99 Gods: Odysseia Read online

  “If Bais no longer thinks of this place as hers to protect, the Gods can now appear here and do things,” Betrayer said. “Just like I am, right now! Bwah hah hah. This place is now mine!”

  A roomful of crazies pulled weapons and anti-supernatural charms and pointed them at her projection. Joe Van Gelder, now a Montreal Supported, put up a futile Supported protective screen around him and his companions and sweated smelly sweat like the old white-ass meat-and-potatoes man he was.

  “But…” Nessa interrupted herself, clenching her fists and flicking her eyes from Dave to Betrayer and back, hesitant. “Dammit, bitch.” Nessa made her choice, crossed her arms and glared at Betrayer. “Save for you, our location is a secret. That’s no argument.” Estrada reached forward with his left hand and put his hand on Nessa’s arm.

  Then he put his right hand on Betrayer’s shoulder and did something. Betrayer let him, intrigued. Whatever he did wasn’t an attack. “That’s not true,” she said. “I just told Akron…”

  Wham. Betrayer winced but didn’t spoof from Nessa’s full-powered telepathic blast. Estrada’s something turned out to be a projected telepathy protection, good enough to keep her projection whole but not enough to stop the pain. His action piqued Betrayer’s interest. She had known about Estrada’s ability to protect his wife, Elorie, but hadn’t realized he could protect people he wasn’t emotionally linked to. Or Gods.

  “Emotional, perhaps?” Betrayer said. Around them, the people in the room moaned in agony again.

  “Bitch.” Nessa took a deep breath and backed away a step, shaking Estrada’s hand off her. Betrayer relaxed, now catching edges of telepathic interplay between Nessa and her socks. Had Estrada opened her up to her socks as well? He must have, likely unconsciously. “Fine. You win. I give. We’re leaving tomorrow night. Let’s get packing.” She turned to her mother. “All better!” Twinkle twinkle. “And you’re going to just love telekinetic flying!”

  Ken sent.

  The moment of shared glee ended in a thud. Everyone stopped in place, including Betrayer. Nessa slowly turned and glared at Ken. Elorie grabbed Ken and, as Betrayer marveled, immunized him against magic. Damn, that was a useful trick.

  Ken sent.

  Elorie sent.

  Ken sent.

  Elorie sent, the emotions, not the words.

  Ken did, telepathically. A dense telepathic conversation ensued between the six adults in Nessa’s family, including Uffie and her bodyguard, Tracy. was all Betrayer gleaned from this. She took notes, intensely interested in the six of them and the ‘act as one’ state they slipped into occasionally. Useful.

  Jurgen sidled up to Betrayer. “Hsst. Montreal wanted me to pass along a warning to you: watch your back, there are parasites out there. Other than that, you’re still not a welcome visitor.”

  “Gotcha,” Betrayer said, giving the guy the glare as he backed away. He knew of her as Atlanta, but didn’t know she was Atlanta. He didn’t trust her at all, one of the reasons she was courting Jan and Knot. Somehow, she needed to ally with the Indigo and find a way to get them back together. She also had to learn how to use Dave and Elorie. Their twin abilities were far too potent to ignore.

  “Thank you for the rental of your lair,” Betrayer brayed to the room, just before she departed. “I’m sure I’ll find some use for this pile of crap… Such as target practice. Bwah hah hah.”

  8. (John)

  “Mother Mary, please, I need answers,” John said to the empty air, his vision narrowed to a tiny cone. For the second time in two days he had hiked up to the lonely clearing of Nessa’s hideaway. For the second time in two days, he subjected his body to the Alaskan cold. For the second time in two days, he called upon the Virgin.

  For the first time ever he magically warded his mind from external influences. He wanted to prove Elorie had been mistaken. Such were his prayers.

  The Virgin appeared in his tunnel vision, dressed as always as a Hebrew of her era. As always, the religious ecstasy of the presence of the Virgin overwhelmed him.

  “What say you today, Magician?” the Virgin asked. “Now more than ever your will must guide you, and…”

  Anger filled him as his preparatory magics proved Elorie correct about this charade. “I am having a hard time believing that you, Sorrow, were the holy mother of Christ.”

  The Virgin’s expression didn’t change, but she walked over to John and sat next to him. Her body smelled of incense, and needles crumbled under her weight, far too real to be just a vision. She took his hand in hers; her cool hand pulsed with immense magic and soothed his soul. “I am the Virgin Mary – and Sorrow,” she said. “After the mother of Christ died I became her, in spirit, and changed the legend.”

  Relief, at least a little. “I feel lost, a pawn. All I ever wanted was to understand myself and my place in God’s plans,” he said. Unbidden, tears came to his eyes.

  “As do we all,” Sorrow said. “You were once a pawn, that is true. An arrow aimed at the secret heart of the Scholars of God. The arrow struck and they learned wisdom. You continued on and became your own person, and have in time become the Father of Darkness.”

  John found his tunnel vision fixated on Sorrow’s holy eyes. “I’ve been in deep study of the old records of the Ecumenists and their predecessors. I now know you and your fellow Fallen Angels taught the early members of the group that much later became the Scholars of God and that you were ancient even then.”

  “Yes. Your point, Magician?”

  “Why? What kind of game have you been playing with us?” John asked. Sorrow didn’t answer his question. “I can feel the evil within you, hidden for the moment under your holy goodness. How can you be this way?”

  “If I told you here, now, you wouldn’t believe me,” Sorrow said. “Experience is needed. Come to us and we will speak on the ancient days and of the present.”

  “You do invite me, then? Then Dave and Elorie were right to suggest I visit you. Were they right about all things?”

  “Come and learn. You are safe with us,” Sorrow said. “I will enjoy your delicious pain as you learn the secrets of the ages, and rejoice in your holy darkness. But if you are to come, come quickly. Because of the actions of the Daughter of Light, too many now know of us. More will perceive us shortly. The world would become a worse place if we became the possession of one of the 99 Gods. Remember the lessons you learned on Witch Mountain.”

  “I shall come, and quickly,” John said. Centuries old memories of foul Hell-demons swirled in his mind, remnants of long ago horrific encounters on a mountain in Germany. Lessons, though?

  “We shall await you.”

  Sorrow’s presence left him. John vomited his breakfast before stumbling down the slope to his trailer home.

  “Sit, sit, please,” Elorie said, after she invited John in to Nessa’s house, larger and more permanent than the other trailers now inhabiting her property. She nursed Alana; Ken held the infant Zachary in his right arm. Elorie sat in Ken’s lap on the sofa, surrounded by three half-packed suitcases and two diaper bags. No Nessa, no Dave. He refused to allow himself to think about what monstrous evil those two might be doing right this instant. Elorie in Ken’s lap was bad enough. He had hoped to talk to all four of Nessa’s family.

  Ken’s grin faded as John settled heavily into the single chair, reading his nervous vibes despite John’s mental shields.

  “I want to apologize for yesterday,” John said, eyes on Elorie’s face and not her open nursing breast. “I was out of line. You were right.”

  “Accepted,�
�� Elorie said. “It’s to be expected. Strife and discord are the ways of the Watchers.” Elorie’s heart-stopping beauty, enhanced by Persona when Persona had rebuilt the woman after removing the cancer from her body, always struck him hard, an arrow in his soul. Her soft heart-shaped face, thick pouty lips, long wavy black hair, deep black eyes, and snub nose challenged the beauties of the ages. She met his eyes with cunning as well as beauty, an experienced leader he feared to cross. Training her in her immunities had been quite difficult, and he feared he hadn’t done as thorough a job as he needed to.

  “Sorrow was indeed clouding my mind, which I was able to pierce today, at least a little,” John said.

  “Ah,” Elorie said, studying him.

  “I need advice and ideas,” John said. “Although it’s time for my group to visit Watchers, I can’t fathom what our highest priority should be. The Ecumenists left us no clues about what a Father of Darkness might do, and Sorrow just warned me about Hell-demons, as if she was one of the Indigo! I don’t know at all what’s going on.” He paused and wiped his sweaty forehead. “You two experienced the Watchers in person. Do you have any ideas?” Was there a connection between the Watchers and the Indigo, or their European predecessors, the so-called Aristocrats? How had his old and cautious occasional allies kept such a connection from him?

  Elorie frowned. “The Watchers are horrific and their goodness does not cancel out their evil. We’ve come to believe the Angelic Host is right, that the Watcher’s evil can easily contaminate the 99 Gods.”

  Hmm. Which meant one particular member of John’s current group shouldn’t be going with them. “I believe your assertion, based on what I’ve sensed of Sorrow and what she told me.”

  “John, they got to Nessa,” Ken said. John winced. “They got to all of us, in our group, at one time or another. You’ll need to watch out for their tricks.”

  He nodded.

  “I think you need to find some way to harness the good within the Watchers,” Elorie said. “Or at least find some way of harnessing their power in some manner that isn’t overwhelmingly evil.” The baby at her breast made a slurping sound, and she turned away for a moment as she handed off Alana and put Zachary on her breast. Wanton to do this in public; for things like this God created men and women to live separate lives.

  “I can try,” John said. He feared, though, that such a task lay far beyond a ‘Father of Darkness’. “Any other ideas?”

  Ken and Elorie exchanged something telepathically and flickered into some obscure psychic state he knew he should recognize. He still had a problem with the borrowed telepathy and telekinesis games, but not as much as in years past. Satan had been training Reed in her off hours, and he had been stuck listening as Reed detailed all the telepathic nonsense that Satan had been doing to him. John had trained countless Telepaths himself and had known for centuries that Telepaths were neither sane nor human, but for Satan to drive it home so brutally raised calluses on his soul.

  “According to the Watchers, the Father of Darkness must prepare the Watchers so they can be returned to God,” Ken said. Elorie smiled. “As one mind, the two of us believe that your true purpose is to undo the Watchers’ Godly magic, especially the magic trapped in their gamme.”

  One mind. That explained a lot about how Nessa’s family functioned, although it was still a tall red totem pole for him. The state of ‘one mind’ transcended the flesh, which meant that perhaps they weren’t carnally experiencing each other. Still, he understood full well about the trials and tribulations of the ‘one mind’ state, too perilous, too inhuman and too unnatural to be maintained for long. That is, unless the Telepaths grew up within the one mind state. He thought the state inhuman even then.

  Best not to speak about the trick now, though. Not if he wanted to keep their good will.

  John thought about their advice. He still couldn’t make himself believe the Fallen Angels were Gods, despite how right Elorie had been about everything else. “Undoing their magic? The idea occurred to me as a possibility. I do think you’re on to something, though. Thank you.”

  Disquieting. He made polite noises and left.

  “You stick a burr under your Mother Mary’s bonnet yet, John?” Satan asked. She waved her cane at the last of the moving crew, who threw their dollies in the back of the moving truck and dieseled off. The makeshift parking area where the trailers lodged bustled with people and vehicles preparing to depart. Reed would make sure someone came for the trailers once they had gone, to retrieve at least a bit of his money for the next emergency.

  He nodded. “She’s Sorrow, just as Dave and Elorie surmised, and she got me worse than I got her,” John said. “You still sure you want to accompany me? Whatever these Fallen Angels are, laid-back and easy to dominate they aren’t.”

  “I wouldn’t miss this for the end of the world,” Satan said. “I’ll tell you, the Ecumenist records have been a real eye-opener and a real prod to my musty old memories. I’ve got some things I want to ask these Fallen Angels.” Satan still looked older than God Almighty’s mother, but at least she walked straight and didn’t smell like the pits of Hell any more.

  “I wouldn’t miss confronting them, either,” Reed said. “You realize how many legends those creeps show up in? They’ve been mucking with Asian civilizations for millennia!”

  “Don’t blindly take the Ecumenist records as truth. Don’t forget they believed in sea monsters in the Atlantic.”

  Reed snorted. “There are sea monsters in the Atlantic: the dolphins ‘minds of the sea’ and whatever you acknowledge as their tricks. Who knows how the dolphins fit into the Fallen Angels’ games?”

  Too true. John had a tendency to forget the damned dolphin group minds – self-defense, given what they had done to him in the past. He heard Uffie’s voice behind a nearby trailer. “Hold on a second. I’ve got some more secrets to track down.” He muttered magic, covering himself from all aspects of abnormal nonsense, and strode around the trailer. He found Uffie giving some last second instructions to one of the movers regarding a stack of crates, likely her fieldwork samples she had shipped in from Africa.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and walked on over to Uffie. She had avoided him for far too long. “Do you have a minute?” She ignored him, even after he dropped his temporary protections.

  “Just treat them as if they had badly packed glass in them – extra fragile,” Uffie said to the mover. He walked off to get a flatbed dolly. She turned to John, looking extra peeved. “What can I do for you, John?”

  “Someplace private, perhaps?”

  Uffie shrugged, turned, and led John into the now stripped trailer she shared with Tracy. John couldn’t figure out why Tracy, of all of Nessa’s last crew of bodyguards, stayed on after the others had gone. He had a few suspicions, though, which related to the conversation at hand. Apparently, the short and dainty middle-aged Japanese woman had decided to become Uffie’s bodyguard.

  “Uffie, I would like you to reconsider and come with me on my visit to the Fallen Angels,” John said. His voice reverberated in the empty trailer, little more than a large can on wheels now. “We could use a Seer.”

  Uffie froze in place at his high-percentage guess and glared at him. “What did you call me?”

  “A Seer. You were in the Ecumenists’ records, which didn’t make any sense to me at all unless you were one.” The Ecumenists always worked with Seers. “I’ve worked with other Seers and Sibyls myself, for centuries, a lot easier game than my work with the Telepaths. I’ve also worked with the Indigo core group since its founding a generation ago, and I’m sure you’re familiar with them, as your skill at masking your talents is one of their lessons. Your insights would be quite useful, especially given your scholarly bent.” He paused. Uffie didn’t respond. “Does Nessa know?” Behind him, someone chambered a bullet. He ignored the threat for now.

  Uffie’s glare didn’t fade. “I’m not going back there. I can’t defend myself from the Watchers and they do not hold me in
a positive light.”

  John turned around. Darkness fell, blinding him like a cloud covered night in the deep forest. More Cabbalist crap. He conjured a dim light, not bright enough to spook the hidden person. His light revealed a vaguely familiar-looking old woman. She held a pistol pointed toward his heart.

  “A hunter-class Seer!” John said. He bowed in deep respect at the old-style pre-Indigo Cabbalist. “Ma’am. I am your humblest servant.”

  Uffie quietly rapped on the door with the knuckles of her right hand. The door opened and Tracy entered. “None of us trust you, John,” Uffie said.

  “Is this the Sight or something else?” John said.

  Uffie waved her hand at him, a dismissal. “I am not interested in having this discussion.”

  John turned back to the older Seer. “Alas, ma’am, I find I must leave before we introduce…

  “Do you always talk like you’re a sack of manure?” the old Seer-woman said.

  John’s eyes opened wide. That voice more commonly came from her daughter. “So you’re Christine Binglehauser! That explains quite a bit about Nessa.” The lure of her twin grandchildren had proven too much, he realized. No Seer who didn’t want to deal with him would normally come within miles of him.

  “You’ve nearly earned yourself a bullet, Lorenzi,” Binglehauser said. “Leave.”

  “As you wish, ma’am,” John said. He turned to leave the trailer, and as he did Tracy interposed herself between him and Uffie. He exited the trailer and walked off.

  That didn’t work well, not at all. He wondered why he upset Uffie so much; she showed all the signs of both the old training and the modern Indigo training, and should be open to dealing with other practitioners of the unnatural. “Eh, Seers.” He remembered a conversation with one in the late 19th century, in pre-earthquake San Francisco. The Seer, a man, had told John there were quite a few more of his kind and related types than John suspected. When John had asked why, the man had laughed and said that most were good at avoiding people like John. Or finding people like John, for that matter, if by some rare circumstance they felt the need.