'How do you mean, child?'
Nydia met his gaze and said bluntly, 'A warlock raped me.'
* * *
Roma had won. She had managed to seduce young Sam—at the orders of Satan—thus guaranteeing a demon child would be born from Sam's seed. She had done so by trickery, placing Nydia in a state of suspending animation. Sam believed her dead.
Upon reentering Falcon House, Sam had followed the sound of sad funeral music. Upstairs, Nydia lay in a coffin. Weeping and sobbing people lined the room. They had—to a person—told Sam they wanted to accept Christ into their hearts, and turn their backs on the Devil. In his confused state, Sam believed them. He allowed Roma to set him on a couch, the witch beside him. He did not know her perfume was drugged with a powerful ancient aphrodisiac. He fell prey to its black power.
Sam was conscious of cool air on his groin, but he felt it wasn't worth the effort to open his eyes and look. He realized his underwear shorts had been removed. That seemed all right to the young man.
Roma touched his groin, brought him to stiffness. She brought him almost to the point of ejaculation with her skillful fingers. Then, with one swift movement, the witch mounted him, laughing as she did so.
Everything returned to Sam, coming in such a rush it almost overpowered him: the warnings he had received from his dead father; the sight of his father struggling with the witch through boundless space. This woman! Roma was the woman his father had been fighting.
Young Sam began struggling with the witch, attempting to dislodge her from his erection. Her strength was incredible. He exploded within her. She milked him of every drop of semen. Leaving the young man exhausted and confused on the couch, Roma padded naked to a table and drank deeply from a small bottle of fresh blood.
Sam was too weak to move as she began speaking in a language he could not understand. She was calling on the forces of the Dark One, the incantation evil as it rolled from her tongue. Lightning licked around the mansion, thunder boomed, ripping the countryside, the smell of burning sulphur strong in the stormy air.
Laughter reached Sam's ears, spilling from the room where Nydia lay in her coffin. Dead, or so Sam thought. He stumbled into the room.
The scene that greeted his eyes was of the vilest imaginable: Nydia had been lifted from the casket, pillows placed under her. She was naked in death, her lifeless white arms hanging over the sides of the coffin. Her legs were widespread, knees to feet hanging out of the coffin. Falcon was between her legs, his gross maleness swollen to full erection. He was fucking the dead girl.
Sam shouted his rage and charged toward the sickness. Someone tripped him, sending him sprawling on the floor. He was kicked and beaten into semiconsciousness, vaguely aware of the hideous necrophilia before his eyes.
Nydia's head was thrown back, her mouth open, a gaping black hole, eyes closed in surrender on her voyage to the stygian shore.
Sam could but lay helpless, bloodied and weak on the floor, watching through a red mist as Falcon rammed his long thickness into the dead flesh of Nydia. The man began howling like an animal as he ejaculated.
Falcon rose arrogantly from the satin-lined casket like some monster from the grave. He stepped onto the floor and wiped his penis with a towel handed him by one of those as lost as he.
Sam put his head on the carpet and wept for the dead young woman he loved.
Roma's laughter reached him. 'Oh, don't be such a crybaby, Sam. You may have her now.'
Sam lifted his head as Roma raised her hand toward the casket. A quick movement of her fingers and the sounds of weeping came to him.
Sam thought he was going utterly mad as Nydia's eyes opened and she looked around her in confusion. She looked at her nakedness, then at her temporary home, and screaming joined the weeping.
Sam got to his feet and staggered toward the casket as Roma's words reached him.
'Take your darling, Sam. Take her, and witness when the time comes, what marvelous parturient pops from her womb. How does it feel to be beaten, young man?'
Sam ripped drapes from the walls and covered Nydia's nakedness. When he turned to face the witch, she hissed with fright, drawing back from his burning eyes.
Sam said, 'We're not beaten, you whore. I'm whipped for now, but I'm not out for the count. But I have realized something from this—ugliness: You can't kill us. God won't let you kill me, and you have to keep Nydia alive. So, yeah, bitch, I'm going to beat you.'
Jeering sounds followed his words. A party began as Sam and Nydia walked from the room with as much dignity as they could muster.
Father Le Moyne crossed himself as Nydia finishing her telling of the rape. He visibly paled when she said, 'And Sam and I are not certain if Little Sam is our child, or the child of Satan.'
'You have no way of knowing?' he asked.
'No,' Sam said. 'Do you think you can tell?'
'I—don't know. Perhaps it is not yet time for the true body of the child to surface.'
'That's what we think, too,' Nydia said.
'But with the sightings of the Beasts,' Sam said, 'we both feel that time is not far off.'
Father Le Moyne walked to his kitchen and poured a tumbler half full of whiskey. He downed it in one gulp. He started to refill the tumbler, then thought better of it and put the cap back on the bottle, screwing it down tight. He put the bottle in a cabinet and shut the door hard.
When the priest turned to walk into the small living room, there seemed to be a fresh new strength to the set
