The Department of Wacko Containment - 2

Title: The Department of Wacko Containment

Genre: Paranormal

Rating: R (for graphic description, language)

Story Type: Novel - incomplete/WIP
Warnings: holocaust references

Word count: (chapter) 5,046

Summary:  Cassie has always wanted to be an agent with the Department of Preternatural Security and Cross-Dimmensional Transportortaion Securement.  By the end of her current case, though, she just might start thinking about early retirement.
Author's Note: This is part of an incomplete manuscript.

 My best friend’s grandfather killed Adolf Hitler.  Kind of impressive, since the most earth shattering, history altering thing that my grandfather had done was knock up my grandmother so she could have my father and, in turn, make the world a better place by having me.  In comparison, I’m pretty sure that my wonderful birth doesn’t really measure up to the murder of Hitler.

What does Hitler have to do with any of this?  Everything, really, since he’s the reason we even have a Department of Wacko Containment.

Hitler dabbled in the occult.  He had a high priestess on his payroll, blonde with bright blue Aryan eyes, of course, and she was one of those, straight to the nitty gritty sorts.  She was the one that told him all the posturing and grandstanding he was doing only annoyed the dark things that he wanted to call from other dimensions.  She got straight to the point and called out all sorts of nasty things for him.  Without her, World War II would have probably ended a lot sooner.

When Hitler started to go crazy, it was his wickedly summonned buddies that took over everything and kept his little empire running.  Personally, I still go with the theory that he had syphilis.  He was a manwhore, after all.  Never heard that one?  Watch digital Discovery channels.  You learn a ton there.

Anyway, the wickedly summonned buddies.  So, Hitler’s going crazy and he’s losing his grip on things.  The death camps are being taken over by the Allies, all his little pet projects are being destroyed, and the Allied Forces are pretty much kicking German and Japanese ass left and right.  He can’t do anything, but they can.

Daimonatè was around during this mess.  He was the real power behind the Hitler campaign at the end.  Thankfully, he was sent back and Hitler was left to crumble.  Kitty’s grandfather shot him in the back of the head while he was trying to escape through one of the portals.  That’s right, you don’t just have to bring things out of them.  You can go through them, too.  No way was Kitty’s grandpa letting that happen, so, BANG!  Right in the back of the head. 

Hitler’s dead, war’s over, portal’s closed—Happy ending, right?  Yeah, right.  That would have been a wonderful thing, but the end of World War II brought about a whole new mess of troubles.

1) How to stop other assholes on a power trip from taking over the world with demons

2) How to stop other assholes on a power trip from escaping their fate by jumping through portals

3) What were these portals, anyway, and where do they go?

4) What do we do with the people in the concentration camps that aren’t exactly... well... people.

The list goes on and on, but lets focus on these for a while. 

The first two were pretty easy to solve.  You set up some kind of monitoring system to either stop portal jumpers before they could jump or send back whatever jumped.  The third one, well—You could always do some research and portal jumping.  There were plenty out there, after all, who knew all about the dimensions.  Of course, you could only find most of these guys in psych wards across the country because when they told people about the portals, they were slapped with wacko stickers and throw in the nuthouse.

The fourth one, now that was the hard one, and that’s where I come in.  Sorta.  Kinda. 

See, those people that weren’t exactly people?  They were some of those things that most people didn’t really believe in, and after Hitler was taken care of, more of them came out of hiding.

Witches.  Vampires.  Werewolves.  Faeries.  Leprechauns.  You name it.  If it was mythological and real, Hitler had found it and thrown it in a concentration camp.  He wanted to know what it was that made these people into non-people, and he wanted to harvest it.  He set his mad scientists to work, dissecting and testing and all sorts of nasty things to find what it was and insert it into his master race.  Imagine all those Aryan knights with magical powers.  Scary, huh?  Hitler thought it was the best thing since swastikas and the dirty smudge he called a mustache.

When it was made clear what he was doing, a lot of the supernatural (or preternatural if you want to sound smart instead of psychotic) beings went even further underground.  Like, literally, underground.  They lived in caves, holes, anywhere that would keep them safe and out of those damn camps.  It worked for a lot.  It didn’t work for a hell of a lot more.

But, once the war was over, they were free.  The Allied Forces couldn’t just lock up people that they’d fought so hard to free.  They hadn’t done anything but be victims.  Problem was, people (i.e. human people) tend to try and destroy what they didn’t understand, and they sure as shit didn’t understand what came out of some of those camps.  So the fighting began.

No one really wants to go down without a fight, especially someone whose already been in the worst place imaginable.  So people and non-people were fighting in the streets.  The non-people were harder to control because of the magic and strength and all other abilities.  It was riotous and the world was falling apart.

On top of that, there were the portals.  No one had bothered to find out if things could come through without being called, so all manner of strange beings were popping out all over the place, just walking out of thin air and scaring the crap out of anybody who saw them.  Those portals were a pain in the ass.

There were police to control the human population, but what about the rest of the population?  It took the governments of all the nations all over the world almost ten years to realize that the rest of the population needed a policing force, too.  And there were those pesky portals to worry about. 

Thus, the Department of Wacko Containment was born.  Its actual name is The Department of Preternatural Security and Cross-Dimensional Transportation Securement.  See why I call it the DWC?  That’s a lot to say and it sounds pretentious as hell. 

The Department of Wacko Containment (herein referred to as the DWC because that’s still a lot to say) is here to make sure that we all stay in our place and, supposedly, to protect us.  They’re not only called when some non-human goes psycho and starts slaughtering.  They’re called when there is bigotry or discrimination against one of us. 

The DWC also hands out the permits to cross dimensions.  Believe it or not, there are some pretty cool destinations out there, and it’s become the new way to travel.  Why take a long flight to some foreign country when you can take a two minute jump across dimensions to a place that makes Brazil or Europe look like the state fair? 

The DWC also closed the portals to all incoming traffic that didn’t have a pass.  The other sides like to vacation, too, and humans crack them up.  But, we don’t want just anybody coming through, so the portals are locked from the other side and, through very intense and intricate dealings with the other side, passes were given on a discretionary basis for certain periods of time.  After the pass ran out, you were kicked out.

I thought it was kind of stupid.  Over the years, the DWC had become complacent.  They didn’t realize that portals were everywhere and the number of dimensions was indeterminable.  We had a form to fill out if we thought we found a new one.  I have no idea what happens after you fill out the form, because I’ve never had to fill one out.  I hear that it’s not much, though.

And where, exactly, do I come into all of this?  Simple, I was one of those rare genetic anomalies that pop up and, the government being who they are, I’m getting used for all its worth.  Not that it’s a totally bad thing, I did sign up for this, after all.

One of the things that Hitler’s mad scientists discovered was that vampirism is genetic.  No one still has any idea when the first mutation happened or how it sprouted, but it’s encoded in the DNA.  Usually, one parent has to be vampiric for it to happen.  Actually, it’s the father, because a body that, by human standards, is almost dead just can’t create new life.  Unless, of course, you’re special like me. 

Somewhere in my family tree is a whole gaggle of vampires.  Some even suggest that, if we go far enough back in my family tree, you’ll find the first vampire.  I really don’t care. 

My parents were both regular old humans, living the American dream.  I even had a white picket fence growing up, how’s that for American dream.  Vampires like me are rare, and not just our existence.  We’re a rare breed, period.

We don’t have the allergies that the others have.  Sunlight and UV rays don’t hurt.  I love garlic and put it in everything.  That whole holy thing was made up bullshit, but even if it were true, it wouldn’t affect us.  Science doesn’t know why, but they’re still trying to explain it.  Science tries to explain everything.

We’re not mostly dead, either.  We have all the strength as the other vampires, we live a really long time, all that really good stuff, but our hearts beat the same as regular humans and breathing is fun.  The whole blood thing isn’t as bad, either.  We need some because our system craves it, but if I go a few days without, I won’t wither and start going insane.  It’s pretty cool being a rarity, if I say so myself.

I wanted to be part of the DWC ever since I was little, and Kitty first told me that her grandfather killed Hitler.  He was the head of the DWC, the guy who came up with the idea and talked everybody into it.  I wanted to be like him.  Then, I saw some DWC agents kick some ass, and I wanted to do that, too.  So, when I graduated college, I knew right where I was going.  And they were more than willing to have me.

Every field agent for the DWC was some kind of non-human.  Better to understand our own, they say.  More like nobody can kick a non-human’s ass like another non-human.  Kitty wasn’t human, either, but she wasn’t a field agent.  She preferred to work behind the scenes.  Kitty was the best little half-faerie they had working in the DWC.

And, as far as I’m concerned, I’m the best field agent.  So what if I had that little thing with the humans and ended up tied to a chair with a scarf soaked in jasmine tied around my mouth.  I was still the best, dammit.  My daddy said so, and he would never ever lie to me.  Would he?

“I never thought I’d see the day that a human got one over on creepy Carrie.”

“Obviously, she’s losing her touch.  It’s so sad, too.  She’s only been on the job about a couple of years.”

“Guess those telekinetic powers don’t mix with the vampire anomaly thing.”

I rolled my eyes as the peanut gallery started in on me.  I expected it, and I was ready for it.  Okay, so I wasn’t necessarily ready for it.  I wasn’t ready for it, but I did expect it.

I firmly believe that both of my parents were dropped on their heads multiple times as children.  That has to be the only reason they would name me Cassie Wright, when I knew goddamned good and well that my father’s favorite book and movie were both Carrie.  He knew that the idiot principal kept calling Carrie White by the wrong name so—He gives me that wrong name?  And my mom agreed to it?  Seriously, there is something wrong and demented about the mindset of humans.  That’s all there is to it.

I’d been hearing Carrie jokes since I was old enough to go to school, and I’d been hating them long before I was old enough to actually get the jokes.  Now, at twenty-four, the jokes were just old. 

“Ha ha, funny funny, I have never heard a Carrie joke in my life.  And I certainly didn’t hear any from you yesterday when I left the office.”

Jason leered at me.  Yes, he leered like an old guy hanging in a park, watching kids play, wearing a trench coat. He was such an ass about everything.  I think it had something to do with the fact that I beat him up when he was brought in by the instructor to help with our training.  He thought I was going to be an easy mark.  Big bad vampire, a hundred years old, he could take one tiny girl.  Uh huh.  Just like every guy I’d ever gone up against, he underestimated me.

On the surface, I was your typical popular girl.  I was short, which my mom liked to call petite, but I had hips that rocked to the sides with accompanying drumbeats.  Boom ba da boom, ba da boom. 

My breasts were somewhere between a big C and small D cup.  I had bras of various size because there was no telling what they wanted to fit into on any given day.  The only constant was that, no matter what size cup the bra, they always stood up right on top and made everybody stare.

I was a blonde, so along with the regular Carrie jokes, I got dumb blonde jokes.  Dumb blonde, sure.  That’s why I came in tops on the exam to get in the field.  My blonde has been coming out of a bottle since I was old enough to realize that blondes really did have more fun.  At least they did in my high school.

Oh, and let’s not forget high school.  Captain of the cheerleading team, straight-A student, everybody’s favorite girl.  It carried over to college, too.  Yeah, I was the perfect pretty little girl, and because of that, I was underestimated a lot.  Because of that, I embarrassed a lot of guys with my oh-so spectacular skills.

“I’ll come up with one that you haven’t heard yet.  Just give me time.”

Leo was more fun with it, but he could still be an ass, mostly because he tended to catch me when I wasn’t in the mood.  When I was in a better mood, I gave him pointers on how to properly make fun of me.  Mixing a good Carrie joke with a dumb blonde cheerleader joke was an art form and, as of yet, I was the only one that had mastered it.

I flopped down into a chair next to Kitty and spun around a couple of times before stopping to stare at her.  Kitty could have been a model, but for some weird reason, she preferred to be inconspicuous and keep eyes off of her.  She claimed to be following in her parents’s footsteps.  They had both, after all, been agents in the DWC.  Of course, she’d be one, too.  I thought she was full of shit, but what did I know?  I was following in her grandfather’s footsteps.

Kitty Callahan was a good three inches taller than me, and she loved big shoes.  Like I didn’t feel like a midget standing next to her already?  She always wore her brown hair pulled back out of her face, and she didn’t wear much make-up.  Besides her big shoes, nothing was very flashy about her, down to her plain suits that she wore to work.  And the award for most non-descript person working at the DWC goes to...

“You look different today.”  I squinted at her, like that was really necessary.  It made for great effect, though, or at least I thought so.  “Did you change lip gloss?”

“I don’t wear lip gloss.”

     

 “Did you start?”  Her eyes rolled and I shrugged.  “Just trying to give compliments.  You do look different, though, and I’m gonna find out what it is if it kills you.”

     Kitty and I had been best friends since the third grade.  She had always been quiet and unassuming, and I’d always been loud, boisterous and insane.  She got picked on a lot by the so-called popular girls, i.e. the girls that didn’t realize that I was the popular one, and they were nowhere near my league.  I was having a bad day, so I decided to step in.  A few punches, a good slap across the face and I had a new best friend for life.  That’s when Kitty told me that her grandfather had killed Hitler and her mom was a faerie.  Talk about a great start to a friendship.

     “Sorry about what happened last night.”  Kitty ran her fingers through her hair.  Ha!  That was the difference!  Her hair was down!  Kitty never wore her hair down to work.  I had to fight her to get it down when I dragged her out on the weekends.  “They caught you by surprise, that’s all.  It was all that jasmine.”

     “Uh huh.”  I’d ranted her ear off for a good forty-five minutes about that bitch and her stupid scarf.  “Why is your hair down?”

     “Huh?”

     Kitty was horrible at faking clueless, mostly because she 

blushed like crazy when she was caught in something.  Her cheeks were flaming red and she was starting to shrink.  She hiccupped and went back to normal size.  Her cheeks still flamed, though.

     “You’re trying to impress somebody.  Please, for the love of money, tell me that you’re not trying to impress anyone in this room.”

     The conference room was filled with social rejects.  The cool ones hadn’t shown up yet, the ones that I would actually be seen in public with.  What we had was a room full of people that wouldn’t know what to do if you stuck them in a bar on a Friday night and told them, point blank, to go and get laid.  Jason and Leo were the only field agents, and Jason only pretended to be cool.  Leo was taken.  Who knew that Warlocks could be gay?  I’m not a homophobe.  I’m just extremely naïve sometimes.

     The rest were secretaries and information gatherers.  Nobody that I would happily help Kitty impress.

     This was our weekly morning meeting where we were assigned cases and forced to discuss all the things that we’d done wrong.  They’d make me discuss the humans, and it was so not my fault.  The jasmine screwed up me.  Seriously.

     The boss would be here, but Kitty couldn’t possibly be trying to impress him.  She was related to him, and that was gross.  Kitty was related to almost every person in charge in this place.  Her family practically lived at the DWC. 

     “I’m not trying to impress anyone.”  Kitty folded her arms under breasts that she often described as woefully inadequate.  More often, she described them as mosquito bites.  I offered to give her some of mine, but she turned me down.  “I was running late and didn’t have time to do anything with it.”

     Yeah, right.  There was definite curlage to her hair, which meant she had time enough to apply heat.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t it take longer to curl one’s hair than it does to put it up in a ponytail?

     “You’re a horrible liar, Kitty Callahan, and you know it.”  She was bad at lying, but great at not telling me things that I could use against her later.  “Is it anyone I know?”

     “It’s no one.”  She sat up straight and I turned towards the door.  That posture meant the meeting was ready to start.  Impossible.  Everyone wasn’t even here yet.

     Oops.  Guess they were here.  And they were all dressed more appropriately than me.  I’d yet to get used to this whole dress code thing.  Unless I was having a one-on-one with a boss, you weren’t going to find me in a suit.  I didn’t do suits.  I did tight jeans and cute printed tees that got me all kinds of attention.  I’m a former cheerleader, what do you expect? 

     Today’s tee wonderfully expressed my mood.  It was specially made for me.  Tinkerbell had on her pissed off face, arms crossed, and it said, “What the fudge are you looking at, dummy?”  I liked it.  Dummies didn’t like it so much.

     “Good to see we’ve all made it alive this morning.”  Mr. Big Shot always thought he was so funny, everything he said was a stand-up comedian’s dream joke.  I wanted to throw up.

     Mr. Big Shot’s name was actually Damien Guile.  Who named their kid Damien?  I mean, really, people.  Who hasn’t seen the Omen?  Obviously, Damien’s parents.

     Mr. Big Shot was, well, the big shot.  He was the BMOC and he made sure everyone knew it, from his tailored three thousand dollar suits to the strong baritone that he practiced in front of a mirror before every meeting.  He thought that the suit and the voice would make up for the three-hair comb over and the fact that he squinted like a moron instead of wearing his glasses. 

     News flash, Mr. Big Shot.  With or without the glasses, you’re not hot and any of us that are hot won’t be lusting after you anytime soon.

     Mr. Big Shot was Kitty’s second cousin on her mother’s side.  See?  She’s related to damn near all of them.  That’s a good thing, though, because since I’m her best friend, I get a lot less shit than I’d get if I were some random chick off the street.

     “Looks like somebody had a tough night.  Cassie, what happened?”

     I said a lot less shit, not that I didn’t get any, at all.  “My senses got overloaded,” I said with a shrug.  I was so blasé about it that I felt like I should have been popping on a wad of gum.  “How was I to know that there’d be that much jasmine in a house that was supposed to be calling a demon from a hell dimension?”

     “Expect everything, Cassie.  That’s the first lesson you get in training.”  Mr. Big Shot leaned forward, pressing his knuckles into the glass table.  He was over three hundred pounds.  The table groaned.  Mr. Big Shot didn’t pay any attention.

     “Yes, sir, Mr. Guile, you got it.”  I saluted.  Half of the room laughed.  The other half groaned.  In the middle, Kitty shook her head in shame.  That happened a lot.  When your best friend is a loudmouth psycho girl, expect a lot of embarrassment and shame.

     Honestly, I wasn’t much interested in the meeting.  Somebody in this room was on Kitty’s hot list, and I wanted to know who it was.  There were very few possibilitites.  Scratch that.  There were very few possibilities for my hot list.  Kitty had a tendency to shock me sometimes. 

     Leo was gay, so despite the cuteness he was off limits.  Though, even being gay, maybe Kitty was trying to impress him.  Maybe she was itching for a gay boyfriend, and Leo was on the menu.  Nah.  She hadn’t given him a second look while she was sitting there.

     Two possibilities sat a few chairs down from me.  Gaston Bartholomew—Yes, his name was actually Gaston.  The DWC was full of people whose parents deserved a good “what were you thinking” and a slap upside the head. 

     Gaston was tall and his shoulders were broad.  He had a square jaw that was always clean shaven, and he always smelled of expensive cologne.  He gave off an air of ‘man’ as Kitty liked to call it.  He wasn’t one of those dainty metrosexuals that got regular manicures and spent hours in front of the mirror.  He was a man’s man, the kind of guy that was known for fighting in bars to protect his woman’s honor. 

     His name was Gaston, though, and that was a big no-no.  If I had to give advice over the picking of men, I’d say pass that one up.  I didn’t think I needed to give any advice, though.  Kitty was picky, and she once said that she could never have sex with a man named Gaston.  She would end up laughing and singing songs from Beauty & The Beast.  So, pass on Gaston.

     Javier Esposito was a good option.  He was Spanish and came from a long line of DWC agents.  He looked like Antonio Banderas and he sang like him, too.  Unfortunately, Javier was a siren, so we didn’t get to hear him sing too often.  No one wanted to end up walking out of a ten story window because his voice was just too pretty.

     Could Kitty be interested in him?  Her eyes flashed across the room, but she wasn’t looking at Javier.  She wasn’t looking at Gaston, thankfully, either.  Neither of them was why she decided to play pretty girl.  So, who was she looking at?

     “Jason! You’ve gotta be shitting me!”

     Oh, hell, did I say that out loud?  All eyes were on me, and Kitty was sliding further and further down into her chair.  I’ll be goddamned.  She was trying to impress the office jackass.  What had gotten into her head? 

     “Reading minds, Carrie?”

     I glared at Mr. Big Shot.  He was just another who didn’t understand that Carrie jokes didn’t embarrass me.  They only pissed me off.

     “It’s Cassie,” I said, sitting down in my chair.  I gave a circling finger to the room full of snickers. 

     “You’re working with Jason on this next case.  I need two of my best on it, and since they’re not available, you two are it.”

     Ha ha ha.  Some people actually laughed.  In fact, most of them laughed.  I felt it was better not to encourage him.  The man wasn’t funny and no amount of fake laughter was going to change that.

     I didn’t laugh because it wasn’t funny.  Kitty didn’t laugh because she was too busy hiding.  And Jason didn’t laugh because he was looking in our direction, wondering why I had just shouted out his name.  Yeah, like I was going to tell him.

     Oh, Kitty, darlin’, what are you thinking?  Even if she did manage to make him open his eyes and see all of the cuteness she had to offer, she couldn’t possibly really want him.  He was an asshole.  He was cocky and overconfident, and working with him, he was so gonna get me killed.  That’s not a guy to crush.  That was a guy to hate.

     I should really pay more attention to what’s going on around me.  The meeting was short, great, wonderful.  The meeting was over and I didn’t even know what Jason and I were supposed to be working on.

     “Kitty, tell me that I’m wrong.  Tell me that my senses, including my common sense is off because of the jasmine.  Or at least tell me that your common sense somehow got screwed up.  Tell me,” I begged, “that it’s not Jason.”

     “That I’m not what?”  Wonderful.  Did he not realize when girls were trying to have a life or death discussion with one another?

     I guess Jason was attractive, if assholes could be attractive.  He wasn’t a giant, but he was tall enough that Kitty could actually look up at him.  His eyes were dark and mesmerizing, and thankfully for Kitty, he had enough sense not to try and mesmerize women with them.  At least, not anymore.  I heard he was actually a DWC prisoner back when he first hit puberty.  That had to be a gas.

     His black hair shined with too much product.  He was one of those that spent hours in front of a mirror, I just knew it.  He even got regular manicures.  He was a metrosexual down to his pedicured feet!  Kitty, no!

     “We’ve got work to do, right?”  I stood up and glowered at him.  “Let’s do it.”

     “Do you even know what we’re supposed to be doing?”

     Smartass.  “No,” I told him, “but I’m sure you’ll fill me in.  And you can do that in my office.”  i.e. away from Kitty.  I didn’t want her around him anymore than she really had to be.  Maybe enough time without seeing him would help her find the brain that she’d lost.

     “I’ll talk to you later, Cassie.” Kitty’s voice was soft and almost wistful.  Oh Lord, she wished that she was the one walking off with Jason.  Help me, she was crushing seriously.  That was so, so very wrong.

     “Definitely later.”  I was going to talk her out of this.  Acutally, it might be a good thing that Jason and I had to work together.  I could get firsthand knowledge that would help to break whatever spell he had on Kitty.

     I think he has a hidden wife somewhere, or like, a dozen illegitimate kids.  He’s a playboy, or he’s actually gay.  There’s something in there, and whatever the secret is, I could find it and totally break Kitty of the spell.  Then, we could work on finding her someone suitable.  Someone who did not deserve his own containment cell at the DWC.  Someone who didn’t make my skin crawl.

     Was I selfish?  You bet your ass.  The last person I wanted to lose my best friend to was Jason.  But, at the same time, I didn’t want her to get hurt.  Jason didn’t come off as the type that would make a good match for her.  Then again, there wasn’t much I knew about him other than he was an asshole.  Once vampires hit fifty, they tend to get secretive.  He was over a hundred. 

    One way or another, though, I was going to find out information on him.  Good or bad, he wasn’t going to stay an enigma for long. 

     But first, we had work to do.  Assignment #1?  Find out what in the hell the assignment actually was.