Chapter One

Southern Germany, 1489

 

Forks of glaring yellow-white split the black, creeping out across the sky like skinny demon fingers searching for victims of its death-touch. It was a night to stay home, even if that home was little more than a hovel; even if the devil himself seemed to be trying to gain entrance, the way the windows shook in their frames.

"A perfect night for witches!" remarked Ottilie, so apparently drawn to watch the storm that her turned-up nose and ever-pouting lips were squashed right against the glass, and any external viewer might believe the usually pretty young miss had turned gargoyle.

"Come by the fire and don't ever let those words touch your tongue again!" Ayla chided her. "They will get you killed now the sheriff is so in thrall to that damned book!"

"Everyone uses the saying," tutted Ottilie, for it was by no means the first time the girl who was no older than her had dished out unasked-for advice as if she were the mother of the two. "My grandma used to say it and she was a witch!"

"That was in the days before that damned book claimed all witches got their powers from pacts with demons. That they are all heretics sent mad by lustful urges. That they are all slaves to incubi, and flames must be used to free them!"

"My grandma was a little mad, there is no denying it."

"They say a widow is to be burned this very Sunday. Seen whispering to a neighbor's draught-horse, they claim. Three days later the horse pulled up lame and its owner accused the widow. The same owner who had just been publicly rebuked by that same widow for being spotted with his breeches down and stood proud whilst 'milking' that same horse in a manner only fit for the devil's eyes! The widow denied using harmful magic against anyone, but the sheriff still put her to torture and gained a confession."

"So, she was a witch after all," said Ottilie absent-mindedly, watching the next pernicious spread of lightning with a little shiver of trepidation. "No doubt her black magic also had the owner befouling his horse."

Ayla stared at the back of her companion's head with incredulity. Ottilie was not the wisest, that was for sure. Naïve was the kindest word. That was why Ayla had taken her in after the girl's recent tribulations, despite never counting her as a friend. She knew her well enough to realize she'd been an easy target for any unscrupulous lech or darker mind.

"The sheriff had her hanging by her wrists from the rafters," said Ayla, still aghast. "Her wrists tied behind her back so that with the hanging, the arms parted agonizingly from the shoulders. Do you not think that was the reason for a gabbled confession, rather than any desire to speak some hidden truth?"

"Well, the book says to do the torture in this manner," said Ottilie, still not looking her companion's way; still transfixed by the storm. "If witnesses say she's a witch, she can either prove she isn't or speak up and admit to it. She got tortured because she would do neither. If that is God's will, the book is right to let it be known!"

But that was the thing: it wasn't God's will. The book in question was the notorious Malleus Maleficarum, "The Hammer of Witches", published three years prior and now being steadfastly issued around the land to keen bringers of justice. It was a treatise on the existence of harmful magic; of witches, their methods, and how to deal with them. Almost overnight, it ripped away the rights of every adult female in this land and beyond. Its author, one Heinrich Kramer, was an Inquisitor. It was thus assumed his work was backed by the full weight of the Catholic Church. It wasn't.

The Church long believed that magic, harmful or otherwise, could not exist. God commanded everything, so to suggest some other "force" was in evidence was heresy. Since you couldn't be accused of witchcraft, many chose to dabble in certain arts, to mix healing potions, to cast lots and predict fortunes, to recite incantations designed to bring healthy crops, to make amulets to give to expectant mothers-since more than half would not survive the ordeal of childbirth. Such spell-casters were seen not only as beneficial, but utterly necessary to life when The End of Days was widely predicted.

Kramer disagreed. On his travels to unearth heretics, he'd heard growing tales of curses blighting lives and crops and working animals, even the weather. The devil was clearly afoot. Magic could exist, Kramer argued, because the devil worked it. God allowed it as a test of faith-a test so many were now failing. The devil tricked and cajoled. He promised powers of harmful magic to those who allowed an incubus as a bedmate. This demon would impregnate the women and ensure the seed of evil spawned new generations.

Men could be led astray by such promises, but only so their seed could be stolen, corrupted with evil and planted within women visited by an incubus. Women, Kramer declared, were far more susceptible to such temptations partly due to their natural tendencies towards jealousy, gossip and back-biting; they innately wanted to do harm, he claimed. Mainly though, he believed the temptation of the incubus proved irresistible because women were without exception lust-driven creatures incapable of subduing their carnal desires. Men, he said, were far more reasoned and pious. They were guiltless targets of spiteful, flesh-ravenous females.

Well, this certainly suited the menfolk, who leapt upon his teachings and made them gospel, even without the backing of the bishops. Because no papal bull backed Kramer's notions, he declared the job of purging this rising sin could not fall to the church alone. His book, therefore, stood as an instruction manual for local justices on how to conduct their own inquisitions free of church authority. And soon the air over certain towns grew thick with the bitter stench of burning witches.

"God save us!" Ottilie suddenly cried in shock, the latest flash of lighting revealing a figure in the night staring straight back at her through the breath-misted glass.

"Whatever is wrong?" said Ayla, suitably startled.

"A fellow lurking in the storm is what! Right there! I believe it is Gottlieb!"

"Gottlieb with the withered arm or Gottlieb the foul son of the foul priest?"

"Gottlieb the foul son!"

"Come away! Is his prick out? I've heard he haunts the dark and sprays the windows of the maids he spies upon with his deviant seed! Come away!"

Ottilie did not come away, keen for the next flash to reveal whether the prick was indeed exposed and standing proud.

"He's gone," she said at the next sky-flash, sounding almost dismayed. But a hammering upon the hovel's door told them he had not disappeared into the night, merely taken two steps to the left.

"Do not answer it!" Ayla commanded, it being her house. But Ottilie was not one to follow orders above her own curiosity, and the very next instant saw the wind gusting in around a hulking figure in the open doorway.

"Blessings to you, Fräuleins both!" Gottlieb jovially announced. "A perfect night for witches and me caught out in it! I beg brief shelter to dry my drenched coat, for your roaring fire is so tempting-almost as much as the smell of fried onions wafting from your chimney. Do I dare hope you are making Semmelknödel for supper and there might be a plate you can spare me?"

Ayla was thinking of a polite way to refuse an invitation inside but Ottilie had already moved away to let their visitor gain entrance. Immediately his coat was removed and slung on the back of a chair dragged over flagstones in front of the fire, and he was stretching out his hands to give them the warmth of the flames.

"There will be no food to spare," Ayla said before Ottilie had a chance to say otherwise.

"A beaker of beer then," Gottlieb said with a grin, "as is the custom for guests."

"You are not our guest," Ayla reminded him.

He was not a pretty sight. Tall and with the awkwardness of a just-adult; his features blunt and heavy like a clumsily-carved waxen effigy; the skin pimpled; the hair lank; the teeth cracked. If he ended up looking like his father, there were warts, premature baldness and red-veined cheeks to come. No wonder he had to go a-peeping. Who would wish for his kisses?

"Aye, a perfect night for witches!" he repeated, maintaining his grin, ignoring Ayla's curtness and plonking himself down upon another chair before gladly accepting the beaker Ottilie now offered. "And speaking of such, did you hear they are to burn one this Sunday? Confessed to attending a Sabbat near Ravensburg, she did! Confessed to throwing rotten sage down her neighbor's well! Confessed to feeding that neighbor's virgin daughter a sleeping draught and then pissing in her mouth!"

"Really!? She di..."

"This we know," Ayla said tersely, cutting off her wide-eyed companion. "So if that is all you have come to say, we can sit in silence until your coat dries. And the steam coming off it says that won't be long now."

"Boots are damp too," he only remarked, unceremoniously heaving them off uninvited, releasing a fusty fug to challenge the rich aromas of the bubbling dumpling gravy. "Soaked right through. And three witches burnt over in Neuweiler. One for causing an old man's bowels to fail in church, having quarreled with him only that morning. One for rendering a bull impotent, and another for blocking her conjugal passage from her husband with a crucifix. His hair turned grey at the sight of it-and him not even turned thirty! Turned her hair to fire, though, they did!"

"Why are you telling us this?" said Ayla, anxious suspicion starting to seep in and overtake her annoyance at the intrusion. Gottlieb kept his grin and avoided her glare.

"Trousers are drenched too," he said. "I'll catch my death!"

"They can stay on!" Ayla scolded, seeing his hand going to the button at his waist. But Gottlieb was giving no heed to her warning.

"Were those pricks I saw flying out of your chimney?" he said archly.

"What?" gasped Ottilie. "Whatever do you mean?"

"Pricks you've conjured from innocent men and given wings to," Gottlieb said with something of a laugh, although the girls could tell it was by no means meant in jest. "As is the wont of witches."

And then his leggings were hauled right off to leave only grey woolen undergarments, and he was sat squeezing the bulge at his crotch, his grin widening in proudness of what a good handful it was.

"We are no witches," Ayla said, trying to keep the nerves from her voice. "You know that."

"I do know that," Gottlieb replied nonchalantly. "For I'd be a fool to come here if you were, and lay myself and my prick open to your sorcery. But what if I were to claim it? What if I were to say I was out all innocent and what did I see but cocks flying from your chimney-a sure sign of witches within, and such a perfect night for them! And what did I see when I went to the window to inspect? You naked on all fours, Miss Ayla, like a piglet with that taut, pink rump of yours! Reciting incantations, you were, and to Asmodeus himself-the prince of demons! And squatting behind you what did I witness but Miss Ottilie, plain as day, all naked as a baby and with her tongue swirling around inside your arse! What if I made such a report?"

Ottilie gave out a whimper-yelp, a noise of shock at the coarseness of his ungodly words and the vivid images they produced.

"It is a sin to lie," she breathed, but her saucer eyes could not be drawn from the sight of the swelling beneath Gottlieb's underwear, now too long to be contained by his grasp. As stiff as a broom handle it seemed, and with similar girth. Two female hands could doubtless wrap around that pole and still leave the crown free for a greedy mouth to engulf!

"It is more of a sin to dabble in sorcery," he reminded her, his grin suddenly faded to seriousness.

"What do you want?" Ayla asked with quiet menace, though her racing blood was spiked with anxiousness and fear.

"Milk!" Gottlieb said, his grin quick returned.

"What?"

"Why, milk is all!" said Gottlieb, his grip squeezing at that hidden pole of his. "The milk from Miss Ottilie's glorious fat teats! Warm sprays of it on my cheeks and lips! Huge gob-fulls of it that drizzle down my chin! Hard spurts of it on my aching cock and balls-and I will return those spurts with a thick cream of my own, don't you worry on that score, fair maid!"

"What milk? What are you talking about?" said Ayla, trying to sound incredulous.

"The milk all mothers produce," said Gottlieb, unsmiling again. "For Miss Ottilie was so recently a mother, however much you tried to hide it from us, Miss Ayla. Think I don't see what's going on around here? But what I don't see is any husband, unless you've got him hidden in some cupboard?"

"I was taken by force!" wailed Ottilie, thus spoiling any chance of a denial. "I was..."

Gottlieb held up one long forefinger to cut the maid off.

"See, I hear that when men take by force," he said, "they always use the arse. That way the woman is so shamed by the guilt of sodomy, she would never dare to reveal her attack to anyone, knowing God will hear of her sin and allocate her a place alongside the damned. So, unless you gave birth out of your arse, Miss Ottilie-which I can't deny I would have loved to have witnessed-then I'll have to take you for one of them brazen bitches my father has to decry weekly from the pulpit with such fervor."

"There is no baby," said Ayla, thinned-lipped. But she already knew what was coming.

"Not now, no," replied the smug Gottlieb. "Handed as a sacrifice to the devil, no doubt. We all know witches breed infants to give as blood-prizes to the Lord of Darkness. Seems you wanted Miss Ottilie hidden here in your keeping, Miss Ayla. Seems you wanted her baby. And yet where is it now? Seems the work of witches to me!"

"We are not witches," said Ayla with determination, though she knew this battle had slipped.

"I'd be mad to come here alone if you were! And I knew you were home too, not out riding the clouds, wetting your brooms with your wanton cunts. Cunts they'll shave, mark my words, before they torture you-make sure you've got no amulets hidden there to help resist the pain. The baby might be gone but the proof of it hasn't. It's right there in her swollen udders. Now, I can either reveal this proof in the market square in front of everyone, with Miss Ottilie stripped bare. Or your secret can stay within these four walls, where none but us ever need know it."

"I tell you we are not witches," Ayla repeated, but it was all she had.

"It's haunting me, you see, the thought of her gorgeous cream. I can't keep my prick down because of it! I know you've probably put this curse on me to drive me to lunacy. Probably payback for me spying on you upon your pot last thing afore bedtime. You've cursed me as a pervert, Miss Ayla, so I need payback. Some gorging on her luscious tits, that's all I ask! Not much to demand, really, to keep you both from the flames! I want to drink down her mammy's milk 'til I can drink no more. And I want her stroking my stiff prick whilst I do it."

"She never will!" spat Ayla. "A deviant like you will be off to hell before I let that happen!"

"Whoa, Miss Ayla! What, jealous? Jealous it isn't your body I wish to feast from, pretty as you are? You've got an arse on you, there's no denying it! A fine, firm arse as round as any apple! Ample cheeks and a jut to send a prick raging! The best rump in town, some say. I know many who'd love their faces in it to go a-gorging. Doubtless they'd be witnesses to my claims of sorcery just to have a go at that split heaven you sit upon! But luscious as you are, Miss Ayla, you haven't got her tits. You haven't got the milk. And that's what I rage for-as you well know, Miss Ayla, doubtless being the witch who placed the curse upon me!"

"It isn't fair," whimpered Ottilie, her cheeks blooming, her mouth open and wet, her eyes unable to close against the sight of the intruder's swell. "There were no curses."

But the foul Gottlieb wasn't of a mind to listen.

"Yes, you're undoubted luscious, Miss Ayla," he said, almost with a snarl now as the lust took over. "That long black hair of yours all down your back. Those fiery dark eyes. That single pock-mark on your cheek, almost as deep as a dimple. Does something to me, it does-and others confess the same! But others proclaim it the mark of a demon's spatter. You might have only been hit once, but hit you were! Why else have you no betrothed, twenty winters old and ripe as you are? Must be because an incubus is keeping your brazen cunt so joyful!"

"I was to be betrothed!" Ayla snarled back, though she hadn't wanted to engage in his twisted arguments. "He died!"

"Died from a poison mushroom, so they say," Gottlieb crowed. "And who knows poisons better than a witch? One who only yearns for the touch of an incubus, and the rewards for giving herself over to evil. And now you've drawn Miss Ottilie in too, hiding her here as prey for a demon's lusts. Using her fruit as a gift to the devil! No husband to keep you in check, despite scores of men holding their fat pricks in aching torment at the mere sight of you. No parents to rule over you. I wonder what happened to them? More curses, no doubt!"

"My mother died having me!" Ayla snapped. "My father died of a fever not two winters past, as you well know! You were here whilst your father prayed for mine. Here gawping at me just like now, your eyes betraying all your twisted thoughts!"

"It's easy to be a pervert when you have a priest for a father, Miss Ayla," he said with a smirk. "Absolution is never far away. Harder to be absolved from witchcraft, mind. And who would they believe? A fine young man set to read the scriptures, or an unmarried, demon-marked wench with an arse created to tempt by Satan himself? Don't think I won't try that rump, Miss Ayla. When my drinking from Miss Ottilie is done, I'll bring my unsated prick to bear on that pink-piggy-apple arse of yours-and you already know which hole I'll be a-plundering!"

"The devil will take you for these words," Ayla said, her blood bubbling.

"As I said," he coolly replied, "no devil for me. Absolution for me is never difficult to gain. My father understands how easily a young man may be cursed by a witch. I'll never suffer any guilt. And all you need suffer, Miss Ottilie, it to have me drink from your tits, and what harm is that? I've heard they ache to be emptied when full. I've heard the release is blissful. I've heard it sends jolts of joy straight to a wanton cunny to have it all a-tingling. Give me that delicious cream of yours, pretty Missy, and have me soaring up to heaven in my pleasure. And I, in turn, will keep you from descending to the flames of hell."

"You're a monster," said Ottilie, her shoulders slumped, her eyes still on his bulge.

"There is nothing to be done about it," he said. "I must gorge. My prick demands it. My lips will never utter a word of this moment whilst they still crave your lush titties. A slave you're now destined to be-but to me, to human flesh and blood, not to no incubus. And be careful your milk doesn't dry up, Miss Ottilie, for as soon as it does, so will my favor! Now, yield me them tits!"

And then he hauled his prick out from its constraints and held it proud for all to witness. The purple crown was already full to bursting. It leached a tear of his unquenchable desire. The blood swelling the thick veins of his shaft and could have filled a stein. There would be no denying this prick with mere words, whatever foul methods its owner had used to see the poor girls defeated; whether God was watching or not.

"Do as he bids," Ayla quietly commanded. This time Ottilie obeyed, wordlessly taking to the seat opposite the intruder. Her fingers were visibly trembling as she undid the knot at her neck, but her legs came open, as if unconsciously she was willing other fingers to find their way up under her skirts. They would discover heat and seeping wetness there, it could not be denied. Down fell her top to reveal breasts every bit as plumptious as Gottlieb's lust-ravaged mind had so often pictured them. He could but let out a gasp and slurp back the saliva trying to escape. Down on his knees he went, as if in worship.

"I'm sorry to deprive you of your usual supper, Miss Ayla," he still managed to taunt, his eyes wide and fixed upon his prize. "But I've another reward for you in return. You can hold my prick for me whilst I guzzle. Stroke it gentle, mind-I want lots of pumps at that tight shit-hole of yours!"

Ayla took her position on her knees behind him; smelt his maleness, his staleness. He was far more cunning than he looked, she had to admit. But it was all so frighteningly simple these days, thanks to that damned book. All female defenses had been shattered. There was no hiding place now from the clutches of corrupt, lascivious men. Not if you wanted to live.

She reached around and took a hold of him. He was hot, the skin surprisingly silken for such iron rigidity beneath. She knew instantly that any hole, however tightly virginal, could only yield to such firmness if it was delivered with any force. Imagine being stretched open and filled by this pole! He pulsed against her grip. It was potent lust, raging in him and seizing control. Just as no tight muscles could defeat him, nor would any morals-even if the Lord was an all-seeing witness. The throb only increased as he reached out with both hands to take reverent hold of his heart's desire.

The nipples under threat were swollen and expectant, seemingly stretching to meet the mouth now open and on its way. Gottlieb hadn't lied: to be fed upon could lead to pangs of desire between the legs, however guilty this made one feel-and whenever Ayla afforded her this relief, Ottilie found herself forced to recite the names of the saints in her head in the feeble hope of driving the sinful thoughts from her mind. Why could she not summon a single saint's name now? Her whole body was quivering. She was itching down below.

She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip, hoping to hold back any whimper of joy that might betray her. It meant she didn't get to see his eyes spring suddenly open, all wide with alarm. Though she could feel his hot breath upon her, the warm, wet suction to sate her ache never came. It was his strange gurgling that made her look again. He was wearing an expression of horror as he gasped and spluttered blood-red foam down his chin. And his tongue was a grotesque devil's tongue: a flat, narrow spike of metal dripping gore.

But it wasn't a tongue at all, as Ottilie then came to realize. It was a dagger blade, the same one Ayla used to cut yarn and spear food and clean under her fingernails. It had been forced into his nape, slicing right through his spine to poke impertinent and grisly from his mouth. Ayla the slayer wore a sneer of gladness that this foul man was fully aware he was breathing his last. Strange, the cock in her hand did not flag at all, straining even harder against her grip. She bent her head so her lips were right at his ear.

"That," she snarled into it, "is what you get when you cross a witch!"