Kneeling in front of the altar, Roma sank her teeth into the femoral artery of Howard's thigh, the blood gushing from the fang bites, spilling over her face and lips. She drank greedily of the hot red liquid, biting him again and again, working steadily upward, until his thigh and groin area were pricked with the needle marks.
She drew away from him, her face covered with blood. Howard's cries tapered off into low moans as Black began shivering with approaching climax. The Beasts began dancing, a grotesque, obscene hunching, a debasement of any rhythm that needed grace or beauty. Soon all were dancing and chanting: 'Prince of Darkness! King of the Night! Lord of the Flies and of Filth! Hear this one scream for you!'
Howard screamed as Black climaxed. The Coven members danced about the altar, tearing off their clothes. Howard lay unconscious across the altar.
Falcon pointed to the young man draped in humiliation across the flat stone altar. 'Tend to his needs,' he ordered.
Then, oblivious to the cold and the damp, the men and women coupled like animals, their naked bodies gleaming in the torch-lit circle of stones.
The naked Satan worshipers began fucking like dogs, while the Beasts danced and howled and slobbered around them, their own erections starkly vivid in the flickering light.
Roma took Jimmy into her ageless cunt, while Falcon impaled a screaming Sandy against the damp ground, the young woman suddenly filled with his massive organ. She screamed her pleasure-pain and wrapped young legs around the older man's back, meeting him lunge for lunge, shrieking out her evil joy. She cried blasphemies, flinging the oaths into the night air, her shrill voice seeming to push the others into more profane, perverted acts.
'I've seen enough,' Sam said, taking Nydia's hand, leading her away from the circle of flickering lights, back toward the house. They were dressed in dark clothing, blending into the night as they walked.
As they walked away from the blasphemous screaming and cursing, from the scene of Devil worship, Nydia said, 'I get the feeling mother knew we were watching. You?'
'Yes. And I think Satan told her we were.'
'That … feeling of being suspended for a time.'
'Yes.' They waited in silence for a time, Sam breaking the mood by asking, 'I wonder what my mother is doing?'
'You should have seen Hershel do his stuff this afternoon,' Miles excitedly told Jane Ann over the phone. The only two phones belonging to believers that still worked in Whitfield, although the plugs had been pulled and the wires severed by phone-company personnel. 'Those people who have been so crappy to us for the past year don't act so high and mighty now.'
'Sam didn't do so badly himself,' she replied. She looked around for the mist that was Balon. She could not see any evidence of the vapor, but she knew he was present.
'Janey? We're all right here. I don't understand what is happening; why this has to happen; why God just doesn't take us if that is His will … but you, are you doing all right?'
'I was afraid, Miles. But Sam comforted me. I prayed. You?'
'Like I haven't been away from synagogue for fifty years.'
'Doris?'
'Like a mountain of faith. Janey? I don't understand any of this. It's so baffling. Are we being tested? Is that it? If so, why? What have we done with our lives that makes us so worthy … or unworthy, as the case may be? What does Sam say?'
'He says we will all understand someday.'
'How like him.' Miles' reply was dryly put. 'Stay strong, Jane Ann. Our prayers will be with you, at the end,' the last words were filled with emotion.
'You know what is going to happen?'
Her old friend's silence told her he knew only too well.
'I'll talk to you later,' she said. She hung up the phone and turned to face the rear wall of the den as she sensed Baton's presence. 'Have you been away?' she asked the forming mist.
'Part of me,' Balon projected.
'I won't ask how that is possible.'
'You're learning.'
'Eight more days,' she said, some of her fear returning, changing the tone of her voice.
'Put it out of your mind,' Balon told her. 'Think only of how pleasant it will be later.'
'I wonder how our son is doing?'
The mist seemed to smile. Balon said: 'Our son has more going for him than he realizes.'
'What do you mean?'
'Exactly what I said.'
'Do you always speak in riddles?'
'I do not speak in riddles. Those who are not yet a part of my world do occasionally interpret my words as riddles.'
She sighed. 'It's hours past full dark, Sam.'
A scream cut the night, a wail of agony so intense it sawed at Jane Ann's flesh like a knife with a dull cutting edge.
