The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Danielle looked up from the practice floor as Professor Rasputin stalked into the palaestra, his soles clicking on the stone of the raised walkway. She straightened from the crouch and let him look at her as she glistened in the sweat of another workout, resplendent in the bright red two-piece and her own glow. He smiled with real affection, and she forgave him again his ban on calling this a “gym” instead of the palaestra.

“Dani,” he said.

She smiled back up at him. “Morning, Professor. Thought about our deal?”

“Our deal?”

She sighed. She knew he was going to be difficult, but she’d honestly thought she’d made more headway the other day. “Where we agreed I could go without being mind-controlled more often than I catch up with reruns on the VCR?”

He fixed her with one of his milder Stares, but she met it and silently counted to ten in Russian without forgetting what she was doing or curling up into a purring little ball, so she felt a bit better.

“Dani, the bad guys aren’t going to declare a moratorium on enslaving people’s minds, if that’s how they operate. Especially a martial-artist crimefighter like you.”

“Especially a mentally-susceptible sidekick like me,” she muttered, ignoring the flattery like the thrown bone it was.

“Petulance doesn’t become you, Dani.”

She knew the flush from her workout covered the blush that would otherwise be giving away her irritation at that fatherly sternness. She had to sound petulant. The alternative was to put her real feelings into it, and she didn’t know how he’d react.

But with this Pygmalion/Svengali thing he kept doing, it was hard not to be angry for real, now and then. Now.

“I don’t mean them, Professor. When they’re not hypnotizing me, you are. Seems like an easy fix.”

Rasputin nodded, as though saluting her for that last little thrust. That was bad: it hadn’t gotten to him.

“It can be the only fix, Dani. When we went up against the Eternity Cult, you would have fallen under the belief-conditioning like the girls we were rescuing, if I hadn’t already prepared your mind with trance.”

She shivered despite herself, remembering the eerie echoes in the ceremonial chamber, the strange cool seduction of giving in to the chanting. Only Rasputin’s firm, gentle words in her mind had kept her linked with who she was—against the tide of erotic need to be who They wanted her to become . . .

Leading the other sacrificial victims out by the hand, marginally more resistant than they’d been, but enough.

Not fair. “Well, of course, that time you had to—”

“And the Andros conspiracy? There was no way to smuggle recording gear into their archive. Hypnosis was the only way to empower you to memorize all those names and dates while I played suicide chess with Andros Prime to keep them distracted.”

Won, too, she recalled. Nor ever complained that it had taken extra time, since in her undercover role as sex-puppet to the Archivist she’d lost minutes here and there servicing him.

What a sport he was. And still sporting—with her. Empower? Please.

She sighed.

“At least with me, Dani, losing your free will is a temporary thing.”

Hugging herself, she looked down, remembering when that hadn’t been so. Rasputin had rescued her from the spell of an utterly ruthless magician whose name she still refused to remember. Kendra, the other assistant, hadn ‘t been so lucky—and it had been only luck that he’d chosen her instead of Danielle to divert the Professor as the Professor closed in.

When she could bear to think of it at all, Danielle tried to tell herself that Kendra must have been a zombie by that point. That Kendra must have been so deeply hypnotized that she couldn’t feel anything but the blind compulsion to obey their master’s voice, that she’d been numb and anesthetized as she’d climbed into his Box of a Thousand Cuts while Rasputin fought his way past the locks into the sanctum.

That when she’d bypassed the safety latches . . .

But Danielle remembered too clearly. She’d stood there in her top hat, tuxedo, and tights, uncommanded and frozen, and listened to her friend scream.

Then stop screaming.

Even as his escaping enemy’s laughter hung in the air, Rasputin had turned from his quest and tried to save Kendra, but the machine she and Danielle had set that morning had worked perfectly, and the blades had gone home.

When she’d finally been able to think again, Danielle had been hysterical. The Professor had used his powers to tranquilize her, and over the months to heal her as best he could. He told her she’d resisted at first, and he’d realized it was all she could do to take some of Kendra’s torment onto herself.

No, Professor Rasputin wasn’t the monster. He usually asked before he swung the watch, and he put her back together afterward. And not every case (adventure—as this gym was a palaestra, the Professor addressed adventures, he didn’t work cases) even involved mind control.

But . . .

“I know,” she said. “I know.

“But what kind of person would I be if I didn’t at least ask?”

“Not the admirable girl you are, Dani.” He smiled again, but he didn’t go on to tell her he’d leave her awake next time.

She gritted her teeth quietly. Outmanuevered again. He’d reminded her how noble they’d both been, and it would be small, self-defeating, unworthy for her to bring up all those times when he’d just snapped her into a trance to overawe some small-time conjuror.

Or when she’d questioned his assessment of a situation or his plans for proceeding, and he’d turned her objections into blissfully smiling agreement with a string of nonsense words.

Yes, Rasputin usually did know better what to do.

But later when he woke her, even when she couldn’t remember what she’d tried to point out, she could usually remember the soft laughter as onlookers, if there were any, watched him turn her off like a radio.

Please, Professor. No. She wasn’t there yet.

Deciding she didn’t want to look up at him from the practice floor, she turned to the ramp to join him up on the walkway. She spoke as she turned away from him.

“So is something happening today, Professor? You’re usually in meditation at this hour.”

“Yes I am, Dani. But before I went out to the rock garden, I saw there was a message from the Cenacle.”

She stopped. The Cenacle.

Bad enough what the Professor’s admirers in law enforcement brought to him when they needed help, but the mystics and initiates who constituted the shadowy Cenacle usually had some sort of danger to souls in mind when they called on Rasputin.

Danielle could remember something of each adventure they’d dealt with at the Cenacle’s behest, though she was completely blank about whether she’d ever met or seen the cabal itself—and was pretty sure she knew why.

The Cenacle had very likely seen her as Rasputin had presented her in trance. The long table of dusty old men she imagined when she thought of them had probably liked what they saw.

But right now she saw the whole conversation they’d had about this fading away. Wasted.

“What do they need?” she asked, trying not to sound—petulant.

“It’s not clear, but there are some people, not just unauthorized but dangerous, who’ve gotten access to powers better left . . . unaccessed. We need to investigate first and see what the signs are, then consult and

plan.”

“Investigate?”

Rasputin smiled at her hopeful tone. “We’re going to Yanthley House—the Marsh family estate—and see what we can stir up. While there are risks aplenty, one of the advantages of facing thieves of arcana is that they sometimes assume an Adept’s ambitions without an Adept’s wisdom.”

“Shoplifters who don’t bother taking the instruction sheet,” she said, but she was less casual than she tried to sound. The Marshes were strong and she’d met a lot of people in the course of working for Rasputin who were frankly afraid of them.

“Ah, Danielle. There’s nothing wrong with that mind.” His praise patronized but it was real, and she warmed to it even as she knew he was playing her.

Remembering how he’d freed her from the monster made her remember the night she’d gone to Rasputin’s bed, drawn this time to another body not by implanted addiction or a voice blotting out her own desires, but by real need. She’d been denied that for so long that she’d barely recognized the feeling.

She’d started to kneel by the bed through training that had become part of her muscles and nerves, but he’d drawn her to sit on the mattress beside him.

“Please,” she’d whispered. “Please take me.” She’d wanted to explain, to tell him about the emptiness as she’d lain alone in the dark without even Kendra to hold, the terror that if no one took her she’d just drift off into the void and never come back. But she couldn’t.

Rasputin had looked into her eyes and understood.

He’d taken her but he’d been gentle, and everything after that had been better, somehow.

She started to tell him that, now.

But he was saying, “I think—the chauffeur motif will suit you this time.”

Not wasted. Ruined. “Oh, come on, Professor. I don’t want to wear that in public again.”

He shook his head, smiling, convinced. “There’s a reason everyone stares at you when you do, Dani. And forgets whatever else they’re doing. It’s part of what I want working in Elihu Marsh’s hindbrain.”

Nothing wrong with my mind—but all he wants is an assistant, too. A magician’s assistant. Something decorative to distract the audience, her thoughts so irrelevant it doesn’t even matter if he’s hypnotized her .

“I can do this in slacks—”

“Dani, we need to come at them very hard. From what the Cenacle could tell me about the arcana at issue, this adventure will be about sex. And I can sense it . . .”

“About sex?” She was acutely conscious all of a sudden about standing there in a bikini arguing about it. She knew where this was going, and hated knowing that part of her was getting excited. “But Professor, I’m not about sex. I’m about—”

“You’re about to go to sleep,” he sighed, and Danielle’s eyelids started to flutter before he’d even pulled the pendulum from his waistcoat.

She forced them open and stared at him desperately. “No, damn it!”

I could just walk out of here . . . but then what? Why does it always have to be this way?

“Don’t—don’t do . . . this . . . to . . . me . . . " She tried, tried to look away. But she remembered that there was nowhere else in the universe to look.

“This isn’t. . . isn’t . . .” Her train of thought was gone as the pendulum’s motion delicately swabbed lesser concerns from her mind. It was hard to fight when she no longer remembered what she was fighting for.

It became impossible to fight when the only thing she could remember was how hot it always made her to surrender.

Something was wet on her cheek. But part of her still would not try Please—no.

Danielle was like a stripper conditioned to the music, hearing her set start and too aroused by the old thrill of exposing herself, giving up even the sham defense of a skimpy costume, to resist the humiliation of doing it.

Again, and again, and again.

Even before the voice that filled her mind—that had become her mind—began to instruct her, Danielle’s warm, moist center knew and luxuriated in what she would do.

She would obey.

2.

Danielle looked at the pretty girl at attention in front of her, wide of eye and long of thigh, and licked her lips without realizing it. She tried to make sense of the high-collared, short-skirted uniform. Cheerleader for a military staff college? Stewardess for a . . . no.

Chauffeur, today, for a paranormal investigator with a talent for hypnosis.

Danielle wondered how long she’d been awake and staring at her reflection, and tried to recall anything the Professor had said about mirrors as reinforcing tools

She smoothed the hem of the skirt over her upper thighs, feeling the ghost of an urge to pull it uselessly lower, and smiling at the fragment of modesty. She regarded herself in the mirror, sorting the lust aside and concentrating on how the tunic fit, the belt snug round her waist with a purses like cartridge cases. She lowered the zipper a bit more, until the lower, outward curves of her cleavage were visible.

She knew it was about sex.

The boots gleamed, and as she looked at the heels she smiled again. Guess the Professor doesn’t expect me to have to chase anyone.

Or run for it.

She thought about what this would involve, playing kissyface with some creep to divert his attention while Rasputin did his own sort of magic, and she didn’t mind. She knew there was a little hypnotic helper in her mind now, something to make her easy with whatever she needed to do.

That bothered her somehow, but a deeper certainty kept her from fretting.

Patting her hair, not wondering why she didn’t remember putting it up but liking the sweet-severe look it gave her, she set the visored cap atop it.

It hit her, finally, when she came to attention—thinking she just wanted to see how the ensemble worked, but guiltily aware of the warmth between her thighs and the moisture that threatened to follow.

Shit. He’d done it to her again. She’d let him to it to her again.

She had to think she’d let him, because if not, then there was no free will in her at all, and . . .

Never mind. They had an—adventure to resolve. If the Cenacle was involved, there might be someone whose will was in even deeper danger than hers.

She turned abruptly and walked out to the garage, pulling on the white gloves. She didn’t need to think about which of the gleaming machines to start, or how long to listen to the well-tuned idling before putting it in gear and rolling it around to the front drive before the portico.

Leaving it running, she went in and found him in the library, closing a bound volume of hand-lettered parchment. Coming to attention again, she let the arousal press her deeper into the role.

“The car is ready, Sir.” Her tone was empty of anything but focus on service, but she could feel the erotic undertone, and as she relaxed, submitting to the impulses guiding her, she began to realize the sort of person she’d been programmed to distract.

If they ended up fucking, she’d need to keep her hair up. And the boots on, probably.

As Rasputin strode out, she had no difficulty in dropping back to follow him two steps behind and to the left, or in stepping ahead to open the door and stand stiffly beside it as he seated himself in the back.

After she had them on the state highway toward Yanthley House, the humming of the engine and the easy, body-learned task of driving over the smooth road as it uncoiled beneath her soothed Danielle into a private trance of her own. She was just aware enough to wish she could just keep driving, not stop and encounter the fearsome Marshes or whoever it was she was supposed to entice.

Just aware enough to know, as she drove with calm assurance, that her reverie made no place for Rasputin. She didn’t begrudge him that—just knew that it meant the daydream was hers. For once, she was her own hypnotist.

Oh-oh. She blinked, squeezing the wheel. That was dangerous. Not to her driving, but she didn’t want to get that used to slipping under.

Any opening that’s violated that often, that deeply, will eventually loosen to be open all the time.

The bitterness roused her, and she met the Professor’s eyes in the mirror, wondering what had let him know—or whether he could, after all, read minds. Some minds, anyway. There was concern in his eyes, but still she looked quickly away from them.

Grasping for some autonomy, she said, “What are we up against this time, Professor?”

He smiled, glad to see her try. “At the very least, a very smart psychopath who thinks he has a lead on one of the more potent forbidden sources of power, and some skills to do a lot of damage before he realizes he’s guessed wrong.”

She let the G-forces of the turn take her for a moment. “And at most, a psychopath who has this power?”

He nodded at her logic. “Elihu has been overreaching himself since childhood, and with one or two major . . . exceptions . . . the Marshes have contained him very well. As a family, they’re shrewd enough to know where self-preservation begins. Being collectively only a bit less evil and dangerous than he may be, they have the skills to act on that, too.”

“He knows you’re coming?”

“We’re coming, Dani.” Rasputin was gently reproachful over her self-exclusion, but she didn’t bother to acknowledge another thrown bone. “The family believes that we’re coming on an entirely different matter. One of those horrible old books people still pay a great deal for in order to hide in subcellars and try invoking powers they’d be better off leaving alone.

“They think I have one. Von Junzt’s, though that’s their guess and I’ve said nothing specific. Old Whateley Marsh wants it to be the Prinn.”

“And . . . ?” She sometimes dreamed names like those, when she dreamed of the magician who’d owned her before, and couldn’t sleep for hours afterward. She wondered, if Rasputin had never come and she and Kendra had gone on as the monster’s mindless assistants, slipping deeper under his subjugation, what he might have done with them, guided by old evil books like those. Maybe Kendra had been lucky.

No. I was lucky. Poor Kendra was—

“And, Dani, while they try to find out and buy it from me, I’ll be learning what they know or fear about Elihu’s endeavors.”

She glanced at him, uncomfortably aware they were nearing Yanthley House with every passing fencepost. “What if they ask . . . me?”

“I’ve prepared you for that,” he said quietly, and she felt strangely reassured. She’d spent most of the afternoon under hypnosis, apparently, but it hadn’t all been about bending her mind into accepting a decorative role. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be that trusting, to believe that he’d reinforced her resistance without knowing how, but it was too warm a feeling not to wrap herself around, in the gathering cold of her fears about what they were about to do.

She felt the same way going into every adventure, and it never got better.

He saved me from slavery and worse, and he’s given me a way to spend my life helping save others. I have to face it for him. For myself.

For Kendra.

The front gate to Yanthley House was set far enough back from the road that as she pulled the Jaguar up to the security pylon, she felt already isolated from the highway, from the rest of humankind. The stone of the gateway looked as corrupt but resilient as the overgrown wall or fence on either side of it, and the incongruous silver panel in the pylon should have been a reassuringly modern touch.

But as she rolled the window down and turned to it, it looked like a trophy, a flayed face, metal skin ripped from its slain machine and put onto the stone post to fool the unwise into thinking the machine still lived . . .

“Professor Rasputin,” she announced crisply when it clicked at her, without reference to the Professor’s chauffeur-toy. She turned forward to stare at the seam of the closed gates rather than look beseechingly at the camera, letting whoever or whatever it was see her impassive profile and wonder if she were calm or mesmerized.

When the gates parted, she rolled the window up and the car forward without looking back.

Yanthley House sat in a sunlit cut in a vast dark wood. The mansion was light sandstone, well-kept and done with a lot of post-classical touches, clean lines and many windows. Nothing dark or medieval about it, not a gargoyle in sight. It was bright, rational, even wholesome.

Driving up to the broad low steps, Danielle looked at it as she would at a smiling, perfectly-tailored serial killer. The brightness was mocking, almost insulting. As she parked and got out of the car, the lurking fear nicely overshadowed the awkwardness of facing it in her decorative uniform.

She was almost proud as she opened the door for the Professor, secured the car and fell smoothly into place at his heels as he stalked up the steps to the tall, strangely-carved doors.

She waited at attention as he knocked. The door opened almost immediately and a young woman stepped back to let them in. Danielle looked at her, seeing a maid’s outfit even less functional, and much more revealing, than her driver’s getup. She sought the other girl’s eyes, to see how much silent sharing there could be with another pretty ornament. The maid looked at her.

Through her.

Danielle almost stumbled on the polished marble of the foyer, stunned at how empty the girl’s eyes were. How . . .

Soulless.

She tried to let the shock pass through her, to focus on keeping pace with her superior, to tell herself that the maid might simply be drugged—by her own choice, perhaps. Maybe the Marshes were satisfying their noblesse oblige with vocational rehab of recovering . . . no.

It was suddenly too scary in here to be sarcastic.

She led them across the foyer, past more mockingly normal and impressively expensive-looking artwork, to the double doors of a downstairs library. They walked into the middle of the room, and found several Marshes there waiting for them.

There was a desiccated old man by the inlaid globe, like a parody of the gangling professor—or waiting vulture: the patriarch, Whateley. On the long leather sofa, a smug younger man in a tweed suit and bowtie with the effete, inbred-Brahmin looks she realized she’d glimpsed in portraits in the foyer and now here on the library walls—the scion, Elihu, just perilously close enough to good-looking that Danielle realized that if they’d met in different circumstances, she might have been intrigued, drawn in. Seduced, perhaps.

Recalling what Rasputin had said about him, she felt a chill for the young women who had been.

Before she could do more than glimpse a graceful older woman sitting very still in an armchair someone appeared by her elbow.

“Impeccable taste in software as always, Rasputin,” said a deep voice, and Danielle felt her gaze pulled gently, irresistibly to her left, away from Rasputin. “I’m betting another sloe-eyed maiden—no blue eyes for you, not after what happened to Gretchen.

“Now, little one. Show me your pretty eyes.”

Just his voice. Danielle forgot the Professor and the help he wasn’t giving.

He wanted to see her eyes.

She had to show him her eyes.

Let him into her eyes . . .

She felt the strength drain from her, but she fought.

Her orgasmic sigh was the only sound in the great room, as she lost.

3.

Danielle’s eyes were still lowered and her body was sluggish, so it must have taken a few seconds for her to obey the compulsion he’d put over her.

Her eyes were still rising, seeing only the shape of a face—older and horribly wiser than Elihu, younger and more predatory than Whateley—when she felt a hand on her neck, fingertips under her hair, a touch.

She let her head drop, slack in the Professor’s hold, her mind blank as though he’d found a Reset button for her brain. As her thoughts came back up, she realized she hadn’t won the power game—she’d always be a piece in such games, never a player.

But Rasputin had intervened before this other, vigorous Marsh had raided her soul. Inside, she wondered how it would have felt if he’d carried off a piece of it while she gazed raptly into those eyes she hadn’t yet seen, and let him take it.

Dangerous to wonder. And they might not be leaving Yanthley House for a while.

So she was still in danger.

“Spoilsport.” It was Elihu across the room. “Uncle Septimus was just playing with her.”

As she came back to herself, still bowed under the Professor’s hand, she heard him say flatly, “I didn’t bring a toy for him to play with.”

She let the residual trances both men had put her into insulate her from how cold that tone made her feel. Before she could start to pity herself—or panic—she made herself wonder about the empty-eyed maid, who she saw was still standing silently by the door. How did they speak about her?

Or did they refer to her as “it”?

She decided to relax and trust in Rasputin’s plan, and his control of her. Whatever power these people wanted, they couldn’t be allowed to gain.

“Septimus plays poorly with other people’s toys,” said the old man in a cracked voice, but it wasn’t clear to whom. Danielle looked up as the Professor’s hand fell away, and saw Whateley’s eyes, coal-black and beady, boring into her from where he stood. She didn’t feel anything like the raw dominance that had captured her for Septimus. There was an avid focus on how the tunic set off her cleavage.

He felt less dangerous, and that might make him more so, but the Professor had prepared her—and probably hypnotically programmed her—to target the younger one, Elihu. With her feminine wiles, she thought with distant irony.

Like a fencer would target a battle tank.

God. The Professor seemed to be directing from the wrong script entirely, but the only way she was going to survive this would be as the Professor’s obedient stooge—if she acted on her own, she’d end up as their obedient little . . .

“Child,” said the woman, suddenly, and everything in the room changed as they looked at her.

Danielle reeled. The woman’s voice was calm, and sweet, and completely without the hungry dominance that the others—even Professor Rasputin—had been washing over her. It sucked at Danielle, the only warmth in the room.

The woman stood and strode across the library to stand next to her, slim and delicate and birdlike, and favored them all with a cool glance. Danielle had started to think the woman was a victim, a familiar toss-toy they were ignoring now because Rasputin had brought a newer, younger one—someone who’d married into the Marshes for love or money before she’d grown screamingly aware that they were about something older and uglier than either.

But this woman didn’t walk like a victim, and even Septimus made way for her. She made Danielle think of a beautiful falcon swooping to drive weaker predators from her nestling, and it exalted Danielle to be chosen as that nestling.

She spared a cold patrician look for Rasputin, as if to say How could you subject her to this?

“I’m Sylvia Marsh, my dear. You must be Danielle.” She took Danielle’s hand in her own cool one while touching Danielle’s shoulder with her other one, as though she sensed how close the younger woman was to just falling down. That, and being known somehow, made Danielle feel better.

“Pleased to meet you,” she whispered, and Sylvia seemed proud of her for managing that. Sylvia’s lively gray eyes—Danielle smiled inside, not really expecting them to be yellow—welcomed her, sheltering her without trying to devour her.

“Boys,” Sylvia said, dismissing in one word three generations of Marshes, their atrocities, and their atrocious manners, and Danielle felt warm under the wing of someone with that much perspective. “They will have their little games. Let them compare their grubby little medieval pornography.

“We can spend a while enjoying living things, in the conservatory. Taking our ease.”

Danielle found herself saying yes even before seeing Rasputin’s covert approval. That only made sense when she saw Elihu had stood up, apparently more eager to follow her than to join his grandfather and uncle in dickering with Rasputin.

Sylvia put her arm through Danielle’s, and the Victorian grace of it soothed her more than she’d known she needed to be. They started together for the far end of the library with Elihu in tow, and Danielle thought So I can dangle myself in front of the Bad Seed, with a chaperone literally by my side?

The plan might actually work. Maybe Professor Rasputin really had second sight.

As they left, she heard Whateley’s bloodless voice. “Beware, Professor. I think your lovely companion may be getting mesmerized after all.” She squeezed Sylvia’s hand and looked at her, feeling brave enough to roll her eyes. Sylvia winked at her and squeezed back.

Elihu quickened his steps to stay with them, his footfalls dull in the wake of their neatly clicking heels. Eat your heart out, junior.

They went down a pillared cloister past a sunny but empty inner courtyard to another part of the house, and as they entered a large chamber full of cool green plant smells, Sylvia turned to Elihu.

“Go play with your toys,” she said, without any heat, as though he were ten or so.

“But Mother—” Maybe he was, at the core. Danielle almost smiled to hear actual petulance.

“None of them even try to fight back anymore.”

Maybe—not. She couldn’t hide the shiver, and felt Sylvia’s hand tighten on her upper arm, and then reach around to embrace her, warning Elihu further off.

The door closed on him and Sylvia pulled away, letting go of everything but her hand. “Come, my dear. Nothing in here wants to eat you.”

4.

Danielle let herself be drawn, relaxing in the gentle air, almost wanting to pet the leaves and fronds and smooth trunks around her. She heard the quiet sounds of misting and water flowing through pipes. She wondered how often Sylvia had to come here to surround herself with life and sanity, to get away from the madmen she lived with. God—how much courage she had, to face them down, however immune she might be as someone’s wife.

But now she saw how much of a nest Sylvia made, the refined little nook by the fountain, the wicker plantation chair with its cushions, the sidetable with a book and notepad, a tea table with carafes of water and something golden, and two glasses—she recognized precious Polish crystal.

Two glasses. Had she expected to have to rescue someone from the Marsh men? Danielle was abruptly sad: maybe Sylvia seldom had anyone to drink with, but always had two glasses set out, in hope.

Danielle swallowed. Or just because it’s proper, she told herself, willing the easy tears back and refusing to reward Sylvia’s rescue with childishness.

As though she knew it, Sylvia’s hand tightened again over hers, and she found the gray eyes measuring her, almost like a nurse checking for bruises. “It’s really all right, child. No one will bother us here, and after we’ve spent an agreeable while here they’ll have run out of sinister nuances to brandish at each other.”

It was too hard to resist the invitation to picture the others—even Rasputin—as adolescents playacting their meaningless occult duel until they ran out of interest and started comparing dead insects instead.

She started laughing, and it was a comforting sound in the blanket of leaves between her and the misted glass walls. More so when Sylvia joined her.

“Please sit, Danielle. You’re making me feel tired.” She nodded toward the chair, but Danielle stepped to the stone bench that faced it, under the protective awning of some broad-leafed plant that didn’t seem to drip sap. It didn’t feel right to take Sylvia’s chair.

“Oh, don’t worry about mildew, dear. The cushions are taken in each evening.” Danielle smiled, wondering how much whoever had that duty might look forward to being in here, might linger here before returning to the well-lit darkness of the rest of Yanthley House.

Then she thought about the maid who’d let them in, making her way in here like a service robot, her burned-out mind dead to the beauty and refuge. Maybe she was one of the toys who wouldn’t ever fight back against Elihu again. She thought of the comfort of the leaves here, condensing on the girl’s empty shell of self and dripping off, ignored. She almost stroked the overhanging leaf to console it, and made herself sit before the fancy went further.

She squirmed, feeling the cool marble across the thighs she’d forgotten were bare under her miniskirt. Sylvia noticed and looked at them as Danielle crossed her legs, squirming again as the bottom of her right leg now managed to chill the side of her left with its new cold.

“He made you wear that,” she observed.

To entice your son. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me Sylvia. Please.

“You’re very loyal to him.” Sylvia making clear she wasn’t blaming Danielle with any of the other assumptions possible about a sidekick who dressed that way. “And he hypnotizes you, doesn’t he?”

Danielle looked up into her eyes, the cold bench forgotten.

“You keep your dignity about you, dear, but the signs are there. I watched you back there when Septimus tried to enslave you. So good to see a girl fight it for once—but so sad to know how she must have learned.”

Fight? Danielle had been under the man’s spell before she really knew he was casting it. Maybe she’d been doing better than she thought.

“He does what he needs to, Sylvia. There’s a lot I do with his help that I couldn’t do on my own.”

“And a lot that you wouldn’t do.” Sylvia’s tone wasn’t reproving, though she looked pointedly again at Danielle’s legs. Admiringly, too?

Flushing, Danielle was pleased and embarrassed. She’d been with women before, in and out of hypnosis, but seldom had she felt this happy when one looked at her like that.

“You’re a lovely, strong young lady for all of it,” Sylvia said, still standing, looking down at her. “I admire you. I know what it’s like to live in a house ruled by someone whose manipulations go beyond trickery. Who not only treats people like objects, but trains them to behave that

way.”

Danielle wanted to protest. While she had thought that about the Professor, hearing it aloud was—but Sylvia might be explaining her own struggle with the sorcerous clan she’d joined. Was she sorry about the little monster that still called her Mother?

“In some places, Danielle, one can keep her griefs to herself—in confidences with a trusted friend, perhaps. Or in a diary if there’s . . . no one to trust.

“Or in her own head if there’s no safe place to write.

“But if even her mind isn’t her own . . .”

Danielle suddenly realized how pretty the older woman was, her soft smooth skin, her lithe shape under the silk dress. She glowed there in gentle pastels, a gracious cameo lady here to comfort Danielle in this nest of crawling things.

“I get so tired, Sylvia,” she whispered.

“It’s ironic,” Sylvia whispered back. “How tiring it can be to spend so much time asleep, at another’s command. Worse for someone who tries to resist, who won’t just bow her head and surrender. So desperately in need of true rest, of safe, peaceful sleep—and so gallantly resisting it, with the last breath in her body.”

Danielle felt her own breathing slowing. Distantly she thought she could pick a regular rhythm in the soft background sounds . . . the pump for the fountain, some other quiet system here in . . . ? It was so much easier to fall into synch with it than to understand it. She closed her eyes.

“But there’s always another breath. Another struggle. So wearying.”

Danielle found Sylvia’s words blending into the cadence of the mysterious sound, and found it easy to let her own softening thoughts blend into the cadence too. Falling into synch was its own reward, like being stroked inside.

Synch—don’t think. She smiled, and believed. Gave herself to the stroking.

“You’ll always be tired, child, unless you learn to rest.”

Yes. Danielle shook a little where she sat, the muscle spasm of the bone-weary finally feeling the bed beneath. When the marble, warmed now by her skin, kissed her with more welcome, it drew a smile and a happy soft moan from her.

Sylvia’s voice whispered over it. “You may come here whenever you need to rest, Danielle.”

At that moment it seemed so reasonable to Danielle, as though she could just leave an argument with the Professor and fly here to Yanthley House . . . She nodded, and sighed happily to see that her acceptance pleased Sylvia.

“Just listen, for a moment, Danielle.”

She obeyed as eagerly as a child learning a secret. The fountain bubbled, the misters hissed, leaves whispered and sighed and thought aloud.

Sylvia might be whispering to her, too. Sylvia was on the bench beside her, close enough to feel the warmth, but Danielle could see only her cool gray eyes, unable to see if the other woman’s soft red mouth was speaking to her.

But . . . synch—don’t think. She obeyed instantly now, and it felt good.

It closed her eyes again as she leaned back on the bench.

Sylvia had perspective, and Danielle was melting with the joy of being with someone who understood, who cared. It was easier now to think through Sylvia’s whispers than through her own increasingly unfamiliar mind.

She opened her eyes. She was sitting upright now, Sylvia right beside her, one warm arm across her back as she rubbed Danielle’s hip under the skirt . . .

The other hand softly stroked Danielle’s inner thigh. She yearned to close her other leg over it, draw the captive hand deeper into her, seduce it into—no. She must wait.

She must wait. It was now her will to wait. She would wait forever for her orgasm, just to please Sylvia.

To obey Sylvia.

That almost made her come, by itself.

But she couldn’t . . . and it was still joy . . .

“There.” Warm, perfumed breath engulfed her ear and she squealed softly—but didn’t come. “You’ve learned to rest, Danielle.”

She had pleased. The joy almost hurt to bear.

“Good girl. So easy to train. So ready to be taught, to be changed.

“Didn’t he realize he was addicting you to this? To having your thoughts pulled from your weakening grip and given back to you bent and remade?” She felt the tongue explore the edge of her ear, touch her jaw below it. “I hope not.”

How could she still be sitting up, with her bones melted to water?

Because it was Sylvia’s will that she do, of course.

God—Goddess—Sylvia—she needed to come.

“But that’s not for you to worry about, my child. My obedient girl. You’ ve learned an important new skill. How to rest your will, and put it to sleep when desired. It just won’t ever be your desire, will it, my child?”

Danielle trembled.

She felt Sylvia’s fingertip under her chin, turning her. She opened her eyes—and fell into Sylvia’s, inches away, too far gone even to hear herself gasp. Sylvia smiled and Danielle’s world blurred and then she felt lips at her throat, the beat of her carotid against her skin as it arched under the tip of Sylvia’s hot tongue. The beat.

Synch—don’t think. She did, and didn’t.

She waited for the teeth to tear into her, to let Sylvia drink her life.

She could only hope she tasted good to Sylvia as she died.

When Sylvia dazed her with another glance, she knew Sylvia knew that.

“You will obey, Danielle.” She nodded, lost in Sylvia’s eyes.

“Before that, you will be instructed.” She quivered, suddenly aware of the hand patiently governing her conquered thighs.

“Before you are instructed, you will sleep, Danielle.” She sat straighter, eager for the helpless dark, wondering what dreams Sylvia would give her.

“But before you sleep, my child . . .” Sylvia smiled, and Danielle realized at last that she was not this falcon’s nestling.

She was its rabbit.

“. . . you will come.”

She did, without being touched, her plaintive mewing lost in the fountain’s song, the spine of her will snapping neatly in the talons.

Best and worst of all was how gently Sylvia Marsh held her when she collapsed, before sending her to sleep.

5.

Danielle slid a bit on the Jaguar’s seat as she drove them home. It wasn’t just how the leather excited her against the bare skin of her legs, either, though that did feel nice . . . her crotch felt even warmer. A strange, invaded feeling, and a tinge of fear that she couldn’t place, but that felt like she might—might . . .

Enjoy it?

From the back seat, Professor Rasputin said nothing, clearly mulling over what he’d gotten from the hours fencing with the Marsh men in a pretense of bibliophilia. She had no desire to bother him, either, with what was at heart probably just her normal-person’s reaction to being in a sink of madness like Yanthley House.

Thank God for Sylvia.

And her wonderful conservatory. I may go there whenever I need to rest, she knew, and slid on the seat again, already wanting to feel tired again, to seek Sylvia’s help to rest. She gave no thought to how she’d explain it to the Professor—she might not even tell him.

Anyway, she felt very alert now. Very ready.

Danielle let the ride mesmerize her again, unafraid this time. She knew this was hyperalertness, not asleep-at-the-wheel, and didn’t try to rouse herself from the highway hypnosis. In a way, for this timeless time, she would be the perfect driver, one with the car and the road . . .

After a while, driving though the deepening evening, she realized they’d almost hit something, a deer. Rasputin had been lost in his cogitations and she’d been road-hypnotized, shifting and swerving and accelerating so smoothly she hadn’t awakened either of them from their trances. Only the deer would remember. She almost laughed, but didn’t spend the energy.

She needed it for something else.

She savored the strange feelings between her thighs.

“You’re quiet today, Dani.” Danielle was a bit nervous at his sudden awareness. “Are you all right?” He swallowed. “Did anything happen?”

She gave herself a second to glance away from the road and looked up, feeling an unfamiliar self-confidence. “You mean did I become Elihu’s bewitched sex-toy, hearing only his voice?”

Seeing him wince, she did nothing to let him off the hook. She wondered idly why she didn’t, and looked back at the road. “In his sick little dreams, I’m sure I did, but otherwise apparently not.” In her mind pictures came up, rooms more shadowy than Sylvia’s lovely conservatory.

“He didn’t try anything really odd. His mother kept appearing, but I think he was also a bit—shy.”

“Shy?” The Professor was too polite to laugh.

“Even monsters can feel awkward and weak when they’re not on monstrous ground.”

“You mean Yanthley House isn’t monstrous—?”

“In their minds, Professor. I was a guest, or at least a guest’s servant.” He blinked, and she went on. “If I were formally a victim, I’m sure he would have gone right ahead.”

He was looking at her oddly, and a bit sadly. Danielle looked at him in the mirror a bit longer this time, and asked a bit more ingenuously, “Uh—what would he have gone ahead with, anyway, Professor? If I had been?”

Rasputin looked reassured. “Better that you don’t—no, that’s not right. Well. Did he try to interest you in his collection of crystals?”

It was her turn to blink, sorting out the scenes. “He didn’t seem to know quite what to do, actually. We spent most of the time in that ‘armory’ that’s really an excuse for those torture-chamber models. He showed me which ones were actual pieces they’d bought, and which he’d been rebuilding. It was almost like model airplanes, except—”

“Yes.” The Professor still looked at her. “Dani, what makes you so eager to diagnose him?”

She watched the road for a moment before answering. “On one level, I’ve met his like before.

“When I was working for the act.” The magician. That gave him pause.

“Not even psychopaths are always on. Some of the ‘dates’ I was sent on were pretty mild, if they met me before they could psych themselves into . . .” Something made her want to get away from the subject, and he was no more eager to drag it up.

“Anyway,” he went on, “as far as the Cenacle knows, Elihu likes to use some special crystals he’s worked with to induce trance in young women he wants. If you didn’t see any—”

“Maybe he didn’t want me after all,” she offered, deadpan, and won a smile despite him.

“Unlikely, from what I saw in the library.” Rasputin sounded almost proud of her, but it was just her looks at that point. “He looked quite jealous when he thought Septimus was about to enthrall you.”

Danielle swallowed. She’d been dead to everything but that voice. She could still remember it—she’d been closer to thralldom than about to, just then. At least in Yanthley House, when you were the meat, you were too deep in trance to know the Marshes were tearing at you, fighting over you. To feel their teeth in your soul.

Thank God for Sylvia.

“I suppose,” she said, looking up in the mirror but looking back as the traffic thickened ahead, “that I’ll be spending some time in front of the metronome, to make sure I wasn’t just told to forget the pretty crystals?”

He was silent for so long she thought he was displeased with her for belaboring the obvious.

But then he said, “Dani, would it make it any better if I said I wished you didn’t have to?”

She sighed. “Yes. And thank you.

“And I know that it’s so much better than the alternative.”

Neither of them spoke the rest of the way.

As she pulled up to the portico, he moved on the seat, and as she put on the brake and reached for her door, he touched her shoulder. “You’re relieved from ‘chauffeur’ now. Just put the car away. We’ll go somewhere to eat in a bit.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said, but she smiled and touched his hand before he got out.

He didn’t see her squeeze her legs together. She waited until he was unlocking the door to pull down toward the garage.

She made her way toward the library, not feeling any urgency to change her clothes. Here, at home, she felt a mildly kinky enjoyment at strutting around like this, and Rasputin might be an hour or two setting down his thoughts about whatever he’d gotten from what the Marshes had—and hadn’ t—said. No great rush.

God, but her ass was . . . pleasantly . . . irritated . . .

Rasputin’s library was smaller than the one at Yanthley House, and it was a friendlier room despite being darker and decorated with some fairly grisly exhibits. Danielle walked around, exorcising the other mansion’s evil emanations, greeting the stuffed grotesques and glassed-in bones she’d grown to fear, then to like, then to cherish as she’d rested here, healing and learning, after the Professor took her in.

They looked like sideshow fakes, and it was the Professor’s quiet joke to hide some of it in plain sight, the hideously true masquerading as the truly unbelievable. She returned the grin of the demon’s skull, and tsked in her usual commiseration with the red-eyed, winged feline thing frozen forever in a reach for a perch it would never achieve.

She turned away quickly, suddenly unable to laugh at any winged hunter. Unable to explain her sudden urge to—kneel to it.

Oh. Right. She recalled something she’d been wanting to do but always remembered at the wrong time—in the shower, when they were going out somewhere. Just before drifting off to sleep.

Opening one of her belt-purses, she smiled to herself. I suppose I could ask him to give me a posthypnotic suggestion to remember things like this. I suppose he would. Her legs tensed again and she stood on tiptoe for moment, the arousal gone as unexpectedly as it had come.

She blinked. Something she had to do. Right.

One of the two slim black things she took out was a cassette, and she loaded into the drive without more than a glance to see that it was cued. The other was larger, and she knelt to get it plugged between the power cables and the outlet, letting her skilled fingers work and smiling when the tiny green light rewarded her and freed her to stand.

One last thing—gain controls on the volume and bass. Right.

“No music just now, Dani.” Rasputin came in as she hovered by the sound system, a bit lost now that her project was done. “I need to transcribe, then research one or two things Septimus wants me to think he let slip.

“Of course,” she said. “I think I’ll just go draw a bath and—”

The phone rang and Rasputin frowned. It was the line the police used, and he might be worrying that things had moved too fast, that the Marshes had already done something else. She wondered if she’d have time to change. She found herself moving to the gun case, not sure why she thought simple firearms would be of any use against what they were likely to be facing. Realizing she didn’t, as she soundlessly unlocked it.

It just felt important to hold one. Important not to be noisy enough doing that to make Rasputin turn and see.

“Hello? No, I’m sorry. This is not—the what Institute?”

Important, suddenly, to remember the clip for this gun that she had, for some reason (not important), in her other belt-purse.

“No,” he said patiently, and she felt her fingers skillful again as they loaded it.

“Who? Speak louder, please. Kendra? No, th—” As it registered he spun to face her, even as she thumbed the catch and the slide snapped home, jacking in the first round.

Kendra.

The final trigger had entered her and owned her and made her feel dirty and aroused. She felt herself jerking mechanically into readiness, a larger, softer automatic weapon.

She would obey.

She wasn’t allowed an orgasm until she obeyed.

He hung the phone up without looking at it as she raised the gun.

“Don’t,” he said. She thought he would plead, but when he spoke it wasn’t about him at all.

“Dani—Danielle—don’t let them do this to you.”

6.

Danielle slipped into the shooting stance he’d taught her, and she saw his pain as he recognized it. Her own might be there, but it was though vast areas of her mind had suddenly been flooded with novocaine, numb and limp and not involved.

The parts of her mind that still felt and functioned were utterly focused, hypnotized. Eager to earn climax, and the memory of another command obeyed.

She used that discipline to keep her hands from shaking. If she let him see that he’d probably think she was afraid, or even hope that she was resisting the control that was making her do this. But it was only that some obscure part of her, neither stunned nor brainwashed, didn’t want him to see that killing him was moistening her.

“Danielle. Listen to me and relax.” She felt a petty triumph, resisting an authoritative tone that would have had her staggering before—before she’ d learned to obey. Now it tweaked a submissive nerve in her that liked being commanded, but did nothing else to her mind.

It wasn’t her mind now, anyway. Oh—almost . . .

“I am commanded to tell you,” she said, “that they will—” She saw him reaching for the pocket with the pendulum.

“Rasputin, they own me, and your toys have no power anymore. I obey only them.” He saw her flush as she said it, saw her nipples tense under the tunic, heard her breathing hitch. “But they said I could shoot to hurt if you tried it, before I kill you as programmed.”

He relaxed, his hands back out where she could see them. He opened his mouth and stopped as she made a small circle with the pistol. “I have to—

She blinked, but he was too wise to do anything. “I don’t know what the next . . . trigger is. They wanted you to know what was happening, and they let me decide what might be an attempt to hypnotize me.

“I understand, Danielle. I grieve for you, not for me. I failed you terribly, and I wish you could know how deeply I regret it.” He looked at her, then at the clock.

“I shouldn’t say this, but it’s close to seven. The chime is likely to be what—activates you.” He seemed actually hurt by referring to her as a machine, but it just made her pussy warmer. So did his hurt.

“So that’s how long we have. What will you—are you programmed to do once you’ve killed me?”

She smiled. “Reminding me what my owners have altered me to do won’t make me uncomfortable, Professor.

“Just wet.”

Saying it made her feel wetter, and dirtier. The look on his face—she licked her lips.

“So by all means keep reminding me.”

“Why did they choose that trigger when they enslaved you?” He actually smiled as he saw the word hit her, as though he’d given her a gift.

She smiled back. Why not? Enslaved. She was a slave. It felt gooood.

“Umm—trigger?” The gun was warm. She wondered how it might feel . . .

“The word. Kendra.”

She blinked, but nothing went through her now. Just an old ache.

They looked at each other. “Expended,” he said, softly. “Meaning only what it used to.

“The name of a friend. A victim. The one who died the day you almost did. The one I tried to save.”

More with her body than her mind, Danielle remembered more than an ache for Kendra, and looked at Rasputin as though she’d never seen him before.

“K-Kendra?” She felt it coming to her.

“You’re avenging her now, aren’t you? That’s their gift to you, isn’t it, Danielle?”

Part of her knew he was getting into her head, and for the first time in a long time she wanted it.

But it wasn’t her head anymore.

“Because I let her die in that box, when she couldn’t help herself against his hypnotic commands.” His voice shook. “I heard her screaming.”

Danielle was paralyzed in the shooting position. Right now, she could kill him, and that was all. Her insides twisted. She was starting to hear Kendra now, too.

“That . . . was . . . pain.” She surprised herself. “Just pain. She didn ‘t know—”

“No, Danielle.” He was gentle. “You know it wasn’t. She knew what he was making her do, and that she couldn’t stop herself.”

“No.” She tried to sink deeper into trance, but this wasn’t what she’d been programmed for. “No. She—would have asked for help—”

“No, Danielle. He probably didn’t inhibit her. But she knew as well as he did—you couldn’t. You couldn’t move.

“She didn’t want to cry to you to save her, when you couldn’t.”

Danielle was confused and growing more frightened. Part of it was about whether she might be able to obey but some of it was . . . she felt as though the warm euphoric pool of obedience she’d been set to float in was being invaded by a dark cold current. It was waking her, hurting her . . .

Kendra. Maybe I could have broken the trance—if you’d called out— But she remembered watching, her face as blank as Kendra’s, as her friend methodically prepared to die to save their master.

‘You’re—” Now the gun was shaking, and she knew that Rasputin was more afraid now than ever, when the next shiver that went through her was at least as likely to fire the gun as was the chime at seven o’clock.

“Give me my fucking mind back!” She had no idea who she was screaming at.

Just that no one ever would. If she wanted it back—even for a few seconds—it was up to her.

Kendra. The current was cold around her, freezing everything but her heart. Arousal, peace, even the orgasmic joy of obeying cooled and disappeared in the midnight flood of sorrow.

She got her finger off the trigger to the guard.

She moved the gun higher.

Little steps, all she could manage. But they were letting her tiptoe around the programming as the cold current of grief and shame began to short it out.

Thought was returning.

Someone hypnotized me into trying to kill the Professor. I almost did it.

I let my friend die in agony. I stood and listened.

I’m going to be a slave for the rest of my life. I’m going to love it.

She felt the compulsions in her mind, and knew a very austere glee as she realized none of them were set up to stop her from what she knew she needed to do now.

7.

Danielle closed her eyes, trying to outrun the memories. She straightened and brought the gun up, suddenly confused.

Temple? Mouth? Lower jaw? Where would it—?

The crash popped her eyes open and she knew the priceless antique chair in front of her had taken flight and was now kindling sliding off the gun case, but before she could react her field of view became entirely Professor Rasputin as he swept over her and as she felt his arms strong around her, the gun hand trapped in steel, in stone.

She was dizzy. He had knocked them over. They were falling.

They hit the floor as a unit and bounced, and she was slightly winded.

If he resists you must you will you moisten to kill him kill him

Kendra forgive me I want to die

She wasted the leverage in the gun hand trying to remember whom she had to kill. She gripped it, but could not longer move it.

Rasputin was on her like a starfish, no loose space between them, immobilizing her as he worked her arm.

The sudden pain in it startled her, and it was enough time to remember she didn’t want to touch it.

It thudded to the rug, and she relaxed slowly in his grip, limbs tangled.

“Yes,” she whispered, and she felt him shift slowly, trusting her in increments as he reached to the gun, tabbed and dropped the magazine, then freed the other hand to eject the chambered round.

Both hands were for her, then, and they lay there.

“Oh god,” she murmured into his shoulder.

Her mind was working again, slowly. He could have ducked behind the massive sectional and out the door. He hadn’t. He’d risked being shot to save her from suicide.

She knew where at least one person in the world stood, and she was glad about who it was.

She tried to thank him, but her voice was offline now for a bit. As she hugged him, he hugged back.

“Was it true?” she whispered. “Did Kendra . . . ?”

Slowly relaxing the python-grip, Rasputin looked down at her. “No. Actually, I have no idea. Though from what you told me later—in trance therapy and out—she was the kind of person who could have done that to spare a friend.”

“You lied.” She wasn’t accusing.

“Not about my own guilt.” He looked at her. “I don’t know if either of us could have saved her. I do know I wasn’t going to let you die. Not here and not years from now as a mindless slave of the Marsh family.”

Danielle was becoming aware of how it felt to be entwined with him, and part of her was still deeply aroused, even if it wasn’t slave-lust. His leg had parted her thighs and she squeezed tightly.

He arched an eyebrow as he looked down, but she felt him tense, knew his breathing was speeding up as hers was. His composure was thinner than the clothing between them.

Sometimes tristesse followed sex. Sometimes it caused it.

His cock was pressing her, too. She smiled at its eagerness.

“We can’t,” he rasped. “You need—” He broke off, and she knew why.

She’d just fallen out of a powerful brainwashing program, and they had no idea how deep the hooks were buried in her mind.

He wanted—they needed—to hypnotize her again.

She looked up at him. No, her eyes told him. Please.

Not that way. Not my mind. Please.

Danielle remembered the words from before. “Please,” she said aloud. “Please take me.

“Please. I’m almost not even here anymore.”

She was worried, until she saw the guilt. She remembered how badly he’d felt whenever he’d had to hypnotize her through tears.

He kissed her. She let her body take over, and he catered to its needs as soon as he knew what they were.

Danielle lay back at first, letting his fingers and lips bring her up, enjoying the long slow burning climb. Her programmed orgasm would have shot her to these heights in seconds, like a sounding rocket, but Rasputin was lovingly carrying her there, letting her feel each step as though they had forever.

But she knew they didn’t.

They writhed, heedless of rug burn. She’d gone on the attack, surprising him by taking him in her mouth. He loved it but had never asked it of her after that first night. Now she teased him, remembered things to do with her tongue, her breathing, that she’d learned on her knees in times he’d helped her forget.

When he was moaning with need, she lay back and opened, and he took her. She felt him inside her, and worked herself to match his thrusts as they grew more urgent.

Synch—don’t think.

She pulled off, the need in her strong enough to constrict her chest. She panted as she looked up at his puzzlement and frustration.

“Not that way.” Her hiss whittled the air between them. She stared into his eyes, fiercely mortified by what her need was making her say.

“In my ass. I need it.”

He tried to look shocked, but she was beyond admiring chivalry now. She was melting down and she’d almost come just making that whorish plea.

But she couldn’t come yet.

She used his hesitation to turn in his arms, and when she presented her ass, she felt him try to push lower and take her pussy again.

“I need it,” she snarled and thrust backward. She felt so dirty and it was just turning her molten.

Like a bitch in heat, she was not to be denied. She needed it, and she made him need to do it. She let him graze her dripping slit to coat himself in her juice and then groaned at the way it felt when he slid it in.

Forcing it was the only way, but that made it so much better. So much better.

He was huge, splitting her, tearing her open, and she was jealously gripping him, milking him, dazed by entirely new pleasure as she kept him.

Then he lost control.

He shuddered and grunted, and she lost herself in the ecstasy and control of bearing down, of prolonging his orgasm.

She had to keep him inside her.

She felt something break, gently, inside her, and knew she just had to keep . . .

. . . gripping . . .

. . . bearing . . .

. . . down . . .

He sagged on top of her, and by her ear she heard him moaning. There was enough of her mind left to know it wasn’t ecstasy.

It was despair.

She’d done it, and now the orgasm hit her, hammered her into a glowing incoherence.

Danielle was sprawling on the rug, her world going dim and black, even the warm weight of her lover distant against her skin.

Through the deepening shadows over her mind, she started to hear a woman’s voice, resonant and strong, coming from everywhere.

She was past knowing words, but she knew who it was. She was unable to wonder why . . .

Thank God for Sylvia.

8.

Danielle realized slowly that she was still lying on the rug. It was easier to breathe—Rasputin was no longer lying on top of her. Her skin was cool.

Her ass felt glorious. Remembering that gave her another little reward-climax, and her weak movement as it took her rubbed her tender nipples on the carpet fiber and sustained it.

She blacked out.

Awoke again, and hearing Sylvia’s voice.

Different now. Live.

“Yes, Professor.” The mockery was undisguised. “Ordinarily, it would be hard, almost impossible, to turn someone—anyone, but especially a girl as spirited as Danielle—in the little time I had. Though between you probing for stolen arcana they never had, and the boys trying to play you for an occult volume you didn’t have, I had a fair bit of it.

“But everyone who’s stretched Danielle’s mind and will around their plans and controls has weakened her—including you. She was a broken slave sleepwalking through the world waiting for someone to put her in their collar. You fit yours on much too loosely—not tight enough to protect her, but enough to make her helpless.

“She begged you to stop, didn’t she?

“Thank you for not listening.”

Danielle wondered why she didn’t feel anything.

There was something whispered from somewhere else in the room.

“No, Professor. We’ll be returning to Yanthley House for your further indoctrination. What I gave you through our lovely drooling syringe over there will keep you well-behaved until then.”

Now she could hear him. “How . . . Mistress?”

Mistress? He seemed to try to resist saying it. Danielle blinked. Was she really drooling?

“Really, Professor. It’s not as if there’s time for you to buy while I outline my diabolical plan. You’ve lost. But I’ll indulge you.

“Some mundane science I pursued while the boys were busy with those grimoires full of ‘Adept’ rubbish. A powerful will-suppressant, in a bulb of alkaline-soluble polymer.

“Like a drug-mule’s balloon, inserted up the anal passage—dissolving when someone sodomizes them and ejaculates onto it. Enough of it hit the skin of your penis to soften you for the taped induction.”

“But—the tape—?”

“Danielle was a multipurpose tool. Most of the drug entered her system, and that drops all sorts of activity—it started out as a suspended-animation method until the mind-control uses became better known. I fitted her watch with a pulse monitor when I enslaved her, and when it showed the drug bomb had gone off inside her, it triggered the tape to start.”

Danielle shuddered and didn’t know why.

“That’s insane,” Rasputin said, sounding a bit more like his old self.

“I’m not the one to say,” Sylvia answered. “But I am the only one who’ll leave this room with free will.”

“How did you know she wouldn’t kill me, Mistress?” Already Danielle sensed less of a struggle against saying it.

The smile in Sylvia’s voice suggested she sensed that, too. “Well, I didn’ t, Professor. I was curious to see what would happen. But I drew some conclusions about Danielle while I had her mind open, and I thought she’d respond to it that way. Especially with that trigger—I counted on you to make the best of it.”

Danielle was vaguely pleased to have made her happy, and waited a while for another orgasm.

“I could live with a world where you were dead, Professor. I knew you wouldn’t be able to spot the second trap, or even know one was there. If you weren’t clever enough to find a way out of the first one, though, I wouldn’t have had any use for you anyway.

“But I’m looking forward to a world where you’re alive and serving me with that wonderfully clever brain.”

No orgasm, but Danielle had to pee, and she relaxed and let it out, making the rug below her warm and damp.

“It will wear off, Professor, but by then you’ll have been a very willing hypnotic subject, and the need to obey me and think whatever thoughts I put in your head will be part of you.”

Rasputin was breathing harder, fighting something Sylvia may already have implanted in his mind. Danielle listened with rapt boredom.

“What about her, Mistress? What will you do with Danielle when the drug wears off?”

Sylvia laughed. “I will enjoy doing so many things with you once you’ve been through conditioning. So devious, as though I’ll just forget to anything to her while she’s drugged.”

Danielle listened with somewhat more interest, more because Sylvia’s wondrous voice was talking about her than because she cared what happened to her.

“But it’s a moot point. The drug won’t wear off for her. The amount you got suspended certain centers in your brain that left you unable to resist suggestion for a few crucial moments. It’ll be out of your system soon and they’ll work, subject to my changes.

“The amount Danielle took after your orgasm dissolved the capsule flooded her bloodstream, and more or less shut down those centers. If any of them work again, it’ll be at a very low level.”

“Oh, God, Mistress.”

Danielle felt bad for how sad he seemed to be about it, but the pleasure in Sylvia’s voice buoyed her.

“It’s irreversible, Professor. She can think for herself, but she’ll be unable ever to decide for herself again. Possibly past the level of which color thong to wear.

“Essentially the same thing you did to her mind, Professor. Like metal fatigue—keep bending it, and it will break. Just all at the same time.

“Oh, stop that.” Sylvia chuckled. “There. I do control you, don’t I? Hmm. You were thinking of ‘curing’ her at some point, I presume. No.”

She walked over to stand in front of where Danielle lay. Danielle looked at her shoes, wondering if she might be told to lick them. Hoping, but not too hard.

“Depending on how much is left in that pretty head, I could always use another maid.”

Danielle recalled the girl at Yanthley House, her eyes.

Thank God for Sylvia.