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  She looked up at him for a moment, and then put her head down. For the first time he heard her silence as an indictment, and he worried that he might have said something wrong. “I’m sorry… was that not the right thing to say?”

  “No, no, it’s fine. Really. It’s just… ” She looked off in the distance, and sighed. “You don’t know how hard this is, really. Dealing with this part of myself, which I really don’t know much about, except that it’s there, and that when I acknowledge it, it makes it all feel so… right. Whole.”

  “My first real boyfriend and I went through hell—no, let me rephrase that, we put each other through hell—simply because we were unable to talk like this, to be frank and open about what we each wanted. What we needed. I mean,” she gave a rueful laugh, “it was really bad. And I’ve had relationships since then, where I’ve forced them and myself to be open and honest… and it was always such work, and usually drove them away before long.”

  “Now I meet you… and you’re great, really, you are—“ Brian filled outt he next word for her: but… ”and all I can think of is, what if it doesn’t work this time, either?” She laughed at his sudden worried look. “No, no, I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re married, with, what is it, two daughters?” Brian nodded, relieved that Sullivan had included that in his introduction. “Believe me, with my life, marriage is the furthest thing from my mind. But Sullivan and Ada think that you and I might be able to help each other, not only now but as some sort of… partnership? Is that right? I’m still not clear on how that works.”

  Brian smiled wryly. “The more I get to know these people, the more I think they’re not especially sure, either. I know what my problem is; I met up with someone who marked me in a way that means that every time I get hot I turn into a target for those Repressor types. And you...well, they told me you were a Focus, and could give the power from my ropework a place to go, a way to let it go without setting off a neon ‘come and shoot drugs into me’ sign over my head.” He looked at her seriously for a moment. “I definitely feel the… draw of you. I won’t pretend that I don’t know that it’s us, too, not just me. And I don’t know exactly how, or what is supposed to exactly happen between us. Or what you’ll get out of it. But yes, I have two daughters who right now are probably in danger from the same assholes who tortured me, and I would be very grateful if you could… what?” She was staring at him with such a mixed expression he couldn’t tell if she was laughing at him or simply was about to sneeze.

  “What I’m going to get out of it? Brian, do you realize what I am?” He shook his head. “I guess I didn’t make it clear. I am a submissive. Yes, I love sex, and cock, and all that stuff, but that’s like… fluff.” She took a deep breath. “My ability is to control people’s gaze, get their attention, make them listen to me. It’s what I do for a living. ‘Doin’ a-what comes naturally.’”

  “But that’s why, in order to get the kind of release that works with this Power—in order to add my own Power to it—it needs to be with someone who is not controlled. Not oblivious to me—they wouldn’t want to do anything with me in the first place. No, it has to be someone who feels the pull, feels my power, gets me—but is in control of its effect, rather than being controlled by it.” She smiled at him. “Someone, to use a simple example, who is certainly aware of my bodacious ta-tas but whom I’ve never once caught sneaking a peek.”

  Brian grinned into her eyes. “Well, to be honest, your eyes are at least as beguiling. So it’s not so much being immune to them as choosing my poison.” She dimpled at that. “So let me get this straight: I’m supposed to dom you? And that’s going to help my daughters?” He frowned. “You know, I’m not really comfortable about the idea of using sexual energy like this where it involves them. Maybe it’s because I’m a teacher, or because I raised them mostly alone, but I’ve never been into the whole ‘daddy’ kind of kink. .”

  She scornfully sniffed and lightly slapped his arm. “Oh, give me a break! How exactly were they created in the first place, Mr. Puritan?”

  He blinked in surprise. “I… never thought of it that way. Good point.” He rubbed his arm where she slapped him. “So, I’m going to dom you, and that’s going to let us set the Wards on them?”

  She nodded, and smiled again, a devilish look in her eyes. “You’re going to try, anyway, sugar. Much as I would love to just say ‘I give in’ and spread my legs for your tall sexy self, from what Sullivan tells me, that won’t work. That’s about as sensual as the plastic and fur handcuffs they sell in the back of Playboy. I have to really resist you, and you have to really conquer me. And that’s something no one else has managed to do, though they have spanked me until I was bruised for weeks.” She added, more softly, with a concerned look. “You do know, don’t you, that I would make it easier on you if I could? I wouldn’t fight you if I could help your daughters any other way. You have to know that… because it’s a part of this, a part of me that I hate right now.”

  He shook his head, and lifted his hand to caress the side of her face—the first time since shaking hands that he’d actually touched her skin. His palm rested on her cheek, and she leaned slightly into it, her eyes never leaving his as he spoke. “No. I understand. Nothing good comes for free. As for it being difficult to overcome your defenses… well, as someone once said about surviving the fire swamp, ‘You’re only saying that because no one ever has.’”

  “Hey, no fair!” she protested. “I’m the only one allowed to quote from my favorite movie! And besides—“ her voice cut off in a gasp as Brian’s palm rotated slightly so that his fingers curved behind her neck just at the base of her skull, his thumb sliding under her jaw. He had suddenly tightened his grip, just slightly, lifting with his hand so that she was pulled onto the balls of her feet, her head tilting back. Their eye contact never broke, and there was the thickening of the air between them as Brian stopped trying to hold back.

  “We have work to do. Is your car here?” He held her eyes as she gave a slight nod, her breathing fast and a far away look relaxing her features. “It will keep here. We’re going to Thornhall, right now.”

  VII

  Thornhall will be a good place for you to try to form the connection,”Ada had said. “We found this Focus, this woman, through a local BDSM support group that meets there. She’ll be comfortable there, and able to concentrate on you and what you do.”

  “Sullivan is the one who determined that she is a Focus, or has the potential to be. But he’s not attuned to the kind of connection she needs. But I believe you and she may be able to work together and build the kind of energies necessary for the wards.”

  “Wards?” Brian had asked dubiously. “Can’t we take more, I don’t know, direct action, somehow? I mean, I was able to mess up those missionaries pretty well by myself, and the Torture Guy didn’t seem so tough once I unplugged him… ”

  Ada’s eyes had turned colder. “Yes. Well. You’ll pardon me if, as a Wiccan, I’d prefer using life magic rather than lethal force as our weapon of choice.” She softened her tone at Brian’s fallen expression. “Right now the priority is to safeguard your daughters, though, isn’t it?” With that reminder she’d all but pushed Sullivan and him out the door, to meet up with Sally at the park.

  Now Brian and Sally were standing downtown in front of an industrial-looking building. A slight drizzle had coated the asphalt with a sheen of reflected lights distorted and broken. Sally was wearing a black velvet dress, cut low in back, and white opera gloves. She would not have been out of place at an opening at the Met, with smooth glittering silver decorating her neck and ears. The only thing that was a bit out of place was the extreme height of the heels she wore, which pushed her arches forward and gave a subtle accent to the curve of her ass as she walked, her arm woven into Brian’s.

  Brian was more simply dressed, a thick white cotton shirt that was slightly puffed out in the sleeves and tight black trousers, a shining leather belt mirroring the polish of his shoes. He carrie
d a dark green bag over his shoulder as they walked towards the grungy door and pressed the button. The harsh buzz-click of the latch opening signalled the acceptance of the closed circuit camera Brian saw mounted over the door, and they walked up the steep stairs in greenish florescent light.

  At the top of the stairs, an older leather daddy with a bristling gray crew cut gave Sally a big smile. “Sal– er, Monique, my dear, so nice of you to join us! And you brought me a toy to play with! Sign here, big fella, and tell me you’ll be mine… ”

  Brian smiled at the man as he signed the waiver. “Sorry, ‘big fella’, I’m spoken for this evening. Maybe next time.”

  The man grinned toothily at Brian. “Don’t tease, boy, I may take you up on that.. Ok, you two, go on in. Whatever you do, don’t play nice.”

  Sally smiled at him, and turned to Brian, bringing her lips to his ear. “Brian… Don’t forget what we are trying to do.” Her soft murmur caressed his neck and he felt his cock thicken slightly at her nearness, the curve of her velvet-covered ass filling his hands with warmth.

  Giving her a reassuring squeeze, he opened the door for them and they entered Thornhall.

  In a room without windows or doors, there sits a man. The room was built around him. He is naked, covered with wrinkled brown skin, encrusted in places with some unnamable substance that he occasional peels off and chews meditatively.

  He doesn’t do it for sustenance. He doesn’t actually need food, drawing his energy from a more direct source, the three women and one man dreamily sitting in puddles of urine and excrement outside of each wall of his room. Intravenous drips shunt directly into their jugulars, and their bodies are thin and malnourished, the skin hanging off their collar bones, ribs framing bloated bellies. They are all smiling as the cloudy black liquid drips down the tubes into their bloodstream.

  They will need to be replaced soon, the man thinks, with the same sort of emphasis with which a person might consider changing a roll of toilet paper. People were cheap these days; so cheap, in fact, that feeding them was no longer cost-effective. He sends out a stabbing will that sends a couple of clean-cut young men in black suits into a homeless shelter thousands of miles away. They believe they are bringing lost sheep back to the fold of their Lord and Savior; they will write home about the incredible feelings they had as they watched the homeless couple enter the School for the Disadvantaged sponsored by their church, knowing that they had saved the married couple from the wages of sin.

  They would not see the couple stripped, pumped full of a combination of aphrodisiacs and barbiturates, and used as extras in videos not sold in stores, but only to certain “collectors” with specialized tastes. The Wrinkled Man knows how to reward and feed his tools’ addictions. Eventually the couple would lose even the appearance of attraction, though, just as his current four energy sources had. And they would end their lives here, yards away from each other, oblivious to anything but the constant waves of pleasure coursing through them.

  They would die smiling.

  The Wrinkled Man is not smiling, though. In a town full of troublemakers, a new threat has appeared. It is something he has not seen before—and for a man as old as the Wrinkled One, that is quite disturbing. Twice he has felt it directly through his tools, and other times he has seen the aura the—man, yes, it is a man, a Troublemaker—has left behind after he has done some work.

  The Wrinkled Man is not smiling at all. The Troublemaker’s work is wicked. It is sacrilege, and it takes away what is rightfully his. So the Wrinkled Man decides to take away something that belongs to the Troublemaker.

  The room was a single large open space, pulsing with a techno-trance sound coming from hidden speakers. At the edges one could see traces of the industrial cement and unfinished walls. Most of the roughness was disguised, however, by the layers of Turkish rugs spread over the floor, plush and dark and lending their warmth to the high ceiling crisscrossed with ductwork and dimly-seen wiring. Most of the open sections were softly lit with indirect torchieres or accent lighting, and the people filling these spaces with low murmuring conversation were only gray silhouettes of organic curves with the occasional glint of chrome or sheen of leather reflecting the objects of attention.

  These objects were set in pools of light every twenty feet or so along the floor. First was a row of dark wooden X-shaped frames, each reaching about eight feet tall, richly finished in dark mahogany tones with shining metal rings at the end of each limb. Attached to four of these were semi-nude forms, three female and one male, their bodies adorned with black leather at wrists and ankles and occasional scraps across their torsos. The roundness of their bare buttocks shone pink in the bright light over each them, the muscles sweaty and quivering under the floggers and whips that whirled through the air and impacted with snapping wet sounds. The arms of the doms wielding them were strangely syncopating the music, and Brian could feel Sally’s hand excitedly tighten on his forearm as they walked past them.

  The other furnishings of the dungeon space were more varied—here a traditional wooden stock, straight out of a Puritan town square, set next to a seat that seemed to be a dentist chair as designed by Scandinavian furniture designers. There were several couches set along the walls, and in one corner a full medical examination table, stirrups extended and holding a squirming woman being stroked with glittering chrome instruments by a couple wrapped head to toe in stretched rubber outfits. Prie-dieux were set in each corner of the room, set slightly higher than the Catholic standard, and all but one had people bent over them, their skin turning red as they were spanked by hands and paddles. Traveling between these stations were dominants and submissives in various states of connection, leashes, shackles, or chains pulled tight as they were led to or from the areas of activity.

  The sexual energy permeated the room, and Brian could feel the scars on his torso growing warm as his mark responded to the surroundings. Sally could sense the change in his walk, the stride slowing and lengthening, his shoulders pushing back as he naturally extended into the space around him. His hand released hers and fell naturally to his side, arm angled to subtly hold her palm at his side. She could feel the change the way he felt walking next to her, suddenly seeming far larger than the six-foot man who’d hugged her at the door. For just a moment she had the urge to kneel, right there next to him, and press her face against his thigh… then she shook herself. She straightened her own shoulders, pushing her bust out and adding a slight twist to her walk that she knew would draw eyes to her ass. She kept her hand at his arm… but sped her walk slightly, to pull ahead of him just enough to allow herself to imagine she was leading him… this handsome strong man becoming, in her mind, as much an accessory as the glittering silver encircling her neck.

  Sally suddenly squealed a high, girlish greeting as she spotted some of her friends standing in one of the voyeuristic groups, and there was a series of laughing hugs exchanged. Brian waited to be introduced as she smiled and flirted with a long-haired bearded man wearing a dark silk shirt inset with crimson flames and his wife, a blonde in a tight red corset that pushed her breasts into improbable balance over the edge of the silk.

  “Artemisia! You look stunning! I love the corset? Is it new?” Sally pulled away from Brian and laid her arm conversationally on the blonde’s, and they began discussing the boning techniques used in the material while the man, who Brian gathered was named Port, made slightly lewd comments and occasionally patted one or the other woman’s ass with a light spank. Obviously they’d played with Sally in the past, but Brian found himself getting more and more annoyed as the conversation continued with no acknowledgement of his presence.

  They were joined by another couple wearing business attire and matching silver-and-black dyed hair. The man’s suit was subtly cut to accentuate his shoulders, and the woman’s matching pinstripe was tight across her bosom, pushing it up and out of the double-breasted fabric that strained at the buttons. Her legs were revealed by the swatch of skirt that barely stretched to t
he lower edge of her ass, seamed stockings going down into the sharpest stiletto heels Brian had ever seen. Once again Sally went through the ritual of hugs and smiling innuendoes, and once again didn’t bother to include Brian. The snub was becoming painfully deliberate, and finally Bettie, the woman in the pinstripe, asked “So, who is your dashing friend here, Sally? He’s new and yummy… ”

  Sally looked briefly at her companion, her eyes cold and glittering in a shocking contrast to her glowing words when they’d walked in. She said dismissively, “Oh, he’s just my boy for the evening. Pretty, but not much for mental stimulation.” She turned back to Ivan, the man in the business suit. “So, did you get that new St. Andrew’s cross for your playroom?”

  Brian could feel his hair rising in a flush of anger and his eyes widened at her dismissive tone. His hands flexed, and for just a moment the anger flashing through him made him simply want to turn and storm away. Just for a moment, it almost carried him off… then a thread of insight wound around the rage. This is the way it starts, he thought, and with a soul-filling click he suddenly grounded and felt himself expand into the role she’d cast him in.