The Nephelim - Chapter 4

So denied, so I lied,
Are you the now or never kind
In a day, and a day love
I'm gonna be gone for good again
Are you willing to be had?
Are you cool with just tonight?
Here's a toast to all those who hear me all too well

Here's to the nights we felt alive
Here's to the tears you knew you'd cry
Here's to goodbye
Tomorrow's gonna come too soon

Put your name on the line
Along with place and time
Wanna stay, not to go,
I wanna ditch the logical
Here's a toast to all those who hear me all too well

All my time is frozen motion
Can't I stay an hour or two or more?
Don't let me let you go
Don't let me let you go

Here�s to the Night
Eve 6

One bad thing about Alec’s change was his new and completely involuntary habit of waking early. He beat his alarm clock by a good hour today, groaning as he read the digital display with disbelief. For a lazy person like him, the sole joy of waking up early was the opportunity to go back to sleep. His body, however, was having none of it. Not that it was easy to roll over right now anyway – his morning wood made it impossible to lie on his stomach at all, and lying on his back was out of the question.

“Go back to sleep!” Alec told his dick angrily. “Yes, I mean you!” he hissed, lifting the sheet to glare at the persistent member as it stood thick and proud through the opening of his boxers. With a resigned sigh, he reached for a Kleenex to take care of the thing. If he didn’t it’d stay up all morning and give him no end of hell at school. His dick, of all things, was benefiting from his new powers as well, which meant that he had the choice of either relieving himself before getting up or sporting a roaring fat for the rest of the day.

Then again, he thought, remembering his conversation with Chantelle the night before. She’d mentioned something about being a predator – the same word he’d used to describe her in her sexual prowls on the physical plane. She’d also said that he’d need to be at ‘full strength’ today. Did full strength include his erection? With the way he was going lately, he could probably flog the bishop five or six times and still be ready for action, but he decided to leave it alone just the same. No sense in wasting perfectly good jizz on a tissue when, with a little luck, he could probably find a perfectly good – and perfectly human – receptacle later. Opting for an early shower instead of a wank, he threw a black look at the alarm clock and got out of bed.

“Morning, kiddo’,” said Steve as he came downstairs for breakfast. “You’re up early.”

“Well, one good thing about getting up early is that you get to have a real breakfast,” remarked Lindsay from her place at the stove, frying up bacon and eggs. “You want one egg or two?”

“Make it two,” said Alec, putting back the cereal and giving his aunt a kiss on the cheek. “And thanks.”

Alec poured himself a strong cup of coffee from the percolator, foregoing milk and sugar, and sat down at the breakfast table. Steve looked up from the morning paper and leaned closer.

“I don’t think Lindsay noticed, but if you don’t tuck that boner away you’re going to poke somebody’s eye out,” he whispered.

“Fuck!” Alec exclaimed – quietly – and turned in his chair to hide the still-stiff appendage behind his belt. Lindsay dished up breakfast just as he dropped his shirt, apparently not noticing that her nephew had gone bright red.

“Bah,” said Alec, picking up a fork and digging in. “If anyone in this house could do with some meat on their bones, it’s you.” Lindsay waved away the comment as she sat down to a plate of unbuttered toast.

“I notice nobody said I could use a few extra kilos,” said Steve with mock indignation.

“A few more kilos and we’d have to reinforce that chair you’re sitting on,” quipped Alec. “Not to mention the floor… and that belt.”

Steve very carefully rolled up his paper and slapped Alec upside the head with it, laughing. “You’d better be careful, fella’-me-lad, or I’ll have to take you outside and kick your skinny arse.” Lindsay hid a grin behind her coffee cup as she watched the banter between her husband and foster son. “So, what’ve you got planned today?” Steve asked around a gooey mouthful of egg.

“Well, thought you might be meeting up with a certain pretty girl in black.” Alec froze, making Steve roar with laughter.

“Uh, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said as nonchalantly as he could.

“Oh, do lay off, Steve,” Lindsay chided. “So, Alec. What’s this girl’s name?”

“Chantelle,” Alec said, realising that he’d been holding his breath. “But she’s just a friend.”

“They all start off as friends, bucko. Before you know it you’ll be nose-deep in her knickers and-“

“Steve!” Lindsay snapped, hiding another smile behind her napkin as she ostentatiously wiped her mouth.

“Jumping up onto the platform in Tremaine Terrace while we were on our way to dinner last night,” Steve supplied with a grin. “I beeped my horn, but you seemed too wrapped up in your pretty little girl in black to notice.”

Even Lindsay joined in the laughter this time. “Quit tormenting him!” she said, nudging her husband.

“Oh, alright,” Steve relented. “I’ll leave you alone for now. Don’t expect me to be so nice if you’re not going to let us know what’s happening, though.”

Alec growled at his uncle’s laughter, mopped up the remainder of the egg on his plate with a piece of toast and stuffed it into his mouth, followed by the rest of his coffee. “Got to get to school,” he grunted.

“They tend to rip on me less at school,” Alec said, kissing his aunt on the cheek. “I’ll see you pair later.”

Not that Alec was really pissed off by his family’s good-natured shit giving, but he wished he could have avoided their seeing Chantelle. Now they would ask about her later, and he knew for certain he didn’t want to bring her home to meet them. That could open up all sorts of conversations he didn’t wish to think about. Taking the stairs two at a time to his bedroom, he grabbed his backpack, cigarettes, lighter, wallet, keys and all the other assorted crap he carried about on his person, and headed back downstairs. Lindsay intercepted him about two feet from the door.

“I can talk to Steve if you like. He can be a little… well, cruel at times.”

“Ha! No, that’d take all the fun out of it,” Alec said with a smirk. “Besides, he’ll be eating his words soon enough.”

“Well, you’ll see. Anyway, I’m off. It’ll be good to get to school on time for once.”

“You, too,” Alec said over his shoulder as he performed the all-important pocket check. Wallet, keys, knife, cigarettes, lighter, erection (Goddamnit!) – good to go. He made the walk to the train station on autopilot, too busy thinking about how he was NOT going to explain Chantelle to his folks to bother paying attention to the scenery. Wrapped up as he was, he couldn’t help but notice that the sky was completely clear of last night’s storm, though the air wasn’t without a pleasant hint of moisture. If he was lucky, he’d make it to school before the day really began to heat up. Lighting a cigarette, he reached the train station just in time to stub it out and leap onto the train moments before the doors closed. Despite the morning’s mildness, he’d already worked up a sweat just by walking two blocks, and was glad to trade the rapidly rising sun for the air-conditioned compartment.

“Huh?” Alec turned to the only other occupant of the carriage, a pretty little thing with massive breasts and the funkiest hairdo he’d ever seen. At around five feet tall, she was pretty short, but missed the waif look completely with a set of curves that could make any man drool. Her school blouse – a Turnam State school blouse – looked like it had been painted on to her round, every so slightly pointed breasts, with her blue and gold striped, very loosely tied, tie laying in between. The top few buttons were undone to display a little cleavage, almost but not quite taking the attention away from the rest of her classical hourglass figure, noticeably slim around the waist but with generous hips and a lovely set of legs. Her most noticeable – if not her most attractive – feature was her hair. She had black-tipped, fiery red-dyed hair that was very striking, laced as it was with the odd blonde lock. Slightly curly, it was cut into a messy bob that touched her collar at the back and just stroked her jaw line at the front.

“Saving your strength, of course. You’re looking very strong this morning,” she said with a smirk, gesturing to his crotch.

Alec groaned and sat down quickly, putting his bag – carefully – in his lap. “You should wear a name badge!” he complained.

“I thought you’d recognise me,” she giggled, taking a seat beside him. “After all, I’m the one girl in the world you don’t wanna jam that into, remember?”

“Grrr, shaddup! Mocking me isn’t such a good idea when I’m packing this… thing.”

She burst into laughter. “So, why don’t you… you know… take care of it?” she accompanied her words with the appropriate hand motion to insure Alec couldn’t possibly misunderstand her meaning.

“Aw, have I embarrassed you?” she asked teasingly, putting an arm around him.

“Anyway,” Alec said quickly, frantic to change the subject, “what am I calling you today?”

“Well, I can’t keep calling you ‘hey you’ until you deign to introduce yourself when I see you in a different body. Why don’t you just tell me your real name so we can save all this bullshit?”

“I have a name, but I really shouldn’t tell it to you. In the so-called ‘real world’ it might be safe for one person to tell another their name, but for me to tell you my name might be dangerous. What if it were read from your thoughts? If your father, for instance, knew that I’d been teaching you, there’d be questions. Questions I can’t answer.”

Alec considered questioning this, but let it go. Whatever beef she had with his dad, it was between them, and had nothing to do with him. Yet. For now, he was happy to have her company, and the odd lesson, and wasn’t willing to put that in jeopardy. But on the other hand… “What makes you think anyone could take it out of my mind? I can hold my own.”

The girl sighed. “At certain times, yes, you could, but can you control your mind while you’re asleep? Can you keep it tightly shut during all hours of the day and night, not just when you’re under attack?”

“Exactly.” She smiled at him softly, then closed her eyes briefly. A silvery shield shimmered into being around them, much stronger than the one he’d unwittingly produced the night before, and she leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Nischa,” she said softly, her warm breath tickling his neck.

“N-“ he exclaimed, or was about to when she put a manicured finger against his lips.

“No, no,” she said quietly, releasing the shield and letting it wobble and fade into nothingness. “As I was saying, my name’s Martina.”

“Martina, eh?” Alec said aloud, mostly to keep from thinking her real name as he walled it up in his mind, mentally wrapping a shield around it even as he wondered if this would work. It felt oddly like he was folding a piece of paper over and over again until it was so small it couldn’t be found. After a moment, he couldn’t remember the name at all, and nearly broke through his own defences trying to remember it. Sensing, almost immediately, what was happening, he relaxed and let the attempt slide. Whatever that information was, he didn’t need it yet and it was much safer where it was.

“Now, you’re doing the right thing,” Eliza confided. “At least until you’re strong enough to think it without having the thought plucked from your head.” Alec nodded.

“Okay, Martina. What’re you doing here today? Don’t tell me you’re ‘visiting’ someone at my school.”

“No, well not yet at least.” She glanced down at herself, “I just came up with this one this morning and thought I’d try it out. Today is a social call.”

Martina swung a mock blow at his head, grinning. “I made you a promise last night, didn’t I?”

“But it’s eight o’clock,” Alec said with a covert glance at his watch. “Besides, I’m only two stops away. In fact, we’re nearly halfway there.”

“What are you-“ Planning, Alec meant to say, but before he could finish the sentence:

”Attention passengers,” came the train driver’s voice over the speaker system. “Due to a signal problem at Graewyn, there will be a twenty minute delay. This train will stop at Eastgate, and will resume service once the problem has been resolved. We apologise for the delay.”

Alec’s eyes narrowed on Martina as she gave him a grin and a wink. “Oh, what a coincidence! I guess now we’ll have plenty of time. You up for it?”

“I should’ve known,” Alec said, shaking his head. “I should’ve known. Just don’t make me too late for school, okay? There’s enough shit on my plate without you landing me in detention.”

“Mind reading is good.” Alec still hadn’t forgotten her little ‘predator’ remark from the night before. Seeing as – to his own mind, at least – he didn’t understand girls, Alec relished the idea of plucking their thoughts right out of their heads. From there, logic dictated, the rest should be a walk in the park…

“I’m glad you approve. The reason we’re doing this in a train, by the way, is that it’s easier to learn mind-reading if you have a ready supply of minds at hand that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Ha! Nice try, boyo’, but I don’t think so. Anyway, we’ll start with a little theory. There are two main forms of mind reading. One is passive, which means that you catch those thoughts that naturally flow freely around a person. Seeing as you’re not poking around in their head, your subject won’t notice what you’re doing, but the downside is that you can only read what they’re putting out there to be read. That’s okay, because most people don’t bother to guard their thoughts at all. The other method is much more intrusive. You actively enter their mind and can either read what they’re thinking exactly, as they think it, or grab any information they have stored in their mind. It’s much better for getting specific information, especially from a guarded mind but it’s exponentially harder to do, though, and you have to be careful. Even an untrained mind will involuntarily close up like a steel trap when it senses an intruder. For the intruder, it can be… painful. Got it?”

“Sounds good. How does a regular person shut their mind, though? You and dad were able to read my mind without a problem.”

“Ah, but we’re… unnaturally talented. Any regular person trying to read your mind would have had a much tougher time of it. We’re far more subtle about it, and thus don’t bring up your mind’s natural defences.”

“We’ll try the first method. It’s a lot easier to start with, and it won’t attract any attention. A deep read from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing can be… uncomfortable to say the least. I wouldn’t want to cause a scene by having every person you stare at start screaming and grabbing their head. That’s also the reason that I’ve ‘arranged’ for this carriage to be empty for the moment. We have to try to be discreet here, and having most of the car to ourselves you’ll be able to relax and go about this in any way you like.”

“Seeing as you’re part angel, we’ll use your angelic faculties as a starting point. I want you to map out this carriage with your mind. Let me know when you’re-“

“Done,” Alec finished smugly. In a relatively small, confined space, his pulses could size up everything around him almost as fast as he commanded them to.

“Okay, smart arse. We’re nearing the station now, so just hang tight until the train stops and everyone is settled.” It only took a few minutes for the train to whine to a halt and for the passengers who wanted to leave to disembark. Two passengers entered by the door at the far end, and another came in through the door adjoining the next carriage. All three showed up immediately on his radar screen, two women and one man.

“You’re the expert here,” Alec glanced at Martina. “What do I do now?”

“You have three such subjects in the carriage with us right now. Choose one.”

As he’d immediately noticed, two of the passengers were women, and one was a man. In his view, that meant he had a fifty/fifty choice. He was able to get a better view using his radar than he could with his eyes from this angle. They occupied opposing seats on the corridor. The subject to the right was just shy of forty, fairly trim, bespectacled: a woman, rather than a girl, and not his idea of the perfect subject. The other, however…

Sitting straight in her seat, paying no real attention to anything, this one was somewhat older than he was, maybe twenty, twenty one, with a similar figure to the one Martina wore – on the short side, but not waiflike – slightly less curvy than his friend but still mouth-wateringly buxom. Rather than a school uniform, though, she was dressed to the nines in an expensive looking (and feeling) silk blouse, gold earrings, gold rope necklace, and a black skirt that clung to her hips and legs nicely before billowing out around her firm, perfect calves. Red hair (he opened his eyes for a full-colour view despite his bad angle) of an entirely natural shade was pinned up into a bun, leaving a few loose strands artfully draped across the pale skin of her neck.

“Huh, should’ve known,” Martina whispered, picking up his intent immediately.

“Now you need to isolate her from everything else. Using your pulse senses would make this a whole lot easier for you. Focus on her and cut everything else out until she’s the only one on your radar screen. This’ll mean you won’t be aware of much around you but for something this delicate, it’s necessary.”

“If you say so,” Alec muttered dubiously. He obediently focused his pulses in a single direction and ‘locked’ on to the redhead, wrapping her up in his pulses but careful to avoid using too much power to prevent her from moving or feeling it. One thing was immediately apparent, the girl had the sort of breasts he’d trade his left testicle to cup. It took an effort of Herculean proportions not to let her tits dominate the entirety of his thoughts. “Got her, now what?”

“Now you’re going to have to open a channel. It’s slightly different for everyone, but basically, you’ll need to visualise a pathway between your mind and hers.”

“I told you, it’s different for everyone. I can’t tell you how I do it because that approach might not work for you and, more importantly, your mind is way too undisciplined right now. If you know how I do it, you’ll be unconsciously trying to duplicate my methods and that’ll ensure you never learn to do it.”

“Sweetness, I’m being very helpful at the moment,” Martina said with all seriousness. “What use would I be to you if I taught you the wrong way? That would take ages for you to fix on your own. Now enough with the backchat and more with the doing what I told you to do!”

Alec shook his head in irritation. This lesson was proving much more complicated than he’d earlier anticipated. Still, mind-reading was something he actually wanted to do, so maybe it was worth the work he’d have to put into it. Now all he needed to do was open a damn channel, whatever the hell that was…

“You’re not going to get anywhere if you think too much about what you’re doing,” Martina interrupted his musings. “Channelling has to be something you can do almost automatically. If you waste too much time and effort trying to open a channel, you won’t have enough left to actually do any reading.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” Alec complained. “First I’m supposed to concentrate on what I’m doing, but now I’m not supposed to think about it too much? How the hell does that work? Am I concentrating or not?”

“No no no!” Martina shook her head. “Focus on her, yes. Concentrate on opening channel, no. That’s why you need to visualise. Just imagine there’s a link between your mind and hers. It’s the same as when you want to get a Coke from the fridge: you know where you are, you know where the fridge is, so you get up, go to the fridge and get the Coke. You don’t actively work out the mechanics of walking or the path to the fridge. Those things are done automatically. Visualising the channel is done the same way you plot a course to the fridge. Just decide what you want and your mind finds a way. But for that to work, you need intent, you need to will that connection into being.”

Alec shrugged and simply imagined there was a narrow tube between himself and the chick whose mind he was trying to break into. His ‘pulses’ immediately adjusted to reveal a colourless pipe that started at his forehead, took the most direct route to the girl, then circled around her head to lightly rest against her forehead. The pipe felt very real to his pulses even he wasn’t really sure if the pipe was actually there, or if his pulses created it at the behest of his brain. Either way, the insubstantial pipe seemed to fit the vague description of a channel that Martina had told him to make.

“Okay, I’ve got this pipe between my head and hers,” Alec said. “It feels kinda’ weird and I have no idea if it’s actually there, but I can feel it…”

“That’s good enough for the moment. We’ll find out soon whether you’re on the right track, now I need you to open both ends of that pipe, but for your sake, open them slowly! The last thing you want is an absolute barrage of alien thoughts flooding into your mind.”

“Yes, mama,” Alec grinned. But there was a serious acceptance of her logic. The memory of his pulses getting out of control previously was still fresh in his mind, and that had only been things he could feel. When the thousands of other thoughts being generated in someone else’s head came into the mix, the end result would be positively mind numbing! But how to open something insubstantial slowly? Without a better idea, he simply imagined a small hole appearing at each end of the pipe and gently widened it. At first there was no discernable change, no new thoughts rushing towards him. He widened the hole a little more. Still nothing. Taking a deep breath, Alec clenched his fists and widened the hole as much as the diameter of the tube would allow him to, and finally felt… annoyance.

He turned to glare at Martina and caught himself just in time. It was working! That annoyance wasn’t his. It did feel slightly alien, and while he’d thought his initial efforts had failed, that in itself wasn’t enough to generate a sense of annoyance that ran this deep! Clamping down on the new feeling, he tried to make a little more sense of it. It wasn’t the irritated annoyance he felt he should be experiencing, it was a much more profound sense of annoyance that… that he wasn’t getting paid enough attention. But that didn’t make sense, why the hell would he care if he wasn’t… oh you fucking stupid moron! Alec chastised himself and quickly made the correction. It wasn’t that he wasn’t getting enough attention for the feeling wasn’t his. It should have read: she wasn’t getting paid enough attention!

Martina grinned lazily. “By the triumphant look on your face, I’d say eureka!”

Alec returned her grin. It was difficult to concentrate on two things simultaneously, but he felt he could manage it for a short while. “Eureka, indeed! Do me a favour and confirm my work, is she miffed that more guys aren’t checking her out?”

Martina turned to stare at the redhead, her eyes narrowing slightly and her nose scrunching up in a manner that Alec found very cute. He could distinctly feel her ‘touch’ pass through his pulses and into the girl. The ‘sense’ of her lingered for a moment before he felt her consciousness retreat back to her body.

“Yup, she’s pissed.” Martina confirmed with a slight frown. “Damnit, I thought I was up myself but as far as conceit goes, I ain’t got nothin’ on that bitch!”

“What’s the go with that?” Alec asked, “I opened my channel as wide as I could because I wasn’t getting anything at first but all I finally managed to get was a feeling and some vague reasons for it. I knew she felt she deserved more attention, but that was just about it. Am I doing something wrong? I mean from the way you were talking about it, I figured there was going to be a shitload of stuff coming through the pipe I put between us.”

Martina bit her bottom lip, but Alec could tell she was thinking it through, not trying to look coy. He felt the sense of her reach out to the redhead again, maintain that connection, and look at him. “No, you’re on the right track,” she began, “but there’s something about this girl, it’s like there’s nothing else in her head but annoyance. That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Because she’s clearly human for one, and I’m pretty sure she’s not a trained telepath. A mind needs to be very disciplined to block thoughts and while I can’t get in very far, her mind shows no trace of discipline.”

“A mind that’s undergone mental training has a certain feel to it,” Martina explained patiently, “It’s kinda’ tricky to explain, but for now, just try to imagine that thinking, about anything, generates certain thought patterns. Angry thoughts feel different from happy thoughts and so on. The same rules apply to the generation of thoughts. A trained mind thinks differently when compared to an untrained mind, and with practice, I can tell almost at a glance. If she’d been trained, I’d either pick up ghosts or nothing at all on a surface scan.”

“Like the echoes of thoughts. They’d still be there, but they’d feel more like impressions or vague disjointed memories of thoughts rather than thoughts themselves. Oh, and they’re like a billion times harder to read.”

“Well whaddaya want me to say? She’s an enigma. So what? You’re an enigma and you don’t see me jumping around advertising the fact.”

Martina shot him an irritated look. “Hell, no! She’s just a human. I told you that.”

She cut him off before he could finish with a dismissive wave. “Look, one of the things you have to get through your head very early on in this game is that there’s a lot of shit going on in the world that doesn’t really make sense or fit into the grand scheme of things. Sometimes those things are good, sometimes they’re bad, but the general rule is to approach everything with caution. If you don’t understand it, and its not bothering you, leave it be. Don’t go looking to start shit when there’s no need to.”

“No ‘buts’, Aleck. Leave the girl alone!” she snapped with surprising vehemence. “Do you understand me!” It was abundantly clear from her tone that it was a command, not a question.

“Hey, no need to knot your knickers!” he held his hands out defensively, “I get the picture.”

Martina’s expression abruptly softened to something almost predatory. “Who said I’m wearing knickers?” she said in a sultry tone before exploding into giggles at Alec’s immediate blush.

“Shut up!” he snapped waspishly, but inwardly glad that she’d managed to effectively break the tension building up between them before it got out of control. Having her mad at him wasn’t something he wanted, ever.

“S’okay,” she grinned patting his arm, “but you had the basics for channelling right. That’s at least a start. Now I’ve got things I wanna do so we’re gonna have to cut this short. No matter though, practice channelling a little more when you get to school and you’ll find it gets easier and easier. You’re mind just isn’t used to recognising the thoughts of others, but that’ll change with practice.” She cut a glance at her watch, “But before I go, wanna learn one more little trick? It doesn’t involve channelling but is much easier than mind-reading and it’s a pretty handy thing to know.”

Her blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “Very. Wanna know how to cast a couple of area specific wards?”

Stepping off the train onto Platform 1 of Tremaine Terrace Station, Alec couldn’t keep the big cheesy grin off his face as he turned to wave at Martina, still seated at the back of the carriage. Not only did he now have a limited ability to read minds – which was, in his opinion, the coolest thing he’d ever done – but she’d shown him a few useful tricks as well. Like everything she showed him, it was a new method of using a talent he already possessed, but it was something he probably wouldn’t have thought of by himself.

He watched the train pull away from the station then reached for his cigarettes and headed for the exit. The walk to school passed in no time at all, and a glance at his wristwatch told him that he was still twenty minutes early. All things considered, it was a good start to the day, and if he had anything to do about it, it would get even better. Striding happily to ‘their’ spot – an out of the way area of the school grounds that he and his two friends had claimed for themselves – he wore an uncharacteristic grin and the sprightly, confident step of someone who was in a good mood. Really, he should have known better.

“Eh, yourself,” Alec grinned, lighting himself another cigarette and offering the pack around as he planted himself on ‘their’ bench.

“And what the fuck are you so happy about?” inquired Allen, still halfway through his breakfast of egg and bacon roll.

“No,” Marc said with an irritated swipe at a fly. “You can’t. This is school. Nobody can be happy without good reason and seeing as its school, there can’t possibly be a good reason. Nor can you get here earlier than usual without a decent excuse. Did you get laid last night or something and show up early to brag?”

Not yet, Alec thought to himself. Not yet. Out loud, he said, “Got to bed early last night, beat my alarm, came early. End of story.”

“Hmph,” Allen said around a mouthful of food. “You comin’ to the party tonight?”

“Why should anything be different?” Allen demanded between mouthfuls of gooey egg and barbecue sauce. “We have a good formula. A method of doing things that is sacred. Traditional, even. We all know the importance of tradition.”

“That’s right,” intoned Marc in his ‘reverent’ voice. “For he who breaks the tradition shall himself, be broken. Into iddy biddy little pieces. So shall it be.” He eyed Alec threateningly, sizing him up.

“Alright, alright, I’ll be there,” Alec relented. “So long as your fucking mood improves by then.”

“Bah! I’m getting a drink,” Alec said, getting up. “Anyone want anything?” he called over his shoulder as he wandered off.

“What’s up with that?” Marc grizzled, lighting the cigarette he’d flinched from Alec’s pack with the fading cherry of his last. “Since when am I in a bad mood?”

“Dunno’,” Allen shrugged, lighting himself one as he wiped grease and goo from his fingers. “I guess he’s just not a morning person.

Shaking his head as he closed the distance between their spot and the tuckshop, Alec realised something about himself that he’d never really noticed before. It wasn’t some new gift or weird talent born out of his angelic heritage, but an entirely human trait that he’d somehow managed to ignore for his entire life. He’d realised it just as he was considering taking a peek into his friends’ heads. Guilt. Not a lot of guilt, but enough to make him question his actions. It came as quite a surprise that he’d feel… what, bad? about invading the privacy of someone else’s mind, especially that of a friend. Why feel guilty, he asked himself, if nobody else will ever know? The inevitable answer was, of course, that he would know, and his heretofore silent conscience would probably nag him for it. With a silent curse and an insult directed at this alien emotion, he shook off the feeling and asked the student behind the tuckshop counter for a Blueberry Ice, wishing, as he did so, that he had a shot of Smirnoff to go with it.

Guilt? he thought to himself. Me? Since when? As if to prove himself incapable of such a pointless emotion, as well as to polish up on a new skill, he waited until the guy’s back was turned and inserted his grey, hose-like probe. As he mapped it out with weak pulses, he wondered how a direct link with someone could be considered ‘non-invasive’. It looked pretty damned invasive to him! He put the thought aside, figuring that Martina (or Chantelle, or whoever the hell she felt like being next time she saw him) would teach him when he was ready for it. For now he was happy to skim the surface, and skim he did, opening the ends of his pipeline slowly and allowing the information to flow through, and found… interest? Interest in… him? Alec’s eyebrows shot up and he found himself unable to speak when the guy handed over his drink.

“Uh, that’s two-sixty,” said the guy, looking at Alec oddly. With fumbling hands, Alec handed over the money and grabbed his drink, forgetting his change in his haste to get out of there.

<Weird,> came a final wisp of thought as he made his escape. <Very cute, but definitely weird.>

By the time he went to class, Alec was over the shock of having another guy interested in him. With something like six percent of the male population being gay, he figured he was bound to meet up with someone of that inclination sooner or later. But to have that someone attracted to him? On the bright side, the little encounter had effectively killed his hard on, so that was a bonus. He shook it off and looked around the computer lab of his IT class, hoping for a distraction. He found it.

A fairly cute eighth grader watched him dreamily from the other side of the room. Because IT was an optional class and not seen as a particularly ‘manly’ one, his Year 10 group was pretty small and consequently shared lab space with an advanced level group of Year 8’s. the girl in question had been sharing the lab with his class since the beginning of the year, so he at least knew that her name was Tiffany, but beyond that he didn’t know much about her at all. From this distance her eyes looked green, but could easily be hazel or a pale brown. Whatever the colour, they suited her small, round face very well. They were huge, suiting her ‘big-eyed kid’ image as much as the very faint dusting of freckles across her little nose and cheeks. Cute? Undoubtedly. The same way a stuffed animal is cute. Sexy? Err, NO! Alec figured he might be a pervert – scratch that, he was a pervert! – but one thing he wasn’t was a cradle snatcher, so her attention came as a surprise to him. After all, if he wasn’t attracted to someone that age, how could she be attracted to him? Then again, he theorised, she could be looking at anything. Maybe he had a massive snot string dangling out of his nose? In the spirit of experimentation – and of finding out just what that girl was thinking about while goggling at him like that – he decided to take a quick peek into her head. By now the process of making the pipe and opening the ends was a little more familiar to him and the mental conduit was in place in moments. As he opened the ends, Alec was surprised by the onslaught – not only of concepts, thoughts, but words and even images… and feelings!

Everything was painted onto a canvas of very un-girlish lust. It was a feeling that he was well acquainted with, and one which awakened the already angry dweller of his pants. Martina had warned him not to open the ends too fast, and now he had to deal with the consequences of ignoring her advice. He shut his eyes, trying to block out the rest of it, but only made it worse for himself. The inside of his eyelids made a perfect screen onto which his mind projected the contents of her thoughts. And such thoughts! Alec knew what he looked like in the mirror. As he’d said to Chantelle, he wasn’t exactly repulsive. The way Tiffany saw him went way beyond any egotistical mental image he could have come up with. She saw him as a creature of absolute perfection, from the top of his head where his tousled jet-black hair formed a curtain across his shoulders, all the way down his smooth, muscled arms and torso to the massive, throbbing erection he pounded into her young, pulsing cunt. The images showed him on top of her, their mouths locked together and their eyes closed. Her small hands gripped his taut, muscular waist, pulling him into her as he pummelled her with – to his mind – a grotesquely huge dick. Tiffany obviously didn’t have any body-image problems of her own, either. Before intentionally turning his mind from such things, he felt her tongue in his mouth and his own in hers, noted the swell of her breasts, the stiff nipples and smooth skin of her tummy, and the hot, pulsating sheath of her pussy as it squeezed him mercilessly. My god! he thought. I can even feel it! Of course it was only an imaginary representation of what he thought a pussy probably felt like, seeing as he’d never actually been inside one, but it was staggering nonetheless. No less staggering were the words that went along with these thoughts:

He’s so gorgeous. So big and manly. If I could just get him alone, I know I could have him! Oh, my God I need his big, hard…

<Close the conduit, Aleck,> interrupted a smooth, calm voice. <See and feel the ends of your pipe closing, and it will stop.> It was a voice that he immediately recognised and, grateful for a rational thought in this weird tumble of fuck-thoughts, obeyed. Surely enough, the clamour ceased. First the images, then the words and, finally, the feeling of lust itself. Of course that part didn’t matter too much. Alec wasn’t even aware that girls of that age were capable of feeling that… horny. The second-hand warmth and pressure of Tiffany’s desire had brought his dick back to full stiff, hard, aching life.

<Come downstairs. I’ll meet you,> said the voice in his head. Alec nodded then, feeling foolish, opened a channel and gave the mental equivalent of the nod. He felt the presence at the other end grin before breaking contact. The next problem was standing up. Although he wasn’t endowed with the telegraph pole Tiffany attributed to him, Alec was quite large enough to make standing up a problem. As inconspicuously as he could manage, he used the old trick of tucking it behind his belt and untucking his shirt a little so as to hide the bulge pressing against his stomach. After that he had to deal with standing – an action that rubbed the oversensitive appendage a little too much – and hope that he could keep a straight face as he walked to the teacher’s desk.

“Are you alright, Alec?” Ms. Matthews asked, lifting her glasses on their librarian-esque chain and taking a look at his face. What she saw was a pale, sweating teenager who looked like he was on the brink of passing out. The plain truth was that Alec was pale from the shock of having his head swamped with somebody else’s thoughts, and coming to the realisation that he’d be in serious trouble if he and Tiffany were ever alone together in the same room.

“Not feeling too well, Miss,” Alec explained vaguely, hoping that she wouldn’t send him to the sickbay. “I think I’ll be okay if I just go get a drink.”

“It’s so hot in here, isn’t it?” the elderly teacher asked, all concern. “Tell you what, you get a drink and sit downstairs in the shade for awhile. Take as long as you need, and if you’re still not feeling well I’ll have someone call your parents for you.”

Alec gave her his gracious but tired thanks, trying to keep himself in character. Walking slowly to act the part wasn’t a problem. A regular pace was out of the question with the pulsating monster concealed behind his belt. What with the lack of release this morning and the intense stimulation he’d just received, the simple motion of walking might land him a big, awkward stain on the front of his shirt if he wasn’t careful. Having no idea where exactly he was supposed to go, he just made a slow descent via the stairs and hoped nobody would see him. His luck held until he reached the ground floor, and the only one to see him was the one he was hoping to see.

“You’ll have questions, no doubt,” Menthayel interrupted his son. “Why don’t we go somewhere a little less public to discuss them?”

It wasn’t often that Alec managed to get a look at his father in direct sunlight. Normally when he put in an appearance it was in the dead of night and in Alec’s bedroom – usually long after the lights had been put out and Alec was asleep or reading. Apart from his usual black suit, there was very little difference between them visually. While Alec tied his hair back at school, Menthayel’s was a glorious, flowing mane. His fingernails were the polished black of volcanic glass, and his eyes were a slightly deeper shade of green. Even though Alec had put on quite a bit of height and bulk recently, his father still stood an inch or two taller than he did, and his face was a little longer, lacking the roundness of Alec’s youth. The overall effect made Menthayel look more the big brother than the father, perhaps a year or two older than his son. The other big difference was in their voices. The senior of the pair possessed a sharp, accentless voice that was precise and authoritative, whereas Alec spoke with a typical lazy Australian accent. Alec had no doubt that in a few years he’d be looking at his mirror image, and he wasn’t at all displeased with his future appearance.

“So,” Alec said when they arrived, jamming a cigarette into his mouth and offering his father the pack automatically. “What’s the occasion?”

“Occasion?” Menthayel asked, taking a cigarette before Alec could realise his mistake.

“Oh. Anyway, this isn’t the usual setting for one of our ‘meetings’. It must be something important for you to come here in broad daylight.”

“Sure,” Alec nodded. “Firstly, how did you know I was having a problem back there?”

“First and foremost, you’re my son. If you’re in distress, I know it. I couldn’t tell too much beyond the fact that you were in trouble, although it wasn’t anything life threatening, so I took a look and saw your problem. How long have you been reading minds, Aleck?”

Menthayel sighed. “Your angelic radar awoke years early, all by itself, but you’ve somehow learned to make shields. When I contacted you earlier you seemed well-acquainted, if not experienced with telepathy, and now you’re using a mental conduit to read the surface thoughts of humans. And then there’s…”

Alec was about to say ‘There’s what’ when he felt a probe try to intrude into his mind. Leaping to his feet, he clamped down on it and turned it away, shutting his mind with as much force as he could and doing his best to keep it that way. “Get the fuck out of my head!” he snarled without thinking.

“See? All of these things have happened only recently, and now you can not only feel me accessing your mind, but you can lock me out.”

“What gives you the right to go looking around in my head anyway?” Alec demanded. “It’s my fucking mind. Stay the hell out!”

“Aleck,” Menthayel growled, his voice dropping. “I am your father, and I demand to know who has been teaching you these things. If you insist on blocking me out, then-“

Menthayel’s shoulders slumped momentarily before he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, calming himself. “There are more things in this world – and in other worlds – than you know about. I’m only looking out for your best interests.”

“Can you? You don’t know what lengths I’ve gone to in order to keep you safe, Aleck. I’m your father. I can’t allow you to put yourself into a situation where you might get hurt.”

“Look,” Alec said, moving closer and sitting down again. “Whatever you’ve been doing to protect me, you can leave mind-reading out of it. The rest I don’t care about, but I need my privacy. There are things in here,” he tapped the side of his head, “that I don’t want anyone to know about, least of all my dad. Do you understand?”

“I could have asked you to kill those guys who were beating me up in school, and you probably would have done it, wouldn’t you?”

“Depending on the situation, then yes, I may have. Arranging for them to walk into the path of a speeding car wouldn’t be too difficult…”

“I want you to drop this. If I’m learning on my own, it’s because I want to, and it’s only making me stronger. Trust me when I tell you that I’m not in any danger.”

“You can’t. That’s part of having a teenage son. You can’t look after me all the time, and you can’t make my decisions for me. You’ve got to trust me.”

Menthayel shook his head and looked at Alec sharply. “I’ve been alive since before this Earth was formed. My age can’t be counted in years… and I’m feeling parental angst.” He smiled quickly, flashing his white teeth. “You’re growing up, Aleck.”

Alec returned the smile with a grin of his own. “Bound to happen eventually.”

Menthayel turned to leave, then faced Alec once more. “One more thing. Now that you have the ability, I’ll give you some advice about mind-reading.”

“Be careful whose mind you look into. You might find something you don’t like.”

Alec nodded. He’d already learned that lesson today! “I’ll try to be careful.”

The Seraph Menthayel disappeared in his usual fashion, leaving his son to ponder their conversation.

Her full name was Jennifer Marie Tynen, but she’d answer to nothing longer than ‘Jenni’. Calling her ‘Jennifer’ would only earn a cold stare, if she deigned to pay the transgressor any attention at all.

At a casual glance, there wasn’t anything truly remarkable about her even if she did warrant a second look and more often then not, a third. She was pretty, but pretty in a soft, cuddly, uncomplicatedly XOXO way. Her high cheekbones, full cheeks and narrow, dimpled chin gave her an adorable cherubic face and those small, gloss-coated lips made her so utterly kissable it simply wasn’t funny. Her hair, an anonymous brown with subtle blonde highlights, was messily parted slightly left of the middle and fell dead-straight in a feathered cut just past her slender shoulders. Her skin tone was a light copper which meant she probably wasn’t a hundred percent Caucasian, and she could easily have Polynesian, Indian or Eurasian blood flowing through her veins.

As far as appearances went, she was a typical modern Australian. An individual whose ethnic background was so muddled that it would be damn near impossible to decipher just by looking at her, thanks to the fact that Australia - as far as population ratios go - is easily one of the most multicultural countries in the world.

But it was her dark, almond-shaped eyes that really made her stand out. Those eyes alone, more often then not, were a clear indication of how she was feeling. Though her expressions and her words would often lie, her eyes could not. When she was angry, it was plainly obvious, but when she smiled, truly smiled, she could light up the entire room, but it would take an observant soul to notice that because putting a happy heart in her smile was not something that Jenni did too often. And almost never in public. All most people ever got to see was a cold, haughty, and distinctly unimpressed stare that instantly marked her as the queen bitch of powder kegs, just waiting for the proverbial match to provide the righteous excuse to blow shit up.

She idly batted a thick, wayward strand of hair away from her face and marched up to the checkout counter, fixing the thin, pimply clerk blatantly ogling her chest with her trademark expression. Pulling to a stop before him, she pressed her fist between her breasts – where he couldn’t fail to notice it - and slowly extended her middle finger so it pointed up towards her chin.

The clerk’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at her. The top of her head barely made it to his collarbone. He quickly did the math and decided she must have stood at 5’4 or 5’5 at the most. “You got any ID?”

Jenni snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Yeah, I got two of ‘em and you were checkin’ ‘em both out a moment ago.”

“Oh, a smartarse, then!” he snorted nasally in a lame attempt to get back at her.

Placing her palms on the counter, Jenni leaned forward slightly. “Look, I have neither the time nor the inclination to play these irritating word games. You gonna gimme’ my cigarettes or what?”

“I think I’m gonna go with the ‘or what’ option.” Pepperoni pizza-face smiled condescendingly. “After all, state law does require a valid photo ID to be presented when purchasing tobacco products and there’s that ten grand fine in place for selling smokes to minors. Frankly, girly, it’s simply not worth my time.”

He glanced around quickly to ensure they had the little corner store to themselves before fixing her with a devious grin. “Tell you what. You flash your ID past me, and I’ll sell you whatever you want, baby.” The way he emphasised the word ‘flash’ left no doubt as to his real meaning.

Jenni rolled her eyes. Typical friggin brain-in-the-pants arsehole! But she did need a nicotine fix fast or she was liable to snap and do something stupid. Like slug someone. And she was about three seconds away from dislocating a knuckle on this dick’s face. What the hell, she reasoned darkly, this wasn’t her neighbourhood and she could count the arseholes she knew around here on one middle finger. Sydney was a pretty big place and if she was lucky, she’d never have to see that arsehole, or this arsehole, or even this dump, ever again…

“Fine,” she hissed, “but two conditions: Look, don’t touch and the tar’s are on you.”

The clerk stared back at her disbelievingly but she refused to back down. He glanced around the store again before returning all his attention on the girl. She looked like she was maybe fifteen or sixteen, definitely a minor as far as the legal mumbo jumbo went, but her snug, sleeveless black sweatshirt couldn’t quite hide the fact there was something worth looking at under it. The girl may have been petite, but there was no doubt in his mind she had tits. Tits that he could probably see in a minute.

He dropped a pack of Griffins on the counter and grinned daringly. “You’re on, sweet-cheeks! Show us your pink bits!”

Looking more irritated than anything else, Jenni gritted her teeth and reached for the zipper at her throat.

Ten minutes later she sat brooding on the bench of a bus shelter a couple of blocks away, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth as she stared down at her small fists. Fists that smarted and were already starting to swell. Randomly flashing the ugly guy wasn’t quite as bad as she’d thought it would be. Not that the experience had been in any way, shape or form arousing, it was just merely… unpleasant. Something she could put behind herself without too much trouble and simply pretend it never happened. She was rather good at pretending things never happened. God knows with the sort of jerks she found herself surrounded by, she did it enough…

She shook her head in irritation. It was getting harder and harder to work out if she was still hiding behind her indifferent palisade or whether she’d become her indifferent palisade.

She looked up as a tallish blonde girl who looked like she’d just walked out of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue took a seat on the bench next to her.

“Left backhand, right-cross combo. Good strategy, but was slugging the guy in the mouth really necessary?” the blonde asked with an easy, but curious smile. “I mean that backhand fairly well screamed ‘I’m not a happy camper’...”

Jenni regarded the newcomer warily. “And what are you yapping about?” she inquired without inflection.

“The clerk down the road,” the blonde girl answered. “First you flash him, then you bust his lip. What’s the go with that?”

Jenni shrugged indifferently. “I told him not to touch. The prick had it coming.”

Jenni felt her anger rise. Who the hell did this Barbie look-a-like think she was? Flashing the guy had pissed her off more than she’d ever care to admit, but she was so mad at another asshole anyway that she needed the nicotine and she needed it ASAP. There simply wasn’t any other place for miles. And she’d frigging TOLD him not to touch! All she’d done was what she needed, to get what she wanted, and anyone that had a problem with that could just shove a telegraph post where the sun refused to shine. She had more than enough shit on her mind to waste even more time worrying about other people thought about her. She didn’t want their attention, or their sympathy, or their approval, or even their frigging understanding for that matter! She just wanted them to stay far the fuck away and leave her the hell alone. Was asking to be left alone really asking too much? Jenni didn’t think so, but then again, some people simply couldn’t frigging take a hint…

Jenni glared at the blonde. “Okay, look, lets get a couple of things straight before you really piss me off. Little Miss I-Give-A-Damn died, and unlike that prissy little goody-two-shoes bitch, her grumpy PMS-ridden roommate, me, simply doesn’t give a fuck what you, or anyone else for that matter, thinks about anything. Okay? So I’m gonna sit here and sulk and while I’m doing that, you can just go jump off a really high building. Feel free to scream just before you hit the ground so I know I’m one irritant down…”

“Steady on,” the blonde grinned disarmingly, “no need to knot your knickers! I was just making conversation is all.”

“Suit yourself,” the blonde shrugged as she extracted a white card from her slim Velcro wallet. She placed the card on the seat between them and stood up. “Name’s Eliza by the way and if you really want answers to explain those shadows that keep following you around, you’ll gimme a call. Later…” At that, she turned and walked off without a backward glance.

Still fuming, Jenni looked down at the card. It looked like a standard business card but instead of the usual name, credentials and job title, it merely had a grey embossed symbol, a mess of swirling lines whose meaning baffled the eye, on the front. Vaguely intrigued, Jenni flipped the card over. Handwritten in neat, flowing script on the inverse was a name and a cell phone number.

Still frowning, she slipped the card into the thigh pocket of her chinos. How the hell did this… Eliza… know about her dreams?

Later that evening, seated on the treated log as was the norm, Alec watched the revellers with a clinical sense of interest, categorically noting just how different they were from him. It wasn’t just the fact that he had the blood of the firstborn flowing through his veins and they were merely human, it was more than that. These people - classmates, friends of friends, and total strangers around the same age, they all had a boisterous air about them, as if they were living life to it’s fullest and taking no prisoners along the way. Making and burning bridges with a single-minded desire to have fun at all costs with a middle finger reserved for the consequences. Alec figured he enjoyed life – at least now, as much as the next person, but he could never quite find it in himself to be as outgoing as his peers. It felt oddly wrong to act so silly in public. In his own way, he rather envied them for their freedom. They could just show up, jump into a conversation with a couple of total strangers and after a couple of drinks, party like they’d known these people their entire lives. He could never do that, never treat strangers as anything other than strangers. With Marc or Allen, he could be sarcastic, on a one-on-one basis with anyone else, he could be civil, but that was about it. He never had the words, could never articulate the bullshit that ran through his head or make small talk until the sun came up. And wishing things could be any different was an exercise in futility.

“Dude, refill,” Allen held out his empty stubby, his attention fixed on the rather pretty blonde chick he was in the process of chatting up. Alec reached into the esky by feet, rummaged through the ice and then thrust a fresh bottle his friend’s way. Allen accepted the drink with an idle wave of thanks and continued on his quest to solicit nookie leaving Alec to his own company until Marc returned from wherever he’d disappeared to. With a slightly hostile glare at his mate’s back, Alec returned his attention to the rest of the party-goers cluttering up Dave’s backyard. It was going on ten o’clock and most of them were firmly on the fun side of tipsy: loud, obnoxious and horny. Save for the last condition, exactly like him…

A slight smile slid onto his face as he noticed Dave on the patio with his arm wrapped around the waist of a gorgeous, all too familiar girl. She’d dressed down tonight so as not to look totally out of place amongst a bunch of drunken teenagers. No make up save lip gloss, a little grey Nike half-shirt and a knee length black denim skirt replacing her usually intricate Gothic attire. Alec could tell she was trying not to stand out, but given how good she looked, not standing out was a lost cause from the start. He felt a nagging thought as the sight of her as ‘Chantelle’ triggered a vague… memory? but something told him not to worry too much about it. Chantelle caught sight of him immediately, whispered a few words to Dave and zigzagged carefully through the throng of drunks to the treated log Alec’s friends had long since claimed as their butt holders.

“Hey darling,” she grinned leaning down to kiss him on the cheek before taking a seat next to him.

Chantelle nodded and Alec wasted no time providing her with the beverage of choice. He waited until she’d taken the first sip before speaking. “So? You here for me or here to Hoover the sexual energy off more unsuspecting mortals?”

“A bit of both actually, but I figured that you’d be more comfortable seeing me before, as opposed to after, I’ve had my fun.”

Alec laughed, “I’d disagree if it’d be anyone else who looked as good as you, but yeah. The before would definitely be preferable. So, what’s up? Any vamps in the neighbourhood I should be aware of?”

Before Chantelle could answer, Marc chose to show up from wherever he’d been hiding for the last half hour or so. “Hey Alec, mate, you gonna introduce us?” he asked grinning at Chantelle appreciatively.

“Is it just me or am I missing something?” Marc frowned. As far as he could tell, his friend and this raven haired goddess seemed to be playing some weird sort of silent eye contact game. Odd because Alec wasn’t the sort to play eye contact games with strange pretty girls…

Alec looked around and found that the blonde had buggered off doubtlessly leaving his mate to continue the eternal search for nookie elsewhere. “Chantelle, Allen.” he intoned dourly.

“A pleasure,” Chantelle smiled sweetly, shaking hands with Alec’s friends in turn. She was cordal with Allen, but her gaze seemed to linger for a long moment on Marc. Alec couldn’t be sure, but he thought he felt something flash between her and his blonde friend. Whatever it was, it went by so fast that his novice telepath training wasn’t enough for him to make anything of it.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Chantelle said, “but could I borrow tall dark and handsome here for a bit? I’ll bring him back mostly intact…” she added with a sly look at Marc.

Marc and Allen exchanged startled glances but Alec quickly stood up and offered Chantelle his hand before either of them could object. “Be back later, keep my seat.” He said pulling her to her feet and leading her towards the house without a backward glance. Dave was generally against people wandering through his home so Alec took Chantelle into the not-really-off-limits garage instead. It wasn’t the most comfortable room in the house but he was looking for privacy, not comfort. Besides, it wasn’t like they were going to do anything more than talk anyway…

“That was abrupt.” Chantelle remarked as they took their seats on Dave’s workout bench.

“They’re my friends.” He answered tartly. “I don’t mind what you do and who you do it with, just stay away from them.”

Alec stared down at her and as eloquently as he could, explained. “Because.”

“Because?” Chantelle repeated, her nose wrinkling in a cute little frown as she took his hand in hers.

As always, her touch drained the negative vibes straight out of him. She irritated the hell out of him at times, but the second she touched him, it all faded. This gorgeous void jumper was someone he could trust, despite the fact there were things between them she chose to keep secret. But those secrets didn’t really matter much to him anymore. He felt safe around Chantelle, and he really couldn’t deny he loved her. It was a platonic love to be sure, but it was also unconditional. Strange, he mused, that I could come to love someone so quickly… but she was… who she was, and he couldn’t word it any more eloquently. He hadn’t set out to feel that way, but now that he did, loving her seemed totally natural, like he was supposed to love her. But loving her was one thing, opening up to her was another matter entirely.

“Because it grosses me out to think of my sister bumping uglies with my mates.” he said, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

Chantelle opened her mouth to protest but managed to stop herself as understanding suddenly filled her big grey eyes. “Your… sister…” she whispered, rolling the word off her tongue as if she were savouring the way it sounded. Then she beamed and squeezed his hand gently in a manner that told him, more than words ever could, that she understood, more importantly, accepted, where he was coming from. “I can live with being your sister Aleck. In fact, I think I rather like it.”

“So do I,” Alec admitted in a very frank tone, “it’s about the only way I can rationalise our weird relationship. Makes it much easier to come to grips with the fact I hang out with an amazing girl that I have no plans to screw.” He shot her a weak smile before adding, “Otherwise the whole setup would feel decidedly unnatural. Not that it isn’t unnatural enough already…”

“No your relationship, with girls in general.” Alec started to protest but Chantelle cut him off with a dismissive wave. “I think we’ve already established the fact that lying to me is more or less a lost cause darling. I promised I wouldn’t peek, but I don’t need to. I know you.”

“No you’re not. Not really anyway.” She grabbed him firmly by the shoulders, her eyes boring into his, “look, you need to stop mucking around, pull your dick out and fucking use it! You’re about the only single guy at this party not trying to get laid! You want nothing more than not to stand out but by not standing out, you’re standing out.”

“No excuses Aleck. Remember, you might have your magic and your heritage, but you’ve also got your humanity and humans like fucking, a lot. And I should know!” Her tone turned commanding, “it does you nothing good to deny the other half of your nature so for fucks sake, go get laid, and consider it an ORDER!”

Chantelle, a warm smile on her face, gave his hand another gentle squeeze. “Then trust me darling, it’s not totally unreasonable to assume there’s at least one chick in this place that thinks you’re cute. Just cheat a little, open up some channels and find out who’s interested and start there. You don’t need much else, you’re a teenager so improvise and spin some shit like any other teenager.” She intertwined her fingers with his, “look, it’s important that you start regaining some self-confidence and I can think of no better way off the top of my head than getting laid.”

“You would,” Alec suddenly grinned, “Miss I-can’t-keep-my-legs-crossed-for-five-seconds.”

She matched his grin with a dazzling one of her own. “So I’m a horny little flip-skirt, but you can’t say I’m lacking any confidence can you?”

Alec shook his head, a slight smile on his face. “Never that. Okay, I can’t promise I’ll score, but if you really think its necessary, I can at least promise to try.”

“I do, and you’d better, because there’s conflict in you and that’s not healthy.” Chantelle told him seriously. “I caught a glimpse of it when we first met, on one hand, you want female company, but set against that is the fact you won’t make any real effort to get it. That’s not being shy, or even being a gutless wonder, it’s the result of having a blue-green algae level of self-esteem. You just don’t believe you’re worth anything and that, sweetness, has got to change. I know you’re getting a lot more comfortable with yourself now, but its time you went all the way.”

She dug her elbow into his side playfully, “and besides, it’s not like you won’t have a great time either. All I’m asking you to do is sleep with some chick, not chop your dick off and sauté it…”

He lightly bumped his shoulder against hers. “Very Hannibal Lector of you, but I can’t argue with you there.”

“Duh,” Chantelle snorted flippantly, “because it’s about time you realise that aside from being a pretty face, my towering intellect ensures I’m always right.” She stood up and straightened her skirt. “Now c’mon, we’ve been here long enough and I think it’s about time we both went and got ourselves laid.”

Once back in Dave’s backyard, Chantelle suddenly grinned wickedly. <Wanna' turn your mates green and score some social points in the bargain?> she asked telepathically.

<Watch…> she sent, stepping boldly up to him. She flung her arm around the back of his neck, the move startling him enough that he didn't resist when she pulled him down. It was a movie kiss, all lip work and no tongue, but given the low light and the fact that most of the witnesses were more than a little drunk, utterly convincing. Alec had no idea how long it lasted, but he was quite breathless when Chantelle finally pulled away, a mischievous glint in her grey eyes.

“Have fun darling, but I’ve gotta split,” she said loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, “I’ll drop by later to finish what we started so keep your calendar open because this cat always gets her cream.” At that, she flashed him another naughty grin before she turned and walked away with a slightly exaggerated sway in her hips. More than a few of pairs of eyes followed her appreciatively.

Alec watched her go in stunned silence. She’d kissed him before, but never like that. It was a totally fake kiss and he still felt nothing for her that way, but she’d done it in front of everyone! A gorgeous girl had just kissed him in public! Alec felt a surge of elation rush through himself. It didn’t matter at all that it was faked, what mattered was that no one else knew. As far as every bystander here was concerned, the term ‘never been kissed’ no longer applied to him. One small step for anyone else, one rocket-propelled leap for his ego.

<Thanks, happy hunting,> he sent after her, unable to keep a pleased grin off his face.

“You’ve been holding out on us, you rat bastard!” Marc’s accusing tone cut Alec’s telepathic conversation short. “Just who was that girl, how do you know her, and what the fuck were the two of you doing wherever the hell it was the two of you went?”

“That’s for me to know, and you not to.” Alec answered smugly. “Hey Allen, chuck us a refill, I’m dying of thirst here.”

“Then die, pond-scum,” Allen shot back testily. “That way, me and my gook side-kick here can flip for who gets first dibs on that honey of yours.”

“Who the hell is that girl?” Liam demanded, his eyes evil little slits as he watched Chantelle stroll down Dave’s driveway.

His colleague, a tall lanky Watcher shrugged. “I’ve no idea, but she’s just a human. Aside from the fact she’s a great piece of ass, why bother with her? This is Turnam City and there’s never a lush piece of ass more’n a stone’s throw away anyway…”

Liam spun around furiously, “You dare question me Carter? Need I remind you of the fate that befell your yippy predecessor?”

Carter paled visibly. “Uh, no. I don’t think I need to be reminded, again…”

“Good, then shut the hell up and follow her. Find out everything there is to find out about that little whore. She’s getting awfully close to that damn half-breed and there’s a chance she knows something about him that we do not. We have a need of anything that may help us tip the balance to our favour. Now go.”

Liam turned to regard the tall dark haired teen sitting on a log in a friend’s backyard with unconcealed loathing. “You’re crow bait, boy,” he spat through clenched teeth.

Alec grinned at his friend evilly and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Nope.”

Marc burped, took another long pull at his bottle and glared at Alec. “You’re a cunt.” He declared solemnly.

Alec’s grin widened dramatically. “Is that a note of jealousy I hear in your voice?”

“Oh just a friend…” Alec said casually as he pretended to inspect his nails. He was thoroughly enjoying the prolonging of his friend’s torture. Chantelle had left the party almost an hour ago, but Marc seemed absolutely smitten by her and had actually told Allen’s blonde to ‘bugger off’ when she returned and tried to strike up a conversation with him. Alec had no doubt that the little something Chantelle had slipped into Marc’s mind had something to do with this. He knew Chantelle well enough to know that she was NOT above doing something as underhanded as that.

“Oh, I dunno…I mean she’s nice enough and she is quite pretty, but I’m not sure if she’s my type…”

Marc turned to Allen. “Hey dude, should we just kill this bastard now and find out who she is ourselves?”

“Sounds good to me. Let’s just get him very drunk and then push him into the path of an incoming train. As long as no one sees us actually push him and if we tell the story right, it’ll work just fine…”

“Wanna bet?” They returned in evil unison. Alec was on the verge of retorting when Dave showed up at their log and provided a welcome distraction for his mates.

Alec didn’t bother listening out for Dave’s reply. Their host wouldn’t know anything he didn’t already know about Chantelle so it was as good an opportunity as any to start opening channels as she told him to. He chose the small knot of girls that were customarily on their right to start with.

Opening channels was much easier for him after a full day’s practice in school and he could open one now without even looking at the person he was aiming at. All he needed to do was snap his pulses down around the person and that was all the ‘location’ his mind needed to do the rest. Alec didn’t need to turn his head for a visual confirmation to know the first channel he was opening was with Tracey. His pulses, little more than insubstantial brushes against her skin and clothing told him without a doubt, it was her. With a light mental prod, he opened the pathway between their minds and allowed her thoughts to flow into his head. And instantly regretted it.

The brunette’s surface thoughts came across like the opening credits for an episode of Baywatch, only without the bouncing tits. There were other bouncing things however and Alec lost no time in severing the connection. The last thing he wanted to see was a whole bunch of men who’d misplaced their swim trunks running around and dangling in the wind.

With a bit of trepidation, he tried again with Amber, rather pretty redhead within the same circle. This one wasn’t nearly as traumatic, but Amber was totally wrapped up thinking about was what her boyfriend, currently in Victoria, was doing, and who he was doing it with. Seeing as Alec really didn’t care about Amber’s boyfriend, and the fact she seemed quite preoccupied with her pondering meant she probably wasn’t going to be particularly forthcoming, he broke the connection again.

Andrea was next and Alec felt his heart give a little kick. This one had potential. She’d been rating the guys at the party the same way he and his friends usually rated the girls at the party. He quickly went through her personal scores and was slightly disappointed with his findings. To his credit, she hadn’t rated him too badly, but for some odd reason, she had Marc higher up on the breeding chain. That was irritating, and while he really shouldn’t be so choosy, Alec had no intention of playing second fiddle to anyone. Even for someone as hot as Andrea.

Alec tried a couple more girls after that but there were no real takers. Most of them were too preoccupied with things he thought were utterly trivial and didn’t seem susceptible to having the moves made on them. Not, he realised with a little chagrin, that he had any idea how to make the moves anyway. Social skills were not amongst his strong suites. He broadened the range of his pulses and began a much vaguer set of random scans. This was even easier than the standard channelling, and really did little more than ‘bounce’ off minds picking up impressions and thought ‘sketches’ rather than actual thoughts. The method was also faster because he could lock down several people simultaneously.

More crap. Alec shook his head in irritation. Who would have figured girls had this much shit running though their heads? But considering the amount of crap he and his friends talked about, maybe it wasn’t so surprising that the opposite sex was just as petty. He was about to give up and just get hideously drunk as was his usual practice when his channel probes bounced onto a mind so different from the ones he’d scanned thus far that he spilt his beer in surprise. It wasn’t that this girl had anything ‘alien’ in her head, she had exactly the opposite. Her thoughts were a haunting mirror of his own. Or at least how his used to look. She had that same irritated self-loathing that came close to spawning suicidal tendencies, but too uncaring, or perhaps too fucked up to go all the way. Mixed in were an odd concoction of frustrated rage and clinical indifference. Not, he reasoned in retrospect, a particularly pleasant or healthy mixture. He of all people should know.

All thoughts of getting laid were instantly purged from his head. Alec was more than a little curious as to who this girl was. The need to find the female version of his old mind-set overrode his need to get laid. He quickly dimmed the rest of his pulses, focusing solely on the one locked on that intriguing mind. Strangely enough, according to his pulses, she was inside the house! He didn’t think he could lock on people that far out of viewing distance and because he wasn’t really paying much attention to what he was doing earlier, hadn’t noticed his pulses had entered the house at all. But while that was nice to know, it wasn’t getting him anywhere. Finishing the last of his beer, he simply told his friends he was off to the dunny and headed straight for the patio door, pulling his aura tightly around himself as he did so. The aura shield meant he’d have to release his lock on his ‘other half’ but Alec wasn’t really concerned. He’d visited that mind already, and once he got inside the house, he shouldn’t have any trouble finding it again.

He found her upstairs in the lounge room slouched in a comfy leather recliner watching the ‘The Craft’ on TV, a bowl of popcorn on her lap and a glass of what looked like coke in hand. And she did look pretty fucked up. As in pretty, and fucked up, like if Delta Goodrem and Gwen Stefani were dykes, and dykes could conceive without any male input, then she’d be the muddled daughter they had. Her straight shoulder-length blonde hair was liberally streaked sky blue with emerald green tips and she had random braids here and there to prevent it looking any more monotonous. Her skin tone was middling, neither pale nor dusky, but rather an anonymous tone somewhere in the middle and she was dressed in a black long sleeved T-shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants. Blue-green eyes, big and almond shaped but too serious to be considered cute, regarded him with a mixture of curiosity and irritation. Her features were sharp, chiselled almost, and she was more than a little attractive, though Alec couldn’t quite decide whether or not the multiple piercings enhanced her looks. She had a barbell through her left eyebrow, a stud in her left nostril, another under her bottom lip and triple pierced ears, all in gleaming surgical steel. Simple, almost utilitarian jewellery. She looked kinda like a punk rock hippy with a penance for pain, but all things told, the look worked for her. Probably not the easiest to approach and fairly unnerving to look at, maybe, but by no means ugly.

“You lost? The party’s downstairs.” She said before taking a small sip of her drink. “Just go back down the stairs, head down the passage and it’s the first door on your left. Follow the noise and you’ll get there.”

Alec got an idle wave at the couch. “Fucked if I care,” she told him, her attention already back on the movie, “but just so you know, if you decide to on a technicolour yawn in here, Dave’s gonna deep fry your testicles and make you eat em.”

Alec decided against replying and took a seat on the couch instead. He’d seen ‘the Craft’ a couple of times already – not because he thought there was much substance in the magic portrayed, but because he thought Neve Campbell looked hot as a sulky Goth - so the movie held little interest for him, but the girl certainly did. Hers wasn’t a conventional attractiveness, but on her, it worked well. A punk rock look, but a serious punk rock look where ‘fucked if I care’ was a forgone conclusion rather than a defiant statement. But it seemed like a façade. She might not have wanted to care, but try as she might, his visit through her mind revealed enough hints to imply she simply couldn’t help caring. That was probably where the self-loathing came in, just like it’d been for him.

Alec reopened the channel between them and began monitoring her surface thoughts. Because Chantelle hadn’t actually gotten around to teaching him how to dig, he couldn’t get much more than a feel for her mind and her surface thoughts, and those were just a mixture biological info - she was a little chilly and needed to pee - and her thoughts on the movie; which weren’t particularly favourable since Neve Campbell as a Goth did nothing for her. That was about all he could get because if she wasn’t actively thinking about it, he couldn’t see it.

A few minutes later the movie ended with that amusing ‘I-can-fly’ nuthouse scene and she began flicking channels to look for something watch. “You’re Alec, right?” she asked suddenly, twisting sideways in her recliner to look at him.

“Nadine, Dave’s totally whacked left of the middle sister.” She answered with a slight smile, “I’m on my break from the University of Sydney so I’m crashing here for a couple of weeks. Now if you don’t mind me asking, what are you still doing here? Last time I checked, you had a girl most guys would die for on hand and not apparently adverse to spending time in your company. Shouldn’t you be out chasing her tail?”

Alec was moderately curious about the motives behind her question, but an irrational impulse not to cheat caused him to shut down his channel. If they were going to talk, then they were going to talk. And he wasn’t going to pre-empt her.

“Chantelle? She left awhile ago,” he answered before returning a questioning look of his own, “you checked?”

She held up her glass. “Well, I went out for a refill and I did manage to catch the tail end of your kiss. Rather… extravagant.” Her tone was dry and her expression bland. There was nothing to hint at her thoughts on that kiss.

Fuck it! Alec decided, fair play be damned. He opened up the channel again and was surprised to find Nadine directed a fair bit of jealousy at Chantelle. Not merely because of what his sister looked like, but more to do with the fact the brunette seemed to have at all together: the looks, the body, the confidence and the cutie. Kuweeel, Alec grinned to himself, she thinks I’m a cutie...

Alec considered his options and came to the conclusion that a half-truth wouldn’t hurt, too much. At any rate, it gave him something to talk about and that was infinitely better than floundering now. “Well, me and Chantelle, we’re not… uh, going out or anything. She’s a really good friend, but that’s all.”

“Uh-huh.” Nadine said in a sceptical tone. “So you guys are just friends who fuck or something?”

Alec visibly winced. Since getting to know Chantelle, he found the thought of actually slipping her his pride and joy, repulsive. Thinking of her as his sister played a big part in that, but he really liked what they already had and he felt that if they slept together, things would change between them. And he didn’t see how any change could be for the better. Chantelle was worth far more to him as a friend and an understanding shoulder than as somewhere to hide his dick.

“No, we’ve never done that, and neither of us have any plans to. Actually, I think that kiss was just some sort of female ploy to drive one of my mates crazy.”

Nadine leaned forward slightly, her expression one of mild interest, “Oh yeah? Which one?”

“Marc, the short blonde guy. Chantelle thinks he’s cute and apparently he feels the same way about her. After she left he just couldn’t stop asking about her. Buggered if I know how kissing one guy makes a girl more attractive in the mind of another, but what would I know, I’m not a girl…”

“So you guys are really just friends? Never thought I’d see that.” She shot him a funny little smile, “you gay?”

Nadine’s expression turned musing. She glanced at her empty glass and then noticed Alec was without a drink. “So ya done for the night or you wanna refill?” she asked neutrally.

“Bourbon and coke but the Beam is downstairs, if you want, I could grab you a beer on the way back…”

“Patio table with the rest of the battery acid, coke’s in the downstairs fridge.”

“One to four?” he asked referring to the ratio of bourbon and coke that was going into her drink.

Alec was impressed. Not even his friends could drink at that sort of ratio for very long without throwing up. It didn’t stop them from trying, but even Marc, to whom drinking was practically an occupation, had enough common sense not do it unless coke was in short supply. Then again, now that he’d had more time to look Nadine over, he realised that she was a couple of years older than he and his friends. Maybe nineteen or twenty if she was already at uni, and so she’d probably had more time to acclimatise her insides to battery acid abuse. “Brave girl, when you graduate to one to two, gimme a call. I could do with a mate that can keep up…”

Nadine’s eyes narrowed evilly, “Well if you wanted to get broken over my knee, why didn’t you just say so? Bring it on then!”

While her smile was open and almost friendly, Nadine’s tone was ominous. “We’ll see…”

The question was what to do about it? She could kill this Watcher, that would be easy enough, but it’d also be counter-productive. The mind shields she used to hold her human persona had held under their scrutiny earlier, and as far as they’d be able to tell, she was just another ordinary person. They were most likely just fishing for information and she saw no reason to alert them to the fact that she was much more than she seemed. No, it was safer for Aleck if they only saw what she wanted them to see. But what to show them…?

A beautiful devious grin slid onto her perfect features, and for a split second, her grey eyes flashed a deep violet. They wanted a show? Then she’d give them a show!

They were on the couch, facing each other with an ashtray and a half-empty bottle of Bourbon on the coffee table beside them.

Nadine held her shotglass up solemnly, her eyes fixed on the amber liquid within. “And then he left,” she said in a morose tone. “Said he didn’t understand why I was being so fucking contrary, that I was just too much trouble to deal with, and walked his skinny arse out.” She brought the rim of the shotglass to her lips, jerked her head back and with a practiced flick of the wrist, upended the shotglass sending the bourbon straight down her throat. “Nngghh! Prick!” she spat a moment later.

“Prick sounds ‘bout right…” Alec murmured, prying the shotglass out of her fingers. It had taken a while for Nadine to open up, but now that she had, she couldn’t seem to shut up. He poured himself a shot and slammed it home, wincing a little as it cauterised his throat.

“Why are guys just so fucked up?” Nadine demanded, pulling herself a little closer to him. There was a bright intense look in her eyes that was more than a little unnerving. “I mean sometimes, when he kisses me for like no reason at all, its just so fucking perfect that I wish I could just hit ‘pause’ and live in that single moment forever but then, like two seconds later, he’s being a jerk and tellin’ me I need to do this, this way or some shit. Why can’t guys just accept how you are instead of trying to change every little thing they don’t like about you?”

Alec shrugged noncommittally. The whiskey was really starting to kick in and he was having trouble paying attention to what she was saying. He had no doubt she was passionate about whatever the hell she was yammering on about, but it took all of his remaining concentration just to spout what he hoped were neutral comments. He really did want to be more attentive to her, but the alcohol was really making it hard to focus. By contrast, Nadine seemed to have a tireless energy about her when she was worked up, and she was definitely worked up then. The alcohol hadn’t done much to slow her down other than to cause her to slur her words every so often.

But damn if she didn’t look cute when she was pissed! He thought with a dopey smile.

Alec blinked and established a channel automatically. Fortunately for him, the question was still floating around in her head. It was one of those annoying hypothetical ones but her hot stare told him he better have something smart to say. He took a deep breath and adlibbed, hoping for the best. “I dunno, I guess its just human nature. People always wanna change stuff they don’t like into something that suits them better.” He swallowed nervously and took a gamble, “but most guys would claim their girlfriends are just as guilty of committing the same sin.”

Nadine stared at him and for a panic stricken moment, Alec was sure his gamble had backfired. Then she chuckled ruefully. “I guess you’re right.” She admitted, her expression turning thoughtful, “and when it comes to nagging, girls have got it down to an art form. But I’m done now so thanks for letting me get all that crap off my chest.”

She suddenly leaned forward and hugged him before he had time to react, then, as if she felt her emotions were getting the better of her, pulled away just as quickly and cut an anxious glance at the bottle of whiskey. “Hey, there’s still bourbon left in that bottle. Let’s fix that!”

Alec shook his head, trying to hide a relieved smile that he’d gotten through that unscathed. He poured her a shot which she downed with her usual gusto before pouring himself another. “To a more understanding other half,” he smiled, raising his glass in an impromptu post.

“Amen,” Nadine agreed with a solemn nod as Alec drank his shot. She hugged her knees to her chest and stared down at her feet despondently. “But with my luck, I may as well just save myself the trauma and join a frigging convent.”

“Fuck that for a bad joke!” Alec snorted. “A convent? Are you out of your damn mind? Christ woman, I’m hardly a fan of that sort of self-inflicted torture,” he indicated her piercings with an idle wave, “but you’re way too pretty to waste your life like that!”

He wasn’t trying to hit on her, but his blood was practically 80 proof and the alcohol had loosened his tongue to a point where he couldn’t be bothered dancing around what he felt was the truth. As far as he was concerned, she was pretty and her looks would be wasted if she went did something stupid, like get celibate. That he had a contemptuous view of voluntary celibacy as a rule made his outburst even more valid in his own mind.

Nadine shot him an uncertain look. “You mean that?” she asked in a very unsure sounding voice.

Alec snorted again. “No, I said that because it amuses me to make sounds with my mouth. Of course I frigging meant it! For fucks sake, haven’t you ever taken the time to look into a mirror? You’ve got gorgeous, if a bit too serious eyes, a good classical Roman bone structure, great hair – though you might wanna consider brushing it every now and then… and the piercings, if anything, make you stand out from the pack. In short, you’re hot.”

He remembered Chantelle having more or less this same talk with him only the day before and now he could understand where she’d been coming from. It must have been so frustrating for her to see him unhappy with his own image. Something he only really understood now that he got to be on the other side of the equation. But at the very least, Chantelle shown him that it wasn’t all bad and her talk had boosted his confidence in himself tremendously. He’d sensed in Nadine, a kindred spirit the first time their minds met and he was suddenly filled with the desire to do anything he could to give her the same boost. Someone had taken the time to give it to him, it was only right that he return to favour as soon as the opportunity presented itself. That he actually believed in what he was saying justified the whole thing.

Nadine got off the couch, her expression suddenly very determined. “Come with me.” She said reaching for his hand.

Nacht seemed like a good enough place to go. She wasn’t properly dressed to get through the door, but that was nothing a little magical make-over couldn’t fix. For the benefit of her personal Watcher, she popped a random locker at Central station, grabbed the small knapsack she found there and headed into the ladies room. Half an hour later she emerged decked out in long sleeveless dress of black lace and the fuck-me boots she preferred as ‘Chantelle’. After returning the pilfered knapsack to its locker, she left the station and headed at a leisurely pace down Royal Avenue. The club was only three blocks away and she waltzed through the doors approximately ten minutes later. Customarily filled with predators and prey, Chantelle was sure Nacht would be perfect setting to find someone to help her distract her new minder. She flowed gracefully across the ground floor, scanning the crowd with both her eyes and mind probes that were launched and extracted so fast her minder wasn’t even aware she was using them. She needed someone who looked the part, could act the part, but wasn’t likely to be seriously averse to her idea. As a last resort, she could always force someone to help her, but that was strictly a last resort.

There were a couple of close calls on the first floor, but no real takers. Turning her head slightly, Chantelle caught a glimpse of the Watcher at the very edge of her peripheral vision. He was leaning up against a pillar, his relaxed poise and black on black attire helping him blend in without difficulty. She could tell at a single glance that this one was good. His shields were set deceptively low, but she could tell they were rigorously maintained by an extremely able and alert mind. At the slightest hint of an intruding probe, he’d lock down his thoughts and jack his shields up as high as they would go. Had a human telepath been trying to get into his mind at the time, they’d be left momentarily stunned and would probably be nursing a splitting headache for days. And after his shields were up, the Watcher would be all but immune to a telepathic takeover. That wouldn’t stop her killing him, but dead, he was worthless to her. The Sigurdians weren’t the only ones who were fishing for information.

Turning her back on him, she ascended the stairs to the second level and continued her search. She was half-way across the floor when someone bumped into her shoulder. Chantelle spun around expectantly, her defences already in place and a moderately powerful attack spell that would cause massive neural failure to its target, ready to be unleashed, but the second she caught sight of her would-be assailant, she relaxed as a sly smile slide over her features. The search was over. She’d just found her playmate…

Alec followed Nadine into her room and glanced around. Most of her stuff was already packed away so the bedroom was pretty empty, just a bunk up against the wall under the window, a TV stand in the far corner and a large mahogany stained closet across from the bed. He turned around and to his surprise, was immediately pounced on! Nadine pulled his head down and kissed him long and hard, her tongue forcing itself into his mouth with unnecessary violence.

“Hey steady on,” Alec stared at her in surprise – and not a little lust – when he finally managed to pull free. “What’s the rush?”

“The rush is that someone’s eventually going to come look for us and I’d much rather be found alone than explain why I’m in the company of a guy with my knickers around my ankles.” Nadine answered breathlessly. “Now shut up and kiss me!”

“Yes ma’am!” Alec dove back in, his eagerness filling the gap left by his inexperience. He couldn’t believe it! Losing his damn virginity was now a very definite possibility! And good riddance too! The bastard thing had been following him around like a bad smell all his life. He wrapped his arms around her, unwilling to let her go now that things were definitely moving in the right direction. He was in a major sensation overload. Her hair had the faint scent of a lavender-ish shampoo, he could taste the bourbon on her tongue, feel the heat from between her legs against his thigh. But most apparent was the diamond consistency hardness of the principal organ of male thought pressed up against her belly. An organ he fervently hoped would be buried to the hilt in her as soon as possible. He hadn’t come here to get in her pants, but now that it was in the offering, the Hulk armed with TOW missiles wouldn’t stop him!

Nadine suddenly broke free and Alec felt his disappointment knew no bounds, but that was quashed a moment later when she used her newfound freedom to pull her t-shirt over her head. She hadn’t been wearing anything underneath but Alec only managed to catch the barest of glimpses at her breasts before she was back in his arms, her fingers tearing at the buttons of his shirt as her tongue tried to strangle his.

He could see the open door over her shoulder and as much as he hated to pull his tongue out of her mouth, something had to be done about that damn door! The last thing he needed now was Dave or Shane walking in. Alec instinctively knew that neither of them was going to react favourably to him having their half naked sister in his arms. Under any circumstances. It was a brotherly prerogative.

But this was his first real dental inspection and it promised to lead up to his first non-solo fluid transfer and nothing short of a fiery Armageddon-ish Second Coming was going to interfere with that! Keeping his lips firmly planted on hers, he simply backed Nadine up in the direction of the door until he could push it shut with one hand. Nadine sensed what he was trying to do and he felt her fingers brush against his as she reached behind herself to lock the door. To Alec, the metallic snick of that lock was about the sweetest thing he’d ever heard. If current events were any indication on the not-too-distant-future, his virginity was going to have to send him a postcard.

Nadine finally managed to get his shirt unbuttoned and he was forced to let go of her to get it off. By unspoken agreement, they attacked her sweatpants next and in mere moments, she was wearing nothing more than his pulses.

“The lights!” she panted, grabbing his head tightly as he trailed light kisses down the side of her neck. “Hit the lights.”

Alec didn’t need to reopen a channel to know what was on her mind. It was the same thing he’d have thought about doing six months ago. But this was fucking ridiculous! She was hot and if it was the last thing he was going to do, she was going to have to learn that single fact. When they were done, she wouldn’t need to play with this bullshit anymore.

He stopped himself quickly. He couldn’t talk to her the way Chantelle had talked to him. Chantelle was a special case. He trusted her, loved her even. That sort of relationship didn’t exist with Nadine and there was no reason at all for her to trust him. She’d spread her legs for him, maybe, but trust him? No. And anyway, she was older than he was so lecturing her like a wayward child would come across sounding patronising. If he came out and told her straight what was wrong, she’d instantly go on the defensive and reject everything he said. It was something he would have done in her place. Nadine would just clam up and lash out. But maybe, just maybe, being a teenager would work. Chantelle did tell him to improvise…

He put his hands on her hips and pushed her out a little more. “Lights?” he asked with a grin, deliberately looking her up and down. “What and miss out on all the visual splendour? Not on your life sweetness! It’s not every day I get the chance to get hot and bothered with a chick that looks half as good as you do! Na-huh, I plan to get the most out of this and that means the full sensory treatment!”

Nadine stared up into his eyes, her expression uncertain and not a little apprehensive. She looked about ready to bolt out the door, but the haunted look in her eyes told him she was too startled to react that way just yet.

“No but’s,” Alec said tapping her lightly on the tip on her nose. “Where’s the fun in unwrapping a present if you can’t see it?”

She frowned for a moment and then burst into giggles, her nervousness flowing out of her as she reached for his belt. “Well seeing as your present is already unwrapped, maybe its time we get to mine!”

“About bloody time if you ask me!” Alec said, covering up his own nervousness with feigned irritation. This was all uncharted territory for him and no-one had seen his dick since he started dressing himself. “The poor bastard’s suffering a chronic case of neglect.”

Nadine slid down the length of his torso until she was on her knees before him. His belt already unbuckled, all it took was a single yank and his jeans and boxers were around his ankles. “Well he might be neglected, but he’s certainly up and begging for attention.” She grinned cheekily up at him.

“He’s still feeling neglected.” Alec huffed, unsure whether these idiot lines came from the fact he was gloriously drunk or because he was finally likely to get laid. Probably a bit of both…

“Poor baby, but I’ll fix that!” Nadine declared. Without further ado, she grabbed the base of his cock, opened wide, and pulled him forward into her mouth.

Alec’s pulse quadrupled. HEAD! He was getting head! Some chick had just put his dick in her mouth! Okay, she was more than a little drunk, but she was awake and doing it voluntarily! He watched in spellbound awe as Nadine worked on him, her right hand gently stroking the half of his cock that she couldn’t comfortably fit into her mouth. He couldn’t even begin to put it into words and he definitely couldn’t stand it for long. Her slow, sensual, oral massage was driving him out of his fucking mind!

Nadine pulled him out of her mouth long enough to say ‘tell me when…” and then she was back at it with a vengeance. The sensual massage was replaced with a suction that made a Hoover seem like a blow-dryer by comparison. Any resistance Alec had left was gone after that. His brain stopped working after all of three seconds. His dick had taken over and it was utterly convinced life just didn’t get any better!

She quickly pulled away, and pumped him with her fist but the loss of her mouth on him wasn’t enough for him to hold back. Her suction had ensured the process was already in motion and two jerks was all it took for Alec’s world to explode. For almost a minute afterwards, it was all he could do just sit next to her on the floor and breathe.

Alec wiped the sweat off his brow and stared at her with wide eyes. “Damn straight!” he declared adamantly. “That was… fucking amazing!”

“Yeah well,” her tone was somewhat hesitant, “I thought you might be a little disappointed that I didn’t…”

Nadine nodded, her lips curling into an awkward apologetic grin. “I prefer not to.”

“Well maybe a little,” Alec admitted, thinking about how good it might have felt to have her lips wrapped around him right until the very end. He reached out and wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders and pulling her closer to him until their faces were just inches apart. “But it’s not like I’m complaining because that, was simply unbelievable and anyway, I’d much rather not taste myself on your tongue if it’s all the same to you.”

“You could always just avoid kissing me…” she parried playfully but Alec saw straight through her weak attempt at humour to the gist behind her words.

“Like hell!” he snorted before bringing the conversation to a temporary halt by showing her just why he wasn’t disappointed he hadn’t come in her mouth. Personally, he couldn’t see what the big deal was about. If he was so against tasting his own jizz, there were bugger all reasons for her to want to. And either way, while he had no-one else to compare her to, he thought Nadine was a great kisser and just being able to kiss her after such an earth shattering experience without the risk of dry-retching more than made up for her mouth not being a cum depository in his mind.

“Hey, as fun as this is, I think we oughta migrate.” Alec said when they finally came up for air. At Nadine’s confused look, he pointed at her bed. “It’s probably a lot more comfortable than the floor.”

“Oh, okay then.” Her expression took on a devious taint. “But don’t think I’m done with you yet!”

Getting into bed was hardly a graceful affair with Alec trying to be as attentive as possible to all the features that made the female form, the female form. Gravity finally took over and they tumbled into bed with Nadine on top and Alec’s nose buried quite comfortably between her breasts. She had an odd tattoo that ran across her chest just under her collarbone, some sort of Celtic looking cross in the centre with an interlocking set of triangular links that ran up over her shoulders the same way a necklace might. It was an interesting design and Alec would have liked to study it a bit more if her boobs weren’t a gazillion times more interesting. The fact that the aforementioned assets were pressing against each of his cheeks only compounded his interest. He rolled her onto her side and attacked her neck with his lips as he reached up for those tits.

Nadine wasn’t particularly tall, about average height for a girl and had a figure that was soft, but surprisingly compact and proportional for her height. That meant she hardly had the biggest tits going, but they were firm, soft and filled his hands like they belonged there. And most importantly, Nadine had no objection to his hands being there. The feeling up lasted a couple of fun filled minutes before Alec suddenly remembered there’s more to a girl than tits. His fingers traced a light path along her side, over the curve of her hip and down across her silky thighs, thighs that parted to accommodate his questing fingers.

Nadine giggled into his mouth and rolled onto her back forcing Alec to move over her so as not to break their kiss. Her thighs opened to him and Alec instinctively rolled straight into her embrace. He felt her hand wrap around his cock and tug him urgently towards the hot wet opening between her legs. Because of the height difference between them, and the fact neither wanted to stop kissing, it took a little fumbling, some repositioning, and Alec being forced to arch his back uncomfortably before they got him lined up at her gates. Nadine broke their kiss, her eyes soulfully locked on his as she guided his cock into her hot wet pussy.

“Oh God...” Nadine groaned loudly as he slammed the entire salami into her with a single over-eagerly rough lunge. Her body accepted the intrusion valiantly but Alec froze, immediately cursing his clumsiness and worried that he’d hurt her. He needn’t have worried for Nadine was having none of that. She jack-knifed her body, hurling her pelvis up at him so hard that it almost threw him off her.

If not for the piecings, she would have looked almost angelic as she returned his grin. “That’s, how we’re playing!” Nadine affirmed with a devious little wink, swivelling her hips to grind her clit on the base of his cock. “Now quit asking stupid questions and get with the program already!”

“Your call…” Alec smiled. He hooked his arms behind her knees and leaned forward to grab her biceps, effectively opening her up and pinning her to her own bed. At first, his thrusts were a little ragged, but they quickly established a flowing rhythm and then things degenerated rapidly. Kisses that had originally been comfortably soft became bruising lip-locks and they hurled their pelvises at each other in wild abandon.

Nadine cried out every time he barged into her cervix and while he’d initially been worried someone would hear them, his concern was soon forgotten. There was no doubt in his mind that he got an intense thrill hearing her groaning under him. She was so wet and hot and vocal that everything not connected to Nadine and fucking Nadine’s brains out, had no place in his mind. She was the first to go, her body stiffening under him as she threw back her head and groaned so loudly he was forced to silence her with another bruising kiss. Alec slowed his thrusts down almost to a stop, and waited patiently for her to recover but the second her eyes lost their glaze, he was back to ramming her like it was the last day on earth.

Nadine matched him, stroke for stroke and her pelvic muscles squeezed him in ways he wasn’t even aware were possible. “I'm coming...come with me baby,” she urged desperately and that was all that he needed to send him over the edge. Alec felt his cock explode inside of her as Nadine continued to buck up against him. “That’s it baby. Uh-huh...” she panted.

Alec buried his face into the space between her cheek and her shoulder, his body shuddering as he coated her insides with his seed. Nadine ran her fingers through his hair, holding him gently in place as she ground her pelvis slowly in time with his involuntary little thrusts, milking the final drops of semen from his cock.

He pulled out of her with a wet pop, his eyes both amazed and not a little dazed. He brushed back a sweaty lock of hair away from her face and tried to come up with a clever line in the vein of Bruce Campbell but the best his brain could come up with was the proverbial breathless “Wow!” The kiss that followed was much more relaxed. After a minute or so, she pushed him off her and they lay on their sides facing each other with their foreheads millimetres apart. To Alec’s surprise, Nadine started to cry. She didn’t sob, or shake or do anything overtly dramatic, her eyes just welled up and tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Hey…?” Alec began hesitantly but she cut him off with a slight shake of her head and leaned even closer to him. He didn’t need to open a channel to see what she wanted and immediately drew her closer, swallowing up her slender form in a tight, but not crushing embrace. She was so small and he felt an odd, almost paternal need to hold her, hug her and never let go. She just felt like she belonged in his arms with her head tucked under his chin. It was a lame outdated chauvinistic view, he decided ruefully, for she was her own person and he was hardly qualified to be her knight in shining armour, but for now at least, Nadine needed to be held and he was more than happy to hold her.

“I love you,” Nadine slurred into his chest before closing her eyes contentedly and finally succumbing to sleep. Alec pulled her limp form closer as his post-orgasmic sensations ebbed. He could see now why Chantelle was so obsessed with getting laid. He knew it was going to be good, but nothing had prepared him for how good it was actually going to be. A big stupid grin spread across his face as he lay there listening to Nadine’s breathing.

Alec finished buttoning up his shirt and looked down at the girl who’d given him the best night of his life. Nadine looked so peaceful, so undeniably beautiful, at rest that he didn’t have the heart to wake her just to say he was leaving. Just getting out of bed had been a chore because it felt so right to have her snuggled up in his arms. Spying an open notebook on her desk, he jotted down his phone number and his email address. After a moment of thought, he added, ‘thanks for a great night, keep in touch…’ before tearing the page out, and folding it into a little square which he placed in her hand. Not the cleverest or the wittiest of notes, but Nadine was Nadine and he didn’t know how she’d react to anything more personal then that when she was sober. She had said she loved him, but Alec wasn’t putting anything on that. She was drunk, and sleepy, and under a post-orgasmic daze when she said that so he wasn’t going to hold her to anything. And anyway, it was only one night. The last thing he wanted was to come on too strong too early and risk getting laughed at. His ego - while it had been gaining ground rapidly - was still too fragile to take a hit like that, and anyway, it wasn’t like she was going to be around much longer. Uni would start again and she’d be in New South Wales for at least four months before he saw her again.

Just my luck, he told himself ruefully, I finally find someone I can ‘click’ with, who ISN’T violently opposed to fucking me, and she spends three quarters of the year a couple of hundred miles away.

Taking one long last look at her, he pulled her blanket up over her bare shoulders and kissed her lightly on the lips. That was about all he had time for. The sun was already peeking out over the rooftops across the street and Alec guessed it was probably close to five o’clock. If he was lucky, he’d be able to leave and get the first train out before anyone realised he was still here. The sneaking wasn’t for his sake – for he was still wildly elated to no longer be a virgin – but for Nadine’s. He didn’t know how she’d feel about everyone knowing that they’d been playing hide the salami and felt it was much safer to keep things under wraps until they’d had time to get their stories straight. He was so wrapped up being elated and considering his options with Nadine that he completely failed to pay attention to his pulses. As a result, he opened her bedroom door and walked straight into Dave, her brother.

“We need a chat dude.” Dave said in a tone that didn’t leave alternatives. And Dave could afford to use that sort of tone. At 6’4 and built like a Sherman tank, he already had the stature, if not the temperament, of a nightclub bouncer. It was a known fact that Dave was the main reason his parties were generally peaceful affairs. No one in their right mind would pick a fight with him unless they were packing an M60 or two. Alec remembered seeing Dave systematically beat the last overtly smart smartarse at his party down to bloody pulp without breaking a sweat. Dave wasn’t just big, he was fast and more importantly, knew how and where to hit. That hadn’t been a fight, it’d been an absolute shit-kicking, and Alec, who’d been on both sides of the equation, knew a good shit-kicking when he saw one.

Faced with that, he simply nodded. He felt he knew where Dave was coming from, and so it was only fair to hear him out. And a scuffle here in the passage would only wake Nadine. Something he pointedly didn’t want to happen. “Where?”

The walk through the house was simply torture. Alec’s initial decision to see this through was steadily being eaten away as his discomfort grew. Just what the hell had he gotten himself into? It was almost a relief when they finally made it to the garage. At least now, Dave could get everything he needed to say off his chest and they could be done with it.

“You fucked her didn’t you.” Dave began as an opener. The way he said it made it clear this wasn’t a question. Alec nodded, careful to keep his expression neutral. Looking smug would probably cost him teeth.

“Okay, now that we’ve covered that little fact, what are you going to do about it?”

“What are you going to do about it?” Dave’s tone was still even, but his eyes showed he was clearly pissed. And alcohol had nothing to do with it.

“Okay, look, my sister’s kinda fucked up.” Dave began, “she’s just broken up with her boyfriend and while I think that’s a good thing, because me and Shane were two seconds away from pile-driving that prick’s head into a brick wall, it also means she’s really depressed at the moment. Now some people just get drunk or sulky or pig out when they’ve got the shits, but Nadine’s different. See when she’s sulking, she’s got fuck all self-esteem and that makes her particularly vulnerable. Getting into her pants when she’s like that is easier than finding an excuse to spit on that bastard Dougie.”

Dave shrugged, his posture suddenly more relaxed. “Now by rights, I should just kick your arse here and now for taking advantage of my sister, but it’s unlikely that you’d have known about that so I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Thanks,” Alec said, careful to avoid sounding like a smartass. Taking Dave on was a fifty-fifty thing and he really didn’t want to trade punches if it was at all avoidable. “So what happens now?”

Dave lunged forward and grabbed a fistful of Alec’s shirt. “Forget… it… EVER… HAPPENED.” The taller boy spat through clenched teeth. “Nadine may be my big sister, and she may have issues and shit, but I’ll be damned if some pouncy little goth fucks her and then fucks her over but telling all his wanker mates about it! Nadine makes like she don’t care what people say about her but I’ve seen her in tears more times than I care to count and I ain’t gonna fucken see it again so help me Allah! Now to be real honest, I don't give a three-way gorilla fuck who she screws, so I guess that includes you, too, but if you give her, me, and my family a bad rep’ by, say, runnin’ around and telling everyone you know that you just fucked my sister’s brains out, I'll saw ya dick off with a butter knife an’ add it to the collection of cast-off male appendages in her bedroom drawer. Capish?”

Alec’s eyes narrowed angrily as his pulses lashed out, sizing up the room so he’d know everything he’d need to about his environment and the potential weapons it contained if it came down to a fight. “Let’s get a couple of things straight jackass! First off, I happen to like your sister okay! Some of that is because I fucked her, but most of it is because of who she is. You might not believe that, but you can shove your three gorillas up your ass sideways for all I care. Second, I had no intention of running around telling all my mates I just fucked her because if you haven’t noticed, I’m not the most social person there is. And lastly, if anyone hurts that girl, you and your brother can fucking join the queue because I’ll be at the front of that whup-ass line! Other than that, yeah, CA-fucking-PISH!”

Dave let go of Alec’s shirt, his expression clearly startled. Then he let out a loud laugh and clapped Alec on the shoulder with the sort of bone-jarring pat Alec would have expected from Steve. “Ya got balls mate!” Dave declared approvingly. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, its cowering little wussies. Hell, I’m so impressed that I’m even willing to forget you just called me a jackass. C’mon, let’s go ‘ave a beer while we wait for your cab. Erh, by the way, you know that Chantelle chick who was ‘ere last night, you wouldn’t by any chance know her number now would ya?”

The Nephelim
Chapter 4
animus and Staine

Act IV

The Nephelim Chapter 4 animus and Staine

Act IV

The Nephelim
Chapter 4
animus and Staine