Maleficarum: Hunger of the Witch (8 page)

From outside
, Hegel watched the events unfold. First there was not enough to eat and now this. It was becoming clear that this was the worst Sabbath ever. Many of the people she had known for two or three lifetimes were either running toward the house or keeling over as they danced. It was a good attempt by the trapped group, but it wasn’t going to be good enough. It was only a few minutes till the dreaded stroke of midnight, and all she needed to do was wait.

Soon the
elder witches who had not been affected yet called on the demons. “Hear us, oh dark ones; we invite you among us.”

“Show us your love and power that we might
know the truth,” the younger witches called. Hegel mounted her pitchfork and began to chant.

“Here, there, hence, thence,
” she chanted as the others joined in.

Over and over they chanted as they lifted off the ground on their chosen flying instruments. Some used brooms, others used shovels
, and some used the dead. As they flew they began to circle the great bonfire in a counterclockwise pattern. The left is the side of moral weakness, filth, and sickness, and so it was the direction they traveled to summon their masters.

“Here, there, hence, thence,
” continuously rang out in a breathy and halting manner from the fiends.

Faster and faster
, the tornado whipped as the elders screamed, “We entreat you, spirits. All who wish to come are welcome. Show yourselves or take our bodies for your own.”

Occasionally
, one of the flying witches’ bellies would burst from the witch bottles, and she would crash, howling, to the ground or into the fire. Many of the younger witches were becoming possessed by the arriving worldly spirits. They collapsed to their knees onto the blisteringly hot pavement next to the fire, and their eyes rolled into the backs of their heads, turning a light shade of sickly yellow. They spouted dark sentences and profaned all that was holy as they clawed at their own flesh.

The lesser spirits had arrived
. Now the witches were hoping they would garner the attention of the fallen angels—the true sons of darkness.

“Meet us in the fields and meet by our fires
, so we can inflict your will on God’s creation,” the elders sang. “Grind the bones of our hated enemies and corrupt their flesh with your signs. Let us eat their meat and take whatever pleasures we wish from their bodies,” they droned.

The fire seemed to cackle as if it had become alive, and the stars and moon dimmed at
their coming. Surrounding the infernal witches, faint and unnatural forms began to materialize. There were more of them than the witches themselves. It seemed that all the generals and princes of the light bearer had heard their calls. The beings slowly consolidated into flesh, showing their chosen forms.

Agares, Vassago, Valefor, Zepar, Marax, Ipes
, and Ronwe were all in attendance, and they had brought their hellish legions. Orobias appeared as a giant man with the head of a horse, and his lion-like teeth gleamed from the light of the flickering flames. Andras paced in the crowd atop his monstrously large wolf. His body was that of an angel, and his head was that of an owl. He outstretched his great white wings, and in his hand he swung a massive sword. Fur Fur walked among them in the form of an upright stag, baring his hideously sharp teeth and flapping his bat-like wings.

The air grew wet and began to smell of death. The horrendous affronts to God’s law
were out in mass this night, and many had come to see bloodshed. Never in all of Hegel’s years had she seen such a gathering of hell’s royalty. Many of them were demons even she could not name.

“What is it that you call us for
, servants?” A raucous but well-formed voice spat. Agares, a great duke of hell, slithered forward, sitting atop a massive crocodile. He looked like an elderly man with a rank and unkempt beard, and his skin was pale and damp like a man with a fever. On top of his head was a crown of gold, and in his hand he clenched a great golden staff warped by wreaths of nightshade and twisted with flowers of monkshood.

“Kill our enem
ies,” all the witches moaned, some even as they were falling dead from the erupting witches’ bottles.

“
We have given you great powers, and you cannot overcome a few children. You beg like the poor, and I turn my ears from them. Why should I lift a finger if you are so poor in spirit as to be unable to kill them? I should find more worthy servants to carry my name. You make me look foolish,” Agares thundered as he pointed a long and bony finger at the crowd of witches.

“Master
, we have tried, but they are protected with many elements that God has infused with the ability to destroy our works. We cannot lay a finger on their hiding place, and yet they can sling their arrows at us from their fortified dwelling,” Hegel protested as she landed in front of the horrendous being. These beings were so terrible that they filled even the hardest of hearts, such as Hegel's, with fear, dread, and cowardice. However she knew that there was nothing she could hide from them, and so she spoke up.

“I come ashamed. I broke with the
Lord to never feel shame, and this is what I see when I arrive. I have had to veil the eyes of those who would stop you because you picked a place that was so visible tonight. I have weaved power into your hearts. Flight, fire, invisibility, and the concocting of poisons have I shown you, and still you can’t stop but a few kids because they have placed a line of salt and have hidden behind cold iron. I have given knowledge that can destroy mighty armies, but look at how you repay me for my gifts,” the hellish voice grew in the throat of the diabolical being.

Deeper in
to the crowd of his followers, Agares bid his unholy mount, and the demonic crocodile slithered into their midst. With a snap of its jaws, it caught the leg of a naked witch who was foolish enough not to give the beast a wide berth. The witch screamed as the crocodile sucked him deeper into its mouth, but Agares spoke over his cries as the beast chomped haphazardly at the witch’s flesh.

“I have done so much for you, and now you will do for me. I will not kill them.” He pause
d for dramatic effect. “However I will break down their walls so that you can have your chance at their flesh. First though I will warn them so that they will be ready. This will be your punishment. Those who live are those who are worthy to call me god. It was your mission and your choice, Beth Hegel you caused this, so it shall be you that must fix it. You will fight them alone, and you will either seduce or die. If you fail, then the rest will attack, but not before either your blood or their blood has flavored the air.”

Out in the crowd of demons
, a frightful thing paced on his mighty steed. He was an aberration, even among the fallen. His head held higher than any rejected angels ought to, he was a thing that even other demons feared. His power was unimaginable. His hate was so contagious that it shocked whole countries. The others did not interfere with his whims. It was
intrepidus paciscor poena pro sin
(undaunted agreement to punish sin). He had killed multitudes, and he drank deeply of the blood of sinners.

The Angel Crusher, the Eater of Wings, and the Destroyer of Dark S
entences were his titles. He was Heaven’s Witch Finder General. He had many titles, but his true name was hidden to all but God and the former power itself so that none could exercise power over him but God. His name was so powerful and such a guarded secret that he was often referred to as the nameless one. Only the reins that God had placed on him kept him from obliterating all of creation.

He
wore shining armor that even the mightiest kings of history would covet, and it was steel-hardened and refined for battle. In his hand he clenched a war hammer, and at his side swung a massive silver sword. His face and body were that of an angel and on his back were four wings. His face was stoic and well
formed, but
his eyes were another matter. Blackness was drawn to them like whirlpools, and even the angel of death feared his gaze. It was a nameless evil that could shake the foundations of the earth and hell, and in his rotting soul was only malice for sin.

He
was there to take names of the sinners and eventually repay their vices with death. He was on a mission—a mission not given to him by God or any angel in heaven, but it was his own blasphemous mission of destruction.

Sinners killing sinners had always amused him, but that was
what all killing was. He was there, not out of morbid curiosity, but out of a need to write down names in his book. Not one of the demons would protest since they knew what it meant to have him there. More than death had come to the dark proceeding, and more than death would do as he wished. From the moment Nick had picked up
The Book of Eddiss
, this former power had watched. He always watched the holder of any copy of the book. In fact it was all God would allow him to do since he had so abused everything else he had been given. When it came to the book and the events surrounding it, his authority was absolute. The Eater of Wings refused to accept that he had been placed in exile for his sins, but in exile he was. He would find a way, despite the will of God, to affect the world and remake it in his own vengeful image. The time for punishing all was drawing near.

The troop
cooked their bottles with as much fervor as they could muster. The fire boiled the contents of the bottles, sending yet another wicked soul to its eternal destination. There was no time to think as they roasted the souls of the damned, and it had not occurred to them that the night had gone silent except for the screams of the dying. Beverly’s arm burned and swelled, but still she kept working.

The stillness was soon broken when all the fires of the room went dark
seemingly without cause, and then the grinding of teeth became prevalent. None of the trapped survivors dared to move, not knowing what monstrous things awaited. Darkness enveloped them. The air grew cold and somehow even staler than it had been as the sound of dozens of new lungs pumping air materialized about them in the blackness. The fires inside reignited with a hellish hiss, and they burned with unnatural green and purple flames. Around the young survivors stood the hosts of hell in all their terrible glory. No screams made by humankind could convey their hideous, radiating hate.

Not one of the five made a move or sound. They instinctively knew better. From the depth
s of their souls they shivered, and many of the survivors would have given their very souls to have the defiling forms leave them.

Valefor stepped forward. His body was like that of a lion
, but his face was the face of a man. His black mane bristled as his claws ran themselves through the carpet and into the cement slab below.

“We are around you always. Nothing you do escapes us. No thought is secret
; no deed is hidden. We know you and love you. Not in spite of what you are, but because of what you are. Hear what we holy beings have decided for you.” His voice was like the clashing of swords on armor, and the bones of his neck creaked as he gazed at each of the five fearful onlookers. “Those who wish to be saved must bow and worship at my feet.”

Ann ripped the tape from her mouth. “No!” she screamed in as powerful a voice as she could.
Every person in the room breathed a sigh of relief that someone else spoke up to address the beast.

“Then you will be left to the witches. In one
minute, we will dissolve any protection that this place and its contents offer you. They will strip your skin with their teeth and debone you slowly.”

Nick looked
into the crowd of demonic forms as the fiend spoke its words. He recognized many of them from his study of the ancient grammar,
The Book of Eddiss
. The names and attributes of most of them eluded him, but their terrible images on the pages were forever burned into his mind. Now they were here in front of him in vital flesh.

The fiery eyes of Fur Fur and the angelic features of the evil Pu
tti Volick all gazed at him with death in their eyes, but the one who filled him with the most dread was the noble-looking knight. Nick had seen his image only in
The Book of Eddiss
.

T
he story of the Eater of Wings was told in the book, and that’s why Nick was wise enough to fear him more than the rest. Heaven’s Witch Finder General was a creature of brutality and death. He was the first and most powerful of the class of angels known as the powers. Their job was to record all of history and to fight as grand warriors in God’s army.

In the beginning, t
he job of the Eater of Wings in particular was to find and punish all those who committed the most horrific of sins, and he was unmerciful in his pursuit. The angel had loved to punish the wicked. The angel, loved it more than God, and soon it became clear to all that he was willing to punish the most trivial of offenses in the most brutal of ways. Moreover, he then turned on the angels themselves just so he could get a chance to deal out his wrath. His hate of sin was so strong that it corrupted and hardened the once noble being’s heart.

Cast from heaven to
earth and kept under tight reins, the creature still raged to inflict his vigilantism. It was this being who incited nations to carry God’s name in vain when they committed atrocities. It was he who spurred the hearts of men to murder in God’s name and to brutalize the innocent. This fallen angel had always found humans to be more than willing to cast God aside in all but name and fight for the Eater of Wings and his twisted vision. He had really not had to force humans to do a thing. All he did was offer his hand, and some politician, king, church leader, bureaucrat, or bum would take it.

His
presence here was a death sentence, as all souls were judged by him to be wicked and in need of destruction. Blinded by his ego and love of punishment, he marked no sin off even when God had, and he sought to punish every last soul in all of creation. His soul was so corrupted and diluted that he couldn’t even admit that he had fallen. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he still believed that he was carrying out a holy mission in God’s name. All souls were witches and demons to him, and all souls had to pay.

As Nick ripped the
duct tape from his mouth, he stepped forward and spoke to the beautiful angelic knight. “Have you come to punish us all or just a few?” Nick spoke in as strong a voice as he could muster.

The demons parted like the
Red Sea to let him pass, and the knight cast his horrendous gaze on Nick. “I will punish all eventually, but when is knowledge meant only for me,” the knight said. The mere act of laying his eyes on Nick made Nick feel as if a thousand pounds had fallen on him, and the trembling that he had been doing stopped as each cell in his body froze under the creature’s heavy eyes.

Val
efor gripped his claws deeper into the floor as he said, “The witches shall have at you if the Eater of Wings has no objections.” He raised his paw and bit deeply into it. Black blood spilled onto the floor, hissing. The distorted form slung his paw, flinging his unholy blood into the room. The room, soaked in his blood, was now removed from the order of the Good and tainted until the end of days.

“I have none,
” the Eater of Wings growled.

“This is sacred ground now
—holy and free from the corruption of God,” and with that, a bright green flame burst from the salt and herbs that Nick had placed around the store as a seal, and the iron doors grew a thick coat of rust. With that, the monstrous forms began to fade into the darkness.

“Nameless
One, stay,” Nick screamed in a shrill and desperate voice.

“You drink from the cup of sins, and you
r punishment is being delivered,” the knight
s
aid as his voice ripped into the air like a powerful earthquake. “I will not be far from you this night or ever again,” he said as he faded from material existence.