Page 61 of Viking

“Watch me.”

Viking lets out a resigned sigh. “Just don’t fuckin’ die or the teenage dream there will make a purse outta my balls.”

Lucky chuckles like a madman. “Take a lot more than that to kill me, brother.”

Viking glances down at me, those ice-blue eyes cutting to mine. “Last chance to bow out, little siren.”

“I wouldn’t miss this for anything.” I tilt my chin in defiance.

The others chuckle. Lucky lets out a low whistle, and gives me an appreciative once over. “Lady balls of steel.”

Viking barks out orders for us to fan out around the building. He tells Wolf to stick with us, while Meatball, Lucky, and Daydream enter through the back door.

Another guard comes into view at the front entrance of the temple, but Viking’s hand axe makes quick work of him, and before long he’s planting his boot on the guard’s chest and yanking the weapon free from his skull with a sickening slosh. I inch back as the guard’s blood seeps across the path toward me.

Viking pulls a gun from his cut and aims as he kicks it open. The stained glass inserts rattle as the door snaps back against the wall. The main chamber is empty, save for the sterile beds lining the wall with their stirrups. I inch closer, staring at the cuffs and their wicked spikes. I close my eyes, feel the sharp metal dig into my ankles to hold me in place, the trickle of blood as it poured from the wounds the more we struggled.

I had been only ten the first time I was shared with the Brothers. A babe, unaware of the pain I was about to endure as my father, Triton, led me into this room. He sold his daughters to the cause and earned a promotion to Prophet at another commune for his contribution.

“What the fuck?” Viking swears from behind me. “What is this place, Arie?”

“Jesus,” Wolf mutters.

This unholy temple is too quiet now, without the cries of the Sisters, as if every sound ever made in this room was consumed by the walls. Another secret for the island to keep.

I swallow the lump in my throat but a sob tears free. Viking moves behind me, but I hold up a hand for him to halt. I can’t be touched in this room. I cannot seek comfort in the place where they took everything from me. I would fall apart, and I have no intention of that happening before I kill every last one of those sons of bitches.

I nick my fingertip on the sharp ankle spikes and gasp.Pull it together, Arie. I have to do this for my sisters, for all the Sisters who were used for pleasure and then discarded like trash by the Brothers.

“The fuck went on here, Arie?” Viking hisses and I turn and face him. His gaze is wild, darting to the murals on the walls of Sisters naked or draped in sheer white gowns, their legs in the stirrups, blood trailing their ankles, and their sex on display. Some are facedown, the fleshy globes of their buttocks crude and sickening, their slits pink and glistening. The faces of the girls were serene in their servitude.

Lies. All lies.

Like the rest of the Sisters of the Moon, I was ordered into this room every Sunday evening, but my face was never schooled into the serene mask of servitude, and I was punished for it severely.

“This is the temple made for sharing our bodies with the Brothers in the ceremonial rites.”

Viking’s breaths are noisy, sharp inhalations and exhalations through his nose. He sneers, that full top lip curling into something vicious and frightening. “This is where they raped you?”

“This is where they broke me, drugged me, used me. The cuffs around my ankles pulled so tightly, the teeth embedded themselves so deeply as they fucked my ten-year-old body until I bled. They stole my innocence here.” Hot tears slide down my face, and I wipe them away and lower my gaze. “This is where I prayed for death every Sunday for the last eight years.”

Wolf pales. “Holy shit.”

“I’m gonna rip their heads off and jam it through their dickholes, and then I’m gonna shit down their neck.” Viking is vibrating with rage as he walks away from me. I follow and grab his arm. He sneers as he turns, and I release him.

“Let him go,” Wolf says. “He’s got a score to settle.”

“And I don’t?” I shout. Viking turns to face me, his eyes a wildfire promising to burn everything in their path. I stalk forward and press my hand to his cheek. “You made me a promise, old man.”

“Then find them fast, Killer. Because after seeing this room, I can’t promise I won’t murder every motherfucker I lay eyes on.”

I exit the temple through the antechamber doors, the same doors the Brothers would enter through after they had broken bread. They would starve us, force us to watch extravagant meals going to waste on their plates while they snorted their Devil powder and consumed little pills that would keep them hard for hours at a time.

Outside the room is a long hall. The walls are lined with more murals: a field in which female children held the hands of the Brothers, images of the Sisters performing our duties in the ceremonial rites, and the very worst of the paintings which turned my stomach—Prophet Job sat exposed, his member purple and erect, proudly jutting out from the rolls of excess flesh, around him, a harem of naked children. I spin on my heel and study the opposite wall, unease rippling through me. Painted with such perfect precision is a child with a crown of light, rays of ascension radiating from her head. She’s no older than I was when Prophet Job and the Brothers took me for the first time, but though this one has my face and my red hair, beyond her naked frame with her tiny rosebud breasts, is a swollen belly filled with child.

An audible gasp escapes me. Was this the plan for me? Is this why they waited until my moon blood had begun to share in the rights? Because they hoped I’d conceive Prophet Job’s child ... as a fucking child?

Vomit roils in my stomach, and I heave onto the carpet again and again.

---