99 Gods: Betrayer Page 16

“Hey, how’d I get into this pollution machine?” Nessa said. Ken drove, he had just started the vehicle rolling down Lorenzi’s cabin’s dirt driveway. A rental, Nessa guessed. She glanced around and saw Beer Gut #2 slide behind the wheel of the second vehicle, an SUV, overpacked with eight. “Why’re they stuffed like sardines in that CO2 belcher behind us? With all of that muscle available, why are you driving?”

  “Because you’re not fit company today,” Ken said.

  “I’m not?” Nessa decided to change that. She ordered an entire herd of deer to come out of hiding, line up rear-facing along the patchy-paved road leading from Lorenzi’s cabin back toward Seattle and so-called civilization, and defecate at them just before they came by. “…that’ll show them…” she said, just mouthing the words. Their disdain wasn’t fair. Never was.

  Ken tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “We’ve got two long plane flights ahead of us, and you need to get a grip,” he said, after they passed the defecating deer.

  Nessa took quite a few moments to stop laughing. “We do? We’re going to Nairobi?”

  “Yes,” Ken said, and sighed. She read intense frustration, but couldn’t pick up any of his thoughts. Even stray ones.

  “I’m having a real bad disconnect, aren’t I?” If she couldn’t listen to Ken’s thoughts, her control had severely regressed.

  “Yes. Glitches, too.”

  Ken stopped the car at a stop sign and turned on to a main road. Nessa saw a freeway overpass a minute ahead.

  “Crap,” she said. “I shouldn’t be out in public in this condition. I should be nesting under a desk or something similar.” That comment started Ken sweating, which bothered Nessa for some reason or other. They stopped at a stop sign at the overpass, and all the vehicles within a mile chose that moment to blare on their horns. “Oops.”

  Twitch.

  “That’s funny. My name’s not Susan,” Nessa said, peering over at the passport with her picture in it.

  “Gawd,” Loser Lady #1 said. She had hold of Nessa’s elbow with a worn black fingerless glove.

  Ken had Nessa’s other elbow. “Ignore the comment,” he said, and gently put Nessa’s passport back in her purse.

  So many people. A whole airport full of them. She had to be at an airport. Nothing else made sense. All those easy-to-slip-off shoes! Lots of them thought the same thoughts, which made the thoughts easy to pick out.

  “How long are we going to be here?” Nessa asked. “Why do they think the Gods assassinated the President of Belarus?”

  “Another hour and a half,” Ken said. “We’re through all the security. They think the Gods did the assassination because his security was too tight for anyone else to get to the guy, but I suspect Supported did the job.”

  “Awesome. Wasn’t I supposed to mess with the heads of the security people here?” Something about guns. Nessa liked guns. Especially when they went ‘bang!’ and hit near the center of a target. Almost .23 orgasms on her mental happy meter. All the people around her carried guns, except for Ken. She wanted one, but today they wouldn’t let her have one.

  “Don’t worry, Nessa,” Ken said. “I took care of things.”

  “Okey dokey,” Nessa said, and leaned on Ken’s arm. She took a closer look at Loser Lady #1. “You don’t look right.”

  “Ken made me pack away my spike collar,” Loser Lady #1 said, batting at her big hair. Died black, of course, with blonde roots. Nessa peered at Loser Lady #1’s neck for a while longer, before deciding that whatever she now wore around her neck was meant to be there. “It’s called a neck corset, okay?”

  Nessa sighed and shrugged. She only understood Goths when she had the urge to be one. She and Ken had snagged Loser Lady #1 out of Portland’s quickie Grade One Supported course, and the formerly quiet sad-faced Goth lady had turned feisty.

  Go with the flow, she told herself. Might as well pull in the telepathy with all these people around. Not getting any good thoughts today, anyway. Besides, there were all these poor dogs and cats in the luggage. They needed to go to sleep. Nessa helped them do so. “So, tell me about these plane trips. Where are we going?”

  “Nairobi.” Ken’s face tensed. Huh?

  “Oh, okay,” Nessa said, deciding she must have done something annoying, even if she couldn’t figure out what she had done. “I shouldn’t be out in public today, not in this condition.” Ken didn’t answer. Perhaps she had said that already. “So, how long are they?”

  “The plane flights?”

  “Of course. I know how long your…”

  “Nessa!” Ken said. Nessa let her comment finish itself in her head and giggled. Loser Lady #1 covered her mouth, giggling as well. “The first one is ten hours, and takes us to Amsterdam.” Ken’s voice had acquired a strained patience to it. Perhaps he had told her this before.

  “That’s not too bad,” Nessa said. She had a sudden feeling of violation, as if someone had cut off her hair. She stopped dead in her tracks and felt at her head until she found her hair. There it was! Someone had piled it up, unbraided, on the back of her head so that it didn’t even come down to the base of her neck. Such a nasty trick. She wondered what such a crazy thing did to her appearance. “So we get a telepathic contact high in Amsterdam. Then what?”

  “Two and a half hour layover, then an eight and a half hour flight to Nairobi,” Ken said.

  “Oooh! Fast,” Nessa said. “I vaguely remember you saying it took over a day to get to Nairobi. What happened?”

  “We got some more money to waste and I got us a more expensive flight.”

  “Huh? Why do we need any more money? What happened to Lorenzi’s boodle? The stuff we got for that piece of Miami we sold him.”

  “We burned through the boodle months ago, Nessa,” Ken said.

  “We did? Okay. So, where’d we get some more money?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Bets?” Nessa smiled. Ken sat her down in an area of the airport dominated by Northwest Air signs. “Did we steal the money?” That would be neat.

  Ken met her gaze. If he didn’t answer her she would make the airport workers start singing karaoke songs. Or ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’, a song guaranteed to annoy people. “No, we didn’t steal any money,” Ken said. Another sigh. “More money from Lorenzi. We’ve got a few of his projects we need to check up on in Europe, the Middle East and East Africa, so he’s funding the trip.”

  Wasn’t Lorenzi broke as well? He probably robbed a bank, then. Bank robbery would be just like him. Or would it? Nessa wasn’t sure.

  “We’re working for Lorenzi? Didn’t we say we’d never do that?”

  “Things change,” Ken said. “Right now, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all working for Portland. Even Lorenzi.”

  The public address system called out something in a foreign language. Ken stood and helped Nessa up. The person on the other side of her took her elbow, this time Soft Hand Lady, the short and dainty assassin who preferred thin knives and thinner wires for her work.

  The top of Soft Hand Lady’s head only came up to Nessa’s shoulder.

  Now that was strange. Soft Hand Lady’s long hair was coiffed exactly the same as Nessa’s.

  What an amazing coincidence.

  Nessa giggled.

  Ken talked to a uniformed airport person in this foreign language, which Nessa decided was English. “Lorenzi’s money’s tainted. Because of this, we’re going to get sucked into hazardous adventures, learn the secrets of the universe, and in the end this will cost us our souls,” Nessa said. “If our rescuees survive, they’ll write a book filled with lies and keep us alive.”

  Ken quickened the pace. “You don’t normally get hunches in this state.” He felt disturbed.

  “Gracious me, I thought you were beyond surprise,” an unexpected voice said.

  Nessa blinked twice and found she had a sock puppet on her left hand. “Who invited you?” Nessa asked.

  “You did, lunatic,” the left sock
said.

  Ken glared at Nessa and continued to walk. They entered the plane.

  “Neat! We’re in first class,” Nessa said, after Ken led her to a seat.

  “You pitched a fit and made John change the tickets,” left sock said.

  “That wasn’t fair.”

  “The fit was appropriate.”

  Twitch.

  I’ve been here before, Nessa thought. Not that she remembered. Bright lights, no real world, no body, just a mobile mental presence. She had talked to so many people this way…and forgotten them all. Normally, this trick wasn’t accessible, stuck in her unconscious mind.

  Not today.

  Wherever today was.

  She flew down – down? – toward what drew her. Someone praying. She twirled around until she sensed the person better. Of all things, she found Dubuque’s starched white face attached to his nonexistent praying body.

  “Please, save me!” Dubuque said.

  “Fuck and shit. You’re asking me to save you?”

  “You’re the Brilliant Woman, you must,” Dubuque said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she said. His words made whatever she was right now ring like a bell. She didn’t like his words.

  “A guess, a divine estimate, and a scriptural prediction,” Dubuque said, pride dripping through his voice. “You see, there’s more going on than your allies’ pathetic plots. I need confirmation, of course.” Even if my confirmation costs them their lives, he thought. And causes all holy hell to happen. Then you can save me.

  “So not only are you an evil God-King, you’re a conniving bastard and all around piece of shit,” Nessa said, after reading his side-band thoughts. “I wouldn’t throw you a wheelchair if you were drowning, you pathetic moral quadriplegic.”

  Dubuque frowned. “You must, Nessa. Your Mission requires you to save me. I’m not evil, by the way. Just doomed by fewer than two years of occasional mistakes.”

  Insight flowed around in her mind. “You’re familiar with too many of these deep dark secrets,” Nessa said. “Doesn’t that damn you in the eyes of the Angelic Host?”

  “I’ve taken precautions,” Dubuque said. “I’ve let the Angelic Host into my mind to prevent me from learning the damning secrets of the Fallen Angels and the other things I’ve poked into.”

  “How convenient,” Nessa said, not that she understood who or what the Fallen Angels or Nephilim or the Ha-qodeshim were. Damned Gods. They had more ways out from under their own sins than a politician who owned the chief media outlet in his district. “So, what’s your beef? Why do you need my help?”

  “Those who venerate me pray for evil,” Dubuque said, embarrassed. “I want to grant their wishes and make them happy, even when helping them won’t aid my Mission.” She could practically smell the blood on his hands, from all his already accomplished evil.

  “You fucking imbecile, what did you expect?” Nessa said. “Now you understand what God Almighty goes through.”

  “Are you saying God Almighty is doomed?”

  “Nope. He’s the real transfinite thing while you’re just a resurrected dude in a white suit with comic-book superpowers. Anyway, you caused this problem for yourself, you figure out how to get out from down under. This is your test.” Nessa swam her bodiless form away, angry. Save fucking Dubuque? No fucking way. Not after what he and his people had done to her and her friends. Besides, whatever this Brilliant Woman crap was, she wasn’t one, not yet. Perhaps not ever. Hopefully.

  Twitch.

  Nessa sat up straight, heart beating madly in terror, as if she had caught herself from a sudden fall. Beside her, an airplane window showed darkness. The air held the metallic emptiness of cabin air in flight, and she heard the whine of the engines far behind her.

  What the fuck was she doing on a goddamned airplane?

  “Where’s Ken?”

  “He needed a breather,” Soft Hand Lady said. She sat beside Nessa. “He also said we should try and get to know you better, Nessa.”

  We. Now, who could that ‘we’ be, Nessa asked herself. Who was this person sitting beside her, and why did she remember her as ‘Soft Hand Lady’?

  Well, she told herself, when you don’t know the answers, just press on without them. “Where are we?”

  “The arctic. The captain just said something about Greenland.”

  Nessa peered out the window and didn’t see a bit of green. Thus, obviously, global warming was a hoax. “Hmph.” She turned to Soft Hand Lady and furrowed her brows. Now she remembered where she had run into Soft Hand Lady before: she had recruited her. Soft Hand Lady appeared as mild as before. Nessa still found it hard to believe a vicious killer hid inside this normal middle-aged woman. “You’re Korean, aren’t you, Soft Hand Lady?”

  “Japanese,” Soft Hand Lady said. “My name is…” Nessa frowned. “So you are having memory spasms or something?”

  “I must be,” Nessa said. “I’ll bet you’ve answered my questions the same way many times before. Do you give sushi backrubs?”

  Soft Hand Lady froze. “You told me a little while ago that you weren’t able to read my mind today.”

  “That’s right. Telepathy’s down. Can’t pick up a thing,” Nessa said. She felt better, or at least she thought she felt better. Things made sense again; some of her memories trickled in. They were going to confront the God Nairobi and rescue Uffie. They were on their way to the city of Nairobi, with a stop in Amsterdam along the way to change planes.

  “But I never told you about what I did on that mission,” Soft Hand Lady said.

  “Mission? Oh, don’t mind me. Sometimes I pick up things from people’s memories and stick them in my memories, so I can remember things for them.” Nessa squinted at Soft Hand Lady, and Soft Hand Lady put her hand in Nessa’s and squeezed.

  “Relax,” Soft Hand Lady said. “You’re very strange today, but I know from the training what strength you have.”

  “I’m strange today, and probably yesterday, because I finally had the breakdown I predicted ever since the Recruiter kicked us off the team because he was tired of coping with Ken and me and we had to go on our own by ourselves,” Nessa said, telling herself what she already knew so the rest of her remembered the story. “You and the rest of the current team are part of my mental stabilization, and when the team around me changes I change.” She wanted Ken. She wanted to make love to Ken. The first class cabin would do.

  “I’m not sure when you fell apart; when you recruited me you were better. You helped me adjust.”

  “Adjust?” Nessa said. “How’d I help you?”

  “When I realized I was a Mindbound, it horrified me,” Soft Hand Lady said. “I’m inhuman enough. My profession, of course. I was contemplating ending myself. You and Ken showed up and gave me a new purpose in life.”

  “Why are you talking to me about this?” Nessa said. “I’m just a random person.” Shouldn’t someone like Soft Hand Lady be so reticent about her evil profession and her sordid history that she shouldn’t talk to anyone about her past? This was too personal.

  “You saved my life and showed me how to cope,” Soft Hand Lady said. “I owe you a debt of gratitude, and...”

  Nessa frowned. Soft Hand Lady was saying she owed Nessa her life. That wasn’t what Nessa wanted to hear. Nessa covered her ears and said “Na na na na…” to drown out Soft Hand Lady’s words.

  “You’re in pain,” Soft Hand Lady said, after Nessa took her hands off her ears.

  “I suffer when people I know well die,” Nessa said. She wiped tears from her cheek. “They leave little holes in my brain where the bad things live.”

  “All of which is why my name slides in and out of your head?”

  Nessa nodded. “I can’t afford to know you.” Too many nightmares of hers included…those two…who died in the attack on Portland.

  “Ken said you’d taken his and Alt’s pain from them, months ago, and that they were the ones normally debilitated by death. That you held the pain unde
r your control until you couldn’t hold on any longer.”

  “Uh huh. Sounds like me,” Nessa said. It did. “Well, then. I’ll be normaler eventually. I’m tougher than those two guys. I’m good at grieving. I’ve practically got an advanced degree in grief.” She did wonder why the grief hit her hard, now, and made her so twirly-brained. Was this just the shock of the new recruits, or was this something else?

  “If I may ask, Nessa, how did you find me, anyway?” Soft Hand Lady said. “Now that I think about everything you taught me, you don’t have any of the necessary skills.”

  Nessa scratched her cheek. Talking with someone who had interacted with her more than she remembered was strange. “What did I teach you?”

  “How to block off the occasional feeling of ‘there’s something out there’, which you said was a bit of leakage past my mental shields,” Soft Hand Lady said.

  “Of course,” Nessa said. “That makes sense.” She paused. “Did it work?”

  Soft Hand Lady nodded.

  “I found you because I stole a whole list of potential recruits from Alt’s head when the bastard kicked Ken and me off the team,” Nessa said. “You were on the list. All of you are strong Mindbound.” Nessa pulled at her fingers and thought about chocolate. “You knew already, though.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think…”

  Twitch.

  “Ken?” Nessa asked. The world crept in dark and close, as if something heavy bound her. She reached up her hands and realized someone had put a coat over her face. She lifted the coat off her, and winced. Wherever they were was uncomfortable. Bright, too. She hated the sun, always. Except… The thought fled her mind.

  Her head rested on Ken’s leg. She had called out his name because she smelled him.

  “I’m sorry,” Ken said. “You were playing dodge-ball with the people-mover vehicles.”

  “Well now that doesn’t sound good at all,” Nessa said. “You did something to stop me? Something tricky?” He nodded. “Well, then, I don’t remember what you did, so don’t tell me.” Pause. “It might upset me.” Pause. “We in Nairobi yet?” She scanned around with her mind, looking for nefarious enemies. Airports, bus terminals and trucker rest stops always bred nasty trouble, in her experience. Nefariouuuuuuus trouble. However, the only troublemakers in her mind’s reach were the gaggle of well-armed bodyguards who nonchalantly ringed them. They seemed companionable, though, for some unexplained reason.