Kill For Satan Read online

  “The actual devil is here tonight?”

  The hopeful note in his voice astonished Micah in the wake of his earlier thoughts, but it was definitely there.

  Sindie squeezed his hand again. “Yes. I’m glad you’re here with me for this.”

  “So am I. I love you.”

  Sindie tugged at his hand and turned him toward her, raising up on her toes to kiss him on the mouth. “I love you, too, baby. Hail Satan.”

  TWO

  Micah’s second midnight mass was similar to his first only in the sense that it featured a blood sacrifice at the beginning. Another drugged-out young woman was brought into the clearing and placed on the altar. The priestess came out of the woods and climbed the platform’s steps to stand above the altar with the strange snake dagger in hand. Once again, she was wearing only the long velvet cape and white plague mask that covered the top half of her face. Micah’s cock stiffened instantly at the sight of her. As before, the hooray-for-Satan chants started up as the woman raised the dagger high over her head.

  This time, however, he experienced none of the disbelief and trepidation he’d felt the last time. There was no sense of horror at the plight of the sacrificial victim on the altar. A collective giddiness permeated the air. Micah looked around and saw people smiling beneath the cowls of their robes. Somewhere out in the midst of all that Satanic humanity, a girl couldn’t stop giggling. Micah soon found himself giggling, too. Then he burst out laughing when the dagger arced downward and the tip of the blade plunged into one of the victim’s breasts. He wasn’t the only one. A lot of the faithful were laughing. The sound of hysterical laughter only grew louder as the woman on the altar squirmed and attempted—to no avail, of course—to get away from the knife.

  On a disconnected level, he remained aware of how absurd, obscene, and horrific this vicious murder was, especially juxtaposed against all this uncontrolled hilarity. Knowing this, however, did nothing to dampen what he was feeling. He felt connected to the people around him in a way he hadn’t last time. They were drawing energy from each other and recirculating that energy in a way that felt like a deep immersion into some kind of dark magic. Yes, magic. Micah could think of no other word that applied. He felt enveloped in it. A vibrating field of invisible power. It was more intoxicating than any drug on earth. Micah found himself wishing he could live inside this feeling forever.

  Hail Satan!

  The priestess continued to hack away at the busty blonde beauty on the altar. Had he really thought she attacked the victim in a frenzied manner last time? Because after this he was going to have to reassess his definition of frenzied. The lady was going wild with that fucking dagger. She was like a beast. Like a thing possessed. At one point she leaned over the altar and ripped away a piece of bloody tit meat with her teeth. Micah watched in awe and appreciation as she swallowed the piece of flesh whole. After that she continued to hack away at the now definitely dead victim with wild abandon for several more minutes. By the time she stopped, the dead thing on the altar scarcely resembled anything human. Even the face had been mangled beyond recognition.

  Then she dropped the dagger and plunged both of her hands deep into the dead woman’s shredded abdominal cavity and reached up under her ribcage. The strength on display as she rooted around inside the body and eventually ripped out the woman’s heart was stupefying. No coroner tools were necessary this time. Micah couldn’t imagine any woman possessing the necessary strength for a thing like that, not even the musclebound bodybuilder type of gal, and this woman looked nothing like that. For that matter, he had a hard time envisioning any man being able to do it. He was pretty sure tearing a human body apart wasn’t nearly as easy as zombies made it look in the movies. It would require an unnatural level of strength.

  The priestess removed her cape and climbed atop the altar to stand before the gathered acolytes with the blood-dripping heart clutched tightly in her raised right hand. She looked like an ancient barbarian woman holding aloft the severed head of a defeated enemy. This impression was banished about a second after it formed in Micah’s head, because that was when he began to perceive the glow emanating from the eyes and open mouth of the priestess. This light intensified quickly and soon was brighter by far than the light cast by the flames of the bonfire. It pierced the evening sky like searchlights.

  As Micah watched this with mounting awe tinged with an underlying, respectful fear, he realized an earlier thought of his was far more accurate than his barbarian queen impression. She was possessed. There was something inside her that wasn’t human. That was the source of the unnatural level of strength. It was a demon. A ghost.

  Or …

  Satan.

  All doubt was dispelled when the entity inside the priestess began to speak in a thunderous, stentorian voice. That sense of overpowering elation and ecstasy ramped relentlessly upward as the assembled acolytes listened to the darkly wondrous things their master had to say. He had come among them to deliver a message and send them on a mission. Each acolyte was charged with the task of bringing the devil as many pure souls as possible, from which he would draw immense power. The souls of those not yet touched by sin. Those who had not yet known the pleasures of the flesh. The more pure souls his followers delivered, the greater their eventual reward.

  Tomorrow was Halloween.

  And on that day the devil’s faithful were to go out into their various communities and kill.

  Kill all the virgins.

  With the message delivered, the supernatural light faded from the eyes of the priestess. The consciousness of the woman behind the mask reassumed control of her body. The heart of tonight’s victim was still clutched in her hand. She brought the organ to her mouth and slowly lapped the blood from it with her preternaturally long tongue in a way Micah found overpoweringly erotic.

  Then she smiled and summoned the faithful to the altar, where they were to taste the blood and flesh of the innocent, pure soul taken that night. This, they were told, would give them the ability to identify other pure souls by sight. One by one, the acolytes climbed the steps to the platform to taste the dead woman’s blood and devour bits of her flesh. By the time each member of the congregation had finished taking a taste, not much was left of the corpse.

  Next the robes came off and the acolytes went at each other with their usual level of utter abandon. An attractive girl was standing nearby. She had cherry-red hair and luscious bee-stung lips. Sindie grabbed her and threw her to the ground. Then she pounced on her. Micah made no move toward any of the many potential partners in the vicinity. He fended off several advances while keeping his gaze on the priestess. She would come to him soon. He was certain of it.

  She did not disappoint him.

  THREE

  The twice-weekly meetings of the Youth Abstinence League of Littleburg (commonly known by its acronym, YALL) were held each Wednesday and Sunday. Membership consisted almost entirely of teenagers from devoutly religious families. Some belonged to the group because they sincerely wanted to preserve their virginity until they were married, believing it was what Jesus wanted of them. Most of the kids in this category would sooner blind themselves by shoving fire-heated pokers slowly through their eyeballs than risk doing anything that might endanger their future in heaven.

  Other members of the group did not possess these beliefs. They were there because it was what their devoutly religious parents wanted. A stranger walking into any given meeting of YALL would be able to instantly identify members in this second category. They were the obviously unhappy ones. Kids who desperately wished they could be anywhere else doing anything else. They lived under a cloak of oppression, going through the motions of pretending to believe things their parents told them they should believe while yearning for the day when they would be free to make their own decisions about faith and live life for themselves.

  Seth Thornton had been forced to join the group three months ago, after his mother walked into his room unannounced and caught him masturbatin
g to a lesbian porn video on his laptop. She screamed and went running out of the room to fetch her husband. An aggravated Seth hurriedly clicked out of the video and put his wilting junk away, managing to get zipped up before his father came charging into the room. The man’s face was red with rage. Before Seth could say a word in his own defense, his dad’s huge fist crashed across his jaw, knocking him to the floor.

  The blow was hard enough to make him woozy and he needed a minute to clear his head. His father continued to scream at him while his mother stood outside his bedroom door and wailed like a grief-stricken widow at a funeral. The things his father was screaming at him were just noise in those first moments after being hit. A muffled roar coming from somewhere far away. Then the fog finally cleared enough for him to understand.

  “What do you have to say for yourself!?” his father screamed. “What do you have to say for yourself!?”

  Just those same words over and over, like a scratchy old record stuck on a groove.

  A trickle of blood slid down Seth’s chin as he managed to raise his head off the floor and stare blearily at his father. “I’ll never forget to lock my door again. That’s what I have to say for myself.”

  His father’s face got even redder—a thing Seth wouldn’t have thought possible—as he called his son an insolent little brat. At that point he began to remove his belt. The prolonged whipping that ensued was something Seth would never forget. That was the day he realized he would always hate his father. One day he would move far away and never again see either of his parents. He would try to forget they even existed.

  For now, though, he had no choice but to live by their rules and accept the punishment they deemed necessary for his transgression. In discussing the incident with them afterward, he learned the act of masturbation alone wasn’t the big issue for them. They didn’t approve of it, but by itself it would have been a minor problem. He was a teenaged boy. Teenagers did such things. Sometimes they just couldn’t help it, despite it being shameful in the eyes of God.

  The thing that really upset them was what he had been watching while pleasuring himself. His mother sobbed as she recounted the horror she’d felt at seeing the images of two women having sex with each other. Seth’s father glared at him and shook his head in disgust. They told him homosexuality in any form was a sin, even when it involved two women rather than two men. He was probably already doomed to hell just for having watched the video, but they said they loved him anyway and weren’t ready to give up on him just yet.

  Worried he was on the brink of heading down a slippery slope of sin and depravity, his parents insisted he attend religious counseling sessions every week. He was also ordered to join YALL. These were non-negotiable requirements for remaining in their house. If he failed to do what they wanted, he would be kicked out and left to fend for himself, something he wasn’t quite capable of doing just yet. Seth wasn’t completely sure they had any real legal basis to do that. He was still a minor, after all, and wouldn’t reach legal adult status for almost another year. But this was a mid-sized town in the Bible Belt. Legal or not, he was at the mercy of his parents in this matter.

  So here he was on yet another Wednesday afternoon after school, sitting in his car in the parking lot outside the church where YALL held its twice-weekly meetings in the basement. This was never a fun time for him, but this week the Wednesday meeting happened to fall on Halloween. He’d rather be at home watching the horror movie marathon on Channel 39. Other kids his age would be going to haunted houses or costume parties. He’d love nothing more than to hang out with his friends later tonight. They could walk around the neighborhood and soak in the spooky atmosphere. His parents, however, did not approve of Halloween celebrations of any type, which they deemed pagan and evil.

  Of fucking course.

  His car’s engine was running and the radio was tuned to the static-riddled signal of a distant classic rock station, the only thing he considered remotely listenable on the AM/FM dial. The car was a decades-old Subaru with an ugly tan paint job speckled with rust. Even if he still had a phone, he wouldn’t be able to pair it with the ancient radio via Bluetooth and stream better music. His parents had confiscated his phone and laptop after the masturbation incident. These things provided easy access to sources of corruption and he clearly could not be trusted with them.

  It was all so endlessly and profoundly frustrating for Seth. He was chafing under the mental strain of all the extreme restrictions placed on his existence. His parents were oppressed idiots suffering from a deeply rooted form of religious mania they would take with them to their graves. Escape was all he wanted, but it was beyond reach for now. He couldn’t just drive his car out of town and leave all this crap behind. The Subaru wasn’t reliable and he doubted he’d get very far before it broke down. Besides that, he had no money and nowhere to go.

  I’m fucking stuck.

  He sighed resignedly.

  Oh, well. Might as well get this over with.

  He shut off the Subaru’s engine and reached for the door handle. Before he could open the door, he glanced at his rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of another car pulling into the parking lot. His breath caught in his throat and his heart started beating faster. The car was one he recognized, a yellow Mini Cooper with two vertical black stripes on the hood that made it look sort of like an enormous, motorized bumble bee. It belonged to Caitlin Winthrop, who’d gotten it as a sweet sixteen gift from her parents.

  Seth’s hand remained on the door handle as he watched Caitlin’s Mini zoom past him and pull to a stop in a space near the entrance to the church. She got out a moment later, wearing a white button-down top and a short, pleated skirt. Seth felt a surge of lust as he watched her walk down the sidewalk toward the entrance. He grimaced and squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.

  Caitlin was the sexiest girl Seth had ever seen, either on TV or in real life. Or on the internet, for that matter. There wasn’t a porn babe alive who could compare to Caitlin. She was his dream girl. Too bad she barely knew he existed. She was a snooty rich bitch who never even looked at him during YALL meetings. Even more confounding was her apparent genuine devotion to premarital abstinence. How could she look that amazing and not be an unstoppable sexual dynamo?

  It was a fucking mystery.

  Sighing again, Seth got out of the car and followed Caitlin into the church.

  FOUR

  Earlier in the day …

  The alarm on his phone went off at noon. Micah groaned and rolled onto his side to reach for it, his hand fumbling around on the nightstand until he was able to grip the phone and hit the stop button. With the annoying tone of the alarm silenced, he groaned and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

  He looked around and realized Sindie wasn’t in the room with him. Not a big deal or source of concern. She almost always woke up before he did, sometimes hours earlier. He would most likely find her in their apartment’s spare bedroom, a space she used as her art studio. She typically worked on her art in the morning before going off to her afternoon shift at the record store. Thinking he would go peek in for a look at her current work-in-progress, he got up and pulled on some sweatpants.

  After yawning and stretching, he walked out of the bedroom and down the hall. The door to the spare bedroom was standing open. He peeked in and frowned when he saw Sindie wasn’t in there. An unfinished painting depicting naked Satanists frolicking around a bonfire sat on an easel in the middle of the room. Like all her work, it was visually striking and vividly rendered. As always, he was impressed. Lately she’d been selling every piece she completed. Sometimes an individual piece would fetch a sum that was more than their monthly rent. At this point, the record store income was just a bonus. Micah truly believed she would be famous someday.

  Then he flashed back to last night’s Satanic mass. His frown deepened as he remembered the murderous mission he and the other members of the congregation had been assigned at the end of the blood ceremony. He cringed at th
e memory of eating bits of the sacrificial victim’s flesh, his stomach twisting as he recalled the physical sensation of the bloody meat sliding down his throat. He’d reveled in it at the time. It was as if he’d been drugged, as if he’d been a different person entirely. Now, though, he only felt sick.

  Sweat broke out on his brow and a moment later Micah was running back down the hall to the bathroom. He got there in time to drop to his knees in front of the toilet, raise the lid, and vomit into the bowl. The puke came out in a hot rush, striking the water hard enough to make droplets of it splash against his face. He heaved a few more times before his stomach ceased convulsing. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he stared at the mess in the toilet bowl and wondered if any of what he was seeing consisted of partially digested pieces of human flesh.

  Probably.

  This unpleasant truth made his stomach twist again.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  Sindie was standing just inside the bathroom’s open door. Wearing only a pair of tiny black cotton shorts and a sleeveless black t-shirt with the Cradle of Filth logo on the front, she struck a disapproving pose, glaring at him with her arms folded beneath her breasts.

  “Did you hear me, Micah?”

  He nodded and shakily wiped more sweat from his brow. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just not feeling that great suddenly.”

  “Okay, but you need to get your shit together. We need to get out there and start collecting souls.”

  Micah grimaced. “Are we really still doing that?”

  Sindie’s glare intensified. “Of course we are. Now get up and get out here. There’s something you need to see.”

  And with that she was gone, backing out of the bathroom and heading back down the hall to the living room. Her demeanor clearly indicated she had no interest in debating the subject with him. The leaving without a word thing was a tactic she’d used frequently during their months together, her way of completely shutting down any potential disagreement. Early on he’d learned the wisdom of never trying to press a point when she did this.