A-Cup Angst Ch. 15

"Yes, that's probably right," Jamie said. "Listen, some friends of mine are in mortal peril in a villa just outside of Florence. I need you to get in touch with Laura Rossi and have her call the Carabinieri and send them to raid the castle and this one dorm in the city itself."

The rift started fading away. Some text appeared, reading, "I'm sorry, I can't maintain this spell any longer. I am flying to Florence, where I hope to meet you in person."

"Wait," Jamie yelled. "I need your help!"

The rift blinked out of existence, leaving Jamie alone in a strange field without a clue as to where he was. He couldn't wrap his mind around what he had just seen. The whole situation was just too bizarre. He wasn't sure if he believed Ahmed's claims about being impervious to magic, especially as he had been put to sleep by a spell right outside the witch's villa. Jamie couldn't believe the witch spared his life. She obviously knew enough about him to deliver him to Sylvie and she had had him utterly at her mercy. She could have had him killed by placing him face down in a shallow puddle of piss and she instead chose to let him live another day. He punched his fist against his palm and promised himself that that was the very last mistake she ever made.

He scanned the horizon for any sign of another human being. Spotting none, he tapped into his anger and his need to save Caitlin and Mara and let his instincts guide him. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind. He imagined eight of himself moving in every cardinal direction as far away as he could still sense himself. He imagined another eight of himself standing still at that point and stretching out their senses while the original eight moved on. When they reached the limit of his imaginary duplicates' senses, another eight mental duplicates appeared and acted as telepathic relays between himself and his projected searchers. This went on and on until it was starting to get difficult for him to keep track off all those mental duplicates. He tapped into his wrath and let the thought of Mara and Caitlin being hurt power his resolve. He kept up with his search.

Finally, a telepathic message came to him. It had bounced through time and space. He saw in the mind of himself that went southwest that he would see in the mind of himself that went even further on that he would see in the mind of the one ahead of himself and so on, and so on, that he would come across a village in just over an hour's brisk walk.

Jamie ran full tilt southwest. As he ran, he kept getting deja-vú after deja-vú. In the gathering dark, the flat ground before him looked so much alike that it was easy to mistake one stretch of it for another, but he nonetheless recognized the view of the land before himself as he ran over it. It was as if he was receiving the information from his future self and then passing it on to his past self that had already received it whilst seeing it for himself for the first time. He fought through the bizarreness of his incredible exploit and pressed on. The paradoxes piled up, but he ignored them. Soon, he saw the image of the village in the distance that had sent him on his course and felt a blessed relief as the perpetual state of deja-vú ended. He felt like his normal, one timeline self again.

He ran as fast as he could the rest of the way, but his strength was failing him. He had never been one for endurance running. When he came to the nearest house, he was gasping for every wheezing breath and struggling to stay upright. He knocked on the back door and waited for a response, glad for the respite. He knocked again and again, getting no response from within. Finally, when he felt strong enough, he tried the door handle and found it to be locked. He reached out with his senses and confirmed that nobody was home. He used the Force to unlock the door and went inside.

He found the landline in the front room and nearly collapsed in relief when he picked up the receiver and heard it was a working line. He immediately dialed Laura's number. It went to voicemail. Alessandra's phone did, too, so he dialed the number for the takeout orders. Andrea answered the phone, saying, "Hello, Trattoria Rossi, what would you like to order?"

"Andrea, it's Jamie, put Laura on the phone, please," Jamie said.

"Sorry, Jamie, this line is for business only, call them on their cell phones! Bye!"

Andrea hung up, leaving Jamie to stare at the receiver in his hand in bewilderment. The phone had only a rotary dial so Jamie had to spin it to dial again. When he finished with the time-consuming task, the line was busy. He tried two more times before he got through again.

"Hello, Trattoria Rossi, what would you like to order," Andrea said.

"Listen here, you little shit," Jamie roared, "I'm coming back there today and if you don't put Laura on the phone right this fucking instant, I'm going to rip off your arms and use them to break your legs!" Jamie took a deep breath to calm down. He was a bit surprised at his outburst. There was silence on the other end of the line, but it was still open. "Hello? Hello?!"

Jamie strained to hear anything on the other end. There were muffled noises there, but he couldn't quite make them out. Finally, he heard a concerned, female voice say, "Andrea, what's wrong? Are you all right?" Jamie sighed in relief when he recognized Laura's voice. "Hello, who is this?"

"Laura, it's me, Jamie," he said. "I don't have the time for apologies or talking, lives are at stake! Listen to me very carefully. Pass this on to the Carabinieri as quickly as you can and I promise I'll come to the trattoria tomorrow and we'll talk. Ok?"

After a slight pause, she said, "I thought you didn't want the police to get involved in your affairs."

"Please, Laura, lives are at stake here," Jamie said. "Be mad at me all you want, but please call the Carabinieri and pass on this information from me! Do you have a pen and piece of paper?"

After another pause, Laura said, "Yes."

Jamie gave her the address of Mara's dorm and the villa outside of Florence and told her about the lust spell, the witch and the goons. He did his best to not mention Mara or Caitlin. He suspected that if he did, Laura would choose to not call the cops. "Please, Laura," he said, "whatever the situation between us might be, I'm counting on you to call the cops and save all those innocent, young women."

"And which one of them is so special to you that you would risk police attention like this," Laura asked, a hint of venom in her voice.

Jamie grimaced in frustration. If their breakup or her petty jealousy led her to not call the cops, he was going to lose his shit. He calmly said, "I don't know any of the girls in the dorm. Not a single one." He thought that he wasn't lying, strictly speaking. Mara was no longer to be found in the dorm and he had no idea who the girls he had fucked there were. "Please, Laura, those are innocent young women being held captive and exploited against their will. Please call the cops! Think about if Alessandra was one of them. Wouldn't you want someone to make that call and save her? Now you can-"

"Shut up," Laura indignantly said, cutting him off. "Alessandra was going to go to Florence to study before she had been taken. I don't need any additional motivation to call the police and it's insulting that you think I would." Jamie sighed in relief. "Also, you calling like this, in the middle of my busiest hours to get my help after leaving us like you did and expecting me to drop everything to play phone tag? Very insulting! Now, is there anything else I need to pass on to the Carabinieri?"

"No," Jamie said. "Not that I can think of."

"Good," Laura said. "I'm hanging up now and calling them."

"Thank you," Jamie said, but she had already hung up. He hung up as well and then searched for mail by the front door. He found none, so he searched for paid bills. He found some in the drawer of a desk and read the address of the house he was in. It was written in French. He dialed the operator and tried to ask for the number of an air taxi service in his mangled French. The amused operator knew English and quickly gave him what he wanted. Jamie was connected to the air taxi and asked what it would cost for him to get a helicopter flight to the nearest airport and then a plane to Florence. When he gave them his address, they informed him that they could have him at the airport in Nice and on a charter to Florence in no time. He ordered the flight, dictating a number for his virtual credit card that he only used to shop online. It was the only one of his account numbers that he knew by heart and the only one he could still hope had some money in it. The rest of his accounts must have been drained by now, since the witch had his wallet and cards. While he was waiting for his flight, he called and found out the time and date. He had been out for only four and a half hours.

After ten minutes, a helicopter landed in the field behind the house and Jamie ran to it, bracing himself against the icy rotor wash. He got in and was quickly ferried to the airport. In less than forty minutes, he was on the ground at the airport in Florence. There, he rented a car and drove to the villa as fast as he could.

He slowed down when he got to the copse of pines he had passed earlier in the day with Caitlin and pulled over, out of sight of the villa. He got out and crept forward to a spot from which he could observe the place undetected. There were no cops to be seen and his X5 was right where he had left it. Jamie's fists tightened in rage. If Laura hadn't called them out of jealousy or anger at him, then he was going to be very angry with her.

He crouched and fretted over what he was going to do. The cops weren't there and he couldn't count on them coming at all. Caitlin and Mara were most likely already dead, but he needed to be sure of that before turning back. He nodded to himself as he came to a decision. "I've been a pacifist too long, anyhow," he whispered out loud.

He got back in the car and drove calmly down the road towards the villa. He parked the rental car on the opposite side of his X5 from the villa and hoped that it would go unnoticed there. He got out of the car and looked at his SUV. There were guns and ammo in the trunk, but it was locked. The only way to get at them was to get his keys back from the witch. The many wards on the car prevented picking its locks and one of the wards specifically made it impossible to unlock a door after its window had been smashed. He would have liked to be able to go in armed, but he guessed he'd just have to settle for his telekinesis.

He walked to the villa with a steady step. As soon as he stepped onto the grounds, he sensed all the minds present. There were nine goons, the madam and two female minds that were utterly consumed by lust. He let himself hope that those might be Caitlin and Mara. He realized no one had seen him coming and he ran the rest of the way to the door. He flattened himself against the wall, next to the front door and double checked that no one was paying attention to the door.

He used the Force to open the door quietly and slip inside. The inside of the villa was very warm, making him uncomfortable in his winter clothing. He took off his coat and stuffed it out of sight, under a large chest of drawers that was in the front room. He could tell that the madam and one of the women were upstairs with four of the goons. He sensed that three goons were in the basement with the other woman. Of the two remaining goons, one was in the garage fixing something and the last was in the kitchen, cooking.

Jamie decided to sneak downstairs into the basement and see who the poor girl there was. He could sense that the goons were using her for their sexual pleasure. The thought that it might be Caitlin or Mara made him angry, but he kept it in check. He used the Force to gain surreptitious access to the basement. He soon found himself traversing a long, brick corridor that branched into many large rooms with steel bar doors. The first rooms he passed contained barrels and sundry, but the rest had cots in them. Jamie grimly realized that he was in a makeshift prison, or dungeon. The sounds of feminine pleasure reached his ears from the end of the corridor. He crept closer and was soon able to smell sex as well as hear the soft, rapid slapping of flesh against flesh.

He made certain that none of the goons were watching the door before leaning his head in and peeking to see who the molested girl was. When he saw a bruised Mara O'Donnell kneeling naked on the hard concrete floor, impaled by a big goon from behind and sucking off another while the third jacked off next to them, all restraint went out the window.

Instantly, Jamie slammed the two standing goons against opposite walls, making the cock of the one that was getting sucked slip out of Mara's mouth with a loud pop. Neither goon was even winded by the impact. They immediately found their footing and ran to the door. Jamie slammed them against the back wall, again to little or no effect. The third goon pulled out of Mara and stepped over her to get to Jamie. Jamie pushed him aside and then slammed him against the far wall. He pushed back the other two goons that were already rushing at him again.

All three goons effortlessly shrugged off any thought of damage from being thrown against the walls and kept finding their footing and rushing at Jamie with incredible speed and single-mindedness. Mara knelt on the ground and tried to grab one of them to fuck her some more, but they were running and flying past too fast for her to catch.

The goons were so fast and earnest in their efforts to land a blow against Jamie that one of them managed to reach the bars on the door because Jamie spared a split second's consideration to Mara. The goon held on to the door when Jamie's telekinetic blast swept his legs out behind him and towards the far wall. As soon as Jamie slammed another goon back, the hanging goon found his footing and lunged at him. Jamie had to dodge the punch and send the goon flying down the hallway. He didn't send him far because another goon ran out of Mara's cell to strike at him that very instant. Jamie tossed him aside, but again, not very far as he had to repel the third goon.

The three of them kept rushing at Jamie, giving him no time or chance to formulate a plan. They were simply too fast and too insistent. They charged at him the whole time and they ran at him just as fast as he was throwing them away from himself. Even tossing them a short distance was draining Jamie's strength and he couldn't push them much farther back before he had to let go and push another. He simply couldn't push two of them at the same time. They were too fast for him to even think consciously about repelling them. The Force guided him instinctively through his desperate defense. He felt his endurance waning and started to jog backwards, away from the goons and away from Mara. He immediately dismissed the thought of ordering her to follow him out of genuine fear that she would be seriously injured if she left her cell.

Jamie retreated to the heavy, wooden door to the cellar and allowed the Force to guide his hand as he grabbed the handle and pulled. The door slowly swung open with a very loud creak while Jamie kept up with his efforts to push the rushing goons backwards. He stepped through the doorway and telekinetically slammed and bolted the door shut behind himself.

Before he could even think about breathing a sigh of relief, he received the instinctive warning to jump back. He did so and narrowly avoided getting pelted by the many splinters the door shattered into when a goon's massive fist went through it. Jamie seized the split second reprieve in their attacks to turn around and run up the stairs. The goons swung the door open and bounded up the stairs like they were on springs.

Jamie interfered with their ascent as much as he could, sending them toppling one over the other down the stairs, but he was feeling completely overwhelmed with the demands on his telekinesis. As he reached the top of the stairs, he sensed the cook goon had heard the commotion and came out of the kitchen to investigate. Jamie swore when the goon reached back into the kitchen with one hand. He sensed the alarm was coming a second before the klaxons were heard. He sensed all the goons react instantly to them and ran headlong towards the front door.

The goons from upstairs were rushing down, the goons from the basement were joined by the cook in their chase after him. They were so fast that they caught up to him before he reached the front door. The garage goon showed up at the door and Jamie dived out of the way and into the front parlor. He slammed the door in the faces of his pursuers with the Force. They smashed the door into kindling in a second. Jamie sent a chair flying at the head of the first goon, but he just lifted an arm and swept the chair aside to smash against the wall. Before Jamie could send something flying through the windows and try and escape, a second goon rushed him, crossing the front room in an instant. Jamie was tackled to the ground and pinned under the almost three hundred pound heavy mountain of muscles.

The rest of the madam's enforcers surrounded him in short order and he knew he lost. To his pleasant surprise, then didn't beat him up. They merely scooped him up, seized all of his limbs firmly, and carried him into the central hall. Once there, two of them set him down on the polished marble floor, forcing him to kneel, and stood on his ankles, making him scream out in pain. His bones hadn't been broken, he suspected, but even the slightest motion in his legs now resulted with blinding pain. They grabbed his arms and bent them behind his back until his shoulders nearly popped out of their sockets. It was pure agony.

A third enforcer came up behind Jamie and seized him by the hair. He yanked his head back. Jamie grimaced in pain and let out a growl. When he opened his eyes, he saw the witch madam standing at the top of the circular staircase that wound its way around the round central hall and led upstairs. He turned his eyes away and focused on the roaring fire in the fireplace that was against the far wall, nearly directly ahead of him. The madam smiled a disconcerting smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Well, well, mister Jacobs," she said, "this is quite a surprise. I expected to see you again, but not for two more days." She gave him an appraising look. "And not so young, either. How did you manage to get away from Sylvie?"

Jamie couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes. This was the second time he lost to her. She had spared him the first time and shipped him off to meet his doom at Sylvie's hands, but he suspected that wasn't going to happen again. One of the goons walked up to the witch and whispered something in her ear. She reacted by looking sharply at Jamie and narrowing her eyes. The witch nodded her head and the goon bounded up the stairs. Jamie sensed another leave the hall to go into the basement. He realized he was getting a second wind with his Force abilities. He cast his gaze all around, looking desperately for something he could use to his advantage when he tried to break free. His main concern were the goons that were squeezing the life from his limbs. He had no idea how to loosen their grip on him.

The witch began to slowly descend the circular staircase, like she was a Hollywood diva joining a party. A naked and tired-looking Caitlin showed up on the top of the stairs, followed by the goon, and started to follow the witch down. Jamie sensed Mara being brought up from the basement, too.

The witch descended the stairs and stood right before Jamie. "I'm quite grateful, actually," she said. "I get surprised so rarely these days that I find myself welcoming any and all breaks from the routine." She studied his features with an intense gaze. "Even the unpleasant ones." She ran a hand through the hair on his left temple. "Like showing up at my brothel unannounced and making me wonder if I'm going to get raided the instant I return there." She yanked some of his hair out as she grabbed it and pulled hard. He bit back a yell of pain. "Or tossing my boys around without any magical power to your veins. That's something completely new for me, I must say." She stood over him as if expecting him to say something. He could vaguely sense her expecting him to beg for mercy. He thought he could tell she wanted him to, so he kept quiet.