, exquisitely, tantalizingly. Now the tinglings of pleasure gathered like trickles of sweet hot syrup in his loins. He fought the rising tide of sensation. He couldn't let himself come!
She chuckled and smiled around the thick hot bulk in her moving mouth. She saw the torment, the struggle reflected in his expression. She tightened her mouth on him and subtly speeded her motion, and her tongue danced against galvanizingly sensitive tissues.
Frank threw his head back. His throat worked. He gasped. His belly tightened. The heavy muscles of his thighs hardened. I can't ... I can't ... I mustn't ... Oh, Jesus, please, no ... no ... not in her mouth ...
He tried to pull his penis free. She emitted muffled, wet laughter and crammed even more into her greedy mouth. He couldn't escape. It was going to happen! He groaned. His face worked. His belly ridged. He began to tremble. His breath rasped in his throat.
His head lifted, shaking, and his agonized gaze fastened on his daughter's bobbing head. She was making shameless gobbling, liquid sounds. Somehow she was able-or the thing who possessed her wets able to command it-to let his glands enter her throat beyond the palate. Her full, wet, pink lips clung to his throbbing, rigid shaft, and swept down farther ... farther.
It was inhuman. It couldn't be done. Yet before Frank's horrified, dazzled, ravished eyes she engulfed the whole of his massive penis. Her throat spasmed, clenched, convulsed ... Her hot blue alien eyes sucked at his soul! He gave a wailing, stricken cry. His loins seemed to expand in a golden explosion of boiling ecstasy-and contract-and pump a jet of semen into her throat. He was beyond thought, beyond shame and guilt. He jolted her head with primitive coital thrusts. He spurted violently, again and again.
Endless seconds later he went loose and relaxed. He lay drained, dull-eyed, breathing deeply. Her mouth still claimed his shrinking organ. He tried not to think. Then suddenly she gave a strangled cry and jerked her head away. His penis fell juicily to his belly. Frank raised his head quickly to see ... Donna was herself again! She crouched, her face a mask of horror and revulsion, her mouth open, contorted, thick dribbles of semen running from her lips, down her chin ... His heart almost stopped. He paled. Donna began to heave. A spew of brown vomit splashed on his left thigh and onto the bedspread, rapidly soaking into the fabric.
Frank instinctively pulled his leg away. Then he recovered and moved to take her into his arms. "Donna, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. I didn't-"
The heaving had changed character. It was ... laughter. Her face came up. Glowing eyes. "Kiss me, Daddy!"
He recoiled from her. He realized he should have had the presence of mind to grab the knife while the demon had momentarily stepped aside in Donna's mind. Now it was too late-her hand was again tight around the polished walnut handle. She brought her free hand up and coated her fingers with the remnants of semen on her face. She captured his eyes with hers and licked her fingers clean. "Ummm. I like your scum, Daddy."
Frank's stomach turned. He almost vomited, too. "Stop it. Leave me alone."
"For now. You may shower and dress and go about your business. When you leave here you will not contact a psychiatrist about me, you will not go to the authorities. You will return before sunset. I have plans to make." She brandished the knife. "Disobey and your daughter will be disfigured in ways that will make even you cringe and turn away at the sight of her."
He could only nod. He was in a state of shock. He lurched off the bed and limped heavily into the master bathroom.
She smiled and found his coat. She took out his wallet and took two fifties and two tens. She went to the large mirror and, using a finger dipped in the slimy vomit, drew an occult symbol on the clean glass. Then she left the master bedroom.
CHAPTER FOUR
Webster looked up from old handwritten manuscripts on his ornate mahogany desk. The doorbell chimed insistently. His full, sensuous mouth firmed with irritation. He clicked off the lighted magnifying glass he had been using and stood up. He stepped around a mound of old books, past an antique overstuffed sofa, crossed the thick Oriental rug to the sliding double doors that led to the entrance way of his turn-of-the-century house. He could see only a distorted image through the stained glass windows in the front door. He turned the gorgon's head brass doorknob and pulled the door open.
Before him, smiling prettily, stood Frank Kaiser's daughter-the breathtakingly lovely girl who had behaved so extraordinarily in the pentagram the night before, at the party. She wore a frilly yellow dress that matched her long, golden hair. She had that neat, freshly scrubbed look people admire and value so much. But she wore no bra or slip. Her nipples poked out against the loose-knit, translucent acetate, showing smudges of pink. She did seem to be wearing pantyhose.
Webster glanced down the walk to the street. No car at the curb. He said, "Miss Kaiser ... ?"
She nodded. Her expression shaded into worry. "Yes. Mr. Webster? I got your address from my father's address book. You don't have a phone."
"No, I don't. It's an intrusive monster." He frowned. "May I help you? I intended calling this evening-I walk to a store to make the few absolutely necessary calls I must make-ahh, to find out how you were."
"That's why I came. I have to talk to you about what happened to me!" She bit her lower lip. She seemed on the verge of crying.
"Well ... certainly. Come in." He looked again at the street-up and down the quiet block in the older section of Long Beach. "Are you alone?"
She nodded and quickly slipped inside. She continued on into his book-littered study where he had been working.
Webster frowned and shut the door. He followed her. "How did you get here?"
"Cab."
He puffed his lean, sallow cheeks. He idly scratched his neatly trimmed beard. "That must have cost twenty dollars."
She was standing before the tall, glass-doored bookcase beside the fireplace, intently scanning the ancient, leather-bound tomes. She asked, "Where's the book you used?"
"I don't keep it down here. It's very valuable."
"You only have one copy?"
He laughed. "I may have the original. I have a Xerox copy, of course." He pointed to a thick, stapled sheaf of copy paper on his desk. "I have a feeling about the book. I actually think it's dangerous."
She nodded quickly. "I do, too! That's why I want to see it ... and talk to you about that spell."
"A Summoning, not a spell, technically speaking." He sat in the comfortable old swivel chair behind his desk. "How do you feel? The last I saw of you last night your father was carrying you away and you were limp as a rag."
"Oh, I'm fine ... physically." She blushed and smiled weakly. She wandered around the high-ceilinged room. She fingered the heavy green brocade draperies. She stared at the ornately framed occult paintings on the dark walls. "But my head is in a different place."
Webster had noticed a subtle, intangible differentness about her. Something vaguely false about her ... as if-as if a ninety-year-old woman were masquerading as a teenager. Her eyes disturbed him. There seemed to be chilling glitter in their depths. A masked glitter.
He frowned. Imagination. "Miss Kaiser ... that was a very graphic scene that happened in the pentagram. It appeared that you were being ... assaulted ... by an invisible being."
She sat on the antique sofa. "I know ... I was! He ... It whispered in my mind and did awful things to me ... and raped me."
Webster almost smiled ... and realized his reaction was perhaps evidence of disbelief in the occult and supernatural. He had almost smiled -he had dismissed her as a hysterical teenage girl, sexually frustrated, full of emotional storms. He asked, "How do you mean-raped you?"
She flushed and didn't know what to do with her hands. She lowered her eyes. "I-I felt him enter me. It hurt terribly. And Daddy had a doctor come by earlier this morning and examine me, and he said my hymen had been torn open."
Webster coughed and scowled. "What did this invisible creature say to you? We couldn't hear a thing ... on the outside."
"Dirty things. And about Lucifer and like that."
Webster nodded. He was still of a mind that her performance, and that of Frank Kaiser the night before, had been an elaborate, well-rehearsed hoax. Very well done. But yet ...
He said, "If that Summoning had been performed according to the prescribed ritual and instructions-But last night it was a game, a joke. The conditions weren't authentic at all. The preparations were a mockery of-"
"BUT IT HAPPENED! SOME KIND OF MONSTER FROM HELL TOOK POSSESSION OF ME!" She collapsed into a sobbing heap against the musty old cushions.
Webster was shaken. This girl was convincing, yet there still lingered a tinge of doubt about her. Was she acting now? "Miss Kaiser ... I don't understand what you want of me." He was acutely uncomfortable seeing her crying so heartbrokenly. He wondered if he should go to her and comfort her. Yet he resisted that-he wasn't at ease with unstable, unconventional young women. He wished to keep well clear of Donna Kaiser. He wished he weren't alone with her.
She sat up and took a hanky from a bulging yellow plastic purse. Several crumpled twenty dollar bills nearly spilled from the purse. She mastered her sobs very quickly. "I c-came to find out if ... if you can recite the-the Summoning backward or something and sort of wipe out what happened."
"No-if it was a successful Summoning of Lucifer, or one of his cohorts, it would require an altogether different ritual and incantation to ..." Webster licked his fat lips. "You said something took possession of you? In what sense?"
"I don't know. I have weird thoughts and impulses. I find myself doing things I don't want to do ... It scares me. It's like having someone else in my brain."
"Miss Kaiser, it's very difficult to believe that you were genuinely in contact with the supernatural last night."
"I'm not lying!" She stood, angry. "Some kind of demon fucked me and-" She caught herself. "I want to see that old book! I want to see that spell."
"It's written in 9th Century Latin on discolored parchment and the ink is faded. I can't let you even touch the book. I shouldn't have risked taking it to your father's party last night, but he wanted authenticity ... so I took it along. I don't like being used like that. I doubt if I'll ever see you or him again." Webster pulled the Xerox copy of the book from the litter of papers on his desk. "You can look at this copy if you like." He held it out.
"Is that the only copy you have?"
"Yes. And I can't lend it to you."
"Does anyone else have a copy?"
"No, not to my knowledge."
"How did you get possession of it?"
"I found it in a copper chest in an ancient cellar vault in Germany ten years ago. The vault was part of an 18th Century lodge in Bavaria I partially inherited from my mother. I had to fly over to meet the other heirs and arrange with them to sell the property. I don't think the vault had been opened for a hundred years, and the chest was at least a thousand years old. I have the chest in the basement. It's worth about six thousand dollars in itself."
"Do any other scholars know of the book?"
"No! I wouldn't trust those vultures."
"You're a fool, Webster."
He looked sharply at her. The voice that had come from her mouth had been harsh, cynical, somehow masculine. Her eyes-A creeping chill shivered his back. He swallowed. She smiled icily. She spun and picked up her purse. She walked quickly to the open doors. She left the room.
Webster leaned back in his chair. Then he frowned, cocking his head. She hadn't left the house! He heard her footsteps on the stairway landing leading to the rooms upstairs. What the hell? He rose and strode angrily after her. When he reached the top of the carpeted stairs he saw her emerge from the guest room and enter the bathroom.
She smiled innocently. "The body has to piss." She closed the paneled, varnished door.
Webster snorted. He noticed his bedroom door ajar. She had been in there, too. Simply looking for the bathroom? He entered his room and checked it. Nothing had been disturbed that he could see. He glanced at the locked antique cabinet by the window. The book was there in the bottom inside drawer, wrapped in velvet in a foam-lined metal box. He was resolved to keep it there, except for rare moments of research where the photo copy would not serve. Webster closed the door of his room, listened to rustling in the bathroom, then crossed to the head of the stairs. He wasn't happy. That girl was acting strangely. Talking like a whore. He wanted her out of his house as soon as possible, even if he had to be rude. She was more unstable than he had suspected.
Webster went downstairs to his study. He stood waiting, listening. Finally the upstairs toilet flushed. He wasn't sure if he could hear footsteps on the stairs or not. He strained to hear. A muted clumping overhead-she was in his bedroom! She was after the book! He ran to the stairs and took the steps three at a time. His bedroom door was open. He saw her kneeling before the cabinet-lovely long blonde hair, yellow dress, tanned calf showing. He yelled, "Get away from there! What the hell do you think you're up to?" He strode angrily toward her.
She turned. Her corrupt blue eyes stopped him as he was about to seize her arm and yank her away. The submerged glitter was unmasked. Subtle lines and muscle tensions altered her soft, girl's face. He stared down into Hell. He was frozen, astonished, afraid.
She said harshly, "The book and the copy must be destroyed."
He managed to shake his head. "No. Get out of my house."
"Destroy the book and you may have this body to enjoy however you wish. I'll make it do anything."
Webster's gaze was drawn to her tempting breasts. But her young face was changed-and the old, evil eyes ...
He shook his head again. He asked, "Why do you want the book destroyed?"
"It gives too much power over us. You, for instance, with practice, could command all the dark forces. You could interfere with plans and systems and operations begun eons ago. You would upset the structure that is bringing Satan his victory."
"God is dead?"
"God is dying. We are returning."
"I don't believe this."
"A student of the occult and you do not believe. Yes, you are a fool."
"Maybe, but not fool enough to let you get your insane hands on that book. Get out of my house!"
"In time. After your soul is given over to Them."
Then he saw the small, deadly automatic in her right hand, her open purse on the floor. The muzzle of the gun swung toward him. She twisted on her haunches.
Webster didn't understand. Then he did. He went cold. "Who are you?"
"He who was summoned." She shot him four times.
The first .22 slug tore through his brown vest, buried itself in his stomach and flattened against his spinal column. The second cracked two ribs and lodged in his left lung below and to the left of his thudding heart. He was staggering backward, falling, screaming, when the third slug caught him under the chin behind his beard and ripped up through his head into the gray matter of his right lobe. He fell heavily, unconscious, dying, and the fourth, carefully aimed bullet smashed through his chest to his heart. The organ went into fibrillation, squirted high pressure blood into rent tissues, and then stopped.
She dropped the gun back into her purse. She tried to open the cabinet and couldn't. She calmly stood up, walked around the body and the spreading red stain in the blue throw rug across which he had fallen, and left the bedroom. She went downstairs to the kitchen and found a meat cleaver and a strong steel carving knife. She returned to the bedroom and forced the antique cabinet's door. She forced open the drawers until she found the metal box that contained the book. She pried open the box, unwrapped the priceless book and opened it to a page near the front. She read it and laughed. She squatted beside Webster's body. She closed her hellish blue eyes and threw her head back. She cried, "Asteroth, Asmodeus, I beg you to accept the sacrifice of this man which I now offer to you, so that I may receive the things that I ask."
She used the long knife to cut away the body's clothes. Webster's corpse lay twisted, white, still, oozing blood from the ragged, discolored bullet holes. The beard was soaked with blood. The eyes stared at the carved left foot of the 19th Century bed.
"I give you a soul, mighty Astaroth. I request powers. I feed this vessel." She savagely cut open the belly from sternum to pubes. She hacked into the chest cavity and cut free the ruptured heart. She held it with both hands and ate it raw, tearing gobbets of red flesh with her bloody teeth. She stared fixedly at the book which lay open on the floor beside her. Spatters of blood stained its parchment pages.
When she had finished the heart, she took up the knife and cut free the testicles and penis. "I honor thee, majestic Asmodeus. I give you a soul. I request powers. I feed my host." She ate the testicles and penis. Blood dripped on her frilly yellow dress. She ignored it. When she had swallowed the final mouthful, she intoned, "I worship thee, indomitable Lucifage Rofocale. I give you a soul. I request powers."
She pulled handfuls of slippery, ropy white entrails from the gory abdomen. She arranged them in an intricate design on the ruined body-a horned cross. "I do your bidding. I do your bidding. I do your bidding. I request powers." She bowed her head for a moment, then she took a piece of Webster's clothing and wiped the cabinet where she had touched and gripped.
She took up the book and her purse and the knives and went downstairs to the study. There was a little-used fireplace in one corner of the room. She took manuscripts and papers from the desk. She placed the cleaver and knife in the flames, and started a fire. She fed the fire-page by page-with the book and with the Xerox copy. She grinned as the fire consumed the ancient knowledge. Finally, even the dry leather binding of the book had been eaten by the flames. She used an antique brass poker to fragment the ashes even farther. She wiped the handle of the poker with her soiled, stained dress. She looked down at her dress-at the brown spots-and she shrugged. She found her purse and left the old house.
CHAPTER FIVE
Frank dreaded entering his home late that afternoon. He had been in a turmoil all day. In the safety and familiarity of his office at the brickyard the happenings of that morning and the previous night became impossible, weird, nightmares, delusions ... He had to keep reminding himself that it had all happened. He had to relive the bizarre, loathsome, incestuous acts he had engaged in. He tried to concentrate on business and tried to decide what was real and what was fantasy. He wondered, for one moment, if perhaps it was he who was insane, suffering from awful hallucinations.
Was Donna possessed? Was she inhabited by a demon from Hell? He wanted to believe it! Jesus God, if only her lewd talk and degraded behavior were the result of an inhuman monster roosting in her mind. But if that were true-The implications were awesome. Reality-the precious reality of science and rationalism-was a sham, a skim on the surface of supernatural void. Mankind became a plaything, Earth became an arena. Two vast entities-God and Satan-played a million-year game for mastery.
It couldn't be! Donna was mad. She had to be. She had sunk into a complicated paranoid schizophrenic system of delusions. God knew what powerful psychic forces were at work in her mind. Ellen's death must have triggered. But he kept hearing that altered voice, seeing the eerie shift of personality. And the horrible change in her face as that other took over.
Frank had stewed all day. He had come so close to calling a psychiatrist ... even to calling the police, though that would have been idiotic.
That butcher knife. She-or it-had scared hell out of him with that knife. He had believed her. She would have mutilated herself-and him, too!-had he not obeyed. Whatever the truth, possession or madness, that threat had been real.
He stood on the gravel path leading to his porch and hesitated. His attach� case was heavy. What was waiting inside? The setting sun reddened the surface of the ocean beyond the house. The surf thundered on the rocks below. There were no lights on in the house. His leg was bothering him again. It made his limp more pronounced as he walked forward and unlocked the front door. He shut the door and called apprehensively, "Donna?" His deep, penetrating baritone voice was loud in the silence.
No answer. He switched on a light in the sunken living room and limped into his den. He put his attach� case on the modern walnut desk and went back across the living room toward the long hall that led to Donna's room. As he passed the basement door he noticed it stood ajar. He opened it further and looked down the angled stairway. The basement lights were on. He called, "Donna?"
She answered, "Come down here, Frank." It was the "new" Donna's hard voice.
His stomach sank. He awkwardly lurched down the steps. She was standing in the party room, stark naked, with a sketch pad in her left hand, a red Crayola in her right hand. She was staring at the long bar that filled one end of the low-ceilinged, paneled room. His daughter's physical beauty made Frank's throat tighten and his belly muscles tense. She caught his expression and grinned. "You liked what we did this morning, Mr. Kaiser? Doesn't it bother you that I'm a male demon in your daughter's body? Doesn't that make you some kind of double pervert?"
She laughed harshly. "Don't worry, you'll get an encore tonight. I have plans. I enjoy sex. I dip into her shame and horror, and yours ... oh, it's delicious. That part is as good as the actual physical pleasure."
She stroked her right palm over her full, pointed breasts. She used the red Crayola to draw an uneven circle around the pink nipples. "Target, Frank."
He sat in a bamboo-frame chair. His mind was swirling with shameful desire for her and with a gritty remorse. He waited for her to tell him what the sketch pad signified. She had made a drawing. He couldn't see enough to make sense of it.
Donna made a few more Crayola lines on the pad. "You will have built-or build it yourself, I don't care-an altar like the one I'm drawing. Put it where the bar is." She looked around. "I want this cold tiled floor covered with thick, deep red carpeting. The ceiling painted black. And this south seas furniture- get rid of it. Cover the walls with black velvet. And I want thick sponge rubber pads four or five feet wide along this wall. And have them covered with crimson velvet."
Frank raised his head as the instructions continued. "What-?"
"Find some candleholders-old ones-and some old cabinets and have them enameled-black. You'll have one week to do these things or cause them to be done."
She finished the drawing and handed it to him. "This room will be our place of worship. Here the Horned One will be adored. Here we will perform the Black Mass. Here the coven meets."
Frank was caught by her fierce blue gaze. The power in her eyes seemed to hit like a sledgehammer. Her force of will was stronger now. She seemed to blaze from within. He could not resist in her presence. He felt hypnotized.
She shifted her gaze to the party room again. "Red leather for the altar top. Real leather! And black velvet draping for the altar. Yes, the Old Ones will be well served here. They will approve. I will be given greater powers. This body is young and well formed. It is a tool I will use skillfully."
Frank sat stunned. He looked down at the drawing. It was astonishingly well done-the work of a talented professional. Yet Donna had never exhibited any talent for drawing. She had always echoed Ellen in saying she couldn't draw a straight line.
The pictured altar was even provided with dimensions and some technical specifications such as would have been provided by an architect or draftsman. Frank's skin goose bumped and he shivered. He began to breathe shallowly as fear sickened him. Donna suddenly was standing before him, facing him, close, her tan and pink and white nakedness ... her slender, nubile, lush beauty overwhelming. He raised agonized eyes to her smiling face. "Put those shaking hands on these breasts, Frank."
He was a prisoner of her will. He put the sketch on the gray and blue tiled floor, leaned forward in the creaky bamboo chair and placed his trembling, sweaty hands on his daughter's magnificent breasts. The pale, taut, rounded flesh was very warm. The violently pink, erected nipples protruded against his sensitive palms.
"Play with them, Daddy." She grinned lewdly down at him. "But gently. Don't bruise the fruit. The body has to be perfect to attract other worshippers to the Master."
Frank fondled his daughter's jutting breasts. He caressed. His breathing became even more shallow and fast.
Imperceptibly, in the heated, sibilant moment that followed, her back arched and thrust her breasts closer to him. She whispered roughly, "You will obey me in all things. You will be my acolyte. You will serve without question."
Her eyelids drooped, her head tilted back and her mouth was drawn open as she stared at the ceiling. Her breath surged. Her breasts moved against his clinging, stroking fingers. She whispered unevenly, "The body loves this." She continued, "My acolyte, my slave, my body's father ... you will be rewarded for your service. Richly rewarded. There will be great wealth. There will be immortality!"
She clutched his head. She pulled his face to the soft, deep gorge between her breasts. "You must be loyal and true to me and to Lucifer. I have powers now and I will have more!"
She dug fingers into his thick, brown, graying hair. Her nails cut into his scalp as she warned, "If you resist me-if you disobey-if you scheme against me and against our ultimate master, Lucifer-you will suffer the unbearable agonies of the Utterly Damned. You will see your daughter ravished in unspeakable ways, her body torn, her soul shattered and consumed by Furies. And more ... and more."
Her terrible gaze swept down and transfixed him. In that awful moment he was convinced his daughter was in the fiendish grip of a demon. He knew pure Evil existed, and that Lucifer lived-a horror from another plane of existence. The fabric between the universes could be penetrated ... portals could be opened.
Her hands came to his loins, kneading him. She commanded, "Be naked, Frank. We will consecrate this room now. It will echo with the passionate screams of your daughter-and your groans of ecstasy-as you fuck her! Father and daughter in unholy incestuous union. The walls and floor and ceiling will absorb the sounds and will be tainted by your agony of spirit and by hers."
Frank nodded. She didn't need a knife. Her will, her eyes-he was unable to resist. He believed. It was so real ... vast wealth ... immortality. Frank came to know what it must be like for Donna-to be powerless to control her body, to be a horrified, shrunken self huddling, cowering in the brain, an observer, a viewer through cavern windows, a puppet whose body was operated by another. He experienced that in minor degree. Part of him wanted to run, part of him feared and lusted for her body. The lust and the fear were master. And he admitted greed ... and a hunger to live forever. Any sacrifice, any crime, would be worth immortality.
He stripped off his clothes as she stood, hands on naked hips, watching. When he stepped out of his briefs, he was ashamed of his massive erection. Frank stood and he shook.
She gestured to the bamboo furniture. "Throw all those cushions and pillows on the floor-on the rug."
There was a large, oval braided rug, nine by twelve, covering most of the cool, tiled floor. He obeyed.
"Lie down, Daddy."
He went to his knees on the edge of the pile.
"On your back, slave. You'd like to be the active one, wouldn't you? You want to be on top." She knelt and skillfully handled his erection. "Look at this monster, Frank. All this in your daughter's virgin cunt. Shall I let her come up and tell you what she's thinking? Shall I?"
He licked his lips. "No. Don't. It's too ..."
"Too much for your conscience?" She smirked. "You'll have to kill that conscience of yours. Bury it. Everything you've seen taught is good and right and virtuous is wrong. Based on lies. Evil is good. Good is evil. It is time to admit the seven deadly sins rule men and women, not idealistic illusions and self-deceptions. Your God has always held the losing hand. His bluff is being called."
She had him at full erection. She chuckled and bent over. She filled her mouth. She sucked. Her long blonde hair sifted down to form a silken, shimmering veil before her lovely young face as her head bobbed.
Frank waited in a dread anxiety for the fiend in her mind to let Donna's true self emerge for a few seconds. He cringed from that scene. He selfishly wished it wouldn't happen. The suspense was torture. What could he say to her? A gut-seething glow of pleasure was building in him. The demon was using Donna's mouth and tongue and throat with unholy skill.
She stopped sucking. She tossed her hair back. "Now I get this body hot." She straddled his chest. She inched forward, peering down, eyes glowing, moist lips quirking.
Frank liked the weight of her and the rounded walls of her silky thighs like a vise enclosing his head. Her vulva-a pink-lipped slit surrounded by a pale blonde fuzz-almost was pressing against his mouth. He couldn't resist putting his hands on her velvety, rounded buttocks. He pulled her that last inch closer and kissed. He probed with his tongue. He felt her muscles tighten. His penis throbbed, unattended, rock hard, jerking in the air with his heavy pulse.
"Ohhh ... you have a fiend's tongue, Daddy. This is your best talent." She undulated her humid crotch against his face.
Frank began to lose himself in the act. His tongue snaked and slithered in her vulva. His eyes were closed. The cushions and pillows on which he lay cupped and cradled him. He was almost able to forget who he was loving. He could almost forget everything but the acidly tang of the girl, her soft groans and gradual approach to orgasm.
Her thighs tightened on his head. The large muscles in her buttocks flexed as she rocked against his mouth. Then she stopped and shifted back, away from him. Looking up, he saw she was glaze-eyed with passion, her full-lipped mouth was parted. She was breathing fast. But when she spoke-the demon's persona controlled her voice and showed in her face. "Now, Frank ... now you both get your secret wish." She cackled with amusement, her words a ghastly reminder of alienness and evil. She slid down his body. Her crotch left a sticky trail. She lifted up over his pulsing, iron-like erection. She reached under and held him. She captured his eyes as a hawk captures a sparrow. She feasted on his helpless lust and shame as she lowered herself.
He clamped his jaw tight as he felt the penetration. Hot-tight-like a fist of jelly, like liquid velvet, like nothing in the world! His belly sucked in and locked. He gasped-as she gasped. He could not escape the blue diamond's that were her eyes ... the demon's eyes, as it fed.
Her feral smile broadened into a leer of triumph and mastery. "She's screaming inside, Frank. She can't face it. She won't admit how many times she's wanted this to happen."
Frank fought to look away. The changed, possessed face of his daughter held him. He felt the inexorable engulfment continue. Her weight pressed down until he was buried in her, until her vagina spasmed from the engorgement.
Then, from her grinning, unmoving mouth, from her throat, came a tiny, shrill, human girl's voice ... distorted, weak, but Donna's voice! "Please stop it, don't let it go on, oh please, Daddy, stop it, make it stop, I can't stand it, I hate it, I hate it, I want out, I want free, I want to die, I want to die." The frail voice faded away. The grin continued. The demon controlling Donna's naked body began rising and falling on Frank's shrinking penis.
Frank was shaking with horror. He was panting, his mouth dust-dry, eyes so wide his vision was blurred. He threw an arm across his eyes and wept. "God-no more! Leave me alone!"
She laughed derisively. "You're so gutless, Frank. You're hardly worth using. You're only convenient at the moment."
"Enslave someone else ... use someone else."
"In time." She sat on his limp genitals. She mockingly rubbed herself on them. "And it amuses me to see you so broken and sad because I'm using this body and giving you the opportunities you've dreamed of. As a fellow male, Frank, I'm surprised at your lack of enthusiasm. Do I have to force you to do everything?"
"Yes!"
"Then you're a fool!" She glared. "Lose those idiotic morals of yours, or you'll end up like-like all stupid mortals who oppose the Old Ones."
"Get out of Donna. Leave us alone."
"I was Summoned. I cannot leave. I will not. I must not. You're indulging in wish. You are to serve me in any way I say. You are convenient to me and you are necessary to me at the moment."
"I will say this once more ... and never after: Put aside all the social rules and religious thou-shalt-nots you have learned. They are feeble delusions, a net of lies over the true nature of mankind."
"Serve me willingly, with zeal, with intelligence, without remorse or scruple, and you will be richly rewarded on this Earth, and you will be made immortal on the instant of Lucifer's final victory."
Frank listened. But in his mind he also heard Donna's despairing cry, I want to die ... I want to die.
The party room extension phone buzzed. It was on the left end of the bar. She turned her head and looked at the phone as it buzzed again. She closed her violent blue eyes for a long second, as if communicating, somehow, then said, "Answer it." She slid off Frank and lay spread-legged on the cushions. "Tell her to come over."
Frank struggled to his feet and limped to the bar. He lifted the receiver. "Hello?"
"Hi, pooky. How's your little girl? Are we still 'on' tonight for din-din?"
It was Holly, his girl friend. A tall, loose-jointed, red-haired, slender girl in her mid-twenties.
"Hi, honey." He swallowed a tightness in his throat. He turned and looked at the naked, sprawled abandon of his daughter. "Donna ... I had a doctor look at her this morning. She's ... fine now. Hey, I hope we didn't spook you too much last night."
"Frank, you spooked everybody. Or-she did! That performance was very realistic. That Webster freak and his witchcraft number. Wow. I had goose bumps on top of goose bumps."
"Well, she ... I guess she wants to be an actress."
"She'll make it big. How did she manage that illusion of no-sound? I mean, it was so real, like there was a barrier that stopped us from hearing her."
"I don't know. I guess she practiced it in front of a mirror," he speculated.
"And the way site used her body ... no modesty there! You'd better watch that girl, Pooky -she'll be into stag films when word gets around."
"I don't think she-"
"I have to admit she's built! I never realized your little daughter was so well-developed! Makes me green in the bust department."
"Holly, you have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Right, damn it, I have nothing, and I'm ashamed."
He laughed. "Come over and we'll have something to eat here." He looked again at Donna and she was smiling, nodding approval. He experienced a shiver of happiness at having pleased her. He said to Holly, "You're only fishing for compliments."
"Right! And when a girl has to fish for them she's in trouble."
"Honey, your breasts are like cherry-tipped mangos. They-"
"Thank you, pook, but we both know my titties are like fried eggs. When will the food be on the plates?"
"You mean you expect me to cook?"
"God, yes! You're a good cook."
"In that case-about seven-thirty."
"I'll be hungry as a bear. 'Bye."
"Later." He put the down the phone. He was astonished at himself. The conversation had been about normal. He had carried it off while standing naked a few feet from where his fifteen-year-old daughter lay naked, just after they had been-
Donna said, "Very good, Frank. See how easy it is to lie convincingly? But you're a successful businessman; you already know how to do it."
He sat on one of the cushioned bamboo bar stools. "Why do you want her here tonight?"
"Holly will be my first convert, after you, of, course. The coven will be three, after tonight. Tomorrow I will recruit more. Special members. I'll need your help in that." She smiled and sighed. She got up from the cushions and pillows. She picked up the sketch pad and Crayola. She flipped the altar drawing and began printing a list. "Get dressed. I need some things. I'll need them tonight."
Frank obediently went to gather his clothes. "What are you going to do to her?"
"Oh ... a kind of free-style initiation. I will require your services, acolyte." She finished the list, ripped off the sheet and handed it to him.
Frank read the list. His eyes widened. "Some of these things ... "
"Better hurry, Frank. You haven't much time." She went, naked, up the stairs.
CHAPTER SIX
Holly Barnes liked to hip-flip when she walked in private or with a very good friend when no one else could see her. It was an exaggeration, a caricature of a prostitute's walk. Holly thunked shut the door of her green Vega and, swinging her red purse in circles, hip-flipped shamelessly as she went up the dark, curving walk to Frank's house. She didn't notice that his Mercedes was gone.
She wore an expensive pair of tapestry hip-huggers over her bony pelvis and long, lean thighs. Her blouse was flaming red silk. She never wore a bra. Her small "fried egg" breasts jiggled as she walked. Holly had naturally carrot-red hair, but she kept it cut short and wore one of a dozen wigs, as the mood, occasion or her outfit demanded. This night she wore a dark red African natural because she felt freaky, and because she would be alone with Frank.
She walked up to the big lime oak door. It was unlocked and the metal lantern porch light was on as she had expected it to be for her, and she entered. Holly traipsed toward the kitchen. "Hey, pooky, your red-haired African girl is heah." She pushed open the swinging kitchen door to semi-darkness. The kitchen was empty.
One of the stove's oven lights was on. She raised her voice. "Hi, lover, where's my food?"
She heard a soft, muffled, piteous mew. She switched on the overhead sink lights. "Tribble?" She opened a cupboard door under the left drain board and the little kitten emerged from between large salad bowls. Holly picked him up. "Ohhh, hey, how'd you get locked in there, hmmm? Get curious and somebody didn't see you go exploring?" She petted him and nuzzled him. He began to purr and lick her cheek. Holly walked toward the refrigerator. "Want some milk?" She looked at the small milk and food dishes beside the stove. The dishes were empty. "We'd better feed you, baby." She found a covered can of cat food and milk in the refrigerator. She fed him. The kitten ate ravenously.
Holly crossed to the stove and pulled open the upper oven. Frozen something was heating in its aluminum tray and cover. She shut the oven. Turned toward the hall door-She jerked and gasped when she saw Donna standing in the doorway, naked, holding the door open. Light from the hallway silhouetted the girl's slim yet opulent body and created a soft halo effect in her blonde hair. Holly clapped her hand to her chest. "Jesus, you scared me, Donna."
"I've been waiting for you."
"Oh? Where's Frank?"
"He's still out shopping."
"That bastard! I'm hungry as hell." Holly felt oddly ill at ease in the situation. Why was Donna naked? Why did the girl stare so? Holly shivered. She didn't know what to do or say.
Donna stepped slightly to one side, allowing an exit through the door. "Let's talk in my room." It was more than a suggestion.
Holly frowned briefly, then yielded. She too often yielded to people. She had that tendency and she knew it. She tried to resist, to assert herself as much as possible, but ... it just seemed that in the crunch she gave in and let others tell her what to do. And what was worse, a little flame of happiness burned in her when she met a strong person who was willing to take her and make her do things. Now a tremor of joy shivered through her as she recognized in Donna a new power of mind. Holly knew; her body/mind recognized a master in an instant -a host of tiny, subtle signals passed between them, and she had a dreadful feeling of happiness. Holly murmured, "All right. I guess there's nothing else to do."
She passed Donna and was envious of the young girl's fully developed body. It was all genes and good nutrition, she knew, but that didn't help her own flatties. Still, the men she had been intimate with praised her for her large nipples and capacity between the legs. She was built big inside. That was partly why Frank liked her so much, she knew. Frank was a strong-willed man, too, but gentle and fair.
Holly felt self-conscious as she walked down the hall and into Donna's room, with Donna following her. Donna's room was dark, and Holly went forward cautiously. She sat on a slipper chair by the bed and watched the strange girl switch on a small bedside lamp. Holly smiled mechanically. "How long has he been gone?"
Donna came around the bed and stood before Holly, legs boldly apart, hands on hips. She stared down at the almost gaunt older girl. She grinned. "I got a flash of you last night. Just a hint of your lack of character. You're a vacuum hungry to be filled. A slave waiting for the right master."
Holly experienced a flutter of fear. "What?" She couldn't bear to meet Donna's intense blue gaze. And the girl's lush nakedness, so near, was an aggression. Holly clasped her hands tightly together, and kept her elbows tight against her waist. She unconsciously huddled in the small chair.
"I am your master now! You will obey me in all things. You will serve me without question. Yes, you will. And you'll love it." Donna reached out and lifted Holly's chin. She captured Holly's wide green eyes.
Holly's eyes dilated. She didn't understand what was happening. Donna had been an ordinary, neurotic, moody, withdrawn teen-ager before last night-before that awful, ugly occult ritual or whatever it had been-and now the girl was CHANGED! DIFFERENT! TERRIFICALLY STRONG! Holly couldn't break the hold of Donna's eyes.
"I am a demon, Holly. Frank is helping me start a coven. You will be a member of the coven. When he returns we will eat and then we will initiate you. All your weak inhibitions and moral restraints will be melted from your mind. You will end as Lucifer's loyal slave, eager to do our bidding."
Holly was breathing raggedly. Her mind reeled. Demon? Her mind skittered. Demon? Joke? No. The force that held her, the power within this girl was appalling. There was an aura that blazed from Donna. Frank, too? Was Frank captured by this utterly transformed child? This ... monster?
Donna's eyes ... dancing far back in those hellish, overpowering blue eyes was a capering essence of pure evil, sickeningly malevolent. Holly shuddered involuntarily. She was suddenly cold. But she was attracted. She felt a growing desire to give herself up entirely. She whispered, "Is Frank your slave, too?"
"Yes! He is my right hand, my acolyte. You will obey him as you obey me. But you will obey ME above all."
Holly couldn't resist. Donna and Frank were her masters. They could do anything with her they wished. And they would take care of her. They would let her stay in this house and let her clean and serve. She was so tired of being out on her own, alone so much. She wanted to be kept ... to be a child without responsibilities, even responsibilities for herself, to trade obedience and service for total freedom from freedom.
Donna ordered Holly: "STAND up."
Holly groaned with fear and submission. She got to her feet. She swayed. She was only inches from Donna's aggressive pink and white and tan nakedness. Holly was physically three inches taller than Donna, but skinny in comparison. She was permitted to drop her eyes. She stared down at the full, pointed perfection of Donna's breasts and saw that the pink, button nipples touched the red silk of her blouse with each quick surge of breath.
Donna said, "I'll amuse myself for a moment. I'm curious." She reached up and put a hand behind Holly's long, slender neck. Holly trembled. She felt the hand pulling her closer, drawing her head down ... to meet Donna's lifted, parted, glistening lips. Donna kissed Holly. Holly began to shake. She felt confused and aroused. Donna kissed like a man, somehow? Yet sensually, erotically, as no man could kiss. Donna's other arm went around Holly's waist and drew her tight. Holly moaned in the kiss and yielded; her mouth softened and opened. Her troubled green eyes closed. A strange heat blossomed in her belly. Her nipples surged to fingerlets of aching, itching need. Donna's serpent-like tongue entered Holly's mouth. Holly squirmed in Donna's embrace. Her nostrils flared and her knees went weak. Donna broke the passionate kiss abruptly and moved back half a step. "Yes, you are mine. I knew it would be easy."
Holly stood, panting lightly, waiting, head down, submissive, wanting more. She felt cut loose from her past. She was dazed by her behavior, by her reactions. Donna reached up and casually began unbuttoning Holly's red silk blouse. Holly could not stop trembling. Her body seemed apart from her. Her eyes watched Donna's fingers undo button after button. Now the front of her blouse was open to her waist. Now Donna's curious hands-soft, yet boldly masculine in seeking-invaded the blouse and found her shallow, big-nippled breasts.
Donna grinned. "Oh, I like this type. Good. I want to see." She pulled the blouse wide open to expose Holly's chest.
Holly watched Donna's fingers pinch and tweak her purplish, thimble-sized nipples. Shivers of sensation-pain and pleasure-filled her small breasts.
Donna asked, "You like this, don't you?"
"Yes," Holly answered faintly.
Donna's hands dropped away. She commanded, "Strip."
Holly fumbled at the snap and zipper at the side of her toreadors. She stepped out of them, and out of her red silk panties, shrugged off her blouse, and stood, naked, as Donna inspected her.
"You need twenty pounds with exercise. I don't like that gap between your skinny thighs. Tonight when you go home after I'm through with you, shave this red bush off and keep it shaved off. I want you smooth as a baby there all the time. Now, let's see what kind of clitoris you've got. Sit on the bed. Open up-use your fingers!"
Donna's peremptory commands were hammer blows to Holly. She obeyed. She sat on the bed, opened her legs wide and drew up her knees. She pulled apart the lips of her vulva. Donna knelt and looked closely at the gaping, glistening pink slit. Holly's clitoris was even larger than her nipples-it projected from the upper, inner folds of her labia, a tiny penis nearly an inch long.
"You love to have that sucked, don't, you Holly? DON'T YOU?"
"Yes." She whispered breathlessly.
"Does Frank suck it?"
"Yes."
"He's good at it, isn't he?"
"Yes." Holly quivered as Donna touched the small, supersensitive organ. Holly needed time to adjust to her new role, to absorb what she had been told, to come to terms with her new position and her powerful young mistress. But she wasn't given time. Donna played with her. A finger flipped her flaming clitoris until the organ was vibrant and stiff, swollen about twenty percent-the limit of its capacity to expand. Each touch was an electric jolt of erotic pleasure. Holly's left cheek twitched. Her eyes fluttered shut. She began to breathe faster.
Donna chuckled lewdly. "You're a slave to pleasure, too. Good. Those who take well usually give well." Donna slid her finger into Holly's wet vaginal tunnel. Deep into the sticky warmth. "Does Frank shove all his prick into you, Holly?"
"Yes." Holly felt two fingers enter her body, then three ... probing, seeking ... it felt good. It was humiliating, demeaning ... and she liked it. A slave can have no pride. Holly sucked air as Donna curled her thumb under her palm and pushed her whole hand into Holly's elastic, deep vagina. Holly felt stretched to her limit, terribly vulnerable, as she experienced the fingers tickling her cervix, the fingers moving in her body so deeply. It was a strange sensation. She lifted her head and looked and saw Donna's hand sliding in and out, going in to the wrist. Holly fell back, chest heaving, nipples sticking out like purple fingers.
Donna withdrew her hand. It was slippery wet. Holly's glands were secreting heavily. "You'll be fun to initiate when Frank gets back. He's buying things for me to use."
Holly lay waiting for orders. She continued to hold open her vulva. Her fingers were slippery and it was difficult. She knew she was turned on and was not ashamed. She had never been ashamed of her body or its processes. She lay amazed at the swiftness of her yielding, yet she was content. She knew Donna was a power, a masterful, supremely dominant personality. Holly was prepared to accept witchcraft, demonology, the occult, the supernatural, worship of the devil ... she was a part of something overpowering. She was being given a direction, a mission, a way of life. She was content.
Donna stood up and, hands on hips again, smiled down on Holly. "Get down on your knees and lick my feet."
Holly was grateful to change positions. She slipped off the bed and knelt and discovered in herself a kind of exaltation as she lowered her head and licked Donna's toes first, then sides of her feet, the arch ... Holly's loins tingled. Her clitoris throbbed. She didn't understand herself, not at all. But she didn't care.
Donna watched, amused. "That's enough." Donna sat on the edge of the bed and opened her thighs. "Eat this cunt until I tell you to stop."
Holly had had lesbian experience. She wasn't shocked. She had spent three months with a dominating bull-dyke who had used her to satisfy another femme, an insatiable, stunningly beautiful platinum-blonde model. Holly had spent literally hours each day licking that ever-hungry vertical mouth. The dyke had spent thousands buying the model gifts, paying for a luxurious apartment. In the end the model had walked out to go with an important director on an assignment in Spain, The dyke had whipped Holly and abandoned her, blaming her for the model's leaving. A few months later, out of a job, Holly had met Frank and been taken over by him. She had been an ever more frequent visitor to the house. Frank had bought her the Vega.
Now Holly willingly crept between Donna's slim, yet rounded thighs. She butterfly-kissed the fringe of blonde down, the creases where thigh met crotch, the waiting, musky mouth. Holly was an artist. Gentle strokings of tongue. She was rewarded a few moments later as Donna's body slowly tightened and then released in a series of gasping spasms. Holly didn't stop. She wanted to prove how well she could satisfy this way. She wanted to please her new mistress.
They heard the characteristic motor sound of Frank's diesel Mercedes as he drove up to the garage. Donna did not give the word to stop. Holly continued to lick sensuously, artistically, into the honeyed slit. She felt a growing orgasmic tension in Donna's body. Donna began to moan and whisper, "Lick! Oh, yes, lick, you sweet-tongue cunt-eater."
Holly knew what was going to happen. She shivered as she knelt in worship of Donna's flushed center. She heard the solid thunk of the Mercedes' door, heard Frank's off-gaited steps on the cement walk to the front door, heard him enter and call, "Holly? Donna?" He knew she was here-he had seen her car.
Holly knew he would find them. Donna wanted that. Holly moaned into the warm wetness and fluttered her tongue even more adroitly. She heard his limping steps in the hallway. The bedroom door was wide open. The light was on. Holly shivered and groveled and tightened her embrace of Donna's satiny thighs. She heard Frank stop. Then his despairing, "Oh, God-" And Donna's full-throated laughter shook her body and the bed. Holly's back was to Frank. She felt more naked and more abject than ever before. She wanted to suck his big penis, take him deep into her belly, feel his crushing weight on her.
Donna's voice was strong, triumphant: "Your woman is mine now! She's my slave. See how she obeys?" And then Donna panted into a wracking climax, laughing and moaning, thrashing, clutching Holly's head-pulling off Holly's red afro wig-gasping and choking with glee and lust, throwing the wig at Frank. When the powerful sensations had passed, Donna said huskily, "Stop!"
Holly settled back on her heels. She was afraid to look around at Frank. She wiped her face with an edge of the bedspread. She watched Donna raise up on elbows and ask, "Did you get everything?"
Frank answered, "Yes."
"Put the implements and things for the ritual down in the coven room and then get dinner ready. This body is hungry. It'll need energy."
Donna kicked Holly in the shoulder. "Help him!"
Holly got to her feet and reluctantly faced Frank. She whispered, "I couldn't help myself ... "
He grimaced. "I know." He put his arm around her narrow waist. "Come on."
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the kitchen, Frank went to the oven and checked the timer. "The beef stroganoff is ready. I suppose a salad and some cottage cheese ... "
Holly hung back. She felt uncomfortable naked in the kitchen ... with him fully dressed. "Is there an apron I could wear?"
Frank took her into his arms. "I'm sorry, Holly. I wish I could have prevented this. But she's so overpowering ... hypnotizing."
"Is she really a demon now?"
"Jesus, I don't know. When I'm in her presence I'm sure she's been taken over by something from another world. I believe. It's impossible not to. She-or it-radiates so much psychic force-But when I'm away, out of the house or in another room, then I wonder and I start to think ..."
"I really couldn't help myself, pooky." Holly clutched and pressed against him for reassurance and strength ... "And I wanted to be her slave. Something in me just loved it."
"Yes. She burns us down to the core-the naked core." He kissed her. He found her mouth hot and loose. He had to pull away. "I'll get you one of my shirts to wear. You start making the salad."
Ten minutes later, Frank went to Donna's room. The door was still open. He saw her, still naked, standing rigid next to the bed, sweat running down her body. She was breathing deep and fast. Her eyes were shut tight, her face a mask of brutal concentration. Frank noticed the slipper chair behind her-it was moving, rocking, as if tugged by wires. But there were no wires! Frank made an involuntary grunt of surprise and incredulity.
The chair settled down. Donna opened her eyes. They blazed! She crowed, "You saw! My powers are coming!"
He said hesitantly, "Telekinesis-"
"You have your stupid pseudo-scientific labels. The Old Ones are giving me powers. More and more. I am their instrument on this plane. My mission is clear. My ... "
Donna swayed and sat abruptly on the bed. She slumped. "This body weakens so easily, so quickly. But it will serve. Is the food ready?"
"Yes, that's what I came to tell you."
"I do not like the feel of this sweat on the body. Go to the dining room and wait."
Frank and Holly were sitting at the table, waiting, the food in place, when Donna came imperiously into the room. She had showered and her blonde hair was damp and clotted from a shampooing. She wore a cotton robe. She said to Frank, "Turn the heat up. I don't want this bag of flesh and bones to get sick."
When he left the room to turn up the thermostat, she said to Holly, "Do you swallow when Frank shoots off in your mouth?"
Holly kept her eyes on her plate. "Yes."
"Good. I'm looking forward to seeing that. I always have been a voyeur. One of my original sins. A minor one, actually. I was executed and sent to Hell for cannibalism during the siege of Syracuse in 212 B.C. Those Roman bastards!"
Holly's eyes widened.
Frank returned. "I set it for seventy-five." They could hear the muffled hiss of the gas furnace.
Donna said to Holly, "Serve me!"
Holly jumped up. She wore a pink, diamond patterned polyester knit short-sleeved dress shirt of Frank's. It reached barely below her crotch. She spooned a serving of stroganoff onto Donna's plate.
"More!" Donna impishly ran her hand up under the shirt tails and caressed Holly's naked rump. Her fingers trailed into the crevice.
Holly's hands shook. She put more food on the plate, and added a large helping of salad and peas.
Frank poured a glass of milk. He saw the fondling and was repelled, but then realized it was consistent-if Donna was possessed by a demon. IF! IF! She had made that chair move by force of will. Yet a deeply disturbed teen-age girl might be able to do that. The talents discovered and forced into use by the deranged human mind under pressure ... who knew what was possible and what impossible? What powers?
Suddenly he was jolted by the stab of her blue eyes into his mind. He was transfixed, poised with the milk carton tilted. She said warningly, "Do not doubt me! I will suck the jelly from your bones."
He was released, and he put down the carton, shaken. He took the coffee pot from the warmer and poured himself and Holly each a cup. He observed his trembling hand. He knew he had to finally decide very soon-oppose, seek help, for an insane girl or join without reservation in the plans of a demon from Hell. It was ... ridiculous ... but real!
Donna ate ravenously. As she ate and drank, she talked. "I want to recruit about five coven members in the next week. Frank-I want to meet someone of great wealth and position. An older man, greedy, secretly depraved. You-Holly-think of people you know or have known who fit. I want people with money and connections and twists in their souls. They're the easiest. My inner core ... my first, primal coven must be powerful, a base."
She drained her glass and signaled for it to be refilled. He did so. But he was silent. She glared at him. "Well? Who do you suggest we visit tomorrow?"
"I really don't know anyone interested in the occult."
"You had a roomful last night."
"That wasn't-that was a party, a game, they thought. I don't move in cult circles."
"Who do you know who is wealthy? Extremely wealthy?"
"I'm not in that league."
"ANSWER ME!" The bowl of stroganoff flew from the dining room table and smashed against the wall. Holly jumped and gasped. Her eyes were saucers.
Frank gripped the edge of the table. He was impaled by Donna's blazing gaze. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He groaned and said, "Jonathan Dean ... maybe. He's a kind of rich maverick. I met him at a luncheon."
"Describe him physically."
"Five-nine or so ... heavy shoulders, a paunch ... he's about fifty-six years old, graying ... collects classic pornography and doesn't care who knows it."
Donna's eyes were shut. "Money?"
"He owns a big chunk of Macro Structures. They build dams, buildings, bridges. All over the world. And he's got investments in land, oil, computers."
"I want him!"
"How do you go about getting him?"
She smiled. "I want you to introduce me to him. That's all you have to do ... Daddy."
Holly sat huddled in her chair. She had stopped eating. She kept looking at the shattered remains of the plate of stroganoff and the stain on the wall.
Donna turned to Holly. "Who do you recommend for my coven?"
"I-I-I know a woman ... and her daughter ... who believe in ghosts and ... the supernatural. They go to mediums and they talk to her dead husband."
"Is she important?"
"She just has lots of stocks and bonds."
"How is it that you know them?"
Holly's head went lower. "I was ... Adrienne is bi, and I'm kind of bi ... and we were making it together. Helene knew about it. She doesn't care. I think Helen's bi, too. She talks dirty a lot."
"How old is this woman and her daughter?"
"Helen's about forty-two or three, and Adrienne is twenty-three now."
Donna nodded, pleased. "Tomorrow you will arrange for us to meet. I'll absorb them and they can suggest a few other prospects for the coven. Yes. It's going well now." She laughed throatily, an evil, masculine laugh that
sounded weird coming from Donna's full-lipped, very feminine mouth.
She said to Holly, "Make me a thick cheese sandwich. And clean up that mess."
Holly sprang to obey.
Donna said to Frank, "I can almost read your mind, Daddy. You still haven't given up your daughter. You're a fool. I have her squeezed into a tiny ball of energy. She cannot see or hear. From now on, that little ball will grow weaker and weaker, and after a few weeks ... I'll snuff it out for good. This is a fine, young, beautiful female body. I appreciate it more and more. It will serve me well for many years."
"Can you ... change to another body?"
Donna regarded him. "Would you find me one as nice, Frank? Would you condemn some other girl to save your daughter?"
"I don't know. Yes!"
A slow, evil smile. She did not answer his question.
Holly came hurrying back into the room from the kitchen with a cheese sandwich on a plate. "I didn't know if you wanted butter or lettuce." She had buttered the bread and added a leaf of lettuce. "If you want some sliced tomato-"
"Put it down. Now both of you eat. We have an energetic evening ahead of us." She watched them both resume their meal. She wolfed the sandwich and finished the second glass of milk.
Donna said impatiently, "I'll be in the basement. When you've finished, when you've cleaned up, when you've each had baths, come to me." She quickly left the room.
Frank watched Donna leave. Her walk-her gestures-were all different, all subtly stiff and strong ... masculine.
Holly said softly, "I'm scared to death."
"I think I am, too."
They forced themselves to eat. They heard Donna go down the stairs. They ate in silence for a moment. Then Frank said in a near whisper, "We could leave. Get in my car and never come back. That isn't my Donna anymore. I don't feel any love for the thing she's become."
Holly asked, "What if she is a demon now? Couldn't she find us ... and punish us?"
"I don't know. Damn it, I don't know!" Frank's face twisted with anguish. He lunged up from the table and pulled Holly with him. He towed her to the front door. She said, "She'll kill us!"
Frank couldn't turn the brass doorknob. He checked the lock. The door wouldn't open! He used both big hands, all his strength, but the knob wouldn't turn. There was no play in it at all. It was frozen-as if the metal had been welded somehow ... His mouth was dry as dust. He was suddenly panting with fear. He seized Holly's hand and dragged her to the wide glass sliding doors opening to the patio. The latch wouldn't budge. Sweat dripped from his face.
"We can break a window if we have to!" He ran to the nearest windows-the two flanking the fireplace-and first tried to twist open the simple lock. It was like solid metal. Cursing, Frank pulled off his shoe and smashed the leather heel against the pane. The glass was like steel. Frank pounded at it in a frenzy. "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, JESUS CHRIST!"
Holly clutched at him, put her thin arms around him. "We have to obey her. We have to obey!"
He stood gasping, teeth gritted. "If she can do this-" He stood for another few seconds, staring at the window, then he went loose and sat in a club chair. He looked dully at Holly. "Baby, I'm sorry."
She knelt and rested her head on his knee. "Maybe ... maybe she will be some kind of ruler. Maybe we will be rewarded if we serve her."
He stroked her rumpled, short red hair. "It's insane. It can't be true." He looked at the window, at the patio doors, and he shook his head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Frank and Holly went down the basement stairs together. She held his hand tightly. She said, "Whoopee, I'm scared shitless. I hate initiations."
Frank squeezed her hand reassuringly, but knew it was a hollow gesture-he was as much in Donna's power as Holly. They entered the party room. Donna sat on a bamboo stool at the bar. She was reading a pocket book. With a shock Frank recognized the robe she now wore. It had been one of Ellen's. It was black silk edged in Chinese red, with a red sash. He winced at the memory it triggered. His throat tightened. Tears came to his eyes and his nose stung. He had packed all of Ellen's clothes into a trunk and stored it in a corner of the low attic. No one had seen him do it. How had Donna known? The sexy black robe hung on Donna as if made for her. The red sash hung loose from the loops.
Donna turned, and showed her lovely, fifteen-year-old body. She closed the book with her left hand and slipped it into the robe's wide slash pocket. She scowled at Frank. "You forgot the things I had you buy for the ritual. Get them."
Frank hesitated a fraction of a second, then turned and went back upstairs.
Holly stood alone, pale, swaying. She breathed, "What's going to happen to me?"
"Nothing fatal. You might even enjoy parts of it." Donna's eyes gleamed. She slipped off the stool and approached Holly. She walked around the pile of cushions and pillows. Her robe hung open, kept apart by the thrusting globes of her breasts.
Donna said, "Take off that shirt!"
Holly obeyed with trembling hands. Frank's pink shirt dropped to the tile floor. She gasped softly as Donna's mouth fastened on her lips and as Donna embraced her tightly. Holly had admitted to being bi-sexual, and she responded to the kiss-the strangely masculine, butchy kiss. She pressed her warm belly against Donna's.
Donna kissed Holly's ear and whispered huskily, "I'm going to fuck you tonight." Then she laughed and stepped away. She walked regally behind the bar. The bar was solidly built, seven feet long, with a green formica top, and trimmed with split bamboo along the sides. Donna stepped up onto a low stool behind the bar. She closed the silk robe and cinched the sash. She said, "This is the altar for now. Climb up on here and lie face up, your head to the East." She tapped the left end of the bar.
Holly complied. Her heart was pounding. The formica was cold when she stretched out, and she flinched, but it warmed quickly. Donna placed her hands on Holly's sunken belly. "Your body is now the altar upon which we will worship the Horned One."
Frank came into the party room. He carried a wooden bowl, an incense burner, a Halloween gargoyle mask, candles, and a very large hollow plastic dildo with an attached elastic strap. In addition, in a black, draw-stringed sack, were three wooden and plastic crucifixes and a statuette of the Virgin Mary.
Donna ordered, "Light the candles. Burn the incense then switch off the lights. When I tell you, don the mask and become naked. Now bring me the bag and the prick."
Holly turned her head and saw the giant dildo. She groaned, "Ohhh ... "
In a moment the low-ceilinged basement room was lit only by four small, flickering candles. A single candle burned at each end of the altar, inches from Holly's head and feet. Incense began to cloy the air. Holly now lay with her arms outstretched, candles seated in dripped wax on her upturned palms. The rarely used party room door was closed. Incense perfumed the air.
Frank stripped off his clothes and put on the gargoyle mask. Looking out of the small slit-holes, hearing his breathing loud and sibilant behind the stiff, formed, laminated plastic, he felt ... free to do evil, free to indulge, free to obey Donna, because he was hidden, masked, a different man.
In the dim, glimmering light, Donna was incredibly beautiful. Her long blonde hair, dry now, tumbled over her shoulders, contrasting with the black silk. She seemed to exist partly in deep, enveloping shadow. She said to Frank, "Kneel below the altar. Take this crucifix and hold it upside down in your hands." She pressed an inverted crucifix to Holly's lips. "Kiss the Christ's loins."
When Holly had done it, Donna spread her arms, made Satan's sign with her first and fourth fingers, and cried, "OH MIGHTY TCHORT, OH MIGHTY DEV. OH MIGHTY BEHERIT, OH MIGHTY PWCCA, OH MIGHTY ASMODEUS, BELIAL AND APOLLYON, OH MIGHTY SHEITAN, OH MIGHTY SET, OH MIGHTY O YAMA!"
Her breasts heaved, her throat corded. Her voice keened to a higher, more chilling pitch. "OH GREAT EHEIEH, OH GREAT IOD, OH GREAT TETRAGRAMMATON ELOHIM, OH GREAT EL, OH GREAT ELOHIM GIBOR, OH GREAT ALOAH VA-DAATH, OH GREAT EL ADOMAI TZABAOTH, OH GREAT SHADDAI!"
She tore open her robe. Her breasts were bared. Her nipples were starkly turgid. She screamed with every ounce of her being! "WE ARE HERE TO SERVE THEE, MASTER! I BEG MORE POWERS! THIS COVEN IS CREATED! THIS VESSEL IS YOURS!" She clamped a cruel hand on one of Holly's small breasts. She positioned the crucifix head down between Holly's thighs at the crotch. Holly's outstretched hands jerked. The candles set in wax on her palms fluttered and almost went out. She was gasping with fear.
Donna shouted, "THIS SOUL CRAVES TO SERVE YOU!" She placed both hands on Holly's forehead. "SHE IS YOURS BECAUSE SHE IS MINE!" She pointed a trembling finger at Frank. "HE IS YOURS BECAUSE HE IS MINE!" She was shaking violently. She sucked huge lungfuls of air. She took up the crucifix and broke it in two. She pointed to Frank. He broke his crucifix. He was shivering, as was Holly. The air in the party room had suddenly cooled.
A terrifying bass voice came from her throat. Her blazing eyes closed. "BY THE MYSTERIES OF THE DEEP, BY THE FLAMES OF BANAL, BY THE POWER OF THE EAST, AND BY THE SILENCE OF THE NIGHT, BY THE UNHOLY RITES OF HECATE, I GIVE MY HOST AND MY SLAVES OVER TO YOU, MOST FOUL, MOST DEPRAVED MASTER OF SLANDERS, DISPENSER OF THE BLESSINGS OF LUST, STEWARD OF VOLUPTUOUS SINS AND MONSTROUS VICES, SATANACHIA, IT IS YOU WE WORSHIP THIS AWFUL NIGHT."
Donna-or the thing that was Donna-quivered as if suddenly emptied and then almost instantly refilled. She moaned in a strange, hollow voice.
The voice said, "I ... am ... here."
Her eyes opened. There burned in them a new fire, more terrifying than before. Alien. Cold. Distant. Contemptuous. She looked slowly around. She laughed a laugh that sent tremors of dread and horror through Holly. Frank gazed up at the creature that was his daughter and felt awe and mortal fear. His skin crawled. His breath was loud and fast in the mask.
The voice seemed to echo from within her. "I ... accept."
Again she quivered as if relinquished and then reclaimed. Her eyes gleamed with the demon's fire. Her laugh was throaty and triumphant. "He was HERE! We are HIS!"
And the air warmed. She reached to a shelf beneath the bar top and brought up a long, thin steel knife. She placed the point to the hollow of Holly's pulsing throat. "SWEAR! DO YOU SERVE ME AND THROUGH ME SATANACHIA AND THROUGH SATANACHIA LUCIFUGE AND THROUGH LUCIFUGE ASTORATH AND THROUGH ASTORATH BEELZEBUB AND THROUGH BEELZEBUB THE INFERNAL MASTER OF THE BLACK UNIVERSE LUCIFER?"
Holly whispered, in a fugue of abject terror, her eyes wide and glazed, "Yes, master ... master, in everything. Yes. Yes!"
When Donna's gaze smote his eyes, Frank nodded quickly and managed, "I swear."
"Go and bring me the cat."
"Tribble?"
"Bring it!"
Frank lurched to his feet and limped heavily to the door. The air in the party room was hot! The gas furnace was set for only 76 degrees, and the candles couldn't have produced that much heat. And the cold a moment ago! He emerged into the main part of the basement and went up the stairs to the kitchen. He had an awful suspicion he knew why she wanted the kitten. He found Tribble curled up in his box beside the washing machine in the utility room. Tribble complained a little when he was picked up, but then settled into Frank's arms. Frank stood for a moment, petting the fluffy Persian. It purred. Its claws dug into his skin with pleasure. He murmured, "I'm sorry, Tribble. This is all a madness." He kissed the top of the kitten's head. "And I'm insane too."
He went back down to the party room. When he entered the dark, candlelit room and closed the door behind him, it was like walking into a perfumed oven, and he saw Donna bent over Holly, kissing Holly's thimble-like, erect nipples. Holly lay, still, with arms outspread, the candles seated on her palms.
Donna straightened. "Bring the animal to me." She took Tribble from Frank and held him high in one hand. The knife gleamed in her other hand. Her face, breasts and belly were sheened with perspiration. Holly glistened, too. At a gesture, Frank knelt before the altar. Donna intoned, '"Astaroth, Asmodeus, we beg you to accept the sacrifice of this being which we now offer you, so that we may receive the things that we ask."
She placed Tribble on Holly's naked stomach. Holly quivered. "A minor soul for thee in Hell, Astaroth. It COMES!" She plunged the knife into Tribble's furry belly and ripped up to the rib cage. Blood squirted. The cat squalled and convulsed with lightning speed. Holly screamed. Her eyes rolled up and she fainted. Her arms turned and bent. The candles pulled free of her palms and fell to the tiles. They went out. Somehow, Donna kept hold of the cat's neck as it flailed and scratched and bit. She gored the wound with the knife and finally pierced the heart. The kitten died; a last tremor jerked its left hind leg. It was a limp thing, leaking blood over Holly's small breasts, stomach and belly. Spatters of blood speckled her loins and thighs, and arms and face. Donna's hands were scratched and bleeding. Her blood mixed with Tribble's. She laughed wildly, flushed, exhilarated, and put the wooden bowl on the hollow of Holly's loins. She let the cat's blood run into the bowl. She said, "Frank, bring a stool to the side of the altar. Climb and kneel on it. Be ready to give your prick to her mouth." Frank obeyed.
Holly was coming out of her faint. It was much darker in the room. Only the candles at her head and feet were still lit. Donna pinched one of Holly's nipples. Holly gasped and reflexively brought a hand up. Her eyes widened when she saw she had caused the candles to fall. She cringed when she saw the dripping carcass held over the bowl. Donna commanded, "Suck his prick!"
Holly turned her head and faced Frank's flaccid genitals. She looked up and saw him in the gargoyle mask. She willingly scooped his softness into her mouth and began to suck. Frank was surprised at how fast he got an erection. But hiding in his mask helped. And it seemed to him that Holly's mouth was unusually warm and her tongue and lips and cheeks unusually gentle and yet superbly active. She had never sucked him this well before. He began to enjoy it very much. He began coital movements. The eye slits in the mask severely restricted his vision. He kept his head down, watching Holly, and was able not to see Donna and the bloody thing she held. But she allowed him only a moment of pleasure. "Now! Your final test of evil and commitment!" She thrust the dead cat into his hands. "Fuck it! Use the knife hole. Now. NOW!"
He held the corpse-the pitiable limp, dead thing that had been Tribble, and he obeyed. A malignant yes impelled him to do it. A recognition of his own depravity. A rationalization-the cat was dead anyway ... He withdrew from Holly's suctioning mouth. He braced the small, gory-wet, furry body against the bar edge. He was surprised he wasn't losing his erection. He breathed loudly in the mask. He was sweating. The room was dark and roasting hot. He thrust into the warm, wet little corpse. The small head wobbled lifelessly.
Donna commanded of Holly, "Sit up. Drink!" She held out the wooden, blood-spattered bowl. It was half full. Holly almost retched. She had watched Frank impale the dead kitten. The corpse was moving against her upper arm. She cringed from it. And now-But she sat up. She took the bowl in trembling hands and brought it to her lips. She tried not to think, not to realize! She sought Donna's imperious, masterful eyes. Locked into that malevolent gaze, she tilted the bowl and filled her mouth with lukewarm, salty blood. Holly swallowed once. Her throat worked as she fought to keep from vomiting. Her stomach churned. Donna took the bowl from Holly. "You're both learning. Good! There will be more terrible things to do in the days to come. This is a beginning."
Donna raised the bowl to her lips. "ASTAROTH, I SALUTE YOU!" She drank. Then she let the dregs flow onto her magnificent breasts. She flung the bowl away. It clattered on the tiles. She smeared the blood over her breasts and belly. She breathed deep and fast. Her hands entered the valley of her thighs. She saw that Frank was still penetrating the corpse. He was working hard, squishing in and out of the rib cage. She said, "Now into her mouth again!" She pushed Holly's head down, turned it, held it as Frank dropped the kitten and plunged between the open, waiting lips.
Holly almost gagged from the thought of taking his blood-wet penis into her mouth-but her mouth and chin were bloody, and the taste of raw blood was still with her. A part of Holly's mind caved in and another part burst free. She gave in further to an utter abandon, a total psychic release. Holly moaned with evil passion and sucked in ecstatic surrender. She did not see Donna strap on the huge dildo. But Frank saw it, and the image made his pleasure stronger. He peeked through the eye slits of the mask like a voyeur.
Donna ordered, "Turn her, Frank. Ninety degrees." He pulled from Holly's mouth and pivoted her on the bar top. Now Holly lay across the eighteen-inch wide bar, with her legs, upper back, shoulders and head unsupported. "Hold her head in your hands. Use her mouth. Fuck her mouth!"
Holly didn't understand. The position was awkward and precarious. But she did not complain. Her master had ordered it. She gripped the edge of the bar for stability. She let her head fall back. Her mouth was pulled open by the position. Frank's hands cupped the back of her head. She saw the taut, fuzzy sack of his testicles, the rigid boom of his penis, the massive columns of his thighs. He entered her mouth again. She couldn't suck as well upside down, but she tried ... as he plunged deep.
Frank watched Donna move between Holly's thighs. Donna pulled up the girl's legs and spread them. The dildo wobbled, long, thick, a grotesque exaggeration of a penis-ridged, veined, capped by a knoblike glands. Donna seated the knob in Holly's exposed, gaping, wet, vulva. "Now I fuck you! Now it enters!"
Holly grunted with surprise and pain. She felt utterly defenseless, utterly a slave, with no rights, no pride, no self. She felt the hugeness thrust up into her belly. Oh, God-no, not God-oh, SATAN, it was monstrously big! In so far! So thick! Holly shook helplessly. She rocked on the bar top as she was abused by the giant implement strapped to Donna's pounding, flexing loins, and by Frank's large real penis as he ravaged her mouth. Donna held Holly by the waist. She leaned forward. Her face was close to Frank's. She panted, "Take off your mask, Daddy. Kiss me."
He tore away the plastic gargoyle face. He arched over Holly's body. His hips kept moving. He met his daughter's hot, soft, yielding, hungry mouth. Donna and Frank moaned and gasped. Their tongues played. Their mouths sought to devour and suck. They drank each other's saliva, each other's depravity.
Donna slid her lips aside for a few seconds. She hissed, "Throat fuck her. Come! Come as we kiss!" Then the burning flower of her mouth resumed its feverish, passionate leeching.
Frank obeyed. He was on the edge of climax. How sweet to be told to give in to a savage yearning. There was nothing but his restraint keeping him from plunging all the way-forcing into Holly's defenseless throat, to her palate and further. He saw Donna thrusting the dildo into Holly's engorged vagina to an unbelievable depth. The thing had to be at least a foot long, and most of it was wet with her juices, most of it disappeared into the spasming belly with each lunge of Donna's naked hips. He heard Holly's grunting and felt her mouth tense and relax. He quivered on the brink of ecstasy. His hands tightened on Holly's head. He keened as he madly kissed his daughter, as her mouth became a lasciviously wet, hot, moving, exquisitely soft world.
Frank yielded and plunged-plunged-until he was buried, until he felt the sharp pressure of her teeth against his pubes and his scrotum pressed against her nose. He reared and plunged! He opened his mouth wide to encompass all of Donna's magic mouth. His guts boiled. He spurted! He spurted! He spurted!
CHAPTER NINE
Frank came out of a deep sleep to the sound of chimes. He lay as if drugged, unable to move a muscle for a moment. He felt as if he had been through a giant set of wringers. He didn't want to move, but his bladder was too full. He flopped his arm up and blearily focused on his watch ... almost one p.m. His mouth tasted like dirty flannel-and those door chimes didn't stop. He struggled to sit up. He braced with his arms and saw Holly in bed next to him. She lay curled into a fetal ball, naked, breathing shallowly.
He cringed as memory of the past night came. Where was Donna? He almost fell out of the bed. His leg hurt him. He limped across the room, naked, feeling smeared and sticky, and got into a robe. He limped to the front door and opened it. He flinched at the glare of sunshine from the walk and edge of the porch. Two men in suits stood before him. Briefcase.
Frank said, "Oh, Christ, I don't want any!" He started to slam the door.
"Police business, Mr. Kaiser."
"What? What are you talking about?" He tried to look closely at the men.
The nearest stood over six feet, skinny-his gray suit hung loose-and his head was a thirtyish, bush-haired hatchet blade. It was he who had spoken-a surprising, self-assured tenor.
The other was heavier, beefy, with cop intangibly written on his stolid face and brown suit. The briefcase hung out of place from his strong right hand.
"I'm Lieutenant Stan Rose, and this is Detective Sergeant James Dennison. We'd like to talk to you for a few minutes."
Frank couldn't suppress a yawn. He rubbed his stubbly face. "What about?"
"Well, we'd like to discuss it inside, if we may."
"Look, you dragged me out of a bottomless well. I'm not awake yet. I need a shower and a shave ... Come back in an hour, hmmm?"
"It's about a young woman-a blonde, teenage girl-we think your daughter."
A sick feeling thickened in Frank's gut. "You mean Donna? What about her?"
"It would be best if we could talk inside, Mr. Kaiser."
"Yeah ... okay. Come on in." Frank wanted to rush to Donna's room to see if she was there. Had she-or it-slipped out last night after the ... the ritual and following orgy? He led the detectives to the sunken living room. "Sit down." Frank was disoriented. The demon, the reality of Hell, Satanachia, Astaroth ... it had been so convincing. Yet now, in the brightness of day, in the intrusive presence of two policemen ... Frank asked, "Is she in trouble? I haven't checked her room-"
Rose said, "Maybe it would be a good idea to see if she's here. We'd like to ask her a few questions. Primarily her, as a matter of fact."
"Why?" Frank became more awake. He rubbed his grainy eyes and face.
"May we talk with her? The reason will be clear then."
Frank pulled his robe tighter to his body, cinched the sash again, and nodded. "I'll see if she's in her room."
Lieutenant Rose stood. "Mind if I go with you?" It was more than a request.
"You think I'll spirit her out a window?" He gestured for the man to come along.
Detective Dennison stayed in the living room. He handed Rose the briefcase.
They went down the hall. Frank knocked on Donna's door. "Donna?" He hoped she'd answer. God-if the detectives searched the house-if they saw that stuff in the party room. He couldn't remember if he'd put Tribble's body into the garbage, or not, last night.
Donna opened her door. She was dressed in blue jeans and a loose blue blouse. Only its top button was undone. She held a brush in one hand. Her long blonde hair was a bit frizzy. Her eyes were ... normal. "Yes, Daddy?"
Frank took a deep breath. She seemed to be wearing a bra, too. She looked so innocent, normal, average.
He said, "This is Lieutenant Rose, from the police. He wants to talk to you."
Her eyes widened. "Me?"
Rose smiled. "Yes, for a few minutes. The living room would be better."
They trooped back. Donna appeared apprehensive.
Frank said, "Lieutenant, should I call my lawyer? What is this about?"
Rose sat close to Donna. He put the attach� case on a nearby coffee table. He opened it to reveal a tape recorder. "We'd like your permission to record the conversation from this point." He indicated Sergeant Dennison. "Jim will be taking shorthand at the same time."
Frank got mad. "What is this all about? Permission refused until I know what we're into here!"
Rose flipped the attach� case lock with his thumb a few times before looking at Donna. "It's about the murder of Dainis Webster yesterday afternoon."
Donna paled. Frank blurted incredulously, "Webster?"
Detective Dennison scribbled on his open steno pad. Lieutenant Rose answered, "Yes. You know him, or know of him. Your name and address are in his address file." Rose watched Frank. "Protection to record? It's for your protection as well as ours."
Frank glanced at Donna. She was biting her lower lip, looking scared, but not too scared. He said, "Not yet. I feel at a disadvantage here. Give me a minute to get some clothes on." He went to Donna and squeezed her hand. "Don't say a word until I get back."
"I won't." She looked up and-Was there an evil, amused glint in her eyes, a message?
Frank was confused again. Then he realized the demon was in her, acting! He turned away and limped to the master bedroom. To his relief, neither of the detectives followed him. He wanted to wake Holly and tell her to stay in bed and keep quiet.
Lieutenant Rose said, "Before you go-whose green Vega is that in your driveway?"
"That's ... my girl friend's." He saw the next question coming and added, "Holly Barnes. She's asleep right now in my bed. I hope it won't be necessary to awaken her."
Rose hesitated. He studied Frank. "No. I don't think it'll be necessary at the moment. Go ahead and get dressed."
Holly was still sleeping. Frank threw off his robe and slipped into underwear, tan slacks, a brown sports shirt, brown socks and brown, crepe-soled slip-ons. Then he went to the big bed, shook her awake and whispered his instructions. He whispered fiercely, made sure she understood, and then took a minute in the bathroom to empty his overfull bladder and run an electric shaver over his chin, neck, and upper lip. He let his sideburns go untrimmed. He splashed hot water on his face, toweled, combed his hair.
Through all this, he tried not to think about what Rose had said. Webster-Why did they think Donna had anything to do with it?
Frank returned to the living room. "All right, Lieutenant, I'll let Donna decide if we need a lawyer."
Donna said in a small voice, "No, I don't mind. I just don't know anything."
Rose nodded. He switched on the tape recorder and positioned the microphone between Donna and himself. He took a printed card from his shirt pocket and read her rights to her. When he had finished, he asked, "Miss Kaiser, do you understand what I just said? Do you agree to answer questions without a lawyer present to act in your behalf?"
"Yes."
"And you, Mr. Kaiser, as her parent, do you agree?"
"Yes."
"Fine." Rose made a face and rubbed behind his ear. "Miss Kaiser, a very pretty blonde girl in a yellow dress was seen to leave Dainis Webster's house yesterday afternoon ... around two. She called a cab at two-oh-nine and was picked up at Fifteenth and Jessup by cab number three-five-oh. Driver was Manual Silvers. He drove her to this address, your home, and arrived here at two-forty-two. He noticed that the girl's dress was spattered with blood-or at least dark brown spots and smears. Also, her hands were stained-as if by blood."
Rose paused. He regarded Donna closely, with shrewd, experienced detective's eyes. So, too, did Detective Sergeant Dennison. Frank stared at her. She had taken money from his wallet. She had had the opportunity ... Murdered Webster?
Donna seemed to shrink into herself under their gazes. She huddled and began to shake. She buried her face in her hands. She sobbed. "It was me ... it was me ... I went there ... " She looked up, wide blue eyes wet with tears, horrified. "But I didn't k-kill him! He-he was already d-dead!"
Rose nodded. "All right, let's go into this from the beginning. Why did you go there in the first place, Miss Kaiser?"
"I went there ... I'm interested in the occult and superstitions and witchcraft ... things like that." Donna looked around for a handkerchief. Rose gave her his.
Rose asked, "You knew he was an authority in those subjects?"
"Yes. He was at a party here ... night before last, and-"
"The night before he was killed." Rose shifted his gaze to Frank. "Does Miss Barnes know Webster?"
"No. She'd never met him before the party. I don't think she said six words to him even then."
Rose nodded. "Umm." He looked to Donna. "Now, you knew Webster was a specialist in the occult and related subjects. Did you spend a lot of time with him at this party?"
Donna looked to Frank for support. She seemed young and vulnerable. He sat beside her and put his arm around her reassuringly. Frank said, "I invited Webster to add a bit of color and variety to the party. A friend told me about him. I'd never met him before he showed up."
"What is the name of this friend?"
"John Bernstein. He's a professor at Long Beach State."
Rose nodded and made a note on a pad. He looked up and squinted fiercely at Donna. "The cab fare is almost twenty dollars, one way, to Webster's house in Long Beach. Why were you willing to spend that kind of money? What was so urgent, Miss Kaiser?"
"Daddy gives me all the money I need. I just paid what the meter said. I don't think about money."
"Forty dollars for cab fare in one day-that's quite an allowance for a fifteen-year-old girl."
Frank said angrily, "I make a lot of money, Lieutenant. I only have myself and Donna to spend it on."
The detectives looked sour. Rose sighed. "Still, it was a special trip. What did you want to talk to Webster about, Miss Kaiser?"
"I-I wanted to find out more about the kinds of clothes witches wore in the Middle Ages, and warlocks, too. And if he could teach me a realistic-sounding spell I could chant at a costume party I was thinking of having here next month."
"Umm." Rose rubbed behind his ear again. He and Detective Dennison exchanged glances. Rose said, "Why don't you tell us how you got in Webster's house and how you found him?"
"Oh ... it was horrible ... when I finally found him up in that room." She pressed her face against Frank's shoulder. "He was all-He was dead, and all ripped open ... and ... his ... insides were all ... " Donna broke down again and sobbed. She clutched at Frank. He patted her. "Easy, honey ... "
Frank wondered why he didn't tell Rose and Dennison the truth about his "daughter." He could show them the party room. He couldn't! He had done things with her he couldn't admit. He was no longer the innocent victim. He'd sound a fool if he tried to excuse what he had done by saying she had an overpowering will, that she was possessed, that she could levitate objects. Donna or the thing in her was able to act normal anytime she or it pleased. She would lie, blame him, convince anyone he was the monster, the depraved libertine who had forced her, raped her ... Frank was trapped ... by fear, and by lust and by a growing desire to know--for sure-if the Old Ones really existed. He had to cover for Donna, and lie for her.
Rose waited a moment before asking any more questions. Finally, when Donna seemed to have regained some composure, he asked, "How did you get into the house? Why were you looking for him upstairs?"
"The door was open a little ... a few inches ... and I knocked a long time and pressed the door chime button ... but nobody came. I put my head inside and called ..." Donna took a few seconds to blow her nose and swallow. She continued brokenly, "I thought maybe he'd gone out for a few minutes or was in the basement and couldn't hear me. I didn't want to just leave right away after I'd come so far ... So, I just went inside. I sat in the room ... on the right, sort of an office or study or something. There was a desk and books ... but it smelled awful, and I saw some things had been burned in the fireplace."
Rose pressed, "Why did you go upstairs?"
Donna chewed her lower lip. She started to cry again. "I shouldn't have! I should have just left! But ... I got curious and ... and I wondered why he'd left the door ajar and everything. So I started to explore. All those occult paintings and decorations and things ... I was curious what the rest of the house was like."
"And you found his body in the upstairs hall?"
"No-it was in the bedroom. It was awful!"
"How did you get blood on your hands and dress, Miss Kaiser?"
Donna moaned, quavering with horror, "I fell in it! I got so dizzy and sick-I fell on him!" She wailed and started to run away. Frank held her. He comforted her.
Rose switched off the tape recorder for a moment. He conferred with Dennison for a moment in a low voice. They checked some papers from a folder in the attach� case. Neither Frank nor the sobbing girl could hear what they said. Rose switched on the recorder again. "A few more questions, Miss Kaiser. Just a few. We have to know why you didn't call the police then, or report it to someone, even the cabby."
"I don't know. I just wanted to get out-I didn't want to even think about it or remember it. It was horrible!"
Rose asked Frank, "Mr. Kaiser, did she tell you?"
"No." Frank was pale. He was cradling a murderess in his arms. Or a murderer?
Donna said unevenly, "I knew I should have called the police. But I was already home ... and I was afraid of getting mixed up ... and I didn't want to get Daddy involved ... I'm sorry."
"Where is your yellow dress, Miss Kaiser?"
"In my room ... in the bottom drawer of ... "
Rose signaled Dennison. The sergeant left to find the dress.
Frank watched him go and wondered if he should object. Didn't they have to have a search warrant? But Donna had told the exact place. She was in full command. He had found a pulse in her thumb as he held her hand during most of the interview, and her heartbeat hadn't varied from normal. A steady seventy-five beats per minute. Frank was unsteady himself. He asked Rose, "Webster was mutilated?"
"Disemboweled. It wasn't pretty. It was deliberate, and there were parts of him missing."
Frank stared at Rose. He steeled himself not to look down at Donna. He said, "I don't think I want to hear any more."
"I wouldn't tell you anymore."
Dennison returned to the living room with Donna's soiled yellow dress in a plastic evidence bag.
Lieutenant Rose asked, "May we take the dress for tests, Mr. Kaiser?"
"I don't see why not. But Donna's already admitted it's Webster's blood."
"We like to be sure."
Frank said, "Go ahead."
Rose nodded to himself. His hand went to the tape recorder, then fell away. "Mr. Kaiser, just for the record, where were you at two yesterday afternoon?"
Frank grinned. "At the works. Kaiser Kilns."
Rose switched off the tape recorder. "Well, thank you. Especially you, Miss Kaiser. I know it's been a traumatic experience and I'm sorry we had to put you through it. I hope you understand we had to follow up the lead and ask these questions."
Donna nodded, sniffling. She held out his damp handkerchief. "Thank you."
Rose inclined his head and pocketed it.
Two minutes later Frank closed the front door as the two detectives went down the walk to their car. He watched until they drove away. From behind him he heard Donna's deep, evil chuckle. He turned and she pressed against him. She put her arms around his neck and pulled his head down. "You performed beautifully, Frank. I'm proud of my daddy. I'm going to reward you."
She kissed him sensually, erotically. He couldn't help returning the kiss and holding her tightly in his arms. He had to break for air. His lungs were starved. And he had to ask the question. He gasped into her ear, "Did you kill Webster?"
"Of course. I sent him over. His soul brought me powers. I had to kill his knowledge and destroy that book. We can give limited spells to trusted humans. We cannot let those ancient rituals and exorcisms and powerful chants become widespread. We will not be controlled by you mortals!"
Frank wanted to pull away. She had killed Webster. Disemboweled him!
She laughed. "Still under the influence of Christian morality, aren't you? Still bothered by conflicting loyalties?" She wrenched his head around and transfixed him with her bright, powerful blue eyes. She had masked and "filtered" her extraordinary, hypnotic gaze while the detectives were present.
"Frank, you are in this to the death. You are mine! As much as Holly, you are my slave." She smiled. As she held him with her eyes she unzipped his pants. Her fingers deftly slipped into his briefs and claimed him. She manipulated gently, insidiously. He hardened. "Now we're going to your bedroom," she said, "and we're going to use Holly again, and I'm going to use you. But before that you're going to take off these prim clothes I had to put on in a hurry when those stupid detectives arrived."
She "towed" him to the bedroom. He felt humiliated and loathed himself. But her skillful grip milked him subtly, as she pulled him along, promising delights, recalling memories. Frank despised himself ... and knew he was into the affair to the death. It was penetrating. He had lied to the police ... was now harboring and conspiring with a murderer. God knew what other charges could be leveled against him in addition to the sex crimes he had already committed-with his daughter.
In the bedroom Holly was awake, sitting up, when they entered. She asked, "Why were they here?"
Donna said, "Undress me, Daddy." As Frank obeyed with trembling hands, Donna told Holly of the scene with the detectives. "Fools. They can't believe a sweet, innocent blonde teen-ager could do the monstrous, vile things that were done to Webster. They'll look for an insane killer, a man with a history of sex perversion and psychopathic violence."
Frank unhooked Donna's tight bra. She shrugged it off. It fell to the carpet. He knelt and eased her peach panties down. He couldn't resist kissing the smooth, rounded, white cheeks of her buttocks as he pulled the panties down her thighs.
Abruptly, she bent over. "You an ass man, too, Daddy? Want to lick her hole? Then, do if!" She pulled apart the cheeks. He stared at the small, puckered, brownish-pink sphincter. He closed his eyes and licked into the deep, fleshy crevice. After a moment she said, "Enough." She stepped out of the panties puddled at her feet and climbed onto the big bed. She took Holly into her arms and kissed her lasciviously.
Frank didn't have to be told to strip. His erection didn't diminish as he watched Holly respond. Donna was feasting on her large red nipples. When Frank's weight disturbed the mattress, Donna took her mouth from Holly's left breast and said, "On your back, Daddy. I'm going to feed you five or six courses of hot, juicy cunt."
A weird excitement shivered Frank. He lay on his back. Donna straddled his chest. Her weight came down and he was faced with the tanned gorge of her open thighs and the pink, moist slit of her vulva. "I love your tongue, Frank. This body loves it. The pleasure nerves are well developed. And you love to give it to your daughter, don't you?"
He couldn't answer. He put his hands on her silky cheeks and pulled her up to his waiting mouth. He kissed the wet, warm, vertical lips, and ran his tongue between. He felt her tense when he strummed her clitoris. He reveled in the act. He gave all of himself to it. Why not? Why not? He was in so deep now it didn't matter.
Donna said, "Now, Holly, suck him off. Slowly. Don't let him come until I tell you."
Frank felt Holly moving on the bed, and then felt the soft, warm, wet enclosing by her mouth. He quivered and groaned into Donna's sweet, gaping vulva when Holly's tongue went to work. Donna hunched forward and rocked her yielding mound against his face. His nose was buried against her. His open mouth was fastened to her pink opening, his head was wedged between her tensing, hardening thighs. His tongue played rhythmic games. She climaxed, panting, jolting his head with reflexive pelvic thrusts. She grunted, "Don't let him go off yet!" She could sense from his body's tension, from the enthusiasm of his tongue, that he was close.
Holly stopped the long, slow takings of her mouth and throat. She held him in her hand and waited a moment before beginning again. She blindly obeyed Donna. She was nearly mindless. Last night had almost wiped out her identity. She was now simply a slave.
Donna took deep breaths. "I'll keep you with me for a thousand years, Frank. Just for this ... " She reached down with both hands and pressed his face tighter against her core. "Again!"
Fifteen minutes later Frank's jaws were aching, exhausted. His tongue felt raw at the base, painful, where it curled out of his throat, from constant straining to reach far into her between sustained periods of stabbing at her swollen clitoris.
Donna was almost collapsed over him, panting in the aftermath of a seventh wracking orgasm. She toppled off him. She watched Holly fit her mouth with exquisite gentleness and care over Frank's throbbing, jerking organ. She chuckled, "Been up to the edge a dozen times, haven't you, Daddy? Want your sweet little Donna to finish you?"
Frank made a yes sound. He had thought he had been so thoroughly drained the night before that he couldn't manage another ejaculation for days, yet now he knew it was there, poised to spew from his loins again. He grabbed a pillow and doubled it under his head as Donna shifted into position. Holly moved aside.
Donna noticed what he had done. "Why, Daddy! How you've changed. Now you want to watch your little girl suck you off. Aren't you going to try to stop me? Not even one 'Please, Donna, for God's sake, don't'?" She laughed with obscene delight. "You're making good progress. You both are."
Donna patted Holly on the head. "Do you want relief, too, dear?"
Holly nodded mutely.
Donna looked around the room. Her notice was caught by the knobbed posts at each corner of the king-size bed frame. The posts were about ten inches high, carved in a series of six small connected walnut spheres the size of golf balls. Donna pointed to one of the posts. "Fuck that until you come."
Holly, for the first time in all the times she had been in the room, and in the bed, saw the knobbed posts for what they could be used for. She groaned. She obeyed. Frank watched, sunk in lust and depravity, as Donna bent her head and licked the silky purple head of his big penis. Then she placed her succulent, warm lips on it and with infinite skill, took it deeply into her mouth. Behind her, to the right, Holly crouched, her slender body taut, and lowered herself onto the knobs. Frank watched that, too. He was breathing loudly, erratically. His belly sucked in. "Ohhh, Satan! Oh, shit! I LOVE IT!"
Donna had taken him till her throat stroked his glands, and she was kissing his pubic hairs with lips clinging to the thick root of him.
Holly was gasping, shuddering as the fifth and sixth wooden spheres of the post disappeared inside her. Her eyes locked with Frank's for a moment. Then she lifted and sank, lifted and sank, slowly at first, then faster as her secretions oiled the polished walnut.
Frank yielded. "Suck, Donna, suck! Suck me ... suck me ... suck meeeeee!"
She chuckled somehow with her mouth and throat full of him. Her head rose and fell swiftly. Her lovely blonde hair brushed his belly with tickling grazes, and her full breasts jostled and nudged his thighs, her soft, gentle hands cupped his scrotum in warmth.
Frank went rigid, head trembling, eyes fixed, seeing Donna's greedy lips sweeping down ... seeing Holly working more and more enthusiastically over the post.
A strangled shout erupted from his throat as his guts clenched and his loins exploded with the ultimate pleasure. He shook and thrashed, out of control-not wanting control!-as his body and mind seethed in that wonderful agony. When the pleasure turned keen and painful he cursed God for making men this way. The pleasure should last. He begged Donna to stop sucking. He watched, dull-eyed, no longer interested, as Holly gasped and moaned into a perverted climax.
She was plunging up and down on the knobbed post. Juices ran down the lower knobs. The small wooden globes made sucking sounds as they emerged. Her clitoris was surely dragged down into direct contact with them as they were crammed into her vagina. She drooled as she worked, head down, body flexing, hands clawing the bedding. A series of wracking spasms shook her. She whimpered. She slowed and carefully disengaged from the wet post. She collapsed on the bed.
Donna said approvingly, "Very good, my slaves. Rest for a while. Bathe, dress. This evening we recruit my coven."
CHAPTER TEN
Frank was proud of the party room; it was now the coven room, complete in every way as Donna had specified. The floor was wall to wall in deep pile burgundy nylon carpeting. Sixteen dollars per square foot. The ceiling he had painted with two coats of flat finish black paint. Holly had helped. Finding enough black velvet to cover the walls had been a job, even in Los Angeles. He'd found ten bolts in a theater supply house. He had hung the velvet with Holly's help. Neither he nor Donna wanted a lot of workmen in the basement, seeing the developing room, asking questions.
The altar had been a problem. Until he had gone to a custom decorator in Hollywood who was used to cult-oriented special orders. The specifications-red leather top, archaic design, black velvet draping-all had gone unremarked upon. The drawing (which he had duplicated on the office copier) served beautifully as a guide for the decorator's workers. The decorator had also provided the sponge rubber pads covered with crimson velvet. After a consultation with Donna, Frank ordered the pads be the size of bed mattresses. Six-inch foam rubber. There were, in addition, dozens of big, red velvet pillows. The old cabinets he had found in antique shops in Venice, up the coast near Santa Monica, and the candle holders had been found by the Hollywood decorator.
Frank stood in the coven room and felt the sinister atmosphere. The tall, thick black candles were lit. They would last all night. The effect was ominous, evil, arcane. He thought for a moment of the three thousand dollars it had all cost. He didn't care. There was no turning back.
He thought they were in the clear as far as the police were concerned. John Bernstein had called a few hours after Lieutenant Rose and Sergeant Dennison had left the house. Bernstein had confirmed that Frank Kaiser and Donna Kaiser had never met Dainis Webster before the night of the party. Bernstein had said, "Frank, I thought it best not to mention that spell and Donna's participation. It was so obviously a case of too vivid an imagination and an emotional catharsis ... a kind of hysteria ... physical ventilation of psychic pressures ... " Bernstein was an amateur psychologist.
Frank had thanked him. The next day at the office Frank learned the lieutenant had been there, too, checking on his alibi. So they were now probably off the suspect list. Safe. Frank, for the hundredth time, wondered if he was right in covering up for Donna. It was too late. He was an accessory now. Her hold on him was too strong.
Donna was up in the master bedroom, preparing herself for the first full coven ritual. She had demanded five hundred dollars of him-and he had given it-and she had had Holly drive her to Beverly Hills, to buy "suitable clothes." She had returned with outfits for him, for Holly and herself. Frank looked down at himself. He wore a floor-length black and red brocaded robe with heavy brass buttons cast with a horned devil's face. Within the robe he was naked. He wore a black skull cap. He wore black velvet slippers. Donna must have gotten the outfits from a motion picture costume company. Upstairs, waiting to admit the new recruits, Holly was similarly attired, without the skull cap.
Frank looked at the two shrouded figures that flanked the front of the altar. They were life-size statues. Donna had made certain alterations ... He limped to one of the antique, black-lacquered cabinets. On its top were an old, brass, covered dish and a crystal decanter of dark red fluid. One dish held squares of a special, dense cake Holly had baked. Each square contained enough ground-up marijuana to make anyone high for the night. The decanter contained boysenberry juice laced with amphetamines. A ceremonial eating of a piece of "Black Mass" cake and a mouthful of the purplish "Satan's Blood" would charge up anyone to extraordinary feats. Donna had bought the drugs. He didn't know where she had gotten them. He didn't care. He had reluctantly bought a small live pig. It was in the garage, oinking and grunting to itself in a stout wooden box. He still resisted ritual sacrifice ... and the acts it involved.
Frank heard the door chimes sound upstairs. He wondered who had arrived first. For a fleeting second he wondered if it was the police. But he hadn't heard from Lieutenant Rose again since that visit over a week ago. The papers hadn't sensationalized the murder of Webster. A terrible jet crash in the Santa Monica mountains with a loss of 135 lives and a spectacular mud slide in Malibu had dominated the newspapers for three days. And on the fourth day some terrorist group had bombed The Queen Mary in Long Beach. What was the grotesque murder of an obscure "demonologist" compared to those stories?
Frank left the coven room and went up the stairs. He reminded himself he was no longer simply Frank Kaiser. He was now acolyte to a demon-possessed witch. He had to act the part. In a perverse way he was looking forward to it.
The first arrival was a big, heavy young man named Jimmy Massinsky. He looked out at the world with frightened brown eyes set in a plump babyish face. Donna had found him in Beverly Hills somehow. He was the only heir to a real estate fortune held by his mother. He was twenty-six years old, awkward, insecure, looking for direction and meaning. Donna's eyes had glowed when she had described him. "He will be wealthy inside six months. His mother will die of an incurable cancer. I will arrange that."
Frank had asked, "How?"
"I have powers. He will arrange for me to meet her. I will alter her glands slightly. A few visits and she'll develop a tumor somewhere and it will grow with great speed."
Holly had greeted Jimmy and led him to the basement stairs when Frank reached the top. Frank said in his best, deep, booming voice, "Satan welcomes you, my son. Descend with me to Hell."
Jimmy almost giggled. "Yeah, okay. I like those outfits. Am I going to wear one?"
"When you have passed the Tests. When you have irrevocably given yourself to Satan and all his needs."
The chimes sounded. The recruits were prompt. It was not quite yet eleven p.m. Frank preceded Jimmy down the stairs. Holly stayed behind to answer the door. In the coven room, Frank commanded, "You must strip and prepare to face Evil."
Jimmy was impressed by the room. He obeyed Frank without question. He asked, "When does Donnathia come down?"
Donna had adopted that name.
"When the others have arrived and prepared for her." Frank folded his arms across his chest. He watched with mild curiosity as Jimmy undressed and showed a pale white, pudgy body, with hairy thighs and arms. But it was the young man's genitals that were remarkable-the penis hung between his thick hairy thighs like a pink and white length of hose. It was a good six inches long in its soft state, Frank saw. Frank thought it no accident that Jimmy was present and so well hung; somehow the demon had sensed his "qualifications" on all levels -psychological, financial and physical.
Naked, ill-at-ease, Jimmy asked, "What now?"
"Lie face down on the carpet facing the altar. Meditate on the deadly sins. Prepare your mind to do evil, to defy society, to believe in the final victory of Satan and the final death of God."
Jimmy nodded and did as he was told. At the same moment there was a murmur of female voices overhead and steps on the stairs. Frank waited as Helene Buvo and her daughter, Adrienne, hesitantly entered the coven room. Holly had led them down.
Holly seemed transformed; the special robe and her duties and status as acolyte to Donnathia made her glow with newfound assurance. Some of her old surface hipness and confidence showed, but altered to conform to her new identity. She smiled at Frank from behind the two women.
She introduced them to Frank. He bowed his head in stern greeting. He kept his arms crossed on his chest. "Strip!" he commanded with baritone firmness.
Helene was a dyed blonde woman, sinewy, slender, with high cheekbones and darting, curious eyes. She was forty-five but looked thirty-five. She smiled. "By all means." She dismissed as unimportant the naked, prone, blubbery form of Jimmy Massinsky.
Adrienne was auburn-haired, an inch or two taller than her mother, and possessed a tremendous bust. Her hips were solid blocks of bone and flesh. Her waist was narrow. Her legs were long and shapely, proportioned along the lines of her opulent breasts and hips.
Frank found it hard to believe the two women were mother and daughter, compared physically as well as emotionally.
Adrienne was fidgety, frightened, nervous, jumpy. She started at the sight of Jimmy and her eyes widened at the coven room's hangings and decor. She looked at the shrouded statues fearfully.
Adrienne whispered to her mother, "I don't think I want to go through with this."
Helene turned scornfully to her. "I do! I swam in Donnathia's eyes. I know her powers. I know she can link us with John-wherever he is in Hell. She told us she could reach him."
"But this isn't just a game ... I think it's real! She terrified me when Holly brought her to us."
Helene nodded. "Me, too. That's how I know! I'm tired of paying mediums for fakery and deception. I'll gladly give my soul if there's really a world beyond!"
"It's crazy. It can't be."
"Then there's nothing to fear, you goose! Get your clothes off."
But Adrienne held back while undressing. She would only take off her large, white, wired bra until after Helen had casually dropped her skimpy cups. Helen's breasts were conical, tipped with businesslike red teats. She obviously had suckled Adrienne twenty-two years before, as well as innumerable men since. Adrienne's breasts sagged inevitably when her bra's support loosened, but only enough to give them an enhanced, earthy, natural shape. They were incredible, with tiny nipples centered in wide oval smears of light red-brown aureoles. Helen matter of factly stepped out of her black panties. Her center was a bushy pelt of curly brown. Adrienne pushed her pink panties down off her swelling hips and down those ivory columns. Her triangle was thinly covered by tight red-brown curls.
Holly said, "Lay down facing the altar. One of you on each side of Jimmy." She let her hand slide erotically over Adrienne's rump. "Donnathia will descend to us in a moment. We await the last of our number." She glided out of the room and went back upstairs.
As if on cue, the chimes rang. Frank warned, "Do not speak to one another. Silence until our Witch tells you to speak. Consider that you will lose your souls tonight. Consider that you are doomed to serve Satan forever, once the ritual is complete."
Adrienne lay trembling. There were goose bumps on her flesh even though the temperature was a warm 75 degrees.
Frank remembered Donnathia's instructions: "Give extra amounts of the cake and drink to that tub Massinsky and the amazon. His fat will absorb a lot of the drugs, and she'll need a lot of it to crack her fear and inner resistance." Donnathia had laughed. "But once that girl's walls go down she'll be hell on two legs."
Holly brought down Jonathan Dean. She said quietly, "I will inform Donnathia all are present."
Dean was cool and interested. "Hello, Frank." He looked around, examined the three naked people on the carpet, and smiled. "Nice layout. Be a perfect setting for a sex movie orgy. Got any cameras hidden in the walls?"
Frank looked through the man. "Strip! Lie on the floor facing the altar!"
"Oh, very straight. Very sticky for the proper atmosphere and all. Okay. I'll go along with it. That's what I'm here for."
"SILENCE! YOU WILL NOT SPEAK!" Frank thundered in his powerful voice. He saw Dean recoil, cowed somewhat.
The memory of Donnathia's visit had to be fresh in the wealthy man's mind. He had been bowled over by her radiance and aura. She had held him with her eyes and promised him unspeakable pleasures and enormous wealth and power. "Serve me," she had whispered, piercing him with her blue lightning gaze, "Serve me, be an immortal slave to Satan, and you shall rule a nation of mortals on this Earth."
Jonathan Dean had been captured, but obviously her effect had worn off a bit. Frank smiled to himself as he prepared, upon Holly's return, to feed the new ones their ration of drugged cake and juice. Dean and the others would be overwhelmed by her awesome persona. No mortal could resist her when she unleashed the full force of her will and her powers. The drugged food and drink were mere tools, devices to shortcut to a complete commitment to her and to the Old Ones, and the Supreme One. Donnathia was moving very fast.
Frank was interested in the nakedness of Jonathan Dean. The flabby pectorals and saggy paunch made of the rich man just another middle-aged male who lacked discipline, who would die in a few years of a coronary, a stroke, or cancer. Unless Satan accepted him. Dean's genitals were small, but Frank knew that wasn't a sure-fire guide to the length of his penis when erect. Dean finished stripping and went to his knees, and then to his stomach next to Helene. He winked at her. She winked back.
Holly entered the coven room. The door was left wide open. The basement beyond was in total darkness. Holly and Frank served the would-be coven members the cake and juice. Frank presented each with a portion in a small silver dish. Holly served them the liquid in a silver goblet. Jimmy Massinsky ate two pieces and swallowed a half goblet full of the spiked juice. Adrienne also was given two squares of cake and a half goblet to drink. Frank lit four incense pots. The heavy aroma began to fill the room. It would take about fifteen minutes for the drugs to take effect.
Frank and Holly sat at opposite ends of the black velvet-draped altar and chanted in unison, "Aglon Tetragram Veycheon Stimulamathon. Erohares Retragsammathon Clyoran Icion. Edition Eh:fatten Eryona Onera Erasyu Mayu. Meffias Soter Emmanuel Sabotli Adouai, I call you. Amen."
Donnathia had chanted the spell once for them, and the strange words had stayed in his mind-and in Holly's mind-and they came to his lips without search or strain. Frank and Holly droned the spell again and again. Frank knew it was very close to midnight. He thought he saw a movement beyond the door. Adrienne was breathing raggedly.
Then Donnathia was standing in the doorway! The tall black candles flickered from an unfelt wind. Wild shadows leaped in the black room. She wore a cape of crimson silk edged in silver and black. It moved gently as if alive against her naked, magnificently formed body. Her long blonde hair was styled in a strange, upswept design that lent an evil, cruel aspect to her young face. Her eyes-!
Both Holly and Frank broke off their chant. Frank cried, "SHE IS HERE!" The supplicants all looked around. They gasped.
Donnathia walked slowly, backward, imperiously, to the left, and mounted the low platform behind the altar. When she spoke, her voice was vibrant, filled with power, yet trembling on the edge of hysteria.
"This now is the beginning of the Rule of Satan! This now is the beginning of the true death of God! By our oaths this night, by our orgies this night, by our rituals this night we make a Way for Him. We give our souls to the Horned One, to the Hideous One and to the Most Terrible One."
She flung her arms wide. The crimson silk swirled away from her white body. "May the Gods of Acheron be propitious to me. May the triple divine power of Jehovah fail! Fire, air, water, spirit of the earth, hail! Chief of the East, Beelzebub, monarch of fiery hell, and Demogorgou, we propitiate you that Awful Satan may bless us!"
Her intense, catalyzing voice affected everyone. Its harmonics plucked deep in their seething minds. Adrienne was moaning, beginning to writhe on the carpet. Her long, solid legs spread open. Her eyes were glazed, staring as she gaped up at the altar.
Jimmy Massinsky was squirming, rubbing himself on the deep red pile, digging in his fingers. His flesh quivered. He panted loudly. He gazed at Donnathia with abject adoration. Helene and Jonathan were only slightly less affected.
Donnathia was exalted. She trembled with excitement and power. She suddenly clamped her hands on her lovely, full, naked breasts and dug her fingers deep into the white flesh. She was flushed. Her eyes were burning blue coals. "I GIVE YOU SOULS, MY LORD OF THE FLIES! I ASK POWERS TO DO YOUR WILL!"
Frank and Holly were caught by the force of her mind. They sank to their knees. The candlelight quivered. Fantastic shadows, black-on-black, seemed to cavort on the velvet-draped walls. Donnathia called, "Bring the sacrifice!"
Frank was drunk on her aura, on the hot, evil electricity in the air, on the needs of the squirming bodies. He went quickly out of the room, up the stairs, feeling his way in the darkness, out to the garage. In the cool night air he lost the madness of the coven room. He faltered. He rubbed his face and shivered in his brocaded robe. He moaned softly, "Oh, my God. Help me." He waited a moment, head bowed, then sighed and opened the wooden box that held the small pig. He lifted out the wriggling, kicking animal and returned to the house. When he descended the basement stairs he descended into dim, flickering Hell. The aroma of incense was heavy, the sibilance of breathing and movement was pervasive. Over it all Donnathia's driven voice had reached new peaks of unrestrained frenzy. The pig kicked and squealed in his arms. Perhaps it sensed its death.
When he reentered the coven room, he saw that Holly was bearing a big, oval bronze platter to the altar. Donnathia held a long, oddly curved knife aloft. The handle had been intricately carved from ivory. The silver hilt was shaped like a pair of graven horns. She continued a ritual incantation to the legions of Hell. Her voice was hypnotic.
The drugs had taken full possession of the two men and women who groveled on the carpet. Jimmy Massinsky had rolled onto his back. His erection was monstrously large. He held his arms upraised to Donnathia, mouth open in a continuous panting moan. His loins jerked in blind thrusts. His organ wobbled heavily in the air. Adrienne was staring at his massive erection, drooling, squirming fractions of inches closer to him, gasping inarticulately. Her eyes were strangely wide. Helene had risen to a kneeling position, her hands clasped tightly, her lips moving in seeming prayer, and her eyes were riveted on Donnathia, and she was crying. Jonathan lay quivering, breathing very fast, still on his stomach, straining his neck to watch Donnathia. He drooled without realizing. He wiped his mouth automatically with his right hand.
Frank was sinking back into the atmosphere of the room. He carried the pig behind the altar. He was suddenly very close to Donnathia. Her silk cape brushed his face. She wore a musky perfume that made his mind reel. She was gloriously evil, dominant, transformed! Her body lured him ... naked ... giver of pleasure. He hoisted the pig into the heavy metal platter. He held it on its back. He relinquished his hold on its forelegs to Holly, who stood on the other side of Donnathia.
Donnathia cried, "FOR THEE, STEWARD OF VOLUPTUOUS SINS AND MONSTROUS VICES, SATAN, SATAN, SATAN, I KILL!"
She held the knife in both hands and plunged it into the belly of the pig. The animal's screaming squeal joined with her scream of delight. Blood spurted. The pig arched and convulsed as she raised high the reddened, curved blade and plunged it again into the shrieking, dying beast. Frank and Holly fought to control the kicking legs and hold it in position. They were spattered. Donnathia's heaving white breasts and belly were spattered. Frank suddenly saw her butchering Webster in the same way. He closed his eyes and drove the image away. With the third triumphant plunge the knife found the pig's heart and it went limp, except for reflexive spasms. Blood flowed in red streams. It covered the bottom of the deep bronze platter.
Donnathia cried, panting, "Come up, come up to me how, you worshippers of Satan, and partake in this sacrifice to him. EAT-and give up your souls to him!" She slashed open the pig and tore out the bloody, leaking heart.
Jimmy, Adrienne, Helene and Jonathan were on their feet and crowding against the black velvet-draped altar. They were blazing-eyed, howling, clutching, begging for her to feed them, to make them slaves of Satan. Donnathia tore a piece of the heart free with her teeth. She spat it into her palm. She stuffed it into Adrienne's gaping mouth. Adrienne shuddered and chewed and swallowed. Her eyes rolled up. She fell back to the carpet and writhed, uttering weird cries.
Donnathia laughed insanely and fed the others a piece of the heart. Then she hacked free the pig's gonads and fed one each to Frank and Holly. Frank crushed the small, bitter pellet of flesh between his teeth and felt himself going over the edge. He could do anything now! He ripped the cover from the nearest statue. Revealed was a seated, wooden demon, its gargoyle face split in a fiendish grin, its taloned hands clutching the arms of its throne-like chair, its scaly wings folded behind its hunched back. Holly tore the shroud from the other statue, a twin of the one Frank had uncovered.
Donnathia had seen them in a Hollywood shop that specialized in renting odd, esoteric props to motion picture and TV production companies. The owner would not sell the statues ... at first. Now they belonged to her. The statues were frighteningly realistic; it must have taken a master wood carver months to complete them. The shop owner had said they were commissioned by a rich eccentric who had died before they had been finished. The artist had sold them to a major movie studio for the balance due on his commission. They had been used a few times in horror movies. Then the studio had been sold and the props auctioned off.
Donnathia had added something-nine-inch black plastic sex organs reared up from the mahogany loins. They were joined to the wood by tightly fitted dowels. Frank had installed those huge artificial phalluses. He had done a good job; they appeared to be part of the creatures, and made more obscene and malignant the grins on the hideous faces. In the flickering candlelight the monsters seemed almost alive.
Donnathia ripped the pig's entrails from its belly and arranged them in an intricate design. She smeared her breasts and belly with her bloody hands. Her hot gaze fastened on Adrienne. She pointed at the writhing girl. Her voice pierced Adrienne's mindless activity. "The young Buvo-embrace your master! Fuck your master!"
Adrienne sat up. She saw the grinning, lascivious monsters waiting. She saw the rearing black phalluses. She crawled, trembling, to the nearest. She reached and fondled the long, thick, black plastic. It was resilient, but stiff. She got to her feet, knelt on the wide wooden throne and kissed the grinning mahogany lips. Jimmy Massinsky was squatting, his hands on his own massive erection, masturbating as he watched. Helene was on her knees, sucking Jonathan's organ with sloppy abandon. He jerked and thrashed on his back.
Adrienne reached under and clasped the phallus. She lowered herself upon it. She took a great, thick length of it. She quivered and began rising and sinking on it. She embraced the statue and shook and moaned. Her white hips and buttocks rose and fell, rose and fell ... She crushed her melon breasts against the scaled chest and kissed passionately the frozen, ugly, gargoyle face.
Donnathia stabbed the air with her arm. "The old Buvo-embrace your master. Fuck your master!"
Helene stopped goggling Jonathan's penis. She looked up, eyes wide. "I-can't. It's too big."
"FUCK YOUR MASTER-OR DIE!"
Helene groaned, wired to Donnathia's eyes. She got to her feet. Still captured, unable to look away, to break the hold, she mounted the remaining statue. She bit her lips and paled as she forced herself down. For a long moment the two women raped themselves with the statues. Adrienne was babbling, working lower, impaling herself until her buttocks slapped against the sinewy wooden thighs.
Donnathia was pleased. Then she turned to the men. "Suck each other!"
"No! Oh, God-" Jonathon shook his head violently. He had been watching Jimmy masturbate. He made a face.
Jimmy was panting, close to spurting. "I will, I will, I will!" He wanted to please Donnathia. He scrambled the few feet to the paunchy, middle-aged man.
Jonathon curled up, face covered by his hands. He was an infant. "I won't!"
Donnathia took up the ceremonial knife and came down and around the altar. As she passed Helene crouching, groaning, on the statue's organ, she seized Helene's head, tilted her face and passionately kissed the woman. Helene shuddered and returned the kiss. Donnathia pulled away and knelt beside Jonathon. She pricked his flabby rump. He flinched and opened up his fetal ball. "I can't!"
"YOU WILL!" She jabbed the still bloody knife point to his throat. "Nothing is forbidden you. Satan commands that you shed the dead skin of morality. There are no rules but service to the Master! YOU MUST OBEY OR DIE! You have eaten of the sacrifice. You have given your soul to SATAN! You have no choice."
Donnathia gestured Jimmy close. She clasped his huge erection at the base and angled it toward Jonathon's face. The point of her knife still indented his throat. She glared fire and hell into Jonathon Dean's mind. The wealthy man gave a mewling cry of capitulation and took the large head of Jimmy's penis into his mouth. His eyes shut tight. Donnathia laughed evilly. "Now suck-suck good! Don't take your mouth off this lovely prick on pain of death!" She began pumping the shaft as he sucked inexpertly.
Within seconds, Jimmy began to tense. "Ohhh ... Ohhhh!" He gasped, "I love you!"
She whispered, "My slave! I possess you!" She kissed him, lewdly, with obscene art. Her soft, skilled hand pumped him faster.
The boy went rigid. He jerked, he spurted violently, gushingly, into Jonathon Dean's mouth. The older man recoiled, choking, gagging, and semen splattered his face.
Donnathia laughed loudly. "Now you know how the girls feel, old man!" She wiped some of it off his chin with her finger. She presented the finger to Jimmy's lips. "Lick it clean, slave, as proof of slavery!"
The youth obeyed. He sucked her finger enthusiastically. He had not lost his erection. The drugs were working well. Even Jonathon still had an erection.
Donnathia kissed Jimmy again. Her hand stayed on his penis. "I will reward you. Lie on your back."
Jimmy went down to the carpet instantly.
Donnathia called, "Adrienne, come fuck this one! Helene, come suck off the old one. Holly, use the Master that Adrienne has left, and face us as you fuck Him."
Frank wondered what she had in mind for him. She turned to Frank and her eyes glowed. "Sit the other Master, slave. Helene has left Him wet and slippery for you."
Frank almost rebelled. Take a nine-inch dildo up his rectum? Donnathia waved the knife in a Sign. "Obey ... obey ... " He went to the misshapen, grotesque statue. He acted almost without volition. His legs walked, his arms pulled his robe off his naked body ... "Facing us!" Donnathia commanded.
He had to climb on backward, awkwardly. He saw Holly already in position, screwing herself down on the wobbly black phallus. Her mouth hung open. She watched Donnathia abjectly. Frank felt the head pressing against his anus. Strange, frightening, alien touch. Slippery. He hadn't taken any of the drugs and yet his mind swirled. He felt hot and prickly. He dreaded and wanted. He watched Adrienne's opulent vulva swallow the whole of Jimmy's very large penis. She rose and fell. Frank watched Helene suck on Jonathon's organ as if it were coated with a flavoring she adored. Frank gingerly let his weight press the head tighter against his anus. He knew it was going to hurt. He couldn't!
Suddenly Donnathia was before him. She held his head. She kissed him with hot, wet, passionate lips and mouth. She breathed into his ear, "For me, Daddy. For me!" Her hot, sweet mouth came to his lips again. She put hands on his shoulders and urged him down. He lost himself in her hungry, sensuous kiss and did not care if the thing tore him open and sent him to the hospital. The pain would be good, an atonement for what he had done, for what he had allowed, for what he would do ...
Frank took his supporting hands from the arms of the statue. The black phallus breeched his anus! His weight drove it deep, up into his colon. It was an agony, a ring of fire where his stretched anal sphincter was strained by the massive thickness of the black shaft. Frank howled and reared back to lift himself off that impalement. Donnathia seized his arms with amazing strength. "NO!"
His struggling drove the monster even deeper. It hurt! His guts ached! The thing felt alien in his body, as if he had been defiled, as if he were pronged like some hunk of meat in a butcher's cold room. Lightenings of pain surrounded the length in his gut. He gritted his teeth. He breathed with quick, moaning rasps.
Donnathia soothed him. "Be still. Quiet ... quiet. The hurt will fade." She captured his eyes. Her blue pupils seemed to expand until they were an ocean and his mind was adrift in it. The pain did fade. Only the huge club-like presence in his vitals remained. His breathing slowed. He sat relaxed in the distorted lap of the wooden devil. Donnathia kissed him again. Her left hand drifted down his body ... fingernails lightly brushing his skin ... till she found his penis. Frank was astonished to discover-when she clasped him-that he was rigid. Abruptly his attention centered in his erection. He was throbbing, wanting!
"For my first acolyte ... " Donnathia sank to her knees. Her red cape spread in a wide pool on the carpet. Her incredibly skilled mouth took him slowly, exquisitely. She sucked!
Frank groaned with pure, unchained lust and looked to Holly. She was shuddering in a wild orgasm, the whole of that devil's black phallus buried in her vagina. Her eyes were rolling and blood and foamed saliva flecked her lips. She rocked forward and back, forward and back with panting greed.
The others, on the carpet, were partly watching, partly engaged in the acts Donnathia had commanded. Adrienne crouched over Jimmy, her plump, velvety hips gyrating, taking and snaking his huge organ. Her breasts hung down like giant white gourds and buffeted his chest with fat softness and stiff nipples. Jimmy had eyes only for Donnathia. His gaze swam with love. Jonathon climaxed explosively in Helen's suctioning mouth.
Donnathia seemed to sense Jimmy's utter devotion. She took her mouth from Frank's hardness. "Jimmy," she called. "Come and fuck me. Come and give me pleasure." To Adrienne she said, "Eat with your mother! Sixty-nine!"
Jimmy glowed. He crawled to Donnathia, his huge penis wet from Adrienne's squishy vagina. With trembling hands he lifted her crimson silk covering away from her body. He caressed her smooth, taut rump as she knelt and sucked Frank. Jimmy was overcome with the drugs and with love. He probed his rigid organ between her round thighs. He found her waiting vulva. He sank into her.
Frank had a grandstand view of everything. He sat with that black pole stirring in his bowels with his every slight move, and he watched Adrienne attack her mother with a gluttonous mouth, and watched Helene throw off all inhibitions and restrictions and fit herself to her daughter and begin to tongue Adrienne's juicy vulva.
Frank looked straight down and saw Donnathia's blonde head moving like a metronome, felt her mouth-tongue-throat working in unison on and around his throbbing, jerking organ. And Frank saw the slobbering love and lust in Jimmy's face as the young man penetrated further, with great, crude lunges, till his belly slapped Donnathia's velvety cheeks.
Jonathon lay where he had spurted into Helen's mouth a few moments before. He was on his back, twitching, his penis still erect. An artery pounded in his gray-fringed temple. He was breathing heavily, watching, too.
Frank experienced the seething sensations of imminent climax. He tightened on the pole buried in his guts. He gripped the gnarled wooden arms which gripped the throne. Jimmy's huge pistoning and pounding into Donnathia was jolting her, giving her deep-throat suckings a special quality, a new, added sensation to Frank's growing, thundering avalanche of pleasure. Jimmy, too, was in the throes of orgasm. He went: "UHHHHHH! UHH! UHH!" His flesh quivered with the smashing power of his lunges. His eyes bulged.
Frank was jetting semen far up in Donnathia's throat. He was tunnel-visioned: A red haze focused everything on the black doorway leading to the outer basement. For a blinding moment he thought he saw a hideous face hanging in the blackness, a scaly skull, with curved horns. And hellish red eyes ...
In the hours that followed, the orgy involved everyone in almost every possible sexual combination. In their turn both Jimmy and Jonathon "sat" one of the devil statues. Jonathon squealed like the sacrificed pig ... and ejaculated as he screamed.
Donnathia took all three men at once-Jimmy's ever-hard organ in her anus, Frank in her vagina, Jonathon in the mouth, to the root. Donnathia lay on a velvet pad amid the pillows and was eaten non-stop for an hour, each new acolyte vying to bring her to orgasm more often than the others. Helene, surprisingly, won.
Vibrators were brought out-and Holly was stimulated to a series of convulsive climaxes. Elaborately shaped and decorated dildoes were brought from the cabinets and slipped over exhausted male organs. The orgy went on and on ... At dawn the new coven members crept from the house, dismissed at last. Donnathia was as energetic and passionate and dominant as ever. Her vitality seemed inhuman.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two nights later, at three-twelve a.m., Frank was awakened by a cry and a body falling on his bed. "Daddy! Wake up!" He jerked up on his elbows in the darkness. Beside him, Holly stirred uneasily in her heavy, Seconal sleep.
Donna had jumped onto his side of the king-size bed. She was crying, sobbing, seeking him with a child's need for security and reassurance. She was stark naked. He knew instantly it was the old Donna, his true daughter, and not the demonic monster who had possessed her for over a week. He took her into his arms. The feel of her soft, warm flesh brought memories. He stroked her long, loose blonde hair. "I'm here, honey. I love you. I love you."
She sobbed, "It's gone. I'm free."
"That's good, Donna. That's good." He wondered for how long? When would The Other take over again?"
"I woke up and I was ... I was in my whole body again. It's so wonderful to be able to control what I do and say. We've got to get away! We've got to go, now! Before it comes back!"
"Donna, I don't think running will help."
"Yes, it will! I know if I can get far enough from this house it'll lose me. It won't be able to find me again."
"Baby, if it's from Hell, really, then there's no place on this planet you could hide. And if it isn't from Hell ..." He left it unstated. If the demon wasn't from another universe, from another plane of existence-then she was psychotic, and the demon was in her mind, a complex, powerful second personality, and she was in reality a far advanced case of paranoid schizophrenia.
"You think I'm crazy."
He held her and didn't know, still, what to think. There was no ultimate proof immediately available. Only the appearance of a demon, a visible fiend from Hell, so horrible and real, so utterly loathsome and solid, that he couldn't deny it. Yet even then he would suspect his own sanity and wonder about a total hallucination. Or the take-over of the world by the forces of Hell ... and his living beyond a natural span of years, without aging. But now it was all on faith. And he had always been a skeptic.
"Please, Daddy, please! Let's all three of us get away! I know it'll work!"
In her agitation, Donna rubbed her lovely breasts against his bare chest. He was naked in the bed. Frank experienced lust. Triggered lust for her body, for her cunning mouth, for her honeyed, hot vagina ... He felt his large penis begin to harden. He pushed Donna away, insisting "Either way, it wouldn't do any good!"
"It will! I KNOW IT WILL! OH, PLEASE, DADDY! You don't know how horrible it is to be shut away in your own head and know what an alien thing is doing with your body!" She wept convulsively. She huddled and crept again into his unresisting arms. She whispered brokenly, "I ... know you couldn't help what it made my body do ... and what it forced you to do ... and Holly ... and the others. It's so strong!"
He nodded and held her. "Go to sleep, baby."
"Daddy, we've got to leave!"
"Donna, Holly is zonked out on sleeping pills. We couldn't get her conscious. We couldn't get-"
"WHY DON'T YOU WANT ME TO GET AWAY? DO YOU WANT THAT THING TO GET INTO ME AGAIN? DO YOU WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH ME AGAIN?" Donna scrambled out of the bed. She was shaking with rage and grief, with fear and dread and a terrible suspicion.
"No, God, no, honey! It's just-Okay. Okay. We'll give it a try. Get dressed. We'll leave Holly here. I'll leave a note. We'll go right now."
"Oh, Daddy!" Donna raced from the bedroom.
Frank swung his legs out of bed. He switched on a bedside lamp. He rubbed his face, stood, and limped to the bathroom. As he emptied his bladder he wondered if Donna's urgent need to get away might not be a symptom of her "good" side mounting an attack on her "bad" side-a sign of recovery, of sanity. Maybe-if the demon was in her mind!-the act of running away would serve as a "solution" and the demon would be unable to "find" her again. The subconscious was a place of twisted paths and strange lands.
He re-entered the bedroom to find Donna already returned, dressed in a pair of jeans and heavy wool long-sleeved sweater. She turned away. He wondered why, and then realized it was because he was naked. He said, "Sorry, Donna." He climbed into underwear, slacks, a shirt, and a wind breaker.
He limped to a small desk and scribbled a note for Holly, who lay sleeping, oblivious to what had happened.
He wrote: "Dearest,
Donna and I are off on a trip. If
not back in a few days will contact
you. Stay in house for a while. Can't explain.
Love, Frank"
Frank knew he was hedging. He was afraid of the demon-real or psychosis. He didn't want to commit himself on paper, one way or another.
The instant he finished writing, Donna tugged at him. "Let's go. Quick!"
Five minutes later they were on the San Diego freeway, heading south. It was three-forty a.m. Traffic was light. The air was cool.
Frank watched Donna. She sat tense, not speaking, with fists clenched, as if dreading an attack, a return of the demon. As the moments passed and the miles thrummed under the tires of the powerful Mercedes, she slowly relaxed. She asked, "Do you think it'll work?"
"I don't know, honey. We'll just have to wait and see."
"I wish you hadn't come into my room that night! I wish I'd never seen that man!"
Frank said nothing. If the demon returned-or surfaced-his words would be on record in Donna's mind. The demon would punish him for disloyalty. He despised himself and kept silent. He knew he had passed the point of no return. When he had kept silent and shielded her-or it-when the police had come ... that had been the decision time, the commitment. He was a fool. He was evil. He was selling his soul.
He drove on at 85 m.p.h. and wondered about life and death. And he waited. When they neared San Diego, Frank asked, "Want to go on?"
"Yes, please, Daddy. Farther than this. Can we go to ... Texas or somewhere really far?"
"Yes, but I have to get some rest, Donna. Let's stop at a motel for a few hours."
"But-"
"We have to stop sometime. If over a hundred miles isn't far enough, then ..."
Donna gave in. Her fists clenched again.
Frank checked them into one of a large, nationally advertised motel chain. He registered using his real name, with daughter, and requested a two-bed room. He had to practically croon Donna to sleep. He held her, rocked her in his arms ... lied to her ... and found her a stranger. What had happened to his natural love as father for his child? Something was wrong with him. He wanted the demon to return so that ... so that there could be lust and orgy again! So that he could serve the Master again! Donna finally fell asleep. He stretched out and closed his eyes. He thought about everything. Once you rip open the mind and let the unleashed evil spread ... He drifted ...
"WHY DID YOU TAKE HER AWAY?"
Frank jerked awake. It was dawn. Donna-no, Donnathia! crouched furiously on his bed, naked, eyes blazing! Fear congealed in his gut. "I didn't! She came to me and begged me to get her away. She would have gone alone if I hadn't agreed."
"I left this body exhausted, asleep! It could not have awakened!"
"It-she did. Can't you tell? Can't you see into her memory?"
"If I must. It takes too much energy to peel the resistances. The tighter I control that willful, childish essence, the more I squeeze it and lick it away, the harder it is to penetrate. She still has her soul. It like's steel when under pressure. I need all my powers for the Plan."
Donnathia glared. "Why didn't you lock her up until I returned?"
Frank licked his lips. "I-I wasn't sure you'd be back. And there's no place in the house where I could keep her locked up-"
"The coven room!"
"She might have destroyed everything." She drilled her eyes into his mind. The fiery blue pupils filled the universe. He was aware of a ... slimy probing ... Then he was left shaken, and Donnathia was smiling. "Yes ... your decision has been made. There is that cold, selfish core in you, the power-seeker, the pleasure-seeker. You do want immortality. Death haunts you-since Korea."
"That's about it." He tasted sourness. It was true. He felt a sinking sensation. A fear. A black despair. He still knew guilt and shame. He wished he could cut that out of his mind and be purely evil, as was the demon. He hated being ambivalent, even partially. It tainted his virtues and vices ... always. He envied the demon.
Donnathia reached for Frank's genitals. She played with them idly. "I prefer inhabiting a male body. But ... this will do. I find a beautiful young female body has many advantages in the manipulation of men. In this world men are the power-holders. They are vulnerable to the skillful and beautiful young woman." She smiled as Frank's penis erected. "I was away ... reporting to my superiors. I have full instructions. I am promised great powers. There are plans ... " She lay back on the bed. "Eat your sweet Donna's cunt, Daddy, while I tell you what is going to happen." She giggled contentedly. Her knees rose and fell wide. She fondled her lovely breasts.
Frank more than willingly crept into the familiar, soft gorge. He embraced her raised thighs and kissed the hot, moist center of her body. His eyes closed. He lovingly drifted his tongue along the acid-tangy lips of her plump, pink vulva.
Donnathia moaned gently. "You perform so well. Oh, yes ... " She sighed luxuriously and was silent for a moment as he delved and licked with passionate skill.
She said quietly, "I've learned that Jonathon Dean is a good friend of an aging, very rich movie actress, Vonda Hartford. Jonathon, like the obedient slave to Satan that he is, will take me and you along as friends to a very special party Vonda Hartford is giving this week."
Frank settled into a quick, gentle tonguing of Donnathia's clitoris. He felt her body respond. She writhed sinuously as she said, "It's a political fund-raising party for Jack Dixon."
Frank heard. What was going to happen? Jack Dixon was a handsome young California Congressman who was being groomed for the governorship.
Donnathia continued, "Jack Dixon has been chosen by our masters to be the prime tool in this world. I will meet him and seduce him. When he fucks this lovely body a part of me-an incubus-will enter his body and reside in his mind. He will come very soon to be ours!"
Donnathia began to moan more frequently. "Ahhh ... Frank ... so nice ... nice ... Now more tongue ... a little higher on the clit ... ohhh, YES!" She went into a series of rippling spasms. Her loins bucked against Frank's clinging mouth and darting tongue. When she had passed through the overwhelming pleasure, Donnathia said, "It will take the incubus about three years to mature, to be a full-grown demon. My child! A part of me will rule this country and eventually the entire world as absolute dictator. And I'll be at his side. We will marry when this body is eighteen years old. We must abide by the current social regulations until we are powerful enough to rule as we wish. When God is defeated, when God is dead there will be portals created to the black universe, and Satan will rule this sevagram as well."
Frank kept on licking into her flushed, slippery inner vulva. The swollen pink button that was her clitoris vibrated anew under his slithering tongue. He listened to the grand plans for demonic conquest of the world and he wasn't happy, as he should have been.
"Jack Dixon will be elected Governor of California. He and I will marry near the end of his first term. We will be heralded as a golden couple, a sure-bet for greater things ... We'll make him President. With that power, with a tremendous spread of covens and wealth, with our Satan-given Powers, we'll spread a vast evil upon the planet. Wars. Genocide. Famine. Chaos."
Frank didn't understand. Wanting power over the world he understood. But power for the sake of causing death, pain, and suffering? Was that all-to reduce all mankind to groaning misery and anguish? The whole point of the Plan? Then he finally understood. Evil was anti-freedom, anti-happiness, anti-pleasure in the final result, anti-progress of any kind ... in fact, anti-life in general.
The only pleasure in the Plan involved inflicting pain, humiliation, death, destruction, ruin ... The demon in Donna enjoyed physical pleasure and used physical pleasure to gain its ends. Once in full control ... all pleasure for others would end.
Frank doubted there would be immortality for himself, or for any other "unoccupied" mortal. The first tool of evil was the lie. How joyous and happy it must make a demon to lie and be believed! To promise and know the promises would be broken! How could he fight Evil? He smiled against Donnathia's hot flesh. By using the tools of Evil against its servants.
He felt Donnathia's hands on his head, guiding, as her hips ground her vulva against his open mouth and fluttering tongue. She was panting, going into another climax.
Finally, an hour later, she pushed him away. She yawned. "We will sleep now. When I wake we'll drive back home. I have many things to do."
Frank rolled gratefully away. His jaws and tongue were aching. His physical desire had not been drained, but he was too tired and dispirited. He shifted to the other bed and slipped under the covers. He sank into a deep sleep within two minutes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was a big brown Tudor style house that had been built in the 20's. It was set back from Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills, behind a towering hedge and a couple hundred feet of immaculate lawn. The long, capacious drive and small parking lot beside the private tennis court and guest house was lined with cars when Frank turned in through the wide gateway. A servant with a flashlight checked Dean's invitation and directed them to a parking place close to a gardener's shed.
In the back seat of the Mercedes, sitting with Jonathon Dean, her slave, Donnathia said eagerly, "I can hardly wait. All this money and power waiting to be used. All these ripe souls."
Jonathon Dean advised, "Please don't ... overwhelm people. Not too soon. As beautiful as you are tonight, in that dress ... you'll be the center of attention anyway."
Donnathia was breathtaking. She wore a stunning off the shoulder opaque blue gown that shimmered in any light and provided brief hints of flesh tones where it fitted smoothly to her hips, belly, thighs, breasts as she moved. She wore no bra, nothing under it but sheer pantyhose. From some unknown source of knowledge she had applied a subtle combination of make-up: eye-shadow, liner, lashes ... lipstick, rouge, powders ... until, miraculously, she had achieved an enchanting look of sophisticated innocence. With her face, youth, and body, with a tumbling flow of honey-blonde hair, she was an incredibly lush Marilyn Monroe type.
It was Jonathon's mission to guide her, to caution her, to make sure she was introduced, sometime during the night, to the dynamic Jack Dixon, and to other influential political and financial figures. It was Frank's function to stay with her and play her father, to also meet the important people, and to advise her. The demon was powerful but inexperienced. The Plan could be weakened by a wrong move, a bad performance.
Donnathia, Frank, and Jonathon walked up the lane of parked cars to the big, brightly lit house. Raga rock drifted from a few open windows. Laughter, talk. Well-dressed men, elaborately gowned women moved in the large, gayly decorated patio beside the looming Tudor bulk.
Jonathon said, "You'll meet Vonda Hartford first. She's a closet butch and she'll try to get you alone for a proposition and whatever else she can get away with on the sly. I'd advise not going too far with her at this time, though it wouldn't do any harm to let her think you're her kind of girl."
Donnathia smiled. "I'll add her to the coven."
Jonathon frowned. "Go slow." He led Donnathia and Frank into the house. They found Vonda in the back, by the large, figure 8 pool. She was talking to a dumpy, bald man and a lovely young woman with straight black hair and a slender, willowy body.
As soon as Donnathia and her men emerged from the sliding glass doors at the rear of the house and started down the stone steps, Vonda turned as if magnetized to face them. She smiled warmly with her famous wide mouth and sensuous lips. Her green eyes were large, expressive and wise with experience. Decades of creams and treatments had kept age-lines and creases to a minimum. She looked thirty-five and was actually fifty-five years old.
Vonda couldn't escape Donnathia's blue eyes. "Ahhh, how beautiful! Dean, you didn't at all do her justice." Vonda took two steps to meet Donnathia. She took her hands. "You're breathtaking, child."
"I'm far from a child, Vonda." Donnathia's voice was low, brimming with sexual overtones, invitation, promise.
"Obviously not, my darling." Vonda swayed, locked into those flaring beacons of blue. She flushed.
Jonathon plucked at Donnathia's elbow. He looked appealingly to Frank. Donnathia was using too much power too obviously. Like a child in an unattended candy store-she couldn't resist.
Frank said loudly, "I've always dreamed of meeting you, Miss Hartford. I'd be very interested to know if you will be making any more pictures." He slipped an arm around Donnathia's waist and pulled her off-balance. The "spell" was broken. Donnathia turned her head and glared at him then realized why he had done it.
Vonda appeared shaken. She blinked and turned away, recovering. "I want you to meet Freddie Biggie and his wife, Ginger."
Jonathon stepped in smoothly and provided names. Vonda appeared still mildly in shock. She finally added, "Freddie builds houses ... lots and lots of them."
Donnathia said, amused, "Mr. Biggie, you should get together with my daddy. He makes bricks ... lots and lots of them."
Frank said, shaking Biggie's hand, "I already sell you about a half a million brick a month."
"Yes-Kaiser. Good brick."
They laughed. After a moment Vonda took Donnathia away to meet other guests. Frank and Jonathon followed closely. The fifth introduction, near the heavily patronized bar at the edge of the patio near the smorgasbord table, was to a short, thick man with a full beard streaked with gray. He wore a brown suit with a vest and gold watch chain. He sipped at a tall reddish drink that appeared to be a Gin Sling.
Vonda said disgustedly, "Professor Carew, how can an educated man drink a concoction like that?" She had picked up a Martini.
"Miss Hartford, Medievalists often acquire strange tastes." He met Donnathia's intense blue gaze and narrowed his eyes. He frowned.
Vonda laughed. She explained, "Professor Carew doesn't have any money to contribute to the cause of Jack Dixon, but he does have a big reputation now because of his latest best-selling book-"
Carew interjected, "I am told. I have no royalties as yet."
"-THE RETURN OF SATAN. His name on our letterheads will impress a lot of impressionable, wealthy people, we hope."
Frank said, "I thought you deep, scholarly, history types kept out of contemporary political wars."
Carew smiled wistfully. "I live in the here and now, even though my mind is usually immersed in the there and then."
"Does your study of the Dark Ages tell you anything about now?"
Carew shrugged. "Perhaps. I think we'll have a dictatorship in this country within twenty years. I hope we can use one of the last few elections to get a good man into the Presidency."
Frank said, "A good man wouldn't take us into dictatorship."
"The best we can hope for is a man who will be gentle about it and will be a benign ruler with some humility and compassion."
Donnathia said harshly, too loudly, "What do you know of Satan?"
"I've studied Witchcraft and Satanism and related matters for over thirty years."
"Do you believe?"
"Occasionally." He looked sharply at Donnathia. He glanced at Frank and Jonathon, then flicked his keen gaze back to her.
Donnathia asked, "Did you know Dainis Webster?"
"He was a student of mine. Rather unbalanced, I think."
Donnathia laughed crudely. "And now he's dead and his soul belongs to ... " She fixed Carew with her drilling blue eyes. "Who knew more-you or he?"
Jonathon plucked at her elbow again. She was betraying too much. Vonda appeared confused. Donnathia did not sound like a mere sweet young thing with a terrific personality and a stunning physical appeal.
Carew was not overpowered. He flinched but was not captured. He made the sign of the cross before his face and murmured, "Lofaham, Solomon, Iyouel, Iyosenaoui."
Donnathia paled. She blinked and looked away. "Was that a spell or something?"
"Yes. A shield."
Donnathia asked, again in the role of young beauty, "Is it in your book?"
"Yes. Though it's hard to remember and difficult to pronounce properly."
She smiled. "Then there's hope for Satan after all."
Vonda said, "I think people take all this witch stuff too seriously."
Jonathon put in, "I do, too. Let's get back to politics."
Carew kept watching Donnathia closely. After a moment of small social talk, Jonathon suggested, "Frank, why don't we take Donna around and let the movie producers get a look at her?"
Vonda said, "I can do that far better than you two." She took Donnathia's arm. "Would you like to be a movie queen, my dear?"
Donnathia smiled. "I'm willing to consider it." She dismissed Jonathon and Frank with a small, decisive gesture. "Don't worry about me, Daddy. I trust Vonda."
Frank watched them move away. He hoped Donnathia would not make a serious mistake. He wanted to talk to Professor Carew alone. He said to Jonathon, "Better drift along behind her and be ready to step in if she gets in too deep, too soon."
Dean nodded and moved away. He took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.
Frank was left with Professor Carew. He asked, "Do you know about black masses, invocations ... exorcisms?"
"Of course. Actually, that's my specialty. I've become famous because of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Suddenly people want to believe in the old anti-establishment religions." Carew smiled. "Interesting phenomenon. Science is dead; long live the supernatural."
"Do you think Satanism a real threat?"
"Yes, I do. I'm now a minority of one, since Dainis was murdered ... by a demon."
Frank's mouth became cottony. His heart thudded. "You think a real demon-?"
"The police called me over to see ... to see what had been done to him. He was sacrificed and his soul sent over to Hell. I think only a demon could have done it. I've seen a configuration-a sign-of that kind only once before, in an ancient book. A drawing of that design using human entrails was made in twelve hundred six A.D. in Rome."
"Did you tell the police that? A demon murdered Webster?"
Carew smiled wryly. "Not quite. Just that someone 'possessed'-a twisted, warped, psychotic mind did that. Someone who knows the rituals and lore of Satanism intimately."
"And there aren't many who qualify."
"No. Fortunately, I had an iron-clad alibi-I was lecturing a class of seven graduate students at the time of the murder."
"But a demon! Demons aren't that common nowadays, are they?"
Carew looked up at Frank. "No. I think it's been hundreds of years since an authentic invocation-a raising-of a demon has been accomplished. I think Webster managed it somehow. It takes a just-so coming together of certain elements."
Frank licked his lips and asked, "Would a highly neurotic young virgin be one of them?"
"Yes, the prime element. Hysteric young virgins, their minds bubbling and seething with psychic energy ... they're the catalyst. Certain combinations of sound reach deep into their souls. Certain designs and certain chants somehow weaken the fabric that separates our universe from the next. There's a leap of that energy-a split nanosecond of penetration, of an opening, and a demon-actually an alien mind from that other universe who is probably tuned to react to that rare opening-is into our universe ... into the girl ... and we are all in mortal danger."
Frank nodded. He decided! "Professor, I've got things to tell you ... "
* * *
Vonda guided Donnathia toward the house. "Would you like a bite to eat? I can mix you a drink if you like. Does your father mind if you have a mild alcoholic drink now and then?"
"I decide those things. He takes orders."
"Oh?" Vonda's cool, calculating, yet passionate eyes traveled Donnathia's spectacular body to her ravishing face. "Yes, I suppose he does. That's the way to treat men, isn't it?"
"It's the way to treat slaves."
Vonda laughed delightedly. "You're my kind of girl." She led the way into the big, somber house. "Would you like to see the upstairs? I have some interesting things you might like."
"You mean I have some interesting things you'd like." Donnathia smiled at Vonda's expression. They were inside the house, standing near the stairs. Donnathia leaned close and whispered, "Do you want to kiss my tits and eat my cunt? "
Vonda gasped slightly. "Well ... how appearances do deceive! I haven't been this surprised in years." Her famous sensual mouth parted in a wise, knowing smile. "Why waste time? We'll only have a few minutes now before suspicions are roused to fever pitch."
"Just ... a lick and a promise." Donnathia started toward the stairs as if she owned the house.
Vonda touched her arm. "By way of the kitchen and the private back stairs is best, under the circumstances, Donna."
Two minutes later, on the second flood, Vonda unlocked a door and Donnathia entered a large, masculine appointed bedroom. The bed was massive, wood-framed, the walls were paneled in cherry wood, the carpeting was forest green, the lamps brass and marble, the pictures were modern non-objective oils-strongly colored, vivid, violent.
Vonda closed and locked the door from the inside. "This is my second, very personal bedroom. The frilly one is for show, to buttress my feminine image." She smiled wryly. "For the increasingly rare photo interviews asked for by the fan magazines."
"Jonathon Dean said you're a closet butch. It's an open secret in Hollywood."
"We keep these things to ourselves-in the business. Gossip leaks out to the jerks, but as long as I'm discreet and keep up my outside image and don't wear men's clothes in public that's as far as it goes. Appearance is all."
Vonda came to Donnathia. She was breathing faster. "You're an actress. You fooled me. You're fooling a lot of people. You know the score." She embraced Donnathia.
"Don't kiss me on the mouth! Not on the face -not anywhere above the neck. I don't want to be mussed. Get back."
Donnathia unfastened her sheer, off-the-shoulder blue gown and carefully stepped out of it. She was naked but for pantyhose and shoes. She toed the blue and silver shoes off and peeled down the pantyhose. She said, glancing at the entranced older woman, "I want you naked, too."
Vonda hastily complied as she feasted her eyes on Donnathia's perfect, lush body.
Donnathia went to the bed and lay on it. She asked, "Do you have any toys in here?"
"Toys?" Vonda pulled her slip up and off.
"Dildoes. If you're a real butch I want you to lick me up and then fuck me hot and heavy till I come."
Vonda gazed at her, again surprised. "My God, how incredible you are." She hastily undid a half bra, pushed down her black panties, and rushed to a dresser. She came to the bed with an extremely realistic soft plastic penis, complete with scrotum, attached to an elastic flesh-tinted harness.
She asked, "Is it too big? It's a little over eight inches."
"This body loves big fat pricks. Come on."
Vonda moaned with happiness. She stepped into the harness and adjusted the wide straps on her hips and in her crotch. The artificial penis projected heavily from her loins.
She climbed onto the bed. She lovingly kissed and fondled one of Donnathia's globular breasts and sucked the button nipple. She was trembling. "You're so beautiful ... "
"Get to eating. We haven't got time for romance." Donnathia pushed Vonda's famous face down to the waiting, open hollow.
Before she dipped her wide, sexy mouth to the lightly fuzzed blonde mound, Vonda asked, "Why are you doing this?"
"I love pleasure. You're probably very good at licking girls off ... and at using that prick. I can use you in my special, inner family, to serve me, if you're really as well connected and influential and knowledgeable as I've heard you are."
Donnathia sank her demonic blue gaze into the woman's mind, through Vonda's suddenly dilated green pupils. "Satan lives. I am his servant on Earth. You are my servant in all things. I claim you. You are mine."
Vonda shook as if she had a terrible fever and violent chills. She sucked air. She groaned.
"Yes ... yes ..."
Donnathia released her. "Eat me!"
Gasping with shock, but still passionately eager, Vonda closed her large, confused green eyes and lowered her head to feast at the moist, entrancingly formed young vulva.
Donnathia soon arched her back. "Ohhh ... yess. Oh, Great Satanachia, this one is superb ... skilled beyond the father ... "
She shivered and panted. She quickly reached a climax. Her stomach muscles knotted under velvety skin. She jerked to a half-sitting position. "NOW-THE PRICK! THE PRICK!" She flopped back, writhing, and drew her knees up to her cushioning breasts.
Vonda came up over Donnathia. She was gasping, wet-mouthed, as she inserted the head of the penis. "My sweet darling ... my master ... " She was barely aware of her words. She arched her hips and buried the big dildo.
Donnathia gripped under her knees with greater strength. Her arms vibrated. Her belly suddenly bloated. Her entire body quaked. "Now ... fuck! Fast! Make this bed shake!"
Vonda moaned with joy and complied. She gripped Donnathia's shoulders and drove the dildo till she was sheened with perspiration. Fast, hard, deep! Each thrust to the hilt, each plunge ending with a slap of flesh against flesh.
From the first giant thrust, Donnathia babbled with pleasure. Internal tremors shook her every few seconds. She rocked under the heavy, powerful thrusts and impacts. After a long, low, keening moan that climaxed in a near shriek of ecstasy, Donnathia cried, "Enough!" She pushed Vonda away with her knees and arms. The big plastic penis slid juicily from her. She lay still for a moment, breathing deeply.
Vonda risked caressing Donnathia's perfect body. "We should go back down now." She checked her diamond-crusted wrist watch. "It's been over ten minutes."
Donnathia nodded. She left the bed with Vonda and dressed. They helped each other attain their former appearance. Donnathia went to the window and parted a translucent orange drapery. "I want you to introduce me to Jack Dixon."
Vonda came to the window. She searched the patio below. She rested her left hand lovingly on Donnathia's waist. "There he is. Are you on the make?"
"Yes. He'll be President."
"Why not go for the man who owns the President? See that fat tub in the tight tux next to Jack? That's Grant Ten-Eyk, the President and major stockholder of the banks. He, and men like him, buy and sell politicians by the dozens. These are the men who really run this world, because they own it."
Donnathia smiled. "Then I'll take both of them ... and more later."
Vonda stared at the girl in wonder.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Grant Ten-Eyk wished his tux collar and tie weren't so tight, and mentally cursed his tailor for not letting out the waist another inch ... as he talked to Jack Dixon. They stood beside the steps to the side door of the big somber house. They were alone, though Grant noticed Dixon's eyes wandering. Ungrateful puppy!
Grant swallowed from his large glass of Scotch on the rocks. "WT&T will be glad to underwrite the campaign up to a million."
Jack became alert. "What do they want?" He automatically ran his fingers along the side of his thick blond hair. It was a tip-off gesture betraying fear and greed, but he didn't realize it.
"Most big corporations have to plan a generation or two ahead. My bank does, too. In effect, we do the world's planning for it. The world's governments don't bother."
"What does WT&T want?"
"Nothing at the moment. Aside from desiring that you do not vote to dismantle the free enterprise system that has made this country great."
Both men smiled.
"I'm not likely to do that. But I'm only thirty years old, Grant. I have some idealism burning in my guts, yet. A sliver of self-respect remains. I don't like the idea of being owned."
"We're all owned, Jack. The difference is a few of us are able to choose our masters and bargain for price and working conditions."
"Who's at the top? Who is it who looks down and holds all the mortgages?"
"Oh ... maybe David R. in this country. There are a few." Grant noticed Dixon's gaze shift away. Grant turned and saw that gut-twisting blonde beauty who had been turning heads for the past hour. She was still being towed around by Vonda Hartford.
Grant said, "That's an incredible girl."
Jack murmured, "I'm interested."
"She looks too young, even for a discreet fuck. You've got to be careful who you mess with, Mr. Gubernatorial Candidate."
"She ought to be gotten away from that old lez. Let's walk over and meet her. It's about time."
"I'll have my staff check her out. Stunning creature."
"She glows. You notice that? She glows."
Jack Dixon moved to intercept the path of Vonda and Donnathia. Grant Ten-Eyk accompanied him.
Jonathon Dean lounged near the women and snagged a fifth glass of champagne from a passing waiter.
Vonda spotted the approaching candidate and bank president. She whispered, "I think the eventual next President wants to meet you."
Donnathia whispered back, "It's about time!"
Vonda said, "Mr. Dixon! You haven't met the real star of my party, have you? This is Miss Donna Kaiser. Donna, this is our handsome, dashing next Governor."
Dixon kissed Donnathia's hand. "You're incredibly beautiful." He lifted his eyes to hers and was paralyzed-taken-in that instant. He gasped, mind spinning. He suddenly knew he had to be alone with this utterly beautiful girl. She was the most desirable young woman in the world. She'd make a perfect wife.
Vonda was unaware of what had happened. "And this is Grant Ten-Eyk, only the President of the country's fifth largest bank and I imagine this state's richest man."
Donnathia smiled. "I must add you to my closest circle of admirers."
Grant took the full power of her electric blue gaze. A prejudice was hypnotically set into his mind: "Donna Kaiser is available, she is sweet, virginal, and she is to be trusted."
He said huskily, "If I get any closer, my child, I'll be unable to keep my hands from admiring you."
Vonda laughed, "You dirty old man."
Donnathia turned back to Jack Dixon. "I'm sure you'll make a wonderful governor." She held him with her eyes. "I've always wondered what a famous man is really like."
"With your beauty and charm, Donna, you'll be even more famous, soon."
"I'm the homebody type. I want to be the woman behind the great man."
Jack Dixon grinned and said, "Get thee behind me."
Donnathia's eyes widened briefly. "Do you believe in Satan?"
"I believe in God, as every right-thinking politician does. Therefore, I suppose I must accept Satan."
"Maybe-" Donnathia stopped herself. She then said, "I wish I were five years older. I'd marry you." She looked at him admiringly.
Dixon laughed. "That's very good for the ego. I'm tempted to let you marry me now."
Vonda said, sensing she was losing Donnathia, "Listen to the egotist! She's only a teenager, Jack. It would never do to be too close. Your opponent would-"
Donnathia hissed at her, "Shut up!"
Vonda blinked and paled. "I didn't mean-"
Grant said smoothly, "Properly chaperoned, with your parents present, my dear, I'm sure a friendship with Jack wouldn't be out of line. May we know how old you are?"
"I'm a very mature fifteen, kind sir. My father is over there ... " Donnathia looked toward the other end of the crowded patio and spotted Frank deep in private conversation with Professor Carew. The older man looked grim.
Her face darkened with anger. She reformed her face. She smiled dazzlingly at Dixon. "I'd love to see you again, sometime, whenever ... "
She glanced again toward Frank and Carew. She continued, "Father and I go everywhere together. He owns a brick factory and he makes all kinds of money. We live in Palos Verdes. I'll make him make a big contribution to your campaign."
Jack ran his fingers along his temples. "I'll be delighted to see you again, of course." He continued brushing his hair with his fingertips.
Vonda said, "It's a small world. You never know when you'll meet."
Jonathon Dean came forward. "Donna, your father wants to see you right away."
Donnathia glared at Dean for an instant, then nodded. "Oh, thank you, Jonathon." She shook hands with Dixon and Ten-Eyk. When they clasped her hand they were further dazzled. She said, "I must go to my father now for a moment. Excuse me."
Frank saw her approach. He had kept an eye on her as best he could, and had noted her talk with Dixon and the rumpled fat man who looked, somehow, like a power in the world. He said to Carew, "Here she comes. I'll probably have to lie like a thief."
Carew said, "Call me when you can. I'll exit with a polite social smile." He did so.
Frank then pretended not to see Donnathia approach. He drained his glass and stared at it for a second. He headed for the bar and came face to face with her.
She asked suspiciously, "Why were you talking so long with that man?"
"I was trying to find out if he is dangerous. If Webster could raise you from Hell, his teacher might know too much."
"I already know he knows too much! That spell he chanted was like a wall around him. I couldn't get into his mind!" Donnathia took Frank's arm and strolled with him. She smiled, but her whispering voice was hard with rage and command. I can't take any chances. He has to be killed!"
"Master, that would not be a good idea. Not so soon after Webster's death."
"I will not do it myself. His soul would be of high value, and I would acquire more powers, but the Plan would be endangered. Sooner or later Carew has to be killed!"
"He didn't suspect you. He only chanted that spell as a joke. He's only a scholar. He jokes about gullible people who believe in Demonology."
Donnathia walked in silence for a moment. "Did he mention having any ancient books?"
"No. Actually, we talked mostly about how odd a character Webster was. He did say ... I think ... that Webster had claimed to have a copy of a legendary grimoire. But it wasn't found in the house. He thinks it was what was burned in the fireplace."
Donnathia chuckled. "I'll wait, then. His death would alarm the police and again lead to us ... as having had contact with him: He is no real danger without a copy of that book."
Frank asked, "Did you make progress with Dixon?"
She gloated. "Oh, yes. He's mine when I want him. It's only a question of time and place. But I've discovered that fat man is the real power here. He is a buyer. Dixon is a seller, an order taker. I must have them both."
"What about Vonda Hartford? She's panting after you. In fact, here she comes."
"Vonda is one of my slaves now. Incidentally, Daddy, she's much better at licking my cunt than you are ... and she fucks me very well, too. Very well!"
The demon in Donna looked out amusedly at Frank.
Vonda asked, "You're not leaving, are you ... master?" The word came reluctantly, embarrassedly, to her lips.
"No. Vonda, I want you to get that rich fat man away from Dixon and those other people."
"Those others are his wife and sons."
"I don't care if they're Mary Magdalen and two Disciples. I want Grant Ten-Eyk alone up in that man's bedroom of yours."
"But, master-"
"Obey me-in all things!"
Vonda bowed her head and moved away.
Donnathia said to Frank, "At our next coven meeting I'll put her through Hell. Do you fancy fucking the famous Vonda Hartford?"
Frank answered, "That would be an experience."
She chuckled. "Leave here. I don't want you talking any more with that Carew. Go home."
"How will you get home?"
"Vonda will take care of that. Now, GO!"
Frank walked away. He was content to leave. He had some thinking to do.
* * *
Grant Ten-Eyk wheezed up the last of the back stairs behind Vonda. "I hate mysteries. I hate secret meetings at parties. What are you setting me up for, you man-hating witch?" He said it fondly. He and Vonda Hartford had been friends for years. His bank handled her fortune. And he respected her and trusted her.
"Grant, you'll thank me." She hesitated, then unlocked the bedroom door. She knew she was betraying the man ... but Donnathia was too strong ... too alluring, too much the perfect sex object. Oh, how glorious it had been to tongue that sweet pussy! And how magnificently, how greedily, had the master taken the dildo! How wild and uninhibited had been her orgasms!
Grant entered the room. As he entered, Vonda pressed the key into his right hand. She went back downstairs. Grant saw Donnathia standing by the bed. His first impulse was to turn and walk out. His instincts and good judgment all prodded him to get the hell out of there! But she was a sweet young girl, sexy, yes, but she couldn't help that. He had gotten the impression when talking to her earlier with Jack Dixon that she was bold, but virginal, that she held in her a smoldering sexuality that would erupt with the right man. In a way the girl was like a bomb. Frightening. Her blue eyes were amazingly expressive ... fascinating ... hypnotic. Grant found himself closing and locking the door-and not a word had been spoken.
When he turned to her she had advanced to the foot of the bed. God, what a body! He wanted to rape the girl. He said, "Do you want my help in some way, Miss Kaiser?"
"Yes, Grant. Come here."
Puzzled, lured, wary, he crossed the room. Her eyes were like beacons, guiding him. The closer he got to her the more powerful became her physical aura and strange psychic energy. She hadn't turned it on like this down in the patio! His mind screamed, GET OUT, GET FREE!
Donnathia held his gaze easily. She held his mind, his will. "I have something I've been planning to give to Jack Dixon, but I'll give it to you instead. In a few days I'll have it for Jack, too."
She reached up to unhook her gown. "Get naked, Grant. You're going to fuck me like a stallion!"
"No ... no ... " He strained to turn away, to break her grip. He couldn't look away! He knew his hands were fumbling with his belt. A cold terror washed through him.
"You have a tough mind, Grant. But no mortal can now repel me. I have powers." She released her gown. The silky, translucent blue cloth slid down off her full, pointed naked breasts. She released his eyes to allow him to see her, to watch the unveiling of her spectacular young body. "Now touch me. Put your hands on these breasts."
Beads of sweat popped out on his shiny forehead, on his upper lip. He watched, mesmerized, as his hands came up and closed over the large, soft-firm, warm cones of flesh. In the back of his mind he knew he was being set up; there had to be a camera grinding away in a peephole ... How could she make him behave this way? Something in the drinks? Vonda in on it? His hands stroked and squeezed and fondled. His hands enjoyed the touching. And he began to crumble inside, to give in under the steady pressure of her irresistible will.
Donnathia stood like a queen-a master!-as he caressed her magnificent body. She commanded, "Stop!" When his arms fell away, she stepped forward, snaked her arms around his neck, pressed against him and kissed him with a lasciviousness, an uninhibited, steamy sensuality of warm, yielding lips and mouth and tongue so erotically effective that he quivered like a boy. His penis was in full erection, throbbing. His arms went around her.
She slid her hot mouth to his ear and whispered, "You're going to fuck me like a stallion, Grant. You'll be a young man again for me."
"Yes ... I'll try." He worried about his virility. More than half the time with Janice, his wife of twenty-four years, he was impotent. But now, with this incredible young girl-
"You will not fail me!" She took his mouth again. Her hands dropped to his pants and found his hardness. "You will obey me in all things."
He capitulated. He had never in his life experienced such a light, tantalizing touch. His heart hammered. He had to have her! To hell with the consequences!
"Get naked, Grant." She stepped away and climbed onto the bed. She lay waiting, one leg flung wide, the other drawn up, one hand resting on the knee.
Grant stripped to his socks and crawled onto the bed to her. He cursed his big belly and spindly legs. But he was proud of his stiff organ. No woman had ever affected him this way. He wanted to suck on her nipples and go down on her before entering, but she said, "You can do that between times. I want you in me now, NOW!"
He felt her delicate touch, guiding ... he penetrated! He was flushed with pride and pleasure. He gasped as he sank into the hot, jellied, squeezing world of her deep vagina.
"Good ... now fuck ... fuck hard ... fast!" Donnathia undulated under his weight.
He responded, panting, plunging inexpertly, out of rhythm, but moaning in the sea of resulting sensation. He was lost-lost!-sucked into a sweet, slippery, velvety furnace of intense, blossoming pleasure. He could not hold back. The chasm opened before him. He fell into a howling, jerking, blinding orgasm. He spurted and grunted and whimpered, head thrown back, neck corded, and spurted-And did not see the cold blue eyes watching as the lovely body worked under him, and did not see the smile.
Suddenly, in the keen, exquisite, final seconds of his transport, a thread of ice seemed to dart into his penis and pierce his insides-up, in one frozen instant-up through his body to his brain ... where it coiled and seemed to melt. He had never felt such a thing! He collapsed dazed, and rolled off Donnathia. He wondered dully if he had ruptured something. Had that been a minor heart attack? It hadn't been pain exactly. He heard the low, throaty, triumphant laugh so evil ... and looked to her. She was up on an elbow, gloating.
She said, "You're a slave to Satan now. The incubus has been implanted."
It seemed normal and proper to agree with that. He nodded. A tiny self was screaming somewhere. It made him feel uncomfortable; he wished it would stop. He wanted to serve her and through her-The Master. He was happy. For so many years he had believed in nothing. He had been cynical and skeptical. Now he had certainty. He served the Old Ones.
Donnathia said, "How and when can I get Jack Dixon alone for him to fuck me?"
"I'm having him out for an afternoon on my yacht this next weekend. It's a stag cruise for drinking-and fishing."
"I'll be along as a surprise guest. Who will be the others?"
Grant recited the names of two other bankers, the publisher of one of the three biggest newspapers in the state, a U.S. Senator.
"I'll have them all! Perfect! The Plan will be furthered even more!" She smiled. She flipped his penis disdainfully. "Get dressed. We've been up here long enough. We can't have talk, can we? You leave first."
Grant obeyed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Frank led the way down the ramp to the exclusive Long Spar Club's boat slips on the Marina del Rey. It was a hot, sunshiny Sunday afternoon. The huge marina was full of moving sails and power boats.
Donnathia followed a few paces behind. She wore a bright blue mini-bikini under an orange and blue playsuit. Her long, wavy blonde hair broke at her shoulders and trailed down her back and to her breasts. She wore large mirror-lensed sunglasses.
Frank said, "Slip number ten-B ... there it is." He pointed to a large tri-level power yacht at the end of the moorage. It was at least sixty feet long. Frank limped forward and was gut-scared. He had lied to Donnathia. Grant Ten-Eyk had called and given the name of his club, the slip number, and directions to Tonga Way on the teeming, newly developed south side of the vast marina.
But this was a different club, on Easter Island Way, and the yacht belonged to a dealer. Frank had rented it. Inside the main cabin waited Professor Carew with his book, with his knowledge. The yacht was decked out with flags and colorful pads on the bow and in the fantail cockpit. Frank didn't know if what they planned would work. It was a deadly risk.
They reached the yacht. Frank turned to help Donnathia up the portable steps to the railing. The boat dipped and sloshed against the moorage from waves created by other large boats on their way to the sea.
She said, "Where is everybody?"
"Probably down in the lounge getting drunk." Frank urged her down into the cockpit. "Or maybe we're early." He followed her onto the boat. This was a critical moment.
Donnathia was suspicious. She moved slowly toward the closed main cabin door. Frank got into position behind her. She scowled. "This isn't right. It reeks of-"
The cabin door opened suddenly before her. Short, thick-bodied, bearded Professor Carew stood within. "Come in, Donnathia."
Frank lunged forward and shoved her down into the cabin. She fell, off balance, and sprawled against a built-in cabinet. Her head struck the sharp edge of the wall cabinet directly above. She staggered and fell to the carpeted deck, dazed. It was a stroke of good luck. Carew sprang upon her with a pair of handcuffs. "Now, Kaiser! The hood!"
Frank scrambled into the cabin and snatched a heavy velvet draw-stringed hood from a shelf beside the door. He saw that Carew had the cuffs on Donnathia's wrists, behind her back. He was chanting, eyes closed, face intent. Frank recognized the chant; it was the shield spell the professor had spoken in Vonda Hartford's patio at the party. Frank obeyed Carew's previously given instructions. He closed his eyes and fumbled the hood over Donnathia's head.
She was becoming aware of what was happening. She kicked blindly, savagely at the two men. "You'll pay in Hell for this! You'll die in mortal agony as I cut out your liver and eat it before your eyes. Frank, you first, my loyal daddy! I'll chew off your balls and stuff your prick into your ass! I'll string your guts over your body and send your soul to Satanathia for special treatment!"
She caught Carew on the knee with a lucky kick. He cried out with pain. Her shoes were soled with hardened rope. Carew had some nylon cord. They had to tie her feet. But he signaled to Frank, pointing to his mouth.
Frank had forgotten an incantation Carew had had him memorize and repeat aloud the past few days, as often as possible. Especially, he was supposed to recite it now. He did not feel foolish as he fervently recited the words. "Great Jehovam Sabaoth, our Lord, harken to my prayer. Free me from my bewitchment. Loosen my sin. Let there be turned aside whatever evil may come to end my life." Frank made the sign of the cross and of the fish in the air as he spoke.
Carew signaled and the two men wrestled with Donnathia, to bind her feet. They took heavy kicks. She was terribly powerful, in an insane rage. She writhed and twisted like a python. She kept trying to work the hood off her head. The drawstring was knotted tight under her chin. The cloth billowed with her frantic, heavy breathing. Air slots had been cut into the velvet.
Her voice deepened to a masculine bellow. "XILKA, XIOKA, BESA! I CALL! I CALL!"
The yacht began to rock heavily in its slip. It creaked and groaned. Her muscles became like steel. Her skin dripped sweat. Her pulse hit an impossible speed.
Yet Frank and Carew managed to loop the high-strength nylon cord around her lower legs and ankles and draw it tight. They knotted it again and again.
She roared, "BAGAHI LACA BACHABE! COME! COME! COME!"
Carew gasped, "Her arms!" He grabbed for more cord.
Donnathia's hands were running blood. The handcuffs had been closed tight around her wrists, but she was intent on pulling her hands free even if it meant dislocating her thumbs and shredding skin and muscle from bone. She whipped and convulsed her body to frustrate them. "NO! NO! I SAY NO! YOU WILL DIE! O PRUSLAS! O BAEL! I CALL! I CALL! I CALL!"
The carpeted deck shook, suddenly, to a great blow from beneath, in the hull. The big cruiser trembled. Again the blow reverberated. Again! Carew was not used to such extreme physical exertion. He panted and blew. He cursed and fought to loop her arms and wrists once more ... once more ... The struggle had disarranged her playsuit. One of her bikini top straps had ripped loose. Her left breast-full, white, trembling with the pounding of her heart-was completely exposed, its nipple a hard pink button.
It was done. The two men let themselves be thrown away from her powerfully flexing body. The terrifying hammer blows continued to shake the yacht. Carew gasped, "Cast off. That thing is stronger than I thought possible."
Frank refused to let himself think. He lurched out of the cabin to the sunlight. He limped to the heaving rail, climbed down to the slip, cast off the stern line and ran as quickly as he could to the bow lines. The yacht seemed alive, in agony, as it yawed and pitched and groaned in counterpoint to the massive internal blows. Professor Carew had climbed to the canopied pilot house. Huge twin diesel's coughed to life and muttered to themselves. Frank got aboard again. He climbed up to the bridge. Carew sat in the plush Captain's chair and awkwardly backed the cruiser free of its berth. Frank asked, "How far out to sea do we have to go?"
"Free of this clutter." The professor waved at the thick traffic of small craft in the marina.
"Shall I go down and keep an eye on her?"
"No! If those bonds can't hold it we can't prevail. Don't get near it. Pray it doesn't find a way to use those psi powers in different, more effective ways."
Frank shivered. 'It!' He had never really accepted the demon as an alien, a monster from somewhere else. No-he had, but ... He lowered his head. "Oh, God. Donna ... "
It took forty minutes to creep along the traffic lanes in the marina to the sea channel and then cruise slowly among the crowds of waterbug-like catamarans endlessly tacking toward the outer breakwater, among the other powered boats, always yielding to the criss-crossing sailboats, large and small. The yacht lurched continually to the endless, smashing blows from an invisible force. But the impacts seemed lighter, feebler, than at the beginning. Finally, they were cutting through the endless swells, the great city only an ugly smear of smog on the eastern horizon. And the erratic, weakened blows against the hull and decks ended.
Carew studied the automatic pilot and set the cruiser on a long, slow circling turn. He smiled at Frank. "I've never exorcised a demon before, but I'm happy that it's tired."
"Demon for real? Or malignant, dominant, schizoid persona?"
"We'll find out. I'm not sure I want final answers, but I've committed myself to this madness." Carew rubbed his full beard. "Whatever that is down there, it should be dispossessed ... or killed."
Frank was scared, more than ever before. "I'm afraid to go down there."
"Yes. I am, too. But we must do God's work." Carew led the way down the ladder.
When they entered the cabin, Donnathia lay quiet on the deck, a small, tightly trussed young woman. She stirred and whimpered with discomfort. She called in a pathetic, frightened voice, "Daddy? What's happened? My arms hurt. I can't see! I can hardly breathe!"
Frank went to her. "Donna! Oh, baby, I'll-" Carew seized Frank's arm and pulled him back. "Don't undo that hood! What kind of fool are you?"
"The demon's gone!"
"It's a trick! Can't you think?"
"Daddy? Who's that? I'm suffocating." She began to cry.
Frank pulled free of Carew's grip ... but didn't undo the hood drawstring. He knelt beside Donnathia. "Honey, the demon is still in you. It's hiding, playing games. We have to try to exorcise it-drive it out of you. Do you understand?"
"No. Please, Daddy. I'm scared. I can't breathe! Please, please, please take it off!"
"You can get air, honey. The slits on the hood give you enough air." He clenched his fists. "It'll only be a little while, then you'll be really free, and it won't come back. It won't make you do awful things."
"But my arms ... and my legs hurt!"
Frank could see the blood-smeared cords and handcuffs, the puffed, purplish hands, the torn skin and raw muscle. "I'm sorry, baby. Hold on. Hold on. It'll all be over in a little while."
She shivered visibly-and lay still and quiet.
"Donna?"
She laughed evilly, confidently. "Exorcism! You trivial fools! I'll make you two eat each other's shit for this!"
Frank began to weep. Carew drew Frank away. "Let's begin."
They drew a double pentagram, one six inches within the other, on the carpeting around Donnathia, using white chalk. They lit white candles and positioned them in small white dishes at the points of the outer pentagram. They poured pure, non-homogenized goat's milk into small bowls and placed them at the points of the inner pentagram. Carew placed small wooden crucifixes in the recessed angles of the outer pentagram, the top of the cross outward. All the while he chanted in Latin, over and over, "Lofaham, Solomon, Iyouel, Iyosenaoui."
And Donnathia laughed.
Carew took an old, yellowed sheaf of pages from a clear plastic folder. He handled them carefully. He began to read aloud in a strong voice. "O Spirit, because thou hast diligently answered my demands, I do hereby license thee to depart without injury to man or beast. Depart, I say, and never return to this vessel. Be thou exorcised by the Sacred Rites of Magic. I conjure thee to withdraw peaceably and quietly, and may the peace of God-"
Donnathia's peals of mocking laughter overrode his voice for a few seconds.
"-May the peace of God continue forever between thee and me. Amen."
"If Webster had read that weak little thing, maybe it might have had a small effect. You poor ASS!" Donnathia howled with mirth.
Frank watched and knew that Carew was wasting his time. If a true exorcism was possible, it was beyond his knowledge and skills. Frank sensed that vital elements were missing. Some part of the ritual had not been done, some invocation probably known only to Webster. Or in that burned volume of ancient lore. But Fran kept silent as Carew repeated the spell three times.
Through it all Donnathia chuckled and made obscene remarks, or told of particularly horrible tortures in store for "Daddy" and Carew.
As he finished the third chanting, Carew's eyes met Frank's. He shook his head slightly. He carefully turned one of the manuscript pages. He took a deep breath and began reading another spell against evil:
Donnathia chortled. "I could save you a lot of time, Carew, by telling you that Albertus Magnus was an old, gravel-brained idiot. Quoting his addle-pated incantations to harm me is so ludicrous as to be beyond credence. If you want me out of this well-used cunt you'll have to do far, far better than that."
Carew doggedly continued. He repeated it three times. And he said, "I oppose you in all things in all ways, demon. Your words do not sway me. Nor will they, sway the father of the girl you hold in thrall."
"Frank'll get tired of this game sooner or later. He'll make a deal. We'll bargain. Won't we, Frank? How about thinking about this: once I get my incubus planted in Jack Dixon, I'll let you have Donna back for ... oh, six months out of the year, for the first year or two."
Frank shouted, "NO! GET OUT OF MY DAUGHTER!"
"Sure you want me out, Daddy? I'll let you fuck her all you want. Will she let you? I'll bet you'd like to suck this nice naked titty right now, wouldn't you?"
"SHUT UP!"
Carew said, "We must continue until every ritual and exorcism is exhausted."
It was twilight. The big cruiser plowed on through the ocean swells, circling, circling, circling ... Frank went up to shut off the diesel's to insure fuel to return. He turned on the lights. Hours later, as the yacht drifted and rolled easily, Carew began the twelfth chant. His voice was raspy.
Frank sat tiredly in a chair in the candlelit cabin and dispiritedly watched and listened. He noted that he would have to replace the candles again. They were guttering low in the dishes.
Donnathia said, "Neither one of you really believe in God. You don't believe in anything beyond bricks and books."
Carew began, "I abjure you, ancient serpent, by the Judge of the living and the dead, by the Creator of the universe, who has power to send you to Gehenna, that you depart forthwith from this child. He orders you cursed-"
"And that one is so pathetic! It's a Seventeenth Century exorcism to drive out a poltergeist, not a full-fledged demon, with powers. Anything left, Carew?"
The professor slumped. He stared down at the hooded, bound girl in disarrayed orange and blue playsuit and bikini. He watched the exposed breast rise and fall with her breathing. Carew put the old manuscript back into its plastic folder. He motioned for Frank to follow him. He went out into the fantail cockpit. He sat in the luxurious, curved lounge seat at the stern. Frank sat beside him.
Carew looked at the ocean, at the glow of light on the eastern horizon. He finally said, "Nothing I can do will drive that thing out of her."
"I wish I had a drink." Frank stood up and limped around the cockpit. A slow anger was growing in him.
Carew said, "I've done everything I know. Maybe if we really did believe in God ... "
"Oh, shit! I believe there's a real demon in her. She couldn't have done all that by herself! I believe in that demon, and I believe in Satan and all that stinking, evil nest of things in Hell ... and I believe in God! This business has made a believer out of me. I'm convinced."
Carew sighed. "I think I am, too. But the exorcisms haven't worked."
"Why not? You said they would. 'One of them is sure to work,' you said."
"The knowledge required died with Webster and burned with that precious book. The fool! He should have shared it ... put it in a vault ... in a university."
"That doesn't help us now, does it? What do we do-keep her tied up, with that hood on her head till she dies? We have to go back to the Marina with this boat in the morning at the latest. You've got your work to get back to! I've got a business. WHAT DO WE DO?"
"If you believe in God and Hell and Satan and that demon, Frank, you have to believe its threats and promises. We can't let it loose again."
Frank stared at him. He scowled. "So we're sitting on the horns."
"Very sharp horns. It is almost kill or be killed."
"I can't kill my own daughter ... and I can't let you do it." Frank ran his fingers through his hair. "Jesus!"
"I said almost. There's one last way of driving a demon from a loved one. It's very risky, and only you can do it."
"Well, you son of a bitch, tell me what it is!"
"It's ancient lore that a demon cannot live in a dead body. If it is caught in a dying person it must leave or die with that person."
"What are we supposed to do-dunk her over the side till she almost drowns and hope the demon is scared enough to leave her?"
"That's one way, but it lacks fine control. The thing in her won't leave until absolutely convinced its host body is beyond saving or is already so far gone that life cannot return."
"God damn you, Carew! Say what you're getting at!"
The professor hesitated. "This is madness. I don't want this to be happening." He rubbed his hands continually. "I want out. This whole venture-"
"Tell me, or by God, I'll throw you overboard!"
"All right. You have to strangle her. You have to convince it that your only out, to save yourself and me and ... the world ... is to kill her and it in the process. And you have to do it! You have to mean it! You have to be willing to kill her, Frank. If it works it will work because you are utterly convinced that her death is necessary and worth the sacrifice. You have to face the probability that if the demon leaves it will still be too late to revive Donna."
Frank sat heavily on the seat. "What happens to the thing once it leaves her body?"
"It cannot survive without a host. Only an invocation of a special kind with a special host waiting, under special circumstances will permit it to enter another person. It will be sucked back into the black universe. It cannot stay in our universe. It has no choice."
Frank put his face in his hands. After a long time he asked, "What do we do if she dies?"
Carew sounded sick. "We confess to murder and go to prison. Or we weight the body, dump it, and we report your daughter missing at sea. We hope we get away with it."
Frank began to weep.
Carew sat and watched the ocean and the glow in the sky to the east. After a few minutes he went to the side rail and vomited. When he had finished he went forward, into the cabin, and on into the bathroom. He returned five minutes later and sat in the same place. He said, "She's calling for you."
Frank said, "I'm so scared I'm about to shit in my pants." His voice shook.
Carew said, "I just did."
They both laughed hysterically.
When their laughter subsided, Frank slumped low and stared up at the sky. "We're all monsters. God bless us, every one." He took a deep, shuddering breath and stood up. He entered the main cabin. Carew followed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She was sobbing, obviously in great pain, when Frank stepped down into the lounge. She heard him and cried, "Daddy?" Her voice was anguished from inside the hood. Frank winced at the sight of her raw, purple arms and wrists where the handcuffs and cord bit deep. Her feet, too, were swollen and purple.
"Yes, baby." He knelt beside her. He covered her bare breast with part of her torn playsuit.
"I can't stand it anymore. I can't! Please untie me!"
"I will in a few minutes, baby. It'll only be a few minutes more. I have to do something, then it'll be all over, one way or another."
"What? What are you going to do?"
Frank swallowed. His throat was tight. His guts were watery. Did he have to tell her? He looked to Carew. The professor nodded.
"Honey, I have to ... There's only one way to kill the demon. I have to kill it to save everything. To save myself and the professor and the country and the ... the world ... " His voice broke.
"I hurt so much! I hurt! I don't care anymore. Please-do it. I don't care what it is. It can't hurt anymore." She sobbed and moaned. Her voice was weak, watery, jagged with pain and tears.
Frank closed his eyes and put his hands around her soft, slender throat. He gasped, "I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry, I'm sorry ... "
She jerked and he felt her pulse immediately begin to pound. The demon spoke. "Before you try that, Frank, I'll tell you I won't let go until your precious 'Donna' is gone beyond recovery. If you want a vegetable for a daughter, go ahead."
"I'd rather she was dead than alive somewhere in her brain while you go on to-"
"Evicting me from this body won't save your world, O noble father." Donnathia laughed. "I took Vonda's advice and planted my fourth incubus where it will do more good for Satan than in a mere politician. This civilization is ruled by big money, not big swords as in the ancient past. My latest incubus is nesting in the fat old body of the president of the banks. I made him fuck me at the party, after you left." She laughed again. "That 'child' will help carry on the Plan. And when it is mature, it can plant an incubus of its own in an appropriate young woman of good social position, and she in turn can marry an appropriate up-and-coming politician. Maybe even Jack Dixon after all."
"You're lying!" Frank squeezed Donnathia's neck. His thumbs began to sink into her throat. "You haven't-"
The demon wheezed, cackling with amusement, "I've planted four incubi, Daddy! We never tell mortal allies everything! I have 'children' in Jimmy Massinsky ... Jonathon Dean ... Grant Ten-Eyk ... and in YOU!" Her chest heaved to draw a hissing breath and to expel it in a horrible travesty of laughter.
"YOU'RE LYING!" All his rage and hate and fear flowed into his big hands. He vaguely heard Carew praying, chanting. The demon was lying, had to be lying ...
Frank suddenly realized he had to see her eyes. He had to know when the demon had left her. There was no chance of saving Donna otherwise. He kept one hand tight on her neck, constricting her breathing. With the other he plucked at the knotted drawstring.
Abruptly, Carew was beside him, pulling his hand away. "What are you doing? No! It'll have you! No! I warned you, you can't uncover the eyes!"
"I have to see when to stop. I have to!" He pushed Carew away.
"NO! YOU POOR FOOL-" Carew's face was twisted with desperation. He lunged for the suitcase he had brought aboard. He pulled out a .22 calibre nine-shot target pistol.
Frank surged to his feet and tore the gun from the smaller, weaker man's hands. He knew what he had to do. A plan of his own, every contingency thought through, was in his mind. Pure. Clear. Absolute. He shot the man in the stomach. The sound was flat and sharp.
Carew doubled over and fell, groaning. "My God ... " He turned amazed eyes up to Frank. "You-"
Frank shot him between the eyes. The bullet hole was small and round and deep for an instant, then it overflowed with blood. Carew lay twitching. His fingers scrabbled in the carpeting for long seconds before becoming still.
Frank was panting. He knelt. He took a pen knife from his pocket and cut the drawstring of the hood over Donnathia's head. His hands shook. Donnathia was gasping, recovering from the strangling squeeze of his strong hands.
Frank prayed, "Dear God, let me win. Let me do your will in this. Let me have my daughter. Please God ..." He pulled the hood away.
"NOW!" She crowed. Blue hell burned in her eye sockets.
Frank reeled on his knees. He was impaled by her searing gaze. He whimpered.
"You are a fool. Fools die! Untie me! Cut me free!"
Frank's mind was ablaze, dazzled, floating ... He was dizzy. But a core survived the onslaught and resisted. If there are demons there is Evil. If there is Evil, there is Good. If there is Good, there is a God. If there is a God I will serve Him!
"OBEY ME! YOU WILL OBEY ME IN ALL THINGS!"
But the knife dropped from his hand.
"OBEY ME! OBEY ME!" she screamed. Her fiend's eyes glared.
I will serve Him!
Frank's hands closed around her neck again. He squeezed. He was still captured by her fire eyes, but he tightened his grip. He wept and gasped and trembled-but he pressed his thumbs brutally deep into her throat.
A great blow crashed against the yacht's hull. The deck shook. The cruiser heeled over ten degrees. Another great impact! Another! The lounge resounded to the heavy, terrifying thuds.
I will serve God!
Donnathia's blue eyes bulged. Her face darkened and mottled. But the hate and Evil were still glaring out at Frank. Then the hammer blows against the boat stopped.
Suddenly he felt a terrible pain in his chest-an agonizing pressure around his heart. A fist closing. And he knew it was the demon! And he knew it was a last, desperate attempt to survive. It might kill him, but the boat would be spotted in a day or two, and she would be found, apparently a victim of a homicidal father ... She would have a story ready.
The pain in his chest was unendurable! I will not yield! He hunched and glared down into the glazing, dimming blue eyes. She began to convulse. The body voided urine and feces. The pain slackened. Frank shouted in his mind, Leave! Leave her! His fingers were iron claws embedded in her throat. He shook the limp body. He bellowed aloud, "LEAVE HER! LEAVE HER!" He sobbed and held on and on. Then ... he experienced a coldness. An unseen essence rushed from the body of his daughter. For an instant it enveloped him in a cloud of blackness of mind ... and was gone.
He painfully straightened his fingers and took his hands from the corpse's bruised neck. He knew there was no hope. But with an anguished cry, he slammed his fist down on her chest. Again! And he fastened his mouth on hers and forced air into the still lungs. There was no response. He gave up after half an hour.
He turned off the yacht's lights and sat in the fantail staring at the night sky until dawn. His head felt funny. Then he weighted both bodies and lowered them into the sea. He cleaned the lounge. Then he started the diesel's and headed back to the Marina.
His service to God wasn't complete. He had three incubi to kill, and then ... He frowned. His head hurt. Wasn't it four to kill? Hadn't Donnathia said ...? Headache! Three. Yes, three.
