Chapter 1
It wasn't much of a ceremony, as Black Masses go, but then Leo Lupus hadn't come for the ritual.
Flesh was what he desired.
Fresh young female flesh tender-vulnerable.
Sweet young flesh for the cult and its master.
This was a sort of cult, too, this misbegotten ragtag collection of half-baked occultists, confused thrill-seekers, and kinky sex freaks.
The meeting was held in the basement of a private home in a fashionable, expensive suburban community in northeastern New Jersey.
The time?
Midnight right on the borderline between Friday night and Saturday morning, on this frigid winter night.
In the basement it was warm ... hot. Thick with smoke, incense, hashish, stale perfume, sweat, leather.
Hot from the collective body heat of the ritualists.
There were about fifteen of them down here in the basement. Actually, the area was too clean and comfortable and spacious to be counted as a basement.
But it was located underground, its ceiling was the floor of the first floor of the house. It was a wide, spacious area, low-ceilinged.
At the far end of the space, opposite the narrow wooden staircase which connected with the ground floor, was the altar.
Hung on the wall behind the altar was a red banner covered with black runes and symbols of seeming mystic significance.
To a true scholar of the occult like Lupus, the magical trappings of what was essentially an S&M swingers group was laughably pretentious.
The altar was a square, solid wooden platform, blocky, waist-high, covered with a red satin covering that draped down to the floor.
An ivory human skull sat on top of the altar.
The members of the group were an attractive bunch, made up basically of affluent, bored couples who had come in search of a new kinky kick.
Their numbers were about evenly divided between male and female, with the ages ranging from middle twenties to late forties, the average being distributed somewhere in the middle of the range.
The altar was on a dais which raised it a foot or so higher than floor level. Mats and cushions covered the floor facing the altar.
On those mats and cushions knelt the cultists.
Their backs were facing Lupus, who stood in the shadows at the rear of the room, his eyes glowing redly in the dimness.
The members were wrapped in black cloaks with pointed hoods, full-length flowing cloaks which covered them from head to toe.
Male and female, they were naked under those cloaks.
Lupus, too, was naked under the cloak which he wore, in deference to the sensibilities and rituals of the group of which he was a guest.
The High Priestess, Bella Sime, was an associate of Lupus.
He knew that she, at least, was the real thing.
Among this group of jaded thrill seekers, Bella was a wolf among the sheep.
Lupus, too, was a two-legged wolf.
Bella did not belong to Lupus' master but she knew him. Feared him. And sought to curry favor with him by assisting his agent. Lupus.
Lupus was a mature white male. His age lay somewhere between thirty and forty, but was impossible to pin down beyond that.
He had thick black hair, cut short and close to the scalp. He was clean-shaven, with a wide, bony, monk-like face, hard-edged and hollowed.
Up at the altar, Bella Sime conducted the ceremony.
She was forty, with a face that looked fifty and a body that looked thirty.
She was tall and strong and full-bodied. Her black hair was full and glossy and framed her wide face like a helmet.
Her face showed the dissipation that too much wanton pleasure had produced. It was prematurely aged and carved with hard lines.
It was attractive in a harsh way. Her brows were dark, her lips painted bright red, her skin very white and pale.
She wore a cloak draped over her shoulders, its hood thrown back to expose her head, the cloak held clasped closed at her throat.
She was assisted in her duties by Wilson Holloway and a girl named Kimberly.
Wilson Holloway was the leader of this cult. In the real world, he was a very prosperous stockbroker, quite wealthy.
But this was his true calling.
He had arranged and organized the group, from among a band of ultra-sophisticated swingers in search of newer, more intense excitement.
The group had been in existence informally about six months. Only recently, Holloway had made contact with Bella Sime.
Bella was famous or notorious-among the deviant set, both in the realm of the occult, and the world of bizarre sexuality.
Bella had visited some of the cult meetings and directed the proceedings, as she now was doing, with Wilson Holloway deferring to her.
Holloway was a mature, handsome man in his late forties, with a fine-featured face and dark brown hair graying at the sides.
He was six feet tall, well-built, in good condition.
Kimberly was Bella's assistant for this gathering. Lupus took notice when she moved into the light, out of the shadow at the rear of the altar.
The area was dimly lit, and what light there was, was furnished by candles, thick black candles which stood erect in holders.
Quite literally erect for each of the foot-long, thick, waxy black candles was shaped in the form of a stiffly erect penis.
As the flickering flames burned and the candle melted, the erections turned liquid, spilling gouts of hot wax down the candle.
The candles were collected mostly around the altar, to light the area. A few more were sparsely scattered around the room.
The lights threw strange, angular, twisted shadows as the trio of Bella Sime, Kimberly, and Wilson Holloway circulated on the platform of the altar.
Kimberly was just about the youngest participant, and despite the heavy make-up she wore, had to be in her very early twenties, possibly her late teens.
The ritual commenced.
Bella was crowned high priestess of the ceremony. A real crown stood close at hand, a diadem of cold black iron with spear-bladed points.
Wilson Holloway raised the crown over the head of Bella, chanting the appropriate prayer, while she stood facing the worshippers.
From the kneeling black-hooded and cloaked worshippers, came the droning response and answers to the invocation.
Wilson Holloway reverently fitted the circlet of black iron on Bella's head, so that it circled her scalp like a headband.
This done, Holloway stepped aside, making room for Kimberly so that she might hand Bella the rod of authority:
A whip.
It was a cat-O'-nine-tails, with a fifteen-inch dildo-shaped handle. Nine thick black leather thongs sprouted from the handle's head.
The cat lay on a red silk cushion, which Kimberly held.
The red eyes of Lupus glowed brighter when Kimberly stepped forward.
A sneering smile curved his thin, bloodless lips.
This wench was a beauty! Even though she did her best to cover up her good looks under too-dramatic make-up.
She was a little rebel, a type Lupus had encountered more than once.
Her pretty chestnut-brown hair was worn in a strange, spiky hairstyle, so that it bristled out in all directions.
Her face was long and fine-boned, delicately featured. Make-up lay on it as thickly as a mask.
Her brows were dark and arched. Her lashes were thick, and her shining eyes were ringed with purple eye shadow laid on too heavily.
Her lips were painted blood-red, with lipstick that shimmered there like wet paint. A black beauty mark was drawn in close to her mouth.
Dangling from the lobes of her pierced ears were a pair of rings, shining silver rings shaped in the form of the skull-and-crossbones.
Kimberly was into the punk, New Wave look, the latest style in adolescent revolt in defiance of adult standards of good taste.
Only the latest. Before them had been the hippies, and before the hippies the beatniks, and so on down the line.
Such childish postures amused Lupus no end. Children, dressed in fanciful garb, making their little gestures and noises of rebellion.
Today, such way-out clothes and make-up and attitudes would serve their purpose well-namely, to drive Mommy and Daddy up the wall.
But in a few years hence, the little rebels would hang up their costumes and rejoin the establishment and grow into little cloned copies of the very parents they had so futilely rebelled against.
What did such of they know of rebellion?! Bah!
Now, Lupus was the real thing he had rebelled against every law of man, God, and decency.
He watched Kimberly with avid interest, his red eyes glowing.
Wrapped in the black cloak as she was, he still could make out the fine lines of her high-bosomed, slender, long-legged physique.
She stood with her head bowed while Bella took up the cat.
Kimberly stepped back, out of the way.
Kimberly and Wilson Holloway, standing on either side of Bella and the altar, went down the side of the room.
Each of them selected one of the worshippers from the group, and brought the selected duo up to the altar.
There was a man, and a woman.
Damon, the man, was in his mid-thirties. He had short brown hair, dark eyes, a mustache. He was stocky, well-built, hairy.
Angela was the woman young lady, rather, for she was in her mid-twenties.
She was short and buxom, with attractive Mediterranean good looks. She had a round face with dark brown eyes and a Roman nose and wide, sensual lips.
Angela was about five feet tall, perhaps an inch or two over that mark. She had a swelling bosom, small waist, wide bottom.
On the altar platform, Angela weaved unsteadily.
Kimberly stood behind Angela and held her lightly by the arms, supporting her.
Damon's eyes were unnaturally bright and glazed, as were Angela's indeed, as were the eyes of almost all the cultists.
For they all of them had imbibed and smoked and snorted a variety of potent drugs to put them in the proper head for the ritual.
The ceremony could now begin.
Wilson Holloway lifted the human skull from its place of repose in the center of the altar, and reverently set it aside.
It was put in a place from which it had a fine vantage point of the altar as if the skull had eyes that could see, in those hollow black sockets.
Kimberly guided Angela to one side of the altar, while Wilson Holloway did the same for Damon, bringing him to the opposite side.
The cloaks of Damon and Angela were removed and set aside.
Naked, the pair stood facing the cultists.
That Angela was a tasty little tart, Lupus decided-but such as her could always be procured under ordinary methods.
No, this night, he sought something special.
Angela's flesh was golden and tawny and glowing. Her breasts were melons of flesh, crowned by fat brown nipples showing wide aureoles.
Her hips were wide. Her bush was thick and dark and brown, mostly covering a fat pubic mound and a pair of thick pussy lips.
Her thighs and bottom were plump but not fat.
Damon had broad shoulders, a square torso, hairy chest, belly, groin. He had a flat belly and a thick, limp uncircumcised penis and heavy balls.
Damon and Angela were displayed in their nudity to the cultists.
At a command from Bella Sime, Angela and Damon were stretched across the altar and locked into restraint for the ritual.
Heads bobbed and excitement murmured through the watching cultists, as Damon and Angela, standing at opposite ends of the platform, were bent forward from their waists, so that their upper bodies rested on the altar top.