InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 6: Shameless ❯ Chips and Salsa ( Chapter 35 )

~~Chapter 35~~

~Chips and Salsa~

 

 

 

Cain stumbled into the house just after midnight with a tired sigh and a grimace, wondering just what the odds were that he could head straight to bed without having to answer questions or be put to the third degree by someone like Ben with the best intentions, certainly. It didn't alleviate the fact that the last thing that he wanted or needed to do was to be grilled by his head general over the events of the day.

 

Gavin had called around three in the afternoon to tell Cain that he and Jillian were landing in Helena. She wanted to go home, and Gavin . . . well, the young man just wasn't good at telling Jillian `no' and meaning it. Evan had flown back a little after Gavin and Jillian since they hadn't been able to get a flight out together, but InuYasha had remained behind in Denver, waiting for Larry and Cartham to get there. They'd take care of the youkai, taking them all in for questioning before any verdict was handed down, but Cain had to get back. He needed to talk to Bas and Gunnar, and he needed to talk to Ben, but mostly, he had to find out what Jillian knew. Trouble was, he didn't really want to question her; at least not yet until she'd had a day or two to recover.

 

The house was empty, or so it seemed. Everyone must be in bed already, and he hoped that included Jillian, too. Bellaniece and her ass-monkey of a mate had arrived in his absence, and Cain supposed that Kichiro had likely given Jillian the medical once-over. He'd ask about that later, maybe in the morning . . .

 

Shuffling into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water, Cain stopped short when Bas glanced over his shoulder at him. “Water?” he asked, his tone careful, clipped.

 

Cain nodded. “Please.”

 

Bas grabbed two bottles out of the refrigerator and pushed the door closed with his elbow, chucking one bottle to Cain before jerking the lid off the other one and slugging back half of its contents in one long swallow.

 

Cain regarded his eldest son with a measure of suspicion. “All right,” he finally said, “what's eating you?”

 

Bas turned his head, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw ticking with the irritation he was trying to control. He didn't answer right away, and Cain heaved a heavy sigh. “I'm going to bed,” Cain remarked. “We can talk in the morning.”

 

“That was stupid, Dad, you know it?” Bas muttered abruptly, stopping Cain in his tracks.

 

Cain slowly turned to face his son once more. “Stupid?” he echoed, eyebrows lifting in surprise.

 

“Yeah, stupid,” Bas reiterated.

 

“How so?”

 

Bas snorted. “Pfft! You didn't know what they wanted—what you were walking into! You didn't know a damn thing, and you marched right in there, anyway.”

 

Cain sighed, leaning against the wall and leveling a no-nonsense look at Bas. “Did you think I wouldn't?” he challenged mildly.

 

Bas shook his head, slamming his water bottle onto the counter. “You've always told me that I can't just go flying off the handle without thinking things through! You've always said that being the tai-youkai came first and everything else came second! You've always said—”

 

“I've always said that your mother and you children came first!” Cain countered angrily. Ordinarily, he would have just let Bas have his tirade and been done with it. Maybe it was just the timing of this, on top of everything else that had happened during the course of the day, but Cain . . . He simply didn't feel the need to stand there and be chastised by his son when he'd done what he needed to do. “I was putting your sister first!”

 

“Yeah, well, contrary to what you might think, I don't really want to be tai-youkai just yet, damn it! What if something happened to you?”

 

Pushing himself away from the wall, Cain strode over to his son, drawing himself up to his full height, glowering at Bas with a fierce expression that he rarely made. Irritation delineated Cain's every movement, and he slammed his fist down on the counter beside him. “You know, Bas, I hope to God you never know why I did what I did. Do you understand? When you have children, and they're relying on you to protect them, I pray on all that is holy that you never, ever have to make the choice I made. Don't preach to me when you have no idea!”

 

To his credit, Bas didn't back down. Standing toe to toe with Cain, he glowered right back, his anger a palpable thing. “What if they'd kidnapped Jillian just to draw you out? What if it had been a trap? You've always said that I had to examine things from every conceivable vantage point, and then—”

 

“She's my daughter—your sister—and you damn well better have made the same choice I did if it had been your daughter, damn it!”

 

“Stop it!”

 

Both men turned in time to see Jillian—a blur of motion—as she darted over, ferreting her way between her father and brother as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” she screeched, pushing Cain back and stepping away, wrapping her arms around her stomach as the tears continued to fall. “Can't you . . .? Why do you have to . . .? Just stop it!”

 

Casting a furious glance at Bas, Cain reached for Jillian's arm. “Sweetie, listen,” he began.

 

“No, no, no, no, no!” she blubbered, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs. “No . . .”

 

“Jilli?” Gavin's soft voice interrupted. Sparing a moment to glance at Bas and Cain, he narrowed his eyes and hurried over, pulling Jillian against his chest, rubbing her back, smoothing her hair. “Come on, Jilli. You should be lying down.”

 

She sniffled and whimpered, hiding her face against his shirt. Gavin scooped her up, cradling her against his chest as though she were little more than a child, before pinning Bas and Cain with an angry scowl. “She's been through enough, don't you think?” he growled. “The last thing she wants or needs to hear is the two of you fighting over . . . trivialities.” His glower shifted to Bas. “You can't change it. What's done is done, and you—” his gaze roaming to meet Cain's, “—you're her father, for God's sake.”

 

He strode out of the room with Jillian in his arms. Cain blinked and stole a glance at Bas, who was looking rather odd, his expression a mix of surprise and irritation.

 

“Cain Zelig!”

 

Head snapping to the side in time to see Gin stride into the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest and a belligerent look on her face, Cain opened his mouth to say something—anything—to placate his mate before she had a go at him, too. It was too late. “Gin—”

 

“How could you upset Jillian like that?” she demanded, her youki crackling around her. Stomping over, she glared up at her mate with a mutinous scowl on her pretty face. “After everything that she's had to endure, you come home and start an argument with your son over something as ridiculous as that? You go running off in the middle of the night, but we were worried, you know!”

 

Cain cocked an eyebrow at her. “You think I can't fight?” he challenged quietly.

 

She rolled her eyes. “Of course you can, Zelig-sensei! But you more than anyone should have realized that we'd worry anyway! You, Evan, Jillian—”

 

“Aww, Mama . . . we're fine,” Evan grumbled, shuffling into the kitchen to grab two bottles of beer out of the refrigerator and handing one to Kichiro, who had followed him into the room. Ben stopped just inside the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest and trying his damndest not to look entirely amused by the situation.

 

“All the same,” Gin went on haughtily. “After all that . . .” She trailed off and shook her head, her face contorting as her scowl deepened, and when she spoke again, she punctuated her words by poking him dead-center in his chest. “Then you come home and start arguing when you know that Jillian's going to hear you, and all this time she's been worried that you'd been hurt even though we told her that we'd talked to you on the phone! You don't even go see her before you get into a screaming match with your son! How can you be such a—such a—so—so—How can you be such an ass?”

 

Cain blinked at that—Gin just didn't curse often. Bas looked completely stunned, and Evan had to hide his amusement behind a well-placed cough. Kichiro—ever the ass—didn't even try to hide the grin on his face, but Gin wasn't finished, not by a long shot. “We were worried about you, Zelig-sensei! It's been a long time since you've had to fight anyone, and regardless of whether or not you can fight, it's been a long time since you've had to do it!” Her eyes took on a glassy sheen, and Cain grimaced, knowing that the tears weren't far off. She shook her head stubbornly, determined to have her say, and she jabbed him hard in the shoulder. “You could have gotten yourself hurt or killed or—”

 

His sharp inhalation stopped her dead, and he couldn't help the grimace that contorted his features as pain erupted from the lightning burn in his shoulder. “Kami, you did hurt yourself, didn't you?” she murmured, slapping his hands away as she tugged at the front of the cheap button-down shirt he'd bought to replace the one he'd fought in before getting onto the plane bound for Helena. Giving up with a long-suffering sigh, Cain stood patiently and waited while Gin peeled the shirt back and uttered a soft whine. “Why didn't you tell me you were hurt?” she berated though her tone lacked any real censure. She grimaced at the grayed, inflamed skin she uncovered. “Oh . . .”

 

“It's fine,” he assured her. “It'll be gone by morning . . . or at least in a day or two.”

 

She took his hand and started dragging him toward the doorway. “Let me put some ointment on it,” she said, all traces of her earlier irritation gone.

 

“I'll be all right,” he protested.

 

Shaking her head, she kept moving, pulling him along behind her. “All the same, Cain, I want to get a better look at that. Did you get hurt anywhere else?”

 

“No, Gin,” he replied. Stopping in the doorway long enough to glance over his shoulder, he caught Bas' incredulous stare and broke into a very wide, very smug grin, lifting his free hand to wave at his son before letting Gin drag him out of the room and toward the stairway.

 

“How the hell does he do that?” Kichiro grumbled, looking completely disgusted by the turn in events.

 

“I can't believe she yelled at Dad,” Bas admitted, shaking his head in complete disgust at his father's penchant for manipulating the situation to his advantage.

 

Evan snorted, downing his beer in a single gulp before ambling over to rinse the bottle out in the sink. “I can't believe she said `ass',” he added with a chuckle.

 

Bas barked out a terse laugh. Kichiro grinned. Ben just shook his head and strode out of the kitchen.

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

“How are you feeling today?” Gavin asked as he sank down on the edge of the bed and held out a cup of coffee for Jillian. The sun was shining through the window, and she looked much better this morning than she had the day before. Still he couldn't help but be worried since Kichiro had said that it could take a few days for all the drugs to work themselves out of Jillian's system. He'd prescribed bed rest for her, and Gavin meant to make sure that she complied with the order. The only way he'd gotten her to agree to lie down for awhile was to let her use his Mokomoko-sama as a blanket. He sighed. `Whatever it takes, right?'

 

His youkai snorted. `Ri-i-ight . . .'

 

“Much better,” she assured him with a bright smile as she pulled Gavin's Mokomoko-sama up around her chin. “In fact, I'm feeling really good.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

She nodded, her smile taking on an impish sort of tilt. “Absolutely. Want to feel for yourself?”

 

Blushing furiously when he caught her meaning, he shook his head and chuckled. “You need to rest another day or two, Jilli,” he reminded her. “Kichiro said so.”

 

Wrinkling her nose, she heaved a melodramatic sigh and turned her attention to her coffee mug. “Fine, fine . . . but you'll owe me when this bed rest thing is done,” she pouted.

 

“Whatever you want, Jilli,” he promised, his blush deepening a little more.

 

A soft knock on the door interrupted her rebuttal. Pausing long enough to kiss her forehead, Gavin stood up and ambled over to answer it.

 

“Hi . . . is Jillian awake?”

 

Gavin nodded and stepped back to allow Cain entrance. Spotting his daughter sitting up in bed, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and shuffled over to stand beside her. “Hey, sweetie . . . how are you feeling today?”

 

Jillian set the coffee mug on the nightstand and shrugged, pulling her knees up, wrapping her arms around her ankles. “I'm okay,” she said quietly.

 

Cain grimaced. “I'm sorry about last night, Jilli. Your brother and I shouldn't have argued like that. Forgive me.”

 

She stared at the palm he held out to her for a moment before hesitantly slipping her hand into his. He sank down on the bed and pulled Jillian between his legs with Gavin's Mokomoko-sama cuddled around her, leaning back against the thick wood frame. She curled up on her side, resting her cheek against her father's shoulder, her head tucked under his chin as he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Daddy.”

 

“Love you, too, Jilli,” he murmured.

 

“You and Bassie aren't still fighting, right?”

 

“No,” he assured her. “We're not fighting anymore.”

 

“Good.”

 

Cain sighed. Gavin leaned back against the wall, crossing his ankles and watching as Cain and Jillian cuddled on the bed. The irrational feeling of misplaced jealousy ripped through him, and Gavin had to tamp down the desire to march straight over there and pull Jillian away.

 

“Jilli, sweetie . . . I need to ask you some questions,” Cain said gently, rubbing her back and looking as though he'd rather be doing anything else other than sitting there grilling her about the ordeal she'd just endured.

 

“Like what?”

 

He grimaced and glanced at Gavin. Gavin nodded, surprised that Cain was asking his permission to question Jillian. “I'm going to go make sure everything's okay with the ranch,” he muttered, slipping out of the room and leaving Cain alone with Jillian.

 

Cain nodded, watching as Gavin disappeared into the hallway before turning his attention back to his daughter once more. “Do you remember anything? Did they say anything to you?”

 

She frowned. “The guy—the doctor . . . he knew my biological parents.”

 

“What?”

 

She sat up a far enough to look into her father's face. He carefully kept his expression bland, refusing to let her see the questions that tumbled through his head. “He said . . . he said I looked like my mother.”

 

“He did . . .?”

 

She nodded, allowing Cain to pull her back against his chest once more. “Yeah . . . he didn't say much more than that, though . . .”

 

Cain digested that for a moment as memories of the day Jillian had come into his life cycled through his mind. She was so tiny, so beautiful, so perfect, and she'd stolen his heart in that moment. It didn't matter whether or not she was his daughter by birth; she was his daughter from the second he'd picked her up, held her against his heart. Those bright blue eyes, her tiny hand wrapping around his finger . . . he loved her as certainly as he loved any of his other children, and he supposed that over the years it had been easy to forget that she hadn't really been born a Zelig. He'd never been able to track down her natural family, and that had been a blessing in disguise, hadn't it? It had allowed him to keep her, and Gin . . . Gin was Jillian's mama in every single way.

 

“You don't remember anything else?” he asked, breaking the silence as he shook off the lingering remnants of his reverie.

 

“No . . .” she said slowly, scowling at the black ends of her hair. Her hair had grown back, of course, but the color was still there. She'd likely have Madison cut it later to get rid of the lingering dye. “Not really . . .”

 

Cain sighed. Cartham had already called earlier to tell him that Larry Rowland and he had taken the youkai into custody. Cain had ordered that they were all taken to headquarters in Maine to be confined at the state of the art facility under the Youkai Special Crime Unit's building until Cain got back to deal with them. The doctor, however, had been brought back to Montana and was currently being held in Moe's custody since Cain wanted him closer for questioning. In fact, Ben was over there interrogating him at the moment. Cain could only hope they were able to get some answers out of him . . .

 

“He did say something . . .” Jillian ventured, snuggling closer to Cain's chest.

 

“Oh, yeah?”

 

“Mmm . . .” She sighed, basking in the warmth of her father's embrace. “He got angry because the Zyrtoph broke. I remember because it sounded like something else they were going to drug me with,” she ventured.

 

Cain frowned. “Zyrtoph?” he echoed.

 

She nodded.

 

“Zyrtoph,” he repeated again. Why did that word sound familiar . . .?

 

“Okay, Jilli. Why don't you rest some more? I'm going to go downstairs and see if Ben's back yet. If you remember anything else, though, come find me, all right?”

 

“Yes, Daddy,” she replied, snuggling back down in the nest of pillows as Cain extricated himself from the bed. Pausing long enough to kiss Jillian's forehead, he pulled the Mokomoko-sama closer under her chin and rubbed his face as he shuffled out of the room.

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Evan leaned back against the wall in the living room beside the fireplace, watching and listening as the paltry bit of information that Ben had been able to get out of the doctor was laid out on the table, so to speak.

 

“So basically he said nothing,” Cain growled, slamming his coffee mug down on the coffee table as he shot out of his chair and paced the floor.

 

Ben rubbed his forehead and sighed. “And Jillian wasn't able to tell you anything?”

 

Cain shot him a dark look and kept pacing. “No . . . just something about Zyrtoph, I think . . . She wasn't really sure.”

 

“Zyrtoph?” Gunnar repeated with a frown.

 

Cain nodded. “Something like that . . .”

 

“Sounds familiar,” Bas mused.

 

“She said he knew her real parents,” Kichiro spoke up.

 

“We are her real parents,” Cain growled coldly.

 

Kichiro rolled his eyes. “Let's quibble the incidentals, Zelig . . . Her biological parents, then.”

 

Cain sighed. “Yes.”

 

Ben sat down and pulled Gavin's laptop computer over. “Where did you say she was taken?” Ben asked, sparing Evan a questioning glance.

 

“Uh . . . Carradine Medical,” Evan supplied.

 

“Yeah? And did you see that before or after you had your ass handed to you?” Bas asked dryly.

 

“Shut the fuck up, Bubby,” Evan grumbled.

 

Bas grinned insincerely.

 

“Lost your temper, didn't you?” Gunnar cut in before Bas could retort in kind.

 

Evan grimaced. “Maybe.”

 

InuYasha snorted. “Keh!”

 

“Sound like someone you know, old man?” Kichiro asked.

 

“Shut it, pup,” InuYasha growled.

 

Cain rolled his eyes. “Losing your temper is your biggest problem, Evan,” he pointed out.

 

“Yeah, whatever, Cain,” Evan grouched.

 

“No, not `whatever',” Cain insisted. “You're lucky you weren't hurt worse than you were, damn it!”

 

“And that's pretty irrelevant now, isn't it?” Evan shot back. “Or doesn't Jillian matter anymore.”

 

Cain looked like he wanted to argue it further, but he drew a deep breath and flopped back down in the chair he'd vacated, raking his hands through his hair in a thoroughly exasperated sort of way.

 

Gavin loped down the stairs and glanced at the gathering without stopping as he hurried off to the kitchen. “Anything new?”

 

“No,” Bas grouched. “Did they say anything to you?”

 

Gavin's voice drifted out of the kitchen. “Just that Dr. Avis wanted her brought in.”

 

“Dr. Avis?” Evan queried.

 

“Apparently the mastermind behind the operation,” Cain replied, draining his coffee mug and slamming it down once more.

 

“Carradine Medical was the headquarters for a research team some years ago,” Ben interrupted without taking his eyes off the computer monitor. “One of the two heads of research died on a river rafting vacation, and the other one . . . must have retired or something. It says he closed the facility and disappeared.”

 

“Medical Research?” Kichiro piped up with a shake of his head. “Carradine . . . I remember them . . . they did quite a bit of youkai research . . .”

 

Gavin strode out of the kitchen with a bag of tortilla chips in one hand and a jar of salsa in the other. Cain glanced at him only to do a classic double take as his eyebrows shot up to disappear beneath the fringe of bronze bangs. “Gavin?”

 

Gavin grimaced. “I'll be right back. Jillian's been talking about chips and salsa ever since we got back.”

 

“Chips and salsa?”

 

Bas snorted. “Pfft! She's not pregnant, is she?”

 

Gavin blushed. “Wha . . .? No . . .”

 

“Hurry up,” Bas grumbled.

 

“Sorry . . . Jilli said something about hearing the word `chips', and, well, you know how her mind works sometimes.”

 

“Wait,” Kichiro blurted, reaching out to grab Gavin's arm before Gavin could head back up the stairs. “Where did she hear that?”

 

Gavin frowned. “I-I don't know . . . she said it once when she was . . .” He grimaced, glancing around as though he were afraid that everyone was going to tell him he was crazy. “It was like she was talking to me, in my head . . . She might have been drugged at the time, though . . . she said she thought she was . . .”

 

“Because she was in trouble,” he concluded with a curt nod. “Makes sense. About this chip thing . . . what else did she say?”

 

Gavin shook his head. “Just . . . she just said she was hungry and that she wanted salsa . . .”

 

Kichiro considered that for a moment. “Damn . . .”

 

“`Damn', what?” Cain demanded.

 

Kichiro turned to Evan, effectively ignoring Cain's question. “Ev, you said that there was a bunch of scanning equipment?”

 

Evan nodded slowly. “Yeah . . . one of those huge scanners . . . like an MRI machine or something . . . a few handheld ones like security uses in airports . . .”

 

“. . . And a Zyrtoph,” Kichiro mused.

 

Gunnar nodded, shoving himself away from the wall. “Right . . . Zyrtoph . . . isn't that a specialized scanner?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Cain looked like he was ready to hit someone. “Why does Zyrtoph sound so familiar?”

 

“It's a brand name, Papa,” Kichiro said, adding the tag just to irritate Cain. “A scanning device used to locate bio-chips.”

 

“Bio-chips?” Gavin echoed, his scowl growing darker, more menacing by the second.

 

Kichiro sighed. “Bio-chips . . . simple things, really,” he explained. “They're implanted just under the skin with a needles, like a shot, but once introduced, the chip fuses with the body's fatty tissues so that the chip basically become as a part of the host. They don't normally hold a lot of information, but they've been used a lot more recently by parents as a means of identifying their children in case of emergency, but given that the chips disintegrate fairly quickly when removed or when the living tissue it is implanted in dies, then they're not as effective as standard chips, either.”

 

“You think someone put a chip in my daughter?” Cain demanded.

 

“I don't know. It sounds like it might well be that.”

 

“Who'd do that?” Gavin growled.

 

Kichiro shook his head. “First things first: let me make a few phone calls. Zyrtoph scanners aren't easy to come by.”

 

Digging his cell phone out of his pocket, he strode over to the sliding glass doors and slipped outside.

 

Evan shook his head, fighting to control the rapidly rising irritation that anyone would have done such a thing to Jillian.

 

“Ben . . . go back over there. Ask Avis about this chip.”

 

Ben pushed himself to his feet. “You sure you want me to do that before we find out one way or another if what Kichiro suspects is true?”

 

Cain stood up, stalked over to the glass doors, watching as Gin, Madison, Charity, Chelsea, Sydnie, and Bellaniece laughed and chattered to one another. “I want to know what the hell they were looking for,” he growled.

 

Ben nodded. “Understood.”

 

 

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Final Thought fromCain:

A Zyrtoph scanner …?

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Shameless): I do not claim any rights to InuYashaor the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~