Hunting Ground
The house trembled from its shingles to its foundations, struggling to withstand the unholy force erupting within. A scream echoed down its halls and burst through its doors and windows, every molecule of air expelled from the victim’s lungs while his face became beet-red. It was two sounds mixed together, his own pathetically human cry of agony and desperation, and the enraged howl of the beast fighting for control.
“Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places!”
With trembling hands, the priest held the crucifix up to the bound man. The ropes holding him to the chair were frayed from his incessant pulling, while the wood itself splintered more and more with each passing second. The balding man gave another howl, the demon answering the priest’s challenge. Behind the priest, two women held each other in terror. The first was the man’s wife, her hair fully graying after months of fear and stress, fear of the beast trying to devour her husband’s soul.
It had started out with simple disturbances, bumps in the night and objects going missing. Soon enough, the eyes, eyes she never saw but felt on her at all times, shadows darting out of the corners of her vision, and silhouettes that could be seen only in mirrors. Then, a change in her husband began a new dark chapter.
“Come to the assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the Devil! The Holy Church venerates you as her guardian and protector; to you, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into Heaven! Pray therefore the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to the Church! Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us; take hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit that he may no longer seduce the nations!”
Beside her, the daughter prayed for the priest’s success, that her father would return to the way he used to be, that all of the bad could just be explained away by possession. At nineteen years of age, she should have been in the prime of her beauty, but her face was horribly bruised and scratched from endless assaults. She remembered the first time her father had snapped, just a few months ago. They were having dinner, and while saying grace, her father suddenly fell into a violent rage, screaming at his family and throwing plates and food against the wall. Grace was never again spoken.
“In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints! And powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the Devil! God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him! As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God!”
The yelling continued, every minor issue seeming to invoke his rage. Soon enough, he was beating her simply for not closing a door quietly enough. Following the war against the undead, patriarchal puritanism made its return as people sought stability and security. In areas still not fully reclaimed and rebuilt by the government, the man of the house was obeyed like he was God, and what happened in the home was never spoken of to outsiders. That was the way it was in the isolated communities, where the phrase “God-fearing” had become a badge of honor.
“Behold the Cross of the Lord, flee bands of enemies! The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the offspring of David, hath conquered! May Thy mercy, Lord, descend upon us! As great as our hope in Thee! We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies, and sects!”
It was when all three family members began receiving scratches from an unknown origin, long cuts in their flesh, always in threes, that the presence of something otherworldly could not be denied. The wife and daughter had tried to avoid the priest, as anything to do with the church would invite beatings, but when he found out about the scratches, he gave them an answer and promised to rid them of the demon possessing the man.
“In the Name and by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, may you be snatched away and driven from the Church of God and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of the Divine Lamb! Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat! The Most High God commands you, He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal! God who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth!”
The exorcism had been going on for hours, with friends of the man doing everything they could to keep him bound to the chair. The priest continued with his prayers, saying them over and over again in the hopes of driving out the demon. His words seemed to cause it pain, but nothing he said or did could actually pry it off the man’s soul.
“Christ, God's Word made flesh, commands you; He who to save our race outdone through your envy, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death; He who has built His Church on the firm rock and declared that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her, because He will dwell with Her all days even to the end of the world! The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you, as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian Faith! The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed your proud head! The faith of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the other Apostles commands you! The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you!”
The man suddenly became silent, falling limp. Everyone wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but they knew it in their hearts that it was just a rouse. The silence was louder than any scream, and even more dangerous. The whole house then shook as if it had been hit with a wrecking ball, everyone shuddering from a crash loud enough to rip away their courage. The men holding the possessed were then yanked back, as if drawn by invisible ropes around their necks. In that silent room, the cracking of wood was almost deafening, as without anything holding it back, the chair began to levitate, floating up six feet in the air. This had already occurred a dozen times over the course of the exorcism, yet everyone stared in horror at the undeniable presence and power of the unholy spawn.
The priest barely managed to regain his courage.
“Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by the God who so loved the world that He gave up His only Son, that every soul believing in Him might not perish but have life everlasting; stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church and hindering her liberty!”
The man and the chair crashed back down, and in that instant, everyone was knocked back, bleeding from a hundred invisible punches. Every window and piece of glass shattered, the man now howling louder than ever.
The daughter, barely conscious and lying on the floor, looked up to a familiar sound. The front door had opened, yet that simple occurrence, for some reason, seemed louder than her possessed father’s screams. In the doorway stood a man with a long black overcoat and matching hair, and an insidious grin on his face. Once again, her father fell silent, but this time was different. Normally, when he stopped screaming, he’d go limp, like a puppet with its strings cut. Now, he was staring wide-eyed at the intruder, the demon inside him apparently seeing something she couldn’t.
“After all these years, you people still cling to your delusions,” the intruder said. “Christ, God, salvation, all that nonsense. Your bible is nothing more than fairy tales, a mythology of a god that never existed. The real gods dwell not in Heaven, but a realm of eternal darkness. That cross you wield is nothing more than a useless piece of wood. It is the will of humanity that allows exorcisms to work. Because you cling to your faith, even though it’s a lie, you’re able to shape and focus your will, pouring it into a symbol like a mold. If your belief is unshaken, then so is your strength, and you can counter the chaotic sentience of the undead.”
It happened in the blink of an eye. The intruder zoomed across the room as if on wheels and grabbed the man by the throat, holding him off his feet without any effort. “But I do not need such insipid things. My will is absolute, and in time, even the Old Gods will meet their end at my hands.” He then dropped the man, but something remained in his grip, someone else. It was humanoid, but its body was jet black and covered in scars. Its grotesque face, boar-like, had twisted horns and misshapen tusks. He had ripped the demon from the man’s soul, revealing it for all the world to see. “I am Dominion, and you now belong to me.”
Everyone watched as the creature, held in Dominion’s grip, began to melt like a lit candle. But rather than falling to the ground, its liquifying flesh was being drawn towards his hand around its throat and absorbed into his skin. The demon shrieked in fear as its flesh and muscles peeled away layer by layer, its body consumed in a matter of seconds.
“You… you saved us,” the daughter gasped.
At her trembling words, Dominion laughed. “On the contrary. You were safer with the demon. Now that I’ve had dinner, it’s time for desert.”
He held out his hand, and her father, semiconscious and lying on the floor, was once more lifted up into the air by an invisible force. He floated before Dominion, sending chills down the spines of everyone in the room. The power lifting her father was demonic, but they knew it was coming from Dominion. His grin sharpening, he plunged his hand into the man’s chest, his fingers tipped with claws that tore through flesh and muscle with ease. The two women shrieked at the sight, the man vomiting blood as Dominion pulled out his heart, still connected to the main arteries and pumping in his grip. He fingers sliced through all four chambers and the man’s blood sprayed out.
However, like the demon, it was all being drawn to Dominion’s hand and absorbed into his flesh. It took only seconds for the man to become a dried husk, and was then thrown aside like garbage, but more had been taken than just blood. Blood was the medium of life, and through it, Dominion had seized the man’s soul and devoured it no differently than he had the demon.
The priest staggered to his feet and held up his cross. “You’re just another demon!”
Dominion stood with his back to the priest. “Don’t compare me to those pathetic undead.”
The same force that Dominion had used on the man, he used to throw himself backwards at the priest, flipping through the air. He opened his mouth, his teeth changing shape as if malleable like clay and becoming sharper and needlelike. Zooming over the priest’s shoulder, he sank his teeth into his throat, then, landed behind him, lifted the priest off his feet, and gave a hard jerk that snapped his neck like a wolf catching a bird. Blood covered Dominion’s face as he drained the priest, adding yet another human soul to his collection.
Both the slain man’s daughter and wife were now screaming, their clothes peppered with blood splatters from the priest’s murder. One of the man’s friends, exhausted from holding him still during the exorcism, gathered what little strength he had left and grabbed a poker from the nearby fireplace. He gave a desperate scream and charged towards Dominion, still siphoning every drop of blood out of the priest. He jammed the piece of steel into Dominion’s back, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. The poker had been buried deep, enough to puncture a lung, but from the sight of inky black blood oozing the wound, the attacker realized how foolish the move had been.
It happened in an instant, the demon they had all seen get devoured, reappearing. It burst from the wound in Dominion’s back, fused with him like a conjoined twin and given shape by his blood. It attacked the man without mercy. He screamed in agony as it gouged out his eyes with its clawed thumbs, only to be silenced as it tore into his windpipe with its jaws and began stealing his soul. Like all the other demons that Dominion had enslaved, this newest addition had lost its free will, its every move now subject to its master’s whims, its powers to be used however he saw fit.
The second friend, seeing what was happening to the first, bolted for the door. In the face of this godless horror, there was nothing he could do. The two women were beyond his saving. He could only hope they had the strength to run as he did, and that the Lord would forgive his cowardice. He managed to reach the doorway, the sweat on his face evaporating in the chilly autumn air. He went no further.
Without even turning away from his meal, Dominion pointed his hand at the fleeing man. They came from out of his sleeve, three tentacles made of jet-black flesh, each tipped with a barbed stinger. They ran through the man’s chest like harpoons, the pain making him want to scream, but the blood filling his lungs and esophagus not letting his voice escape. He was lifted into the air and the tentacles immediately went to work bleeding him dry and taking his soul.
Having now devoured four souls, Dominion at last stood up. The tentacles retracted into his arm and the demon on his back receded into the wound, closing it as it vanished. He looked down on the two women, a smirk on his blood-caked face. His eyes fell to the wife of his first victim and he showed some faint annoyance.
“Meh, you’re a little too past your prime for me.”
He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her off her feet with his claws digging into her wrinkled flesh. Her daughter threw herself onto Dominion’s arm, an action not done out of hope, but frustration. “Mom! Mom!” she shrieked, trying to separate the two of them. Dominion pulled her away, holding her off the ground with his other hand likewise around her throat. The difference was that while he was draining the mother, he was simply strangling the daughter to end her efforts. She sobbed as she watched the life leave her mother’s eyes and all the color drain from her face. Once finished, Dominion tossed her aside and turned his insidious gaze on the daughter.
“Oh, you’ll do nicely.”
He threw her onto a nearby couch, and as she struggled to regain her balance, he threw himself on her. He ripped away her clothes, exposing her naked body. “Please no!” she shrieked, trying to hide her shame despite him keeping her wrists pinned.
Before her father’s possession, she had been planning her marriage with a nice boy from town. She had known him all her life, he came from a good Christian household, just as she did. Not even he had seen her like this. Her father’s erratic behavior had driven him away, but the idea of an exorcism gave her hope of reconciliation. Now, feeling Dominion’s cruel gaze licking her unclothed form, she knew that her fiancé would never take her back, not after what was going to be done to her.
Despite what she had seen, she tried to fight him off, but his hold on her was like iron. He grabbed her face and began to kiss her, filling her mouth with the blood he had stolen. Once her face was as red as his was, he finally pulled away from her, his eyes alight with a lust for violence, but his heart beat never rising. He ran his bloody fingers through her auburn hair, then slid his hand down and cupped a warm breast. She squirmed and whimpered as he kneaded her flesh, having never been touched this way by anyone.
“Such a lovely girl, such smooth skin,” he hummed.
The talons that had grown from his fingertips retracted, and he moved his hands between her legs. She screamed and tried to kick him off, her skinny white feet swinging back and forth and the pale flesh of her inner thighs rippling despite her slender body. Dominion showed no mercy, he thrust his fingers inside her, drawing tears from her eyes and a scream of agony. He violently fingered her, shaking her whole body and leaving her pert breasts jiggling. The feeling of part of his body invading her womanhood, her fluids mixing with her dead father’s blood stuck to his skin, it made her want to vomit in revulsion. It was like he had pierced her soul with a venomous fang.
“Ah, a virgin. I love virgins. I get to show you a whole new world of pleasure and pain.” He pulled his fingers free and then jammed them into her mouth, forcing her to taste her own feminine essence. “How does it taste? Sweet, isn’t it? I have something else for you to savor.”
He then got to his feet and unsheathed his manhood, fully erect and ready to defile her. She stared at it in horror, but some part of her was also fascinated. She had never seen the male organ before, at least not one that didn’t belong to an animal. In anticipation of her wedding, her mother had given her “the talk”, explaining the mechanics of sex but at a Christian minimum. She only understood that it was meant to go inside her, but that was what made her so scared. She had been waiting to consecrate her marriage with the man she loved, but this monster in human skin was going to rip that away from her, just as he had her family.
“Now, open your mouth.” His words only deepened her fear, as she began to realize that he wouldn’t just stop at stealing her virginity. “Hold her down,” he then said. Just as she began to ponder what he meant, hands, clawed and covered in black scales, burst from the couch and grabbed her. It was just like before, when the friend of her father stabbed Dominion in the back but the demon from the exorcism came out of the wound and attacked him. Their talons cut her flesh, drawing flesh blood, which only seemed to excite them more and tighten their hold. She was forced to sit on the couch, facing Dominion as he undressed. Her eyes switched back and forth from his throbbing manhood to his merciless gaze.
“The more you resist, the more I’ll have to hurt you, and my pets are eager to hear your screams and taste your blood. And don’t bother praying to your false god,” he held out his arms, and blood, black as tar, began to pour from his wrists, “for I am the way,” he said, mockingly. He then strode over, hefting his manhood up to her tear-streaked face. She could do nothing but cry and pray this was just a nightmare. “Now, open your mouth, and if I feel any teeth, I’ll take one of your hands as punishment.”
“Please, just let me go!” she begged.
“Believe me, there is nowhere that you’ll be safe.”
He then grabbed her by the hair and forced his cock in her mouth. She gave a garbled scream and tried to pull her head away, but he kept a firm hold on her. It was all the way to the back of her throat, his balls resting on her chin. Her gag reflex, untrained, immediately began sending bolts of electricity through her nerves. She began heaving, her body trying to expel the mass that was choking her. Part of her wanted to bite down, but Dominion’s warning restrained her, and even if she could work up the courage, her body wouldn’t let her close her mouth, doing everything it could to try and open her airway.
He began to thrust into her, holding her head still while his cock banged against the back of her throat, each impact like a punch to her uvula. The taste of his manhood filled her senses, the smell of his natural musk making her lightheaded. She could taste the sweat and testosterone. It slid through her mouth and down her throat like a poison. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even think.
Her body gave in, a great wave rolling up her spine as she retched, ejecting the contents of her stomach but never being free of Dominion’s cock. He simply looked down on her and grinned, the sight of the frothy mess erupting from her mouth amusing him, running down his balls and pouring on her tits. Her tears were just another ingredient to the mixture. He continued to skull-fuck her, her face and chest becoming filthier and filthier each time she retched. If anything, his thrusts increased in speed and brutality. Only after several minutes did he finally pull out, then smearing his cock across her face and blinding her with her own saliva and vomit.
A brief moment of mercy, he gave her time to catch her breath. Her eyes were lifeless, her soul drowning in shame and disgust, but there was still so much more to do. Dominion gave a flick of his finger and the demon hands holding her still adjusted their hold. They grabbed her ankles and pulled them apart, exposing her virgin slit. This action shook the girl from her stupor, and fear once more rushed through her, as she knew what was going to happen next.
“No, please! Anything like that!”
“I’m sure you were told that when your virginity is taken, you become a woman, but that’s wrong. I’m not going to turn you into a woman. I’m going to turn you into a piece of meat.”
He threw himself on his victim, and in one fluid motion, he forced himself inside her down to the base. She shrieked in agony, her hymen shredded and her blood anointing Dominion’s cock. The feeling of him inside her, it was nothing short of evil. She felt herself corrupted, as if he had taken a dagger and carved horrific profanities onto her soul. If there was a God, he must surely be turning his back on her in disgust, like Athena cursing Medusa as Poseidon raped her on the floor of her temple.
Dominion wasted no time, he immediately built up a rhythm and began slamming her with his full weight, his cock smashing her cervix and making soup of her insides. His speed, it was as if there was a malice to it. Of course, everything about this was a display of how evil Dominion could be, but it was like his rate of thrusts had their own frequency of evil, like the rapid-fire clapping of flesh on flesh was some Mors code chant from Hell.
With every tear that fell from the girl’s cheeks, every smack Dominion made to her breasts, every squelching sound of her womanhood being violated, the possibility of ever living a normal life drifted farther and farther away. Every impact of his cock was like a chisel chipping away at her soul. Love, marriage, children, growing old in this God-fearing community surrounded by friends, she could feel those dreams crumbling away like sand as she was forced to stare at Dominion’s face. Funny, had they met under different circumstances, she would have found him quite handsome.
Then, without warning, he pulled away and stepped back. The girl lay there, her legs spread, her pussy bruised and bleeding from the rape. Her eyes had once again gone lifeless as her mind tried to recede into itself to escape this horror. But there was still so much more pain for him to inflict, so much horror for her to experience. He wanted to take everything from her, he couldn’t stop until he had robbed her of everything that made her who she was.
He returned and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up as if she was weightless. He threw her again at the couch, this time bending her over the back and showing him her ass. He stepped up onto the couch and grabbed her hips. She did what she could to brace herself, to prepare to feel him once again use her vagina as a receptacle for his cruel desires. But instead of her labia being parted, she shrieked as she felt a stinging pain in her anus.
The speed and technique Dominion used was nothing short of masterful, once again burying himself all the way to the base in a single stroke, but this time, it was in her back door. As expected, she was incredibly tight, but friction could stop him no more than being stabbed by that fire poker. Her asshole was now wrapped around his cock in a perfect seal, the ring threatening to tear from the brutal assault.
Dominion began hammering her with the same speed as before, raping her anus with seemingly inhuman strength and malice. He pulled back her hair, using it to hold her still and keep her looking up. She screamed at the top of her lungs from the pain and cried harder than ever in her life from the humiliation. Again and again, Dominion threw himself against her, inflicting an agony on her that she had never known existed, such an unholy torture that she felt herself forever ruined. There was no coming back.
She no longer wished to be saved, she longer hoped for mercy. Now, she just wanted to die. She had felt it break inside her, her ability to ever again feel joy. She didn’t want to live, just the physical pain making her want to slit her wrists. She was sure she was bleeding, Dominion simply using it as lubricant. She sobbed endlessly as he raped her asshole, her tears falling like rain.
He then switched, driving himself back into her vagina with the same brutal speed. It continued on for hours, Dominion switching back and forth from her pussy to her asshole, raping her without ever growing tired. He never gave her a break, and every time she went on the verge of passing out, he’d pull harder on her hair. He seemed to want to hear her wailing, taking amusement in watching her cry.
Then, he came to a sudden stop, his hands on her hips. She felt it. She had never experienced it before, but she knew what it was with crystal clarity. She could feel him emptying himself inside her, flooding her with semen. His seed inside her, it felt toxic, evil, like some kind of acid that was melting her flesh. It was like a poison infecting her soul, a disease searching for any fragment of her that hadn’t been tainted, any part of her that was still pure.
He pulled out of her and stepped back, stretching to ease his weary muscles. “So, how many times did you cum?”
She didn’t answer, just laying draped over the back of the couch like a blanket, with semen and blood trickling from her vagina and anus. She didn’t understand what that last word meant. Cum? Several times, despite her agony, she had suddenly felt a wave of pleasure surge through her, making her roll back her eyes and curl her toes. Was that what cumming meant?
“Please, just kill me,” she whispered.
“You were certainly as fun as I thought you would be, and now I shall give you the death you so surely crave. However, I guarantee you that there will be no peace.” He leaned over and sank his teeth into the side of her neck. She gave one last shriek of pain as he sucked her blood like a leech, draining it and her soul. With his face coated in fresh blood and six more human souls added to his collection, he leaned back and cricked his neck. “Ah, I think I could use some freshening up.”
‘Master…’
The voice came from the back of his mind. It was one of his pet demons from the mass grave.
“What?”
‘What is the point of all this? This is just another home you’ve attacked in the last two weeks. You promised us the world, yet you’re little more than a night time prowler.’
“I don’t recall giving you the right to criticize me. You are just a tool, and tools aren’t allowed to speak. But if you must know, it is because I still need to become stronger. I currently have 387 demons and 97 human souls, and while my powers are growing, I am not yet invincible.” He retrieved his pants and drew the silver coin from his cemetery battle. His flesh singed and smoked upon contact, the silver disrupting his powers like a neurotoxin. “With all of your power now within me, it seems I’ve inherited your weakness to silver. However, it is much less damaging now than it was just a week ago, meaning that its possible for me to someday be completely immune to its effects. Until such a time, I must stay hidden and cultivate my powers. And forgetting silver, while bullets and blades are no longer able to harm me, I’d rather not yet try my luck against a nuclear bomb. The American government will surely attempt to eliminate me once I make myself known.
Then, of course, there is the sake of enjoyment. I’ve spent my life as a man, and soon, I might become a king, and eventually, a god. But for now, I want to see what it is like to live as a monster. I wish to be a terrible nightmare that dwells in the shadows outside man’s domain, spoken of only in whispers, a mysterious terror that attacks in the night and leaves behind mosaics of horror and madness.
This is how I train myself, how I push myself to my limits to ensure the strength of my will. I was born to dance, and the line between insanity and civility is my stage. I must become the embodiment of savagery, a deranged sadist that lives to inflict pain on others and paint the world red with the blood of innocents, for my purpose to be the complete lack of purpose. I must then become the embodiment of focus, able to control my emotions and desires. I must be able to act as needed without a single distraction in my mind, to eliminate threats with a pin prick when others would need a bullet, and to stop myself at any edge, no matter how badly I wish to take the plunge.
I must again and again become addicted to madness and then break that addiction, moving from one end of the spectrum to the other as easily as breathing. I can brutalize a girl’s body until she begs for death, but how might I twist her mind until she begs for defilement? My goal will be fulfilled, but I must savor every step. I must take my time to explore every facet of my actions, to study my consequences and see the results all angles.
I don’t want to miss a thing.”
=============
In the town of Senner, built thirty years ago in the ruins of the old world, the mayor greeted the morning as he always did, sitting behind his desk with a sigh and taking a few moments to enjoy his coffee. Despite the town not being aligned with the government, it was still possible to get things like coffee, though getting gouged was often unavoidable. He then began leafing through reports and updates from the previous day and continuing anything that remained unfinished. He spent only his mornings in the office. The afternoons were spent working outside, meeting with people and making sure everything in town was running smoothly. It kept him fit and healthy as he aged.
One hundred years after the rise of the undead, civilization had yet to fully stabilize, even in America. The major cities, for the most part, looked no different than they had a century ago, first to be reclaimed during the fifty years of reconstruction. But out in the rural areas, towns varied wildly across the spectrum of advancement, depending on how close they were to major highways and cities.
All fifty states had been reclaimed, at least their capitals, but many rural towns and communities like Senner had broken away to become sovereign city states. They were too small to cause trouble for the government, and eventually they would be reabsorbed back into the union, but until then, as long as they kept their heads down, they were free from taxation but on their own if disaster struck.
The town was small, but the people did live a relatively modern life. Without a national power grid, electricity came from wind turbines and solar panels, and most residents were farmers or ranchers, supplying a wide variety of food. Automobiles, medicine, and any tools that couldn’t be made would be bartered from outsiders, friends in neighboring towns that were aligned with the government.
Less evolved towns, lacking the technology to keep up, resembled the Wild West. With the rise of religious fervor following the war against the undead, the Amish way of life had spread like wildfire. For many, it was believed that technology, chemicals, and overly complex lives had turned people away from God and brought about the scourge of the undead.
Then, at the lowest level of society, were those who still clung to the post-apocalyptic way of life. They lived in hippie-like communes without any kind of power or running water, and violence and savagery were a daily part of life. Up in the wilds of northern Maine, it was these communes that held most of the population. Rather than grouped together in one area, the backwoods hicks lay spread throughout the wilderness in isolated cabins and farmsteads, a mix of hillbilly living and Mad Max dying.
These people avoided the main roads and coastlines, any areas where they might be spotted, despite no one looking for them. Senner sat in the middle of one of these swathes of wilderness. The townspeople had a truce with the wild folk that dwelled in the shadows of the trees. They often even engaged in trade, though a representative would be sent into Senner to negotiate, as few who lived in the wilderness wished to associate with outsiders.
“Harold!” His wife’s frantic voice broke the serenity of the morning as she rushed into his office.
“What? What is it?” he asked.
“It’s Father Donovan and the Clive family!”
The mayor’s face became pale. The priest had come to him yesterday and warned him that he would be performing an exorcism. He had spent the night praying for the priest’s victory in the battle against the demon possessing Jim Clive. “Are they all right?” He almost spoke the words, but the look on his wife’s face, the sight of her tears and sound of her frantic breaths, told him the question was pointless. The only real question he could ask was how bad it was, but his wife had only heard the news, rather than seeing the horror for herself.
He rushed out of the Town Hall and sped off in his pickup truck towards the Clive home. The town sheriff and his deputies were already there, their cars blocking the street and trying to keep as many people out as possible. The townsfolk stood outside in the brisk autumn morning, held back by police tape but trying to see inside. In this close-knit town, news that an exorcism would be performed spread like wildfire, and now everyone was curious about the result, despite already knowing it had taken a turn for the worse.
The mayor got out of his truck and forced his way through the crowd. The deputy manning the perimeter made an instinctive motion to stop him, but halted when he recognized his superior. The young man was deathly pale and looked like he was going to vomit.
“Sean, what happened?” the mayor asked.
The deputy began opening and closing his mouth, but no words were spoken. All the effort used for speaking was instead redirected into holding back tears. The mayor moved past him into the house and immediately felt his stomach lurch. The walls and floor were caked in blood like the workshop of a deranged butcher. Bodies lay strewn about, men and women alike, huge bite wounds in their necks like something had been feeding on them, Jim Clive and his friend looking like they had been shot through the chest with deer slugs. The daughter was up on the wall above the fireplace, naked and crucified. Four men, including the priest, and two women, all were shriveled and white as snow, completely bled dry.
The mayor couldn’t stop himself, he turned and vomited onto the floor, adding yet another puddle to the collection the police had already made. The sheriff and two other cops were in the room, empathizing with the mayor’s reaction. They had all witnessed death before, it came with the territory, it came with the lifestyle. But horror like this was unheard of.
“What happened?” the mayor asked.
The sheriff walked over to him, gray hair and heavyset, but a lifelong friend and reliable protector of the town. “We don’t know. I heard the priest was performing an exorcism. If there really was a demon in Jim, I can only think that maybe it caused all this.” He picked up the discarded fire poker, its tip erased as if melted with acid. The muscles in his hand writhed as a chill seeped into his stomach. The threat was gone, but his instincts were still screaming for him to have his gun in his grip.
“A demon wearing shoes?” one of the deputies asked, crouching down and examining the boots of the man whose eyes had been gouged out.
“Say what?” the sheriff asked.
“Look there, a bloody footprint. The tread doesn’t match any of the shoes here. Someone is unaccounted for.”
“So there was a killer,” the mayor gasped.
“Or maybe someone taking part in the exorcism. They may be a survivor,” said the sheriff.
“Or both,” said the deputy. “Julia Clive was raped, there is blood and semen on her inner thighs. If there was a demon, it must have jumped into someone else and gone on a rampage.”
The mayor wiped the clammy sweat from his forehead. “Either way, if there was someone else here, we need to find them. Get these bodies out of here, have Doc perform an autopsy. I’ll start asking around the church, see if anyone else was supposed to be here. If there is a killer on the loose, possessed or not, everyone in town needs to be warned. I’ll probably have to send word to the woodsmen to watch out as well.”
“Too late.”
The mayor and sheriff turned and looked outside, where a large man was standing at the head of the crowd. He had long wild hair and an unkempt beard, and while his clothes were bartered from Senner, his coat was made of deer hide.
“Boyd!” the mayor exclaimed.
He was one of the delegates between the town and the wild folk.
“What hit your people already hit my people.”
=============
The conversation was moved to the mayor’s office, away from innocent ears. Both the sheriff and Boyd sat in chairs opposite Harold, stern and fearful looks on their faces.
“It started a couple weeks ago, we just thought it was maybe a rabid bear or some desperate coyotes moving in on our land. Bodies were being found in the woods, ripped apart and mutilated, men and women alike. All of them had been drained of blood. Some would manage to fire off a few shots, most never managed to reach their weapon in time. Then, the other day, I found my neighbor and his family butchered, his wife and oldest daughter raped. Not even his newborn son survived.”
“Jesus!” the sheriff hissed.
Harold wanted to tear into Boyd with all his might, for letting things spiral out of control. The town should have been warned, he should have been warned. However, he knew how unreliable the people in the forest were, a bunch of backwards hicks and inbred savages. Not only did they barely communicate with the town, they barely even communicated with each other. There was no sense of community. They only knew the members of their own family, and whoever lived in the adjacent homesteads. Anyone who lived on their neighbor’s other side might as well have been on another planet. Boyd was a rarity, one of the few who actually put in the effort to know more than a dozen people.
“Any idea what it is now?” Harold asked, barely keeping his temper in check.
“Some kind of vampire.”
A hundred years ago, those words would have drawn scoffs and laughter and caused eyes to roll back. That was before the dead rose up and began feeding on the living. The old myths and folklores, at least those not forgotten, had made a strong return in rural areas. Almost everyone had a story in which they had claimed to see a vampire or werewolf prowling out at night. Many believed that the undead scourge hadn’t gone extinct, and that the infected had instead learned to hide themselves and feed without gaining attention. There were a lot more exorcisms than before the war, the world teeming with demons born in the aftermath.
“But those bodies you found, they were out in the woods, right? Not in their homes? That meant they were killed during the day. Vampires can only go out at night.” The sheriff spoke the words with complete certainty, expecting no ridicule in response, and there was none.
“It must be some kind of undead,” said the mayor. “One that drinks blood and also lusts for women. Maybe it migrated here or maybe it’s always been here, hiding, sleeping. Whatever it is, we can’t let it roam free. Jeb, get the hounds ready and gather up the boys with weapons and ammo. I’ll let the people know that there is a dangerous animal on the loose. Nobody goes anywhere alone and there is a curfew at sunset. We can’t let this thing strike again.”
=============
Dominion sat in a tree in the woods outside Senner, his hand outstretched and a rock spinning above his palm, held in the air without any visible force or suspension. This was how he spent most of his time between meals, practicing with his abilities. He could levitate himself and objects, alter his physical structure, and summon his demon pets as extensions of his body, as well as consume spirits, of course. There were certainly more abilities within his reach. He simply needed time to discover and practice with them.
He was also experimenting on the souls he had taken, both human and demonic. Rather than simply a finite fuel source, each spirit acted as a perpetual motion device, a sort of self-charging battery producing unlimited power at a fixed rate. Even if he stopped feeding, his powers would never wane. An interesting challenge was keeping the stolen human souls pure. In death, the soul leaves the body and immediately begins to decay, losing all memories and feelings, becoming nothing more than the unholy embodiment of wrath and hunger. They become wraiths, the wicked dead, and once mashed together, they can become demons.
When Dominion stole the souls of those he fed on, they remained intact, retaining all their memories and feelings. Likewise, the power they produced was “pure” and untainted, a valuable difference for experimentation. The issue was that with human souls, the wraiths, and demonic entities sealed within him, it was tough keeping the former uncontaminated. But this just meant it would be easier to cultivate demonic power, in a world occupied by the living.
Wait a second… He heard something. While beyond that of regular human hearing capabilities, he picked up the sounds of dogs woofing, and several feet stomping around close to each other. Ah, a hunting party! For them to work up the courage to try and hunt him down was admirable. How might he reward that courage? Should he just skip the foreplay and kill them all? Should he completely avoid them, letting them spin their wheels and taste the bitterness of disappointment? Perhaps he could play with them just a bit.
=============
Harold, Jeb, Boyd, and a dozen men from town moved through the forest as silently as possible, guided by a trio of bloodhounds following the scent of gore and starting at the Clive farm. Two deputies stayed behind and every home had a weapon for self-defense, so the safety of the town in their absence was not the immediate concern. Rather, it was what awaited them that shook every breath. These men were all seasoned hunters, but the mayor’s words, and the scene at the Clive house, extinguished all bravado. A man? A monster? The mayor himself admitted to not being sure as to what they were after. He only hoped that they would know it when they saw it.
The New England wilderness stole them from the civilized world, a sense of isolation forming a lump in everyone’s throat that could not be swallowed. Black bears and coyotes were a certain danger that they had all grown up accepting, but now there was something else in the woods, something far more dangerous. Every step they took, that might become a step they’d have to run when, not if, something happened. With every hill they climbed up, they pondered how fast they’d be able to scramble down. Every slope they descended became a question of stamina; would they have the strength to make it to the top and keep running?
It was midmorning, they had the promising sun and fullness from breakfast keeping their spirits up, yet that all disappeared when they came across their first body. It appeared to be one of the woodsmen like Boyd, impaled at the top of a dead tree. High above the forest floor, they would never have seen it, instead drawn by the smell of putrid gases and voided bowels. Blood should have been running down the aged bark like spilled paint, but every drop had been taken before the body was hoisted up. Days old, it was bloated and its flesh was sickeningly pale.
“Oh my God…” one of the men said.
Actually, all of them said it, but he was the only one loud enough to be heard at all, and he did it while trying and failing to hold back tears of revulsion and terror. He was Tim, the youngest of the group, just nineteen. Hearing his voice, all the other men wondered if he was still too young for something like this. But looking at the body, they realized that age alone wasn’t enough for someone to take this sight in stride.
The tree itself had been stripped of its branches by time, leaving it as a rotting pillar, but at a considerable height, the skewered body more than fifty feet off the ground.
“What could have done this? A bear, maybe? A mountain lion?” Jeb, the sheriff, muttered. “I heard that in Africa and Asia, leopards will drag their prey up into trees to keep it away from scavengers.”
“No animal on God’s green earth could do something like this,” said Boyd. “Whatever did, didn’t do it to preserve its food or anything like that. It did it to put it on display, to send a message of what it’s capable of.”
“With climbing gear, I’m sure a man could have dragged him up there,” said the mayor.
“And slammed him down with enough force to drive the trunk through his gut? The boy has an excuse to be naïve, but you don’t.”
“We’ll have to chop that tree down later to bury him,” said one of the men of the hunting party.
“Not until we kill this thing,” Jeb barked.
The hunting party continued, every member coated with a fresh layer of cold sweat. Not half a mile later, they found another cadaver. This one was a young woman, strung up by her own intestines. She was stripped naked, allowing the men to see how she had been raped and tortured before death. Her sickly pale body, seemed of all things, pathetic, to the men. When she was alive, she was probably quite pretty, but it was like that beauty had been tainted, leaving behind a limp… thing.
Her breasts, which would have lured the eyes of all the men around her when she was alive, now looked pitiful, decrepit, as if mocking the fertility that they had once symbolized. Her thighs and rear end, shaped by evolution to entice males, and toned by a life of hard work, now just looked like white tubes of fat, slowly rotting out here in the wilderness. It was as if every sexual aspect of her existence had been taken away, reducing her to a grotesque homunculus.
Her head was askew, due to the intestinal noose around her neck. Her eyes, wide and glazed over, seemed to stare at the men no matter where they stood, as if condemning them for not being there to save her. The more they looked at her, the more her appearance changed, originally a sight of tragedy but then evolving into an avatar of evil. It was like she herself was cursed, her body turned into an unholy relic by some kind of black magic. Seeing her in these woods, to them, was like seeing a leaky car battery dripping acid into their drinking water. Her very presence poisoned the landscape. Once more, all the men muttered curses and prayers, many even crossing themselves.
“Come on, let’s get going,” the mayor said, but it was out of his desire to get away from the carcass, rather than continue hunting down the killer. The way his voice trembled gave away his true feelings.
The resumed marching, their hearts feeling heavier and heavier with each step they took. Half an hour later, they came across a house. Well, not really a house. It could barely even be called a cabin. It could have either been well made a hundred years ago, or terribly made the year before. It was sided with old plywood and rusty metal sheeting, but the windows were intact and the area around it was cleared. It was one of the homes of the people of the forest, the kind of place children would tell ghost stories about and dare each other to step inside. But the house was silent, no signs of anyone.
“Should we check?” the mayor asked.
“We might as well. Hey, Potter, go look inside!”
“Screw that!” one of the men replied.
“Boyd, these are your people here,” said the mayor.
The man sighed and hiked up the hill towards the house, shotgun in hand with an itchy trigger finger. He came up to the front door and beat his fist loudly, calling for anyone to answer. After a moment of silence, he pushed the door open, peaked inside, and immediately closed it and ran back.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“What did you—”
“Let’s go!”
No one dared ask him what he had seen, but once again, the courage of the men took a deep hit. The trek continued, with morning giving way to afternoon. More and more bodies were found, the men slaughtered like livestock, while the women, the young, attractive ones, at least, were violated. Even the children had been murdered. They eventually stopped for lunch, having brought food in case the hunt dragged on. In this forest of death, no one had much of an appetite, but they still forced it down, hoping it would settle their stomachs and untwist the knots caused by stress. But their eyes, originally focused on what they hoped not to be their last meals, were drawn upwards, as they found themselves immersed in gloom.
Storm clouds were rolling across the sky with unnatural speed, so dark that the men expected soot to fall like snow. Upon having eclipsed the sun, the clouds halted, as the persistent autumn breeze ceased to exist. It was like the air itself had been killed, so utterly still that it was like it was frozen in time. It had to be in their minds, the sudden difficulty in breathing. Every breath they released seemed to cling to their faces, while the air around them, suddenly so viscous and heavy, had to be forcefully inhaled.
Sweat budded on the flesh of every man, mixing with dirt and dead skin and forming a pasty layer of filth that clung to them like a growing fungus. The men rubbed their hands together, trying to remove the oily sensation that dulled their sense of touch. At that moment, a bar of soap would have been more valuable than a bar of gold.
No one dared speak, terrified of breaking the silence. Desperate for auditory stimuli, their brains focused their hearing on their heart beats. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. They could each hear their pulse in their ears, hear how frantic it was. All eyes shifted to the dogs, beginning to whine. They too felt it, felt instinctive fear. They tried to get as low as possible and covered their eyes with their paws.
Snap.
The sound of a stick breaking forced the men to their feet all at once. Where had it come from? It was too loud for a squirrel or bird. In the opposite direction, another stick broke, followed by rapid footsteps in the brush. One of the men began shooting his gun towards the source of the noise, blasting the trees and ground with two others joining in their panic.
“Stop shooting! Cut that out!” the mayor shouted, though they didn’t stop until they had run out of ammo.
“Come on, go find it!” said Phil, the owner of the bloodhounds.
The dogs whined and refused, but were forced to give in after he kicked them onto their feet. The men followed the dogs on the scent trail, now running to catch up with the dark entity. Ahead of them, they could hear footsteps, sticks and branches being broken, and see an ominous shadow passing between the trees. The forest then ceased to exist, giving way to steep banks around a marsh. For a hundred meters in all directions, there was only waterlogged soil, black and stinking like beach silt at low tide. Some bushes and swamp maple were able to grow in the muck, but the forest was still a long-ways away from fully claiming the land.
All the men stopped, fearful of slipping down the steep banks and into the muck, but their eyes fell onto a pale shape, not ten feet away. It was a naked woman, lying flat in the mud. Only her head, back, and arms could be seen, her entire lower body swallowed by the marsh like she was submerged in tar. The filthy hair around her face shifted, moved by her faint breath. The men shivered, realizing she was still alive. They had to help her, but fear gripped their hearts and wouldn’t let go.
“Tim, go check on her,” the sheriff ordered.
“No way in Hell I’m going down there!” the young man shouted.
But his name had already been called, labeling him as the sacrifice. Someone pushed him and he went tumbling down the bank. He managed to stay on his back, and he instinctively held his gun up to keep it out of the mud. He came to a stop, just in front of the woman, his heart beating so fast that he felt like he was going to throw up. She slightly stirred, easing some of the terror. If they could save her, then at least this day would have some silver lining.
“Hey, lady, can you hear me? Are you ok?” he asked, slowly sitting up with his gun across his lap. She hummed and shifted her head an inch. “Lady?” he asked again, reaching out and touching her hair. She slowly raised her head up, groaning in pain, but her face was caked in mud.
Tim looked up to the men. “Give me some rope.” He was handed one end and three men grabbed the other, ready to pull him and the woman up the bank.
“I can smell it,” she whimpered.
“Smell what?” he asked.
She opened her eyes, revealing two empty sockets, each pouring blood. “YOUR FILTHY SOUL!”
Her jaw dislocated like a serpent’s and her cheeks ripped open, as from the depths of her throat, a clawed hand of black, scaly flesh reached out and grabbed Tim’s ankle. He screamed as it crushed his bones in its grip and began dragging him towards the deep mud. All of the men began shooting at the woman, their bullets ripping through her flesh, but she simply receded into the mud with the arm continuing to drag him. Up on the bank, the three men holding the end of the rope had become four, but it was like they were being dragged by a winch. Boyd jumped down and seized Tim, trying to pull him back.
“I don’t want to go! Don’t let me go!” he sobbed.
“I’m not going to let you go! Someone, get down here and help me!”
Harold answered the call, climbing down to the edge of the muck and proceeding to blast the hand at pointblank range. His shells did nothing to the unholy creature, its black flesh barely torn by the buckshot, and immediately regenerating like nothing he had ever seen before. It happened in the blink of an eye, something lunging out of the mud and knocking the shotgun out of his hand, breaking two of his fingers in the process. It was a tendril, shooting out like a frog’s tongue. It returned to the mud and shot out again, this time slashing Boyd across the face and gouging one of his eyes.
He howled in pain and his grip on Tim faded. The boy gave one last tearful scream before he was dragged into the mud, disappearing beneath the black depths like it was a portal to Hell. With Boyd and the mayor blinded by their agony, the men atop the bank were utterly stupefied, unable to comprehend what they had just seen. It had happened so fast, not even half a minute. Tim had been there, and then he was gone, and the forest, filled with screams and gunfire, was once more silent. What had taken him? Had they all just seen what they thought they had seen?
They stood like marionettes, their empty guns held loosely in their hands, realizing how impotent they were. Bubbling, it shook them from their stupor. It was such a soft noise that untrained ears would never have been able to catch it, but with only the sound of their own hearts beating, the men sensed it. Their eyes were drawn to the mud, thirty feet away from the bank. Something slowly arose up as if on an elevator, a head and shoulders, then the rest of the body. Muck poured off its sides, revealing the figure’s clothes. It was cloaked in nothing short of pure darkness, as if some unholy god pulled out one of his hairs and wove the garment himself. Tall and slender, the figure stood atop the black water like something out of a nightmare, with its face hidden beneath its hood.
The men were petrified, having never encountered something like this before. They heard stories of the war against the undead, told by priests and other God-fearing bards that they were the Devil’s minions, meat puppets controlled by demons and brought forth by the sins of the modern world. But this was no zombie. This was something infinitely worse.
Then, it raised its head, and under its hood, they saw the glint of its eyes. It happened in an instant, pain that wracked their bodies and souls in levels of intensity beyond words. Massive icicles ripped through their muscles and organs while their eyes were gouged out and their flesh melted with acid. Their bones shattered, crushed from all sides as if they had been transported to the bottom of the ocean, while every light and happy thought in their minds was drowned in an ocean of viscera. It was bloodlust, that was the only word that could be used to describe it. The moment they looked into the creature’s eyes, it unleashed upon them a psychic wave, transmitting its killing intent.
They all dropped their guns, trembling as tears ran down their faces. Three of the men, the oldest, fell to the ground, struck with heart attacks. The rest ignored them, too engrossed in their own pain and horror. For Boyd, the loss of his eye didn’t even re
