Bound and Initiated (27 page)

“I’ve missed you, pater,” Sarah whispered.

“I’ve missed you, too, nupta,” he replied after a moment. “But…” He pulled Sarah into his lap; he had changed out of his business-suit pants into a pair of old, soft jeans that felt lovely on her backside. “We need to talk.”

Sarah pouted for a moment. Then she said. “Okay, pater. So what’s an inflection point?”

He chuckled. “It’s when the energy markets go through one of the transformations that brings the collapse closer. The model doesn’t predict when these will happen—only that they will. When they do happen, though, we have to do our best to figure out what’s going on so that we can strengthen the guard’s position.”

“Position?” Sarah asked.

“That’s all I can say about that,” Robert said, smiling. “But the better our position, the more civilization we can save when the time comes.”

They must be buying up huge amounts of something. Natural resources? Cultural artifacts?

“The reason I want to progress you,” he continued, “is that we need your eyes and ears looking at and listening to the kinds of things that bellatrices and agnae have access to. We’re worried that we’ll miss something.” He looked into her eyes silently for a moment. “And we’re worried someone has a mole here in the Mithraeum.”

Shit.

She widened her eyes, desperately trying to calculate how she should act in order to appear innocent. Just like this, she knew: concerned and ready to do her part. Not eager, not hesitant. But Sarah wished there was something more active—something she could say like “She must be found!”
Or, “It’s me, pater.”
Suddenly she felt like crying.

“And it will help if I’m a bellatrix?” she asked.
Take it for granted that the presence or non-presence of a mole has nothing to do with you.

“I think so,” Robert replied. “One of the possible reasons for the approach of the inflection point is that certain powerful people in government have become aware of our activities. One cause of that awareness, in turn, could be that they have a mole inside the guard or the order. As far as we can tell, though, if there is a mole here, our enemies haven’t managed to get any good intelligence from him or her, at least so far.” He sighed. Sarah had managed to maintain her appearance of confusion very well, she thought—in part because she still genuinely had no idea what it was that the guard actually
did
. “You’re not really ready to understand all this yet, despite your obvious brilliance, Sarah, but let me put it this way: when we see a certain kind of volatility in the energy market—derivatives changing values in a recognizable pattern, for instance—it has meant, historically, that someone is acting in the marketplace with knowledge that the guard is also acting there. If that volatility shows another flag, as we call it—a pattern within the pattern—it has tended to mean that they think they can guess what we’ll do next. It doesn’t mean that they
do
know that; just that they
think
they do, or they will. Then, if they actually
do
figure out our next move, the volatility goes away.”

Sarah felt fascinated despite herself. Also, having been called brilliant, she thought she should probably show some analytical skill. “So you’re seeing the first two things but not the third.”

Robert’s brow creased for a moment, as if in surprise at how quickly she had caught on. “Perhaps you’re readier than I thought. Yes, that’s exactly right. As a bellatrix, an agna, and even a perses, you’ll be able to observe many more girls—and even guardsmen—than you would as a nupta.” Another pause. Then, decisively, “So you’ll be initiated tomorrow at the banquet in the Hall of Mithras.”

Sarah’s heart rate quickened again. “Banquet, pater?”

“Yes,” he said. “Your first one.” He smiled, though something in his expression remained guarded, and another thrill of fear went through Sarah. But he continued genially, “If you thought the parties were naughty, wait until you see the banquet.” He wrapped his arms tightly around her and snuggled her into his chest. “Now let’s go to bed. I’ve missed that wet little cunt of yours very much, nupta, and I want my turn before I give you to those two big nymphobi tomorrow night.”

Kevin and Alex.
She hadn’t seen them up close since her first day, in the Ostia offices, but they loomed in her memory very clearly. She shivered, thinking about what it all meant, and how strange it would have seemed to her only a few weeks before, to be looking forward to having her mouth, cunt, and bottom given to the men who had threatened her that day with the mysterious second degree, and told her that she would beg for them to whip her.

As she obediently climbed onto Robert’s bed, as he knelt by her face so that she could stiffen his cock in her mouth the way he liked so much, as he pushed her knees back to her chest and entered her swiftly and forcefully, Sarah wondered if she could ever explain to her superiors at the CIA why she knew that, yes, indeed, she would beg for the whip tomorrow night.

Robert fucked her almost angrily that night, and much more silently than usual. Sarah couldn’t deny that she enjoyed it that way, but she also couldn’t shake the anxiety she had felt at the mention of the mole. Of her.

* * *

The Hall of Initiation was crowded at sunset the next night; all the red-robed guardsmen and the girls of the New York Mithraeum were there, the men closer to the fire and the girls to the door. Crowded, but not full; even the hundred or so people present came nowhere close to filling the vast underground space with its spectacular vault. To her surprise, too, Sarah didn’t see any of the other nuptae: only the bellatrices, Renata, Claudia, and three beautiful persae whom Sarah knew by sight but had never met.

All the girls were naked, even Claudia, Sarah saw with a gulp of mingled fear and excitement, as the domina came toward her, holding a leather leash. She looked stunning, of course, her body only barely touched by age. With a strange, embarrassed start Sarah noticed that Claudia had her pubic hair, though she had trimmed it into a neat, dark triangle that covered the place between her thighs.

Claudia chuckled. “Yes, nupta,” she said without preamble. “Dominae grow their hair back, to show their rank and their right to make girls obey them.” She looked into Sarah’s eyes, an amused smile lingering on her face. “It’s nice to see you, nupta, and I’m happy to be here to supervise your progression. You’re doing very well.” She reached out to Sarah’s neck with the leash and clipped it to Sarah’s collar.

Something in Claudia’s voice seemed to Sarah to seek to probe into her thoughts. Did Claudia suspect? The words were uttered slowly, as if to gauge Sarah’s reaction to each one. But hadn’t Claudia treated her like that from the beginning, as she probably treated all new columbae—even after they had progressed? Part of the domina’s job, undoubtedly, comprised monitoring all the girls in the New York Mithraeum. Grace had certainly said that she punished them, at least.

“Thank you, domina,” Sarah said.

The guardsmen were forming into a procession now, in front of them, and Sarah saw that the girls had begun to make a similar double-file line behind her.

“You will be at the front of the girls with me, nupta,” Claudia said. “I will go first, and you will walk behind me on your leash, single file.”

“Where is Pater Robert?” Sarah asked. “And…”

“Your nymphobi? They will arrive in a moment.”

The evening bell sounded. Sarah instinctively looked toward the double doors, remembering with a blush when Claudia had led her through them, her first night in the Mithraeum—the day she had met Robert and the night he had first claimed her with his cock. There stood Kevin and Alex, in their red robes.

“
Nox est,
” Kevin said.

“
Tempus est,
” Alex replied.

They opened the doors with a bang, and Sarah saw that not only Robert but also four other men stood there, in red robes but also with gold chains around their necks. At first Sarah thought she had never seen any of them before, but then with a thrill of fear she realized that next to Robert was David Chilton, the CIA director, looking very regal with his steel-gray hair and matching eyes.
He doesn’t know who I am. He doesn’t know who I am,
Sarah kept telling herself.

The men with the gold chains said, in unison, “
Patres sumus. Adsumus cenaturi, cibo et puellis.
”

Claudia whispered in Sarah’s ear, “We are the fathers. We are here to banquet, with food and girls.”

Then, from behind Sarah, all the guardsmen said, “
Edamus cenam et futuemus puellarum ores et cunnos et nates!
”

“Let us eat, and let us fuck the girls’ mouths and cunts and bottoms,” Claudia said. Sarah felt her face going very red. She realized, almost with surprise, at that moment that although at the parties many men and women had explored her bodily charms most fully, she still had only had one cock inside any of the places the guardsmen seemed to regard as a sacred triad—Robert’s.

The old, conventional part of her wanted to press the thought down and away, but it came unbidden and with terrible, knee-loosening strength:
How fitting, that he should be the one to decide who fucks me next, and to award my body to his loyal henchmen.
To be given to two men at once, and neither of them the man she loved, but to know that he watched, and that she pleased him by her submission… Why did it make her legs tremble, and her pussy drip with arousal so that her thighs became slippery even as she watched the gold-chained patres, led by the nymphobi who would now fuck her, advance to take their place at the head of the procession?

Had she always wanted to be fucked by two men at once? Two strong men who would whip her, too, and hold her down? Surely she hadn’t wanted it before three weeks ago, when Kevin had hinted that these two men would, in fact, do that to her whether she liked it or not?

Surely not, but how could she deny, looking at them, as the men passed her by, that it seemed now that she had always wanted this: a man who loved her enough to give her to his brothers, to progress her along a great and meaningful path toward light and truth?

But why had Robert not even looked in her direction, and only marched gravely forward, Chilton at his side? The ceremony of it, Sarah decided, must be very important. She managed to quiet her anxieties again.

As the patres advanced, the enormous fire died down, as if the true men of the guard tamed it simply by their will. To Sarah’s astonishment, out of the pit rose a broad walkway, leading across where the fire usually had its sway to the equally vast hall on the other side—the Hall of Mithras.

She could see two long banqueting tables and one shorter one, arranged with the long tables to left and right and the short one at the far end of the hall, in between them, to frame, in the center of the hall, an enormous mosaic of much less complexity than the one on this side of the fire pit, but also of much greater majesty: the bull, alone. Sarah grasped the symbolism immediately: the true men of Mithras subdued that bull every time they banqueted here, demonstrating their civilization and their power in the eating of cooked food created in the taming of fire—and in the whipping and fucking of girls brought into submission by their masculine powers. Above all, she understood now, in the fucking of girls’ anuses—the civilizing act.

In the center of the bull mosaic stood two columns with a bench between them, just as in the pleasure chamber. Sarah saw the crossties hanging from the columns, and the torchlight glinting off the metal fixtures on the bench.

Now Sarah saw the nuptae, standing along the tables on which it appeared they had just finished laying out a sumptuous feast that looked like it had arrived via a time machine from the ancient world; Sarah saw what could only be stuffed pheasants alongside roast suckling pigs. She thought she could pick out Grace at far end of the right table, but the cavernous space made everything seem far away and indistinct.

Then she was walking across the strange bridge that crossed the fire pit. To either side, fifty feet or more below, she could see the fire still burning, though much lower. She had the vertiginous feeling that she had served somehow—that everyone here, of the guard and of the order, had served somehow—to tame that fire into a helpful thing that they could cross at will. Tame it, cross it, and save civilization.

And have you come to believe it, then?
the last shred of her old self demanded.

It makes more sense than the other side,
the new Sarah answered defiantly.
It makes more sense than the endless wars and the feeling of doom. The collapse is coming. Everyone knows it. The Pretorian Guard are the only people doing anything about it that truly looks to the future.

True men!
the CIA agent said scornfully.

Yes!
shouted back the girl about to be fucked by two men at once while her billionaire lover watched, and desperate for it.

Perverts with too much capital, more like.

One or the other, Sarah saw. Did she have to choose now, though? Why now? Couldn’t she choose when her handler reserved her, once she became a bellatrix?

Claudia stepped off the bridge and onto the mosaic-covered floor of the Hall of Mithras. The patres, led by Kevin and Alex as their nymphobi doorkeepers, had reached their places at the head table. The rest of the men, who Sarah saw now all had on their robes brooches that must indicate their rank—ravens for corvi, torches for nymphobi, spears for milites, lions for leones, Persian caps for persai, and sunbursts for heliodromi—lined up behind their benches, all facing the center, where Sarah realized the show would take place.

Your show.

She did have to decide. She had to give herself to this progression, and to the way of Mithras—as crazy as she would have found that three weeks ago—or she had to keep her true soul in reserve and analyze. She had to memorize faces, listen to their talk, and prepare to betray them all, even as a man she had to persuade herself she did not actually love watched her at the mercy of the men to whom he had loaned her mouth, cunt, and bottom.