99 Gods: Odysseia Read online

  “Well, I am a fortress,” Dana said.

  “Tell me about it,” Lydia and Nessa said, together. They laughed. Dana reddened.

  “At least make out with him,” Nessa said. “Physical touch is important. Uffie and Persona both say there’s chemistry involved. Well, biochemistry. I agree.”

  “Uh, Nessa, we’re talking Gods here,” Lydia said. “They might have mantennas but they don’t have biochemistry.”

  “Are you sure?” Nessa said, flashing a quick image to Dana of Dana and Dave in projection-space, where no biochemistry existed at all. Dana reddened. Nessa grabbed Lydia and Dana by the shoulders and brought their heads together. “I’ve been Persona,” she said, conspiratorially, her voice a half octave lower than normal. “I’ve had divine orgasms, and experienced divine love and lust and anger. The Angelic Host didn’t fuck this up. The Gods, despite being made of nano-whosists, do fully mimic human emotions. They have a few more than normal humans, but then again, don’t we all?”

  Dana couldn’t argue with the latter. As a Supported Regent, she once possessed most of the divine emotions. Natural Supported came with several other new emotions she didn’t understand yet. The need to hack off Orlando and her sadness afterwards she suspected might be one of them.

  “What does a divine orgasm feel like?” Lydia said, doing a little wiggle.

  “Seduce Persona into your body, fuck Bob, and find out for yourself,” she said, arch.

  It was nice to know that Nessa had some limits about what sort of information she would talk about, Dana thought. She had suspected otherwise.

  “How do I make out without promising more than I’m willing to deliver?” Dana said, her flush turning beet red. Her question just blurted itself out. This had to be Nessa’s influence.

  “Be the one in control,” Lydia said. “Slap that hand when he goes where you don’t want him to go! If the guy doesn’t get the hint, he’s not someone for you.”

  “Doesn’t hand-slapping piss guys off?” Dana said, aghast. “Isn’t slapping against the rules?”

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “There are no rules, Dana. Sheesh! Guys learn, and I’m sure Orlando knows the one about the hands.”

  “The idea there might actually be rules you need to follow is too much of an introvert’s point of view,” Nessa said. “Ignore the idea.”

  “I thought you said to be myself,” Dana said. “I am introverted.”

  “Yes, be yourself, but don’t be too much of yourself,” Nessa said. “Is that clear?”

  Lydia giggled. “Nesssssa.”

  “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to get laid,” Nessa said. “But if you’re not serious about this relationship return the ring. Anything else is unfair.” Lydia thought for a moment and nodded, along with Nessa.

  Dana winced and sighed. They were right. Anything else wouldn’t be proper.

  “We lie to ourselves so we are more believable when we lie to others.” – Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature

  “We are the eschaton.”

  27. (Dave)

  “Three spades,” Dave said, over Elorie’s one heart. He sure as hell hoped he remembered correctly and this was a proper situation to use a splinter bid, indicating trump support and a singleton or void in spades. Or was that just a void?

  He was damned tired of Uffie and Diana walking away with all of the rubbers. If he wasn’t mistaken, Uffie counted cards like a pro. He glanced across the card table at Diana, on his left, for her bid, but instead of her nonchalant Bridge concentration, shock splashed across her face. Her expression gave him a battle flashback, and he shivered.

  “Hey there, Di,” an unknown, melodic and Hollywood quality voice said. “We need to talk.”

  Dave turned and found two black cloaked women standing in the corner of the second baby’s room in the Van Der Smessen estate, near the doorway. The room made a good hideaway from the hustle and bustle of the estate, and, more importantly, kept him from inadvertently running into Dana and getting lost in her damned eyes again. They all had their reasons to escape their normal duties; Uffie, for one, needed frequent breaks from her dolphin research to avoid getting walleyed and snarly. Dave put down his bridge hand and stood. The two women hadn’t been there a second ago.

  “Who are you two?” Dave said, stern. Something they radiated made him want to confront them.

  “And why can’t I sense you?” Elorie said, in her archest voice.

  “Calm down,” the normally unflappable Diana said, her voice an octave higher than normal and not calming at all. “I’ve told you about these two. The frizzy statuesque redhead is January Cox and the beanpole basketball player is my namesake from another timeline, Knot.” Neither of them had an Indigo feel to them, but a second look told him they were both advanced Enhanced. January was amazing; he wasn’t sure he had ever seen a woman with such pronounced trapezius muscles. Diana jutted her chin forward and took a deep breath. “You don’t need to rescue me, and don’t bother asking me to leave here. I’m right where I want to be and need to be.” A plaintive echoed through the Nessa-designed mind linkage from Diana, almost a prayer.

  Dave moved forward, ignoring a comment from Uffie. “I’m Dave Estrada,” he said, positioning himself between Diana and the two interlopers. He held out his hand, but neither woman responded. From Diana’s Indigo stories, he understood the problem they faced. “Diana is not being telepathically coerced into staying here.”

  “There’s a piece of a Telepath inside my niece’s head,” January said. “Of course she’s being coerced, and of course she’s leaving with us.” She appeared to have immediately decided to dislike him. Dave lowered his brows and frowned at her. January stepped forward and kicked a Grumpy Cat stuffed animal out of the way without looking.

  Elorie sent something to Diana, who sent something back along the lines of ‘don’t interfere; this is going to be fun. Be ready to panic, though.’

  “You’re not listening,” Dave said. Something about Cox intensely irritated him, the same arrogance that bothered him about his former Ecumenist quest team member Jack Caravello. Only this time he didn’t need to be polite, because Cox wasn’t part of the team, and because she was on Diana’s shit list. “Which appears to be a repeat offense for you, because this is why Diana left your group.”

  January tensed with anger. “Back the fuck off.”

  Dave backed away, against his will, all the way to the flower-fabric encrusted heirloom crib. “Hey!” he said. “You’re not one to complain about Telepaths if you can pull magic tricks like that.” He reached his hand out to Elorie, who stood, stepped over to him, took his hand, and immunized him. Elorie sent, walking Dave back to between January and Diana.

  Fine. He and Elorie did so, smacking her one their style, covering both January and Knot with their respective immunities.

  “Holy crap,” Knot said, backing behind January.

  January’s frown deepened and she crossed her arms. As she did, Dave noticed the woman wore a sword on her left hip. “Look, I’d rather not harm any of you,” she said. “But the hurt’s going to come unless the two of you get out of my way. Now!”

  This time neither he nor Elorie backed off.

  “You’re going to have to fight me, as well,” Diana said. She stood, walked forward to stand behind Dave and Elorie, and put her hands on their shoulders. “See? I can still say ‘fuck off, I’m staying here, Aunt Jan’ while immunized by the both of them.”

  Jan met Dave’s gaze, what he recognized from Tracy’s training as ‘sizing him up’ and ‘martial arts dominance gaze’. He faked a dominance gaze back at her, but he knew she saw through it. He wasn’t a martial artist; hell, he barely knew how to fall correctly.

  “Jan, let me,” Knot said. Jan didn’t move. “Please?”

  “Not this time,” Jan said. “We nee
d Diana, and we need her now, before those three overpowered suicidal idiots figure out we’re here.”

  Three? Oh. Orlando, Bob and Dana.

  “Fighting isn’t going to help,” Knot said. Jan growled. “Save for you working out your frustration at the universe as you mop the floor with everyone in the room save Diana.”

  “Who is half tempted to make you high as a kite and horny as hell anyway,” Diana said, as angry as Jan, if not more so. “Guess who’s trained Dave and Elorie how to make holes in their immunity to let the witchy crap through?” Which Diana had. She said her Communicant tricks weren’t offensive, and she had taught them about the rule of three – what you did with witchy magic came back upon you thrice – but he guessed distracting people wasn’t too karmically dangerous.

  “Which I can undo, namesake,” Knot said, a bit snotty. If Dave had to hazard a guess, Knot and Diana didn’t get along. “Jan, we need to do what we always end up needing to do in our interfamily fracases. It’s even legal, as there’s nobody here who I don’t count as Outer Circle.”

  “Fine,” Jan said. She took a deep breath, backed off a step, and grabbed Knot’s hand. A moment later, the world flashed indigo and a third person appeared, holding Jan and Knot’s free hands.

  Whoops! The tall athletic and transparent woman, dressed in a grubby University of Washington sweatshirt and patched blue jeans, had to be the Indigo’s Angelic backer, Kara the Godslayer.

  Funny thing, Dave’s heart wasn’t instantly filled with love, the way Diana said it would be if the Godslayer ever appeared. “No, I don’t think so,” Dave said, squeezing Elorie’s hand three times. He concentrated his mental immunity on the Godslayer, and Elorie concentrated her magic immunity on her as well. The Godslayer vanished.

  Heh.

  Jan and Knot exchanged glances and smiles. Dave puzzled for a moment before a voice startled him. “Fool.”

  He turned to the voice, which was the voice of his ex-wife, Tiff. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time,” Tiff said. Only Tiff was translucent and glowed indigo.

  “Tiff?” Dave said, queasy. His mind felt suddenly numb, as if is brain wasn’t working at quite full speed.

  “You’ve been nothing but trouble as I’ve manipulated you into becoming the Hero you needed to be,” Tiff said. Dave quailed and backed away. This couldn’t be happening. How? What? She was the Godslayer? Holy crap! No wonder she had outclassed and outmaneuvered him every step of the way. “Give up. Now. Or I’ll make sure things get even worse for you and your…”

  Tiff stopped, frozen like a statue.

  “Or what?” Nessa. “Dave, oh Dave, haven’t I told you a dozen times the easiest way past your immunities is psychology?”

  Nessa and Ken settled to the ground in front of the door, accompanied by the gust of wind of a fast fly. “Hey there, January. Remember me? You know, my agreement with the others doesn’t hold if they attack first. Perhaps you’re going to want to join us.”

  “Psychology?” Dave said, to Nessa.

  “As in that isn’t your ex-wife, but the Godslayer in an illusory form,” Nessa said, with a two hundred watt mental zap at him. Oh. Dave’s face flushed hot, a combination of anger and chagrin. He really hoped the brief mental numbness had been part of her trick, because he would hate to think he was that stupid normally. “You’d better watch it, or she’s going to get frustrated and start slinging horribly bad jokes at us. She’s dangerous.”

  “Nessa,” Tiff said. “Ken.” She sighed and changed from Tiff back into her original form. The room interrupted with everyone but Nessa and Ken saying variants of ‘how do you three know each other?’ Nessa and Ken smiled and shrugged, as did the Godslayer. “This reminds me of the picnickers who were eating their last bit of German sausage while stranded on a deserted island.” Pause. “At least, they said, the wurst was over.”

  Dave rubbed the end of his nose and frowned at the predicted horrible joke. The rest of the room groaned in response.

  “We have an impasse here,” the Godslayer said, frowning back at Dave. Because he hadn’t laughed at her limp joke? Nah, he had to be jumping to conclusions.

  “No, not any impasse at all,” Nessa said. “You and January and whatever the hell you are are going to behave, or else.”

  The Godslayer glared back, and then glanced at Knot and raised an eyebrow.

  Dave frowned, suspicious, and Knot sidled over and smiled at Nessa. “Hi! I’m also named Diana Lowezski, so people here call me Knot. I’m from another timeline. I think you would find it interesting to read my mind. I’m inviting you in.”

  “Damn,” Nessa said. “Yeah. Witch.” Her voice went vapid. “Really straaaaange witch.”

  “Nessa!” Ken said. “Scheme!”

  “Uh huh,” Nessa said, speaking slowly and almost sounding high on drugs. “You have my permission, Dave, to immunize the crap out of me if Ken says to do so. Good enough for you, Ken?”

  Dave sighed. Nessa, always distractable by shiny things.

  The Godslayer was right; they needed a way out of this before things got ugly. Uglier. He relaxed his mental immunities and let the ambience of the room – and Diana’s hand on his shoulder – trigger his hunches. Despite the fact he wanted to smack Jan worse than he had ever wanted to smack someone before, intellectually he knew they should be allies.

  One annoyingly large storm of hunches later, Dave shook his head to clear the distractions out of his mind. He realized he had missed a whole bunch of confrontation. He had also ended up with the Grumpy Cat stuffed doll in his hands.

  “…and if you piss me off some more, I’m going to keep doing this. You’ll need to go sleep with someone to be able to do anything more than whimper,” Elorie said. She had left Dave’s side to go stick her finger on the Godslayer’s nose. The Godslayer looked peeved and more transparent than before, almost ghostly. Dave looked around and found Knot arguing with Uffie, Jan held in the air by Ken, and the heirloom crib in kindling. Uffie was upset over seeing the Godslayer, something about never wanting to be in the inner circle, never never never. Nessa stood behind Knot, radiating a happy and almost orgasmic glow. If Dave wasn’t fooling himself, Nessa was reading Knot’s memories and having a grand time.

  Diana he found snuggled under his arm, blissed out by her own hunch storm and slowly writhing.

  All he got in response were snuggle and lustful thoughts. He blamed the Godslayer for this break in discipline. Love and horniness attacks carried little magical karmic backlash, even when they were, legalistically, sexual assault. This loophole appeared to be the entire raison d’etre of the Indigo.

  “Time out, folks,” Dave said, loud and confident. A room full of eyes turned to gaze at him. “Jan – you need Diana’s help, but you didn’t want to get the help here because you’re afraid Orlando, Dana and the Kid God could grab you and interfere with your current mission or heroic quest or whatever. Am I correct?”

  Jan nodded. Ken poked through Dave’s mind, and, Ken’s paranoia satisfied, January floated down to the floor to land on the remains of the last bridge hand. They would need to replace the card table and two of the chairs as well. He stood on their remains.

  “Let’s make a deal. We’ll agree to protect you from those three, and in return you get Diana’s help, here, and stop trying to kidnap her.”

  Jan turned to the hassled and almost invisible Godslayer. “Can you cope?”

  “No, I can’t,” the Godslayer said. “I can’t leave Diana here in nasty Telepath central without messing up our story.”

  Dave had a solution for that as well. “Godslayer, the way out of your Mission problem is to make Elorie and I part of the Indigo.”

  “Daaave,” Elorie said, her gaze turning to a glare. The Godslayer’s glare was even hotter. “Tell me this is hunch based and not logic based, because it’s about as illogical as I’ve ever heard from you.”

  “Hunch based.”

  “This
is safe?” Elorie said.

  “The Godslayer is an Angel,” Dave said. “Elorie, love, you’ve been attacking an Angel, and…”

  “…from all we’ve learned, I’m going to have bad karma up the ying yang for years, unless I make it right,” Elorie said. “Crap.” Pause. “Won’t this trap us into needing to fight Hell beasts or whatever?” Elorie relaxed her hold on the Godslayer, who went back to being semi-see-through.

  “We’re part of Nessa and Ken’s Mission, and their Mission overrides,” Dave said. “Another hunch. Not that I understand. At all. I just know this.”

  The Godslayer motioned for Elorie to walk with her, back to Dave. “It’s okay,” the Godslayer said. “Nessa and Ken have always been part of the team, uh, my team, albeit a distant part.” She turned to Knot, who didn’t understand. “In this timeline, Ken was the one who trained your uncle Joe in his Telepath skepticism. You know the Nessa story.”

  Diana wiggled out from under Dave’s arm and gave the Godslayer the middle finger. Both hands. “Okay, Aunt Jan, what do you have for me?” she said. Knot followed, keeping far too sharp an eye on Dave and swerving around him.

  Please, no, Dave thought, meeting Knot’s gaze. He had enough woman problems without adding another. To his surprise she sent him a hunch: her interest wasn’t personal but professional; he would make a great member of her timeline investigation team.

  Dave lowered his eyebrows, projecting his utter disbelief in timelines, as they made no logical sense to him. What use could he be, anyway?

  To which she sent back another hunch: well, this method of communication, for one, and second, his ability to quickly learn to use unfamiliar tech without a manual, which would need to get trained.

  Knot was insanely smart, Georgia Kelly from the Ecumenist quest smart. She smiled and turned away, leaving Dave queasy.

  Jan brought out a box from inside her cloak. Dave shrank back with a visceral ‘ewwh’ reaction – the box vibrated in place, trying to convince him it wasn’t there. A Hell box, not that he had ever seen one before. He just knew. Jan opened the box; inside the box was a palm sized silver spider, which didn’t give off any ‘ick’ vibrations. “This was once a piece of the God Miami. Some unknowns stole our God-sample from the Compound and turned it into a semi-alive espionage device – an actual crawling bug. We managed to make a deal with Portland and get it back. We need to know who’s behind this.” From the expression on Jan’s face, the deal cost a lot, and was one of the reasons for her current high temper.