by Addison Cain
It was over in a second.
The weird baton came out. He thrust it against the back of the woman’s thigh. Her spine jerked backward, and she made a feral noise, nostrils flaring and the whites of her eyes showing all around. When he took the weapon away, she went limp. Sides heaving to get air.
“I see our work is cut out for us.”
The new voice sliced through everything. Heads turned, and brushed metal doors slid back into place behind a man dressed head-to-toe in white. But not just britches and a shirt, no. A long cassock so clean and blinding nothing could ever have touched it and lived.
Buckeye’s blood ran cold.
The only people who dressed this way were Covvies, but no one sneaking into the VT managed to stay so pristine. And this man didn’t look like he was sneaking anywhere.
Every eye was on him. August and Wayland. The guards. The captives. They all stared, silenced. His mouth turned up on one side with that terrifying satisfaction that can only come from zealotry.
Wrong. Wrong!
This was not about debt.
“Hello, sinners,” he said.
They were not in The Vice Territories.
“Welcome to New Covenant.”
He Maketh Me Lie Down
Buckeye wanted to vomit. A straight-jacketed woman on the opposite side of the group collapsed. Noises of shock went up from behind gags on all sides. The man in white stepped in their direction.
The guard who’d laid out the woman on the ramp was hauling her to her feet, steering her in among the rest of the captives. She made some disoriented sounds and swayed in her stance, but otherwise managed to stay upright.
“You agreed to deliver them on the fifteenth,” said the Covvie priest. “That was Tuesday.” He stopped and turned to August. “It’s Saturday.”
The traitor snorted like he wanted to spit on the ground, but then thought better of it. “The Vice don’t run on a schedule,” he said.
“All the more reason to abandon it.”
The priest’s attention returned to the filthy gaggle of Vicers huddled amid the guards. He approached a woman with short, blonde hair and lifted her chin with the side of his index finger. Turned her face this way and that. Buckeye thought she could see tears glassing blue eyes, but it could have been the bright overhead lights.
He moved next to a man, of a height with himself, but broader through the shoulders. An appraising eye moved over the ‘cargo’ August had brought, and the priest’s hand rose to rest on the man’s jaw. His thumb traced the fabric of the gag where it dug into cheek and split lips. The jacketed man looked like he wanted to set the priest on fire.
On he went, strolling with arms behind his back among the dozen or so unwilling visitors from the VT, pausing here and there to roll a lock of hair between fingers, to examine features.
The cassock hid everything but the priest’s hands and face; made him appear to glide over the concrete as he moved. White swept back from his temples among hair nearly black, and a silver cross as long as her fingers hung to the middle of his chest from a chain. Grave authority rolled off the man in waves.
When he stepped in front of Buckeye, it took all her defiance not to shrink back, not to make some humiliating noise. Eyes the pale grey-blue of judgment looked down a long straight nose at her. The oil-slick beauty of Skinner, back at The Rose, was the crude sculpting of a child compared to the features above the priest’s white collar.
“And what of this one?” he said to August while his eyes remained on her. “Your instructions were to collect from the houses of Lust. This is no harlot.”
His words made Buckeye’s attention shift to the captives around her. She’d been too wrapped up in the terror of standing in New Covenant to notice that, sure enough, the rest of them had clothing under their straight jackets that looked nothing like the plain threads she wore.
Flashier fabrics, though torn and dirtied from capture, shone all around. Any britches she saw were form-fitting to display curves, though bare legs dominated the scene, sticking out bruised and dusty from short skirts or showy underthings. There were damp remnants of styled hair and runny cosmetics.
August coughed, the first sound of uncertainty she’d heard from the arrogant pig. “You’re right, she ain’t,” he said. “Last stop on our list was The Yellow Rose, but we had to change plans. And we were runnin’ late as it was.”
The priest turned his head toward the blond man. Raised a dark brow that wanted an explanation, but would also reject every excuse.
“Found out The Rose is under new management. Rhoda Holland retired. Gave the place over to Maggie Bone.” August scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Couldn’t take one of the rentbodies. Ain’t nobody steals from Maggie B. We wouldn’t even’a made it here.”
The white-robed man smiled, and Buckeye couldn’t tell whether his thin amusement was for her or August. “You fear repercussions from this new whoremonger,” he said, still looking down at Buckeye, “when it is Judgment that should keep you stepping wise.” He flicked a glance at one of the guards. “Halve their pay.”
“Half? “
This from Wayland, still standing in the back of the truck.
“We had a deal, Mather,” said August, regaining some spine. “Twelve bodies. She ain’t six outta twelve.” He gestured to Buckeye, whose panic was rising at being bargained over like a pile of car parts.
The two guards closest to August removed their batons from their hips.
Mather. Why do I know that name?
Why did it make her want to piss herself? Again.
“You’re in no position to negotiate, Sinner,” said the priest, stepping back from the prisoners. “Allow this loss to teach you where your priorities should lie next time.”
August’s mouth was grim. Wayland was a color of red Buckeye had never seen. The guards stood with tense limbs, waiting for trouble. Mather ignored it all.
“Consider your services rendered,” he said, turning back to the metal doors. “Your pay is at the guard booth on the way out. Should the need arise, we’ll be in contact.” The cassock swirled finality around him.
Buckeye’s head whipped to August, still somehow in disbelief. He gave her a shrug and a guilty cock of his head, as if to say, Sorry, not sorry, and moved off toward the cab of the truck. Wayland was cursing under his breath and hauling down the roll-up door.
Mather passed through the doors and the grey-clad men formed back up around Buckeye and the eleven lustworkers to herd them along. Her heart skittered behind her ribs.
New Covenant. I’m in fucking New Covenant! Sold like a goddamn horse!
It made the idea of Greed enforcers seem like a hot bath and a cold beer.
The broad hallway into which the sliding doors opened was bright and linear and devoid of life. For the first time, Buckeye was glad for the gag: without it, her teeth would have ground to dust.
The corridor Mather led them down ended in another perpendicular hallway of similar width. When he turned right, the guards kept the prisoners in a tight group to follow. There were no windows anywhere, just as there’d been none in the concrete garage. Buckeye got the sense that they were at least one level underground, if not more.
The priest made more turns, threading his way further back into the warren of whatever structure this was, and their surroundings shed some of their newness as they went. The door he brought them to was far humbler than the one from which he’d first appeared, painted wood instead of metal, and a single hinged side instead of smooth, gliding tracks in the floor.
Beside this door stood another clergyman, younger than Mather, wearing a black cassock. He dipped his head to the senior priest as they approached.
“Father.”
“Brother Levi.” The man in white nodded. His subordinate opened the door and held it wide.
Buckeye didn’t know if it was collective fear, shock, or just the rational understanding that they’d get nowhere if they tried to run, but the jacketed Vic
ers clumped together and moved through the new door without any more fuss than wary, darting eyes. The guards closed in behind like sheepdogs.
The space they entered was as far removed from a parking garage as The Vice was from this pristine hellhole they were in now. The concrete cavern and glossy hallway had been linear and devoid of life. This was a masonry beehive of old, a honeycomb of a room stretching away under warm electric lights.
Two rows of columns divided the space, arches connecting them to each other and to the outer walls, creating a series of smaller dome-ceilinged segments within the larger hall.
Hall? Or maybe …
It wasn’t Buckeye’s area of expertise for sure, but she might be looking for the word ‘crypt’. It reeked of religious architecture, whatever it was.
Mather kept walking, familiar and unimpressed. As their group passed under the arches, there were dark shapes of movement on the periphery. Buckeye turned her head enough to see additional black-robed men peeling out from somewhere behind her and falling in at the end of the reluctant captive parade.
The jacket straps were chafing Buckeye’s crotch as she walked. Her mind ran scenarios as fast as it could, but none of them were good, and none of them ended in escape.
Survive, Wheeler. Just survive. It’s what you do.
After a turn to the right side of the Gothic-style hall, Mather approached yet another door and placed his thumb on a pad to the side of the frame. A dull clack came from within an incongruous metal door, and the man turned the handle and opened it into the next room.
Buckeye scowled around the gag. Electric lighting everywhere. Those batons. A fingerprint scanner. These assholes were fully on-grid, just swimming in pre-Delineation tech, and none of them seemed to care. Just another day in the Covenant. All you had to do was give your life to the church.
The guards crowded them through this new door and the line of clergy followed. She heard it shut at their backs with a snick. Her skin prickled.
The room couldn’t have been that big. Maybe forty feet by twenty. It wasn’t columned, but the walls and ceiling were smooth, pale stone, like the previous space. Mather turned to face them and clasped his hands behind his back, waiting.
A jerk on the back of her jacket got Buckeye’s attention. One of the guards was yanking her by the fabric to stand a few steps further into the room, and she could see the same happening to some of her peers, as well. After some more forcible shuffling of bodies, the pattern came out: the guards were arranging them in a line, facing the priest.
No way this ends well. No way at all.
When the four guards stepped back, satisfied with their lineup, the contingent of additional priests took their place, one standing a pace or so behind each poor bastard from The Vice.
Buckeye was cracking under all this, but one of the men broke right in half. The scruffy blond spun on his heel, head down, and charged the closed door with a grunt of rage. What he thought he’d accomplish, she had no idea.
Smooth as glass, a guard stepped near and landed a fist in the captive’s gut. The mad-eyed Vicer buckled, but tried a shoulder check on the way, refusing defeat. Pointless. The baton came out and he made an animal noise, toppling forward on one foot like a drunken stork. While he lay there, panting, his peers agog, the guard dragged him back in front of the black-robed priest. Hauled the man to a stand, though it took several deep breaths before he could maintain it without help.
“Indeed,” said Mather, impassive. “Would anyone else like to act out of turn?” Cold eyes surveyed the line. “No? Very well.”
He nodded—Buckeye assumed to the other priests or guards, since the gesture meant nothing to her—and began to speak.
“My name is Elijah Mather,” he said, “and I’ve brought you to Virtue for a very specific purpose.”
Virtue? The fucking capital of New Covenant? Buckeye was feeling lightheaded, and not just because she hadn’t eaten in over a day.
Sharp tugs came to the back of her jacket. She glanced to the activity at her side and saw the priests were working at buckles and straps all down the row.
“The vices always sell,” he went on. “Isn’t that what you sinners like to say? It’s a shame you happen to be correct, on this one point, at least. The Devil is always at work in the world, is he not?”
Wait, Elijah Mather?
The straps came loose, and Buckeye’s arms fell, aching like they never had.
The head of the church in Virtue. Even in the VT, people knew that name. Knew it and said it with a shudder. Titles escaped her, but if anyone had the last word in the functioning of New Covenant, it was a man named Elijah Mather.
This man.
More fabric yanking between her legs before a relief of pressure. It was no relief at all. The priest at her back came around and began pulling sleeves off limp arms.
“And yes, the Church is well aware we have citizens sneaking under the wall in pursuit of their own earthly imperfections. These are the realities of the sinful nature of Man with which we must contend.”
Now the gag, picked apart at the back of her skull with little care. Buckeye worked her tongue and jaw when it came free. The man she’d heard nightmare stories about began to stroll along the line of Vicers.
“But some of these are men of the cloth,” he continued. “ ‘Who knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’ We cannot have this.”
He stopped in front of Buckeye and made pointed eye contact with the priest behind her. She could swear she heard the man swallow. Mather moved on in his slow pacing.
“The wages of sin is death,” he said. “We will not have our clergy, our most holy beacons of righteous behavior, caught smuggling themselves into your godless waste. For our flock to see them fouling their minds with herbs. Fighting. Fornicating.”
At the last word, he turned to face them once more. “But again, we are all too familiar with humanity. When our ordained brothers are tempted, they will purge themselves here. Not where their transgressions may be caught out and damage the Covenant.”
A cloud had been building from the moment Buckeye had figured out they were all lustworkers. All but her. The first few raindrops spattered.
“You are here to serve the Church in this capacity,” he said.
Lightning. Black rain.
“Most of you”—he eyed Buckeye—“have experience in this manner of service. The difference will be purpose. And payment.”
Mather faced them in silence for some time, eyes stopping on this face or that to take some interest known only to him. Buckeye shifted, bitterly glad of her plain clothes for once. She was far more covered than her peers. Some of them exchanged looks.
Unless she misunderstood, the church wanted VT whores … to use as sex pressure valves? The memory of that mint-acrid drug, the rampant lust in the back of the truck, came spiking into the base of her skull, tensing her jaw.
As though he’d cleared away some minor item of business from a list, Mather nodded and moved on, indifferent to the carnage he’d left in his path.
“Your given names are irrelevant,” he said. “The Church will know you as servants and will address you as such. If I require you to speak, you will address me as ‘Father’.”
Like hell, I’m ever gonna call this sonofobitch ‘Father’.
His eyes narrowed, and his head swiveled in her direction. As if he’d heard her thoughts.
“In New Covenant, we serve the Church. Obedience is service.” He took a pointed glance at the guards and their batons. “I believe we’ve seen what disobedience looks like.”
A squeaking hiccough came from one of the women to her left. It sounded like a sob.
So. It was fuck or be fucked. And not in the fun way.
It did nothing good for Buckeye’s sparking pulse to note the beginnings of erections tenting some of the black cassocks behind the Vicers.
“You will demonstrate
your understanding by kneeling. By falling on your face to the ground.” Mather said. “Now.”
What he expected had nothing to do with prayer. The lustworkers were all too familiar. And Buckeye was no fool.
She could have heard a rat piss in that room. The Vicers eyed each other, asking silent questions. What should we do? Just take it? What are the choices?
A tallish woman near the far end of the row closed her eyes. Let out a breath and shook her head. Sank to her knees.
She kept going, palms sliding down her thighs, until the side of her face rested on the stone floor and her fingers made a diamond under her head. Honey Brown hair fell over her neck and shoulders. Her ass, covered in not much more than fancy underwear—the default garb of many a rentbody—propped up in the air, waiting. There was no tension in her limbs: she knew this pose well.
Two more followed her down; a man and another woman. The man was closer to Buckeye. These people knew another transaction when they saw one. And they also knew what pain looked like. How much would it matter if they serviced johns on one side of the wall or the other?
The priests behind these three were working apart the buttons on their cassocks from the ground up. One had already unbuttoned to his waist and was drawing back the fabric halves to kneel between the feet of the first woman. In the space of a breath, he had his trousers open. Cock out.
Holy shit. Really happening.
And it did. It really happened. Right there in front of more than two dozen people. The next two priests were lining up, as well, tugging down Vicer garments, fitting their hips against lustworker ass. Beginning to push and withdraw. And push.
Mather nodded approval.
“Service without question has its rewards,” he said. “These three will eat tonight. And shower.”
Shower. The word shushed around the room as the Vicers exchanged astonishment. How much clean water could the Covvies have in one place, to be wasting it like that on … well, on goddamn sex slaves?
