I forced myself to my feet. I made my arms fall from my face to my side. I stood upright, taller than I had ever stood in my life, and I shouted into the forest, “I am the body. I am the blood. I am creation. Do you hear me, demon? In the name of the God who set His spirit within me I deny you life.”

There was rush of wind over me. Looking up, I saw the eyes of fire, circling, coming closer. I threw back my head, waiting for the talons to tear at my throat, but it did not strike.

There came a terrified cry, “No! No, get back! Not me! I am your master!”

Someone was crashing wildly through the bushes.

“I command you-” John roared, but the words broke off in a long, drawn-out scream. There was a heavy splash. Then nothing.

I stood, listening for a long time, terrified that the demon was still hovering above me, but all was still.

“John,” I called softly. “Where are you?”

But there was no reply. I fell to my hands and knees, crawling forward through the mist towards the sound of crashing water. I felt the ground disappear under my outstretched hand and knew I was kneeling on the riverbank. I crouched on all fours. The mist hovered about a foot above the water. Below it, the white foam boiled down over the rocks.

“John, are you hurt?” I called again, but my voice seemed to be smothered by the white blanket and I wasn’t even sure I would hear his answer over the sound of the water. Then the mist parted for an instant and I could see something moving in the river. A man’s head, the face turned towards me, his eyeballs glittering white in the darkness. He was clinging onto the rock in the centre of the river. The icy water was cascading over his fingers as if they had become stones in the riverbed.

“Hold on,” I yelled. I struggled off with my cloak, twisted it, and knotted it top and bottom. I threw one end, but it was not long enough. The knot splashed into the water.

I needed a long stick or branch; it was impossible to find one in the mist. I pulled the belt from my waist and buckled it through the knot of the cloak; it lengthened it only a little, but I prayed it would be enough. I lay flat on the bank.

“I’ll throw it again. This time you must reach out. Now,” I yelled, as the mist closed again.

The end of the cloak fell into the water, but no hand grasped it and I felt the cloth being dragged down the stream. Again I hauled it out.

The mist parted briefly once more. I could see his fingers, white with cold, were slipping from the rock.

“John, let go with one hand and catch this when I throw. You must trust me or you will be swept away. It’s your only chance.”

I threw again. This time, the end of the cloak fell within inches of his hand, but he made no attempt to reach out for it.

“No… no… Mistress, you can’t take back from Anu what she has claimed for her own… Remember, Mistress, you cannot destroy a legend… a legend can only die… if no one speaks its name.”

From above our heads, a piercing shriek rang out like high mirthless laughter. Kraaaaaah. A great bird came swooping down through the swirling mist. It hovered, its huge body stretched out over the water. The skin of its torso and long human legs gleamed bone-white; black talons clawed the air. But the head was the face of Hell itself.

The strokes of its wings were so powerful that the water was beaten back beneath them into a great hollow with towering waves rearing up around it. For an instant, I saw John’s body lying exposed on the rock. Then something green reared up out of the water, an ancient woman, her hair rippling out behind her like wet weed and her massive wrinkled breasts swaying. Her mouth opened wider and wider like a huge fish, showing rows of sharp pointed teeth.

John threw up his arms to cover his face, screaming until the whole forest echoed with the horror and despair. But with one sweep of her powerful arms Black Anu had embraced him and dragged him down with her into the raging torrent.

i’D WATCHED THE PALE LIGHT in the tiny slit of the window turn pink and grey, then shiver into hyacinth. But now there was nothing, not night, nor day. Just a shimmering oblong of pearl, hanging high above my head. I thought I had slept without knowing and it was dawn and they were coming for me, but it couldn’t be daylight; that whiteness was not the sun.

I was so cold. I had not known how cold my head could feel without my hair. The horn-shaped hat with its scarlet letters waited for me by the door, waited for me to put on my new name. It was too dark to read the word anymore, but I did not need to read it. Know your own name, old Gwenith had said, but deep down I had always known it. It was there at my birth, the Demon star, Lilith’s star, the evil eye that winks at man from the heavens. It was my star now, for under that star was I born and under it would I die. Birth and death they are the same; the one curses the other.

My nursemaid told me that I was born with her sign. It was only a little thing, a tiny red mark on my chest, shaped like a crescent moon, Lilith’s symbol and Lilith’s curse. Three days after I was born, my father had taken a hot iron from the fire and ordered my nurse to strip me of my swaddling bands and stretch my little body out. Then he laid the red hot metal to my mark to rid me of the curse. It would keep me chaste, he said, drive out the demon whore, for, as everyone knows, fornication is the greatest sin and my father demanded chastity. My nursemaid swore she pleaded with him to stop, but he held the brand there, determined to obliterate every trace of the curse. It burnt deep into the flesh beneath. I had taken many moons to heal and she feared I wouldn’t live, but I had.

Lilith, the night-hag, the winged demon with hairy legs and goat’s feet. The bloodsucker who rides the night, who invades men’s dreams and steals their seed. Who strangles babies in their mothers’ wombs and devours her own children. She fled Adam before the fall, before he brought death into the world. She is immortal. She cannot die. She cannot die in the flames. They will go on burning her forever and she will not die. There cannot be an end to her pain. She will be bound forever, naked and screaming.

If willpower alone could have made my heart stop… but it wouldn’t stop. It just kept on beating as if I wanted to live. I’d taken off my shift and twisted it into a noose. I tried to climb the wall to the bars on the window to hang the noose from them, but I couldn’t reach them. For hours I had searched every inch of that cell, trying to find a nail to scratch open my veins or a sharp shard buried beneath the straw; even in the dark I went on searching with my fingertips. Groping through the straw, sweeping my hands over the cold flags trying to find one scrap of something I might have missed. Let them not burn me. Blessed Virgin, let me not burn. Please let me die now. I cannot bear it. I know I cannot bear it.

There were voices outside the window, a woman’s voice and murmuring words too low to be distinct, excited laughter, then a thump against the wooden door.

“I told you, she’s not coming. I saw her ride off towards the forest,” the woman said.

“So, the bitch really believes she can stand against the Aodh, does she? It will be her last ride.”

“Don’t you fancy a ride, Master? Come on-it’s a pity to waste the evening.”

The man laughed. I knew that deep mirthless laugh. It was my cousin Phillip.

“I usually prefer them young and tender, but why not? Most of the women in this village think they have to put up a show of resistance. It gets a little tiresome. They are all strumpets under their skirts; it makes a change to find an honest slut.”

There was a resounding slap on well-rounded flesh and the woman laughed.