Muffled footsteps outside the rusty iron-studded door that led out into the gloomy castle were the cause of her sudden panic. She knew only too well what they meant.

A key rattled dully in the lock. Bolts were pulled back. Slowly, purposefully slowly, the door swung inward, creaking hideously on its ancient hinges. Blackness yawned beyond.

A sick, dry gasp of pure terror came from the girl's tremulous lips.

Three nightmare figures stood framed in the entrance.

One was a giant, a huge man clad entirely in black, his head concealed by a velvet hood. Through slits in the hood, the man's eyes glittered like polished emeralds, hard and cold. Appraisingly, they swept over the girl's lush figure, half-concealed by the folds of the shift, the silken fabric wrapped tight around her thrusting breasts, the filigree lace hem twisted about her soft white thighs.

His two companions, obvious underlings, were creatures out of hell.

One was a squat dwarf with a grotesque, almost spherical head and long matted hair foul with clotted gore. The other was a muscular bull of a man with a hare-lip, whose shaven skull looked like carved ivory.

Like hyenas sensing soft and defenseless prey, the hellish trio eyed the chained and semi-clad girl with unnatural lusts, their loathsome minds filled with diabolic visions of things to come.

Black Hood sucked in a breath with a sibilant hiss. His green eyes burned evilly behind their slits. "So, signorina, we meet again," he said icily.

The girl said nothing. She seemed petrified.

The dwarf licked his gross lips with an animal tongue, turned his monstrous head and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

Black Hood shrugged.

"Perhaps I might put the question first, and hope sense prevails," he said. "Do you hear me, signorina? Ah, I see that you do. Will you answer a question or two about your father's castle?"

Deep within her scantily-clad body, the girl felt a sudden reserve of aristocratic pride. Momentarily mastering her fear, she managed to push herself erect, standing before the lust-filled gaze of her captors with something of the hauteur that was her normal bearing, bracing her palms against the slime-encrusted wall. Black Hood leaned forward to await her reply. The girl spat full in his face.

For a moment his massive bulk shook with rage. His fingernails dug into his palms, then opened again, bloodied.

"Very well, signorina. Ugo, give her a taste. Tun, you hold her."

Before the girl could move, the bull-head with a hare-lip had her pinioned against the slimy wetness of the wall.

In an instant her hauteur vanished. She was cringing, frozen with terror for her well-kept body. She shuddered and tried to avoid Tun's clammy hands as his fingers strayed insinuatingly over the silken surface of her shift.

Meanwhile, the dwarf was heating several long needles over the flame of a cauldron. Then he advanced within a step of the girl, waiting.

In the semi-darkness, Black Hood's eyes shone like green windows into hell.

"Now, signorina, are you ready to talk?"

"The Virgin pities me, I do not know," she sobbed.

"Come, signorina, you can't expect us to believe that."

"P-please," she stammered. "I know... I know nothing."

"Very well," Black Hood sighed in a velvet whisper. "Ugo!"

The dwarf extended a glowing needle to touch the girl's silk-covered flesh.

A shrill, mind-shattering shriek of unbelieving agony and terror broke from the girl's red lips. This was the first time in her pampered life that she had felt real pain.

A demented, quirking smile touched the corners of the dwarf's slobbering mouth where it loomed cavern-like below her horrified face, ghastly with the stink of decaying teeth.

"Undress her, Tun," the dwarf gibbered. "Show me her beauty!" He cackled in glee as Bullhead ripped at the sleazy shift, splitting it down her back to the cleft of her perfect buttocks, drawing a scream of mingled outrage and terror from the young noblewoman. Then he grasped the thin material at one shoulder and pulled it powerfully, holding the struggling girl by her other arm.

She screamed even louder as her shift was torn to complete shreds, revealing her virginal, nude body to the lascivious gaze of the three men. Their eyes drank in the beauty of her proud, full breasts tipped by fear-hardened brown nipples, her slender waist and flat stomach above flaring hips, her firm-fleshed thighs which framed the gloriously lush bush of blonde pubic hair which struggled to hide the pouting lips of her sex. She blushed momentarily but was quickly drawn back to the harsh reality of her situation by the high-pitched voice of the dwarf.

"I'm going to burn you, pretty girl. I'm going to - "

"Nooooo! Don't touch me!" his lovely victim screamed, squirming nakedly in the cruel grip of the fiend called Tun. "Don't hurt me!"

The dwarf leered evilly. A tic started in one bloodshot eye. Carefully, he selected another needle and held it over the flame until it began to glow redly. Saliva dribbled out from behind his rotting snags.

Black Hood chuckled. "Imagine how you'll look when Ugo's finished with you. No man will want to caress you, signorina. Will you speak? Will you tell us what we want to know?"

The lovely aristocrat fought to suppress the pain screaming through her pampered body, fighting to remember that she was the daughter of a duke, a member of the nobility.

But her terror and hopelessness were too much for her.

"Signore," she sobbed, prepared now to humble herself before her captor, "I swear I do not possess the information you seek. I would tell you if I knew, but I do not."

Black Hood's laugh was pregnant with menace. In disbelief, the terrified girl heard the hateful acid that lay behind that laugh.

The amber light from the lantern bathed the girl's sleekly smooth body in its caressing glow. It fell across her ivory skin, starting at her slim ankles, and swept over to highlight the perfection of her body and face.

She writhed and squinted in an agony of anticipation as the dwarf removed the burning needle and brought it near to her breast. She felt its heat and tried her best to squirm away from it, but Tun held her in a grip of iron. She was unable to move far enough. The point touched the silky smooth flesh on the underside of her breast...

Just the point touching her sent searing torment through her torso. The pain was terrible, but she quickly learned that the touch of the point was nothing compared to the soul-wrenching agony of glowing metal shoved deep into soft, feminine flesh. A long, shrill shriek of agony poured from her tortured lips as the needle tore through her precious breast in a line of fiery torment. Her eyes almost came out of her head as she saw the skin on the top of her breast bulge outward before the point emerged from her skin.

The needle was no longer glowing, the fiery glow quenched by her tortured tissues, but it was still hot enough to sizzle and smoke as it protruded from her flesh by several inches. The nauseating stench of smoldering flesh - her own flesh! - outraged her nostrils as she collapsed weakly, sagging in the merciless grip of the grinning demon who held her. She gagged with horror, then her eyes rolled up out of sight as the smell of her own flesh cooking and the unbearable pain plunged her down, down, down into black and bottomless oblivion.

"Who would have thought you could have withstood such pain?" Black Hood asked rhetorically, his voice holding a flicker of admiration. "But now you know what real pain is like. Will you speak of your father's castle now?"

"But I told you!" she wailed frantically. "I do not know anything! I'm just his daughter! He never shared such information with me!"

"That I doubt," said Black Hood thoughtfully. "But it matters not - we have plenty of time." His eyes suddenly blazed as he saw her eyes wavering.

"Signorina," he raged, thrusting his face close to hers. "Please pay attention!" His hand knotted in her long golden hair, jerking her lovely head up. Three stinging slaps brought her blue eyes flying open.

"Better," Black Hood purred, releasing her. His voice was calm and pleasant as he continued. "Since your questioning will obviously take longer than I'd thought, I believe I shall call a halt for a short while and give my faithful servants a chance to appreciate your distinctive charms for themselves. After the common peasant wenches they're used to, they'll find you a tasty morsel indeed."

Gazing up through a lock of blonde hair across her forehead, the girl saw the abominable dwarf shuffling forward like some grotesque human spider, clawing at his belt as he wetly licked his lips. Black Hood picked up the lantern and held it high as Tun forced her down on a rough straw mattress and held her shoulders. It swayed back and forth, throwing a flickering light over her lush nudity.

The girl screamed in terror as the dwarf's loathsome face descended over her beautiful and anguished features. She writhed, trying to fight him off, but Tun held her arms pinned to the mattress, and the dwarf already had her legs spread. The pain had also taken a toll of her, despite her youth, and she screamed again as she saw the dwarf's rampant manhood for the first time. It was the first time she had seen the genitals of any man, even the young nobleman to whom she was betrothed. As the dwarf's unnaturally enlarged cock surged into her, tearing her virginity from her in one bloody and agonizing thrust, she screamed out her lover's name, but it came out a wordless syllable.

With brutal strength, the demented dwarf assaulted her, thrusting deep inside her virginal love channel, stretching it cruelly. As Black Hood and Tun shouted encouragement, the girl prayed for unconsciousness to claim her, to shield her from the horror of having her maidenhead torn by the repulsive dwarf. But, though the rape was terribly painful, it was nothing to the blazing hot needle that had been thrust through her breast, and she remained conscious and aware as the Dwarf finished his business and pulled out of her, his cock dripping with his slimy ejections.

But then Black Hood said, "Turn her over, Tun. I believe I shall avail myself of her other undoubtedly virginal orifice." The girl's scream echoed through the dungeon as the hideous leader of this band of fiends surged through her anal sphincter and deep into her rectum...

"Now that we've made a woman out of you," Black Hood smirked at the naked girl, "we have some more questions to ask. Since you didn't respond to your first taste of pain, we'll need to become more methodical. Spread her on the flaying frame, Tun. That way Ugo can get to every part of her with his hot needles. That should loosen her tongue, but if the signorina is still stubborn, I believe I'll let him peel the skin off that lovely backside of hers. That should make her properly receptive when we put her on the torture stool and light a fire under it."

"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!" the nude girl shrieked at hearing the planned details of her interrogation, but none of the three paid attention to either her denials or her struggles as Tun dragged her to a massive wooden frame with ropes and pulleys at each corner. Quickly, the leather cuffs were strapped around her slender wrists and ankles, and she was drawn up into the air and spread-eagled. Tun turned cranks until she groaned as her superb, alabaster body was drawn taut with her straining toes several inches clear of the floor.

The clank of metal and a dragging sound drew her eyes, and she screamed in terror as she saw Ugo pulling the fiery cauldron and his needles over to her.

"No!" she screamed. "Don't let him touch me!"

"Then tell me of the secrets of your father's castle. I'm sure there is a secret passage to the outside. All fortifications have them, and the ruling family would all know how to escape in the event of being besieged."

"I don't know!" she screamed frantically, her eyes on Ugo coming toward her with a glowing needle.

"Tell me!" Black Hood commanded, but her only answer was a scream as Ugo began to shove the needle into the middle of a nipple and straight down into her breast...

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"

By that time, all her torturers had come to the conclusion the girl really didn't know anything, but they continued to torture her for no other reason than that it delighted them to do so. Black Hood had secured the perfect assistants for his nefarious enterprises. So the horror continued as Ugo put his needles aside and sharpened his flaying knife to slowly peel the skin from her quivering buttocks. Then, with the raw flesh exposed to the dank air of the dungeon, he and Ugo seated her on the short spikes of the torture stool, cackling at her shrieks as they bound her ankles to her wrists so that all her weight was on the spiked surface. Then they dragged the stool over to the circular fire-pit and positioned it over the already lit fire. Soon the girl was screaming maniacally as the surface of the stool became searing hot, completing the destruction of her skinless buttocks.

She did not die for endless hours and, when it became apparent she was hopelessly insane, Black Hood only shrugged and left her to his henchmen. He only chuckled as the screams behind him resumed as he left the dungeon.

Gaetano, born about 1769, began to prey upon travelers in the valleys and mountains of his native Campania when he was little more than a lad. Like most Neopolitans, he married young, but, unlike his compatriots, on finding that his wife and child were useless encumbrances, he decided to free himself of family restraint by murdering both of them. The child had annoyed him by its wailings during an illness. The butchering of his teenage wife followed because she had irritated Gaetano's peace with lamentations concerning the infant.

He was an enormous man, with a strength of limb and muscle that caused legends to cling to his name. It was said of him that he could lift a horse with ease, could bend a thick iron bar across his knee. It was also claimed that he seemed to absorb vitality from everyone with whom he came in contact, leaving them exhausted. This mental and emotional vampirism, particularly where women were concerned, was eclipsed by a more literal and horrible vampirism to be referred to later.

Gaetano suffered from scrofula, the horrible skin disease that causes a grotesque swelling and degeneration of the lymphatic glands. The face erupts in loathsome pussy sores. As a consequence, the bandit leader always wore a hood, it being a tossup as to which was more terrifying - the black hood or his ghastly, leprous face.

His methods were extraordinarily simple. Operating out of a ruined castle, he would waylay likely travelers, ordering his victim to deliver up their property. If this was not sufficiently valuable, or if the brigand chief had an idea something was being withheld, he would order his gang to inflict unprintable tortures on the wretched victims to get them to disclose the treasure Gaetano thought was being concealed.

Thus, on one occasion, they encountered a wealthy merchant and his pretty, pampered daughter, both of whom Gaetano immediately ordered out of their luxurious carriage. When the victims refused, the bandits dragged them out.

"You'll hang for this, blackguard!" the merchant, one Stefano Cremona, screeched, shaking his puny fist in Gaetano's hooded face. A moment later he regretted his bravado as the brigand calmly ordered his lovely daughter Christina stripped.

''Tear off her clothes, Cesare!" Gaetano roared at a black-bearded lout who was already studying the luscious redhead with eyes moist with primitive lust.

The lout smirked, a disgusting string of drool coming from one corner of his twisted lips as he ripped her dress.

The girl panted in fear. Christina was rich, lovely, pampered and soft. What was being threatened against her was incomprehensible. As the drooling brigand reached for her, she clawed desperately with her exquisitely manicured fingernails, but he easily caught both her hands and then enveloped them in one gigantic fist. He reached out with his free hand, thrusting it under her skirt, and silk ripped. The bandit laughed, and Christina was overcome by the sick realization that he had just torn her lingerie from her loins and was even now making ready for his hideous assault, preparing the way by kissing her powdered cheek.

After all the gang had had the girl, Gaetano looked at her reflectively. "She is certainly a delectable morsel," he mused, "and she's not really all that badly hurt. Just a few slaps and bruises. I think..."

He paused for a moment, his lips curling cruelly as he thought over the idea that had just occurred to him. Then he called several of his men together and gave a few quiet orders.

The mostly naked Christina was still sobbing a half-hour later, trying to clutch the shreds of her clothing about her, when the small party Gaetano had dispatched returned and gave a nod.

"Bring them both!" the man with the black hood ordered, and the girl and her father were jerked to their feet and led along a forest path to a nearby clearing. Cremona looked about in confusion, for it seemed the men had been busy building a cooking fire to roast a deer or some similar animal. A pair of forked stakes had been forced deep into the ground on either end of the long fire-pit, and a long pole awaited the animal to be cooked.

It was not until Gaetano waved his hand at the girl and ordered, "Prepare her!" that her father finally saw the ropes lying beside the spit, which he had thought looked rather long for a deer. He blanched as a sudden realization of what was intended struck him and he roared, trying to tear loose from the men that held him and come to the aid of his beloved daughter.

The nearly naked Christina was not nearly as quick to realize the threat, even when two of the gang began to tear at the few shreds of clothing she still retained. As she was stripped completely nude, she thought she faced being raped again. Not until she was being pulled over to the long stake lying on the ground were her eyes drawn to the ropes waiting for her and she began to scream.

"Father!" she shrieked wildly, as she was thrown down to the ground beside the stake. "Help me! Save me! Please, oh please!"

Her father buried his face in his hands, sobbing in helpless despair because of his helplessness to save his daughter from the terrible death intended for her. Christina was equally helpless as she was picked up by two of the men and laid on her face on the ground. They held her squirming body by wrist and ankle as two other men laid the stake along her spine.

"Father!" she cried again. "Help me!"

Her struggles intensified as she felt the rough bark of the long pole against her soft skin, but these men were well versed in dealing with a resisting captive. Ropes were first looped around each of her ankles before being wound around the pole.

"Make sure they're good and tight on the pole so she doesn't move when we're turning her," said Gaetano.

"Yes, sir," replied one of his panting men as he tied her knees as he had her ankles, wrapping the rope separately around each knee and tying it off before winding it around the pole, making use of the stub of a trimmed off branch on the pole to give additional anchoring. They were binding her from her feet to her shoulders, and her struggles, while remaining energetic, began to require less attention as the bonds increasing reduced her freedom of movement. Her waist was next to be secured, then ropes went around her chest above her breasts. Then her arms were pulled down, trapping the chest rope in her armpits, and her wrists were bound together firmly behind her before being lashed to the pole.

A short, thick branch with a rope at each end was presented to her mouth, but Christina desperately clamped her lips closed. Her resistance only delayed the inevitable briefly, since one of the brigands only grinned and clamped his fingers on her nostrils. Within a minute, she had to open her mouth to breath, and pressure on her jaws made her open her teeth allowing him to jam the branch between them. The ropes on the end of the branch were securely lashed to the pole, trapping her head and making it possible to wind her long, red hair, which had come loose, around the pole, keeping it out of the way and preventing it from falling into the flames and catching fire.

She screamed around the branch in her mouth as her pole was lifted into the air, but Gaetano stopped them before his men placing the pole with its squirming burden over the fire.

"Wash the girl off first," he ordered. "She doesn't look very attractive all dirty like that. I want her to look nice over the fire."

As some of his men went to fetch water from the stream at the side of the clearing, he stepped forward to look down into the terrified eyes of Christina Cremona. "It's too bad we don't have any grease to rub you down with," he told her. "It would prevent your skin from burning quite so quickly, but that doesn't matter all that much. You're strong and healthy - you'll last a good long time over the fire. This is a cedar wood fire, which cooks long and hot - you'll be roasted to a turn before we're done with you. But don't worry - we won't be eating you. We're civilized men, after all!"

He laughed uproariously when he said it, joined by the mirth of his men and punctuated by her father's roar of outrage and her own scream of terror. It took little more time to wash her off to Gaetano's satisfaction, and then the world swung drunkenly about her as the pole was carried to the fire and dropped into the forks of the supporting stakes.

"Aeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" she screamed as the rising heat from the flames swirled about her nakedness. It was a scream more of terror and despair than of pain at the moment, for the horror of the monstrous death intended for her was too distressing to comprehend. But she had little time to dwell on her despair, as the pain from the heat started out as bad before progressing to intolerable and then to unbearable.

"Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!" This scream was one of pure pain only, for the agony of the searing heat drove all conscious thought out of her mind.

Christina did not see one of the brigands fit a carved branch into a notch in the spit, but she felt its effect as the pole began to revolve. But it revolved slowly and her alabaster body revolved with it, so her screams continued unabated even as new parts of her body were scorched by the heat. Her full, heavy breasts sagged to the side, pulled by gravity, as the spit revolved until her right shoulder was downward. The pole continued to revolve until the nude girl was face down and her two mounds were pulled into a full dangle.

Her scream now elevated to a frantic screech, since her breasts were so large that her nipples and the undersides were six inches closer to the flames. The increment of heat was excruciating beyond all her other agony, and she shrieked and shrieked as her sensitive nipples felt like they were on fire.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuullllllllllllllllllpppppp meeeeeeeeeeee! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"

Her father sobbed, guessing that his daughter was trying to call his name and beg for help, but her words were blocked by the branch between her teeth. He tried to look away, but Gaetano gave a sharp command. One of the brigands forced his head up and pulled his eyelids open, forcing him to watch. It had been painful enough to see his darling Christina's bare, unclothed body displayed for these degenerates to see. But he was heartsick to his core by the abject agony she was suffering, with the fire eating at every part of her defenseless nudity as she rotated over the fire, shrieking from the pain. Being helpless to do anything to stop the torment, with the fiery glow of the flames turning the ivory underside of Christina's body a gleaming orange, was even worse.

The idea of anyone, much less his precious daughter, who was so deathly afraid of fire, being burned to death was terrifying enough. But the cruelty and viciousness of this monster stripping his beloved little girl absolutely naked and then putting her to death, slowly, by roasting her alive was a monstrosity so far beyond his comprehension as to be incomprehensible. He sobbed again, thankful that his tears were blurring the horror taking place before him, but he couldn't do anything about her piercing screams that penetrated to his very heart. He had tried to jam his fingers in his ears, but the brigands only laughed and pulled his hand away.

Neither father nor daughter were aware that the reason Christina was able to scream so energetically was that she was not the first female Gaetano had roasted alive. He had instructed his henchmen on how long to dig the fire-pit and where to position the girl so she didn't breathe the fiery air just over the flames. She still felt the heat on her face, but she didn't have to breathe the fiery stuff that would have drastically shortened her time over the fire.

Gaetano and his men settled down to watch the show. They found it terribly amusing to listen to the agony and desperation of Christina's screams as her pale complexion, of which she had been so inordinately proud, began to show the results from the searing heat that was cooking her alive. Her alabaster skin turned pink at first and had begun to redden after an hour over the fire, when she was taken off and given cool water to drink. Despite the fact that it was reviving her to endure more torment, she couldn't stop herself from drinking her fill. But the break in her torture was quickly ended, and the respite from the pain made it that much harder to bear when she was carried back to the fire.

Slowly, her skin turned bright red but it shaded to a darker tint as her torment continued. Her screams remained lusty and powerful as the torture continued, and her agony was only relieved when she was removed from the fire and given water. By this time, her father had fallen to his knees, and Gaetano allowed him to remain there as the grieving man prayed for the death of his daughter. But that death was slow in coming, and it was not until Christina Cremona had been roasting for four hours and had turned a dark brown that her screams began to dwindle. Her father gave a prayer of thanks when her shrieks finally ceased.

Gaetano stood up and stretched hugely. "Well, it's not the longest roasting I've ever done, but the little piglet was certainly one of the prettiest I've put over the fire. It's still too bad I didn't have any pig grease, but that's likely for the best, since we need to be on our way. Call in the lookouts and throw the old man on the fire so he can join his darling daughter. We don't have time to do to him what we did to her, which I wouldn't find too interesting anyway."

So Stefano Cremona, still sobbing, made no resistance as ropes were looped around his wrists and ankles before he was carried to the fire.

"I'm sorry, Christina," he wailed just before being thrown on the fire, looking up at the well-browned body of his silent daughter, who had died a death so horrible that it staggered his imagination. Then fires rose about him as he was tossed into the flames and the ropes at ankle and wrist were tied to the supports holding the spit. His own death was mercifully much quicker than his daughter, and he only screamed for a few seconds before fire in his lungs brought surcease to his grief as well as his agony.

Not only did Gaetano rob the ambassador of his purse and jewelry, but he permitted his men to outrage the teenaged wife before the diplomat's horrified eyes in ways that defy description. The Frenchman and his naked wife were then tied to the tail of one of his own nervous horses and in this manner allowed to depart for Naples.

The ambassador was furious and complained bitterly to the king. Ferdinand sent for his minister and charged him to take "immediate steps for the capture of the brigand." But at this point, diplomacy intervened to save the head of Gaetano Mammone. The minister explained that Gaetano was too valuable an asset to the safety of the throne to be sacrificed to an ambassador's desire for vengeance.

Brigandage in Italy had political origins: Peasants, harshly exploited by the aristocracy, had early banded together in sporadic little revolts. Hence, even centuries later, the life of a brigand in Italy was a more agreeable proposition than that of a highwayman in England. The highwayman was a solitary creature, little more than a street thief who had taken to the road. The brigand had the solace of numbers and a certain dreaded prestige.

Frequently he was a member of some semi-political group whose aims were not entirely connected with personal gain. Often he played both camps - the aristocracy and the radicals - one against the other.

The bandits lived in style - they had their campfires and their songs, their orgies with lovely captives, and their own fiery women. But seldom were they as rapacious and blood lusting as Gaetano Mammone.

He was a man without virtues. He knew himself for what he was - a human fiend who laughed at patriotism except when it served his purpose, who reveled in unspeakable cruelty for its own sake, who time and again inflicted horrible outrages on the soft bodies of young women in order that he might gloat over the agonies of their dying.

In 1799, this monster had rendered certain services to the reigning house that actually gained him the rank of captain in the army. It is an ironical reflection on the ethics of war that he was able to rejoice in his new occupation because it afforded him greater opportunities for plunder, rape and torture. Gaetano was now free to inflict a reign of terror without fear of restraint, and, in the years that followed, he gratified his perverted cravings in a non-stop orgy of blood.

Blood in its literal sense had become a sort of obsession with this ogre. For some time, he had made a practice of drinking blood. He boasted that the taste of it was more delightful than that of the finest wines.

Satan protects his own, or so it seems. Gaetano's health was wonderful. Plagues passed him by, leaving him untouched. He went his bloody way unworried, unconcerned. He bragged at times that he ought to be miserable because of his abnormal crimes, but that, fortunately, he had not been burdened with a conscience. He came to look upon himself as a privileged person, blessed by the Evil One.

As an officer of the king, Gaetano now had an opportunity to win distinction for himself by the use of his strategic gifts, but, with the natural preference of a blood-mad monster, he relied upon savagery even when less brutal methods would have served his purposes. He gloried in the knowledge that people became sick with terror at his approach. Some perverted twist in his nature made him crave the sight of pain, and, if he had the choice of putting captives to death quickly and mercifully or protracting their agonies with torture, he always chose the latter.

Sometimes this human fiend organized spectacular horrors that would have delighted Caligula or Ivan the Terrible. Thus, on one occasion when he had captured a number of women and children in one of the internecine wars that raged across the Campania, he drove them all into a large barn. Their hands were then nailed to tables and walls. An hour later, the barn was filled with straw soaked in oil, the doors were barred, and the screaming victims burned to death.

Gaetano loved blasphemies and frequently committed hideous sacrilege. After the capture of Altamara, he entered the cathedral and organized a burlesque mass. The Duchess of Altamara, a woman whose beauty was famous throughout Europe, tried to protest the blasphemy.

The monster's reaction was characteristic. He had the lovely Duchess stripped naked and chained to the altar while his men prevented the congregation from leaving. He then encouraged his men - most of whom had not even seen a woman in months - to have their fill of her. Then he ordered the nude aristocrat spread-eagled in mid-air. She was pulled from the ground by ropes tied to her wrists and thrown over rafters, while her legs were spread by other ropes tied to her ankles and then secured to the walls.

Drawing his knife, he tested its keenness, and, apparently satisfied, stepped up to the bound Duchess. "I usually have one of my men do this, since he's better at it than I am," he told her, his voice pleasant but with his mouth twisted in a cruel smile. He flashed his teeth, more of a snarl than a smile as he continued, "But I've skinned a woman before, and I can do it again..."

Then, putting the tip of his knife at the base of her throat, he drew a line straight down between her magnificent breasts, over her heaving belly, through the depression of her navel, and over the soft curve of her stomach, ending in the auburn curls of her pubis. He made another cut from one shoulder to the other followed by a pair of cuts along the crease between her groin and each hip.

By this time, the Duchess, who had initially been outraged by being so outrageously treated, was beginning to panic as she realized this monster was actually intending harm against her, a member of the nobility!

"You can't..." she started, but her protest was cut off as he slipped his knife under the corner of skin where the cut straight down her torso met the cut from one shoulder to the other. He quickly and expertly pried up a flap of skin and began to pull and slice under the skin. She shrieked in pure pain now as he separated a triangle of her skin and then pulled at it, using his knife to both pry and cut her skin free. The triangle grew larger as the duchess' eyes crossed as she looked at her chest in horror as the triangle of flesh began to grow larger as he worked, ripping and cutting in turn. Her screams grew louder as he separated the skin between her breasts, working outward over the smooth curve of her exquisitely formed mammary. By the time he had peeled the flawless skin from that breast, the duchess had lost all of her outrage. Only pain was left, and she desperately tried to beg him for mercy. His only response was to stoop and grab a wad of her torn clothing, stuffing it in her mouth to silence her.

He continued working until he had skinned one side of her torso from the middle outwards. Then he went to work on the other side, working swiftly but deftly, and, when finished, he flayed her back and shoulders. Now he bent to work on the smooth curve of her buttocks, humming to himself as he worked and appearing to derive considerable satisfaction as he worked, not troubled at all as the half-skinned noblewoman clenched and unclenched her buttocks while she desperately tried to scream through her gag. Gaetano was easily able to understand that now she was not begging him to stop - now she only wanted him to kill her.

Galeazo had no intention of killing the duchess - he wanted her to suffer for her affront to him. The intimidated congregation did nothing to help the tortured aristocrat, and, after her torso was denuded of skin, watched in horrified silence at the Black Hood skinned the duchess' arms and legs.

Stepping back, he nodded in satisfaction, then called to one of his men, a misshapen dwarf, "Almost up to your standards, eh, Ugo?"

"As good as me!" called the dwarf, jumping up and down in glee as Gaetano presented his with the skin of the noblewoman.

"There, Ugo!" he said. "You can use it to cover your books!"

This seemed to amuse not only Ugo but all of Gaetano's men, since the dwarf couldn't read a single word.

Then, leaving the doomed Duchess spread-eagled in abject agony, he and his men simply left, unconcerned with her fate. It was her distinct misfortune to be a devout believer in a religion that proscribed suicide, even for one who was clearly doomed, as she was. She was taken to her home, moaning in agony and screaming at every touch. The priest, who had watched her torment without doing anything to stop it, stayed by her side. Some whispered that he did so to prevent the duchess from committing a mortal sin by taking her own life, while others grumbled that he was also preventing any of her family from helping to end her misery.

It took her three endless days to die...

Instantly, she began to plot the bandit's destruction. She planned to have Gaetano, who was nearly sixty years old by this time, arrested on a trumped up charge and sentenced to death. She had spoken with the magistrate who would try the brigand and received his affirmation that the criminal would be found guilty. And, because the magistrate viewed Gaetano's many and abnormal crimes with horror, it took little convincing on her part to secure his further promise to sentence the brigand chief to being boiled alive.

Unfortunately for Carla Ludovicia, Gaetano had lost none of his wiles and still maintained his many contacts in the government, so he learned of her plan and cleverly turned the tables. One evening, after a sumptuous dinner, she felt unusually lethargic and retired early to her chambers. She awoke groggily in the dungeon of Gaetano's ruined castle to find herself on a pallet of straw surrounded by Gaetano's brigands and their fiery women, all of whom were staring at her with avid, hungry eyes.

"Ah, Carla," the head brigand called from a large chair nearby, almost a throne, wearing his characteristic hood while one of the women had loosened his trousers and enveloped his still rampant manhood with her hungry lips. "I heard you planned to have me arrested!"

Carla looked desperately around her. She remembered the unusual lethargy that had stolen over her and knew that the monster had bribed her cook to lace her food with a potion to put her to sleep. But how had he spirited her out of the castle, under the very nose of the king's guards.

"And I hear you planned to have me boiled alive in a vat of oil," he continued merrily.

"Yes, you monster!" she flared, trying to draw herself up arrogantly. Her efforts were thwarted by the chains about her wrists and ankles.

"Ah, monster is it! Well, perhaps, perhaps," he agreed pleasantly. "It does seem that I've provided a monster's proper response to treason. Look over there, Carla."

Despite herself, she could not stop herself from following his pointing finger, and she screamed as she saw the huge vat of bubbling oil with the huge fire under it. Suddenly, she realized that she had been smelling the fumes of the fiery stuff without realizing it. Then her eyes saw the rope hanging down from a pulley in the ceiling with leather cuffs at the end...

"Yes, Carla Ludovicia," he said, as the chained woman tried to stuff her small hand into her mouth in horror. "You wished to sentence me to a most severe sentence. It may still be carried out, though I've taken certain steps against your plans. But, before that happens, if it does, you will first serve the sentence you planned for me, since I'm going to lower your naked body into boiling oil. And I'll do it slowly, so you can experience everything you wanted me to suffer. Ugo! Tun! Prepare the sow!"

So Carla quickly found herself pulled to her feet while strong hands ripped the rich nightgown she wore to shreds. When she was naked, the chains about her wrists and ankles were removed but only to imprison her slender wrists in the cuffs attached to the ropes from the ceiling. Other cuffs went about her trim ankles, and heavy weights were tied to them. Sobbing and pleading, she screamed as several men began to haul on the other end of the rope, pulling her arms into the air.

"Careful!" called Gaetano. "Don't let her touch the side of the vat! I want her to experience being dipped into the oil without any other pains to distract her!"

So the brigands, urged on by their women, who watched the perfect body of the nude courtesan with jealousy and envy, held her aside as she was pulled into the air. She groaned as the heavy weights pulled down on her. The men who kept her from touching the sizzling side of the oil vat did not release her until the weights at her feet had risen above the level of the vat. She swung crazily as they let her go, her arms feeling as if they were being torn from their socket. Her wrists and shoulders flamed with pain as they had to support the full weight of her body plus the weights at her feet. She felt the heat from the oil diminish as she was pulled higher until her wrists were drawn up to the pulley at the ceiling. She looked down the column of her nude body, pulled taut by the heavy weights at her feet, staring at the horror of bubbling oil below her. She sobbed as fear constricted her throat.

Could the king send his men to save me? she thought in panic. Does he even know I'm missing? Does he know where the brigand might take me?

Another thought struck her. Even if he knows I'm gone, he might not know it was Gaetano who took me!

She did not know the answers to any of her questions, and she quickly forgot her questions as the rope jerked. The men at the other end of the rope had started to lower her.

"Slowly, now!" Gaetano called. "Just dip her toes this time! We'll work our way up to the rest of her as we go along!"

Carla strained to pull her feet up as her toes neared the hellish stuff, but the weights were too heavy. She shrieked as a bubble of oil burst, splattering her feet with a drop or two. She jerked downward an inch or two. She was sobbing in despair. Then her toes actually touched the searing stuff... and dipped lower.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhh! Yiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhh! Ah! Please! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"

She didn't realize her toes had only been in the oil a single second, but it had been enough. The pain was overwhelming, even though she gradually realized she was back up at the ceiling. Slowly, her screams dwindled to coughing sobs and then to whimpers.

And then they started lowering her again...

Slowly, the twisting column of her white body, with the torchlight reflecting off the sweat which sheened her nudity, approached the oil. The watchers found the sight both satisfying and erotic. Gradually, her toes grew closer and closer...

They dipped her toes a bit further into the oil this time before pulling her to the ceiling to let her screams gradually diminish. The next time the oil swallowed all of her toes and just a bit of her feet, and the time after that the oil crept half-way up her feet.

It took an hour of endless agony before the oil reached the knees of the nude, tortured courtesan as she was dipped in and out of the oil, and an hour after that before it reached half-way up her thighs. She fainted time and again, only to be awoken by a bucket of icy water thrown in her face after she was pulled off to the side and lowered to the ground.

She still lived when she was lowered to her waist, screaming maniacally, but her screams were so full of madness when the fiery stuff swallowed her breasts that Gaetano wondered if she might have gone insane. But one of their women claimed she heard Carla begging for death through her screams, so she must still possess a modicum of sanity.

Gaetano ordered the dipping resumed. On her last dip, she was lowered until the oil reached the top of her neck, almost to her face. The monster then had her removed from the oil and left dangling over the dark, bubbling stuff, her body looking to be a mass of oil-covered, seared, blistered flesh that had little left that looked human. Only her face showed any similarity to the beautiful woman brought to this dungeon.

He was still pondering what to do with her when his world exploded in a roar of muskets. The king's guard had finally arrived.

The fight was short and bloody, and only a handful of the brigands survived that first deadly volley and the bayonet charge that followed. After it was over, the king himself stepped forward to confront Gaetano Mammone and his half-dozen survivors. One of the soldiers ran up to Ferdinand and fell to his knees before him.

"A thousand pardons, your majesty, but your mistress has suffered mortal wounds. The doctor says she cannot survive. Though she still lives, she is deranged by her suffering."

The king looked at Gaetano with hatred. "I should have dealt with you as you deserved instead of listening to my counselors speak of 'political necessity' and 'expediency.' I blame myself for this," he said through gritted teeth. Then he turned to the soldier. "Tell the doctor to do what is necessary. I will not have her suffer for three days as did the Duchess of Altamara."

He turned back to his captives and grated, waving at them, "As for these foul creatures, award them what they did my beloved Carla. Strip them naked and dip them into the oil as they did to her, a bit at a time. Start with the men and then the two women. Save the monster for last."

Thus, Gaetano Mammone's blood soaked rampaged came to a just, if grossly overdue, end. But the cost was high. Very high for those like Sanchia Biscelia, Christina Cremona, the Duchess of Altamara, Carla Ludovicia, and so many others who fell into the hands of this mad butcher?