99 Gods: Betrayer Read online

  The world refused to get any saner. “Who’s your master!” Grover shouted, followed by the sound of a slap. Dana didn’t move, but Akron turned the force bubble toward Grover. He had Epharis in his grip, slapping her, hard, across the face, with his right hand. “Who’s your master?”

  Epharis’s eyes swam, unnaturally filled with the colors of the rainbow. “I have no Master,” she said, her voice off. Grover slapped her, harder. Amanda stood behind Epharis, holding her in place.

  “Stop!” Dana said, her first coherent word since the insanity started with Jan’s ritual suicide.

  “No, let them,” Akron said. “The two witches’ Hell-magic infected the tall witch, and the schizophrenic guy is slapping the evil out of her. He and the biker woman are projective Immunes, and they’re doing their best to null out the Hell magic, but it won’t be enough.” Akron smiled. “If they succeed, I won’t have to kill her.”

  Dana inhaled great heaving sobs, not understanding Akron’s comments. “What about Lara? How do we save her?”

  Akron put a hand on Dana’s shoulder. “We don’t have to. The taint fell off her the instant the Hell-beast vanished. It’s as if she and her fellow witch were using entirely different tricks. I don’t understand anything going on here! I’m not even sure I want to. This isn’t logical! Nothing here makes any sense!”

  Dana nodded and pointed to where Jurgen, shivering, stumbled back toward Jan’s body. Lara continued to pound mouse remains and curse. Akron’s gaze followed Dana’s finger and she trailed after Jurgen with the force bubble.

  “Magic isn’t logical, it’s psychological,” the Godslayer said, calming, explanatory and filled with love, from behind them.

  “Is it safe now, Angel?” Akron asked.

  “Yes. Please do not interfere, though, or call me an Angel. They know, but they don’t like being reminded,” the Godslayer said. The force bubble vanished, depositing Dana and Akron full sized to the ground three paces from Jan’s body.

  …where Greg, teary eyed, had finished wiping the blood from Jan’s cut throat. He took out a roll of duct tape, ripped off a piece, and duct taped Jan’s throat closed.

  “That’s not going to help,” Akron said. “She’s already dead. If you want, I can try and revive her, but she’s been dead long enough that she’s going to have noticeable brain damage, no matter what I do.”

  Greg shook his head. “This was a nasty one,” he said. “The blood may be too tainted. Can you tell? To me, everything senses as tainted right now.” To Dana, Greg possessed no abnormal capabilities. He had no sense to detect ‘taint’. Yet he did.

  Jurgen, who had shambled nearby, unzipped a backpack and brought out a small Styrofoam cooler. “Assume it’s tainted. We didn’t bring enough, dammit,” he said, his voice hollow and aching. To her right, Grover’s slapping continued, but Epharis’s answer had changed from “I have no Master” to a mocking “You are.”

  None of this is real, Dana thought. None of this can be real. I’m stuck in a dream or nightmare, and I’m going to wake up soon. Then I’m going to scream and scream and scream.

  Jurgen knelt beside Jan’s dead body. “Come on, Jan. You can do this. You’ve done it before.” Her heart didn’t beat, or even quiver. She didn’t breathe. She was nothing more than a cooling bled out corpse.

  “Nothing,” Greg said. “She should have popped back when Epharis and Lara finished banishing the Hell-beast.”

  “Dammit!” Jurgen said. “Not like this!” He slapped Jan’s face, more of a tap than a slap. Nothing. No response. He grabbed Jan’s jaw and wiggled. Nothing. He slapped her cheek again, a little harder.

  “Who do you serve, Epharis?” Grover said, loud, after a loud slap.

  “You, Master Grover. I serve you. Please.” Her voice echoed with unsurities.

  “Tell me again.” Slap!

  “Jan, get the fuck back in your body!” Jurgen said, grabbing Jan’s torso and shaking her corpse. He stopped suddenly, turned away, and opened the Styrofoam cooler, his eyes full of excitement. Dana peered inside the cooler; nestled between the cold packs were bags of blood. Jurgen picked up one of the bags of blood.

  No. No goddamned way, she thought.

  “What are you doing?” Greg asked. “This isn’t procedure.”

  “Fuck procedure,” Jurgen said, his voice filled with sudden confidence. “I’m following my gut and improvising.” He grabbed the bloody suicide knife, wiped it clean on Jan’s jacket, and sliced open the corner of the blood bag in his hand. He dropped the knife, opened Jan’s mouth and he squirted in several tablespoons of blood. He put down the blood bag and manipulated Jan’s throat.

  Jan, still dead to all of Dana’s senses, willpower and otherwise, sat up with an “ahhhhahhah!” of inhaled breath. She grabbed the blood bag from the ground and began to suck. Tiny rivulets of blood seeped around the duct tape on her throat as she swallowed.

  Dana shrieked and fell to the ground with Jan’s initial “ahhhhahhah!”, and there she remained while Jan slowly sucked down the contents of the bag of blood. Dana didn’t stop her muted shrieking.

  Greg sat behind Jan and lifted her on to his lap, holding her upright and helping her breathe by doing chest compressions. Her heart still didn’t beat.

  “Master, I’m Epharis again.” Slap! “I beg you, Master Grover.” Slap. Pause.

  “What was my sister’s married name?”

  “Dolly Madison March Madder, until she changed it back, Master” Epharis said.

  Insane. Insane insanity. Dana curled into a ball and wailed, unable to keep her eyes off Jan. She just wanted this all to go away.

  “Interesting,” Akron said. “I expected the enhanced healing, but not the direct absorption of blood into the bloodstream in her upper intestine, or the way her stomach squeezes the blood into the intestines. So your big secret is you’re vampires?”

  “The V word happens only if something goes very bad,” Greg Clover said, looking up at Akron with nervous eyes. “The reason I had to second Jan. This? This is just enhanced healing.”

  “More,” Jan said, spitting out a mist of blood as she spoke. She wheezed, and Greg compressed her chest again so she could speak. “I think…I need…about five.”

  Dimly, distantly, around the edges of Dana’s own wailing, she heard Jan’s heart beat. Once.

  “We’re out,” Jurgen said.

  “Give me the tainted stuff, then,” Jan said, a barely audible wheeze. “Grover and Lara will just have to beat the taint out of me later.”

  “No,” Akron said. “I’d have to kill you. You have no idea how bad this is for me. I want to help, because one part of me knows you’re heroes. But even confronting these Hell-things is sharing their evil. Your old blood is not a point of discussion. We must destroy it. I have no leeway on this.”

  Dana grabbed her hair and pulled tight. None of this was real.

  “Okay, that’s stupid,” Jan said. “What are we suppose…” wheeze “…supposed to do, just run away and let the Hell-beasts…” wheeze “…do their evil?”

  “For us of the 99 Gods, I believe the answer is ‘yes’,” Akron said. “I thought I would be able to heal you, but the Host said ‘no’. Even creating blood to help save you would infect me with the taint. The Host would end me. But I’m bringing blood from Williamsburg. I can help, indirectly.”

  “Then…” wheeze “…you need us. People like us.” Wheeze. “You need to stop hunting us!”

  “I never was, and never will,” Akron said. Sonic boom and flash of light. “Here’s your blood.” Dana tried to plug her ears and clinch closed her eyes, but she still managed to hear Jan’s slurping. “If you want, I can share my story with the other 98 and demand those who are hunting you desist.”

  “No. Not yet.” Epharis. She sounded closer to death than Jan. “Tell only those you trust, those who will not fall to Dubuque. When he learns of this, he will destroy us. We revealed power today.”

  “Say it right, Epharis.”

 
“Yes, my Master. We revealed we can wield the power of evil today, if we must.” She paused. “Unfortunately, I also believe we broke our Dana in the process.”

  Dana curled up tighter, into a smaller ball, and tried to wedge her fingers even tighter into her ears.

  “For now,” the Godslayer said. “She’s no worse off than you were after the ’80 episode. She’ll recover, eventually.”

  “Oh, crap, Sharpie,” Grover said. From the pitch change and the emotion echoing through his voice, Dana realized he had fallen to the ground, and that he hadn’t encountered the Godslayer in years. “You’re doing your crazy Queen of the World catalyst trick again, aren’t you?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So, what are you doing to her? What are you turning her into? One of us? An Inseer? A Hero?”

  “Nothing so simple,” the Godslayer said. “I’m turning her into herself. You forget I’m still getting better, too.”

  Dana heard no more.

  5. (Dave)

  “This way,” Elorie said. Dave followed her out of the elevator, rolling a suitcase with each hand. Elorie’s team didn’t have a miser’s budget, not if they stayed at the Hotel Monaco. Dave still half expected some kind of initiation beating at any moment, but the Hotel Monaco wasn’t a place for such thuggery. Even better, Jack and the other one, the hacker who hadn’t said a word after they had shaken hands, turned the other way down the hotel corridor.

  Elorie swiped a key card and shoved the door open. Dave parked his suitcases by the dresser, looked up, and found Elorie inside his personal space.

  “Prepare yourself.”

  “Do I get to know what’s going on?” he said, inching back. An instant of chagrin lowered her shoulders, and she stepped back as well.

  “I have to freshen up,” she said. “Sit down on the bed for a moment, won’t you?” The words sounded cheerful, but he didn’t at all believe her remote cheeriness.

  Dave sat on the king-sized bed, worried. Elorie’s chilly exterior ached of fragility, but he sensed hot emotions behind her façade. She appeared to be only a few millimeters from breaking down in hysterics or grabbing a gun and shooting him. Something was going terribly wrong here. He suspected he would learn the details far too soon.

  He heard water running, from a sink, not a shower. Faster than he expected, Elorie came out of the bathroom, wearing a white hotel robe.

  She stopped a careful arm length away, her entire demeanor changed, back in control over herself. “Look at me, Dave,” she said, commanding.

  The pins and needles were back, not just his arms now but his whole body. The weird woo-woo moment that started in the morning, as yet unsatisfied, now built to some sort of appalling muscle-clenching life-destroying climax. Elorie’s eyes held no tears, and her face and her posture radiated firmness and more than a bit of anger. Her eyes, though…underneath her eyes were dark purple bags. She had washed off the make-up. She had been through hell, and not just the hell of recruiting him. “I lead this team,” she said, angry. “Understand why.” She took off her robe to reveal her naked body and flipped the wig off her head to reveal her short curly stubble.

  Dave’s day-long woo-woo moment and his feelings of overwhelming psychic strangeness crashed wavelike through his mind and washed away into empty nothingness, leaving behind a thousand possible reactions to Elorie’s mutilated body. To someone else she was a zombie, some monstrous creature that should have been in the grave but unnaturally remained among the living. To others, she would be terrifying and terrible.

  He reacted differently, via his mundane emotions and through far too much disconcerting psychic crap. His first inclination was to convince Elorie to change the mission, hunt down the Telepaths who had recruited her for this job, and kill them. Instead, inspiration struck. He took off his suit coat, undid his tie, and took off his shirt to reveal his own torso.

  God damned Telepaths! This was not a coincidence.

  “Cadmium poisoning from a badly polluted site,” Dave said. “Kidney failure. Seven operations, ending with a kidney transplant a year ago.” He outlined the still prominent scars from the most aggressive surgeries. “Two more exploratory surgeries since, after the cadmium poisoning went terminal on me last year and the doctors couldn’t figure out why I was still alive, and decided to use me as a research project.” Those scars were still red. “Surprisingly, I’m healthier now than I’ve been in years. Thanks to Dubuque.”

  Elorie’s aura of command vanished in an instant, and she turned bone white in shock. She took several ragged breaths to steady herself, blinked once, twice, and then turned away.

  “I was in a hospice,” Elorie said, her voice quiet. “The cancer was back for its third round, and the doctors had given up. The metastases were everywhere, including my brain.” Her body showed more scars than his, the worst being the double mastectomy. Disease and doctors had chewed her up and spit her out, a tale inscribed on her ruined body. Mismatched tattoos ruined by surgery. Train track scars. Puckers. Scars over scars. Weals from under her wig, pins and needles painful to see. Only her lower arms, lower legs and face were scar free.

  “I was ready to die. I’d made peace with death,” Elorie said, turning back to him. She took a deep breath and the liquid pain in her eyes filled his universe. “I’d lived a life alone. I was ready to die alone.”

  Dave nodded, and motioned for her to come over to him. Elorie shivered but didn’t move. She opened her mouth to speak, choked out a “Th”, stopped, and choked back a sob. With a shake, she found herself, her face gathering stone. When she spoke again her commanding voice returned, but now without the anger.

  “The three leading Telepaths, Nessa, Ken and Alt, showed up and made me the offer to lead the team. The Recruiter knew I was the right one to lead the team, but although the articles on him make him sound omniscient, he isn’t. He hadn’t known how close to death I was. I refused the offer. A person stepped out of Nessa, physically out from inside her, the God named Persona. The media doesn’t talk about Persona’s trick and I freaked. After they calmed me down, Persona said she could cure me, and she would cure me whether I accepted their proposal or not. They had made a mistake and shouldn’t have approached me. I demanded to know why they wanted me. After they explained, I said I’d do the job if they put my cancer into remission, but not if they cured me. If they cured me, I couldn’t handle the risk. I would have gone back to my children, who I’d already fostered out to two of my friends when I settled my life before my expected death.” She wiped her nose with an angry motion, leaned toward him, and tried but failed to summon back her anger. “I made the Telepaths promise me they wouldn’t cure me unless I succeeded. This mission has to mean something to me or else I couldn’t do it. That’s why I’m the leader and that’s why you’re going to do exactly as I say, Dave.”

  The last sentence was obviously canned, a part of her pre-planned presentation. Dave shrugged it off. “Cadmium poisoning can affect the mind, and I was showing signs. Everybody said I was behaving irrationally. The loss of mind was my worst fear, a much worse fear than the terminal kidney failure, the one I couldn’t talk about, and the reason I took up with the veneration of Dubuque. I chose him in particular because I agree with his goals, even though the decision lost me my friends and I suspect drove the final stake through the heart of my marriage. I’m fully cured, no trace of cadmium in my system at all. I don’t even have to take any more anti-rejection drugs. However, I didn’t pray for the scars to go away. I suspect you understand why.” He again motioned for her to come over. She didn’t move. He didn’t speak.

  Elorie’s face softened as she looked at Dave. “Okay?”

  “I understand your anger, Elorie. Why fate, if you want to call telepathic manipulation ‘fate’, brought us together,” Dave said. Her ravaged body explained everything. Nothing more needed saying. He had been through a similar hell. He still fought through his own buried anger.

  She took a half step toward him and he held out his hands to he
r for a third time. She abandoned her tentativeness and dove into his arms. He hugged her tight. At first she tried to maintain a little distance, then gave in and hugged him tight as well, scars against scars. Then she shivered and began to sob.

  As did he. He hadn’t let loose like this since his world caved in last year; he suspected Elorie hadn’t let loose since hers had, either.

  Oh, how beautiful it was to finally be able to cry.

  “The others didn’t react this way, did they?” Dave asked, an infinity of comfort later.

  “Oh my God no, not even close. The minute they caught a glimpse of the real me, I wasn’t human to them anymore. Jack, Lisa and Osham all went to their knees begging my forgiveness. Darrel threw up and tried to run; I told him that if he left the room he was off the team, so he huddled in the corner of the closet for the rest of the night and wouldn’t speak. Mohammed got irate and told me I was no longer a woman; we fought but he eventually said he would do as I said, no matter what. I think he thinks I’m holy or something. Georgia spent the night waiting on me, disgustingly solicitous, trying to talk me out of being involved in this at all. If I touched her, even the merest brush of fingers, she freaked. Still does.” She paused. “Other than the bit of competitive scar-gazing, what were you thinking?”

  He had moved to the head of the bed. Elorie huddled in his lap, a blanket around her. He chuckled at her comment. “My first instinct was to hunt down the Telepaths and kill them for dragging you into this. Slowly.”

  “You didn’t even flinch. Everyone else, save for a few doctors and nurses, always reacts in horror. You didn’t.”

  Dave frowned. Mind games. Well, Telepaths, duh. “I’ve seen myself in the mirror” Elorie winced “and despite my best efforts at plodding, my profession’s proven to be dangerous at times. I’ve survived three explosions and who knows how much toxic exposure. I’ve treated fallen comrades.” He paused to take a deep breath. “My scars aren’t half as bad as yours, and seeing such scars on someone I care for hurts, but they weren’t completely unexpected, because I was expecting the unexpected.”