Chapter 10

Al'Karab had left me to sort myself out. He said that he had some things to take care of, but promised to come back later. I had so many questions, and he was now the only one I could turn to for answers.

I stood up and looked around, trying to guess where I was. I was on a beach somewhere, with waves crashing against the shore and palm trees swaying in the breeze. The sun was setting in the distance and it made for a beautiful scene. But the beach was deserted. Nobody was here, and there were no buildings in sight of the shore. Maybe I was on an island somewhere.

I studied the shore for a while, until I was sure I could return there if I wanted, before I teleported home. The first thing I noticed as I walked up the drive was the car parked in front of the garage. Kenny was still home, and because it was a Friday night, he was probably playing poker with his gang. Sure enough, as I walked through the door, I could smell the stale cigar smoke wafting up from the basement.

I ignored the sudden interest from my mother, who wanted to know what I had found out from the police. I had never talked with the police, and I really didn't feel like lying to her, so I just nudged her a few times until she let the matter drop. I snagged a can of soda from the pantry and headed for my room. As I walked up the stairs, I realized that my evening was either going to turn very sour, or very interesting.

Karen and her bitchy crew of friends were hanging out in her room. And I was going to walk past their open door. I could have used my powers to avoid the situation, but after the way Karen had always treated me, I just didn't want to. I had the advantage now, and there was nothing that stuck up bitch could do to twist things in her favor. I could make her pay for everything she's ever done to me.

I could almost feel the bad karma from where I stood. In fact, I realized that I could feel her karma. The karmic sense that I had wished for was alerting me to the black stench of her rotting soul. And it wasn't just Karen that radiated karmic injustice, but her friends as well. There was quite a bit of bad karma concentrated in there.

I reached the landing and started walking down the hall. Sure enough, just as I crossed her open door, I heard a couple of giggles and a snide comment about my sexual preferences. Then my stepsister went above and beyond with a remark about my gender, suggesting that I was a sexless amphibian, born out of a godless union between a fungus and worm. This, she attributed, was the source of the slime that she claimed covered most of my body. All five of her friends burst out laughing.

Karen was pretty enough, and had a decent body, but it was her ability to put others down that had earned her the title of queen bitch. She ruled the social hierarchy of the school in the same way despots rule their subjects: through abjuration and demoralizing fear. And now she was exercising her power by demonstrating it to her friends, only this time it wasn't working.

I stood there for a moment, and shook my head with an amused smile. She considered it beyond an insult that I would grin at her. She turned bright red from the sudden anger that rose within her. Despite the righteous fury I had felt a few moments before, I suddenly had no desire to punish her. None of her comments had the sting that they used to have, and my brushing them off seemed to have broken their power. Maybe that was because of my newfound confidence, and maybe it was because of everything that had happened to me that day. I don't really know.

Regardless, I threw off her ineffective abuse and walked down to my room, but not before I flashed her a wonderful smile. She was so confounded by my actions that she couldn't come up with a response before I had shut my door. I felt like laughing for the first time since I watched my friend die. I turned on my computer and started surfing the web.

When I logged onto my instant messenger, I was almost immediately pinged by Amber, who wanted to make sure our date was still on for tonight. I assured her that it was and she promised to be there at eleven. At that very moment, my sister came bursting into my room.

"What the hell do you want?" I asked her, my patience becoming thin.

"I just wanted to see what you're so smug about. I can't imagine what it would be." She told me, looking at the open web browser on my monitor. "Did you find a new porn site to jack off to?" She asked, spotting the message box and reading through the last of my correspondences. "No way." She said in disbelief. "Un-be-lievable! A fucking twerp like you got a date? I don't believe it."

"It really doesn't matter what you believe." I told her. "Now get out of my room."

She ignored my request. "What kind of loser is she?" She asked instead. "How much are you paying the whore?"

I felt myself tense up, and I knew that I was dangerously close to hitting her. "Shut up and get out." I told her.

"What? Did I upset you, Jason? Are you going to cry now? I'll be sure and let your girlfriend know all about it when she gets here. Not that the tramp will listen. I bet you pay her too well for her to care." There were some giggles out in the hall, and I realized that all of her friends had come to listen to her rap on me.

I suddenly knew I wasn't going to just shrug off this attack. She had gone too far this time, and something in me snapped. I felt powerful and angry. This stupid bitch had crossed the wrong person, and she was finally going to pay for her transgressions. I reached out to her with my power, and brought my arm up to point at her. I made a fist and jerked my hand down, compelling her to drop to her knees.

The shock and surprise that flashed across her face were quickly overwhelmed by horror as I stalked towards her. "I've had enough, Karen. For years you've been nothing but a wanton bitch, and you've treated me like shit. Well I'm sick of it. This time Kenny won't be stepping in to save you. You're mine now." I told her, making my statement true with my power.

She gasped and cried out, her scream silenced by a sudden tightness in her throat. She blinked a few times and looked up at me, still kneeling on the floor. Her mind was still reeling under the mental onslaught that had just been unleashed upon it, and her personality was shattered and fragmented. Those fragments were already starting to reform, but interwoven between them was a new addition that was rapidly becoming part of her. When her mind had healed, under my guiding hand, she was no longer my stepsister; she was my slave.

Karen continued to look up at me as her mind underwent the changes I had forced upon it. Her eyes showed at first loathing, which gave way to fear, and was eventually replaced by devotion. By the time the changes were finished she worshiped me as her god, and she firmly believed that I had every right to own her. She smiled, basking in my presence and waiting for my orders to give her purpose.

Her friends, standing around in the hall, were quite confused by what was happening. They had all heard my threats to Karen, but none of them knew that I had already acted upon them. They were nearly as bad as her, and I decided that they should share her fate, but in a less permanent manner. Their personalities would remain intact, but they would still be my slaves.

"Come here." I said, compelling them to obey. In a few moments, the four of them entered the room and looked around hesitantly. As if guided by some unseen hand, all of their eyes came to rest on Karen, who still knelt before me. I laughed thinly. "None of this would have happened if you girls had just left me alone." I told them sadly. They at least had my sympathy, because I knew that Karen treated her friends little better than she did me. I couldn't understand why they would choose to be around someone like her.

Karen's friends could be divided into two groups. The first group was the cheerleaders.

Ginger was a perky brunet with brown eyes and a pasty smile that begged for attention. She loved to talk and was seen as something of an airhead, but she actually had very good grades and maintained the respect of both her teachers and her peers. Her skin was tanned bronze, showing her Mediterranean heritage.

Kristine was a dirty blond with an athletic build. She moved here from a more rural area last spring, and had started school here with a country girl attitude that made her wildly unpopular. In order to combat that image, she started hanging around with my sister, who was only too pleased to have another lackey. But she still had that country personality, even though she worked hard to hide it. Her tan was so minor that it was almost unnoticeable.

Whisper was the captain of the cheerleaders, and she was very loud in everything she did. Her hair was dyed a bright blue, only slightly lighter than her eyes. Her pale skin was flushed with embarrassment and shame. I peered into her thoughts to find out why, and was mildly surprised to find that she was becoming aroused by the situation.

The second division was the popular girls.

Grace came from a rich family that had a lot of everything. Her blond hair was always carefully conditioned to flow smoothly around her face, and her blue eyes were shadowed with makeup. Saying that she was spoiled was an injustice to the word. She was undisciplined and amoral. She believed that she could and should have everything she wanted, and didn't care what it took for her to get it. She was like Karen, but taken to extremes.

Finally there was Cindy, who was one of those pretty girls that got away with things because of her beauty. She could expect to get through life without much problem, because everything that she needed would be handed to her by others, who were all eagerly vying for her affection. She played her admirers off of each other, taunting them to bolder attempts to win her favor, and teasing them to ridiculous displays of loyalty. She had no less than three boyfriends who would gladly do anything she asked.