The Music of the Mind Ch. 17

This may seem a small victory, but for us it felt like we had already conquered. We had saved our friend from any more pain, and even if we failed she would not be left to Dolkoff's ravages anymore.

Now, seeing and not seeing I looked at Dolkoff and our enemies both in the real world, and in the world of our thoughts. The two places seemed to superimpose over each other, and it gave an odd contrast to behold. Dolkoff stood amidst a circle of panting men and women, many with bloody faces who looked as if they were running a great race.

In his face there was nothing human left; so long had he abused this power that he had lost his humanity. He had become the kind of man that saw even his own children as pawns. There was nothing left of him but the struggle for power, and control.

The people at his feet were broken shadows of him. In the plain of sound they had allowed him to so consume them that they were indistinguishable from their master. While our column of sound danced with the life of all of us. At his feet their physical state reflected what they had given away, and what it had cost them.

Then, like sunshine breaking through the clouds in a fall snowstorm an idea came to me. So simple, yet so fundamentally different from what Dolkoff was that I thought it might just work. I could feel the reaction ripple through the web with the girls, and their intuitive agreement.

Our strength was not in subservience, but in partnership. Not in fear and domination, but in love, cooperation, and union. None of us was really in charge, and yet we all were. I reached inside myself, and let the last of my fears, the last of my separateness melt away into the music of our dance.

I felt each of the girls do this, and new awareness of Jill flooded through me as she, unable to stop herself, revealed all to her dearest friends. In her I felt the same love and devotion to me as I felt for her. I felt the absolute truth that we were already joined in this feeling, regardless of what happened to our physical bodies and minds in this cold room on the hills overlooking Boulder.

I wish I could describe the amount of sharing that we all experienced then, in that moment. In a sense, I think we became something new, a single organism comprised of all our minds. My thoughts became in part, the thoughts of the group, and in turn theirs became mine.

The attacks came again from Dolkoff and his followers again now, and there ferocity was so intense that I could hear the cries of pain from the living beings in front of me. The whirlwind of sound reached out and battered us with thousands of tiny shards of terrible sound. Each branch, each note, a symphony of despair and destruction.

We clung to each other, but again it took all our strength to just hold our own. Our uniqueness gave us strength, but it also separated our power. We needed to unify our sound, but keep our individual will. Then a note rang through the group, it made me smile to feel it from Jill, the woman I love.

It too was simple. She had experienced all I and the girls had been through in the bond, though she was not able to project her own thoughts into the group with her mind not open yet. But, in being subjected to our memories, she understood things on an objective level perhaps the rest of us could not.

So she concentrated on one idea, one thought of how to save us all, and the web of thought pulled it from her and passed it through us. 'Use the same power that formed the bond to unify you now, and then attack with it.'

Tuyen began it, our bold and fearless friend. I felt a note called into being and suddenly I felt her soft lips on mine, as did everyone else in the web. Then it was Ellen's mouth on my nipple, and Suzan's arms around me in a tight embrace. I began to call to mind the notes of pleasure I could remember in each of them when I touched them.

I felt Meg's fiery and restrained passion burning through us, and Wendy's confidant heated youth. I felt the strong love and joy of Suzan and Ellen for each other. I felt Tuyen's love for us all, and her barely restrained interest in Dimitry. But most of all, I felt the love I had for Jill, and I poured it out with all the strength and courage I could find in my soul.

The effect of all this was immediate and amazing. The bond between us did not so much grow stronger, but deeper and richer. More like a pipe expanding in diameter, than in flow. But the more astounding effect was that I began to feel a harmonic begin to form between us on the plain of sound.

It was an extremely strange feeling really. All of us were under terrible strain, and the assault from Dolkoff did not slow for an instant. So we felt an immense rising passion at the same time we fought to hold the pain out from Dolkoff.

I could feel now, all the pleasures of each of my friends, and they could feel mine. Jill was floating in a sea of pleasure, unable to give back to us, but feeling all of us delight in giving to her. Then, like all passion the feelings began to run away with us. I could feel the built to orgasm beginning, but it was not just my own, but the pleasure of all of us building in unity, as one.

As the power of feeling grew between us, the sounds we represented as a group became more and more in sync. In a sense, the body of energy we represented as a group, became more and more sympathetic, more in harmony. The energy began to align together, like two smaller waves in a pond joining together to make one wave twice the size. However I began to fear, for as the power of sensation grew, I could feel control slipping from me. I could not direct this force anymore then I could direct a tidal wave, and I feared the aftermath of our collective climax.

My fears and thoughts transmitted through the group, our thoughts so interlinked now that every thought of mine became the thought of the group. As one the group began to move us toward Dolkoff in the plane of sound.

We now looked more like a solid fluctuating wave of sound, and we towered over Dolkoff and his followers. I could see his panicked attacks as we slid toward him, and then into his sound. I could feel his energies tearing at us, but it seemed like an itch now, a nuisance.

I was so far lost in the pleasure of our mental love making that I could barely think anymore. I was sharing, no living the union of love and passion with the people closest to me in the world. Our pleasures soared together, and our strength grew. I could feel, dimly in my physical body my cock straining in my pants as I knelt on the cold tiled floor.

Then, like all pleasure some invisible line was crossed, and the great wave of an inevitable orgasm. I could feel our sound come into tune now completely. We were one note, one feeling or exquisite joy and pleasure. I felt the anticipation of everyone's bodies in line with my own.

As the first contraction of muscle happened, and the first synapses of brain tissue fired in pleasure, we all cried out as one. The world around me fades to bliss. Somehow I knew that Dolkoff's shields were gone, torn away, but I could no more act then I could stop the amazing and terrible forces that lifted me out of my body at that moment.

I knew the moment to strike, to finish this was passing, but I was paralyzed as were all the girls. I felt only a tiny flicker of fear though, for my mind was wrapped in such powerful emotion and feeling that there was little room for anything else.

Then, I felt a strong stabbing of energy flow through us and into Dolkoff. In that energy was such pain, such resignation, but it seemed miles away from me. It reached out and tore Dolkoff's mind apart. My real eyes saw him slump to the floor, and his disciples with him even as my mind began to descend back down from the pleasure where it had just resided. I knew a terrible price had just been paid. Dimitry had just killed his own father.

Reason returned slowly, and as it did the room around me came back into focus. The bond between the girls and I began to slowly recede, but the connection now was incredibly strong. There was no calling it forward now; it pulsed like a living heartbeat between us.

I turned my head slowly, as if remembering how to after long disuse. Dimitry sat on the floor staring at his fallen father, Anna knelt next to him her arms around him in comfort. His eyes were resolute, but also haunted. He looked into my eyes then, and nodded his head, a barely perceptible nod, but I understood. He had made the only choice he could, and he was not blaming me for it.

"Mike?" Jill's voice rang softly through the quiet room.

I turned and saw my love, her face streaked with tears gazing at me from her cot. I tried to rise to go to her, and found my body would not respond. The best I could manage was to stretch forward, and to slowly crawl toward her. I felt as though all the strength had been taken from me.

Then suddenly there were hands on me, lifting me to my feet. It was the girls, Tuyen and Meg on one side, and Suzan and Ellen on the other. I almost wept for their support then, both through the bond and from their physical presence. I stumbled forward next to Jill's cot, her beautiful eyes following me.

Many hands untied her bonds as I stroked her cheek and kissed her face. My tears ran with hers, and as she was freed I felt her arms come around me and hold me as tight as she was able. She felt terribly frail to me. I pressed her face to my shoulder, holding her as if she would slip away if I didn't. Then I spoke the words I had already said more truthfully, more deeply that I ever could with out the gift.

"Jill I love you." My voice croaking with emotion as I spoke.

"I love you Mike. What took you so long?"

I could hear the joke in her voice, but more surprising I could feel it through the bond. Jill had joined us, at least as fully as she could until I opened her mind. Something about that little bit of spunkiness in her caused us all to laugh, caused us all to let go of the fear and the tension we were still carrying.

I sat back and Ellen and Susan helped Jill sit up on her cot, Suzan sliding her long cashmere coat around Jill's bare bruised shoulders. She smiled at me slightly, and I could feel her embarrassment starting to surface through the relief of her rescue. Immediately, through the bond our true feelings poured into her. I could see the shock on her face as we all poured our love and support out to her. In a few moments only, her smile returned with more tears.

"I think this is going to take some getting used to." She said sheepishly, and we all laughed. Wendy chimed in.

"Less then you think, before long you won't know how you lived without it!" The girls all nodded their agreement even as I felt it through our bond.

Suddenly I felt the hair rise on the back on my neck, and the room's temperature seemed to drop another couple of degrees. I felt the connection to the girls dim in my mind till I could barely feel them. I stood, disengaging myself from Jill, and looked around the room.

I knew I would see it, the feeling though disturbing was almost familiar now. It stood by the doors leading to the front of the building, its face unreadable as ever. I have said before that the creature felt somehow alien to me, I think perhaps otherworldly is more accurate.

The rest of the group all followed my gaze and I heard a sharp intake of breath from Anna as she saw the being. I walked forward through my friends to stand before it. I had dreaded this moment, but now I found myself calm.

The prospect of living without the gift didn't bother me so much anymore. I knew that Jill would take time to recover from her injuries both mental and physical, but I knew that my friends could help her with that with or without the gift. Ultimately I guess I just felt that us all being alive was a great gift in itself, so I met the genie with as much calm as anyone could have in its presence.

It stood watching me, the light reflecting strangely off its tinted skin. I wondered what would pass through the mind of a being like this. I wondered what drove it, what motivated it. What world did it come from, what universe held the laws that it lived by?

For long moments we regarded one another, and then it smiled. I have described this smile before, but this one was entirely different then the others. I could feel a smug satisfaction radiating from it about Dolkoff's death. It had greatly bothered this being that it had been used by him, and I had executed its revenge for it.

Its eyes flicked across the group behind me before coming once more to rest on my face. The smile faded, but my sense of being caught in the stare of a predator did not. Then it raised its hand and a warm white light washed out across the room over us all.

It filled me with warmth, and I felt my energy return to me as if I had just woken from a long sleep after a week of vacation. My whole body and mind tingled. The light was bright enough that I squinted for a moment, and when it passed the genie had gone.

The bond then rushed back in, the gift still present between all of us. I could feel in each of my friends that they too had been invigorated by the creature's last gesture, mostly though my eyes found Jill sitting on her cot. She rose to her feet slowly. The bruises and blood were gone from her face. The cuts on her wrists and ankles had vanished.

Suzan's long coat hung open briefly as she stood, and I could see the beauty of her form unmarred by the trauma she had endured. I could feel through the bond, that the memory of it endured, but the physical signs were gone.

Then I felt, with great shock, her reach out with her mind to us all, sharing her love and acceptance of what we were, what we had done, and her hope for a future together with us all. The genie had opened her mind, and now we all stood in the light of the bond, separate, yet whole.

A great deal of work lay ahead for us all. A great deal of healing was needed on all our hearts and minds, but at least we could stand together as we did it. I walked forward to my love and my friends and let my joy ring forth in me. Jill met me in embrace and as I kissed those lips I had watched in conversation so many nights in her house, our friends gathered around us and held us tight.