99 Gods: War Read online

  “We all have our quirks,” Nessa said, after Ken finished. Ken looked her over, unhappy.

  “I worry about you,” he said. “You’re showing far too many stress signs. The ones we were told to watch for.”

  “Which leads into your real question,” Nessa said. Stern. Ken raised his hands in surrender, sheepish.

  “This isn’t working out the way I’d imagined,” Ken said, and sighed. “I guess I should start by apologizing for the argument we had nine years ago about my marriage. I was wrong. You were right. Livie and I turned out exactly as you predicted. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have chased you off.”

  “Oh,” Nessa said. She hadn’t expected an apology, and he meant what he said. She hadn’t thought of the fight aftermath, after the confrontation, as ‘chasing her off’, but she could understand how he might. Emotions awoke inside her she had long thought discarded. His comment changed everything.

  Damn the unexpected!

  “Six months after Livie and I split, I asked her for a divorce. She’s been trying to get me to come back to her. She wants us to go through marriage counseling.”

  Nessa barked laughter. “Marriage counseling? Oh, that would go well. You should have either told her everything, or told her nothing.”

  He nodded. “You were right. She hates me. She hates me bad enough to kill me, and her hatred slips out whenever her concentration slips. But she’s still in love with me.”

  “Bitch,” Nessa said. “At least Ron didn’t waffle. When he got to where he hated me bad enough to kill me, he did his damned best to do so. None of this love-me-anyway shit.”

  “I’m still amazed you didn’t kill him,” Ken said. “Or…”

  “Or what?” Nessa said. She stood and walked away from Ken. She wrapped the foil around the remains of most of the chocolate bar, and set the bar on the kitchen counter. Self-control was no problem. She had learned self-control, incredible self-control, though the lessons had cost her a lot. Nothing beat multiple physical drug addictions as a stern taskmaster. She hadn’t had much self-control back when she worked for Ken. A disastrous valley of experiences lay between them, years of mistakes and losses of control. Over for now, she hoped.

  She crossed to the other side of her living room, where she kept a boom box and a neat rack of old-fashioned CDs. She put one on, turned the volume down, and waited for the music to start.

  “You still could, couldn’t you?” Ken said. “With your tricks?”

  “Of course,” Nessa said. She didn’t realize what she had done until thirty seconds into the first song.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked herself.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she answered herself.

  Dammit!

  His eyes held too many questions. She feared his questions. “Ol’ Johnny was right, with those last lessons he taught us. You’re still doing your detective shit. You don’t want to ask me your questions directly, so you’re going around and getting the answers to them by asking other questions.”

  Ken didn’t answer. “What sort of crazy music is this, anyway?”

  Nessa smiled and danced to the music. “European EDM. Electronic dance music. Only good dance music around. I especially like the music nobody’s heard of.” She easily lost herself in it, nice, impersonal music. She often danced for herself, but not now. Now, she danced a dance for Ken.

  “I didn’t realize you danced,” Ken said. He didn’t know her as well as he thought. Heh. She wanted to giggle, but she didn’t even allow herself a smile.

  “Stand up and join me.” She had no desire to answer his question. Not in words. Instead, she swung her hips.

  Ken stayed seated. Nessa continued to dance; legs, hips, arms, hands, eyes. She could dance like this for hours, enough to freak out anyone who bought into her starving waif appearance. Some guy she met down in Anchorage three years ago she suspected was still running from her. She had danced six hours with him and for him, partly pissed off because he couldn’t make himself believe she could.

  “You really want this?” Ken said.

  “Get up and dance.”

  Ken took a deep breath and stood. Danced. With Ken up and dancing, Nessa let herself get lost in the music and the dance, the way her dancing should be. She danced by herself often, as a way to quiet her thoughts and center herself. Which wasn’t the real motive of this dance. She had other plans now.

  She danced for Ken. Twenty minutes in, her CD slowed down. She stepped imperceptibly closer to Ken with every step, soon close enough to slow dance.

  He didn’t run.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Ken said. His voice was a light whisper in her ear as he took her into his arms.

  “Why speak of the obvious?” Nessa said. “Hush and dance.”

  They danced.

  The next song was even slower.

  “You sure you want this?”

  He just had to talk about it.

  “You’re hot,” Nessa said.

  “Your fault.”

  “Enjoy yourself,” she said. She didn’t want to say anything else.

  He pressed his body up tight against hers. She laid her head on his shoulder and let him lead them as they danced. He was nearly as waif-like as she was, though he called himself wiry, not gaunt. His particular scents were as foreign to her as always. The mystery attracted her. She had always wanted to learn what he was like, what his secrets were.

  She had never had the chance before.

  They hugged each other tight.

  She ran her fingers down his back, feeling all of the knobs of his spine. He turned his head to her and offered a kiss. She accepted.

  Coffee mixed with chocolate.

  “You’re beautiful,” Ken said, about ten minutes later.

  Nessa shifted around in the crumpled sheets and smiled. “I’m not beautiful,” she said. “Not compared to you. I’m a goddamned nightmare.” Their clothes were still on, and given Ken’s addiction to foreplay, likely would stay on a while longer.

  “Not to me. Never to me,” he said.

  “I’d never thought we’d be free to do this. Even beyond our respective mental problems. You remember when we first met? I wanted you then.”

  Ken chuckled. “You weren’t legal, then. You were, what, thirteen?”

  “Twelve,” Nessa said. “A precocious twelve. You were seventeen.”

  “I wanted you too, but you were too young. Going after you wouldn’t have been right. Besides, we would have messed each other up worse than we already were.”

  “Not fucking possible,” Nessa said. “I went to work for you, remember?” For three years, she had been an investigator for Ken, years after they first met. “I thought it was perfect. Boinking the underlings isn’t one of those things you do, so I thought working for you would defuse the tension.” She let her mind go to remember those three years. For years, she had soured on those memories of all those strange cases she and Ken got to work on, cases proving to her the world held more mysteries than she realized. Only after she came up north had the case memories turned pleasant, the only pleasant memories she had in her life before she came up north.

  Not counting the alternately seductive and terrifying episode with Opartuth, the big success.

  The dangerous cases, especially the one that had turned on them and made victims out of them, still soured, beyond remembrance.

  “Working together was perfect. Doing so helped both of us keep our minds whole.”

  “Uh huh, I think you’re right,” Nessa said, and flicked his ear stud with her tongue. “So, it’s clear I’m not going to get your clothes off until you ask your annoying question, so ask, dammit!”

  “Uh,” Ken said, his emotions shimmering and shivering inside him. “Right. Okay.” He paused, and she could feel him gather his courage into one small round robin’s egg, turquoise blue. “Are you behind the appearance of the 99 Gods?”

  Her eyebrows narrowed at his attempt at omelet making. “All this angst about asking a que
stion about some damned rap band?” Nessa said. Without warning she got all freaky in the head, her arms all pins and needles.

  “Rap band?” Ken said, his emotional state leaping from anxiety to horror. “Nessa?”

  “Sorry. A rock band, then?”

  “You’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

  “What the fuck are you reacting this way for, Ken? Don’t scare me like this.”

  Ken backed away, slowly, and almost levitated out of her bed. “Surely you’ve heard of the goddamned 99 Gods. It’s only the biggest thing that’s happened in the new millennium, if not ever.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nessa said, now as cold as ice. She let herself open up a bit to the thoughts behind his words, and stopped in sudden disbelief. “You’re talking about real Gods, aren’t you?” He nodded. This was almost too strange for words, strange even for her life. Gods? Plural? Out in the open and everything? Things like that never happened. Never ever ever. Even in her much stranger than normal world. “Tell me.”

  “You don’t follow the news on the net?” Ken said. “I thought you did. You’ve got a lot of good tech in your office.”

  “The tech shit’s all from Uffie, so she and I can collaborate better,” Nessa said. “I don’t understand how to use anything she doesn’t send explicit instructions for.” All the computer crap made Nessa’s mind hurt, and every time Uffie sent her a new computer setup, the screens got larger and the computer got smaller, and everything moved faster. Uffie’s last comment on the subject was a threat to replace the whole mess with a smartphone able to control three big flat-screen displays. Gaah! “So…Gods?”

  “Uh huh. Gods. They appeared out of nowhere. They claim there are 99 of them, but only thirty or so are public. So far. I’m talking about physical Gods doing miracles and promising peace, love and utopia. They’re God Almighty’s gift to humanity. Sweetness and light, the end of all wars. Their miracles are showy enough to convince all but the most die-hard agnostics and atheists that these Gods are doing God Almighty’s will. Overnight, everything’s changed, all amazing, wonderful and heartening, and everyone’s utterly happy about them. Only…when I was down in Fort Myers three days ago, working a case, I got rousted by the God named Miami. He opened a big ol’ can of divine whoop-ass on me. I barely got out with my life.”

  “Miami? They name themselves for cities?” Fucking unbelievable.

  “Some do, the ones who call themselves Territorial Gods,” Ken said, all serious now.

  Nessa smiled. “You got away, though. These Gods aren’t very omnipotent, are they?”

  “I’ve got my tricks.”

  “That you do,” Nessa said. She sat up and unexpectedly felt the dark anger build within her. “So you came up here thinking I might be behind the appearance of some fucking Gods? You utter fucking asshole! Get the fuck out of here, dammit! Get the crap out of my life, you…” Nessa balled her fists and jabbed Ken’s jaw. It was like hitting a brick wall. “Owwh, fuck, I forgot about your trick.”

  Ken sat up in bed. “I had to ask the question. I’m sorry. I’ve seen you do…”

  “Fuck you!” Nessa screamed at full volume, interrupting the rest of his sentence and drowning out ‘the impossible’. She leapt out of her bed and stalked out of her bedroom. She wanted to kill something. Stomp it into the ground. Rip Ken’s head off and stick it up his asshole. No one came into her home to accuse her of such idiocy.

  “Wait, wait,” Ken said. “The chocolate wasn’t enough?”

  “You patronizing piece of shit,” Nessa said, half way across the kitchen to where she had stashed the remainder of the chocolate bar, before she caught herself. She stopped cold. “Wait just a goddamned second.” Her voice went back to normal, perhaps a bit quiet, the volume and anger leached out of it. “When did these supposed 99 Gods appear, anyway?”

  “August 6th. A day they said was specifically chosen to not commemorate any previous events,” Ken said.

  Oh.

  That’s what he meant when he said ‘haven’t we all’ after she said she had been on edge for the last six weeks. Duuuuh. “My last contact with Uffie was on the 11th of August.” Nessa paged through her memories and realized Uffie had been indirectly talking about the 99 Gods in the six days before she vanished, assuming incorrectly Nessa understood what her friend meant. “My goddamned collaborator’s vanished, and I’m not sure what to do, because she vanished in fucking Malawi and I don’t know shit about fucking Malawi save that Malawi’s somewhere in fucking Africa and not on a fucking seacoast.” Uffie’s disappearance had sent Nessa into a deep mental tailspin, uncivil, unfit for any of her normal community activities.

  “Damn,” Ken said. “This means the so-called utopian shit these Gods are spewing’s been a bunch of lies from the start.”

  “You’re acting paranoid.”

  “Personal experiences,” Ken said. The same ones as she had. She could sympathize. “I’d hoped only one of them was bad, though. I don’t like this at all.”

  “They’re really calling themselves Gods?”

  “Well, some are calling themselves Living Saints, some others are calling themselves Djinni, but, essentially, yes.”

  “Well, I still fucking didn’t do it,” Nessa said, worrying anew about Uffie. She would never do anything nasty to Uffie. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, though, I guess. I like knowing someone thinks I’ve, well, you know. Got what it takes.” Men. Always a complete pain in the ass.

  Ken stood and walked out into the living room. He took Nessa into his arms. She stiffened, but he rocked her until she relaxed a bit. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he said. “I had to ask, though. Something you were playing with might have gotten away from you.”

  “Well, I wasn’t,” Nessa said, opening herself up to him again. “Wait a second. Are you thinking we ought to do something about them? As in both of us?” she said. She closed her eyes and concentrated. “Hell, you are, aren’t you? What right do we have to mess with something like this?”

  “The same rights as always: since we can, we must. You’re the one who taught me.”

  “The person who taught you was a young self-centered egotistical piece of shit named Vanessa. Vanessa once held that philosophy, but Nessa doesn’t. You know where my idiot philosophy led me. Vanessa died.” He had been present when it happened.

  Yet, here she was.

  “So you’ll sit up here in your trailer in Alaska and ignore the problem?” Ken said. “You don’t care?”

  “Oh, I care,” Nessa said. What a way to ruin her intimate curiosity! Gods, indeed. As bad as constipation. “But I care more about Uffie and what happened to her. Tell you what. I’ll make a deal,” she said, thinking scheme. Yum. “I’ll help you with your glorious do-gooder plans and try and keep your black ass in one piece, if you help me find out what happened to Uffie, and help her if she needs help. I need people around me to keep my head on straight.”

  “This is new,” Ken said. “I thought lots of people caused your problems.” Problems? What a euphemism for a form of dysfunctional insanity the DSM didn’t even name. Well, beyond ‘other’.

  “Too many people are a problem; not enough people are a problem,” Nessa said. She slid over to the wrapped up chocolate bar and nipped off another piece, half embarrassed. “I put a lot of work into figuring out how many people is the right number. Ken, if I help you, if I go back out into the real world, I’m going to have breakdowns. I’m no longer Vanessa. I’m going to abuse you. I’m going to be screaming, catatonic, manic, and paralyzed by terror. You name a psych problem, it’s going to happen. I’m going to scheme, too. You know me. There’s got to be a way for my tricks to make me enough money to retire on, and having a bunch of newbie gullible Gods around sounds like an opportunity too good to pass up. I’m easily distracted by such things.”

  Ken laughed. “I’ll take the deal.”

  “Fine. Don’t argue with me. See if I care.”

  “Let’s talk.”


  “Not just yet. Find me something safe and unique on the internet about this nonsense that I can look at without having a fit,” Nessa said. “I need to figure out what the fuck’s going on with my world.”

  3. (John)

  “John Lorenzi?” the functionary said. In John’s first visit here, Dubuque hadn’t had functionaries. He had them now. This young man wore a preppy young-American-style suit without a tie, and open collar. An earnest man of good character, he guarded the door to Dubuque’s giant headquarters behind a plain table. He appeared discommoded by John’s appearance, not surprising, as John was shorter and wider than most people in this era. He was old as well, ancient in appearance, and what little hair remained on his head was snowy white. To better fit in this modern era, he had taken to wearing short-cropped whiskers, and they were white as well.

  The functionary did something with a miniature computer lying on the table in front of him. “Yes, here it is. The Living Saint is expecting you.” Dubuque lived in the small city of their shared name. John had called in a request for a second meeting, two weeks ago, and two days ago one of Dubuque’s people had called John’s small office and offered this appointment.

  The meeting was in Dubuque’s illusionary-reality home and place of business. The cheap miracle kept the rain, snow and wind off the people inside, but did little more than that. “Who’s this, Mr. Lorenzi?” the functionary said, pointing at John’s companion.

  “Cosmo. Don’t worry about him, he’s with me,” John said. The functionary frowned, as Cosmo hadn’t been on the invite, but let them through anyway. “Unless something’s changed, I know the way.”

  John and Cosmo walked down wide white halls to Dubuque’s office. Dubuque’s home appeared starker than before and more perceptibly holy. The faux decorations were gone, as were the potted plants. John glanced at Cosmo, but he didn’t react. During John’s first visits to the 99, he hadn’t risked Cosmo.

  Ahead of them, five sharp-dressed men in their forties and fifties exited Dubuque’s office. Protestant preacher types, John guessed. The five men argued among themselves, in quiet voices, agitated with Dubuque’s professed ability to sense the moment of ensoulment, and didn’t notice John or Cosmo as they passed.