Chapter 27

Cassie moaned and turned onto her back as her eyes opened.

She slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes. She paused a moment, letting the images from her last dream settle in her mind, going over them so they would not fade. It took only a few seconds. It was something at which she was quite adept by now.

She pulled off the sheet and got out of bed. She yawned and stretched, still thinking about what she saw. The woman in the dream had to be Nyssa. It couldn't be anyone else. She still couldn't see the room that distinctly, or with whom she was speaking.

Either way, she knew it was important. Perhaps more so than the vivid dreams she had had about Marcie Fuller earlier during the night. One way or the other, she would have to make sure to let Jason know.

She sighed. It was almost as if there were simply too much happening for even her dream world to keep up.

On Sunday morning, for the second day in a row Jason was awakened by a phone call before his parents had risen. He scrambled out of bed, face twisting horribly for a moment as his stiffened muscles and joints screamed at him. He fumbled the receiver twice before finally getting it to his ear and speaking into it groggily. "Hullo?"

"Hi, Jason! How are you?"

Jason slammed hard into full wakefulness. "Melinda??"

"Are you okay, Jason? You were really upset when you left yesterday."

The incongruity of her question made him speechless for a few moments. "What... well, of course I was upset! Heather was going to... to... wait... did she or didn't she?"

Melinda giggled. "You sure you're okay, Jason?"

"Melinda, please, tell me, did Heather... did she do anything to you or did someone stop it?"

There was a pause at the other end for a moment before Melinda replied in a soft voice, "No one stopped it, Jason."

Jason sighed despondently. "Melinda, I'm so sorry..."

"You don't have to be. I'm okay."

"You're not okay, Melinda! You're..." He could not get himself to say it.

"I'm happy with it, Jason."

"Only because you're being made to feel happy about it."

"Heather thought you might be upset about this. She wanted me to call you to tell you everything was all right, so you didn't worry."

"So that's the only reason you called me? Because she told you to?"

"But I want to do what she tells me, Jason. I want to be a good little girl."

Jason felt something inside him twist. "Melinda, listen to what you're saying..." he said desperately, even though he knew it was useless if she was as far under as he thought she was.

"It's okay, really. That's why I'm supposed to call you this morning before we left for church."

Jason felt like he wanted to explode. Only the fact that his parents were still asleep stopped him. Yet his voice was sharp when he spoke next. "So I guess you don't care about me anymore now? You care only about s-serving your new Mistress or something?!"

For the first time, Melinda faltered. "I... I h-have to serve her, Jason," she said in a husky voice. "Just thinking about it makes me wet. It j-just feels too good to want to stop... I c-can't stop feeling good..."

For some reason, hearing this actually made Jason feel better.

He was still very distressed over what had happened. But somehow this reassured him that part of the old Melinda was still there and fully realized that what she was doing was not normal. It was still painful to hear her acting like this, but it was better than her sounding like she had been completely mind-wiped and reprogrammed. Maybe there was some hope for not just her but the others as well.

But there was something else he needed to hear.

"I just want to know that you still care about me, that's all," Jason said softly.

There was a long pause. "I do, Jason," Melinda finally said in a whisper. In a steadily more normal voice she continued, "Mistress says she'll let me serve you sometimes. I can be your good little girl sometimes."

Jason's fingers tightened. He wanted to say that he just wanted her, not a "good little girl." At the same time, he was ashamed that the sound of this arrangement caused a small spark of arousal in him. "Um, okay," was all he could think of to say.

"I'll do whatever you want me to so, Jason. Anything at all."

Jason took a deep breath. "As long as Heather allows it, right?"

"I have to be her good little girl first. I... oh my..."

"What is it?"

"I'm horny," she said in a husky voice. Jason heard her start to pant into the phone. "I-I have to go, Jason. Mistress wants me. She has to give me relief. She..."

"I get the picture!" Jason said hurriedly. He silently cursed his own's body's traitorous response to it. "Okay, I'll let you go. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Of course. Goodbye, Jason."

"Bye."

Jason took a moment to calm himself after putting the receiver down. Sometimes he hated teenage hormones and wished he could turn them off. He truly understood now why the Darkness was targeting the teen population of Haven so heavily through Nyssa. How was a typical, hormonal teenager supposed to resist this kind of control?

Or did even the adults have any chance against it? Look at Richie's Mom. Or Heather's. Or Diane's. Or his own Dad.

He stiffened. Somewhere in his mind he was beginning to face a very hard truth. It explained his father's manner lately, and what he was seeing when he looked at his father's aura. He was coming to the conclusion that the man was a willing participant.

But his father did not look to Nyssa. This was something different. The tiny voice he was starting to hear in the back of his mind when he looked at an aura was not yet loud enough to be coherent. Yet there was something about the tone from the one that whispered to him from his father's aura that suggested dominance, that Henry Conner was not a submissive slave like the others that had fallen to Nyssa.

It was like with Heather's mother. They had been subsumed to it before Nyssa had arrived. They were servants of it rather than slaves to another.

Jason was beginning to pull himself out of his depression. He could start planning now. He wished he had a way to get in touch with Cassie, but knew he would just have to wait to see if she called him back again.

Jason hoped it would be soon. He had the uneasy sensation that he was racing the clock.

Sandra glanced at her son as she pulled out into the street and headed towards church, her eyes both critical and concerned. Richie noticed and smirked. "What?"

"You did it, didn't you?"

"Did what?" Richie asked innocently, though there was still a smarmy smile on his face.

"Don't pull that shit on me."

"Heavens, mother, your language!" Richie said with mock shock. "After all, we're on our way to praise the Lord and pass the loot."

"Don't be a fucking wiseass, Richie. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And no more snide comebacks."

"So why didn't you ask me about all this yesterday afternoon? Oh, wait, that's right, you were out getting' laid again."

"Richie!"

"All right, all right, sorry. Yeah, I did it. So what? You already knew what I was going out for."

Sandra sighed. "Yeah, but I hoped maybe you wised up at the last minute. Or one of your friends would have had enough sense to stop you."

There was only a moment's hesitation before Richie responded, "Yeah, well, maybe they're smart enough not to get in the way, huh?"

"Obviously you didn't use the same smarts either."

Richie said nothing.

"Why did you go through with it?"

"What the hell do you mean?"

"Richie, you don't get that sort of power from this town unless you do something for it in return. And when was the last time you were 'oh-so-generous' about giving favors?"

"Hey, you think I'm stupid? You think I'd do this unless I lined up a sweet deal for myself where I didn't have to do nothing for it?"

Richie was jerked against the seatbelt when Sandra abruptly swerved off the road and towards the curb, fishtailing the car briefly before slamming the brake and bringing it to a tire-screeching halt.

"What the fuck... ?!"

"Richie, I want to know exactly what you did to get that power!" Sandra demanded.

Richie blinked. Rather than the anger he had expected he was hearing near-panic in his mother's voice. "Huh?"

"You don't get anything for free. It doesn't work that way. You either have to pay some price up front, or you have to... to give up your own..." Sandra paled. "Oh my God, Richie, tell me you didn't do that!"

Richie's mouth dropped open. He had never seen such abject fear in his mother's eyes. "Didn't do what?"

Sandra had to pause a moment to calm herself down. Her heart was pounding. She wondered how long it would be before Haven decided she shouldn't be speaking about this. The fact that she got this far scared her. It could mean that it was not concerned, that words alone could not change what had happened.

"Richie, did you... do you belong to someone now?"

(And you know what you are giving me?)

Richie swallowed. "Mom, I..."

"Does someone else control you? Are you some else's slave?"

(You know you will be mine after this?)

Richie opened his mouth to deny this, but no words came out. He closed it again without uttering a sound.

Sandra looked into his eyes, her own shimmering. "Oh, God, Richie..." she croaked.

"Mom, it's okay. She's not gonna do anything to me."

Sandra covered her eyes with her hand.

"Mom, it... it wasn't bad at all. It..." Richie paused a moment. His cock was swelling in his pants as he thought about Nyssa. "It was kinda nice. I don't remember what happened, but it was real nice. And she gave me something for it, Mom! She... !"

"Richie, answer me this," Sandra said suddenly. "You got this from the school nurse, right?"

Richie nodded.

"If she were here now, what would you call her? How would you address her?"

"Mistress," Richie answered immediately. His cock became rock-hard and his voice softer. "She's my Mistress."

"And now she can get you do to whatever she wants."

Richie snorted. "Come on, Mom, what's she gonna ask me to do, huh? I'm a nobody. Sweetest deal I coulda ever gotten."

Sandra's expression hardened as she looked at her son. She put the car in gear and pulled out into the street again.

"Funny thing, Richie," she said as she stared morosely at the road ahead of her. "That's exactly what I thought when it first happened to me."

Richie's head jerked around, but before he could seriously consider her words, his thoughts were gently coaxed towards something more suitable. He thought about Nyssa again and his obedience to her. Immediately his cock felt as if someone were lightly stroking it, sending small ripples of pleasure through him.

He turned his gaze from his mother and tried to put her out of his mind. He slowly smiled as he was rewarded with more light, teasing stimulation to his cock. He settled himself back into his seat with a pleased look on his face.

Surely he got the better of this deal. It was beyond him why his mother could not see that.

Or why he should care what she thought about it in the first place.

Cassie was rather relieved to hear that Jason was in a better state of mind when she called him about mid-afternoon. She wasn't so pleased to hear what he had to tell her.

"The whole town??" she cried. "My God, how... how can we do anything against..."

"Please, Cassie, don't say that!" declared Jason. "It's the same thing Richie said."

"Okay, I'm sorry. I'm not like Richie, Jason, I won't go running off to Nyssa, okay?"

Jason sighed when he sensed the resentment in her voice. "I never meant to say that you would. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, really. But still, I don't see how we can go up against odds like that. I mean, three of us have fallen! You and I are the only ones left!"

"And Diane." Jason had told Cassie about the phone call he had received from Diane the day before. "And we can try and get Ned and Becky."

"But what if we can't?"

"We have to!"

"Even then, Jason..."

"Look, don't think of this as every last person in Haven against us. That's not what I meant. I meant more that we have to stop thinking about it as a person or entity that we can confront directly."

"I thought all along that Nyssa was the Darkness."

"Well, she's part of it. She works for it. The Darkness sort of works through her I think. But the Darkness itself is not an entity. It's more like a force or something. It must need people like Nyssa to help it, otherwise it would just take control of whoever it wanted."

There was a pause. "Jason, this is making the other dream I've had make a little more sense."

"What dreams? The ones about Marcie Fuller?"

Cassie still wished she could tell him about those. The problem was, she was having so many strong images in her dreams that if it weren't for her friendship with the others, she wouldn't know which ones were more important.

"No, not those. I mean, I'm still having those, but you're probably more interested in the ones about Nyssa."

"Yes, I am. Miss Fuller can wait. Please tell me what you saw about Nyssa. Was it more about what she's taking from the others?"

Jason thought it rather ironic. Barely a few weeks ago he would have dismissed the idea of someone's dreams having any significance in real life. Now he wanted every detail of what Cassie's dreams were telling her.

"Well, I'm still having those, and I can almost see how she's doing it, but not quite. But this one I'm talking about is different. It's really brief, but it's a persistent one. I get the sense of Nyssa talking to someone... something... I couldn't see or hear who it was, but it had asked her to do something, and she was talking about that. That fits with what you said about her working for the Darkness, right?"

"Yes, it sounds like it."

Cassie swallowed. "Jason... whatever it was that was talking to her... I-I think it was using the same technique on her. Using pleasure to make her do what it wants."

"Hmm..."

"God, if it's so powerful it can do that to Nyssa... !"

"Please, Cassie, calm down. And I think you need to start volunteering this information more rather than waiting for someone to happen to mention something."

"I'm sorry," she said sheepishly. "I guess I'm still trying to get used to the fact that someone actually wants to hear about it."

Jason smiled. "I think once we get regrouped tomorrow we ought to have a daily 'Cassie Dream Report'."

Cassie giggled. "So long as I get to help, Jason, that's all I ask."

"Cassie, you've been a huge help. And the fact that you have been helping us tells us two things."

"Really? What are they?"

"One: Once you get rescued from Nyssa's control, she either can't take you back or doesn't want you back. Otherwise she would have just gone after you again. Two: She doesn't know you can see auras now or she'd be doing something to stop you."

"Wait... you think she went after Heather because she knew Heather could see auras? Or that she was a Precog?"

"I don't know. It could be just coincidence. She seems to be picking names at random in no order..."

"No she wasn't!" Cassie suddenly burst out. "Oh my God, why didn't I see this before?!"

"Huh? What?"

"Jason, I have dreams that can see stuff in reality. And I was the first one Nyssa picked. Heather starts having Precogs and then she gets picked. That can't be coincidence! Can it?"

Jason was silent for a long moment before responding. "But she didn't pick me, and most of you still see me as sort of the ringleader..."

"But you went to her that first day. She turned off your ability to see the auras. Maybe she thought she was safe."

"But she can't be thinking that now, can she? Not after we messed her up with Ned and Becky. She must know that I can see them again, since she doesn't know that you can see them."

"Oh no... that means..."

Jason heaved a heavy sigh. "That I'm next. Nyssa will try to take me next."

"Jason, if we lose you..."

"Then you'll have to continue on without me."

"But... !"

"No, Cassie. I said before I didn't want to be the leader of this group. This was not the reason I was thinking of for why that was bad but it makes sense. We can't have anyone in this group being indispensable. If I fall to her, the rest of you have to carry on."