Chapter 1

The racy green sports car pulled off the main highway and headed into the woods, into a place where the car's passengers knew that they could do what they had come her to do without fear of being disturbed.

Sixteen-year-old Paula Marcus brushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes and stole a glance at her boy friend Carl, who was sitting in the driver's seat beside her. Carl saw that she was looking at him and winked. He knew why she had asked him to drive into the woods, and he was looking forward to it just as much as she was. Perhaps even more.

Paula closed her eyes happily and nestled deeper into the seat's upholstery with a sigh. It was wonderful to know a boy like Carl Holden, she told herself. Paula could have had her pick of any boy in the school, but she had wanted Carl. And Carl wanted her. And now, now that the two of them were going to where they could be alone, Paula and Carl would both have a chance to find what they had been searching for.

The car drove along for several minutes in silence, and the dirt road gradually got thinner as the woods got thicker, until at last it would have been impossible to go any farther except on foot. Carl stopped the car and pulled the key out of the ignition.

"Tins far enough for you, Paula?"

The golden-haired girl opened her eyes and looked out at their surroundings. They were in the very heart of the woods, and at least twenty miles from town. Surely here was a place where they wouldn't have to worry about being disturbed. Paula turned to gaze at her boy friend Carl.

"Yes, Carl," the girl told him, and there was a dreamy tone in her voice, a tone of anxious longing. "This will be fine. This will be wonderful, as long as you're with me."

That was all the boy had been waiting to hear. He pushed himself out from under the steering wheel and reached over to kiss Paula, to hold her and make love to her.

She pushed him away gently but firmly. "No," she whispered hoarsely. "Not here. There's no room in the car."

Carl nodded to show that he understood. "Where, then?"

"In the grass," the girl told him. "In the grass it will be beautiful."

The boy did not have to be told twice. He pushed open the car door beside him, and a moment later he and Paula were standing up and feeling the soft forest floor beneath their feet.

And then the two of them were running, the boy and the girl were holding hands and running, laughing as they ran away from the car and in search of a spot where they could be alone with their passions and their desires.

Ahead of them was a forest clearing, and in the center of it was a pile of dead leaves. "This way!" Paula shouted, tugging the handsome youth along with her as she ran. "This is the place for us!"

And then they were both falling down in the leaves, bouncing and tumbling and laughing, and then Paula found herself in her lover's arms, and he was kissing her and she wanted it.

She tugged at her boy friend's shirt with feverish hands. "Undress, my darling," she pleaded. "Take your clothes off and let me look at you. I want to see what kind of man I've fallen in love with."

He kissed her lightly on the cheek. "And I want to see what kind of girl you are. I'll take your clothes off if you'll take off mine."

Paula did not answer, but no answer was needed, for a moment later they were grasping and snatching at each other's forms, each one divesting the other of his or her clothing to reveal the naked skin beneath.

Carl could feel his manhood rise within his body as he took off layer after layer of Paula's clothes, to reveal more and more of her soft flesh as the clothes came away. And then Paula was naked, and Carl was naked too, and for a long moment they both lay there gazing into each other's eyes with a fascinated look on therp faces, a look that could only be described as love.

"Oh, darling!" Paula shouted, as she felt the strong arms of her boy friend press her down against the earth, as she felt her body being pushed down under the weight of his. She wanted to feel this man on top of her, she wanted to feel his hard flesh being thrust feverishly into her own.

Carl's hot throbbing pillar of manhood was up and growing larger by the instant, growing larger and growing stiffer as it did so. Soon it would be rock-hard, soon it would be firm enough to be able to force its way into Paula's body and make love to her sultry interior.

Paula spread her legs and locked her arms around the body of her boy friend in a grip of passion. She pressed him down harder on top of him, pressed him down so that the two of them would be locked in a fevered embrace. She wanted to feel his body pressed so hard against hers that it hurt.

Carl's cock was up now, it was up and it was ready for action. Gently he inserted his legs between Paula's thighs, spreading them apart as he did so to reveal the jewel of erotic splendour that lay beneath. He wanted this girl. He wanted to feel her soft moaning body impaled upon his erection until she cried out in passion.

Paula shut her eyes and felt the hot, swollen hardness brushing against her thigh, tickling against her hip, trying to find its way in the jungle of pubic foliage towards the innermost receptacle of her passion. She could feel the thing coming closer now, she could feel it easing along and drawing nearer, ever nearer to the thing for which it longed....

And then the girl felt Carl give a thrust of his powerful torso, and she moaned slightly in pain and surprise, for his manhood had turned out to be larger than she had expected. But Paula didn't care, because she wanted it that way. She wanted Carl's cock to be huge, she wanted to feel it fill every inch of her inner anatomy. She wanted that cock to tear her apart.

Carl's organ pushed deeper, thrust harder and farther into her tender interior. Every millimeter, every fraction of an inch was a whole new torrent of passion for them both. It seemed to Carl as though his cock would never fill this woman completely; it would just keep on going and going forever. But he liked it like that.

"Fuck me, Carl, please!" the girl panted, practically breathless with anticipated passion. "I want you to fuck me until I fall apart in your arms! I want you to screw me until I explode! Stick it in me, Carl, please STICK IT IN ME!"

But Carl did not. have to be told what to do. He wanted this girl just as much as she wanted him. He wanted to feel his hot throbbing manhood go into her deeper than any man had ever been, deeper than any other man could hope to go.

He forced his cock deeper, he thrust his cock farther, until at last he could feel the slight pressure at its tip that told him he was in all the way. And now he started pumping, he started forcing his cock up and down deep within her. so that Paula would be able to feel the full benefit of its hardness within her.

And Paula was moaning now, gasping for air with her eyes shut and her mouth open and a thin thread of saliva at the corner of her tongue. It had never been like this before, it had never been this good. And somehow she knew, she knew without being told, that it was going to be getting much better quite soon.

The cock plunged faster and faster, harder and harder, until the soft flesh lining of Paula's pussy began to grow hotter and hotter. She knew what it was like to feel this man deep within her, but she wanted to feel more of him. She wanted his whole body plunging down into the open maw of her vagina, to make passionate unrelenting love to every corner of her body.

And then Paula became aware of a rumbling, a far-off tremor that told her that her boy friend Carl was fast approaching orgasm. And Paula could feel herself being brought towards an orgasm of her own. She was being sucked slowly and irrevocably into an ever-widening vortex of hot searing passion, of lust that thirsted and would not be appeased.

Gently Carl inclined his head, bent down his mouth to kiss the girl's nipples. Slowly he sucked them, teasing the soft brown lumps of flesh into hard red points of erectness that thrust upwards towards the sky. And as he did so he could feel his cock begin to quiver and shake, until suddenly it was bursting forth into an orgasm of passion that could not be denied.

Paula felt the hot liquid come gushing into her flesh, and it felt so good that she was unable to control herself any longer. In an instant her own body was squirming and writhing, and then she was gushing out her own hot pussy-juice. It shot up and played against the edges of Carl's firm hardness, and then the two of them creamed again and again and again.

"Oh, my darling!" Paula moaned, unable to contain her passion any longer. "This is what I need! This is what I need! I want to feel your hard cock inside me forever and ever!" She could feel her pelvis twitch and spew out its love-sauce again and again, and Paula was gasping on the brink of sexual ecstasy. She'd had men before, but it had never been like this. Carl was the best. He was the best of all. And what they were doing felt so good that Paula felt like applauding. In fact, she imagined that she could hear somebody applauding far off in the distance.

Suddenly she sat up and opened her eyes. Somebody WAS applauding.

Paula screamed. Out of the corner of one eye she could see that there were people here, other people besides Carl and herself. She pushed out from under him quickly, and then the two of them turned to see who it was that had intruded upon them in their moment of passion.

There were seven people standing there. Seven people in the shadows, their faces masked by the blackness of the surrounding undergrowth, their bodies enveloped in garments of denim and leather. It was impossible for either Paula or Carl to be able to tell anything about what these people looked like, or even whether they were male or female.

The sharp sound of sarcastic applause cut through the air, the sound that had made Paula look up in the first place. She turned in the direction of the noise, and saw a pair of hardened hands pounding against each other in midair relentlessly. The body attached to the hands was completely invisible in the dim sylvan light.

The hands stopped applauding as suddenly as they had begun, and then their owner was stepping out of the underbrush, stepping out so that the two naked people could see exactly who and what he was.

It was a man, if you could call it that. He would have been about five feet and nine inches tall if he had stood erect, but as he was he stood hunched over like some sort of monstrosity. There was a menacing look in his pose, and an even more menacing one in his face. Paula took one look at that face and screamed. This was not the face of a man; it was the face of a monster, a demon who lusted after human flesh and devoured it whole. The face of a ghoul....

The man-thing came closer, until it was only scant inches away from both Carl and Paula, who recoiled in horror. Even as they watched, the thing's mouth, which gaped obscenely like some sort of open wound that would not heal, thrust itself open even farther, and a glistening object that roughly resembled a tongue flicked out from the hole. "You will rise," croaked a voice, and it was a voice that was totally unlike anything that Paula had ever heard before. "You will rise and pay homage to Veena, Countess of Ravenspur."

Neither Paula nor Carl attempted to move. A moment ago they had been in each other's arms, throbbing and shuddering in the blissful conjunction of orgasm. What was happening to them now?

The thing came a step closer, lurching forward on protuberances that might loosely be called legs, and now Paula could feel its hot breath on her cheek. "You will rise," the voice repeated dully. "You will rise and pay homage to Veena, Countess of Ravenspur."

Silence. It seemed to Paula as though she ought to move, she ought to get up, but she did not dare.

"You will RISE!" rasped the voice, and then the thing was on top of Carl, attaching itself to his throat like a leech and squeezing remorselessly. The boy screamed, and Paula could see the blood vessels in his forehead grow purple and threaten to burst.

"STOP IT!" she shouted, and leaped to her feet, ran forward to help the man whom she loved. The half-human thing had dropped Carl as a dog drops a bone that has been gnawed free of all its meat, and Paula watched in horror as the boy fell to the ground, gasping and sobbing in his attempts to remain breathing.

"You will rise," the voice repeated, and the creature that the voice came from was bent so far double that it was unable to tell whether or not it was standing on all fours or squatting on its haunches like some sort of dumb, unreasoning beast.

Paula saw that she would have to do as the thing said. She slowly staggered to her feet, taking hold of Carl as she did so and leaning his body against her own, so that both of them were in a position that roughly resembled standing erect.

A dull gleam came into the half-human creature's eyes, an animal gleam of satisfaction at seeing its wishes obeyed. "You will now kneel," it croaked. "You will kneel and pay homage to Veena, the Countess of Ravenspur...."

Paula no longer even bothered to think. She sank to her knees painfully, wondering what was going to be demanded of her next. By this time Carl had recovered most of his wits, and he was kneeling beside the girl, his face looking even more puzzled than hers was.

Another figure stepped out of the blackness, and as it did so its six comrades fell on their faces in adoration. Paula found herself gazing into the eyes of a tall, Amazonian woman, a woman with crimson hair that fell to her waist and black eyes that blazed like two coals in the furnaces of Hell. The woman was slender, with a body that lay tightly enwrapped in a layer of form-fitting leather. In one black-gloved hand she clutched a spear that was even longer than she was, and the razor-keen edge of the blue-metal spearhead was tipped with a darkening stain that was brown and had once been red. Tucked into the woman's broad belt was a long leather flail, its ends braided and knotted to produce a lash that would send shudders of pain into any flesh that it touched. And behind this, protruding from the shoulder blades of the woman's tight leather garment, were a pair of black shiny objects that looked like wings. The wings of a bat.

Or perhaps of a demon....

There could be no doubt in the minds of either Paula or Carl that this creature, this monster in female form, was the thing that was known as Veena, Countess of Ravenspur. Even as Paula watched, the voluptuous vampire woman came closer, and then slowly extended her spear until the tip of it touched against Paula's naked flesh.

"Get up," said a voice. It was the voice of Death....

Angrily Carl staggered to his feet, not even bothering to hide his naked manhood with his hands as he stood. "Look, I don't know what insane asylum you people escaped from," he announced, "but all this stand up, kneel down, stand up again is getting me sick. Why the fuck don't you...."

CRACK! The whip was out and in the grip of the black-gloved hand, and it flashed across the air and bit into the flesh of Carl's face. He gave a sharp' cry of pain and fell over backwards, and then the whip had been returned to its position against the woman's hip. It had happened so fast that Paula was not quite sure she had seen it.

Paula wanted to turn, to rush to the side of her friend Carl and see whether or not he was all right and how badly he had been hurt. But she did not move. She did not move, because she knew that to do so without the consent of this woman who called herself Veena would be instant death.

Veena extended the spear again until the tip of it was pressing painfully into Paula's side. "Get up, female," the woman's cold voice announced. "You may leave your disobedient friend's body where it lies." She looked on in satisfaction as Paula hurried to obey. Then Veena's eyes turned away and refocused upon the form of the hunched-over thing that had spoken earlier. "Come here. Frog," hissed Veena's voice, and it was a voice that could not be disobeyed. "Come here."

"Aye, Mistress," croaked the aptly-named Frog, and then he was lurching forward to stand humbly before her. There was an obedience, a submissiveness in his manner that showed he regarded this woman as his overlord. But at the same time there was something within him, some sort of inner defiance, that made Paula think he could easily destroy this woman and anything else in his path if he cared to. The girl wondered what it could possibly be that Veena possessed that made this man-thing so willing to obey her.

The woman named Veena stretched out one black leather hand and pointed towards the car that Paula and her friend had come here in. "Destroy it," she murmured.

"Aye, Mistress." The car was twenty feet away, but Frog was on top of H in a single bound, clutching at the doorframe and pushing himself into the driver's seat. With one quick wrench of his powerful hands he tore out the dashboard and flung it aside. The auto horn honked, the signal lights flickered, and the car's radio blared into fife.

"Police are still looking," intoned a disembodied voice, "for the six men and one woman who escaped their dragnet earlier today. The fugitives are believed insane and are definitely dangerous, having killed...."

"TURN IT OFF!" shouted Veena, and with one twist of Frog's powerful hands the car's radio had been torn out of the dashboard and scattered in a dozen directions. "Make certain the car will never run again."

"Aye, Mistress." Now Frog was capering over the hood of the car, flinging it open and snatching at the wires and connections of the engine that lay beneath. Paula winced in pain as she saw pieces of iron and steel torn out and flung in every direction. As she watched the car's engine being dissected she felt as though her own body were being tom apart with it.

At last Frog had seen to it that the car would never, never run again, and with a single bound he was again at the feet of his mistress. Paula was unable to figure this out: Frog looked as though he could overpower Veena in a fight. Why then did he choose to obey her so thoroughly?

Paula's thoughts were seized abruptly by a groan of pain from Carl, who was still lying face-down in a puddle of his own blood, a puddle that was gradually growing larger. As he groaned Paula saw Veena and her followers turn to look at the boy.

The black-clad dominatrix extended her spear and pointed it towards two more of her followers. Paula saw that one of the men was chunky, with perhaps a thin layer of fat between his skin and his animal-like muscles. The other man was tall and rawboned, with a shiny black eye patch across one side of his face, covering the dark sightless hole that lay beneath.

"Tish," Veena called out. "Cyclops. The two of you take that boy who has dared to disobey me and dispose of him someplace. I will deal with the girl here." And as Veena spoke Paula could detect a glint of lustfulness in her eyes. Paula shuddered. She didn't like the way that Veena was looking at her. Was it possible that this woman was a lesbian?

Carl groaned once again, and Veena nodded in the direction of the thick man and the eyeless one, the two that she had called Tish and Cyclops. "Dispose of he who would disobey me."

The two men came forward....

"It's not fair," called out a voice, a thin whining voice that seemed born to complain. "It's not fair at all. You let Frog kill the car, and you let Tish and Cyclops kill this man. Why don't you ever let ME kill anything? I can kill good. I can kill real good...."

"Shut up, Estrogen," hissed the merciless voice of Veena. "I will let you kill something when you prove yourself worthy of killing something. Until then you will do the only thing that you are proven fit to do: suck tit and kiss ass." Her eyes narrowed to slits as she spoke. "Is that clear, Estrogen?"

"But...."

"Is that CLEAR?" There was a pause, and for the first time Paula could get a good look at the complainer, the one whom Veena had called Estrogen. He was short, scarcely over five feet high in fact, and looked as though he weighed less than a hundred pounds. There was a childish look of incomprehension on his ferret-like face, and Paula saw that the crotch and armpits of his ragged garment were overgrown with some sort of fungoid vegetation that mouldered and stank like nothing human.

"Is that clear?" repeated the voice of Veena, and the weakling half-man called Estrogen lowered his eyes in shame and submission.

"Yes, Mistress," he said, and there was a hint of a whimper as he spoke.

"Excellent." Veena made a gesture towards the thick man and the man with one eye, the ones she had referred to as Tish and Cyclops. "Now take the body of that young infidel and dispose of it somewhere."

"It shall be as you wish, Mistress," murmured Tish, and the one named Cyclops nodded. The two of them strode determinedly towards Carl, who was only now becoming fully aware of what was going on around him.

In an instant the boy was on his feet, both fists at the ready to deal out swift retribution. "You lay a hand on either Paula or me," the boy hissed, "and I'll break all your goddamn necks! like THIS!"

And then he had launched himself forward and had one hand at Tish's throat and one hand around the neck of Cyclops, and they were both writhing in his grasp. Each of the two men was stronger than Carl, but the boy's fear and his desire for self-preservation were giving him strength that he had not imagined he'd had. To Paula it looked as though he would snap both men's necks like matchsticks....

"FROG!" shouted Veena, but the command might as well have been left unsaid. As if reading the woman's thoughts the half-human homunculus named Frog had lurched itself forward and seized a piece of the car's engine block with long, snake-like fingers. A moment later the lump of twisted metal was sailing through space, and Paula screamed in horror as she-saw it crash into the edge of her boy friend's forehead.

"Carl, Carl!" she shouted. But the girl's entreaties would do no good whatsoever. Her boy friend's form had fallen limp and dangling, and now Cyclops and Tish were dragging it toward the bushes nearby.

No longer able to control her grief and anguish, Paula gave a howl of rage and flung herself towards the two men who were holding her boy friend captive. "Let him go!" she screamed, pounding both men with her useless, little-girl fists. "Let Carl GO!" In her fury

Paula bowled Tish over and sent him flying, but one hand from Cyclops flicked out and dug painfully into the nerves at the side of Paula's neck, and she moaned and whimpered and then fell in a heap.

Veena seemed to be amused at this worthless attempt to resist. "This child seems to think she can defy us," she rasped, "but she must find out for herself that any attempt to disobey my wishes will result in pain and torment for the disobedient one." Veena watched in satisfaction as Cyclops and Tish dragged the still-thrashing Carl behind one of the bushes, then gestured to another one of her men-a short, swarthy man with a dark complexion and piercing eyes. "Hernandez, you and Estrogen bind that girl's hands securely. Leave her legs free, though. She has quite a bit of traveling to do."

"Sure, Veena, sure," babbled Estrogen happily, in his child-like voice. "We'll tie 'er up good. Me and Hernandez, we'll tie 'er up good."

"Shut up, Estrogen," barked Veena. As she spoke the fingers of her right hand toyed idly with the handle of her whip. It had been a long time since Estrogen had felt the bite of it, she reflected. Perhaps too long....

Paula felt as though she ought to run, to flee for her life while still she had the chance.

Behind her she could hear Tish and Cyclops doing something to Carl, something that did not sound at all pleasant.

And then Hernandez and Estrogen were upon her, holding her hands behind her back in a death grip and binding them securely with a cord that Hernandez produced from his jacket. It seemed to Paula that Hernandez, who was half a head shorter than she was, was immensely heavy for a man of his size and the possessor of a strength equal to if not greater than that of Frog. As for Estrogen, who tied Paula's hands eagerly while Hernandez held her, the girl seriously doubted that he would be able to stand up to one punch from her if she got the chance to use it.

Paula was, quite understandably, scared. She was stark naked and helpless in the clutches of these seven raving maniacs, these men and this woman who were so far gone that they had almost passed the borders of humanity.

Paula noticed that there was one more man, one more person who had not yet moved. He was tall, perhaps even seven feet tall, and as thin as a rail. He stood behind Veena motionless, without twitching a single muscle. The man's hands and head were too large for his body, and his face was split into a maniacal grin that was certainly not human. There was evil in that grin, Paula decided. She wondered what must be wrong with this man's face, that made him hold it for so long in that same death's-head grin.

At last Hernandez and Estrogen had finished their work. Paula stole a glance in the direction of the bushes where Carl had disappeared and saw that there was no sign of him at all. Only the bushes, waving gently to and fro....

Tish, Cyclops and Frog were coming closer now, forming a ring with Estrogen and Hernandez around the naked, captive blonde girl. They looked at their mistress Veena, who nodded to show she approved. "Excellent. Estrogen, pick up the girl's clothes." The short, fungus-covered man did as he was told, and Veena turned to face Paula. "We are taking you to Ravenspur, where you will be given the punishment you so richly deserve for your crimes."

"What crimes?" Paula demanded. She felt Hernandez give her a dig in the back, and Frog growled.

Paula felt sick. She knew that these people were sadists, and probably rapists. The woman named Veena was almost definitely a lesbian. Paula was absolutely certain that she would never escape from them alive. She saw Estrogen casting a lascivious look in the direction of her naked breasts, and was sure of it.

Veena made a gesture in the direction of the sixth man, the one who had not yet moved. "Bertie, lead the way to Ravenspur,"

The sixth man came forward, and Paula screamed. She had the awful sensation that the man was not walking, that he was slowly FLOATING along the ground without moving his feet. It was hard to see the lower half of his legs in the dimness and through the underbrush, but still the impression was there.

Bertie slithered past Paula and went forward, and it seemed to the girl that the grass was parting before him as he walked. She felt Hernandez and Tish give her a prod in the lower half of the spine, and then she was stumbling forward timidly.

Paula's mind was racing at a mile a minute, trying to come up with an answer to all the questions she had. Undoubtedly these creatures, despite their outward appearances, had once been PEOPLE, although by now they were too far gone for it to show very much. They were definitely insane, and Paula was absolutely certain that she would be tortured, gang-raped and then killed as slowly and as gainfully as possible.

And there was nothing she could do to stop it-

Absolutely nothing at all....