Sam was too weak to move as she began speaking in a language he did not understand, the incantation evil as it rolled from her tongue. Lightning licked around the mansion, as thunder ripped the countryside, the smell of burning sulfur strong in the stormy air.
Laughter reached Sam's ears, spilling from the other room. Hot, wild rage filled him, causing his blood to run strong, giving him the strength to claw on his clothing and stagger from the room where he had been seduced into an unwilling paramour.
The scene that greeted him was of the vilest imaginable: a grotesque real-life panorama more vivid than anything Hollywood could ever produce in its most brutish moods. Nydia had been lifted from the casket, pillows placed under her. She was naked, her lifeless white arms hanging over the sides of the brass entrapment. Her lovely legs spread apart, knees to feet hanging out of the casket. Falcon was between her thighs, his gross maleness erect, pumping in and out of the young woman.
Shouting his rage, Sam charged the sickness before his unbelieving eyes. He was tripped, sending him tumbling to the floor, where he was kicked and beaten into semiconsciousness. He lay bloodied on the carpet, unable to stop the hideousness taking place.
Falcon's hardness became slick with blood, and Sam could not understand that, for Nydia was dead. Then he decided in his near delirium it was not blood, merely the way the candles cast their dubious flickering light.
Nydia's head was thrown back, her mouth a black gaping hole, eyes closed in surrender on her voyage to the stygian shore.
Falcon continued to ram his maleness into her.
"Why don't you pray, mother-fucker?" a female voice screeched at Sam.
He looked up through his pain into the wild eyes of Lana, squatting half naked beside him.
Sam shook his head as the taunts began, profane and loud, exhorting him to call on his God for help. He fought to get to his feet, but hands turned into fists, pounding him back to the carpet. He watched as the ugly act of necrophilia drew closer to completion, Falcon lunging in earnest, burying his long thickness into the dead flesh of Nydia. The man howled like an animal as he ejaculated, spilling into the young woman.
Falcon arrogantly rose from the satin-lined casket like some monster from the grave, and stepped onto the floor, wiping his softening penis with a towel handed him from one of those as lost as he.
Sam put his head on the carpet and wept.
"Oh, don't be such a crybaby, Sam!" Roma's voice cut at him as a cat-o'-nine-tails would rip the flesh of its victim. "You may have her now." She raised her hand and performed a ritual that was too quick for Sam to follow.
He shifted his eyes to the sounds of someone suddenly weeping and thought he was going utterly mad as Nydia's eyes opened and she looked around her, a bewildered expression on her face, as if she not only did not understand where she was, but why she was crying. She looked down at her nakedness, then at her temporary home, and screaming joined the tears.
Roma laughed. "There is your darling, Sam. Take her, witness what marvelous parturient pops from her womb. You won't have a long wait, for when my Master takes a hand, events such as the one now growing within Nydia's womb develop rapidly, such wonders to perform. Take your darling, Sam, and both of you carry your sniveling selves from this room. So we lost a member from your application of holy water," she answered the puzzled look in his eyes. "No great loss—it is an honor to die for the Master." She cackled like the witch she was. "How does it feel to be beaten, young man and woman of God?"
The room of lost and damned souls howled with laughter.
Sam pulled himself to his knees and wiped blood from above his eyes. When he turned to look at the witch, she hissed with fright and drew back from the sight of his burning eyes. "We're not beaten, you whore. I'm whipped for now, but I'm not down for the count. I don't understand what has taken place here, for I know Nydia was dead; no one could look that dead and not be dead. I don"t know if I'll ever understand it. But I know this: for some reason you can't or won't kill us … yeah," he said slowly, his eyes shifting to Nydia. "She's got to be kept alive, right? Sure. I see that. Me … I don't know why you didn't kill me after you screwed me … maybe I'll never know. But I'm going to beat you, bitch." His eyes lashed at the witch. "Some way, somehow, I'll win this battle. Bet on it."
Sam rose to his feet and walked to the candle-lighted bier, helping Nydia to the floor. No one tried to stop him, no one attempted to interfere. Sam ripped a drape from behind the bier and wrapped it around Nydia, covering her nakedness. They walked from the room amid the jeering, ugly sounds of the Unbelievers. Party music began playing, a loud raucous noise as the people began dancing in a hunching fashion around the room, the dancing more a lewd profanity than any type of graceful movement of partners.
"Sam?" Nydia spoke in a whisper, even though the room and all the evil of its occupants was farther behind them with each step. "I was … dead!"
"I know, honey. And don't ask me to explain it, 'cause I can't.
"Sam?"
He looked at her, taking her offered hand.
"I know what you have to do."
They were on the second floor of the great house, walking down the corridor to their rooms. "What, Nydia?"
"You have to make love to me, as quickly as possible."
"I … don't understand."
"Yes, you do," the voice boomed in his head. "And may your seed be strong."
"1 heard the voice that time, Sam," she told him. "And that's why you have to make love to me."
"You remember Falcon raping you?"
"Every awful, ugly second of it. I can't explain it, for I couldn't move—not even my eyes. But I could feel pain. It's … I was dead, Sam, but I wasn't. I know my heart stopped when I looked up and saw that thing … what in God's name was that?"
"I didn't see it, but Roma said it was the Devil. I guess that much of what she said was true. Your heart stopped?"
"Yes. I came back when Falcon … began raping me. Something else, Sam."
"What?"
"I … saw you and Roma."
"But you were …"
"I know. But I could still see you both. I was so proud of you when you fought through the drug and began to resist."
"The food was drugged?"
"No. The perfume she was wearing. An ancient aphrodisiac. She stayed within the rules of the game in using it."
Sam shuddered. "A game. Like no other game in the world."
"While we're here, Sam, we're not of this world. "We're kind of in limbo."
Sam was conscious of that mighty presence near, but no voice sprang into his head. The force withdrew. At the door to their rooms, Nydia stopped him. "You take a shower, Sam. You smell like … well, like her. I've got to do something; maybe it will help."
"What?" Sam asked innocently.
She looked at him and shook her head. "Douche," she said flatly.
* * *
Sam tended to his face after the shower, applying antiseptic to the small cuts. One eye was puffy, the area under it turning a shade of greenish-blue, and there were numerous smaller bruises on his face and chest and legs. But he concluded he would live.
"How long and what for is the question," he muttered.
'How skeptical you are," the voice spoke to him. "Weren't you warned you would be tested? And wasn't it I who told you not to fear should you sometimes fail?"
"I did a pretty good job of failing this night, didn't I?" Sam said glumly.
"So did your father, but he found a place beside God."
"Am I right in doing what I'm … we're about to do?"
"I cannot answer that. That is something only you and the young woman can decide."
"What if Falcon's seed takes hold?"