The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“This is the place,” Thorn said. “I’ve been wondering what happens to the men or women they control when something happens to them.”

“We’re not likely to find the answer anytime soon. I’m sure it depends on what instructions someone might have been left with. Like, oh, I don’t know. Stand there until I come back,” said Mathers. “It might be they’d just no longer be controlled and wander back where they belong too.”

“Optimist.”

“Not me. I believe in the worst so I can be surprised when things are good.”

Thorn turned to her and dropped the FBI face a moment.

“Did I leave my toiletries in your room’s bathroom again? I couldn’t find them this morning.”

She laughed. It helped his mood too, having her laugh. It took a bit of the edge off.

“John, why worry about it. We’ll be having more opportunities before this is all over.”

“Sarah, you’re a crazy wench.”

“Enough. We’re on a case. I’m thinking we could go in but nothing inside there is going to tell us much unless his babes are still hanging around.”

“According to the initial investigation there was a woman here the day after he was killed.”

“Shall we go knock,” then she paused looking away from the drive, “oh hello. What’s this?”

A car had pulled up into the house’s U shaped drive. It parked in front of the house and the man who got out the driver’s side had on a pair of aviator sunglasses. Thorn took photos of him. A woman got out of the back of the car and then another man from the passenger side. Click. Pictures with a zoom lens. He hoped they’d get detail.

They simply opened the door and started in. The driver was last to go in, stopping at the threshold to look around outside. It looked as if he was expecting someone specific to be watching him. Then he was gone.

The agents started to look at the photos the zoom had provided them.

“I’ve seen the guys,” said Mathers. “Who’s the woman?”

“One of the joy toys? Oh wait. I’ve seen her too.” He handed the camera to Mathers, pulling his phone out. He started to go through the pictures Bart had shared with them. After a moment he came to a picture of an elderly man with the young woman to the side and a step or two back. “Look at this. Recognize him?”

“We fished him from the river,” she looked at the picture a moment longer, “Looks like she’s his arm candy. Think one of those two plucked her up after he died?”

“I don’t know. Look, they’re coming out,” he pointed. They were in a hurry to get back in their car. “I wonder what lit a fire under them?”

“Don’t know. Do we go in the house to check or follow them?”

“I doubt the house is going anywhere. They are.” He looked at their vehicle coming onto the street.

Mathers started the engine and pulled out, staying a ways behind them.

“I guess we get a different field trip than planned,” she said.

“I hope they can’t do their mojo on us just now.”

“Oh sure, now you think of that. If they do, we’re kind of stuck relying on Nathan and his extra-legal friends to find us.”

“If.”

Officer Dorgel saw the car zoom by. The radar registered sixty-five. This was a thirty-five mile per hour zone. He pulled out flipping the switch for the lights and siren. He read off the license to dispatch. The car was clearly a rental. Zooming along the way it was, someone driving it could have stolen it from the lessee. The car wove through between other vehicles.

Oh, he wanted this one. Soon he was behind the speeding car.

The rear-view mirror showed Bart he had official company. He eased off the gas and pulled over slowly. There were few reasons he would do this in such a public venue normally. But in a few moments the good officer Dorgel was telling dispatch he’d made an error.

Difficulties on the road delaying him were frictions to his sense of urgency. Each delay cost. He may have told the women Edward wasn’t stupid. He thought Edward was anything but stupid. Yet he had a quiet assumption he didn’t share, Edward seemed to have a unique talent for being impulsive when it came to guarding the safety of others.

He really couldn’t even guess if Edward would try to beard the lion in his den. He hoped not.

Edward was stymied at the moment.

Taking Jill out the way he came in seemed impossible. Crossing on the balcony to the stairs, descending to the balcony below, then crossing again on the lower balcony to the hallway he’d traversed before seemed very risky. Her red hair, though a dark hue of red, was still so noticeable it was impossible someone below wouldn’t conclude she was on the loose.

He looked at Peter and could only feel disgust at the man he’d eviscerated.

Stepping into the hall, he whispered to Jill and Peter, “stay where you are. I’ll be right back.”

He’d been saying he’d be right back a lot recently. Putting the captives he’d taken on hold so to speak. Opening the door at the end of the hallway to look down at the gathered people below, he was nervous. One of the people visible was the telepath Paul’s mind identified as Melody. Since she’d been the one with him when they picked up Jill, it seemed even more unlikely he’d be able to do the simple task of getting down one floor unmolested.

He closed the door again, taking a deep breath. Looking at the other end of the hall, he wondered what was behind the door there. On the second floor there’d been the office in the loading bay. But the bay was only two stories high. It was hard to imagine there was another floor above the space for storage but it could be.

Hearing sounds from behind doors he hadn’t explored here made him worried. His scan before hadn’t actually turned up more telepaths on this floor. Now he realized he was in such a hurry to find Jill, he was wrong. There were two more here. In addition to Peter. Perhaps he could gut their ability and use them as stooges. He considered the option of herding a crowd all down there together at once.

Sending the other people from this floor as a group down to the second floor could provoke a response or provide a distraction. Either. Maybe.

Walking to the far end of the hall, he tried the door there. It had a built in lock in the handle. Thinking, he wondered if there was a throw bolt on the other side of this door as had been in the loading bay’s office.

There was no way of knowing and the door would open away from him. It wasn’t as though he could pry the hinges off to open from the hinge side. He looked took a closer look at where the strike plate for the latch had to be and didn’t see much other than the bar of the latch. He could work a credit card in but could not be certain if he could successfully push the latch back that way.

After thinking a bit, he pulled his slacks up and got the knife he’d brought with him out of it’s sheath. He tried working it in at the latch to see if he could lever the door enough to slowly push the latch aside. It seemed like it might be working but then the knife was just too wide to force in between the door and the jam.

Putting the knife away he tried a card. It used to work for some of the doors in his house when he did this for fun. But it wasn’t working. All it was doing was denting up the card. He gave up and put it away. The balcony and stairs in plain sight were going to be the only path he could take.

He jiggled the handle as he was about to leave and the lock gave, allowing him to turn it to open. Was he surprised. How? He realized he didn’t care. It was simply faulty. Good luck? Maybe?

He found the door was the kind with a button to set the lock. So if he went though the opening there was not an issue coming back. It was dark in there but he saw a light switch. The space lit up just fine with a couple bare bulbs.

Just the other side turned out to be a circular set of stairs. He looked back an instant and pulled door closed behind him while he explored down the metal steps. This building was just odd as hell to him. He wondered if he should drag Jill down these stairs with him now or see what was below first. He chose the later.

The landing below had a door. Thinking about the layout of the building, if this opened into the other corridor on the second floor, he’d be able to walk only a short distance on the balcony to the correct hallway for his departure. If the floor below wasn’t useful. He inched door open so he could peer out to look at the hallway.

It wasn’t the hallway he anticipated. Not as he had anticipated at all. It was a single large room with at least eight people in it. There were any number of benches, a few racks with straps to hold someone on them, a skill horse normally used for gymnastics, rubber mats and clearly a couple whipping posts.

While peering in through the crack he saw the door he’d need to use on the opposite side, with about three or four steps up to it, so this room was taller than the others. Right beside the steps though there was a couple, the man bent over a bar of some kind while the woman was going at him with something. It took him a few moments to realize she was wearing a strap on and pegging the guy. He concluded none of them would be so distracted as to miss three people going past them.

As gently and quietly as he could, he closed the door again. Ensuring the little lock mechanism was set, he leaned against the wall to the side. Once again he found his heart was pounding and his palms felt sweaty. Internally, he scolded himself for doing something probably about as stupid as he could have selected for the purpose.

He continued down the next flight of stairs to the ground floor. It appeared there might be further one could go. There was a trap door with a padlock on it. He wondered idly if this might be the bolt hole for the owners if the club was raided in days gone by. He sighed.

Trying the door here led him into a pantry of some sort. There was a door at the other end of the room, so he could probably go along between the storage shelves. He hadn’t thought the place had a kitchen for some reason. It made sense if they ever hosted parties. Maybe it just wasn’t in use at the moment. He could hope.

Another thought crossed his mind as opening the door a crack to take a peek. None of those rooms upstairs had suitable fire escape measures. This joint was a death trap if the place caught on fire.

Looking out he saw it was indeed a kitchen. Someone must be having a meal in their dining room, there were four people preparing food, doing cleaning, measuring out portions for recipes. Or something. But there were people in there and from where he was, he couldn’t be sure where the doors were. There was one in sight at the end of the kitchen he could see. If they were like any other kitchen operation there would have to be another door at the end he couldn’t.

None of which helped him any. He closed the door, slipped back out of the larder into the stairwell, latching the door locked again. Quietly as he could he mounted the steps to the third floor. He couldn’t figure it out. These guys had to have a bolt hole somewhere in the place. It was just a huge rat trap otherwise, not to mention they couldn’t escape if someone from Law Enforcement chose to raid for drugs or trafficking or something, anything. He had a hard time believing they were so stupid as to commit suicide in the event of a fire.

He opened the door on the third floor only to find himself face to face with someone.

The man was wearing a baseball cap backwards, had a black t-shirt on and was muscular. He was also at least six inches taller than Edward. There was little question no one was supposed to be in the stairwell. The man reached for him with a rather large hand. The fingers wrapped into his shirt to grip him.

Edward didn’t respond physically. He was too busy getting his hooks into the man’s mind. This guy was not a telepath. Before he had him completely under control though, the man had almost yanked him off his feet. The eyes glazed a bit before clearing again as he helped Edward to steady himself on his own feet.

This sticking his tentacle like controls into people was turning into a habit today.

It went against Edward’s grain to do this. He wasn’t going to fail today though, even if it meant breaking a lot of rules he lived by. He felt a bit filthy for doing it but the alternatives would have made him feel like he was a shit. More importantly at the moment, he was hoping the burst of energy he had used went undetected. He reinforced his cover construct and did more to be prevent his psionic self from showing.

This tall lug was one of a handful of security men the club had wandering the halls and rooms. Reading his mind indicated no one paid attention to them but they knew who the security guys were so it wasn’t a problem. This guy, whose name was Sean, thought he was very well paid for the gig. Edward quickly reached the conclusion Sean hadn’t been outside the building in five years, only had an imaginary bank account outside, and lived in one of a number of dorm rooms in the basement. Sean apparently thought it was a luxury room and he got to sample some of the women in the place twice a day. The reality was someone took the time to plant fake memories of doing so in his thick skull.

Edward realized he should have been thinking about how they maintained security other than the psionics at the entryway. What if they had security cameras set up around the place? He rubbed his eyes. This was all too much to have planned out, at least to him. So many different ways he could screw this up and he’d walked right into one, blundered actually.

At least he had this little problem under control. For now.

“This is Samuel,” he answered his cell.

“Hi, we haven’t met. Robert gave me your number,” the female voice on the phone had a touch of irritability in it.

“Bart, Robert, a thorn in the paw by any other name would still sting.”

Laughter came out of the other end, smoothing out the irritation a bit.

“I’m Doctor Alison Moore. He asked me to help out talking to a young woman he found who was...mmm, correcting some injustices with her own version of extreme prejudice.”

“Right. He told me about Sandi. Briefly. What’s up?”

“The bitch whomped me over the head and took off. With her? you know.”

“Yeah. Shit. I’m very sorry. Are you okay, should we get you to a hospital?”

“No, I just have a headache from it, but I’m worried she’s going to add more people to the corrections she’s been making. Little bitty remediations in her mind but I think we can agree it’s excessive.”

“Where do you think she’d go?”

“My bet? Where did Rob? I mean Bart, find her?”

“I know the place. Do you?”

“No. Just, consider this a heads up. I’m not chasing her down. I need to put some ice on my head.” She clicked off the phone.

“She’s in a mood,” Samuel said.

“Who’s in a mood?” asked Polly.

“Doctor Moore. Someone Bart brought in to help out from out of town.”

“Oh, good, someone extra to help out, right?”

“I don’t know she’ll be any help right now. Apparently the woman Sandi bashed her over the skull, then ran off.”

“And we thought one of our troubles was under control.” Polly let out a sigh.

“I’m thinking we should try to head her off outside the bad boy’s clubhouse.”

“Okay. I’ll go let the girls know we’ll be out. You pull the car around.” Polly walked to the hallway with the bedrooms.

“Please,” she added. She beamed at him.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw someone come around the corner on foot. Nathan let out a sigh of relief as he recognized the shorter man. He waved to make himself obvious to Bart. He was still holding Edward’s binoculars so the waving motion was more like trying to sweep the air with the binoculars.

“How long has it been now?”

“When did I call you? That’s how long it’s been. He’s in there. Another couple came out and is sitting on the dock there,” answered Nathan. “I’m pretty sure he sent them out since they’ve said nothing to the first couple. Who, I might add, are also doing a lot of nothing.”

“Sorry it took so long. Traffic was worse than expected. I also had to ditch a cop who wanted to ticket me for speeding. Imagine that.”

“Gosh. Imagine that indeed. The local gendarmes doing their job. Are we gonna go file a complaint?”

“No. We’re going to at least walk up to the loading dock, find out what these four know,” said Bart, “then we’ll make plans to do other things.”

“Oh goody. Plans. Can we have code names for the plan? You know, something quaint like Case Yellow? I’m for making the case for being cowardly.”

“Don’t you government guys ever do anything other than come up with code names?” By now they were strolling up to the dock. “I mean, what was that thing back in the day in Cuba? Operation Pluto wasn’t it?”

“Don’t look at me. That was the CIA’s doing. I was just a runny nosed brat in diapers at the time.”

“You guys existed back then. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

“Holy Cow Batman!”

“Oh don’t you ever stick me with an alias of Bruce Wayne. I will come stomp on you so hard you will feel it every time the weather changes. Besides. You’re not cut out to be Robin.”

“What do we have here?” Nathan ignored the empty threat.

“Seems this one was stuck here on guard duty and isn’t scheduled to be replaced for another two hours. So he and his chicka here,” he sighed, “let’s do something for her now. Because the less bodies we have to deal with later, the better.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Bart held out his hand. The wad of hundreds Paul had been idly playing with earlier ended up where Bart could take stock of the total. There was quite the tidy sum in the bundle he’d built up.

“Been a busy little thief, haven’t ya lad.” He pulled out four of the bills and handed them to the young woman at Paul’s side. He spent a few moments clearing the experiences she’d been through in the last few months from her head. Once he worked out where she had someone who might help her, from what he could get from her mind, he turned to the other young woman. The first was already on her way up the street.

“What was that?” asked Nathan.

“Car fare, bus fare, whatever. So she can get to her home town in Indiana. I do hope she’s right and they’ll help her. It was the best option I could find in her head,” by this time he’d been scouring out the other young woman’s bad memories. “This one at least only has a couple week’s worth of ugly things to forget.”

He peeled another three bills out of the pile, handing them to the other young woman. “Go on. You get yourself back where you belong. It will all work out.”

“What about these two?”

“I don’t know what our young man has in mind. He’s left this one only temporarily incapable of doing anything,” he indicated Paul. “Mister Earrings though, he gutted his ability. So I’m not sure what his intent was. Personally, I’m going to do my part to reduce the number of wild talents.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning this guy I took the money from is losing his abilities. Right now.”

“Ah. I see. Are we thinking we go in and find out if he needs help?”

Bart looked in the doorway. “We don’t know. We have a lot of options just now. How long did he say to expect him to be gone?”

“He didn’t say. He also didn’t say what his name was.”

“Oh?”

“Yep.”

“Well shit. I’m amused he didn’t make one up on the spot for you.”

“It’s okay. I don’t need to know. Yet.”

Nathan was looking in the doorway now. “Just a big storage room at this point. I see, one, two, maybe three doors leading elsewhere.”

“Let me look again.” Bart took a full step in and frowned. “Good grief which of these options do we consider seriously?”

“If he walked straight across towards the front of the building, either of those two there would do.”

Bart pointed at the stairs and the large window at the top. “Or he could have gone up that way. Though those stairs look a bit frail.”

“All the better reason to do that? Less likely to run into someone?”

“I don’t know. One of those doors on this floor has a small window in it. Shall we go have a look?”

Nathan shrugged. He stood still though as Bart started towards the door. “Um.” He waved Bart back a moment.

“He made the case Hubert could give us away. What do you think?”

“How did he know about Hubert?”

“Uh, little Huey here took exception to him checking me out on meeting me?”

“Oh great. Just great.” He looked out to the street. “Out there? You know the wee thing carries a punch disproportionate to his size. You’ve seen him in action before. Hey. I see. He racked up one of our hostiles in the pregnant girl’s room?”

“Got me there. Yes. He did.” Nathan scritched a little at Hubert’s head. “Little fella guarded the young lady like a knight in shining armor.”

“Sometimes I wonder how you get rid of any dangerous wild talents.”

“We call on you or others we know about who are friendlies, and stop the bad problems. I’ve taken your little spiel about being sensible over what has to be fixed and what doesn’t... quite seriously.”

“Mostly what needs fixing is the idiot CIA types who want to harness a telepath.”

“It’s not just the CIA. You know that.”

“I suppose I do,” Bart scratched his ear. “Okay. You stay here. If any individual telepaths come by, I’m sure they’ll start by probing you. Unless they’re as well shielded as myself, and apparently my young friend, they’re likely to be out of circulation fast. Hubert, I take it back. You’re a wonderful miniature gorilla. There’s a pun in this somewhere, but I decline to use it. You? gawd help me, you wait here. I’ll try to be back quickly.”

“Sure thing. Though. I really am thinking of looking up there,” he pointed up at the window.

“Hm? I’d rather you not give someone an excuse to set off Hubert needlessly. Though if you do it up there, no one may pay attention to me,” he thought out loud, “only to check behind the window. Nothing else, okay?”

“Okay,” nodded Nathan.

Melody was pretty content at the moment. She’d had her feet pampered by Charles and Scott. She enjoyed watching the display of their antics to get her attention. It’d taken time to endow them with the proper amount of simpering need for approval from her. Sometimes, she felt it paid off well.

She was trying to relax when two of the telepaths across the room started arguing. She watched with amusement. Telepaths, especially the male ones, were given to particularly tetchy territorial behavior around each other. There was a lot of machismo going on and testosterone levels must be going up. Soon there would be a screaming match. Usually the next step was a wild brawl with telepathic energies and on occasion accompanies by physical blows.

What made this interesting at the moment was two more telepaths sidled up to aid the first two, making this a two versus two tag team match. She hadn’t seen that happen for a long time.

Come to think of it, there hadn’t been a lot of brawling between telepaths in about a year. Every time something would start up, Jake would step in. He made it clear he would no longer tolerate the group attacking each other. Jacob seemed to believe it was time for everyone to work together towards broadening control in this part of the city.

So far, that worked out well. The local businesses all looked the other way when it came to the club or it’s members. They’d managed to bring even the local beat cops to heel, so complaints came to the club before officially being turned in at the precinct. The entire club had been pretty full of itself with glee when the neighbors stopped complaining about parking, loud rowdiness that sometimes happened, and rough play between controlled thugs.

It seemed odd and out of place a brawl picking up right now during all their current troubles. She’d go intervene, if she could, in a moment. Only because she wanted this place as a secure withdrawal location herself.

Picking up the cell phone, she hit the speed dial for Jacob.

“This is Jake, what’s up?”

“We have a few members mixing it up here. I’m going to step in after I hang up, if I can. It just was something new, we haven’t had one of these in a while.”

“With all the recent events, it could be the result of an enemy, someone working with the shooter maybe.”

“It seems likely. There’s four of them involved so far. It looks to me as though a few more are edgy enough they might step in and participate.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She could hear him shout to someone, probably Jonathan, that they had to go before the phone clicked off.

She had very little use for most of the telepaths in the club. They were a great buffer though between her and the rest of the world. The only one she really got along with all this time was Jacob. He seemed to know how to act towards her without being condescending. He was an asshole with other people but he acted like she belonged here, never once giving her the impression he wouldn’t be gentlemanly towards her. For her part, she treated him as an equal. Which considering his gender, was a hell of a concession for her.

She pulled on her walking shoes and pulled herself out of the chair. She was going to do this though she really hated involving herself in these popularity contests with lesser people. It didn’t matter if their egos were so inflated, they had better cut this crap out.

Approaching the verbal noise, she couldn’t tell what the hell they were arguing about. Until she got closer.

“...our table, we were here first, and you belong with your fucking sluts back by the kitchen.”

“FUCK YOU, This! Is where we always sit!” came back the other angry male voice.

She didn’t give a crap about who sat where as long as they knocked it off.

“ALL RIGHT! STOP NOW!” She let out a bellow making the nearest wall shake. “Everyone SIT DOWN!”

“The HELL you say,” said one of them. He had a heavy black leather jacket on with enough adornment to make him look like a motorcycle gang member. Probably he had coveted it when he saw some biker wearing it, making the guy give it to him. She had to wonder.

“You know better than to brawl in here,” she said quieter this time, looking up from her eyes under her eyebrows as though she was ready to bite.

“I fucking don’t fucking care about anything other than this fucking boob getting the fuck out of my fucking face,” said the guy in leather. She knew his name. She tried to remember. So many of the members were so inconsequential to her, she rarely bothered to remember.

“You’ll fucking care when you find yourself bare ass naked out front. I’ll even put a target on you begging who ever’s been taking pot shots at us to shoot at you. If you can’t settle down, you won’t be having much fun soon.”

“You ain’t tough Melody. It’s just that nobody cares about you,” he retorted, “The only reason people put up with your crappy hatred of men is because your whining is funny.”

There was a lot of close in jostling going on. She realized there was going to be a real mess if these twits didn’t chill out and take a breather soon. Her own internal anger was building too. That last statement was like a shot across the bow. Before she could do anything though, someone clubbed leather jacket with a champagne bottle.

Crunch.

There was a furious burst of mental energy from several sources. Now it seemed no one really knew who they were directing their psychic blasts at. A few of the groups’ slaves who were close to the table fell down like marionettes when the strings are cut. They fell to the floor and pushed against legs just by the position of their bodies, making everything more crowded.

Melody felt panic growing in her. This was out of control. She tried to put the closest telepath to her to sleep, which to her amazement worked. She was trying to turn it to others, to settle the wild craziness when a couple other telepaths turned on her. All she could do was keep her mental barriers up like armor.

She backed away as others tried to help put the mess to rest as well. There was no real reason for a brawl to start over seating, so she was wondering if some early drinking led to this behavior. How did other clubs without telepaths deal with this kind of out of control flash fighting? She didn’t grasp how they couldn’t manage a bouncer here at all.

It hit her perhaps this was the role Jake had been filling most of this time.

Nathan got to the room behind the window. He looked down at the entry bay. He was considering, should he open the larger door, make more room for departure for them, or leave it closed. The thoughts coming to mind didn’t really help Bart with the situation where he was.

He peeked through the doorway into the hallway. There was no evidence the young telepath invading the stronghold had gone by this path to get in. The hallway was quiet as a library. Looking at the doors along the corridor, he had a feeling it was mostly empty. He drew the same conclusions Edward had, the place had far more space than the club needed. They probably could only afford it because telepathy allowed them to get away with pretty much anything.

It didn’t seem it would hurt to step down the hall a little bit to see what was in one of these empty rooms. He looked back into the storage bay. Seeing no indication Bart was returning quickly, he stepped down the hall the few feet to peer into one of the partly open doors. Discovering a room with an old mattress and a few rings embedded in the ceiling, he thought this place could easily be a brothel.

It was certainly more likely to have been a brothel than a BDSM club. He’d have to do some research to see if the place actually was a brothel before telepaths took over. It would make sense. A lot of the young male control types would find it appealing.

Poor little Hubert was jittery. He’d wrapped his tail around Nathan’s neck and was jerking his tiny little head about to see where various emanations were coming from.

Nathan paused. His initial concern matched the young telepath’s who left him behind to begin with. If Hubert let loose, their presence might be pinpointed quickly. Retreating back down the hall to the office over the storage bay, he comforted Hubert by encouraging the little guy into his favorite pocket.

Below him though, Bart had stepped into the first door he’d found. The room had a hallway with a freezer door on the left. It was wide enough for a couple rolling trolleys to pass through so it was likely this led to a kitchen area. He stepped up to the next door and had to open it, only to find himself in a small antechamber of some sort.

Opposite was a door to a bathroom, apparently. To his right was a pair of swinging doors with glass or plastic, yes, definitely plastic panels through which he could see a long metal island counter top for a kitchen. To one side were stoves, in places were a couple sinks, and there appeared to be about four people wandering around.

The people in the kitchen seemed oblivious to anything but preparing food for someone. No, at least one was mostly lounging and periodically trying to help one of the others. It was turning out to be so exciting sneaking in the back door.

He started putting the four people into a state of enforced somnolence. He guided each one individually to a seat where they wouldn’t fall first.

If only Edward had been five or ten minutes later he would have been able to step out of the pantry into the kitchen to the snoring of the kitchen staff. Bart had no clue Edward had been looking in from the pantry room just a little earlier. His assumption now was this was not the way Edward had come in. There would not have been four kitchen staff working in here if he had.

Taking a brief moment, he turned off the stove tops and ovens. Anything producing heat capable of starting a fire without someone monitoring it, he wanted shut down for now. There were another set of doors at either end of the kitchen. Thinking it likely these doors led to a dining area, he didn’t know whether to press on from this direction or seek another way.

Near the pantry door he noted, there was another opening. It was just a frame with no door in it. He looked through and found a set of stairs to one side leading down. If Edward had not come by way of the kitchen, he certainly did not go out by way of stairs to a basement. The place was larger than he expected though.

With a mild sigh he looked through the window in the door towards the front of the building. The assessment there would be a dining room there proved correct. He pulled himself back from the door a bit though. He could clearly make out a rather large looking pair of men beside a door off to the side. It crossed his mind he’d seen damn little in the way of exit signs. Come to think of it, their absence seemed unusual. He doubted they were exempt here from having exit signs for emergencies.

If Edward hadn’t come in this way, he certainly wouldn’t be expecting to come out this way. The pair of thugs in the dining hall did nothing to disturb Bart. They weren’t telepaths and presented no threat. He was pretty sure. Unless there was a telepath shielding them somehow. Not likely to happen though with this bunch.

How to find the woman Edward was looking for? Edward would have tried to sense people and maybe scan some of the people here to determine if they had seen her. Bart could do the same but he’d rather just find the young man. Not wanting to give away to the mob of telepaths partying here someone was spying on them, he needed a practical solution. He’d either have to be damn fast or very clever to actually scan the other psis.

Time, he supposed, to use one of the tricks he only just learned in the last couple years. He had always been pretty subtle when scanning people in plain view. Scanning people at a distance was more of a problem. The usual method he was accustomed to was to let his senses reach out like an expanding sphere with a tiny number of filters so he didn’t have to notice everyone directly. He’d still be aware if someone was there, he wouldn’t have to let his awareness spend too much time individually if they had been filtered out.

What he’d been able to do for the last few years was to narrow his scanning sense into a thin sweeping plane, like a huge sheet of rectangular paper and move it around as he might fish with a net. Much as he’d like to claim the idea as his own, it was another psi who had taught him this trick. He found he got a much longer range and far less contact that could give him away as well. So he started to look for Edward.

He just started the scan from the direction he was looking and was going to sweep around in a full circle. He turned up quite a number of other telepaths and hoped the touch was feather light so they didn’t feel it at all. It only took a fraction of a second before he passed over someone who might be Edward or might not. Damn that kid.

It would be nice if it was possible to just have someone in mind for telepathic connection. The vast majority of minds he touched that were telepathic simply hadn’t bothered to use more than a mild shield, sufficient to keep the noise of other minds out. Of those in the building, at least half a dozen had actual set in place shields. He wasn’t entirely sure if he’d found more than six upstairs but there might be a seventh.

A flare of energy came from the direction of the dining room. Bart turned up his own mental protections without taking down his ‘hide me’ effort. It took only a few moments to realize, it wasn’t about him. He tried to catch some sense of the identities involved without actively scanning the lot of them.

The chance Edward had triggered some of them out there occurred to him. He spent time sorting out if any of them weren’t members. It seemed a simple method for screening to see if the young man was one of them. They all turned out to be part of the club. It was some kind of internal spat. This place kept making him feel dirty by being here. He didn’t look closer. If they wore their own abilities down, he wasn’t going to be disturbed one bit.

One upstairs he thought he found, flickered away. He assumed it was Edward. The response under threat for most psionic people was to reduce their profile while trying to identify specific hostiles. In this case what happened, he guessed, was Edward felt the rhubarb downstairs and decided to take cover before reacting.

Left with the problem of how to get to Edward he looked back out the window to the dining room. The two goons guarding the door were talking about the noises coming from the other room, but they apparently had strict orders about guarding where they were. He picked one and started looking under the hood, or rather looking to see if it was a mental control keeping them in place, or a supposed loyalty.

It took a few moments to ascertain the head of the telepaths, named Jacob, had a security force of eight guys who all lived on the premises. This one believed for certain he had a large bank account outside growing by leaps and bounds at all times. There were also a string of planted memories of wild sexual adventures during time off in here.

Must be convenient to employ such brutes for room and board, and a wee bit of time to program them. The problem of course, someone might come along who could change the coding. He altered these two to question the bank account story. Had they ever seen the money? Had they held the bank statements in their hand? What bank was keeping their accounts in order?

As long as they were having somewhat disloyal thoughts, he sprung the curiosity about what all the noise in the other room was about. They would soon start to egg each other on to go look.

Edward had gotten his minor entourage in the room with Jill and Peter.

Sadly, he failed to deprogram Jill enough she would stop seeing Peter as the object of her affections. It only took a few moments to pry the two apart in the midst of an inconvenient make out fest. They’d both taken the instruction to wait here as not restraining anything else while waiting here.

Angry as he was at Peter, he wasn’t going to punish him more for something he himself failed to tell him not to do. He did however quickly clear any interest in Peter out of Jill’s head. Fortunately the skill level involved was nothing like what Elaine had gone through. He was starting to think Sandi had done them a huge favor, having taken out quite possibly the most effective of these rogue telepaths. It could, he supposed, just been a matter of the guy continuously tinkering inside her head for three years.

He didn’t have time to think it over. Instead his immediate concerns were in the rooms along this hallway. He hadn’t done anything to clear those out of his back trail. He reached out again with his flatter scan, locating the telepaths on the floor he was on. They were both so busy in coitus he wasn’t likely to be noticed.

Edward shook his head. This was starting to become logistically a struggle. He felt trapped though none of them knew he was in their lair. He really had to limit what he did lest their big guns figure out he was in their home.

He sent the big thug forward to look through the door for him. Having him walk to the railing of the balcony gave him the ability to see what was going on down there. Immediately at least a couple people looked up but they recognized the security goon for what he was and went back to their revelry.

Edward looked out into the hall. He stepped out and had the two he’d gathered up follow him. He really didn’t want Peter giving him away so laid a compulsion on the errant creep not to speak or make noise. It would have to do. After thinking a moment, he turned to them again.

“Be quiet while we go downstairs. I don’t want to disturb a soul out there.”

“Yes sir,” said Jill. Damn, had to fix that too. Peter just nodded. Edward took a moment and reflected. For now, having Jill think of him as ‘sir’ was possibly beneficial. Correcting her could wait until later.

“Okay, follow me.” He led them to the door to the balcony, watching both doors he knew concealed telepaths who were preoccupied at the moment. Hoping they stayed preoccupied just added to his anxiety. Sweat from his forehead was getting in his eyes. Using his sleeve, he cleared away the moisture, not having realized he was exerting enough energy to cause himself to sweat.

He wanted, no, he needed a distraction down in the main room. Something to keep those people preoccupied. Using his lackey as his eyes, he spotted two men who were not quite getting along. They were acting as though they’d just walk away disgruntled from each other.

Not sure if he could work a thin enough probe done to plant suggestions in either of them, he thought they could get a distraction going. So what was he going to do?

The entire visit to this place was a big risk. One more risk to try to get them into a tiff down there was just another idea. So the little needle of thought worked into the one walking away. Why should you take that shit from him? Having planted the seed of discord in the one, he reached to the other and sent a suggestion into him. I showed him, that’s for sure, he’s a nobody who should grovel at my feet. Soon the two were verbally harassing each other. It was just a nudge

Melody had stood up. Edward knew it was Melody. He’d seen her through Peter’s eyes, and a few other eyes down there. She was one of the ones Peter thought it good to steer away from. So she might be one of their big guns. Or, maybe the hostility was enough to want to have nothing to do with her.

He tried to pick out which people down there appeared to be choosing sides of the argument that had broken out. If he could get more of them involved, it would make things easier for him. So he slipped a couple more needles of thought into those nearby implanting the idea one side or the other had been noxious and deserved a pounding. It was almost too easy, but he could tell now believing it easy would be a mistake.

Several down there had started slinging psi energy. At first it was like a siren had gone up announcing shields were going up. He’d have to force issues to get past protective barriers now. He turn to Jill and Peter.

“Peter, take her gently by the elbow. You’re going to escort her to the corridor off the second floor balcony. Walk at a normal pace. Take her into the hall that leads to the locked door, not the door to the big dungeon room.”

“The east hall, got it.” Edward lost his sense of direction at some point and had to think to work it out.

“Yes, the east hall, get in the hallway and close the door behind the two of you. Jill, be a good girl and go with him.”

“Yes sir,” she giggled.

“No giggling. Be quiet as you do this. Once you’ve closed the door, I should be just a few minutes behind you, so wait there.”

“Okay,” Peter said. “Wait in the east hall. Got it.”

The two of them started the walk. No one looked up. If someone did, they’d recognize Peter was leading his new girl somewhere by way of the stairs. He wondered if he could use the big thug as a visual disguise. Maybe he could walk on the wall side of him on the way down the stairs so even if someone looked it would appear as though two of their guards were walking together.

He watched as Jill and Peter made headway down the stairs.

A huge rush of psi energy was blistering the area from the squabbling down on the ground floor. He looked down. Yes, a brawl would be likely to provide a good distraction as he moved down to the next floor. He waited though until he felt certain Jill had made it into the hall. Then he led his new lackey along the balcony keeping him between himself and the railing.

It seemed like each step was crawling. The man beside him kept a calm demeanor, but it wasn’t a risk to him. He was simply following directions. Edward had to fight the urge to look to his left past the man. The argument down on the ground floor was as loud with shouting as the energy of psionics indicated. If they all hadn’t put their mental shields in place by now, some of them would at a minimum have terrible headaches soon. Probably for a long time.

He got to the stairs. Going down left him just as nervous as just walking did. He just didn’t want to attract any visual attention by rushing though. He had never had the sense of time slowing so much in his life. Each stair was a grueling sweaty activity. He counted thirteen of them as they went down. The distance between the second floor balcony and the ground floor was much more than the height to the third floor from the second. He thought it peculiar but he didn’t care at the moment.

It felt like crawling would work better.

The noise from the ruckus downstairs was getting louder. It’d been almost ten minutes he thought. Maybe twenty, given how slow time really was moving. He stuck with walking beside his camouflaging goon and stayed steady on the course. Any extra motions he made made him concerned his visibility had gotten stronger.

He finally opened the door and slipped through. The large lackey came along behind him. Not before hearing someone down the balcony shouting to the lackey. Someone had at a minimum seen the security guy.

“Hey Sean!”

Jacob, Jonathan, and Mia Abernathy pulled into a space across the street from the club. With the car facing the wrong way against traffic. Jake didn’t give a shit. Jonathan looked to see if there was anything going on outside, but he could feel the psi energy even from here. He doubled down on getting mental guards in place.

He watched as Miss Abernathy opened the car door in a rush. Leaving it open, she ran into the building on this side of the street. Jonathan wondered what the hell she was doing.

“Don’t worry about her,” said Jake, “She’ll catch up.”

“Oh?”

“Remember, she’s looking for our shooter. The problem inside might be intended to get people to come out in the open.”

“Okay, so what about us as we cross the street?”

Jacob waved him off. “Stay over here if you want to. I’m going in.”

Jonathan watched as Jacob started across the street. He heard the squeal of tires coming up the street at them. He thought to warn Jake but the car was not headed for Jake, it was headed into another wrong side parking space. What the hell?