99 Gods: Betrayer Read online

  “This is no whim, woman. I prayed for three weeks before I dared. What I’m doing is necessary.”

  “Friends, you need to know that this woman is totally resistant to my abilities,” the God projection said. “She’s a Class F Immune.”

  Satan ignored the God projection and his blather. He was about as useful here as a third cup on a bra.

  “Lorenzi, you’ve finally lost your ever-loving mind,” Satan said. “Necessity attracts the infernal forces you fear faster than anything. I taught you that lesson centuries ago. Weren’t you listening?”

  “Of course I listened, but what do you care? You only care about yourself, no matter what you say.”

  “Calumny and invective won’t save your soul, Lorenzi,” Satan said. The rest of them had become audience, even Nessa and Ken, though Nessa picked at Satan’s mind with her excellent mind reading tricks. Inevitable, Satan decided. Perks of the powerful. “As you know, I despise mad male autocrats. I’ve brought down more than my fair share of them, my good deed to the world. Between takedowns, I like comfort, as much as you do.” Unfortunately, taking down modern autocrats took time. There was only so much bad luck she could give someone, and modern mad male autocrats had such incredible numbers of fawning ass-lickers that she couldn’t get to them easily.

  “So?”

  “Mad male magicians are always prime targets. They always turn into the worst sort of autocrats, small scale and bloody. It’s the pattern, Lorenzi.” Patterns were important. Amplify the echo in a pattern and you amplify the pattern. If you did the trick often enough you could change the world.

  Not necessarily for the better.

  “Why kidnap one of my magicians, then? Doesn’t this make you an accessory?”

  “I can handle Willie,” Satan said, and showed a bit of her power. Or a bit of her power showed itself. Only on rare days could she fully control her power.

  The stunned mob eased back from her show of power. “She’s evil,” Alt said.

  Fool, mistaking power for enmity. Not the first to make the mistake.

  “Alt, get a grip,” Nessa said. “She’s no more evil than John is. John’s just been playing games with us again.”

  Satan licked her lips. She liked this one, even if the edgy pregnant woman stood ready to attack in an instant if Satan twitched the wrong way. Despite her young mortal body, she had an icy heart and a frigid soul. Cold logic guided her every decision. Well, every sane decision. Her hold on sanity looked frayed and worn, and Satan felt the primal chaos leaking through.

  “Nessa, beware,” Lorenzi said. “She’s perfectly capable of messing up your mind. In addition to her infernal powers, Satan’s the most mystical Mystic on the planet. In your terms, she’s Telepath numero uno.”

  Satan looked over the mob. Most were, as she expected, disgusted. She disgusted most people, primarily because of her body odor, an odor stronger than soap, deodorants and perfumes. She found disgust a useful weapon and wielded it well, focusing the effects on some to spare the others. For instance, right now, she spared Nessa and Ken. “Dear,” she said to Nessa, “You can tell I possess no mind-reading tricks – telepathy, in your terms – at all. I used to, but no longer. They’re the road to madness, I should warn you.”

  Nessa laughed. “I’ve heard the advice before, Bais, from people who chose evil over madness. Bah. Sanity is overrated,” she said, revealing far too much dysfunctionality in the process.

  Most interesting.

  “She wears the lives of those she’s slain like a cloak,” Persona said. Good alliteration. “This is wrong, Nessa. You should know better. She’s like Atlanta! Don’t even talk to her.”

  Bad luck, that. Satan wanted Persona, but her recruitment attempt hadn’t taken. Insufficient information about what these Gods sensed. Bitch!

  Birds flapped at the edges of her mind, and she turned to the miscreant attackers, an old man and a hard-bitten woman, both Telepaths. Talk about a futile waste of energy. “You two can’t read or control my mind, not even close,” Satan said, waving her left cane at them. “Don’t force me to whack you one. Be polite.” Or else. They backed off, picking up on the unvocalized ‘or else’ with ease.

  Well trained. Perhaps there was more to Nessa, their trainer, than she suspected. Training Telepaths took incredible self-discipline, and to get them to work together as a group took more.

  “What did you do to set her off, John?” Nessa said. “You told us Satan kidnapped Willie, but it’s clear to me now that you came to her.”

  The fat friar muttered under his breath for far longer than even Satan thought appropriate. Nessa’s words! She was able to read Lorenzi’s blinkered mind, his side thoughts at least, a feat few ever managed. Yes, there was more to Nessa than her projected aura of insanity.

  “I wanted to talk to her to find out her plans,” Lorenzi said. “When I showed up she became hostile about my abandonment of my long mission and my training of magicians. I told her I’m not corrupted, and to watch me work. That’s when she took Willie.”

  “Training magicians is stupid,” Satan said. Magic was evil because magic was made evil. She knew of no way around the problem, and there hadn’t been a way around the problem for a good part of her life. Lorenzi knew this. He took a huge risk in using magic himself, but Satan trusted someone as old as him to take years to fall into corruption, perhaps decades. He would likely get himself killed long before he fell.

  His pupils, however…they would suffer and fall into corruption, and quickly. Needlessly. Painfully. Apparently, Lorenzi didn’t care. Evil asshole.

  To her surprise, all the present Gods and God projections agreed with her assessment, at least in their secret hearts of hearts. None of them gave her the least bit of verbal support, though. Typical.

  Nessa put her hands on her hips and angled her hips to support her second trimester pregnancy. Twins, if Satan could believe the tabloids. She wondered how well Nessa coped with such mundane attention. “Why do I have the feeling you’re not telling me everything?” Nessa asked Lorenzi.

  Nessa hadn’t had one of her fits around the reporters. Yet. That would be a remarkable sight. Probably inevitable, alas, given Nessa’s strengths and weaknesses. Poor thing, so filled with flaws. Satan sympathized.

  “Likely because he only tells us what truths we want to hear,” Ken said. Well, that sounded like some juicy history here, eh? Typical Lorenzi asshole behavior, most likely. “Ma’am, Bais, why are you here in the United States? Is there something we can do to help you?”

  “Such a pleasant man,” Satan said. Her trick had succeeded. Disgust at her hadn’t triumphed over Nessa nor Ken. They stayed leery, but polite. “I don’t know yet what my mission here is, if indeed there is a mission to be had. I smell worse problems than the obvious…and I do need some people to talk to who know the lay of the land among the powerful. The talking would save me a lot of work.”

  “We’ll fill you in,” Ken said.

  “Shit,” Alt said, his aura altering. “Sorry, everyone, for the interruption. Dubuque’s up to something. He’s found a way to put up shields around his mega-church headquarters that can keep me out. It hurts.”

  “Huh. Me, too,” the old man Telepath said, a moment later. He coughed a phlegmy mess on his sleeve. “Totally blocked.”

  Ken whistled. “I didn’t think anything could stop you, Javier.”

  They chattered and, if Satan guessed correctly, mind-chattered thousands of words on the subject, to no avail. They couldn’t do anything about Dubuque, who lived half way across the damned continent from here.

  “Such bad luck,” Satan said.

  “This is Satan’s work. She causes bad luck wherever she goes,” Lorenzi said. “She’s the tormenter of Job, humanity’s nightmare, the ultimate font of evil, Pandora, the tempter in the Garden of Eden, the tempter of Christ, Mohammed’s enemy, the tempter of Buddha. Surrender to her, attack her or flee. There are no other options.”

  “Dissembling again, Lorenzi,” Sa
tan said, bending her will to keep Willie in place. “I’ll admit to no such things in a literal sense.” She knew she had been the direct source of the Maara the Tempter legend of the Buddha: sense-desires, boredom, hunger, thirst, yadda yadda yadda. Only, as usual, the chroniclers had gotten her sex wrong. Such idiots. “What I said was that I had lived long enough to make my way into countless stories, legends, myths and fairy tales. Perhaps I should have mentioned Hansel and Gretel instead of Job, but since I’d thought I was talking to an educated holy man, I thought a legend from the Christian Bible would better pique your interest and be more appropriate.”

  “The Bible doesn’t lie,” Lorenzi said. “You’re evil incarnate, worse than an Angel fallen from Heaven.”

  “You’re a religious fool.”

  Nessa put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Okay, fine, you two have deep philosophical issues, but if it’s possible I’d like to let them sit for a moment. Bais, you implied you were responsible for these fancy protections Dubuque just put on his place. How is this possible?”

  “It’s possible because all our tricks disobey God’s laws,” Satan said. “Time is but an illusion, as is cause and effect. When people hassle me, they get bad luck. The more powerful the person, the worse their luck becomes. Ill-omened coincidences often follow. I’m not in control of the ill-omened coincidences. Well, not of those out of my sight. Lorenzi tried to get me burned at the stake once and for centuries afterwards he attracted pig shit, and his curse was all my fault. That’s more personal than the connection between your group, me and Dubuque. When the enmity’s so distant the bad luck’s never under my control.”

  “That’s illogical,” one of the Mindbound said, a dapper young man. He sounded overly educated. “You’re talking nonsense, flawed logic.”

  “You hang with a magician and my nearly mundane explanation bothers you?”

  The man blanched. “The magician’s abilities are unnatural, that is true, but they’re not illogical.”

  “Well, then, you should look closer,” Satan said. “Logical or not, these alterations of reality do happen. They’re as much a mystery to me as they are to you, even given the scientific advances over the last two centuries. I’ll tell you what, Mr. Intellectual, you figure out how and why Telepaths work the way they do at the physics level and I’ll make sure you have good luck for a very long time.” She sniffed. “Supermodels. Blowjobs. Whatever floats your boat.” He blanched. Poor man, having such inferior interests.

  As far as she could tell, everything she knew about her abilities violated everything she knew about physics. Dr. Heisenberg – such a nice man! – hadn’t been able to help, either, but she suspected some of what she told him about reality and time had helped him.

  Lorenzi’s mob hadn’t followed her explanation, so she tried again. “These protections you say Dubuque’s created are bad luck for you. That’s the operative phrase, ‘bad luck’. If you hadn’t hassled me, you wouldn’t have had the bad luck. That’s the way my tricks work. I don’t even need to think about them for them to work. Nor is this something I arranged or even wanted. Nor is this something I knew about, or suspected. Nor did I cause this to happen; nor did I interfere with Dubuque’s free will, if he possesses any.” After what she had seen of his putative ally, Verona, she had her doubts.

  “In that case, ma’am, why don’t we make you comfortable,” Ken said. “You look like you need a long rest, Bais. Sit, sit.”

  “There. That’s the way,” Satan said. She hobbled over to Ken and patted him on the arm. “Be polite. Have good luck. We’ll all profit. The bad luck I create has rebounded on me in so many bad ways that I nearly worship any politeness granted me.” She sat.

  Too bad Ken’s acting skills sucked. He looked ready to puke, despite his words, even though she kept her ill aura off him as best she could. He probably had amplified senses, she guessed. Still, his words and actions outweighed his true feelings.

  “You’re a monster,” the old woman Telepath said, glaring at Satan. She turned to the rest of her compatriots. “I need to leave this place. I must. I can’t stay around anyone this disgusting! She attracts ghosts. Bad ghosts.” Oh, the poor dear, Satan thought. She did attract ghosts. She couldn’t do anything about the ghosts, either.

  “We’re supposed to be rescuing Willie,” John said. “Come on, people, come on…”

  “Forget it, this isn’t going to happen,” Alt said. He put his arms around the old hard bitten woman Telepath and the old man Telepath, and herded them toward the door out of the library. “John, there’s no way we can rescue Willie. I mean, man, he’s right there and I can’t even contemplate going over to help him stand. We’re well out of our league. You want him? You go rescue him.”

  “I can’t,” Lorenzi said. “You say he’s right there? I can’t even see him. I’m not immune to Satan’s tricks. Far from it.”

  Satan snorted. “Which is why, in weakness, you named me Satan and spread the word about me and my appearance,” she said. “Five hundred years ago you did this, you bastard, and my silhouette is still the main symbol for ‘wicked witch’. You won’t even admit to the collateral damage your actions caused. The souls of all those burned women who weren’t witches lie upon your shoulders. This, your karma, is why the Gods are beating you like a drum in this contest. Your evil past can’t cope with their essential initial goodness.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Lorenzi said. “Her lies will seduce you. Nothing she says is true.”

  “Seduce? I’ve been celibate longer than your lifetime, Lorenzi,” Satan said. She hadn’t said any falsehoods, either. “You want to amuse yourself, Johnny, go find a dog. A small dog. You’ll know your type of bitch when you see her.”

  “Nessa, Ken, aren’t you coming with us?” Alt said, ignoring Lorenzi. Save for Ken and Nessa, he had edged the Telepath crew nearly through the door. Sweat rolled down Alt’s forehead and beaded on his sunglasses. He sensed too much and he didn’t possess the willpower to change what he sensed or the experience to understand.

  “I’m staying, Alt,” Nessa said. “Persona, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “I’m going with them,” the God said, as she walked away from Ken and Nessa. “I’m sorry. I must. I can’t stay in the same room with this…whatever she is. She’s done something to you and I can’t help you anymore.”

  Nessa shook her head. “Look, I’m fine, well, okay, as fine as I ever am. I guess we’ll see you back in Seattle. Please don’t worry about me.”

  Alt shook his head. “I’m not sure we should meet again. You’ve fallen under Satan’s sway, which means you’re damned for all time. I no longer…I can’t trust you.” With that, Alt gave in to his panic and left the library in a dead run, hand over his mouth. His crew half-carried Lorenzi out as he balked and complained. In a moment, the rest of the mob flew off, powered by terror. They had supped on each other’s fears until their fears had consumed them.

  Typical.

  “Wonderful,” Ken said, as Alt’s mob kissed sky. “Kicked off the team. Kicked out of our team at that.”

  “Phhht! We knew this was coming,” Nessa said. “Consider how many arguments we’ve had with Alt and the rest in the past week. Far too many. We weren’t wanted, and as you suggested, the team wouldn’t last beyond the next crisis point.”

  “You’re fools,” Willie said. Now that the rest of the idiots were gone, Satan didn’t bother to ensure Willie stayed still. That didn’t mean he could say anything but mindless blather, though. “You’re as captured as I am. She’ll never let you go.”

  Nessa laughed. “I don’t think so. You see, I’m pretty near as powerful as Bais, and Ken’s not far behind. Different skills, of course, though, and the mind stuff is my specialty. We’re here only because we choose to be.” Nessa turned to Satan and looked her over. Satan looked back and didn’t like what she sensed. Nessa didn’t lie, but pure Telepaths couldn’t be that powerful. Which meant she had to be the…

  “You saw the g
laciers retreat, which is fucking crazy and true,” Nessa said, driving Satan’s thought out of her mind. “You’re not human. You’re a mass murderer, but you’ve done the dirty deeds over so many centuries it doesn’t count. You’re not evil, but you’re not good, either. We can’t work closely with you without going mad. Your effect on those around you is, as the others stated, evil, even if you’re not. The effect’s just not under your control. Willie can protect himself from going mad, because this is built into magicians, which can’t be a coincidence, but we can’t. Well, actually, I think Ken can, if you took him on as an apprentice, but I can’t, because you look at me and think ‘poor defenseless Telepath’. My socks are already clamoring for me to leave. So talk, and talk quickly, before I need to boogie.”

  Satan sighed. Such temperamental folk. Socks? The poor mind reader already drowned in madness. Satan hobbled over to a couch and sat down. “If you can read the edges of my mind and the thoughts dwelling there, then you are powerful, my dear. I’m glad you also embrace your mortality, for if you didn’t, you would become epically evil. You’re wrong, though. Both of you can learn to protect yourself from my aura, if you wish, and do the work. You hold the talent and the power to arrange this in your own minds. Few do.”

  “Your life must be lonely.”

  “There’s plenty of bad people to live with,” Satan said. “I don’t give a damn what happens to them.”

  Ken smiled. He understood. The truly evil had no rights.

  Nessa sat down beside Satan, reached into one of Ken’s coat pockets and brought out a half-eaten bar of chocolate. “Want some?”

  “Thank you, dear,” Satan said. She took a square of chocolate into her hand and popped it into her mouth. Yum. Too bad these two couldn’t stay with her now. Nessa was right about her life being lonely. “Willie, go fix us some more of that tasteless tea and get us some black bread with honey, too, please.” She turned to Nessa. “You understand how to protect yourself?”

  Nessa shook her head. “I believe you, but I don’t understand how to right this instant. Ken, how long do we have?”