The Ritual Begins

A chanting began...four women's voices in harmony, low and almost hypnotic. Lois felt a knot of worry in her stomach and began to carefully test her bonds. The band of cloth around her left wrist seemed loose. If she could just get her hand free...

"Oh ancient spirits of evil, hear our call..."

The alien syllables struck a strange chord in the reporter's soul. The knot in her stomach seemed to churn more strongly, a ball of contention in her gut that just wouldn't go away. Still playing at being asleep, her fingers pulled at the binding on her left wrist. It was giving, just a little bit, all she needed was time.

"Oh Lilith, the Dark Mother, lend us your aid..."

Lois felt her breath coming in short gasps. A heat was building inside her belly, the roiling getting worse and worse. She felt bloated as from a bad period, stomach taut and overfull. The binding on her left hand was almost to the point where she could free her hand.

"Oh, watcher angels, who begot giants on the daughters of Eve..."

A cry escaped the reporter's lips as something moved inside her stomach. She risked opening her eyes, just a little...and her heart nearly stopped when she saw her abdomen distended, swollen in obvious pregnancy. Something glowed within it, a pulsing light like the beating of some slow heart, and through the pale flesh Lois could see the dark shadows of her ribs...and something else, something down below her belly button, a kind of rounded crescent moon shape like...like the image of a fetus on a sonogram...

Blaze had her eyes pointed toward the ceiling, seemingly oblivious to Lois Lane's efforts, hands raised in a gesture of supplication.

"The child in this mother's belly hungers, feed it and let it grow..."

The belly was growing. Slowly and steadily, Lois could see and feel it now, stomach visibly bulging out, maybe four or five months pregnant, but speeding through the weeks of normal gestation...and the reporter had no doubts now what would happen if she didn't escape. Already she could feel it shift inside her stomach, a weight growing on her lower back as the demonic child inside her grew.

"...bind those devils who prey on the unborn, give us your dark blessing..."

With a silent cry of triumph, Lois freed her wrist, and quickly turned, all pretense gone as she tore at the binding on her right wrist.