A-Cup Angst Ch. 08

Jamie was about to give a second snort of derision, but then realized she was right. He needed to explore and investigate all options, no matter how remote. Time was of the essence and desperate measures were called for. "Give me one of the scrying packs," he said. Rose handed him a bushel of small baggies containing their parents' hair and photographs. "While I'm there, Nova, go through the files of all local adoption agencies and compile a list of ideal couples who could take in Suzie. Rose, Sandra, pick out the ones you like the best and go interview them. Use your magic to charm them into telling you the truth. Afterwards, we'll meet back here and pick a couple to take Suzie in."

"Jamie," Helena said, "You can't be serious about-"

"Yes, I can," Jamie said, cutting her off. "If Mara finds our parents, whoopee! If she doesn't, I want plan B ready for execution before this day is out! If whoever took our parents thinks I've squirreled Suzie away for safety, they'll come for her and we'll be there. With motherfucking bells on!"

Helena grimaced unhappily as Jamie went out. Rose and Sandra sat down to review the files Nova presented them with. Helena was left with nothing to do but keep Sonya too busy to fret about her parents.

Jamie got into his car and drove to campus. He felt decidedly nervous. He needed Mara's help and he needed it badly. If only he hadn't treated the girl so poorly the last time they had met, he wouldn't find himself preparing to eat a double helping of humble pie. As he parked and walked towards her dormitory, he found himself desperately trying to come up with some way to get her full cooperation and assistance and not have to grovel and beg. He came up with nothing, by the time he got to her door. He took a deep breath, steeled his resolve, wiped the grimace from his face and knocked. His strategy for recruiting her help, he decided, was full on teary eyed begging. On his knees and groveling, if she said so. And he resolved to not let up until she rendered what aid she could.

A different girl opened the door and it took Jamie a moment before he recognized Julie from the pictures of her that he had seen, back when he had been inside the dorm room. "Yes," she asked.

"Um, is this Mara's dorm room," he asked.

"Yes," she said. "And you are?"

"Jamie Jacobs."

"Wait here," she said and closed the door.

After a few seconds, Mara opened the door and smiled a broad smile at him. Jamie flashed her a nervous grin and said, "Can we talk? Freely?"

Mara nodded. "Yeah," she said. "Come through to my room." Julie's look of suspicion followed Jamie through the common room. Jamie was just relieved that Mara seemed to be in an agreeable mood. Once inside her bedroom, Mara closed the door behind them. "What's up?"

"I need your help," Jamie said. "The girls and I need your help. Our parents have been taken by evil men, last night, and we need to find them."

"Oh, my God, Jamie," Mara said, "I'm so sorry to hear that! How can I help?"

"We've been trying to scry on them, to figure out where they were, but we can't. We were wondering... You said that you are a witch doctor and that you have a spirit guide."

"Yes."

"Could you find out where our parents are being held, somehow?"

"Do you know who took them," she asked.

"It was the same bastards that stole people's organs in a clinic on the west side," he said. Mara looked surprised. She had thought them all dead and buried. "Just... more of them."

Mara tightened her lips. She wished she could help, but there was nothing she could do, as she sincerely doubted she could scry even half as good as Jamie and his girls. Also, she could not call on the knowledge held by the Great Spirits as she had not yet repaid her favor to them. She had spent it on finding the bastard that had raped Julie and ruined her mind. Jamie couldn't ask them for a favor because he wasn't a tribe member in good standing and, if his urgent tone was any indication, he couldn't spare a year to become one. She did know of a ritual that gave an answer to one question, but it required a sacrifice of virginity. She squinted her eyes and hesitantly asked, "Are you, by any chance, an anal virgin?"

Jamie blushed furiously. He cleared his throat and shook his head no. Mara's eyes opened wide and her brows rose in surprise. "I, um... The girls... It's called pegging, and, uh..." Jamie stammered. "I'm an anal virgin if girls with dildos don't count!" Mara shook her head no. Jamie felt his hopes fade. He gave her a bag. "This has everything one would need to scry on our parents. We'd all appreciate it if you kept it with you and used it, if, you know, if anything came to you. You know, later." Mara nodded. "Well, thanks. Bye!"

Jamie left and Mara cursed the Great Spirits for not giving her an opportunity to redeem her debt to them. She looked in the bag. "There has to be a way," she said to herself.

Jamie left Mara's dorm room, waving bye to Julie, and cursed softly. He got the distinct impression from Mara's mind that she wasn't dismissing him, or hiding anything from him. She genuinely knew of no way to assist them in finding their parents. He drove to Bastion and the girls told him of some couples that looked very promising. Jamie picked one of them and they charmed Suzie into accepting her new living situation. The couple was also charmed to think they had permanently adopted Suzie and are very happy with her character, which most people would describe as "extremely annoying".

The rest of the day was spent warding the couple's domicile against magical scrutiny. Jamie picked out a foreclosed house in an upscale neighborhood and the caster girls and he got busy turning it into an inescapable deathtrap.

He wanted to have obvious traps covering up for the insidious, deadlier ones. It didn't take a lot of their power to set the traps, but it did require a lot of concentration to do it right. Jamie guessed it would take them three more days to ready the place. Then, he'd have Suzie start to call her friends back home. All his hopes of finding their parents rested on this Syndicate somehow monitoring the phone lines. Nova kept a tight watch on their home town's phone lines at all times, but found no evidence of anyone else's wiretaps.

At the end of the day, they came back to Bastion, totally drained. Jamie was a shambling mess, drained and sleep deprived. Nova informed them that the University had received a parcel for each of them. They were informed by email and queried about their forwarding address. Jamie had Nova and Rose go collect the parcels.

Nova and Rose came back and they thoroughly examined the small, but thick envelopes. They found fingerprints on them and Nova recorded them with its cameras and uploaded them into AFIS. That quickly led to identifying the man whose prints they were. Nova informed them that the man that delivered the envelopes was just found dead in his apartment by the police. His background contained nothing in common with anything they already knew about the Syndicate or Section. Jamie's lips tightened. The whole thing reeked of Syndicate. They opened their envelopes and found two DVDs inside the padding. One of the DVDs had their father's name on it, the other their mother's. Every one of them went to a different DVD player and they played the discs.

They all screamed in horror as they saw their parents being tortured on film. The torture itself was still mild, mostly psychological, but that didn't make it any less terrifying or painful to watch. The girls scattered to the upstairs bedrooms and offices to cry as they were unable to watch more than a few minutes. Nova took all their discs, uploaded them into its memory and scanned them for clues. Jamie mutely sat and watched as his mother was repeatedly intimidated and beaten. He listened as she was told, over and over again, that they were doing it to punish her for raising a son like Jamie.

Jamie sat still and motionless as he watched his mother get raped. He heard her begging and scream in vain. A voice whispered by the camera, unheard by his screaming mother. It taunted him with what will be done with her corpse after she is finally killed. Jamie's face showed no emotion, but inside, he was a roaring cauldron of lava as the images and sounds of the abuse of the woman who brought him into this world burned into his brain with a fire that removed all restraint and mercy.

Halfway through the film, his mother was left alone to sob in shock. A man then came along, masked and hooded, and began to softly whisper in her ear. He talked to her as he slowly released her from her bondage. He wiped the tears from her cheeks, cleaned and bandaged her wounds and gave her water and some sweets. He engaged her in idle chit chat and his mother soon began to respond. The man was a skilled investigator and he quickly got Jamie's mother to tell him everything about Jamie and his childhood.

Jamie was a nuke in the process of detonation. He knew they must have plied his mom's mind with magic right off the bat, in order to get all tactical info on Jamie and discern Suzie's location. They probably even got his mom to tell them her greatest fears and weaknesses and thus script her own abuse. This tape of them getting her to talk, by mundane means only, was meant to unbalance and unhinge him. He could tell that, intellectually. It was meant to make him feel betrayed by his own mother. He knew better. She could have even been charmed to talk to this interrogator.

He didn't feel betrayed by his mother. He was beyond enraged by the Syndicate.

His heart pounded so hard in his chest, that he thought it was going to fracture his ribs. In a daze, he went to the kitchen and found a bottle of vodka. He chugged it all down in one sitting. It did nothing to dull the horrid pain in his heart. His own mommy was being violated and beaten by some scum. His throat burned from the vodka and he focused on the feeling, desperate to feel anything but the anguish that was consuming him. He roared his pain and wrath out loud and saw nothing but flames. He passed out and welcomed the darkness.

He woke up the next day, safely tucked in a bed. He squinted his eyes about and recognized he was in one of Bastion's many upstairs bedrooms. His head hurt. He groaned as he got out of bed. He was feeling dizzy as he stood up, but that quickly passed. He slowly shuffled downstairs, wondering at the distinct aroma of smoke that permeated the air. When he descended the stairs, he turned and gaped. The kitchen and its surrounding areas were covered in soot. It was all over the back wall and the ceiling. The tiles were coming loose and all the furniture was gone, leaving only charred outlines where it used to be. Rose and Sandra were using magic to clean up the mess. Everyone else was busy scrubbing the walls.

"Did we have a fire," he asked.

Helena turned around and said, "No. We had a you." Jamie wobbled as he gave her a questioning look. "You chugged a whole bottle of vodka last night and then breathed fire all over the kitchen. We're damn lucky you didn't burn the whole place down."

Jamie grunted and shuffled off to sit on one of the couches. Helena brought him a glass of water and he drained it. She looked at him sadly. She wanted to bitch and ream him out for setting the place on fire, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. His hair had turned noticeably gray and, sitting down, he looked like he might just keel over and give up. She knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees. "Jamie," she tenderly said, "we need you. Our parents need you. Your whole family needs you."

Jamie rolled his eyes and sighed. "I know," he said.

"Then promise me you're not going to get drunk again," she said.

"Go fuck yourself in your whore ass," Jamie said. "I'll get drunk whenever I fucking feel like it." Helena was stunned at how casual and emotionless his voice was. "If you think I need to be constantly reminded that I've fucked up and that it's all up to me to fix it, then you're wrong. Dead wrong. Brain-dead wrong. I don't need no fucking reminding. Now, why don't you go clean something?" Helena opened her mouth to say something, but then decided against it. Jamie was, at times, impossible to reach. It was like his brain went on fucking vacation and left a jerk in charge. This morning was, apparently, another one of those times. She stood up and went back to cleaning the aftermath of his rage, feeling quite a bit angry herself.

After a lunch break, which was breakfast for Jamie, He had Nova send Moran an email in which they ask for his help in finding their parents and offer him one favor in return, no questions asked. Moran replied that he was on it, within minutes. They called Cyrus and Mara and received no good news. The forensic sweeps of their homes were completed and yielded no results. Whoever took their parents, must have used a spell to cover their tracks as the houses showed no sign that anyone had ever been inside of them, not even their parents.

"Well, there's one last thing to try before we resume laying traps," Jamie said. "Nova, call The Suit and put its photo, name and all data relevant to any contact we've had so far, up on the plasma." Jamie studied the old man's photo and condensed personnel file as the phone rang.

"Hello," The Suit answered.

"Hello, Harris," Jamie said, "it's Jacobs."

"Mr. Jacobs, I am a very busy man," Harris said. "What do you want?"

"I just want to tell you that if we find out that information on our families was leaked by Section," Jamie said, "anyone in Section, we are going to make good on those threats you keep dismissing."

In D.C., Harris smiled a broad, satisfied smile. This arrogant little shit was finally sounding like he might start learning his place in the world. "Are you quite done," Martin asked.

"I am only getting started," Jamie said, darkly. "If you had any part in this, now is the time to repent. This is a one time offer. If you have any information on where our parents are and who took them, I'll give you a full pardon and we'll never take any vengeance against you, but only if you give us the information today."

As infuriating as the offer of "a pardon" from the little bastard was, Harris barely suppressed his glee at hearing the young upstart so broken. "Good luck searching for your parents, Mr. Jacobs," he said and then hung up. He clapped his hands together and cackled with delight. He put his glasses on, picked up the report on his desk and resumed reading it. It detailed the results of the exercises he was putting the alpha and beta strike and intervention teams through. They were to be united into one fighting force, led by the two old shapeshifters and they needed to work out the kinks in communications, leadership and tactics. Whoever won, whether it be the Syndicate or this surprisingly strong coven, Harris was going to take them down, right after the battle, while they're drained and hurt.

"That's all, folks," Jamie said, as he hung up. "That's all the ways in which we could search for our parents exhausted. We have no option but to set the trap with Suzie as the bait and hope they go for it." The girls reluctantly agreed with his assessment. "Nova, what did your analysis of..." Jamie again forgot The Suit's name. "Of The Suit's voice stress tell you?"

"The analysis was inconclusive," Nova said.

"Well," Jamie said, throwing his hands up, "that's it! Let's go lay down more traps!"

Ramon Gutierrez strolled the campus quad and looked around, while trying to be inconspicuous. It was after dark and most students were indoors, or hurrying to get indoors. The weather was surprisingly cold for this time of the year. He huddled up against the cold and huffed at his cold hands. The weather in Barcelona, when he had taken off for this city, had been twenty degrees Celsius warmer that here. He shook his head and smiled. The bounty he was promised was enough to endure frostbite of the dick, as far as he was concerned.

He continued to look around and search for a good ambush spot. He got the distinct feeling he was watched. He stopped and suddenly turned, but saw no one behind himself. Without bothering to conceal his actions, he openly cast his eyes all about and peered into the shadows, lest he see anything suspicious. Finally, he was satisfied that no one was following him. He turned back to where he was going and walked through a narrow alley between two imposing buildings. When he emerged on the other side, he saw a staircase leading down to the basement of the building to his left. He took another look all around and then hopped the rail and descended the stairs. The door was locked and a sign on it plainly read that it was for maintenance staff only.

Ramon grinned and concentrated. He called on his power and softly chanted. The lock turned and the steel door creaked open. He opened it wide and got in, closing it behind himself. He stood in the dark for a few moments, before he managed to fish his flashlight out of his pocket. He turned it on and quickly found the light switch. He was in a maintenance workshop. Tools and power tools occupied the shelves along each wall. A cage in the center of the workshop contained some machines Ramon couldn't identify. The door to the cage had a padlock on it and Ramon ignored it.

He looked around until he found some doors. The first was a closet, the second was for the washroom and the third led upstairs. Door number four made him smile. It led to a tunnel that connected the buildings underground. It was full of steam and pipes, but there was room enough for someone to walk through it comfortably. Ramon opened his coat and jacket. The steam was making the tunnel very hot. He started to explore it. The tunnel branched several times, almost creating a maze, and Ramon started to really concentrate in order to draw a mental map of it. After only ten minutes of exploring the tunnels, Ramon gave up. He took a notepad and pen from his pockets. He exited the tunnel though the nearest exit and found himself in a basement. He climbed some stairs and saw that he had come to the football field. He looked around, buttoning himself back up, and then found a cozy place to sit, under the bleachers.

He spread the paper across his thigh and began to draw a map from his memory. He would need to go through the tunnels again and explore each branch he found, but he needed to jot down what he had already seen. He was just about done, when he felt a presence nearby. He looked up and screamed in fright when he saw her. She was a gorgeous, young woman with vibrant, blood red hair that came down to her shoulders. Her pale face was rectangular, but soft, with high cheekbones, a triangular nose and thick, succulent lips that were curled into a grin.

"Ah dinnae scare ya," she asked.

"Que," Ramon asked. "I mean, what?"

"Ah seh, ah dinnae scare ya, didday," she said.

Ramon spread his hands and stood up. He had no idea who this chick was, or what she was saying, but he liked the look of her. She stood about 5'8" tall and the shape of her, hidden underneath a thin coat, suggested she was of slender build. A grin crept on his face. His scouting could wait until tomorrow. This chica looked like a very nice bed warmer.

"She asked if she scared you," said a man's voice from behind Ramon. Ramon startled, inadvertently, and turned to see this new addition to the conversation. He could immediately tell the young man was closely related to the woman. He had the same rectangular face, although his was actually rectangular with a wide, square jaw and prominent brow. The rest of his face was near identical to the woman's, only more masculine. Even his short cropped, blood red hair matched. The man's voice held no hint of the woman's playfulness. It held a keen edge of hostility.