The beating continued, and I soon lost all track of how many times I had been lashed or exactly where the blows had landed. It felt like my back was entirely raw, the skin split and opened up by the vicious whip, which was clearly being wielded by a practised expert. My body danced at the end of the chains after each strike, until I slumped, too exhausted to continue screaming or even to struggle and fight. The regular sound of the whip cracking through the air, followed by a grunt or strangled cry from me, my legs and arms twitching reflexively, became like a metronome counting out time for a virtuoso performance.

At some point during this I must have passed out, and when I woke up, I was lying on my stomach. With an immense effort, I lifted my head to look around me, and discovered that I was in a small cage, hardly any longer or wider than my prone body, and I realised I couldn't even get to my knees, let alone stand, without my aching back touching the roof of the cage. My wrists were held in metal cuffs attached to the bars of the cage below me, further restricting what little movement I had. As I looked around I saw that I was still in the same dungeon where I had been tortured, just in one of the corners, where I had a view of what had been hidden behind me before.

It was not a reassuring sight. I could see the whip which had been used on me, hanging in a rack with a whole array of other weapons of torture – canes, floggers, crops and other things I didn’t even recognise. There were no shafts of light coming through the roof anymore, so I assumed it must be night, and the  only illumination came from a single old-fashioned torch in a bracket further down the wall. In the shadows loomed unknown pieces of bondage equipment – I think I saw a St Andrews cross, but other things were merely frightening shapes in the dark.

I heard the sound of a key turning in a lock, and saw a shaft of light appear as the door to the dungeon opened. This told me two things - one, that there was full electric lighting in the corridor beyond and two, that the door was made of aged  wood thick enough to prevent any rescue and also to ensure my cries would not be heard outside,  and it looked like it had been serving this purpose since the Middle Ages! I watched as Signor Campagno entered, carrying a lighted torch similar to the one already on the wall, which he placed in a bracket on the wall above me.

“Well, puttanella, we are alone at last," the big man said with a leering face, "now that the priest has gone, I don't have to be quite so… gentle with you." As he said this, he pressed a button on the wall and, with the mechanical whirring of a hoist, the end of the cage in which I was trapped began to rise off the floor, gradually pulling me up into a standing position. When the motor had finally stopped I was hanging in the cage a foot or so off the ground, so that when Campagno came to stand in front of me, we were just about eye to eye.

He raised his hand and I saw the metal pincers that he was holding, and I started to back away from him in fear, but let out a cry of anguish as my injured back touched the bars behind me. He reached in through the bars and, despite my desperate attempts to avoid him, closed the jaws of the pincers around my nipple. The jolt of pain that stabbed through me made me scream and cry, but as he pulled his hand back, I had no choice but to move towards him until I was pressed against the bars and my breast had squeezed uncomfortably through them. He released the grip on my nipple, but only so he could close the pincers on the other one and pull that breast through the bars as well.

Before I could recover and pull my breasts free, he had reached behind himself and picked up a metal clamp, comprising two long metal strips with screw threads joining them at either end. He placed the clamp over my breasts and pressed it against the bars, before tightening the screw threads until it started to squeeze my breasts on top and bottom. I let out a howl of fear, astonishment and pain as he kept on tightening it until my breasts were flattened and hideously discoloured by the trapped blood. I could no longer move away from the bars and I stood there, my face contorted in a look of terror as the Inquisitor smiled at me, enjoying my fear and agony.

To my astonishment and disgust, I felt his fingers reach through the bars and grip my pussy, pulling me towards him as they forced their way inside me.

"So, you like this, fica,” he smirked, "you are such a filthy cagna!” I was horrified to realise that I was wet, my body betraying me in the worst possible way.

He withdrew his fingers, sucking them clean as he stared at me, the amused look still in his eyes, then moved away into the shadows, to a table laden with his tools of torture. He returned with what looked like a silver bullet and, without ceremony, thrust it deep into my wet, receptive cunt, causing me to cry out at its coldness and also its length. He pulled a rope around my waist and then between my legs, ensuring I had no chance to expel the huge intruder. He tied the end of the rope to the bars of the cage, so that my body was pressed against them.

“This will keep you… entertained through the night while I get some sleep, ready to continue in the morning. I won’t say ‘Goodnight’ because I know that, for you, it will not be. Until the morning, sciattona.”

He raised his hand, and I saw a remote control. He fiddled with it, and then pressed a button. Instantly, I felt a shock run through my body, emanating from the device inside me, burning my flesh and making my whole body jerk and jump in spasm. It was almost too traumatic for me to comprehend, to the point where I could let out a strangled scream to express the agony coursing through my tortured body.

By the time I had recovered enough from the shock, literal and figurative, I had suffered, my tormentor had extinguished one of the torches and taken the other down from the wall. As I watched, he walked out of the door, and I was left in total darkness as I heard the heavy key turn in the lock. Seconds later, I was screaming in utter torment as another vicious jolt of electricity hit me.

It was the worst night of my life. Somehow, despite being in continuous pain and being forced to stand with my wrists in shackles and my breasts being crushed, I fell into a doze. But I was brought back to consciousness every time in a paroxysm by the electric shocks of the metal dildo trapped inside me. My screams, cries and forlorn sobs bounced back at me from the thick stone walls, mocking me, as if to tell me there would be no relief, no rescue from this nightmare.

I must have passed out at some point during the night because, when I woke up, my tormentor had returned. I was released from the cage and my pain-racked body was dragged across the dungeon to another torture device. This seemed deceptively simple, just a metal bar with a triangular cross-section mounted on a central post, with iron rings at either end. I didn't understand its purpose, but Signor Campagno soon had me prepared.

I felt a rope placed around my neck and then my arms twisted behind my back, each to be tied to the end of the rope. As my arms tried to return to a more natural position, they pulled on the noose, tightening it around my neck like a ligature, choking me. My only option was to try and hold my arms up between my shoulder blades, which was both tiring and painful, and the rope would begin to strangle me until I strained my arm muscles again.

As I struggled with this particular problem, the torturer made me stand astride the triangular bar. If I stood on my tiptoes, I was just barely able to keep the sharp metal edge from pressing painfully against my perineum between my legs. But this was not challenging enough for Campagno. I felt him to tie a rope round my left ankle and then pull my foot from the ground, bending my leg behind me and tying the end of the rope to the ring on the back of the bar. I let out a scream as he did the same to my right leg and my entire bodyweight was taken on the sensitive skin between my pussy and my anus.

I found that there was no comfortable position for me to sit on this cruel device, but that if I leaned back, I could at least relieve the pressure. However, the Italian had not yet finished with me. He attached clamps to my nipples, clamps joined by a thin chain which he pulled on, forcing me forward until my weight was brought onto my vagina, with my pussy lips ‘kissing’ the metal, making me groan at the increased pressure on my most sensitive area. I watched in horror as he attached the chain to the ring at the front of the bar, forcing me to hold that position unless I was prepared to pull back and torture my nipples instead. It was a hideous choice to make, each resulting in agonising pain, and I had to alternate as one position became unbearable, to be replaced by another which was no better.

I must have sat there for several hours, crying, wailing, begging for mercy, but to no avail. My cruel tormentor merely watched my suffering, occasionally playing with the obvious erection in his trousers.

Eventually, I was taken off the ‘iron pony’, as Campagno had called it, and dragged to my next ‘torture station’, this time a set of stocks which held me in the kneeling position, head and hands through one stock, and ankles through the other. The dungeon Master strapped a ring gag into my mouth, and then used this position to rape me in all three holes over the next 12 hours. He whiled away the time between assaults, waiting for his manhood to recover, by caning my buttocks and the soles of my feet, or flogging my breasts and back. When he had done for the day, I was returned to the cage, this time suspended upside down, and with salt having been rubbed into my wounds to ensure that I remained in agony throughout the night.

And so my torment continued, day after day, night after night. There seemed to be never a moment when I was both conscious and not being subjected to some terrible torture. The whippings I received covered me in bloody welts all over my breasts, stomach and thighs, and I knew that the beatings I had received on my back and buttocks were at least as bad. I was in constant pain and, if there was any truth to the idea that Elliot could feel my suffering, then he would feel a lot.

It was some days into my incarceration in the catacombs that Father Donetti returned to check on my progress. I hung from chains on my wrists, my bloodied body broken, hardly able to lift my head.

"Has she been suffering?" he asked Campagno.

"Most assuredly, Mon Signor,” the cowled torturer replied.

"Well," Donetti said, addressing me, "either your ‘friend’ is travelling a long way or he doesn't care enough about you to seek you out. Either way, I feel we should accelerate the program. Campagno, test her with the irons."

"Are you sure, Father?" Campagno asked in a worried tone. "We don't want to lose her." The priest seemed dismissive.

"If she dies, she dies, I'm tired of waiting. Proceed now!"

Whatever action they had decided upon, it didn't sound pleasant. I watched fearfully as the dungeon Master went to the wall and wheeled over something that looked like a barbecue, positioning it in front of me. He twisted a handle, pressed a button and suddenly it burst into flames! The coals gradually heated until they were glowing and I could feel the heat coming off them. Campagno thrust a branding iron into the fire, and I lost it, completely terrified.

"Oh dear God! You can't do this! Please!" I wept and pleaded, but the priest stepped in front of me and slapped me hard across the face, making my ears ring.

"How dare you take the Lord's name in vain!" He screamed in my face, his spittle landing on my cheek. "You will burn in hell, whore! This will just bring you a little closer. Tie her legs so she can't squirm."

Campagno tied a rope to my left ankle and pulled it out to the side so that my leg was held at about a 45 degree angle and tied the end of the rope to an iron ring in the floor. He repeated this on my right leg, pulling the rope so tight that I thought I would be split in half. When he tied it down, I could hardly move. Satisfied with his work, the torturer went back to the brazier, but Father Donetti waved him away.

"I will mark the whore," he said in a voice which brooked no argument. When the iron was withdrawn from the fire, it glowed red and small wisps of smoke rose from it, and I was so terrified that I lost control my bladder, a long stream of piss hitting the flagstones beneath me. As the priest approached, I saw that the branding iron was in the shape of a Christian cross, and whimpered pathetically when I felt its heat as he held it up in front of my face, taunting me.

"We will expunge the Mark of Satan which is upon you with the holy heat of our Lord and the Mark of the Cross." So saying, he pressed the red-hot iron against the soft flesh of my inner thigh, just where Elliot had sunk his teeth into me years ago. The air filled with the smell of my burning flesh, and the scream which emerged from me was bloodcurdling, ringing off the walls of the dungeon until I finally, thankfully, I fainted.

When I regained consciousness, I found myself suspended from the ceiling, held about three metres up in the air. My legs and arms were pulled behind me and fastened into a hogtie, with iron bracelets around my wrists and ankles. Around my neck and stomach, I felt wide steel bands, which were so tight that they restricted my breathing, making me gasp and wheeze for air. Tight steel bands were also locked around the base of my breasts, making them bulge from my body and discolour obscenely. I could feel clamps gripping my nipples, and I looked down to see huge weights hanging down from them, painfully stretching my skin towards the floor.

Every inch of my body spoke to me of its hurt, either suffered earlier or still being experienced and enhanced by my bondage. There was a hell of a lot of pain. But by far the worst was my thigh, where the brand had been applied, which screamed particularly loudly and insistently of its torment. I had no tears left to shed but my face was wet with my sweat and felt red and bloated from my earlier traumas. Despite the painfully sharp edge on the steel collar choking me, I could not hold up my head and it hung down as I stared blankly at the floor.

I couldn’t believe the Catholic church condoned this kind of treatment. I felt like I was in some crazy medieval morality play, and then realised I was. I had no idea what they intended to do with Elliot, but I hoped he wouldn’t come to try and help me. And that I would die. Soon.

I hung there for what seemed like hours before the sound of the door opening woke me from my stupor. Father Donetti came over and walked to the wall beside me, where there was a winding handle and a chain going up to the ceiling. As he turned the handle I began to descend, and I guessed I was suspended from the chain. He stopped when I was about two metres from the ground and walked over to me. As I wearily raised my head, we were looking eye to eye.

“How are you feeling Ms Harrison? In terrible pain, I hope?” he asked with a smile.

“How does a massive sadist like you get a job with the church?” I croaked, using what little strength I had left.

“By being extremely proficient and enthusiastic about hunting down and disposing of the Devil’s spawn. Speaking of which, you’ll be glad to hear that you won’t be suffering any further torture.”

I looked at him quizzically, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist the sound of his own voice.

“Are you familiar with the tethered goat and the tiger?”

“Yes, I’ve seen Jurassic Park,” I replied with a weak smile, enjoying interrupting his flow and depriving him of the opportunity to show off his knowledge.

“Yes, well, you are the bait in this trap. You will hang there until the vampire comes to you and then it will be caught and destroyed.”

“And what if he doesn’t turn up? That would be a bit of a disappointment for you…”

“Yes, but you will have expired from your wounds, dehydration or starvation by then, so don’t be too pleased with that outcome. But first, I have a couple of additions to your restraints. This will prevent you from warning the abomination.”

I recognised what he was holding from old pictures – it was a scold’s bridle, basically a head harness but made out of metal.

“This is an original 16th century piece,” he told me as he fitted it over my head and forced the tongue depressor into my mouth, “you should feel honoured.” What I felt was uncomfortable as the metal bands tightened around my forehead and cut into my cheeks, before being padlocked together at the nape of my neck.

Once he had finished tightening various screws so that the device was holding my head like a vice, he held up an object which looked like a metal pear. This one I didn’t recognise, and he smiled evilly at my confusion.

“This is called a ‘prickly pear’. It goes smoothly into whichever orifice I desire and then…” He twisted the end of it, and the previously smooth surface erupted with a dozen or more vicious-looking metal spikes. As he twisted it further, the surface itself broke up into four quarters and moved away from the central spine, taking spikes with them until the whole thing had virtually doubled in size. A look of terror suffused my face as I imagined what he was going to do with it.

"This isn't an original I'm afraid, we had to manufacture it from old drawings, but the spikes were my invention. Quite elegant, no?"

I closed my eyes as he walked behind me and I felt him pressing the pear against my vulva. As he forced it into me, I tried to prepare myself for what was to come, but failed miserably. I began to sob and wail inarticulately as it slid along my vaginal tunnel and came to a stop, fully inserted. There was a long, drawn-out pause, as the sadist built my anxiety, then I felt the spikes emerging and pressing against my tender flesh. As they extended to their full extent and the pear itself began to expand, my screams rent the air and ripped my throat. This was pain even worse than the branding, the sense of physical and mental violation convincing me that this time I was losing my mind. Sweat broke out on my forehead and somehow I managed to squeeze out a few more tears. The priest reappeared in front of me, but the pain didn't lessen, it seemed like it was getting worse.

"I do hope you're vampire makes an appearance, Ms Harrison," Father Donetti said gleefully, "otherwise we shall not meet again in this world, and I fear you are going to a different place to me in the next."

He raised me up towards the ceiling again and then left, closing and locking the door behind him. I was once more alone with my torment. I was sure I couldn't survive this.

Eventually however, my whole body seemed to become numb to the pain, a defence mechanism I suppose, and my mind began to wander. The priest's mention of dehydration and starvation reminded me that I had had neither food nor water since my arrival in this pit of hell, and my stomach was growling with hunger, while my lips were parched. But I knew that was probably the least of my worries. If I was lucky, I would die soon from loss of blood. If I was unlucky, Elliot would come to rescue me, be captured, and I would be shipped off to suffer this kind of torture for as long as I lived. Neither was a particularly happy scenario.

I remember at least one night passing as I hung there, although time had really ceased to have any meaning for me. I think it was on the second night that I heard the noise. Up above me I heard a scrabbling around the skylight I had seen when I first arrived. I couldn't look up to see what was happening, and wondered if some night bird or animal was up there scraping its claws across the grille through which I'd seen sunlight some unknown number of days previously. In a shaft of moonlight, I saw plaster dust falling, and then there was a loud ripping noise, after which more substantial pieces of plaster fell to the floor.

I could still see nothing but, suddenly, I heard a  sound like a cat landing on the floor and I looked to my right in fear of what I might see. There in the moonlight was a crouching figure, the outline of a powerful body, and I knew it was Elliot.

As he rose to his full height and calmly dusted himself down, I tried to make myself understood, to shout a warning that this was all a trap, to tell him to flee and save himself, but nothing intelligible came out of my cracked lips. He looked up at me and then strode over to stand beneath my suspended figure. I continued to try and communicate, shaking my head and making urgent noises as best I could.

"Good evening, Jennifer," he said with an unnerving calm, "do not worry, I will release you from your incarceration and we can leave this abominable place."

As he walked over towards the winding ratchet, even though I could see nothing untoward, I had a sudden premonition of what was going to happen, and I screamed with all my remaining strength to try and alert him. He looked around at me, and in that moment, everything seemed to happen at once.

A net fell from the ceiling above Elliot's head and enveloped him before even he could use his lightning reflexes to escape, the weights along the edge bringing the net down at great speed and dragging it to the floor. To my astonishment, Elliot went down with it, brought to his knees and then collapsing entirely, lying on the floor as if poleaxed.

At the same time, the door burst open and a group of men led by Signor Campagno, raced in and pounced on the net, surrounding Elliot's prone form and pinning him down. The torturer carried shackles and, reaching through the net, he locked them around Elliot's wrists and elbows, trapping his arms behind him, then shackled his ankles and knees, rendering him seemingly powerless. I couldn't understand why he didn't just shrug off his attackers and break the shackles using his superhuman strength. It was almost as if he had been rendered mortal.

A sound caused me to look back at the door, and I saw Father Donetti stride into the room carrying a burning torch.

"So, the cowardly demon finally makes an appearance!" he exclaimed as he walked over to Elliot. I looked anxiously at my vampire, hoping he would suddenly spring into action, but he just lay there struggling weakly under the net.

"Do not trouble yourself, evil spectre, the netting is interwoven with silver thread, and the shackles are steel, but lined with silver. It seems that your weakness for this harlot has undone you and delivered you into my custody. It's so reassuring to find one of Satan's filthy brood with a conscience, otherwise my job would be so much more difficult."

For the first time, I saw Elliot stir and, with what appeared to be a supreme effort, he turned onto his back and looked up at the priest.

"I am surprised that you have not yet killed me, priest. Pray that your decision does not come back to haunt you." Father Donetti gave a sneering laugh.

"Do not flatter yourself, Demon, you will die soon enough. But first, you will inform us of all the members of Satan's hordes that you have associated with - the one who made you, those you have created in your evil image, and those with whom you have conspired to swell the ranks of the undead. It will not be a pleasant experience for you, our methods for extracting information from your kind are even more extreme than those we used on your concubine to attract you here."

Elliot looked up at me, and I think he sought to reassure me through the emotional link we shared.

"At least you do not need Jennifer anymore. Release her, she has done nothing." The priest shot a hateful look up at me.

"Do not concern yourself with her further. She is a sinner in the eyes of the Lord, but her immortal soul can be saved, if not her corrupted body. She will be made to repent her sins from this day until she dies, however long or short a time that may be. Signor Campagno, prepare the Demon for interrogation. We begin in the morning."