The faint scrabbling noises were increasing, becoming louder and more numerous in their gibbering, scratching, searching rattle. She didn't move, not a muscle of her long thin body even so much as twitched, lying naked and exposed, starkly white against the dull pewter grey of the table.

She knew they were coming, knew the terror of it, feared the horrid wrenching pain to come... And the inexorable necessity of it kept her nailed in place. There was no other way, the sacrifice must be made and it must be willing.

The hateful gruntings and scrabblings drew nearer. She kept her eyes closed as the demons entered the room, sought out the table, scrambling up it like crabs, claws screeching harshly against the metal.

She could keep from seeing them, but not from hearing the nasty, gloating, gibbering of their voices and the horrid click and squeal of their claws drawing nearer to her flesh.

Fear rang in her, exploded in a burst of adrenaline that howled in her head and limbs to FLEE! But she forced herself to remain still, hardly even flinching as pain bit into her side with the questing, cruel-clawed fingers of the first of the creatures.

They swarmed up her, scratching and shrieking triumphantly at their preys complete aquiescence. The suffocating terror of it made her eyes fly open at last and she sucked in a gasp of horror. Foul beasts they were, like hideously disfigured babboons, with great slimey fangs and grasping, dagger-sharp fingers they mounted her, tore at her, violently violating her vulnerable flesh.

She couldn't help it, couldn't keep the brave promises she had made to herself, she began to writhe as they grabbed her, so many dreadful hands and mouths accosting her everywhere, her long tender thighs, her smooth flat belly, her soft breasts, grabbed and squeezed and pierced and bloodied. She screamed and struggled, weeping with fear and rage, but they were hellishly strong and too many of them held her arms and legs, pulling and pulling, spreading her wide and helpless on the table.

The largest of them mounted her chest and she couldn't turn away, her head was held ridged by demonic fists wrapped in her long, long hair. She looked up at him and was struck dumb by the sheer force of the malevolent lust in his bloodred eyes. She thought he would rape her, for she could feel the hard length of it pressing into her belly, but his lust was not for that and she shuddered as his intention came to her in a flash of dreadful agony. She surged away with all her might and almost freed a hand to strike at them but it was no use. They had her and she had no choice, the sacrifice was inevitable.

His hands, so large and almost human, but for the cruel talons at their tips moved from crushing her breasts to the center of her chest. Her stomach lurched as she saw them dig into the small indentations between her ribs, piercing the skin in a welter of blood and pain. But his eyes never left her face and she was caught, fascinated by the intense, unwavering enjoyment, the hot pleasure in them as he watched her, heaving, racked with uncontrollable spasms of massive, excruciating terror and... Pain? Why didn't it hurt more? Why wasn't she fainting, dying?

She heard the ghastly, popping, crunching sound of cartilage breaking apart, yielding to his powerful hands. Wrenching, he tore her ribs upwards and snapped them, reaching into the fount of blood, groping, and then, with a dreadful wet slurping, tugging, pulling, she felt him pull her heart up out of her chest and he held it before her tormented, astonished eyes for a moment.

The room was silent, save for the plopping and spurting of rich red heartblood onto her gaping chest. All the gibbering and slobbering had ceased abruptly, every eyeball in the room stared in silent fascination at the glistening, pumping organ in his gorey hands.

Everything seemed translucent, both sharply clear, delineated in every nauseating detail and also indistinct, impossible to focus on. Her senses pounded in her head with frantic urgency, but nothing seemed to move, time was still, or just inching along in momentous, tiny fragments of itself.

The demon king slowly, deliberately raised her dripping heart in a gesture that seemed absurd and familiar, as though he was making a toast to her good health. Then he brought it down to his lips, his questing tongue slipping out between wicked, long fangs, tasting it. He devoured it in great careful bites, chewing with great relish and satisfaction as she lay quivering and receding on the table.