“Hi, my name is Brenna. We’re not going to hurt you. Can you tell me your names?” she asked the girls sitting in an upstairs bedroom. They watched her silently with wide eyes.
“We’ve blurred the minds of the people in the house next door and across the street,” Carly said. “It’s the middle of the day and most people aren’t home, but someone might have reported that gunshot. Can we take everyone and get the hell out of here?”
Brenna nodded. “Your show, Carly. Thanks.” She took the hands of the two youngest girls and led them from the house.
The Protectors took the computer and all the files they could find and followed them.
~~~
Seamus teleported from West Virginia to San Francisco, then to DC, bringing Lydia McCarthy. Lydia was the Clan’s best construct artist and Rebecca’s teacher. Siobhan, who also had the Lindstrom Gift and had worn more than fifty constructs as an O’Donnell operative, flew in from New York. Siobhan sometimes worked as an escort and was very familiar with the escort and courtesan culture in Europe and New York.
They also brought in Dr. Moira O’Reilly, a Clan psychiatrist specializing in telepaths and especially wilders’ and children’s problems. Moira was a very strong telepath with twelve Gifts, but not the Lindstrom Gift.
Cindy and Brenna’s attacker the previous month had worn a construct when Brenna first met him. Obviously, someone with the Lindstrom Gift was working with both the succubus hunters and the prostitution ring. Collin hoped Lydia and Siobhan might gain some clues as to who it was.
Before collapsing the constructs in the girls’ minds, they studied them in detail and read the memories the girls had collected. What they found sickened Brenna.
The girls ranged from thirteen to nineteen. All had been kidnapped, all had been sold over and over to a wide variety of wealthy customers. None were succubi, but three were S-gene carriers. Two were from O’Donnell Clan families, one missing for over a year, the other missing for two years. The nineteen year old that Brenna and Rebecca first spotted had been living a life of forced prostitution for three years.
In addition to being sold for sex, two of the girls showed scars from physical abuse consistent with being used by sexual sadists. Their memories confirmed it.
Lydia took Moira through the girls’ minds, then gave her a briefing describing the constructs and what she thought still might exist of their original personalities.
“The constructs are ninth level, implanted at the level of their souls and expanded out through all the layers of their minds. Very intricate. The person who built these was very good at their craft. However, they’re also cookie cutter. All of them are identical with the exception of their names. That means the original builder may be thousands of miles away, or even dead. Anyone with the Lindstrom Gift could set them up in someone’s mind.”
“It would make sense to sell girls with the constructs already in place,” Siobhan commented. “Capture the girls, implant the constructs, turn around and sell them for a big profit. You’d save on the training expenses and don’t even have to damage the merchandise. That sounds like the kind of business von Ebersberg would like.”
“I think we should collapse one of the constructs, probably on the youngest girl, and see what we have,” Moira said with a resigned expression. “We’ll have to notify her parents at some point.”
Lydia collapsed the construct and Moira immediately entered the girl’s mind and laid a Comfort on her. Watching the psychiatrist closely, Brenna saw the blood drain from her face. Shaking, Moira fumbled for a chair and dropped into it.
Concerned, Brenna knelt down in front of her.
“Moira? What is it?”
Taking a deep breath, Moira shook her head. It took her a full minute before she whispered, “There’s nothing there. She’s like a baby. They took everything away from her before they planted the construct.”
~~~
Chapter 2-6
We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution. - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Collin and his Protectors battered down the shields of the men who had held the girls. In-depth interrogation over three days revealed they were a small ring. They had paid between a hundred thousand and two hundred fifty thousand each for the girls, constructs already implanted. In the past year, they’d cleared over three million dollars.
The ring procured the girls from a contact in New York. Twice in the past three years they’d sold new girls they had abducted to that contact. The broker told them those girls would have a construct implanted, then sold either to the west coast or overseas.
The only truly useful information the Protectors obtained was the identity of that contact, their client list, and the knowledge of two other rings.
“Call Charles Farrell,” Seamus said. Farrell was the top-ranking telepath inside the FBI. “We could be chasing this type of thing forever. Time to turn it over to people who make their living doing police work.”
“I can’t believe the amount of money they’re spending to buy these girls,” Collin said. “And the price for succubi is off the charts. Those guys were quoted twenty million for a succubus with a construct.”
Seamus sighed. “The profits are huge. The last estimate I saw pegged human trafficking as a thirty-two billion dollar industry. That’s thirty-two billion a year.”
“What makes a succubus so valuable? I’m still trying to get my mind around it,” Brenna shook her head.
Rebecca spoke up, “Think about it. A woman sex slave can earn a pimp two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. A succubus can be sold for a hundred thousand a night.”
Seamus nodded, “And Siegfried von Ebersberg has a long history of trafficking women, specializing in exotics. He started after World War I, and prohibition and the depression in this country became a bonanza for him.”
“We also have intelligence that the Chinese are working on selective breeding programs,” Collin added. “Succubi genes and eggs might find a ready market. The Germans may be doing the same thing. Twenty million may seem high until you start counting the ways you can market the goods. It’s not just sex.”
“The disruptions in Russia and Eastern Europe in the nineties provided a new source of beautiful women,” Seamus continued. “It revitalized Siegfried’s business. I wonder if he really knew what he was getting when he took Gless on.
“Brenna, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to increase security on all the succubi again.”
“So much for running away and joining the circus, huh?”
Collin chuckled, “You won’t even make it past the driveway.”
~~~
As the FBI broke up several prostitution rings, they recovered a number of telepathic girls. One disturbing thing they found were five young S-gene carriers who were college students when kidnapped.
Rebecca spotted a common factor. All had gone to their student health centers seeking counseling for their sex addiction. All had been referred to an outside counselor who specialized in such cases. Three were Clan, the others wilders.
Charles Farrell met with Moira, Rebecca and Brenna at the Washington compound. Brenna and Rebecca had never met him, though they knew of him from his work in attempting to find Cindy when she had been kidnapped.
“When I was in college, I did the same thing,” Rebecca said. “It didn’t help, of course, but the problems of having this condition are so severe, it causes you to want to fix it. It can be all consuming, and once you get out of your parents’ home, you feel as though you have the freedom to seek counseling.”
“I’m glad you spotted this trend,” Farrell said. “I went back and did a database search, and identified twelve more women who were referred to him that are missing. Ten of those are known Clan.”
“I think that’s amazing so many telepathic girls have gone missing in this area,” Brenna said.
Fa
rrell ran his hand through his hair and shifted in his seat. “It’s not just in this area, or from a single school, that’s why it was difficult to spot. This guy has built a practice by approaching colleges throughout the Atlantic region. These seventeen girls went to twelve different schools in five different states.”
“I’m going to have Collin do a search on missing Clan members,” Brenna said. “Some of the girls we’ve found are too young for college. I wonder if any parents fell for this guy’s pitch.”
It was decided to mount an operation with Rebecca and Irina as bait.
Dr. Jonathan Detweiler had a PhD in psychology from a prestigious German university. He’d moved to the States seven years ago and aggressively built a practice as a sex therapist by contacting student health centers and offering his services as a consultant. He currently listed forty-three colleges and universities as clients, and also worked with several large city school districts. He had published a number of highly regarded papers in psychological journals and many psychologists sent him referrals.
“I’ve met him a couple of times,” Moira said. “When you requested this meeting, I made a few calls and two of the therapists I talked to refer patients to him. He’s very well-known and respected.”
The original plan was to create constructs for both Rebecca and Irina, but Rebecca brought up a potential problem. “We know a construct artist is working with these people. Suppose it’s him? If it is, he’ll detect the construct and it will blow the deal. Let me go in and just give him me. If he is a Lindstrom, I’ll collapse Irina’s construct before she goes to see him. We’ll just have to be good actresses.”
Lydia implanted a construct in Irina, relying heavily on Rebecca’s own experience to create the personality and memories. As she built the construct, Lydia, normally exuberant and happy, became increasingly withdrawn. Brenna could see something was bothering her.
Callie’s contacts inside universities, along with the FBI’s influence, created identities and enrollments for them at West Virginia University.
Telepaths mature late compared to normal humans, and with their long lives look far younger than their chronological ages. At twenty-four, Rebecca was older than any of the women who had gone missing, but she still got carded at most bars. Irina could easily pass as a college freshman.
The evening after Lydia finished the construct, Brenna found her sitting on the broad front porch. She sat staring out into the twilight, arms wrapped around herself, rocking slowly in her chair.
“Are you okay?” Brenna asked.
Lydia turned a tear-streaked face toward her. “I’ve built hundreds, maybe thousands, of constructs. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. My God, Rebecca’s been through so much pain.”
Brenna put her arm around the older woman and hugged her. “Yes, I know. I’ve been through some of it with her. But now that she knows what causes it, she’s dealing with it and starting to heal. Moira is working with her, and we’re trying to identify girls with the condition at an early age. My grandmother has been consulting with them on a program she uses in Ireland, and Rebecca is helping Moira develop coping strategies for them. That’s helping her a lot.”
~~~
One of the selling points for Dr. Detweiler’s services was his willingness to travel to his patients. For student health clinics, this was a Godsend. It would be almost impossible for students to travel long distances for therapy.
Rebecca and Irina went to the counseling center on separate days, made appointments to meet with a psychologist, and received referrals to Dr. Detweiler. When they contacted him, he made arrangements to come to Morgantown the following week. While they waited, the two women treated the time on campus as a vacation, cutting a swath through the willing young men they met.
As soon as Rebecca walked into the room at the health center to meet Detweiler, she was thankful she hadn’t worn a construct. She had no way to know if he had the Lindstrom Gift, but he was a powerful telepath. During their meeting, he gently and cautiously probed her shields.
It didn’t take much acting for Rebecca to reenact the first interview she had with a counselor in San Francisco five years before. As a strong empath, Rebecca left feeling that Detweiler had bought her performance without reservation.
She met Irina at the student center coffee shop and collapsed her construct, then coached her as to how to approach her interview. Irina wouldn’t present as a sex addict the same way an S-gene carrier would, but rather as someone whose sex addiction stemmed from trying to figure out why her relationships with men turned out so badly.
Irina’s mother was a succubus, and she had known about the effect she had on men from an early age. But conversations with Brenna had given her a good idea of the confusion her friend had gone through when she became sexually active.
“I don’t understand it,” Irina told the doctor with tears misting her eyes. “I don’t think I’m bad looking, but … but … we make love and then they don’t even call for two weeks. I don’t want to be a one-night stand. I want someone to love me. I keep hoping the next guy will be different.”
Detweiler’s methods became very clear. He made appointments to meet with them in Morgantown in two weeks, but he suggested he was willing to provide extra free counseling if they could drive to his office in Philadelphia on the weekend.
“I couldn’t believe how excited he got when I walked in,” Irina said after her meeting with Detweiler. “He said he could help me with my self-image problem.” She laughed, “I thought that’s what high heels were for.”
“If he’s ever seen a succubus, it would be impossible to ignore what you are,” Rebecca said. “He’s probably counting his money already.”
Irina’s brow furrowed. “Most succubi aren’t short.”
“I wasn’t talking about your height. Irina, you may be the only woman in the world who’s prettier than Brenna. It’s pretty obvious you’re not really human.”
The diminutive blonde gasped and stopped walking, staring at Rebecca. “Nobody’s prettier than Brenna.”
“That’s what I would have said before I met you. Besides, you smell like a succubus. Come on, let’s get on the road. We need to figure out what to do next. I think we’ve set the hook.”
“I took a shower this morning,” Irina muttered as they approached Rebecca’s car.
Rebecca smiled at her. “I know that. What kind of perfume are you wearing?”
Irina shook her head. “I don’t wear perfume. Everything I’ve ever tried stinks when I put it on.”
Rebecca chuckled. “None of you wears perfume. You smell like flowers naturally.”
~~~
Back at the manor, they met with Collin and some of his lieutenants. Moira and Brenna also sat in on the meeting.
“What are our objectives here?” Collin asked the group. “From my viewpoint, we want to capture him, set him up as a mole and follow him to the broker in New York.”
Brenna chuckled, “I’m not volunteering as bait, but wondering if you need me for backup.”
“We definitely need backup,” Kallen said. “The op we ran with Brenna proves even the most powerful telepath can be taken down with the right drugs. Considering your range, you can link with Rebecca from a block away and never be in danger.”
Rebecca called Detweiler and made an appointment to meet him on Saturday. She showed up dressed in a form-fitting dress rather than the jeans she’d worn on campus. After half an hour describing the problems she was experiencing, he turned the conversation in a different direction.
“So you’re from San Francisco?”
“Yes. I wanted to get away from there, that’s why I came east to school.”
“Are you close to your parents?”
“No, I don’t have much contact with them. I have a scholarship, so they aren’t paying anything.”
“Do you have friends waiting for you today?”
“No. I didn’t even tell anyone where I was going. I’m not very prou
d of why I’m here.”
Detweiler leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across his stomach.
“And you’re twenty-one?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said.
“I’d like to try to hypnotize you. I’ve had very good results with it in similar cases.”
Alarm bells went off in Rebecca’s mind, and in Brenna’s, sitting in a coffee shop at the end of the block.
I think we need to get ready to move, Brenna sent to Jeremy.
Detweiler took Rebecca into another room, had her lie on a thin bed-like couch, and dimmed the lights. She reached out to the electricity in the walls and drew it into her, ready to discharge if he touched her. He started into a droning speech, telling her she was growing drowsy. She closed her eyes. Rather than listen to him, she described what was happening across her mental link to Brenna.
After about five minutes, Detweiler touched her neck. Rebecca reacted immediately, discharging electricity into him and assaulting his shields.
Show time, boys and girls! Brenna broadcast to the team waiting outside Detweiler’s office. She fed energy to Rebecca through their link.
Detweiler fell backward, missing his chair and falling to the floor. Rebecca covered him in an air shield to prevent him using any mental or physical weapons against her. She didn’t know what Gifts he might have, but it would stop weapons such as Pyro or Electrokinesis.
He gained his feet and attempted to charge her, but ran into the air shield. She battered against his shields, but he put up stiff resistance. Fearing he might have a Gift that wasn’t blocked by the air shield, she bolted toward the door, only to find it locked.
Brenna, I can’t get out of here.
We’re on our way, her friend answered.
If he has the Rivera Gift, I’m toast.
Drain him.
Rebecca reached out with her mind and started drawing his life energy into herself. With the energy Brenna had been feeding her, her reserves were full and she wasn’t able to store it, so she fed it to Brenna through their link. The succubus soaked it up like a sponge.
The Telepathic Clans Omnibus Page 34
