by Addison Cain
But the stickiness between her thighs, the telltale sting of rough use, had her face pinching against the judgment. She inhaled, long and deep. Mustered the energy to roll onto her side, to face away from the others and curl her body in against exposure.
She had refused to sell out and ended up in the exact same place: the fuck doll of some self-righteous Covvie. And nothing to show for it. Not even pride.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Buckeye jerked and sucked in air.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
“Let me out, you sick fucks!”
She turned her head, then managed to flop back onto her back. Two cells down, a woman was hammering her door with both fists. She was the one who had leaped on the guards when they’d restrained that last man who’d refused.
A single loud thud came from the outside the door, rattling reinforced metal in its frame.
“Calm down,” said a guard.
The woman kicked the door with a bare foot and screeched. Backed away, hands fisting in her hair on both sides of her head, tearing. Fingers turned to claws, moving to rake her face. Buckeye drew her knees up to her chest, as though the woman could lash out and strike her from the other cell.
“I said, calm down.” The voice was deeper, and Buckeye’s chest tightened at the warning in the sound.
No such instincts of self-preservation infected the other woman. She was incandescent. Unhinged. Buckeye watched, sideways, as the Vicer flung herself backward into the wall, and began banging her skull with no small amount of violence.
Holy shit.
The cell door swept open and two guards muscled in, the first reaching for the rabid woman, the second closing the door behind them.
Something happened when the first man made his grab. Buckeye couldn’t tell what amid the tangle of limbs, but the woman went limp in a heartbeat. White fabric draped from one of the second guard’s hands, while he held some dark tool in the other. The first guard laid her to the floor.
They worked together to stuff her into the straight jacket, flipping her onto her stomach to buckle down the straps once they’d worked her arms into sleeves. The tool came into play again, and pneumatic sounds came dull through the cell dividers. Four separate bursts, as Buckeye counted.
When the men stood, she could see the woman’s jacket somehow tacked to the floor. Possibly an involvement of metal rings in this, though it was too far away for her to make out something tiny like that for sure. When she woke, though, the Vicer would not be going anywhere. Buckeye made a face at the thought of the bucket.
She groaned and shut her eyes, trying to breathe again through her aches.
Until today, Buckeye Wheeler might have had her beliefs, but none of them had included a hell. She wasn’t sure when sleep came.
They never shut off the lights.
The next day they all got showers.
Whether it was because Buckeye was near the end of the line for the single stall, and all the other Vicers expended the hot water before she got there, or whether the priests had decided VT sinners deserved ice needles to clean their flesh, the shower was a miserable experience.
While running hot water was a luxury in The Vice, she knew these fuckers had it. Just like their lights everywhere, and their clothes free of dust. The upright tiled cubicle looked as though its builders had meant it to serve the occasional clergy member, but today the spray from its head had to soldier through eight filthy lustworkers. And Buckeye.
Guards stood around, faces unreadable, silent except for the occasional bark for one of the Vicers to hurry. The menace of batons at their hips had the group subdued, if wary.
What kind of religion needs people standing around with weapons?
Buckeye had slept hard, for a time. Dead to the world, even on the bare floor, body taxed beyond limits. But when the woman in the jacket surfaced out of her drugged state to find herself restrained once more, well … no one in the cells got any sleep after that.
There was no bother with finding clothes for any of them. When the freezing showers were done—for those who hadn’t ‘earned’ one the previous night—the guards herded them through the halls on full, naked display.
She couldn’t help herself shrinking inward, arms folding over her breasts. Any minute, Buckeye was sure someone would come swinging out from one of the doors along the corridor and see the line of captives. She grimaced, bare feet connecting with cold floor.
As if no one’s gonna look at you wherever we’re going next.
That, and her nipples were about to pop off and go shooting across the room.
‘Next’ turned out to be the same place Mather had introduced them all to the church’s idea of ‘service’ the previous day. She assumed it was yesterday, at least. Who could tell time with no windows? No natural light? Forget about clocks.
The priest in the white cassock stood waiting in the center of the room as the Vicers filed in under the eyes of the guards. He had an assessing eye for each of them, though his features gave away nothing.
Behind him stood a line of clergy in black—the same group from their first encounter, if Buckeye’s quick survey of faces was accurate. The priests—aside from their leader—were without cassock today, vested only in black shirts and trousers. The square inserts of clerical collars shone white at their throats, another type of bondage in plain sight. More ominous still: the room was no longer empty.
Today, at the foot of each priest, save Mather, a long mat lay on the floor. The sort pre-Delineation folk might have used for frivolities like exercise routines. Some red synthetic material enclosed just enough padding to keep abrasion and bruising from the stone underneath away from limbs and joints.
Had Mather chosen red as some sort of meaningful aesthetic? Buckeye sensed a flair for the dramatic around the man who so readily denounced others. Or maybe he’d had no part in the appearance of the mats other than to order their presence today. Either way, they were a livid slash right down the middle of the stark room.
Arrayed along the back wall, threatening on yet another level, were a series of metal configurations. Square tubing put together in what could have been a large painter’s easel, if painters needed manacles welded to their equipment. One for each Vicer.
Buckeye shivered. She ought to be delivering fucking mail right now. Instead she was here, allowing grey-clad guards to chivvy her into a line in some basement level hell beneath a Covvie church. In Virtue, of all goddamn places.
Elijah Mather stood between the Vicers and the priests, who faced off like pieces on some obscene chess board.
“All who are prepared to serve the Church step forward.”
His voice was a cold dash of water. Gooseflesh popped out all over her arms and legs.
Four of the lustworkers took a step towards the clergy. Only two were from among the three who’d volunteered first the last time. Why one of them would balk now, she didn’t know. They’d already done the deed.
They all had, really. Some of them under more duress than others.
Yeah? Well fuck them. They want to run my ass on the Treadmill of Doom again? Fine.
Buckeye was no more ready today than she had been yesterday. This was not her gig. If she’d wanted to service johns—gussied up in priest robes or no—she’d’ve asked for work from Maggie Bone. These pious assholes could literally go fuck themselves.
Mather surveyed the line, waiting for anyone else to submit to their fate. When he saw there were none, he nodded. “I imagined there would be more quick learners in the Territories,” he said. “But no matter.”
His eyes cut to the four who were either the most easily cowed or the smartest among them and tilted his chin down in acknowledgment. “You may begin.”
Amid some deep breaths and sideways glances, the first of them stepped toward the priests, who—in some eerie bit of unrehearsed choreography—moved to meet them. To direct them onto the red mats. To begin to speak instructions in hushed tones. The lustworkers began sinking to
their knees. One, she noted, was the woman from the straight jacket incident.
“We will wait until the rest of you are ready,” Mather said.
No sooner had that statement put all her senses on high alert, than the remaining priests moved past their leader, each toward a stubborn Vicer on the opposite side of the room.
They’ll wait?
A black shirtsleeve brushed past her left elbow, and then Buckeye heard the drag of metal casters over stone. She swallowed, unable to look, cold rivulets from her wet hair dripping down her back. Her muscles squeezed up, clamped tight, when male fingers touched her shoulder, urging her to move back.
From mid-line came a woman’s shriek. Every head turned to see a damp redhead wrenching her body away from a priest. A guard melted out of the stonework on the back wall and Buckeye was grimacing and shaking her head even as the baton came out and the pitch of the wail ascended.
There was no time to focus on others, however, because a priest was guiding her left arm behind her back.
Every instinct told her to lash out. To spin on her heel and grab his hair, to bash his temple against the wall. But now there was no reality she could get her hands on. There was no way to rationally grasp which action or inaction of hers might provide the worse outcome. Fear was paralysis, a cloying mist that kept her docile while the manacle closed over her wrist. Her other arm followed, both hands stationed behind her tailbone, a length of metal tubing some cold truth between her shoulder blades.
The same happened all down the line.
What does he mean, ‘they’ll wait’? Why do we need to be tied up to wait?
And wait for what?
The priest lowered himself to squat near her feet. It would be so easy to cave in his nose. One well-placed kick. But Buckeye just stood, mind on the guards’ batons, deciding for once that the devil she did know was in fact the worse of the two, for now.
When hands found her ankle, the priest’s touch was gentle. As though she were some breakable thing. He drew her leg to one side, speaking quiet words to himself, probably in Latin, as he fastened another manacle.
You are breakable, though. They broke your ass last night.
Buckeye strenuously ignored any ideas her brain had about panic. Ignored them harder when the second ankle mirrored the first in restraint. What could go wrong with her feet tethered to a crossbar while she stood naked in a room full of men?
Her peers were in the same predicament. Well. At least the ones who weren’t kneeling on the other side of the room, lifting Covvie cock out of black trousers.
Priests were standing now, all along the row of recalcitrant Vicers. Moving behind them even as Mather began to speak again.
“I have explained the nature of the service the church requires,” he said. “There are those of you who already understand their place.” The backs of four heads bobbed, the noises they made soft and wet. “The rest of you must come to accept.”
Other sounds were happening at Buckeye’s back, but she couldn’t turn her head enough to see what the priests were doing. Some liquid spraying, the shuffling of shoes. She rotated her wrists, but the manacles were too small for her knuckles. There’d be no slipping loose.
“You are the first servants of your kind in New Covenant,” he went on. “A number of trials are necessary for us to determine the best way to proceed with others who may follow.”
One of the priests in black had his fingers threaded into the hair of the woman in front of him. He guided her movements. Buckeye put her eyes to the ground and tried to bend her knees inward, but it did nothing to close her legs. Mather kept talking.
“As our contact transported you here, they should have introduced you to SNG-8. The Song.” Something about this took a tight grip on her attention. “You would remember experiencing certain … responses. Desires.”
Buckeye’s pulse woke up.
That drug. Whatever they used to soak the fabric of those hoods.
“The Song is meant to encourage your acceptance of your new role serving the Church. The initial dosage, administered in transit, was designed to attune your systems to its effects. We’ve learned a full dose without prior conditioning can be … counterproductive.”
Counterproductive?
That itch between her thighs. The woman mewling in front of her through the gag. The man at her back, humping, mindless in the back of the truck. She would have let him. If there hadn’t been clothing and restraints, Buckeye would have let h—
Thick fabric covered the lower half of her face. A hand clamped it on from behind. Acrid mint seared her nostrils.
“Today’s dose is a bit more than half,” said Mather.
Buckeye jerked, and the metal tube smarted against the back of her skull. The hand with the drug-damp cloth held firm, riding out her protests and ability to hold her breath. Of all useless things, the priest holding the rag made quiet shushing sounds as if she were some fussy infant, and not a full-grown woman who didn’t want a bunch of unidentified chemicals in her body. Again.
“Allow yourself the opportunity to accept this experience,” said the head priest. “It will not be efficient for us to require the use of batons every time you are called upon to serve.”
She danced on the metal structure. Grunted profanities into the handful of cloth, even as she couldn’t stop herself from sucking tainted air down into her lungs. Her hips thrust far out from her manacled wrists, and the whole steel contraption jumped with a clang on the stone floor.
The priests let go all down the line after some measure of time known only to them. As Buckeye heaved fresh air, the remaining VT men still bucked and shook heads against the smothering rags. Larger dose for more body mass? Was that why the clergy held onto the men?
Doesn’t matter. You got other problems.
And so she did.
Across the room, the situation was evolving for those free Vicers who’d volunteered without a fuss. The first of the priests receiving their ‘service’ backed away from the work of a mouth and knelt on his red mat.
He extended a hand to guide the woman who’d gone feral in her cell down to lie on her back. What sort of nightmares had she gone through last night to obey this priest now, docile like a tamed pet? Her knees fell apart at the touch of his hand, and the man settled between them, clothing still intact, with the exception of his exposed prick. Testicles shelved atop the open fly. He aimed himself and Buckeye bit her lower lip.
Oh hell no.
The priest mounted the woman, her knees pale brackets around his hips. He began to move, firm and deliberate, as though he were counting out Our Fathers as he pushed his cock into the passive Vicer.
One of his peers followed suit, this one directing the unbound group’s only male to the ground. The man went onto his back, the same as the woman. It made no difference; this priest spread and penetrated his ‘servant’ in much the same manner. The male Vicer, however, took his own flaccid length in hand and began to tug. No one stopped him.
These sons o’ bitches.
The other two pairs were joining the first. Lustworkers taking the mats, parting their legs. Black fabric pulling taut and bunching over the flexing backsides of clergy. Cocks pushing home.
How long had it taken, that time in the truck? Between when Wayland had come around and sprayed that shit on their hoods and when Buckeye had started feeling that itch?
Mather was going to make them watch.
Well, fuck all that.
She closed her eyes. Leaned her head back along the metal tubing. Out of sight …
But ‘out of mind’ was a joke. She couldn’t see? Too bad. There was no way to block out the sounds.
The damp noises of flesh applying and separating. Restrained grunts. Breath hissing through teeth. Meaty slapping. The images in her head were more graphic than reality.
Her eyes snapped open, refusing the sensory lure. Buckeye wrenched her head to the side, putting her focus on the line of bound Vicers. Most of their priests remained s
tanding behind their respective scaffolding units, but a few had moved alongside their charges to murmur inaudible words at their ears. Some of the lustworker backs started to arch, hips to tilt at the flood of stimuli.
One of these began to nod, the motion increasing in vigor, as their attendant priest spoke low and quick. With his next move, the Covvie freed Vicer wrists and ankles. Drew her by the hand to the opposite side of the room where an empty mat lay waiting.
The first hint of a dull hum came from between Buckeye’s legs.
Goddammit.
She flexed the cheeks of her ass, some primitive effort to pinch off the drug’s effects.
Mather had left the center of the room and was moving among the holdouts. Leaning in here and there to offer additional quiet words. Another of the captives buckled, their eyes wide on the tableau across the room. A priest made fast work of their release, and now six of the twelve Vicers lay under rutting clergy.
Buckeye squeezed her eyelids shut again. It would have been better if she could’ve done the same with her legs. The first leak of her arousal pearled, and she bit back a round of profanity.
Fuck me! How fast does this shit work?
She heard the clank of metal and turned her face to the sound. Opened her eyes as her chest began a more labored rise. Two more Vicers fell to The Song. One even reached for the priest’s hand as he guided her forward to what was becoming the most disturbing sex show Buckeye had ever seen. And living in The Vice, most people had seen their share.
With a controlled grunt, the first of the Covvie men finished—one of the four from the original group of un-drugged Vicers. After a series of parting thrusts, he pivoted away on a knee. Before he had his spent cock tucked away, though, he was already urging the lustworker up from her back, to attend the next priest to his right.
The second priest stood, pinching his prick by the base to steady it into the mouth of a kneeling male Vicer. The woman looked from one priest to the other, the switching of gears a struggle that showed in her eyes. But she understood, oh yes she did. She made her way to her knees and the next mat. Joined her peer in ‘service’, mouthing a pair of Covvie balls while her counterpart worked the shaft. The priest closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
