The barn's equipment bay has a wide set of double doors that are usually closed with a heavy-duty lock and chain.

Ishmael goes in there sometimes—maybe once or twice a day—and it's no great secret. He probably has something to hide in there, but he acts like it's a trifle, never particularly cautious when he slips inside, closing those doors—and perhaps locking them—at his back.

In passing, I've captured a few glimpses. Hooks, ropes, chains, antique farm equipment, too rusty to serve any agricultural purpose. If there are any other uses, I've never had a reason . . . or the balls . . . to be too curious.

Brock occasionally follows him in there. Some of that shit is heavy and dangerous. A vampire's strength, endurance, and inclination to do manual labor—they dry up, sooner than you might think.

What drifts out of there isn't always what you'd expect. Lately, it sounds like they're shuffling things around, like the area is actually for storage and they're tidying up a bit. A little fall cleaning...

As far as I'm aware, their darker deeds are achieved elsewhere, out of sight but necessarily out of mind.

The wolves don't usually see much. We change and eat in the first stall, and quick business is handled in the small adjacent office.

In truth, we don't usually venture too far into the barn unless duty happens to lead us there, or we're not where we're supposed to be.

What we can hear, however...

That's another matter entirely. Even muffled, the voices tend to carry. Call it a warning you wouldn't need twice. They're usually male, though, and I've made a career out of convincing myself that they deserve whatever it is they're crying and carrying on about. Most of the time, I'm probably right.

On Brock's leash, I've seen more and heard better. So far, it's been impersonal. Better them than me.

I warily await the day it is personal.

That day is coming. Maybe it's here already...

With a muzzle on, wrestled on just minutes ago, Brock is tugging me into the back of the barn at an odd hour—just after dusk. The darkness indoors has truly set in, and no one has bothered to flip on a light switch yet. This is usually the time for a much-needed meal and nap.

Ishmael may be a sadist—hence, the invitation with my name on it—but Brock is a creature of routine, and this is outside of our new normal.

The equipment bay doors are wide open. The space is clear of junk. A few freaks of nature, posing as people, are positioned inside like they're standing on stage, waiting for the fright fest to begin. A cauldron is hanging from a rusty iron tripod, and of course, there's something brewing. The burning coals draw attention to themselves before I can make out who exactly is in attendance, and a noxious metallic odor is masking any other scent. Pinpoints of candlelight are scattered throughout, but the area is a cavernously dark two-stories high. Add in years of dust and soot, and my eyes start to water before I walk through the door. Even if I wanted to take this all in—and I'm not sure I do—I'm running into some hurdles.

Brock and I cross the threshold. Whatever party they're having, we're the last to arrive. With my chain wrapped around Brock's hand and wrist, he slams the doors shut and lowers the wooden bar lock. The echo disrupts the morbid silence of the space.

My wolf eyes slowly adjust. Ivy is by the foot of an antique gurney with a thin, tattered mattress and no sheets. It's empty . . . for the time being...

Rosemary is to Ivy's left. Rollin, in human form, is on her right. Ivy has what appears to be an old spellbook on a stand in front of her. She's poring over the open page and doesn't even flinch at the interruption.

Rosemary is easier to distract and glowers at Brock and I over her shoulder, as expected. She may not be the most intimidating, but she is the haughtiest of the three sisters, always acting as if she's too good for anyone but Ishmael.

When it finally dawns on Ivy that the doors are closed, she sweeps her long fake curls behind her ears and off her neck and rolls up the sleeves of her sweater. "Let us begin."

Rollin lurches into action and retreats from view. He returns with a listless body over his shoulder. Sam.

I whimper and pull forward, but with a verbal command and a tug, Brock insists that I "sit."

The evidence of maltreatment makes for a long list. She has a gag in her mouth. Her hair is loose and in tangles. Some of it is in her eyes and mouth. Her white nightgown is smudged with dirt, grime, and probably blood. Plus, it's drafty in here and a chilly night in general. For reference, Ivy's wearing a long wooly sweater, and Rosemary has a trendy coat and matching hat, and goddamn leather gloves on! Sam would probably be shivering up a storm, but her body doesn't seem to be reacting. Some kind of drug or sedation draft must have taken effect. She's not unconscious, but she can't seem to do more than loll around in Rollin's arms.

Rollin unceremoniously dumps her onto the gurney. "Her nightgown?" he asks Ivy as he's about to shackle her in place.

Even doped up, Sam seems to know that she's about to be violated, no matter what the answer is. Her hands attempt to grip onto something at her sides. It's just some feeble scratching against the mattress, but the intensity seems to pick up.

"Leave it on." Ivy pulls her warm sweater more tightly over her chest and flicks her hand at the gurney. Beyond that, she doesn't divert much attention away from the page she's on. "They'll be perfectly preoccupied with her insides. Pull the gag, though."

Rollin completes this first and with little delicacy. Sam doesn't have it in her to scream and can't put up much of a fight when he grabs for her wrist.

While he's closing it into the shackle, Sam's head swivels toward me. Her glossy blue eyes drift open.

I can't sit still or stay quiet, even with a chain and muzzle. Maybe my whining and unease will alert her somehow—this is my fault, but I'm just as much a prisoner now, and this is torture to me, too.

Sam doesn't let on that she's absorbing any of that. I could go absolutely batshit crazy trying to figure out why. I'd like to blame it on the sedation, but it may be her indifference toward me—or worse—and a degree of resignation that's demoralizing but warranted in her circumstances. Whether I'm heartless or just useless to her, it looks the same and changes nothing. She'd think very little of me either way.

Brock smacks me across the head. By the time I shake the stars from my vision, Sam's staring blankly into the dark space above her. 

Rollin finishes her wrists and moves to her ankles.

"Hands only," Ivy instructs further, this time turning her head. Rosemary's attention shifts too, and while Ivy is shrewd, Rosemary is just mildly curious, like she's bored and this is the only remedy for the night. "She'll need some freedom of motion..."

Although I would never expect Rosemary to sympathize with Sam, I wouldn't expect her to be Ivy's accomplice, either. According to Ivy—and yes, I now realize that I should take everything she's ever said to me with not just a grain but a whole spoonful of salt—Rosemary can be vicious and conniving in her own subtle way. It would make more sense if she sat this one out. She's known to get insanely jealous of anyone who has something she doesn't. Now that she's not the fairest of them all—that's Sam—or the most accomplished—Ivy—I find it hard to believe Rosemary's not moping in her room, cradling her failed voodoo-doll attempts, just waiting for Ishmael to boost her up the only way they know how.

In other words, what's in it for her?

Since she's here and compliant, I don't know what to make of it, exactly, but it cements the notion—she is not an ally. With Faolan allegedly falling to the wrong side of the fence, my list has only one name—Shilo. Rosemary's status is not altogether surprising, though. Or all that disappointing. She'd probably do more harm than good, regardless.

"All right. Places everyone." Ivy points out a spot for Rollin beside the gurney so that he and I are facing each other.

He widens his stance and links his hands behind his back, like evildoing is hard but honorable work. He adds in a smirk for my sake. It should be my place—chief lackey—but he's there instead.

"On second thought, Rollin..." Ivy scrunches up her nose at the appearance of him there. "Your presence seems superfluous with Brock and the other dog here. We'll manage just fine without you. You're free to go," she informs him, twisting her wrist toward the door, taking no notice of his shock and blatant disappointment. Or his renewed disdain for me... 

This is not a victory I'm jumping for joy about, but he doesn't know that, and I make sure to stare him down on his route toward the door.  

Brock and I escort Rollin out, barring the door behind him, and Ivy directs her sister toward the head of the gurney.

Rosemary takes off her gloves and removes her phone from her coat pocket. She plays with the zoom, like she's getting ready to record something.

Brock then gets a single nod from Ivy. We're in the center of the room again, between Sam and the door. 

After he nods once in return, Ivy spares me a glance. The "behave" is familiar to me, but the new level of contempt promises a whole lot of pain if I betray her again.

Not one to waste time, especially on me, Ivy resumes facing forward, her back to me. Around her hair, I get only a view of her cheek and one eye when she rotates her head toward the gurney.

After rolling her shoulders and stretching her neck, she lifts both hands and looks to Rosemary, who taps her screen and gives Ivy a thumbs up.

"Phase One, the Claiming," Ivy says aloud, raising her hands a little higher, like a music conductor about to set the tempo. "To you, oh angels of darkness," she then calls out, loud and clear.

It takes a few seconds, but a surge of air ripples through the room with a slight whistle.

As it happens, Sam's muscles seem to tighten. Her eyes are closed, and her consciousness is in question, but the discomfort finds a way to break through her calm, drug-induced façade.

Her head snaps from side to side. Her knees go up as if to block an intrusion or mitigate the influx of pain.

"Accept this summon to the earthly realm..." Ivy eyes her surroundings and then glances at the camera, where she is the focus. "I, Ivy Fowler, am your loyal servant and with great pride, I present to you this offering. A mortal virgin, a womb in menses, for your partaking. Feast on her femininity. Relish the pleasures of the flesh. Earthly dominion in the making. If you, contenders of the damned, are worthy..."

Ivy lowers her hands and removes a vial of dark liquid—Sam's blood, most likely—from the pocket of her sweater.

Slowly and dramatically, she waltzes over to the cauldron. She pours her first drop inside with whispered words and a little flourish. "The reception will now commence!"

When the third and final droplet falls, the fire seems to exult and not just below the cauldron. Across the room, the flames flare and spit sparks. It's diabolical and terrifying. The whole place could ignite!

Ivy returns to her spellbook stand. Her hands go up. And the room simmers down to an expectant hush.

"The hour is near," Ivy goes on. "Forthwith, you may indulge. Join the fray. Be the claimant you strive to be. May the most foul and feral triumph. Over this mortal body and soul. And may your seed bear fruit and fruit sow seeds. In His world and ours, forever and ever..."

Ivy's hands lower. The coals and candlelight dim to neutral.

"And now we wait?" Rosemary whispers, taking a step back and reducing the zoom of the camera angle, to capture not only the gurney, but the dark space in its vicinity.

Ivy ambles toward her sister, and together, they watch Sam twitch and whimper every so often, like she's having a bad dream. "Yes, now we wait. And hope for the very best..."

While I pray for the worst—that this won't work—to any decent entity in range of my thoughts.

But who the hell would listen to me?

While I'm expecting the gates of hell to fly open and its army to push inside the body of a hundred-pound human virgin . . . nothing seems to happen.

I breathe a sigh of relief through my nose. My mouth—and only weapon—is out of commission.

Sam goes still, like she's in a deep sleep. Even the candlelight seems solemn.

I count to sixty and then stop. After about ten more minutes, Rosemary emits a sigh of her own and lowers her phone. "Did you say something wrong?"

"Did you hear me stutter?" Ivy bickers back.

It's just like any other day with the Fowler sisters, except that Rosemary isn't offended this time. "No, but . . . it could be the girl," she utters, like Sam is the freak here. "Maybe they don't like her."

"What's not to like..." Ivy comments. "From a demon's perspective?" she slaps on top so that her first statement wouldn't seem like a compliment.

Rosemary lifts one shoulder. She can't come up with an answer . . . because there isn't one.

"Should we ask mother?" she says instead, a few beats later. 

"Fuck no!" Ivy lashes back. "She's never taken on something like this."

"Yeah, but..."

"Enough with the buts. Are you here to help or not? Just be patient . . . and keep the camera rolling. We can edit out any lulls, but we can't put something there that we missed." 

With an audible grumble, Rosemary does as she's told, repositioning her arms, and fussing again with the zoom. "Will they accept it like that?"

"They would probably know better than anyone. These things take time. And if there's nothing to detect, there's no sense wasting their time."

Ivy put a strange emphasis on they.

They must be important. Not only in general, but to her as well.

Ivy does as Ivy wants, even if she's advised against it by those who have more clout than she does.

A silence settles back in, but the stillness abates, little by little. A wave of flame flickering starts in the far corner of the room, like someone or something is approaching.

Sam's body seems to feel—and reject—this presence. She arches up, her face pained, then collapses flat, only to bounce against the thin mattress and echo that motion, higher and with more strain.

Rosemary gasps and takes a step back. Her head sways toward Ivy, her mouth agape. Ivy responds by crossing her arms, the I-told-you-so plain on her face.

"Looks like we have our first claimant." Ivy bobs her nose at the foot of the bed.

At first, I don't see anything. I'm not sure what to look for. Should I expect some material form? Or is this more of a metaphysical thing?

Then a shadow passes over the backdrop of candlelight and stirs it into a frenzy. A slight oily shimmer catches the light over Sam's body. It condenses into a black wisp of smoke that launches itself at Sam's mouth.

The dark cloud billows between her parted lips at a lax pace. She begins choking on it, coughing and sputtering, thrashing around in panic. As it overwhelms that reflex to spew, her skin goes deathly pale, and she rattles as if the end is near.

"This is the reception," Ivy narrates while I can't bear to watch anymore. "It'll just take a minute. It'll end before she suffocates."

I am not reassured, but I open my eyes anyway.

Once that scourge is fully consumed, her lungs heave twice, desperately, and then a calm seems to wash over her.

"We've moved on to the partaking." As Ivy says this, Sam's cheeks flush to a healthy pink, her breath hitches, her knees go up, and her body goes taut. She emits a slight moan when the tension breaks. Her limbs fall loose. Her breathing turns deep at this release. "Supposedly this part is pleasurable." There is another sisterly exchange of glances, and they're amused this time, like this is their kind of porn and they're doing Sam a favor. "And it will last until . . . well, here we go..."

Another wisp. More choking and flailing, worse than before. There are two "claimants" inside of her. The gurney's hinges squeak from all the abrupt and conflicting motion. There's the clanking and scraping of her wrist restraints, metal against metal. A moment of intense pleasure. A blip of relaxation. And then...

"The contention," Ivy explains, although it is unnecessary.

There's an obvious fight for territory. Sam's insides are the battleground. Her womb is sacred ground. And she's reacting how you'd expect. She's wailing and groaning, bucking like a bronco, like she's possessed. Her body is also being yanked back and forth, by some internal force, violently enough that she's smacking against the bed bars.

Before this part is even over, she's choking on the next shadow. And the next. They keep getting longer and darker, and they billow wider.

Suffocation. Pleasure. Excruciating pain. Violent movement. Again and again. In that order. Or all at once. A couple here, a few there. Pleasure usually the one falling to the wayside.

And this goes on for hours. I lose count of how many are inside of her at any given time. As one is pushed out, it's like three more demonic entities slip inside of her. In one case, it happened all at once—her mouth and two nostrils—while the "contention" climbed to a horrendous new height. 

I don't even know how she's surviving this. And won't it only get worse? Once there is a "winner"?

Why am I still watching? Why am I behaving? I'm being forced to, but is it something I could realistically overcome, with Brock as my keeper? Should I try? Even if it leads to my own death?

Brock keeps a short leash, my head only a foot away from his meaty hand, which never fails to strike me if I get too agitated. With the muzzle, they keep my mouth closed and quiet to just a whine. They can't stop me from drifting away, though. There is some mercy in this world. For a bit, I am in a blinding light and hear nothing except a dull ringing sound. It lasts until Ivy's voice cuts in like a meat cleaver.

"I think we're finally at the bridging..."

Sam's body is flat and limp on the mattress, her limbs in complete disarray, her head lolling toward us. There's a trickle of blood coming from her mouth, and down her right ankle, which is dangling over the side of the gurney.

Is she dead?

Hard to say. She's so still and disheveled.

Regardless, there is more for her body to endure, and it appears as if there will be another block of time to wait.

"What's left?" Rosemary eventually hisses to her sister, as if she's inquiring about a list of chores.

"Today?" Ivy confirms, but she doesn't wait for Rosemary's reply. "After the bridging comes the subjugation. The victor will stake his claim with a brand. That's when we'll see how well I did. I'd like a Prince of the Elements, but I fear I'm working with faulty material. It did work, but..."

"What would that look like?" Rosemary breaks in. "A prince?"

With uncharacteristic patience toward her sister, Ivy retrieves the spellbook and flips a few pages ahead of her bookmark. Between their bodies, I can pick out the strange configurations, sketched in black ink.

"There's air, water, earth, and fire, with fire being the most powerful," Ivy informs her, dragging her finger down the first page of symbols. "The claiming is open to all demonic entities. The weak will be vanquished. The highly esteemed tend to be more discriminating. Any lies she's told. Any indiscretions. Or imperfections. They'll know." Ivy turns the page, still searching for her answer. "They may partake but won't fight very hard for just anyone. I'm not sure our marginal virgin of questionable breeding will glean that level of interest, but . . . we shall see. If it's a prince, there will be the mark of royalty." She flips to the final page of symbols. The sketches stop halfway down and the regular text resumes.

Rosemary stops scanning the page at a particular symbol and points it out with the tap of her finger. "It looks sort of like a crown."

"It does, indeed," Ivy replies, cocking her head, to take it in as well, along with some of the others, of similar or greater value. 

She's quite absorbed for a bit, like she's trying to memorize everything. It makes the lift of her chin all the more sudden and shocking. She snaps the spellbook closed so abruptly, she almost drops it.

Sam's body suddenly goes taut, like someone flipped a switch and let the life flow back into her. Her ankles start to lift from the mattress by way of something other. Her legs and bottom, back and shoulders rise, too.

She's levitating from the mattress! She connected to this earth by only her wrist shackles...

Rosemary makes sure to capture this all on camera.

Sam's body is taut, flat, and lifts at an angle. Then her back begins to arch, like something is pulling her hips up and her ankles down. She's flexible, but still, she has a spine! It must be excruciating, but that's assuming she can still feel pain in the state she's in.

Her back keeps rising. Her legs refuse to follow. Now I get why they didn't tether her feet to the gurney. She'd snap in half!

When I expect to hear bones crack anyway, I'm accosted by the sound—and smell—of sizzling flesh, like she's being struck with a branding iron.

Sam then crashes to the mattress like a cord was cut. She lands like pulverized flesh, no rigidity, no connection.

While I look for signs of life, Ivy's more concerned with her results. She peels up Sam's bloody nightgown, to above her waist, and invites Rosemary over with a hand signal, overtly pleased with herself.

Rosemary strides forward and zooms in on Sam with the camera.

I don't see the wound itself, but the blistering burn by her hip takes over Rosemary's screen.

The hideous thing looks like nonsense at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it could be a flame and crown.

Did Ivy snag herself a fire prince? It must be like winning the witch lottery...

Rosemary pans toward Ivy's reaction.

"A Prince of the Inferno," she declares to Rosemary and her audience—whoever they are or will be.  

Although she doesn't visibly give me the time of day, it's an act and she's glad I'm here. She wouldn't want me to miss this opportunity for her to gloat.

And if it hits low, where it's emasculating and debilitating, all the better...

"What's next?" Rosemary wonders aloud, disrupting the moment, and for that, I'm grateful.

My ears perk up. If I'm being forced to witness all this, I'd like some idea of what's to come. If there's any advantage to it . . . it makes my suffering, my incapacitation worth something, I suppose.

"We let her heal and rest," is Ivy's answer. "She'll need all her strength for Phase Two, Copulation. That's when things really get interesting..."