Northern England, 1390

Edmund felt a chill run through him as the servant girl fell backwards. Her arms spread wide like a saint as she fell. Her eyes stared up, seemingly right at him, wide with fear, until they fluttered closed, a choking sound gurgling from her as she took her last breath. Her throat was split open somehow, the wound spitting blood. A shadowy figure bent over her like a question mark.

He clutched the short sword sheathed at his hip, trying to keep his hands from shaking. He was sweating under his thickly woven leather armor. He’d worked for the duke only a short time, freshly appointed at the tender age of eighteen. He never dreamed he’d see anything like this.

Beside the duke, the priest trembled, holding his crucifix toward the dead girl within the pentagram. The shadowy figure leaning over her shifted like smoke, curling around the girl’s bloody throat and arms, entwining its tendrils around her waist. It receded and shrunk, seeming to seep into the girl’s skin. The blood trickling from her throat appeared blackened. Her skin had taken on a grayish hue in death.

Edmund watched, horrified, as the dead girl slowly opened her eyes as if waking from a deep sleep. They were wholly black, shining in the candles sitting at the points of the pentagram. She shifted to her side and pushed herself up, her hands gripping the stone under her. Her hair, long and tangled, grew dark, the fair locks somehow changing color, becoming a rich purple like the duke liked to wear. Great horns grew out from her head and curled to the sides of her face, and as she sat upright, a hooked tail curled around her legs like a cat’s. The men were all silent as they watched her. She stared at the duke, and her mouth quirked up in a wicked smile.

The duke, to Edmund’s surprise, grinned like a madman.

“At last,” he said. “You are mine. I have summoned you, and so you will do as I command,” the duke continued.

“Is that so?” she asked. “Have you tamed me?” When the girl spoke her voice was calm and unwavering, completely unlike the wobbly crying she’d been doing when Edmund helped drag her into the pentagram. But he supposed she wasn’t the same girl anymore anyway.

The duke’s expression turned stormy. “I command you to grant my wishes, demon,” he spat. Edmund bristled at the duke’s words. “You are trapped.”

The girl cocked her head to one side. Her horns, giant curled things like those of a ram, framed her pretty face. “It seems I am,” she said. “But I am not under the command of the likes of you. It seems no one told you you hold no power here.”

Slowly the crucifix and rosary beads began to twist from the priest’s hands. He tried to hold on to them, but they jerked suddenly, cutting the priest’s hands and making him release them with a yelp.

In the blink of an eye, the crucifix shot to the duke’s throat, stabbing him clean through his neck. Edmund’s scream stuck in his chest as the duke sputtered, spittle flying from his mouth and blood spurting from his neck. The girl turned her black gaze to Edmund.

“Break the salt line, boy, and I’ll let you live,” she said.

Edmund did as he was told.