Page 27 of The Devil's Viking

“I ain’t surprised,” Wolf said wryly. “I ain’t surprisedat all.”

Chapter Ten

Utah

Early the next morning

Briley approached The Garden of Divine Light from the south road, the one that didn’t go through Walton. It took an extra hour to go around, switch roads, and come back this way, but she was used to it. It was better than being seen by the townspeople going to and from the compound.

She couldn’t let her fellow police officers see either.

She pulled up to the guardhouse at the gate, saw that it was that creep Michael on the gate this morning. To be fair, the Guardians wereallcreeps, but this one hadn’t fully shaken his ex-pimp vibes when it came to looking at women, and he also had a pathetic, puppy dog desperation to please. Briley knew just by looking at him that Michael wanted nothing more than to crawl up Gideon’s golden ass and live there. Michael would do anything that his Master asked, and he’d do it happily, if it meant advancement in the Garden and basking in Gideon’s approval.

Ass-kisser Michael nodded at her, buzzed her into the compound. As always, Briley immediately felt tense and sick at having to deal with Gideon, then she got herself together the way that she did every single time:

You’re doing this for Cheryl, to protect Cheryl. Keeping Gideon happy keeps her safe.

Briley took a deep breath, felt her heart rate slow. She hoped hard that she’d be able to get away without having Gideon’s repulsive dick in her mouth again, but if she had to have his cum on her face once more, that’s what she’d do, and she’d shower at work before starting her shift. Again.

Anyway, it’s not like you have a choice.

Briley entered the main reception area of the Garden, looked around for whoever would be coming to meet her that day. As she waited, she saw some of the women from a distance – the servants, as they were called – walking around doing whatever endless chores they seemed to get through every day.

She spotted two of them carrying armloads of dirty sheets and she studied them. Two hallways over, they floated past, eyes averted, not even acknowledging her physical presence. They looked vague and fuzzy and unmoored and once again – for about the thousandth time – Briley wondered if they were on something, if they were even aware that she was standing there. She wouldn’t put it past that fucker Gideon to dose these women; surely drugged servants were more compliant, dutiful ones.

This whole place was a nightmare, and as a cop Briley should have been doing everything in her power to close it down for good. To rescue these women who surely hadn’t known what the hell they werereallysigning up for when they came here. To put the Guardians in jail for what she suspected was serious physical and sexual abuse of these women done with their Master’s full approval, and Gideon…

Ah, yes. Gideon. The ringleader of this whole horrible, disgusting circus. The bogeyman running wild in the waking dream, the self-proclaimed prophet lolling on his throne of lies and brainwashing and violence.

She hated him.

And she couldn’t do a goddamn thing about him – not with what he had on her.

“Officer Cross.”

That smug, slimy asshole Zachariah was standing there, his gold uniform buttons gleaming in the weak sunlight, the gold angel wings marking him as Gideon’s favorite Guardian proud over his heart. He was a stupid, petty, mean man who did what he was told without question or thought – which made him as dangerous as Gideon, in her opinion. After all, they were one and the same; Zachariah wasn’t only Gideon’s right hand, he was his heartbeat that kept him alive, his very thoughts brought to life.

“This way,” Zachariah told her as she left her gun on the table by the door. “The Master is in the bath.”

Her heart sank as it always did at the thought of Gideon meeting her in his private chambers, made worse by the fact that he was already naked. She steeled herself for another rape: she’d already suffered through several and she’d suffer more before this ordeal ended.

Sure enough, Gideon was lounging in his sunken tub. It was about six feet across each way, and about four feet deep. Briley tried hard to not think about what he got up to in that damn thing – she’d never been in there and hoped hard that today wasn’t the day that she took the plunge, quite literally. Two women-servants were in the bath with him: a brunette was behind Gideon massaging his back and shoulders, and a redhead was on his lap energetically riding his cock.

For a split second, Briley was disgusted at the sight, then it came to her (with a wave of shame and self-loathing) that if the redhead finished Gideon off now, she wouldn’t be pressed into servicing him. This was what Gideon had done to her in less than two years – he’d made her into the kind of woman who rejoiced when another poor woman squeezed an orgasm out of Gideon so she didn’t have to do it.

As much as she hated that fucker Gideon, Briley hated herself more.

“Officer,” Gideon said, his voice a bit breathless, his hands on the redhead’s hips, moving her faster. “You have information for me?”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“I traced the van licence plate to a business in Denver, Colorado,” she said briskly, ignoring the large, ugly tattoo rippling on the woman’s slim back as she gyrated on Gideon. “It’s a garage.”

“And?”

“And apparently the business is owned by a motorcycle club called The Road Devils.”

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