Ada nodded. “I don’t share that path with you—my
path has more peaceful means to power—but I understand and even on
occasion enjoy—“ her eyes flashed for a moment to Sullivan, who
grinned ferally back at her, “—playing with those who do follow it.
And as my calling is that of a healer, I have some understanding of
it.”
“The Mark that Vashte has put on you, combined with
your natural affinity with the ropes, has put you in the delicate
situation of being too powerful for your own good. As you’ve felt,
the power tends to run wild; as such, you become both a beacon for
those who would like to either utilize or destroy it.”
Brian frowned. “It’s really that cut and dried?
Couldn’t I reason with them somehow, or find a way to play that
would keep the power from growing within me, or something?” He
paused, trying to control the quaver in his voice. “Is my life
going to always be like this?”
Sullivan gave his shoulder another squeeze, and
Brian looked up at him, and was surprised at the serious expression
there. “Aye, Bucko, likelihood is it will be. What’s worse is that
it’s not like we’re organized or able to offer you any kind of
security. Sure, we’ve managed to save your bacon here, but for the
most part? It is just a ragtag group of people who happen to share
both a dislike for the system and the ability to manipulate power
of one sort or another. That’s all.”
“But… you all seemed so capable of taking care of
what went wrong today. You found healers,” he gave a squeeze to
Elyse’s hand on his thigh, “and Ada, you found me in the, the…
torture tower?”
Ada sighed. “Brian… no, I didn’t
find you. You led us to you. You and that rope. It was like a
beacon, and I only noticed it because… well, because some forces I
work with would not let me ignore it. And Elyse and Alan are
wonderful, yes… but I didn’t call them with my mind.” Sullivan
looked up suddenly with a grinning muttered“
I knew it!”
which she ignored. “They
were called last week to come over for tea with me this afternoon.
It just so happened that they were to arrive right after you showed
up on my rug… so I simply let things take their course.” She looked
a little embarrassed. “Normally I eschew such theatrics, but
Sullivan, the Rascal, tends to bring it out in people.”
“So no, there really isn’t any support system.
We’re just a bunch of different people who sometimes help each
other, sometimes do stupid things like what Vashte did to you, and
sometimes just get lucky. I’m sorry, Brian, but that’s the lot
you’ve thrown in with.”
Brian looked at her for a moment, and said, very
quietly, “What is the alternative? Nothing personal, I’m very
grateful to you all for what you’ve done, but I have to ask this:
what is so bad about just going and giving them what they
want?”
Ada looked at him sadly. “Aside from the loss of
the art and beauty you create, you mean? Aside from living your
life in a hollow imitation of your true potential? Brian, I will
describe a best circumstance for you, right now, something I have
seen happen before.”
“You will try to contact them. They will become
very solicitous and friendly to you. They will offer you what seems
to be a great job, something in the adult entertainment industry,
perhaps even doing rope work, maybe even going to Japan to study
shibari rigging with self-styled ‘masters’, and use your talent to
promote the vapid, cold and lifeless images they purvey.”
“Your friends and family will be taken from you by
the means of some scandal, whether contrived or actual—they are
quite gifted at tempting you into situations that you cannot
extricate yourself from. Drugs are the easiest way; and you would
find it is much harder to say no to a needle offered by a woman you
are lusting after than it is by men such as the one who held you
captive.”
“You’d find that, as the drug wormed its way deeper
into your life, your talent, your feeling for the ropes would be
blunted, fade away as you tried to fake it through repetition and
excuses. Finally, even the tawdry magazines would have no use for
you… and you’d still be hooked on whatever substance they put in
you in the first place. And since you’d be willing, at that point,
to do anything to get it… well, do I have to go on? I’d rather not;
all of us here have seen friends go through this, and know what
comes next, and I think we’d rather not be reminded.”
Brian sighed and rubbed his eyes. “No, no, I get
the picture. But I still don’t understand… what do I do next? I
have a wife who will be back from visiting her lover in New York in
a few days. What do I tell her? ‘Hon, we can’t have sex, or the
Missionaries will bust in and try to hook us on heroin.’” He leaned
forward and looked intently at Ada. “And what about my daughters?
They should be with their mother this weekend, but they would not
be hard to track down. And they would be the easiest way for these,
these Repressors or whoever, to get me to do what they want.”
Ada nodded. “Good questions, both, and like all
real answers, they are nested inside of each other.” She looked at
Alan and Elyse. “This is more your path than mine, so please let me
know if I go astray in my answer.” She returned to Brian, and said
again, “You need a Focus.”
Brian sat back again heavily.
“Back to that. What is it? Or, what did you say,
who
is it is a better
way to ask? And why can one help me and mine?”
“A Focus, Brian, is not traceable. Unlike you when
you manifest your power, when you use a Focus, the power can be
aimed, but cannot be traced back. You would be able to raise and
release the energy—doing vast amounts of good, I might add—without
fear of being traced.”
“With the help of the focus, you can first put
Wards over your daughters. They aren’t exactly shields as much as
distractions, but they will keep the ‘pressors—or at least, most of
their servants—from being able to even see them, much less harm
them.” She leaned forward, pushing her arms forward, and smiled as
Brian’s eyes automatically flicked to the cleavage suddenly
created. “Misdirection is always the easiest sort of sex magic to
work.
Brian flushed, snapping his eyes back up to her
face, and grinned when he saw her wry smile. “And there’s
more?”
She smiled wider. “Well, from what Sullivan tells
me, you and your wife are polyamorous?”
“Yes. We allow for outside romantic relationships,
besides our marriage, as well as the occasional play partner.
They’re always grounded in some sort of emotional context, whether
friendship or even love, which I guess sets us apart, somewhat,
from swingers, but the difference could be only in our own minds… “
He shrugged. “And that’s really the only place it matters, I
suppose.”
“And you don’t consider that cheating, Man?” Ada
held up a hand at Brian’s look of anger. “I’m merely playing
devil’s advocate, Brian. I think there may be some great potential
here, for some great good… but I need to know more about the bond
between your wife and yourself before I can be sure.”
Brian took a calming breath before continuing. “We
very carefully crafted our vows to each other so that there would
never be a need to cheat. For the most part, in terms of play, we
trust each others judgment, and if things begin to get deeper in an
emotional context, we take extra time to make sure the
communication is crystal clear between all involved parties.” He
grimaced. “Sometimes that can be agonizing. When she met Jake, her
lover in New York, where she is now, I think we must have spent
hours and hours on the phone, in chat, whenever possible in person,
trying to hash out exactly how we all felt.”
“Good for you,” Elyse commented. “Most of the poly
folk we know are of the ‘what I don’t know won’t hurt me’
philosophy, and it goes wrong so often.”
Brian nodded. “Yeah, we tried that
early on in our relationship, it didn’t work at all. We even had an
engineer friend of ours, the person who introduced her to Jake, in
fact, get so upset that she wrote a twelve page essay, with charts,
no less, about why it would never work.” He echoed Sullivan’s
chuckle at that. “That helped, actually, quite a lot; we sort of
circled the wagons, and spent so much time explaining to her why
it
would
work
that we never really had to convince each other. And now they’ve
been together, oh, about two years, and our friends have pretty
much accepted that yes, it is working.” He paused, thinking of Bec,
suddenly missing her with a familiar pain that was all the sweeter
with the knowledge that she would come back to him.
Unless the ‘pressors do something to stop
it.
He suddenly looked up again at Ada.
“Is that what you needed to know? Because the more I think about
this, and talk about her, the more worried I’m getting.”
“Just one more question, Brian. What about you? Are
you also a lover of Jake? Or…”
“I don’t have a lover, currently, just play
partners on occasion. And since neither of them is bi, no, we don’t
share lovers.” He blushed a little. “I’ve met a man or two who I’ve
been attracted to, so I suppose I’m bisexual to some degree—“
“Who isn’t?” Alan said, with a smile.”
Brian nodded. “True, thank Kinsey. But while Jake’s
a great guy, he doesn’t do anything for me. We’re more of a
V-shaped relationship, rather than a triangle.” He paused again, a
bit embarrassed, but then realized that these people, of any, would
be accepting of him. “The closest we’ve come to that is for her
birthday, we have sort of started a tradition of doing a play scene
where both of us Dom her. We’ve got different styles, but they seem
to complement each other, and… well, Bec’s never complained about
her birthday present, anyway.”
Sullivan, Elyse, and Alan all gave him supportive
leers, and even the serene smile on Ada’s face held a prurient
twist to it. She let out a sigh that seemed relieved. “Good. That’s
the best news of all. Brian, as soon as we get the Wards set, you
and your focus—whether it be the woman Sullivan has in mind or
not—will need to perform a ritual that will bind your power,and its
path through you both, to your wife—Bec, was it?—and her lover,
Jake.”
Elyse was nodding. “A binding like that, like the
one Alan and I share, will extend the strength of your art and your
mark to them. It’s an added measure of protection, if it’s done
with the help of a Focus. And more than that, the power flows both
ways—their energy can help yours, increasing your power
exponentially.”
Brian frowned. “Won’t that just make me a bigger
target?” His frown deepened. “Won’t that make all of us into bigger
targets?”
Sullivan chuckled. “Bucko, you act as if you aren’t
already more conspicuous than a condom in a cathedral. The key word
is ‘bigger’,” Sullivan paused, visibly restraining himself from
further comment under Ada’s stern glare. “You may notice that I’m
only a target because I’m helping you. Elyse, Alan, we’re all
basically too big fish for them to fry, without being blatant.
Plus, we’ve all got wards up, just like the ones we’re going to put
on your daughters.”
Alan interrupted. “Well, not so much wards, as
shields… well, whatever metaphor works. What Sullivan’s saying is
that with the binding in place, connecting you and your wife with
her lover and your Focus, you gain a more solid base, and the
amount of effort needed to draw you down becomes less
cost-effective.” He said the last with a sarcastic tone edging into
his voice. “From what you’ve told us, Brian, you and your wife have
already got a strong bond between you, and that strength is quite
possibly what’s enabled you to last this long, and get this
far.”
“But more than that, my boy, you
can help in the fight.” Sullivan had sat forward and turned on the
couch so that he was facing Brian. “How does the Spider-Ethic go,
‘With Great Breast Come Great Responsibility’? Oh, wait, it
was
power
, that’s
right…same thing.” His grin turned serious. “We have ways that we
are trying to get organized, to influence a senator here, a
businessman there, and get things turned around.” The grin came
back, with a smirking twist that was infectious. “Not to mention
that Focuses are a
lot
of fun to work with. Sure, the first thing you should do is
put a ward on your daughters—not so much shielding them as giving
them and you early warning of any ‘pressor activity. And then seal
the binding with your wife and Jake—when does she get
back?”
“Next week.”
Elyse shook her head. “Not soon enough. You’ll have
to call her, let temporal and active synchronicity overcome spatial
displacement… “ she paused as she saw Brian’s puzzled expression.
“…but first things first. Let’s get you a Focus. Then set the
Wards.”
“Wards? What good is that against people like that
man, like those missionaries?”
Sullivan’s grin got even wider.
“Tell you what. Let me introduce you to a new friend of mine, and
we can talk about
that
later… “
VI
“Hi, my name’s Sally. How are you?” The woman’s
voice had a strength and directness that contrasted sharply with
her slight frame. Taking her hand, which seemed to sink into his
wide palms with a cool smoothness, he tried to feel if there would
be some sort of instant connection, if he could feel her presence
as vividly as he’d felt Vashte’s or Sullivan’s.
There was something there, something hidden, but it was behind a
smooth and solid façade, not so much a barricade as simply a part
of who she was. As she murmured the standard pleasantries, her
slender hand disappearing into Brian’s wide palm, he felt a twinge
of disappointment. She shook his hand with a confident strength
that belied her slight frame, and then let out a delighted squeal
and threw herself into a hug for Sullivan.