Chapter 37

Laura was not aware that anything was wrong, or that anything had transpired of note in her school late that afternoon until she suddenly sensed a presence in her office. She looked up and gasped in surprised. "M-mistress..."

"I don't have time, my pet," Nyssa said in a low voice. "I have to go."

Laura's mouth dropped open, her lower lip trembling. "But... h-have I displeased you, Mistress? Have... ?"

Nyssa came around the side of the desk and cradled Laura's cheek. Laura shuddered as soft pleasure suffused her. "Oh, no, my pet, my wonderful little slave," Nyssa cooed almost lovingly at her. "You have been one of my best."

"Th-then why..."

"Things did not work out," Nyssa said, withdrawing her hand and taking a step back. "I must leave, before Haven grows angry enough to strike at me."

"It failed," Laura said darkly. "Your plan."

"Yes. But I cannot dwell on that now. I have released the others. I had no choice. Now, as for you..."

Laura bolted out of her chair and fell to her knees. "Please! Don't free me! Please, Mistress! Don't make me go back!"

Nyssa placed her hand on Laura's head. Laura moaned as her pussy throbbed, silencing her protests with blissful pleasure. "No no no, my pet," Nyssa said soothingly. "I could not release you even if I wanted you. You gave of yourself, remember? It was by your choice in the end. You are permanently bound to me."

Laura looked up in adoration, her eyes shimmering. "Take me with you..."

"I cannot, my pet. You know I cannot. Besides... " Nyssa grinned wickedly. "You have a task to finish."

"But I can't do it without the power!"

"You still have it. It's yours forever. In fact... if you grow bored of Marcie and wish another pet... you can take another in the same way."

"Thank you, Mistress. But... but you still won't be here to command me... I won't be able to obey you..."

Nyssa smiled and bid her slave to rise with a single gesture of her hand. As Laura rose to her feet, Nyssa gazed into her eyes. "You will be able to obey me, for I intend to give you a command that you will need to continuously obey."

Laura nodded eagerly, her eyes wide. "Tell me, Mistress, please. How may I serve you?"

"Haven needs to be appeased, slave. So that it does not grow too angry with me, in case... well... let's say I wish to leave my options open. So I want you to make sure that whenever you see signs of the Darkness stirring again that you smooth its way as much as possible. You make it easier for it to operate."

"Yes, Mistress. Yes, I will do that."

"And I will be back again, my pet." She stepped up to Laura and cupped her chin, looking deeply into her eyes. "Count on that."

Nyssa kissed Laura. Laura's eyes slid closed and she shuddered, moaning as she came again, her hips jerking from the intensity of it.

Nyssa slowly broke the kiss and backed away. "I am very pleased with you, slave. You have done very well with little Marcie. Now... give her the final little push... give her something to occupy her every waking thought... and every dream... she has over this weekend. And then Monday... take her... she will be yours forever."

Laura opened her eyes and watched her Mistress with longing. "Please... please come back again..."

"I will, my pet. I never abandon such good little slaves."

Nyssa smiled wickedly one last time and then vanished before Laura's eyes.

Laura uttered a pitiful whimper and shed a single tear. She paused and wiped it from her cheek, taking a deep breath to steady herself. She would be Nyssa's good slave. She would do as she was told, and run the school so that the Darkness could have free reign.

She smiled. She had a purpose now. She finally had a purpose, something that actually mattered. Something that would be appreciated.

"I will not fail you, Mistress," Laura whispered.

Linda was gasping for breath, her body sheened in perspiration. Her hips continued bucking under what was now the largest dildo of the set. It stretched her pussy so wide that she would never have gotten it inside her comfortably had she started with it. Even now it was taxing her, her cunt growing almost as sore as it was excited.

"Uhhhnnn!... Ohhhh!... Yeah... oh yeah!..."

Her arms and hands ached badly, almost as much as her pussy. Her legs and back ached from pumping her hips so long and so much. She was almost incoherent with the need to climax, held back as long as she had been.

She longed to hear her Master's voice again.

She longed for him to command her.

She longed for his cock in her pussy.

She...

...

"Uhhh... ?" Linda's movements slowed and faltered. She started to lift her head, her eyes betraying steadily more confusion and steadily less lust and desire. The fog began to lift from her mind as her old personality reasserted itself.

But with the lift of the fog and the release from control came the removal of the block on the consummation of her pleasure.

"What... what am I... ohhh... uhhhh!!... AHHHH!! GOD!!..."

She threw her head back, teeth clenched almost painfully as her hips jerked violently, her orgasm overwhelming her and making it impossible to move or think clearly for just a few more moments.

This time when the orgasm faded, so did the fog of pleasure, never rising to the absolute bliss that she had enjoyed under Richie's control.

She yanked the dildo from her fast enough that it slipped from her wet fingers and arced from the bed and onto the floor. It bounced twice on the carpet and fetched up against a wastepaper basket next to her desk before it came to a stop, still glistening with her juices even in the weak light of failing day.

Linda lay still, panting. Now her body aches asserted themselves, making her wince when she first tried to move. She raised a shaking hand to her head, placing it against her temple. "Oh my God..." she moaned. "What... I can't believe... h-how did... ?"

She drew her legs under her as she sat up and dropped her face into her hands. Her emotions were a tumultuous mix of confusion, horror, and fury.

And, to a small degree, though it was lost in the mix for the moment and never quite made it into her conscious thought... disappointment.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to beat her fists against the wall.

She did none of these things.

Linda took a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. She was stronger than this. She was not sure what had happened, only that she had not been in her right mind for over a week, and Richie was somehow to blame. It seemed impossible to her, but she could not disregard the truth.

Nor could she forget the memories of what she had experienced during that time.

She shivered violently for a moment. Again, briefly, came the desire to cry, to rant, to scream in frustration. She again pushed it down. Instead, she decided to be more practical.

She went and ran a shower for herself. A nice, hot, long one.

"I don't know how you did it..."

Sally took her earrings off and threw them at Gary.

"I don't know where that power came from..."

Sally yanked off her ankle bracelets and threw them as well.

"I don't know why a loser like you was given it in the first place..."

Sally grabbed a tissue and wiped the pink lipstick from her mouth. She wadded up the tissue and threw that at him, too.

"And I don't know what got in your head that I would enjoy becoming a fucking air-headed bimbo..." She turned her head towards the mirror and made an "ugh" sound as she ran her fingers through her bleach-blonde curly hair. She turned back to him with fury blazing in her eyes. "But if you ever... EVER... so much as even look in my direction ever again for the rest of your miserable little life, I will find out the one thing that would put you in the most pain you could possibly imagine... and then do something to you that's TEN TIMES WORSE!!"

Sally stormed out of Gary's house, slamming the front door so hard that a vase on a nearby table tipped and crashed to the floor.

Gary sighed and shook his head, his face betraying a combination of relief, disappointment, and embarrassment. Like Melinda, he now remembered everything that had happened to him with Nyssa. He felt some shame for what he had done to Sally but knew she would not hear of any apology from him.

At the same time, he would miss it. He felt guilty for that as well, but he could not ignore it. The idea of having her as his bimbo was still very appealing to him. Nyssa had done nothing to change that. If anything, it had left him now with a full realization of a fantasy that he would never have come true again, no matter how much he wished it.

As for Sally, her thoughts now were little more than rage and anguish over what had happened. She dreaded how much her grades would suffer from that week of having a two-digit IQ. She shuddered with revulsion at what he had done to her and what he had done with her during that time.

Yet later, when she had a moment alone to herself, and the initial anger faded, her thoughts would return to her time under his control. She would remember the sex and the intense pleasure she felt at being what he wanted her to be. Some part of her would want to return to that. It would excite her in ways she would not be able to understand.

And as the weeks pass, she would become keenly aware that remaining a straight-A student would take a lot more effort than it ever had before.

The silence was leaden in the Sovert family car, save for the rain that beat steadily on the windshield and the occasional low peal of thunder.

Heather and Melinda both sat in the back. Neither had vied for the shotgun seat as they usually did. Neither wanted to be anywhere near their mother.

Penny watched the road with a forlorn look. The silence was starting to get to her as well. Her emotions were mixed over what had happened, and a small part of her hated herself for that. Finally she had to venture a comment.

"Um... I'm... I'm glad things turned out the way they did," she said.

Heather glared at her mother's back. Melinda folded her arms and gave an indignant grunt.

Penny took a deep breath. Haven was not trying to control her thoughts as much that day. She had more freedom than she had had in a long while. She was not entirely happy about that right now. It was so much easier when someone could do her thinking for her.

The main problem was that with thinking came responsibility. This was not one of those times that she wished for the responsibility.

"I... I did whatever I could to insure your safety, please know that," Penny finally blurted. "I..."

"You turned us over to Nyssa!" Heather finally yelled.

"You let Heather take control of me!" Melinda screeched.

"You let someone fuck with both our minds!"

"You didn't care! Heather was forcing me to do these things and you didn't care!!"

The two of them were startled into silence when Penny suddenly wrenched the wheel and pulled the car over.

Penny turned in her seat. "I DID CARE!" she exploded at them.

Heather and Melinda simply stared.

Penny forced herself to take a deep breath. "There was only so much I could do," she said in a more contrite voice. "Only... only so much leeway that I'm allowed."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you started working for Haven!" Heather shot back. "How long has it been, huh? Since you've been at the Li'l Missy Inn?"

"Heather, never mind that, that has nothing to do with..."

"It has everything to do with it! We were told that's the focus of everything going on around here! Don't give me this bullshit about..."

"Heather, you will not use that language with your mother."

Heather gaped at her. "My mother? Since when are you my mother anymore?!"

Penny's eyes widened and shimmered. Melinda gasped softly and looked at Heather with a combination of horror and satisfaction.

"You stopped being my mother the moment you let me take control of Melinda."

Penny swallowed. "Y-you were just acting out a fantasy... one that you had..."

"I refuse to believe that! I never had a single goddamn feeling like that towards Melinda until the... until the summer."

"She just made people live their desires, honey, and..."

"You're not listening to me! It wasn't mine! What Nyssa found had been planted there, it had to be!"

"You weren't hurt by any of this, Heather. You were safe while you were..."

"Safe?!" Melinda piped. "How can you say that?! I-I couldn't have a single thought in my head that didn't have something to do with pleasing the bubblehead here. I couldn't even think about my boyfriend unless she allowed it! You got a weird idea of what 'safe' means, Mom!"

"And I couldn't stop thinking of... o-of using Melinda... I was fucking programmed! Like I was someone's robot or wind-up toy! That the kind of daughter you want?"

"Or is that what you are now? Someone's little slave who does only what she's told?"

By this time Penny had turned away from them, and now a single tear trickled down one cheek.

"I'm sorry," she said very softly. "I wish... I wish I could have done more for you."

"Yeah, so do we," Heather said darkly.

"Honey... if there is anything I can do now, please..."

"You had your chance," came the bitter reply.

"Yeah," Melinda added. "You blew it. Big time."

"Don't do us any favors anymore."

"Just leave us alone."

Penny sniffled. She took a deep breath and let it go. Her eyes welled up with tears and she blinked them away. Distantly, she could feel Haven starting to reassert itself. It would take a little while, but by the late evening she would be back to being her content self again. She would look forward to it, like an alcoholic looked forward to his next drink.

Without another word, she slowly put the car in gear and pulled back out onto the road.

Others were not with the ones they had captured when Nyssa left. Yet they knew something had changed. They felt the surge of repressed memory come back to them. They felt the mixture of horror over having been controlled themselves and the embarrassment at their darkest fantasy made real.

But for those first ones, like Frank, James, or Kathy, there was the additional shock, the one of disappointment when they found that their control over the targets of their fantasies was gone.

Of them all, Frank was the least surprised. He had a bad feeling that this was going to be the case. It was confirmed when first Mindy came home and did nothing more than glare at him before heading into her room and slamming the door behind her. She would not come out the rest of the day, and Frank would hear occasional sobbing inside.

Jenny simply gave him the silent treatment when she got home. She would not acknowledge his presence in the room, and when Frank tried to talk to her, she simply gave him the cold shoulder and looked away. If he persisted, she would leave the room.

Debby and Karen took the time to tell James off and make him feel as bad as they possibly could. They went so far as to claim that they would tell every girl they knew what had happened so that he would never get a date so long as he lived in Haven. All through it, James had trouble accepting what had happened. He kept trying to command them as if they were still his slaves. Reality did not truly set in until Karen slapped him hard across the face.

Irene was also no longer interested in being Kathy's "friend." She threatened to make Kathy's life a living hell at school if she ever revealed anything about what had happened between them. In this case it was Kathy that broke down and cried, but it only fueled Irene's ire, and she kept lambasting Kathy until Kathy finally had to run away to stop the torrent of vile epithets.

"You were goddamn lucky," Sandra said, her face set hard as she peered at the road before her. In front of her face the windshield wipers worked at top speed, barely keeping up with the sheetlike rain. "Or you got really good friends after all. Hope it's the latter, frankly."

Richie said nothing. He simply seethed quietly in his seat.

Sandra risked taking her eyes from the road briefly to glance at him. "Don't know what they did, but they did something. Something big. You should appreciate it."

Sandra was purposely low-keying her enthusiasm. Not only had Nyssa been defeated and her son freed from Nyssa's control, but Haven's power seemed lessened. It was only slight. It was not so much a weakening as it was a shift in Haven's focus. It was as if Sandra for the time being did not matter to it quite as much now. More of her thoughts and emotions were her own for the time being.

She knew it would not last. But it had been enough to give her some hope.

She looked at Richie again and frowned. "So what the hell is eating you, huh?"

Richie glared at his mother. Yes, he was angry. Furious, in fact. He simply was not sure what he was angry at. Or which of the things he was angry at he should mention first.

Ultimately he was angry at Nyssa herself for luring him with her promises of power and then making him a mindless thrall for the last hour or so of her time in Haven. He was angry with the others for forcing Nyssa to leave and removing his control over Linda. He was angry with his mother for trying to make everything sound nice in the end.

Most of all, he was angry with himself. Yet despite the fact that this was where most of his ire was directed, he refused to acknowledge it for the time being.

Finally, Richie said, "Yeah, you're one to talk, huh?"