Church of Chains (18 page)

When the nectar of Caroline’s delirious ecstasy lay thick over Paula’s tongue and the whip had ceased to lash at her, she too fell limply onto her side.

For a long time they lay side by side, heads at each other’s sexes, bewildered and amazed at their own passion. But eventually Caroline’s hand found one of Paula’s breasts and began to stroke it. Paula groaned, she couldn’t take any more. But she had to. They had passed this test and the brothers weren’t about to waste two whipped and aroused slaves with sexes wide open and vaginas desperate for filling.

Neither of them could remember how many men took them that night, but Paula counted at least two who rammed themselves into her anus. And the sprays of sperm pumped repeatedly into her mouth left her with a delicious taste of mingled male and female climaxes.

Chapter 21

On the day of the visit the girls were all mounted and displayed by early afternoon.

The new girls were displayed on the huge wooden X which had been constructed in the main hall. It started at floor level and went well above the galleried landing, supported by thick ropes mounted high on the wall. The brothers lowered it to the floor to put nine of the girls on it. Each limb of the cross had two girls tied firmly to it one above the other. They were tied full length, arms and legs stretched out, feet and hands together while a thick belt at their waists, tightly cinched around the timber of the cross held their bodies parallel to the wood. In the centre of the display was a girl tied spreadeagle fashion. When they had all been mounted, the brothers hauled on the ropes and the living cross, formed by naked female bodies, rose up to stand at the back of the main hall towering some thirty feet above the floor. The last girl of the group was tied to her own cross which was hoisted up above the entrance to the gallery along which Paula’s group was to be displayed. And as they were marched past to take up their places they couldn’t help gasping at the spectacular sight.

At first Paula couldn’t make any sense of the preparations which had been made for them. There were ten thick lengths of timber spaced out along the corridor and jutting straight out from the same wall at slightly less than shoulder height, the ends had been planed into dome shapes and covered in leather. Each girl was stood in front of a timber with her back to it and her arms spread and chained back behind her. Her ankles were then spread and forced back against the wall and chained tightly as well. The timber post jutting out into her back below her shoulder blades supported her but forced her upper body out and left her leaning out into the corridor as though she were the figurehead of an old sailing ship. With her arms spread back and stretched apart, her breasts were prominently displayed, and to further emphasise this effect each girl was gagged with a long leather strap, fastened not at the back of the head, but to studs set in the length of timber. This forced her head up and back, pulling the breasts even further up and ensuring that no screaming could spoil the harmony of the display. And before it was her turn to be gagged, Paula managed a look up and down their line. Twenty breasts were all prettily thrust out and ten naked bodies were splayed open. Once they were all gagged, the reason for it became clear. A flex was run down the whole line and a small crocodile clip attached to each nipple ring. A second flex ran along the line as well, this one attached to each labia ring and a smear of electrolytic cream on the sex lips themselves ensured good conductivity. The finishing touch was provided by delicate silver bells hung from each ring at both nipples and labia. Brother Gibson connected the transformer at one end, ensured that each flex was correctly looped to its terminal and experimented with delivering shocks of varying severity until he found the right setting for the rheostat.

The effect they wanted was to make all ten bodies jerk and stiffen at each shock so that all the bells would ring. Shocks could be delivered either at their sexes and breasts simultaneously or separately; the trick was to find a setting which could deliver a shock repeatedly without making any of the girls pass out.

Paula felt each hammer blow at her sex strike up into her stomach sickeningly, while the ripples that ran through her breasts seemed to make her teeth rattle against her gag. But after five or six experiments a level of supportable agony which set all the bells jingling had been established.

They were left to await the visit for an hour or so and Paula found herself moistening in the familiar way as she thought about how cruel and complete the preparations had been.

At last they all heard the scrunching of gravel at the front of the house as the car carrying the Patriarch and his party arrived.

Father Burton and the entire staff had gathered in the hall. Paula heard his voice raised in greeting and heard it answered by a voice even more resonant than his. She could make out some words which were congratulating everyone on the magnificent display in the hall, and then the party entered the gallery along which she and her group were displayed. By swivelling her eyes to the side, Paula saw them arrive. First came four women. They had to be part of the Inner Circle, they were dressed in beautifully tailored sheath dresses which were split up to the hip on one side, and as they moved the material parted to reveal a tantalising glimpse of long, elegant leg. Behind them came Father Burton and the Patriarch himself.

Paula just had time to register his tall powerfully built figure and strong face with the most piercing blue eyes she had ever seen, before Brother Gibson began the display.

Helplessly she jerked and writhed under the shocks, shrieking silently into her gag. Her hips bucked and her stomach spasmed, her shoulders shook and her back arched in agony. Time and again the shocks came, sometimes just at her breasts sometimes at breasts and sex together. The bells jingled prettily as the ten girls stiffened and slumped helplessly.

When at last they stopped it took a few moments for the red mist of pain to clear from Paula’s vision. But when it did the Patriarch was standing nearly in front of her.

He was laughing delightedly. “What a charming display Father! You have excelled yourself!” he said. He waved casually at Brother Gibson and immediately the shocks began again. Paula thought she must pass out this time, but after only three or four they stopped again. Some of the bells continued to ring as girls slumped against their bonds but then there was silence and Paula looked again at the man for whom she and all the rest suffered. He radiated power, simply dressed in an immaculate dark suit and white shirt, there was no mistaking who was in command.

His eyes seemed to bore into each girl as he walked slowly down their line. When he came to Paula she met his gaze.

Here was all the power and cruelty which she had come to need. All the power which she had thought belonged to Father Burton and the brothers was only a pale reflection of his brilliance. She would obey any command he gave her, obey any command any of his servants gave her, but somehow she had to get close to him. The piercing blue eyes drilled into her and seemed to see her willing submission because a slight smile twisted at his lips before he passed on. She marvelled at his economical movements, so strong and so utterly self-confident.

He was power personified. He was the Church. And Paula wanted to be nothing but a tool for his use.

He passed on and behind him came the four women he had brought. They too gazed at each girl, but with cool contemptuous smiles. The last one, a tall blonde, stopped for a long time at Paula and stared hard at her. And as Paula stared back she realised that she knew the woman. She had seen her somewhere before, but she couldn’t think where. As she searched her memory though a small knot of fear began to form in her stomach.

The woman herself obviously couldn’t remember where she had met Paula, and looking thoughtful she moved off. Soon the whole party had gone into the room prepared for them and where the initiates waited to serve them. Two of the brothers took Paula and her group down and allowed them only a couple of minutes to recover before hurrying them back to their quarters. Sister Helen was waiting for them with their dancing costumes and there was no time to nurse aching breasts and throbbing sexes. They drew on the thin gowns, brushed their hair and went back.

The party, along with Father Burton and several senior brothers and sisters were seated in small groups around the edge of a luxurious drawing room that none of the girls had been in before. The initiates were either on all fours with their backs providing footstools for the men and women seated beside them, or scurrying carefully on all fours between tables with trays strapped to their backs from which drinks were taken.

Paula glanced hurriedly round at the scene as her group took up position in the middle of the room. She noticed the blonde woman looking hard at her again. The music started and Paula focused all her attention on the dark figure holding court in front of her. She let her imagination tell her she was dancing on her own and for him alone, and she knew her body was giving a blatant display of submissive need and invitation. She swayed and writhed seductively as she had been taught to but knew she was bringing to the movements every bit of passion she could conjure up. And for a moment, when the music stopped and all the girls knelt with their legs apart and their hands high above their heads, she thought that she had succeeded in catching his eye. She stole a glance and saw him looking at her. But then he turned to Father Burton and she saw the colour drain from the Father’s face. The blonde woman leaned over and there was a whispered conversation between the three of them.

And as she watched Paula suddenly felt her world fall apart. She saw the blonde woman in profile and knew where she had seen her before.

Chapter 22

Sick with terror Paula stared down at the carpet. But then the Patriarch spoke.

“You! Come here!” His voice brooked no argument.

She looked up again hoping desperately that he meant one of the others. He didn’t. Shakily she got to her feet and approached him. The blonde was staring at her in open triumph now, Father Burton was white with fury and the Patriarch had a closed, unreadable expression. He gestured her to her knees again when she reached him and then stood up to tower over her.

“Your name is Paula, is it not?”

“Yes Master.”

“WPC Paula Cheever. You are a spy and an informer against us.” His voice was flat and unemotional, yet it conveyed to Paula depths of anger and cruelty which turned her stomach to water.

“Master, I am not a spy,” she managed to whisper.

Her thoughts were racing and raging against this twist of fate. Just as she had found the core of her new identity, the man she knew she wanted to give herself utterly to, her past identity which she had thought finally buried, returned to haunt her. The blonde woman’s name was Maria Hegarty and two years ago Paula had played a large part in having her arrested for running a brothel. Again Paula had been in plain clothes, Maria had got six months and must have gone back on the game when she got out and been picked up by the Church.

“You are a policewoman. You are a spy.” He stated facts. His voice was so resonant and strong, his personality so overwhelming that Paula had to struggle against admitting any crime he accused her of.

But she wasn’t a policewoman, not any more. And she wasn’t a spy.

Hopelessly she murmured, “I am not a policewoman Master. And I am no spy.”

“Liar!” the blonde shrieked.

Paula glanced up sharply and saw the Patriarch hold up a hand angrily to silence her. Then the hand descended and dealt Paula a blinding blow across her face. The rings on his fingers slammed into her and she felt her mouth fill with the warm salt taste of blood as she fell. She hit the floor and dazedly tried to wipe at her mouth but two of the brothers suddenly held her arms in their powerful grasp and hauled her up. She saw Father Burton’s face in front of her. He seemed to have controlled his fury but ground out his words between clenched teeth.

“Put her under the Punishment Wing. She can rot there until we decide what to do.”

There was a door leading out from one of the rooms in which Paula had endured a day’s contemplation. She was taken through this and down some steps into a maze of cellars. At the door of the farthest one the two brothers who held her tore off the gown in which she had danced and pushed her in naked. It was nearly pitch black and there was only straw on the stone floor. But they weren’t finished yet. One of the men switched on a dim light and Paula saw the other lift a metal grating in the floor. She began to scream and beg but only received another blow to the face. They lifted her easily down through the hole and let her hang at the full extent of her arms, holding her only by her wrists. And then they let her drop. She fell only a foot or so but it might as well have been a mile. The grating was closed above her and she heard a padlock clamped into place. Then they left her and turned out the light in the room above as they went.

Once her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she realised it wasn’t total. There was a small, filthy little window set in the wall of the cellar above her and this let in just enough light for her to be able to make out her surroundings. She was in a pit barely big enough for her to lie down in. There was some old, stale straw in one corner and down one side of her prison ran a shallow gutter, presumably for her waste. A word came back to her from history lessons at school, ‘oubliette’, a pit into which prisoners were thrown to be forgotten about until they starved to death. Were parts of the monastery old enough for this to be a real one? It did the job even if it wasn’t authentic. And would they leave her? No, she was sure that the Patriarch would want to get out of her all the information he could. She shuddered at the implacable willpower she had sensed in him. She had no information to give him. But she knew that the Church had members in the police and she was sure that even now Maria’s story was being checked and her own identity established. Besides the girls in her group would confirm that they all thought she was different in some way. And Brother Davis would remember his first misgivings about her. She sank down miserably in a corner and tried to curl up on the straw to keep warm. At last she fell into an exhausted sleep.

She was woken by the light being turned on in the cellar above her and the grate being unlocked and lifted. Paula blinked in the light and saw a ladder being lowered; Father Burton’s voice told her to climb it. She emerged into the cellar and saw the brothers preparing it for her. New chains were being attached to old rings set in the walls and their strengths tested. Already some hung from the ceiling and all Paula’s terror returned. Father Burton smiled as he saw her look about her.

“You are right to be terrified. We know quite well who you really are and all that remains is to know who you were to report to, and how. The Patriarch himself intends to get the information from you.”

Paula could only drop to her knees, “Please Master! I am not a spy!” she begged.

Father Burton’s only response was to gesture irritably to the brothers that they should begin. Her wrists were fastened together behind her and at the same time a chain was clipped to the catches on her restraints. The chain ran through a ring in the ceiling and two of the brothers simply hauled her up by it. Paula screamed as she never had before. It felt as if her shoulders were being torn from her body as her arms were pulled up behind her and her whole bodyweight came against them. They pulled her up until she was hanging some four feet off the floor. Through her tears and screams she became aware that the Patriarch stood in front of her.

“Paula Cheever. In the words of an older and more crude movement than mine. I am going to put you to the question. And I will go on asking it until I think I have arrived at the truth. Who were you to report to and how were you to contact them?”

Paula could hardly speak from pain; all she could do was scream out again that she wasn’t a spy. Again and again he asked her the question and she shrieked out her denial until merciful darkness claimed her.

When she came to, she was lying on the cellar floor exactly where they had let her fall, her arms still tied behind her. One of the brothers stood over her and glanced down impassively as she stirred and moaned. She heard him leave and slowly managed to lever herself into a sitting position by using the wall. Her shoulders ached savagely and she was nearly sick with fear of what they would do next. She cried until they came for her again.

The Patriarch watched while she was laid on the floor and chains attached to her ankles this time. She begged them for mercy but they ignored her and pulled her up so that her legs were raised and spread, only her upper back remaining on the floor. The Patriarch came to stand beside her and she looked up into his implacable face. The bitterness of having the man she wanted to serve believe her to be a traitor was unbearable. She glanced up the length of her body and saw the brother who stood beyond her wide-spread thighs, and she saw his whip. She groaned.

The Patriarch repeated the question. Paula gulped and braced herself before repeating her denial. Immediately she heard the Swish! of the whip and it lashed into her wide-open sex. It was a heavy, many-thonged whip and its impact drove all breath out of her. It seemed to crush the tender flesh between her legs and its weight on her stomach almost winded her. The Patriarch waited patiently until she had got enough breath back after screaming, and then asked her again. She sobbed out her denial and then bucked and twisted in her chains as she was whipped again. As when Father Burton had condemned her to the cane, her fear outweighed any pleasure.

How she would have loved to have been able to tell the truth and be believed. Then she would have welcomed this pain at the hands of the Patriarch. But as it was all she could cling to was the hope that if she kept up her denials they might be forced to believe her.

Again the question and again the denial. Swish Smack! Her left inner thigh blazed with pain this time and she arched frantically until only the back of her neck touched the floor.

Swish Smack! Her right thigh this time and she screamed again.

Slowly it ground on. She passed out and they gave her time to recover before starting in again. The question, the denial; Swish Smack!

Despite the cold she was sweating with pain and hoarse with screaming. Her sex had been pounded into a kind of total white-hot agony which was all she could see or feel. She shook and trembled but croaked out her denials, stubbornly clinging to the truth. She was no spy.

The brother who was whipping her came to stand at her head. Now the lashes bit into the crease between her buttocks and made her anus sting and blaze. But still she denied and still the dreadful whipping went on until all she could do was shake her head dumbly in denial and then moan as the whip smacked home again, her body too exhausted to even writhe anymore.

At long last the Patriarch stopped it and ordered her to be lowered and released. She lay with her legs spread as they fell from the chains, sobbing brokenly. She felt the Patriarch’s shoe dig contemptuously at her ribs.

“If anyone wants this slut, help yourselves.”

At this final devastating cruelty Paula’s spirit nearly broke. What really hurt, even above the scarlet agony which consumed her body, was his anger with her. Her Master believed she was his enemy and she had no way of demonstrating her willing submission to him. Everything would be misinterpreted as stubborn loyalty to some other cause.

She had no time to dwell on her misery however. The time they had spent whipping her wide-open sex had inflamed the brothers. One of them dragged her over to the pile of straw and lowered himself onto her while she lay on her back. Her body arched and she managed one more shriek as he thrust in between her tortured lips. The channel of her vagina was dry and it was some time before he was able to get full penetration, but once he did, her body reacted on its own. And while she lay groaning under his weight he took his pleasure with her, reaming her out and then spurting his seed into her in the casual way she so loved. The second one turned her over and raised her haunches before ramming into her back passage. Again she shrieked as the tortured flesh was stretched but then she had to moan once more in helpless pleasure as the inner membranes were stimulated and then flooded with his spend.

She lay motionless for a long time after they went. But eventually the door opened and Caroline came to kneel beside her. She brought a bowl with cold wet flannels in it and pressed them gently to Paula’s weals. She brought food and water as well and she urged her to make a confession. She knew Paula was no spy, she said, she could have saved herself that terrible caning if she had told Father Burton that it was she, Caroline who had started the fight. Paula knew the trick—hard and then soft—wear them down. But she couldn’t explain the truth to Caroline either, it would seem like a partial confession and they would come after the rest of it just as hard. And Caroline left her with a pitying look. The brothers returned and lowered her back into her prison.

She had no real way of measuring time in the dark. They left her a blanket and she slept, curled protectively around her throbbing sex. At some point food came and was lowered in a bucket which was hauled up again when she had eaten the bread and drunk the water. She slept again, food arrived again, and so it went on until her pit stank and she itched constantly from whatever was in her straw.

She began to sink into a stupor, she ate what she was given, she used the wretched gutter and she dozed. Time ceased to exist, the dark, the stench and the cold were the only realities. It was only much later that she learned she was down there for a week before being brought up again. She could hardly climb the ladder and sank down exhausted at the top. She noticed the men shrink from her and knew she must stink of her own filth. They only stayed long enough to ask whether she was ready to confess, listen to her refusal and say she was to be kept up here until her next appearance before the Patriarch, an appearance which would be made much more pleasant if she would stop being so stubborn. She shook her head and crawled over to the wall, to which her wrists were chained, when they told her to, and then they left. Caroline appeared again with warm water this time and sluiced off most of the filth. She told her they had something special lined up for her next time, but Paula could only shake her head again and she left, angry at Paula’s stupidity.

Whatever they had lined up for her, she thought, they wanted her in reasonable condition for it now that deprivation had failed to break her. She got real food regularly and Caroline gradually combed out and washed her hair each day. She gave up trying to get Paula to confess and gave her the news instead.

The Patriarch was staying on to deal with Paula himself and some new women had joined the monastery. They were volunteers she said, not rescued sluts like the others, but women who wanted to join the Church. They served of their own free will and were housed separately. They went out of the monastery to work for the Patriarch, but served like the other girls when they were in it.

When she was taken out for questioning for the last time, Brother Davis came for her. As he knelt beside her to unchain her wrists she realised there was some pity in the way he looked at her. That scared her; this was the man who had first trained her, whose arrogant cruelty had excited her. She had never seen him look at any of the slaves with pity before, no matter how savagely they were being treated.