Free Hope by Emma South Page A

taken down countless stairs.  The depths we walked to seemed impossible to have been dug and built by human hands no matter how many slaves were worked to death in the construction.  The stairs and, indeed, the whole house must have been constructed into and on top of some naturally formed caves.
    Eventually we reached a large room and each of us was roughly pushed into one of several small individual cages that lined the walls.  In the centre was an altar and standing by the altar was Sylvester.  When we were all safely locked away his servants left and Sylvester began chanting.  I didn’t recognise the language but it sounded old.  Ancient really, and evil.  The temperature rose until I was sweating profusely, the other girls looked equally uncomfortable.
    Suddenly a booming voice spoke as if out of the very rock of the walls and floor.  It spoke the same language Sylvester had been chanting, of that I was sure.  As if everything else wasn’t enough evidence I knew then that I had made an incredible mistake and I had been lured into something truly unholy.  Sylvester drew a pentagram on the altar and then went to the nearest cage, dragging the reluctant woman to the middle of the room and forcing her on to the flat surface.
    I hoped he was going to sprinkle her with holy water and say a prayer.  When he produced a huge knife I feared he was going to disembowel her.  What actually happened was unlike anything I had ever dared contemplate before.  After cutting her expensive finery off, exposing her innocent body he roughly deflowered her in front of all of us, pounding into her with reckless force until he spent himself deep inside her.
    When I was younger I had sometimes giggled with my friends about sex.  I had thought the first time was supposed to hurt but the woman on the altar seemed to enjoy herself.  She didn’t enjoy what happened next though.  Her stomach appeared to swell and churn, bulges formed and dissipated as if something was trying to push out through her skin.  Suddenly the form of a horned head was clearly visible as it strained against her flesh.
    Her screams still haunt me, they got louder and louder until she appeared to catch fire and was almost completely incinerated before my eyes.  The room boomed with the voice again.  It was angry.  That was the only time I ever saw Sylvester look scared.  He quickly composed himself and repeated the process with another woman.
    This time the woman didn’t burn.  After a while the turmoil of her bulging stomach settled and her appearance returned almost to normal.  The only difference was a strange otherworldly colour to her eyes.  Sylvester whispered something in her ear and she stood up as if in a trance, walked back towards the stairs and I never saw her again.  The booming voice laughed until the room shook and several small stones dislodged from the ceiling, rattling off our cages and the altar alike.
    One by one Sylvester repeated the ritual.  Of the twenty other women besides myself almost all of them burned.  Two of them exploded.  Two more of them survived to walk away up the stairs.  I was the last one he took to the altar.  I had been informed correctly, it was painful… but it was also strangely pleasurable and even though I’d seen so many woman meet their demise on that very altar not a few minutes beforehand, I had my first orgasm right there impaled on Sylvester’s huge member, which vibrated with the same hot energy his hands did.
    When I felt his fiery seed inside me my fear rose up and overwhelmed all other emotion.  The pain became unbearable and the heat spread throughout my whole being while something inside me writhed and gnashed its teeth.  I was sure I was about to burn for eternity but all of a sudden a cool calm washed over me and my body became still.
    Sylvester bent over to whisper in my ear.
    “Rise, Succubus, and remember forever how you consented to this.  Hear your curse and weep.  Wherever