A Satanic Ceremony

"The guy—I recognized him," Angelica Blaze explained in the cab. "Colin Thornton. He's some kind of Satanist or occultist or something. Been on TV. He's got this place, or temple or whatever on 16th Street."

Lois Lane glanced at her. "Number 6?"

The dickgirl, who was keeping her distance on the far side of the back seat, looked at the reporter with something like admiration.

"How did you know?"

"Just a guess," Lois lied. "How do you know the women are there?"

Blaze shrugged. "Where else would they be? Satanist dude is drugging local women. He's obviously doing something nefarious with them."

They left the cab a block away from the building. Lois slipped her arm in Blaze's and told her to act natural as they walked past the door to #6—which was, she was surprised to see, a small former church, the steeple gone but with the high, narrow windows and stained glass. Once upon a time, it would have sat in the middle of a larger lot...but now it was hemmed in on all sides by big commercial buildings, set apart only by narrow alleys on either side.

On a hunch, Lois guided Blaze down one of those alleys. As Lois suspected, it ended at an iron gate...beyond which she could make out tall, grey grass and pale stones. A small cemetery. She gave the bars an experimental tug, but they were either locked or rusted in place.

The reporter frowned as she looked at the wall of the church and the gate. She reached down to take off her heels...

"What are you doing?" Blaze whispered.

"The gate is locked," Lois whispered back. "I'm going to climb over."

"Let me try," Angelica said with that smug smile, an arm reaching past the reporter...and Lois saw her hand make a movement that seemed patently impossible. As if the fingers pressed through the metal and out the other side...then the dickgirl's hand was resting on the gate, and it swung silently open.

"All in the wrist," Blaze said with a wink, and Lois shook her head, unable to distrust the evidence of her own senses.

They weren't the only ones in the graveyard.

Part of the tall grass had been mown away, and in the clearing four women in dark robes knelt on the graves, their heads bowed. Standing in the middle of the clearing was a tall man, dressed in a black cassock, his slick hair oiled back. There was something hauntingly familiar about the dark eyes, the generous mouth, broad forehead, and high, prominent cheekbones, but Lois couldn't place it immediately. He was reading from a book in his hand:

"He is like a many-legged goat, and he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice, horned in glory. Nyarlathotep spake, and he said, 'Rise up, my dark one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is night and the cold rains fall. The flowers have died upon the earth, and the singing of birds is done. The turtle lies slain. The fig tree withers, as do the grapes. Arise, my dark one, and come away...'"

As if on cue, the women reached up and peeled their robes from their bare shoulders, letting them fall to their waists...and as their breasts gleamed in the moonlight, they pushed the dark cloth behind them, showing each of them was utterly naked. Lois, kneeling behind one of the larger gravestones, Blaze poised behind her, recognized the four missing women from their social media profiles. Angelica Blaze had guided her truly...she had found the missing women.

The only question was, now what?