Chapter 1

I can sense emotions and intent.

You might think that is an odd thing to say, but allow me a moment to elaborate. I can sense other people's emotions and, to a slight degree, know what they will do. Things become clearer, yes? Yes. You now think I'm insane. I am. If you take insane to mean abnormal and consider "normal" people to be representative of sanity, then yes, I am insane. You can, perhaps, glean from my response my own feelings on the matter.

For as long as I can remember, and I have an exquisite memory, I have had an aptitude for anticipation. Whether it was someone throwing a punch or someone throwing a rock, I saw it coming. Don't let me leave you with the impression that I was untouchable and never was hurt, as such was definitely not the case. I was a favorite target for bullies most of my childhood and early teenage years, and for those years I was beaten bloody on a weekly basis. At least. Being able to anticipate what an opponent is going to do certainly gives you an edge in a fight, but when your guesses aren't always right and it's five or more against one, anticipation simply is not enough.

Ironically, it was one of those beatings that led to the blossoming of my abilities. We'll get to that a little later though. I've also always been very good with reading people, or that's what I thought. Now, I think that was simply an early manifestation of my later abilities, but at the time I thought I was just very good at reading people's expressions and body language. This actually helped me avoid a fair number of those beatings I was telling you about. You ask how I can make such a statement after telling you I enjoyed a weekly pummeling, but I say to you it was not a daily event.

To describe my situation at the onset of my more mature abilities and the reason behind my beatings won't take much time at all. I was born in 1987 to an unfortunate young woman who had been raped and left to bleed out in a back alley of Baltimore. She was found and, eventually, patched up but the damage done was irreparable. She spent most of the following nine months in a catatonic state while being held in hospice care. Several times over the course of my gestation, my nameless mother fell into a coma-state and suffered further indignities at the hands of a few unsavory male orderlies. Despite all this, my mother carried me to term, actually birthing me a week late.

The beautiful young girl who was my mother died soon after I came into the world, though not from complications during the birth. Afterwards, she was left unattended in the maternity ward for a few moments. She took that time to drag herself off the bed, across the room, and hurl herself through the open window. The seventh story window.

I was remanded immediately to Foster Care. They found me a family fairly quickly and I spent the first three years of my life fairly well cared for. I was a precocious child and was able to speak well and read with some aptitude by that point. However, this scared my very devout foster parents. After the third exorcism failed to stop or even slow the rate at which I was advancing, they sent me back to Social Services and I was put in an orphanage.

I stayed out of the way and kept mostly to myself for the next two years, but then my luck changed. It might be less misleading to say my luck remained the same and my situation changed. Apparently, along with being precocious, I was a handsome child. I attracted the attention of an older boy around the age of 14. This was not a good thing.

He pursued me, tried to woo me, in a sense. When he realized I wanted nothing to do with him, he tried to take what he wanted by force. Unfortunately for him, the orphanage was within easy walking distance of a rather good public library with a fair collection of medical texts including Gray's Anatomy. I have grown to love that book over the years.

Anyway, when he dragged me off to his room and tried to shove his dick in my mouth, I punched him in the balls as hard as I could, then, as he came down, snapped two more punches into him, one to the solar plexus and one to the temple.

He had to be taken to the hospital where he was treated for a mild concussion and both his testicles were removed. I should have felt some remorse, I suppose. Maybe. That internal conflict was quickly resolved when the boy returned from the Hospital a week later and beat the living shit out me as soon as he saw me. With a baseball bat.

My turn for a visit to the hospital, but my concussion was not so mild, nor was the shattered arm, broken leg, and five broken ribs. It was a month before I was released from the hospital, and, by that time, the boy was safely in police custody. But my problems were just beginning.

The boy, Mark, was very popular with the older boys in the orphanage, although I don't think they realized that Mark had planned to rape me. As the supervisors for the orphanage rarely interfered with us, except to give us our meager meals, keep us presentable for prospective parents, and make sure we turned up for classes with the nuns, Mark's friends were free to achieve his revenge. They didn't think Mark nearly beating me to death to be satisfactory. Go figure.

I was okay for a while, but when they finally figured out that I couldn't seem to take down more than three or four of them at once, the poundings really began. I just couldn't move fast enough to counter everything they threw at me. I'd dodge one punch only to be lined up for another's kick.

And so, I spent most of the next ten years getting the shit kicked out of me. It became an institution, "beat Nate bloody"; it was the coolest thing to do. That's me, by the way, Nate. Nathan Snow Winter. I never had a problem with my name, but I understand that my foster parents gave me the names "Snow" and "Winter" as they were common names given to bastards. You can just tell how much fun they were to be around, can't you.

By the time I was 12, vastly superior numbers were no longer enough to ensure I took my beating like I was supposed to. The started using whatever they could find as weapons, from the orphanage's cheap silverware to lengths of chain and old metal pipes. I usually managed to protect myself well enough to avoid anything worse than bad bruising, but I still ended up spending a lot of time at the local free clinic.

It was there that I first met Megan Caine. A woman in her mid twenties, she was a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins. She came from a wealthy family, but didn't allow her own wealth blind her to what went on around her. Actually, it was her trust fund that was paying the clinic's bills, and she worked for no wage. Maybe it should be mentioned that the Caine family was very wealthy. The clinic's expenses had not even made a dent in Megan's trust fund, and she could conceivably run the clinic indefinitely on accrued interest alone. As I said, very wealthy.

The day I met her was my thirteenth birthday. I stumbled in to the clinic holding a towel in each hand, both pressed to my ribs, covering slashing knife wounds I had received from birthday well-wishers. They were in innocuous enough locations that my life was not in danger, but I was most definitely woozy from blood loss.

I caught the attention of one of the nurses who immediately brought me to one of the observation rooms. As I was frequent visitor, I made sure I was on good terms with everyone, and knew all the nurses and doctors. The nurse, Judy, and I chatted a little while awaiting the arrival of one of the doctors who would stitch me up. An interesting little tidbit of information is that I become very violent when sedated. No one can seem to offer up an explanation, but the only sure way to knock me out is to take a blunt instrument to the back of my head. So no anesthesia for me. I assure you, getting stitched or stapled with out the benefits of numbness is not fun. Not fun.

So, I was trying to prepare myself mentally for the pain when this vision of beauty walks in the door. I'm slack-jawed as I watch the voluptuous goddess approach me. She says something but all I can do is register that her voice is as beautiful as the rest of her and try to contain the drool. Judy responds for me and the woman and the goddess discuss my case... I think. I noticed the nametag on the left shoulder of the goddess's lab coat: Megan Caine. I was thinking that was definitely Irish and she was simply the most stunning example of a Black Irish woman ever to draw breath. The second thing I thought was that the nametag was on her shoulder so as not to draw further attention to her magnificent bosom.

Yes, I said bosom. You gonna make an issue of it?

I didn't even feel it as she closed me up. I registered that she had put the needle down and was checking her work and washing the excess blood from me. Even through the latex gloves, I reveled in the feel of her hands upon my sides, running over my ribs where the blades had caught me. Her hands now resting on my hips, standing between my spread legs as I sat upon the exam table, she raised her head to look up at me and our eyes finally met. I fell in love with those dark blue eyes.

I watched as she blushed a little, highlighting the pale perfection that was her skin, and she started to stammer something to me. I simply held her gaze and said the only thing that had been running through my head for the last twenty minutes as she stitched my sides closed:

"God damn if you aren't the most beautiful woman alive." My statement left the two women speechless for a moment. I have to admit that I had forgotten Judy was even there until she started laughing. Judging by the way Dr. Caine jumped, I have to say I think she forgot about Judy as well. Megan's blush now grew deeper, making her delicate features turn a delightful shade of pink. I couldn't help myself and said, "You even blush beautifully."

Megan glared at Judy as the nurse doubled up in laughter. Still blushing profusely, my goddess turned her glare upon me. Our eyes met again and I just... sort of... lost track of time. It was gratifying to note that Megan seemed to be just as swept up by emotion as I was.

"My name's Nate Winter, and it is a true pleasure to have been able to meet you... ?" I hopped of the table and held my hand out to her, making sure to keep eye contact. She seemed at a loss for words so I just let my eyes search her face for an imperfection. I did not find one. We actually were of an equal height, 5'3", although I was much broader at the shoulder and narrower at the hip. She had all the padding a man could want in all the best places, and I was all muscle and no fat. I figured, if I could get her around the whole 'half her age' thing, we'd make a handsome couple.

It was Judy who finally answered for the stammering doctor. "Nate, this is Dr. Megan Caine. She just graduated from Johns Hopkins and is going to be working here at the clinic for quite a while. She's disgustingly brilliant. She started Med School at 19 and finished in only six years. Don't ask me how she did it, but there you go. Actually, she basically owns the clinic, but she's nice enough not to rub anyone's face in that. So, as much as you're here, Nate, you should be very grateful to her." I could see her grinning at me from the corner of my eye.

"Oh, I am grateful, I am." I was grinning too, but I refused to break my connection with Megan. She had yet to accept my hand, but I was hopeful and patient. It was Judy again who moved things along. She took Megan's hand and placed it in mine, where I cradled her small, delicate fingers in my large and calloused ones. Judy spoke again:

"Dr. Caine, this is Nathan Snow Winter. He is absolutely with out a doubt the toughest little bastard you will ever meet in your life. He usually turns up here about once a week after receiving a horrendous beating. We patch him up, and he walks right on out those doors as if nothing happened. We can't even sedate him. We tried it often enough when he was younger, and he nearly destroyed the clinic. He eventually told us to stop trying, or he would simply stop coming to us. Enough of us had fallen for him by that point that we couldn't stand the thought and we caved to his demands. He basically owns all the staff that works here, we'd do almost anything for him but he has never taken advantage of that. So, as you pay for this place, Dr. Caine, you should be very grateful to him." Judy couldn't contain herself any longer and she actually had to sit down, she was laughing so hard.

Even Megan was smiling at this point, seeming to have gotten over her stammering. She took a deep breath and squeezed my fingers softly, sending an electric current straight up my arm and to my brain. She kept her eyes on mine and said in her beautiful and slightly husky voice, "Well, it is indeed a pleasure to meet you Mr. Winter. I've got to be honest and say I'm usually attracted to much taller men, but you appear to be an exception. I haven't been left tongue-tied like that since I was thirteen and trying to talk to my first crush. How about we go out to dinner tomorrow and talk about you subverting my staff," and she smiled shyly, "as well as anything else that might come up."

It took me a moment to register what it was she had asked me, I was still too caught up in burning her visage into my mind. Once I figured out that she had asked me to dinner, I could feel my smile grow until I'm sure it looked to be splitting my face in half. Judy recovered faster than I did.

"Meg," the nurse softly asked, "you do know that he's just thirteen, right?"

"Yeah, I know. I asked enough questions about him to know quite a bit about our Mr. Winter. I probably know of his background than most of the nurses and certainly more than all the other doctors." Megan had shaken herself as she started to speak to Judy, causing a plethora of interesting effects throughout her body, and she now seemed to have better control of herself. She was now looking at Judy now, but she had yet to remove her hand from mine. I was still grinning like mad about that, but I was a bit confused about her knowing so much about me.

"Why did you find me so interesting, even before you saw me?" My question was spoken softly, and for a moment I thought she hadn't heard me. But she turned to face me again, and I felt another little jolt as her blue eyes met my gray ones. My heart felt like it was going to kick out the front of chest as she smiled at me.

"Honestly, you're a very interesting case, medically speaking. You have an incredible threshold for pain, you have an incredible mental toughness, and you have an incredible ability to heal. The rate at which you heal is, I think, totally unprecedented in medical history. The way you are so frequently injured, you should be a not much more than a lump of misshapen flesh in a hospital bed. But every time you come in here, it's as if you've never been hurt before. You should have bruises upon bruises, and those knife wounds along your sides should have still been bleeding when I stitched you. Instead, it was as if your skin was drawing together on its own."

I could see where she was going to eventually bring the conversation, but it's not as if she was being subtle. In fact, despite her words, I thought she was looking distinctly reluctant to make the suggestion I saw was coming. She was, to me, obviously conflicted between her professional and personal curiosity. I decided to put her mind at ease:

"I'm sorry, but you seem to be leading up to saying I should get some extensive testing done. I won't do it. I can't do it. For the same reason as I refuse to be removed from the orphanage, I can't be away for that length of time. There are a lot of kids at the orphanage that are depending on me. I keep them relatively safe in that shit hole of building. While I'm around, they're not harassed sexually or even hit that often. I wear out the bastards, keep them pounding on me while the others get out of the way. While the Gormans are slime-balls, and they do pocket over half the money from the adoptions, they do get a lot of kids into good homes." I laughed again at the irony of it all, and answered the question on the face before me. "The Gormans, the couple that runs the orphanage, they make sure that every thing in the homes they send the kids to is absolutely as close to perfect as is humanly possible. They don't want anybody at social services to catch a whiff of anything sour to make sure that no one looks at them or the books twice. A very good deed, done for a very bad reason. I always thought it was funny."

I had watched Megan's face closely throughout my rather longwinded speech, and I caught her nodding at me and got the sense she had confirmed something and then a new feeling seemed to swell in her, one I knew nothing about. She smiled at me again, her face holding a kindness and care that I have never seen in anyone before or since.

"Thanks Nate, you just answered most of my questions and confirmed a number of my suspicions for me." Megan turned to Judy now, who looked pretty shell-shocked. Of all the nurses, I was the closest to Judy, but I had never told her all that before. I also realized that I had dropped most of the slang from my speech. I usually tried to hide my intelligence so as to draw less attention to myself, but I hadn't even noticed falling into my normal patterns of speech. I came to the realization that Megan Caine, the woman I thought I was falling in love with, was more dangerous than she first appeared. It's kind of weird, but that thought just made me more attracted to her. But Megan was speaking again:

"Does that sound like your average thirteen year-old? Your average twenty-something?" Judy shook her head almost numbly, and her emotions seemed to be a mix of pride for my determination and anger at me for not telling her before. But Megan went right on talking, "Nate may be a very handsome young man, and his facial scars do seem to age him a bit, but I'm well aware of his physical age. I now have an idea as to his mental age as well; we both do. Can you blame me for wanting to know more about the first man to make me blush in about ten years? The dinner will be just that. Nothing more than a little conversation between two adults." She glanced at me from the corner of her eye and smiled almost as widely as I must have been a few moments before. "I'd be lying, though, if I said I wasn't hoping to keep him interested enough in me that he wouldn't just see me as some old lady. Five years from now, he might be even more interesting than he is now. Who knows, I might just go after him when he is legal."

My grin was back full force now. I was thinking that five years isn't that long to wait for a woman like Megan Caine. Now, how to keep her in me interested me for such a length of time?

Judy finally seemed to pull herself together and immediately apologized, "I'm sorry, Dr. Caine. I should have known better than to even think anything like that was on your mind." She turned to me, "And Nate, I need to apologize to you too. I thought I knew you and I don't. I made assumptions. I know a lot of the orphans from your building are involved in the gangs and I thought your fights were a part of that. I didn't know anything about that you say goes on there at the orphanage." Now she was glaring, "And when were you going to tell me that you could talk without all that garbage. You've been hiding things from me, Nate. We're going to find a chance to talk about them."

I laughed and begged off. That day certainly turned out to be one of the better birthdays before the Change, despite the whole knives thing. I made plans with Megan, and we went out to dinner the next night. It was a little tapas place across from a theater, downtown. We had a very good time and nothing inappropriate happened until we were walking back to her car after the movie. She had one too many glasses of wine and was a little tipsy. We were a few feet from her car when she tripped on her high heel and stumbled into me.

I caught her easily, but her body was plastered against mine. I could feel all the fabulous curves I had been trying so hard not to stare at all night, and hers lush lips were only inches my own. I wanted so desperately to kiss her, but I managed to get a grip on myself and was pulling back when Megan's arms went around my neck. Her hands took hold of my long hair and drew my mouth down to her. That was my first kiss, and I have to say it was a good one. She eventually pulled back, and I thought that was that. But she got her feet under herself and then pulled me to her again.

This time, she forced my lips open with hers and pushed her tongue into my mouth, where it found mine. I moaned into her mouth as our kiss deepened. My second kiss was already better than my first and it had just gotten started. My arms, still wrapped around her waist pulled her body closer to mine, crushing her breasts against my chest and pushing my leg between her thighs. Our kiss turned into kisses, and I was leaning my back against her car. She rubbed her breasts against my chest and ground her sex onto my thigh. She caressed my erection through the heavy denim of my jeans, and I finally got enough courage to drop my hands to her beautiful and full, heart shaped ass.

Now she was moaning even more, the sound barely muffled by the presence of my tongue in her mouth. She was grinding against me faster now, and she grabbed on of my hands by the wrist, drawing it up to her breast. I can take a hint. I began to caress the underside of her breast through the thin silk of her blouse, even as I moved my other hand beneath her skirt to continue to knead her ass.