Ex-Pagan 4 Christ

After my encounter with Satan I found that I was now a true member of the group. Everyone in the coven had dedicated themselves to Satan and with my new friend Stargrove's enounter taking place just days after mine there were now no secrets in the coven.

We regularly met to praise Satan, Baal, Astarte and all the other old opponents of the God of the Bible. We hated Christians and tried hard to think of ways to destroy them for good. We had some success in this area - lukewarm Christians could be attacked, but true believers were impossible to get to. We put it down to our weakness and went on trying.

We summoned the dead on many occasions, asking long-dead witches for advice. It was from these that we heard over and over again of the power of blood. We had been using our own blood to make our spells more powerful for some time but the spirits told us that sacrifices worked better. We were so debased that out only query was what we should sacrifice and how to avoid calling attention to ourselves. We began by using cats - as long as they were well buried, or eaten by dogs then no one would suspect anything. We practised cruel tortures on those poor animals for our own pleasure. We got worse and worse the more spirits we called, and started to use dogs, pigeons - anything we could get our hands on. Satan was leading up to something, and we understood what when he spoke to us himself one day and ordered us to sacrifice a child. We were Satan's servants, we did not object, but were worried about getting caught. Satan laughed at our worries and told us that we had brethren in all sorts of unlikely places - there are thousands of missing children every year and the pagan police officers would be sure to say our victims were either just missing or, in case of any bodies being discovered, dispose of them if possible or blame a serial killer.

The next day we enticed a ten year old girl in from the street. We held her in the warehouse, and held a disgusting ritual where her still-beating heart was held aloft as an offering to Satan. That poor child suffered terribly and I can only hope God has her at peace with Him now. The spells we performed using her poor little body had added potency, weaking havoc and causing serious problems to Christians and all who opposed us. We used our connections to have her body destroyed after we had finished.

We sacrificed animals, humans, anything we could get to serve our master Satan. We all grew to love the taste and sight of blood as we powered up to fight our enemies. There was no depravity we would not perform for Satan - we even raided a graveyard for bones to make a potion from in one instance! We all grew wealthy and powerful from Satan's help, though our negarious activities were not spoken of in front of pagans, the same way their "higher" rites were not spoken about to us.

I spent over a year serving Satan in this way. It got so that I could not have a relationship of any form with anyone outside the coven - I truly belonged to Satan now, not anyone else. Even people who were casual aquaintances began to be affected by what I was doing - my newsagent became a rapist, my next-door neighbour killed himself. I had the opposite of Midas' touch - everything I touched became evil.

The coven was my family - I didn't even see how disgusting we all were until I met Christ. I would have stayed in the coven until I died and went to hell if God had not intervened. Satan made a demand so high that even I could not stomach it. He announced to us one day that in order to get enough power to summon many demons to torment the saints in a church we knew, another sacrifice was necessary. We thought nothing was unusual until he announced that one of us had to die. He did not anticipate any objection and carried on telling us about a further rite involving the defilement of children, when Stargrove asked why one of us had to die. He told us that the death of a "dark saint", his servant, earned much more power than any other except a true Christian - who were protected. By drinking the blood we would increase in power and by using the body our spells would be many times more powerful. He also wished us to recruit more Satanists - we had not made any since me and with the occult explosion going on, he wanted us to increase numbers. Everyone went along with it, but I felt strangely reluctant. I asked if we couldn't kidnap a Christian instead and the coveners started to question my dedication. I protested that I would always love and serve Satan, but Satan decreed that my friend Stargrove should be sacrificed to test my loyalty. I was not happy - even though I had witnessed many sacrifices, this was my friend. The warning tone was unmistakable, and I knew what the coven could do, so I said nothing more. Stargrove went quite happily to her fate, pleased to serve Satan, and it grieves me very much that my friend will be in hell. She was brutally sacrificed, her blood and heart eaten by the coven, her body used for potions. She didn't even scream when the blade plunged into her chest. This was too much for me, Stargrove had been my biggest friend in the coven. Seeing her fate made me worry about myself for the first time - Satan did not care about us, and would sacrifice any of us without a second thought. It was like a revelation - everyone cared only for power and not for each other, our cameraderie was only skin-deep. I decided that night to leave. My sleeping conscience was waking up - as I found out later, the Christians I had attacked were praying for me. God enabled me to see what I was doing, though I did not meet Him for some time.

With the death of Stargrove, I decided to leave Satan for good.