Matt and the Hunters
Matt finds out he has the power to make men do whatever he wants and turn them into his slaves... and that some people want to kill him for that power.
Prologue: The apprentice
From the Book of Hunters
From all the vile creatures we are sworn to destroy, none is as vile and despicable and utterly dangerous as the Tempters, for any other creature may kill your body, but the Tempters will corrupt your soul. They embody and follow the lowest instincts of the body, and they can spread them to others with just their presence.
The sole glance of their eyes and the sound of their voice can be enough to start to propagate their corruption, and when they make it an act of their perverted wills only the strongest spirits, made them stronger through successive tests of will, may resist them. Touching them while they are alive and breathing is an almost certainty of corruption, and whomever man receives their vile seed in his body is forever doomed to be enslaved to their carnal passions.
The Tempters are creatures of both the day and the night, walking and living amongst humans that go unaware of the abominations between them, and no man should face them alone, for he may lose himself.
They must be killed whenever they are found. No mercy shall be given to them, in this life or in the other.
There was a city, and in the city there was a street and almost at the end of the street there was a house, and in the house there was a young man who didn’t know where he was. He had been taken there in blindfolds for what had been hours, taking so many turns he had lost all his sense of space, and he only had been allowed to uncover his eyes inside the house with the blinds down. He wasn’t allowed to look outside, and now he was scared.
There was an old man next to him and they were standing outside a locked door. They knew what was on the other side, and why the world should be protected from that thing that only looked like a human.
—Are you ready?—Asked the old man.
He found himself unable to talk. He swallowed and nodded.
—Now, remember: this is a test we don’t expect you to pass. Almost none of us did in the first time. We expect you to resist as long as you can and we will judge if you will be able to take it again.
—Did you... did you fail it?
—The first time? Yes, I did. It took me half a dozen tries doing it longer each time until I was able to resist it. And even so, I’ve never let my guard down. These creatures never stop being dangerous. So I will give you a final chance of turning back, and you will not be judged if you decide so. Are you absolutely willing to do it?
He didn’t answer immediately. This was a great step, but at the same time it would be a big risk and it may mark him forever. His teacher, the strongest man he knew, had failed multiple times before making it. He knew they would be watching him to make sure no irreparable damage was made, but still he knew he wouldn’t have a chance. Finally he swallowed again, hard, and nodded.
The old man smiled proudly and opened the door.
The room behind it looked like a prison cell and was exactly what it looked like. There was a shower and a toilet at the corner with no curtain, there were a bed and a table bolted to the floor, and there was a chair and a thing that looked like a man sitting on the chair.
The old man gave a last, reassuring squeeze on his shoulder, and then walked out and locked the door. The test had begun.
It sounded easy, he just had to spend an hour in that room without touching that thing in the chair. But he knew it would almost be impossible.
He tried not to even look at it. He decided not to even think about it as a person. It was a thing, vile and corrupted, that they only kept there because it was needed to test the resolve of their new blood. Any other creature of its kind was to be killed in sight.
There was no chair for him to sit, but if he paced the room he risked looking at... it, so he just went to a wall as far away as possible to the chair and sat on the floor facing the wall. He just had to stay like that for an hour.
The thing in the chair didn’t speak. He had been told it would be gagged during the first tests, but he could still hear it breathing behind him. He tried to focus on the wall and keep that thing out of his thoughts. Focus, focus...
Something was wrong, and it took him a bit to notice what: he was breathing in sync with the thing behind him. In... out... in... out. He tried to stop the cycle but somehow his breath was locked to it. He tried to take a deep breath and hold it for as long as possible, until he started getting dizzy and had to gasp for air... and as soon as he recovered he was breathing in sync with it again.
That creature’s presence in the room was starting to creep on him. He knew it, there was just the two of them, breathing in sync. He felt how all his muscles tensed until he couldn’t bear sitting alone doing nothing. He stood up and paced, keeping his eyes focused in front of him. Don’t look at that thing, just don’t look at it and everything will be okay. But it was still there, like sand in his eyes, like an itch that grew stronger the more he refused to scratch it.
He sat again.
He stood again and paced again.
He sat.
He paced.
He sat.
He paced.
He stopped in the middle of his pace, unable to resist the tension anymore. He could feel the call in all his mind, pulling him towards that chair. He tried to resume his pacing and he couldn’t. He tried to turn back towards the wall, and it was more impossible than growing wings and flying. Slowly, very slowly, resisting every part of the movement with all his mind, he turned to face the chair.
“Don’t look at it in the eyes” he told himself while he crossed the distance separating him from that creature. “Just don’t look at him in the eyes. It.”
It pretty much looked like a man in his late thirties, maybe early forties, with dark blond hair and pale skin from spending years locked into that room. He wasn’t speaking or even trying to speak through his gag, he was just sitting at the chair staring at him.
He tried his hardest to not look at that man’s face, focusing on the rest of him instead. His arms and legs were tied to the chair, loosely enough that he could move a little, but not enough to let him stand. He seemed to know he couldn’t escape, so he wasn’t even trying.
Both of them were breathing heavily, in fast and shallow intakes, and the young man felt like he had just climbed fifteen flights of stairs. He could feel an urge inside that man, like a hunger that hadn’t been sated for too long.
He was so busy feeling the hunger that he didn’t notice his glance sliding up, until the moment he was staring directly at that man’s eyes. His face wasn’t even that striking, he looked absolutely plain, but there was just something in him that made him feel compelled towards him. He raised a hand to touch that face... and stopped himself.
No, this was wrong, this was exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do. If only he could take his eyes off those eyes. If only he could... he had to release all this tension, then everything would be okay.
He opened his belt and his pants and took out his cock, that was hard, it had been hard since the moment he had looked at the man’s eyes, and started pleasing himself with firm, short strokes. He could feel the hunger coming out of that man, calling him and awakening inside him impulses he thought he had left behind thanks to cold showers and discipline. It wasn’t right that this felt so good, it wasn’t right that he was doing it, knowing that there were other people watching, it wasn’t right that he was taking his clothes off, one by one... but he could not stop.
In a single moment of clarity, he realized that he was doing exactly what the Tempter wanted him to do, that he was giving into the impulses of his body, surrendering to him, and he shouted at himself to stop but it was too late. It had been too late for him since the moment he had crossed the door, and not that man would feed on his carnality, on his lechery. And then the clarity was gone and he was just a mass of desire that had been repressed for too long, a hot body stroking a hard cock for the visual pleasure of a man chained to a chair. His mind went blank, there was nothing on it but those dark eyes filling his thoughts, and it was like the entire world was pulsating at the rhythm of their breathing, like the universe was a heart pumping blood in his cock, and this just felt so good, so right, so perfect...
He had never felt anything like that. This was just different and took his mind by assault. When he finally came, it was like the orgasm was being pulled out of him by that man, like his pleasure was feeding him and helping him quench that hunger. And it was a lot to feed him. This orgasm was more intense than anything he had allowed ever himself to feel.
His legs went weak and he had to go down on his knees before he fell, and then he was almost eye level with that man’s crotch. Even through the clothes he could see that he was hard, and he didn’t even remember this was a test, all he knew was that there was a hard cock there that was feeling the same urge to cum he had felt, and only he could help him.
He was so focused on that that he didn’t even hear the door opening. He had pulled the pants down and was marveled at the sight of the most beautiful thing he had seen in his life, a vision of lust and desire made flesh and skin in the shape of a cock, and right when he was about to lean forward and start sucking it, every last cell of his body yearning for the taste and feel of that wonderful cock in his mouth, two pairs of strong hands grabbed him and pulled him away before he had a chance to touch that man’s skin.
It had been eighteen minutes.
They took him back to another room, kicking and struggling and trying to free himself, and covered him with a blanket and left him alone until he came down from his carnal daze and then cried in shame. He had failed, exactly the way they had expected him to, and he had let hem see him overtaken by his animal instincts. He curled into a ball and covered his head with the blanket and cried like he hadn’t done since he was a child.
A couple hours later, the door opened and his teacher entered. He didn’t try to underplay his failure, instead he told him that this was what they knew would happen. There would be a second time, and hopefully more, and every time he would be stronger.
The young man accepted these words in silence. And when it was time to leave, he got dressed and walked by his own feet to the living room that had all the blinds down. He would leave the way he came, blindfolded and unable to know where he was. But he wouldn’t leave the way he came: he had learned something about himself, and about the things that were in the world and how difficult it was to fight them, and he understood now why they had to be killed.
Right before he offered himself to the blindfold, he took a long look to the door that had to be kept locked. And he didn’t know it, but deep inside him a seed had been planted in that time, deeper and stronger than he or his teacher knew. And it would wait there, bidding its time to bloom.