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 Vicers 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?

And the next question loomed larger still: These three eat tonight? What about the rest of us? Another of the women put it to voice.

“We’ll be fed? Housed?” said a short brunette. And then, after glancing around and landing her gaze back on Mather: “Father?”

Buckeye groaned inside. There were people here who knew how to work a situation. She was probably not one of them.

Fuuuuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The head priest gave the most gracious of subtle nods, affirming.

The brunette made eye contact with the woman next to her, evaluating Mather’s response. They both shrugged. Knelt. Like so many in the VT, the promise of food and shelter went a long way.

Two more priests sank down, brought stiff pricks into the open.

For some, a really long way.

Buckeye coughed. She’d seen Covvies in the houses of Lust, but the graphic reminder that these were still men sent a mild shock through her system.

Now five were down and seven stood. Mather turned his head to fix the hold-outs with a single eye. Muted fleshy rhythms clapped out along the line, a promise. A warning.

“Obedience is service,” he repeated. “Kneel in service. Or kneel in pain.”

The guards stepped away from the wall behind the sordid line of priests and Vicers. One already had a baton in his grip. The threat was enough to take down four more, amid a volley of grumbled swearing.

“Your tongues serve the Church now,” said Mather. “You will not dirty them with profanity.”

Buckeye could have snorted. The way things were going, profanity would be the least filthy thing they might expect on their tongues. Fucking hypocrites.

There were two others left standing aside from Buckeye: a man and a woman. Mather watched them with an indifferent forbearance. Restrained grunts and hisses were coming from the first of the priests to take their knees.

The last standing woman folded her arms over her chest, eyes kindling with hate. Her feet planted solidly apart, challenging the man in white to move her.

Mather’s eyes flicked to one of the guards. In a single, booted step, a baton touched the lower back of the man standing next to the woman.

He yelled, coming up on tiptoe, his whole body in an arc, while the woman pivoted with a shriek of her own. Her hands swept to her face, and wide eyes refused to believe where the jolt had landed.

The guard put his weapon to the back of the man’s knee, and the Vicer crumpled, his body a grotesque parody of his peers who had knelt of their own accord. A second guard stepped in, some sort of complicated metal rod in hand he’d produced from fuck-knew-where. The two began yanking the limbs of the prone lustworker into a specific arrangement.

The woman flung herself at the pair of guards, fingers like claws at their uniforms, but she’d forgotten these weren’t the only two. More hands hauled her back, and the next few moments were ugly.

Buckeye cringed at the sounds the two made. The pointless fight. The odd extra bits on the metal rod she now could see were a type of restraint. Ankles first, and then wrists, the guards had the man bound to opposite ends of the rod. He was useless this way, legs wide and arms alongside his shins, unable to push himself upright.

He was prostrate, just like the others. All the struggle to end up the same way. The woman was no different, bound in seconds, though she swore with surprising creativity and violence the whole time. A guard replaced her gag and she growled into that, instead.

As Buckeye stared down the line of VT rentbodies in various stages of use, a new reality sank onto her shoulders.

She was the only one still standing.

Mather’s gaze was on her. He took slow steps in her direction.

No.

“The ways you learned in the Territories are over.” He looked at her while he spoke, but his voice rose to address the room. “Here in New Covenant, service to the Church is not an option.”

Even the restrained pair bounced in front of black-trousered hips by the time Mather made his way over. The priests had no qualms, mounting men as well as women. A white cassock stopped just in front of her.

“Do you think,” he said, in tones pitched just for her, “because you didn’t serve in a house of Lust, you wouldn’t be called upon to serve here?”

Buckeye scowled.

Don’t do it.

Her tongue drew back into her mouth.

Ain’t no point, Wheeler.

Mather raised a brow. She spit in his face.

“Get fucked, Covvie.”

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t break eye contact, but spoke over her shoulder to the guards, who were done with the last pair of rebels.

“Break her.”

Why? Why, Bucks?

Hands clapped on her upper arms before his mouth had closed on the words. They were hauling her back; her legs had to blunder in reverse to keep her from collapse. Back and back.

The door latch clicked behind her. They were leaving the room.

She refused to look away, all venom and Vice, but the man in white only watched with cool interest. As though she were an experiment that had taken a curious turn.

The guards dragged her out into the crypt. The door shut on her first taste of Virtue.

* * *

When forcing her to walk backward became too much of a chore, the guards spun her and switched arms. Now they marched back the way they’d come, under arches and concealed uplighting. She had nothing to say to them.

A left turn just before they reached the way back to the glossy hallway revealed another wood door, aged to match the architecture. One of the men pulled it open to reveal a short stone landing, and then stairs to somewhere even lower in the building.

The grey-clad pair exchanged looks, and the one who hadn’t opened the door shrugged and said, “Just carry her.”

And so she was over a shoulder again, giving up the idea of a fight, as this would be a better choice than the baton. She bounced as the steps spiraled down, the boots of the second guard keeping pace just within her vision, when she bothered to raise her head.

She counted twenty-two steps, more than the standard for a single story, and when they arrived at the bottom, a short corridor receded underfoot. The guard carrying her stopped, and the other moved around in front where she couldn’t see.

Another clack, another door opening, this time with a heavy creak. They passed into another space that smelled of emptiness and long disuse. Grey-shirt deposited her on the floor and she stepped away, clutching her own arms in some primitive bid for defense.

They were already backing out through the door. The one who’d carried her had his arm extended, hand on the latch from the outside, ready to pull it shut.

“You’ll need to run,” he said.

The lock snapped into place behind him, and the room went black as a coma.

Then, lights.

Set low in the walls, the same warm hue as the honeycomb above, the illumination showed Buckeye she was in a circular chamber about as wide through the middle as the long side of the room with all the priests.

She pivoted on her heel to see the rest, and found a single, fat central column supporting the ceiling—a massive spindle connecting two ends of a spool. The only visible opening on any surface was the locked door.

And then the floor moved out from under her.

Buckeye yelped and sat down on her ass. Hard.

The fuck?

No, not ‘moved’. Rotated.

She was moving while the smooth stone floor—something poured, like concrete—began to rotate around the central column, and the walls turned past her like some Neolithic carousel.

Her brow furrowed, and she winced at the new ache in her tailbone. Then a grating sound, stone over stone, came from overhead. She followed it up and up, and her jaw went slack.

At a subtle but steady rate, the ceiling was descending.

You’ll need to run.

She swore and scrambled to her feet. Began a brisk walk. Ground her teeth as muscles worked against a forming bruise.

The ceiling, about fifteen feet overhead, kept coming.

Buckeye made the walk into a jog.

The grinding noise stopped. And she saw it all.

Sadistic fucks!

She stopped. Stood in place and let the floor turn her about the room, fists on hips as she watched to confirm. The moment she was still, the stone rasp began again. She could mark, by using imperfections on the curved wall as a reference, the descent of the ceiling once more.

Buckeye gnawed on her upper lip and closed her eyes. Shook her head at the relentlessness of New Covenant. No wonder her grandparents had stayed in The Vice.

She put her head down and started up another jog. The ceiling ground to a halt.

There was nothing else to do. She already knew the end of it. The idea lingered to simply go to the door and surrender, to just get it over with, but Buckeye bristled with resolve.

They’d just have to break her then. Because that was the only way this was happening.

She ran.

For how long? Half an hour? A whole hour? The light never changed. The only marker she had was the burn in her lungs, her limbs, as she pushed.

A stitch came under her ribs and she panted. Raised her arms and folded them over her head as she plodded on, faltering. Her clothes stuck down with sweat.

The room and its pale stone was a blur of sameness. Breath became an abrading fire in her throat. She stumbled. Ran on for a moment at a weird, gravity-defying forward lurch. Then fell.

She managed to twist at the waist at the last second, landing on the meat of her hip rather than busting open kneecaps on the stone. The heels of her palms had no such luck, taking the abrasion when she braced against hitting her head.

Buckeye coughed, throat constricting in waves as it tried to work saliva up from some reserves it no longer had. She sat there heaving while a crushing weight of masonry closed in, unchecked.

No. No, you fucking bastards!

With a groan, she rolled onto her knees. Got her feet under her ass and stood, swaying in place. Thirsty.

The ceiling might have been a foot overhead.

Buckeye fell into a drunken jog. Ruin stopped where it was, for now, but claustrophobia was there, bearing down.

Wind sawed in and out of her. The edges of her vision fuzzed to a red-speckled grey. Blood rushing in her ears cocooned her in a pocket of warm bankruptcy.

When she collapsed again, there was no pushing herself up.

Her arms tried to drag her along like some primordial thing slithering two-legged out of the sea. There was no moisture left in her for tears. The ceiling closed in, the lid to a rotating coffin.

She let everything be. Rolled her upper body to watch the descent. If she blacked out before the end, would it still hurt? When the room crushed her flat like a bug?

In her delirium, her surrender, Buckeye thought of Scylla.

Shoulda just gone upstairs. Probably wouldn’t be here.

Everything stopped.

The ceiling kissed her hip. She was too limp to even blink, and then it reversed direction.

Stone twisted up and away, and Buckeye was a puddle. Dull sounds joined her in the space. A guard’s features blotting out overhead light. Arms gathered her. Lifted. She had no ability to care.

Stairs, crypt, door, and bodies, backwards everything went.

Standing priests in black lined one of the short walls of the room. Vicers, stripped bare now, knelt at their feet. Buckeye’s head lolled, her eyes rolled in their sockets on the way down, the guard spilling her onto the floor like so much soiled laundry.

The hem of a white cassock drifted into view, just above the horizon of the floor. Brusque hands tugged at her clothes. Her limbs flopped, joints banged against stone.

Buckeye had nothing left.

Someone turned her with about as much sympathy as they’d show a bad mattress, until she was fully prone. The floor was cool and hard, and squished her ear to the side of her skull. Mashed her naked tits flat beneath her. Bruised her knees and hips.

She wasn’t running. She didn’t care.

Limbs caged her hips. Fabric chafed. Where her ass met her thighs, something rooted, blunt and hot. A body. A cock.

She stared at the white hem, muscles slack.

Just like pirates. Crush the defenses; take what was valuable.

Rigid flesh nudged, pushed. Sweat was a halting lubricant where arousal couldn’t grow. Another human being was inside her. More. More, until open trousers met her cheeks. Thrusting began, mechanical.

Somewhere overhead, Mather spoke.

“Service to the Church in New Covenant is the will of the Lord,” he said, cassock dusting the ground as it floated around her head and out of sight. “The will of the Lord is not a choice made by men. By sinners.” The stiff prick worked in and out of Buckeye. “This lesson will be repeated as often as necessary.”

A faceless priest rode her limp body. Stone ground her skin over her cheekbone, the knuckles of her big toes. Grunting came, and more force behind the snapping of hips. There was no sound in the room now but the slapping of flesh, the rasp of breath.

A palm splayed between her shoulder blades, pressing her further to the floor. Male groin humped at her, two, three, a half a dozen more times. Then there was the kick, familiar. Unstoppable.

Hips connected with her ass. Defeat drove all the way home, jammed to her limits. The pulse came again and again, vomiting thick dominion into her cunt. Where the spurting ended, the violation began anew. Slow plunges glutted semen out around the sated cock, sent it seeping down past the empty buzz of her clit.

And then the invasion was gone. Phallus and body retreated, leaving Buckeye to lie there for dead. Bone-weary and broken.

“We’ve spent enough time on this today,” said Mather from the far side of the room. “Secure the servants. Brothers, you will do penance as you leave.”

Again, like a ragdoll, arms were gathering her up, lifting her from the floor. This time holding her under knees and an armpit to a grey-uniformed chest. She couldn’t look at the guard.

A line of priests formed at the open door. One of the guards stood by, baton held out at chest level. The first of the clergy stepped up and reached for it. His body jerked, and he growled but maintained a grip. It might have been two or three seconds before he let go and passed out into the crypt, chest heaving, neck bent in pain.

The next took his place, grabbing the baton of his own will, suffering for a moment before he left. Then the next. And the next.

Penance.

Mather was punishing the priests? For what? Fornicating?

The man in white spoke as if her barely-coherent thoughts had been aloud. The other captives must have been gaping at the sight, as well.

“Oh yes,” he said, addressing the naked huddle of waiting Vicers, “These Brothers have volunteered to acclimate you to your service, but they are not exempt from payment for their transgressions. Whether they slip off to the Territories, or profane themselves here, even in support of our efforts.” Another priest yelped and then stifled the sound. “They will do penance if they wish to continue wearing the cloth.”

The last of the black cassocks left through the door. Two remaining guards moved in around the lustworkers, goading the sitting few to stand with the threat of their batons. In her idiot haze, Buckeye wondered how strong this one was, to have been holding her dead weight up the whole time. It was the only way she was getting out of the room, though. Her legs were liquid, useless.

The men corralled the Vicers into a line and began herding them out the door. Buckeye’s guard fell in at the end, turning sideways to get her through without hitting her head. As she passed, Mather stepped into view. Cool eyes looked down into hers.

“Do better tomorrow.”

She had almost enough energy to blink at him before he left in an eddy of white.

You’re not dead. You made it.

* * *

They deposited her in a cell.

They deposited all of them in cells.

Well. The others, the guards goaded into cells. Like cattle. They could still walk. Buckeye could not.

The cells sat end-to-end, segments of a centipede, their doors off the hallway that ran in the opposite direction of Mather’s original right turn toward the crypt.

Rather than solid walls, or bars like some old-timey jail, something clear and thick divided each Vicer from the next. It could have been glass or plexi, but Buckeye was too far to reach out and touch it from where the guard had laid her on the bare floor. Too far, and she didn’t have the strength yet to move much more than her head. Either way, she was certain the stuff wouldn’t shatter, no matter what any of them did.

She coughed, throat still raw from trying to outrun the ceiling. Other parts of her were raw, as well. Buckeye grimaced. Swallowed. Dim, circular lights recessed into the ceiling stared like impassive eyes.

Her face rolled to the side to watch the last of the church’s new ‘servants’ put away, so many tools after use. Though a dozen panels of transparent barrier diluted her view of the furthest cells, she could still see the last three were different.

As the guard had lowered her to the ground, Buckeye had scanned her own personal prison to find it devoid of anything except a single, discomfiting, bucket. No furniture. No bedding.

The cells at the opposite end of the row had something that looked like a thin mattress on the floor. A stainless fixture rising from the ground that she guessed was a toilet. These three cells stayed empty. At least for a time.

When the grey-clad men escorted lustworkers into these by the upper arms, Buckeye saw their hair plastered to their heads, dripping. The doors closed behind them and they each moved to grab up what turned out to be a thin blanket, folded at the end of their mattresses, to wrap around their nakedness.

Buckeye recognized these three as the first to submit to the priest’s demands.

‘Service without question has its rewards. These three will eat tonight. And shower.’

A part of her sneered.

Sold their asses just like that. For fucking nothing.

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 standing 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.

The red mats pillowed nicely under knees and feet and asses. They might not be that uncomfortable. Just to lie down. Get filled. A body pinning hers, warm. Giving.

Fuck! Stop it!

Her hips tilted. Buckeye ground at nothing.

Mather was closing in her direction, knocking away Vicer resistance as he came like a series of vases on a shelf. Another pair moved to the mats. One of the priests was urging his partner to roll to her belly. A noise came from Buckeye’s throat when she thought about her breasts flattening to the lurid vinyl that way. Her nipples were tight, angry points.

No! You’re stronger than this, Wheeler!

The priest who’d bound her had made no sound at all, but when the man in the white cassock stepped near at last, he slid into Buckeye’s view from her right. An erection tented his trousers. Mather’s face was a picture of infinite patience, hands still folded behind his back.

She looked from cold blue-grey eyes to a darker brown set, the one unaffected, the other burning with need. Her spine curled. She had to breathe through her mouth. The metal tubing bruised between her cheeks.

Mather leaned in and spoke near her ear. “Are you ready to serve Brother Raymond?”

Buckeye whipped her head back and forth, a vehement ‘no’, her eyes wide. The priest in black, Brother Raymond, tugged at the length in his pants through fabric. It was not small.

“Brother Raymond is here to help you learn, Sinner.” Mather’s voice was insidious. “Will you not serve him in this?”

She whimpered, body contorting to try to drag her humming cunt along the metal. Anything. There was no reaching it. There was no scratching the itch.

He’ll scratch it.

She ran her tongue over her lips.

No!

Kept an eye on that moving fist. The hard ridge it outlined.

They’re gonna get you anyway.

The priest was young. Probably her age, or somewhere near. Clean-shaven. Fit. She could do worse.

Fuck you!

“Will you serve?” said Mather.

Her open-mouthed nod looked just like the others.

Nothing happened. No one moved to release her wrists.

“Will you serve?” The repetition was identical in tone to the original.

Desperation surged up her throat.

“Yes!” Surely now. Now they would let her have it. She humped at the air, eyes locked with Brother Raymond’s. There must have been some instruction for the priests not to touch the Vicers until they’d agreed, because his face looked like he was ready to be all over her.

“Yes, what?”

Buckeye searched the invisible for what it was Mather wanted. When she found it, she wanted to heave, but the pulse between her legs made her choke out the answer.

“Yes, Father.”

Mather gave a nod. Brother Raymond bent to her manacles.

There was no need for force as she stepped away from the restraints. The young priest was moving backward to the mat, fingers already tricking open his fly, reaching in to lift an erect cock and point it out through the gap. Even as Buckeye sank to her knees, eyes glazed with want, he was gathering his balls to hang them over the divided fabric.

Her fingers wrapped the shaft without preamble. The plump, livid head became the focus of her world. It begged to be swallowed, and Buckeye did.

The priest controlled a hum when she took him into her mouth. Grunted when she started helping meat to the back of her tongue with a pumping fist. Her pussy throbbed, effervescent in the grip of The Song. She choked and slobbered on him, rabid in a way she could never remember of the times she’d tried to please a man in The Vice.

It didn’t last.

Just as she’d found her stride, Brother Raymond pulled away, trailing a spiderweb-thin line of saliva from her lower lip to his glossy prick. Buckeye was dazed, lost, but he was dropping to a knee, an arm out to help her further down on the mat.

She needed no such assistance.

In a breath, the ceiling was behind his head. Her shoulders and tailbone sank into the brief padding. Thighs fell open like pages in a book, and the priest was there, reading between the lines.

He knelt, bracing on one arm. The other hand aimed and sluiced his cock through the wet disaster she spread for him. Buckeye had no idea what to do with her hands, but it didn’t matter.

The priest was inside her.

He was inside, and she did the opposite of fending him off. A tiny, caged part of her mind shrieked and rattled the bars for her to stop—for the love of all that was left of her, stop!—but the drug roared over it, obliterating. The moment their bodies kissed together, they both seized a rhythm out of the humid air and launched into their fucking like a song.

The Song.

I don’t care. I don’t care.

He plumbed his length down into her, not so slow and careful as the other priests she’d seen, and Buckeye met him with greedy hips. The chafe of fabric on her inner thighs had her leaking more arousal, slicking his path. His Adam’s apple bobbed over that white collar insert a few inches above her nose, and she would’ve craned her neck to bite it if she thought she could reach.

Buckeye pressed her heels into his flexing ass, urging him home. Brother Raymond’s face was tight, concentration intense on the sin of pounding his cock into writhing Vicer body. He was beautiful in some perverse way and, in the grip of these Covvie drugs, Buckeye thought she could watch him sweat and thrust and violate her body forever.

And then she was empty.

The whine that squeezed out of her throat rose at the end like a question. Her pussy flexed and gaped at nothing, a suckling mouth chasing after a withdrawn nipple.

The priest was untangling their limbs, Straddling her hips. Clambering up past her belly and ribs. Her pulse sped as his knees pressed into the mat on either side of her neck.

Oh, god.

His eyes were downcast, intent from much further above, but the looming foreground was all sticky manhood.

The scent of him—of her!—overwhelmed as he aimed the fat crown at her mouth. Buckeye opened, delirious, and let him push the flare past her top teeth. Let him scrub it over her palate. She closed on him, the taste of her own body twanging her salivary glands even as she let the girth flatten her tongue.

Black trousers a few inches from her face were a backdrop for invading and retreating cock. Again, he braced on a palm. Found an angle that fit the bulk of him to the entrance of her throat. Began fucking.

He went at a careful pace this time, as though if he didn’t take pains to go slow, to savor every texture and flutter, he’d lose control and drown her right there.

There was nothing for it. His thighs might have been trapping Buckeye’s shoulders, but her hands were sure as hell free. The right one wandered between her legs, fingers slipping through arousal. She found her clit swollen, sensitive, and she worried it under her touch, the little bud slip-sliding back and forth, while a Covvie priest used her mouth like it was the only chance he would ever get.

Her fingers danced, speeding along with Brother Raymond’s hips, no thought for who might see her spread and pink on the vinyl mat. She sputtered here and there on his cock, his thrusts more careless now and breaching the back of her throat.

Out of the corner of her eye, the hem of a white cassock flowed near. The presence broke the illusion of a world consisting only of her and Brother Raymond. Other people were here. Mather was here.

Her hand stayed at work. So did the priest in black.

The head of the church took a knee, hiking white fabric as he went. Buckeye’s cheeks hollowed and filled, lips stretching around a moving organ while her eyes rolled up to meet the second pair looking down.

“Obedience is service,” he said. “Does it not satisfy to obey Brother Raymond? To serve the Church in this way?”

Her pussy surged. Fingers scrubbed harder at her clit.

Oh please, no.

Cool fingertips brushed her forehead. Mather was moving damp hair back from her sweat-beaded brow, his hand inches away from pumping cock. She gurgled profanity around the meat, unintelligible, and closed her eyes.

“His penance will come later,” Mather said, “but for now, he will teach you. He will sin upon your body and you will accept it.”

Buckeye groaned and crammed three fingers into her pouting hole. The heel of her palm slapped her clit in a furious rhythm.

His voice went on like a litany. “You will accept him and any other man of the cloth who must purge himself of transgression.”

Raymond panted overhead, balls plumping against her chin as he thrust. Mather spoke as if nothing were happening.

“You will accept them on your knees. You will accept them on your back. You will open yourself in any way they ask, Sinner, because you are a servant now.” Cock rooted to fill her mouth, and her eyes bugged, skull rocking back and forth to make room for air. “You will complete your service to Brother Raymond and thank him for his blessing.”

She rode her own hand, eyes rolling wild, as the Covvie priest groaned and crammed more of himself than ever into her mouth.

“This is your opportunity, Brother.” Mather switched his attention to Raymond. “Tell her what shameful things you want. Let her show you obedience.” The dick on her tongue flexed at this, and the younger priest hissed.

“Tell her.”

Raymond’s free hand threaded fingers between the back of her head and the mat. He cradled her skull and drew in a breath as he fit his full length down into protesting, squirming tissue.

“T-take it,” he said. “Sssuck my cock.”

The words came timid at first, as though he’d never had a chance to say something like that aloud. Let alone have it describe the reality of the moment.

Buckeye choked, face flaming with effort. She met his eyes. They each seized the connection.

“Yes.” He was bold, jerking his hips so his cock reamed her face. “Take it.” She snorted and warbled, spit bubbling around girth.

“Go on,” said Mather.

“Take it!” Raymond stuffed her, unforgiving. “Oh God oh God, take this cock, you fucking VT whore!”

Her clit convulsed, blood surging in a massive thump. Buckeye screamed around the battering cock and came all over her own hand like she’d never come before in her life.

Purple and black flecked at the edge of her vision. The rutting priest gasped, more than once, and seized.

“Accept his blessing, Servant of the Church.”

The shaft swelled on her tongue. Kicked and began to pulse. Hot salt jetted into her throat.

“S-swallow.” A barely-upright Raymond insisted, gripping himself at the base. “Swallow it.”

Her throat worked without question, but he was pulling back, spending the last of himself down her chin. His head had fallen back, and his fist slicked over his cock, milking as he tried to breathe.

Buckeye coughed. Panted. Her lips were raw and her cunt hiccoughed pleasure like a drunk. If she made an effort of it, she knew she could come again, But her limbs were slack. The priest was pivoting off her.

“You will thank the Brother for his blessing.”

Breath rasped her words into broken pieces. “Tha-ank you. Brother.”

Mather leaned closer as her head lolled to the side. He spoke even lower than before.

“I told them to bring me prostitutes,” he said. “They understand service. Transactions.” Her throat was sore, but she tried to focus. Blue-grey eyes scanned her in appraisal. “But my first impressions were correct. I knew you were suited to serve.”

Her brow furrowed at him, but she couldn’t form words. Semen cooled in the valley beneath her lower lip.

“Your rag was soaked in a mint extract,” he went on, still quiet. “I wanted to see your responses without The Song. You did not disappoint me.”

Buckeye reeled as Mather stood. Stared at the ceiling, chest heaving.

No drugs?

But …

So wet.

She’d come so fucking hard.

The white cassock retreated. Feet were making sticky noises moving over the mats on either side of her. Some of the pairs were still grunting through it.

He could be lying.

She wiped at her chin. Cleaned the side of her fingers with her tongue before she could stop herself.

Without The Song.

What am I?