The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A Bargain With The Devil

(mc, fd, ff, mf, bd, cb)

Synopsis: With nowhere else to turn, vigilante crimefighter Josie Cade must seek the help of an evil sorceress to solve the one case that has haunted her. Unfortunately, she is serving a life sentence locked away in a basement cell at Century Plains Penitentiary.

Author’s note: This is my third Josie Cade story, a trilogy of sorts for a character who has stirred me to write as no other. Starting with the two-part “It’s All In The Mynd,” then a trip to the Omegaverse and River City in “Bubble Gum Dreams and Pink Minds” and concluding here with this three-chapter story. One may notice the strains of “Silence of the Lambs” in this one, as well as other influences from the many brilliantly penned stories on the EMCSA. I would recommend reading “It’s All In The Mynd” first, however, to fully appreciate the finale. Also, I would like to thank Flibinite and J. Darksong for their advice, inspiration and support throughout this endeavor. Although Josie may return some day, I felt it was important to bring her full circle, to give her (and the reader) a sense of closure. And, more than that, closure for myself.

* * *

Chapter One

Capt. Deke Smithers gripped the wheel tightly.

“You don’t have to go through with this, Josie. There are other ways. Something is going to turn up. You just need to keep digging.”

“No,” she said sharply. “It’s been five years, almost six. I’ve run out of clues. It’s this or nothing.”

Smithers could see she was nervous, which he had only seen once before—the day she came into his office three years earlier to confess to him that she was the mysterious masked vigilante. The one who had cut a deep swath of vengeance through the heart of Century’s criminal underworld.

Now, she was just Josie, his friend, staring out the window of his car, dressed in her all-black lycra costume and mask.

He had to drive her. Her identity needed to be protected, and only someone with the authority of a police captain could get her access to where they were going.

“This isn’t some punk looking for a pardon. This is Zandilla. You know what she has the ability to do. But there is a lot about her we don’t know. This a dangerous step.”

Josie Cade sighed hard. She had read the files. She knew Zandilla and Smithers had met before, many years ago when he was a detective. Zandilla had gotten away then, but she had somehow been careless and was finally caught. Still, Josie had reached the point of desperation. This was her last chance to find the men responsible for that moment in time that changed her life.

They pulled into the parking lot in front of Century Plains Penitentiary. The maximum-security home of men and women Josie had helped put there.

“Last chance,” Smithers said.

Josie paused, for just a moment, then pulled the door handle.

* * *

Warden Devon Quick led them into his office trying to contain his annoyance. This was more than irregular. It was downright a mistake. But he had known Smithers a long time. The men had traded enough favors over the years to make this one—this very unusual and, in Quick’s mind, foolhardy favor—something he could not refuse his old friend.

“I trust you’re both aware of what we have here. It cost the taxpayers a pretty penny to rig up her cell. She hasn’t had any direct contact with anyone since she came here six month ago, with the exception of my former assistant.”

Quick leaned into his desk in front of Josie and Smithers. “They’re still trying to put the pieces of his mind back together at the state facility in Bruma. It only took five minutes for her to melt that poor bastards brain.”

Josie gripped the chair arms tightly, but kept her eyes and face emotionless.

“I’ll give you 20 minutes with her. That’s it. We’re not going to take any chances with someone like her.” Quick leaned even closer. “To be frank, I don’t think she is even of this world.”

Zandilla, The Sorceress.

Crimes of the mind are difficult to quantify. However, the law had managed to pin 209 separate counts of theft, mental battery, extortion and various other criminal misdeeds on her that they were able to bring her to trial. It took the jury three full days to run through the verdicts. Zandilla wasn’t even allowed in the courtroom, having to listen to the proceedings from a jail cell—with a bag over her head and her hands tied.

No one ever discovered how she had been left at the front door of police headquarters, bound and unconscious. Gift-wrapped for arrest.

Warden Quick led Josie down the long basement hallway of the prison, flanked by four guards, toward as remote a cell as one could imagine. At the end of the hall were two more guards, oddly enough wearing sunglasses in the dim light and each holding two sets of what looked like large, ear-covering headphones.

Josie watched as the four guards put on the headsets and dark glasses. “They’re specially designed to keep out any of her thought waves,” Quick told her.

“Can you hear me okay?” Quick asked the guards, speaking into a handheld mic. They nodded their heads.

Quick motioned to one of the guards and he began the lengthy process of unlocking the huge, metal door in front of them.

Josie took a step forward it as it opened, but Quick held her back. “Let my people go in first. Then you.” The four guards entered another empty hallway and Josie felt a hand on her shoulder. “One last thing ...”

The guards had taken up positions at the end of the second hallway, fully armed. Josie turned to Quick.

“Whatever happens in there,” he said, “don’t make any sudden or aggressive moves.”

“I thought you said she can’t get out?”

“She can’t. But you’re going in there unprotected. If it looks like she’s gotten ... inside your head, my men have orders to shoot you.”

Josie nodded.

“You sure you want to go through with this?”

She didn’t hesitate as she entered the interior hallway, which dead-ended, and walked cautiously. The four guards stood well apart from each other before a glassed-in room to the left.

As she approached, Josie could hear a faint whisper in her ear: “Don’t be shy, little girl. I can’t come out to play.”

* * *

Josie reached the glass-walled cell. It was brightly lit and about 20-feet square with a bed, a doorless, closet-sized bathroom, a small table with one chair and a bookshelf packed full. And a quadruple-locked, four-inch-thick plexiglass door.

Standing at the extreme back of the cell, facing away, was a very tall woman. She was wearing tan prison coveralls and her hair was matted and unbrushed with streaks of gray running through the dirty blonde. Her head moved slightly as if she had eyes in the back of it. Josie could almost feel those eyes upon her.

Then she slowly turned around ... and in the blink of an eye she was transformed. Josie couldn’t contain a gasp.

It was her arch-nemesis, Mistress Mynd!

Josie spun her head toward one of the guards, who shook his head vigorously. The woman smiled devilishly as Josie turned back—she had changed again in an instant. Josie’s breath caught. It was Josie’s late mother, Julia. She was there!

“Hello, honey. And how is my dear Herbert?”

Josie could feel the anger building. She steeled herself and stepped closer to the glass wall of the cell.

“He’s fine. But you know that. Now, are we done playing games or should I just walk on out of here?”

The smile widened with satisfaction and the woman approached the glass, transforming again. This time, it was her—Zandilla.

She was wearing a whispy, light blue veil on her shoulders over a white robe, which did nothing to hide the body underneath—round and buxom and swarthy. Her thick hair was yellow, almost neon, against her skin with voluptuous red lips and coal-black eyes, the lids tinted silver. To Josie, she looked like the deranged madame of a brothel for carnival freaks.

“You must forgive me my little amusements, Josephine. You’re only the second visitor I’ve had since my arrival. The assistant warden came to check on me soon after I got here, but unfortunately he had to resign his position abruptly. Pity, we were getting along so well too.”

And she laughed, broadly and deeply, forcing Josie back a reactive step.

“Now my only company has been Bradley and Tom and Juan ...” Her eyes grazed over the four guards, stopping at the last. “... and Dusty. Oh, how I would love to spend some quality time in his mind!”

The guard, Dusty, fidgeted slightly, but remained in place.

“You know,” she continued, “it wouldn’t take any effort at all to make you walk right over there and open this door for me. Although you won’t get three steps before these fine young men riddled you with bullets.”

“Why don’t you then?” Josie spat out.

“What would be the point? A momentary amusement? No. I like people. And I am thrilled to make your acquaintance, Josephine. A woman with a mind and a body like yours doesn’t cross my path very often. In fact, from what I already know, I don’t believe I’ve ever felt a mind quite like yours before.”

Zandilla stepped closer to the glass and, as if magnetized, Josie stepped closer too.

“Now, let’s have that talk. I must admit I am intrigued by your request.”

Josie fought down the urge to ask how she already knew. She knew how she knew.

“Desperation is not a characteristic that becomes you. But it’s understandable, of course. For someone who strives for order, a black-and-white world, personal untidiness must be very hard to deal with. Compulsively meticulous. But there is that one loose end. It’s tragic, really.”

“Somehow I don’t feel your sympathy, even if what you said were true.”

“Oh it is, my dear. It most certainly is. Even you know it is. Otherwise ... I wouldn’t know it to be true.”

Josie tried to keep her thoughts as closed as she could. Focus. She had come this far and didn’t want this encounter to be reduced to self-examination and mind games. She needed answers.

“Since you know why I’m here, you also know there isn’t anything I can offer you in exchange for your help. You won’t be released. You won’t receive any consideration beyond what you’re getting right now. It’s a life sentence, Zandilla.”

“Whatever gave you the idea I would have even the slightest interest in helping you then, my dear? I know the answer, but I want to hear you say it.”

Josie set her jaw. “You’re the only person who can.”

Zandilla smiled again—the satisfied grin of someone who just said, “Checkmate.” She moved a few steps along the wall, pulling Josie with her. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Fifteen minutes,” came Quick’s voice over the loudspeaker. Josie looked at it sternly, then back to Zandilla, who was eyeing Josie even more carefully than before.

“Actually, Josephine,” she said, “there is something you can do for me. Two things, in fact. And both well within your power to provide. If you are willing.”

Josie had expected something like this. But what the sorceress had in mind she had no idea. Yet, this was her only chance.

“I’m listening.”

“Shall we take this conversation to a more secluded and relaxed setting, my dear? Oh, never fear. Our bodies won’t be going anywhere.”

There was another laugh, but it crackled with conspiracy. Josie closed her eyes ... and nodded.

* * *

When she opened her eyes, Josie found herself standing outside ... at the end of a long reflecting pool, ringed by a beautiful assortment of flowers and plants. At the far end, some 30 feet away, was a large bed surrounded by the trappings of a posh hotel suite cut into the foliage.

They were three, distinct images from her memory. The Botanical Gardens of Dominion Park, the reflecting pool at the center of the cemetery where her mother was buried and the lavish room at the Cambridge Hotel where Josie and Jerry had spend a glorious weekend only three weeks before.

And standing before it all was Zandilla, completely naked.

“Come closer, Josephine. Or would you prefer Josie? Or Jo?”

Josie stiffened. “We don’t have time for this, Zandilla.”

“Yes, we do. Time stands still here, Josie. My patience, however, is not boundless.”

Josie strode around the pool and headed toward Zandilla.

“Alright, what are your terms?”

“Terms,” Zandilla huffed. “I prefer to think of them as opportunities. For both of us. One is rather pleasant, the other is rather unpleasant. But you will need to do both if you want what I can give you.”

As Josie reached the other end of the pool, Zandilla moved back and gracefully flowed onto the bed. Her features had softened. Gone was the silver eye shadow, the painted lips, the bright hair. Her body was more defined with gentle, inviting curves and her hair was now sunflower blonde. Her face radiated warmth. Josie was unavoidably stirred by the vision.

“Come here, Josie. I want you to have a taste of what I am offering.” Josie hesitated. “Don’t be shy, Josie. This is the pleasant part.”

“If all you wanted to do was fuck me, you could have just said so. You already know what my answer would be,” Josie said bitterly.

Zandilla spread her arms on the bed. “It’s not that simple or that crude, little girl. You’re here because you know what I am capable of. What you don’t know is that I am capable of anything.”

Josie considered, then relented. She sat on the edge of the bed uncomfortably, forcing Zandilla forward, her body close to Josie.

“Just one kiss, my dear.”

Despite her instincts, or maybe because Zandilla’s appearance had now morphed into someone compellingly attractive, Josie leaned into her ... and they kissed.

She closed her eyes as their lips met, feeling the gradual embrace around her shoulders and back. The lips were soft, warm, and Josie found herself pressing harder into them. She caught a familiar scent in her nose, and it made her swoon. She reached with her own arms and found them naked, the cool breeze on her body unclothed.

Her mouth opened and felt a tongue running along the inside of her lips and teeth. And a taste, so familiar yet so distant, that it forced her eyes open. Josie moaned a gasp at the sight she beheld, the face she knew and loved and treasured.

Audrey.

The startling realization froze her but for a moment, before she kissed harder and deeper, breathing in her skin, tasting her lips, feeling her smooth, young body alive in her arms.

Audrey slowly broke the kiss and looked at Josie with a mix of longing and love.

“Josie?” she said. “You will do something for me now. Won’t you?”

“Audrey ...” Josie could feel her eyes filling. “This ... this isn’t real.”

“Who is to say what is real or not, baby,” she replied. “I’m here now. I can be here a thousand days from now. We can hold this moment and never let go. Ever. But you have to agree to do what you are being asked to do.”

A sudden, sickening reality hit Josie.

“No!”

Josie stood up, wiping the wetness from her face, blinking out the stilled tears. And as her eyes cleared, there sitting before her was Zandilla, dressed in her white robe.

“No! Damn you!”

Josie backed away, expecting to see Zandilla smiling with glee. But she wasn’t. She was calm, even sympathetic.

“My ... you are a remarkable one,” Zandilla said. “I don’t offer what I’ve offered you lightly. But it is for me, as well as for yourself, Josie. The next kiss will be from my lips. Not hers. And you will take it. And everything else that is mine. And I will take what I want from you.”

“This is—”

“Don’t say it, Josie. Don’t say it. You know what I can give you. But nothing comes without a price. You want me to help you find the men responsible for your suffering. I can do that for you. But I will have you. And then, you will do something else for me.”

Zandilla rose from the bed and stood close to Josie, her eyes narrowing.

“If you do all that I ask, then I will help you find your lover’s killers. And I will give you this moment with her again. For as long as you want. An eternity, if you so desire. But I will get what I want in the end.”

* * *

Josie sighed deeply.

She couldn’t separate her thoughts from her emotions. It was overwhelming, what she was experiencing, what she was offered. She knew that she had crossed over into a territory that was beyond her scope of rationalizing.

No matter how many ways she had tried to anticipate what might have occurred in this meeting with this diabolical and dangerous sorceress, the unreal reality she was existing in snuffed out her clarity as to what she was willing to do before she came to the prison. She had held Audrey in her arms. And she was now willing to sell her soul to the devil to do it again.

“What do you want?”

Zandilla’s crooked smile almost made Josie regret the question. Almost.

“I want you to perform a task for me, little one. In a strange way, I want you to do for me, what you have asked me to do for you. I want you to find the person responsible for putting me here. My betrayer. My former lover. The witch who lives free outside, while I’m trapped in this glass menagerie. Do this, and I will give you what you want in return.

“I want you to kill Amaria DeStehl.”

Josie was stunned. She knew the name. Everyone in law enforcement did. She was called a Mind Witch, and had left dead bodies and shattered souls in her wake from one end of the country to the other for years. Josie had even heard rumors that Omega Girl herself had tried to track her down, without success.

If Zandilla was the criminal equivalent to Darth Vader, then Amaria DeStehl was the Emperor.

Josie instinctively shook her head. She would never do it, even if she were able enough. No matter what the reward. She wasn’t a killer.

“I won’t do that, Zandilla. And you know I wouldn’t be able to do it, even if I said yes. Even if I could. Sometimes, the price of getting something priceless in return isn’t worth the cost.”

“Very well,” Zandilla said evenly. “I wanted you to hear you say it and mean it. But you will find her. And catch her. And see to it that she is locked away. But I warn you, she will not be easily found. She will not be easily caught. And if she chooses to die rather than being caged, then you must abide by those wishes. It may not be your wish to do so, but you will abide by them.

“Do we have a deal?”

* * *

Smithers was leaning on the hood of his car as Josie approached. His eyes squinted through his glasses, trying to get a read on the face before him—tired, damp-eyed and unfocused.

“Jesus.”

They drove in silence on the 30-minute trip back, only twice interrupted by Smithers saying, “I knew this was a bad idea” and “I never should have let you do it.”

Josie just stared out the window. Unable to block the memory of what had just happened.

Zandilla had returned to the bed and spread out on it.

“So, little one? That’s the second thing I want you to do for me. I can feel in your mind that you already know what the first one is.”

Catching Amaria DeStehl was an impossible task, Josie knew, but she was a crimefighter and DeStehl was one of the most dangerous criminals in the country.

Right now, however, Josie was willing to give the sorceress what she wanted, what she needed, at that moment—her body.

“Don’t be deceived, little one,” she said. “This is, was, my true appearance before I was ... locked up. I’m not particularly motivated to keep up appearances alone in my cell. And as for your first impression of me, well, I do like to have my fun. That form was of a prostitute you yourself encountered when you were 16. You had forgotten. But I fished her out of your mind. I thought the silver eyelids were a distinctive touch.

“Now ... come to me.”

Josie knew deep inside that she was venturing somewhere so unlike her—so wrong—that she should stop. But Zandilla’s face was open, honest. She was a woman in need. Josie crawled on top of Zandilla and offered herself.

Their bodies blended together as if familiar, yet so strange. Josie felt fingers run through her hair as she slammed her mouth against the open invitation of the sorceress. She was enveloped by the olive skin, almost melting into it, as they grinded into each other. Their lips and tongues embracing in wild abandon.

Zandilla was touching Josie in ways she had never felt before, and the young crimefighter felt her body and mind reacting to the caresses, growing more and more hungry for the sins of the flesh offered before her.

Josie was aroused beyond her conscious mind to process. She could feel her essence flowing from between her legs willingly. This wonderfully horrible creature of a woman tapping into Josie’s lust.

Josie wanted her.

She was eased back onto the bed and spread her legs. Lost in the heat of lust. Zandilla became even more unbearably desirous—her eyes haunting, her lips so red and full, her hair rich and tantalizing. Her breasts pressed against Josie’s and their nipples danced a dance of want and passion that struck Josie dumb from her head to her toes.

Josie’s ever-ready thinking was dulled. No thoughts beyond satisfying the fire that burned in her loins. And also satisfying HER need. Zandilla’s need. Josie was reduced to the submissive rubble of a fucktoy.

Zandilla kissed her way down Josie’s belly and threw her leg over Josie’s head. Josie’s arms wrapped around the hips of the mind-controlling demoness and pulled her to her lips, lapping eagerly at her folds, her nectar. The sorceress took Josie into her mouth in kind. And bit and licked and pulled at Josie’s clit, making Josie lurch upward.

“Not yet, little one. This isn’t for you. This is for me.” Zandilla grunted, slamming her ass downward and forcing Josie’s nose between her wet, open cheeks. And she ate. Josie’s one, single, solitary thought was this: Cum.

The sorceress orgasmed in thick, sex-fueled streams. Josie gobbled and drank and swallowed ... and sucked harder, only too aware in her cloud of passion that Zandilla had taken her clit into her mouth and pulled with her lips.

Josie’s eyes rolled back into her head. She had completely shut down from any feelings other than carnal abasement. She worshipped the pussy on her lips, the wet heat that flowed from it. Zandilla continued to pull, harder and harder, tighter and tighter, until Josie had the sensation of her clit being stretched. Longer and longer. And longer.

So long, that it began to fill Zandilla’s mouth.

Zandilla pulled off her and lunged into the pillows at the head of the bed. Josie looked down between her own legs and saw a large, bulbous monstrosity of a clit. Eight inches long and dripping of saliva and cum.

“Fuck me, Josie!”

Josie lurched forward, kneeling, and slid into the sorceress.

In and out furiously, Josie rode into Zandilla. Driven by the insanity of lust. The insanity of submission.

Josie was out of her mind.

She drove into her ... on and on and on ... the moans and grunts and cries of unbridled sex. Zandilla came once, twice and then again, while Josie was locked in the unceasing and unbearable pleasure of a near-orgasm.

“Cum now, Josie!”

And Josie did, matching Zandilla’s fresh orgasmic pulses in fluid, sticky jets. Josie’s shattering climax went on, perhaps moments, perhaps hours. Josie was lost on a tidal wave of ecstasy. She slammed her eyes shut from the overload.

Josie felt herself falling, as if from 10,000 feet, down and down ... then landing so abruptly that her eyes popped open.

Josie was staring at Zandilla, whose eyes opened slowly. Her face the picture of utter satisfaction.

Josie caught herself swaying and reached out, her hand pressing against the glass wall of the cell. The guards snapped to readiness.

“Ten minutes,” Quick’s voice called.

Zandilla flashed a toothy, post-orgasmic smile.

“I think we have a deal.”

* * *

Smithers pulled his car in front of Josie’s apartment building. He looked at her like a parent would a child given tough love. Yet he knew she had to make the next move.

Josie’s eyes were fixed forward, but Smithers could see she was looking deeply on the inside, not outside.

“I’m going back there tomorrow.”

As she started to get out, he grabbed her arm.

“Josie. I may be a police captain, but I’m also your friend. You’ve got to tell me what’s going on. What did you find out? I need to know. Whatever it is. You can’t do this alone.”

“I’ve always been alone.”

She got out of the car and slammed the door. Smithers didn’t move, remaining slightly hunched over as he watched her walk to her front door. Hoping beyond hope that she would turn.

He stayed motionless ... until she closed the door behind her.

To be continued ...