A Loner Mentalist Pt. 07

"See, now that doesn't make sense, either," Jack said as he sat back in his seat. Eric's ramblings had struck some chords true, but there were holes in the story. "If The Thule Society and all these other groups had mind readers in their ranks, why didn't they know about what the other side wanted to do?"

"Theydid know. The Thule knew about their associates and they knew about The Thule agenda. It's just that each group needed the other's help in achieving their own goals. At the very beginning, they learned that humans themselves were the source of the shared subconscious. After that, The Thule dismissed their associates' goals as impossible and started to share all their research in earnest. Both sides were equally surprised when the alloys were stumbled upon." Eric frowned. "Wait a minute! What makes you think they had mind readers in their midst? I never said anything about that."

"You said the OSS Ghost Company was made up of US psychics and The Thule kept handing them their asses." Jack spread his arms in question. "How would they do that without being psychics themselves?"

"Oh," Eric said and looked stymied. "Right."

"So, what happened?"

Mia's question made Eric notice her again. "A very good question, Mia." He winked at her. "You're as smart as you are sexy." He picked up the wine bottle. "Here, let me pour you a glass of this wine."

Jack was eager for answers, not wine. He snatched the bottle from Eric's hand. "I'll pour."

Eric relinquished the bottle and leaned towards Mia. "That's ok. I find myself wanting to gaze into your beautiful eyes."

Jack saw that the man's eyes weren't aimed at Mia's face eyes, but rather at her chest eyes. He took a deep breath and focused on pouring the wine. If the guy didn't have that necklace that protected him from his powers, he'd use his powers to-Jack realized he didn't know if Eric's mind was protected by the necklace, or if he was a mentalist that was lying about the necklace. He set the wine bottle aside. He made holes in his cloak, connected with Mia's mind and sent her the order to try on the necklace.

"Eric, may I see that necklace?"

"Of course," Eric said with a sleazy smile. He got out of his chair and stood over Mia. He leaned down until his necklace was hanging freely in front of her face. He now had a spectacular view down Mia's cleavage and he was taking every advantage of it.

Jack wanted to stand up and smack the asshole on the side of his head to remind him that he was right there, sitting next to them. He settled for giving Spot the order to take aim at the man's balls. If Eric pushed it too far, he would be castrated, mentalist, or no. Jack sketched a bitter grin and said, "Mia, I want to see how it would look on you. Put it on!"

"Ok!" Mia took the necklace off a distracted Eric's neck with one swift motion and put it on herself. Even before she swept her hair over it, Jack lost his connection to her mind.

Holy fuck! It's true! A fucking necklace can protect you from mentalism!

He double-checked his hypothesis by making holes in his cloak shaped like the sight of Mia's prodigious cleavage. He felt several male minds looking down various cleavages, but once he refined the hole to include the color of Mia's pretty, new dress, he felt only Eric. He immediately looked to see if Eric was telling them the truth. Jack was relieved to learn that he was. He made Eric feel the need to tell them everything he had ever learned from his great-great uncle's estate, along with the desire to never again leer at Mia.

Eric returned to his seat. "Well, after that, The Thule Society and their associates fought and destroyed each other. The Thule were completely gone, but the OSS had some good leads that there were several survivors from their associates' ranks. Anyway, the groups were all effectively destroyed, so they never bothered with rounding up those few individuals who went into surprisingly effective hiding. Most likely," he nodded at Mia, "they had such necklaces around their necks. Without The Thule helping them, the Nazis began losing to the Soviets and the OSS soon found itself on German territory, gathering up what remained of all their research."

Eric frowned. "A lot of this stuff, it wasn't done in the most stringent of scientific conditions, you must understand. The very nature of mental powers is highly individual, difficult to reproduce with a high degree of certainty. There are indications that The Thule had managed to master remote viewing, precognition and postcognition, but no solid data on those things had ever been recovered."

Jack nodded. He had managed to accomplish remote viewing into the past when he had seen the young soldier bury his baseball cards. It was the result of being joined with the aether under the effects of pot. He had also thought he had managed to see into the future when he rescued Mia from rape, but that had turned out to be just an extrapolation of current events.

"They also learned that the language barrier prevented mind reading. If a person with mental powers didn't have a language in common with a person they wanted to read, they simply couldn't do it clearly."

Jack frowned. He had read the mind of a rapist whose first language had been Spanish.Oh, right, his dad and he spoke English, too. He kept his frown. "If they couldn't read minds in foreign languages, then how did The Thule help the Nazis against the Soviets?"

"A lot of the Soviet senior brass had been trained in German academies before the war, so they were fluent in German. There was one thing that The Thule had managed to accomplish with a reasonable degree of reproducibility. It was a terrible, terrible thing. They could bestow a paranormal power to a regular person."

"What power," Mia asked.

"Telekinesis."

"That doesn't sound terrible," Mia remarked.

"The way they did it was. The only people they could turn into telekinetics were prepubescent girls. The way they did it..." Eric shook his head and his eyes glazed over. "I never told this to anyone. It's too terrible. But I'll tell you. They learned that if a prepubescent girl was sexually abused by a close relative, she stood a small chance of gaining telekinesis if she was utterly unable to stop the horrible abuse in any other way. Usually, that would mean that her abuser was a person of impeccable social standing, but in those camps..." Eric looked disgusted. "God! Just reading about that shit made me nauseous. To this day, whenever I see a neo-Nazi group on the news, I just want to pick up a gun and...rid the world of them."

Jack thought back to what he had learned about the former leader of New York's largest mentalist society. He closed his eyes as he tried to banish the image of her blurring out his connection to the aether. He realized he believed everything Eric said and that meant that the aether was probably broken somewhere over Europe. He wanted to go there and take a look. An image of a derringer in a chewed off hand popped up in his mind's eye, making him feel like there was no air to breathe.What if I go there and lose my powers permanently? The old gypsy woman had come out of Dachau with mind reading and telekinetic powers, but that didn't mean Dachau had been one of the camps where the aether was broken. He forced himself to draw a deep breath before saying, "Which camps had the ae...the group subconscious been broken in?"

Eric looked stymied as he shrugged. "The letters never said which camps. Very few things had been specifically written in the letters. Both my uncle and whomever he was writing knew the specifics, so their language was very broad."

Jack shuddered and decided he wasn't going to go to Europe any time soon. Mia interrupted his train of thought by taking his hand in hers and giving it a squeeze. He looked at her and was surprised to see her bubbling with barely subdued excitement. He gave her a questioning look, but she just smiled.

"Anyway, that's all I've been able to piece together from my great-great uncle's letters. Everything else is..." He shrugged. "I don't know. It's hidden in a CIA vault, or somewhere. If you want to know more, you need to talk to someone else. I know I talk a big game, but pretty much everything else I say in my lectures is either hearsay or stuff I make up to get people to invite me to give lectures." He shrugged. "A man's gotta earn a living and if people want to pay me to tell them stories..."

"Do you know about any current paranormal powers in America," Jack asked him.

Eric shook his head. "No, not really. There are supposed to be more supernaturally endowed people in the world now than there ever were before, but they are all hidden. Either they're all wearing those necklaces, or they've fallen off the face of the Earth."

Or Jacobs had found and killed most of them, Jack thought ruefully.Was the puppet master I'm chasing one of those fucks that ran experiments in concentration camps? He remembered his dogs had identified Shauna's handler as a man in his prime and that made him wonder if the man himself wasn't a creation of those evil fucks from those days long gone. He wondered if all the suffering he had witnessed wasn't the result of just one sick fuck trying to accomplish some agenda from humanity's darkest hour. "There must always be one," were the words he had felt through the aether when Jacobs and Patrick had been turned. That sounded to him like something a religious crusader would spout.

The waiter came out with their food, assuring them the dogs had never come near it and apologizing for the delay, but Jack and Eric barely picked at it in their depressed state. Mia ate with a healthy appetite and poured herself a few glasses of wine to go with it. They skipped dessert, which made Mia give a disappointed whine. Eric stood up to leave and asked for his necklace back. Jack slipped into his mind again to learn all he could about the necklace. The chemical composition of the alloys had been explicitly written in one his great-great uncle's letters and Jack quickly memorized it. After that, he gave Mia the nod to hand the necklace over.

As she took it off, Jack was struck by a sudden idea and reached out to take it himself. He felt nothing while it was in his hand. He lifted it over his head and let it fall down to lie around his neck. He still felt nothing. He lifted his cloak and felt nothing. His cloak remained in place, only it now felt like it was being forced on him. He tried to make holes in it and failed. He realized his cloak was just an emulation of the necklace's properties. The realization that his own cloak was the result of those terrible experiments made him feel sullied and sick to his stomach.

He forced himself to focus on the positive. The necklace disabled a mentalist, when worn around the neck. He could use it to neutralize Patrick and her master. It also protected against mentalism. He could send all the mentalists he had warned a second letter and urge them to wear such a necklace at all times. He'd just have to find a metalworker to make enough of them for all the mentalists in America. He took the necklace off and returned it to Eric. He lifted his own cloak in its place.

Eric left without a word and Jack got up to slowly walk out. Under the table, Spot made a soft noise. Jack sent him the order to follow him out and left the restaurant. The hostess gave him a heated glare as she saw the dog. She stomped up to Jack and said, "You brought the dogs in! You'll answer for all the damages the hotel might be held liable-"

Jack opened up holes in his cloak, in the shape of his sad face, and slipped into the woman's mind. He convinced her he didn't have a dog with him. As he thought about walking out through the lobby and being seen by the people at the front desk and the doorman and security cameras, he looked into her mind to see if there were security cameras in the restaurant itself. Once he saw there weren't, he told Spot to go out through the kitchen.

"Mia, check out, please."

"Aw, but I got us the room and I-"

"Now, please."

She huffed and went to the front desk to do as he said. Jack went to the RV and ate a pot cookie as soon as he got in. He pet his dogs and took out the files Drew Maynard had given him. He leafed through them and saw that each of Jacobs' four goons had a plain necklace in their pocket at the time they had died. Jack had skimmed right over that tidbit when he had first read the files. The necklaces had been found in the goons' pockets, not around their necks.

That explains why I was able to read their minds. Jacobs probably had them take the necklaces off while they waited for me so he could communicate with them that way.

Jack shrugged. It didn't matter to him why the goons hadn't been wearing their necklaces when he came calling on Jacobs. All that mattered was that he had a lead on four backup necklaces, in case he couldn't get some made for them right away. He got into position on the bed. He began his meditations. Halfway through them, Mia opened the door and climbed in, her arms laden with shopping bags. She tossed them all down on the side table and couch and huffed loudly. Jack kept ignoring her and patiently did his meditative exercises as he waited for the brief high to kick in.

Once it did, he found himself in the theater. He thought about a metallurgist, or someone who could be able to recreate Eric's necklace in short order. He saw several people on the stage, each doing something. He thought about which one of them had those exact alloys on hand, or could get their hands on them the quickest. An old, fat man sitting in front of a TV remained. Jack thought about his phone number and it was projected onto the big screen at the back of the stage.

Jack's high ran out very quickly and he raised his cloak as he found himself back in the RV. He raised a finger at Mia, to stop her from speaking, and dialed the man's number from one of his burner phones. He made holes in his cloak that were shaped like the words he was saying to the man and slipped into his mind. He tried to convince the man to make a large batch of the anti-aether necklaces, only to learn that such necklaces were standard issue for the US military since 1947. He could get them at any Army surplus store, as well as at the fat, old man's store-which was closed at the moment. Jack convinced the man to meet him at his store and turn a dog tag necklace into two chokers for Mia. He closed up his cloak holes to end his connection to his mind, and hung up the phone. He drove to the store and bought the two chokers for Mia.

When he got in the RV again, he handed one of them to Mia. "As long as you wear this, you're safe from any and all mentalist intrusions into your mind."

Her eyes went as wide as saucers. "For real?" He nodded. "Even the over the phone stuff?"

"Yes. This protects you from every kind of gimmick. You're safe, as long as you have this around your neck. And here's a spare. Keep it near you at all times, too."

The necklaces were too short to be placed over her head, which also made them too short to be removed that way. She put one in her purse and opened the clasp of the other. She handed it to Jack. "Put it on me!" She lifted her hair and turned her back to him. He fastened it around her neck and she turned around to kiss him. He was still shaken up by all the information he had taken in that day, so he barely responded to her tongue's prodding.

Mia pulled back and looked into his eyes. "Thank you, Jack. Thank you so much. I knew you'd keep me safe!" She gave him a hug, taking care to press her tits hard against his chest. When she let go of him, she asked, "But we can still have some magical, sexy fun with this on, right?"

Jack shook his head. "That stops your mind from being tampered with by anyone for any purpose. Including me making you think you're being ravished by a tentacle monster."

Mia wilted somewhat. "Shame." A mischievous grin spread across her face. She picked up her necklace and pulled the clasp around to the front. "Why don't I take this off so we can have some naughty fun?"

"Not tonight, Mia. Drive us back to our spot across the river."

"Aw," she protested, "but I had a whole night planned for us and everything."

He moved to the bed and wiped his face with his hands. "Just drive, please."

She got behind the wheel and punched the location into the navigation. She turned the engine over and carefully edged the big vehicle into traffic. She had a little difficulty maneuvering such a big rig through the thick New York traffic, but she managed.

Jack joined her in the front seat after a while. "Mia, why weren't you shocked?"

"What do you mean, babe?"

"When Eric told us that terrible story about what the Nazis did to small girls, you seemed almost excited."

"It's true?"

"There it is again. You look like you're holding a winning lottery ticket and not like..."

Mia was biting her lower lip before she broke into a hopeful grin. "Could you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Give me a power? Like that telekinetic thing?"

Jack gaped at her in horror. "Of course not! Didn't you hear what he said in there?! Didn't you hear any of it?! To become telekinetic, you'd have to be a little girl that's...I mean, fuck, Mia, that's just sick!"

"Well...you could just make me think so. It doesn't have to be for real."

"No! Absolutely not!"

"Oh, please, babe!"

"Are you even listening to yourself?! Can you hear how crazy you sound!? I'm not going to make you believe you've been molested! I can't believe you'd even ask me to!"

"It would just be make believe! You could always undo it!"

Jack faced front, feeling shell-shocked. "I'm not even going to talk about this anymore."

"Oh, please, babe, won't you even try?"

Jack turned to stare at her in revulsion.What the hell has gotten into her?

"I'd make itso worth your while, babe." She gave him a saucy wink, completely ignoring the expression on his face.

"No." He faced front again, nothing but darkness and revulsion on his mind. "Don't ever so much as mention this crazy shit to me again." He glared out the window and wondered if the whole world was built on madness and lies. He quickly stopped asking himself such pointless questions and focused on what he really wanted to know.Was the aether broken somewhere in Europe?

He guessed that if going to those places could permanently strip a mentalist of their power, then Jacobs would have kidnapped people and taken them there, instead of doing what he did. At the very least, he would have called his mentalist victims up on the phone, told them they won free trips to Europe and booked them into hotels near those two places. A mentalist could always find the money to pay for such trips.

Jack needed to know for sure. He couldn't rely on conjecture about Jacobs' actions. The puppet master's agenda, whatever it was, did not exactly reek of logic and sanity.

While Mia drove them across the river, he ate a few more pot cookies. By the time she parked at the RV camp, he found himself back in the theater. He thought about New York's mentalists and which of them were most likely to try drugs. He was surprised to find that nine of the mentalists regularly used pot and psychotropic mushrooms to fuel their clairvoyant abilities. Each of them shared their clairvoyant visions with their societies, but they kept the secret of what fueled them to themselves.

Jack wasn't surprised to learn that having clairvoyant powers gave the mentalists greater standing in their societies. He wondered how those mentalists kept the source of their powers a secret and the three leaders of the societies showed up on stage. They recited one of the rules that all three societies shared; no member shall read another member's mind without express permission.