by Addison Cain
The woman was wet. Shaking.
Her face and chest were red, and she made eye contact with no one. Her arms clutched around her and she shuffled to her thin mattress. Folded herself down into it and turned her back to her fellow captives. The bones of her spine ran in a visible row down her curled back.
The transition happened again; the men bringing a third Vicer out in exchange for the second, who also returned dripping from head to toe and barely able to stand.
Some of her peers began to put heads together on opposite sides of their dividers. Whatever they said to each other was too far away, too muffled by intervening dividers for Buckeye to hear.
Down the row they went like that, some of the former lustworkers beginning to scuttle away from the door when it opened inside their cell. The guards came in and hauled them out with an indifferent grip, all the same.
They’d taken six when Buckeye heard the locks tumbling.
A familiar-faced guard held the metal door to her cell open with a splayed palm. The slightest angle of a brow dared her to make trouble.
“Get up,” he said.
His partner waited in the corridor. Hand near his baton.
She wanted to fight. To run. To do something brave.
Buckeye wanted to ignore the threat of pain and cursed herself for a weakling when she couldn’t.
Who am I s’posed to be? Maggie Fucking Bone? I’m just a goddamn mail carrier!
It was as though she expected to have to regale people back in The Vice about this entire nightmare, and they’d judge her for a coward when they heard she didn’t put up a fight. But that was the joke, wasn’t it?
The guard in the hall cleared his throat.
She’d never be going back to The Vice.
Buckeye let out a breath and made her way to her feet. Outside her cell, they took her by the upper arms anyway. It was not a good sign that she was getting used to people parading her around naked.
As the two men led her, the path seemed to point again to the room from her previous trials. Where they had turned right before, however, the guards now went left at the far end of the crypt. They came to another wood door, much like the one that had led below to where they’d run her into the ground that first day.
This door opened to more stairs, but these ascended. The guard on her right gave up his grip on her arm. Flipped a light switch inside the stairwell, taking for granted again what came as pure luxury back in The Vice. He turned and fixed her with an eye.
“Behave,” he said. Blunt. None of that formal rhetoric she’d heard from Mather. He started up the steps, and other guard moved his hand to the back of her neck. Gave a small push.
There was nothing to do but follow along between them.
They climbed at least a story and exited from another landing into living architecture the likes of which Buckeye had only seen abandoned.
Stone arched everywhere, soaring overhead. Ornate. In the distance, columns marched. Pews rippled away in rows, dim light calling out only their edges like a drawing. The guards didn’t let her gawk, but shored up their grips again, veering her to the left, away from all the classical marvel.
The time. The effort. These assholes had the resources to keep a pre-Delineation building like this in shape. The means to keep a bunch of Vicers around like pets. Something in her chest hitched at this. No one would be coming for her. No one could.
Several steps led up and behind the altar at the head of the darkened chapel. A trio of folding privacy screens stood behind the place where priests broke their bread and poured their wine for the faithful. She got the feeling the screens didn’t normally live there, but a second pair of guards appeared from behind them escorting another captive and banishing all mundane thought.
Not ‘escorting’. Hauling.
The knuckles of the woman’s toes dragged the floor. The two men held her up by the armpits, but a dark head of wet Vicer hair lolled.
As Buckeye and her own guards passed the trio, the nearest of the other two men bit off a curse. His boot landed only halfway on the next of the steps, and his heel went out from under him. Knee buckled. He lost his grip on the other woman.
Her body crumpled, too heavy for the single remaining guard, and went down in a heap on the steps. She didn’t move. Neck bent at a sickening angle, and the captive did nothing to right it. Her lips parted, blue-tinged, in some silent sigh, and glassy eyes stared in unblinking piety at the cathedral ceiling, forever.
The guards regrouped and gathered what was left. A portion of August’s cargo, useless.
Buckeye came to life, wrenching against the hold on her arms, feet scrabbling on stone.
No. No way! No Goddamn way!
Fingers went pincer tight and a baton jammed in the side of her breast. The guard on her right jerked her near and forced the warning through his teeth: “Don’t be stupid.”
The tender skin on the underside of her arm twisted as Buckeye craned her neck around to see the last of the dead woman, dragged away through the chapel, her pale skin some floating ghost of hope as the guards’ uniforms disappeared into the darkness around her.
Buckeye tripped on a step as the guards hustled her forward through her staring.
They rounded the screens in time to see two priests departing in the opposite direction. She squinted after them, convinced they, too, were soaked up to at least their waists, still in their clerical black. Splashes of water glittered over the stone floor.
A lone light shone from overhead, and at the furthest edge of its pool on the ground stood Elijah Mather. In the shadows to his right was a high-backed wooden chair. Before him, under the focus of the spot, was a long, open rectangle in the floor where water danced in wavelets. A baptistery.
They drowned her. They fucking drowned her.
Mather stood like a marble statue in his white cassock, his eyes following Buckeye as the guards brought her opposite the font. Movement in the darkness at his back materialized into the forms of two more priests: Brother Raymond and a face she remembered attached to the name Levi. He’d met Mather at the door that first day.
“Perhaps this one will deliver results,” Mather said.
The other two rounded the baptistery, taking her arms from the guards with something of a gentler grip. The men in grey took up positions on the near side of the screens, boots in a wide stance, arms folded over their chests. Buckeye began to shiver.
The priests, only in their black shirts and trousers again, no cassocks, guided her near the water’s edge. A squeeze at her upper arm came from Raymond’s side, but she didn’t dare look at him.
“I believe you have a gift,” said Mather. “Perhaps you will be the one.”
Brother Levi shored up his grip on her right arm and Raymond let go to approach one of the short sides of the baptistery. He stepped straight down into it—stairs, she guessed—trousers and all, some dark object in his hand he kept lifted out of the water.
“Obedience is necessary, and that you have come to show us,” said the priest in white, “but we require one who can provide a full surrender into service. Who will place their complete faith into the Church. Into the crook of its shepherds. Brothers Levi and Raymond will help us determine if you are that servant.”
Full surrender. Those empty eyes.
Buckeye swallowed.
At her feet, Raymond stood dead center in the baptistery, its edge hitting him just above the waist. He held a hand up to her. She blinked. Looked at Mather.
“Kneel,” he said.
A subtle pressure came from Levi on her shoulders, and she felt the menace of the guards and their batons behind her without having to turn around and see. Raymond waited, dark eyes guileless, and Buckeye twitched under a flash of memory. Those eyes above her. That jaw slack. Her hips meeting his.
Wrong. This is wrong. They’re gonna kill you, Bucks.
By the time her knees met the floor, her teeth were chattering.
Kill you! Do something! Run!
&nbs
p; But there was too much. She was numb.
Levi directed her to turn. To put her back to his counterpart in the water. The guards focused on nothing overhead while Raymond gathered up her arms and folded them at the small of her back. He stretched something synthetic against her paired forearms and began to wrap it; some weird, thick ribbon, around and around. Her pulse broke loose and bolted.
She lurched, feet kicking out from under her on the wet floor, spine thrusting back against Raymond as if she’d knock him off balance. He staggered back a step, but Levi was there, catching her wild legs, shushing her like a child who needed a splinter out.
Raymond had bound her arms.
Oh god, oh god. What? What is this?
“Lean back,” he said, hauling her by the shoulders with cupped palms until her weight was on his chest.
He’d placed a roll of something black on the floor, and Levi took it in hand. The second priest arranged her limbs despite her attempts at flailing. Jammed hard fingertips behind her left knee to make it bend when she tried to hold it straight. He had her calf meeting the back of her thigh, and began passing the strip of binding in snug circles to keep her ankle just below her ass.
Buckeye straddled a knife edge of hysteria.
He moved to the right leg and, drunk on some unfortunate cocktail of shock and fear, she did nothing to fight him this time.
Raymond’s voice was just above her ear, so low she might not have heard it but for the warmth of his breath.
“You were my first,” he said.
Her eyes opened wide at this. Levi went about his work, but it was Raymond’s fingers squeezing her waist, the rasp of his shirt at her back. A flutter came between her thighs.
No. No, Buckeye.
Warmth in her cheeks.
His first?
And here she was, more restrained by the minute. She could be his second, too. And this third. His fourth. What, really, was there she could do about it?
Fuck. Fuck!
“Brother.”
Mather’s voice cut through the fog, and Raymond stopped his nuzzling at the rebuke. Nothing slipped by the head priest. Would the man at her back do additional penance now? Was he one who grunted in pain at the jolt of the baton, or did Brother Raymond take it in silence?
Her chest rose and fell. Pussy hummed.
God! Fuck it all! There was a dead girl! Didn’t you see that shit?
When Levi stood, she had no freedom of movement in her limbs. Cold, wet stone was under her ass, even as Raymond kept her from falling backward into the water. She rolled her head back to look up at him. Mouthed the word ‘please’.
What she was asking for wasn’t clear, not even to her, and Raymond chewed his lower lip. His thumb grazed the side curve of her breast. Nothing came from Mather; the priest must not have seen.
Levi rounded to the end of the baptistery and descended the steps, clothed like his peer. He took over Raymond’s hold and moved back, dragging her by the waist without ceremony into the water.
Buckeye gasped.
It was room temperature, but that was cold enough. Her nipples seized up to full hardness in a blink, standing up off her tits as gooseflesh pebbled her skin.
The bindings arrested her instinct to stand, to tread water, anything. She flailed at the hips, her backside spreading in a lewd scrub over the wet fabric at Brother Levi’s waist. If Buckeye wanted to stay above water, she’d have to rely on the priest. Her eyes shot to Mather, horrified.
He gave her a single nod. “Surrender and trust, Servant of the Church.” Stepped back to sit in the chair, palms on his knees, to observe.
Levi carried her like some weird ship’s figurehead nearer the stairs where he’d entered. Raymond had stepped up so the water was only at his knees, and Buckeye’s mouth went dry to see his cock, erect and already out through his fly. He had some small, open metallic container in one hand, and was smearing something viscous over his shaft with the other.
The sight of the stroking fist made her go still.
She’d known, of course, but …
Raymond met her eyes for an instant before looking to the other priest. Setting the container aside on the floor. Levi carried her to meet him on the steps and, between the two of them, they managed to rotate her body so her back was to Brother Raymond again. Her knees in the water, his arm circling her waist from behind. Levi steadied her shoulders so she didn’t flop face-first into the water.
And then came rooting.
Hot, greased-up flesh pushed down between her clammy cheeks. Rode along her slit, crude and seeking. Her breath labored. Raymond aimed with a fist. One of Levi’s hands moved to her jaw. His thumb brushed her lower lip, and she met green eyes that wanted as bad as any she’d known in a house of Greed.
Fuuuck.
Raymond found the depression where she was slick. Pushed. She sucked in air. He was inside her again, anchored at the base. She had no control of her legs to back him out, to ease the pressure at her deepest point.
And then they were moving.
Her body was parallel to the stairs, and Levi held her up by the shoulders while Raymond locked her to him with a grip at her hips. The pair took the next step down, and then the next, until the men were in to their waists.
Buckeye’s ass and belly were underwater. Her inner muscles clutched at Raymond’s length. An irrational attempt not to fall? A reaction against the pressure? It didn’t matter. The water buoyed her weight. He only had to hold, not to support.
The priest began fucking.
“Ohmygod.” Her eyes rolled back. It was beyond too much.
Fingers tapped her cheek in a light slap. She snapped her attention to Brother Levi, who was shaking his head.
“Profanity,” Mather reminded from his chair.
Jesus, fuck! They don’t let you get away wi—
She squealed when Raymond bottomed out, hard. For only his second time, the priest wasn’t fooling around. He bounced into her with as much force as the water allowed, its interference replacing the usual slap with a floating quality. Whatever he’d smeared over his cock was not washing off; the width of him a continual slick push-pull past her lips.
Levi stepped back, his support going with him, and Buckeye tipped face-first into the moving water. Her back arched in a panic. She whipped her head up into the air with a squawk, hair flapping over her brow in a dripping sheet. Raymond never slowed.
If she used all the muscles along her spine, Buckeye could keep her head above water, which meant she could breathe. It also meant she could see Brother Levi pulling his erection through an open fly. Right about water level.
The percussive sloshing was a blasphemy in the darkened chapel. Some gasping noise like a question rose up out of her throat. Levi traced fingertips under her chin, stepping close and aiming his cock to fill.
T-two? I ca—
He was in her mouth.
Plump, warm flesh slid back over her palate. Male musk painted her tongue, even as hand palmed the top of her head to block a startled retreat.
Both priests moved in her body. Levi now parting her jaw, while Raymond soldiered away at her cunt. There was no arching her back now to raise her head. The thrust of male hips had the surface of the water violent, and Buckeye had to snort whenever it hit her face.
This was it. She had to just be here, now. Helpless. A cut of meat on a spit. A spit that was fucking her. At both ends.
When had the others broken? How had the priests known to stop?
Glassy eyes above a bent neck.
They didn’t. They didn’t stop.
Either they hadn’t known, or …
Buckeye was breaking. She could feel it. But the cracks in her structure ran in a far more terrifying direction.
He won’t stop. Oh god, he won’t stop.
She squeezed and tilted her hips into Raymond’s groin. There was no other way to tell him, but the priest got the message. Hauled her down to his base with more force.
It’s okay. It’s
okay. No one can see. Just let him. So good.
Who would see her shame? Raymond? Levi? Mather? She made a guttural noise in her throat. It didn’t matter. She squirmed on the two Covvie pricks that might fuck her to death.
Words. There were words nearby. Someone was talking.
Mather.
“Surrender and trust,” he said again from his chair. “Complete faith.”
Her eyes darted to meet his, grey, but on fire with interest.
That voice. Oh, god.
Raymond and Levi took another step down into the baptistery. The water closed over her head.
There were still cocks, locking her in place. Bouncing her back and forth. Only now, water flooded in behind her teeth. Bubbles leaked from her nose.
Her squeals had that compressed quality from being underwater, and her arms yanked at the bonds, chafing her lower back.
And then it all stopped.
A hand lifted from under her chest. Her face broke the surface, Levi’s cock pulling free for her to suck in air. She filled her lungs, eyes rolling around wild, before she heard Mather again.
“Give yourself over, Servant. Trust.”
It was him. The seated man filling the space with the power of his words. Elijah Mather making her body react.
Brother Levi fed himself back into her mouth. She just had time capture breath through her nose.
There were no more words she could hear. Only her own grunts, vibrating beneath her ribs. A palm cupped the back of her head. She tried to keep her tongue fitted at the entrance of her throat, a barricade to inhaling water against the battering of an insistent prick.
When the seconds stretched, determination broke into panic. She jerked against Raymond’s hips, trying to signal.
Enough.
Fingers splayed between her shoulder blades to keep her down. Possibly Levi’s. Buckeye thrashed, a caught fish on a line. Churned the water. Her lungs burned.
A hand hauled her up. Nothing in her mouth. She gasped relief, the breath a near painful ache to inhale so much at once. It was useless.
Even as she sputtered, Levi plugged her throat again, taking her well below the surface. Fingers caged her ears on both sides, a grip to hold her there for the fucking. Her bound legs parted wide around Raymond’s driving hips.