Author's notes:

This story takes place in 2000 in the same timeline as A Long Time from Home, but it is an independent story, with different main character ect. There's no need to read A Long Time from Home before this one, though a few events might be present in both stories for the simple reason that the exist in the same world.

It's also a lot shorter than ALTFH :)

Some warnings:

This is erotic action adventure, meaning that there will be both sex and violence, but I don't mix the two.

This story is posted on the Literotica website and the author does not give permission for it to be reposted or reprinted anywhere else without consent.

Note.

This is an edited version, correcting some of the spelling, missing words and other errors. The series is self-edited, so any mistakes are mine, though I now have a proof-reader, that can catch missing words ect. Thanks to Jessejames932006 for doing that.

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Fabula, sed vera

(Latin: A story, but a true one)

CHAPTER 1 -- A JOB WELL DONE

London, Friday 23. of June, 2000, Evening

As always when we agreed to meet, Laura was fashionably late. Fortunately, I was used to that by now and had arranged for the take-away food to arrive later.

That turned out to be an excellent move because when Laura showed up, I could feel the lust emanating from her like the scent of a strong perfume, and the welcome hug and kiss quickly turned into a full-blown French kiss, that sent tendrils of lust through my body, spreading like electricity.

Not that I minded. Laura was good-looking, with sand coloured hair, amber eyes behind a pair of elegant glasses, and lovely lips that more often than not were smiling, revealing a set of pearly white teeth. Being fit and trim, she had a fantastic body, with good-sized breasts, a slim waist, and shapely hips that turned into long legs.

We had met at Cambridge University, where we had worked together on several projects until we eventually ended up in bed together. An event we had repeated every other week for the last two years. We had tried to be a couple for a few months, but while we were good when it came to sex, we didn't work as a couple, so we went back to just having sex. An arrangement that had suited us both for more than a year now.

"Shit!" Laura groaned, as we broke the kiss. "I need you inside me!"

That made me chuckle and take her arm, walking towards the bedroom. "Deal, but what has made you so turned on?"

"I'll tell you when you're inside me." She promised with a wicked smile.

A few minutes later, I was laying on the bed, admiring Laura, as she took off the last of her clothes. Normally, she would make a show out of it, but today, she just dumped the clothes onto a chair and crawled onto the bed, aiming straight at my stiff dick.

When she reached her goal, she bowed her head and took me into her warm, wet mouth. It felt heavenly, but from the way she used her tongue, I could feel that she was just making it wet for the next part.

She stayed low as she let go of my dick and moved up my body with a leg on each side of me, her modest but oh so perfectly formed breasts dragging across my stomach and chest.

She gave me a smile. "You look like you're enjoying yourself."

I smiled back. "Why wouldn't I? I have a gorgeous naked woman dragging her perfect tits over my skin."

"Good point." She admitted with a grin as she reached me, giving me a kiss as she positioned herself at just the right angle, with the head of my dick at her entrance. Then she pushed backwards, impaling herself on my stiff cock.

"Oh Fuck!" she moaned and wriggled her hips, pressing down at the same time, making me gasp with pleasure, as I felt her pussy grip and stretch around me.

When it was completely inside her, she sat still for a moment and then began to rock back and forth, moaning with each move she made.

Reaching up, she leaned forward and took hold of the bed's headrest to get some leverage. That brought her breasts to the level of my eyes and I admired their perfect shape and hard nipples for a few seconds before I reached up with both hands and fondled them.

"Oh, yeah!" She groaned and raised up, before she slowly lowered herself back down, taking my entire cock into her. She fucked me slowly like that for several minutes, while I lay still, enjoying the feel of her wet pussy sliding up and down my shaft, combined with the sight of her riding me.

Gradually her pace increased, switching between going up and down, rocking back and forth, while grinding her clitoris against my pelvis.

Suddenly she arched her back, slammed her hips down me and came with a shudder, howling "YES!", before she collapsed on top of me.

For a while we just lay there, but then she raised her upper body and gave me a quick kiss, before sitting all the way up. "Do you remember Doctor Smith?"

"I think so. Old guy, grey hair, short beard?" I answered, wondering where it was leading.

She nodded. "That's the guy. Just before leaving work today, I was tidying up and had to go into the old library with some books, but when I got there, I heard faint moans, so I placed the books on a rack and tiptoed forward, until I reached one of the reading areas. The moans had grown louder, so I walked in between the two last rows of bookshelves and peeked into the reading area over some of the smaller books."

Laura paused her story for a moment to clench the muscles in her pussy and slowly lift up, making me groan from the feeling, only to impale herself once more on my stiff cock, moaning as her ass connected with my thighs. Then she grabbed the headboard again and went up and down a dozen times more before she settled down and continued her story.

"That's when I saw the young nurse Angela sitting on top of Doctor Smith, screwing herself on his dick, while he was laying on a sofa." She giggled. "I thought you had a big dick, but holy shit... Sixty or not, that guy has the biggest cock I've ever seen. Seriously, it's about the size of my forearm, with balls the size of plums!"

As she talked, I could feel her pussy contract around my dick. "That turned you on?"

"Like crazy." She admitted. "Not the thought, but the sight. I've never seen anyone have sex before in real life and God, it's hot."

She rotated her hips, making my dick move inside her.

"They were at an angle to me, so I could see everything. Their expression of pleasure on their faces, his giant cock going in and out of her, as she rode him. Her shapely ass shivering with pleasure each time she went up..."

Laura lifted herself as she spoke, saying, "And down." as she let herself fall on my dick.

Sensing that she wanted to come once more, I started to massage her soft tits, rolling the hard nipples between my fingers, causing her to moan louder, as she moved her hands to my chest and arched her back even more, thrusting her breasts into my hands. "Yes! Just like that! Damn, you have the perfect cock."

"Well, you have the perfect pussy for it." I moaned, meaning every word of it. She was tight, without being too tight, and just deep enough to fit me, with the head of my dick gently touching the bottom of her pussy when she sat on me.

Laura groaned in response and slowed down enough for her to speak. "Anyway, I kept watching them for a while, playing with myself and getting more and more aroused, but I didn't dare to come, because they would have heard me for sure."

I nodded at that. Laura tended to be loud when she came.

"Angela was coming like crazy, screaming into the panties she had stuffed into her mouth, but finally I head Doctor Smith telling her that he was coming."

Laura started moving faster again, squeezing her pussy around me as she slid up and down my cock. I was tempted to help her, but experience had taught me that Laura preferred to have it her own way. It hadn't stopped me from taking control occasionally, but generally I let her be in control. Especially when she was as horny as she was right now.

"She got off him on wobbly legs, bent down and took the head into her mouth, while she used both her hands to jack him off... Mostly because his dick was so huge, that her hands couldn't close all the way around it."

Laura let go of the headboard as she leaned back, placing one hand on my chest, while the other went between her legs, rubbing her clitoris so fast her hand was a blur. The moans became louder and faster, but amazingly, none of that kept her from moving back and forth, making my dick go in and out of her. To make it even better, the angle made the head of my dick slide firmly against her G-spot every time, making us both groan.

"Slow down." I managed to say between groans.

"Are... you... close?" She gasped.

"Yes."

"Not... yet... please." She moaned and then screamed as an orgasm tore through her body, making her jerk on top of me. The feel of her pussy contracting rhythmically around my dick almost made me come there and then, but I managed to keep it under control.

Finally, her orgasm subsided, and she got off me, sat beside me on the bed and took a hold of my cock with a hand, jerking me off, while she looked up at me. "It didn't take long for Angela to make Doctor Smith come and those plum sized balls must have been filled to the brim, because even with her swallowing as fast as she could, sperm was running down the shaft, covering her hands."

With that, she took my cock into her mouth, letting her tongue lick the underside, as she bobbed her head, lips gliding over the head, sucking gently, while her hand went up and down the shaft.

Reaching out, I briefly fondled her ass, before I inserted two fingers in her warm, wet pussy. The sensation of her around my fingers added to the rest and I just had time to grunt, "Coming." before I exploded in her mouth.

Laura moaned and swallowed it all, stroking me, as I emptied myself in her mouth. When she was sure nothing more was coming, she lay down by my side, head resting on my shoulder. "Damn, that was good."

"It really was." I confirmed with a smile. "I never knew watching other people fuck would make you so fired up?"

She blushed a little. "Neither did I. I've seen porn plenty of times but seeing it live is something completely different." She looked up at me. "Do you think I'm perverse?"

That made me laugh. "Not at all. I'm just happy you discovered it."

Laura opened her mouth to speak, but the sound of the doorbell interrupted her.

"That has to be the food." I told her.

"Perfect timing." She said with a grin, "I'll go get it."

Getting out of the bed, she took a silk bathrobe from a closet and walked out of the door.

Smiling slightly, I got out of the bed as well and took a bathrobe as well before I followed her.

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Friday 23 of June, 2000, Midnight.

The rain drummed a melody against my window creating a counter-rhythm to the music as I let the fingers walk themselves down the tangents, settling into an old ballad as my mind relaxed and drifted with the music for a while.

Laura had gone home an hour earlier after we had eaten, taken a bath, and talked for some hours. All in all, it had been a pleasant evening and I looked forward to next time.

The phone on the table gave a beep, signalling an incoming message.

Not many people would send me a message at this time of the day, so I stopped playing and walked over to the phone and looked at the screen. It read "Teleconference. Leo."

Leo is my cousin Leonardo Scipio, who works in the family corporation and he wouldn't be calling unless it was important.

The laptop was right next to the phone on the table, so I activated it using the fingerprint reader, turned on the webcam and called Leo, while activating the encryption of the signal. It might make the connection a bit slower, but I like my privacy.

"Hey Leo, what's up?" I asked in Latin when his face appeared on the screen. We were both raised with speaking the language and it sure as hell makes life more difficult for people who might be listening.

He grinned without saying a word and tapped a few keys so that the camera changed to the security camera in what looked like his bedroom. The dark-haired beauty that lay on the bed only dressed in underwear was one impressive built female.

"Hades! She looks like Venus incarnate." I chuckled. "Is she as well trained as it looks from here?"

The lady disappeared and Leo was back in the picture, nodding. "More I think... and she got herself a degree in Business Law to go with it."

I drank some more of the coffee. "So, if you have her to enjoy, why are you sitting there talking with me in the middle of the night... unless you wanted to brag of course?"

"Oh, just wanted to tell you that the deal with Mr. Clarence has been finalised." He said with a little smile. "The papers are signed and there was no trouble at all."

I blinked in surprise a few times. We had been working on and off with that deal for more than eight months now and I had thought that it would have taken at least one month more before it was over. This deal was the very reason that Leonardo was here in London, because normally he is in Hong Kong or Boston, depending on his business. "How did you do that?"

He shrugged. "As it turned out, Mr. Clarence had beaten his wife and daughter in a drunken craze many years ago and had apparently forgotten all about it. Miss Clarence on the other hand had not forgotten it and was quite eager to get a little bit even... and she inherited thirty percent of the stock in Clarence Technologies, when her mother died last year." He smiled a bit. "She didn't mind becoming rich either."

"Ahhh..." Something dawned on me. "And Miss Clarence is currently sleeping in your bed?"

He smiled. "Yep. Wasn't exactly my plan, but that was the way it turned out... not that I'm complaining."

I grinned back at him. "Neither am I... not with thirty percent of Mr. Clarence's stock." I thought it over for a moment. The thirty percent should be enough to get the majority of the shares in Clarence Technologies, effectively taking over the company and adding it to Scipio International. "Okay. I'll need to move on this as fast as possible. Could you fax me the signed contract?"

He nodded. "Already happened." He chuckled. "Well, you need to work, and I will go back and do my duty for the good of the family."

I snorted. "How come you always get all the fun?"

"Because I'm the charming one." He replied with a grin. "See ya later, Jimmy."

"Yeah, see you... and have fun."

"No worries." He said with a wide smile. "I will."

While the Clarence deal wasn't really my job, I had promised Leo to help. It took four more hours to finish off and when I was done, morning had started outside the windows. Cramped from sitting down for so long, l stood up, opened the sliding glass door, and walked onto the roof terrace while massaging my back. For once it was a lovely late summer morning in London and I was enjoying the fresh morning air, smiling to myself. A beautiful morning after a night where the Scipio Corporation had taken over a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars isn't all that bad.

Now it was time to sleep.

Yawning, I turned away from the window and walked towards the bedroom. There's a limit on how many hours without sleep I'm willing to endure.

I stopped in front of the display case that holds a copy of one of the family heirlooms: A Gladius Hispaniensis. An ancient Spanish-Roman sword, it's double bladed, 61 cm long and 5 cm wide and it has been in the family since our ancestors Gnaeus and Publius Scipio carried them in the second Punic war around 215 BC.

Everybody in the family has a copy and for us they are a kind of good luck charm. More to the point it reminds us of our responsibility to a family that we can trace back more than two thousand years.

Then I went into the bedroom and to bed.

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As many times before, I dreamed about the day when I found out that I am a Psychic. I was 14 and for quite some time I had suffered from bad dreams. It was like I could hear strange voices in my head and at other times it felt like I had these... surges of power in me.

To my great surprise the family believed me and gave me all the support that I could hope for. Of course, I later found out that they knew exactly what was going on, but it was still nice to be heard and believed. Especially when you are a teenager trying to tell your parents that ashtrays are floating in the air when you wake up in the middle of a nightmare.

Anyway, the day it broke out for real, was at a small family party at Uncle Lucius' house.

We, that was my father Juan, his first wife Cecilia and his second wife Monica, and me as well as my uncle Lucius, his wife Catharina and their children Marcus, Nicholas, and Paula, were sitting on blankets in the garden, enjoying our meal in the open air. The weather was pleasantly warm and for me, it was the perfect summer day with my family.

Then the peace was shattered as two masked men stepped out from some bushes, aimed guns at us and started to shoot. My father was hit in the shoulder and went down with a yell and a second later Monica went down as well, with a bullet in the leg.

Screams behind me told me that others had been hit too. Something snapped inside my head and a rush of power filled me. It was like a dam was broken and all the water flooded out into me. One of the masked men screamed as an invisible force picked him up and hurled him away. The brief moment of flight ended when he collided with a tree.

The other gunman turned his head to look for his friend for a split second and when he turned his head back and tried to shoot again, his gun was frozen solid. He looked at his hand, which was stuck to the cold metal and screamed, but the sound stopped when a bottle of wine hit him in the head with enough force to shatter both.

He went down.

Bottles of soda started to hit any bush that could hide more attackers, followed by plates, four grilled chickens and a bowl of salad.

I suddenly became aware of somebody yelling at me. "Stop it, Jimmy!"

It was Uncle Lucius, so I tried to stop it, but without much luck as a bottle of salad oil shattered against a tree. "I can't!"

Then I felt someone touch my leg and I recognized the touch of one of my mothers, as peace rushed in and I fell asleep. As usual the dream stopped there.

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Saturday 24 of June, 2000

It was noon when I woke up again. Not because I couldn't sleep anymore, but because the doorbell was ringing.

With a sigh I picked up a bathrobe, put my glasses on and walked to the door. As it turned out it was Leo standing outside, holding two cups of take-away coffee. He handed me one of the cups. "Good morning, Cousin. It's a beautiful day, so set your mind in motion."

As always, he was speaking Latin.

I accepted the cup and stepped back so that he could enter the apartment. "Go fuck yourself."

He just grinned and said "Nope, I got a woman to do that.", before he walked past me into the living room.

Sighing, I closed the door and followed him. With Leo around I wouldn't get more sleep anyway. I drank some of the coffee, which turned out to be an excellent cappuccino. "So, what's up?"

Again, he just grinned and said, "Have you checked the stock on Clarence Industries this morning?" as he sat down in a chair.

I resisted the temptation to throw the cup after him. I absolutely hate being woken up that way after a hard night at work. I drank some more of the cappuccino and it actually helped my mood. Now I didn't feel like killing him anymore. Setting fire to his pants, yes, but not exactly killing.

Not in the mood to play games, I simply looked at him and at the same time the ashtray next to him rattled a warning. That reminder made him continue.

Leonardo might suck at telekinesis, but he is a much better telepath than I am and as all telepaths, including me, he can feel emotions... like the brewing irritation in my body.

"No. Like most normal people, I was sleeping."

Ignoring my irritation, he continued. "They just went up over one point on the stock market this morning. This is going to become one of the better deals we have made in a long time." He grinned again. "Gotta love it!"

I nodded and raised the cup. "Cheers, but you could have told me this on the phone, so what brings you here?"

"Something strange happened in Malaga last night." He said slowly. "As always, Grandmother Claudia was on the beach to celebrate the Night of San Juan, but at midnight she felt some sort of power spreading over the beach. According to her, the power made her feel good, but this morning it was reported that three people died around midnight."

That made me raise my eyebrows. "Strange and vague."

He nodded. "Agreed, but it wasn't the power by itself that made her worried, it was the sheer scope of it. The three deaths occurred at least ten kilometres apart."

"That's a lot." I admitted and thought it over. "Could one of them be a coincidence?"

"Yes, but it would have to be a coincidence made in Hades, as they all died with two minutes of each other." He shrugged. "I don't know what to make of all this, since we're far away from Grandmother's villa in Malaga, so I guess it's more of a warning."

"Duly noted." I said and changed the subject. "Should we go somewhere to celebrate the Clarence deal?"

While I drank from the cup, Leo nodded. "How about a dinner at that Italian restaurant you like so much?"

"San Giovanni's?"

He nodded. "That's the one."

"Sounds good." I drank some more of the cappuccino and was about to say something when the cell phone rang. I picked it up and started talking, but had to stop and start over again, this time in English, not Latin. Sometimes old habits are hard to break, and Latin was the first language that we learned as our parents spoke it at home. Of course, we were also taught English and Spanish, but for most of the family, Latin just feels more natural when we are together.

I recognized the voice in the phone as belonging to John Johnson, one of the staff my work. "I'm sorry to disturb you on your day off, Mr. Scipio, but we have a special case that requires some urgent paperwork."

"I will be there as soon as I can." I promised.

"Very well, Mr. Scipio."

Placing the phone back I turned towards Leo with a sigh. "Apparently, I have to go do some work."

"Okay... See you tonight then." He stood and walked to the door. "Happy working."

I chuckled. "Thank you."

We hugged, said our goodbyes and then he walked out again.

As Leonardo closed the door after him, I stood up and walked to the bathroom to take a bath, but my growling stomach convinced me otherwise, so instead I ended up in the kitchen where I made a Pepperoni and cheese sandwich. Ever since that day in the garden, I need a lot of food to function. There's no doubt that I need the food too because no matter how much I eat, I don't gain weight.

My thoughts returned to my youth and the time after the attack in the garden.

For me, the attack meant the end of childhood. Before the first change I had a very happy and quite normal childhood. As normal as any childhood in our roman-inspired family can be that is.

One of the things that make our family unlike most others is the focus on Roman things and traditions. We were all raised with Latin, Spanish, and English as the spoken languages. Our clothes were the same as every other kid, except for family parties and gatherings where the men would wear colourful togas and the women equally colourful tunics.

The biggest difference was our way of living: My parent's house is a copy of a big Roman villa and there's lots of marble, couches, and Persian rugs there. Of course it's a lot better insulated than the original and there's every modern convenience that you could need. The family is eccentric, not stupid, and as my father usually says: Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. (Latin: 'The times are changed, and we are changed in them.')

When I visited other kids, I was always careful not to show how colourless and ugly I found their homes. Where were the statues of ancestors, the colourful frescoes that make the walls so beautiful and the mosaics that did the same to the floors? Not to mention that their gardens were plain boring and unsuited to enjoy or play hide-and-seek in. In fact, the only good thing about other people's gardens was that they had a big lawn, which could be used to play soccer on.

Another thing that the other kids found interesting was the fact that Antonius, one of dad's Praetorians (Bodyguards), was assigned to play with us kids and teach us a few tricks about fighting. It was loads of fun for everyone and when the other kids had to be somewhere else, Antonius taught me the ancient art of fighting with a sabre, and I became quite good at it.

But after the attack my life changed, because I got pulled out of school for some years, while Grandmother Claudia moved into the villa and started to teach me how to use the powers that I was born with, while my mothers taught me ordinary school stuff. She continued to teach me even when I came home from the hospital or the university and she did succeed in making me understand the need to keep it secret.

"People fear what they don't understand." She told me. "That is one of reasons why we keep it hidden and before you ask the same question as all young people do, which is why we do not rule the world or at least some small country, I will give you the answer: Every ruler in history, from the Roman emperors, over countless kings to presidents have discovered that being visible is being a target... and targets die." She shook her head. "It is far safer to stay in the shadows for people like us."

Later I discovered that every kid with Psychic powers in the family got that speech and with good reason. The temptation to use psychic powers is sometimes overwhelming when you're a teenager and want things your own way. To get the newest clothes, the girl or boy that you want and so on and if it is not stopped right then and there, things can go very wrong.

Another reason to limit the use of psychic powers is that others with the same ability can feel when you use them.

To my parent's and Grandmother Claudia's great frustration I'm actually one of the few, whose use of psychic powers for some reason can't be felt. I've heard many possible explanations for this, but I think that my powers simply operate on a different frequency.

It's like listening to a radio: It no use searching on the FM band, if the signal you're looking for is located on the AM band and when it comes to other psychics, my use of powers is simply not there.

I have spent many hours wondering about that, and I think that it relates to the fact that I cannot use powers on anything I cannot see or through non-transparent material. My mothers could always reach out with their minds and contact me, even if I were in the other end of the house, but that is a thing that I cannot do. I can answer 'a call' so to speak as long as the sender isn't too far away, but I cannot reach out that way to people.

So, one possible explanation is that my brain operates on another frequency than other psychics and that this frequency unfortunately is one that is blocked by solid materials.

I am used to this now, so it doesn't bother me that much, but once in a while it can be quite irritating. Especially when I know that dad can Mind Talk with both my mothers from just about anywhere on the planet. Even considering how close the three of them are, that's an impressive feat and one that I can never come even close to.

All in all, I benefited a lot from Grandmother Claudia's teachings and her presence. Believe me when I say that nobody in their right mind would like to have an angry teenager in the house, especially not when that teenager could throw the dinner table through the window in a second or set it ablaze without even touching it.

Grandmother Claudia could cool me down with a few well-placed words and somehow my powers did not work as well when she was around. Besides that, she was a wonderful cook and taught me the way around a kitchen.

With that thought, I realized that if I didn't hurry up, I would be late, so I took a quick bath, got into some clothes and then into the old bucket that is my car and drove to work, stopping on the way to buy some food at a drive-in.

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After six hours of work, I was done and drove downtown, looking for somewhere to park the car. London is not a good town to drive cars in and I don't like to drive anyway, but I dislike taking the metro even more than driving.

Mostly because of all the people that are down there. I have good control over my telepathic powers but standing very close to so many people gives me the creeps.

Another problem is that with the back injury I have, being pushed, even accidentally, in the back hurts a lot. So, I have an old Toyota that I use as transportation. It starts every time, gets me from A to B when I want it to, and as it's old and not very nice to look at, I don't have to be worried about it getting scratched... and since I suck at parking, it will get scratched sooner or later.

After twenty minutes I found a parking house that wasn't full, parked the car, took my cane, and walked towards my favourite restaurant.

The direct road there led through some alleys that people tend to avoid, but I made my way down there without hesitation and to my great surprise, I got a table right away, and sat down to drink a cup of coffee while I waited for Leo to show up.

Right after I had turned eighteen, I worked for Uncle Lucius in my spare time for a year. He managed the security department at the Scipio Corporation and taught me how to react to people on the streets, how to see if they were carrying weapons and a lot of other things that kids my age wouldn't know, unless they grew up in it.

I think that he was grooming me to succeed him, but all that changed on the 10th of April 1992 (Yes, that date is burned into my memory). I had been accepted into the University of Cambridge the year before and had moved there to study finance, but on that day, I had visited Scipio International's department in London's financial district. The visit took longer than planned and I was on my way back a little past nine in the evening, walking down St Mary Axe towards the train station, when everything went to hell.

A huge blast went off, lifting me into the air before I even knew what was happening and threw me into a building wall, ruined my back along with so many other injuries that I can't even remember the list anymore.

It was so serious that not even my mother's healing skills could do much about it and the Gods know that she tried her best. I wasn't the only one injured that day, as ninety-one others were injured as well. Still, I was better off than the three people that were killed in what was later known as the Baltic Exchange bombing.

Personally, I had to stay in a hospital bed for a long time and then spend years in a wheelchair, training every day to be able to walk again. It wasn't fun and by the time I succeeded, Leonardo had been elected to take over after Lucius at some point in the future, while my cousin Paula had taken a seat on the Board of Directors at Scipio International. I don't mind. There's no such thing as a free ride in our family: The one that is best and most suited for the job, gets it, and Leo was better at security than I am, while Paula is a financial genius.

The promotions weren't a coincidence, as the three of us were the only Psychics of our generation, bringing the total number of Psychics in the family to six. That might sound like a lot, but we're a huge family and we're spread out all over the world.

The powers we have are very nice, but Telepathy was the most useful power when it came to business and both Leo and Paula were better at that than me. Otherwise, our powers are nice to have, but they did have a drawback. Over the last twenty years the family have detected or discovered at least fifteen other Psychics that simply had disappeared at some point and even with our connections, we had been unable to find the cause of this.

The implications on the other hand weren't hard to figure out: If you misused your powers and got the attention of some unknown organization, you would end up in a prison facility so secret that nobody had ever heard about it, or you ended up in an unmarked grave, no matter how superior you thought you were.

"Excuse me, sir." Said a voice, disturbing my thoughts. "Would you like something to drink while you're waiting?"

Looking up, I saw the waiter standing by the table, a professional smile plastered on his face.

I nodded. "Yes, give me a medium cola and a beef carpaccio to go with it."

"Yes, sir."

He walked away and my thought turned to the time after the accident, or whatever it is called when you're thrown into a wall by a giant explosion.

While I was bedridden and subsequently in a wheelchair, I had taken the time to educate myself as much as I could. I would like to say that it was a burning ambition inside me, but mostly it was to avoid being bored to death.

Those twenty-four hours in a day is quite close to hell on earth, when you can't do anything. You sleep for seven hours, and then you get a bath and breakfast, which takes another hour.

After that you spend one or two hours trying to get your body to move again and you're done for the day. Except that the day isn't over yet because there are fourteen hours left to kill.

Most people freak out when they're forced to do nothing for a few hours, so imagine how bad ten or twelve hours more can feel. Especially when you have to endure it for years.

Trust me; you'll do anything to avoid that and studying has the benefit of making your mind tired, so that you can sleep at night without using sleeping pills.

Fortunately, the University of Cambridge was sympathetic to my situation and allowed me to double up on my schedule, which again enabled me to go through a lot of stuff in a short time compared to other students.

First, I finished the education I was doing at the time of the accident, which was a degree in trade and finance, along with a degree in Administration and a course in Leadership. It is however quite boring to lie in bed doing financial analysis or pushing papers around, so I started to think about the Psychic powers and where they came from, leading me to research into the brain and how it worked.

That led me to pursue a new study: Medicine, more specifically Neuroscience and I quickly found that I liked it a lot. It was while I was studying that, that I finally got out of the wheelchair and could walk with the help of a cane, and I finished the education as a Doctor in Clinical Neuroscience at Addenbrooke's Hospital at the University. I even worked for some time in the emergency room of the hospital, but my back wasn't quite up to it and by the time that I had finished my internship, I was close to being addicted to painkillers, so I had to quit that part of the job.

It didn't stop my interest in healing though, so I turned to the Oriental art of healing in an attempt to figure out if they knew more about the powers of the mind and I took an education in that at the University of Bridgeport, while working part time in the Scipio Corporation as an economist. Unfortunately, there wasn't any connection as far as I could see, but truth to be told, I didn't have the time to do a lot of research, so there might be something hidden there, waiting to be found.

On the bright side I learned massage there as well and that is something that sits rather well with women. Almost every woman I have encountered loves a good massage, and I can do acupuncture on myself when my back is hurting, which helps a lot. Especially since I don't have the healing powers of my cousin Paula or Grandmother Claudia.

I leaned back in the chair with a smile on my face, as I thought about Grandmother Claudia. Dark haired, beautiful, elegant, and colourful, she is without doubt the person in the world that I respect the most. Not only did she train me for years, but she was there along with my mothers for night and day the first months I was in the hospital.

Always cheerful, she spent hours telling me stories about the family until I was healthy enough to read myself.

Claudia being Claudia, all the stories had some form of subtle morale, even the funnier ones, but it was nice not to be alone in the hospital.

However, the stories that I found even more interesting, were the stories that other family members told me about Grandmother: She is the strongest Telepath that has been in our family in a long time and besides that, she is a businesswoman who, after my grandfather died, was strong and smart enough to lead the corporation in a time when businesswomen simply did not exist.

Being a lot older and more experienced than she looks like might have been an advantage too. She looks to be around forty-five, but I know that as a young girl she was a nurse in the second world war, because one of her patients was so grateful that he painted a picture of her and that picture hangs in Claudia's villa in Spain. There is no doubt that it is Claudia in the picture, and since it's dated 2. July 1942, she must be at least seventy-five by now.

Most people find that hard to believe, but my family aren't most people and those in my family that can use their psychic powers to heal usually live very long.

The waiter arrived with my soda and snack and I enjoyed the excellent beef carpaccio, while thinking about Grandmother Claudia.

There're many stories about her in the family and most of them are absolutely true. It is very hard to make up stories in a family where a selected few just know when you're lying.

Some stories are funny, like the fact that she was the model for the statue of Venus that stands in the fountain outside the Scipio Corporation headquarters in Madrid and that the only reason that it has some clothes on, was that my grandfather put his foot down and told her that he would not have his wife standing butt naked where everybody could see her. Mostly because he simply did not have bullets enough to kill all those men that would be drooling after the most beautiful woman in the world.

Apparently, it worked, because not only was the figure equipped with a small toga instead of being naked, but Cecilia, my birth mother, was born shortly after the statue was finished eight months later.

Another funny thing about Grandmother Claudia is that she, for some unknown reason, dislikes the Star Wars movies and the first time it was shown on TV, she switched it off.

That got the undivided attention of her grandchildren, and we all went to see the movie as soon as possible. The reason for grandmother's temper was obvious: The movie was Star Wars and it seemed like a lot of the powers we use were displayed in the movie.

Anyway, for obvious reasons most of the family thought that Star Wars was great fun, and it didn't become better when most of the family showed up as characters from Star Wars at the yearly masquerade in December. Claudia was furious at first, but eventually even she had to laugh along with everybody else when Leo showed up in a Yoda costume complete with a rubber mask.

Since then, Star Wars has become part of family tradition and there're many words and expressions from the film that are now a part of the family language. Like 'Using the Force' as an expression for use of psychic powers or 'disturbance' for sensing the use of physic powers (As in 'I feel a disturbance in the Force'). The younger generation also uses the expression 'Vis exsisto vobis', meaning 'the Force be with you' as a goodbye. Even the word 'Sith' is used to describe an egocentric person while a 'Sith Lord' is a psychic that uses psychic powers for his own gain without thinking about others.

The sound of Leo's voice disturbed my thoughts. "Hello there, Jimmy. You look deep in thought."

I looked up at him with a smile and then motioned towards the empty chair. "Hey Leo. Have a seat."

He sat and a waiter appeared to take our orders and then walked away.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I was just pondering the family history and thinking about Star Wars... and you dressed up as Yoda."

Leo chuckled. "Oh, that was fun... Especially the look on Grandma's face when I wriggled the fake ears."

I laughed at the memory and then added. "Oh, your brother wasn't bad as a storm-trooper either, though perhaps he should have made better looking holes in that mask. Then he wouldn't have smashed your mother's vase with that big plastic gun of his."

"Oh yeah, that was a sight!" He laughed and accepted a cup of coffee from the waiter, before turning back towards me. "While we're at the subject: Are you coming to the party this year?"

I drank some more of the coffee, before answering. "I don't know, but I will do my best to be there, unless my work takes me elsewhere."

He nodded. "As it is with all of us."

"Exactly." I said with a nod and changed the subject as the waiter arrived with the food. The restaurant wasn't a safe place to talk business.

So, we talked about family things. Like my vacation at Leo's place in Hong Kong a year ago and what to give the family for the various birthdays and anniversaries.

Of course, I had to tease Leo with him scoring on Miss Clarence. But as I didn't have an official girlfriend at the moment, I was too easy a target for counter-teasing, so I quickly gave it up.

When the dinner was over we paid and walked outside, where there were chairs and tables, so that we could sit and smoke, while drinking the traditional cup of cappuccino.

As usual I lit a cigar while Leo lit a cigarette and then asked. "So, when are you going back to Hong Kong?"

"In a few hours." He said, blowing smoke towards a mosquito.

"Sorry to hear that." I said and meant it. Leonardo had done most of his work from Hong Kong and had only been in London for four weeks due to the Clarence deal, so I knew that he had to go back to Hong Kong at some point. I just wished that he could have stayed another week. It was nice to have someone from the family to talk with again. "But have a good trip."

"Will do."

"Thanks." I drank some cappuccino. "What about Miss Clarence? Does she know that you are leaving?"

Leo smiled widely. "Yes. She is coming with me... After all, there's not much that keeps her here and I would like to see more of her."

I lifted an eyebrow. It was rare that Leo spends more than a few nights with the same woman and for him to take her with him to Hong Kong was something extraordinary.

On the other hand, Leo is a powerful telepath, and he has no problem with using someone that was trying to use him, like the gold-diggers that wanted to catch a good-looking and rich young businessman.

However, it is close to impossible to fool a telepath like Leo, so usually he just enjoys them for a few days before he discards them.

"She must be quite a lady." I concluded with a smile. "I wish you luck, my friend."

"Thanks." He looked thoughtful into the air as he stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray. "I hope that it works out well, because I like her a lot."

I nodded, as I felt his restlessness. "And there are places that you would rather be right now."

"You know me too well." A smile appeared on his face as he stood. "In fact, she is waiting for me at the airport, so if you don't mind, I will have to cut this a bit short."

I laughed as I stood and gave him a hug. "Go see her, fool. I'll see you later."

He hugged back and flipped a wave in his usual fashion. "See you later, Jimmy."

"Have a safe trip." I switched to Latin. "Vis exsisto vobis." (Latin: the Force be with you')

"Vis exsisto vobis." he answered with a smile and walked away.

I drank the rest of the coffee before I took my cane and started to walk back towards the parking house where I left my car.

The sun had gone down while Leo and I had been eating, there were fewer people on the streets now and the dark alleys that lead back to the parking house were even darker and less inviting than before.

I ignored the drug dealers and kept on walking, until I heard a muffled scream coming from a side alley. Sighing to myself, I turned and walked into the alley. It had been a woman screaming and I dislike women being mistreated.

As I entered the relative darkness of the alley, I levitated slightly to get my feet of the ground to avoid making too much noise and then slowly hovered down the alley, until I came to a big container and could see the source of the screams. A young woman was being held down by a blond man with a lot of piercings in his face, while a skinhead had his pants down and was raping her.

I considered calling the cops, but they would never be here on time, so instead I landed on the ground and took a step into the alley.

I looked at the woman, gritted my teeth and extended my thoughts to find hers, but she was too far away for my limited Telepathic reach, so there was no way I could make her fall unconscious.

Telekinesis was an entirely other matter. So, I turned my attention to the man instead and discovered that the angle gave me a view of the man's balls as he screwed the terrified woman mercilessly.

I could have told him that you did not dangle your balls in front of a pissed off telekinetic psychic, but instead I made a grabbing motion with my hand at the same time as I activated my telekinetic powers.

The man shrieked a high-pitched scream, as his balls were squeezed with enormous power. Then I used my grip to lift him off the girl and throw him into a wall.

That stopped the screaming and since the other guy was busy looking at his friend, I took a few steps forward and reached out with my thoughts, trying to make contact with him, so I could stun him and wipe his memory. There was no need to kill people I didn't have to. To my surprise my thought probe bounced off his mind like a stone skipping on water.

Suddenly I realized that the piercings acted as a mental shield for him. For some unknown reason I can't use any psychic powers at all when my head is covered with something hard, which is rather inconvenient from time to time and as far as telepathy goes, I run into problems when people I'm trying to use it on wear something hard on their heads, like a motorcycle helmet.

Earrings or nose rings isn't normally a problem, but this guy had two piercings in his eyebrows and, more importantly, three piercings inserted in his forehead and the effect of all that metal was evidently more than my telepathy could overcome. It must be because the piercings were in contact with the cranium or something like that, but whatever the reasons; I couldn't use telepathy against him.

The guy had clearly seen me by now, while I had been trying to stun him, he had taken out a gun from his jacket.

I am the most powerful telekinetic in my family and I have trained in this for a long time, but the fact is that any idiot with enough money to spare on a gun and a week to train in, can easily kill me, so I reached out with my thoughts, felt the air next to my body and made a shield around me.

As always it did take a lot of energy, but I did it just in time. The guy fired at me, missed with the first shot, while the second shot bounced off the shield.

So much for sparing his life, I thought as I looked at a piece of scrap metal someone had thrown on the ground and made a small gesture with my right hand. It rocketed through the air and slammed into his chest. He hit the ground right in front of the shocked woman.

Taking two steps forward, I extended my thoughts again and connected with hers before I sent a surge of power at the sleep centre of her brain. She went limp as she fell asleep.

Shaking slightly from exhaustion, I stood still for a moment. Telepathy has its good sides but affecting other people's minds with the thoughts alone simply takes a lot of energy, even when it doesn't work. The same goes for telekinetic shields and grabbing people with that power, and even with all the training I had been through, I wasn't exactly in prime condition.

I walked over to the guy with the piercings and examined him. He was dead. The metal piece had hit him in the chest, crushing the ribcage and forcing bone splinters into his heart.

Maybe I should have felt something besides satisfaction when looking at the man that I had killed, but I didn't and since medical school, I haven't been freaked out by the sight of dead people. That doesn't mean that I like killing people, because I hate the thought of it, but some people are just better off being dead and these two clearly belonged in that category.

Using telekinesis, I lifted the two bodies as well as the gun into a container one at the time, covered them with trash from a smaller trash can that was standing next to the container and then closed the lid. With just a little luck, they wouldn't be found for quite a while, if ever.

Then I walked over to the woman and concentrated for about a minute until I could see her aura. It's a trick I learned from my mother Cecilia: As auras are a reflection on the person, it is possible to see the status of a person's health and see if a person has hidden injuries just by looking at the aura... which is a great help when you're examining them, which I did.

Besides the obvious bruising, a twisted knee, and marks after having been raped and manhandled, she had broken a few ribs and would need medical attention.

I also noticed that she looked Chinese and was quite a beauty; or rather she would be once she wasn't looking beat up. Besides that, there had been something strangely familiar about her mind, when I had made contact with it. Somehow her mind had felt like those of my family.

I decided that I couldn't just leave her here, so I straightened her dress and then lifted her up with telekinetic, making it look like I was supporting her.

Then I looked around in the alley, but besides a torn pair of women's underwear, there wasn't anything in here that indicated that a fight had taken place.

A brief concentration made the panties go up in flames and then I walked towards the streets.

I didn't quite make it.

A trio of young men were walking into the alley, blocking the way out. They were all dressed as badly as the pierced guy in the alley and the one to the left held a baseball bat in his hands, while the others had knives. Due to the limited light in the alley, it took me a few seconds more to notice that they all had the same patterns of three piercings in the forehead.

They relaxed just a bit when they saw the suit and the one with the baseball bat smiled. "Well, hello there, mister Fancy Pants." He waved the bat in my direction. "What the fuck do you think you're doing with my property?"

"Your property?" I asked, trying to get my brain to work again. The problem right now was that I was using my telekinesis to lift the woman, which meant that I couldn't also use it for attack or defence, and with their piercings, I couldn't use telepathy,

He pointed at the Chinese woman: "The bitch is mine. I bought her fair an' square right off the boat; I decide who shags her an' who doesn't."

He shouldn't have mentioned 'shagging' the woman because along with the pain and what I had just witnessed, it made me furious.

Letting go of the woman, I made sure that she didn't hit the ground too hard. Then I did a sweeping motion with my hand and a metal garbage container smashed into the three guys, crushing two of them against the wall, while knocking the third of his feet and into the ground. I turned the hand and obediently the garbage container span around in a circle, smacking the two unfortunate guys against the wall again.

Regaining control of my temper, I let go of the container, which landed on the ground with a 'Bump', followed by two softer bumps from the dead bodies.

This was the reason why I usually keep my temper under tight control, because when I do lose it, the result is usually chaotic and often destructive.

I picked the cane up from the ground and hobbled over to the only guy that was still alive. At least that was what I thought, until I saw that his neck was broken, and the eyes were starring sightless into the night. I cursed again but got a hold of my temper. I did not need more complications right now and losing my control now was certain to bring more.

After checking that the other two were dead as well, I turned to look at the Asian woman and blinked in surprise, when a pair of scared slanted eyes looked back at me. Then it dawned at me, that the fall on the ground must have awakened her and that she had most likely seen it all.

'Right off the boat', the idiot had said. That meant that she was an illegal immigrant that had just been smuggled into the country.

"Do you speak English?" I asked with a sigh. I might as well try that language first.

"S-speak l-l-little, H-Honored Ti Hsien." She stuttered. She had a terrible accent, but at least she did speak English.

She had seen it all, I thought to myself. When I was seven, my parents lived in Hong Kong for a year and I was with them, while my older brothers stayed in Spain. It was a great time, and I learned a lot of Cantonese there, because my nanny was Chinese and she used to read bedtime stories for me each night and I have heard about Ti Hsien many, many times.

Ti Hsien means 'Enlightened Immortals' and is one of the many types of Immortals in Chinese mythology. They have numerous strange powers and a major problem with authority, meaning that they usually manage to insult The Jade Emperor himself and one or more of the ten Yama Kings of Hell during an adventure. All in all, they made for great bedtime stories.

So, calling me 'Ti Hsien', clearly indicated that she had seen me using powers not normal for humans, which again meant that I would have to do something about it, but first things first and I still needed to clean up the mess a bit.

"Good." I said with a smile. "I will not harm you but look the other way."

She nodded shortly, said "Will do, honoured one." and looked away from me.

I waited a few moments to see if she would keep her word, but as she didn't turn around, I lifted the smashed bodies into the container, covered them with garbage and then sent the container into the alley next to the other one. Some sanitation worker would have a shock at some point, but I doubted that it would be around here. As far as I knew, they usually don't look into the containers before emptying them into the truck.

There wasn't much more I could do to cover up the mess, so I looked at the woman again and reached out with my mind, made contact with hers and then sent energy through it, trying to wipe out the memory of everything that had happened in the last ten minutes. It wasn't a polite thing to do, but I didn't need her to remember what had happened, and I certainly wouldn't want to be known in the Chinese community in London as a Ti Hsien. And to justify the Mind Wipe to myself, she wouldn't remember the rape either with just a little bit of luck.

It was useless speculation as the energy bounced harmlessly off her natural mental shield, leaving her memory untouched.

I felt like sighing, when the failed Mind Wipe once again proved that I wasn't good at telepathy. However, it was also a problem, so I tried again, but with the same result.

Since it looked like psychic power wasn't going to help me, I switched to Cantonese Chinese, hoping that she could understand that, and said "You may look now, but please, no more mentions of Ti Hsien."

Her head turned so fast that it was almost blurred. "You speak Chinese!"

"Well, the Cantonese dialect at least and I am Jim." I said with a smile. "Can you walk?"

Tears started to flow from her eyes. "I don't know."

"Please try." I looked around. "We need to get out of here before anyone comes."

That wasn't a lie. My whole body was shaking slightly from exhaustion and if someone showed up now, I wouldn't even have the energy to make a shield.

She tried to stand up but cried out in pain and then shook her head. "I am terribly sorry, but I can't."

I handed her my cane. "Will this help?"

She took it and struggled to her feet. Her expression told me that it was a painful experience and when she tried to take a step, her legs almost collapsed under her. "I'm sorry, but I can't walk."

"Then hold on to the cane. I will have to carry you."

She nodded and stood still, while I bowed down, placed an arm behind her legs and back and lifted her up in my arms using telekinesis to make her so light that I didn't hurt my back, which would be unfortunate right now.

Then I started to walk towards the parking house. "I have a car parked down this way. We need to get you to a hospital."

"No!" she almost shouted, but then calmed down again and continued. "They will kill my sister if I don't come back!" She looked pleadingly at me. "Please just drive me back to the house and then forget about me."

She started to cry almost silently.

I sighed as I continued to walk. It seemed like I had to rescue her sister as well, since I couldn't let her walk back into hell again. If this continued, I might as well buy myself a freaking superhero costume, complete with cape and all.

"Okay... no hospital, but can you find the way back to the house?"

She nodded with some hesitation "I think so. It is not that far from here."

"Who are those guys you are talking about and how many are there?"

"They are demons!" She hissed. "There are eight of them. All with piercings and dressed in dirty leather clothes. They...."

As she was talking, we had gotten out of the alley and back on more normal streets, and almost immediately a man stepped in front of us, interrupting her. "Excuse me, sir, but do you need a hand?" He looked suspiciously at me. "What happened to her?"

"She fell and hit the ground." I explained with a slight smile. "She must have twisted her knee, because she cannot walk, so I am carrying her to my car."

He ignored me for a moment as he looked at her. "Are you okay, Miss?"

Much to my amazement, she kept cool as she nodded and said. "I'm okay. Fell and hurt leg. Jim carries me to car. Then we go to hospital."

The man's eyes grew a little bigger, but then he nodded and stepped aside, so that we could continue. "Have a good evening, sir."

I smiled at him, said "Thank you." and started walking again.

When we were out of hearing range, I switched to Cantonese again. "That was good thinking."

"I want to go to the house and not the hospital." She said in a way of explaining, sounding calm, but there was a slight trembling in her voice.

"Yes, that much I understood. By the way, what is your name? It might be rather inconvenient if somebody stops us, and I don't know it."

"Oh." She looked at me again. "I'm Yu Nu Tian."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I had to make an effort not to laugh. Yu was the family name, but depending on how you looked at it, Nu Tian meant 'Heavenly Woman', 'Woman of candy' or 'Sweet tasting woman', which would have been an appropriate name for a high-class call-girl in Hong Kong. I turned a corner and could now see the parking house. "I wish the circumstances were better, but it is nice to meet you, Nu Tian."

Five minutes later I placed her in the passenger seat of the car and then walked to the other side and got in behind the wheel, where I leaned back and relaxed for a moment.

Nu Tian looked at me with frightened eyes. "Why are we not driving?"

"Because I need a few moments to relax." I said as I reached into the glove compartment and took out two chocolate bars. "You want one?"

"No, I want to drive to the house!"

"You will have to wait a bit." I removed the paper from the bar. "I'm not used to fighting and I need to stop shaking, before we drive anywhere." I looked at her and said mildly. "Take it easy, Tian. You will get to the house."

She shook her head. "You do not understand. If I am not there before midnight, they will kill my sister!"

I glanced at the clock as I took a bite from the chocolate bar. Technically it's not a chocolate bar, it's a protein bar designed for people who work out a lot, but they are covered with chocolate and taste really good. I developed a taste for them during rehab and I must admit that I eat quite a lot of them. Especially when I've used up a lot of energy like right after training or like right now.

"It's only ten o'clock, so we got more than enough time." I took another bite. "Is your sister in the house you're going back to?"

"Yes. We share a room." She shivered. "When they took me out on the street today, two of them stayed in the house with Fei. It was supposed to be her first turn tomorrow."

I thought about the complications for a moment. "Has anybody besides those eight guys you talk about seen you or your sister?"

She shook her head. "Not that I know."

I sighed. "Excuse me for asking, but how did you end up in a situation like that?"

It took me a while to get the story out of her and tragic as it was, it was a story that had been in the news many times before and most likely would be again: After normal childhood and youth in a small city in China, her family had died in a mudslide, leaving the two sisters with some money.

Having nothing to hold them in China they had decided that they needed a better life in the west instead of being married to some idiots in the city. So, they contacted some smugglers that promised to deliver them to a new life in England for a large amount of money. However, the new life the sisters got was one of slavery and prostitution.

The only thing that differed from the usual story was that they had arrived less than a week ago and that the guys that had bought them were a bunch of amateurs when it came to the slave trade. Sad as it was, making slaves out of people is a craft that takes an expert, just like it takes a dog trainer to train a dog.

On the bright side, the person she described as the leader sounded a lot like the guy with the baseball bat, which hopefully meant that the leader of the gang was currently becoming one with garbage.

I ate one more chocolate bar, while Nu Tian was talking and when she was finished I felt a lot better. The fact that it took almost half an hour to get the story out of her also helped, and when she was finished with the story, I took out my cell phone and switched it off, while I remembered it.

Where we were going, I didn't need people to call me and besides that, cell phones can be traced, which I needed even less.

Then I started the car, and we were off.

------------------------------

The drive to the house had taken less than fifteen minutes, so we were in good time when I parked the car under a broken streetlight on the other side of the road some distance away.

Nu Tian made a motion for the door, but I stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"Please sit here for a moment." I said as I took on my gloves and took the cane from beside the seat. "I will go have a look."

She looked at me in surprise. "Why?"

I smiled a bit. "Because you can't walk without help and it will make me feel better if I do."

For a moment she looked like she was going to say something, but then she just nodded and handed me the cane.

I opened the door and got out of the car, while looking at the house.

There was light in some of the windows, others were shut up with boards, the walls were cracked in several places and in general the whole area looked ready for some city renewal program. On the bright side, the street was empty.

I walked slowly past the house down the road while studying it discreetly, looking for some kind of security measures. Not that I was certain that there were any, but it was what I would have done, if it were me that was about to engage in something like slavery.

As it turned out it was a wise move because I discovered two security cameras on the front of the building and one on the side.

I stopped to brush some dirt off my jacket and at the same time concentrated briefly on heating the nearest camera. It went up in smoke two seconds later and I continued walking down the road as I used Cryokinesis (My ability to cool things down) to cool the camera down again so it wouldn't set fire to the building, while wondering if the gangers in the house would come out to check the camera or not.

The greatest problem with trying to save Nu Tian's sister wasn't the two gangers by themselves. I was pretty sure that I could handle them if I took them by surprise but doing it without people seeing and perhaps even filming a telekinetic in action, was quite another matter. This wasn't a dark back alley, where the only possible witnesses were a few junkies.

I wondered if I should call the police. Unfortunately, calling the police would require that I explained how the five other gangers came to their final rest in a garbage container, which I couldn't do. At least not in a way that would satisfy them.

I continued to walk, but nothing happened at the house.

Guessing that they weren't watching the security system at all, I fried and then cooled the other two cameras, just in case they were recording, while I walked a bit further down the road.

When I was out of sight from the house, I stopped to think for a moment. I needed to get inside the house without getting shot or killed and without using obvious powers. The gang members' head piercings meant that I couldn't use telepathy either and to make matters worse I was running out of time.

An idea from a movie popped into my mind and the thought was so crazy that I started to smile.

Bluffing was a gamble, but it might just work, and it wouldn't be the first time I have relied on it. Of course this time it wasn't just a business deal, but a question of life and death. Thinking it over for a few minutes I quickly made a plan and then started to walk back to the house.

When I reached the door, I knocked on it with the cane and waited.

A few moments later the door was opened just a bit and a dark-haired young man showed his pierced face. "What the fuck do you want?"

"Good evening." I bowed slightly. "I represent the Yu family of the Wong Triad and I would like to have a moment of your time." I smiled pleasantly at him. "And I have to advise you to take that moment, since it could spare you from a premature and rather violent death."

He blinked a few times in surprise, while I wondered if I had used too many long words, but then he stopped blinking and growled. "Explain!"

"I am not sure that this is the place to explain such things, since it concerns the two young women that are presently... eh... guests in this house."

That got his attention and he opened the door up, holding his right hand hidden behind his back. "Get in."

Smiling politely, I stepped into the hallway and heard the door close behind me.

Then I felt a gun being pressed against the back of my head and the guy growled. "One wrong move an' you're dog food, smartass!"

I remained calm. It wasn't likely that he would try anything before I had a chance to say anything. "Shall I raise my hands, or should they remain where they are?"

"Walk through the door and shut up."

Obediently I walked through the door that he indicated and found myself in a living room. Or perhaps I should say, the remains of a living room, because it had certainly seen better days, which was a shame since it was a nice room by itself. It even had a fireplace, but then again I had discovered that most homes in England have one.

"Put your hands on the wall."

I placed my cane against the wall and then placed my hands there as well.

He searched me for weapons, but as I didn't have any, all he came up with was a chocolate bar in my inner pocket.

He held it up, but before he could ask anything I said, "It's a chocolate bar. You may have it if you want to."

He took it with a grunt and stepped backwards. "Turn around but try anything and you are dead."

I turned around at the same time as he shouted. "Alex! We have company!"

That wasn't in my plan as I had hoped to get them one at a time and by surprise.

The words 'Malum consilium quod mutari non potest' (Latin: 'A plan that cannot be changed is a bad one.') ran through my head. I did however have another plan ready, so I waited in silence as heavy footsteps sounded. Then a door opened, and a large skinhead dressed in military boots, camouflage trousers and a black t-shirt walked into the room. As the others he had three piercings in the forehead.

He stopped when he saw the other guy pointing a gun at me. "What the fuck is going on, man? What's that Suit doing here?"

"He said something about the girls an' some Triad thing that you might wanna hear."

That got the other man into action and he walked closer to me. "Start talking, Suit."

"As I told the other gentleman, I represent the Yu family of the Wong Triad and I have been asked to talk with you. " I tilted my head a bit. "You do know of the Wong Triad, right?"

They nodded slowly as I knew they would. The Triads is the Chinese version of the Mafia and like the mafia, has been made famous and infamous by countless movies. More to the point, the Triads were operating here in London and while I had no idea if there was a Wong Triad, the name sounded Chinese enough to make them pause.

"Good. Now I know that you have two young girls as your guests here, but unfortunately, there has been a slight mistake as the two girls are not the ones that you were supposed to have." I made a slight pause to let it sink in and then continued. "Your guests happen to be the daughters of a prominent member of the Yu family and said member is very concerned about getting them back."

The one that was called Alex took two steps forward and to my great delight took hold in the front of my jacket. "That's a fucking lie. They said that they were from a poor family!"

I could feel that he wasn't going to change his opinion about that no matter how good my story was, so I slowly placed my gloved hand over his and said in a cold voice. "I will ask you nicely to take your hand off me."

My attempt to intimidate him didn't work out. It's hard to intimidate people like him when you're not physically imposing, which I am not.

He chuckled. "Or you would do what, Suit?"

I concentrated for a short moment and hoped that the guy wouldn't hear anything as the safety on the gun softly clicked over to 'safe', while I said. "For the last time, take the hand of me."

"No suit is going to order me around." He declared and lifted his other hand as if to hit me.

With telekinesis, I grabbed his hand right where my hand was and squeezed.

He screamed and let go of me as the pressure made the bones in his hand break into so many pieces and he went to his knees as I let go of his hand again both telekinetically and physically.

The other man looked at me in shock for a moment and then tried to pull the trigger on his gun. It didn't work and at the same time I made a small grabbing motion with my hand as I reached out with telekinesis to grab him. To my amazement he must have felt the pressure because he avoided it and continued to try firing the gun.

Shifting my attention to the weapon, I got hold of that instead and yanked it out of his hand. It landed in the far end of the room.

He looked wide eyed at it for a moment and then followed it in a jump that ended rather sudden when I sent the table into him with a slight motion of a hand. Both man and table crashed into the wall with a loud bang.

A fist connecting with the bullet proof vest made me step backwards and reminded me that I shouldn't ignore an opponent if I wanted to stay alive. Not even an opponent whose right hand was crushed.

The guy named Alex was struggling to his feet, while looking at me with both fury and pain in his eyes.

Reacting on instinct, I made a short pushing movement with my hand as my brain sent out a Slam attack. The Slam attack is something that has been used as a defensive move in my family for a long time.

It's a simple attack, since all you have to do is to send out energy the same way a shield is created, but instead of gathering the shield around you, you send it into the opponent. If you're strong enough, it will push your opponent away from you, so that you have time to do something... like finding your gun in your pocket or something.

It doesn't do that much damage, so pushing the opponent away is all that it is good for. Unless you are a very strong telekinetic like me, in which case they might not get hurt by the blow itself but hitting a nearby wall sure as hell would.

Alex was no exception to that, since he hit the wall with enough force to break his skull before he fell headfirst to the floor with a wet smack.

I stood still for a moment, trying to catch my breath. Using telekinesis on living people always takes a lot of energy.

Then I went to see the other guy and as I had expected, he was dead as well. I sighed. I would have preferred to keep him alive, in case I needed to ask him some questions, like if I couldn't find the girl, but it's difficult to control how hard a flying table hits or how much damage a body takes when hitting a wall.

I checked his wallet just to see if he had any ID and found a driver's licence in the name of Allan Richards as well as four hundred pounds. I pocketed the money and placed the wallet in his pocket again before I walked over to the other guy, while avoiding stepping in the blood on the floor and looked at the body with a sigh. I've seen worse at the hospital and during my education, but it still wasn't a pretty sight.

I listened for a moment, but no one came running, so I looked at his wallet as well.

The ID said that his name was Alex Schmidt and the five hundred pounds in the wallet told me that he most likely earned his money in a less than legal fashion.

As before I took the money and dropped the wallet on the dead man, before I walked out of the room in search of the girl.

-------------------------

She wasn't on the ground floor, but it was not entirely fruitless, since I did find a room that held the recorder system for the security cameras on the outside as well as one that had been hidden in the hallway. I took the tape out of the machine and placed it into the inner pocket of my jacket, while thanking them silently for using a system that ran on small DV-tapes instead of the big old VHS-tapes.

The thanks grew a bit more sincere when I discovered that there were six more tapes that also went into various pockets, as they might show the police that two women were here. If it had been a VHS system, I would have needed a bag.

I took the stairs to the second floor and started my search again. The first room was a bedroom, but it was empty.

The next room had perhaps been a bathroom once, but now it looked more like a crazy scientist's lab, with chemicals and glass everywhere. I haven't seen one before, except on television, but I guessed that it was a drug lab for making homemade drugs.

Next room was a bedroom that was dirty, but empty and the same with the room after that. That left only one room and the door into that room was locked with a bar on the outside.

Smiling to myself I quietly removed the bar, but then stopped. If the girl really was in there, I needed to clean the place up before I got her out.

Placing my hand on the door, I concentrated for about ten seconds and then sent my sense of sight forward. It sounds strange, but when done correctly, I can usually see through things if they're not too thick. The door wasn't and a moment later I could see the inside of the room.

A young Chinese woman was lying under a blanket on a dirty bed. She might be sleeping, because she was very still, but in any case, she looked battered and bruised and was chained to the bed. On the other side of the room was another bed with chains, but this one was empty.

Satisfied I retracted my senses and walked downstairs again to do some cleaning.

First, I lifted the two gangers into the kitchen one by one and placed them on the floor in a corner, where they were out of sight from the living room. Then I searched them to find the keys to the chains that held the girl, but the only keys they had were house keys, which I pocketed, since the door upstairs might be locked with a key as well as the bar.

There wasn't much more I could do, so I walked out of the kitchen and was on my way to the stairs, when it suddenly dawned on me that I never looked in the room under the stairs.

I opened the door and found myself on the top of a staircase. The house had a basement.

Feeling like hitting myself for not thinking about that earlier, I found a light switch and turned on the light before I slowly walked down.

The staircase ended in a small hallway, with two doors.

There was no way I would go in there blind, so I touched the door, concentrated, and sent my sense forward again. It was a storage room, with some closets and racks.

Retracting my senses, I stepped over to the other door and did the same there.

Behind the door lay what looked to be a SM dungeon, complete with just about everything a sadist or a masochist could dream of.

Normally I don't mind stuff like that as long as the people using it all liked it, but somehow, I doubted that the acts committed in there had been between 'consenting adults', which made the room transform from a room of sex-games to one of torture.

The worst part was that it wasn't empty.

A slim brunette with large breasts was blindfolded and bound to a table, while a naked man, with the same piercings as the rest of the gang, was whipping her breasts with a leather strap. There were bleeding wounds on her shoulder and judging from her facial expression she was screaming in pain, but no sound penetrated the door.

I looked at the walls again. They and the ceiling were covered with some kind of soundproof material... which along with the woman's scream explained why the guy hadn't heard the noise from the fight upstairs.

I considered my options for a moment. Though highly unlikely, there was always the remote possibility that this was a sex-act between two people, who liked that kind of games.

Unfortunately, my powers do not work through doors or other solid materials unless another part starts the mind contact, so I had no way of knowing for sure if it was torture or sex that was going on in there. At least not until I opened the door and found out, and there was no way in hell I would let that shit go on if it wasn't sex.

I waited until the guy had his ugly ass in my direction and opened the door as slowly as I could to avoid making noise. A well-known sensation rippled down my spine: A disturbance in the force as we say in my family. It was the sensation of somebody else using psychic powers.

I blinked in surprise as I realized that not only was the bastard enjoying causing pain and terror to the woman, but he was also loving it so much that he read her emotions with telepathy while doing it! That was really sick.

The door squeaked as I opened it a bit too fast and the guy stopped the whipping suddenly and turned to look at me. Then he smiled. "Hello there. Have you come to join the fun?"'

The tone was utterly false. He was furious and I could feel it, as I shook my head and mentally checked that my Mind Shield was up. "No, actually I was planning to stop it."

The smile turned into a grin. "You have no idea who you are messing with, you idiot."

I didn't reply, because at the same time he lashed out with a mental attack. Most of it was stopped by my shield but a little went through and pain screamed through my body along with a healthy dose of adrenalin.

I reinforced my mind shield. Though strong enough to take down most ordinary people, his mental attack had been weak and clumsy, which meant that he wasn't as skilled as he thought he was or, which was more likely, that he simply hadn't encountered another psychic before and therefore was used to being able to overcome opponents with ease.

Reinforcing the shield had taken time and another mental blow hit the mind shield, shattering against it, just as they did when I was training with Grandmother Claudia and she wasn't using her full strength. If she did, she could usually knock me flat with one or two attacks.

Time to teach this guy a lesson.

Eying a large glass dildo from a table, I sent it towards him with a short motion with my hand. With a yelp he ducked, and the glass dildo hit the wall behind him, splintering into a thousand pieces.

Another mental attack wasted itself against my shield, draining it slightly. This guy had a lot of power and I needed to end this before he broke through.

I pressed a button on the cane, which released the hidden sword, just as he straightened up and sprinted towards me, hate and rage in his eyes. However, there was a slight shimmering in the air around him, telling me that he had raised a shield.

His eyes suddenly grew wide as he saw the sword and as I sent it towards him, he abruptly changed direction. It wasn't much, but enough to make the sword hit his shield at a weird angle, causing it to bounce off harmlessly and land on the floor.

A second later, it lifted into the air again, spinning in the air to point directly at me, as he growled. "You're dead."

I made a grabbing motion with my hand and seized the sword with my own telekinesis, yanking it out of his telekinetic grip with ease.

He looked at me and then at the sword with wide eyes as the sword spun in the air until the point was towards him and with a small motion of the hand and a lot of telekinesis, I send it through his shield and into his chest.

The force of the blow sent him flying into the wall, but he was already dead from a pierced heart before he reached it, while his dying brain sent out a scream of protest that echoed through my mind.

"No, you are dead, you sick bastard." I mumbled to the dead man, as I leaned against the doorframe again, breathing deeply for a while. I had to stop playing a hero and leave those rescue missions to the pros. That had been way too close for comfort.

With an effort I walked over to the bound girl, who was now laying very still as if trying to hear what was going on. I couldn't really afford to use more energy to probe her mind, if I were to have any energy left for a possible fight, but I did it anyway. Just to avoid complications. As it turned out, she was a prostitute that had taken the wrong customer. Now she just wanted to get home.

That was a relief by itself.

A brief investigation of her aura told me that she wasn't hurt as much as I first thought, though she might have some bruises and superficial wounds for a week or so. Looking around I saw what I assumed were her clothes lying on a nearby chair.

With that information, I said. "In a moment I am going to let you go. When I have done that, you get dressed, walk out of here and go home. You do not call the cops. Understood?"

She nodded without saying a word and I took the money I had gotten from the dead gang members and placed it on her clothes, before lifting the dead body into a closet, closing the door after it.

Then I used telekinesis to open the Velcro on the bonds and walked behind a wooden screen, which somebody had placed in a corner to hide a stereo rack. "Now you can go."

She lay still for a moment, before she sat up and removed the blindfold, but she did not look around. Instead, she walked over to her clothes.

She got into them in record time and then walked to the door, pausing a moment to say, "Thank you, whoever you are." and walked out of the door.

I waited a minute or so to be sure that she was gone and then did a quick search of the other closets to make sure that there was nobody in there. The guy had been sick enough to do that, but they were empty.

Then I walked into the storage room to check that out.

There was nobody in there either, but there were a lot of drugs in the form of pills and in a closet, I found a small envelope with some hundred-pound bills in it.

Pocketing the money, I walked into the dungeon again, used telekinesis to get the sword out of him again and lifted the dead man using telekinesis, and walked up the stairs. I dumped him in the kitchen along with the two others, and walked back into the living room, where I placed the sword in the fireplace, followed by the rest of the cane.

Using Pyrokinesis, I heated the sword until the blade melted. The wood caught fire all by itself from the heat of the metal, but I fired that up too, just to make sure that it would burn all the way.

I hated to part with my beautiful sword cane, but there was no way I would walk around with a sword that had been used to kill a man. I like my freedom and have no intention of ending up in jail because I got sentimental about a weapon.

Then I walked up to the second floor and went directly to the room where the girl was.

The door squeaked when it opened, causing the young woman to lift her head and look at me with frightened eyes.

I stopped, bowed slightly, and said in Cantonese. "I am sorry if I frightened you. That was not my intention as I am here to take you away from this hell. May I ask your name?"

Now she looked stunned, but managed to stutter, "W-where are you taking me?"

"I am taking you to see Nu Tian." I answered and looked around the room. Since none of the guys downstairs had the key to the chains, it must be in the room. Seeing a small keychain hanging on a nail, I took it and turned back to the girl. "I am afraid that I did not catch your name."

"I-I'm Cho Fei Mei." She stuttered, while looking at me.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. Since the family name goes first in Chinese names, the girl in front of me should have been Yu Fei Mei. I hoped that there wasn't yet another girl to be rescued here, because I was too exhausted to fight again. I truly needed to get into shape again.

I tilted my head. "I am going to take you out of here no matter what, but could you please tell me if your sister is here as well?"

"Nu Tian is not here." She cried. "The men took her away!"

Relieved that we were talking about the same person I said, "Relax, she's safe and in my car." as I walked to the end of bed, where I opened the first lock. Cantonese is a complicated language, where the same word can have a lot of different meanings and the word 'sister' could also mean 'close friend', which was obviously what Nu Tian had meant, unless I misunderstood things again.

Just to be sure, I asked. "Why do you not have the same family name?" while opening the other foot chain.

"Nu Tian's parents adopted me when I was little." She explained while bending her legs slowly. From the look on her face, that was fairly painful.

That explanation made sense, since they would then be both sisters and close friends. "I will now free your hands. Please take it easy or you will hurt yourself."

She nodded.

I unlocked the chains around her hands and then stepped back from the bed. "Do you have any clothes in here? We need to get out as fast as possible."

"There are some clothes in the closet there." She said as she tried to get out of the bed, but after having been chained for God knows how long, her legs refused to do as they were told.

I walked over to the closet that she had indicated and found several dresses, all designed in a style I would call 'Street Whore.' Unfortunately, it was all there was, so I took the most modest of them and handed it to her. "There you go. Put it on and I will carry you."

Then I turned my back to her so that she could get dressed in relative privacy, but not so much that I couldn't see her out of the corner of my eye if she left the bed to come at me. I'm polite, not stupid, and terrified people do the strangest things.

"How is Nu Tian?" she asked over the sound of clothes.

"Fairly well. She is battered and has twisted her knee, but otherwise she's in good shape." I said. "How hurt are you?"

"I do not know, but there's much pain in my legs."

She sounded a bit clearer, so I turned my head a bit. She had managed to get into the dress while lying on the bed.

"Good. Let's get out of here."

Like I had done with Nu Tian, I used telekinesis as I carefully lifted her up and walked out of the door.

The stairs were irritating since I had to go almost sideways to avoid banging her head against the wall, but finally we got into the living room and through that to the hallway, pausing only a brief moment by the kitchen door, where I used telekinesis to open the valve on the gas oven. Then I continued into the hallway, turned left, and walked out of the backdoor I had located while searching the house.

-------------------

The air outside was cool and Fei Mei shivered a bit as I walked away from the house and then around it until we were standing on the road again. A moment later I could see the car and Nu Tian's smile when she saw us.

I placed Fei Mei on the ground next to the car and opened the backdoor. "Can you climb in yourself?"

By now she was smiling widely as she nodded. "I shall try."

She climbed in and was greeted by Nu Tian in a dialect that I did not understand.

I closed the door, walked over to the other side, and got in behind the wheel.

An explosion rocked the car, causing the two women to shut up and me to grunt as the steering wheel hit me in the ribcage. Then I looked over at the house we had just left. It was burning merrily.

My plan had been to make the kitchen window burn when we drove past, but evidently the smouldering remains of my cane had been enough to light the gas.

I sighed and started the engine. While it was good this time, it still showed that I was an amateur with this. In fact, the smartest thing I had done during all this was wearing gloves. However, done was done, so I turned the car and drove away, just as a secondary explosion blew the second floor windows out. I guessed that the flames had reached the upstairs drug laboratory.

My stomach growled and with a sigh I decided to get some take-away food on my way home.

------------------ End of part 1 -----------------------

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