Adramalech

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Adramelech Copyright © 2005 German Bradley ISBN: 155410-563-3 Cover art and design by Lyrra Madril All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Published by eXtasy Books, a division of Zumaya Publications, 2005 Look for us online at: www.zumayapublications.com www.Extasybooks.com

Dedication: I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Ardath Mayhar and Michael Garrett for their endless help, expertise and advice.

German Bradley

Shabbattu

T

here was music somewhere, loud, mesmerisingly sad and virulent, mashing her head like a powerful drug. Sooty shapes and candlelight spun around her as nausea crawled at her throat in that smoggy, brownish place. The tripping out session was about to start again. Programmed keyboards and drums seemed to transport her to the required state as minor-key lead guitar lines jumbled up with weird vocals. “The circle is meeting tonight.” A female, dreggy voice came into her head. “Leo is moving through time and space as his power grows stronger than ever.” The words entranced her mind, calling to her. “He’s searching, luring her on to the pilgrimage. It’s time.” But she was too tired to understand. She had a fever and was drenched to the skin. She just heard; without listening. “Come, demon lord. Come forth from the open-jawed dragon above. See how she floats, searching, searching. May the flames of your eternal fire lick her consecrated soul.” Her mouth tasted bitter. Her hazel eyes felt heavy, turning into slits that could hardly see the figures that shifted around her. Lydian and Phrygian melodies turned 1

Adramelech her mind into blebs and balls of merging mercury as the air became thinner and thinner. She lay on her back, but couldn’t feel her stiffening body. She neither had a sense of space nor perspective; she only felt she had the consistency of some translucent, flying gelatine. Her mind slowly gave in as the journey was on. An electric current ran through her, turning her entire being into sheer, scorching energy. She moved as well. Delicate female cooing and whispers guided her in that trip towards a scarlet glow that opened itself like a swallowing yawn. A faint smell of incense was all she nosed out before becoming part of that brightness. But then, a black crone came out of what it seemed to be a thick and sticky scarlet slough. Her long, straight hair was glued to her body like a soaking cowl of red tar. Her eyes were glassy and almost white and stared at her with cold hospitality. “Come and bathe in this pool of liquid flesh,” said the old woman and extended her long, knobby arms towards her, inviting. "Come and drink this wine of rebirth.” And everything faded away.

2

German Bradley

Chapter One

Ylying on a large bed. Her limbs felt like lead, and

onah Yorke opened her eyes and found herself

the heavy-headed effects of sleep were hard to shake. She lifted her head a little and saw that only a white clean cotton sheet covered her dark-skinned body. She looked to her right and noticed it was noon by the clock on the wall. It took her a couple of minutes to realise she was in Papermill Wharf in London’s Dockland, lying in her white bedroom with crimson curtains. But she felt odd. She could have sworn she had been somewhere else last night. Where? She couldn’t remember. There were no memories left in her mind. The black Caribbean giantess threw the sheet back and sat on the bed. She was about to get up when she saw there was no genital hair between her long legs. Someone had depilated her, and she never knew it. So meticulous had the work been done that there was no doubt she’d been waxed. For a moment she thought it couldn’t be, but the soft texture of her recently bald skin brought her back to reality. “Who was the son of a bitch?” 3

Adramelech But there was another detail on her mound. Five small and dented swords, with their hilts towards the outside, had been branded on her skin, forming an inverted pentacle just above her clitoral ridge. A circle of about one inch in diameter was around them as well. “What the hell—“ She stretched out her left arm for a small mirror on her nightstand and examined her burnt skin. The swords and the circle were clearly traced and looked like reddish scars, as if her skin had turned into a crinkled plastic. “Who did this to me?” she spat with resentment as she stood and staggered across the reception room and the kitchen of her flat, searching for the possible perpetrator. “Come out, you fucking son of a bitch! Show your fucking face!” But there was nobody there. Her flat was as tidy as she had left it. “You just wiped me out, didn’t you?” she said as she investigated her arms looking for needle marks, but found none. “It made you feel good, eh? You were on a high and got me for hours,” she uttered, ticking the walls off. “What did you take, you faggot; speed, Ex, skunk. What?” Suddenly, she saw her agenda on the wood coffee table. She had started to flip the pages, looking up her last client’s name when she realised one page had been torn—the eighth and ninth of August. Taken aback, she sat on her white, plushy sofa and continued glancing it over until she found out there 4

German Bradley was one missing page in April: Saturday 6, and Sunday 7. But that wasn’t all. Whoever the attacker was, he had torn out two pages in February as well: Friday 8, Saturday 9, Sunday 10, and Monday 11. “Some cunt’s been screwing me up.” She tried to match the names on the nearby dates but there was no pattern to follow. “Shit!” That goddamned bastard had been in her flat before and she had no memories of it then. It was useless to phone the police; she’d done it once and all what she got was humiliation and mockery. They never listened to whores. Nobody did. They said they were mere losers who never expressed disgust; throwaway sexual toys from the slums whose lives meant nothing to anyone; second-rate females, tough as old boots, but slaves to anyone who could pay. She was alone, as usual. It was well after one o'clock in the afternoon and she was still in that drug-lagged state, still with the floating sensation in her brain. She shook her head so as to get rid of that state and fluffed the long, fine tails of her tangerine-dyed and braided hair off her face, letting them fall down her back, below her bustline. She examined her chest, her arms, her breasts and firm legs, but there were no marks on them. She went to the bathroom and turned on the light. She watched the room for a while, but everything was fine and clean: the towels and the soap were unused, the whole place had been unused for one or two days at least. “Oh, bloody shit!” 5

Adramelech She squatted on the bidet; she wasn’t sure whether she had had sex with her aggressor or not. She didn’t know what he or they had exactly done to her. Maybe they hadn’t even bothered to slip on any condoms, the bloody bastards. She had dealt with perverts in the past, and it had never been pleasant. But that was ancient history. She didn’t have to make her way across the city to find the clubs that offered good tricks anymore. She had grown up: she was an escort girl now. In those twenty years of harlotry she’d dealt with loads of perverts and had been able to stereotype their tendencies in the light of their social positions. The higher it was, the sicker they became. She’d done almost all kinds of shit with either male or female clients—her bisexual status had always been a plus— and experience had taught her to be painstakingly selective with every possible trick. She didn’t stick with every man she found. Oh, no. Not anymore. She peered at them now, at their nails, eyes and complexions, like a beast. She’d developed a supernatural sense to pick them on, and had made no mistakes. How many times she’d sat on some wealthy client’s face, how many times she’d let them taste her and eat her while menstruating. Oh, that had always been an emotionally overwhelming experience. They said they loved to lick the blood and sloughed-off tissue from her womb. She felt the same overwhelming power when others begged for urolagnia or coprolagnia before or in the middle of the lay. And she had no remorse for that. It had died 6

German Bradley long ago. She wasn’t stranger to drugs either. Cocaine, heroin, hashish, and LSD had been her only strength some time in her life, but she’d never experienced such muddling events as these missing times. There weren’t relics of those days, not a single moment to hoard up. Who was behind this? Who had branded her like a muddy cattle? Why her? she wondered while opening the shower door and stepping into it. Water sprayed on her body and her skin began to chafe under the hot liquid. It throbbed as if lashed. She turned the tap off and touched her back with her right hand. There were furrows on her skin; open wounds that itched and stung badly, making her scratch, making her curse at those bastards. She stepped out of the shower without drying herself and ran to her bedroom. She opened the door of the wardrobe and caught sight of her back in the large mirror on the inside of the door. There was a strange pattern gouged on her dark skin beneath the drops of water that trickled down her body. There was a dark carmine design in the lumbar regions made of slits and gashes, forming a weird group of lines that didn’t bleed despite the depth of the wounds. “Who in the blue hell is doing this to me?” Confusion, fear, rage, and a lacerating pain flooded her senses and made her cry hysterically, falling on her knees. These stigmas were, by far, more than anything she could expect to happen to her body. They imperiled her psychology, shattering her 7

Adramelech woman’s pride, downgrading her to a branded animal status. She didn’t hate herself for being a prostitute. It’d been her choice and she’d learnt to enjoy it somehow. It had helped her to find her own tendencies as well, but now she was giddy with rage and uncertainty. She felt she wasn’t the boss of herself any more. She couldn’t know how every session would end from now on. She couldn’t know if she would be alive to tell the tale. She felt like a fucking wall upon which some filthy, blue-balled jackass had scribbled his frustration through that psychotic graffiti. “Jesus bloody Christ! What shall I do now?” she sobbed. But then, the image of her Scandinavian friend Linnea Uhr came to her mind. Although she’d visited her peer on and off over the year, she felt suddenly worried about her. Had she been marked as well? Had she gone through some sort of missing time? Even though her friend was a famous porn star, she knew she still trailed a reputation of being a nightclub sex worker, which left her more unprotected against any attack.

8

German Bradley

Chapter Two

Ojacket and tight white pants that fitted her so well ff she went, dressed in a zipped black leather

that she looked as if she’d been painted up to her waist in white dye. As she walked up Branch Road towards the Dockland Light Railway station, she tried to dissemble her emotional shock. But London’s cloudy sky seemed to know about her tragedy, and somehow it felt sympathy for her. That cold August afternoon appeared to be on her side as well and lessened the ache of her wounds. The journey on the elevated track of the train took her about twenty minutes from Limehouse station, near her building, to the last station on the Isle of Dogs—Island Gardens. She had travelled all the way standing in front of the door, watching her reflection in the window, and had noticed the nasty stare of a brawny man seated to her left, behind her. His eyes were fixed on her curvaceous heinie, and she began to tremble. She thought she’d seen her aggressor in those beady, brown eyes and a sweat of fear stood on her brow. A look of terror sat on her face as her deep hazel eyes goggled at her reflection 9

Adramelech again. But then, she understood: her pants moulded to her strong thighs and cupped her prominent mound. It was paranoia, a sheer, fucking delusion of persecution. It was she, her pants, her sensual way of dressing that made men drool. She got off the red and blue train and walked to the east along Manchester Road, towards Linnea’s elegant place in Millennium Wharf. She had decided to call on her friend in her flat, hoping that she would be in. And there the jade-eyed blonde hoyden was, with her firm jawline and high cheekbones, at the threshold of apartment 477, inviting her to come in. However, Yonah couldn’t avoid feeling ashamed; a tragedy had reminded of her feelings towards her lover and friend, a tragedy, not love, had taken her to Linnea’s flat. Inside, the flat was done in soothing blue to create a relaxing refuge where Linnea could laze and unwind. It was a small but modern flat. The settee and the armchair were green, but the table and the rest of the furniture were in the same gold ochre colour of the wood flooring. **** “Oh, my God, what’s this? Where have you been? What have they done to you?” said Linnea, aghast at Yonah’s horrible marks. “You should go to see a doctor. It looks bloody awful.” The angular gashes were incredibly open and clean, bloodless; like pieces of loins on the butcher’s shop counter. 10

German Bradley “It hurts like hell as well,” said Yonah, putting on her white tank top again and leaving her leather jacket on the settee, where she had laid it on entering. “I’ll go with you right away. You could get infected otherwise,” said Linnea, picking up her handbag. “You’re so sweet, honey. Thanks a lot. I think I can count on someone I already know. Can I use your phone?” “Sure.” “A customer of mine is a doctor and he gave me his number in case I’d need his service,” continued Yonah, looking for the doctor’s card in the pockets of her jacket. “But there’s something else I’d like you to see, Linnea. Look,” she said, shoving her white snugfitting pants down to her thighs. Yonah knew her friend wouldn’t be surprised at the nudity of her crotch. They had already seen each other without a stitch on. In fact, they had got acquainted at certain weekend sprees where they shared tricks and found more than one way to quench their desires by exploring the nether reaches of their private parts in sizzling lesbian games. This time, however, Linnea looked as confused and frightened as Yonah. The mark on the shaved skin looked like a seal that set her apart from the rest, and in all likelihood connected her with the one who’d done it. “Looks like one of those satanic symbols, doesn’t it?” said the wan Scandinavian woman, startled to see that distinctive pattern. “It bloody does.” She then knelt in front of her black peer and put her pale fingers on the stigma, feeling the scars. 11

Adramelech “It’s like a medallion burnt on you. A signal that says you’ve probably been part of a fucking ritual some sick brute is holding with you,” she said, unable to hide her fear. “Oh, shit. Just my luck. A bloody satanic worship,” snarled Yonah. “I never should have come to this city.” “Can you feel my fingers?” “No.” “Must be some sort of local anaesthetic.” Linnea’s hand continued running over Yonah’s mark to find there wasn’t a single prickle left on her skin. It felt as soft as a baby’s. Impeccably shaved. “Don’t you set up the rules before you get yourself fucked?” asked Linnea in a soft voice. “I blacked out, sweetie! How many times do I have to tell you? It just happened. It...just...happened,” said Yonah with her breath jerking in her chest, sobbing in frustration. “I’m sorry, Yonah. Call your doctor. I’ll be back in a minute,” said Linnea and disappeared behind her bedroom door. **** As Linnea drove her Linarite blue Rover 75 up along Westferry Road, Yonah began to recall the first time she and her lover had met. A customer of hers, a stockbroker in his early fifties, had that sex fantasy he wanted to live out. The typical fancy: a man who wanted to have two women at the same time, one blonde and one black. 12

German Bradley “We’ll have a great time together,” he’d said, giving her a promotional flyer depicting a tall, standing girl from rear view. She was long-legged and big-bottomed, wearing black and sexy clothes: a pair of velvet boots, a corselet, and thongs. To her right, big black letters gave some information about her and her World Entertaining Tour. The girl was a foreign porn star who lived at 60 Brewer Street, flat 2. “I hear you lived in that street, didn’t you?” her customer had asked. “Yes, I used to work there, upstairs from a private video shop.” “Do we turn right or left?” asked Linnea, abruptly breaking her memories. “We’re supposed to turn right in the West India Dock Road.” “Okay.” Yonah hadn’t much cared what Linnea’s clothes looked like on that day, five years ago. She only had eyes for her extraordinary body. She’d seen the gleam of her own desire in those jade eyes, and something told her that it wouldn’t be a fleeting entanglement. Linnea had been a revelation to her, an incredible tactile experience of seduction and exploration unlike any other bisexual congress she’d had. She was her type of woman. Their sexual needs were tailor made for each other. Notwithstanding that, she hadn’t much cared for what she really felt towards her. “Here we are, honey.” Linnea’s sultry voice broke her thoughts again. **** 13

Adramelech

Coming to the doctor’s surgery hadn’t taken Yonah’s frustration away, of course, but had brought her some relief to know those deep gashes were clean and free from infection. The swollen skin around the cuts would be okay in a couple of weeks or so, and her wounds would probably take a little longer, two months at the very most. Yet what had left her head reeling and made her stomach churn was the fact that she seemed to be still under the effects of some drug. He’d said she would have been feverish or anaemic due to the considerable loss of blood, but she was rather aloof instead. Just by looking at her dilating eyes, he’d dared to say her aggressor had used some sort of alkaloid on her before attacking. But a particular sentence of his stuck like a commandment in her mind. A man who attacks prostitutes is not one of her regular customers. Who was toying with her in such a sick way? The more she tried to cast her mind back to that ill-fated episode, the weaker her mental make-up became. But at least she was not alone. Linnea had begged her to stay in her flat all the time she needed for her healing. Concern and affection, the doctor had said, were the most effective cures for tragedy. **** Yonah’s recovery was slow, but her wounds healed well. A thick muff of dark hair had grown between her legs as well, hiding the marks below. It had been a 14

German Bradley time for themselves; a chance to say and show how much they loved each other. Linnea had stopped filming her X-rated movies—her hardcore videos had sold like hot cakes through Internet anyway—in order to take care of her lover. They usually went to eat out or shopping, or just went down to Greenwich Park and talked about their love. Sometimes they travelled to Kew Gardens in Richmond and Linnea always treated Yonah as if she were the most delicate thing in the world, and she was more than delighted. But... “Will these bloody scars vanish some day?” Yonah asked one sunny afternoon, drinking some tea at the Orangery near the Temperate House in Kew Gardens. “What a question! They’re almost invisible now, honey. In a couple of weeks nobody will see them.” “Do you think so?” “Of course I do. Don’t think about that. Don’t let yourself down. It’s over.” “I don’t know, Linnea. Someone wants to ruin my body, my life. I’m scared.” “We’re together now, baby. No bastard is going to ruin you. I won’t let them. I would die first if I had to.” “Honey.” “I love you, Yonah. I really do.” “Will you still love me when I’m old and ugly?” Yonah asked, glaring at her. “If life allows me by your side I’ll be the happiest woman in the world. As happy as I am now, here, with you.” **** 15

Adramelech

And there, after two months, followed other three weeks of downright infatuation. For three weeks, and day after day, Linnea’s flat turned into a sanctuary of lust—their endless and imaginary night of carnality. “I want to break the schedules of hours and days,” said Linnea, holding Yonah’s hands as they sat on the green settee. She wore a lovely red kimono with flaming dragons embroidered on its sleeves. “I want these days to be special for you, but I don’t want to know if it’s day or night out there. I just want this flat to be our world and I want to make you happy here.” “You’re so sweet, darling,” said Yonah, smiling, and bent forwards her friend and kissed her on the mouth. Their slippery tongues couldn’t wait to play inside each other’s mouth. “Wait, love,” interrupted Linnea. “I’m drawing the curtains.” “Why? You afraid of peeping Toms?” “No, I’m just jealous of the external world, and I’m going to say goodbye to it.” One by one Linnea drew all the curtains of her flat, shutting out the sun. Then, she struck a match and began to burn about a dozen white candles she’d already spread throughout the room. Shortly after the place was suffused with a supernatural metallic green coming from the candles. “Hey! What’s this? Where did you get those candles?” asked Yonah, a little surprised at the effect of the colour. “It’s great.” Her friend just smiled back but didn’t answer. Soft Arabian melodies came from the CD player next to 16

German Bradley the green settee instead. Her friend started to dance, shaking her hips, letting her kimono slide off and tossing it on the floor as Yonah got up and applauded, delighted. Like an odalisque, she moved and whirled around her, performing an exotic dance with disturbing grace, never taking her eyes off hers. No man could ever understand the primitive erotic power of those undulating movements, thought Yonah, or the complicated things a woman could feel. No, men couldn’t possibly understand a female dance performed for female eyes only. The fluid motion of Linnea’s body and limbs frozen her on the spot. She wanted to have that body encased in that metallic gold and black bustier; she wanted to taste her there, beneath those matching thongs. Her warm and flawless body offered itself like a wondrous gift she was eager to gingerly unwrap. As if she read her mind, the dancer stopped. The music went on, but they stood in the middle of the living room, breast to breast, iris to iris, indifferent to the sound, but gently touching each other with soft caresses. “Let’s go to the bedroom,” invited Linnea, putting her left arm around her waist. More candlelight waited for them in the bedroom and their mouths came together, more insistent and demanding in the dim intimacy of that supernatural light. A thrill of excitement ran through Yonah’s body as she felt Linnea’s hands reaching down to caress the crest of her buttocks. Her mouth tried to respond to 17

Adramelech Linnea’s passion as she felt the lubrication forming between her legs. But Linnea softly pulled away. “Let’s strip off, love,” she whispered. “Eves no need clobber in paradise.” Standing by the king-size bed Yonah slipped the bustier ruffled straps from her lover’s shoulders and lightly kissed the hairline at the nape of her neck while her dark hands looked for the hooks of her garment, undoing them one by one. “I love you, Yonah,” said Linnea with a strangled voice. “I love you.” “Me too,” replied Yonah and softly opened and pulled the bustier away from her friend’s large, pale breasts. “Oh, they’re lovely, honey. They feel so good,” she continued as she lifted them up and away, cradling them in her hands, feeling her own nipples already erect beneath her white tank top. Yonah crouched a little, putting her hands on Linnea’s hips. She wanted to feel those large, heaving breasts brush across her face. And Linnea knew it as well. She knew the sight of her breasts had always been a turn-on for her dark-skinned friend, so she leant over and flirted with Yonah’s appetite, teasing her most untamed drive, forcing her to kiss and suck those cinnamon nipples that stood as big and swollen as a man’s fingertips. The Caribbean giantess continued lowering her body, leaving a trail of kisses over the flat of Linnea’s stomach, until she was on her knees. Her dark fingers had slid into the sides of Linnea’s thongs and began to peel them down. Linnea tried to retain control, but an exquisite 18

German Bradley sensation slammed through her when she felt Yonah’s fingers graze over her already wet nether lips. “Oh, God,” she hissed through clenched teeth as Yonah dipped a couple of fingers inside her. A moan escaped her lips. She felt her legs shaky and could barely stand. She needed to lie down and spread her thighs for Yonah. “Let’s go to the bed, honey. Finish me on the bed,” she said, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to withstand so much pleasure on her feet. And so Yonah lay stark naked on the floral quilt of her lover’s bed, with one hand between her legs and the other pinching and fondling her swarthy breasts. “Come and taste me first, baby. Come on. Get me off,” she said as her fingers opened the folds of her elongated pudendum. There the selfish Yonah was, demanding to be serviced, regardless of her lover’s needs. She could do her later, next day, next week. Linnea slid down between her legs, sniffing Yonah’s perfumed skin. Her moist tongue glided up and down her slit, swimming the creases of her labia to finally dive under her clit. “Ah, baby. Do I taste good?” Yonah murmured as her sex contracted and her legs wrapped around Linnea’s shoulders, her hands holding her head firmly down to her sex. “Lap me up, baby. Do it, do it.” Yonah felt herself ooze while that tongue continued playing with her, wriggling into the gape of her pussy. But Linnea’s hands hadn’t been idle during the sucking session; they’d reached up to Yonah’s breasts, grabbing, pulling, milking. 19

Adramelech “Oh, God,” Yonah hissed. “I’m almost there, honey. Get me off. Please, get me off.” Her sex twitched in response to her lover’s lapping. Her belly rippled and her breasts got heavier and heavier. But Linnea wasn’t a mere cunnilinctor. She rose up and bent half over her, placing three fingers inside her. “You feel them?” asked Linnea. “Are they in the right place?” “Don’t be gentle. Don’t make it last.” She felt a nagging prickle down there and pushed her hips forwards, driving those fingers deeper. “Oh, baby. Oh, sweet baby,” Yonah grasped and grunted. Her vaginal muscles squeezed on those fingers in an urgent rhythm until her entire being unfurled, until she could withstand no more. And so Yonah went on for three long weeks, opening herself to Linnea’s sultry consolation, responding to her lover’s burning desires, satisfied and relaxed but always empty. Every day during those weeks Linnea had taken care of her in the most titillating ways she’d found, but the ice in Yonah’s heart remained unbreakable.

20

German Bradley

Chapter Three

Dmanaged to win her over to let off steam together espite

Yonah’s

apprehensions,

Linnea

had

on that Saturday night. So they dressed up to look the part, provided themselves with enough money to spend, and finally drove off to Linnea’s favourite club in London: Fabric. “You’ll love it, dear. It’s a big venue to dance and sweat the night away,” said Linnea already in the party mood. “It’s perfect.” “If you say so.” “Come on. I’ll be just great. You won’t be disappointed. Look, I’m inviting you to one of the most popular shows at Fabric—Bugged out. It’s—“ “What’s the name again?” she laughed. “You see? You’re getting into the mood. That’s what all this is about.” Yonah knew quite well what all that was about and she was thankful to be part of such a caring couple. She knew her lover wanted her to be confident again, she wanted her to forget, and so would she, from that night on. It was a promise. Linnea parked and turned off the motor of her 21

Adramelech Rover near Farrington Station. She was about to get out when Yonah held her left arm and asked: “What date is it today, honey?” She looked nervous, as if suddenly worried about something. “What’s up, love?” Linnea asked and kissed her on the mouth. “It’s September 7, I think. Ten p.m..” A chill ran down Yonah’s spine. She was suddenly afraid but didn’t know why. It was just a tremor, a hunch that put her on the watch and made her feel vulnerable. “I’m scared, Linnea. Do you mind if I stay with you all night long?” Yonah’s words sounded almost like begging. “I’d like you to stay with me forever.” Linnea kissed her again. There was a joie de vivre vibe in the air that night. The revelling atmosphere seemed to be an invitation for Yonah’s mood to give herself a chance to forget and have a good time. “Are my seams straight?” asked Linnea, trying to look at the back of her legs, at the grey stockings that enhanced the beauty of her long calves. “Perfect.” Yonah knew her friend was just flirting. It was quite easy to see she got the looks that kill in that peacock blue satin-snug sheath, shod in those sexy, blue velvet spike heels. “What about me?” asked Yonah, following her coquettish game. “How do I look? Do I look sexy?” She knew she was sexy in her short, wine-red-andblack-fringed jacket, gold corset, and gold shoes with black stockings. 22

German Bradley “You’re devastating, love,” answered Linnea. “You know you blow me away.” And they laughed, flirting with each other; their vanity already tickled. “And this is it,” said Linnea again, pointing to a nearby group of young clubbers, who laughed and talked at the entrance. “77 Charterhouse Street.” Yonah stopped dead in her tracks. Again, the same baffling chill stroked her spine, as if the place itself made her feel threatened. Yet this time she said nothing. Everybody stopped chatting and turned to stare at them as they were crossing the access door. It was a lascivious silence, under which these people tried to hide their super-charged thoughts. That was the effect they usually caused among men, and some women as well, the drooling-man effect that Yonah had always enjoyed. Inside, cutting edge soundtracks deafened their ears; the state-of-the-art sound system Linnea had told her about before. The intense lights of the dance floor changed continuously from reddish to bluish green, suffusing the horde of dancers who already crowded the place. “I’ve heard the DJ’s from New York,” commented Linnea, almost shouting while buying their drinks at the bar. Then they headed for the chill-out rooms on the second floor and sat on the sofa in the darkest corner of an empty room. Bourbon and gin mixed in their kisses as their hands cast about for each other’s sensitive skin above their stocking-tops and between their crossed legs. Their bodies began to squirm on the sofa as their 23

Adramelech mouths moved softly against each others’ ears. “We’ll have plenty of time for ourselves tonight,” said Linnea, finishing her glass of gin. “Why don’t we go man hunting, eh?” Her voice sounded playful and engaging as always. “I mean, just to have some fun. No business, all right? What do you say?” Yonah just looked at those jade eyes and shrugged lamely, waiting for a shove. “We could let them buy us some drinks, and...we could even slow-dance with those lucky ones,” continued the mischievous Linnea. Yonah smiled and followed her downstairs with the glass of bourbon still in her hand. But down there, on the left side of the dance floor, she saw a man who drew her entire attention. It was her ideal prototype of the male gender: a handsome long face with a fine mouth and a slightly askew nose watched the dancers with a certain look of sadness in his eyes. He must have had an argument with his wife, Yonah thought, fixing the man’s face in her gaze, and now he’s drowning his sorrows in the bar. But how can such a gorgeous bloke be so sad? Hold on, baby, I’m coming. It was a sort of magnetism that drew her towards him. There were no second thoughts, no what ifs, nothing. Just pure chemical attraction. And she felt elated and aroused as she made her way through the crowd. “You all right?” she grinned at him, sitting on a freshly empty barstool by his side. He grinned back. “What’s your poison?” she asked. 24

German Bradley “Brandy.” “Same again for me, please,” she instructed the barman, pointing to his tumbler. “You’re shy, you are, uh...What’s your name again?” asked the man in a peculiarly nuanced foreign accent. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. I’d better be off,” she said and stood, but the man’s right hand was already on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, my mistake. My name’s Nagash Lasobre.” “What an unusual name you have. Where do you come from?” “Finland. But just call me Nag.” “Glad to meet you, Nag. I’m Yonah.” “Well, well, well. I see my friend here’s already found a little bit of company, hasn’t she?” interrupted Linnea, with a big smile on her face. “Linnea, this is Nag. Nag, my friend Linnea,” said Yonah, but her friend just winked at her and went off, dropping out of sight among the revellers. The music had changed into space-like melodies and pumping beats, and Yonah let herself go, let her body move with the rhythm until the strong, vibrating sound became energy all over her. The music seemed to lift her out of her body and out of her head, out of the dimension she now occupied. She felt like a teaser goddess closed in on a sensual brio beyond her own understanding. She flaunted her lingerie and flashed her thighs and licked her lips, but only to play the innocent maiden after, only to get off on the fact that she kept Nag on the edge. Yet it 25

Adramelech wasn’t routine this time; it was genuine desire. ****

On that balmy Saturday night, stripped of both clothes and inhibitions, the couple lived out the hankerings that welled within them upon a king-size bed on lemon satin sheets. A white Adam and a black Eve, they were immersed in a garden of throes. “Aaagh, baby. Careful,” said Yonah as Nag entered her. “You’re so big. Oh, Daddy. It feels so good.” Her hazel eyes were fixed on his. “You love it, don’t you? Tell me how much you love it,” he said and smiled, softly pounding his cock into her. “Oh, yeah. That’s it. Pound it in, baby.” The stereo was on. One of her favourite bands was playing for them. Even though the volume was low, an uncanny, hypnotic rhythm filled the room, encompassing them with its melody. Female pantings came out of the loudspeakers as if the band wanted to induce them to a more arduous tempo, but Nagash was heedless of that arousing mood. He just thrust his arse in short jabs while she, beneath him, rotated hers in small circles. They made their own music with those leisurely movements. Yet desire finally overcame all resistance and their pas de deux became more demanding. “Harder, baby, harder. Make me scream.” He took hold of her bottom and pressed her firmly against him, slewing one way and then the other. She 26

German Bradley squealed with delight and her ample breasts jiggled up and down as she heaved herself upwards. But then he changed his pushing and began to tease her with the tip of his member only. “No, no. Don’t leave me now,” she urged and forced him back to his previous position. “Just keep pounding, Daddy.” And so he did, lowering himself into her, digging his prick fully inside her. “Like this? Is this what you want?” he asked, working back and forth. “Ohh, Nag, I like that a lot. Don’t stop, don’t stop. Fuck me numb.” “Say it again, Yonah. I want to hear it again.” “Stuff me with that big fast dick of yours.” She was high, jerking and groaning fiercely. She screamed as if his shaft caused her pain instead of pleasure. Her hands held wads of satin in her fists. But despite her impending orgasm, he stopped. “No, no, no!” She opened her eyes and stared at him in anguish. “Don’t leave me! Don’t—please.” But he’d already done so, and his black eyes watched her dark skin, drenched with sweat. Those swarthy breasts of hers looked like two unconquered mounds that, despite his skilful service, still eyed him in defiance, inciting him to more. “Turn over,” he finally said. “Push your arse out, I want to fuck you from behind.” Without complaining, she did what he said and knelt forward, giving him an excellent view of her black, curvaceous heinie and the gleaming pink lips of her elongated pudendum. He smiled again at the 27

Adramelech alluring angle, grabbed a pillow and inserted it under her belly. The music was intense now but beatifically peaceful at the same time. It’d turned into a prelude for the sacred ritual they were about to celebrate. A prelude for him to move between her legs and nudge her knees apart; a prelude to a new angry fugue of lust. “Oh, baby. Give it to me. That’s it, baby. Harder, harder. Let me have it all.” She wriggled her rear to get more of him while he began to kneel between her legs, bending forwards, brushing his hairy chest against her back. He reached under her and cupped her breasts in a firm grip as he continued moving. Like a rock, she held herself with her hands and knees as her body tensed and twisted against his. She threw her head back. Her long and tight tangerinedyed curls suffocated her, whipping from side to side, yet she kept on wriggling her bottom, desperately working it round and round to achieve the maximum penetration. She threw her head back again and gasped on and on, until a primordial sound came from within her, and him as well.

28

German Bradley

Shabbattu

S

he had risen up out of her body mounted atop a weird mule-headed and snake-like stick with undulating countless tails at the end, guiding her through a spacescape of scarlet glow. She felt free, on cloud nine, holding on to the mule’s ears and wrapped in a silver star energy, which streamed behind as she swept across that catamenian cosmos. It wasn’t an ascending trip, though. She had the feeling she was falling, sweeping across spheres—seven they seemed to be—that imbued her spirit with new attributes, making her more strongly receptive to her most primeval emotions. “Sail out free. Sail out free,” a choir of female voices called to her spirit. “Rise from your sleep. May the expelled creators here blow a new life into your soul.” A multiplicity of forces gripped her spirit in a trice: lust, greed, wrath, pride, treachery, hate and grief. But the names of those demon lords she couldn’t get. Suddenly, the mental image of a spell appeared in front of her and, as if she were in trance, her hands began to pen it down on a sort of blackboard. It was written in ancient cuneiform characters she inexplicably knew and understood, but as she wrote and read it, she couldn’t help 29

Adramelech being afraid of the power of those familiar words, of those sounds that seemed to change the balance of Nature. She was so frightened and amazed that her hands hastened to wipe them out. She didn’t want to remember those sounds; neither did she want to see those evil characters again. Yet, a trace of them remained in a corner of her mind like a stubborn memory of something forbidden, but alive. There were white cards as well. An unknown tarot deck spread out in pairs for her to see. She could swear no human hand had designed the images on them for the personality that came out of each card was beyond the qualities that made up a person’s character. The eyes of those beasts were alive and communicating with her, full of chaos and hate, but above all, full of supremacy. “The cards greet the frightening worm in the heart of men,” said a tall, black crone, holding Yonah by her shoulders. “Your destiny is talking to you now. Open your eyes.” A strong wave of heat ran down her body. Yonah knew it was the old woman’s energy invading and protecting her. It was the evil force that hailed her presence; it was the evil force that energised her. “We’ve all missed you here.”

30

German Bradley

Chapter Four

A

sharp pain in her back roused Yonah from her sleep. Her deep hazel eyes stared towards the olive green ceiling above her and the round lamp at the centre. It was an unfamiliar, brand new place with olive green walls and brown ochre curtains. But that wasn’t all: an old black woman was sitting at the foot of the bed. It was a thin, ethereal form that scrutinised her with extreme zeal. “Who are you?” Yonah asked, trying to sit on that clean bed of ultramarine sheets and satin quilt, but her whole body ached. “Where am I? What am I doing here?” she went on, but the ghostly woman just faded away. “Wait, please!” she called. Her head was still dazed with sleep. Yet she had seen that face before, somewhere, she was sure. She threw back the sheet and quilt and got out of the bed, but to her surprise, she was naked and shaved between her legs, and branded. “Jesus Christ! What happened?” The room spun around her and the sensation forced her to sit on the bed. Her head was killing her and the sharp pain in her back pierced, making her 31

Adramelech cry. She put her right hand on her lower back and touched; the smart made her jump as tears began to run down her cheeks. She was scared and couldn’t think well. No memories came to her mind, no matter how hard she tried. “Jesus! What’s cropping up? What’s cropping up?” She looked over the room. The door was ajar and her clothes were neatly folded upon an easy chair with footrest next to the window, on the opposite side of the room. Trembling with fear and still weak at the knees, she drew near the chair and flung her clothes on. Her gold corset reminded her of a party. A club—Fabric. A man, but nothing else. Her eyes caught sight of a white telephone behind the chair but her instincts told her to be on the watch, to hold her gold high heels in her hands and use them for self-defence. She pulled the door open and waited, ready to strike any bastard who dared to cross. Keep cool, Yonah, she said to herself, no fucking bastard is going to lock you in here. No way. No fucking way. But nobody came in. She went for her bag and left the bedroom, her heels still in her hands. She was alone in the middle of a small, olive-green lounge. Everything looked perfectly clean and tidy: no dust on the furniture, no cigarette ashes on the ashtray, no stains on the carpet. Nobody had been in that flat before her. She tried to open the main door but it was locked, and she impotently battered it with her heels. How 32

German Bradley long she’d been sleeping there she couldn’t know, but the thought gave her an idea. She strode back to the bedroom and examined the bed. Her hands touched the pillow, the upper and bottom sheets, searching for her body’s warmth or smell, but none of them she found. A jittery feeling ran through her body together with an unpleasant feeling of coldness. It was shivery there. The bloody bastard must have put me in the bed and then ran away, she deduced in silence. She looked around and saw the telephone again. This is a hotel, isn’t it? They could bring me something up, couldn’t they? she thought and picked up the receiver. There was a nice orange tag with the room number in blue in that rectangular cradle. Her black forefinger pressed letter C and waited. “Good afternoon. Maid Service. May I help you?” A female voice answered. “Yes, this is Yonah Yorke. I’m locked in my room and I—“ “What’s your room number, please?” “520.” “Oh, I see,” the voice said after a pause. “Someone will be there in a minute.” “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it. Enjoy your stay.” She put down the receiver and stepped out of the room. She approached the window of the lounge and pulled the curtains open. The rays of the afternoon sun dazzled her sight for a moment, forcing her to shade her eyes with one hand. There was a balcony with metal rails, facing a tranquil marina full of pleasure motorboats and small yachts. Beyond, she 33

Adramelech eyed South Quay DLR Station, but the sound of a key unlocking the door made her turn her head. “Excuse me, madam,” said a young maid, handing her the keys. “I brought you another copy of the keys. Just in case, you know,” she said a little nervous but smiling. “Do you need anything else?” she inquired, casting an eye over her clothes. “No, thanks. I’ll go downstairs with you. I need to talk to the concierge. Do you know where I can find him?” “Of course, madam. I’ll take you to his office.” **** Back in her flat in Papermill Wharf, she tried to solve the goddamned jigsaw puzzle her life had turned into. There had been some pretty weird things going on and she had been closing her eyes to them, to say the least. She hadn’t memories of them; only images, or probably fantasised images, coming to her head in the most incoherent sequence. She remembered lights, music, a party, a gorgeous man, and that bloody pain in her back that forced her to go topless in her flat. The concierge at Antilles Bay, the place where she’d woken, had said a woman had booked that room for her on the phone, but he hadn’t seen any of them entering the apartment building. What sort of bitch could have branded me in this way? she wondered. Why? Why did I have this strange feeling of being somewhere else? Does the old woman I saw have something to do with this? She stretched her arms for the agenda on the coffee 34

German Bradley table and looked up some names, but she wasn’t sure what date it was that day, what month: August? September? Perhaps October? According to the engagement book she hadn’t had any business dates since July 29, though. “What the hell is going on with me?” she said, throwing the agenda against the wall. “Who’s the bloody dyke behind this?” Amidst her frustration and her fragmented mental pictures, the image of a blonde woman appeared— Linnea. She pushed aside her troubled thoughts and dialled her number. She had to talk to someone, even though she hadn’t rung her up for...a month perhaps? “Hello, this is Linnea. I can’t come to the phone at the moment, so please leave your number and I’ll get back to you as soon as po—“ Suddenly, her eyes paid attention to a key ring on her coffee table. They weren’t the keys to her door, though. She lifted it carefully, as if it were evidence in the site of a crime, and studied the silvery pieces of metal. One of them was... the key...to her car. Yes. She had a car, a Magma Red Peugeot. And the other... the other had to be her lover’s door key. But she was afraid of going out, afraid of people’s eyes. Where is the self-confident, strong-willed Yonah? she wondered. Where is the tough escort girl? She had been in tight spots before, albeit never branded like that, and she had always handled the situation. Why would it be different this time? Even though the idea made her feel her chest tighten and her heart race, she breathed in deeply, put on a T-shirt, went to 35

Adramelech the carpark downstairs and drove off to her lover’s flat. **** After she waited for four hours, the door finally opened. “Yonah? What’s wrong?” asked Linnea. “You look awful.” She hurried to her lover, and Yonah clung to her like a lonely, small child who had long waited for her mother to pick her up at school. “I tried to reach you on the phone, but you weren’t in.” “Oh, darling. I’ve been doing a series of loops the entire week. You know, stag porno films,” said Linnea. “Oh, love. I’m so sorry.” And hugged her tight, speaking soothingly, caressing her curls. “It’s all right now, Yonah. I’m here and it’s all right.” “No. Nothing’s right, Linnea. Nothing.” “What do you mean, honey?” she asked and pulled away. “Look.” Yonah took off her T-shirt and turned, showing her back to her lover. “Can you see them?” “Oh, my God. It happened again.” “What?” “Don’t you remember?” Yonah’s eyes were wide-open and fixed on Linnea’s. “Come here, baby. Let’s sit down,” said her lover, taking hold of Yonah’s hands. “What did you do last week? Where did you go? Can you tell me?” “I don’t know. All I know is that I woke up in room 36

German Bradley 520 at Antilles Bay today in the afternoon.” “Antilles Bay?” “It’s an apartment building near South Quay Station.” “And you really don’t know how you got there, do you?” “I haven’t got the foggiest idea!” “Oh, darling,” said Linnea and hugged her again. “Do you...remember a club?” she asked while Yonah nestled up to her. “There are images in my head. Flashes. But I can’t get what they are. I mean, they seem to be portions of a dream or something,” said Yonah as her limbs began to tremble and her bosom heaved. “You said it had happened again. Tell me, Linnea. What’s happening again? What the hell is all this about?” “A month ago,” her lover started, “you came here and showed me those horrible gashes on your back, and a sort of pentacle branded on your groin. I know you haven’t shown me that, but I know it’s there, isn’t it?” Yonah couldn’t say a thing. Her lover was right. “We went to see a doctor, a friend of yours, and he said...” “What? What did he say? Tell me.” “You’ve been drugged, Yonah. Some sick fucking brute has been using you.” A sudden fear swept over Yonah. She drew her breath short and thick and she started to feel dizzy. She stood and tried to walk but her limbs seemed to give way under her. “There was a man you met at the club,” continued 37

Adramelech Linnea. “A man with a foreign accent. Can you remember where he took you?” “No, I can’t. I do remember him, but—Did you really see me with him? I thought he was a dream of mine.” “No, Yonah. He was real. I was there, too. We went to the club together. Last week.” Yonah sat again and looked at the floor. “A woman has a hand in this, Linnea, I’m sure.” “A woman?” “There was a woman today in that room. It was... an immaterial figure, ethereal, like a ghost, and she stared at me with those eyes.” “Easy now, baby,” said her lover, trying to calm her. “You just thought you saw a ghost. It must have been an illusion brought into your head by some sort of drug.” “Why should anybody do such a thing to me? Can you tell me why? Who’s using me, Linnea? Who?” And she began to cry. “I wish I had the answer to those questions, love.” “But I won’t gift-wrap myself for that fucking bastard. No way.” And she stood. “I’m not willing to be the victim of some psycho.” Her voice rose to anger. “Why don’t you move in here? We could face this together, as a couple, and you would be safer. You know I wouldn’t let anybody hurt you, would I?” “You’re so sweet, darling. I love the way you are, but we’ve talked about this before. Our relationship is free. You have your own life, and I have mine. I don’t want to interfere.” 38

German Bradley “Why are you so afraid?” “I’m not afraid of living with you. I’m—How many times has this happened to me, honey? Tell me. Honestly. How many times?” “This is the third time,” said Linnea reluctantly. “You see? I can’t take the risk of seeing you involved in all this shit. I’d hate to see you branded like me.” “You’re suffering from amnesia, Yonah. You won’t be safe alone. Not in your condition.” “Probably, but they won’t break this minger that easy.” “Easy? You said easy?” Linnea just laughed. “They have the control, Yonah. They can have you whenever they wish. Can’t you see it?” Linnea was right again; her bravado was just a way to hide her despair. She knew it would be sensible to stay with her lover but it was hard for her to accept that she was weak. Her professional and personal independence was in jeopardy. It no longer mattered how choosy or tough or skeptical she could be with her clients, her aggressor would have her anyway. However, she would never surrender to any bastard’s intimidation. Never. “I haven’t checked the messages in my answering machine yet. They could give us some clues about the things I supposed I did.” “Do you really think it’ll help?” “It’s worth a try, isn’t it? We’ll be together.” “Okay, tough cow, but first things first. I’ll take care of your wounds and I won’t let you go until you get better, all right?” 39

Adramelech “Thanks, love,” said Yonah and kissed her. Linnea burnt her candles and performed her exotic Arabian dance, and after three weeks Yonah felt better, much better. ****

“Hello, Yonah. This is Nagash Lasobre. I still remember the wonderful night we spent together. I’d like to see you again. I miss the things you did to me. Call me. My number is 0171 537 7502.” Back in Papermill Wharf, Yonah and her lover listened to the only recorded message. Nagash was the name of the man Yonah had met at the club, she remembered it now, and it was clear he had been her last customer, but as Linnea had said, that information didn’t help a lot. There was no way for him to know where she’d gone afterwards, he had no right to know it either, and neither could she trust him, just in case he knew. One thing was sure, though: he couldn’t be the aggressor. According to her lover, all that shit had started before she met him, so it had to be someone else; it had to be a woman. One of the four women she’d seen, when being alone, having a cup of tea in her kitchen. They appeared form time to time, in daylight or at night, and stopped their never-ending teatime to scrutinise her with those eerie eyes, with that extreme zeal. They never spoke to her, but she could hear the sound of her own cups and teaspoons. They looked 40

German Bradley strange, dressed in those old-fashioned frocks and sandals. But above all, they looked terribly familiar.

41

Adramelech

Chapter Five

T

he light of the midday sun lit the Amerigo Vespucci’s white-walled dining room. The restaurant still wasn’t quite full, although it was about the height of the lunch hour. People kept their conversations in a low pitch while waiters came and went, in a rather relaxing way, with new orders. “So, why did you come to this country?” asked Nagash, sipping his Cabernet. Four days later, he had phoned Yonah to meet together and have lunch in that elegant Italian restaurant at Canary Wharf. “It fits my expectations,” said Yonah, staring at his captivating businessman’s aura in that formal dark blue suit, in that shiny hair he wore short and combed backwards. He was handsome in a very masculine way, not like the sissy heartthrobbers she usually watched on television. He was the man who combined all she’d always daydreamed about. “It’s permissive and gives me what I need. And you, what about you?” “I live on planes most of the time,” he said, not very concentrated on his words. She looked 42

German Bradley marvellous sitting there in front of him, wearing a clingy flaming fuchsia dress and high black velvet boots. Her striking appearance had called the attention of more than one man since she came in, and there were still some who dared to turn and stare at her from time to time. “A couple of weeks here, a couple of weeks there, you know. My interests are in many cities. But that’s not the reason why I wanted you to come here today.” “Well, I’m all ears,” said Yonah and smiled. “It’s about the arrangement we agreed on,” said Nagash, reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket. “Pardon?” “That night. Four weeks ago.” Her smile had died. She tried to remember but nothing came to her mind. “We agreed on the terms that I’d go to your flat three times a week whenever I wished.” “Wait a minute,” she said and looked at him with a glare. “What are you talking about?” “I’m paying the same price for every session,” said the man and took out a white envelope from the pocket of his jacket. Yonah knew men very well. She could tell the difference between lies and facts just by looking into their eyes, and that formula told her those dark and brooding eyes portrayed a terrifying but genuine truth. He pushed away his plate and glass and leant forwards, reaching out to place the envelope on Yonah’s hands. “I’m not selling,” she spat and made a gesture to 43

Adramelech stand and leave, but Nagash held her right hand. “Will you have a look into the envelope?” he said. “I think you can’t turn down that kind of money.” Her fingers were used to totting up cash fast, but this time she did it twice, three times, and the figure was exactly the same: six hundred pounds in fifty pound notes. “Don’t you remember? That’s the price we agreed.” “Is this a joke? I couldn’t have possibly charged you this.” Although it wasn’t a bad offer, her sense of business made her negotiate the numbers a little bit higher. What’s more, she knew this gorgeous man had to be quite inventive and wealthy to see his fantasies come true. Actually, she had nothing to lose. She just wanted to take her time and tease him a little, lowering her thick and dark lashes, playing a gentle smile across her moist lips. Deep inside her, she had already accepted his offer. As a matter of fact, she would have accepted any offer from this man, any. “My price is usually eight hundred pounds, Nag,” she said, sliding her fingertips along the rim of her wineglass and down to the bowl, to the stem, to continue up again, as her tongue licked her upper lip. “Are you still considering it?” “I knew you’d say something like that.” He grinned. “Yes, I am. But for that price—“ “Sssh!” she interrupted him by putting her fingers over his mouth. Then, leaning forwards, she kissed and licked his lips. “I’ll prove you that I’m more than worthy.” 44

German Bradley

**** The ultra-low frequencies of Techno-Trance and the bass undercurrents of Grunge and Garage music became a sort of need for her. Nagash Lasobre had made a club goer of her, a reveller who, among other scantily clad youths and elders, danced to a smorgasbord of rhythms at the coolest clubs in London: Fabric, Home and Bagley’s became her second home, and Nagash wanted her dressed in different clothes every time. An adult-size version of British school uniform—complete with fishnet stockings, stiletto heels and clingy button-down shirt; a latex open breast dress with elbow length gauntlets and latex stockings; or a long jacket and nothing beneath except an underwired, padded bra, framed panties, suspender belt and stockings, always stockings. Dancing had become a liberating and enjoyable experience, a sense of abandon and skin-tingling euphoria that took possession of her wherever she went. Yet she was stunned and lost in that storm tide of decibels as well. The ear-splitting sounds drove her mad. She felt as if she had no control, as if her body didn’t respond to her commands. The music, or perhaps the spirit she so willingly drank night after night, had transformed her into a dancing marionette, like the sweating masses she saw beneath the flickering lights. She felt carried away. She couldn’t help herself, and danced on and on until the ache of her muscles brought her consciousness back. 45

Adramelech Every night out was another freaky fantasy for Nagash, and new play-acting for her, the lucky harlot on stage. But she didn’t care very much for that; all she wanted to do were those sexual things he always did to her afterwards, or openly on some club stages. That was what had happened at Privilege, a cavernous nightclub on Ibiza, where in the middle of the party, she nuzzled her buttocks up to his coat— that was the only clothing he’d worn in that club— and she felt his erection under. As he parted his long, wide coat, she hoisted up her skirt and dropped her panties a little. He entered her almost immediately and they did it in front of all those dancing strangers. But something totally different had happened in another nightclub on Ibiza, a mingler for transvestites and coked-up glitterati called Eden. Nagash had taken her upstairs to a room he’d already booked for them. “Take your clothes off and lie on the bed,” he said and began to handcuff her. He put her hands over her head in the cuffs and bound them to the bedhead. The scene brought her memories of the bloody bastard who’d used her and she got scared. She saw him in her mind’s eye, she saw his restless eyes in Nagash’s, but it couldn’t be, it was just a fantasy. He tied up her ankles, leaving her body spreadeagled on the bed and she started to writhe, afraid, begging him to let her loose, half playing the role and half scared. Nagash just stood over her with his clothes on, admiring her body, watching her stream with sweat because of the effort, and started a tantalising game he called flamme et cire. And she got 46

German Bradley excited. Hot wax made her more receptive for his game, and she asked for more. And when her nipples were pointed and hard, the pose de pinces took over, only to finish with a savage coupling. At the end of those crazy days on Ibiza Yonah had turned into another woman, a masochist in need of her master. Even though she tried to be as cold as a stone, she couldn’t avoid feeling drawn towards that man who had managed to keep her ravenous for sex, like a nymphomaniac slave in the grip of a ceaseless morbid imagination. She couldn’t find full gratification any more. He was a virtuoso in bed; a scholar of sex, but her libido was never relieved. She was sick with genuine lust for him and proud of submitting herself to his every whim. He reminded her of those legendary Chinese masters of the Tao of love who had sufficient control of themselves to satisfy as many women as they wished. Oh, she liked Nagash, and in doing so, she had broken her own rules. She liked the ways he took her and they, in turn, had become hers. She liked his big, husky shaft. Always hard; always inexhaustible. A living dildo that made her feel full. Oh, she was mad about that glistening purple plum and the distended blue veins that popped all over it. **** “Yonah!” Linnea couldn’t believe her eyes. She and her lover hadn’t seen each other in two months, and over that time she had borne some resentment against her black 47

Adramelech sweetheart. She felt ignored, cast aside in some way but nothing, absolutely nothing could have helped her to understand what she saw in front of her. Yonah was almost lying on the sofa, playing with herself, but her cheeks, brow and arms were wreathed in white cryptic tattoos together with chains, studs and metal plates forced into her skin like thumbtacks. Her fingers were adorned with silver rings connected to one another by chains that joined through small ring-bolts at the centre of two metal plates stabbed into her hands. Her neck was in a broad black choker decorated with tiny brass rings, and a pair of glossy high boots sheathed her long legs. Her lips were parted, her eyes closed. Her hands roamed up and down her body and touched and pressed her breasts and the invisible desire that ran all over her. She was lost in her erotic reverie and hadn’t even heard the door open. She just rubbed her nipples up against her palms as she lifted her lips, searching for that imaginary beau. A hoarse lament escaped her mouth as she let her hands idly stray down towards the white, silky bikini that covered her pussy. She squeezed her thighs together, pressing and catching those teasing hands. Then, slowly and lavishly, she opened her legs again and a sharp, gleaming razor appeared in one of her hands. With her eyes still clamped shut, she guided the blade’s sharp edge towards the fabric of her bikini and sliced it into pieces with the expertise of a surgeon. A red-hot gash came into view—her sex, eager and damp, waiting for the fingers that hastened 48

German Bradley to sink into her. Linnea just lingered there, next to the door, motionless and catching her breath. She heard her lover snorting with her mouth shut. Her undulating hips followed the rhythm of her fingers as the acrid smell of her desire filled the room. But then, she turned over, showing her back. The wounds on her skin had become a strange white tattoo design she couldn’t figure out. There were studs and metal plates forced into her skin near the scapulae. But Yonah just swung and ground her hips against her hand trapped between the cushion of the sofa and her sex, until a succession of hoarse shouts revealed that everything was over. “What...in God’s...?” Linnea asked, pointing her forefinger at Yonah’s tattoos and chains. “How?” she asked again as she studied her lover intently. “Did you enjoy it?” Yonah asked and stood and stomped across the living room, throwing the torn bikini away. Shaking, Linnea remained standing by the door, watching her lover as a crowd of thoughts raced through her head. But none of them explained all the crap she saw on Yonah’s skin. “Tell me, Yonah. What’s all this shit? What have you been up to?” “Work,” Yonah replied tiredly. “It’s just work.” She smiled, pouring herself a tumbler of whisky. “Do you want some?” Her voice sounded unfamiliar, though. Distant and monotonous, as if she talked to herself. “Work? Jesus Christ! What sort of work have you 49

Adramelech got now? Look at yourself. Look at all that shit over your—“ Suddenly, it was as plain as day for Linnea. “It’s that fucking brute, isn’t it? All these weeks you’ve been working your arse out with that bastard, haven’t you? Of course. He keeps you strung out on drugs. Yes, he’s feeding you on alkaloids, and you like them. You love them, don’t you?” “You want to join us?” she asked and slung her hair. A sensuous smile delineated Yonah’s lips, but it wasn’t enough to conceal her fatigue. “You can’t sleep, can you?” said Linnea, staring at the rings under Yonah’s swollen eyes. She noticed a certain congestion on Yonah’s facial nerves as well, and felt her pulse. It was fast, too fast to be normal. “Open your mouth, Yonah.” “You’re a doctor now?” Yonah said and laughed a giddy laugh. Her tongue was dry. “What have you become? What have they done to you?” said Linnea with despair in her voice. “He wants me dressed like this,” Yonah replied and laughed again like a drunken woman. “Who? Who’s the fucking bastard?” “Oh, you’ll love him when you meet him. He does things you can’t even tell. Great things. He’s superb.” Yonah said and bent her head to nestle in the crook of Linnea’s neck. “Do you happen to know his name?” Linnea asked, her voice dripping with scorn. “Nagash Lasobre.” Linnea felt her body tense and pushed Yonah away. That black woman was not the one she’d seen 50

German Bradley two months ago. She was an oddity who tried to act like her lover but scared her to death in doing so. She looked like a zombie, a mindless slave whose eyes shone hatred, whose hoarse voice sounded like a man’s. And that cold she felt in the flat—a cold that seemed to come out of furniture and walls... “Can’t you see?” Linnea spoke again. “Can’t you see what he’s done to you?” “I love him.” “Jesus! You love him!” “What’s wrong with you? Are you jealous? You can join us, too. He’ll be pleased to have you.” “He’s using you. Can’t you see it? He’ll throw you away when he finds himself another bought-by-thehour slut.” “I love him. I really do.” “For Christ’s sake. Stop that shit.” “I’ve been in the hands of hundreds of clods who could never fill me so full, who could never fuck me crazy.” “Jesus! That’s not love, Yonah. That’s business. Fucking. Just. Fucking.” “I like to be seized, raped, forced. And I like the way he does it.” “I could strap a dildo on around my waist and fuck your brains out, Yonah, but that’s not love! That’s not love! He doesn’t care!” “He’s all I’ve always wanted. And he loves me, too. Why don’t you stay and meet him tonight? You’ll see how much he cares.” “He’s driving you crazy, he’s taking your soul,” said Linnea and began to cry. “But you don’t want to 51

Adramelech see.” “We’d love to do a threesome,” Yonah replied, unmindful of her lover’s tears. “Let me save you, honey. Come with me. I love you,” sobbed Linnea and stretched her arms towards her. “If you’re not into a threesome with us, you can get the fuck out of my life." **** With an ache in her heart and soul, Linnea left Yonah’s flat. She walked away, heading nowhere, bearing the huge weight of distress and failure. Love was a lie, she said again and again in her grief. Love was a killer, a backstabber that did nothing to keep at bay the evil grip that clutched Yonah’s soul, her beloved soul. The archangels that walked by her side—invisible to the human eye—understood her grief and tried to comfort her. “Yonah’s soul is in line with her instincts now,” they said. “Let her see her own darkness. There’s light there as well, and she will see it.” But tears kept falling and she couldn’t avoid it. She was an angel in love, a messenger who had broken her blood with her own divinity for love, for the love of a cursed soul.

52

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Shabbattu

R

aindrops battered the woman’s face, breaking the sweet, lethargic sleep that came after sex. She felt as if under a cold shower that had already soaked her body. How long had she slept? No longer than an hour, she thought, but it seemed much more than that. Her hazel eyes looked around but could hardly see a thing. It was just herself, lying naked on a hard, gleaming rubber floor. She gazed up, but the rain, falling from the black void of the night, was all she saw. She tried to pull herself upright, but her hands were not strong enough to hold her body on that slippery floor. Or perhaps it was her body that suddenly weighed too much. She couldn’t even block the rain with her arms—they were heavier than lead. There was a huge weight on her chest. Something pressing hard and scarcely leaving room for heartbeats. She was motionless, sheathed in metal like a medieval knight. Then, a virulent tune came to her ears; a tune that sapped her will like a mighty spell. She could neither speak nor think, and her body no longer sensed the rain. She heard a choir afar inside her brain and began to babble incoherently, trying to follow the melody line. However, doleful moans came out of her mouth, while she squirmed 53

Adramelech as if in pain. Female cooing and whispers echoed everywhere, and her eyes began to perceive a certain motion in the dusk—forms moving stealthily in hiding. Yellow eyes, glowing intensely. Watching. The black woman looked up and around and noticed she was in an open, egg-shaped capsule with no roof over her head. She saw a kind of framework as well—iron straps, forming square windows all around her. Suddenly, she felt something cold between her legs. Her eyes went to her belly, but she could only see a bulk. It’s a hand, she thought. It must be a hand rubbing me. Oh, my God! A slippery hand is probing me! Deep inside! In less than a minute, her whole body started to tremble while her stomach turned over. She neither felt the invading hand nor saw the bulk. She squatted and tried to govern herself, but the spasms were stronger and compelled her to throw up. Then, like bonfires, two flames burnt inside that capsule and she snatched a glimpse of the forms around her—women. Dusky and pale mule-headed, skyclad women with big yellow eyes, standing and praying outside and around a circle painted on the floor. “O King of Fire, O Demon Masters, quit your dwelling at the craggy mountains of Hell, and come hither to this cold, withered land. Come and see this servant’s rebirth.” But the retching urged and she felt her eyes bulge as the vomit fell between her legs. The nauseating smell forced her to eject even more, and she had to close her eyes, but the straining action hadn’t finished yet. Something long and 54

German Bradley mushy came out of her mouth, something that didn’t stop falling. Shaking, as if she suffered from a sudden low pressure, she opened her eyes. Yet, her dazed reasoning couldn’t understand what she saw. Her own entrails had fallen into a brazen vessel just below her face, immersed in a pool of stinky vomit. But there was another small vessel below her sex; something else had fallen from her body—copious menstrual blood. “We, the watchers of the gate, have summoned you again, O Demon Lord, to seize her heart, to extinguish her light and render its death. The menstruo meretricis is of the moon tonight, and the vessels of her transformation are full. Take these foul, sacred bowels and menses, and preserve them in your darkest den.” Her head spun, her body convulsed with pain, and she finally fell down next to the receptacles. She desperately fought, though, so as not to faint, but somehow she knew it was useless. And in the middle of that staggering pain, a scene remained in her mind. A mule-headed woman, coming forth from the group, entered the circle and took the vessels away. She saw her going away; she saw her pass into the flames and fade away. “O King of Fire, O Demon Masters, re-establish her contact with the deeper part of her true nature. Let her nonhuman features reassert themselves, 55

Adramelech for Scorpio has opened the gates through this bitter rain.” A black demoness rolled in pain in the middle of the circle. Its back hurt to death; its wings were about to pull through that coal black skin that shone under the rain. There was no hair on its head; its skull was just a massive bump with two long ringed horns projected sidewards. Its yellow eyes radiated evil and hate as it opened its big mouth and hissed, showing its predatory white teeth. “Welcome to this world of sickness, demoness.” A hollow, shrill voice echoed in the demoness’s head. It came from an old mule-headed woman who seemed to be the leader of that cult. “We’ve brought you here one last time, according to our demon lord’s oath and promise.” The demoness’s ungraceful wings had already turned up and flapped, trying to fly or move. An invisible barrier blocked that action, though. The creature was imprisoned in that magic circle and those stupid women wished it so. “Drink, demoness. Drink this wine of cosmic life,” said the old woman, presenting a big vessel to it. “Slake your thirst before the long trek to the Masters’ den begins.” She dropped down on her knees and put one hand on the fringe line of the circle, covering it so as to push the vessel in. “Drink and see, demoness. Drink and see.” The black demoness went down on its haunches as well, and without even looking at the content it drank it all, letting the magic and power of its own menstrual blood lead the way to the Masters’ realm. **** 56

German Bradley The sky was grey with clouds and a strong wind swept the top of the mountain that moved and contorted as if it were alive under the demoness’s feet. The movement made it look down to the stones and rocks, and then it understood. Countless bodies of different breeds gave form to those heights. They moaned and slithered on each other as if that sole action were the most delightful one of all. But from the cracks between the boulders, seven hideous creatures came into sight. “We’re supposed to annul your powers, but Involution and Evolution grow strong in you,” said one of them with a mind-heard but sharp and scabrous voice. “You hold the key that shall lead us away from the human plane.” They fixed the demoness with a freezing glance as they spread their membranous wings to block the blustering wind a little. Their skin was shallow and as grey as the sky; their long white hair fluttered like tatters in the wind, exposing their nakedness. “We’ll see us again in that mortal world,” another mental voice was communicating now. “We’ll stroll the roads and dwell in those abodes. And we’ll be reborn. It’ll be like a chemical wedding between you and us. We won’t break our old deal.” **** “Look at this city,” said the old woman when the creature came back from its journey. “Look carefully, demoness. Masters are here. They walk like humans. Take your time and you’ll see one tonight.” And the creature saw the twinkling lights of London and her major landmarks. The city smelled ripe and fresh 57

Adramelech under the drizzling; the waters of the Thames looked like a carpet of shining spangles. Few cars crossed Westminster Bridge at that time in the night, but none of the occupants seemed to be suitable prey for the demoness. Some partygoers called its attention for a while, though. Despite the rain and the drinks, the night was still young for them and would continue that way as it watched them stroll the streets and vanish into an alley in search of more fun. From the highest capsule of The London Eye, on the banks of the river, the creature’s yellow eyes hungrily waited for a sign while its stomach mauled like another starving thing. But suddenly, at a nearby corner, the proper victim turned up. The sign was a terrible pain and a calling; a compass that had to lead its way, a compass that forced it to spread its wings and lunge at its victim. And it was on him in a second. One of the creature’s hands sank into the man’s stomach, going right through his clothes and flesh to appear again from his back drenched with blood. The demoness looked to the stranger’s eyes and stopped. There was a golden stare in those eyes and it seemed to burn it away from inside. A hellish treachery flooded its savage system and controlled it while the man fell onto the pavement and its hand took hold of part of his spine. It had raised the first one. It had raised its master Namtar and his treachery.

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Chapter Six

N

ot a single day had Linnea stopped thinking about Yonah, although remembrances hurt like thorns nailed to her soul. Yonah, the name itself hurt as well, but she repeated it like a mental calling that would eventually bring her lover back. She was dying a little day after day; it was that feeling of being wasted that went through her and didn’t let her be. Had Yonah ever loved her? Was her cursed self stronger than her human side? And she felt guilty. She thought she’d done it wrong, all wrong. She wasn’t experienced enough, either. She knew that; she hadn’t felt that humane kind of love before. She was just a lovelorn angel who had a mission, a soul to save, but had spoiled it all in the name of love. Six months after their splitting up, Linnea broke her celestial rules once more. This time, however, she had the secret certainty she wouldn’t do it wrong. She had learnt about love and its aftermath. She wasn’t cured, of course, far from it, but she knew how it worked and how it could affect a human heart. First, she tried to phone Yonah, but the number was not in the Directory. She dialled twice, three 59

Adramelech times, just in case she had the wrong number, but the message was always the same: The number you’ve dialled hasn’t been registered. For more information, please contact BT customer service line. Then, with the strength of a woman in love, she went back to her lover’s flat determined to change the things she could have done wrong. But then again, her certainty seemed to weaken; she was not prepared to see the thing that lay unconscious on that bed. There were three rusted spikes nailed to both sides of Yonah’s head, two large curved fossil bones inserted in those spikes, forming a sort of unfinished nimbus above her head. That was not her lover, but a blasphemous representation of well-known sacred icons. Her ears were studded with silver ring-like earrings and fine chains that crossed her face from ears to nostrils or simply hung down to her shoulders. She wore more piercing on her mouth, below her lower lip, and above her eyelashes. Her eyes could hardly focus or fix on an object. The flat itself had changed as well. It looked like a gloomy cave made of solid rock. No trace of Yonah’s expensive flat had been left. It was a damp den now, as cold as the morgue. Linnea felt she had jumped into another time, into another plane. The candlelight she’d seen all around seemed to show that Yonah was waiting for someone else, and the idea shocked her. Sadness and guilt mixed up in Linnea’s soul and in her heart. The torment she saw in that beloved body threw back all the scorn the infernal creatures felt towards the human beings. That place had turned into a gate to Hell, a den of pain, whose hosts were 60

German Bradley Yonah’s own infibulations and lacerations, and they were too much for her to withstand. Two brass rings pierced Yonah’s dark nipples, and three fine chains depended from them. Those chains looked like loops and hooked at the metal plates she wore around her arms above the elbows. A succession of other five rings hooked into the skin of her abdomen, forming a line that went down past her navel. Something had happened to her skin, also. A rattlesnake pattern, combined with dark stripes like zebra’s skin, covered almost all the areas where she had no tattoos. “Yonah! Yonah!” Linnea shouted, filled with despair as she tried to wake her. “Yonah, for Christ's sake! Stand up! We’ve got to get out of here.” But Yonah was unable to react and continued to be lost in that spaced-out state. Even though her body weighed like a dead one, Linnea gathered all her strength and managed to sit her on the bed. Her action provoked a reaction in that den, though. Female faces appeared on the walls and peer down at her, their eyes ablaze with wrath and hatred. Horns grew from their brows and cheekbones as they tried to escape the walls. “Yonah! Please! Wake up! We need to leave this place!” Linnea continued shouting. “I can’t help you here!” But her lover wasn’t listening to her. On that day, Linnea found another mystery of love. Without knowing, without even thinking, she lifted her lover over her shoulders and tried to reach the front door. Yonah was heavier than she thought, so 61

Adramelech she couldn’t be as fast as she wanted, and shortly after there weren’t just faces in that den, but whole bodies blocking her escape. “You can’t have her. She’s ours,” they growled. “Leave her. She doesn’t belong to you.” The infernal women were skinny and winged; their skin decomposed little by little, showing their yellowish bones. But then, out of nowhere, a couple of cold rotten hands closed around Linnea’s neck, pressing harder and harder. She felt they were choking the life out of her, but she couldn’t give up, she couldn’t fail her lover again. She couldn’t get rid of those infernal women, either. She had no other way out than using the only weapon she had at reach—a mental prayer. As her sight blurred and her legs trembled, unable to hold her weight any more—let alone her lover’s— she prayed in good faith. She prayed for Yonah’s life, not hers, but then, in the middle of her petition, something else leaked into her mind. A peeving hum like a crowd of genderless voices in her head confused her, whispering with different tongues, not allowing her to move a muscle or continue praying. Something or someone was eating her alive from inside and riveted her eyes on nothingness. Yet love had a miracle up its sleeves, and the front door suddenly opened and three white winged figures came in. The pressure on her neck vanished in a flash together with the horned women. The air changed inside and a lovely smell of flowers filled the den, while she and her precious weight finally tumbled for 62

German Bradley the door. She looked back, and little by little their smiling faces got clearer for her to see. Her genuine love had brought those translucent archangels back to help her lover and show her a safe way to escape. **** On a sunny May morning, Yonah opened her eyes and found Linnea by her side. She felt a little dizzy, but the marks, tattoos, studs and chains had disappeared from her skin. “Welcome back, love,” said Linnea, smiling and stroking Yonah’s brow and hair. “Www-what—“ “Sssh! Everything’s all right, honey. Everything’s fine.” “I’m hungry.” “That’s great! I’ll go and fetch a strong Brit breakfast for you. Don’t move, honey. I’ll be back in two ticks.” As Linnea went to the kitchen, Yonah looked out of the window from her bed. The sky looked unusually beautiful to her; it made her feel strong after that profound sleep. What had happened? she wondered without finding any answer. She couldn’t piece the images in her mind together. Her memories had no continuity; they were only flashes that made no sense: there were scenes of dark sexual extremes, night flights over the Thames and central London too, blood, death, horrible creatures and a strange new power in her. She was so confused, so dissociated. There was something wrong with her, 63

Adramelech somehow. She sensed it, but didn’t know what. Probably her lover would tell her, or at least she’d have an idea about all that. “Here you are,” said Linnea, showing her a teatray with toasts, bacon, baked beans, scrambled eggs and, of course, a hot cup of tea. “Be a good girl now and sit down,” she said and smiled. “What’s going on with my life, Linnea?” asked Yonah, sitting. “I’ve got these memories... but they don’t belong to me.” “What memories?” “Horrible things, fragmented but threedimensional and incredibly real.” “Don’t torture yourself, darling. Forget all those nightmares. They won’t do you any good. Think about us. We are together. Let the good times come back.” “That’s not the answer I need, Linnea. I can’t pretend everything is a bad dream, because I know it’s not. Something has invaded me.” “Have you read the newspaper? We might find the answers you need in The Wharf.” “What do you mean?” “Yonah, you’re obviously undergoing a sort of...well, strange things, inexplicable things, and I read an advert about a Canadian tarot reader in Camden Market—“ “What?” “She’s probably the greatest diviner ever seen in London.” “Oh, no. No way would I jump on that kind of bullshit.” 64

German Bradley “Tarot is fate, Yonah. Believe me,” said Linnea. Her eyes searching for something in the bedroom. “I think I left the newspaper in the dining room. I’ll go and fetch it,” she said and left the room. “Don’t insist!” shouted Yonah. “I’m not into that crap.” She said the last sentence more to herself while finishing her tea. “You should give yourself a chance,” said Linnea, coming back with the newspaper in her hand. “Tarot helped me once when I started to work in the porno industry. I followed the advice of the cards and I became a star. Here. Have a look. Open it on page 46.” Would you like to glimpse what changes your future may hold? Rachel Lemieux can help you. She can provide the answers to those questions you may be asking yourself right now. Come and see for yourself. She won’t ask you a question. Everything’s in the cards. “My life was quite good before all this began and I didn’t need any tarot cards for it,” said Yonah after reading the tabloid. “Wouldn’t you like to stop all this madness? Isn’t it enough for you?” There was tenderness in Linnea’s voice. “You seem to know much more than I thought.” “Hey! Wait—“ “You were the one behind this shit, weren’t you? Oh, yes. I should have known that. You were the fucking dyke who put me in that room.” “Now you’re insulting me, aren’t you?” “Tell me then, tell me why do I have these bloody memories!” Yonah shouted. 65

Adramelech “I have nothing to do with this shit, but I know you would never believe what I have to say.” “Don’t tell me no lies!” “It’s true, Yonah. It’s true. Why don’t we go and see that diviner? She’ll show you what’s going on.” “She’s part of this shit as well, isn’t she?” “I’m on your side, Yonah, I’ve always been. I love you.” “Why can’t you tell me the truth, then? Why do you insist in that bullshit of tarot?” “It’s the only way you have to see who you are and where your life is going.” “Bullshit!” “Probably the life you’ve been living has outgrown its form and you need a change.” “Bullshit!” shouted Yonah again as tears filled her eyes. “The cards will show you the way to overcome your current crisis, Yonah.” “Shut up you liar!” “Wouldn’t you like to know why you have no memories of your childhood in Trinidad?” The question froze up Yonah in the bed. That was a revelation she was not prepared to hear; she had never talked about her childhood before, and there was no way for Linnea to know about her past, because she couldn’t remember it herself. Yonah’s eyes ran over her friend’s face, searching for a sign that said she was joking, but she wasn’t. She drew herself unconsciously along to the other side of the bed, as if she wanted to escape her friend’s words. “I love you, Yonah. I just want to help you,” said 66

German Bradley Linnea softly, almost crying. “Please, let me help you.” “How did you know it? How did you know it?” That was the only question her trembling voice and flurried head allowed her to ask, while her lover hugged her tight.

67

Adramelech

Chapter Seven

C

amden Town was full that Saturday morning. Latin, Pop, Alternative and Oldie music filled the air while a mass of seething bodies, most of them tourists, walked that popular borough of three-lined streets and elegant houses. A whole range of New Age paraphernalia, tattoos, ethnic crafts, clothes, shoes and wigs were some of the things people could find in that colourful place, along the market stores or at the shops. Above a bookshop called Compendium in Camden High Street, Yonah read an outdoor advert saying: Miss Lemieux’s Guiding Tarot. Witness the power of a Real Tarot Reading as only a true diviner can provide. Linnea Uhr had managed to bring around her to visit this Miss Lemieux while she had stayed behind browsing among books downstairs at Compendium. She couldn’t help feeling nervous, though, in that cosy, rose madder flat. She had no appointment and Linnea hadn’t even bother to phone. But there she was, despite herself, sitting at a small round table dressed in a white corselette and snug-fitting pants, expectant, wondering what this tarot reader had to 68

German Bradley say or how wrong her lover was. However, something in that room seemed to say this Miss Lemieux hadn’t had a visitor in a long time. “I can feel you’re afraid,” said the diviner, entering the room with a cup of aromatic tea in her hands. “It’s an apple tea sweetened with honey. I hope you like it.” “Thank you,” said Yonah shyly. “It’ll help your nerves.” The diviner’s presence was enough to soothe her nerves. Her mystic aura seemed to muffle the city sounds, and Yonah felt she was somewhere else. Not in England, not in Trinidad, but in a veiled corner of her dreams. Suddenly, she noticed there were no pictures on the walls, no crystals, no candles to turn her attention away. It was just a peaceful place that smelt like cedar and juniper. Yonah expected to see a penetrating look in Miss Lemieux’s green eyes, a stereotypical woman wrapped in some sort of sari, but her preconceived notion was all wrong. She’d met an ordinary russet haired woman whose peace and warmth filled the air of that room—a woman who just shuffled the cards without paying much attention to her, as if she already knew the purpose of her visit. “Focus your mind on your question only,” said Miss Lemieux in a soothing voice as she spread the deck, faces down, on the delft blue tablecloth. “Choose a card, any card, and give it to me.” The diviner put the card face up on the centre of the table; the design showed five dark blue disks in an inverted pentacle. 69

Adramelech “There’s uncertainty and crisis,” said Miss Lemieux. “These five disks represent your life; the answer to your question and the spell that has fallen upon you.” She stared at Yonah as she spoke. “Your life has turned into a sea of chaos. Now, choose another card, please.” Caught on the hop and a bit annoyed, Yonah singled out a second card. The picture, this time, depicted five small and dented swords with their hilts towards the outside. “These five swords cross you,” said the tarot reader, putting the card across the other one, “and they are branded on your skin, aren’t they? Below your pubic hair.” Yonah opened wide eyes after hearing such a striking revelation. But the diviner was nervous and her hands trembled a little. “These swords form a pentagram that represents your universe,” continued Miss Lemieux. “These two side points represent the baseline of what exists.” But she suddenly spoke no more. It was plain by the expression on her face that she felt uncomfortable reading that card. She had unconsciously put herself away from the table so as not to continue, as if she were afraid of the card itself, as if she were afraid of Yonah. “The two upper points,” she added, “represent the limit of what exists. Together, they make up—Oh, my God! They make up all that exists! Death...and...birth.” “What’s all that shit?” spat Yonah unmindful of the diviner’s fear. “But you have other marks on your skin!” 70

German Bradley continued the tarot reader, her breathing getting harder. “White pigments, gashes, studs, chains and pieces of metal. I can see them all over your body. They are invisible to the human eye, but I’m seeing them now. “Studs represent the stars in your firmament; the pieces of metal, the four cycles of the moon and your menstrual cycles as well; the chains, the communicating cords of sex and senses. Your body is a map, child. Your universe... Give me another card, please,” said Miss Lemieux, still shaking. Now the picture showed a horned man clad in green. “The Fool crowns you and represents the father of your existence. This trump is therefore both the father and the mother in the most abstract forms. It says the daughter has to return the energy to her father, to the mad beast that shall destroy its own child.” “Stop it!” interrupted Yonah. “Let me finish, child. Let me finish,” said the tarot reader, without looking at Yonah. “You’ve met a lascivious man, haven’t you? Yes, you have. You’re earning a lot of money with him, aren’t you? Yes, he’s got everything you want, but he is a man who carries a sack full of follies and illusions as well, and you’re dancing with him, along the edge of a precipice, unaware that he is your father as well.” Yonah’s mind darted back to the night when she met Nagash Lasobre, she saw herself dancing at the most expensive and exotic nightclubs in London and on Ibiza. “Yes, his human name is Nagash Lasobre.” 71

Adramelech “What?” “I need more cards.” “Lust. The Daughter of the Flaming Sword,” said the tarot reader, studying a card that showed a naked woman riding a seven-headed lion. “This trump is beneath you and represents the basic event that was in your past and upon which the present things are taking place. “You’ve become a sexual plaything of a demon, which is your father as well. This creature has taken you to the highest levels of passion and lust. You’ve given yourself to it. It is your element and you ride astride this ancient beast. Its name is Adramelech, and it is your father as well.” Suddenly, Miss Lemieux’s pale face turned red and she seemed to be unable to breathe. She put her hands to her neck so as to free herself from an invisible pressure, but it was futile. “What’s up?” asked Yonah, scared, and stood without knowing what to do, but at that moment the tarot reader began to breathe again. “You all right?” Yonah asked and tried to touch one of her shoulders. The diviner jumped backwards on her chair, avoiding any contact with her. “Don’t. Please,” she said in fear and trembling. “I’ll tell you everything, but don’t touch me.” “Okay. Calm down, all right? I won’t do you any harm. I didn’t even want to come here,” said Yonah, sitting on her chair. “It was essential for you to come here. I’m sorry, but I really wasn’t prepared for...” “For what?” 72

German Bradley “I know you don’t believe me, child, but you’d better do it. I’m telling the truth,” said Miss Lemieux, “even though some things are meant to be kept in secrecy.” “Do you expect me to believe I’m a sort of Devil’s daughter?” “I just want you to let me do my work. I expect you to be worthy of dying for.” “You scare me, you know that? You scare people.” “It’s not me, child. It’s you,” she said with sadness in her voice. “The cup this woman holds aloft,” explained the diviner, showing the card, “it’s the key this demon needs for you to surrender. It is the impregnated womb of yours, aflame with your own lust every twenty-eight days. You hold the forces of creation every time you bleed.” She put the card on the table, according to a prearranged diagram drawn on the tablecloth, and continued. “But things do not always follow the way we want them to go. Let’s go back to your past, child. Give me another card.” Another naked woman appeared in the following picture. She seemed to be floating, ascending through an enormous flame, passing by a sleeping tiger. “You were born with something unique, child, a dark force that pours into life and into its myriad of components. Your mother was a Trinidadian crone and witch. You’ve seen her in your dreams, in your trips. Her name is Zainam Yorke. She died after having you. That was the first food you ever ate. Yes, child, you fed on your mother’s body from inside, and after the birth as well.” 73

Adramelech “What the hell—“ “Adramelech, your father, took care of you until you were thirteen. Then, everything changed. He told you that you had to enjoy the beauty of your body, for it came out of every single pore of yours. He said men would go weak at their knees; women would choke with envy. You would turn into a goddess, he said. Now look at that smashing body image of yours. You got what he wanted, after years and years of working up a sweat at the gyms in Trinidad. But that wasn’t all. He said you had to be his whore as well. And he showed you how. ”At thirteen you saw his cock close and personal for the first time. It was the most incredible thing you ever saw and you hastened to put your mouth on it. You had to feel it on your lips, lick it, taste it... suck it, because he had told you so, and you were his girl. You couldn’t think, you couldn’t understand. You just fell in love with that cock and started to worship it for hours, day after day, as he infected you with an unbridled lust that would mark your destiny. But it felt even better when he filled your hungry mouth with his seed. ”Then,” Miss Lemieux made a grimace, “then the first blood came, and the pain. Your true dark universe opened up when he entered you, and in spite of that pain you bucked wildly as he thrust into you with all he had. You became his whore and sex was like the air you breathe.” Instinctively, Yonah uncrossed her legs and pressed them together as those forbidden memories stirred in her mind. She saw an old man stroking her 74

German Bradley young thighs, reaching for her as she hoisted and rolled up her floral dress around her waist. “No, no, no! This is a lie. It can’t be me! It can’t be me!” she said, as if the tarot reader imposed those images in her mind. “It’s only shit! A bunch of shit!” She cried out and stood, ready to strike Miss Lemieux’s face. “Believe me, child. Adramelech won’t let you go. You’re extremely valuable for him. You stole part of his power once.” “Who’s Adramelech? Who’s that bastard you made up?” “I’ve made up nothing, child. Everything is in the cards.” Memories continued coming to her mind: she saw the old man’s hands circling her young breasts as he came into her. She felt the pain and saw him again, naked. Sweat covered his body and his penis hung limp and used, coated in blood, running in pale streams down his legs. “We must go on, child. We can’t change our past. We can only learn through it. Sit down and choose another card.” Yonah’s long eyelashes blinked again, as though the diviner’s voice brought her back from the deep of her being. She dropped down on the seat and crossed one leg at the knee under the table, picking up another card. The new design showed two dark and sinister towers on each side of the picture. On their thresholds stood two Egyptian gods, two jackal-headed gods— Anubis in double form. 75

Adramelech “This trump talks about the future and says you belong to the moon as all women do. But you are a goddess, a dark goddess about to be reborn. Nahemah, a winged demoness that flies at night searching for its masters. Your dark nature will prevail against your weak human one,” said Miss Lemieux, without taking her eyes off Yonah’s. “Now, give me four more cards and this revelation will be over.” The first card showed nine blood-dripping swords amidst a landscape of tears. The second depicted seven cups dripping a greenish liquid. The third, a single androgyne figure with a red lion and a white eagle, and the last one was a goat with curved horns. “These nine swords say that you’re afraid of being what you are, afraid of knowing the truth. ”The seven cups show that your world is an illusion, a mirage made up by Adramelech, and you don’t want to open your eyes. ”The trump called Art represents the consummation of the merge between your human side and the dark lunar side of the goddess you carry within. The equilibrium is perfectly clear in the figure itself. The dark great work is already done. You belong to each other. ”The trump called The Devil talks about your future and shows your father afraid of losing power and prestige. The dark forces of creation grow strong in your dark soul. I see your black secret plan will be executed. There’s a victory, a chemical wedding. The curved horns you see represent your spiral force, causing you to perform reckless deeds. It is your 76

German Bradley womb and the fallopian tubes. They are branded on your brow as well. I see a bucranium there. The cells you see beneath this goat represent seven votary demons waiting for your sins, seven forces ready to bring out the winged demoness called Nahemah in you.” Yonah was speechless in front of the diviner; she didn’t know what to do or say. She was far, far away, floating in the void of her own emptiness, suddenly unable to feel anything. “I know you don’t believe me,” said Miss Lemieux. “Nothing I could say would change the things I saw in the cards. Every time you have sex with Adramelech, or the man you call Nagash, your astral self flies to a cosmic coven, a place where witches meet, and the wounds of your body open again, causing you pain. Every time you fly, you die as well, but you come back to life when you awake. It’s a constant agony that won’t let you be. Don’t close the door to your redemption. It’s so close to you, child. You have a friend, a good friend. Listen to her. Don’t cast her aside. She is the door.” **** Downstairs, at the bookshop, life seemed to have lost its sounds, or perhaps Yonah had suddenly become deaf. She saw her lover smiling at her with a book in her hands; she saw her move her lips but couldn’t hear her words. She couldn’t even hear the clicking of her heels. Out in the street, the lively atmosphere she’d seen 77

Adramelech before had turned into a silent slow motion film; not even the colours looked the same. Then, as she began to walk, a bothersome hum took her ears by storm. She felt like there was a little mischievous spirit inside her head, trying to hack its way out with small humming knives. She could hardly react when Linnea shook her by the shoulder in order to draw her attention. She turned around, but in doing so, she lost her footing and fell. She saw people stare at her, shouting words she couldn’t hear. And then everything went black.

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Chapter Eight

“I

shouldn’t have said a word,” Miss Lemieux had fallen into a low-spirited mood as she continued watching the traditional fortunetelling pattern Yonah’s cards had formed on the table. Alone in her rose madder flat, she lamented over her last reading session. “Why did you have to poke your nose in, messenger?” she asked to an invisible being. “It had to be a secret. Why did you have to put such an enormous weight on my shoulders? She’s cursed; you have almost no chances with her. She’s so cold and skeptical. Why? Why me, messenger?” And tears ran down her face, spoiling her eyeliner and makeup. She hadn’t met a woman that day but a maid of desolation—a dark creatrix. Adramelech had kept her down for too long, but now it was time for her to rise again during that woman’s menstrual periods. This demoness wouldn’t be sealed any more; she saw it in the cards. Deep inside, demons hated and feared the rites of this dark goddess, and for the last two thousand five hundred years they had taught men to persecute 79

Adramelech women endlessly, to impose religions of male gods because the male was supreme, had to be supreme. But they were wrong. Adramelech had always been weak and feared the creatrix; she had stolen his power and she could change everything at will. It was also clear for Miss Lemieux that her messenger was just wasting her time: the demoness would never hear her words. “You had to save her from herself, messenger. You had to take away her powers and use them against Adramelech. But you fell in love with her. Your pure heart couldn’t resist the power of love.” The responsibility of knowing that terrible truth disturbed her in such a way that she couldn’t leave her seat. There was chaos in her head and she resisted accepting all that, but she also knew tarot was telling the truth. Short after three that afternoon, Miss Lemieux was about to go when suddenly the door was open. “Is that you, messenger?” she asked, without stopping packing her tarot deck and tablecloth, without turning to see. “Is there any other thing I should do?” There was no reason to see, she knew her guiding friend quite well. But now she sensed no answer to her questions. She felt something odd in the room, a sudden cold and a nasty presence watching her from behind. It was not her spiritual friend. Oh, no. She sensed a woman. The door slammed and the noise made her jump, breaking the psychical connection. She turned this time and saw a tall and ethereal black crone standing just behind her, drenched in a thick, scarlet slough. 80

German Bradley Her eyes were glassy and almost white and stared at her with diabolical rage. “Oh, my God. Zainam!” Little by little the room started to change into a small grotto made of solid, lustrous rock, and the air got colder and colder. Horned women came out of the walls, too many for such as small place. “You...you...” mumbled Miss Lemieux, shaking in her shoes. Without thinking, one of her hands covered the thick gold necklace she wore around her neck. She had noticed Zainam’s eyes were fixed on it, but it was too late. The edge of the necklace had already sharpened around her neck. She fought Zainam’s hypnotic eyes, but the horned women had already materialised and a couple of them seized her hands firmly down while the old woman’s knobby hands pulled on the necklace hard. But she could hardly feel the cutting pain. Emptiness grew inside her as she felt she was leaving her body behind. She saw a foggy sphere passing by and looked down. Her head had been separated from her neck while her body was still standing below... Alive! Another force had possessed her body, a force that filled the room with its dark, infinite grief. As Miss Lemieux ascended out of that flat, out of Camden Town, she began to realise her time had come, but she could have never imagined it would be this way. By her side, like hellish angels, the horned women guided her towards a scarlet glow that opened itself in front of her. 81

Adramelech

Shabbattu

T

he smell of fresh blood came in through the demoness’s nostrils like a vitrescent plume of smoke, forcing her to leave her warm catamenian sea. It was a spiral energy that called her imperiously. She answered that call and flew, rising over the rooftops in the middle of the night. She glided gently towards the north, her yellow eyes watching every street and edifice to have a better sense of direction in that strange and intricate city. Just before a park, the flying demoness began to sense the grief of the one she was looking for. The force gripped her spirit like a magnet, drawing her down to ground level, making her drop the speed. And there a woman was, behind a window lit by an outdoor neon advert. She was probably in her forties, and her green eyes carefully looked out of the window as if she waited for a guest to take away her grief. Like a windstorm, the demoness smashed that window and grabbed her by her shoulders. Incredibly, the woman’s head fell down with the impact and rolled towards the door of that room. Immediately after, thousands of creatures started to yell and scream inside the demoness’s head, as if she were their saviour. They were all miserable and hateful and asked her for freedom. So demanding were they in their grief that they seemed to control her system, and almost 82

German Bradley forced her to bore her black hands into the woman’s skin and grip her false ribs, to finally tear her open. Spheres of light came out of the beheaded woman, and inside them, creatures with horse skulls fought to break themselves free. One by one those globe-shaped forms entered the demoness and the creatures inside became Irra, the second master, who spread his pestilence and grief like a plague throughout her system, and coaxed her to eat the already infected body at her feet.

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Chapter Nine Yonah went off in a faint in High Camden After Street, Linnea had carried her off to a hospital,

scared at her condition. Doctors had told her Yonah’s blood pressure had lowered dramatically due to an argument or some sort of shocking news. They had prescribed her some pills and expected her back in the following week for a final checking. “I knew it would be hard,” said Linnea on arriving home. She tried to break the ice that had grown between them since she had taken her to the tarot reader. “But you gave me no other chance. You wouldn’t listen. You thought I was jealous.” “Do you think I can go on with my life after hearing all that Devil’s daughter crap?” replied Yonah, angrily. “Do you really think I became a slut because an old demon raped me? Or are you going to say I really ate my mother?” “Yonah—“ “What’s the next step, eh? Lock me in an institution for the mentally ill?” Every word Yonah said was loaded with rage and 84

German Bradley frustration. She was putting the blame on her lover for all those fragments of memory that flashed in her head, for all those things she shouldn’t have heard. “Was she that wrong with you?” asked Linnea, trying to find a sign in Yonah that told her she’d taken her to the right place. “She told me about Trinidad.” Yonah’s voice was softer now. “She said I have invisible marks on my skin. She told me about Nagash as well and said he was a demon and my father too, and... I never told her anything about me or what my problem was.” “And you won’t give her any credit for that?” asked Linnea, squeezing Yonah’s hands. “She scared me, Linnea. I was scared to death! She said my mother was a witch and that I’ll become a goddess! Can you believe that?” “She was telling the truth.” “Oh, yes. Of course she was. Tell me then, why haven’t I finished you yet? Why haven’t I summoned the Devil to take your soul away?” Yonah’s voice got louder and louder and her anger increased. “You haven’t learnt how to do that yet.” “Do you think I’m stupid?” “Tell me about your childhood back in Trinidad,” Linnea spoke back, defiantly. “Come on, tell me about your parents, tell me why you decided to be a whore. Who was that wonderful manimal that fucked you like a beast, that made you track him down ever since in every man you meet? Or who was the bastard that broke your heart and made you hate men for the rest of your life? Or did you suddenly find yourself trading your firm and luscious body to any men 85

Adramelech willing or able to pay? Tell me, Yonah. Tell me!” “Don’t forget I need women as well,” said Yonah, closing the distance between them. “There are ways we can enjoy ourselves without men.” There was a gleam of rage and desire in Yonah’s eyes. Her fingers caressed the back of Linnea’s neck and the sensitive flesh of her earlobes. “You haven’t answered my questions,” said Linnea, feeling Yonah’s hot breath on her face, but she didn’t try to stop her lover’s strokes. “Don’t talk,” said Yonah, tearing Linnea’s pink satin blouse open. “I want you naked in bed.” “What?” Yonah’s tongue licked her face from her eyelids to her chin and she smacked her lips afterwards, as though she’d tasted a delicious and invisible ice cream from that face. “What are you doing?” Linnea’s voice quivered. “I said I wanted you naked,” said Yonah, moving behind her lover and grabbing her blonde hair. “Strip, Linnea,” commanded Yonah and pulled her hair down, forcing her to throw her head back, as she produced a knife from her jacket with the other hand, “or I’ll cut those expensive leotards of yours.” “I’m not the kind of woman you can act the bully with,” said Linnea and hit Yonah’s belly with her elbow. The impact made her drop the knife and threw her on the sofa where both women began to struggle and roll. But during the fight, Linnea’s already torn blouse fell to the floor and her toasted almond demicup bra slid down a little, exposing her cinnamon nipples. 86

German Bradley For a couple of seconds Yonah’s eyes were fixed on the swell of those breasts and those lovely nipples, and Linnea took advantage of that precious time and picked the knife up and straddled Yonah, keeping her imprisoned between her thighs. She knew quite well the effect her bare breasts and nipples had on Yonah, and that had given her the eleventh hour chance to revert the situation on her side. “Who’s running the show now, love?” asked Linnea, pressing the tip of the knife against Yonah’s throat. “Who’s topping now?” “You bitch!” Yonah cried and writhed and tried to wrestle free, but Linnea had already seen her nostrils dilate and the sharp blade of the knife began to cut the dark violet, stretch-lace teddy Yonah wore beneath the open jacket. “Come on, Linnea. Fuck me! Use me! Take whatever you desire.” “You must be mad,” said Linnea, caressing Yonah’s dark nipples with the blade. “Suck me! Fuck my mouth! Fuck my bottom! Fuck between my breasts!” cried Yonah, her eyes held fire. “Do it or I’ll do it to you first.” “You’re fucking mad, Yonah. Mad,” said Linnea and stood, giving up. “I see,” said Yonah with a smile. “You’ll be the bottom, then.” And got to her feet. But Linnea hadn’t dropped the knife. She had stretched her arm instead, holding the blade up at Yonah’s eye level. “Can’t you see it?” she asked, intimidating her with the knife but stepping backwards at the same time. “Can’t you see what you’re doing?” “You said I was a dark goddess,” answered Yonah. 87

Adramelech Her looks had turned sinister. “I’m just acting according to the title.” And advanced. “Get back, Yonah! It’s not funny!” “Is the dark goddess scaring you?” Yonah mocked at her fears. “Stop it! This is not a game, you stupid whore!” “Do you think it’s funny to hear a mad woman telling you’re the daughter of a demon? That your father raped you? Or your mother is a witch? Do you think it’s funny?” “I never meant to hurt you, Yonah. I just wanted you to know the truth.” Linnea’s voice was thick and throaty. “And how am I supposed to live with that truth, eh? How!” Linnea’s knife still gleamed in front of Yonah, but the wall had stopped her moving back. “You still have me,” said Linnea and dropped the knife. “You know I love you.” And in a couple of short steps she was with Yonah, her lips open to hers, her tongue probing. “Linnea,” Yonah moaned into her mouth. “You don’t love me.” And held her tight against her body. “You just want to separate me from the one who truly loves me.” “Nagash?” Linnea had pushed herself away. “Yes, Linnea. He is my element. I was made for him and he was made for me.” “He can’t save you.” “Who saves who here.” “What does he give you that I don’t?” asked Linnea with tears in her eyes. “Is it just the money 88

German Bradley you make?” “No. He gets it back every time he goes to bed with me. No, Linnea. It’s the sex. It’s his cock. It’s the hard, fat, brutal cock of his. He does what I like and knows exactly how I like it. He talks to me the way I like to be talked, he uses me the way I like to be used.” “Oh, I see,” said Linnea, her voice filled with anger. “I got the point now. Crystal clear.” And slapped Yonah so strong in her face that her hand hurt. “Okay, you pussy-sucking cunt,” she continued and hit her again, harder. “Go to the bedroom, you fucking lezzie. Go!” She pushed her hard as she walked, forcing her into the room. “I’m going to be your animal, I’m going to fuck you like a beast. Lie down, you fucking slut!” Yonah couldn’t believe what she saw. She had made Linnea’s hackles rise, and it was eroticising as well. A hot image that really turned her on. “Take your fucking clothes off!” Linnea shouted. “Or I’ll lubricate you in blood.” Delighted, Yonah kicked off her heels and slowly stripped her jeans; her jacket and the torn teddy, leaving just the white thongs on to cover her nakedness. Then, in a trice, she climbed onto the bed and knelt, caressing her hips, lifting and massaging her breasts while Linnea was busy opening the second drawer of her dresser. The tiny chinking of metal and the ropes she could see gave her an idea of what she was about to live through on that bed. Linnea had thrown her own torn blouse into a corner and approached her with a rope and three pairs of handcuffs in her hands. She knelt on the bed 89

Adramelech at the back of Yonah and shackled her hands behind her back. “I’m going to beat the hell out of you, bitch!” she said and pushed her facedown on the bed. “I’m going to whip the shit out of you and I’ll have a nice piece of you, you fucking damn dyke!” “Yes, baby. Fuck me! Use me!” Yonah screamed, while Linnea drew her ankles up over her buttocks and shackled them as well, securing both hands and ankles with the third pair of handcuffs. “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” Yonah continued shouting, but Linnea pushed her face up on the bed again and blew her hard on the face. “Shut up, you bitch!” Linnea commanded as she put the rope around Yonah’s neck and tied the end of it to the headboard of the bed. Then, she got off and drew the curtains across the window and burnt the candles she always kept around the room. Yonah remained, thighs spread, in that awkward, almost tortured position. However, all that bondage choreography had turned her on and she shouted, asking to be raped, like a bitch in heat. Meanwhile, Linnea had taken out four long ropes from another drawer and was already binding Yonah’s shoulders to the right bed frame first, then to the left one, restraining her motions even more. Then, she continued with her bent knees, fastening them tight, forcing her to open her legs wider. After that, she unhooked her demi-cup bra and threw it on the bed next to Yonah’s face. She went to the drawer again and took out a harness with a fleshy, true-to-life cock. With her leotards still on, she 90

German Bradley buckled the leather straps of her outfit and the cock stuck out nine inches from her. Cupping her breasts, Linnea leaned forward over Yonah and rubbed them all over her face and mouth. “Suck them, bitch! Suck them hard!” she commanded as she tried to open Yonah’s lips with her stiff nipples. And Yonah’s lips parted indeed, and her fluttering tongue did its work well. But she also sucked and chewed them hungrily, making Linnea groan in appreciation. “More. I need more,” said Yonah when Linnea freed herself and knelt between her spread thighs. She cast a look at Yonah’s pussy and found she was already wet beneath her white thongs. In fact, the stain was quite visible through the fabric. An idea crossed her mind, then. She looked at her hand and back at the stain between Yonah’s legs and slapped her hard: once, twice, three times, increasing the intensity. Yonah’s body jumped after every slapping as if electrified. She even screamed in pleasure and asked for more, but Linnea stopped and pulled her thongs apart. “I’m going to ride you from here to the moon, slut,” she said and held the cock in one hand and rubbed its head around Yonah’s pussy, searching for her clit while her other hand was busy, working on her dark breasts. She dropped the cock lower, though, until it finally entered Yonah’s already open sex. She pumped fast, jamming her hips in and out, driving the plastic cock deeper into her lover. “Does it feel good to have a real man in you?” she 91

Adramelech asked and kept on thrusting with no mercy. “Yes, baby. Don’t stop. Don’t give out of me, baby!” Yonah gasped, inflaming her at the same time. “You’re having no tight pussy after this, you faggot dyke! I’m fucking it hard and good!” “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” “Shut up, bitch or I’ll fucking kill you!” Linnea’s breathing was hard, but she kept up the furious rhythm. Her own sex was already dripping with the banging pressure of the cockbase at her clit. The bedroom smelled of pussy and sweat, but without planning, it had turned into a playground of pain and pleasure for both. But that had to be a lesson for Yonah, the hardest lesson she could ever teach. “This is what it’s all about,” Yonah panted. “This is what I want in my life.” She had driven the plastic organ in to the hilt, but kept on pounding despite her tiredness. Yonah squealed like a madwoman and soon enough the whole room was filled with groans, moans and whimpers. Linnea then took hold of Yonah’s breasts and gazed up into the soothing blue of the ceiling, and the silhouettes of the dancing candlelight flashing across the walls, but there was something else there. Mule-headed women came out of the ceiling swirling down like ghost. Their yellow eyes shone hate and death as they came closer her, like smoke, trying to get into her body. “Look, Yonah! Look!” she said and looked downwards. She wanted her lover to see those ghosts, she wanted her to understand what she really was, but Yonah was screeching, her eyes wide open, not in 92

German Bradley pleasure this time but in pain. Membranous wings began to spread from her back as she fought to get herself free from that prison of ropes and cuffs. And then, Linnea understood the huge and evil aftermath of her brutality against Yonah. Neither was she raping or humiliating her, she hadn’t even taken an iota of that dark heritage from her. All the contrary, she’d given her power, much more power she ever thought she could hold. “Look, Yonah! Look at the spirits flying around us!” Linnea commanded as the mule-headed women tried to cut the ropes. “They want to take you away! With them!” The green metallic light of the candles had died away. “They say you belong to them!” “Get them off me! Get them out!” Yonah pleaded, twisting her body, fighting the pressure of the ropes. Linnea was still between Yonah’s legs and fought the ethereal demons, protecting the ropes and the bed itself with a green metallic powder that came out of her fingers. “But I’m your angel,” she confessed, “and I’m here to save your soul, to help you see the truth.” The mule-headed women hissed and receded. The angelic powder burnt their infernal forms, but what it really forced them to escape was not the fine dust itself but what came out of Linnea’s own back—an enormous pair of white, feathered wings that covered both of them like a heavenly canopy.

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Chapter Ten

M

emories were still fresh in their minds as they drove west to Kensington area, more precisely to Holland Park Avenue. Linnea looked relaxed behind the steering wheel, but Yonah was shaking by her side. The pain and the mule-headed ghosts were still alive inside her. She hadn’t spoken a word during the trip, and her lover hadn’t forced her to do so either. She knew she needed time to understand the terrible truth of her existence. “Is that true?” Yonah finally broke the silence of their trip. “Sorry, love. I was paying attention to the road. What did you say again?” “Are you an angel?” “Yes, I am,” answered Linnea, looking at her. “Do you really think Dr. Dwight Wead will find a way to stop all this madness?” “He’ll just help, Yonah, but only you can stop it.” During the time they had broken up, Linnea had thought on and on about all the possible ways to save Yonah from her dark self. She had always wanted Yonah to discover her hidden self; she wanted to 94

German Bradley prepare her for what was going to happen. Real foreknowledge would influence her future and act successfully upon it. She had borne in mind some ancient forms of divination: tarot, astrology and I Ching, but she had thought about other alternatives as well, and one of those was regressive therapy. It had always been the second ace under her sleeve, anyway. She’d phoned a lot of psychologists whose speciality was regressive therapy, and Dr. Wead seemed to be the right choice among them. He was one of the most experienced hypnotherapists in the U.K., and he was keen on working on Yonah’s case; he had worked with another patient in the past—an evil entity used to possess a young man’s soul and body at nights. He felt the weight of that entity on his bed, he’d felt the cold breathe of it in his ears over a long time—but Dr. Wead had managed to cast the evil spirit out of that man, and his life had become normal again. Linnea was sure that only in a deep hypnotic state Yonah would be able to keep at bay the beast that unfolded inside her. She felt satisfied so far, though. Yonah had finally seen a part of her hidden self, and she was joining forces to bring about a good result. **** After parking the car in Landsdowne Walk, both women set off for Holland Park Avenue. Their destination was a white Victorian manor with a nottoo-small garden in the front and just opposite a Bed 95

Adramelech and Breakfast hotel called Ravna Gora. It was a nice, well-off area of the city that none of them had been to in a long, long time. A chubby red-haired woman let them in with a smile, once they’d crossed the garden. “Have a seat, please. I’ll tell Dr. Wead you’re here,” said the woman before disappearing behind a small door to the visitors’ left. And so they sat on a comfortable leather sofa in that foyer lit with the still fresh light of the morning sun. There was a grand, wooden staircase in front of them, and a large clock ticked away the seconds to their right. The walls were half-panelled in light oak and the upper portions were covered with a nice lemon wallpaper. “Miss Yorke? Let’s go upstairs, please. Dr. Wead is waiting for you,” said the red-haired woman, suddenly breaking their silent examination. A short man with a square face and a steady look in his blue eyes waited for her behind a dark brown desk. His hair was completely white at his temples, and it seemed he had recently shaved his face. “Good morning, Miss Yorke,” he greeted and gestured her into a seat. “Would you like some tea?” He used a soothing tone. “No, thanks. I’m fine.” “Well, Miss Yorke. How can I help you?” he asked and gazed steadily into her eyes. “I don’t know. I...don’t know how to start.” She hesitated. “Do not worry, Miss Yorke. Just make yourself at home. Feel free to stand up or walk around the 96

German Bradley consulting room if you wish to. I just want you to relax, okay?” Yonah’s face relaxed in a smile and she tried to free herself from her own disturbing tensions. At least there was something that really helped in Dr. Wead— his voice. She liked his voice; she liked his slow, soft and gentle way of speaking. West Country burr had always been attractive to her. “All I know about you is what your friend Linnea Uhr told me on the phone,” said he, opening a red folder on his desk. “Here it is.” He took out a sort of form and began to read. “She told me you’ve been suffering from a significant loss of memory. She said you are mad about a man who has changed your life completely and that you’ve recently found something horrible about yourself. Am I right?” “Yes, unfortunately all that’s true.” “So could you describe to me any of these situations? Could you give me some more information about yourself? There’s no hurry anyway. Take your time.” Yonah looked right at the sagging chaise next to the Doctor’s desk. She needed time to find the strength to carry on with that, but she was afraid, afraid of the impossible things she had to say. “I’m not myself,” she started. “How’s that?” “I mean, it’s not me, the woman you see in front of you.” “Could you explain that?” “I...I can’t seem to find a sensible way to explain this, but...there’s a demon inside me, or perhaps I’m a 97

Adramelech demon myself. I don’t know.” “So you’re not sure if you’re a human being or a demon, are you?” “Yyyes,” she mumbled. “Does this event have anything to do with your loss of memory?” “I really don’t know.” “Tell me about your past, Miss Yorke. Tell me about your family.” “I haven’t got any family memories. Every time I go back in time I only can remember one thing, and it’s always the same old thing.” “Can you tell me what is that thing?” “I’m from Trinidad, and I was a prostitute in Sangre Grande, my hometown.” “Do you remember any relatives from Trinidad?” “No, I don’t. I only remember some customers, you know, old and young men from my neighbourhood.” “Is there any other thing that you remember?” Yonah stood and began to pace the room, visibly nervous. “I’ve recently gone to a tarot reader, and...she told me that I was raped by my father when I was thirteen or something; I did remember something at that moment, but... she said something else.” “Continue, Miss Yorke.” “She said my mother was a...witch.” She had said that last word almost in a whisper. She was afraid, of course, she was afraid of herself. “I see,” said the doctor, studying Yonah’s movements around the room. “I imagine you left Trinidad in search of a better chance in life, didn’t 98

German Bradley you? What do you do now, Miss Yorke?” “I’m an escort girl,” she said, looking right into the doctor’s eyes, proud of herself. “And then you met this man, didn’t you?” “Yes.” “Can you remember his name?” “Nagash Lasobre.” “And could you describe to me why he’s so special for you?” “I can’t really explain why he’s special for me. I just feel he’s the man I’ve always dreamt about. Actually, I forget all about everything else when he’s with me.” “But you certainly don’t have any trouble remembering that, do you?” “No, not really. I remember him quite well,” Yonah said and sat in front of Dr. Wead again. “But you’re shaking, Miss Yorke,” said Dr. Wead filled with concern about her condition. “It’s the wings... They came out of my back. Here,” she said and turned, showing him a place on her back between her shoulder blades. “They hurt like hell.” **** “But you’re shaking, Miss Yorke.” “It’s the wings... They came out of my back. Here.” And after a short pause in the audiotape... “They hurt like hell.” Dr. Wead stopped the tape recorder to tap a provisional and final analysis of that initial assessment on his computer: There was some 99

Adramelech evidence of mental imbalance in his new patient. It seemed to him that Yonah Yorke had fabricated a fantasy about her past in order to hide an abnormally early and powerful sexual instinct, and she had probably found a man who matched her needs, Nagash Lasobre. But in a certain way, she hated herself for that and had invented the idea of another creature living inside her—a demon that represented her lascivious impulses. The assessment had finished an hour ago, and Dr. Wead was shutting down his computer, getting ready to leave his consulting room to go to the clinic he usually worked for on Wednesdays. But while he got his desk tidy, he couldn’t help gazing at the empty chair in front of him, on the other side of his desk. He felt the magnetism in Miss Yorke’s hazel eyes again, the impressive beauty of that black Caribbean giantess, and once again, in a twinkling of an eye, he was mentally reviewing the information he’d gathered from his new patient that morning. Her past was a mystery without a doubt. She had no memories of brothers, sisters, relatives or parents; she couldn’t even say if she had ever gone to school or any other educational institution. She could only remember her customers, nervous and anxious young lads, waiting for their chance to become men, real men. Cheating husbands who hoped to find the spice they had killed long ago in their marriages. Losers who numbed themselves to her illusory services and whom she sometimes jerked off into oblivion, knowing they couldn’t live on without the lies she told them week after week. Or 100

German Bradley those drunk bastards who couldn’t tell whether she was a man or a woman. She remembered them all, and the money they left on the nightstand by her bed. Fed up with that miserable life, she had left Trinidad in search of wealthier people, luxury and new experiences. England represented all that for her at that time. She had always dreamed of money and the chance to start a new and hedonistic life. But when she thought she had finally made it, her life turned into chaos, full of missing times and bullshit. She had developed no emotional bonds in her life and seemed to relinquish any kind of attachment as well. Her father’s sexual abuse had distorted her entire world, forcing her to forget everything about her past, driving her to prostitution, through which she’d seen a chance to take revenge on her father in every man she met. It was a delicate case, of course, but not unusual in that area of clinical psychology. He had suggested using regressive hypnosis to ascertain the origin of her emotional chaos. He had also made her aware that only fifteen percent of the patients fell into such a deep hypnotic trance, that it probably wouldn’t work with her, but she’d said she’d take the risk and would be back on the following day. But then the clock downstairs struck one p.m., finishing all further analysis. It was time to go. He was already late for his patients at the clinic.

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Chapter Eleven

“Oclose your eyes. Breathe through your nose,

kay, Yonah. Make yourself comfortable and

deep and slow, deep...and slow...as if you were in a very ample, cosy bed. You’re relaxing, Yonah, easing into a deep sleep. Good, very good. Focus all your attention on this pleasant breathing. Nothing else matters. Relax. Feel your heart beat slower and slower.” Dr. Wead’s soft and gentle voice was guiding Yonah into her first hypnotic state. Two sessions in two weeks had taken him to start the regressive hypnosis with Yonah. And there she was, lying on the chaise, dressed in those thin, white calf-length pants and a blue boned corset with lacing details and a busk-front closure, ready to get into the mystery of her past. “Breathe slow, very slow. Now see your body, Yonah. Picture the muscles of your body. They are relaxing now. Your legs, thighs and hips are already relaxed. Your stomach, arms, hands and shoulders, they feel relaxed as well. Your neck; your face; your spine; your back.” Dr. Wead kept on talking and 102

German Bradley guiding her by her side. The patient’s receptivity satisfied him completely so far. “There’s a white, bright light above your head, Yonah, inside your body,” he continued. “Hold it in your mind’s eye, feel how it spreads throughout your body. It makes you feel fine and sleepy. There’s no sense of time, no bodily sensations. There’s only peace, a white, bright peace.” And after a pause. “Now you’re in a deep hypnotic state, Yonah, but you can talk to me normally, okay?” “Okay,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “Good. Go back to Trinidad, Yonah, to the house you lived in with your father and mother. Tell me, can you see your parents? How old are you?” “My mother has gone. We don’t live with her. I’m thirteen years old.” “Are you with your father now?” “Yes.” “Tell me what you see. What does your father look like?” “He’s talking to me, slowly. He’s sitting on a wooden chair. He’s teaching me and I listen to him carefully. He’s an old man. He’s odd and looks dirty. His skin is wrinkled and yellowish. I’m on my knees in front of him, listening to him.” “What is he teaching you?” he asked. “Many things.” “Do you like to be with him?” “Yes.” “Go to another moment in that year.” He guided her again. “What can you see?” “I’m taking my father’s rags off.” 103

Adramelech “Is he ill?” “No. He dresses in rags.” “Did your father ask you to undress him?” “Yes.” “Have you seen him naked before?” “No.” Yonah stopped to moisten her lips. Her tongue moved around in her mouth and she swallowed some saliva. Dr. Wead had a look to the small light of his tape recorder and continued: “Is he teaching you again?” “Yes, he’s telling me how to work it up.” “What do you mean, Yonah?” “The fleshy club between his legs. It’s twitching up.” Dr. Wead couldn’t help feeling a sudden rage. Another psychopathic pervert had wasted an innocent child’s life. “Is he forcing you? We can go to another moment in your life.” “No. I like the way it feels,” she said, making herself comfortable on the chaise. She was enjoying that memory somehow. There was no grimace on her face, no signals of trauma. It seemed...pleasant to her! “It feels warm and gummy,” she continued. “It has a life of its own. I like to see how it changes its shape. I rub my fingertips back and forth. I like to move that thin skin over the veins.” Dr. Wead had been watching Yonah’s hands. One of them had gone down to her pussy and began to softly rub her there while the other played the scene of her past again, massaging an invisible penis. But 104

German Bradley the scene made him awkward. It seemed as if she had wanted it to happen. Nobody reacted in that way after such a traumatic event. She might have provoked all that, unconsciously. “I hear him moan,” said Yonah with wonder in her voice. “It’s like an animal sound.” She had gone to another moment with that pervert, and just by looking at her movements on the chaise, it was quite obvious she was having sex. “Go back in time, Yonah. Leave that scene. Take me to your mother.” “I’m cold. I’m eating on the floor,” she said after a while. Her body was trembling as she cuddled up to the chaise. “Are you at home?” “I don’t know.” She was still shaking. “Tell me what you see.” “My hands are very small. I am small, too... I’m crying.” Actually, she had begun to cry like a newly born baby on the chaise, in a foetal position. Undoubtedly, she had gone back to the time she was a very young child, and probably she was alone and naked on the floor. Dr. Wead let her have her cry out and waited. “How old are you?” he asked when she stopped. “I don’t know...I was born yesterday.” “Can you tell me something about your birth?” Yonah took herself a time before answering. “There’s a hard muscular surface all around me. I’m caught in a small body. It suffocates me. I’m angry... and hungry, too.” Dr. Wead watched attentively how she scratched 105

Adramelech the air around her, as if she wanted to tear her mother’s womb and escape. She grunted, viciously angry. “Calm down, Yonah. It’s just a memory. It’ll be over soon.” “It’s like an earthquake. The contractions. I must find the way out.” Suddenly, the patient held something in the air and bit at it. “What are you doing now, Yonah?” “Eating.” “What are you eating?” “My mother’s flesh.” Taken aback, Dr. Wead jumped out of his chair. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. The child was eating her mother’s womb! “W—w—why?” he stuttered. “She is my food. She is all that I’ll need when I’m out.” For a moment that seemed an eternity, Dr. Wead was unable to speak a word. He was shocked and confused by that horrible revelation. Jesus Christ! he said to himself. She ate her own mother. He looked to the flickering light of his tape recorder and tried to keep calm. He had to continue. “Why did you do that, Yonah?” “She had to feed me. It was her mission. She couldn’t break the oath,” she said coldly. “What oath?” he asked horrified. “She knew I would feed on her flesh before I was actually born. That’s the way it always is.” The case was not getting easier at all for Dr. Wead. 106

German Bradley He knew the experience of birth was a little bit traumatic for most of the patients, but nothing compared to killing mother in the womb. It couldn’t be! That was monstrous! He had noticed no trace of remorse in Yonah’s voice, no trace of emotion or pangs of conscience. In fact, it seemed to him she had had to tear her mother’s flesh open so as to be born. “Okay, Yonah. Leave that time and go back to the age of thirteen,” he commanded her, trying to keep calm. “Can you see your father? Is he there?” “Yes,” she said and smiled. “He likes to masturbate me for hours in my vagina and anus.” Dr. Wead needed to know who had provoked that incestuous situation. He wanted to be sure if she really knew or understood the nature of a sex drive. “I love it,” she went on. “He says I’m his whore. I love the things he does to me. Sometimes I just can’t get enough.” “Have you got any feeling of malice towards your father after recalling this?” “No.” “Does anything seem...wrong to you when you have sexual intercourse with your father? Don’t you feel confused?” “This is the way it’s got to be. I was meant to be his whore.” “Had he impregnated you?” “No.” “Breathe slow, Yonah,” he said, watching the time of his wristwatch. “Relax, Yonah. I will count backwards from ten and when I reach the number one you will wake up, feeling refreshed and relaxed. 107

Adramelech You will not recall the details of what you have seen, but deep within you will understand the origin of your problem.” It was time to finish that incredible session; it was time to put his thoughts in order. He had to give shape to his own chaos. From the bay window of his consulting room, Dr. Wead watched Yonah walking away. In his head, the clinical evidence said that most of the women who had undergone incest rejected heterosexuality in their adulthood. They became either lesbian or bisexual. They tended to relegate their traumatic experience to their unconscious so as not to remember it again, because they really couldn’t forgive themselves. But this patient of his had no traumatic experience at all. She had enjoyed it, and she liked to recall it. She was not looking for vengeance, or something like that. She had been educated to be a prostitute—her father’s prostitute. He didn’t know whether she was lesbian or bisexual yet, but having fallen in love with a man was a clear signal she was heterosexual. But what could he say about the crime she had committed? What could a doctor say about a cannibal baby? What did she mean by the oath? Probably he would find the answers to those questions in the following sessions.

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Shabbattu

N

ight had fallen again and from the rooftops of a youth hostel in Holland Park, the black demoness eyed the lights and the darken edifices near Kensington High Street. She tasted the cold and fresh air of the night and waited. The scent of that city had already become familiar to her sensitive senses. The blowfly hum of the traffic had almost vanished as well as the small, burrowing or tree-climbing animals of the park, which had already gone to their holes and warily sniffed at her from the safest, deepest corners of their little world. But then, the screech of tires and a piercing scream broke the stillness of Holland Park and the demoness’s primal instincts fired. A car had gone off the road, running into a lonely woman. The driver got out of his car and dialled a number on his mobile phone, but the demoness was already upon him. With a violent tug the creature severed the man’s arm from his body while the voice on the phone repeated a word on and on. An electric shock jolted the demoness as the man’s eyes shone a blue green glow. A sudden wrath seemed to swallow the flying creature, setting her afire, forcing her to dismember her victim as if he were made of paper. Then the face of a new master formed itself on the floor, in the 109

Adramelech victim’s blood. Nergal, the ruler of the world of the dead, spoke to his emancipator. “I’ve come down to this withered land to help you.” The low, threatening sound came from the blood itself. “Nina has come with me tonight as well. She’s over there, waiting inside the body of that whore.” The demoness turned left and saw a young woman lying on the pavement against a white garden wall. She cried out in pain but couldn’t move. “We’ll reinforce your powers with ours, but we shall claim your promise soon. Now enjoy this gift of ours and hide the bones,” growled the bloody face one last time and slipped like quicksilver on the road, towards the demoness’s feet and vanished into her pores. The black creature perched on the man’s dismembered pieces and proceeded to gobble them, throwing the slimy bones into the car. Human flesh and its thick vital fluid invigorated her and forced her to continued with the young whore on her left. The serpent master of lust beckoned her in those tearful human eyes, showing all the extremes and the avatars of nonhuman passions; passions the demoness already knew.

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Chapter Twelve

“H

ow do you feel today, Yonah?” greeted Dr. Wead with a debonair smile. His patient looked radiant that morning, dressed to thrill, as usual, but in latex this time: a puff-sleeved top and laced corset pants. Light blue the first, purple the second. “I feel rather zippy today. I don’t know why, but I like it.” As she sat on the chaise, doctor’s eyes couldn’t avoid getting lost in the generous cleavage of hers and the turgid curves of her body. “Beauty is perishable, isn’t it?” she said, noticing his glance. “You’ve got to enjoy it while you have it.” He felt a sudden rush of blood to his face. Probably his face was as red as a crab apple, but he didn’t mind. “It would be quite rude from me not to notice it, Yonah,” he managed to say, saving the embarrassing situation. But the incident had pleased her a lot and she behaved with abandon. Nobody would believe the horrible past that lived inside this beautiful woman, thought Dr. Wead, but it’s better this way. There are more chances for me to study and examine the real causes of such perverse 111

Adramelech and barbarous acts. “Are you ready?” he asked, rolling his office chair across and sat by her side. “Yes, doctor,” she answered, relaxed. He really valued the confidence Yonah had put in him during these sessions, it made everything easier and friendlier as well, and she could show herself as she really was. He could notice she loved playdressing, and that was a very effective way to express her moods. While guiding her to reach into the hypnotic trance, Dr. Wead saw his patient’s fingernails were painted to a glossy shine of metallic blue that looked really good with her latex suit. That was another good signal of her current mood, she must have been pampering herself, and that meant her self-esteem was better, much better. **** “I’m strolling through a cobbled street. It’s a young land, a strange land.” After falling into the hypnotic trance and without any previous doctor’s order, Yonah had traced her way back into another life, a past life. “Could you describe yourself to me?” “I’m an aristocratic woman. I’m wearing a terracotta skirt and a blue corset. There’s a white shift on my shoulders, too. Auburn ringlets fall to my shoulders.” “What year is it?” “1708 and my name is Maitea.” 112

German Bradley “What city is that, Maitea?” “Santiago del Nuevo Extremo,” she said in perfect Spanish. Once again the fascination he felt for working on a patient’s past life manifested itself with tears of happiness in his eyes. He had never dared to experience that journey. He’d always solaced himself with his patients’ memories, which had become his, somehow, as time went by. “What’s the city like, Maitea?” “I see horse-drawn carriages passing through the streets. I hear the hoof beat hitting down on the stones. I see lovely colonial façades everywhere.” “What do you do in that life?” “I walk the streets at night. People think I’m an irresistible leman... but they’re wrong.” A long silence interrupted her story. Lying on the chaise, Yonah moved her head from one side to the other, as if she looked for something or someone. Then, she began to speak again. “It’s a quiet, starry night. A carriage passes by my side. I pretend I sprained an ankle and fall down onto the cold stones. The coachman has seen me and stops the carriage. A gentleman gets off and offers some help. I fall into his arms. It hurts to death, I lied. Please, take me to a doctor. “Inside the carriage I stare at him. I want to service him, take him into my mouth. So I drop one hand down between his legs and latch to the tender flesh beneath his trousers. I knead him softly, but he disallows my lewd proposal. He says I’m a fucking whore and tries to kick me out of the coach. My entire 113

Adramelech being is flooded with wrath. Strong, sharp claws come out of the tips of my fingers and long, white, straight hairs grow from my forearms. He screams. Forgive me my life! Please, forgive me my life! he prays. But I laugh and force my claws down his throat.” “Relax, Yonah. Relax.” Dr. Wead tried to calm her down. Her voice sounded like a croak, filled with anger. “Try to see that scene from another point of view,” continued Dr. Wead, but then another voice spoke through Yonah, female as well, but stronger and much older. “Don’t meddle with things you don’t understand.” He was thunderstruck. “Wwwho’s... there?” he babbled. “Whho’s speaking?” But the voice spoke no more. Even though his tape recorder was recording Yonah’s voice and the entire event, his tremulous fingers couldn’t resist the temptation of writing those words. It was as if she were communicating a message from someone else, someone who knew what he was doing and tried to stop him. “I feel weak,” said Yonah’s soft and mellifluous voice again. “I need the seed of man, the source of humanity.” What sort of creature is this? Dr. Wead wondered. Why does she need seed? Impossible fantasies came to his mind. Succubus was the first word he thought about, but he laughed at himself for such nonsense. After all his years in psychiatry, after all the psychotics, perverts and offenders he’d treated, this case seemed to get out of his hands. For a couple of seconds he even dared to think his patient was 114

German Bradley right—she was not herself. And he was panicstricken. He had no idea what or who he was dealing with. He had to stop the hypno-therapy. “There’s a tertulia in the grand hall.” Yonah had begun to speak again, unmindful of doctor’s guidance. “I’m going upstairs with two elegant young men.” “Breathe slow, Yonah. I will count backwards from ten,” doctor tried to stop Yonah’s regression, but his patient seemed to be out of his therapeutic methods. “I live in that room. I don’t need to tell them what to do. The one in front of me is already unlacing my corset as the other tugs at my skirt, my petticoat and my pantaloons.” “Can you hear me, Yonah?” Doctor insisted. “They like my breasts, my stiff nipples and my legs. They kiss me and rub their hands between my legs. I know one of them.” Reflexively, the patient’s thighs parted, welcoming the intrusion of those invisible hands. “Can you tell me who he is?” asked Dr. Wead. A thrill of excitement ran through his body. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter to me,” she said amidst muffled cries. “I’m sitting open-legged on the bed. Their tongues flick around my belly and slide between the folds of my sex. Oh, it feels so nice,” she purred, inflaming doctor’s own fantasies too. He could even see her there, shamelessly offering herself, ravenously to her lovers. And he began to get excited. “One of them is leaning back on the bed and lets my fingers tickle under his scrotum. I bring my head 115

Adramelech down. I need to take him in my mouth.” “Leave that scene, Yonah. Go to another moment in that life,” said Dr. Wead, fighting his own erection. But his patient couldn’t hear him. She was lost in her own pleasure. “They are both sucking my breasts at the same time. Oh, there! Oooh, that’s nice! What a lovely double tonguing!” He saw her wriggle and grind upon the chaise and couldn’t help feeling like a bungling idiot, like a filthy voyeur. “I’m sitting astride one of them. I reach down for his cock and ease it into my sex. The other one has clambered up behind me and slides his length inside my anus. Oh, I can feel them inside me. They are giving me a good double fucking.” “Would you like to join them, doctor?” Another voice spoke through Yonah’s mouth, a guttural growl. “Would you like to see the whole picture?” Suddenly, Yonah’s eyes opened and stared at him. A full colour, three-dimensional bacchanalian sight flashed in his mind. He was there! In one of Yonah’s former lives! In her eighteenth century bedroom! Invisible to his patient and her lovers! Yonah’s eyes were a sort of cinema projector for him. He could see the furniture, the candlelight and the sepia walls, and upon the bed, the offending threesome changed positions every ten minutes or so. He saw a fair-skinned, auburn-haired Yonah, lying on a bed of white sheets. A swollen penis didn’t let him see her face underneath, though, only her chin and mouth, which 116

German Bradley gulped and sucked him hard while the other man pushed his cock in and out of the well of her cunt, knelt in front of her, holding her parted legs below her knees. The bed squeaked under the prods. Her moans inflamed them in such a way that they didn’t notice the long, white hairs that grew from her forearms and calves, the black, sharp claws coming out of her fingertips. They couldn’t see they were spurting their own lives into her, that their bodies were withering and turned into sallow, naked mummies amidst their feeble laments. Then Yonah disconnected herself from those dry-up bodies and gazed up at him. “What have you learnt now, doctor?” The guttural growl was speaking again. “Has this scene got any meaning to you? What’s your diagnosis, Dr. Wead?” But he couldn’t say anything before his patient’s eyes took him out of that life. An uncontrollable horror had seized him, paralysing his reasoning. Even though he was back in his consulting room, watching his patient, he could still feel the auburn-haired succubus lurking behind him. His heart ached inside his chest. He had a hard on, but felt no pleasure at all. He longed to get away and finish that horrible session, but he couldn’t. He longed to speak, but his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He even tried to stand, but his limbs gave way under his weight, and he quickly sank back into his chair. **** 117

Adramelech “I’m sorry, Yonah,” he managed to say once he’d brought her back from her hypnotic trance. “I can’t help you anymore.” He saw his patient in a whole new light now. “What do you mean, doctor? I don’t understand.” “I’m...not the...right professional for you, Yonah,” he said in a trembling voice. “Your problem is not a matter of psychiatrists, psychologists or social workers. That tarot reader you saw... that tarot reader was right. There’s something evil inside you and I can’t do anything against that. You’re talking to the wrong man.” “But, but... Now I can remember my father and my past and the things I did. You can’t quit now. I know I’m not the normal Tom, Shane and Harry you can find on the streets, but I do need to know who or what I am. You can’t leave me stranded now!” “Listen, Yonah,” he said, abruptly. “In my clinical experience I’ve found out enough evidence to confirm there’s life after life; reincarnation is a fact for all of us. It doesn’t depend on our religion or the concept of life we may have. I can also state that every single person in this world has already chosen his gender, his family and friends and the most suitable time to live in before he or she actually is born. “But what do we have here? A beautiful woman who’s been a victim of childhood sexual abuse and who has miraculously found the ability to cope with it. However, in a clinical sense, you’ve become addicted to sex and I’m sure you are bisexual. But that’s not all. You’ve killed your mother in the womb! You’ve eaten her alive! And you were a sort of 118

German Bradley seedsucker creature called Maitea in a past life. I saw you, Yonah! You took me there! I saw your claws and those white hairs. And that voice, that threatening voice. This is something beyond my comprehension.” Dr. Wead was scared and visibly pale. The recent shocking experience had been too much for him and it was still vivid in his mind. “We must stop this.” “No, doctor. Please!” exclaimed Yonah. “How do you think I feel after seeing all this? How am I supposed to live with this?” Dr. Wead felt the silent supplication in Yonah’s eyes, and the tears. Instinctively, he drew her close and embraced her tight. She was as fragile as a little bird in his hands, and he felt genuinely contrite. The therapy was helping nobody. He was exposing his patient’s sanity, and his own as well. “It won’t do you good, Yonah. I could hardly control this session.” “It won’t be better if you leave now,” said Yonah and pushed away from him, wiping her tears away. “I thought you were the best professional in town. Now I see I was wrong.” “Wait, Yonah!” He stopped her just when she was opening the door to leave that room forever. “Please.” Her words had hurt his scientific ego and self-esteem. “I was just scared out of my wits.” He felt like a coward on saying that, like a stupid idiot, but he realised the case was actually the chance of a lifetime for him. It was worth a try. He couldn’t waste the possibility of being recognised as a pioneer in an entirely new field of reincarnation. Nobody else had 119

Adramelech dealt with a case like that before. Nobody. Yonah was the door to his fame and success. She was the border, and she was asking him to cross it! The risk was too high, though...it involved his patient. “Okay, Yonah,” he finally said and sighed. “Let’s do it. But it’ll have to be on an experiment basis only. I’ve never investigated something like this before, and there are some risks.” “Anything is better than uncertainty,” said Yonah and kissed the doctor’s wrinkled brow. “I know you can make it.”

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Chapter Thirteen

“I

see many fighting men. They are carrying their horses and weapons and food on their drakks. It’ll be a long voyage to the south... They’ve gone away before, but this time it’ll take longer.” “Where are you now, Yonah?” “It’s a Norse village built up on a wide inlet, closed in on snowy mountains and steep cliffs. It’s been secretly located out of a strait. I feel the breeze on my face. It’s coming from a nearby forest of alpine fir trees.” “Go on, please.” “I see a number of huts made of wood and stone. I like the smell of the wood and the colour of the reeds that formed the roofs. There’s a fleet of longboats lying in their beds, moored to the waterfront.” In that first experimental session Yonah had gone back to a previous life in a Viking village in the fjords. The year was 840, and she was a sort of mythical creature that enjoyed death and carnage. “The axes fall on heads and bodies.” Yonah had gone forwards in that life, ignoring doctor’s guidance or commands. She didn’t need them any longer. She 121

Adramelech was the guide who decided the moments she wanted to share with him. “The maces clash the armours and make the horses fall. I smell death and burning flesh. Severed limbs lay all around. Everything is pain and wounds. I like it. I enjoy it.” According to her own description, Yonah seemed to be an animal, a wild wolf that moved on the sly, seeking for corpses after every struggle. Her dextrous paws and fangs ripped off and wolfed down the still juicy loaves of crimson flesh before the warriors picked them up and burned them on funeral pyres. “We are sailing the high seas now,” said Yonah, moving on to another time in that life. “The warship is full of burly warriors. West is where they go, to invade another country.” “Why are you travelling with them?” asked Dr. Wead. “They thought I was a dog and let me in.” “So, are you still a wolf?” “No. I’m a fair-haired woman clad in a long, red cloak. I’m standing on the bow, looking back at the single mast amidships and the large, square sail, showing a huge black raven. This ship is The Raven of the Wind. “I watch the crew. I know someone here has been following me. He knows me very well, he knows who I really am and he wants me for dead.” Later on, Yonah told Dr. Wead that that ship had never sighted her destination. She had stolen the crew’s life. The warriors’ souls belonged to her. One by one they had dropped down dead, energising her evil power. She had killed seventy-nine souls, but she 122

German Bradley had let one live—the one who knew her. “I hear the groans of their souls inside me. Can you hear them, doctor?” she asked, opening her eyes. And there Dr. Wead was, standing by the mast and paralysed with fear, watching the inferno around him. The crew had burst into flames for no apparent reason. Actually, their bodies were engulfed in fire. He felt his lungs dry and swallowed with difficulty amidst the stinking smoke-whirls. He saw the flames sear the warriors’ flesh, melting their faces, peeling their skin. But the sight of their agony and the charred, gristle limbs of theirs left him at a standstill in the middle of the ship. Until all of them dropped down dead and small, white lights flew out of their blackened bodies, heading west towards the woman standing on the bow. One by one he saw them disappear inside her eyes and open mouth. They had crossed over to the other side, but not to the great hall where Odin and his Valkyries would receive and feast their souls. Then, everything changed before his eyes. The sky was strange and boisterous, the landscape sombre and covered with ice. Under the light of his torch, the rocks looked like eerie faces that scrutinised the fear that grew in his soul. Unexpectedly, a young blonde woman came forth from the shadows. Her arms were wrapped up in furs and leather straps, her long legs shod in boots. A thick and wide belt hid her groin and two animal skulls covered her breasts like cups of a rudimentary bra. “Welcome to Niflheim, chaser.” Her voice was like feathers stroking his ears; her hands, soft and cold as 123

Adramelech the ice he was standing on; her eyes, a couple of crimson and baleful immensities, falling upon him. “Why have you wasted all you life chasing a creature beyond your powers, demon chaser?” Her words made him feel weaker and weaker, as if he were under a charm. His arms weighed tons and he felt sleepy. He had every intention of advancing and threatening that evil woman with his torch but something rooted him to the spot. His muscles strained, but his strength was flagging and he could only see her face and those crimson eyes that drove him down, down, down. “Don’t fight, my handsome chaser. It’s futile. You need to clear your head instead, you need to sleep.” In fact, a feverish sleep wrapped itself around him. “Yes, that’s a good boy. Sleep, chaser. Come with me. I like you.” The spell had almost drained his strength away, but he managed to fight it back a little and said. “I...don’t...like you.” “That will change when you cross the borderline.” Then, a spark of his torch fell down upon his arm like an Odin’s merciful sign to wake him up. The woman hadn’t finished her transformation yet. Her face, chest and arms were like a wolf’s, but her waist and legs were human. He was kneeling in front of her, pretending he was still under her charm. He knew what he had to do, he knew he had to be quick, but the hair on the nape of his neck rose and his stomach coiled in fear. He heard her steps on the snow; he felt her closer, but kept his neck bowed. He couldn’t make a mistake. He needed to focus all his senses on his final task. Until he felt her cold breath upon his head and 124

German Bradley mustered all his remaining strength and stood, nailing his still burning torch inside her mouth. A horrible yell echoed in that world of ice and darkness. The creature reeled around, already on fire, trying to take the torch out of her muzzle. But neither the wind nor the snow could die that magical fire down. Then, seven ancient-looking, almost desiccated men came out of nowhere and gathered and watched. There was something in those beings that invited his attention, though. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew they didn’t belong to that time. Probably it was their age, their nakedness or their walnut brown skin, whatever, but he knew their weren’t Norsemen. “Off you go, chaser. Your mission is over,” said one of them in a deep, low voice. “Adramelech and his witch wolves are on their way and what they’ll do to this woman is not for your eyes.” Suddenly, the whole scenario turned into a blur. His eyes felt heavy and he lost his footing, but in spite of his weariness he heard that low voice one last time. “You’ll serve us again, chaser. You’ll serve us again.” And he drowned in a turbulent sea of darkness. **** Dr. Wead emerged from blackness and found himself shaking on his chair next to his patient who was in a deep, relaxing trance. “Jesus Christ!” Dr. Wead gasped out loud. “I killed her!” And jerked back. The episode had baffled him completely. He realised, with astonishment and awe, the purpose of 125

Adramelech that journey to his patient’s memories—they had met each other. That was what she was trying to tell him, but the circumstances had been totally different. There was an unearthly creature inside his patient, without a doubt, or perhaps he should say she was the creature itself, albeit dormant, waiting to be fully aware in order to rise and show its glory. But why did he have to burn her to death? Why did those beings say he’d serve them again? Could that be possible? Was she running the show to have control over him and do her will at the end? He pondered over those incredible things for a while, and watched her lying there like an ordinary woman, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. But the session hadn’t finished yet. She was in a state between lives, she had passed away and he had to take advantage of that liberation; he had to know who she was. “What was your mission in that life, Yonah? What were you looking for?” “You’re brave, Dwight. I’m impressed.” The guttural growl was speaking again. “Who is there? Where’s Yonah?” “How much are you willing to give for your answers, Dr. Wead? Does this woman measure up to your expectations?” “What do you mean? Who am I talking to now? Can you hear me, Yonah?” he asked with despair. “She can’t hear you now, Dwight. She’s far away, sailing the Sea of Menses. She’s found her way back to her creator. The old spirit has finally rejoined his bride.” “What kind of spirit are you?” he asked trying to 126

German Bradley keep calm. There was something in that voice that really scared him. “The kind that can send you to hell!” “Oh, my—“ “There’s a price, Dwight. Do you want to give it all?” “I just want to know who you are and why you’re speaking through her. She doesn’t need you.” Dr. Wead had an idea about whose voice was that but he refused to accept it. It was...impossible. “Do you think your clinical experience entitle you to know what it is possible or not? Do you think you’ve really found something? No, Dr. Wead, Yonah is living her true regression with me and that’s because I, the old spirit, allowed you to do so. You’re not in control. You’ve never been. You’re just an instrument, a rudimentary instrument to bring her back.” “W—w—where?” he asked with panic after a long, uncomfortable silence. “To Adramelech. The voice you’re talking to.” “Do...you have...control over...us?” He was shaking on his chair and tried to govern his fear, but he failed. It was too much for him. He was talking to... the Devil. Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, Jesus Christ! This can’t be happening, he thought, this can’t be happening. It’s...it’s—Oh, God. “This session is over, Dr. Wead. It’s union time. It’s Daath time.” Dr. Wead turned to look at the flickering light of his tape recorder, but it had already turned off. With trembling hands, he picked up a couple of white sheets from his desk and awkwardly wrote the name of the creature that had spoken to him. He couldn’t 127

Adramelech control his tremors as he watched his patient roll over on the chaise, lost in what it seemed a wild and unconscious fantasy.

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Shabbattu shrill wail of pleasure agitated the warm and thick A catamenian sea. The demoness floated, scarcely visible in that liquid cosmos, feeling like a mindless rutting beast that shivered and rolled about in ecstasy. There was something powerful and dark in that universe of blood, something pleasant and relentless that made her cry out and roar in excitement like a helpless slave to the tyranny of her own instincts. Amidst that crimson sea, a couple of hands materialised and took hold of her now dark red body. The demoness felt her pulse race and her heart thump as the flat of one hand skated over her back. She felt those fingers slide into the crease between her buttocks at the time another hand slid around her belly and down into her slippery sex, toying with her clit. She had come back to her matrix; she had come back to her creator. She tumbled weightlessly in that unholy sea and rubbed her thighs together, shaking with need, feeling her nipples ache, yielding in the hands of her matrix. Then the cold touch of a long tongue came afterwards, caressing her backside from the base of her spine to the hollow between her shoulder blades and her already spread wings. The demoness turned over and saw an enormous 129

Adramelech shapeless form materialise in front of her. Something like a thigh slipped between her legs and rubbed against her pubic bone. She felt dizzy and floating. Even though the whole cosmos smelled like blood, she could still smell the stink of her own sex. Her sensitive sense heard no sound, heard no word but the ravenous need to join her body to her creator’s. Slowly at first, the enormous form took shape and became a little visible before the demoness’s eyes. It was a winged creature but double her size. It had the head of a mule and the body of a strapping man, but the legs were of a beast’s. Immersed in that swamp of blood, both winged creatures took hold of each other and tumbled on and on. The yellow eyes of her creator suddenly opened before hers, shining a passion beyond lust. The demoness felt her creator’s nasty aura invade every single molecule in her body. She felt her creator’s spittle falling upon her face and hastened to taste it with her tongue, but the metallic saltiness of that crimson cosmos prevailed in her mouth. Then the creator’s tongue itself began to play between her lips, inducing her into an unbearable state of carnality, making her lips part as the tongue entered her mouth, as the hands worked her forbidden breasts around. Her nipples tingled and stiffened in a tick. She felt her sex swelling and plumping as the tongue explored every corner of her mouth, filling her with a soft, penetrating flower scent— jasmine. The demoness groaned and opened her legs, craving for her creator to push his way into the wet furrow of her. The other winged creature slid in, making every part of her body more sensitive than ever and animal-hungry. She wailed, sick with lust, as she pressed against the other 130

German Bradley hellish winged creature. Her creator had the natural rhythm that suited hers; he filled her up as no other creature had ever done before. He took her angrily, brutally, opening a universe that had been lost in her memories for too long. With every thrust she saw the images of a cave made of light fluorescent green stones, flooded with dark purple waters. She saw an old, dark palace with spiral stairs that vanished from sight in the blackness above, and a gateway carved with shapes of women and beasts indulged in perversions she had once taught. Her creator’s shaft felt like a tree trunk slamming in and out of her sheath as mental images went on strafing her ageless mind. She saw herself like a demon-goddess in that cave, in those waters. Her skin was coal black as usual; her wings were folded in her back, prepared to carry her nowhere; her legs were invisible beneath the purple waters. But she wasn’t alone. Twenty-two other mule-headed women were in that cave with her as well, albeit keeping their distance. Then, almost in front of her, a huge figure emerged— Adramelech. The demoness felt her sex filled to the brim, but thrashed her pelvis wildly against her creator’s. She could hear his cock slurp its way noisily in and out of her, and she whimpered, as her pussy tried to squeeze and nip that shaft as tightly as possible. The mental image had sent her back to the cave where Adramelech’s horrendous erection had already emerged. She saw herself on her knees, looking at that lumpish, gnarled piece of flesh. She saw her own hungry eyes set on that bulbous glans that looked like a tumour only a few inches from her drooling mouth. The glossy skin of that 131

Adramelech pimpled and veined cock looked so delicious that she couldn’t resist holding the uncapped head in her hands, and nibbled and sucked upon it. She went down too and licked his testicles, mouthing them, flicking her tongue around his hairy bag. She heard the demon gasped as she caressed his length. It looked so huge in her hands and she felt almost desperate to give him a head. She opened her mouth as wide as she could and stuffed him inside, adjusting him and sucking strongly, but only to drip him back and jerk him off with one hand to run her tongue along that flesh and stuff him inside again. She was worshipping her master, pleasing him. She was his whore. She brought out his wildest hellish side. “You can be much more than that.” A legion of voices spoke in her mind, interrupting her animal lust, making her heartbeats slower. “You can be a maid of desolation, a creatrix—“ But a new wave of nasty sensations washed over the demoness and made her grab her creator’s buttocks. She felt him deep into her, tearing through into her throat, but she wasn’t sure if it was the cock inside her or Adramelech, back in her mental image, holding her head and pushing her against his bush, who wanted her to keep on milking his shaft. “You can be the one in control,” the voices continued. “You can fulfil the lust of your own flesh instead. You can change everything. Time has come to show you who you really are. Ras al ghoul is moving fast across the black space. He’s joining the Dragon’s Tail; he’s almost crushing against Ishtar’s blinding gleam, exactly upon this cave. You’re bound to this cave, aren’t you?” The voices asked ironically. “But we’re all bound to the men’s fate, even the 132

German Bradley one you’re worshipping now. That’s our hell. Every single man is a gate that binds us to this miserable circle. But the quadrature of the circle is inside you, and you can square it again. You can set us free. We are helping you now to take us back to the black above. We know you were brought into being to please him as his whore, to feed on his seed. He has taken your memory away. How many times have you had him in your mouth, in your cunt, in your arse? It’s time to change all that, Nahemah. It’s time to leave the dens of Sippar.” And the voices faded away. Adramelech, her creator, pumped his seed into the demoness’s mouth and sex. And while tasting that cold, spicy froth, she understood.

133

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Chapter Fourteen

“H

elp me, Doctor! Please, help me!” Yonah looked exhausted and sleepless that morning, quivering. Her hair was a mess, her face looked unclean. There was no necklace or any other kind of jewellery on her. In fact, it seemed she hadn’t changed her clothes in days. She was not herself in that pink, décolleté and sleeveless T-shirt, with no bra underneath, and that straight black skirt. Glamour had gone; spots of old tomato sauce had replaced it. “Jesus, Yonah! What happened to you?” asked Dr. Wead. “Sit down here, child. Oh, my God. What happened to you?” He gently squeezed her hands and stroked the length of her arms. “You never phoned me, and after four weeks I thought you had decided to quit.” “It was true, Doctor. Everything was true.” Her eyes shone anguish beyond words. They seemed to ask him to save her from a terrible affliction he didn’t dare to guess. “Now it’s just a matter of time.” “Time? What do you mean?” asked Dr. Wead, offering her a cup of tea. “My past, my father...myself. I can remember. It’s 134

German Bradley so...horrible.” So strong did her hands shake that he feared she could burn herself and held the cup for her, making her drink in sips from his hand. “Who’s your father?” “Adramelech.” The dark guttural voice came to his mind, sending cold shivers down his back. “He’s the one who controlled our last session.” “He’s a demon, doctor. He knows it all; he sees it all,” she said coldly. “He’s chasing me, too. People of Sippar used to offer their lives and souls to merge themselves with him.” Panic swept through him as he offered up a silent prayer to God and the mother of Jesus Christ. He felt his heartbeats pulse in his ears and started to sweat and his hair stood on end. “And...you were...his high...priestess?” “I’m not a human being. I’ve never been. I know it. I feel it. There’s an unknown force inside me that I can’t describe, but it’s here.” She pressed her chest with her hands. “Why...is he chasing you?” “I took something from him and he wants it back.” “But what?” “I don’t know. I can’t remember that. Oh, doctor. Please help me! Cure me if you can! For God’s sake, save me!” she yelled and threw herself into his arms, looking for protection and relief. He heard her cry on his shoulders, he felt her quiver in his hands, but he felt like a stupid, unable to say those comforting words she so eagerly and 135

Adramelech silently demanded from him. His mind was elsewhere. Despite the horror he’d lived through and the shiver that still ran through his body, he couldn’t avoid thinking about the fame that sole case would bring him. He saw his photograph on the covers of the most prestigious magazines around the world dealing with the medical fields, he saw himself back at university, giving lectures on what he’d call ’The Hidden Side of Reincarnation’. He saw his past finally buried and forgot. Nobody would recall his former experimental treatment, the overdoses... He would be on top again, he would be a pioneer. “The only way you can know who or what you are is going back to the time and moment this madness began.” “It’s... too risky,” she doubted. “You were the one who insisted on this, Yonah. We can’t go back now. It would be a lot riskier to leave you this way.” “I want to die, doctor. I want to finish with all this for good.” “Don’t say that, my child. Don’t say that. Think about your friend Linnea. She wants to see you happy again; she has faith in this therapy. We can’t disappoint her, can we?” Yonah just cried on his shoulder, vulnerable. “Tell me about Nagash, Yonah. Have you seen him again?” he asked calmly. “He is Adramelech under the guise of a human being,” she sobbed. “No, I haven’t talked to him since I started this therapy.” “Oh, I see. He must be afraid of—“ 136

German Bradley “No, doctor. He’s afraid of nothing, he’s only waiting somewhere.” His patient’s words left him full of uncertainty again. Perhaps it wouldn’t be that easy to reach his goal. He knew next to nothing about demons or supernatural phenomena. He only knew about the supraconscious state, which Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist, had called the collective unconscious. Through hypnosis and in countless occasions, he had talked to wise beings that always came in a state between lives, when someone left his or her physical body. They seemed to rule over everything with their infinite wisdom. They knew about men’s life and destiny. They were spirits, heavenly creatures or messengers that controlled and guided people’s existence. That was a fact for him, but now everything changed. A demon controlled his patient’s life and destiny, a demon that was a man as well. Could that be possible? Could a demon be a guiding spirit? He had to know it; he had to be sure. **** “It’s dark inside the cave. The magic of the wind is stronger than I thought.” The words wheezed between Yonah’s teeth with no feminine token in her tone. A new experimental session had begun and his patient had gone back to a time she hadn’t lived before. “It’s dark in here. The cave is blotted with mildew, 137

Adramelech green of putrefaction.” “Do you like that place?” “It smells like fetid air in this dusk, but I need to stay and wait—it’s a safe place for me.” “Do you know where you are? What year is it?” “Humans say it’s 333. They call this place Navarra. They have a name for these caves, too—the Basque caves of Zagarramundi.” “Who are you?” “Nahemah.” “Are you alone there?” “Yes.” “But you talked about human beings.” “They fear me and worship me. They bring me dirty and stinky lepers.” “Why?” “To eat.” Dr. Wead was in his seventh heaven, fascinated by the amazing truth his patient was revealing. He’d asked her to describe herself to him and according to the information she’d given she was an ash-blonde, biped creature. Female indeed, albeit furry, with sharp ears. Her hair was long, dirty and tousled; her face hard-featured and uncouth, all fur as well as her body and limbs. Her state something between human and beast. “What bothers you in this life?” “I’m so primal. I hate being an imperfect creature trapped inside this form.” Yonah was resting on the chaise. Her breath was slower and slower. It seemed she had finished that life. 138

German Bradley “I feel weightless...“ she said after a pause. “I’m floating... No. I’m submerged in a thick red sea. It’s warm here.” “Have you been to that red sea before?” “Yes, I’ve always come back here. It’s my essence.” “Is Adramelech there?” “No.” “Yonah, I’d like you to go to the time the bad blood between you and Adramelech started. Remember that you will be a witness there. Nothing can affect you.” Yonah moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue but didn’t say a word. She changed positions a couple of times, but finally she remained the way she had previously been, but her skirt had rolled up, exposing her nakedness beneath. “I’m coming back,” she said nervously. “There’s a statue of a mule-headed idol and a brick altar in front of it.” She had gone to another life, but her voice was now a nervous whisper. “I’m inside a temple. There’s a large double circle, outlined in a white material on the flagstone floor. There’s a triangle pointing downwards within it and three small circles inside and two burning torches outside. I see candles, all around the perimeter of the circle. Some of them had already burnt out and lie in wax pools. “I see the lunar cycles etched on one wall and the image of a cosmic dragon on the other.” “Don’t be afraid, Yonah,” soothed Dr. Wead. “You’re only a witness there. There’s nothing to be afraid of, okay?” 139

Adramelech His patient nodded, showing that she understood. “Where are you now?” he asked calmly. “In the dens of Sippar. The Sepharvites are celebrating Adramelech first coming to this plane.” “What do you know about that world?” “Nothing much. There’s this number...1830. Probably it’s the year, I don’t know. It’s not really important.” “What else can you see?” “I hear voices. They are calling us. There are twenty-two naked women in the temple, looking at the shrine. But they can’t see us. A halo makes us invisible to them... I like the sound of their voices. They call us. We can’t resist.” “What do you mean by us?” “Obey these words of power, watchers at the gates. Unbar the guarded door and hear our call. You that extinguish the light, you that render its death, You black spirits, hark to the words we say. Obey these servants of darkness.” Dr. Wead couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A black magic ritual was about to start and his patient was repeating an ancient, probably forgotten, invocation. “Radiant King of Fire, The fifth planet is at the zenith. We greet you at the waxing of the moon’s powers, we invite you to our Shabbattu. Come hither to this cold, withered land.” 140

German Bradley After an uncomfortable, long silence Yonah spoke again: “They can see us.” “But, what are those us?” “Namtar, Nergal, Irra, Nina, Asag, Lamashtu and Sharru. They are ready to serve me. They are ready to go with me through all my lives. Tonight the oath shall be sealed.” “Are they demons as well?” “Yes. You’ve seen them as well. They are skinny ancient-looking masters clad in rags. Their skin is deliciously sallow; their touch is leathern and withered; their voices sharp and scabrous; their long white hair covers almost all their bodies. Perhaps you’d like to see them again, doctor,” said Yonah while her fingers walked on the flat of her stomach. Then, she opened her eyes and stared up at him. The universe burst before him and he found himself in another world—in the dens of hell itself. The scene was a nightmare. Two fires burnt and in the centre of the shrine, seven desiccated male and female creatures held themselves up in the air, levitating with their membranous wings already spread. They stank and that nasty smell permeated through the temple and every pore of his skin. Then their bare feet touched the floor and a new creature appeared by the statue of the idol. It was the idol itself! In the flesh! The naked women fell on their knees and bowed their heads so as not to see. The creature was probably 6’2’’ or maybe taller, half human and half goat, like the image of a Greek satyr. His human part, trunk and arms, had a great muscular development, 141

Adramelech but what really scared the wits out of him was the mule’s head upon his shoulders and his penetrating, blood-red eyes. There was another creature behind the living idol. Its skin was coal black and gleamed as if it were made of latex. It was female, and it seemed to be the idol’s slave. The mule-headed creature held and pulled it with a long chain. Still on their knees, the women began to speak, but he didn’t understand a word. He couldn’t know what language that was, but their voices grew louder and louder as they got to their feet and approached the stinking, silent creatures. They slowly took off every single piece of rag that covered their dried-up bodies and sensually smoothed their hands over their senescent chest or breasts, it didn’t matter to them, and down the sides of their waist and thighs. There were two young women for every creature, male or female, and they caressed each other, having one creature in between which stroked them back as well. These women must be witches, thought Dr. Wead. This is sick. Oh, Jesus. This is bloody sick. A couple of women had knelt down in front of a male demon and paid homage to his cock, which began to quiver and swell up as they kissed it, until the foreskin snapped back and the purple knob popped out. One of them grabbed hold of his penis and tongued it, circling its crown, kissing or simply sliding her lips down the shaft while the other licked the demon’s hairy balls. One after another, the demons’ curves of dark brown flesh began to rear up in the women’s skillful 142

German Bradley hands and lips. Some of them were so thick that they needed both hands to encompass their girth. But in so doing, their image changed, becoming younger, stronger and lecherous. The demonesses changed as well. Their breasts turned full and well formed and so did their buttocks. Their nipples looked pointed and unusually erect; their thighs had turned round and smooth. They received the same uninhibited service as their male counterparts. Their human peers fondled those breasts in their hands, flicking and teasing those dark nipples. They moved their heads down and suckled and nibbled them hard at the same time. The demonesses gasped and closed their eyes. Some of them even threw their heads back and let themselves go as their sexual servants toured their bodies with their hands and tongues. Dr. Wead couldn’t believe his eyes. He lingered behind a pillar, watching, almost without blinking. Even though that infernal orgy was too shocking to him, the lesbian scene had given him a hard-on beyond his will. He felt his cock ache beneath his trousers and his heart race in his chest. This was an entirely new experience for him; by far the best he’d ever lived through in his life. He felt like a peeper in hell, watching how those witches had congress with their infernal lovers, and then he wondered who or where Yonah was. He laughed as he looked down at the flagstone floor and thought about London. In his mindscape he saw his busy, crowded city and thought: Would anybody believe what I’m seeing now? Would they 143

Adramelech believe when he told them he’d been back in time in the dens of Sippar? He thought about Kensington Gardens and all the indifferent youths who usually rollerbladed along the broad walk, between Kensington Road and Bayswater. No, he thought, they would never imagine something like he was experiencing. How ignorant the world was, he thought, how limited and banal people’s thoughts were, how lucky he was there, watching an almost mythical piece of history. He wished he had a video camera with him, or a throwaway camera at least. If the whole world could see me here now, he thought and looked up to the centre of the temple, but only to find the most bizarre sexual fantasy he’d ever dreamed about. Floating in the air—about seventy inches above his head—and with their huge wings already spread, the randy devils were entwined with their human lovers and changed positions now and then before his eyes. It was an unthinkable scene indeed. It seemed to him that there was an invisible bed up there where all the trios rolled, lay or knelt, letting their fantasies go, turning the place into a temple of grunts and moans. Wounds flowered on the women’s flesh as those demons screwed them. Deep cuts opened their skin; dark and thick threads of blood ran down, forming an intricate Arabian tapestry. But that wasn’t all. Their faces... Dr. Wead couldn’t believe his eyes. It was... lunacy what he saw. The women’s heads had become... Oh, Christ! They looked like mule heads with hellish yellow eyes! A thrill of horror ran down his back. The 144

German Bradley power of movement had gone from his body. Even though those women looked dreadfully hurt, they stubbornly continued their savage couplings as he saw how the same circles, outlined on the floor, appeared now branded on the skin of every one of them. And then, the power of gravity returned to that temple and the mule-headed women fell like dead bodies on the stones, inside the circles, while the demons remained floating in the air. Still behind the pillar, Dr. Wead had managed to move himself a little, just enough to see the shrine and the altar hidden in a vaporous mist, but the walls and the fires had inexplicably vanished. He gazed up into the blackness above and saw a beautiful, strange night with a canopy of countless tiny stars. But below, a throne, covered with a dirty piece of fur, rose from the mist as well and the mule-headed idol sat on it, pulling his horned slave closer. The mule-headed women had already stood in the centre of the circle and battered at the dome of translucent yellow glow that trapped them. Somehow, the winged demons had sealed the circle as soon as they fell upon the floor. Like statues, the demons levitated towards the throne, unmindful of the women’s shrieks and complaints, and stretched their arms towards the idol, as if they were asking for his slave. They had grown ancient again. Their horned countenances looked fiercer than ever and reminded him of the skulls of bulls and goats he’d once seen in a museum. The skin that coated their bones was almost desiccated. They 145

Adramelech had no eyes in those black sockets and their large wings were folded and flapped around their bodies like shielding capes. “We want to taste her flesh as well, Adramelech,” he heard a legion of voices say. “Would you share her with us? You can sit there and watch us. We won’t hurt your precious gem. You know we can’t match you in fuckery.” And Doctor Wead finally understood the reason why Yonah had taken him to that moment in her life. He saw the relation between the mule-headed idol, Adramelech, and the black demoness, herself. His eyes tried to fix the image of that beast in his mind, as if he knew he wouldn’t see it again. Adramelech answered his peers with a low bow and kept his slave with a loose chain. He raised one of his legs and gave the demoness a hard push with the hoof, sending her face downwards in the middle of the solicitous demons. Four of them took her arms and legs and hoisted her up to stretch her on the altar. After a sign, they stepped back, gave way to a demoness that loomed over her, and gently played with her breasts. As if he were an especial guest, Dr. Wead watched that female beast fondle those black globes of flesh; he could even feel the sponginess through those old hands, clutching her nipples. The black demoness’s body trembled at the touch, but those wizened hands didn’t stop. They moved down over her lustrous body to the juncture of her thighs, rubbing there gently again. The black demoness’s hands moved down as well. Her fingers parted her gorged labia, giving the other demoness access to her slit, which opened itself like a 146

German Bradley yearning mouth. Then a couple of fingers hooked into her flesh, and Dr. Wead’s heart jumped in astonishment. He’d seen the size of those demons’ nails, probably as long as their fingers. And that demoness had sunk her fingers to the knuckles! The black demoness’s hands roved over her own breasts as she pushed her hips forwards, driving those fingers even deeper, but pulling them back too. She even doubled the rhythm that intrusive hand had set and propped herself upon her elbows to stare between her legs, to watch the thumb of the other demoness flatten against her pubic bone as she squeezed and wobbled it. She cried out and her body jerked violently for a while, until the fingers left her pussy. Yet another demoness grasped her ankles and elevated her legs. The owner of the invasive fingers seemed to understand what her peer was about to do and levitated over the altar and squatted on the black creature’s face, holding her ankles up while spreading her legs. She pressed and rubbed her sex against that mouth as her peer sank her face in her pussy. The black creature squealed beneath the demoness’s pussy and ground the lips of her sex on that new, anxious mouth. Little by little, Dr. Wead saw the black creature surrender to the urgency of her need. The one at her cunt was already on her knees with her skull-like face buried in the thick and luscious lips of her sex, plunging her tongue into her inner recesses or making invisible designs on her open pussy with the tip of her tongue. But the black creature lapped the pussy on 147

Adramelech her face as well. She was tongue-fucking that sheath at the time she was being tongue-fucked. She seemed to take the demoness’s exposed clit into her mouth and sucked on it aggressively. Adramelech groaned in excitement on his throne. He kicked the floor with his hooves as he nodded approval. His yellow eyes attentively watched a green metallic juice that gushed from the sex of the demoness atop his slave’s face. He seemed to greet her with low guttural grunts as he watched her cup her breasts with her hands, squeezing them hard, swallowing that greenish juice. Something like a cylinder jutted out from the mouth of the one kneeling at the black creature’s sex. She pumped it in that black pussy with firm and steady strokes first, then faster and faster, until she exhausted herself and fell on her back, leaving a trail of the same greenish liquid dripping from those stillopen lips. One after another all those demons serviced that black whore, leaving their greenish seed dripping from her mouth, sex and anus. But they seemed so weak after that they couldn’t even react when Adramelech pulled her back towards him. Without a doubt, he wanted to taste his slave as well, to knead her breasts and describe spirals on those inviting nipples of hers with the tip of his tongue. She knew her master very well, of course, and kissed his chest while her hands roamed over his abdomen mechanically. Their mouths touched. Dr. Wead’s stomach seemed to turn as he watched Adramelech’s tongue reach into his slave’s mouth 148

German Bradley and clean up the demons’ greenish seed. Even though it wasn’t an erotic scene for Dr. Wead at all, he was sure he could never forget the dull and brutal gangbang he’d witnessed. He couldn’t see the point of all that abuse, he— “You can’t go now, doctor.” A whisper in his head. “You asked me to show you. You were prepared to see, weren’t you?” He looked all around but nobody was paying the foggiest attention to him. In fact, he was an invisible outlooker in that temple. Someone who could take notes of the things and details he’d seen in that forbidden den to file them in his mind and tell the rest of his colleagues. Oh, but... They would think he was sick, they would think he was a nasty pervert if he told what he’d seen. No, he couldn’t say a word. This was for him only. His eyes had gone back to the throne at the time Adramelech’s massive phallus rose and the demoness went down and closed her mouth around that bulbous glans. A low growl escaped Adramelech as her hands drew back and forth the foreskin of his shaft. Yet the scene changed before his very eyes. Suddenly, the throne had vanished and Adramelech was lying on his back, floating in the air. The demoness had climbed up astride him and adjusted his phallus to her overused sex. She leaned her torso forwards and arched her back, keeping her sex close to the base of that massive penis. She ground her hips on it, leaning back. She rested her weight on her hands and threw her face up, looking to the stars. He followed her gaze and saw a curious group of luminous points cluster together just 149

Adramelech above her head. A new constellation of seven reddish stars moving in a spiral. Below, like dying creatures, the demons lay on the flagstone floor and rolled in pain. The women trapped inside the circles screeched and hit the translucent dome, demanding freedom, but Adramelech’s interests seemed to be elsewhere, lost in the pleasure his slave was giving him. Then Dr. Wead noticed the mist had gone. Ghostly spheres came out of the antediluvian bodies of the demons and a legion of voices became high, filling the air with those sounds, but none of them was actually speaking. He couldn’t say whether those voices were calling the demoness atop Adramelech or casting a spell over her. He didn’t understand the language, but he couldn’t deny there was a mysterious fascination in those resonating words. Gradually, the demoness’s flesh became lost in Adramelech’s and the spheres passed by before Dr. Wead’s eyes, smashing against the merging bodies, drawing strange patterns on that ambiguous skin. A thunderbolt came down from the spiralling stars above, silencing the mystic voices he’d heard, striking and shattering the bodies of the dying demons into thousands of tiny flame-like fragments. Dr. Wead backed away in horror. Not only had that Adramelech and his slave become one. They had liquefied into a dark pool of thick bubbling blood! Yet a mass rose from the thickness of that pool. An arched back with its backbone and vertebrae clearly visible. It was the demoness in a crouching position. Her membranous wings were spread down, covering 150

German Bradley the rest of her body. But then, she stood and fixed him with her yellow eyes. Her cheeks, bow and arms were wreathed in white cryptic symbols tattooed on her gleaming skin. Two brass rings pierced her nipples, and three fine chains depended from them. Five rings, hooked into the skin of her abdomen, formed a line going down past her navel. A rattlesnake pattern combined with dark stripes covered almost all the rest of her skin. Besides her long ringed horns, the demoness sported three spikes nailed into both sides of her head, and two large curved fossil bones were inserted in those spikes, forming a sort of nimbus above her head. Dr. Wead looked at her feet and realised there wasn’t a single drop of blood on the floor. The whole pool had materialised in that body. But he felt strange. Suddenly the weight of his body seemed beyond measure and a bitter cold embraced his limbs, slowly numbing him. Then, something dropped from the sky and landed at his feet. A severed goat leg it was, recently chopped and still dripping with blood. The sight made him gooseflesh all over, but another part fell as well—Adramelech’s head. Like pieces of flesh meat, the sky continued raining the rest of Adramelech’s body while he heard the demoness’s foul mental laughter in his head.

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Shabbattu noise took the demoness brusquely out of A themetallic dens of Sippar. She opened her eyes and found

herself in another time, in a peculiar and big room with a high ceiling and half-panelled walls. She was spread-eagled on a narrow leather bed. Blood was oozing from between her legs, but she felt no pain. A short man with a square face and white hair at his temples had fallen from his chair in front of her and looked up at her lasciviously. Agape, his eyes were fixed on her menstruating sex. “Oh, Nahemah. My turn has come at last. Take me out of this prison. Show me the way.” The man’s voice didn’t ring a bell but his eyes were unequivocally familiar. It was Asag, another master that joined his pride to the rest dwelling inside her. “Look,” the master said, tearing his trousers up, revealing his knotty human erection. “Look how eager I am.” Then, as though it were the blossom of a nettle-leafed Bellflower, the man’s foreskin and skin itself opened to lay bare a big crimson phallus, which looked like a bar of raw flesh. Asag sprang towards the demoness, tearing the rest of his human clothes, but that wasn’t meant to be a sexual intercourse. With a sudden hard pull, Nahemah wrenched that crimson flesh off his body, sending him face on the 152

German Bradley floor where he rolled and screamed in pain while she chewed his phallus. But Asag was just pretending; sardonic laughter shortly replaced his screams. “You chose a nice starter, didn’t you?” said Nahemah’s master and stood. A bushy, blood-drenched groin was all she had left between his legs. “Let’s go for the main course now. I’m sure this body will fully satisfy your need.” The master said and approached. Nahemah stood in front of him as well. In a flash, her long sharp claws sank into Asag’s ribs and took him to the air, spreading her wings and breaking through the ceiling and the roof. The transference of her master’s quintessence was almost on the spot. Night had already fallen upon the city, but the whole sky seemed to be as clear as day under the radiant ivory beams that came out of the man’s wounds. The intensity was so strong that she felt those rays were cutting her skin, boiling her veins as the brightening light didn’t allow her to see. The heat and pain was too much for her. Asag had turned into a cosmic vortex, loading her with countless vicious spirit-forms that settled down in her system like parasites. She felt her master flop and vibrate in her grasp. The transmutation hurt to death but she felt alive as well, and wanted more. But then everything was over. The light finally faded away, leaving just a roasted being in her hands. She opened her mouth and unleashed a hideous cry that seemed to cut the night itself like a knife. It hadn’t been enough for her. It couldn’t be just that. She expected more, much more from him. She stared at the useless body in front of her and with a fit of insane anger she spat at that blackened face and split him open, letting him fall to the 153

Adramelech roof like an old broken toy. Floating in the air, Nahemah gazed into the night and saw the waning moon above. She then looked down to the Victorian manor roof and thought back the dens of Sippar. She saw the hundred children those mule-headed women had burnt to their god Adramelech. Soon, she would have the very gods sacrificed themselves to worship her. But a vague memory flashed in a corner of her mind. There was a place for her in that world, below that waning moon. It was a chill cave to the east where no fire could pierce the ever-thickening veil of mist that dwelled in. It was her own den where a wormhole opened in time when she wished so. She had to go back there, she had to keep Adramelech out. He was so persuasive; his cock so satisfying...

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Chapter Fifteen

A

lthough it was a cold grey November morning, Linnea Uhr felt blithe and full of new expectations. Nikkey Sadero, the producer of a wellknown stag film company called Dark World, had recently contracted her for a forthcoming production after seeing her portfolio and website. It was the first time she worked for Dark World studios, but the money she had made through the contract was enough for her to leave the porno industry and start a new life with Yonah. She neither had seen nor talked to her on the phone for at least two months, but she knew it was necessary for her therapy. She knew her lover was a brave girl and would be fine soon. She was just giving her time. With the beautiful face of her Caribbean lover in her mind, Linnea drove to the south, to the Dark World studios in Streatham Hill, where she would receive the script of that new film. She parked in front of an antique shop in Kirkstall Road and walked to the east, but halfway down the street a horrible headline in a newspaper made her stop at the newsagent to read the news of the day: 155

Adramelech PRESTIGIOUS PSYCHOLOGIST DIES CHARRED ON THE ROOF OF HIS HOUSE Fifty-three-old Dr. Dwight Wead was found completely charred this morning on the roof of his Victorian Manor in Holland Park. There was a big hole in the roof by his side, as if perforated by an old cannonball. “I saw a bright light in the middle of the night,” said a resident and witness about a strange phenomenon taking place last night. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Gail Ashley, another witness. “For a couple of seconds the whole sky seemed to glow like a flash of lightning.” “Oh, my God! Yonah!” said Linnea. “This is Yonah’s therapist!” She paid the newspaper and continued reading the news right there at the newsagent. There was no information about Doctor’s patient or any other person, though. Police said the man had committed suicide, but no letter had been found in his house; not a single valuable thing had been taken either. But considering the dread of the event, the head of the police department linked the case with one that had taken place two months ago where a thirty-four-year-old tarot reader named Rachel Lemieux was found beheaded in her own reading room in Camden Town. “Rachel!” said Linnea with anguish in her voice. “Oh, no! Rachel!” Tears ran down her face as she entered Dark World studios. The main door closed behind her and she made her way through a short narrow hall, then upstairs through carpeted steps. “Hey! What’s going on with my leading actress today?” said Ian, a tall, wavy white-blond-haired businessman with piercing blue eyes, when seeing 156

German Bradley her coming in his office. “I’m sorry, Ian. It’s just this news about this psychologist,” she said, showing him the tabloid and pointing to the headline. “A friend of mine was his patient and... Well, it’s shocking, isn’t it?” “Sure, baby. This world’s getting fucking weirder day by day.” There was an aura of authority in that businessman and it made him quite impressive to her. “I got the Fortean Times journal today and look at the cover. It’s unbelievable!” ELEGANT BLOCK OF FLATS TURNS INTO A HUGE BOULDER A couple of pictures on the cover showed the building as it was before, Papermill Wharf, and now, a sort of rocky mass full of holes that, according to the note below the picture, were the openings to countless caves. “Oh, my God! That’s fairly near my own flat!” Linnea exclaimed. “Weird, isn’t it?” “I live in the Millennium Wharf and... Oh, shit!” With the dexterity of a jigsaw puzzle expert, she saw all the pieces fitted together: Rachel, Dr. Wead and Papermill Wharf. All of them were part of only one picture—Yonah. She had to phone her, she had to see her. She had a hunch that was telling her everything had gone wrong. “I’m sorry, Ian, but I’ve got to go,” she said in a hurry, picking up the script. “Something came up and—“ “Sure, baby. Just remember we’ll be cutting this film next week,” Ian said in a business like manner. “Thanks, Ian. I really appreciate it.” 157

Adramelech She rushed back to her car and drove to London’s Dockland. All feelings of happiness she may have felt in that morning had gone in a trice. Now she felt her heart as grey as the sky of that day and horrible thoughts tortured her mind. While steering north along Brixton Hill, she dialled Yonah’s number on her mobile almost ten times, but had no answer. Anguish was her only comrade in that ride, and grew stronger in her soul as she got closer to her destination. She almost had her heart in her mouth when she got out of her car and saw all those cameras, photographers and journalists around what it used to be Yonah’s place. The whole building had turned into a steep cliff made of solid rock, exactly as in the picture she’d seen. The holes on that wall reminded her of an article she once read about the cliff-dwellers, a prehistoric people who built their houses in caves or on ledges of the cliffs, of what it is today Mesa Verde National Park in the south-western U.S. Eight Scotland Yard agents had climbed and entered some of those caves during that morning, but none of them had returned yet, neither had they answered the messages over the radio. There were some relatives of the residents, waiting for news as well, but it seemed the cliff had swallowed them all. Linnea knew her Caribbean lover was somewhere there, inside that rocky mass. She was probably not alone, but she was sure Yonah was there, either hiding herself or captive. And she couldn’t do anything. There was no way for her to enter that cliff, and if it were, there was no way to help her if she 158

German Bradley wasn’t human any longer. She could only wait and pray. She was alone, the archangels had said they wouldn’t poke their nose in that business again. “I won’t let you alone, Yonah,” she said and walked away. “I promise.” **** Linnea didn’t turn on the radio or the TV set in the rest of the week. She paid all her attention to the script and that new production. She knew she would see her lover again. She knew Yonah would find the way to her flat, because she needed her as much as she did as well. The script she had in her hands would give her the chance to escape with Yonah and take her wherever she wanted to go, far away from Adramelech and his power. They would be happy at the end. Linnea imagined the scene: they would walk along a solitary beach of yellow sand in a far-off country where nobody could find them. It would be like a dream, she thought, but the difference between dreams and accomplishments were the actions she took and the passion she put on them. She had joined the cast of a big-budget sex flick she was studying for the first time. The story plot was quite simple, but a little bit odd too. Ian had said he had been commissioned to produce that film and that he would only take fifteen copies of it. The film was based on a real character, Ian had confidentially told her last week, and that made it a very special, almost private film. 159

Adramelech The story was about a millionaire and libertine man, a true connoisseur of sexual perversions who turns a Cistercian abbey into a bordello. He and a group of other wealthy guys call themselves monks and hire some beautiful, amoral sex workers to enjoy bizarre and erotic ceremonies. Very simple to be a limited film, she thought. But there were certain details in that flick that surprised Linnea a little: Ian himself was going to play the role of the millionaire, to start with. All the scenes would be filmed in an abbey at Medmenham in Buckinghamshire, and in two weeks only. That would be the first and last film for Dark World studios. Where was all the moneymaking enterprise she was used to working for? she wondered. **** Late on a Friday night in that very week, Yonah rang the doorbell of Linnea’s flat. She shivered a little when she saw her lover trembling at the threshold, covered from head to feet with a dark green raincoat clutched around her throat. She looked wretched. Her eyes were swollen with tears. Her breath sounded as if she held an infinite grief inside her heart, a grief that had taken away all her strength and charm. Linnea could not help but imagine the unbearable sorrow that veiled her lover now. She could even feel it as well. Yonah had found out her true self and that was breaking her into pieces. “You were right,” said Yonah, putting her arms around Linnea’s neck, sobbing in earnest. “You were 160

German Bradley always right and I wouldn’t listen.” Linnea didn’t know what to say. She had expected that moment so much that now it was almost cruel for her to withstand it. “I was so stupid, so fucking blind!” “Cry, baby. Just cry,” said Linnea, hugging her close, transmitting her warmth. “I can’t go back home now. I have nowhere to go.” “I know, Yonah. I’ve seen your building. It was...” “That was an illusion! A fucking disguise! And I lived there like a fucking prisoner to him,” Yonah said with anger in her voice. “But how did you escape? What happened to the people who lived there with you?” asked Linnea, wiping Yonah’s tears off her face. “Damned souls. That’s what they are. A façade elegance to arouse no suspicion in this age.” “But how did you escape? I couldn’t even take you out of there by myself!” “Through a narrow tunnel leading to Ratcliff Cross Stairs. They throw the bodies of the victims they won’t eat into it. And I had to use those bodies too.” She took off her raincoat and a nauseating smell rose from her. Her naked body was dressed in rotten pieces of human flesh and dried-up blood. “Oh, shit!” said Linnea, pressing her nostrils so as not to smell. “What’s that stinking shit!” She hastened to fetch a plastic bag from the kitchen and handed it to her. “Oh, my God! Take it off! Put it all in. I’ll go to prepare the bath.” After a while, the Caribbean giantess walked into 161

Adramelech the bathroom and Linnea saw the hellish tattoos and chains that covered her skin. “I won’t be able to show my wares any more,” said Yonah ironically. “Come, baby. Step into the water.” Slowly, Yonah did as she was told, sitting and lying back in the tub. With infinite tenderness, Linnea started to run her palms over her lover’s branded body, as if she wanted to wash her lover’s truth away. “I was so stupid, love,” sobbed Yonah as Linnea continued washing her. “A fucking selfish slut.” “You’re safe now. Adramelech won’t come here.” Yonah just stared at her from out of her hazel swollen eyes and said: “Will you ever forgive me?” “I love you, baby,” said Linnea and leaned forwards and kissed her on the mouth. “The question is, would you like to stay with me now?” “Forever,” Yonah whispered. “Just tell me what to do.” Linnea’s dream had finally come true. She just needed the archangels’ trust back and Yonah’s soul would be saved. But for the moment she only had to take care of her. Now she knew what she was, it would be easier to get the balance of that divided soul. They still loved each other. That would be on their side. “The chains and studs and metal plates have become part of myself,” said Yonah, breaking her thoughts. “I know, love. But with a little help from above, you’ll get rid of that shit. I promise,” said Linnea with a smile. “Now you need to sleep. And don’t worry, 162

German Bradley honey. Nobody will come in here. Nobody.” **** “Morning, love.” Linnea had just finished her breakfast when Yonah stepped in the kitchen in the buff. Her looks had changed dramatically after that pleasant night. Her eyes shone happiness again. Despite the marks and tattoos on her body she wasn’t suffering, or at least she didn’t show it or didn’t care. “Why are you up so early, honey? Did you sleep well?” asked Linnea and stood to make breakfast for her lover. “Like an angel,” said Yonah. “But I don’t want you to go into any trouble. I can do that myself.” “It’s no trouble at all, sweetie. I love doing it for you.” “Have you got a robe or something that I can wear? I’m afraid I lost everything I had.” “Oh, I’m sorry. Let’s go to the bedroom. You can choose what you want in the closet. There’s enough clothes for both.” But Linnea went back to the kitchen and left her lover alone to choose and wear what she wanted. After a while, breakfast was ready and Yonah turned up wearing tight red hipster flare trousers and a cleavage bra with wide and adjustable shoulder straps in heavy black rubber. “Wow, Yonah! I love to see you dressed like that. You look smashing.” Yonah just smiled and lowered her head a little. 163

Adramelech “It’s good to have an angel by your side.” “Sit down and have your breakfast before it gets cold.” And so Yonah did. Linnea stood behind her, watching her as if it were the first time. She neither cared for the tattoos nor the studs or plates, she just saw the woman she had fell in love with. “I don’t want you to change your plans for me. Please, just do the things you usually do. I’ll be okay.” “I was just watching the woman I love,” said Linnea and kissed Yonah’s neck. “I was wondering if you could help me with my script.” “Hey! What’s an angel like you doing these days? Another film?” “I’m not an angel any more, Yonah.” “What?” “I decided to get you back and I lost my powers and virtues. Now I can’t protect you like a guardian angel, I can’t intercede for you to God. I’m just a woman like you are. I’m not a celestial image, but I’m happy because you’re my religion now. You’re my life.” “Oh, baby.” It was Yonah who put her arms around her neck now, clutching her in a deep embrace, covering her face with tender kisses. “Am I that worthy?” “Yes, Yonah. You are.” Linnea kissed her back, but Yonah pushed her away. “I can’t stay with you, love,” said Yonah scared. “I’m not human. You’ll be unprotected, in danger with me.” 164

German Bradley “The archangels won’t let us alone, I’m sure.” “But what if they do? What will you do when the demoness I have inside takes over?” “Is there anyway to know when that happens? Can you sense the change?” “I can’t, Linnea. I bloody can’t. But it has something to do with menstruation.” “Menstruation?” Linnea stood silent, thinking. “When’s your menstrual cycle?” “I...don’t know!” Yonah’s eyes were fixed on the floor for a while, then they went up again and met Linnea’s. “I don’t remember.” Her dark skin looked as pale as death. Her body began to tremble and her eyes filled with a sudden terror. “I...always thought... I—Oh Gosh!” She threw herself into a chair by the kitchen table. “I always thought I missed all my periods!” A prickle of fear ran down Linnea’s spine as she saw her lover’s desperation in her eyes. “Don’t panic, Yonah. There are ways to know when your period is on its way. Probably you feel tense, irritable or depressed during the four days before the period flow.” Yonah just moved her head from left to right. “Have you got headaches, breast pains or backaches?” “I have some memories of bleeding, but I think they’re not mine,” said Yonah as she got a little quieter. “Adramelech is using your menstrual blood,” said Linnea, sitting by her side. “He knows it is an element of enormous power; a sexual element to control you.” 165

Adramelech She held Yonah’s face with both hands and looked to her eyes. “There’s a rise of desire at the period time and we need to be aware of that. Adramelech is using your increased sensitiveness, your impatient demand for sex. When we detect those signs we’ll win this evil game.” “But that’s impossible! I am a whore! I sell myself and I love it! You know how I love to get fucked, you know how I love the taste of fresh, warm cum, the taste of a woman’s squirt. How could we single out the signs if they are in me! Always here!” Yonah’s voice sounded uncertain, afraid, as she touched her chest with one hand. “You’ll have to learn to control yourself. You must stop living like a whore, being a whore. That’s why I’m working on this film, to take you out of this life,” said Linnea, handing her the script. “The Monks of Medmenham?” asked Yonah with curiosity. “Yes, honey. This is going to be my last porno flick.” Linnea squeezed her lover’s hands. “After this we are going away to start a new life, away from Adramelech and his witches.” “He will follow us wherever we go,” Yonah replied. “Not if you learn to control yourself. You can make it. Together we can make it.” **** On the following three days Yonah helped Linnea with her lines. She agreed with her that the story was 166

German Bradley a bit odd, but it wasn’t their business after all. On Wednesday morning, Linnea asked her to go with her to the shooting place in Buckinghamshire. She said it would be funny, she wouldn’t do anything but watch. It would be good for her to get a breath of fresh air, and Yonah was on the same mind. Besides, Linnea had been checking her secretions day after day and they couldn’t risk stopping doing it during Linnea’s staying away. No, they had to be together, they had to be saved. That was a swift but relaxing trip for both women under a clear sunny day. Linnea had kept the windows down almost all the ride and enjoyed watching, from time to time, Yonah’s hair fluttering in the wind. Reminiscing about their good old times had somehow reinforced their mutual feelings much more. Linnea realised Yonah had changed. She wasn’t the conceited, selfish woman she used to be. She cared for what Linnea could say or feel, she was trying to be a better human being despite she was completely aware she was not entirely human. Revelations and incredible events often make us change our point of view, thought Linnea, listening to Yonah’s chatting. They get us closer to what we really are—true creatures of God. “Here we are, sweetie,” said Linnea as she parked in front of a big, white-walled building on the banks of the Thames. “Is this...?” “Welcome to Medmenham Abbey, Yonah.” “But, where are we? I wasn’t looking at the road. 167

Adramelech How did we get here?” Linnea just laughed at her lover’s confusion and got out of the car. “We’re near West Wycombe. Buckinghamshire, okay?” “So it was true!” said Yonah, caught on the wrong foot. A tall, handsome, coffee-tinted man welcomed and invited them to enter the abbey. “Control yourself, love,” Linnea whispered in Yonah’s ear after noticing the lascivious look in each other’s eyes. But none of them had imagined the decor inside the abbey, a decor that brought them to a sudden stop. Skulls of unknown beast hung from the wooden beams above together with chains, hooks and thick ropes. Pentagrams and other mystic symbols and talismans were carved on every pillar they saw along the nave. There was a holy-water stoup on the right hand, just after the entrance door, and it was full of blood. A couple of snakes were carved around the rim, showing their grotesque tongues. They turned around and saw a grotesque, horned and squatted creature, just above the main door, that seemed to be ready to jump upon them as it observed them with its eyes of stone. On the walls, evil seemed to be imprisoned in winged mummified demons, irradiating all the hate and pestilence their eyeless socket could hold in their apostle-like positions. A dark and cold feeling came over Linnea. The whole atmosphere of the abbey was evil and twisted and absolutely anti-Christian, and she was guiltridden of bringing Yonah to that place. It was like 168

German Bradley taking her back to her nightmares, but she had said no word. They continued walking towards the altar and saw two refectory tables, mantled with red satin table cloths, on either sides of the transept. But on the rounded walls of the apse and at either end of the transepts, nightmarish mutations shocked them. Beasts, serpents and dragons tried to form a new species impossible to describe. The light coming from the clerestories above helped to keep them almost hidden from their inquisitive inspection. Near the altar, on the floor, a long repulsivelooking snake, with its tail in its mouth, formed a big circle with a burning human skull inside. “Tenebrous style, isn’t it?” said the black guide. “But today we’re filming at the crypt,” he continued, as they walked towards a narrow stairs by the choir leading to the underground rooms. Before making her way downstairs, Linnea turned back to have another look at that astonishing place and saw there were pornographic pictures on the walls, too. Sensual women gave men head while being fucked from behind; others, rode atop their men’s cocks or enjoyed double penetration or even back door sex. There were lesbian couples as well; full hardcore group sex photographed in all sort of positions and angles, and all kinds of blowjobs a human being can possibly imagine. “Come on, Linnea. It’s time!” called the black man from the underground. The crypt was full of columns richly carved with countless snakes, each one of them forming an 169

Adramelech intricate arched ceiling. The capitals were festooned with human skulls. Four cameramen with their tripods were shooting a scene furnished with only a four posted bed, leaned against a column, an Empire méridienne standing in the centre and two Hepplewhite chairs, and a coffin like structure covered with a green velvet tapestry all the way back. It wasn’t cold there despite fact that the place was made of stone, and there was no heating either. A blond woman was lying upon the light blue quilted bed. Her head rested on two pillows. She wore gothic makeup and was unclothed except for the elbow length gauntlets and the black latex seamed stockings, which ended about three inches below her groin. There was a man in a gag mask atop her, almost sitting on her breasts. He wore a strange black leather vest made of straps and laced in the front. His muscular arms and legs were wrapped in broad leather straps as well, and he had inserted a long, curved yellow plastic dildo inside her pussy. “What a freaky scene, isn’t it?” whispered Yonah. “It certainly is, love,” Linnea replied. It was something new to her, too. “It certainly is.” Linnea and her lover continued watching the scene as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the blond woman’s face. She had grasped the base of the man’s cock and swallowed it whole to release it after, bit by bit, from her mouth. She snaked her tongue about the cockhead for a while, then lapped at the underside. The man in the mask slid his cock inside her lips again and pistoned in and out with increasing tempo as he fucked her with the long dildo. The woman 170

German Bradley pushed his buttocks even closer so as to give him a deep-throating. Her eyes were closed, her lips wet with lubricating saliva. The man began to groan deep as his hips pumped on, desperately fucking her face, until a dollop of thick semen oozed from between her lips. “That was great! Did you record it all?” asked Ian to the cameraman in charge of the close-up. “Yes, the whole piece.” “Okay. Shut it off. Let’s have a five-minute break,” the producer instructed while the actors disappeared in the darkest place of the crypt. “Hello, baby,” he greeted Linnea with a smile. “I see you’re not alone today.” “Ian, this is my friend Yonah. Yonah, this is Ian, the producer.” “Isn’t it a bit hot in here?” he asked, looking at the long black and red cape Yonah wore. Linnea had noticed Yonah tried hard not to stare at him, but their eyes had met anyway. “She’s got marks on her skin,” she hastened to say in order to save her friend. “And they don’t look good.” “Marks? What sort of marks?” “Someone has branded my skin,” said Yonah. “You don’t want to know the details.” “I’m sorry, Yonah. I never meant to—“ “That’s okay. Never mind,” finished Yonah and stepped back. “Well, baby,” said Ian, looking at Linnea now. “I need you to change for the next shooting. Could you ask the man over there the bag with your outfit?” “Sure.” 171

Adramelech “Okay everybody,” Ian said and clapped his hands. “We’re about to start again,” he said, summoning back the cameramen and the rest of the crew. Linnea then went for her bag and continued to the shadowy part of the crypt. The cameras were no longer focused on the fourposted bed, but on the Empire méridienne standing in the centre and on the coffin like structure at the back. Five minutes later, Linnea appeared in the scene together with another woman. There was a seductive expression on her face, even though the vampiric makeup she wore gave her a lethal look. Her arms were sheathed in black leather straps with furs and long fine feathers hanging from her elbows; her legs were sheathed in high boots. She wore a G-string and a corselet as well, half leather and half lace, going down to her navel and up to the under curves of her breasts. A stiffened reverse v projected up between them, separating them. The other woman wore pale blue eye shadows and her hair was purple-dyed. She was leather-bound in a black open breast teddy and a broad silver belt around her waist and she carried a long bullwhip with a cracker on the end. According to the script, Linnea and four other men would play the role of slaves to that dominatrix before the main course with Father Superior, Ian himself. And so they came in, dressed in robes. Black stripes crossed their faces, hiding their eyes and mouths, making their resemblance a mystery. Linnea felt a hard pull on her neck and understood the scene had begun. She was the purple-haired 172

German Bradley woman’s slave, and she wanted her near the men. In fact, they had gathered around her and their hands began to roam over her body, as she writhed like a snake under the contact. She felt hands sliding between her thighs; others rubbing her nipples. Palms moving around and around, driving her crazy. She felt them peel down her G-string, while probing fingers circled her labia. Her hands searched for those masculine bodies as well, moving slowly, seductively, opening robes and squeezing naked buttocks underneath or sliding down over hairy thighs until her palms cupped soft posing pouches. “Take your clothes off!” demanded the purplehaired woman somewhere behind Linnea, the sound of the whip cracked clean in the air: once, twice, three times and the men hastened to unclothe themselves while their bodies twisted in pain under the kisses of the whiplash. Linnea could see the red marks pulping on their backs. They were already in the buff, wearing only satin pouches, straps and military boots; however, one of them wore a complete gladiator gear. “She’s a raunchy slut!” shouted the dominatrix. “Spank her! Give her what she deserves. Make her feel the pain.” The gladiator slapped her breasts violently, back and forth with stinging blows. Linnea closed her eyes as tears flowed down through her eyelashes. “Rip her breasts off, slave. She likes that!” commanded the dominatrix. Linnea opened her eyes again just at the time the gladiator pushed her onto the méridienne. Then, he 173

Adramelech plunged onto her body and nibbled at every inch of her. She moaned loud as he sank his teeth into one of her breasts, exactly as a vampire would do it on the neck of his sleeping lady. The camera zoomed in for a close-up of her nipples. Her areola looked larger and swollen under his chewing and the pulse in her nipples pounded. She felt fingers twisting inside her too, and she spread her legs. The rubbing was almost painful, but she gasped in excitement. The gladiator had stopped chewing her nipples and now was pulling her pussy lips wide apart. She saw the camera getting closer as she felt a finger vibrate faster and faster on her clit, until a whistling sigh escaped her lips. She felt herself ooze. She was ejaculating! “That’s a good girl, that’s lovely,” said Ian behind the cameraman. “Change positions now, baby. Sit on Paul’s leg facing this camera and let him do you from behind.” The cameraman shut his equipment off and Linnea stood, letting Paul, the gladiator, sit on the edge of the méridianne, leaning backwards. He had stripped his gear off and she leaned over him and kissed his neck, licking and kissing, moving down to his chest, to his belly. His cock was fully aroused. Linnea then turned and looked at the camera. She parked her rear on the gladiator’s bare legs, guiding his cock inside her slippery pussy, leaning back on his body. The dominatrix had come to sit by her side. She felt the tip of her tongue slide between her lips and 174

German Bradley opened her mouth in response. The dominatrix’s tongue stabbed into her mouth and slid in and out for a while. Then she caught her lower lip between her teeth and chewed, inflicting a delicious pain, but only to smooth her with her tongue again. It was an enthralling, erotic sensation for Linnea. Her body shivered with rapture as she reached out a tentative hand to caress the dominatrix’s breasts as Paul fucked her upwards, pulling her pussy lips apart, pressing and circling her clit with one finger. The dominatrix sighed into her mouth. She breathed hard and fast, as if someone else were taking her breath away. Curious to know what was happening, Linnea opened her eyes and looked down. But she couldn’t believe her eyes. It was Ian himself who was servicing the dominatrix while she kissed her. With every thrust of his, she was almost breathless! Linnea’s and Ian’s eyes met and an animal appetite grew inside her. She stopped kissing the dominatrix and sat straight on Paul’s legs without taking her eyes off him. She couldn’t know, she couldn’t think whether what she saw was true or just product of her lustful imagination. He was there, almost naked with his cock pumping into the other woman between her crotchless teddy. His abdominals, pectorals and triceps were rather metallic plates instead of skin and flesh. His arms were wreathed in fiendish creatures and pentagrams. He wore skin-tight leather trousers with square cuts forming a line down each leg, opened in the front, similar to the riding trousers cowboys used to wear in 175

Adramelech old Western films. “Come here, you steed. Wouldn’t you like to cum inside me?” Words came unconsciously out of her mouth. “Wouldn’t you like to fondle and suck my tits instead of hers?” Linnea said, looking down on the dominatrix by her side. “Come, my stud. Come and taste me.” She showed him her breasts, unmindful of Paul’s thrusts. She even squeezed her areolas as though she already knew he’d like to see them swollen and raw. And he just smiled. Linnea’s wildest and darkest fantasies came true. Ian’s rampant erection had left the other woman’s sex and remained oscillating and wet in front of her. There were two silver studs along him, but she didn’t pay too much attention to them. She just disconnected herself from Paul and felt on her knees, her eyes fixed on his shaft. She felt extraordinarily aroused and elated as well, as though she had never sucked a cock before. She came very close to his shaft and opened her mouth slightly, breathing on him, blowing on him with her breath. Her tongue reached out for him, starting at his bottom, and then licked slowly upwards. Her head turned sideways and she set her teeth gently into his sensitive flesh. He grunted and she looked up, but he wasn’t looking back; he was lost in his own fantasy perhaps. She kept on her upward swings with her tongue, from the base to the rim of the knob. But she noticed something odd while she licked over the head. There was a sort of silver bolt into his fraenulum. “Go on, baby. Don’t stop,” he said with a hoarse 176

German Bradley voice. She closed in on the head and took it all into her mouth, sliding her lips down just behind the corona. She heard him moan, as she encased the rest of his cock with one of her hands. She sucked hard, trying to get everything out of it, moving her hand up and down the shaft. Suddenly, she leaned back and had a look at it. It was all wet and shining and a strong desire of mounting took over her will. “Come here, baby,” she said, frigging her sex. “Give me a nice fuck.” She had already forgot she was playing a role. She didn’t see the cameras or the other men watching the scene. All she wanted now was Ian seizing her, coming inside her, making her feel as the slut she had never been before. The méridianne was already empty and she lay back on it, her pelvis about one foot lower than Ian’s. She lifted her legs and rested her feet on his shoulders. She tilted her pelvis upwards as well, and her back formed a straight line that angled up towards him while she held herself with her elbows. He put his hands on each buttock and, with one single slow stroke, his cock filled her sex. “Ohhh!” The tiny studs on his shaft increased her sensations enormously. In a couple of minutes she was all groans and whimpers as his erection rubbed against her Gspot. She closed her eyes, but Ian pulled slowly back, withdrawing almost all the way out of her. She made eye contact with him again, but what she 177

Adramelech saw left her in a state of utter confusion. He had plunged into her, deep inside this time. His balls slapped against her buttocks, but despite all that, she had the sensation she was having some sort of hallucination. What was standing in front of her was not a man but a beast, a mule-headed beast! “Get away from me!” she screamed, trying to disconnect herself. “Get away from me!” “Cut the bloody scene!” shouted Ian, utterly upset. “So what happened to you?” He released her, staring down at her. The beast she’d seen had gone. It was only Ian; no metallic plates on his body, no silver bolts on his shaft, just Ian, the producer. “I...” She didn’t have words to describe what she’d seen. She knew there was no reasonable way to explain such a strong illusion. She felt like an idiot having everybody around with their eyes set on her, asking for an explanation. “You doing drugs or something? I suppose you knew you had to be clean for this job,” said Ian very pissed off. “Jesus! Don’t you see we’ll have to shoot the whole thing again?” “I’ll check the video, Ian,” said the cameraman in charge of the action. “Maybe I’ll find a place to cut and paste.” “I’m sorry, Ian. I don’t know what to say,” said Linnea, looking at the carpeted floor. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll have a break of one hour until all of us get in the mood again.” He looked back at Linnea and walked away. Once away from the scene and the lights, Yonah 178

German Bradley dared to ask: “What happened, love? You just spoiled a smashing piece back there” “I wish I knew myself, Yonah.” Still with no briefs on, Linnea sat on a metallic chair by a vendor machine. “I saw a beast, Yonah. A fucking muleheaded beast.” Her lover stood by her side agape. “You saw what?” “It... it was just there in front of me, pumping that studded cock inside me.” Linnea pressed her thighs together and crossed her arms over her chest, as if by doing so she protected herself from that horrible image. “You understand what you’re talking about? You telling me you saw Adramelech himself?” “It was not Ian who was fucking me there! It was a monster that stared at me with those yellow eyes.” “You sure you didn’t get up to any junk before shooting?” “For Christ sake, Yonah. No! I swear!”

179

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Chapter Sixteen

Y

onah was sure her Scandinavian lover was telling the truth. She knew her well. She was a serious professional who would never dare to spoil her work in that way and for no reason. And that only meant Adramelech was there, waiting to make his move. She had underestimated his power and had even thought she would be safe by Linnea’s side, but now her soul began to cloud with uncertainty. Adramelech was somewhere there, ready to take any body he wished and she wouldn’t noticed it. That couldn’t be. She had to escape. “Yonah, aren’t you?” Ian’s question had suddenly broken her thoughts. “Yes, I am.” “I heard you’ve been in this business for a while.” “Never been an actress but it’s almost the same thing,” said Yonah, coldly. “The point is one of the ladies of the night never turned up for this film and I was wondering that maybe you might do her scenes,” said Ian, his face wreathed in smiles, as usual. 180

German Bradley “I’m branded, Ian, and that was not precisely something I wanted or dreamed about. My body is now full of shit,” said Yonah, ashamed of what her body had become. “I’m sorry, Ian, but I can’t help you.” “Does it hurt? Who did that?” Ian asked genuinely concerned, his eyes peered intently into hers. “It’s a long story, and I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, averting his gaze “Sorry, but—May I see those...marks? I won’t touch you, I promise.” “I don’t show my body for free,” she said defiantly, hiding her fear, fear of the unexpected sensations that grew inside her. Despite the charm Ian irradiated and his soft, persuasive words she couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anybody there. She had to control her instincts even though it was a hard task to do. “And I don’t pay without seeing what I need.” “Nice try, Ian. But I think you’d better talk to someone else,” she said and started to walk away to the stairs. “Okay, okay. You win, Yonah. I’m not asking you to show me anything. You can even wear that cape you’re in now. I only want you to play the role of a succubus in the next scene upstairs.” “Why me?” she asked as her vision began to swim. “Do I look freaky enough to fit in this stuff you’re producing?” She felt light-headed, as if she were under the effects of some drug. Her lids felt heavy as well. It was his voice! she realised. He was mesmerising her. “There’s something hidden in you,” said Ian in a 181

Adramelech very soft voice. “I noticed it at the time I saw you. You’re not just another woman, Yonah. There’s something special in you and I want that for my film.” In spite of the fact he was not touching her, every single word he said was like soft fingers caressing her body, running down her back, following the curves of her anatomy. In her almost drunk state sensitivity had increased a lot. She just heard words that lulled her fears and suspicions, words that brought forgetfulness to her soul. “Will you accept, then...?” “Yes.” Her voice was a mere whisper. “Will you come with me...?” “Yes.” “Will you be the lady I need for this night?” “Yes.” Her limbs felt stiff. Her heart was too heavy to beat any more, and she let herself go in that stream of blackness. **** The feathery touch of a moist tongue lapping from her navel to the inside of her left thigh woke her up. Her wrists and ankles were shackled to a wheel of solid wood behind the altar of the abbey. But she was still dizzy to see more details. The tongue that licked the crease between her thigh and pussy was in control of her body and reactions. It made her feel alone in her own need as it came dangerously close to her sex, but only to float away. 182

German Bradley She opened her eyes again and saw she was standing on nothingness. Her whole weight rested on her wrists and ankles, but she could hardly feel her limbs. She saw candles around. Their hypnotic flames numbed her senses. However, she managed to figure out her position: she was crucified and spread-eagled on that wheel. She looked down but scarcely saw a head between her legs. Was it a man’s or a woman’s? She couldn’t know. She only knew that head controlled her impulses, as it played with her inner labia with lips and tongue. Little by little her eyes began to focus and her vision got clearer. Candles turned into spotlights and the head between her legs turned into Ian’s. But that wasn’t all. The statues she’d seen on entering the abbey were alive, flying like vultures around her, filling the air with their stink. “My tongue has finally stirred your blood, my little slut.” A husky female voice spoke somewhere in that place. “Who...?” There was no strength in her to formulate a question, no power to react or fight. “Maybe you can give yourself to the pleasure of my hands. It’ll be such a soft touch, equal to the softness of your soul.” It was like the voice of a witch, enticing but mesmerisingly obscure. She tried to find out the origin of that voice, but she failed. It came from nowhere except from deep inside her very soul. “Can’t you feel them? Those high sensations your body can build.” The voice continued, languid and seductive and she closed her eyes. “It feels so soft, isn’t 183

Adramelech it?” She felt hands indeed, running down her body, gently, softly. They seemed to know her body well; she squirmed unconsciously and her nipples stiffen as those countless hands brushed her breasts, thighs, arms, shoulders and neck, all at the same time. She surrendered to their attentions. Her body moved in search of those palms and fingers. She hadn’t experienced such a soft contact in a long, long time. She hadn’t been pampered that way since... “Yes, my little slut. Everybody needs to be touched.” She opened her eyes again and saw the owners of those incredible hands—the winged mummified demons. The mule-headed women! The perfect lovers that had never left her stranded. “You ache for it, don’t you?” She just panted and lifted her hips, until one of those flying lovers slashed one hand up between her thighs. Her body jumped under that first slap and a great warmth began inside her. She heard her own long gasps and moans as she watched the dark eyes of the witches, reading the need of her soul. It was unbearable. Spasms of raging lust convulsed her body and ignited her sex after every strike of them. Her clit demanded more; her mouth pleaded more in incoherent sounds she couldn’t understand. But the hands continued stroking, giving her no mercy. “You’re mad about them. You crave for their flesh. You need to have them. Randiness controls your will, you stinking bitch. But despite our ministrations, you betrayed me.” 184

German Bradley The wheel changed into a horizontal position and she felt her limbs released. She turned and tried to crawl, but a hot tongue laved her spine down to the small of her back and up again to her neck. Cold air sighed into her pussy, making her shiver. She was on her fours, waiting, but no flesh penetrated her, only those gentle hands kept on torturing her breasts and clit with unearthly softness. “Do me good and hard,” she pleaded, almost in a whisper. “I can take everything.” Her eyes were shut and her head down. The cold air still blowing her moist sex. And then, at last, a greasy blunt thing probed the weal of her anus and forced its way up inside her. In a trice, she felt that lance of flesh thrusting in and out of her rear orifice, ripping into her. But the pain only inflamed her inhuman lust. “I know they’re using their powers to turn you into their saviour. But their cause is lost. They won’t be able to leave your body and I’ll screw their power away, exactly as I’m screwing you now. I can sense their fear inside you,” said the voice again. But she didn’t care what it said. She only gasped for air after every thrust. She wanted that rough and in that angle and no bloody voice in her head would disturb her. She squealed like a madwoman, encouraging the creature behind her, whoever it was, for more. Yet the demon behind slowly forced her to a standing position without leaving her anus. Then, another winged creature stood in front of her on that very wheel—Adramelech. “You still belong to me, you rotten slut,” said the mule-headed beast in a breathy voice. “I forged you out 185

Adramelech of my own lust. You’re tied to my needs and so are your treacherous masters now. You, my little slut, have no other aim than this.” And she felt his cock inside her sex. “Yes, this is all what you are. This is all what you need.” But she gave no heed to those words. She just moaned and screamed, lost in the incredible feeling they gave her. She saw them in her mind. It was Adramelech, Nagash and Ian. All of them together and changing position, setting a perfect rhythm, filling her up completely. She felt their cocks hit and slide together within her, and that drove her crazy. “You’re my finest creation, a trained cock-teaser. And you’ll remain so.” She leaned forwards and clang herself against Adramelech’s chest. Her legs no longer touched the wooden wheel; they embraced her master’s waist. “Come with me. Come with us. Take the seed of oblivion. Let us have your memory again,” their voices said on and on as she writhed in a paroxysm of pleasure she’d never felt before. She was drenched with sweat, dizzy, lost, almost out of her body, but they kept on pounding their shafts with hard strokes. There was no escape from the sheer force of her own desire. She’d always wanted it that way—extreme and violent. With that other delicious pain growing in her back, between her shoulder blades. All of a sudden she realised the voices she heard didn’t come from her mind. They came from another dimension, a place she was about to come in one more time.

186

German Bradley

Shabbattu

“C

ome back. Come back.” A thought seemed to guide her somewhere. Her body, her whole being looked like a long scarf of silver specks of light that floated in a purple spacescape. Every tiny piece of her pulsed and beat and she wondered at it; she had forgotten what she really looked like in the cosmic void. But there were other forms travelling with her, amidst the silvery energy of hers. Seven embryonic beasts rolled in bloody placentas, stretching the fine tissue in order to get themselves free. “They’re just worms, Nahemah. Parasites that feed on you.” The thoughts came to her, as she felt she was falling. The embryonic beasts tore the membranes that confined them open and the crimson liquid spread along the specks of light, dyeing her energy and recreating her original pattern. Molecules and atoms reunited, forming a transparent resilient body that slowly turned into solid coal black flesh. She was in her element again, in the ebb and flow of a red sea. A white ring appeared at the distance and drew her there like a powerful magnet. White lines became visible in 187

Adramelech that circle as she got closer, and a violent force sucked her down, enfolding her in a blinding pain. **** A cold wind brought her consciousness back. Nahemah was sitting on her heels, on wet ground, amidst a huge pentagon outlined in glowing lines. She looked around and saw a barren landscape of dark grey mountains. The sky above was covered with black clouds, as if announced a coming storm. Like totem poles, black beings stood around her at considerable distance, though. “Those parasites you call Masters made this place long before I made you,” said a voice above her in the sky. “They wanted to be close to the chaotic human emotions. They got used to them and finally fed on them.” Nahemah stood and wheeled around, searching for the owner of that voice. She knew exactly who he was, but she needed to see his face again, to know where he was. Craning her neck she looked up and down, searching for Adramelech; the voice seemed to shift. “They’ve always been slaves. They follow anyone, but you—You’ve gone too far away.” The voice now sounded at her feet. But she couldn’t look down; an invisible hand squeezed her heart. “No whore can steal her demon lord without a price to pay.” The voice hissed impatiently. “I want what is mine and I’ll have it now.” The voice now sounded somewhere to her left. Her master’s threats infuriated her. She had fallen a prey to him and she couldn’t withstand it. Yet a horrible roaring below her feet ate her anger away. The ground 188

German Bradley started to shake. She felt as if some force beyond her understanding was shaking her by the shoulders, forcing her to get down on her knees. The earth opened up before her eyes into two long cracks in front of her, forming a sort of junction on the outer side of the pentagon. She turned right and found another long crack there. It was the same thing to her left and behind her as well. She could see the steep sides of the cracks vanishing from sight into the dark depths. “Dark and empty as your mother’s womb.” The voice hissed again, as Nahemah snarled in rage at the time she saw claws and arms of shallow grey skin reaching up through every crack around. The demon masters that had given their power to her were there, floating naked with their long white hair, spreading their membranous wings! “Their memory is mine now. Can you see? They left you alone to follow new rules. My rules,” said the voice above her. “They have no place, either. The eighth house has always been mine.” As the voice spoke new glowing lines outlined along every crack, running in a parallel direction with them, forming a geometrical pattern on the ground she couldn’t figure out. “It delves into your essence, it kills your human side every time you make this trip, every time my servants call you up to take away your memory. “Show her! Drop her down!” hissed the voice. “And seal the cracks!” The demon masters gripped her and ascended. They wanted her to see where she was, but at the same time they wanted her to learn what she had to do. That aerial sight made her understand they were not against her but for her. 189

Adramelech Adramelech had left her imprisoned in the centre of a huge pentacle in the middle of a wasted dale. Her own wings seemed to be wasted away. “When the rocks crush her useless body to death her soul and powers will come back to me,” said the voice to the demon masters. But they had already cheated him by dressing her in their powers and awakening hers as well. She had felt the electric shock that had given strength back to her body. The demon masters gazed down into the depths below, but that was their last move. Suddenly, they broke apart around her and turned into ashes. But she was stunned and her addled brain wasn’t able to comprehend. She just remained in the air, watching, feeling a new wind rising and carrying the ashes away, until she gazed down at the pentacle, and the circle, at the tips of her claws. “No!” Adramelech’s shout echoed everywhere. But it was too late. Glowing lines had already come out of her fingers as she flew over the pentacle, drawing new lines from the vertex of each alpha. Her membranous wings took her from one point to another with amazing speed, as she mapped the whole pentacle below with all kind of triangles. In doing so, the landscape around distorted and the beings around the circle fell down into new cracks. She enjoyed the power she held. The whore and the dark creatrix had fused together to modify the quadrature to her whim. Trapezoids appeared here and there, until an intricate astrological pattern came to light, removing the pentacle below. She gave twelve powerful wedge-shaped letters to her twelve new houses and the landscape and the sky changed. 190

German Bradley Hundred of cone-shaped formations of rock rose from the ground, forming deep gorges in the bottom that looked like a maze of narrow paths and alleyways. Above her, dark incarnadine strati partially covered the three moons that shone upon a distant greenish grey lake, like three blinding fireballs. While descending, she saw there was life beneath the lake, disturbing oddities and grotesqueries. The souls of those she had killed in the world of men allied to her. Yet she felt weary and weak, too weak to hold her weight.

191

Adramelech

Chapter Seventeen

A

tickling sensation on her face and the scent of wet grass brought Yonah back from the land of Nod. She lay face downwards in a well-kept garden near the banks of a river, which waters flew out gently to the east. As she stood, everything reeled before her eyes, but she cast a long uncertain look around anyway. The place wasn’t familiar at all. She seemed to be in the countryside, far away from home. She turned her head and her eyebrows raised in surprise as she let her gaze travel up and down across the white-walled building at her back. “What’s this?” she muttered under her breath. She was outside the entrance of an ancient... abbey? Yes, she thought, it’s an abbey indeed, perhaps from medieval time, but fully refurbished and crisp white. She fixed her eyes on the heavy oak door and saw it was clearly ajar. She looked around with suspicion to make herself sure she was all alone there and approached it. She pushed it cautiously and the door creaked open, a little, but enough to let her in. It was empty and silent inside as if it were already 192

German Bradley disused. What am I doing here? she wondered, walking the floor of cold stones bare foot. “Jesus! It’s freezing in here,” she said, noticing she was undressed. “Shit! My clothes! Where’s my clothes?” she asked, but the echo of her voice was the only answer. Then weak female sobs came to her ears from somewhere ahead near the altar. “Hello? Is anybody there?” she asked, but the sobs stopped. “I’m lost in here. Can anybody help me?” she asked again, and walked on towards the altar. The sobs had started again, albeit louder this time. They came from her left wing of the abbey, where the light of the sun couldn’t reach. Vague contours was all she saw for a while, but then, as she got cautiously closer and away from the sunlight, she made out the shape of a wooden wheel against a wall and a woman’s body who seemed to be chained or crucified to it. She was stark naked, and her head was so low on her chest that her face was hidden in her hair. Her arms were stretched to either side of her body, her legs parted. Her body was filthy dirty, festooned with gashes and concussions and stains of dry blood. The woman had noticed her presence and twisted her body, as much as her confined limbs allowed her, and tried not to see her. “No, please... Don’t...” she mumbled, her face halfhidden in her hair. “No more, please,” she pleaded amidst her sobs. “I’m not going to hurt you,” said Yonah softly. She had already quickened her stride to cover the short distance between the woman and herself and slowly lifted her face in her dark hands. 193

Adramelech “Yonah? Is it you, Yonah?” the woman said, controlling her sobbing. Behind the red, ruined eyes that looked into hers, Yonah realised it was her lover and friend who was there. “Linnea?” Yonah opened wide eyes, as her lover blinked and focused her own eyes on her. “Holy shit! How—“ “You’ve got to go away from here,” interrupted Linnea. “They’ll come back soon.” “Who are you talking about? This place is empty,” said Yonah, trying to get her lover free. “Who put you in here, for Christ’s sake?” Her ankles and wrists were on heavy iron shackles. “You won’t be able to let me out of them. This is a trap! They have the keys,” said Linnea as if she already knew there was no chance for escaping. “Who? Where?” asked Yonah in despair, looking all around, searching for something to break those shackles. “The monks, the witches. They’re in the West Wycombe caves, waiting for you to come and rescue me.” “Oh, no,” Yonah lamented for her friend and her own bloody fate. Everything had started again. Adramelech had found them and it was her fault. Her bloody fault! Like an insane, Yonah began to hit the wood with her knuckles again and again, until she saw them bleed. No physical pain could compare or match with the pain she felt in her soul on seeing her friend there. “It’s not fucking fair!” she screamed. “Not fucking 194

German Bradley fair.” She continued, as she slid down to the floor. “It’s me the one you want! Me!” Yonah screamed her soul out. “Come out and take me, you fucking bastard! I came! I did what you expected me to do! Release her! You hear me? Release her!” Her voice was broken with rage and sorrow as she lay there, looking up at her beloved Linnea. “Don’t waste your time, love. It had to be this way, I think. One life for another, more precious one.” “No! I won’t let you here,” said a suddenly encouraged Yonah. “I’ll fight for you and you and I will leave this fucking place. Now, how can I get the cave entrance?” “You can’t, love. Nobody can. They killed the other women and sealed the entrance in the crypt.” “What crypt?” “Don’t you remember? The crypt where everything started.” “It doesn’t matter now. I must take you out of here,” said Yonah, studying the wooden wheel. It was thick enough to move, beyond her female capacities, actually. There was an axle behind it, drilled to the wall that made the whole situation even harder for her. “Fucking Hell!” “Leave it, Yonah. It’s useless. Save my life before the night comes, before your evil side rises from the blackest depths of your being and takes me as a sacrifice," Linnea’s voice was almost pleading. “I’ll be fine. They won’t kill me. They want you to do it instead. Go, darling. Your love will keep me alive until you come back. Go, now. Go.” 195

Adramelech Rage and a deep feeling of uselessness overwhelmed Yonah’s spirit. But her lover was right. She wasn’t aware of a thing when her evil-self took over. The most sensible decision she could make was leave Linnea there for that night and come back next day with the right tool to break those chains. “I love you, Linnea,” she said and kissed her lover on the mouth. “I’ll come for you tomorrow. I promise.” She kissed her again and left without looking back; she knew that if she saw those eyes again she wouldn’t be able to leave her. **** The sun had already set when she found Linnea’s car. Naked, as she was, she felt the air had got much cooler with the abbey’s proximity to the river. Of course the keys of the car were not there. She had to use one of those especial talents she had learnt during her first nights in the streets of London to find shelter inside impounded cars. The touch was still in her hands, after all those years, and soon enough she was on her way back to London. During her trip she had evaluated how bad things had gone for her. Her memory was fragmented to such extreme that she had had to ask her lover where she lived or she had a car. Of course she had no idea of her current whereabouts. Adramelech wanted her memory to be completely blank, and he was making it, indeed. But she could remember what she was, that was intact in her mind, and that was the only tool she had against her father and master. 196

German Bradley She felt sorry as well. She hadn’t been able to control herself. She had no idea when her period was, and... My fucking period, she thought, as if the word opened some secret passage in her mind. What date is it today? she asked herself and turned on the radio, desperately looking for a news station. After a couple of minutes, the announcer almost screamed the date for her—December 9. She worked the days out fast. Linnea had said she’d been chained to that wheel for about three days or so, and that meant her period must have begun on December 6. If she took the five-six-day reference for a woman’s period, the calculation should leave her three more days under Adramelech’s control. Three more days in which she couldn’t sleep or meet any other human being, three more days and she would be safe to escape and leave Europe with her lover. Any place would be okay as long as they were far, far away. But during her drive home along A40, Yonah had also paid attention to every sign she saw by the road, every curve, every picturesque house or church that could help her to find her way back next day. Along her trip, Linnea’s words were fresh in her mind as well. She’d said she had a suspicion since the day she got the script in her hands. Nobody used a monastery to film X-rated movies, no matter how rich or powerful he might be. No sane man would change the religious icons of an abbey for hideous representations of evil, not even for temporary decor. They had been too blind to see. On arrival home, Yonah had to face another big 197

Adramelech problem. She had no keys to Linnea’s flat. She had dressed in a pair of dirty baggy trousers and a sweater she’d found at the back of her lover’s car. She knew the concierge would never allow her to enter wearing that. She had to find another way in; she had to break into Linnea’s flat. **** It was freezing on that December night. Yonah’s hands and feet were numbed with cold, but she had climbed up to Linnea’s window on the fourth floor. There was no way to get into her flat, though. All the windows were closed except the blinds of the bathroom. After a time that seemed to her like an eternity, Yonah managed to slide out the four glass slats and put them on the same moulding she was standing on, which projected itself along the bottom of every window on that floor. She had luckily fitted through the opening and found herself safe and sound at home. She packed some clothes and food for Linnea in a backpack together with a gun her lover had always kept at home, just in case, and came back to the bathroom to search for the small safe she kept in the last drawer of her vanity. She took her time to have a look to the whole place before leaving; she wanted to say goodbye to all the good moments she’d spent there with Linnea, she wanted to say goodbye to her life as a prostitute as well. She stepped by the window of the living room and 198

German Bradley gazed to the winter night out there, and the image of her suffering lover came to her mind. She saw her chained to that bloody wheel, crying and waiting for the worst to come. Hold, baby. Hold. She mentally repeated without breaking the connection with the image in her mind. She went to the kitchen and thought of making herself a good cup of coffee to keep herself awake, but Linnea’s image stopped her. She could neither eat or drink knowing her lover was there in that cold black monastery. It just seemed to her it wasn’t fair, and she felt the ice of her heart had finally broken into tiny pieces. For the first time in her life she truly cared for someone else, and she enjoyed that feeling. But there was another feeling that made her shiver. It was an eerie feeling that said she could change everything she wished. It said she was not bound to the human laws. She belonged to another species, a much older and powerful one—a creatrix. “You really like that feeling, don’t you?” A soothing voice spoke from behind, as the air suddenly filled with a lovely smell of flowers. “Who the h—“ “No need for f-words, woman,” said one of the three white-winged creatures of light. “We know you’re scared.” Their faces were bright and full of wisdom, their hair was curly and gold, and their bodies were dressed in crisp white tunics. “I...I must be dreaming,” said Yonah in a trembling voice. “This can’t be real.” “But it is, woman. As real as the sensations you’re 199

Adramelech sensing now.” Yonah was hypnotised. She just watched their faces, but couldn’t believe her eyes. They were so young and gorgeous; she felt so fine and protected that she thought there was nothing to worry about except the peace that filled her soul. “You want to help your friend,” said the angel on behalf of the trio. “Oh, yes,” said Yonah, becoming aware of their power upon her soul. It had been so easy for her to let herself go into that profound state of inner peace. “She’s chained to—“ “We know where she is,” the angel interrupted. “The question is, are you prepared to help her? Are you sure who you are?” “You can help me,” Yonah said without trying to hide her excitement. “Linnea said you could help me to get rid of this curse.” “This is a sacred place, woman. We can keep the beast at bay here, but that means nothing, really. The dark beast inside you will be in charge soon.” “What does it really mean? Aren’t you going to help me?” “Do you remember the people you’ve killed? Do you remember the ceremonies, the flights in the night, searching for those entities?” Yonah just kept silent, doing her best to recall those images, but nothing came to her head. Nothing. “That’s what you really are, woman, and that’s what you’ll do to your friend tonight.” “No! I know I have to control myself and everything will be okay.” 200

German Bradley “You can’t control yourself, woman. You can’t control a thing. You’re the puppet in the hands of a demon and a prisoner to your fate. Just look at yourself. The living stigmas of hell.” “And you, what kind of angels are you leaving a fellow on her own device? You’re responsible too.” There was anger in her voice now, and shame. “We came to mend our ways and wash her sins away. We came to put an end to your tragedy. Come with us. Let us be the saviours of your soul.” Yonah stood there thunderstruck. Her eyes fixed on their countenance. She tried to get their point, but it was useless. It made no sense to her. Death had never been the escape in the Christian world. “Come with us,” they kept on saying and began to duplicate in great number around her, spreading their wings, almost covering her. “No!” she screamed. At the eleventh hour she’d made head of their true identity and the white feathers of their wings burnt away, giving way to the real membranous wings. Their heavenly appearance broke like glass and the mule-headed women turned up, gripping her arms. “The menstruo meretricis has woken to her own death,” said a hallow, shrill voice amidst the group of skyclad witches, as Yonah kicked them hard so as to get rid of them. A virulent tune had filled the air and sapped her will slowly. After a couple of minutes, every movement of hers seemed to be an enormous effort. Her legs weighed tons, her head nodded out of control. With the lucidity of a drunken woman, she 201

Adramelech saw how those witches grabbed and tore the flesh of her own arms and belly. They were eating her alive and she just laughed in their face; she couldn’t feel a thing! They even attacked her legs using their fingers, but she just roared with laughter as she saw sparks and glowing lines coming out of her wounds and fingers. “Nahemah! Nahemah!” a black crone screamed and the rest of the witches faded away like smoke in the air.

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Shabbattu

“S

he’s grown much stronger than we thought, Master. We have no power to finish her and the Masters off.” Zainam’s voice was tight with ill-controlled panic. The Grand Witch of Sippar had descended into one of the dark-night cracks the creatrix had made to change the laws of Hell, but Adramelech wasn’t there. “I have a bunch of worthless hags.” The voice of the god thundered in the depths, full of anger and revenge. “I’d better entomb you down there in that crack for the rest of your existence,” Adramelech’s voice thundered again, having some boulders break off the steep walls to fall down upon her. “Don’t, Master, please! Don’t leave me here. I’ve been a loyal servant,” the black crone hastened to say, as she shunned the falling rocks. “Just hear what you say, you wasted scum. Look at yourself, crying and shaking with fear of a stinking whore. You’ve broken the oath. The whore knows what she is.” The dark depths of the cracks were narrowing against her, following their master’s desire. However, she wasn’t afraid of the creatrix’s power but her master’s. She perfectly knew that if Nahemah was still 203

Adramelech alive it was only because Adramelech himself wished it so. She didn’t quite understand her master’s game, though, she didn’t understand why he had let her enjoy that undeveloped display of power, neither had she dared to ask. There were no questions in Adramelech’s realm. “I’ll bring the head of that whore in a stray for you, Master,” she said in a tight voice. Her master didn’t answer. He was standing in the middle of a black fire in the centre of that new astrological pattern. He watched the landscape of cone-shaped pinnacles around, while the flames licked his body without touching. In his all seeing mind, he was seeing the black demoness fly towards the abbey. He was looking through her eyes. “You’re hanging on to a power which has always been mine,” he said to her as if it were a dream. “I’m still inside your mind, whore. Look!” he said and extended his right hand to the incarnadine sky. A brazen vessel appeared in it. “Can you see your entrails?” He extended his other hand and another small vessel turned up. “Can you see your menstrual blood?” he asked and gazed up defiantly. The three moons above were already hidden under the clouds, and his whole body together with the vessels were already on fire. “Look, Nahemah!” he said, sprinkling the glowing lines below with the menstrual blood. Like a river, the blood flowed along the lines as if they were channels for that almost black stream. In a tick, the fine river had spread throughout the circle, wiping the lines off and ripping down the cone-shaped rocks on its way. “A short-lived novelty, isn’t it? As short and empty as the pleasures of a whore.” He squatted down and put the small vessel on the 204

German Bradley ground. The blood quickly returned to its container. But the twelve cuneiform characters of destruction and change were still carved on the ground, useless without a speaking demon to voice them and awake the hidden power of their sound. Getting to his cloven hooves, Adramelech gazed up again and drank the blood off. “You still belong to me, Nahemah,” he muttered away to himself and threw the small vessel into a nearby crack. **** A thin mist had risen from the river, ghosting the whitewalled monastery. The black demoness watched the landscape below, sniffing the cold air, searching for the prey. The whirr and beat of her own wings, together with the clear sound of the stream, was all the noise she could hear. But then, there was a subtle change in the night wind and she was aware of another’s presence, a familiar scent. An ageless demon hid somewhere down in the mist. She roared and hissed, while the uneasy sensation of being stalked became stronger. She glided skillfully down around the monastery, peering into the mist until she saw a wheel and a woman lying on it—her prey. The black demoness plunged onto the wooden surface of the wheel and straddled the woman. Her shining black knees were planted on either side of that pale and dirty body, as she lowered the massive bum of her skull to study her victim’s face. But she seemed to be in a trance. The pupils of her eyes were already dilated and looked up to a place beyond the blackness of the night. The demoness folded her wings across her back and outstretched one arm towards the neck 205

Adramelech of the prey. Her claws sank easily into her flesh, but she didn’t even scream or try to escape. She was almost lifeless with her eyes still fixed on nothingness. Suddenly, four fires burned on the ground outside the wheel, and the demoness’s eyes opened wide when seeing the cuneiform characters cut almost on the brim. They talked about her death and the final departure of her demon-lords. Yet at the time she read them, a yellowish magical shield trapped her. With a roar of rage, the black demoness sank both hands into the woman’s belly at the time the demon-lords, dwelling inside her, left her body like the ghost of Gehenna. Their bloodthirsty eyes pierced and split the shield easily and swirled about the mule-headed women outside. “In the name of the Four Fires, we point the threefold law against these two-faced demon lords.” But their conjure was meant to remain unfinished. Like thick moving mist, the ghosts passed into the open mouths of seven of them and sapped their life and strength in a trice. With the speed of a windstorm they came in and out of every sorceress there, leaving just shrivelled up bodies behind. Although Adramelech had run almost out of servants, the demoness felt his mocking laughter deep inside her mind, and saw one surviving leader fly towards the monastery. She spread her wings and flew at her almost by instinct; she’d visualised Adramelech’s face clouded with anger inside, perched upon the altar with a brazen vessel in one of his hands. He showed it to her, growling at her when she approached, a clear invitation to fight. 206

German Bradley She hissed and shrieked with anger and he growled again and leaped towards her, handing the vessel to the Grand Witch by his side. And there Adramelech and his daughter were, about three feet away, studying each other’s movements like a couple of wild beasts. Their claws shone like steel and their faces distorted with fury. The ghosts of the demon-lords had already entered the monastery as well. They swirled around them, forming a misty circle in the air that delimited the battle ring. The demoness walked in circles and swung her head around to glare at her creator, until both of them leaped at the same time and grabbed at each other with their claws. With only one blow, Nahemah, the demoness, had severely scratched Adramelech’s face, making him snarl with rage. A second whack opened three furrows in his belly that made him bleed copiously. He flapped his wings hard so as not to loose his footing, but he felt to his knees anyway. Nahemah was a little absent-minded, watching her creator’s blood in her hands and claws and the glowing sparks that came out of the tips of her claws like electricity. Adramelech took advantage of her amusement, and with a well-aimed strike, he dug the claws of his right hand into her neck. She tried to breathe, but Adramelech’s claws had blocked all her chances. She flailed her hands and kicked him, but his grip was too strong and deep. She was choking as her wings took her high towards the concave ceiling of the abbey, but the glowing sparks were still dancing in her claws. With her eyes fixed on the ceiling, she held the head of her creator and mustered all her strength. She felt a bolt forming at the time her creator release her 207

Adramelech windpipe. Still in the air, she looked down and saw how the bolt passed through Adramelech’s body, making him squeal like a miserable pig, lighting up the whole building. A putrid smell escaped his open mouth as she watched him rotting away in her hands. Amidst desperate howling, Adramelech clutched the chains that covered Nahemah’s arms and breasts and pulled them down together with fine stripes of her own flesh and portions of her nipples. She shrieked and dropped him as she fell down as well, but at least she only felt the crack of a broken wing. Adramelech had fallen into the misty ring of the demon ghosts, which had smashed him up, watering the nave of the abbey with his vital fluid. Having finished their mission, the ghosts rushed into Nahemah’s bleeding body to start the regeneration process. They already had the power to heal. Involution and evolution patterns worked well in their systems, soon enough all of them would become one and only force.

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Chapter Eighteen coughed and tossed about on the hard and Linnea sticky surface of the wheel. Her wounded belly ached like hell but fortunately, it had stopped bleeding. The cold of the night had helped her with that, but now a new day was beginning to break. Inside her heart she wished for another cold day, a heavy rain or any other thing that kept the temperature down, that eased her pain a bit. She tried to stand, but she could only reel like a drunken woman. She crawled to the brim of that wooden surface and somehow managed to tumble down the wheel. She looked up into the sky, but hot tears welled up in her sensitive eyes. Morning light was like a shower of tiny needles that stabbed her sight, but it would be even worst for her; the clouds began to roll away and the first rays of the sun peeped out from behind. If I only could reach the river, she thought, if I only could kill this pain. With her eyes on the waters, she staggered along towards the river. It was the only chance she had to escape the warmth of the morning sun and wash the nasty smell of blood off her body. 209

Adramelech With painstaking slowness, she slipped into the icy waters. Her body shivered all over for a couple of minutes, but she knew it would soon get acclimatised. She tried to relax and let the sluggish current rock her softly. After a while her wounds were numbed and the dry blood on her body slowly melted away, dyeing the water around. She felt light, weightless and drowsy, almost as sluggish as the current she was floating on. Her senses began to give in to the numbing temperature of the river and the soft daylight above. The sky looked cloudy again. She smiled and closed her eyes. **** Thick raindrops brought her back from her languor. Her sudden awakening made her sink and swallow some water, but she managed to calm down and kept floating. The rain fell into the water like tiny darts, drawing hundred of circles all around. She reached the bank and had a look at her skin. It was bluish with cold. She didn’t have the foggiest idea of how long she’d slept on that bed of icy water, but she was afraid of leaving it. She was afraid of the witches that dwelled in the monastery by the river. Where can I go? Neither have I got a car or clothes. I can’t just wander naked over the countryside, can I? But the truth was that she couldn’t feel her legs and the skin of her fingers looked like dried raisins. She waded out of the stream and sat on the grass under the rain, rubbing her bluish arms and looking around with suspicion. She saw another person 210

German Bradley stumbling across the doorway of the monastery. It was a naked woman. It was Yonah! She stood and tried to walk towards her, but her feet were too numbed to hold her weight and she fell full length on the already soaked grass. Yet Yonah must have heard her scream; she was by her side on the instant. “Linnea, Linnea! Is it you?” She heard her say but she couldn’t answer; the wound in her belly was throbbing and bleeding again. “We must go to the hospital. We must get to the motorway. Someone might give us a lift to London or a nearby hospital.” She sounded worried and nervous but at least she was not hurt. “Can you walk?” “Don’t know,” Linnea said and tried to sit. “It hurts to death,” she said and covered her belly with one hand. “Come on, Linnea. We must get out of the rain.” With her lover’s help and will, Linnea rose and walked with more vigorous strides. “Do you think... someone might take... a couple of naked and wounded women... to a safe place on a rainy day like this?” “They’ll take us wherever we want, honey, and back if we wish so.” **** Her lover was right. A Good Samaritan woman, probably in her early fifties, picked them up in the 211

Adramelech motorway and took them to a hospital in Slough, near Windsor. She even gave her own raincoat to Linnea, while a compassionate nurse gave some more clothes to both of them in the hospital. They said a group of thugs had robbed their car after hitting and raping them, but Yonah could not explain the brands and chains on her body. The doctor in charge had said Linnea’s wound was serious and she had to stay in hospital for a couple of days or so. Of course a couple of police officers came shortly after the first checking and took Yonah to the police station, but after having their names, address and licence plate number they took her back to the hospital; she hadn’t been able to describe her aggressors. “I had to tell them about the abbey,” Yonah said once they were alone in Linnea’s room. “I couldn’t think about any other place,” she apologised with a shrug of the shoulders. “And that was exactly what we said to the lovely woman who brought us here.” “Yes, they wouldn’t believe a bloody thing anyway,” said Linnea. The painkiller and hypodermic injections started to work, and she felt much better now that her wounds were clean and bandaged. The frostbite sensation she so eagerly wished back in the river seemed to be a matter of the past. “We have to go away,” said Linnea, looking to Yonah’s eyes. “Tell me that we’ll go away from here, please.” “We will, love. As soon as you feel better,” Yonah replied and kissed her on her brow. “Now sleep, love. Get rest. I want to see you strong again and smiling.” 212

German Bradley And having said that she left the room. **** That couple of days turned into an eternity for Linnea and her lover. They had even thought they would never leave that place when the police officers came again, after the final checking, asking more questions about the incident at Medmenham Abbey. Doctors had said the wounds on Linnea’s body had not been made with a knife or any other cutting instrument. They were almost sure some sort of wild animal had attacked her. On the other hand, Yonah’s gashes and brands had been made at least six months ago, according to the physicians, but the patterns and symbols on her body had made them think she belonged to some kind of satanic cult. However, there was no indication they had been sexually assaulted, either prior or immediately after whatever happened to them. The police already knew they were a couple of officially licensed prostitutes and they had searched the monastery as well. They talked about the strange symbols carved on a wooden wheel and the fresh blood they had found on the stone floor and smeared through almost all the inner walls of the abbey, but they hadn’t been able to take a single print from the whole place. “That’s too much blood, isn’t it?” One of the officers had asked ironically. “They must have knocked me out. I can’t remember what happened there.” That was all Yonah 213

Adramelech said. “A blood sample has been sent to the laboratory technicians. They’ll give us an answer in a couple of days. So, we’d like you to inform us if any of you leave the country in the following weeks.” “Sure, we will,” said Linnea, eager to finish with that farce. A police patrol car had taken them back home after the questions. The officer had even bothered to register Linnea’s flat, just in case, he’d said. Everything seemed to be in order before he went to the bathroom. “Did any of you take the blinds out of the bathroom window?” the officer asked. “No,” said Linnea, looking at her lover. “Then someone must have broken into while you were out. Check your belongings and valuables and let me know if anything is missing.” Linnea and her lover did as he said but there was nothing missing in the flat, not even the small safe and gun packed in a rucksack by the window of the living room. She eyed her lover and understood. She quickly zipped it again, but didn’t say a word. “Did you pack this before leaving?” the officer asked Linnea. “No.” He unzipped the rucksack and revealed its content. “Isn’t it strange that a burglar wanted to take female clothing and food together with this safe and gun?” he asked, showing them the last items. “My keys were in the car,” said Linnea, “And nobody else has keys to this flat except the concierge.” 214

German Bradley “And, was he going to send you this sack anywhere?” He didn’t believe a thing, but Linnea knew he had no charges against them either. “What does it really mean?” Linnea asked. “I don’t know,” he said ironically. “I’ll just go to have a talk to the concierge. He might have seen or heard something you certainly didn’t. Don’t you think so, madam?” **** The police had only added a new earthly fear to the unearthly nightmare they had already been undergoing. Linnea understood she couldn’t go away with that wound, but she was afraid. She felt exposed to Adramelech’s sorceresses and to the inquisitive police department. She had to wait, there was no other way, and she had to organise her travel and her expenses too. On the following morning she and her lover went to Barclays Bank and withdrew some money from her account. But just before leaving she asked her lover: “Are you sure you want to leave England? Are we making the right move?” “We need to start a new life,” said Yonah. “I need to find a cure for this curse and I’m sure we’ll find it when we are away.” **** “I’ll ring a travel agency, love,” said Linnea, picking up the receiver. “Have you already made up your 215

Adramelech mind?” Two weeks had already passed by and she felt better, ready to catch a plane. “Have you got a map or something?” Yonah asked, gazing up into the ceiling, thinking. “I think I saw a magazine somewhere in my room,” said Linnea, hanging the telephone and going to her bedroom. “Let me have a look.” “Hey! What about this? I found it in the closet,” she said after a while, coming back with a Lufthansa magazine in her hands. “You’ll find some route maps from page 80 to page 94.” “This is great!” said Yonah and began to study the suggested pages. “Would you like something to eat or drink?” “Not really. I’m fine, thanks.” Yonah pored over those pages at least four or five times before she said: “Look at page 89. Look at the shape of it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” A large, conical land area in light and dark brown and yellowish green colours was in front of Linnea’s eyes. It was a beautiful shape indeed, very different from Europe. “Is that where you want us to go?” she asked, still watching the strange shape of the continent. “Do you see the big red point next to Buenos Aires?” asked Yonah, pointing to the place on the map. “I’d like to go there.” “Santiago de Chile? Why there?” Linnea asked, looking at her lover in surprise. “I saw this place when I was a little girl in Trinidad. This shape reminded me of that forgotten 216

German Bradley memory. Somehow I think it is a place for chances. I don’t know why but that’s what I feel.” “Okay, I’ll ring the travel agency then,” said Linnea and went to the phone. “Thank you, love,” said Yonah and kissed her lover’s brow. “Just a kiss on the brow? That’s all I deserve?” asked Linnea, smiling. “Your wounds are not completely healed yet, love. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait a little bit longer. Maybe at the airport, maybe on the plane. Who knows?” Yonah said and stroked Linnea’s breasts softly. “We must get a couple of tickets first.”

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Chapter Nineteen

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wo days after Christmas, on a rainy afternoon, LH Flight number 4007 left London Heathrow from terminal 2. It would be a long trip for Linnea and Yonah—eighteen hours according to the ticket information—from London to Frankfurt, then across the Atlantic Ocean to Buenos Aires on another flight—LH 506—and then to Santiago de Chile. They would only have two stopovers for stretching their legs or taking some fresh air and plenty of time to let their imagination go. It was Linnea who came with the idea. “Have we made it on a plane yet?” “No, we haven’t. Are you sure you want to make it here, love?” asked Yonah amused. “I’m dying for it.” “But this part of the trip will take only an hour from here to Frankfurt,” said Yonah, her eyes shone with delight. “Actually, I was thinking about tonight, when we cross the Atlantic.” Knowing that both of them had the same fantasy in mind, a sort of secretly undressing ritual began and it 218

German Bradley was Yonah who, shortly after the take-off, took her raincoat off and put it up in the overhead bin. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said to Linnea and walked down the aisle towards the toilet at the back of the first class section. She was back after ten minutes with her jeans and sweater in her hands. She had changed into a long, loose, cotton T-shirt and probably she still had her panties on beneath that garment, albeit Linnea couldn’t be so sure about it. She had already noticed Yonah wore no bra underneath. Almost all the passengers’ eyes, together with the stewardesses’, were on her in a flash, and Linnea herself couldn’t help feeling a bit embarrassed. The tattoos, the zebra-like pattern on the skin of her legs and the chains made her look like a freak in the middle of all those businessmen. Yet a couple of “what are you staring at?” were enough for Yonah to make them smile and look away with no complains. “I just wanted to make myself comfortable,” she explained innocently to Linnea, as she sat by the window. “Now it’s your turn,” she added and laughed. But Linnea said no. She would wait for a better moment. She only wanted her lover to be a good girl and sit still with her legs parted under the tray she had pulled down from the back of the seat in front. She was eager to find out whether Yonah was wearing panties or not. She waited for the stewardesses to offer them something to drink and snacks before her fingertips trailed down the inside of Yonah’s thighs. She was naked between her legs. 219

Adramelech “Wow!” she said. “You’ve really read my mind.” Cupping over Yonah’s trimmed mons area with her palm, Linnea began to spread her labia wide apart and vigorously rubbed her clit through the skin of the labia in a circular direction, to change later to a backand-forth one. Yonah splayed her thighs reflexively, albeit she continued eating and looking at the grey clouds passing by out of the window. Finding Yonah’s sex already weeping had aroused Linnea. It’d been such a long time since the last congress that she felt even less inhibited now on that plane, or better to say, she didn’t care the place at all. She felt inexplicably free and horny and it was the fact she was not acting a role in a film, it was the thrill of flying first class while rubbing her lover’s sex almost before everybody’s eyes. Yes, it was the fear of being caught in the act what turned her on. Yonah pressed her sex against Linnea’s palm. Her breath had become deep and intense. Her nipples were already erect beneath the fabric of her T-shirt. She was not looking out of the window; she was not even on the plane but in a world of her own making. A couple of Linnea’s fingers were flicking the side of Yonah’s labia across the clit. She stuck them inside her dewy sex and began to stimulate an area just behind the pubic bone, exerting pressure upwards and slowly moving her fingers with small circles. Yonah squirmed and moaned as if she were dying. Linnea tried to hush her, but at the same time she enjoyed having her under her fingers, intentionally torturing her, prolonging the agony. But time was running fast and Frankfurt airport started to get 220

German Bradley visible from Yonah’s window. “Change your clothes, honey. The first leg of this flight is over,” said Linnea, withdrawing her wet fingers. **** An hour later, they had embarked on another plane to cover the longest and weariest leg of that trip— crossing the Atlantic. It was late after dinnertime. Lights had almost been turned out and no stewardesses walked along the aisles. Linnea looked around and noticed most of the passengers slept like a top. It was the right time. She and her lover stood and moved silently down towards the toilet. They opened the door and propelled themselves inside. The door clunked shut behind. Inside that small bathroom, they stood in front of each other for a while, feeling the heat of their bodies, breathing each other’s breath. “Let’s play a little game, love,” said Linnea in a girlish voice. “Let’s rub each other, but don’t use our hands,” she said, as she necked Yonah against the wall. “Don’t use your hands, honey. Let our bodies brush against each other. That’s a good girl, baby. That’s right.” They were so close that their mouths inevitably met. Their lips parted a little, and they inhaled the hot air of each other’s mouth. Their tongues roamed inside each other’s mouth, making splashy noises as Linnea’s left leg slipped between Yonah’s, forcing her to part her legs as well. Linnea’s leg hooked around 221

Adramelech Yonah’s calf and drew her even closer, until their mons brushed together. “It’s lovely, baby,” said Yonah, licking Linnea’s lips. Her voice had pitched low with passion. She moaned into her mouth, as Linnea tilted her hips and squashed on Yonah’s thigh. Standing there on her feet, she slid her open labia up and down her lover’s thigh, but their clits couldn’t meet. “Twist your hips, Yonah. Open your legs wider.” “I can’t, love. I’m just too horny to control myself,” said Yonah and lay on the rubber floor, spreading and bending up her knees. “Come, baby. Rub against my lips,” she said in a husky whisper. “Rub my clit. Make me come.” Linnea crouched over her black lover with her legs spread in such a way that her inner thighs hurt. She was trying to adjust herself against Yonah’s pubic bone and her lover twisted higher, until clit touched clit and nothing could stop their wild and desperate frottage. “Fuck me, baby. Do it hard. Make me cum,” she said louder as she jerked on and on like a wild animal in heat. Linnea felt her tension grow stronger and stronger. She felt the floodgates almost opening, ready to pour her jet out. She wanted to control herself a little longer but it was impossible. Her pupils had already lost focus. She was ejaculating, drenching her lover’s sex with her own milky flow. “It was superb, baby,” said Yonah once they had returned to their seats, half dressed. “I might eat you all night long if you were to ask me.” 222

German Bradley “It’s amazing the animal instincts we can stir after a long time without sex,” said Linnea and kissed her lover on the mouth in appreciation. “I missed you so much, hon.” “So did I, love,” answered Yonah. “We’d better try to sleep now. We still have a long trip ahead,” she continued and kissed Linnea back and reclined her seat to sleep. “I love you, Linnea, and I appreciate everything you’re doing for me.” She squeezed her lover’s hands, making herself comfortable. “Sweet dreams, hon.” Sleep came to Linnea soon, too, although the supersensitive sensation of her orgasm hadn’t entirely gone away yet. **** About nine-thirty a.m., Linnea opened her eyes and realised they had already landed in Buenos Aires. But she was still too sleepy to continue being awake and asked a stewardess if she and her friend could sleep on during the stopover. “Don’t worry, madam. I’ll wake you up when we land up in Santiago,” said a very attractive Latin stewardess, and smiled. **** An hour later, a general applause cast off all their remaining slumber. They had finally landed in Chile and people were unusually hilarious all around. Linnea and Yonah looked at each other but 223

Adramelech understood nothing. Out of the window the sun was strong. “It’s summer time in Chile now,” the stewardess had said. “What shall we do now?” Linnea asked while disembarking with their raincoats folded in their arms. “Let’s go get some information,” suggested Yonah, as they showed their passports at the custom control. “Excuse me—Can you tell me something about Santiago? Is it a big city?” she asked the custom officer. “Yes, it is, madam, and quite modern, too. It’s the most important city in Chile,” he answered. But Linnea knew her friend wasn’t into a big city again and noticed the disapproval grimace on her face. “Not the right place?” she asked, trying not to sound aggressive or mocking. “It’s not that, honey. It’s just that I’m looking for a small, peaceful city.” “Where can we get a map here?” Linnea asked the custom officer. “Go to the information desk on the right. You’ll get all the tourist information you need about the city and the country too.” said the man. “Enjoy your stay in the Land of the Third Millennium.” **** A riverside city in the south called Valdivia stuck in Yonah’s mind like a strong hunch. It was the first time they were there, but for no reason that city seemed to 224

German Bradley have something especial for they. They had only seen a couple of pictures of the city and it was already attractive to them. “It looks great, doesn’t it?” Yonah asked enthused. “Yeah, it’s beautiful,” said Linnea, “but we are strangers here. Any place looks good and nice for me. Why don’t you just relax and think it over while we find a hotel? I’m dying for a shower and a proper breakfast.”

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Chapter Twenty

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n December 31, at nine in the morning, Yonah and Linnea flew from Santiago to Valdivia. It would be another sunny day according to the captain and it would take them a time to adjust their bodies to such changes in temperature. But that was almost an insignificant event in comparison with the language. People were very nice and friendly, perhaps a little more curious than usual, but it was impossible to communicate with them. Of course, it was great if they looked at the bright side of it—nobody would ask about their life or plans. Nobody would ask about the chains and tattoos. That was an upside without a doubt, but the downside was that constant feeling of not knowing where to go. It was such an intelligible language. All the information they had gathered came actually from the hotel staff, but in the streets it was an entirely different thing. In spite of all that, and as if by magic, every trouble they coped with inevitably surrendered itself, one way or another, to the impressive beauty of the city; a beauty unlike any other they might have seen before. White and bright clouds crossed the deep blue sky 226

German Bradley and reflected on the river with accurate details. Yonah and Linnea, together with other local and foreign tourists, had heard the mesmerising call of those clear waters and had boated down the river, either on pedal boats or on catamarans, about eight times or more. From time to time the sight of rowing boats reminded them of the Oxford and Cambridge rowing eight crew they had seen in competition on the Thames. Small parks and plazas made the whole scenery even more breathtaking with their large leafy larch, elm, tepa and coigüe trees. Extensive areas of wetlands along the road to the coast, together with the Valdivian Rainforest, turned the place into a paradise they really wanted to belong to. But the paradise was not really there until they got to Niebla, a coastal town set on a commanding headland above the mouth of the river Valdivia. It was love at first sight. “Wasn’t it really worth it, Linnea?” asked Yonah once they had reached the highest point at the Spanish fort of Niebla. “It’s...it’s absolutely mind-blowing,” answered Linnea, while her eyes scanned the landscape before her. On their second day in Niebla, about twenty kilometres west of the city, they had decided to go to see one of the most visited Spanish forts in the area, located on a promontory that overlooked the whole bay below and the isle to the right. The sea was calmed and turquoise blue. The coast was steep and rugged with scattered beaches and 227

Adramelech campgrounds. The vegetation striking, as always. “It’s like paradise,” said Yonah and breathed in the fresh coastal wind. “We’re in paradise, sweetie, and we’re still alive!” “It’s really beautiful here. I never thought of finding such a lovely place like this. I like it, honey. I really do.” “Do you think we could buy a house here?” asked Yonah in a sudden rapture. “I’ve seen a lovely wooden house on sale a couple of streets away.” “It sounds as if you’ve already made up your mind.” “I’ve been thinking a lot during these days, Linnea, and...well, this will sound a little bit crazy to you but, I’d like us to settle down here, in this lovely town by the sea. I mean, it would be our paradise.” “It sounds great, love, but we can’t. I mean, what can we do? You know we haven’t got a job. We’re tourists here. We can’t really think of buying a house or a flat. Have you ever noticed the way these folks see us when we go for a walk? We are aliens to them and probably we’ll never belong to them at all.” “But we belong to each other.” “We can’t stay the rest of our life locked inside our house, can we? We can hardly speak a word in Spanish, Yonah,” said Linnea, casting her eyes down as if she were sorry for her candid words. But Yonah didn’t give in. She was determined to stay and live in that quiet, impecunious but mystifyingly alluring town. So, on the following days she dared to apply in person for a job as a tourist guide in that very fort, and she was accepted. By the 228

German Bradley end of January, Linnea had found a similar job on a ferry that crossed the bay to Isla Mancera and Corral. She had even been asked to play a role in the historical re-enactments of the Conquistadors’ life at the Spanish Castle of San Sebastian de la Cruz. Life smiled at them again. They were considered as an important part in the community, and their Spanish improved a lot, but their most significant achievement was the purchase of a pretty and brand new log house in Lord Cochrane Avenue, two streets away from the fort. **** Sex had also claimed its mastery over their will, and the hot summer weather helped a lot. New kinky games awakened inside the privacy of their cosy house and they couldn’t and didn’t want to stop themselves. Their mutual lust was on the loose and their sensitive areas had intensified. Sometimes they started with tenderness and gentle persuasion; sometimes with extreme brutality. The art of sex had reached virtuosity in them. Just letting their tongues squirm in the hollow of each other’s shoulders was enough to rise their lust, and they went on flicking each other’s earlobes to curl behind the ears and tickle their folds. Sometimes they played the role of vicious vampires and nibbled each other’s neck; sometimes they just looked inside each other, exploring the folded intricacies of their vulvas, learning their shapes and luscious lips by heart. During the first months Yonah had developed a 229

Adramelech delicious habit of loving herself in front of her lover. She had become a teaser queen whose fingers stroked up across her midriff and up the quivering undersides of her breasts. But the part Linnea enjoyed the most was when Yonah bowed her head and at the same time her hands lifted her breasts so as she could take her dark buds into her mouth. She knew that private show put Linnea in heat. She could almost see Linnea’s pussy opening to her. Suck them! Lick them, baby. She could almost hear her in her mind when her lips closed on her breasts and her cheeks hollowed, sucking like the sex-crazy slut Linnea wanted to see. Then, she just let them fall to finally offer them to her friend’s mouth. And she kept on sucking and massaging them until they ached. As an essential part of their luggage, they had brought a complete set of dildos and clitoral stimulators. They took turns to strap them on and prod each other either into their sex or into their arse. They were well skilled at playing the man, but something was missing, no matter how much they used them into each other. They need a real man’s warm flesh—a cock. They began to seek candidates among the tourists they guided. The ferry and the forts became perfect locations for casual and intensive sex. Yonah used to select her man with a smouldering come-hither look during her last guided tour to the fort, about six p.m.. She waited for the rest to leave and took her chosen one to the furnace sector inside the fort, near the cannons and peeled off her blouse and wriggled out of her cut-offs, revealing her bodacious dark breasts 230

German Bradley to the lucky one of the day. She had got rid of her chains and metal plates. Her gashes had healed up and were almost invisible to the eyes of the strangers. Her tattoos, however, had turned into a kinky plus for the boldest men. After stripping her man, Yonah stretched out in all her nudity on his own clothes and hooked her hands behind her knees. She pulled them up and apart, letting her labia protrude in all splendour. “You’re a great piece of arse,” they used to say. “You could turn any man into an animal, could you?” And they pumped into her sopping crack. She panted and groaned. She also loved clutching their bottoms. She enjoyed feeling them jab, bouncing up and down. “Stay still, daddy,” she used to say sometimes. “Let me do it myself.” And the internal muscles of her sex began to work, gripping, compressing and convulsing inside. She squeezed that delicious shaft with all of her might. Her labia sucked on it and her sex swallowed it deeper and deeper, faster and faster. She heard them groan and she heard their sexy nothings but didn’t stop. She took hold of their bum cheeks instead, and ground her hips around until the throaty cry of satisfaction escaped her lips and her orgasm raged through her, making her whole body stiffen. It was too hard for her to cut out the whore that lived inside her body. Once, she had even serviced a man on one of the eighteen cannons that overlooked the bay from the fort. It was about nine in the evening and the guards had already closed the access doors. She had teased 231

Adramelech and pulled down the shorts of that black South African tourist. She had had him ride on one of the cannons with his uncapped, rock-hard cock against his belly. After kissing and licking his chest and back, she climbed onto his lap and slipped her knees along his parted thighs. Putting one arm around his neck, she adjusted her position and fitted his tool into her. “Have you ever been fucked on a cannon before?” she had asked, working her hips firmly up and down on his shaft. “Has any other black woman given this sort of pleasure before?” But she had only got grunts. Body language was much more explicit. “Come, baby. Come into me,” she insisted, as she bounced quickly up and down. “Do you like it this way, daddy.” His eyes rolled back, his body jerked. “You going to give it to me? I want it, baby. Don’t hold it!” His cock was actually throbbing and she felt her man begin to spend. On the ferry, Linnea couldn’t avoid doing her piece. She pretended to be a virgin who had never gone down on man before. The trick worked quite well, although she sometimes repented of the things she did. Yet when she got home and shared her hot dates with Yonah, she realised everything was right. She enjoyed making her lover squirm and shudder in her seat as she told her the details, the way she took the balls of her lucky tourists and the gentle scrapes she gave to their hairy sacks. She grabbed those hairy arses and massaged and licked their ballsacks until they dripped with her own saliva. Sometimes she just 232

German Bradley took their heads between her lips and jammed their foreskin. She sucked them hard as she felt them clutch at her blond hair. Then, the virgin was no longer there. She bobbed her head up and down and slurped noisily on that eager flesh, her licking and lapping increased in tempo. She cupped the balls again and manipulated them through the soft skin of their bags. Inevitably her man thrust his shaft in and out between her lips and she allowed him deeper inside her mouth. “Oh, God. Oh, God,” she heard them grunt, but she kept on sucking, jamming her lips as tight as possible over those cocks, always paying attention to the ultrasensitive ridge. And then, the jet of sperm hit the back of her throat and she swallowed it all, until the shafts softened in her mouth. Comparing and describing her sexual adventures inevitably embarked them on feverish and electric couplings. Linnea felt delighted just by seeing her friend enjoy that new life. After four months she had completely forgotten about her dark self and Adramelech. There were no memory troubles, her menstrual cycle was normal, and the zebra-like pattern on the skin of her legs had vanished. “It’s over, Linnea! It’s over!” she cried out and hugged her loyal companion. “This is an especial place, a magical place. I love it,” she said and her eyes shone brighter than ever. “Your recovery has been great without a doubt, but we must do the ritual, Yonah. We can never be sure if we don’t do it.” 233

Adramelech “Okay, love. I’m ready for it.”

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Chapter Twenty-One

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ay was autumn in the southern hemisphere and it wasn’t such a busy and time demanding season as the summer months of January and February. Only a few tourists came to visit the historical sites during that month so the town quieted down in its locals’ long and peaceful lethargy. The waves got a surreal charm. Drizzle sprinkled over that outstanding landscape every morning and the hills and knolls escaped the human eye under the clouds, but only to clear up by midday. The rustling of fir, eucalyptus and poplar trees stretching for miles and miles around drew Yonah and Linnea like a magic spell towards the shelter of their centennial trunks and branches. There was magic in Niebla, of course, a clean and spiritual magic. Time to stop their penance had come for them in the middle of that magic place. In one of those autumnal afternoons and with two heavy rucksacks on their backs they went to a deserted beach of grey sands on the other side of the fort. As soon as they arrived, Linnea looked for an even area on the beach and began to unpack her sack. With 235

Adramelech purple, yellow, green and blue stones, she outlined a square of about three metres in width and long on the sand. “Topaz to the north,” she whispered, placing the stones. “Emerald to the east, sapphire to the west and amethyst to the south.” She also took out four big and thick white candles and put three of them inside the square, like an upward pointed triangle, and the last one almost on the edge of the square. “Come here, Yonah,” commanded Linnea. “Kneel between the triangle and the candle ahead.” And Yonah did as she was told. In the meantime Linnea stripped off her clothes and bathed in the cold waters. But it didn’t take her long; she returned to dress in a blue robe and a gold ephod, a breastplate and a scarlet embroidered coat. And stood in front of the kneeling Yonah. “Hear my prayer, O Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel. I cry unto you as it was in the ancient times. Hide not yourselves from my supplication, O, Archangels of God. Blessed me again with your heavenly strength, and save the soul of this kneeling servant of God. Save her from her dark and damned heritage.” Linnea’s voice was broken with deep feelings and faith. Her jade eyes searched for a sign in the cloudy sky, not noticing a couple of feathery wings had already spread on her back. The angel had come back. 236

German Bradley The candles had burnt flames of supernatural metallic green. And from behind the clouds above, a fine gold light bathed her blond hair. Yonah just watched and cried for joy as a strong scent of cinnamon, calamus and cassia came from the sea wind and wrapped her up. “On this onyx stones I’ve written her name, O, glorious Archangels. Have mercy upon her and restore her soul. Help us to destroy the demoness that grazes inside her flesh. Take away her diabolical power and break down Adramelech with it.” The greenish stones in her hands shone like two big eggs of light. Tiny glowing bits escaped the incandescence, as the candles on the sand burnt higher, much higher. “Take the stones, Yonah,” said Linnea, as the wind grew stronger and the sky slowly darkened. “Hold them tightly in your hands. They’ll purify your soul.” But the light of the stones suddenly faded away in Yonah’s hands and the candles burnt out. The tide rose and reached the tidemark on the beach, soaking them to the skin. “Yonah! Yonah!” The angel cried with sorrow while she saw the candles drifting away with the tide. “It’s lost! O, God. It’s lost!” she cried and stood there like a statue, half body covered with water. Her wings were still and folded; her eyes lost in the ebb and flow of the sea. “Why, Yonah,” she muttered, “why didn’t 237

Adramelech you tell me there was no faith left in your heart? Why did you allow her faith to drift away?” A beat of mighty wings above her head told her the four archangels had come down to talk in the sea. Their wings had suddenly muffled the sound of waves breaking on the distant rocks. “Don’t disgrace yourself,” said Michael, his oval face smiled at her half hidden in his dancing snowwhite hair. “Wipe your eyes, Angel of Hope. The Lord has sent us down to take you back.” His voice was warm and concerned. “What about Yonah? She’s—“ “Her soul has lost its way in the dark.” “That’s not true. She’s changed. She’s not the same person now,” she said and looked straight into the archangel’s eyes. “She has already chosen.” But Linnea couldn’t believe what she’d heard. They had to be wrong. She had seen Yonah willing to be part of that ritual of redemption. “She may have been born human,” said Uriel, floating behind her, “but she’s always been more loyal to her dark path than you ever thought she could. You must leave her now. You are in too much spiritual danger.” His voice was gentle but firm. “I can’t,” Linnea replied. Her eyes were lost in the ebb and flow of the sea below. She was floating now among the archangels. “I can’t just shut her out, not after all we’ve been through. I’m here for her. I stopped believing in myself to start believing in her, in the secret hope she could be human again.” “But there’s no faith in her heart,” said Raphael. 238

German Bradley “There’s nothing you can do for her now.” “Wouldn’t you just give her another chance?” Linnea begged with her eyes. “Wouldn’t you just—“ “She’s been living with her chance all this time, but she wouldn’t see it,” said Michael again, his voice soft and conciliatory. “It’s time, Angel of Hope,” Gabriel interrupted. “We must go.” And the archangels’ physical forms began to vanish. “I’m not going with you. I won’t forsake her now.” She had made a decision that none of them could change. “Your emotions are blurring the truth. You’re confused.” She just heard their voices somewhere above her as they left, but she was determined to stay. She had been given a mission and that mission had no end. She was the Angel of Hope. She was the one who fed people’s dreams and desires, the fountain that filled the hearts of men. She mustn’t give in. “Go! Go away!” she shouted to the already black sky. “It’s not the first time anyway. You left a much greater soul to his own resources back then at the Golgotha,” she said in resentment. “Go! Go and watch your mistake once again!”

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Shabbattu pattering noise on the roof broke the strange, deathA like stillness of the night, waking her. It sounded as

though a dozen birds stroke the tiles above with their beaks. The woman looked to her right and found there was someone else in that room. A beautiful pale-skinned woman lay asleep by her side in the same bed. Her blond hair streamed over the white pillow, showing she had been restless in her sleep. But the pattering noise on the roof continued and seemed to have no effect on her mysterious bedfellow’s sleep. Then, something in the size of a hen revealed itself outside the window. She couldn’t trace the form of it, but she was sure it had a couple of flapping wings on either side of it. She looked to her right and saw her bedfellow had moved, leaving her shoulders entirely visible. There was something familiar in that woman. She had seen her before, she was sure. A clattering sound on the window distracted her. The thing out there was watching her! It appeared to fix its invisible eyes on her, calling her, making her out of that cosy bed. Curious and scared she placed her feet on the floor and walked to the hovering thing out there, but she stopped in shock halfway between her bed and the window. There was 240

German Bradley a hideous face watching her with two long bat-like wings instead of ears. “Let me in,” she heard a whisper coming from it. “I’ve got something to show you. Let me in. Let me in.” She was trembling; her eyes fixed on those glassy, almost white eyes that seemed to scan her soul as if it knew her quite well. “It wasn’t hard to find you, Nahemah. We have a special compass.” The face opened its mouth and something long and mushy dangled out of it, dripping with fresh blood and fat. “Your entrails, Nahemah. They always tell us where you are.”

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Chapter Twenty-Two

S

hriek followed shriek in quick succession. “Yonah! Yonah! It was just a bad dream!” Linnea was trying to soothe her lover on the following morning, but Yonah was deeply agitated, her breathing hard as if she’d finished a long, long race. Her eyes ran over every part and furniture in that wooden bedroom: the walnut walls, the polished oak floor and the beams at the low ceiling. And there the pattering noise was. She looked at the window and saw a torrent of rain dashing upon the panes. “It’s just the rain,” said Linnea, combing Yonah’s hair with her hands. “It must have been the rain.” “There was something there.” Yonah’s trembling forefinger pointed at the window. “A flying face.” “It was a dream, Yonah, and this heavy rain.” Linnea was afraid too. She didn’t want the nightmare to start again. “Don’t worry, love. It’s over.” “I saw it. It was a hideous face, and there was something hanging from its mouth.” “Were you alone in that dream?” “It was not a dream, for Christ's sake!” Yonah gazed down to the red and yellow striped quilt on the 242

German Bradley bed. “No,” she continued. “There was somebody else by my side... on this very bed.” “Was it me?” “I can’t remember.” As soon as Yonah left the bedroom for a shower, cold shivers ran down Linnea’s naked back. Undoubtedly, the story was repeating itself and the archangels’ words came to her mind like an illomened prophecy. Had Yonah already chosen the path she would take? Was she just waiting for the right time to show the world what she was? And when the time finally came, would she be safe by her side? Questions tortured her soul and sapped her spirit. “No.” She almost shouted. “I won’t let Adramelech win. I won’t let him have her soul. She was born to be free, not a slave, not a whore.” She got up, naked as she was, and walked to the bathroom. Yonah was crouched down in the tub, crying under the spray of the shower. “Oh, baby. My sweet girl,” Linnea said and turned the tap off and nestled Yonah gently in her arms. “Hold me, honey,” she supplicated as her sobs gradually died down. “Hold me tight. Make me forget this nightmare.” Linnea kissed her full on the lips and felt Yonah’s mouth soften under hers. Her hands were on her neck and moved onto her shoulders and her back as Linnea made a rain of gentle kisses descended over Yonah’s face, throat and shoulders. Linnea stepped into the tub and moved slowly down to kiss Yonah’s breasts. Her tongue lashed out 243

Adramelech at those dark and already erect nipples. Yonah felt her clitoris stiff and tender, her whole sex pulsated with undeniable hunger, and Linnea seemed to know that while she ardently sucked those dark nipples. Her fingers had already moved down between Yonah’s legs, tickling her labia, coaxing her flesh to wide apart and allow two, three or four fingers to dig into her. “Frig me, babe! Get me hot enough to fuck with your whole hand!” Yonah cried out shamelessly, as Linnea’s fingers moved faster and faster inside her juiced-up sex. “No, hon,” said Linnea, moving up, covering Yonah’s mouth with her, taking her fingers out of her. “I’ve got another idea.” she said and stepped out of the tub. She knew she had a life-like dildo somewhere in the cabinet below the basin. And there it was, full of rippling ridges. “What is that you’re strapping on?” asked Yonah, coming to hug her from behind, kissing her shoulders and neck. Linnea loved when Yonah played the naïve girl. “Will you let me have it?” Yonah asked while her fingers played with Linnea’s nipples. “Touch me, Yonah. Touch me.” Linnea was not pretending. “Think it’s your own body what you’re stroking now.” She fastened the straps around her waist and between her legs, but Yonah didn’t stop massaging her breasts. “I just want to get fucked. I want every inch of that cock inside me,” she said. “Screw me, baby. Make me forget.” 244

German Bradley But Yonah’s open palms and stroking fingers felt so good on her flesh that she had a hard time trying to slide that jelly-like Penis Ring down on her dildo, covered with soft studs all around. But finally she managed to turn and her mouth looked for Yonah’s lips once more. They kissed passionately and at length, until in an abrupt movement Linnea lifted Yonah up in her arms and sat her down on her dildo, leaning against the basin for support. She banged into her with bruising impact, faster than Yonah had ever thought possible for Linnea. She was making her scream in sexual hysteria, as she felt the ridges of that Penis Ring found new secret places to drive her wild. Linnea was screwing her so violently that made her look for extra support on the wall behind. “Is this what you want so badly?” grunted Linnea without stopping her thrusts. “Fuck me! Use me like the whore I am! I love it! I love your cock, I love to fuck!” Yonah was coming. She was scarcely aware of who she was, or where she was, or what she was doing. But Linnea’s loins didn’t stop; she wanted to forget as well. Without pulling out of Yonah, Linnea moved a little to her left and sat abruptly down on the closed lid of the toilet, bringing her lover down as well to sit on her spread thighs. Facing her sweat-drenched Linnea, Yonah started to ride up and down on her unexhausting cock, and soon it was all over again. Screams escaped her own soul this time, as if she were not a woman but a beast 245

Adramelech in heat. Unconsciously, she sank her long nails into Linnea’s back, as if it were a desperate way to get rid of that new, agonising orgasm. Yet Linnea had turned into an insatiable beast as well, or a sort of sexual exorcist. “I’ve still got something else for you,” she said, gasping beneath her weary lover. “Give me more, baby. Give it all to me,” Yonah softly mumbled in Linnea’s ear, still grinding her hips on the ridged dildo. “Stand up.” As if after fighting a long, vicious battle, Yonah’s body stood reeling and juddering. She hastened to clutch the cold white basin so as not to fall. She looked dizzy with pleasure, her legs trembled, and her own spend was dripping from her inner thighs. “Turned to the wall and part your legs,” commanded Linnea as she stood behind her. Like a suspicious criminal, Yonah put her open palms against the wall and parted her legs, ready for the inspection. But her lover wasn’t thinking about that. “Curve you waist. Lift your arse to me,” she commanded, as she gripped Yonah’s hips with both hands. Being about the same height as Yonah’s, it wasn’t hard for Linnea to adjust her dildo to find Yonah’s pussy, so with one brutal thrust, she sank her cock right into her. With long, steady strokes, Linnea started to stimulate Yonah’s hungry sex, but sooner than expected her rhythm turned faster and urgent. Unrestrained. Almost without knowing, Linnea was 246

German Bradley ramming her lover against that cold wall, unmindful of her screams and moans. Yonah’s powerful vaginal muscles squeezed her dildo, but Linnea kept on plunging into her with lusty abandon. Cry after cry echoed from the bathroom walls and ceiling, as Linnea pounded into Yonah again and again with insane fury, until she felt Yonah’s hips and arse shake as one last fierce and overpowering orgasm exploded inside her. But her legs weren’t able to hold her this time and she fell on her knees, gasping, panting, like a dying animal with her labia sore and chafed. Linnea took hold on the basin behind and sat down on the lid of the toilet, breathing hard and watching Yonah’s gleaming back. Later, their mutual sex madness left them like a pervert demon to whom their bodies were no longer useful. They had done its task to perfection and now that nasty and powerful demon left them absorbed in the experience, but blank and motionless at the same time. But that sex madness demon was not just allegorical. It was real and ancient and took a female shape. It was Zainam, the Grand Witch of the coven who played with their instincts, making a couple of nasty puppets out of them.

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Shabbattu

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obody strolled through the fog-bound streets of Niebla in the freezing nights of June. No dog barked at that moonless blackness. No cat roamed those roofs. No living creature dared to fly over the town but her. Nahemah had sensed the vitality of those human beings below. The quality and intensity of their dreams and desires and their young souls were only equal to those she’d sensed back at Sippar, but now she could have them all without restrictions. So much human flesh to ease her hunger, so many keen spirits to plague and change made an ideal place of it. She felt free there in the icy air of the night, and so did the demon masters inside. She moved through the air over the foggy trees and hills, over the beaches and cliffs until she hovered over the ocean off the town. But then, one after another, thirteen muleheaded women jumped out of the sea and dragged her down. Baffled at first, she couldn’t react and was caught in the raging currents. She could neither kick nor fight. Those incredibly heavy creatures kept on pulling her down to the ocean depths, towards a glowing sign that looked like a circle with a big cross in it, a mark similar to the signature of a man who can’t write. Waxing and waning moon phases had been traced between each angle of that cross. 248

German Bradley Nahemah hissed and tried to get rid of those beings, but then she realised there was no sea around her. It was an illusion! She could breathe perfectly well! Those women weren’t taking her to the bottom of the sea but to the wasted dale in the eighth house of Hell. Mustering all her wrath and strength now that she understood the women’s trick, Nahemah exuded an eldritch light from her arms and legs, which left her body to become one big, blazing star that dazzled those creatures for a couple of minutes. Time enough, however, to explode and let loose the grotesqueries she had summoned from the greenish lake below. The souls of those she had killed had turned into allied demons, willing to destroy their creatrix’s enemies. Living masses of hundreds of snakes they were, and stretched and enwrapped themselves in those mule-headed creatures, strangling and crushing them to death before they even reached the dale. Neither Nahemah nor her grotesqueries touched that ground. They remained hovering as she pointed at the sign below. A glowing line came out of her claws and started to erase the original sign, scratching her new intricate astrological pattern on it. She swooped down and around that new pattern and blew the thick layer of yellowish sand with which Adramelech had hidden the edge. There the cuneiform inscriptions were, unaltered. The grotesqueries had already dropped the women’s withered corpses in the middle of that pattern. The seven masters had left Nahemah’s body to float in the air, above every inscription below, leaving only the cuneiform sign of the north for her. “Go to the seventh house,” they commanded, pointing to 249

Adramelech the place concerned, “and cast your eyes down towards the centre of the pattern.” As if Nahemah’d suddenly turned into a lighthouse, two streams of light came out of her eyes and reflected from each demon master as though they were mirrors. Bathed in that blinding light, they released the power of every sign. Growls, shrieks and yells drowned the horrible roar of the earth as the cone-shaped pinnacles rose again, higher. But that was not all. A different resonance escaped Nahemah’s stinking mouth. She had been able to produce a word that matched the cuneiform inscription beneath. Her new power had given her the gift of word, the gift of creation. She looked around and voiced every single mark on the ground, and one after another, the demon masters flew away free towards their original constellations beyond the dark folds in space. They were no longer bound to the human plane; no human being could ever invoke them again. Their curse was finally over, and they could take revenge on those mortals who had used them. Yet a strange feeling of disconnection engulfed and bowled Nahemah over. She was not bound to the mortal plane either, but she felt a part of her had suddenly passed away, and in so doing, she began to see men in a different way: they were the useless debris of a failing creation. The mere sight of them fed the wrath and despite she felt towards every living creature in that emotional plane, and towards the Grand Witch and Adramelech himself. Time had come to make them pay. Nahemah’s wrath and thirst for revenge had given a new shape to the moving mountains of the dale as well, but all those slithering bodies were bound to it and would 250

German Bradley continue so without having a chance to be free.

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Chapter Twenty-Three screamed and jumped almost out of her bed. Linnea Her breathing was short and thick, her bosom heaved and her whole body trembled. “I...saw...it, Yonah,” she whispered, while she tried to sit and clutched the clothing of the bed as a way to protect her from that nightmare. “It was so real, exactly as you saw it. It was right there against the window.” Her trembling body and the tug of the bedclothes had made her lover lie on her stomach, leaving most of her back exposed to the cold of that freezing night. “The flying face spoke to me,” Linnea continued. “But it wasn’t me what she was looking for... it was you, Yonah. She had come for you!” But her lover didn’t answer. “Yonah? Are you listening to me?” she asked and shook her friend but took her hand off that cold skin almost at once. It wasn’t natural, she thought. Not that cold. “Yonah?” she asked again and turned her over but Yonah’s skin was as cold as stone. She was dead. **** 252

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Yonah’s funeral was painfully short and lonely. Linnea and a couple of men from the funeral parlour were the only mourners on that cloudy Sunday morning. None of those who had met her wanted to go to say goodbye. Rumourmongers said Yonah was possessed. The priest had talked about Yonah’s open gashes and wounds, about the chains and the studs on her dark skin, together with the white tattoos. He had even run away, horrified, after seeing the six rusted spikes nailed into her head. Doctors at the hospital were in a puzzle about the unusual phenomenon as well. People began to say all kinds of things about the black woman and her friend. The rumour even had it that they were actually witches pretending to be human beings, that they had escaped the Old World to infect the Land of the Third Millennium with their filthy black arts. Some even dared to say they had seen them having sex with the foreign tourists up in the fort and on the ferry. They were witches, said the women of Niebla, and the pale survivor had to go. “Fuera! Fuera de aquí, mierda asquerosa!” Linnea heard them say but she was too sad to worry about those rumours and threats. She felt guilty and responsible for Yonah’s death. She hadn’t been able to help her and Heaven had closed its doors to her. Grief and a deep feeling of failure were killing her, day after day. She stopped working and eating. She just stayed at home, unwilling to go out to the garden, lost in the things they had once planned but never came to be. Memories turned into her only food in that foreign 253

Adramelech land, until two weeks passed by and an old local woman came to knock at her door. “Your friend is not really dead,” she said. “She’s transcended, but she’s trapped in a fold of her own in space.” “What do you know about my friend?” Linnea asked, trying not to sound rude. “I see things that are hidden for the rest,” the woman answered, looking into her eyes, reading her mind with those piercing, unblinking gaze. “I can feel your friend’s anger. She’s powerful now. Darker, much darker. She’s changing the plane of the sinful dead. She’s turning them into our tormentors. She wants us to suffer as much as she once suffered. But she can’t be free. She needs her human body to complete her metamorphosis.” “I couldn’t help her,” Linnea said to herself. “I just brought her to her death.” And started to cry. “Nobody could help her, my dear girl. You could have done nothing without their help,” said the woman and pointed upwards. Linnea opened her eyes in surprise and stared back at the old woman. “Yes, my dear girl. I know they turned their back on both of you. That’s not fair, is it? They shouldn’t have left an angel alone.” “I don’t care for them anymore. I don’t care for anything. My life makes no sense now.” “But it does, girl. It really does. You’re still an important part for her. You must take her out of that coffin and carry her body back to the yard of this house. You wouldn’t turn your back on her now, 254

German Bradley would you?” “No, I would never do that,” said Linnea, wiping her tears off. “But you need to renounce your faith and heavenly origin if you want to see her spirit free from her human prison. Would you deny what you are and abjure your faith? Would you do that for her?” “I would do anything to amend my faults and errors.” An insane brightness was there in Linnea’s eyes. She was blind. She was unable to reason what was going on. She was ready to do anything, ready to believe in anything as long as she could see her lover once more time, as long as she could receive Yonah’s forgiveness for being so useless and unworthy. “Good girl. A worthy friend you are. Bring her body tonight and we’ll help her out of her prison.” And the woman said no more. Like an apparition, she just turned her back and left, shutting the door behind her. “Wait! Please, wait!” Linnea tried to reach her, but the woman had already vanished in the daylight. Could that really be? she wondered. Has she really escaped Adramelech? And who was that woman? Was she really here or she only appeared in my mind? Was she just deceiving herself? “Did you hear that?” Linnea asked the air, as if she were talking to her archangels. “Are you satisfied now she’s turned into the black goddess? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You just let it happen, didn’t you? You just sat up there and waited,” she said, pacing the room. “But tonight you’ll see the mistake you made. Tonight.” 255

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**** She got to the rural burial ground at about eleven o'clock that night. Alone and armed with an old spade she began to dig Yonah’s wooden coffin up. The stars were on her side during the spadework. The moon lit the entire place and humidity and rain had kept the ground wet enough to make her task easier. So in less than an hour, her spade hit the lid of the coffin. Without hesitation, she scratched about the mud with her own hands in search of the lid edges, until the whole box was visible. Using the spade, she loosed the lid and raised it with her hands. There the body of her lover was, surprisingly fresh and free of decomposition. The skin was soft and natural, but her nails had grown a lot on her hands. Probably the wet weather had preserved the body in that state, or maybe it was Hell itself that was on her side in that moonlit night. She didn’t care. She was there to free her friend at all cost. She removed her friend from the coffin and wrapped her in the blanket she’d carried with her. “You wanted her for dead, didn’t you?” She stared at the black sky. “You wanted her away from the glory and redemption,” she said, embracing the corpse. “Heed my words, you cowards! I’ll give her the glory you denied her! I’ll give her the hope and life you refused to give! Hear me, Michael. Hear me, Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel. I deny you all!” she screamed in the night as tears broke in her eyes. “I abjure your cheating faith! I hate you! Can you hear 256

German Bradley me? I hate you all!” She tore her clothes and spat at them, blind with rage. “Go now and scratch me from your mocking Book of Life! Scratch me, for I don’t want to belong to a pack of betrayers.” But her tears didn’t allow her to say more. She fell onto the ground and cried her heart out, as she rocked the corpse of her lover in her arms. With the heavy body of her friend on her shoulders she made her way down the hill, back home. Insanity shone on her smile and made her strong. “You’ll be the most puissant archangel of all, my love. The regent Mistress of Hell.” She laughed. **** Once at home, safe from the barks of the dogs, and after leaving the body of her friend outside in the yard, Linnea went to wash her hands in the kitchen sink. A sudden noise in the cupboard behind her called her attention. She turned, but before even approaching, the doors opened and the crockery inside splintered to pieces, crashing onto the floor. The doors of the house slammed, the windows rattled, the walls shook and Linnea panicked when she found out all the doors were locked from outside. She screamed, but other noises silenced her. It seemed to her that an invisible carpenter was busy at work, hammering nails into the floor of every room. Cleaving wood. Sawing. “Stop plaguing me, Yonah! Please!” she screamed in the middle of that chaos, pressing her palms 257

Adramelech against her ears in order not to hear. “I brought your body back!” Yells of hideous laughter were all the answer she had. “What else! What else must I do?” she asked, as the pictures and furniture around collapsed with no apparent reason. The noise she heard from the master bedroom gave her the idea it was in the centre of a tornado, that the whole house would be swept away soon. “Stop it, please!” she screamed again and again, but it seemed to her there wasn’t enough strength in her lungs; she could hardly hear herself. Maybe it was the wrath of the Lord and his archangels that was punishing her. Maybe it was Yonah herself trying to find her way back. Maybe it was the earth that split below her feet, but the truth was that she was shitting and pissing herself. She was desperate, panic-stricken. Bleeding, as if invisible hands had marked her body amidst that pandemonium. But then, snarls began to chat inside her head and the house itself faded away. **** There were three orange yellow moons in a cloudless wine red sky. Pinnacles of solid rock towered like monoliths ahead, but didn’t blot out the shining spheres. She was naked on the shores of a large lake and so was Yonah’s body by her side. There was no wind and no sound in that place. In fact, she neither had sensation of weight nor temperature, and the waters 258

German Bradley showed such an unnatural glassy calm that scared her. It was like being in a silent void. Suddenly, shadows fell on her body and made her look skywards. A huge, winged creature eclipsed one of the moons as it descended on the ground without making a sound. It was a horrible but fantastic creature indeed, half human and half goat. His head was like a giant mule’s with evil blood-red eyes. His human part, trunk and arms, had a great muscular development. But neither did she hear the beat of his enormous wings nor the shriek that escaped her lips. Until the creature growled. Yells and shrill screams greeted her from everywhere, as if she suddenly were in the lower world, listening to the tortures of the damned. Spectral figures outlined among the pinnacles ahead, moving furtively, almost crawling towards her. But one of them seemed to float. It was the old woman who had paid a visit to her in her own house. Yet her appearance changed dramatically as she approached. It was a tall black crone, no other than the leader of the mule-headed women—the Grand Witch herself. She had used her and she’d been so stupid and blind to buy every single word she said. “Well done, girl,” said the woman at the time a cold and strong hand seized Linnea’s neck, raising her, until her feet no longer touched the ground. “I expected no less from you.” Linnea heard the woman’s words, but couldn’t cast her eyes down towards her. The creature’s blood-red eyes were like an open book that showed her the core of a fascinating but scorching black fire. The flames 259

Adramelech licked her naked body, making her feel so good, making her say incoherent sounds between her gasps. She squirmed involuntary as the flames found new sensitive folds on her skin, and her breathing became harder and harder. She was lost in the sensual strokes of the flame, delighted at the gentle touch that invaded her, until a violent splash of cold water on her back broke the spell and she was thrown away, on fire. Nahemah emerged from the lake and her claws snatched the creature’s mule head. The impact sent Linnea into the water, but she desperately fought her way to the surface. In a second, she caught on everything had been a diversion. The Grand Witch had turned into a hideous flying face, the same she’d seen in a dream, and swirled like dust about Yonah’s corpse, trying to enter through her rigid mouth or her dried-up pussy. Above, in the wine red sky, black claws and sharp fangs sought Adramelech’s exposed flesh. Snapping. Gashing, opening his flesh. Below, an invisible force raised Yonah’s body, as the flying face turned into the tall crone again and merged into the dead body in mocking delight. Between them, a self-damned angel tried to do her best to defend Yonah’s body so as to save the demoness above. Even though Linnea was still drenched with water, Adramelech’s black flames hadn’t died out. They didn’t hurt her, though. The blaze of that evil fire had no effect upon her, but her whole body looked transparent now, like water in a crystal cup. She could see through her hands and body but she was unable 260

German Bradley to touch anything. Her hands tried to grab Yonah’s arms or legs but they just passed through as if she were a ghost, and the Grand Witch laughed in her face after seeing her failing efforts. “It’s useless,” she said. “You have no power here. You denied them all, don’t you remember?” The sound of her laughter was more frightening than the fire she was in. It was the pang that reminded her of her foolishness. But while the Grand Witch mocked, something long and mushy came out of her mouth, burning a hole in Yonah’s belly. It was like acid and sneaked into her body like a python. “Thank you, girl,” said the Grand Witch. “Adramelech will find the way to reward you for this. The whore’s bowels tie her to us. She’s still too human to escape.”

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Shabbattu shriek escaped the demoness as she fell onto A thehorrible ground, beating her wings and twisting in pain.

Adramelech moved down onto her and kicked her with his powerful cloven hooves. He pulled and twisted her wings as well, until the broken sound of bones reached Linnea’s ears. She was still burning, consumed in those flames that couldn’t scorch her but didn’t let her move either. And there, in the middle of that enfolding blackness she prayed. Not to God, not to the archangels but to Nahemah herself. “I tried to save you from this,” she said. “I thought I could bring redemption to your soul, but I failed and took you back to your most horrible nightmare instead. Forgive me, my love. Forgive this poor blinded creature. I have no power to save you now, but I still have hope. Amidst this evil fire I see you rise. In this useless body I feel your dark wrath get stronger, out of control. Rise Nahemah! Show me I have not failed this time. Rise, my beloved demoness! Use my strength, if you find something useful here, and kill. Kill them all!” Eight feet away, however, Nahemah’s shrieks got weaker and weaker as the dark forces of creation darted out of her vulva to return to Adramelech. He was so amazed at having his forces back, running and dancing through his 262

German Bradley body, that he didn’t notice the seven ancient-looking creatures that suddenly swooped down in his face and threw him on the ground. They held him there and shackled his arms and legs with rays that came out of their eyes. Then, the dark force of creation receded like the tide towards Nahemah, leaving Adramelech to roar with rage. “I am the cup,” said the black demoness in a dissonant voice. “The whore is over. The impregnated womb has dominion over the eighth house.” She looked down at Adramelech. “These loyal Masters and I are free. I’ve broken the crystals that bound us to this plane. We are ready to go back to our own mental plane in the darkest folds of space,” said the demon-goddess, looking skywards. The wine-red sky opened, following her will, and showed a group of strange constellations just above them. “See for yourself, Adramelech. See how bright they shine for you. Feel how they drain your strength away.” Adramelech’s human half began to age fast as he watched the distant points of light dance in the sky. His skin horribly wrinkled like the bark of a Wych elm. His power was abandoning him. The stars were sucking it out of him, but he still tried to free himself from the shackles; he was not alone. In a corner of his eye he saw a great number of winged demons descend from the moons, throwing themselves upon the seven demon masters that imprisoned him. But those masters were by far much faster than his demons. “Shame on you, Adramelech. Your patterns are too human for me,” said Nahemah, while her seven allies flew around the gang of demons at amazing speed. They formed a huge ring of light that turned into a sphere and ensnared them inside. It looked like a big crystal ball into which a 263

Adramelech heavy crimson rain ate away the skin of those miserable demons. Nahemah narrowed her eyes and mocked at those primitive demons. Her laughter sounded like insane screeches that opened the earth below. Yet it didn’t last long. “I smell something pure here.” She sniffed the air and turned towards the shedding of that subtle perfume. “There’s an angel here,” said Nahemah, gazing into the black flames. She could see the angel through the fire. She saw her standing there, sleeping, lost in a lecherous dream. “You look familiar to me,” she said to her. “Your face... I’ve seen your face before.” Nahemah studied the woman for a while, blew out the fire and turned towards the Grand Witch. “She hates you. I like that. Hate keeps us alive.” Mustering all her power and strength, the Grand Witch lunged at the demoness, changing her form into the hideous flying face. Her mouth opened to an impossible width, showing her curved needle-like teeth. The demoness tried to catch her but the witch vanished from sight. Hissing, Nahemah turned and searched for her invisible foe, but she could only feel those teeth sink into her flesh, biting, snapping at her flesh, pulling apart muscles and tendons all over her back. With Nahemah’s first yell the sphere that trapped the demons exploded, killing them all but releasing Adramelech as well. The seven demon lords flew away, leaving the demoness alone with her enemies. Nahemah had turned into the Grand Witch’s plaything. She attacked and devoured her flesh from different angles at the same time, blocking her movements with that tormenting pain. It was the time Adramelech was waiting 264

German Bradley for. With one staggering blow he sent her flying onto the ground; her face hit the dust and he was upon her instantly. His hands sank and scraped her opened wounds, searching for her spine. “The power is mine! Only I can use it!” he shouted, tearing muscles away while terrible yells escaped Nahemah’s lips. Yet her eyes met the angel’s and her thoughts came to ease her pain. “You don’t belong to the emotional plane. Pain and flesh are just illusions they are using against you. Show them who you really are. Don’t let them trap you there.” Nahemah closed her eyes. Those sounds helped her to pay no attention to her flesh or the pain she felt. She didn’t care how much flesh the Grand Witch was eating from her. She forgot everything and put her mind to gather a new mental image. Lying face downwards, as she was, she extended her arms while a new geometric pattern appeared in her mind. Eight lines inside a circle formed spokes that connected the centre of that circle with its outer edge. Cuneiform inscription turned up between the angles as her skin began to exude thousands of tiny yellowish lights that began to heal her wounds, melting some of Adramelech’s fingers on their way. The lights gathered on her shoulders and continued marching down her arms as she turned over. **** Linnea was busy with her own job in that dale, too. Nahemah had saved her from the lecherous vision of her mind and she, in turn, had picked up a talon-like piece of the demoness’s broken wing to draw the Seal of Solomon on 265

Adramelech the ground and shaped a prayer. “Primordial Forces of the Universe, Grand Designers of the Planes. Heed my call and grant me a favour in this place. Terra, Ignis, Aqua, all three elements of the astral I summon thee. Dress me in the strength of your elements and bring my enemy here.” She nailed the talon-like piece in the middle of the seal and screamed: “Take my soul and spirit if you please, but let me see this witch die!” And then, the flying face became visible, but once she noticed it she escaped towards the hills of bodies Nahemah had formed. Yet muted voices and a virulent and mesmerisingly sad music made her stop while crossing over the Seal of Salomon. Lydian and Phrygian melodies turned her mind into blebs of merging mercury as the earth below opened itself like a yawning fissure of bluish and greenish grey. The sharp talon on the ground had turned into a stake and drew her down into it with a force much more evil and sinister than she could ever assemble. Her horrible screams muffled the sound of the stake tip entering her cheek. In a second, her eyes, flesh, bones and hair melted and slipped down like fat onto the ground, only to turn into dust. The Grand Designers of the Planes had promptly granted Linnea’s wish and she was more than willing to pay with her soul. **** 266

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The tiny lights had already left Nahemah’s body, materialising into a legion of twin sisters of hers, too perfectly alike to tell who their creatrix was, and moved around Adramelech until he was totally encircled. “Stop boasting, you little slut. You cannot kill me. Your menses run through my veins as well,” said the demon defiantly. And he was right. She couldn’t kill him, but neither could he do any harm against her. The demoness also knew those twins were not entirely product of her accomplishment. There was another sinister power in them—the angel’s, and it was waiting for her to use it against Adramelech. Then, all the twins wheeled around and looked at Linnea, tilting their heads to the side, sneering as they read her mind. It was a strange creature, that angel indeed, eager to die, eager to see Nahemah’s victory. But as they scanned her mind, her physical appearance changed: feathery wings spread on her back, dark shadows covered her eyes like a domino, long gloves dressed her arms and a white chemise embellished her pale body. The demoness understood that something stronger than hate had made that angel call up the forces of the elements and offer herself as a sacrifice—love. She was in love with her. Sick and twisted feelings blinded and empowered her at the same time. But Linnea lowered her head, avoiding those piercing eyes. **** Taking advantage of his enemies’ distraction, Adramelech plunged into Nahemah’s twin sisters. His hands sank into 267

Adramelech backs, bellies and necks. He ripped out their organs, waiting for their power to merge into his already weak one, but those twins were empty. There was no vital energy to suck out of them except lethal foreign venom that had already taken his system by storm. “Get him!” commanded Nahemah, letting Adramelech know who the real demoness was. Four twins held Adramelech still, stretching his arms and exposing his palms towards Nahemah. With every grip of them his bones broke. The demoness approached, stabbed her claws into his palms and waited for his blood to draw circles and inverted pentacles on his skin as she watched him growl in pain and anger. The brands scorched his skin and grew deeper and bigger. “Come here, angel. Finish your work,” said the demoness as the glow escaped her claws to outline a bucranium symbol on Adramelech’s chest. The angel stood in between and extended her arms so her hands could touch both Nahemah’s and Adramelech’s chests. She closed her eyes and an oval pattern began to form on the ground around them. Lightning ran from one body to the other, and below their feet the pattern became clearer and clearer. The ground around turned red, moist and fleshy like the thick and luscious lips of a cunt that throbbed and engulfed them, inch by inch, into the opening. The heads came out of sight. Flesh, bones and powers melted in a sea of cosmic catamenia. A bizarre symbiotic process began, but Adramelech was not meant to survive such a change. Only one being had to emerge from that scarlet glow, the strongest one—Nahemah. The angel had died as well, but her soul had revealed 268

German Bradley heavenly secrets Nahemah had never seen before. Ways through which the doors of Paradise would open for her, formulas to enter the hearts of the angels. And she learnt them all...

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Epilogue

A

vast, ancient chain of mountains opened majestically before her wonder-struck eyes and soared up to almost touch the crisp white clouds above as she got closer. Below, in the lee of that elevation, meadows of greenery spread to the east and small mounds of onyx stones stood here and there. Gardens bright with the fresh sounds of their brooks bloomed to the west. In the middle, groves of cedar, poplar, elm, lime and sycamore trees blocked the sight and entrance of a grandiose golden city apparelled in soft celestial light. Countless white and winged creatures walked and flew over that city, unmindful of the new visitor, leaving a lovely floral perfume behind. Nahemah had adopted the angel’s image and followed the secret ways to enter Paradise and nobody there would notice who she really was. “Where have you been, Angel of Hope,” a male angel greeted her from a nearby balcony. “I’ve been wondering about where you could have gone.” Even though he had glanced at her only briefly, he was sure time had suddenly stood still at the moment 270

German Bradley he saw her. She looked odd to him. He’d seen Nahemah’s giddy seductiveness, but he wasn’t able to understand what it meant. His eyes just roved over her statuesque figure and focused on her swaying buttocks and her bobbing, unfettered breasts beneath the décolleté chemise. “Why were you so worried about me?” asked Nahemah seductively, slipping her clothes off, already up in the room behind the angel. “Why did you do that? I mean, we’re not allowed to play tricks here.” Her eyes were big and dreamy and unnaturally bright. He could feel the immoral heat coming from her as he heard the soft, purling sound of invisible waters, washing his resistance away. She had awakened hungers in his flesh. Desires. The angel smiled at her naively. “Are you the Angel of Happiness?” she asked. “N-n-no,” he mumbled. “I am...the Angel of...Wishes.” She came closer and cupped his face with her hands and tilted it up for a long kiss on his mouth. She met some resistance at first, but then his mouth became softer and softer under hers. “I have a wish I hope you’ll grant, my angel,” she whispered and tug at the knot in the belt of his robe. “It’s a quite simple wish.” She kept on kissing him while her hands stroked his arse, thighs and cock, until she got it turgid, pulsating and glistening with pre-cum in her masturbating hand. Other whispers came to the angel’s head, as she fell 271

Adramelech down to kiss his chest and belly. She felt he was sick with wanting her. She could even see the excited women in his overheated fantasy taking him high on sex, making him die for her with a horny eagerness he didn’t know. And his hands moved to her magnificent breasts. She was satisfied to see her power upon him was absolute. His mouth and hands took turns to stimulate her nipples, to inflame her whole flesh. “Come here,” she said hoarsely, stepping backwards to sprawl on the angel’s narrow bed. Strongly mesmerised, he threw himself atop her, and she slid her legs around his waist. “I want to be yours only,” she said, and snatched his cock, stuffing it in her pussy. “I want you to make me yours.” He unconsciously pushed himself in. “You made my wish come true, angel,” Nahemah whispered. “You’re in me at last. Don’t you like it?” “Y—y—yes.” “I’m yours, angel. I’m all yours whenever you wish.” Her legs went up over his shoulders, allowing him deeper thrusts, and he stabbed his cock into her with the insane strength of a demon. They heaved their bodies together, frenziedly surrounding themselves to their raging needs. “Blast off inside my cunt! Fill me full with your scum!” she screamed and laughed, knowing that her lethal carnality had already infected that poor creature of God. She had taken the veil of illusory innocence from his eyes; she had shown him a marvellous world of obscurity. 272

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**** As it once happened to Adam and Eve, male and female angels fell between Nahemah’s breasts and legs and their eyes opened to sin. One by one, they had enjoyed her flesh in their rooms under a false promise of exclusiveness. Some of them had resisted, of course, and struggled against that infectious disease, but she was persuasive enough to gain their naive hearts. Once infected, the floral perfume faded away in that city and other more pleasant smells for the creatrix replaced them. She had taught them to burn oils of myrrh, frankincense, spikenard, saffron and bulbs of the sea. She had told them to put all of that into seven lamps. And for seven days they lit their lamps in the meadows of greenery at the crack of dawn. And their minds were free to revolt against their rulers—the archangels and their God. Nahemah knew the angels were capable of both beauty and atrocity if given the chance. And the chance was there, guiding their unimaginable powers to her.

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About the Author

G1970. He’s a graduated of the Writer’s Digest erman Bradley was born in Santiago, Chile, in

School and was member of the Association of Freelance Writers in the U.K., where he lived for some years, and member of the Horror Writers Association in the U.S. His personal experience with the occult and his fascination for dark rites and cults of ancient mythologies has given him the background for his writing.