Chapter Five
Crimes Of Lust
The Pokehollow village bell whipped on its pivot, the iron tongue smashing against the inside of its trumpet mouth. The heartbeat clanging roused the people to a midnight horror. Screams of a maiden, someone’s captured daughter being carried off, echoed down the street. Her terrified shrieks drew every eye to the dark hulk of some careening creature. His body and the terrified girl disappeared into Darklair Forest at the south-western edge of town.
Slung over the creature’s ponderous, unsymmetrical back, the girl thrashed, waving her arms and screaming for help. The golden cloud of her silken hair flailed across her pretty face, a forecast of the fate soon to torment the rest of her body.
Some of the village men carried torches, some guns. More than twenty s
