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FYI for those following this story: there's going to be a delay of a couple of weeks before the next instalment because I'm going away on holiday. Don't miss Chapter 8 at the end of the previous page  🙄  -- and thanks for coming along for the ride with Dean, Joey, and company.

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11 hours ago, daddybear54 said:

FYI for those following this story: there's going to be a delay of a couple of weeks before the next instalment because I'm going away on holiday. Don't miss Chapter 8 at the end of the previous page  🙄  -- and thanks for coming along for the ride with Dean, Joey, and company.

Enjoy your holiday - looking forward to chapter 9. 

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3 minutes ago, NLbear said:

Enjoy your holiday. Can't wait for the next chapter. If they find a few more guys in the 'family' they can all enjoy the new hot tub and fuck their brains out 😉

 

Sure to be some more of them lurking in the family tree. As for whatever happens, time will tell.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Chapter 9:  The Project

 

As soon as Dean heard his mother’s quivering voice, he knew instantly that, whatever was happening, it was big. It just wasn’t his mom’s style to flip out, so this must be huge. “I’m in the city, Mom. Are you at home?”

“Yes, I am.” Dean heard a little sniffle. Now he knew for sure that this was urgent. “Just give me a half hour to shower and dress, and I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

Clicking off, he explained quickly to Jaysen and Joey. Joey looked immediately concerned, and asked, “Want me to come with?”

Dean thought for a second. “I think perhaps better not, Joey. She sounded really distraught, and that’s certainly unlike her. I’d better just go alone. Can I swipe your car and you can make your way home – you know, by the express route?”

“Absolutely.”

“Jaysen, sorry, but I had better put that weekend invitation on ice until I know for sure what’s happening.”

“Of course – not a problem.”

Forty minutes later, Dean was sitting down next to Dayna in the living room of Deidra and Ross’ mansion.

Deidra’s mansion now, as they found out very shortly. “He’s left me. Each of us felt like the other was drifting away, and now it’s happened. He thought I was seeing someone else, because of all the time I spent with you two and Joey, and I thought he was seeing someone else because of all the business trips he was taking. What a mess!”

She went on at some length about the entire discussion they’d had, the upshot of which was that they had agreed amicably to an uncontested divorce, and Ross had offered to give her the title deeds to the house in lieu of trying to work out a cash settlement of her share of his very complex personal and business affairs. Dean’s first thought was that she should try to hold out for a full fifty percent share. Dayna, though, pointed out that if Ross decided to contest that, the resulting legal actions could drag on for years and (because of his prominence) pull all of them into the headlines, the last place any of this family needed to find themselves. Finally, all three of them agreed that simply settling for the house was Deidra’s best bet.

In the event, that choice turned out to be far better than any of them had guessed. There followed a lapse of a couple of months while the various legal papers were all drawn up and processed, and then Deidra received the title deeds for the house in mid-April. The divorce was finalized and announced in the first week of June, in muted fashion, in the social pages. A few weeks later, to considerably more and definitely front-page publicity, Ross shot himself in a hotel room in Los Angeles.

The letter which he left pointed to the rapidly ballooning debts of his various enterprises and investments, all of them undone by a series of poor choices, rapidly changing markets, serious inflation, and uncollectable debts. All of them now realized that the divorce was his final and most generous gift to the family he had taken as his own. He’d cut the strings in time, setting Deidra free from the consequences of the financial collapse that had overtaken his business empire, and he’d given her the house outright to establish her on a firm financial footing. It wasn’t an asset that could be attached by any of his creditors since he had purchased it some time before incurring any of the business debts that had driven him to the wall. Deidra’s children, likewise, he had established with the earlier gifts of the down payments on their homes and the club memberships.

To say that Deidra was devastated by his death, and the circumstances surrounding it, was an enormous understatement. Dayna had her mother come and stay at the apartment, away from the huge, empty house, so that she’d have company and wouldn’t have to face the media who swarmed like flies, looking for the “inside story.” Dean and Joey came by frequently as well, to spend time with her. The whole project of researching the descendants of Nora Ludlow had gone onto the back burner and remained there for a while.

The boys also had no further opportunity to discuss the situation with Jaysen. Of course, they didn’t really need to tell him what had happened. The sudden abrupt suicide of Ross after his unexpected divorce had been the number one talking point in the club lounge for weeks after it had all happened.

It was in the midst of this upheaval that Joey received a letter from the same cruise line for which Dayna worked, announcing his appointment to a supervisory position in the customer relations department, with several dozen front-line customer relations agents reporting to him. He’d interviewed for the job over a month earlier, but he hadn’t heard anything since. Dayna had tried to reassure him, saying that the human resources department usually moved at tortoise speed, but he’d felt sure that he was going to miss out on this opportunity. Even knowing that Joey would now be able to live full time in Carlsbad didn’t do much to lift the family gloom, although everyone sensed what a difference it would make to him and to Dean.

After a few months, the boys and Dayna gradually pulled out of their slump. Deidra quickly sold the house, and with the help of a good financial advisor recommended by Dayna she soon had her resources wisely invested. Her final step was to get a more modest but still attractive condo, just a couple of blocks away from Dayna’s place. Understandably, her grief held her down for considerably longer. Ross had been the first man Dayna had ever met who’d treated her decently – “and I don’t just mean money,” she had said when she was talking about her feelings to Dayna one night.

After several months, Dean and Joey finally arranged their long-deferred weekend get-together with Jaysen. They made sure to allow for plenty of time between sessions of getting together to go over with him all the notes and papers they’d accumulated.

Joey was hard at work in the kitchen when Jaysen arrived just before 7:00 on Friday. He welcomed Jaysen with a kiss and a squeeze of his ass, and said to Dean, “Show him the guest room and you fellows can get changed and have a swim. I’m going to be stuck here for a while longer, getting dinner ready.”

Jaysen replied, “A swim sounds great – that rush hour traffic out on the I-5 is a nightmare.”

“Come on, Jaysen, right this way – best to stay out of the Michelin chef’s lair when he’s hard at work.”

Joey snorted at the “Michelin chef” and Jaysen laughed as they headed upstairs.

About ten minutes later, Joey thought he heard a noise. He turned off the fan over the stove for a minute and listened. Sure enough, that was a loud groan of passion drifting down the stairs. He turned the fan back on, set the burner down to simmer, and ran quickly but quietly up the stairs and down the hall to the left – to be greeted by the sight of Dean’s ass muscles flexing as he drove his bare cock deep inside Jaysen’s hole.

“That wasn’t actually the kind of changing I had in mind,” Joey remarked drily.

“Well, don’t just stand there, Joey, get out of your clothes and join us.”

“Not a chance yet. Have to keep an eye on dinner. If you fellows ever make it out to the pool, I can join you there in 20 minutes or so.” He headed back downstairs, shaking his head and laughing. Just as he stepped back into the kitchen, he heard the unmistakable wail of Jaysen’s “Oh, fuck!” and knew that Dean was breeding their cousin’s ass again.

Ten minutes later, Dean and Jaysen sauntered decorously down the stairs, but Joey wasn’t fooled. Jaysen had finally deep-sixed the baggy shorts and was strutting his stuff in a black speedo. Joey definitely approved of the change in Jaysen’s wardrobe. But he could tell that Jaysen was walking a little more cautiously than when he had arrived, and there was a suspicious damp smudge on the front of Dean’s pale blue speedo.

In another ten minutes, Joey had finished the sauce and was able to set the timer and slide the chicken into the oven. He then stepped into the living room, peeled off his outer clothes, and raced outside, diving headlong into the pool. After a minute or so of cooling down, he figured he was ready to start heating up again, and climbed out, joining Dean and Jaysen in the hot tub. They were already kissing again, and had their hands firmly fastened on each other’s hardening cocks.

“You guys just can’t keep your hands off each other, can you?”

“And why should we?”

“No reason. Here, Jaysen, give me that spare hand, the one that can’t leave Dean’s cock alone, and I’ll find it something useful to do.”

So saying, Joey turned around and knelt on the seat, leaning forward over the edge of the tub, then took Jaysen’s left hand and guided it towards his ass. That immediately got Jaysen’s full attention.

“Sorry, Dean, duty calls elsewhere.”

With that, Jaysen turned right around and began kissing Joey’s firm ass through his wet speedo, then started inching the tight swimsuit down, exposing the pale skin and light dusting of fur. In another minute, he had Joey’s speedo off and buried his face in Joey’s ass crack, licking and kissing and tonguing for all he was worth.

Seeing the way things were going, Dean got behind Jaysen and began lavishing the same treatment on his beautifully rounded buns. Their earlier session upstairs had been a quickie, an appetizer. This time, Dean was going for something longer and more involving, a true main course. Once all three of them were naked in the bubbling water, the ass-eating chain got much more intense, with hands squeezing butt cheeks as tongues drilled into holes. Dean was getting the best of it as he sucked and slurped his earlier load out of Jaysen’s ass, but Jaysen was more than enjoying himself, eating Joey’s buns as a prelude to eating Joey’s dinner.

Joey was imagining once again feeling Jaysen’s cock inside him and getting thoroughly turned on at the thought of getting Jaysen to breed him. As Jaysen ate his hole, probing it with his talented tongue, Joey was moaning aloud – the moans finally resolving into words: “Fuck, Jaysen, get that cock into my hole and do me now!”

Jaysen stood up behind Joey, finding that his cock was at the perfect height for the target as Joey continued leaning over the edge of the hot tub. With the water bubbling and frothing around his legs, Jaysen placed his head against Joey’s hole and slowly leaned on it. Joey opened right up and let him in with no hesitation. Jaysen sank into his tight ass, loving the sensation of Joey’s muscles stroking him as he slid deeper inside.

At the same time, Dean had gotten up behind Jaysen and planted his dick against the slightly looser hole in Jaysen’s ass. Now he pushed forward and felt his cock go deep inside. But then he pulled back, and leaned over Jaysen’s shoulders, whispering in his ear, “Okay, Jaysen, fuck the shit out of him,”

Dean himself held still as Jaysen proceeded to go to town on Joey’s ass – but very quickly realized that in doing so, he was energetically fucking himself on Dean’s cock at the same time. As he got into the motion, Jaysen moved smoothly back and forth, delving into Joey as he slid off Dean, and then punching backwards onto Dean as he withdrew from Joey. Fucking and getting fucked at the same time suddenly felt pretty damn incredible. Why hadn’t he ever enjoyed it this much before?

But before things really got close to the point of no return, Joey said, “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Switch.” It took Jaysen a moment to figure out what was happening, but then he got it. He was going to stay in the middle of the sandwich, like cheese in a sandwich, while Dean became the bottom of the bun and Joey took over as the top.

Thus rearranged, they kept going for a few more minutes, until Joey announced that he was going to cum in a minute, he couldn’t hold off much longer. Jaysen snapped, “Well, go for it!” At once, he speeded up his fucking motions, pounding hard into Dean while Joey’s cock slid in and out of his hole at a dizzying pace. Then, suddenly, Jaysen felt his own explosion coming, and hammered harder than ever into Dean, gasping out, “Cumming… cumming in you… your ass!”

Dean moaned aloud and shot off, his clutching hole pushing Jaysen over the edge, at the same time as Joey hammered it home one last time and bred Jaysen’s ass with his own load.

Over the course of that weekend, Jaysen got one eye-opening surprise after another as Dean and Joey showed him the whole collection of documentation they’d gathered about Nora Ludlow and her descendants. The name meant nothing to Jaysen, but that wasn’t surprising because he’d never cared much about the background of his strange power, wishing instead that he could just drink it away or kill it with enough booze, neither of which had happened – not to mention that an ancestor who’d wound up committed to an asylum wasn’t someone either of his parents would have regarded with any favour.

Now, he was discovering for himself the scale of the clan-within-a-clan to which he belonged, and also becoming truly curious about what might be the cause of the whole strange business. Dean and Joey also tipped him off about the importance of reading The Chrysalids, and about where to find Starman online if he wanted to, while stressing that it was probably less critical to their search.

Unlike Dean and Joey, Jaysen had not only heard about but had read The Chrysalids, frequently, finding that this novel really spoke to him at a fundamental level. The essential loneliness of the key characters mirrored the way that Jaysen felt about life and his place in the world. Ever since the first time he'd finished the book, he’d dreamed or at least daydreamed about finding a place where he could go – a safe haven where he wouldn’t be seen as a freak and an outsider.

It was a part of his personality that few people had ever seen, this deeply introspective man who  considered and pondered the world at the same time as he held aloof from living in it. Jaysen couldn’t help appreciating the irony that, with all the progress gay people had made towards escaping the closet and finding social acceptance, he had somehow gotten trapped in the same prison again, although now it was because of his ability to appear as someone other than who he really was.

The clumsy, socially inept, drunk Jaysen wasn’t the real man. He was an artificial construct, a mask Jaysen had created to shield his deeply sensitive and thoughtful inward soul from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Only once or twice since he had reached adulthood had he ever let the mask slip with one person, and when he did it inevitably led to him getting hurt again, and deeply – as if his family hadn’t inflicted enough hurt and harm on him already.

Even as a teenager, Jaysen had seen and felt repelled by the way his father had used his shifting ability to gain sneak advantages in some of his shadier business deals. His sisters had been just as unpleasant, with Linda using her skills to shoplift expensive clothes and jewellery that she could certainly have afforded to buy, while Bella delighted in using hers to drop her friends unexpectedly into socially awkward situations that would give her a good laugh at their expense.

When he’d revealed his gay orientation to his parents, their reactions had spoken volumes about the nature of life in his insanely wealthy family. His mother had shrugged and said, vaguely, “I know. That’s nice, dear,” on her way out the door of their summer home in the Hamptons to another society party. His father had handed him a cheque and told him to “take that and go find the kind of life you want somewhere else – a long way away, and just stay there, out of my sight,” his dad had added for good measure, in a bored tone of voice. His sisters cut him out of their lives without a second thought.

The eight-figure cheque (a sum which barely dented his father’s bank accounts) had enabled Jaysen to live comfortably in California, at least financially, but did less than nothing to make him feel any more wanted or valued by anyone. A few coins and small change flung after him didn’t make him a bit happier about being thrown out on his ear.

He'd gotten a little more support from his great-uncle Roger, who had taught him some useful tricks for managing his little nest egg. Jaysen had taken that advice and run with it, making a whole series of shrewd investment decisions that increased his holdings several times over. He’d always wondered if Roger, his mother’s uncle, whose marriage seemed even more sterile and loveless than his own parents, might have been gay and closeted. He never found out for sure. Not long after Jaysen settled in San Diego, Roger had died, leaving Jaysen essentially without any family at all.

Throughout a long series of sexual encounters with a whole variety of men on the make, Jaysen had learned by experience how to protect both himself and his wealth from the grasping hands of others. He’d fucked around with a long series of guys, offering up his ass to one bare cock after another when he wasn’t dazzling and terrifying them with his black alter ego’s massive tower of power. He’d slept with some of the highest-profile gay celebrities, porn stars, and social media influencers. His money made it a simple matter to get any guy he wanted, and he did. It did nothing to make him any happier but at least all the wild sex helped him to scratch the itch.

Now, without even really trying or seeking, he’d found his place and his clan all in one go and had become a part of a family that accepted him as a whole man, taking him in as he was and not as they thought he should be. Motivated by this unexpected and unaccustomed feeling of being valued by others,

Jaysen willingly joined in the project. He started by volunteering to help Dean and Joey fill in the gaps in his branches of the family, especially since these included at least two examples where he was already reasonably sure that the powers had passed through the male line – his father and his father’s younger brother.

On both Friday and Saturday nights, the bed in the guest room mysteriously didn’t seem to get slept in at all. Joey and Dean were only too happy to share their extra-king-sized bed with their cousin, as a way of welcoming him fully into his new family. For them, too, the weekend was turning out to be one huge surprise after another as the whole story of Jaysen’s life leaked out to them in dribs and drabs. The sex they shared with him was intense, and great fun, but both of them suspected that the best of the experience for Jaysen was when the three of them snuggled down together to sleep. On the Friday night, they made Jaysen sleep in the middle, with both of them cuddled up to him on either side. Dean felt that this might just have been the most emotional and physical closeness to anyone else that Jaysen had ever experienced.

The climax of the weekend, in more ways than one, came on Saturday night when Jaysen confided that he’d always wanted to try a DP. Dean had been involved in DP scenes a couple of times, as a top only, but Joey had never done one. That made Dean the resident expert, as far as there was one, and he proceeded to orchestrate the scene.

First, he had Joey lie down on his back, and got Jaysen to kneel over him and go down on his cock, sucking him into a painful erection. Meanwhile, Dean was busy stroking his own cock, getting it good and hard for what was to come.

Next, Dean got Jaysen to straddle Joey and sit down on his dick, taking his firm hard-on deep inside his ass and riding on it. This helped Joey to produce more pre-cum and lubricate the action in Jaysen’s hole. While this was happening, Dean was squeezing a bottle of lube, getting his fingers nicely greased up and then rubbing it all up and down his pole, preparing himself for the battle to come in moments.

Now, he pushed Jaysen forward by the shoulders until he was lying right down on top of Joey, but with Joey’s cock still embedded in his hole. Dean leaned over him and pressed his cock against Jaysen’s butt, and against Joey’s cock, murmuring like a chant, “Relax… relax….”

As Jaysen’s hole slowly began to loosen up, Dean pushed forward. Jaysen let out a cry, but Dean just kept telling him to relax and open up, to let him in. Jaysen was almost sobbing from the pain, but when Dean asked if it was too much, he babbled, “Fuck, no! I want it… want it in me… both of you… fuck, man, give me… don’t back out….”

Dean pushed more firmly, and his cockhead popped right inside Jaysen’s tight hole, alongside Joey’s equally hard tool. Jaysen was moaning and sobbing, but Dean kept the pressure on and slowly worked his cock deeper inside Jaysen’s stretched-out anus.

“Deep breaths, Jaysen. Take deep breaths.”

Jaysen struggled to follow Joey’s advice and slowly began to relax into the invasion, his breathing becoming steadier as his hole came to terms with the two cocks stretching him apart. As he slowly calmed down, he began to drift off into an almost trance-like state where he stopped interacting with the outside world, zoning out on the effect of two cocks inside him at once – and nothing else mattered.

As he went there, Dean and Joey felt his hole relaxing slowly. Dean began moving cautiously, sliding in and then out again, testing Jaysen’s reaction. Jaysen had developed a blissed-out grimace on his face but gave no other sign. Dean slowly speeded up his pumping motions, driving ever faster and deeper into Jaysen’s ass alongside Joey. But then Joey winced a bit, and Dean pulled out. Jaysen moaned, “Nooo,” but Dean just squirted some more lube over his tool, spread it all around the shaft, and then slowly pushed it back into the hole.

By this time, Joey and Dean were both moving in Jaysen’s hole and they got into a smooth rhythm, with Joey sliding out as Dean slid in, and then Dean moving back in as Joey backed out. Jaysen by this time had a total “all gone” look on is face as they fucked him, and even a sudden burst of extra-hard thrusts couldn’t break his concentration on all the cock inside him. It was Dean who finally broke the spell by grunting, “Fuck… can’t wait… gonna cum!”

“Yeah, Dean, breed his hole!”

With no other warning, Dean’s cock convulsed and released a big pulse of his seed inside Jaysen’s stretched-out ass. The feeling of Dean’s cum flowing over and around his cock brought Joey to the edge too, and there the two of them were, cumming in unison inside the ass of an ecstatic Jaysen Macaleister. And Jaysen, without even trying or touching himself, pumped out another cum load all over Joey’s body as he quivered in his sexual trance.

As Dean came down off the high of breeding ass, his cock slowly softened and slipped out. Joey followed suit, and Jaysen rolled off of Joey onto his side, with their combined sperm loads slowly seeping out of him as his ass struggled to close again. Holy mother, what an incredible high, Jaysen thought to himself.

And then, to his utter and total astonishment, he heard Dean’s voice in his head saying, You got that right!

“What the hell?” Jaysen burst into words in his amazement.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Dean responded. Joey started laughing.

“Looks like we’ve got another one on our hands. Jaysen, remember when I told you a few weeks back that Dean and I could talk in our thoughts? Looks like you’ve just joined the party!”

The three of them lapsed back into thought-speech.

Dean, how long have you been able to do this?

A few months, I’m not sure exactly.

Can you do it at a distance?

Dean and I did this with each other once when he was here and I was in Hong Kong, before I gave up flying.

Wow! Is there anyone else who’s able to do it too?

One other person, I’m not going to get specific because we don’t want her in on this after what we’ve just been doing – our minds must be full of it.

Right, Dean, but don’t forget about the mystery voice – whoever or whatever they are.

“The mystery voice?” Jaysen came back into normal speech.

“I guess we didn’t tell you about that yet,” Dean replied. “We’ll fill you in tomorrow.”

After they’d all recovered their breath from the intensity of that triple climax, and what came after it, Jaysen began to feel a bit sleepy. A kind of contentment he’d never really felt before washed over him. Dean, though, turned to Joey and began kissing him, slowly and lovingly. As Joey responded in kind, Jaysen realized that there’d been a shift in the energy, that he was about to witness something very special. He got up to go to the bathroom, but also to give the scene between Dean and Joey time to unfold. After a quick clean-up, he returned, wrapped in a towel, and sat down in the chair across the room to watch them.

They were locked in an embrace together, their mouths seeking ever more closeness with each other as their hands roamed all over each other’s bodies, stroking, caressing, squeezing, drawing them ever nearer to each other. Their fully erect cocks pushed right up against each other, the heads slowly flowing with sweet liquid. Dean rolled until he was on top of Joey, his erection now protruding down between Joey’s thighs. He pulled back slightly from the embrace, opening his eyes and staring deeply into Joey’s eyes. Without a word spoken, Joey smiled up at him and drew his legs up and back, opening himself to his man. Dean spread the copious precum from their two cocks all over the head of his tool, and then placing it against Joey’s hole, slowly entered him, easily, smoothly, in one long slow slide until his hips were pressed firmly against Joey’s cheeks.

As they continued embracing, stroking, and kissing each other, Dean slowly slid in and out of Joey, gliding smoothly and without haste. It was a special kind of fucking they were enjoying between them, a kind that neither of them had ever experienced until they had met each other and fallen in love. As Dean made love to Joey, Jaysen watched in awe, aware that he was seeing an extraordinary unity and flow of emotions such as he’d never imagined might be possible.

There was no hurry, no frantic rush to the finish line. The two of them were delighting in each other’s bodies, the nearness, the interplay of tongues, the sensations of hands gliding over skin, the smooth movement of Dean’s cock in and out of Joey’s ass – it was all far too deeply enjoyable for either of them to want it to end.

But of course the end had to come. Dean wasn’t even speeding up as he neared climax, but there was a slight jerky quality, an edginess in his movements, that told Joey the moment was at hand. He clutched Dean to him tightly and whispered, “Now, love. Give it to me now.” And with that quiet command, Dean exploded inside Joey, painting his insides, as Joey erupted between them.

The kissing and stroking continued, but slower, as they came down from the high of making love to each other. Jaysen just sat and watched as they slowly came out of their intense absorption in each other. At last, they rolled apart, and Dean took in the fact that they’d been watched. Jaysen feared that he might be self-conscious or embarrassed, but no. Dean merely chuckled, and said, “I’m sorry, Jaysen, you must have thought it was rude of us to cut you out like that.”

Jaysen smiled. “I didn’t think it was rude, but I did fear that I was intruding on something special. Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed to watch. I guess I should go to the guest room now.”

Joey smiled. “Oh, no. Come on back to bed and sleep with us. It’s all good.”

Later on, after Dean and Joey had drifted off into sleep, wrapped again in each other’s loving embrace, Jaysen had lain wide awake, thinking of the significance of all that he’d seen and heard and learned during this weekend. Everything he thought he knew about his life, about his relations with other people, about his place in the world, all of it had been turned upside down and stood on its head. He’d found out that he wasn’t a lonely freak but part of a large family, all of them no doubt struggling with the same kinds of difficulties he faced. He’d been shown clearly that the entire course of his life wasn’t his fault but stemmed in no small part from the totally dysfunctional family he’d been born into. He’d realized, too, that while sex could be great fun, it could also become an expression of a love almost too deep and too intensely real to be described in words.

Most important of all, he’d not only found a family but also hope for his own future, a future in which he might look forward (and not only in his dreams) to enjoying the kind of closeness that Dean and Joey had been so fortunate as to find and nurture for themselves. He was no longer jealous of them. Instead, he dared to hope for as good luck to happen to him: to Jaysen Macaleister, the perennial richest loser on the west coast.

Or, as he put it more simply to them over a late breakfast on Sunday morning. “You fellows have given me a family, a life, a future. You’re not just my cousins; you’re my brothers.”

They’d all shared some close and heartfelt hugs and kisses at that moment. None of the three of them, though, not Dayna nor Deidra, nor any other descendants of Nora Ludlow, could possibly have guessed at the even greater closeness that lay in wait for them.

 

 

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Chapter 10:  The Eyes

 

Over the course of the next few weeks, Jaysen had a number of further conversations with Dean and Joey in which he found out even more details about their experiences and what they had discovered. As Dean pointed out, now that Jaysen had made the breakthrough and joined the circle of those who could use the thought-speech, he could consider himself among those whom the mystery voice had characterized as “experiencing the next stage of the experiment.”

Joey, for his part, reminded both of them of the part of that strange encounter which had most impressed him: the moment when the voice had told him to ask no questions of it, but to ask themselves. All three of them had now realized that this meant they had embarked on not just a fascinating research project but a voyage of self-discovery.

What this self-discovery might uncover, of course, was variable for each of them. Jaysen may have had a higher degree of self-awareness than the other two, but he was not such a fool as to believe that he had reached some destination which they had not. It meant only that he had gotten a bit further in the process than Dean and Joey had yet done.

They also had a get-together with Dayna, to share with her what they had found out and what they felt it might all mean. Dayna was mightily surprised to find out that the shallow, incoherent, incompetent drunk Jaysen (as she had thought of him) turned out to be articulate and thoughtful to a degree which she had never suspected. The discovery of his connection to the others and of the unexpected ability to speak his thoughts had changed him out of all measure.

Nor were they the only ones to notice. Members of the country club certainly noticed that Jaysen was a changed man. The staff noticed even sooner. The dining room waiters talked amongst themselves about how much more polite and pleasant he had become, talking to them directly, and with a smile instead of his former surly monotone delivered into the tablecloth as he scowled down at the menu for the day. All of the  serving staff commiserated with the bartender, whose tip income had taken a real nosedive.

The new and more considerate Jaysen had even taken thought for that angle, though, and the next few times he brought business guests into the bar for drinks before dinner, he added an extra hundred dollars to the tip.

The other noticeable change in Jaysen’s behaviour was out at the pool, where his black speedo had banished his former baggy shorts and he would now lie out there, sunning or swimming with Dean and/or Joey rather than sulking by himself. Members and staff alike speculated as to whether they were all playing or sleeping together, or (as one experienced waiter suggested) if they had perhaps formed a triad relationship.

The answer to that last one, as it happened, was a “no.” Dayna had actually come right out and asked that question the second time she met Jaysen with the boys. Dean and Joey looked at each other, not quite sure how to answer that question. They had continued playing around with Jaysen on occasion, but neither was sure if he or they wished to go further.

To their relief, Jaysen laughed. “We’ve had some fun times together, but making it permanent? Not a chance. You don’t know what isolation feels like until these two have drifted off into their own private little world of luuuve and left you high and dry.” The laughter took any sting out of the words, and Dean and Joey were quick to pick up the laugh, even if it was pointed at them.

Dayna had wrinkled her nose up a bit. “Oh, god, Jaysen, too much information.”

“Shouldn’t ask if you aren’t prepared to hear.”

That made Dayna laugh too. But then she got a bit more serious.

“Guys, there’s something I want to let you know about. There’s this man who’s been around the club a lot lately, and whenever I see him – but especially when I’m lying out on the sundeck by the pool – I see him staring at me. It’s a not a nice stare. You know, not that simple, “You’re hot, I’d love to say hello to you.” More of an undressing with the eyes, really intense, and really unnerving.”

Dean immediately looked concerned. “Do you know his name?”

“No, and before you suggest I ask the waiter, I will do no such thing. Too easily misunderstood as me wanting to meet him – and I don’t.”

Jaysen stepped in. “Easy enough for me to ask. I’m notorious among the club staff for wanting to meet every new male member on the off chance. Just point him out to me the next time we’re there together, and I’ll find out for you.” With that they all said goodnight to each other, Jaysen headed back to his condo, Dean and Joey drove off back to Carlsbad, and Dayna was left with her own problem to ponder.

Jaysen duly completed his task about a week later, and the waiter had shared with him the information that the gentleman in question was a new member of the name of Alek Wolter. The name conveyed nothing to any of them, which wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that a quick search of the various online sources disclosed nobody of that name anywhere even remotely near to San Diego.

Immediately on hearing that from Dayna, Dean’s senses sprang to full alert. He’d had a number of professional experiences dealing with various shysters and fraud artists, and this was one of their fingerprints – a name which yielded nothing much in the way of background information when searched. He’d even used some more far-reaching search tools that were supposed to be exclusively for business purposes and still turned up no information at all.

It was beginning to look as if the Mystery Man could very well be some kind of undercover operative, but for whom? On the other hand, it could be that he was just smitten with Dayna, yet another example of a fate which has befallen many undercover operatives throughout history. The whole thing was still enough to make all of them edgy, Dayna especially so of course.

In the meantime, their research into the descendants of Nora Ludlow was taking on a more conclusive shape, with almost all names identified and placed into their proper slots within the multi-tiered family tree. Not surprisingly, Dean and Joey were by no means the only distant cousins who’d ended up matched with each other. They were sure it must have been just as much of a relief for all those earlier members of the family to find partners with special abilities as it had been for them.

As this concluding stage of the work under way appeared to be wrapping up, Jaysen announced that he was leaving San Diego for a number of weeks to do some on-site research and negotiating over a business venture he was considering in some of the south Pacific Islands. On hearing this news, Dayna (the least romantic of them all) immediately burst into song – Bali Ha’i. Before he left, they all had one last meeting and again cautioned against overuse of the thought-speech unless it was urgently necessary for some reason.

Life continued to move forward. Dayna even began dating a guy whom she thought, from his name, might be a member of that same family tree. She had yet to confirm this, remaining circumspect with him at all times, and by the same token not prying too much into his family background until they got to know each other a bit better.

Dean was really happy at seeing his sister building a personal life for herself in a way she had not yet tried to do. He and Joey enjoyed themselves a nice little getaway for a week on one of the cruise line’s deluxe ships to Mexico, the appropriately named Santa Margarita. The margaritas did indeed flow like water, the beaches at the different ports were spectacular, and the meals were out of this world delicious. They didn’t meet any hot company on a ship full of mostly elderly couples and singles, but they did have an enjoyable dinner with an older gay man and his partner who were cruise-specific travel agents.

Once they’d settled back home, Dean turned his attention once again to the whole question of the Mystery Man. Dayna had told him that the persistent starer was still lurking, and still making her nervous. Dean and Joey spent a Saturday afternoon at the pool, lying some distance away from Dayna between swims. Both of them noticed that “Wolter” was staring at them as much as at her.

That changed the whole complexion of the mystery sharply. It was still just possible that he was a sexual stalker who liked to swing both ways. After all, as Joey smugly pointed out, all three of them were definitely worth a second look in any company. It now seemed much more likely, though, that he was a representative of some creditor who’d gotten burned when Ross died. In such a case, he was presumably checking them out in hopes of finding out something that could help out with a lawsuit. Their own lawyers had assured them that their situation was unassailable due to the number of years which had elapsed since he had given them the cash gifts for their down payments, but that didn’t mean that someone wouldn’t give it a shot anyway. The mystery remained, for the time being, beyond solution.

Deidra had by now gone through the first and most intensive stages of her grief and felt a real need to do something to help occupy her time. This time, it was Dayna and Joey in tandem who lined her up with the right person to get a job at the cruise line, as a customer-relations troubleshooter for some of the more complex bad situations which arose during and after voyages. This kind of hands-on problem solving work was both wildly diverse and right up her alley. When Dayna mused about whether such a job would be a good fit for Deidra, her mother tartly replied, “I raised you two by myself. Enough said.”

In due time, Jaysen returned from the islands, bringing with him a fat contract for management of a new hospitality chain specializing in boutique beach inns, and another and less business-oriented surprise for everyone.

The surprise was a strikingly handsome islander from Tonga, a vivacious and outgoing young man who shared his eleven-syllable traditional name with a twinkle in his eye, and then said, “But just call me Peter – everyone does, even at home.”

Peter had actually been living in New Zealand for quite a while, like many of his fellow Tongans, when Jaysen met him. He was already working in the hospitality industry when he was offered a position in the newly-formed chain. But at the same time he had received a different kind of offer altogether from Jaysen, and one which he found much more to his liking.

It was more than obvious to everyone that Peter and Jaysen were very much a couple, with a good measure of love and commitment already on both sides. Peter even informed Dean and Joey that Jaysen had told him all about his earlier and more restless life, and how he’d been pulled out of it by their friendship. He’d summed up by saying, “I want to thank you for helping him become a more positive, better, kinder man.”

Dean and Joey were both truly flattered to be thanked in such generous terms, in such a musical, soft, warm, Polynesian accent.

On Friday night, the four of them joined together for a swim and dinner at the club. Throughout the afternoon and evening, the conversation revolved around Peter’s life and family. His parents came from one of the lines of traditional chieftains in Tonga, and thus were people of considerable importance, both by position and because of their strong leadership qualities. Because of their stature in society, they were only allowed to marry within their own large chieftainly clan.

Peter had learned all about his ancestors, going back many generations into the eras of oral recollection, before the creation of a written form of the languages they spoke. One thing his father had stressed when he left Tonga was that Peter was the first member of his family line of chieftains ever to leave the islands in seven generations and more.

While he was sharing all this with his new friends, they were enjoying the sunshine – except for Peter, who remained firmly wrapped up in his clothes at the pool. “I don’t know how you northerners can stand to take all your clothes off like this in such cold weather,” he complained – this at a time when the temperature was sitting at 77 degrees Fahrenheit in blazing sunshine. Eventually the four of them, and the conversation, moved inside to the dining room and relaxed over a four-course dinner.

Once again the gossip was going all around the place in no time flat that the handsome young man with the rich dark skin tone had actually taken the wildly promiscuous Jaysen Macaleister off the market. Heads were shaken in disbelief on all sides at the sight of the two of them visibly holding hands across the corner of the table between courses of the meal.

Afterwards, they went back to Jaysen’s condo for a nightcap – “just a nightcap” Joey said firmly, reminding Dean that they had company coming to their place the next afternoon for a pool party and dinner -- some of Dean’s business associates.

“Okay, Joey,” Dean replied meekly, to a round of laughs from Jaysen and Peter.

But then Jaysen got down to business. “That’s fine. We won’t keep you late. But there is a reason why I brought you here. Peter has something he needs to show you.”

They all looked expectantly at Peter, who promptly vanished. A moment later, they heard the tap running in the kitchen, and when it shut off, Peter popped back into view on the sofa and Jaysen draped his arm across Peter’s shoulders, taking care not to disturb his right arm that now held a full glass of water.

Dean chuckled delightedly. “Jaysen! You found another one!”

But Joey had a thoughtful, even slightly worried expression on his face. It took him a moment to speak. “Dean, isn’t that the least of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Peter told us at dinner that he was the first member of his family to leave Tonga in seven or more generations.”

“So?” Dean wrinkled his brows for a moment – and then it hit him. His eyes opened wide like dinner plates. “He’s not one of us.”

“Precisely.” Jaysen looked at the other couple. “Peter is one of us in his abilities, but he’s not a descendant of Nora Ludlow.”

“Which means….”

“It means that this whole thing has just gotten bigger by some absolutely unknown exponential quantity.” Now Joey was looking positively frightened at the sheer potential size of this revelation.

Dean attempted to explain the reason for their reaction to Peter, who was looking a bit puzzled at the speed with which the conversation had flown past.

“Peter, here’s the thing. I don’t know if Jaysen explained to you, but this all started with my family – well, really with my twin sister and me. By the way, my shifting thing is the same as yours, while my sister Dayna can move things around. When my mother found out about me, she let us know that the strange powers had come down through her family, most likely from her ancestor Nora Ludlow. Oh, by the way, because you are likely going to meet my mother, she can shift other people around but not herself.

“At first, we thought that these powers were just descending through the female line as none of the few men in my mother’s family had any natural children. When I met Joey, he had a strong feeling that it was safe for him to share his secret with me – and his ability is the same as mine and yours. It took him longer to trace his family line, because he found out that he was adopted, but once he identified his natural mother, she also turned out to be a descendant of Nora Ludlow.

“Then we found out that Jaysen was another one. I’ll assume that you’ve already found out all about his ability, certainly much more about it than we have.”

Dean and Joey shared a dirty laugh at this point, and Jaysen blushed. Peter just sat there with a very satisfied smirk on his face.

“The really startling thing happened when we identified one distant cousin who, although he is a descendant of Nora, received his power from his father, not his mother, and that sent us all back to start over. We’ve been busily trying to trace all the members of Nora’s family lines who could and most likely do have some kind of shifting ability. There are hundreds of them, and it’s taken us many months just to identify and locate almost all of the living members of her line.

“And now, we’re back at square one in a bigger way than ever, because of your ability, and the fact that your family history makes it plain that you are no part of our family. This means that there is at least one other starting point besides Nora Ludlow. And if there are two, why not twenty or fifty or who knows how many?”

Peter had nodded at each step as Dean carefully laid out the process which they had followed up to this point. Now he spoke to fill in the gaps. “There’s a long mythic tradition among Tongans of people who can move themselves, or move things, or change their shape. But my mother has been pursuing the same work as you among our family, and she has isolated a clear case – my three-times great-grandmother, who died back in, umm…,” and he did a quick mental calculation, “…1953. She was 63 years old when she died.”

Dean and Joey looked at each other. Nora’s death date of 1939 was engraved in their memory. But this made it clear that Peter’s ancestor was born in exactly the same year as Nora, 1890. Was that only a coincidence or was it actually significant?

It was Joey who spoke next. “Gents, we’re going to have to leave soon. But there’s still a lot more to talk about here, and I’d say it’s important to have Dayna and Deidra both with us when we do talk it out further.” Dean and Jaysen both nodded agreement. “Could you fellows come out to our place for the day on Saturday, a week from tomorrow? We’ll do patio lunch and pool time, and dinner too.”

Peter and Jaysen looked at each other and nodded.

Dean said, “I’ll check with Mom and Dayna and let you know tomorrow if it’s a go.”

With that, Dean and Joey got up and took their thoroughly shell-shocked leave. Jaysen and Peter proceeded to clean up and put the glasses into the dishwasher, then went off to bed together.

Although they enjoyed changing it up just as much as Dean and Joey did, on this particular occasion Peter was playing little spoon while Jaysen lay behind him, moving his hard cock slowly inside the tight muscular ass of his sexy younger lover. Peter had his head turned over his shoulder and was kissing Jaysen as Jaysen fucked him. Jaysen had now discovered that he could achieve wonders by using his hands slowly and gently on Peter. He was the first partner Jaysen had ever had who could – and regularly did – come over and over just from getting fucked, and without even touching his own dick. Being stimulated by his partner’s hands had a lot to do with that.

Tonight, Peter had something else on his mind. “What about Errol?”

Jaysen looked at him carefully. “You sure you’re ready for Errol?”

“You know I’m always ready for Errol.”

With that Jaysen closed his eyes momentarily and vanished, instantly replaced by his alter ego, the fifty-something, six-foot-plus, black muscle stud, Errol. Since he was already embedded deep inside Peter’s hole at that precise moment, Peter suddenly had to adjust from Jaysen’s thick but not enormous six-incher to Errol’s massive eleven-inch tree trunk.

“Oh, God! Fuck, Errol, you’re stretching me so far.”

“Love me some of that tight hole, baby boy, always feel like I’m doing a virgin again when I plow into your sweet boy ass.”

“Do me now, daddy. Fuck my boyhole wide open and dump your big daddy load inside me.”

“That’s my good boy. Push your ass up for me.”

With that, Errol rolled Peter onto his face and Peter obediently pushed up his ass, forcing his hips up into the air to meet the deep thrusts from Errol’s giant tool. Errol clamped his huge paws onto Peter’s pecs, rolling Peter’s nipples between big finger and index finger on each side. Peter moaned and groaned in an absolute fury of sexual ecstasy, already exploding in a first orgasm as Errol plundered his hole deep and hard, thrusting his insides out of the way to create and hold open a clear passage for his awesome dick.

“Aw, fuck, daddy, you know how to make me feel it – hurts so good, but don’t stop.”

“Right you are, boy, I’m not going to stop until I’ve given you at least two of my loads inside your pretty little boy pussy. Going to keep pounding you hard and fast until I’ve blown my seed deep inside, forced you to take my babies.”

True to his word, Errol kept driving full throttle into Peter’s needy ass, while Peter did his best to work his muscles on the enormous intruder. After another minute or so of steady pounding, Peter began whimpering, always a sign that he was going to cum soon. Errol took the hint.

“Get ready… get ready, boy, it’s cumming… I… FUCK!!!

That gigantic cock slammed its way deep inside Peter and convulsed, spurting stream after stream of hot man cum inside his ass, all the way up in the inner end of his channel. Peter cried aloud as he felt the hot liquid shooting into him, and his own cock jumped up and down a couple of times before blasting a second huge load of cum all over the bed sheets.

Errol grabbed Peter by the hips and pulled him backwards without pulling out, then planted one massive paw on the back of Peter’s head, pushing his face down towards the pools of cum on the bed.

“Lick up that mess, boy. Ain’t no way I’m sleeping in a puddle of boy spooge. Clean the bed up and then get ready for round two.”

Peter obediently licked up and swallowed all of his own load. There really wasn’t a break between round one and round two because Errol never pulled out. He just hung there, with his big fuck stick embedded deep inside Peter while Peter carried out his cleaning assignment.

Then he growled, “You ready for more, boy?”

“Fuck, yes, you know I can’t ever get enough of your huge fucking daddy dick.”

“Hang on.” Errol wrapped his arms around Peter’s chest, and then rolled sideways onto his back, bringing Peter up on top without ever releasing his enormous cock from Peter’s hole.

“Ride me now, boy. Let’s see you work your muscles and bounce on my cock. You got my special lube, my own baby batter inside you. Now, work it!”

Again, Peter demonstrated his obedience by bouncing fiercely on Errol’s dick, slamming down onto the big man’s broad hips, and then pulling up all the way until he was halfway to standing up and only the tip of Errol’s enormous manmeat was still inside him. Then down again. Up. Down. Up. Down. Peter’s fucking motions on Errol’s tool were getting faster and more furious by the second, and Errol was beginning to groan again at the power Peter had to wring even more sperm out of him.

“Turn around and face me, boy.”

Peter obediently lifted his legs into the air and pivoted around on Errol’s cock until he was facing his enormous fucker, then put his legs down and resumed riding. Errol grabbed Peter by the shoulders forcing him down until they were face to face and then plundering Peter’s mouth by tongue while he was busy violating Peter’s ass by dick.

“Oh fuck… fuck, that’s so fucking good… keep pounding me… open me up even more… drive that insane thing into my gaping loose boyhole…”

Errol was now heaving his hips up and down, driving his enormous dick into Peter’s ass while he held Peter’s body pinned down to his chest, forcing him to take his tongue kisses. Then he grunted, “Fuck! Gonna cum soon.”

“Fuck, yeah – breed me again, daddy!”

“Get ready for some more daddy sperm. Gonna make you take my babies a second time.”

“Yeah, daddy. Fuck me and shoot all your cum inside me!”

“Gonna fucking fill you up. Lie down on your back.”

Peter pulled off Errol’s cock just long enough to lie down on his back and lift his legs up over his shoulders. He waited, quivering with anticipation. Then it happened. He felt the blunt tip of Errol’s giant cock pushing against his hole. Then with one massive thrust, his eleven inches was all the way in, deep inside Peter’s battered ass. Peter let out a gut-wrenching scream, then trailed off into an undecipherable babble of “shit” and “Oh fuck” and “Yeah, daddy, just like that but more.”

By now, Errol was on top of Peter, squishing his legs down hard against his abdomen, and driving that huge cock all the way inside. The sounds torn out of Peter’s throat were incredible as he let loose with a third load of cum while Errol all but ripped him a new hole, pounding away deep and hard at Peter’s ass. And then it happened.

“Fuuuuuck! Cumming… inside you!”

“Yeah, daddy, give me all that hot cream!”

Peter yelped in synch each time Errol’s hips slammed down against his cheeks, his enormous cock bottoming out inside Peter’s boyhole on each thrust. Both of them could feel how each squirt from Errol’s tool displaced some part of what was already there, the cum squeezing and bubbling out of Peter’s overworked ass around Errol’s massive shaft.

At last, he finished pumping and shooting, and collapsed across Peter’s body, while Peter nuzzled and kissed him. Their incredible energy had covered both of their dark bodies with glistening sweat. As both of them gasped and panted for air, Errol’s cock slowly shrank and slipped out of Peter’s tortured butthole… and all at once, Errol was Jaysen again, now returning the loving kisses Peter lavished on him. At last, they both calmed down – Errol’s vigorous fucking had tired Jaysen out too, and his dick was oozing the last remains of two enormous loads of cum. Peter bent his head down and slowly, dreamily, licked up the last traces of the huge cum loads that were even now swimming inside him.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed that,” Jaysen said. “Every time that guy fucks with you, he totally wears me out.”

Peter laughed. “I’m sorry, Jaysen, I just can’t resist him. But let me tell you a little secret.”

“What’s that?”

“Errol is fucking hot as hell, and it’s amazing having him do me like that, but I could never love a guy like that or live full time with him.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re the one I love.”

Jaysen felt his eyes getting wet. As far as he could recall, no person in his life had ever said anything like this to him before.

“I love you too, Peter. So much. Sooo much.”

They cuddled and kissed some more, but before long, Errol’s exertions began to take effect and Jaysen found himself drifting off to sleep.

“Good night, Peter.”

“Good night, Jaysen, my love.”

Jaysen fell asleep, sprawled on his back, with Peter’s head resting contentedly on his chest.

On Saturday morning, a week later, Jaysen’s car rolled up the driveway of Dean and Joey’s house, and Jaysen and Peter hopped out, just as Dean came around the side of the house. “Right back this way, fellows, my mom and sister are already here.”

The social interaction among the six of them flowed easily after the first introductions. Peter used his most exquisite manners on meeting the girls and won their hearts. There followed a lot of discussion about his family and his power, and how he had interacted with other people in Tonga while growing up with such a difference. They were intrigued to hear that such things could be found in Tongan folklore as much as in Europe, and that people were both open about their powers and faced little or no discrimination. If anything, they were held in something like awe by at least a part of the local population.

It was at this point that Deidra turned to Jaysen. “By the way, Jaysen, I don’t think I ever did hear what your shifting power was?”

Peter eagerly opened his mouth to answer her, but Jaysen pre-empted him with a loud warning cough before answering himself. “I’m a shape-shifter. Usually an older black man.”

“Oh, just like my grandmother, except that hers was a young Chinese girl.”

Dean and Joey both breathed a covert sigh of relief.

Then Dayna took up the imaginary speaking stick again. “Before I forget, I want to tell you all what I’ve just found out about Wade.” This was the young man she’d been dating recently. “He’s one of the clan too. I found out by steering the conversation one night to the subject of ancestors and family trees. On that theme, I just mentioned, oh-so-innocently, that I had one distant ancestor who had lived in Chicago and wound up in an insane asylum. He responded that this sounded just like his three-times-great-grandmother. At that, I did my best wide-eyed stare and said, ‘You don’t think that maybe…?’ The upshot of it all was that he confirmed that he is indeed a descendant of Nora Ludlow.”

“And…?”

“And I then sent my drink to the other side of the table and back, looked him right in the eye, and said, ‘Okay. What’s yours?’”

“Well, don’t just leave us hanging there, Dayna! What did he do?” Joey’s occasional impatient streak was taking control.

“He laughed and said, ‘A bit of lime for that drink?’ I nodded, and he quickly popped across to the bar, returning with a slice of lime. The two waiters had their backs turned, and the bartender had stepped into the back room for a fresh bottle of something. I told him, ‘Very neat work!’”

They all laughed. Then Deidra said, “So now we are seven – that is, if you’re planning on getting more serious about him, Dayna…?”

“Yes, I think I am. We all know why it’s unwise to let the chance go by when it happens. Wade is funny, considerate, quick on his feet, and thoughtful with it – a good mix of qualities, I’d say.”

At this point, Jaysen intervened to drop the big bombshell. “Well, Dayna, it might not be quite as unwise to let the chance go as we used to think. Neither you nor Deidra seemed to pick it up, but Peter did mention in passing, a few minutes ago, that he was the first member of his family in at least seven generations to leave Tonga. And his clan can only marry others of the same status within the same clan.”

He let that sink in.

Suddenly, Deidra got it. “Oh, Lord. We’ve just tripped over another great big fat false assumption. Peter isn’t part of Nora Ludlow’s bloodline – he can’t be, because we’re talking for your generation about going back only five generations. So Nora wasn’t the only one – if we’re even correct in assuming that she was the starting point for us.”

Peter got a word in again. “I’m willing to bet that she is, Deidra, and here’s why. My mother tracked the whole thing in our family to my three-times-great grandmother. Now, she died in 1953, but she was born in 1890, the exact same year – as Dean told me – when Nora Ludlow was born. I’d go even further and guess that whatever other people were involved were also all born in that year.”

That gave them all pause for thought. “Do you think it happened right at birth?”

Jaysen nodded approval of Dayna’s suggestion. Then he added, “Or maybe just when they were approaching puberty since that is when we all discovered ourselves.”

At this point, unexpectedly, a handsome young man with strawberry-blond hair appeared suddenly in front of them. They all stared at him blankly, except for one.

Dayna leapt to her feet and ran to kiss him. “Wade! What brought you here?”

He shook his head in puzzlement. “Am I the one to ask? I was quietly sitting in an armchair on my balcony, reading a book -- until suddenly I wasn’t.”

“But you didn’t think or visualize or anything.”

“No.”

We brought him to you.

It was the mystery voice again, this time heard all at once and felt throughout the entire body all at once by all seven of them.

It is time. It began with seven. Now you are seven. Yours is a unique group, all of you linked to one or more of the others by ties of affection, and each linked to each other by the ability to speak to each other in your thoughts. You will be the leaders. There are thousands more like you, descendants of the original seven, in every corner of your world. Your task is to reveal their existence to the world at large.

The voice fell silent. They all stared at each other in awe and fear. It was Deidra who responded first to the challenge, lapsing almost automatically into thought-speech: How are we supposed to do that?

Dean responded: That is our challenge. We have to figure out how to do this.

Peter put in his two cents’ worth: It will be easy among my people, since there is so much acceptance already.

Dayna shook her head in frustration: It will be a lot harder here. This country is full of people who freak out whenever confronted with something which they can neither do nor explain. This will be dangerous.

Jaysen tried to lift their spirits: I’m sure this voice wouldn’t expect us to do something that can’t be done, so that means that there is a way, and we will find it.

At that, all of them turned their thoughts to the possible ways of proceeding. The thought patterns slowly accelerated, individual thoughts turning to voices heard in pairs and then trios, until they abandoned clear speech, racing along far faster than they could have spoken, tumbling all over each other at top speed, forming no coherent pattern at first -- but as each discovered that their minds were automatically picking up and running with the thoughts and images contributed by the others, the speed of the planning session outran by hours what any verbal meeting could ever have covered. In just a few minutes, they had the outline of a plan for action, and some ideas about what to do at the next stage once the initial moves were completed.

The collaborative thinking involving all of them – Wade and Peter had both been brought fully up to speed with the thought-speech process by, they assumed, the direct intervention of the owners of the voice. For the first time, too, they were not overtaken by intense drowsiness and sleep after the voice had addressed them. One or two of them wondered if that meant anything.

The seven were all immersed in the solution of the problem which the voice had handed to them – so immersed that they had utterly forgotten all about Alek Wolter, the man with the intense staring eyes.

 

 

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Chapter 11:  The Threat

 

When all the planning discussion had ended, they all sat back, looking a bit exhausted – not from hearing the voice, but from the sheer amount of information that their brains had just processed. As Dean said later, it was like taking an all-nighter of final exam cramming for a course where you’d skipped four-fifths of the classes, and then squeezing it all into a quarter of an hour.

What had become clear to all of them was that they had been overruled. For months, they (or most of them) had demurred from the possibility of contacting other members of the Nora Ludlow bloodline. Now, it had become plain that the duty imposed on them by the voice truly forced them to do this with the results of all their research as a first step.

Several of them took part in the work of locating and booking a venue for their planned event.

A great deal of anxious thought went into writing the mass email they planned to send out. Each of them took a turn at playing the skeptical recipient, wondering why somebody had sent them an email invitation to a reunion of descendants of someone they’d never even heard of. Thanks to her extensive theatre background, Dayna did this better than anyone – although the eternally-sardonic and ironic Deidra ran her a close second. Jaysen, too, proved to be surprisingly good at picking holes in their communal efforts.

In the end, they’d come up with a letter which had withstood the most determined efforts to knock it apart, a letter which (they hoped) combined the qualities of enticement and open-eyed innocence in equal quantities.

By common consent, it had been created as a joint missive from Dean and Dayna. Since both of them had careers where they could be easily researched by suspicious readers, it was hoped that there names would serve as a guarantee of sincerity.

 

********************

 

Dear __________:

We’re writing to you today to send you an exciting invitation to our extended family reunion. We are planning to bring together as many as possible of the nearly one thousand known living descendants of Nora Ludlow, who was born in Chicago in 1890 and passed away in that city in 1939. To give you a reference point, we are 31-year-old twins, and Nora Ludlow was our three-times-great-grandmother.

It’s time for all of us to be seen and heard! Our own family has proven to be full of people with unusual skills and interests, and we’re sure the same will be true of all of you as well. We’ll be looking forward to sharing these unique skills and interests with each other. At this reunion, we will have some striking family-related news to communicate to all of you.

The reunion is planned for Chicago, in order to make attendance as easy as possible, especially for those coming from outside the country. We’re looking forward to getting to meet in person as many of you as can make it.

The big reunion will be held on the weekend of October 3-5, 2025, at the Riverview Grande Hotel, 290 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60654, with the main event at 3:00 pm on Saturday, October 4. At this event, there will be hors d’oeuvres and a free bar, with dinner to follow.

PLEASE REPLY to this email invitation by September 19, 2025, to indicate whether you will be “coming”, “not coming”, or “possible but not yet sure.”

If coming

[1] Indicate any dietary concerns which we will do our best to accommodate.

[2] Transfer $35 for dinner to the reunion email address given below.

For any more detailed questions or concerns, email us at: 

[think before following links] https://ludlowclanreunion.org/admins/

 

Note: Due to the size of the group being invited, we can only accommodate at this event those people who are direct bloodline descendants of Nora Ludlow.

 

For hotel reservations, at the special reunion rate of $119/night, send email with “Ludlow Clan Reunion” in the subject line to:    

[think before following links] https://riverviewgrandechiil.com/

 

 

Yours truly,

Dean Coultridge and Dayna Coultridge,

Reunion Organizing Co-Chairs,

San Diego CA

 

********************

 

Jaysen was the first to volunteer to underwrite part of the cost to keep the prices reasonable. Others in the group volunteered what they could afford. Jaysen also gave them some invaluable help in organizing and setting up a whole series of blind email addresses so they could send the messages out from multiple accounts without getting snagged by anti-spamming regulations, since every message was to be personally addressed. Then, they divided the entire list of email addresses – well over 900 of them – into seven equal lists, and everybody took a share of the letter-addressing responsibility. All the emails were set to go out at 2:00 am Pacific time on Thursday, May 1. And all of the seven crossed their fingers and waited with bated breath as that date drew near.

On the previous Saturday, Dean and Joey were having dinner at the club with Dayna and Wade, laughing in the most carefree way at Dean’s stories of the antics of passengers on a business flight he’d been on earlier in the week, when a shadow fell across the table.

“Good evening.” They looked up at the sound of the unfamiliar, deep-toned voice and met a pair of dark, staring eyes.

“My name is Alek Wolter, and I am here in the interest of the family of one Nora Ludlow. I’ve been reliably informed that you have been displaying a great deal of interest in her, and in all of her descendants, lately.”

Dayna cast her eyes down. It was plain that the dark-suited, dark-eyed Mr. Wolter was giving her a severe case of “the creeps.” Wade slid a little closer and put his arm around her.

Dean was also getting a serious bad vibe, but he answered civilly. “Is it strange that we should show an interest in our ancestors and our relatives?”

“Perhaps not strange, no. Perhaps ‘uncomfortable’ might be closer to the truth.”

“Uncomfortable for whom?” Joey wasn’t being quite so civil in tone as Dean, and Wolter turned a cold gaze on him.

“While it would perhaps make my… ‘clients’… uncomfortable, it will almost certainly become uncomfortable for all of you, and the others.”

As he said those words, Joey felt a distinct chill, as if a gust of cold air had blown over him – but the air wasn’t moving. At the same time, he noticed something else. Through the material of Wolter’s crisply-ironed white shirt, he could just make out a tiny red light flashing over the breastbone.

Dean took up the thread again. “What do you want with us?”

Wolter laughed. He actually laughed, and all four of them felt their flesh creeping. “With you? I want nothing with you. You are of no interest to me. I am here to protect the interests of the people I represent. And it is in their interest that you should stop your investigations, at once.”

Dayna spoke in that icy, challenging tone which had served her so well with numerous obnoxious men through the years who refused to take no for an answer. “And if we don’t?”

Wolter paused for a moment and Joey saw the light flashing again before he spoke. “There will be certain… repercussions.”

Dean resumed his politest tone. “Thank you for stopping by to speak to us. We’ll take into account everything you’ve said as we decide how to proceed.”

Wolter gave a slight bow, with a mocking grin on his face, then turned and left them.

Joey immediately sent out a thought message to all of them: Talk about something else. Let’s not discuss this until we’re in private.

Their agreeing thoughts came in one by one. The remainder of dinner was accompanied by some amusing theatre stories from Dayna, and by Dean discreetly prodding Wade to find out a bit about his earlier life and family background. As they rose from the table, Dayna invited them all to her condo for a nightcap.

Once they were all seated in Dayna’s living room, the debriefing began, with Joey the first one to speak.

“He’s bad news, no question about it, but I think he has nothing to do with any relatives of Nora Ludlow. Did anyone else notice the flashing red light?”

They shook their heads.

“Just a small light, right here…” and he thumped his breastbone, just by the heart, “…but I could see it through his shirt front. There were a couple of times when he paused in speaking to us while that light flashed two or three times – and then he went on. It was like he was listening to some kind of instructions.”

“Like orders from above.”

“Right, Wade. So he’s a representative, an emissary, of some kind.”

“The question is, for whom?”

Wolter is dangerous. You should avoid him as much as possible. He and his kind can ruin the entire experiment. Do not let him physically touch you, ever.

There was the voice again. And Dean took up the challenge.

“I know that you said we shouldn’t ask you but ask ourselves and we have done that. But is there any more you can tell us about Alek Wolter and the danger he represents to the experiment?”

Yes. It is time that you should know. We represent the great overarching collective intelligence which grows out of and guides all of the universes. It is our particular mission to guard and guide this universe and guide the growth of intelligence wherever we find it within these confines. Our experiment with you and your world is to foster the development of those positive powers and qualities of mind in your race, always mingled with and tempered by the essential, fundamental spirit of compassion.

You correctly described Wolter as an emissary. He was sent by the rebellious malicious intelligence which seeks always to undermine our quest. In parting company with the positive force, this negative or evil intelligence, which we can call the “Undermind,” severely limited its ability to influence the course of evolution, although it also gained significant powers which we do not share.

Since the Undermind cannot itself directly intervene in the growth and development of the universes, it must send out emissaries in the shape of an inhabitant race of a specific world. Wolter, and the others like him who have been sent into your world, are these emissaries. They have been sent here because the Undermind has become aware of this experiment, and of how near it has come to achieving the breakthrough which is our objective.

The emissaries have great physical strength and endurance but, unlike yourselves with your shifting and thinking abilities, they possess no powers which are not shared by the entire human race. This limitation on them is your best and surest defence in dealing with them.

The flashing red light which you have seen comes from a tiny implant which is their communication channel to the power of the Undermind which sent them. Since they have only limited abilities to think for themselves, the emissaries’ need to pause for instructions from their sender will always give you a slight time advantage in dealing with them.

It is critically important that you do not allow them to physically touch you. If they do, they can instantly remove your shifting and thinking abilities, thereby deleting you from the experiment. The deletion cannot be reversed by us. The other way in which such a deletion can occur is if you personally cause any physical harm to one of the emissaries, or to any of your fellow human beings. In such a case, deletion will follow because you have abandoned the core principle of compassion.

Now that these emissaries have come, you must proceed with your work will all possible speed, to lead your people towards the breakthrough which will help them transcend the current limits of their physical life within this world.

The four of them sat and stared at each other after the voice fell silent.

At last, Dean spoke. “We need to get together with the other three as fast as possible.” He lapsed into thought-speech. Mom? Jaysen? Peter?

One after another, their replies came in.

Did you pick up that long speech from the voice?

Again, they all agreed.

Let’s get together right now. We’re at Dayna’s place in town. You all know where it is. Mom, are you at home? I can come and get you.

Within moments, Jaysen and Peter appeared in the room, just as Deidra’s affirmative response came through. Dean vanished, and reappeared ten seconds later, holding Deidra close to him. Now, the seven were all assembled. They had plenty to discuss.

 

 

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