Chapter 12

Victor watched from his chair behind the desk, his face impassive, his hands folded under his chin. On the sofa, a naked and horny Gina writhed and moaned as she drilled a large dildo deep into her cunt. She trembled as she hung at the edge, denied final release by a simple hold on her mind.

Victor leaned back. He had chosen not to share this artificial reality with Gina to better reinforce the illusion that she was alone in her own bedroom. However, he linked to the now growing bit of his essence in Gina's mind and monitored her thoughts.

The perception was holding this time, though he had to resort to a more mundane hypnotic trick to penetrate deep enough into her mind to make it stick.

Victor eased his control of her pussy. Gina let out a shrill cry, and her cunt clenched hard around the dildo as her hips bucked. Her fingers trembled as they fought to work the dildo and draw out her intense climax until she was spent.

The dildo emerged with a wet pop and fell from her limp fingers to the floor.

"Gina."

Gina blinked. Sexual ecstasy gave way to confusion. She struggled to sit up, her eyes darting back and forth before falling on Victor. "What ... where... ?"

"Where are you?" Victor said with a smile. "In my office, of course."

"In ... but I was ... I ... oh! Oh my!"

Gina's hands flew to her flushed cheeks as she looked down at her naked body.

"You took well to the directed imagery," Victor said. "Very well, indeed."

Gina looked up, eyes like saucers. She swallowed and lowered her quivering hands. She drew her legs together and wrapped her arms around her. She gave Victor a faint smile and a nod.

"Perhaps you are not quite as nervous now about your sexuality where others are concerned," said Victor.

Gina looked down and leaned over, her hand hovering over the dildo for another few seconds before she picked it up by the base. She turned it around in her fingers, holding it away from her, then drew it closer. The shaft was wet and smelled of her sex.

Victor observed without comment.

Gina raised her eyes to his again. "I thought I was in my room."

"And perhaps you really were, in your mind's eye."

She glanced at the dildo again before lowering it. "Did I really... ? Right in front of you?"

Victor nodded. "It is a very good start, Gina."

"A start?"

Victor stood and gathered Gina's clothes as he crossed the room. "I need to work with you some more. As I said, this is a start, but we must take it further. I see that you are on the edge of acceptance of your sexuality. That's why it was so easy to nudge you into masturbating before me."

A small shudder passed through Gina. She felt both scared and thrilled at the same time. It had seemed so real, she thought.

Part of her mind insisted it had been real, that somehow she had been transported to her room and back. Now the office seemed a little more cozy than when she had first arrived.

Victor gestured. Gina stood and accepted her clothing. "Come see me again tomorrow morning, same time, and we'll work on this some more. In the meantime, I want you to remember something. This is very important."

Gina nodded and looked at him, rapt.

"You must trust me, Gina," Victor said, his hand brushing Gina's arm. "Trust me implicitly. Trust me completely."

Gina's lips parted. Heat rolled over her. It feels good to trust, came her unbidden thought, and she shivered with soft delight.

Victor smiled and nodded once. "Now, get yourself dressed for your next class. I'll write you up something so that you're not marked for an absence"

"Thank you," said Gina in a husky voice.

Melinda could not get her heart to stop pounding as she crept along the main hall towards the counselor's office. Other students edged around her, sometimes with impatient sighs or bumps of their elbows against her arms and shoulders.

A gaggle of her friends on the other side of the hall saw her and waved. They gestured in invitation, giggling as they whispered to one another.

Melinda stopped and longed to join them and hear whatever new juicy gossip they had to share. For the past month, she had enjoyed a popularity outside the Harbingers that she had never experienced before. Having lived in the shadow of her big sister for so long, she drank it in with little regard to how it happened.

She sighed and shook her head. "Catch you later!" she called out. Miffed, one of the girls put her hands on her hips and gestured for the other girls to follow her as they left. Melinda frowned and clicked her tongue at them.

She started towards the door again and flinched when the door suddenly opened. A dark-haired girl emerged whom Melinda did not recognize. Melinda scrutinized her as she passed, but saw nothing more unusual than a somewhat spacey look to her eyes. Nothing dark trailed behind the girl save for her raven hair.

"Good morning."

Melinda's eyes snapped forward, and she gasped when she saw she had walked right up to the open office door.

"Apologies if I startled you," said Victor.

"Oh, uh ... s-sorry, I wasn't looking..." Melinda trailed off. Her eyes darted from his head to his feet and back again.

"Are you here to see me or make an appointment?"

Melinda retreated a step as if only realizing now her close proximity to him. "Are you the school's counselor?"

"Yes, I am Doctor Victor Mann, but I prefer just Victor."

Melinda nodded, then shook her head. "Um, no, I don't want to see you. I just ... took a wrong turn."

It sounded lame to her, but excuses didn't matter now. She even managed a small smile.

"Would it be too presumptuous of me to ask you your name?" Victor asked.

"Oh, uh, I'm Melinda Sovert," Melinda replied. "I better get to class before I'm late."

"It was quite nice meeting you, Melinda. Please do call on me if you need anything."

Melinda's smile widened, and she scampered away. Two sets of lockers down the hall, she heard a voice behind her. "Melinda, hey! Hey, runt!"

Melinda whirled around as Heather ran up to her, Diane in tow close behind. "What?"

Heather rolled her eyes. "What do you mean, 'what?' The counselor, dummy. Did you see him?"

"Oh, yeah, I did. It's okay, he's clean."

Heather glanced back behind her. "He is? You sure?"

"Positive. Not a thing. It's just like Jason said, it's just some sort of coincidence."

Diane let out a relieved sigh. "Thank God. One less thing to worry about."

"I'll get a look at him myself after this class," Heather told her.

"What, you don't trust me?" Melinda demanded.

"Jason said for more than one of us to look at him, runt. I want to make sure he didn't do to you like Nyssa did to Jason."

Melinda rolled her eyes. "I don't get all giggly and silly in front of a good-looking guy like you do."

Heather smirked. "He was good-looking? Good of you to recall that detail."

Melinda's cheeks pinked. "Oh shut up, bubblehead! I have to get to class."

She spun around and bolted. Heather drew back just in time to avoid a slap in the face by her little sister's hair.

From the doorway of his office, Victor stood with his back against the door frame. He followed Melinda with his eyes until she disappeared into the throng of students. She reappeared for a moment through a break in the crowd, and he glimpsed her conversing with whom he assumed to be her sister Heather and Heather's lover Diane.

Victor allowed himself a small smile. He had not touched Melinda's mind at all. His more passive senses had told him that Melinda's mind had become sensitized to mental control. She would have known if he had made the attempt.

But as he had hoped, it was unnecessary.

The Darkness was relieved, as it had been unsure of the extent of the Harbingers' powers of detection. Now it and Victor knew where the threshold lay, that a mere mental link was insufficient to trigger it. This would dovetail quite well into Victor's plans.

Heather rushed to her second class of the day. She wanted to believe that Melinda had seen nothing on the counselor, but something bothered her. A sense of unease permeated her mind, not enough to conjure a vision of the future yet, but many such precognitions of dire events began this way.

She sighed, a husky edge to her voice. She needed the distraction of a minor crisis. The first stirrings of desire kept her pussy in a gentle heat. The crazy notion popped into her head that all the previous attempts to control her in class had left her conditioned to be aroused during the day.

She rounded the corner and stopped short when she saw Brad standing between her and the classroom. She clutched her book-bag strap, as if intending to pull it across in front of her for protection. Heather closed her eyes and forced out the breath she had been holding. Stop it. He's not under Melissa's control anymore and doesn't have that kind of power.

Heather took another breath and marched towards the classroom. She gave Brad an uneasy smile and intended to barrel past him until he stepped into her path.

"Um, hi," Brad said in a low voice. He shuffled his feet, and his eyes seemed unable to decide where to look.

Heather's tension eased somewhat. "Hi. Uh ... we better get inside if we..."

"Heather, wouldya go to the Halloween dance with me?"

Heather blinked. "What?"

Brad bit his lip and sighed. "Look, I know you're..." He trailed off and averted his eyes as a dark-haired girl excused herself and slipped between them and into the classroom. He continued in a lower voice. "I know you're into girls as well as guys, and I know you got a thing with Diane ... and I know you think I'm a jerk..."

"Well, no, not really," Heather heard herself say. Her lips curled into a smile only once she was sure her words had come of her own volition. Well ... he still is a bit of a hunk after all, she thought, and had to suppress a giggle.

Brad paused, having heard the signs of feminine amusement and unsure of how to interpret them. "Anyway, I, uh, just thought ... if you wanted to go, and you didn't have a date ... or you weren't taking Diane ... um..."

"Brad, I wish I could take a date to the party, but I can't. I'm being made to work at the party as a punishment, and I was told I couldn't have a date."

"Huh? Punishment? For what?"

"For that little incident in Ms. Hollis class where I played with my pussy. Remember?"

Brad's eyes widened. "Oh man ... Heather, you gotta believe me, I didn't wanna do that! It was Melissa that..."

Heather lay a hand on his arm. "Chill out, Brad, I know. I'm not mad at you, but I can't exactly go to Ms. Hollis and say it wasn't my fault because some girl was mind controlling some guy into mind controlling me into doing it."

"Hey, uh, you really think that was it? Mind control, like outta some kinda freaky sci-fi movie?"

"I don't know how else to describe it, so yeah, I guess."

"How'd she do it? Fuck, how did I do it?"

Heather had no idea how to reply. She was saved from having to do so when the teacher inside the classroom cleared her throat loudly and drummed her fingers upon the desk. She gave Brad an awkward smile and ducked inside.

Cassie drifted into the hallway and paused, unsure of where she was. Several students nudged her aside in their impatience, her eyes casting a confused gaze towards them.

She emerged from herself only when she recalled she had just completed her second period class. She shook her head and sighed at another evening to be spent catching up with what she should have learned in class.

Her Dream Gift had done this to her ever since it manifested years before. She withdrew into herself for much of the morning while her mind made sense of the glimpses into the lives of the townsfolk she received the night before. To her peers she appeared zoned out, as if high, ditzy, or both. Her grades always suffered for it, but her parents did not seem to care. The family's money and breeding meant more than education.

Shaking off her self-imposed trance was too much work; it was far easier to let herself remain in a partial mental haze during the change between periods. Now that she was part of the Harbingers and her presence was required in the here and now, she had to shake herself out of her deep introspection after each class. It felt like climbing out of a deep pit, only to fall back in again, over and over.

Cassie rushed to her locker as her awareness of reality returned. She had not yet learned what Melinda had discovered about the counselor and was anxious to find out.

"Hey, um, excuse me?"

Cassie flinched and spun around, eyes wide.

She received an impish smirk in return. "Hey, sorry to scare you. Think maybe you need to chill a bit, huh?"

"Sorry, I just didn't see you there..." Cassie said. Her voice trailed off as she stared.

The girl wrinkled her nose and swept curly blond locks out of her eyes with a toss of her head. "What's with all the staring? Jeez, you're the one that needs to get with it."

Cassie was unable to avert her eyes or prompt herself to speak for another few seconds. Tight shorts hugged the girl's hips; black stockings wrapped about her legs; high-heels were strapped to her graceful feet. Melissa had pushed the limits of provocative clothing in similar fashion during her brief reign of terror, and the similarity was enough to thoroughly disconcert Cassie.

A faint odor wafted under Cassie's nostrils, the smell of something stale or old, and vanished in the next breath.

"Sorry," Cassie said. "Um, something I can do for you?"

"Yeah, you can, actually. I got my class rotation changed on me for some stupid reason. I can't find Mrs. Phelps' class."

"Pardon?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "Mrs. Phelps. You know, the old bat that teaches American History? Huh, she's old enough to have lived most of it."

"I'm sorry, I don't know any teacher by that name."

The girl frowned. "You're kidding me, right?"

Cassie shook her head, perplexed.

"Oh, for ... How the hell can you not know her? You retarded or something?"

"I just don't know who you're talking about. The only history teacher I know is..."

The girl craned her neck over the crowd of students and grinned. "Hey, never mind, okay? I think I just spotted Jerry. Wait'll he gets an eyeful of this." She slid a hand down her ass and the back of her thigh. She dropped Cassie a wink as she tilted her hips. "Maybe he'll want to fuck me again tonight. Practice makes perfect, ya know."

Cassie blushed and smiled politely.

The girl giggled. "See ya around!"

She dashed off, heels clicking on the hard tiled floor. Cassie stared as the girl wandered into the now thinning crowd of students.

"Cassie!"

This time Cassie welcomed the voice behind her. Ned jogged up to her as she turned around.

"Heya, babe." Ned raised his eyes and looked past Cassie. "What were ya starin' at?"

"Oh, that odd girl over there that I was ... wait, where did she go?"

"That you was what?" Ned prompted.

"Never mind, she's gone now." Cassie's gaze lingered for a moment where she had last seen the girl. "What is it?"

"The others wanted me ta find ya and let ya know that the counselor got the Harbinger Anti-Evil Seal of Approval."

Cassie breathed a relieved sigh. "No Aura."

"Clean as the driven snow. Gonna get a gander at the dude myself after next class, but if the Super Sovert Sisters didn't see anything, doubt my peepers will either."

Cassie nodded. "Ned, how did Heather seem otherwise?"

Ned hesitated. "Um ... whaddaya mean?"

"I mean was she ... well ... was she getting that way again?"

Ned cleared his throat. "Can't say that I'd notice that sorta thing."

"You certainly pick up on when I'm like that," she said in a low, neutral voice.

"Uh, yeah, but yer special, babe. I kinda look for it."

Cassie smiled. "Still, with her, it's a lot more noticeable."

Ned shuffled his feet. "Well, okay, yeah, I think she was startin' ta feel it." Ned rubbed the back of his neck and fiddled with the buttons of his shirt when Cassie said nothing in reply. "She'll just hafta find her own partner, fer sure."

Cassie sighed. "You started to feel something, didn't you?"

"Uh, I was prolly thinkin' of ya the while time..."

"This is what I was afraid of, Ned, that she can't control it."

"I wasn't gonna do anything with her, even if she up and asked me," Ned protested. "She didn't even really, like, come on to me. I mean, not directly."

"Not directly?"

Crap, my mouth is as big as my nose some days, Ned thought.

Cassie glanced past Ned and spared him. "We better get to class." She grabbed her books from her locker and closed it. She smiled at Ned, the concern in her face fading.

Ned grinned and watched Cassie walk away. He folded his arms and leaned against the lockers. He wondered how he got so lucky to have Cassie as his girlfriend. He couldn't imagine someone sweeter or more understanding than...

"Does the school suffer from a structural defect I am unaware of, Mr. Lussander?"

Ned straightened and turned. "Huh?"

Vice Principal Seeger looked up, his eyes roving the ceiling. "Oh good, the roof did not cave in." He fixed his gaze on Ned. "I was so sure you were the only thing holding up this wall, thus saving the students of this school with your valiant and selfless effort."

Ned hesitated, then gasped in dramatic fashion and planted his hands against the lockers. His arms and legs strained as if holding the weight of a mountain. "Quick, Mr. Seeger, hold up the other end before it's too late! The lives of all the students are at stake!"

Seeger folded his arms and glowered.

Ned grinned and retreated from the wall. "Heh. Jus' kiddin'."

"Am I laughing, Mr. Lussander?"

"Ah, I'd say no."

In the brief silence that followed, Ned tried not to look nervous. Cassie would be very upset with him if he wound up pulling detention after only having pleaded with Richie to avoid the same.

"I will say the same thing to you that I have been saying to all potential troublemakers at this school," said Seeger. "Watch your step."

"Yes, sir," Ned said. "Consider my p's and q's minded as well."

Seeger frowned. "There has been a far too permissive attitude at this school since the semester started. Regardless of what others may think, I intend to put a stop to it. Take that message back to your cohorts as well."

"Um, got it, sir."

"Now get to class without further delay."

Ned hesitated a few seconds before leaving, his gaze lingering on the Vice Principal as if looking for something, but not knowing exactly what.

Heather hurried to her third class, her hatred of it notwithstanding. Her feelings had little to do with the incident that had earned the unusual punishment. That could have happened in any of her classes. Ms. Hollis herself engendered discomfort and a vague unease in Heather, which now grew only worse as she approached the classroom.