The vampire released him and sat back in his throne-chair, pleased that he scared the life out of Jason. Not that it was true, but it was clearly what the vampire thought. Jason wondered briefly if what he once dreamed about vampires was true. He knew of course that it wasn’t his real father visiting him in his childhood dreams. They were rather figments of his overactive imagination or effects of his consciousness dealing with an overload of data he acquired over the day. Still, it didn’t necessarily mean that he did not read or hear the legend about vampire origins somewhere and dreamt of it thereafter.
Jason concentrated on the present and looked at the self-centred asshole of a vampire seated in front of him. Jason knew all his sins now. All the hideous crimes he committed, all of the abuse he dished out to his captives. And there were thousands upon thousands of them. It seemed that the vampire led this human trafficking ring for decades now. He moved around a lot so that the police never caught a trail of him. He schooled all his employees, aka thugs, in the fine art of kidnapping without leaving a sign of the person taken. He targeted only people like Jason, loners with none or next to no family or friends, those who wouldn’t be missed, easy targets. Jason reckoned that it was pretty smart of him. The vampire was clever, Jason had to admit. But his reign of terror ended now.
Jason grew tired of this charade. The kidnapping was fun as a novelty and brought him more feelings than he had in months, but enough was enough. With a whispered word, Jason got rid of the heavy, scratchy rope binding his hands and moved them in front of himself. The vampire apparently wasn’t paying him enough attention as he did not even notice that Jason was now massaging his wrists to bring back circulation to his hands. The vampire spoke again, but even his lisp ceased to amuse Jason.
“Come to me, human, let me sample your blood and decide to what kind of master you will be sold.” Jason ignored him as he thought of all the action movies where the hero spoke some funny, clever, or otherwise significant words just before ending the villain. Jason wasn’t a hero. He also wasn’t a man of many words, nor was he in a movie.
“You are dead,” he said in a soft, monotonous voice, which he infused with a fraction of the power residing in him since his transformation. “You are a pile of dust and nothing else.” He lifted his gaze from where his fingers were massaging his wrist, and surely enough the vampire ceased to exist, turning into dust. Jason turned back and for the first time saw the kneeling boy’s face—eyes huge with terror, mouth agape as he stared at the place where a vampire sat a second ago. Jason grazed the young man’s cheek with his knuckle again and said in the same steady voice, “You are free. Nothing is binding you, and you can do whatever you want.”
The last part was unnecessary. His power, magic, whatever the hell it was did not work on a person’s free will. So he could order people to do something until his throat went raw and it would still not work. It was kinda odd, he reckoned. He could change reality, change the past to an extent or the present, yet he could not order people to do something that they wouldn’t do if they didn’t want to. He shrugged internally, not really bothered by this aspect of his power, and turned on his heel. It was only to see both guards, thugs, or whatever they were called pointing guns at him. They both shook with terror at what has just happened, yet their hands holding guns were steady. Years of practice, he guessed.
“D–don’t move or we’ll shoot ya!” said the leader, stammering. Jason tilted his head to the side as if curious.
“No you won’t,” he said. “There are no bullets in your guns.” He infused the second part with power. Surely enough, they both pulled triggers and only empty clicks sounded. Both thugs froze for a second as if unsure of what to do. Jason thought that it was one of those fight-or-flight moments, and he had mere seconds to do something about it. He sighed almost inaudibly and spoke.
“All of my kidnappers are now asleep until I can figure something else out.” Two thumps accompanied the thugs falling asleep and falling on the concrete floor. Jason looked around, sightlessly thinking about how to resolve this matter in a way that would not include tampering with free will. He sighed loudly and harrumphed in exasperation. The rules could sometimes be a bitch. Suddenly an idea popped into his head, and his resolve came back.
“All my kidnappers are in the room with a tiger, now awake, but paralyzed until I say otherwise,” he said almost absentmindedly. There were ways to circumvent the rules, but he would have to think on his idea for a bit longer. He started to the tiger’s room, pondering on his idea, polishing all the details and ignoring silent padding of the young man following him meekly. They entered the room, and by the time he reached the place where the thugs lay, he had all his bases covered.
He could not tamper with a free will, that’s true, but there was nothing to say he could not tamper with what people thought, or saw. He couldn’t force them to do certain things, could not force them to feel what they did not, but he could work with already existing feelings and thoughts. He crouched in front of them where they lay, their backs supported by the platform in the middle. He looked each of them in the eye and saw fear. Bah, he saw sheer terror.
“You are afraid.” He spoke slowly with conviction, lacing each word with power. “You are terrified. You all just saw your boss self-combusting. It is all as the two guys in the room saw it. You were all in that room. You saw your boss getting furious with you when you did not manage to kidnap another person today. He got mad and suddenly burst and turned into ash. You are now petrified with fear. You know deep inside that it was God’s punishment for all his crimes. You know what he did. You know how many people he hurt. You are now terrified that the same fate will come upon each of you. You want to do everything and anything to avoid it. You know that there is no way to help all the victims, to make things right for them. But you can do something. You can help some of them.
“You will fall asleep as soon as I finish talking. When you wake up, you will think of all that I said, thinking that they are your genuine thoughts as if I wasn’t here at all. You will discuss it with each other and decide that the only thing you can do is call police and admit all your crimes. You will do it, and you will give them all the information you have on human trafficking you and your boss were all involved in. You will not remember me or the boy who was in the room with vampire. It will be as if he was never here. There will be no trace of either me or him. You will remember going to kidnap me, but you were interrupted before it could happen. You will help police in any way you can.”
Jason finished and saw they were once again asleep. He went through all he said once again in his head and decided that it was all he could do. He stood up and started towards the door. He barely made a couple of steps when the quiet clearing of a throat interrupted him. He wanted to ignore it. He really did. It was past his normal bedtime, his routine was whole messed up, and he still had to go back to his house. Unfortunately the boy was more stubborn than Jason gave him credit for.
A quiet “excuse me” stopped him in his tracks. He slowly turned and measured the young man with a steady gaze. The boy squirmed, clearly terrified, but he gathered the courage and asked, “Are you leaving, Sir?”
“Yes.” Jason was back to his monosyllabic answers. He spoke more today than he had in four years, since his twenty-fifth birthday. He did not like using his power. He only did it when necessary, since he discovered it and it wasn’t much. To be exact, he used it on two different occasions, excluding the first time when he did it without meaning to. He focused his gaze on the boy once and saw him swallowing audibly and gathering his courage.
“But what about the tiger, Sir? Won’t you help him too?” There was pleading in the boy’s voice.
“The tiger?” Jason spared the animal in question a quick glance. “Police will take care of it and all the captives once they arrive. They will probably put it in a zoo or something.” He didn’t know. He was no wild animal expert. The boy swallowed once again but then started speaking rapidly in a shaking voice,
as if afraid that Jason wouldn’t listen to all he had to say.
“But I don’t think it’s a normal tiger, Sir. Not really. I think he is something else as well. I mean, he looks like a tiger, but he doesn’t behave like one, even when he isn’t drugged like now. He is very smart, and he never hurt me when I smuggled him some food scraps when they were trying to starve him. A wild animal, even a domesticated one, would be insane with hunger and attack anyone who’d come close to it, but he didn’t, and I was really close. I put my arm through the bars and gave him this meat and potato I salvaged from when Master told me to throw it in the bin, and he, the tiger I mean, ate it all. Even the potato. And he never attacked me. And he looked at me with this intelligent eyes, and I think it’s not just a tiger, Sir. I mean it. He has to be something else as well, to behave like that, don’t you think so, Sir?”
The boy finished and gulped, trembling all over. Jason suspected it was most the boy said in quite a while. He didn’t think a vampire would take kindly to his slave chatting with him. Jason sighed internally, tired now with the whole ordeal, but moved towards the cage obediently. If the tiger was not simply a tiger but something else as well, it wouldn’t be right to leave him for animal services to take him to the zoo.
Jason walked the few steps on the platform and neared the cage. The closer he got, the more he realised what bad shape the animal was in. Its fur was dirty and matted, its ribs clearly visible, its breathing hard and laboured. If the tiger was drugged like the boy said, it wouldn’t probably live through the night. Jason stepped closer to the cage and noticed how the animal looked at him closely with hidden intelligence in tired yellow eyes. It was apparently too tired to move, though.
“Okay, buddy.” Jason spoke in his gentle voice reserved for wounded animals in the shelter. “I’m gonna touch you now to see how I can make you better, okay?” The cat gave him a long blink, which Jason took as an agreement. He put his hand through the bar and touched one huge paw with his forefinger.
He closed his eyes briefly at an onslaught of images invading his mind. No matter how many times he did it, he could never get used to it. If it was a fleeting touch like he did with the boy, he could somehow censor what he saw and he could try to limit it to a direct answer to his question. Like, “Is the chained boy here of his own free will or is he a captive like me.” Usually it worked well and he had his answer immediately. Like with a boy—a decided “captive, here against his will, wishing to be free above all else.” Other times though, when he did not have a question and the touch was more prolonged than a mere brush, the images could be really suffocating. Like seeing all the wrongdoings of a century-old vampire. Or seeing the abuse suffered by this animal-not-animal here.
Jason sighed tiredly once again then stood up and got off of the platform. He thought for a second about what he would say, then spoke in force-permeated words.
“The tiger is free, not in a cage. His health state is as it was before he was taken captive, he has no lasting damage, and there is no trace of him ever being here. Nobody who remains here after I leave will remember anything about a tiger being here either.” He blinked, and sure enough, the tiger stood tall and proud in the middle of the platform, fur thick and shiny with health, eyes clear and body rippling with muscles underneath all this fur. The animal stood up, shook its fur, stretched his front paws, yawned, stretched his hind legs, and finally sat on its haunches. Then the air shimmered slightly around it like a mirage in the desert, and the next thing Jason saw was a man crouched where the tiger has been. A naked man.
Jason rolled his eyes once again, filled with exasperation. “The tiger-man is dressed in his favourite clothes,” he said. And the nakedness was immediately covered with pair of jeans and Nirvana T-shirt. “Done,” thought Jason to himself, and once again he started towards the exit of the warehouse. Soft steps padded after him, accompanied by another set of slightly louder, booted ones. Jason shot a quick look behind him and sighed again. The boy who was in the room with the vampire is dressed in similar clothes to the tiger-man’s, but ones in his own size that are warm enough so he doesn’t get cold. He could not stand the shivering, the goose bumps, and the lack of shoes on the young man. It made Jason himself feel cold, and he never did.
Since his fateful birthday, he was never cold, hot, or in any other way uncomfortable. It was almost as if his body adapted to the temperature around him. Jason walked down the metal staircase, trying not to think of empty spaces between steps. It made him uncomfortable even when he could not see them, but knew they were there. He then proceeded to march straight to the warehouse’s doors and out into the street, closing everything behind him and other two men. He then mumbled, “There are no signs of either me or tiger-man or the boy from the vampire’s room,” under his breath. It wouldn’t do, after all, to go to all these lengths to cover their tracks just to have police uncover some random fingerprint of either of them.
Jason marched down the street, wondering if he should grab a taxi, catch a bus or a train, or maybe use the last of his power to get straight home and call in sick tomorrow. He pondered this question for a longer while, neither option fully suiting him, when he finally noticed that those two sets of footsteps did not go away. He looked behind himself, and surely enough, the two men kept following him. He decided to ignore them and keep walking, hoping that they’d tire soon and go their own way. It didn’t happen. After another fifteen minutes or so, he gave up and turned to them.
“You two gonna follow me home or what? Don’t you have anywhere else to be?” He huffed for the first time in years, really annoyed. The boy was first to answer. He fidgeted, avoiding his gaze, but answered in a quiet subdued tone, nonetheless.
“Um, no, Sir. I don’t have home. My last foster parents sold me to Master when I was fifteen, and I was with him since then. I have nowhere to go, so I thought maybe you’d like to be my new master, Sir?” He asked, clearly intimidated by Jason’s glare when he peeked from under his bangs.
“I told you, you’re free now. You don’t need a master,” Jason said in exasperation. But he knew it wasn’t that easy. It was just like he thought. His power could free the boy from his chains but could not convince him he was a free man now. It was all in his mind. “But fine, I guess you can come with me for now as you have nowhere else to be. I can’t leave you like that. We’ll figure something out tomorrow. He glanced at the boy and rolled his eyes at a happy smile the boy tried to hide behind the bangs of his lowered head. “What about you, tiger-man? You have nowhere to go either?”
“My name is Tyler Rhodes, and as you saved my life, I owe you a life-debt now. I am obliged to stay with you until I can repay you for your kindness,” said the tall, dark-haired man in a deep, gruff voice. “To not do so would shame me forever and make me unacceptable in the presence of any shifter. I would be dead to them.”
“Great, just great,” grumbled Jason to himself, throwing his hands in the air. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure if having his feelings back was such a good idea. This annoyance was definitely nothing to write home about. He hoped that some more pleasant feelings would come to him soon. There should be some justice in the world after all. “Just perfect,” he said, making a haste decision. There was no point going to work tomorrow anyway. He’d be too exhausted to do the poor animals any good either way.
Jason outstretched his hands on either side of him and grumbled, not looking at either of the men. “Grab my hands, and let’s get it over with.” As soon as he felt they complied, he said, “I’m home and everything I’m touching with my hands is back home with me as well.” He hated this part, so he closed his eyes even as he spoke. He heard a gasp and opened his eyes a second after he finished speaking. The younger man was swaying on his feet, clearly dizzy with the weird feeling of being transported from one place to another in the blink of an eye. The tiger-man, “Tyler,” Jason corrected himself, looked a bit green around the gills as well. Jason had neither time nor patience to deal with it now.
H
e sighed, shook their hands off of his, and started towards the stairs. “Come and let me show you the spare bedrooms and where the bedding and towels are. After that, I want to go to sleep. I’m tired like hell with all the power I used up today. That wasn’t a walk in a park, that one is certain.” He made sure not to put any magical strength behind his words. God only knows what would happen if he did. He was too knackered to deal with an eventual outcome today anyway.
Chapter Three
Jason got woken up by raised voices that didn’t belong in his house. Hell, no voice but his belonged there. He got up and rubbed his groggy eyes, suddenly remembering the previous night. Right, so he brought some strangers, one of whom was a tiger-man, to his house. Okay. But why were they now shouting? Jason started towards the noise, feeling the effects of abusing his power still. He woke up at six and called his job to say that he couldn’t come because of some stomach flu. His employer agreed to cover for him, and Jason went back to bed. He looked at his watch, seeing it was barely half nine. He hoped to sleep till eleven at least. He always needed lots of sleep after using his power. He guessed it was to be expected. There had to be some price for things he could do. Jason neared one of the guest bedrooms and heard the raised voice again.
“No, bad kitty! You can’t sit on Master’s bed. You’ll shed all over it, and then he’ll kick us both out. And where will that leave us, huh? Get off it now.”
Jason rounded the corner and was met by a real bizarre view. There was a familiar-looking tiger sprawled on the guest bed, and behind him the young man whose name Jason still didn’t get was trying to push the huge animal off the furniture. The man was pushing on the tiger’s back, the animal not fazed whatsoever. The young man’s legs were slipping on the thick carpet floor as he did his best to move the tiger. His jaw had a stubborn set to it, a frown on his forehead and determination clear in his eyes. The tiger, on the other hand, looked pleased with himself. If Jason didn’t know better, he’d think the animal was smirking as if enjoying the attention and back massage.
Changing His Reality Page 3
