​Malleus Maleficarum 2.2 – Part 5
 
 AKA:  Hammer of Witches 2.2 - Part 5
 
 
     “There’s a time to be humble and a time to “bring the thunder”.”  Jim Knight

 
 Emma...
 
“How many rapes do you reckon you’ve watched?  Come on,” she prodded the crowd.  “How many have your sons’ unwittingly been forced to see in stories directed especially at them?  And how many of them have had someone to talk to about it?  About rape, and what it means to be a man these days?”
 
The crowd was silent.  Though they all knew these were not hypothetical questions.  Theses were real questions that demanded real answers, at least if you were serious about becoming a responsible parent these days.
 
“How do we protect our children when Batman and Spiderman feature rape as entertainment for kids?  How do we protect our girls when the only high-paid women in the spotlight are the ones willing to sell their sexuality?  For how much longer are we going to let the focus of the media drive our kids to murder and suicide, just so men like Keanu Reeves can keep selling bullets and guns?”
 
Again, the crowd was silent.  Because most didn’t want to hear they had some part to play in the society they loathed.  Even though they all knew they did.  Every single one of them.  Just as every person alive was responsible for the lack of morals in our society.  A society that had centered itself around free internet porn and cheap GMO foods.
 
Because food and sex are weapons now.  A problem we didn’t understand at first - the way the distribution of power had been arranged around those who controlled both.
 
But the old regime hadn’t seen what Emma and those like her had seen.  Didn’t recognize the power lying on the ground, just waiting for someone with the will to bend over and pick it up.
 
No, because their greatest weakness was their blindness to others.  Not only the downtrodden.  But also those unwilling to play along with the status quo.  Those who refused to give up their rights, no matter how many pretty lies they were told.
 
Helena turned off the live feed that had been broadcasting one of the latest Ides rallies.  An empowerment tool taken from an old foe.
 
“The tests have come back.  It seems that Daniel Lazarus had a Merix bioimplant.  Two, in fact.”
 
“That explains his stamina,” Helena said with a bit of a sneer.  “But why two, do you figure?”
 
“The first one was pre-UN-issue,” a voice said from the console of Helena’s mint green Mercedes.
 
“And the second one was much newer, and seems to have some interesting sexual protocols.  Seems he was a hired sadist.  Meant to strike fear in his victims, as an extra service,” the AI named Janet said, though she was just a voice over a speaker at the moment.
 
“Were you able to trace his history, or get contact information?” Helena inquired, as she took a turn onto East Broadmoor.
 
“We’re working on it.  The circuitry is tricky with this new one, they’re using bioengineered parts now, so retrieval without the correct instruments can lead to the destruction of information.”
 
Helena sighed, and then lit up a cigarette.
 
“Can I ask you something?” the AI asked after a moment of silence.
 
“Sure.”
 
“Are you really going to kill his entire family?” the AI asked, its very proper English accent hiding any clues as to its motive.
 
“No,” Helena answered after a time.  “But I wanted him to die believing I would.  I wanted him thinking he would be the last of his name.”
 
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” the AI said, showing Helena more curtesy than Christian had.  Though… he had made up to Helena in other, more tangible ways, she recalled with a fond blush and a sudden rush of heat to her nether regions.
 
“Men like Daniel Lazarus are why I do what I do.  But no one in his family should suffer because of him.  Certainly not any children.”
 
Helena held her breath for a moment, hoping to hear the AI sigh in relief, or in any other way show some sort of emotion.  Instead, the voice replied, “He also had a large quantity of Nuero-9 in his system.  It’s a new street drug they’re cooking up in garage CRISPRs.”
 
Helena had heard about the drug they were making using modified clamshell mushrooms.  A drug that was especially enticing to gamers and criminal sociopaths as it allowed for intense focus for multiple days at a time.  Of course, it always seemed to provoke some sort of psychotic episode as well.
 
Unfortunately for the world, the manic craze that was often associated with the drug seemed to be its biggest draw.
 
“Their kind have never lived by a code.  Have never known any kind of honor.  All of them are hypocrites.  And still they hunt us…”
 
“Not for much longer,” the AI said over the console, just as Helena pulled into her mountain estate.
 
“In two-week’s time we’ll have all the star alloy we’ll need, and then nothing can prevent us from moving forward with our plans.  We’ll launch the Sleaze Trials and begin launching the ships.”
 
Helena still couldn’t believe she’d been assigned a spot on one of the first ships to leave for the Andromeda system.  Couldn’t believe that in a few short months she’d say goodbye to the earth forever. 
 
“Send a message, tell the dragons there’s a party at my place tonight.”
 
 
 
The End



© Raena Exe 2022-2023

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

​

​Malleus Maleficarum 2.2 – Part 4
 
 
 AKA:  Hammer of Witches 2.2 - Part 4
 
 
     “In a 2015 interview, former President Jimmy Carter stated that the United States is now "an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery" due to the Citizens United v. FEC ruling which effectively removed limits on donations to political candidates.…”  (Wikipedia.org)
 
 
Emily…
 
 
 
“Why is it so fucking dangerous to be a woman, still?  In 2022?” Alice asked of the woman at her side.
 
“So swings the hammer.  Never in a straight line.”
 
“Jesus Christ, Emily.  Can’t you ever just give a straight answer?  I mean… we’ve still got forced child marriages, forced prostitution, and now we no longer even control our own reproductive health.  Why do you think that is?  After all this time?  After all of this… winning?”
 
Alice sure is a bitter little pixie.  If only her johns knew just how goddamn bitters she is… Emily thought quite acerbically before she replied, “We weren’t ever meant to follow, Alice.  We were never meant to be ‘saved’.  That’s been the prison they’ve held us in all this time,” the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman formerly known as Jane said to her left-hand-man.
 
“The same people that own our politicians own our storytellers.  Own our idols, own our role models, own our heroes.  They even own our kid’s goddamn heroes.  All of them pumping out storylines and agendas that only serve the ends of a very few.  So, we’re doing something about it.  You and me, right here, right now.”
 
“It is the way,” Alice remarked, just like a fake ass Mandalorian might.
 
Because, to be honest, Alice was sick to death of fake; fake heroes, fake stories, fake interests, fake intentions.
 
“All we have to do is make contact.  First,” Emily remarked dryly, a bit of fear creeping into her eyes.
 
“I know this needs to happen,” Alice told her, putting a reassuring hand on her back.  “But I give us about a seventy-thirty chance (not in our favor) that we get shot before this night’s even over.
 
“This isn’t how we go out,” Emily told Alice, standing a bit straighter then.  “I’ve seen.”
 
“Well, I guess that’s good to know,” Alice chuckled dryly, because she really didn’t mean a word of what she’d just said.  But what else do you say to a woman who has a serious knack for predicting the future?
 
The two women had driven more than two days to get to the hidden bunker just outside the White Sands Missile Complex, located in the New Mexican desert.
 
And now there was nothing between them and the small trailer that housed the elevator that would take them, hopefully, to the last piece of a very complex puzzle.
 
“Maybe now would be a good time to tell me how you know about them, and this place,” Alice said brightly, as they crept slowly towards the dark structure.
 
The night was pristinely quiet, without a cloud or moon in the sky, making the night more than dark, making it abysmal.  So abysmal, in fact, even sounds seemed to sink into the darkness.
 
“Shhhhh” Emily hissed at the girl she had once rescued, and then had set on a course for revenge.
 
“Don’t shhhh me,” Alice said with a growl, as she reached out and grabbed hold of Emily’s cardigan.  Her long manicured nails easily digging into the fabric.
 
“Tell me now, before I take another step forward,” Alice hissed, her face so close to Emily’s she could feel her breath on her cheek.  But it was so dark she could barely make out more than the outline of her face, even though she was just inches away.
 
“We’re here because of you.  So, you gotta do this for me.  Tell me… how it is we are here, and how it is you came to know about these… these things.”
 
Emily had been a lot of places in her life, few of them good.  But her first meeting with a Traveler had been one of the few rare things that she remembered fondly. 
 
“Sykes used to keep me chained up in a cupboard, talking to me in riddles through the door.  He liked to fatten me up, then skinny me down… ‘just like his little pig’,” Emily told the girl she figured was more likely to understand than anyone else on the planet.
 
“And one day a Traveler just appeared.  Right there in the cupboard with me.  He told me about this.  All of this.  Then, and the many times he returned,” Emily said, with a wave of her hand, even though Alice could not see it in the inky blackness of the New Mexican night.
 
“One day, they told me.  One day…”
 
Emily jerked her arm free of Alice’s grasp and increased her speed in the darkness, drawing ever nearer the small metal trailer that housed a single elevator that would take her to the most important meeting of her life.
 
“They’ve been here, you see, all this time.  But they can’t interfere,” Emily said, as she pulled open the flimsy door and stepped inside.
 
“They’ve been waiting,” she told her protégé, as she pulled open the heavy elevator door.
 
“For what?” Alice asked, as Emily closed the elevator door behind them.
 
“For us to stop waiting to be saved, and to start saving ourselves.”
 
“Guess it’s time to stop playing nice then,” Alice remarked from the darkness, just as the elevator dropped out from beneath their feet, as it suddenly plummeted down into the earth at an impossible speed.
 
Thankfully, a moment later their feet caught up with it.  Just before the doors slip open onto a brightly lit space.
 
“Oh, it’s more than that,” Emily said with a wide and genuine grin, as she turned to her friend.
 
“It’s time to win.”
 
 
 
 
 
     “We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.”  Ray Bradbury



© Raena Exe 2022-2023

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.


​

​Malleus Maleficarum 2.2 – Part 3
 
AKA:  Hammer of Witches 2.2 - Part 3
 

     “Those that can heal can harm; those that can cure can kill.”  Celia Rees
 
 
Ava…
  
“Everything changed once we started injecting technology into our bodies.”
 
“Everything changed the second we put two sticks together and made fire.”
 
“Stop making light of this,” Ava told her subordinate, and best friend, a man she’d known for eons, or so it seemed.
 
“We’ve put together the most extensive list of johns ever, Ava.  “We are the change they should fear.”
 
Ava closed the CNN article she’d been reading on her phone.  The one about the new biochips the UN was insisting upon.  They wanted a way to track infections, you see… but everyone knew it was a hoax.  Just like they were doing with the currency crack downs.
 
Things were getting tougher and tougher these days, and most people were on edge.  Especially those with the most to lose, like politicians, and media moguls. 
 
“Just think if they hadn’t started the Nemesis project back in Austin years ago, using companies like ‘22 and Me’ and ‘DNA ME’ to track down and blackmail all those famous and political johns,” Gareth told his best friend, a woman he trusted with his life.  If not his car.
 
“Just think what it will take to stop us now.  I mean… even as we speak, right now, names and DNA is being databased at an incredible rate.  Along with their fetishes, encounter details, and even photos in some cases.  You combine that with what we took off the Feds… and we have enough to control every politician with serious stakes in the game.”
 
“Not all of them,” Ava scolded him with a bit of a rasp to her voice.  As she had screamed herself hoarse recently, and only now was starting to get her voice back.
 
“Enough.  Enough to control both the house and the senate.”
 
“It’s still not enough.  Those are just the puppets.  We need to get to the money behind the strings.  We need bank accounts.  We need Swiss account numbers and pins.  We need a digital platform and we need it now.”
 
Gareth stood about five-foot-seven, barely taller than Ava, and yet, he always felt like a giant next to the tiny blond.
 
“That’s why we’re here.  We sign this deal and we’ll be able to take payment via any major form of digital currency.”
 
“Or so he says.”
 
“Or so he says,” Gareth said with a smile, as he turned towards the door he expected the programmer to use.
 
But after another ten minutes his smile faded as he looked back to the anxious looking Ava, who sat next to him in the lobby of a Best Western.
 
“Perhaps he’s not coming.”
 
Ava was nervous, her slight hands were shaking, though she did her best to hide it from the man she felt responsible for.
 
“He’ll come,” Gareth said, obviously telling her what she wanted to hear.  Because his smile held absolutely zero confidence.
 
Five minutes later, however, a thirty-year-old with a head full of blonde hair and a red beard walked in and sat down next to them.
 
“You know, you shouldn’t talk so openly in public spaces,” he said with a smile.  A bit of leftover sandwich still clinging to the tight curls of his bright red beard.
 
“Oh?” Gareth asked, nerves sounding plain as day in his voice.
 
“Yeah.  See that laptop over there?”
 
Both Ava and Gareth turned to look towards where the man had gestured.  Where a woman sat using a laptop in a breakfast nook some twenty feet away.
 
“Yeah,” Gareth said, already knowing where this all was heading.
 
“Yeah,” the programmer said nonchalantly, as he put a foot on the coffee table in front of them.
 
“I’ve been watching and listening to you both for the past ten minutes.”
 
“Oh?  And what have you learned?” Ava asked sharply, a look in her eye that gave the gamer-turned-private-hacker a moment’s pause.
 
“Nothing useful.  Total waste of time.  But sometimes it ain’t.  If you know what I mean,” the man said, with a nod and a significant look to both of them.
 
“Let’s take this conversation to my place,” he told them abruptly, with a smile that never seemed to reach his eyes.
 
Ava leaned over and whispered into Gareth’s ear and then the two of them hopped up and motioned that they were happy to follow.
 
Twenty-nine minutes later they were pulling into the back side of a condemned gas station.
 
“Really?  You live here?”  Gareth asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust.
 
“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, man,” the man said in a very Gen-Z ‘you can’t ban our books’ kinda way.
 
Down they went.  Down a total of three stories beneath the sleeping city above, in fact.
 
“Holy shit,” Gareth breathed, as the metal elevator finally came to a stop and the doors slid open onto what looked like the coolest man-cave ever.
 
“Seriously though,” Gareth said breathlessly, as he admired the man’s wall of TVs and row upon row of refurbished arcade games.
 
“People don’t steal what they don’t know is there,” the programmer said with a wink.
 
“Have a seat,” he told them, motioning towards a white leather sofa in front of a row of computer monitors.
 
“We’re going to use a QR code,” he informed them almost right away.
 
“You can’t be serious,” Ava said, as if she couldn’t believe how easy it was all falling together.  How all of the loopholes the folks in charge had created to keep them oppressed were now going to be instrumental in launching The Ides into the most powerful position in the world.
 
“Totally.  Initially we’ll give you a QR code to use with those you already have blackmail information on.  It’s how they will pay for the ‘secure storage’ of their data,” the programmer said, using air quotes to emphasize the words ‘secure storage’.
 
“The QR code will install and permanently open our private app ‘Pandora’.  Luckily, we take all major forms of digital currency,” the programmer quipped gleefully, as he placed a bowl of mixed nuts on the glass table in front of them.
 
“Alongside this, my partner and I have set up a second QR code.”
 
“We didn’t ask for a second code,” Ava said with a degree of side eye that implied she did not think fondly of taking unauthorized initiative.
 
“Just hear me out,” the thin man in the oversized flannel said, as he took a seat in a chair opposite from them.
 
“We have a second code we deploy to your collective of sex-workers.  All they have to do is to get the QR code in front of their johns’ cameras.  The phones don’t even have to be on.  Most phones scan for codes now even while asleep.  It’s a new UN tracking protocol hidden within all major mobile phone models.  And we hacked it,” he told them with a degree of pride.
 
“But there’s no way we can get the QR code to all of them at once.  And we can’t rely on the victims’ silence.  I estimate that once we begin activating QR codes on their phones we’ll have three days before word gets out.  Five days before the code, and that particular tactic, are totally dead,” Ava chimed in, as their host poured her a glass of champagne.
 
“But that’s the most beautiful thing,” he told her smiling wider than ever.  “We don’t activate them.  Not until we’re ready.  Instead, the QR code simply does a soft-install, until we send out a signal.  Then, once we ignite the torches, as it were, all of the codes activate at once.  Hijacking all of the phones and locking them into our ‘Pandora’ ap.  And from that moment on they’ll all be forced to make regular ‘maintenance’ payments in order to secure their secrets.  You’ll have influence over both their wallets and their votes.”
 
“It’s not that easy.  We’re not the only puppet masters in play here.”
 
“Oh, I know,” the programmer told the sharp woman with the nervous smile.
 
“When we’re ready to deploy: their microphones, their cameras, and all of their stored data instantly becomes ours.  We’ve even tested the code and ap on Dark Vault phones, the ones military intelligence uses.  And because we use a quantum-based algorithm and all encryption happens real-time on the phone itself, we are able to fool all of their primary security protocols.  No one will be safe from our ap.  No one.”
 
“Well then,” Ava said, “what will you need from us to secure the deal?”
 
“I’m assuming you’ve already read over the terms my partner sent over?”
 
“Yes,” Gareth said, “though we haven’t yet met this partner of yours.  Emma… I think she said her name was, in the email.”
 
The programmer smiled, and then clicked a remote which caused one of the monitors to click over to a computer-generated image of a beautiful woman.  The woman smiled and said, “How can I help you?”
 
“Janet, meet our guests,” the programmer said, with a rather nervous looking grin.
 
“Hello,” the AI system said, as pleasant as any serial killer might.
 
“Oh, hello,” Gareth said brightly, his own voice suddenly showing signs of distress at seeing the AI image of the woman everyone had known as Princess Diana.
 
“Anyway,” the programmer said a bit nervously then, as he clicked off the AI monitor and then set the remote back down on the glass table, so gently you’d have thought it was a bomb.
 
“I want thirty-percent of everything you make in digital currency.  And I want the politics to favor the open web.”
 
“Twenty-five, and I can’t do anything about the politics.  You know that.  That will all be committee based.  We’re not doing all of this so that we live in another out-of-control oligarchy.  We’re doing it so that everyone matters.  Finally.”
 
The hacker smiled his first genuine smile of the evening.  And then he said, “Thirty-percent.  And I guess I’ll just have to write some new code to get what I need…”
 
There was an odd noise just then, from the speakers, almost as if the AI he’d introduced as Janet had snickered, but just briefly.
 
“Thirty-percent, but only if you take over all digital security for The Ides.  Which includes access to our satellite,” Ava said, making the last sentence sound as if it was the real temptation, not the cash.
 
Because Ava was an expert in human behavior.
 
“That was everything we needed.  And for a reasonable price too,” Gareth told her later, as they sped across the harbor in a rented speedboat.
 
“It was.  Given that we retain rights to all political leverage.  The influence is where the real money is made; with the billion and trillion dollar contracts.”
 
“Others will be leveraging those same people too.  The same folks who’ve been blackmailing and leveraging them from the start.  And they’re not going to like us encroaching on their territory, any more than a gangbanger would appreciate a rival encroaching on his street corner.
 
“No, and these gangbangers play for keeps,” Ava said, sniffing the salty sea air, as if it were a memory she wanted to keep.
 
“What then?  We walk-head-first into the smoke and pray there’s no fire?” Gareth asked, his stomach more nervous now than when he’d done his first solo flight.
 
“Oh, we know it’s not smoke we’re walking into,” Ava told the man, reaching up to stroke his face.  “It’s a goddamn inferno.  But we have no choice.  That’s what being brave is, Gareth.  It’s doing the insane thing, the thing nobody wants to do, just because it’s the right thing to do.  Someone has to stop this nonsense.  Someone has to pull these tyrants from their stolen thrones.  Someone has to make our children a priority again.  And that someone is us, Gareth.  It’s us and those like us who are banding together to fight.  It’s the only thing we can do…”
 
Gareth sniffed at the salty sea air as if it were the last air he might ever breathe, and suddenly it tasted different.  Sweeter.  Yet with a bitter aftertaste.
 
“We’re pulling more and more kids off the streets and outfitting them with cameras, the images are coming in at an incredible rate,” he reminded them both.  “We will have our roots so deep they won’t ever be able to pull us out.”
 
Ava pulled the man by his lapels until she could kiss his cheek.
 
“I love you Gareth.  No matter what happens.  You will always be my very best friend.”
 
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2022-2023

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

Malleus Maleficarum 2.2 – Part 2
 
AKA:  Hammer of Witches 2.2 - Part 2
 
“Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them.”  Terry Pratchett
 
 
Helena…
 
 
 
A dark-haired woman sat alone in a darkened corner of a small hole in the wall pub, too far from town to be of use to anyone, except to those who didn’t want to be seen, or heard, or better yet… disturbed.
 
Her thick hair was pulled into a sloppy bun atop her head with a black scarf, which matched her smoky eyes perfectly.
 
“Don’t bother her, not tonight,” a man at the bar whispered to a woman who looked like she was just about to do just that.
 
And then he shook his burly head to reinforce his words.
 
He didn’t repeat the sentiment a few minutes later, however, when a large man with a spectacular mustache came storming into the nearly empty establishment, bringing half of the December winds with him.
 
“Helena,” he said in breathy voice, as he brushed light flakes of snow from his large shoulders.
 
“We need to talk,” he informed her with a smile that looked more terrified than friendly.  Which made the woman smile a genuine smile.
 
Even he’s afraid of me, she thought, as she lit up a cig and then blew the smoke directly into his face.
 
“Helena, please,” the man with the molten eyes implored, but he didn’t dare sit, or do anything other than beg.
 
Because Daniel Lazarus had seen what the woman was capable of.
 
“Sit,” she instructed him, and then she took a stocking covered foot and pushed a chair in his direction.
 
The man sat, and then loosened the scarf around his neck.  But he relaxed no more than that.
 
“She has Jericho.”
 
“And?” the woman who looked no older than twenty-eight asked, obviously annoyed she had to dig.
 
Yet the man hesitated a moment longer before he looked about the room, and then he said under his breath, “Jericho has provided everything we could have hoped for.  More, really.  We even got information on two senators we didn’t have on the list.”
 
Helena was curious why the man had chosen such an unsecure location to disclose such vital information.  In fact, she was just about to call in her left-hand-man and have him escorted to a nearby holding cell in order to find out just that, when he went on – in a rush.
 
“They know about you.  They know about this… place,” he told her, his head almost in her lap.  “They have placed an airstrike on this establishment.  We have… minutes, ma’am.  Just… minutes, before this place is wiped from the map.”
 
That was always the downside to an out-of-the-way lair.  Much too easy to invade, or destroy in this case, without anyone asking too many questions.
 
“An airstrike?” Helena asked, and then she took a long pull on her cigarette.
 
I mean… it did sound completely beyond the scope… unless you understood the full ramifications of what was buried forty-nine-feet below where they were seated.
 
A second later Helena had her phone to her ear. 
 
“Back it all up to the satellite.  Everything, then wipe it.  Just in case their bomb doesn’t do the trick.”
 
“There’s a net in the way.  They’ve spotted our satellite.  We’re being jammed,” a feminine voice on the other end of the phone said.
 
Helena smiled.  At least she had her proof.
 
“Drop the doors.”
 
“You can’t be serious,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
 
“Ma’am…” the man seated across from her prodded, as he squirmed in his seat, obviously anxious to miss the missile strike.
 
“Drop the doors.  Nothing can get past them.  Nothing.”
 
“But the people inside…” the voice on the phone began.
 
“They will be fine for seven days.  That’s plenty of time to get them out.”
 
Helena ended the call before the person on the other end of the phone could respond.
 
“Can we go now?”
 
“Sure,” the five-foot-eight woman in the six-inch heels said, as she climbed slowly to her feet.
 
“And the bartender?  The rest of the folks in here?” the man inquired, though the look on his face suggested he already knew what her answer would be.
 
“We don’t say a word.  Here… let’s go out the back door.  I have a bike,” she told him, as she led the man through a pair of old western swinging doors that hid a small hallway with a john, and a back storage room.  “We have to go through here,” she said, leading him into the packed storage room.
 
Once inside she quickly kicked off her shoes, and then stepped neatly into a pair of motorcycle boots, and she then opened the window and slid outside, as if she’d done it all a million times before.
 
Daniel was quick to follow her.
 
Outside they found themselves on the edge of the snow-dusted back parking lot, a jet-black Ducati 1098 F08 sitting just feet away.
 
“Get on,” she instructed him, as she slid a gun he hadn’t seen her grab into a holster she wore around her upper thigh.  “Do you know how to ride?” she asked him, and much to her relief he nodded his head.  “Good,” she replied with a grin.  “I’ll do the shooting then.”
 
A moment later the two were speeding away, down a poorly lit side road few even knew about.
 
A line of pines shielding them from view, as a single plane came into view.  It was flying silently, and only seemed to drop its payload once it was nearly on top of the small pub. 
 
However, once it did, it took only a few seconds before the entire thing was gone.  Fire engulfing the whole building.
 
And then the plane was gone too, speeding straight up, until it was invisible to the naked eye.
 
And just like that, the small pub (now formerly known as The Snake Pit) was destroyed in a brilliant display of multi colored flames.
 
“What the fuck kind of missile was that?” Helena demanded of the man, as she backed him against the bathroom wall of a cheap motel two-and-a-half-hours later, the barrel of her gun pressed tightly to his throat.
 
“I don’t know,” the much taller and stronger man said, yielding at once to her authority.
 
“I was told to tell you, by Christian.  I don’t know anything more than what I already told you,” he said again, for the millionth time.
 
But Helena hadn’t gotten to where she was by taking the first answers offered. 
 
Not even when she knew someone was telling her the truth.  Because details get lost, confused, mislabeled, at first.  And often it takes some prodding to extract all of the information required.
 
And Helena was an expert at just that, information extraction.  At least… that had been her listed specialty when she’d worked for the company.
 
Before she’d gotten too old for the part and had been retired.
 
“Did Christian tell you what they were going to do?  If their site or any of the other sites have been compromised?”  Helena asked, suddenly stepping away, her tone softening to an almost exhausted level of effort.
 
“No,” the man said, as he reached out a hand to steady her, and to take the gun from her hand.
 
Which Helena let him do, as she absentmindedly stroked the soft blonde hair that covered his thick forearm.
 
“I can’t believe it’s all gone.  Koran is gone.  Troy was in the office counting cash.”
 
The slender woman with the thick hips slid back out of the bathroom, almost stumbling over her own feet to do it.
 
“Helena… you’re exhausted.  Here… let me help you,” Daniel told her, as he pulled her into his arms just before she crumpled onto the floor.
 
“I… just can’t believe it’s all gone…”
 
And then he was kissing her, his soft lips crushing the words out of her.  Crushing the worry and the dread and replacing it with something else.
 
“Let me,” the man with the emerald eyes and the mustached face said, as he pulled her onto the bed.  “Let me,” he said again, as he tugged on one of her boots.  And at first, Helena looked as if she was going to stubbornly refuse.  But exhaustion got the better of her, and instead of complaining she slumped back onto the cheap motel room bed.
 
Of course, she was faking.  Helena could have boxed a bear just then, and then thrown a stellar party afterwards, for as shaken and as exhausted as she was.
 
What Helena was, however, was smart.  Because she knew how to press a man’s buttons.  Certainly, a man like Daniel’s buttons.
 
A man who longed for nothing more than to be the hero of the story.
 
“I should have told them,” she lied, and then she forced a tear, just to sink the dart in a bit further.
 
“Like you said, it would have made them question if we… if you… had gotten away.  This way they think you’re dead,” the man said, as he fiddled with some of the many buttons and belts that held Helena’s thick dress tightly closed.
 
“You must be hot…” he said, as a hunger Helena was extremely familiar with suddenly flooded the man’s eyes, and face.
 
“Oh… so hot,” Helena replied breathlessly, almost theatrically, as she really was annoyed at how this whole night was progressing.
 
Because there were five things Helena knew right in that moment; Daniel had turned up at just the right time, he was new and unvetted in the organization, he seemed to understand the severity of her rank, his weaknesses were unknown – at least to her, there was a mole in the organization.
 
“I can’t believe they’re dead,” she moaned, and then covered her face with her hands, as she tried to conjure up some quick tears.
 
But the man chuckled just then in such a way as to make her suddenly very wary.  Slowly she peered out from behind her fingers, only to see his smile widen by an alarming degree.
 
And then, in a deep, rich voice she hadn’t heard him use before he said, “Goddamn, are you bitches crazy,” and then he was on her, his large hands pulling her wrists together where he quickly bound them using the cord he’d ripped from the phone.
 
And then he was tying her feet – but not together.  No, her feet he tied spread wide open, each ankle fastened to a foot of the bed.
 
Helena smiled up at the huffing and now sweating man with a serene smile.
 
“You are fucking crazy, you know that?” he asked, and then he crushed his lips to hers, pushing his tongue into her mouth where he explored it, at his leisure.
 
And when he was done exploring her mouth, he began the slow work of removing her clothes, which he did with the help of a long thin bladed knife, which he had pulled from his boot.
 
“You know… I took this job just for this.  Just for this moment,” he informed her, as he dragged the blade along the now naked flesh of her belly.
 
Helena wiggled a bit, as the cold steel tickled the softest bits of her flesh.
 
“Everyone said how scary a bitch you are.  But you weren’t that hard to knock of your rocker.  Now, were you?” he asked, as he flicked the blade across one of her hard nipples, nicking it enough to entice a single drop of blood from under her skin.
 
The man, almost overcome with a ravenous desire, growled, and then sucked the nipple and the blood into his mouth.
 
“Oh, the fun we’re going to have,” he said after he’d paused in his latest distraction.
 
And then his hand was sliding along the sheer fabric of her stockings.  With two fingers he pinched at the fabric, sometimes pinching her skin, making her jerk – with each sting. 
 
And every time she jerked, he smiled.
 
“I like the scary bitches best.  You see?  Scary bitches put up the best fight,” Daniel told the woman he’d been charged with saving.
 
And then suddenly his fingers were pulling at her stockings, tearing at them, pulling them in strips from her body.
 
“You can scream all ya like, darlin’” the man said, in a fake southern accent that made Helena suddenly want to punch him in the head.
 
Instead, she smiled and fluttered her eyes. 
 
Cuz she’d been to this rodeo before.
 
“Do your worst, daddy,” she informed him, as she watched him strip off his pants, his enormous cock (an obviously source of his enormous pride) springing instantly to life.
 
So, Helen indulged him.
 
“Oh!” she hollered, as Daniel forced himself inside her – all at once. 
 
“Oh!” she moaned, as he yanked a handful of her hair, and again, as he slammed his large cock deeper into her now saturated pussy.
 
“Stop!” she screamed, just as she told him she wouldn’t, when he forced his tongue deep into her asshole a moment later.  “Stop!” she screamed, as she writhed across the scratchy comforter. 
 
Her legs straining against their tethers.
 
“Oh, we’re not going to stop, until I have you every single way possible,” he growled into her ear, as he came up for breath, his fingers replacing his tongue for a moment. 
 
Harder and harder he berated her body with his own; his fingers, his tongue, his hands, and his cock.  Daniel finally untied Helena and flipped her over only after he’d already cum half a dozen times.
 
“You are nothing but a filthy whore,” he told her, as he tied her once again to the bed, arms and legs both outstretched to the four corners.
 
“And now you’re going to be punished like a filthy whore,” he said, as he yanked the cord from the back of the TV set.
 
Hunger and madness flashed together in the man’s verdant eyes, and that was Helena’s cue.
 
“Who say’s I’m a filthy whore?”
 
Daniel took a step back from the bed, his half-hard cock glistening with the fluids of sex.  And then he pulled back his arm and struck her with the plug end of the cord. 
 
“Ow!” the woman cried into a pillow.
 
Again and again the man struck the woman, along her back, her buttocks, the backs of her thighs.
 
“No!” she hollered, but never too loudly to call unwanted attention.
 
“Stop!” she begged, as he struck her until he was so hard, he could barely stand.
 
“I’m not a whore,” she cried into a pillow, even though they both knew it was a bold-face lie.  In fact, Helena had been such a successful whore she now owned several of her own.
 
“Andrew Knight and Davis Xavier both say that you are,” Daniel told his victim, because he liked to mentally torture them as well.
 
“Who the fuck are they?” Helena asked with as much indignation as she could muster.
 
“They’re on the senate subcommittee charged with dismantling The Ides,” the tall man with the large hands told her, as he shoved three fingers deep inside of her, and began shoveling out the cum he’d already packed her with.
 
“But how did they even find out about us?” she begged, as she gushed fluids out all over his hand.
 
Daniel Lazarus knew it’s not wise to show your hand to the enemy.  But when you don’t plan on letting your enemy live… he figured… what’s the harm?
 
“Diarmaid.”
 
Like a flaming hot knife, sliced right to the bone, the name called forth a cry of agony from Helena the likes of which the sadist Daniel had never heard before.  So rich and full of suffering he almost shot another load right there.
 
“Oh… did you actually think he was loyal?  How cute,” the man said, in a babytalk kind of way, just before he lowered himself onto her again, this time sinking his cock deep inside her ass.
 
But the wound Daniel had just inflicted had been more than anything Helena had ever experienced before, and so… quite frankly, she was done.  Just done.
 
“Thank you, for that very helpful information,” she replied dryly, in an exasperated tone.  And then, like a cat twisting in midair, she snaked both an arm and a leg free of the restraints and instantly locked them both around the man’s neck, his right arm in a tight armbar.
 
“In one second, I’m going to flex my thigh muscles and break your neck.  Do you understand?” the man, who suddenly could not speak, nodded and huffed as best he could to indicate an answer in the affirmative.
 
“I just wanted you to know, before you go… you just killed every single member of your entire family.  I don’t care how long it takes me, or how many children this will require me to kill.  You… by our deplorable arrogance - in thinking that you could have me - have sentenced them all to truly horrific deaths.”
 
A moment later the man’s vacant eyes stared up at the cheap motel room ceiling, at the numerous splatters of unknown substances he’d never see.
 
“I need a cleanup,” Helena said into her phone after dialing a familiar number.
 
“Send Christian,” she remarked with a wry smile, as she looked over at the lifeless body on the bed.
 
 


© Raena Exe 2022-2023

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.


​

Malleus Maleficarum 2.2 - Part 1
 
AKA:  Hammer of Witches 2.2 - Part 1
 
 
 
They came for us in the wee hours of the morning, and in broad daylight, because no one would stand up for us, then.
 
They came for us as criminals, as villains, as demon spawn, calling us vile creatures of the night.
 
They came for us with death upon their lips and rage filling their hearts, ears deaf, brains highjacked by plotted revenge.
 
They came… their bible in hand, to rid us from the land.
 
And when that did not work, they drove us underground, always taunting us with their ‘stories’, our re-written histories.
 
Still… they come. 
 
So, time has finally brought us to this…
 
the unleashing of destiny
 
the chiming of the primordial clock.
 
#TickTock
 
 
 
For the Witches’ Hammer is now solidly in our hands.
 
 
 
 
Jericho…
 
 
“How long you been waiting?”
 
“I don’t know, an hour, maybe.”
 
“They bring in the John?”
 
Jericho looked over at the young woman who had just joined them on a bench in the waiting area of the local holding tank.
 
“I… I didn’t see…” they said, as if it were the last thing on their mind.
 
“Of course they didn’t.  What if he was some upstanding member of society?  I mean… that wouldn’t look very good to their whole façade.”
 
“Façade?” Jericho inquired with a tilt to their head.  Not because the Jr. High dropout didn’t understand the meaning of the word, but because they had no idea what the young woman with the incredibly long braids was on about.
 
“Why do you think they only ever prosecute us?  The lowest of the low?  The whores and sluts?”
 
Jericho wanted to snort and wave their hand around dismissively, but they knew it was pointless because no one ever wanted to hear their real opinion, on any matter.
 
But instead, they just shrugged and looked away, back towards the lone clerk who was slowly making their way through that night’s intake of prostitutes and other petty criminals.
 
The young woman with the painted-on freckles, who was dressed in a baby-doll outfit, snickered behind her hand, and then scooted closer to them. 
 
And then she whispered into their ear, “If you want out of here nod your head one time.”
 
Jericho’s eyes went wide for a moment, and then they closed.  They took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly.  And then they nodded their head.
 
“Wonderful,” the young woman said, as if she were really a hundred years old.  And then she took a bottle of nail polish out of her handbag and put a drop of bright pink polish onto the bench next to her.
 
“When this goes off run for the door.  There’s a helper waiting outside,” she said, winking an eye outlined in thick fake lashes.
 
And a second later she abruptly stood up, turned to her left and dropped a splash from her water bottle onto the drop of the bright pink nail polish.  Instantly a fume of smoke rose up into the air, quickly spreading throughout the small, poorly ventilated area.
 
Coughing, but wasting no time, Jericho jumped to their feet and dashed out the first set of doors, their hands still handcuffed in front of them.
 
But Jericho came to a quick stop, after fleeing the holding tank, because they were now stuck between a set of security doors.  However, less than a tick later the door leading to the outside slid open, and a guard waved them through, with a wink, and a tiny wave.
 
“Security cameras are down for the next ten minutes, but you better hurry, just in case,” the large bullish man in the security guard’s uniform said to the bouncy young woman in the short dress and high stockings.
 
Ten minutes later they had hopped a bus that would take them out of the city.
 
“How did you do all of that?” the slender but not small Jericho inquired a bit shyly, as the two of them slid into two open seats in the back. 
 
“My name is Alice,” the young woman told them instead, and then she politely offered them her hand.
 
Jericho took it immediately and shook it profusely.  Though their hands were still cuffed together.  “Jericho,” they said with a small smile, feeling somewhat shook that they had forgotten this simply common curtesy.
 
"Here, let me help," Alice told them, as she pulled a pin from her hair.  Making short work of it, the young woman that looked like nothing more than an innocent schoolgirl had them free of the metal cuffs in no time.

"Thanks!" Jericho told her profusely, as they rubbed the red marks the cuffs had left.

“We know , by the way.  Just who you are,” Alice told them with a rather peculiar grin.
 
“We?” Jericho asked shakily, as the sudden implications of the word sat on their chest like an elephant.
 
Alice though just smiled and said, “Later,” and then she slipped her hand down the front of Jericho's pants and took hold of their rather large cock.
 
And for the next twenty minutes she jacked them off; three times to a spectacular end, which Alice had expertly cleaned up with wipes she’d seemingly magicked up out of nowhere.
 
“You been doing the work for long?” Jericho inquired of Alice, after she had determined they could be of no further entertainment.
 
At their words however, Alice just smiled sadly.  Which made Jericho’s tummy do an awkward flip.
 
Because Jericho had broken the most sacred vow among sex workers.  They had asked to hear an origin story.  Something every sex worker on the planet knows is off limits.  No... origin stories could only ever be talked about if the person brings it up themselves.
 
“I’m so sorry,” Jericho said, as they slid a hand back through a bunch of thick blond curls.
 
“I didn’t mean to…” they went on, but then stopped, because they couldn’t figure out just how to back up that particular train.
 
“It’s okay,” Alice told them, though they knew it wasn’t.  Not really. 

Not with the way she had swallowed hard, and then smiled, as if two threads had been pulled at the corners of her mouth.
  
“We have been looking for you for some time,” Alice told them then, by way of changing the subject.
 
“Really?  Why?” the twenty-two-year-old transgendered Jericho asked, as if nothing could be more ridiculous.
 
Alice smiled at that, her shoulders simultaneously dropping by an inch.
 
“Because you are going to help us take over the world.”
 
Jericho didn’t know if the young woman’s smile was confidence or just insanity, but either way, they were suddenly wishing they’d stayed in that holding tank.  At least they’d have eaten by now.
 
Alice could read their mind however, and pulled a candy bar from her bag.
 
Handing it to them with a rather predatory smile perched upon her lips, she simply said, “You’ve got something we need.”




© Raena Exe 2022-2023

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.