Netherworlds: Night of the Hallowed

The sound of the forest died away, and the gentle evening breeze seemed to stop completely. A feeling of great emptiness filled the air, as if the very nocturnal life of the forest was being drained away. The banshee was drawing near.

A moaning sigh rustled the leaves like a wind as the banshee appeared to Keira as a white glow. Keira felt the hairs on her neck stand on end in the cold and awe that radiated from the being's body of white mist.

"You come into my forest, unafraid." The banshee spoke with a deep feminine voice, as its mist converged among the trees – a solid white glow, vaguely female in shape.

"I bear the charms of Anac-Burrein. You hunger cannot drain me."

"Then pleasant company you may make. Much time has passed since I had the pleasure of conversation. For that is why you are here, is it not?" The banshee said, and Keira began to draw the conclusion that it was perhaps far more intelligent than she had first thought. But at least the being seemed docile enough – it did not look like it was about to flee into the forest like a startled deer.

"Something is loose in your forest." Keira said coldly. "Something is feeding upon my people."

For a while the banshee did not reply, and Keira began to wonder if it had been a bad idea to try to converse with it. At the very least, she had wasted most of an evening hiking to the top of the forest; at worst, the banshee might try to trick her for its own benefit.

"Not a wolf." Keira continued, trying to coax some reply from the creature. "Not a vampyre. Perhaps a demon. Perhaps a demon lurks within your forest."

"There is only one demon in my forest, and it stands before me." The banshee replied almost immediately, its voice cold and dark. "Yes..." It continued when Keira stood, shocked. "Yes, I can sense you inside and out. You carry the demon within you."

"I seek the demon that is taking my people." Keira said firmly. Few people dared question her eldritch origins, but the banshee did not live with the same taboos; it was stalling, changing the subject.

"Yes, I know what it is you seek." The banshee said wistfully, and it swirled suddenly, like a bank of mist caught in a whirlwind. When it stopped swirling it was inches from Keira's face, a naked female form in pure white, flowing together within a frosty cloud. "But why should I tell you."

"Because..." Keira began, and then realised that the banshee would have no reason to help her. "Because my people demand the beast be caught. If my hunt fails, they will search themselves. They will come with axe and flame and they will tear the forest apart until they find the horror that has slain their girls. They will destroy your forest."

"That is no reason. That is merely a threat." The banshee spat in a slow, thunderous tone that trembled the forest floor. "A hollow threat. That which takes your girls suits my needs, for when it is done with them it throws their husks to me. Oh, their pain and terror is so great that they make an easy feast until their breath fails; yes, feeding has been good in the nights since the monster roams these trees."

Keira felt her anger rise up inside her like water boiling in a kettle. Feeling her temper snap, she snatched her shortsword from its scabbard and cut forwards, jumping into the banshee in a pirouette of spinning blades that would have cut any mortal foe to ribbons. But the banshee was not of the corporeal world – that Keira had known even as her temper snapped, and it merely parted around the blade like mist, and recombined in the very space in which she stood.

Feeling herself fill with cold, Keira was rooted to the spot. The banshee was filling her from within, the chill mist of its ethereal body converging on her flesh and skin, and she felt it try to invade her mind. Racked with cold, Keira prayed in her mind for the charms to protect her from the banshee's invasion; a battle began to play out inside her, a battle for control, for emotion, for life itself.

A feeling of intense negativity filled Keira's mind. It rose and grew steadily, cold hatred and raw anger increasing and building on itself, pain and torture and depraved thoughts collecting like moisture on cold steel and forming mist, droplets, streams, lakes. Black thoughts, black feelings, everything raw and spiteful and terrible, built and built until Keira's body was racked with negativity, and shaking in its rapture: like an orgasm of darkness the banshee took her, making her scream out loud in sudden release as spasms ran up and down her legs, her chest juddered and a biting cold fire seared and exploded between her legs, making her claws snap violently shut.

In an instant the banshee catapulted from Keira's body and collapsed into mist before her, an ethereal female lying hurt on the floor in a falling cloud. Stars began to clear from Keira's eyes and her breath was fast, irregular, racked with spasms in the aftermath of her cold climax. As she regained her breath and her thoughts she found herself looking down at the banshee as it curled around itself, seemingly hurt and unable to stand.

"Stalemate." It said coldly. "Such blissful rapture would have killed a mere mortal, but you still stand. That which should have fed me has drained me. Leave my forest," It said, its voice suddenly angry, "and return only if you wish me to try again to take your life."

"I will not leave." Keira spat as she regained her composure and pushed the dark memories of the hateful orgasm from her thoughts. "Not while you hide the lair of the demon from me."

"Lair?" The banshee laughed coldly, shaking nearby leaves with the rumbling of its breath. "It has no lair! That which you seek is no eldritch: it is a man." The laughter rose, and brown leaves shook from their branches to the ground. "And he is about to strike again."

The sound of the banshee's wailing laughter filled Keira's head as she ran back towards the village. Although she was certain it was not following her, and that she was far away from where they had spoken, Keira could not get the shrieking voice from her mind. Terrible, hateful, cold: the banshee had laughed as Keira ran to save her kin; laughed, knowing Keira would fail and that it would feed again on the beast's discarded victim, possess another innocent girl with cold rapture until her heart froze and her life force was consumed by an orgasm of hatred, which the banshee would swallow like the last ripe berry from a dying bush.

But the beast was a man... Or so the banshee had said. And at last it made sense.

No beast could have infiltrated the village and taken a girl without being seen. No beast could have left no tracks in the mud. And the screams of the victim at the sight of an eldritch creature would have aroused attention before it reached the forest border; of course, it all made sense.

But what man could be taking the village's girls, torturing them to pain and terror, and then throwing them to the banshee to die by searing cold climax? Approaching the village, Keira hoped she was not too late to find out. Her anger had become so strong that she knew no mortal foe would be too great for her. Her sword would sing, and taste blood, and her village would be safe again.

A sudden rustle and movement in the darkness startled Keira, but too late. A thick, dark branch swung from behind a trunk in front of her speeding body and connected with her skull, sending her somersaulting backwards to the damp ground, where she landed out cold among a hail of dead leaves that her lifeless feet had kicked up from the autumn drifts.

* * *

Swirling dizziness and nausea collected in Keira's head, then dissipated. Charli screamed, and kept on screaming, her voice echoing around the bedchamber. Nothing Keira could do would comfort her. Vague thoughts and questions swirled through Keira's spinning mind: Why do you cry, Charli, why do you cry so? Why can I not stop your endless screaming? Why will my head not cease its throbbing?

Charli screamed and writhed on the bed as Keira watched worriedly over her, staring giddily at her face contorted with what looked like terror. Was she ill? Was she hallucinating? Was she sleeping through some terrible nightmare, so petrified by its horror that she could not wake?

Another wave of terrible nausea and giddiness washed over Keira and she turned from Charli's writhing form, lest she vomit suddenly on her. The wave passed after a brief moment and Keira sat still, trying to soothe her churning stomach and still her spinning head with her will alone.

Charli still writhed and cried for comfort, but as Keira turned to face her the heat of nausea flushed quickly up her spine and into her throat. She turned away quickly and lowered her head towards the floor, waiting for the imminent wretch.

A moment of disorientation passed into Keira's mind and she blinked. Charli's screaming still sounded in her ears, her head still throbbed and span, and the nausea was still tight in her throat, but that was nothing compared to the searing pain in her left hand. Her knuckles throbbed and blazed as if they were being tortured with the roaring flame of a blacksmith's furnace. Worse still, the room was not her own bedchamber: it appeared small and dull from her perspective, lit only by a flickering log fire out of her view. And she was shackled to a table.

The aftermath of Keira's dream cleared like vapour as she shot to full consciousness. She twisted her head, quickly assessed her surroundings, tested her bonds. Charli lay screaming a few paces from her, chained naked on another wooden table. A tall dark figure stood over her, wearing a black hooded robe that hid its face under shadow; only its dark eyes were visible, catching tiny flecks of orange light from the open fire.

"You awake." The figure said, its voice a harsh cackle like a man trying to talk through a stranglehold. "Good. You will witness the defloration of that which you have kept pure for so long." It cried, flicking back its hood angrily to reveal a black leather mask, closed entirely but for two narrow eye holes through which peered glistening fire-bright eyes.

At first Keira wondered what the figure meant, until it raised in its gloved hand a narrow pink organ. It took Keira a while to recognise it as the little finger from her own left hand – it was the pewter ring that she recognised first, before she made the connection with the throbbing pain in her hand.

The man pulled free the blooded finger and discarded it onto the floor. Deftly he popped out the tiny key and inserted it between Charli's legs, into the lock of her chastity belt.

"No!" Keira shouted, as she realised what her captor intended to do. Beneath the mask must be a villager – one who recognised Charli's face from the short time each week she spent outside, washing or tending to the garden. Many of the local boys clustered near Keira's cottage on such days, making a deliberate amount of noise in the way boys did to attract attention to themselves when a pretty young girl was nearby.

They must assume that Charli's chastity belt was there to deter unwanted attention, Keira thought, because it was not proper for one's slave to court. Given the time Keira spent away from her home, it seemed a sensible assumption. But of course, it was the wrong assumption – only Keira and her slave knew the full truth behind her enforced chastity.

Charli had already been deflowered sometime previously. Keira had not wished it at the time, but Charli had begged to know what it felt like, and so she had sourced a suitable fruit and taken her slave's virginity, stopping only when Charli was screaming on the verge of an epic climax. Since that time Charli had asked to be penetrated on several occasions; she said she loved the feeling of being filled, even if she could not be allowed to orgasm. Keira always obliged her slave's requests when they made love, and she adored the sweet moans that Charli made as Keira worked the fruit slowly in and out of her tormented body.

And so their masked captor was mistaken, if he thought he would deflower Charli before Keira's own eyes. But the truth was even more unbearable than witnessing her virginity taken by rape: a brutal penetration might be enough to give Charli an orgasm, and start the change into werewolf-kind.

It was true that the wolf-blood inside her wanted control. It was devious, and cunning; it was ruthless, and it took advantage of Charli's mind when it could. Fear, hatred and anger were used against her: any negative emotion triggered a sense of arousal that heightened her sensitivity so much that orgasm was rarely further away than a gentle caress in just the right place. Given Charli's incessant screams of fear and panic, it was likely that the wolf-blood would be playing its advantage.

The man growled throatily as he ripped away Charli's chastity belt and cast it onto the floor, dropped the key next to it and crushed it with his boot, grinding it noisily into the timbers. The smell of Charli's hot sex immediately filled the room, and from her tied position Keira could just about turn her head to see her slave's lust glistening down her buttocks. Her sex was red and puffy, angry-looking; it looked as it often did after an extended session of tender sex, when Charli's body had been teased to the limit over and over again and was crying out for the orgasm it could never be allowed.

"My, what a horny slave you keep, Ranger." The masked man growled over Charli's terrified screams. "So much unquenched lust in a thing so little. I will enjoy bringing her pleasure, before I rack her body with pain. And you, Ranger, will watch."

"No!" Keira screamed in rage, as fear and jealousy combined in her in an explosive mist of red fire. And then she had a plan: between her legs lay a dormant weapon, one that could incapacitate her captor with pain and blood loss, if only he would penetrate her with his manhood. "Take me! Ravish my body, and set her free!"

"Oh, I intend to, Ranger. I will tear your body apart with ravishment. After I have finished with your pretty slave."

And from his robe he pulled a wand – a dull wand, the size of a phallus yet smooth and straight, but for a pointed end. Keira had seen such a wand before, on her travels across the sea to the far-off lands: it was a tool of pleasure, a woman's sex toy.

With a twist of the wand it began to buzz, an angry hum. The sound was alien to Keira, but she knew what it meant: the wand had been set to give pleasurable sensations to all that it touched. In her fear-aroused state, it would undoubtedly be too intense for Charli to bear for very long at all.

With no pause for ceremony or preparation, the masked man let his wand fall onto Charli's wet sex, drawing an instant moan from her lips. Keira shut her eyes briefly, clenching back tears of disgust and hatred, trying to channel her rage into some useable force, but the shackles around her wrists and ankles held her helpless, powerless to destroy the evil rapist who was unknowingly setting loose the beast inside her love; powerless to rescue her slave from death of the mind to the wolf-blood within her veins.

Charli's moans were becoming more frantic with each laboured breath, each rise and fall of her sweat-glistening breasts. Keira had never been so cruel as to push her this hard and deny her; but her captor had no intention of denying the inevitable climax.

"Sweetie..." Keira called out, hoping that Charli would be able to hear her above the fear and pleasure racking her body and mind.

"Mistress..." Charli moaned in reply between hurried breaths. "Mistress, it's too much, make it stop..."

Keira clenched back another wave of tears and sadness as the masked man began laughing, an evil cackle that bit into Keira's throbbing head and angry soul like a saw into rotten bark. "Sweetie," She called out over the foul laughter. "Sweetie, hold on, be a good girl for Mistress, please be a good girl for Mistress."

"I can't, Mistress, I can't! Please make it stop! Please! Please!" Charli begged in yelps of pleasure and torment.

"No, sweetie, you must hold on." Keira cried out loud. "You must hold on for Mistress."

"Please, Mistress, Please! Please! I'm going to come!" Charli screamed, her voice reaching almost climactic levels, and Keira knew as she felt her heart rise into her throat that time was rapidly running out for her slave. Even as she heard her rasping breath she knew that her frantic, sweat-laden panting would be the last she drew to her own mind.

"No!" Keira screamed, almost angrily, feeling already the rage of grief that her true love was falling away from her forever. "No! Don't come! Don't you dare come!"

"Mistress! I can't stop it, I can't hold it any more! I'm going to come!"

"Don't come, you bad girl, don't you dare come!" Keira shouted, her heart stuck in her mouth as she hoped beyond belief that Charli would be able to obey her command.

"Mistress!" Charli screamed, and in that scream Keira knew that it was too late. Her poor slave was experiencing at last the pleasure that she had ever been denied since the wolf-bite put an end to her adolescent masturbation – the very pleasure that was ending her human life.

Keira closed her eyes and tried to shut out the ecstatic screams of her slave, mingled with the vile laughter of her captor and the buzzing of his wand. Eyes clenched against terror and grief, Keira listened to the sound of her slave transforming into a blood-hungry beast. It would be painful – that Keira knew from past witness of a first change. As she listened, Charli's screams became first tinted with pain, and then intense agony. The sound of thrashing limbs was drowned out by her tortured squeals; Keira called out to her, "It's all right, sweetie, it's all right," knowing with despair that all was not right: the love of her life was being taken away forever.

The masked man seemed to have realised something was amiss, because his laughter had ceased. Even as Keira noticed the absence of his voice she realised it was too late for him to escape: Charli's screaming stopped, replaced by the sound of cracking joints, snapping restraints, angry snarls. With a sudden growl and a yelp of pain, a crunch of bones, a spray of warm liquid splashed across Keira's face and she winced in nauseated disgust.

An eerie silence followed, punctuated only by the beating of Keira's heart in her head and the heavy sound of the horrific visions at what may be splattered across her sticky face, what may be happening in the room only paces from her. The sound of laboured animal breathing filtered through the hubbub in Keira's head, shortly followed by a quick sigh and again the sound of cracking joints, the quiet padding of bare feet and then hungry breaths, the working of jaws, the splatter of blood and the moist ripping of warm flesh being torn from the bone.

"Sweetie..." Keira began nervously, her eyes still clenched shut to the horrors taking place around her. "Sweetie, can you hear me?"

When she heard no reply, Keira summoned the courage to open her eyes, feeling her nerves jingle as she did so. Her throat was tight and her heart raced, but her mind had become so numbed by horrific sounds and visions that the real sight itself did not bother her as much as she expected. Charli was a vision in red: her naked body glistened with warm blood. Her face was buried to the cheeks in the corpse of her captor, tearing away mouthfuls of flesh with her teeth.

Charli looked up and snarled hungrily and yet girlishly at Keira, her mouth a bright red ring against her blood-moistened face. "Come to Mistress, there's a good girl." Keira said shakily, and after a pause Charli stood and spat-spat-spatted across the lake of blood that had spilled from her mutilated captor.

Charli stopped before Keira and before she could say a word, knelt down beside her and began to lick her face slowly, delicately, lovingly. By the warm, sticky sensation on her cheeks, Keira realised with a nauseating sinking of her stomach that Charli was licking sprayed blood from her face.