Rowan sat in the cafe, looking up through the window at the gray sky. She was a picture of poetic melancholy in her heavy sweater, and long sandy hair parted in the middle. For weeks she'd been eating lunch at the same table, waiting, wondering when her next mission would come and what it would be. When the waitress dropped her change off, she knew the wait was finally over.
No one else was in the small establishment, or she wouldn't have held up the two strange coins to examine them. They were thousands of years old, and Cretan in origin. Each had the head of a goddess surrounded by wheat, a basic fertility motif. On the tail of both coins was a small labyrinth, and at the center of each maze was a star. The door closed quietly behind her as she left for home.
In the small offshoot of her bedroom that she liked to call her office, the witch placed a heavy old book upon her desk, and opened it to one of several dog-eared pages. There was a picture of Baphomet, a god of the High Magicians; hermaphroditic, horned and hooved. It pointed up with one hand and down with the other to illustrate the ancient maxim, "as above, so below," an equation of energy and matter devised hundreds of years before Einstein's. On its right forearm was the Latin word solve, and on the left, coagula. The motto of the alchemists, Solve et Coagula, meant to most scholars that to understand something one had to take it apart and then put it back together again. Rowan knew, as the renegade lodge did, that its meaning was infinitely more important. It represented the secret of teleportation, which was possibly the ultimate power.
"They're ready," she said, looking at one of the coins, and she laughed. She had been summoned to attempt the spell.
A week later, the woman drove to a business park outside the city. It was owned and controlled by the dark witches, and a facility had been prepared there for the ritual. She presented her ID to the guard in the booth as the rain poured down around them, and she wound up the drive to the designated building, with the materials she'd need nestled safely in her trunk. After she'd parked, two attendants took the bundles from her car and carried them for her into the main entrance.
"Rowan, welcome," Margaret said, and shook her hand. "This is an auspicious occasion."
"I certainly hope so," the witch responded, as they walked to the heart of the building, with her luggage in tow. "It was a long drive."
"If you have any doubts about the text's authenticity..."
"This isn't one of the tomes that you liberated. I hope it's not from some internet auction."
"It isn't. It's been verified by our research division. The source was a book collector in Portugal who had a casual interest in the occult, but who was never even a dabbler in practice. Everything about the grimoire checks out, from the paper to the printing. It's the real thing."
"Then today will be historic." Margaret smiled.
"There's no one we'd rather have making this quantum leap."
"I'll try not to disappoint. Who's playing the role of bottom?"
"No one you know. A volunteer." They entered the room where the magic was to take place. A quick glance around it told Rowan the trappings and instruments were in order.
"I'd better suit up." Margaret motioned to the servants, and Rowan followed them into the rear chamber. Then the leader herself retired to a lounge, to watch the ceremony on a closed circuit television set up.
Having studied a scan of the spell for a week, Rowan knew the incantations all by heart, and she had no doubt of her ability to recite them mentally, effecting changes in her environment by will alone. What she was less sure about was the ceremonial dress she'd be wearing. It was a modern take on the ancient theme, and though she generally perceived the advantages of changing with the times, this costume was something of an oddity to her.
In the guise of Baphomet, Rowan wore boots that resembled the rear legs of a horse. Her body's weight ran entirely through the front halves of her feet into resin hooves, while the back halves were elevated to look like cannon bones, with her heels forming the hocks and her shins the gaskins. From the knees down, the material was tight and black. Up to her abdomen, she was covered in black shag. Over her real ears were prosthetic imitations of a goat's. Through the hair above them protruded two resin horns which curved back and downward, and then pointed forward beside her eyes. Moving in the outfit was like walking on tip toes, and in a few minutes she was naturally taking on the mannerisms of a faun.
With the final preparations completed, she reentered the temple. The naked man was on his back atop a stone sarcophagus, his calves hanging against the side near her. Rowan saluted the four winds to purify the space, and approached him. She radiated a magical vibration, and the torches dimmed. In her plush chair on the second floor, Margaret leaned forward at the viewscreen, her eyes ablaze with expectation.
The priestess held out her hands, and his legs levitated slowly so that she was able to take hold of his knees, with his ankles resting lightly on her arms. A squelch followed by soft rustling announced the emergence of her golden cock from the goat fur on her lower body. Its eight inch length was ribbed with a double helix of metal serpents that ran up and down as they entwined around the shaft. In her erect state, Rowan's consciousness bi-located to both the base and head of the phallus, highlighting in her spirit the pull of those two most basic, universal forces; the horned god and the nature goddess, Repulsion and Attraction, reason and emotion. The powers shifted into perfect equilibrium within her.
Her bare breasts heaved as she drew a deep breath and caught sight of the glinting coins covering the man's eyes, each of which was placed with the star side up. The girl-hooves clacked on the concrete floor, and in the next moment she was inside him.
Thrusting forward her furry hips, Rowan fucked him like a stallion, bringing the torches up to a feverish fury with the primordial vigor of her pendular swinging. His back arched with every insertion of the huge, solid rod, and the air above the man's reclining form became luminous, as though an express train were approaching to enter reality there. The witch knew the moment of truth had arrived, and allowed herself to be disintegrated by the manifesting energy. With her cock firmly lodged in the man's quivering body, she remained conscious rather than dying, and attained the ability to move her mind through the infinite, labyrinthine folds of spacetime in whatever direction she then wished. On the monitor in the observation room, her body appeared to be a calm white flame between the male's legs, but what seemed only a moment to those watching would afford an eternity of travel to the disembodied woman.
"She's done it!" Margaret cried.
"But has she survived?" an underling responded.
The first experiment she'd planned was a trip two hundred and fifty years into the past.
Her expanded awareness found the Earth at that era, and zeroed in. Momentarily her devilish form stood invisibly in the bedroom of a large house. Judging by the interior, and the clothing of the young man seated near the fire, she had landed in France at some point in the eighteenth century. The youth turned his head as his door was thrown open.
"Good evening, young master!" exclaimed an older woman in man's clothes as she bounded into the room, dropping her bag.
"Who are you?" the male asked in French.
"Ha ha! Who indeed!" She bowed histrionically, extending a buckled shoe. The hearthlight danced on her silk breeches. One arm of her dresscoat was tucked beneath her abdomen, and in the other she held her hat out to her side. "Surely my fame precedes me," she said, straightening up. "The head of a lost twenty who reject the Golden Flower Order." Her fingers drummed on the cravat around her neck. "A defender of the rights and persons of the nobility. My signature doggerel:
They seek her here, they seek her there.
