Chapter 49

Jason was the last to be pulled into Diane's reality, and thus the most hesitant. The lingering sense of awareness of his modified perception sought some excuse to view Diane as anything other than a wet, willing slave. Yet Diane abetted her own illusion, sliding her hands under her thighs and holding her legs spread wide, her glistening pussy beckoning to him.

A more basic instinct tugged at him. She was someone different, a girl he had not yet fucked. First he had expanded his "conquests" to Cassie, and now Diane was waiting for him to plunge his cock into her willing cunt. How many high school geeks could claim he had sex with four girls?

Jason finally thought about Melinda as he positioned himself between Diane's legs, and felt shame for considering her only now.

Stop being so hard on yourself, he thought to little effect.

Hesitation was no longer an option. His cock ached for relief. He slid himself into her, and was surprised by the tightness of her pussy. It enveloped his cock in a slick, hot cocoon, his need a heavy blanket over his mind, smothering his thoughts.

Panting and buried inside Diane, he paused until he could concentrate.

As he began to thrust, he fought the impulse to ram his cock into her and burst over the top. He could take his time and enjoy his slave.

Then again, he would get the chance again. He could have her whenever he wanted, and not just as a convenience for some spell.

Jason's hips swung against Diane, moving with greater assurance and purpose. He still paced himself to delay his orgasm as long as possible. He saw patterns of energy race towards him from the southeast, the approximate direction of the nearest energy line, tracing intricate patterns in the air before entering his mind.

The patterns meant something, containing a far greater complexity than he had thought. Several distinct types of energy twined about each other. The lines were more nuanced than merely a homogeneous collection of raw power.

Jason's pleasure soared. He could not hold back much longer. His hips pumped harder, his body slapping against Diane's, her breasts bouncing back and forth. Her lips parted, her eyes half-lidded and glazed, her body trembling in anticipation of an orgasm that remained out of reach.

Jason clenched his teeth as he reached the point of no return. Energy surged in his mind as he strained at the edge, then exploded with his orgasm. He uttered a loud gasp as details in the patterns of energy leapt out at him with startling clarity, like looking at an ordinary object and suddenly seeing the individual atoms.

Each segment of energy within the lines bore a distinct resonance, like a vibrating string, revealing its origins. Some radiated from the psychic energy of living minds. Some seeped in from the lingering energies of the dead. Some burst forth from the act of many people having sex at that particular moment. Some oozed from the Earth itself: the flow of molten rock under the crust, or the breaking of waves against a distant shore, or the strike of a lightning bolt.

Jason gasped as his orgasm did not want to end. He felt his cock pulsing against the sides of Diane's cunt. A tiny whimper escaped his lips when his clarity of vision faded along with his climax. He clenched his teeth and wanted to pound his fist against the floor.

The voice of the Book echoed in his mind: see what I can do for you, Jason. See what wondrous powers I can give you.

Was that all his clarity of vision was? Just a way to tempt him? A carrot to dangle before them?

You cannot possibly give me up. You cannot give me to someone who will not appreciate my power.

Jason extricated himself from Diane. Richie surged forward and nearly knocked him over as he tried to stand. By the time Jason had recovered, Richie had impaled Diane with his cock and began fucking her hard.

The energy roiled in Jason's mind. He could tap it and expand his senses once more. Yet now the words of the Book intrigued him. Why would Victor not appreciate the Book? Victor appeared to understand exactly what power was and how to wield it effectively.

He looked at Heather. If the spell were successful, perhaps they could do it again and send the energy into her. Perhaps her vision of Victor and the Book would become more clear.

Melinda could almost tolerate it now. Little bursts of energy sparked from the link. She thought the first one was from Cassie, and the second from Heather, then Jason after that. She pushed back the lust before it could drive her insane. At least when Melissa had control of her, she could masturbate for the illusion of satisfying her pussy.

She only now noticed two of the cultists had left her side. Perhaps she was wearing them out, and they had to bring in someone else. The chanting had not ceased. The words still sank into her mind, sending hot waves of desire washing over her. She fought not to squirm, letting her body lie as much in repose as possible. Even then, she would not stop quaking.

Suddenly, the chanting stopped.

Melinda saw movement in the darkness past her feet as two cultists approached. Her heart pounded again, her eyes seeking out what she feared one of them carried. She had no idea what possessed her to think they were carrying anything dangerous, but...

She bit her lip as they drew close. Light glinted from smooth glass.

The cultist stopped and held up the ceremonial flask like an offering.

The other cultists bowed their heads in silent reverence.

Melinda saw the oil inside the flask and trembled. She had no idea how, but she knew what was in it, and what it would do. The cultist drew alongside her, still holding the flask up to the light. Melinda's eyes followed it, pleading in stark and impotent silence.

The flask was opened. Melinda shook and pulled at her restraints.

Fright locked her throat against words of protest as the neck of the flask was lowered to one of her nipples. Somewhere came the thought that she could not possibly know of this oil unless they had planted it in her mind, its effects just another manufactured reality. Her will already weakened, the thought died seconds after it had formed.

A thin stream of oil dribbled onto Melinda's nipple. It tingled and shot tiny bolts of pleasure through her breast. As the oil soaked into her skin, the tingle became a low burn, then a raging heat. Melinda shivered and let out a long, low moan as her nipple throbbed with her heartbeat.

More oil dripped onto her other nipple. Melinda panted as both nipples stiffened, throbbed, and ached for just the tiniest scrap of attention.

Even the slightest touch, the most gentle caress would send her into paroxysms of sexual ecstasy. Instead, they pulsed in torturous neglect, a breath of air from the cultist's movement drifting in a cruel tease across her hypersensitive flesh.

The flask hovered over her sex. She wrenched her hips, but several cultists leaned forward and held down her thighs. The flask lowered, and a thin stream dripped into her slit.

Melinda threw her head back and opened her mouth, but her throat again locked. Her lust was no longer a concept or emotion, but a tangible form that had taken the shape of her sex. Her pussy throbbed with her nipples, her clit swollen and tingling.

The cultists' chant rose once more. She looked at them in turn, pleading in silence for their pity and their touch. The words of submission wanted to bubble forth from her mouth, but she fought them back one more time. She was too afraid of what that touch would mean.

Her mind wanted to scream the question at them: why? Why leave her so fearful of what might happen if she gave in? Why not just make her accept them? Why torture her like this?

"Kethr'quixla nox'thrissa orgos ron'yenqua."

"N-no ... uhnnggg! ... oh God ... s-stop..."

She did not understand how her need could get any worse. She was drowning in molten lust. Yet a dread crept over her, rising with each repeat of the chant.

This is fucking insane, Richie thought.

Even as the most accepting of Diane's new role and as eager as he was to fuck a girl that opened her legs for him, he understood the incongruity. He had no idea that he was the only one thus far that could take this step back and observe from outside this imposed reality.

It did not diminish his need. His cock never felt so hard, and he swore his balls were so swollen that he would be unable to stand without parting his legs. He slammed into Diane with undiminished enthusiasm, his pleasure only creeping upward.

The feelings that had come to Jason were absent in Richie's mind. He had never considered Diane as another notch on his bedpost. Without realizing it, Richie weighed each thought against his concept of his father's opinion. His conscience no longer had only his own voice.

You're still taking advantage of the situation for yourself, Richie heard in his head, though the tone was nowhere near as damning as it had been.

He could have insisted that he had no choice, that this was for someone else's benefit. Instead, he agreed, and had no regrets. If Richie's father ever did return to Haven, the man would just have to get used to it. Richie liked to fuck, and that was it.

No reply or rejoinder came. Richie had finally won the battle with himself on this point.

The only thing that could temper his enthusiasm was what he had overheard from Cassie and Heather. Some of the details were lost to his impatience in waiting for Jason to finish. All he remembered was something about their abilities being augmented for a few fleeting moments.

Richie refused to believe that channeling the last thoughts of the dead was something he would want to associate with a mind-blowing orgasm.

Richie fucked Diane not so much with lust as with grim determination.

The muscles in his rear and the base of his cock ached. He was not going to hold himself back. His need to cum was far more desperate than anyone else's had been.

Richie was not aware of his connection to the energy line until he had nearly peaked. It was little more than a presence in his mind, diffuse and undirected, a thick, glowing fog that suffused his mind with brightening light.

As his cock strained inside Diane's cunt, shapes took form inside the fog. Myriad faces loomed and retreated, none of them familiar to him.

Backdrops formed around them, and those he recognized as places he had been.

His cock strained one last time and released, throbbing hard, stars dancing at the edges of his vision. Suddenly he became aware of a single point in the past matched with each face. He knew which of the faces belonged to people that were still alive and which ones were of the dead. Events whirled around him like a vortex, and he knew he could pluck any one of them at will and examine it at his leisure.

Richie breathed hard as his climax abated, and with it his visions retreated into the fog, until the fog itself had dissipated. He had no idea whether to feel angry or relieved.

"Richie? Richie, get back!" came Cassie's alarmed voice through the haze.

Richie was still buried inside Diane when a hand gripped his shoulder.

He made a weak attempt to shake it off, but it only gripped harder.

"Sorry, Richie, yer done and ya gotta get lost," said Ned. "Melinda's gonna lose it if ya don't."

Richie now had a dim awareness of what the others had seen over the link. His mind still reeled, and he let Ned pull him from Diane.

Yeah, this is insane, Richie thought once more.

Melinda thrashed, the ropes stretching and biting into her skin. The bed creaked, her body writhing in unrelenting sexual torment. Her cries had lost coherence, and even her whimpers had faded. She made only soft grunting noises as her mind reeled. Her hips rose, her pussy dripping on the sheets.

Beside her bed, the cultists watched.

"Idiot," said Charles, standing in the darkness near the foot of the bed.

"It is necessary," intoned the figure sharing the dark with him, voice sepulchral from the depths of his hood.

"It wasn't until you used the Oil on her, you dolt!" Charles hissed through clenched teeth.

"She is resisting us, and the Glorious One told us--"

"I know perfectly well what he told you! But you know his feelings on this as well!"

The cultist paused. "A mistake."

"And only now you figure it out!"

"This is the only way to correct it."

"No, it's not." Charles pointed at Melinda. "You all have her convinced how the stuff works. Convince her otherwise."

A pause. "I do not understand."

"Change her perception of the Oil. Or make her perceive it has worn off."

"But ... it does not wear off, not until the one affected has been granted sexual release."

"I know that's what you make her believe, so just--"

"But that is how it works," said the cultist. "I do not understand what you ask."

Charles buried his face in his hands. "My God ... you've all ... it's been so long that now you really think ... dammit... dammit ... I told him this could happen, that you'd all start believing this pseudo-religious--"

"I do not understand," the cultist persisted. "We must perform the ritual on her. Then she will succumb."

"She's only fourteen! She's too young! Victor never--"

A strangled cry rose from the bed, and both heads turned. Melinda gasped and twitched as if suffocating.

"She is nearing the end," the cultist said.

"Oh dear God ... this is insane ... a-all right. Do it. But don't linger at it."

The cultist nodded. He approached the bed, drawing his hands to his robe and parting it. "Young one, receive me." He shed his robe, others nearby taking it from his shoulders as it slid off, leaving his middle-aged body nude. He climbed atop the bed, his hard cock bobbing under him, the head damp in anticipation. "Receive me, and become our slave."

He descended. There was a wet sound, then a keening wail of sexual lust unleashed.

Heather regarded Jason with a haunted look. "It's happening. They're f-fucking her, trying to make her submit."

Cassie shivered and forced her breathing to something resembling normal. Her face contorted, as if caught between displaying two intense emotions at once.

"Can't we stop him?" Heather cried.

"We're trying, Heather!" Jason said, picking up the Book. "We'll channel our energy to her to keep her from--"

"I mean stop him from fucking her!" Heather shouted. "He's at least three times her age!"

Ned tried to block them out. He was riding Diane as fast as he could.

His body was sore from his earlier trysts with her. He wanted to shout at them to shut up, but he sensed the same thing that they did over the link.

His heart ached for Cassie. He could sense her distress. The intense sexual arousal that the cult had instilled in Melinda had cascaded into her, and now her own revulsion was rising in equal measure, twisting her stomach in knots.

"We can only do so much, Heather!" Jason shouted back.

"W-We've got to hurry, it's not going to be much longer," Cassie said in a shaky voice.

Ned tried to talk. The first attempt ended in a half-moan, half-croaking sound. C'mon, get a grip, Nose, it's just another fuck, right? he thought. He fought past the mounting pressure in his cock that sucked in all his attention like a black hole. "Jason, get the next part of the spell ready," he finally croaked.

Jason looked up. "That's the part that lets Diane cum."

"Yeah ... do it soon ... soon as I cum."

"But I don't know if that's too--"

"Dude, jus' fuckin' do it, 'kay? Oh man... !"

Ned panted hard, his pleasure suddenly spiking as the energy from the line rushed into his mind. He closed his eyes and rode it like a wave, letting it match his body's sexual rhythm.

All the others had a brief boost to their powers, but Ned had no innate ability. He was just a slacker that they had rescued from Nyssa, and then he chose to hang out with them so he could do something silly like fall in love with Cassie.

It was silly. He could not see past her pedigree. She may not care herself, but it mattered to him. He once overheard another student at Haven High comment that Ned was a total bastard for getting so lucky as to land a rich girlfriend, that he must have scored at least a high-def TV or a new computer out of the deal.

He had realized for the first time why the other students were shunning The Nose. The "curse" of being in the Harbingers had not motivated them as much as raw envy. He could only imagine what the girls thought of Cassie.

"Jason, get the fuckin' spell ready," Ned rasped.

Ned did not look to see if Jason had complied. He heard turning pages and more anguished noises from Heather. His cock strained. The energy surging in from nowhere he could see like a fire in his head, roaring into a tight, intense conflagration of raw power in the center of his psyche.

He looked down at Diane. She writhed and whimpered, her hands clenching and unclenching. Her hips rose to him as he pounded into her. Guilt clutched at him. Slave or no slave, they were torturing Diane in a way similar to what the cult was doing to Melinda. Nothing about being a slave meant enduring this.

Ned hung at the edge for another excruciating second before he burst into orgasm. He buried his cock inside her just as the energy novaed in his mind. The light filled every crevice, illuminating every dark corner, extinguishing every shadow.

In that instant, everything was laid bare. Every thought he ever had, every memory, every feeling lay naked in a bright spotlight. It gathered into the center of the nova and coalesced into a single, towering strength. Suddenly his mind knew no bounds. He could solve any problem, learn any skill, discover any fact through a superhuman intuition that just knew the right answer as sure as he knew his own name.

Before he could turn that power to anything useful, it was gone.

He gasped and staggered back, his cock pulling out of Diane still dribbling cum. He became aware of Jason's shouted incantation, and then Diane's orgasmic scream. He almost did not heed his own warning. He wanted to feel that soaring confidence again. Maybe it would help him resolve his internal dilemma with Cassie.

The choice was taken from him. The energy roiled and surged into the link and through Diane. She curled up on the floor, moaning and twitching.

"S-something's wrong," came Cassie's quavering voice.

For a terrifying minute, Melinda believed she was dying.

In that stretch of time, sexual contact had become as much a need for her as breathing, and its absence was suffocating her. By the time she understood what was happening, she was unable to form a coherent thought, let alone express it. She could not surrender to them to be granted life-saving relief.

She heard a voice, and comprehended only the word "slave." She was slipping away too fast to voice anything in return. She sensed rather than saw the man above her through the encroaching grayness.

Like a choking man given air, something touched the center of her heat, and a shrill cry was unlocked from her throat. Thick, hard flesh invaded her folds and sank into her until her pussy exploded into an orgasm that rattled the bed. Fingers rubbed her nipples, and they throbbed in the same all-consuming rhythm.

Melinda wanted to beg for it to continue, but she was gasping too hard from the intensity of sweet, blissful release. Hips rocked against her, a cock stroking hard against her clit, vaulting her to heights of pleasure that would be painful if it had not been life-giving.

"Be our slave."

The words were as powerful as her orgasm and pulsed with the same mind-numbing pleasure as they writhed through her mind. She could not let the pleasure stop. If it stopped, she would die.

"Be our slave, little one."

His thrusts slowed, and her orgasm retreated in equal measure. Melinda whimpered, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Again, they did not take her mind. They wanted to lock her in her own body, but she had to give them the key.

"Be our slave or the pleasure will stop."

"Nnngh!" Melinda closed her eyes. She tried to block him out of her mind and mentally pull herself out from under him. She failed at both, his cock still stroking into her, her hips rising to meet him as if craving more.

"You should not resist us."

Melinda clenched her teeth. The words wanted to come out. She wanted to pledge herself to them, to promise to do whatever they wanted. The Oil still burned, magnifying each touch into a cascade of sexual delight.

The link ... the link ... the others ... I can feel ... I might...

No more than three words would remain in her head at any given moment.

Even with the strength of the Harbingers behind her, the cult sapped her will. She struggled to seize the link and draw on it like Heather or Cassie had.

Her pussy was fucked harder. Melinda whimpered as she throbbed once more, rolling waves of pleasure drowning her mind and threatening to wash her away from the link. Finally, she grasped it, and her thoughts came into sharper focus as the Harbingers energized her for a few more seconds.