99 Gods: Betrayer Read online

  Over back on the dust-contaminated grass, the Hell-beast had shrunk down to rabbit size, its mouth closed, and looking, at least to Dana, severely chagrined. Lara had out her longest hunting knife, but she wasn’t eying the Hell-beast. She stared at Jurgen and Grover’s kidneys, and she wasn’t laughing.

  “Sanity check, everyone,” Jan said. “How are we holding up? What are people seeing?”

  All of them were okay, save for the exhausted Grover and for Epharis, who admitted to having caught a case of hysterical blindness. Only Dana, the Kid God and Elise saw a rabbit sized lab rat. Grover and Amanda saw nothing. Lara and Greg saw a writhing multi-tentacle thing they called a Reach sticking out of the ground.

  “This Hell-stuff is really bad, isn’t it,” Dana said, mostly to herself. “This crap is shredding our minds.”

  “Try living there, woncha?” the Godslayer said. “Then come talk to me.”

  “I think I’ll pass. Without you telling me not to run, I don’t think I…”

  Dana winced at a sonic boom and a flash of light. She knew both, from experience: Akron motoring in, Territorial God style. “Uh oh,” the Godslayer said.

  “What the hey?” Akron said. Jan semaphore waved her arms, and moved toward Akron to get her to back off. “What is that foul evil thing? Dana? Do you need any help with…” Akron’s voice tailed off into a jet-engine decibel divine scream, as the Hell-beast began to grow again, this time more quickly, and Akron’s now silvery form started to degrade, flowing into the Hell-beast.

  3. (Dave)

  Elorie stared at the painting done by the more successful of Tiff’s three artist cousins and didn’t speak. The office door clicked shut behind Tiff and the house quieted, though Dave soon heard the bugle of a computer booting and in a moment the quiet tapping of keys. In the far distance he overheard a Hollywood movie soundtrack, likely attached to a video in the game room.

  “You can’t be serious about trying to involve me in more of the 99 Gods’ nonsense, Elorie,” Dave said, after he put his thoughts together. “Once was enough. I want to get back to being my old plodding self.” When Elorie had broken off their youth-damned high school relationship, she had accused him of being a world-class bore, a plodder looking forward to a life of plodding.

  He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have succeeded.

  “I’m being embarrassed, that’s what I’m doing,” Elorie said. She continued to study the painting. “I guess it’s my turn to be humiliated. High school breakup: yours. The time we met after our college freshman year: mine. The mixer in New York twelve years ago: yours. I even knew there was a good chance I was about to walk into a humiliation. The Telepaths warned me ‘bout things like this happening around them. They even said the chances are higher because we’ve had a previous relationship.”

  Dave mentally reviewed what he had read about the Telepaths. “The Telepaths do have their own definition of sanity. Fingering me as a prospective recruit sounds crazy to us, but maybe not for them.”

  “You don’t know the half,” Elorie said. Her stiff body posture relaxed, her face softened and she looked at him for the first time. He returned the favor. He had almost missed recognizing Elorie, which he had initially credited to too many intervening years, but he now decided it had to be due to Elorie’s hair. What had happened to her spine-tingling loosely curled black hair? She wore her hair straight, now, and it practically glowed with rich highlights. “I apologize for pestering you this way, Dave. Profusely. I’ll be on my way. I knew about your devotion to Dubuque, of course, but I didn’t know about your wife.”

  “Eh?”

  “Well, I knew her name and what she did, but, well, I didn’t know her. I look at the two of you and I see the two of you getting back together. Eventually.”

  Dave shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “You two still love each other,” Elorie said. “I’m a stranger and even I can sense the love. You see, we’re only recruiting the unconnected.” She rubbed her hands together, and Dave noticed they were blue with cold. Poor circulation? Strange. In her youth she had run too hot.

  “We do still love each other,” Dave said. “But we’ve grown apart.” Far far apart, actually. “Too far apart to stay married.”

  “She’s a bit scary, to tell you the truth. Brilliant and scary.”

  “It’s a game with her. She is brilliant…and she likes to be scary.” Dave sighed. “I’d say our love requires us to be divorced. We’re not normal people, Tiff and I.”

  “Is she also a Psychic?”

  Dave shook his head, unsurprised at Elorie’s comment. “No, just me.” His status as a Psychic was the obvious recruiting lure that had attracted more attention to him. He had been recruited three times beforehand, by a Boise front slash fortune-teller, one of Portland’s top people and, lastly, by Dubuque’s organization. He had declined them all, though he still venerated Dubuque.

  Back then he had a job and a wife, though.

  “Uh huh. Alt said you even knew the strength of your buried potential, which surprised him.” Elorie shook her head. “Have the two of you tried counseling?”

  “Tiff won’t take any marriage counselors seriously who aren’t as smart as she is, and she hasn’t found one yet who is. Me? I think counseling would have worked five years ago, but not anymore.” Enough talk about his marriage. “You ever marry, Elorie?”

  Elorie shook her head, a half smile on her heart-shaped face. She knew the game and was happy to play. “Got close once, but his family couldn’t get over the fact I’d grown up lower middle class. I’ve got two children, Iris and Leah, ages 17 and 7.” She flashed her wallet and showed Dave the pictures. Leah was non-white and Dave nibbled on his tongue for a moment before deciding not to ask any questions. Just because she had given him an invitation to make a fool of himself didn’t mean he had to send the RSVP.

  “Meddling in the affairs of the Gods is a good way to die, from all accounts,” Dave said, speaking his earlier thought. He couldn’t help remembering the tragic end of Boise’s fortune teller follower. Or the fate of far too many of Portland’s Wise Shepherds in Miami and Atlanta’s fight. Elorie’s two children stayed in his mind as well.

  “You’re wondering why I’m involved, when I’m a single mother with two children? That’s a good question, but I’m not going to tell the story now,” Elorie said. Dave studied her and didn’t see the expected anger. She had given him a canned answer to an obvious question.

  A blatant mystery, which attracted his attention. “Ah. Can you say anything about this job you’re recruiting me for?”

  “I thought you’d already said no.”

  “Not quite,” Dave said. “Right now my ears are wide open.”

  Elorie tensed up. “Okay, then,” she said, leaning forward. “I can’t tell you the details, but here goes. There’s a group of people who’ve gone missing. Alt, the Recruiter, recruited me to lead the team who’s going to try and find these people. For reasons I’m not going to go into unless you join up with us, the Telepaths received word about Dubuque’s interest in solving this mystery and the fact he wouldn’t hinder us if we included one of his people in the team. Trust me, you’re no screwier a choice than some of the other people Alt picked. We’re being set up to handle a large number of contingencies.”

  “I count as one of Dubuque’s people?” Dave said. “I just venerate the Living Saint. I turned down the offer to actually join his crew.”

  “Dave, we’re talking Gods here, even if they call themselves Living Saints. They can know your heart without ever meeting you.”

  Dave shrugged. He still had moments when he couldn’t believe the reality of the 99 Gods, fewer and fewer moments as time passed, but he had them. Nutty, he thought, to disbelieve. Not that he didn’t have his own nutty moments.

  Mixed nuts, not peanuts, he hoped.

  “So, would I be along to be just Dubuque’s representative, or do you have a real reason for having an environmental
geologist on board?”

  Elorie laughed. “I have no earthly idea. We’ll just have to find out as we go along.”

  He readied a polite refusal, but as he did, a familiar feeling of warmth flooded through him, the sensation of healing. Dubuque’s healing.

  Dave stopped his words before they reached his mouth. He fidgeted and stalled while he thought. Yes, he did have the urge to delve into this mystery. No, he didn’t have anything else to do with his life right now. He did have an active interest in finding some way to be far far away from Tiff for a goodly long time. He had an old flame of his batting her eyebrows coquettishly at him. And he did need to get far away from Tiff…

  Dubuque’s nudge was just gravy. “I’m in,” Dave said.

  Elorie’s eyebrows raised.

  “The pay’s fine, the job involves travel, which I like, and, well, I’ve got two years to kill before I can get back into my chosen profession.”

  “Okay, then,” Elorie said, formal. “Glad you’re on board.” Dave almost frowned. She acted as if she had half decided to back out of the deal. He couldn’t complain. He hadn’t made much of an impression.

  Elorie reach over to her briefcase, opened it, and handed him a contract. Dave skimmed the stack, noting the appalling set of waivers taking up most of the contract’s thickness. “What made you decide?” Elorie said, after he had flipped through about half of the contract.

  “The fact you have no idea why you wanted me,” Dave said. He didn’t intend to even hint at Dubuque’s nudge. “I’m a sucker for mysteries.” His specialty, actually: solving the mystery and finding out where the pollution came from. He flipped waivers and noted the waiver clauses. “Someone’s of the opinion that this job is dangerous.”

  “As you said, meddling in the affairs of the Gods is a good way to die.”

  “When do I get to meet the Telepaths?”

  “If you’re lucky, never.”

  “There aren’t any on the team?”

  “Just you,” Elorie said. “There aren’t enough fully functional Telepaths to go around. No Gods or Supported, either. Just a group of random talented people.”

  Dave took a deep breath, feeling for the tinglies. Nothing. He signed the paperwork. “When do we start?”

  “Tonight.”

  “You don’t seem at all surprised,” Dave said.

  Tiff had dragged him into his bedroom for a last bit of privacy after he had told her the news.

  “Curious as to your thought processes, but not surprised. I gave you a fifty-fifty chance of accepting, if only to find out why the Recruiter made the mistake of sending some old lover of yours here to embarrass you,” Tiff said. “I know how much of a sucker you are for mysteries.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’re not coming back.”

  He sat down beside Tiff. “What do you mean?”

  “We’d talked about you moving out after the divorce got finalized. Well, this is it. Oh, legally there’s still more papers to sign. There always are. Emotionally, though...”

  “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “I’m having a shock reaction.” Tiff wiggled over to him and he put an arm over her shoulder. She leaned into him. “You know I don’t like the unexpected,” an understatement if there ever was one, “and I certainly hadn’t predicted you’d get dragged off into the 99 Gods nonsense. Not after what you suffered through with all those Gods and their flunkies while getting that cure.”

  “Well, strange stuff always happens to me. We even know why, now.” One of the side effects of being a Psychic.

  “Uh huh. Nothing strange ever happens to me,” Tiff said. Her voice firmed. “Not if I can help it. I’ll get your stuff moved out of the house and into storage and I’ll email you the information about where I’ve stashed your stuff. Good luck, Dave.”

  Dave kissed his ex-wife on the top of her head. She wiped her eyes. “You too, Tiff.”

  “Jack, Darrel,” Elorie said, after Dave tossed a suitcase and his laptop in the trunk of the rental. “This is Dave Estrada.” They shook hands. Jack practically crushed Dave’s and Darrel did nearly as much damage. Jack topped Dave by a good half foot and looked like a football player. Darrel, the driver, looked as much like a thug close up as he had at a distance. No, more like a thug, complete with a handgun in a shoulder holster. Dave figured he had ten years on the younger man.

  The first thought that crossed his mind was ‘which of these two is Elorie’s lover?’ The second mentally weighed his own chances and found them wanting. “Jack’s job is to keep us safe,” Elorie said. “Darrel’s got many jobs, though his most important one is that he’s a legitimate hacker.”

  Darrel snorted. “Legitimate in the terms of talent, not legality, mind you.”

  Elorie bustled Dave into the back seat; the car rolled before the latch on his seat belt clicked. “We have a ten AM flight tomorrow morning. Until then, there’s tonight.”

  Tonight? Elorie’s comment sounded like an opening for him to make a pass, which he dismissed with a self-depreciating internal snort. Nothing like sleeping with the boss to get a job off to a good start, eh? He forced his mind out of the gutter and back on the professional.

  “You gonna do to him what you did to us?” Jack asked, kicking Dave’s thoughts back into the gutter. He knew Jack’s tone. What Jack had wanted to say instead of ‘him’ was ‘the wimp’. Or worse. Dave knew the impression he gave, a slightly pudgy Hispanic businessman of no particular note, the sort of person someone like Jack would consider of no account at all. Jack no more thought Dave had a chance with Elorie than Dave did of becoming the Broncos’ starting quarterback.

  Dave suspected he had misinterpreted this entire conversation, though. Besides, he knew his own strengths and weaknesses in the romance department. Any attempt he might make to hook up with Elorie would be slow and cautious, his preferred style. He chided himself for his own crazy emotions, attributing them to the chaos of the day.

  “Of course I am,” Elorie said.

  Now that didn’t help, not one maldito poco. “Which is?” Dave asked, curious.

  “Let me lead up to this properly,” Elorie said.

  Dave rubbed his forehead. Professional! Think professional! “You still doing the aid worker career, Elorie?” Her career as of a dozen years ago.

  “Before my life changed, I was managing economic development programs for an NGO in the Kurdish and Armenian areas of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and parts of the old Soviet Union, doing what Jack here calls ‘commie bullcrap’ and what I call ‘bottom-up-socialism’. My team emphasized local co-ops as the proper path for transitioning from third world economies to modern globalism.”

  “That’s ‘commie bullshit’, Elorie,” Jack said. “Giving people hope that will get blown away by the next fit of temper by the local warlord or revolutionary jihad is just wrong. The communalism shit’s even worse. So, what sort of weirdo are you, Mr. Dave?”

  “Environmental geologist,” Dave said. Then, as inoculation against the obvious rejoinder, he continued with his normal business precision: “Until the Troubles started, I co-owned a consulting firm. About half the time we got hired by large companies trying to fix their own mistakes, a quarter of the time by groups trying to diagnose an environmental hazard and get it stopped, and the rest of the time by companies trying to do a prophylactic: that is, reduce an environmental problem they had before the problem hit the government and lawsuit level.”

  “So we have here mister six figure salary guy,” Jack said, startling Dave. “You just a pencil pusher or did you get your hands dirty?”

  Well, a six figure salary until the damned Gods made a hash of things, Dave thought. “I left the pencil pushing for the others,” Dave said. “I was the hands-on guy.”

  “Well, I sure as hope to hell we don’t need you for your specialty,” Jack said. “Not on a bloody skip-trace.”

  They pulled on to the freeway and headed down into Denver.

  “Dave,” Elorie said, voice distant
. “There’s one thing I haven’t mentioned yet.”

  “Yes?” He looked over at Elorie. Her face had become hard and professional.

  “There’s more to come before you can become part of the team. You won’t like it. You’re just going to have to deal.”

  Dave blinked, unsettled, a minor woo-woo moment screaming ‘initiation’ into his brain. From the cold look on Elorie’s face, this wasn’t going to be an easy one, either. Based on his experiences with the Living Saints and their followers, the need for an initiation didn’t surprise him. Dave remembered the gangs of his youth and wondered what she considered a rough initiation.

  Dave watched her through the freeway lights. Her heart-shaped face, smooth and perfectly proportioned, gave him her full attention now. Her rich thick lips, more pouty when she had been younger and thinner, now looked perfect on her. Some things hadn’t changed: her turned-up-a-bit-at-the-end straight nose and her perfect teeth still drew his gaze like a magnet.

  The primal man deep inside of him sighed over the missing pieces in his life. His match with Tiff had been a personality match, not a physical match. Tiff had always had an athlete’s hard body, a long way from his mildly pudgy but once good-looking self. His edge in the romance department had once been ballroom dancing and his many fine arts interests, not the gym rat routine.

  He grunted, the back of his mind weighing his chances with Elorie again as he worried about this initiation. He was too old to heal well from anything particularly rough, and Jack especially looked like that’s what he would like to dish out.

  Elorie reached into her purse, took out a hotel key card, and handed it to him.

  “You’re spending the night with me,” Elorie said. “Nothing is going to go on between us we don’t both agree to.”

  Dave’s arms tingled again and he blinked, not comprehending the words until he ran them through his mind a second time. She had been right that he wouldn’t like this; assignations and one-night-stands weren’t his thing. He had the urge to wait until the car stopped, drop the key card and run like mad. Old pain came crawling to the surface, memories of back when he had been young and stupid. He had thought he had been in love with Elorie in high school. He might even have been, but that was a long time ago. He had talked to her about the future, about life and careers and marriage – and their talk had broken up their relationship.