99 Gods: Betrayer Read online

  Now this, Lorenzi, is how one goes about making a point, Satan thought. Hit fast and furious. Hit hard. Don’t stop. Don’t talk. Don’t negotiate.

  The attack beat at her for over two minutes before dissipating, as the attackers burned themselves out and lost control of their attacks. When the last energy attack ended, Satan opened her eyes. Dense black smoke surrounded her and Willie; around them, the charred wooden floor still smoldered in spots. The floor’s varnish had burned from the heat. Doors boomed open, divinely guided by miraculous reality changes, and the smoke lifted out, away from her and Willie. Willie looked sunburned and Satan knew she would need to discard her clothes, but they hadn’t otherwise been harmed. Her back ached from the sudden movement, but that was all.

  As the smoke parted, she found the attacks had melted her scooter into slag and reduced her canes to nothing but ash.

  This would not stand! She would need to get another scooter.

  Satan licked her lips and thought, putting effort into it, bending her minor mind tricks to the task. None of the attacks had come within an inch of her and Willie, leaving an obvious circle of unburned floor that would illuminate too much about her abilities to any decent tactician. The attacks bent away in catenaries of destruction, most straight up into the air. The danger and Willie’s sunburn came from the ancillary side effects of the horrific energies aimed at her. This hadn’t been a subdual attack. The purpose of the attack had been to kill her and Willie, quickly, without warning, without even an attempt to get them to stand down.

  No one as apparently good as Dubuque should be able to countenance such an attack on defenseless people. No holy knight him, no chivalrous goody-two-shoes willing to chance danger and death in order to do the right thing. He had seen, ordered and shot.

  Hidden evil, perhaps? She contemplated other answers. He might be just an utter fool. He might also be under someone else’s control, some local, not Verona, who didn’t have the balls. Perhaps something else, something insidious, corrupted him. The latter worried Satan. She had sensed a similar but not identical corruption in both Verona and Lodz, but combating insidious corruption wasn’t her strength.

  When the last of the smoke cleared away, Satan found all but three of Dubuque’s men lying on the floor, burned, bleeding, smoldering with backlashed energies from the attacks. Dubuque, the blind Telepath and two of his favorites had run toward her, but stopped eight feet away. One of them, a young twenty-something man, turned and puked.

  “What foul monsters are these?” the man next to the puking man said. “They survived unscathed, more corrupted than before.”

  “Hey, idiot, I didn’t attack, return fire or engage in any form of aggressive defense,” Satan said, snorting. She didn’t possess tricks that would even count as ‘return fire’ on the energy scale used here. Any aggressive defense she might have tried would have been overwhelmed.

  Dubuque seethed, still glowing with total and complete Holy goodness. “You killed Elroy,” he said, spitting his words. “Begone, foul beast from the pits of Hell. By God’s holy light…”

  “I killed Elroy?” Satan said, peeved. She glanced over to where Elroy had stood and found a shrunken charred form on the floor. Such idiocy! Such thoughtless malevolence. “Check again, dirtwad. He died because of the energies you aimed at me. You killed the young innocent boy yourself.” Okay, she decided. Nessa and Willie had been right. Dubuque did the foulest deeds and did not wear their scars.

  Dubuque didn’t answer her, his face wreathed in holy disgust. The blind Telepath nudged him and muttered “Boss?”

  “By the holy light of God I banish you from this Church,” Dubuque said. “Demon, Fallen Angel, begone from the holy light!” Ravenous and holy divine reality twists sprung from him toward her, and passed through Satan and Willie without any effect. Satan licked her lips. A magician corrupted by infernal forces wouldn’t have survived Dubuque’s exorcism, and the exorcism would have even killed Lorenzi. Perhaps there were Hell-beasts who would need such banishing, though Satan had never met one whom some damned evil magician or evil place hadn’t conjured up. Neither she nor Willie counted.

  Hatred burned in the depths behind Dubuque’s eyes, a hatred she had seen in many men before. The hatred of the other. Stalin, Hitler, and Mao had nothing on this man. Even Verona hadn’t had this foul quirk, although, from what little she had seen, Lodz did.

  Yet Dubuque still exuded his saintly sanctity. Tacitly unfair.

  “Boss, please,” the blind Telepath said, and again nudged Dubuque.

  Dubuque turned to the old man. “Blind Tom, what is it?”

  “She’s a Telepath, boss. She’s more powerful than I am, even after your enhancements.”

  Dubuque frowned, and danced to the side as a bit of the roof collapsed down between him and Satan, weakened by the strength of his and his followers’ attacks. “Are you sure? I can only sense her captive evil magician. Of her, I sense nothing but the stain left by her foul soul upon the air and earth.”

  “Trust me on this,” Blind Tom said. He wore a dirty cloth tied over his eyes blindfold style, and his snowy white hair told the tale of his age, somewhere in his eighties, or younger if he had led a hard life. His hands twitched and he held on to Dubuque to steady himself. His voice hurt to hear, clipped, and unmelodious. “She’s disgusting, horrific. She’s Death herself.” Satan gasped as she realized that Blind Tom was far more twisted and evil than Dubuque, a killer, someone who enjoyed killing. Not Dubuque’s master, though.

  He still seemed familiar. Only why did she remember him being a her, and a vampire-style Hell-corrupted immortal Telepath? Damn her memory. She had lived too many millennia, and all those millennia just screwed up everything.

  Satan calmed herself and focused her mind on the confrontation. “Yes, yes, many have called me Death, especially men old enough to make its acquaintance,” she said. “Dubuque, you are not fully lost. Something has warped you from the goodness you desire. You can mend your ways and atone for the murder of your own servant. I’m sure I can find people who can help you.” Some of her old crew of psychotherapists had to be still alive. The more modern crew of psychoactive drug pushers wouldn’t be able to do squat to help Dubuque. He needed the talking cure. Badly.

  Dubuque’s eyes flickered to Elroy’s remains, ignoring Satan. “Dearest Elroy. He died a martyr in the fight against evil, done in by Satan,” Dubuque said, following the pattern and echoing Lorenzi’s foul name without having to be told. Dubuque’s words filled with twisty reality alterations that made it so in the minds of all around him.

  Satan, experienced with horrors of all kinds, fought nausea. Dubuque had wiped away the immorality of his actions with holy words.

  “You are monstrous,” Satan said. “I’m abashed I couldn’t sense this foul rot in you before.” From where did his wickedness run? How could anyone have corrupted himself in so short a time? How did he keep his corruption so well hidden?

  “I will not bandy words with the Devil himself, even if he wears the body of a crone and befuddles the mind of my most loyal friends,” Dubuque said. He took a deep breath. “Shoot that thing and the magician.”

  “Boss, no,” Blind Tom said. When the two other men pulled out handguns anyway, Blind Tom ran, made it ten feet, and fell twitching to the floor, his ancient body failing him. He saw without eyes. Clairvoyance, if Satan remembered correctly the modern term.

  Dubuque’s two remaining men opened fire on Satan and Willie. This held no danger to Satan, and she stood there unflinching. The bullets missed them both, perfectly normal. In a typical feat of bad luck, one bullet pinged off the metal doorframe behind her and cracked into the forehead of the other shooter, who dropped with a bloody thud to the wooden floor. The surviving Light of Truth warrior dropped his weapon in horror and fled in terror, vomiting on himself as he ran.

  Satan spat at where the honorless warrior had stood, more than the coward deserved.

  Which left Dubuque, all alone.

&nb
sp; “I’m staying here, in your City of God Foundation, you wicked get puked from the hindquarters of a rabid donkey after being buggered by your father’s most diseased catamite. You can talk to me or ignore me. Attack me at your peril. The worse you treat me, the worse life will be for you.” Satan crossed her arms and wondered where she would be able to get another scooter. She decided to steal the money from Dubuque’s palace of hidden darkness and get the scooter delivered special.

  Dubuque took a step toward her, fist in the air, before he was unable to go further. “Kneel to me, demon from Hell! I demand it. Serve me in all things or die!”

  Yet another attack, as the curdles of reality around Dubuque’s words attested. Satan shook her head. “I’ve been to Hell, but I got out of there as fast as possible and never went back,” she said, not happy even remembering the terror-filled experience. “Oh, and by the way, you’re all wet, Dubuque,” she said. Her words triggered the room’s automatic fire control system, which rained down only upon Dubuque. Dubuque vanished, bending reality into an actual point-to-point reality jump that took him to another room in his megachurch. “Son of a bitch,” Satan said. “This cocksucker’s got a ton of nasty tricks, doesn’t he?”

  “We’re staying here?” Willie said. “If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am, you’re insane. He’s going to kill us the first time we relax our guard.”

  “Oh, don’t be a scaredy-cat, Willie. Just stay by me and don’t wander off,” Satan said. “Watch and learn. It’s going to be far worse for him and his than it will be for us.”

  9. (War)

  War moved forward her piece that represented five Grade One Supported. “You’re surrounded, Portland. Zap!”

  Portland glanced across their tabletop wargame and gritted her teeth. “Dead. Again.” She shook her head. “Let’s hope your guess that eventually some Grade One Supported will be able to teleport is wrong.”

  “It’s not a guess, it’s a prediction,” War said. “You’re going to need…”

  “I know, I know. More troops, more troops around me, to bodyguard me.” The last she said with a propwash of anger and sadness. Her last Supported bodyguard, also her lover, had died protecting her in the Atlanta – Miami fight. She had pledged never to have another Supported bodyguard.

  The entire scenario took less than five minutes to game out, both she and Portland able to use their divine mental speedup tricks to play out the war game in real time. Portland wasn’t half bad at battle strategy and tactics, not after War trounced her several dozen times, forcing Portland to put some effort into learning how to fight.

  “You must,” War said.

  Portland turned stone face and shrugged.

  The game board and pieces were Inventor’s idea and work, divine enchantments with automatic combat resolution built into them and the ability for War to upgrade them with inventive battle tricks. The terminology, Grade this and that, was Portland’s. She had come up with the grading system several months ago, giving them a common terminology for describing God flunkies, ‘Supported’ in Portland’s terminology, as borrowed from a group of barely enhanced human crazies called the Indigo. Grade One Supported were magicians. They could wield divine willpower like a God. The rest used preset canned talents with mental on/off switches at best.

  At some point, War suspected Portland’s one to four grading system would choke on Portland’s naïve assumptions. Some God, somewhere, would find a way to give their flunkies more than Grade One support, which would shoot everything out the window.

  Portland wouldn’t be Portland, though, if she didn’t always push about things like terminology, and in dozens of directions at once. Portland’s worst, at the moment, revolved around a bit of analysis of Inventor’s trick with the upgradeable game pieces that they could be expanded into real-world applications, such as remotely upgradeable miracle dispensing devices. After hearing her idea, War suggested to Inventor and Portland they also look into weaponizing Inventor’s trick. They agreed, at least a little. Despite their disgust.

  “Our next scenario involves an ambush, away from your lair,” War said. Portland mimed looking at her wrist, but War ignored the prompt. They had another eleven minutes scheduled, enough for two more scenarios. “Smaller numbers on both sides, reflecting the fact that it’s damned hard to hide an…”

  A gentle tinkle-of-bells alarm went off, chopping off War’s words. The alarm was followed by a couple of faint small dog yaps. War scanned around, interfacing herself with Portland’s security system, the one she, War, had built. Portland did the same.

  There. The diplomatic closet opened, revealing a now active and steaming-mad Dubuque projection. He flew toward them, winding through carpeted halls and scattering a few of Portland’s beloved Pekinese and several Portland Supported along the way.

  War moved to intercept, but Portland raised her hand. she sent, God telepathy style, double encrypted. War nodded and moved back to behind Portland, ready to act if needed, willing to let Portland play this out however she liked. This was Portland’s lair.

  “Monstrous! I refuse to let this attack stand!” Dubuque said, shouting at them, long before he reached the two of them.

  “Attack?” Portland said, after Dubuque’s projection entered the spacious sitting room. “I’ve done no such thing.”

  Dubuque stopped in mid-air, radiating anger, practically an attack all by itself. “Bullfeathers! The stench of your Telepaths is all over that satanic monster you sent me and she’s accompanied by one of Lorenzi’s God-awful magicians!”

  Ah. War laughed.

  Her laughter earned her a frown from both Portland and Dubuque. “It’s no laughing matter!” Dubuque said, continuing his red-faced bellow. “She slew nine of my people!”

  “Look at me carefully and read the truth in my words,” Portland said. “I did not send the woman, who is indeed named Satan, and for good reason. She is not my ally. In fact, she kidnapped the magician she has with her; she also did something to two of my Telepaths to cause them to go haring off with her. They’ve vanished from my sight. Did you happen to notice them with Satan?”

  Dubuque’s projection sank to the carpeted floor. “No, I didn’t.” He paused, apparently mollified, at least a little. “Satan and her pet magician are still your people, though, unless you agree to let me bring them to justice. What sort of shoddy shop are you running around here, anyway? Kidnappings of your own people. Rogue Telepaths? I want that monster out of my sight!”

  “Satan is not mine to order around, Dubuque. If you are willing to accept my help and…”

  Right. Ally with the enemy. Portland always sought common ground with Dubuque, hoping to end their icy conflict. As to help: both she and Dubuque had been counseling each other for months, Portland attempting to convince Dubuque to drop his worshippers, who he termed ‘venerators’, and Dubuque attempting to convince Portland of the correctness of his City of God plans.

  As far as War could tell, Dubuque hadn’t showed any flexibility at all about his worshippers, while Portland had been half convinced to support the City of God. Much to War’s disgust.

  “I will not!” Dubuque said, overcome by holy anger. He amplified his projection’s charisma to a level War had never before seen from a projection, more potent than his charisma had been, in person, in the bad old days before the Atlanta – Miami fight. “I’m tired of your spying, your unending harassment and your incessant stalling. Formally join the City of God. Now. Then we can clean that Satan thing out of my lair together.”

  Portland ignored Dubuque’s charisma entirely, but War, in her projection, barely caught herself before she knelt to Dubuque. All of War’s other activities ceased as she funneled energy into her anti-charisma protections here; she routinely kept active somewhere between fifteen and twenty projections, mostly advising people. She couldn’t keep them active, faced with this.

  She didn’t kneel.

  “I see,” Portland said, icy. “You’re suffering from three d
ifferent varieties of worshipper feedback, Dubuque, and you’re not yourself. I can help. Let me…”

  “Feedback? Worshippers? This nonsense, again? Madwoman, I don’t need any help. My venerators are a good thing, not a bad thing,” Dubuque said. His projection paced. “Your carping about them is over.” Or else, War read. “Portland, I’ve seen the light, and it is the light of God. I’ve been weak. I’ve let myself be swayed by your feeble arguments. No more!” He lit up with divine radiance and pointed an index finger at Portland. “You’re the one with the problems, not I. My friends in the religious community are right: your secularism is excessive, corrupt and wrong. Your cause is weak and ineffectual. Your coddling ways must be ended before your empathy destroys us all.”

  War frowned at Dubuque’s inconsistency and his seemingly unhinged behavior. Was this real or just a negotiating tactic?

  “You have inscribed ‘Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the Earth’ upon your forehead,” Dubuque said. His holy glow grew, as did the madness in his eyes. “‘I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus’. You are the one! Dispensing holy miracles in a secular manner. Plotting against me. Sneaking around behind my back. You hate me, but you won’t say the truth. Liar! Coward! ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’ And you are not invited!”

  Completely unhinged. War chilled to see the worshipper effects on Dubuque so clearly. He had become drunk with worship.

  How much of this, though, was worshipper abuse and how much was the effect of Satan? When War met that absurd woman, in War’s real and still unrecognized Leo-body, she had nearly lost control and stupidly revealed her true self. None of them understood Satan, her power or what she wanted. Unless all she wanted was wanton chaos.

  “This is nonsense, Dubuque,” Portland said, anger suffusing her voice. “Come, meet with me in person. We can fix this together. I think Satan’s gotten to you.” Portland had come to the same conclusion War had.