99 Gods: Odysseia Page 7
Betrayer smiled. Orlando would of course use the Place of Time to plot his wooing of Dana, as well as to save the lives of the people in his cause. At least for a while.
The former was the reason for the lesson.
She predicted she would find the results most amusing.
6. (Dave)
Dave parked next to Lorenzi’s appalling tricked-up Toyota, worried about the black-windowed mud-splattered white van parked two thirds of the way down the curvaceous private driveway slash steep rural road that accessed Nessa’s Eklutna property. Santa Fe’s vicious Telepath-hunting operatives were their number one danger, but Nessa hadn’t given out any alarms, which assuaged his worry. Somewhat. She bounded out of the car with a joyous squeak before Dave unbuckled his seat belt.
Nessa skipped ahead, singing a wordless song, as she bounded over to Uffie’s trailer, parked a couple hundred feet downhill from Nessa’s own home. Dave followed, not at all quickly, and gleeful raised voices greeted him before he got within ten steps of the place. He smiled, anticipating another screwy Nessa situation, but stopped short when he opened the door and saw the twins in the arms of an unfamiliar older woman. An unfamiliar older woman with the bodily centering of a non-Indigo Seer.
He did a quick scan of the room, as many of the non-Indigo Seers and Sibyls were their enemies. Some even hunted Telepaths. People packed the small living room, densely squeezed into chairs and a tiny couch. He looked over to Ken, who radiated warmth and happy vibes the same as Nessa, then at Uffie and Tracy, more subdued but happy, and lastly at Elorie, who wore one of her falsely happy social faces.
Ouch.
Elorie caught his gaze, furrowed her eyebrows, raised her hand to her temple and opened her fingers. Oh. Brand new fake-Telepath-him had instinctively closed his mind shields. He took more than a moment to open up, finding it more difficult than expected in front of others. Opening up his mind felt like unzipping his fly in company.
Well, this was an improvement.
Nessa’s mother? Dave looked at the thin old woman and did see a little resemblance. “Ma’am,” he said, sticking out his hand. “I’m Dave Estrada, one of Nessa’s current set of companions.”
“Call me Christine,” Nessa’s mother said. She ignored his hand. Instead, she looked him over and shook her head. “So much for recruiting this one for your group of Indigo crazies, Uffie,” Christine said. “My darling daughter’s gone and turned him into the world’s most pathetic Telepath.”
Which elicited a “Mooom” from Nessa and an “Exactly as I wanted and he needed” from Uffie. The conversation went downhill from there.
Five long minutes later, Dave found a way to wiggle free of the social disaster and extract Elorie in the process.
“She just walked up and took over,” Elorie said, after planting a promising kiss on his lips. “I’m not sure how, but she turned Ken into putty in a moment, despite her catty comments.”
“They’ve probably met before,” Dave said. He let Elorie lead him, his mind still whirling from Nessa’s lessons. Elorie maneuvered them over to the gravel path leading to the seldom-used trailer they called home, when Nessa and Ken didn’t need them.
Dave groaned. “Uh, um, errrr,” he said. “Don’t take this badly, but I’m feeling overly vulnerable right now. It’s like everyone’s watching me.”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that last bit.”
“Not if we dress warmly,” Elorie said, massaging Dave’s upper arms. “Relax. Nerves hurt the telepathy.” Kiss. “Remember, hun, I love you.” Eyes twinkling, she led them into their trailer and pawed through a storage area filled with rock climbing gear, skis, parachutes and Elorie’s wingsuit. She came up with a matching pair of sleeping bags. Dave grabbed a warmer winter coat on the way out.
“Watch this.” She grabbed Dave again, giggled, then concentrated. Dave felt himself lift off the ground.
Borrowed teek. “This isn’t going to help me relax.”
“Hush for a moment while I show off my new trick. It’ll help keep me safe – well, safer – when I’m BASE jumping,” Elorie said, talking about her current most extreme hobby, which involved jumping off of tall places using her parachute-like wingsuit. “Enjoy the scenery.” They rose until they hovered fifteen feet off the ground and started to drift horizontally. Uphill. Elorie slowly and carefully followed the trail to Nessa’s clearing, dodging wet tree branches as well as trees. Dave bit his lip the entire time, trying not to think about what a fifteen foot fall down to the rock-strewn ground would do to them and whether he could grab any tree branches on the way down.
Elorie’s trick did get him to Nessa’s clearing without getting him soaked. She landed them next to the lean-to.
Ummm. Nice nice emotions.
Uh, what? A flicker?
Dave broke off the kiss and sensed the flicker again. Something vanishing at the far edge of the clearing, an old man, kneeling in prayer, if he saw correctly. The feeling of pins and needles ran up his arms. Startled, his mind shields snapped shut.
“Dave?”
“Look where I’m looking,” he said, intense.
Elorie froze, tense herself from the tone of his voice. “Shit. That’s Lorenzi.”
“He’s hidden. I can’t see him unless you anti-magic me.” Elorie’s immunities flooded him, allowing him to see clearly. “Okay, who’s he talking to?” Dave swore he could almost see through the second person, a someone who knelt next to John.
“What second person?” Pause. He felt Elorie adjusting the strength and target for her immunities, following her lessons. “Oh holy shit, that’s Sorrow!” She stood and not pausing to rebutton her shirt, grabbed Dave’s hand and ran across the clearing, toward Lorenzi.
Here we go again, Dave thought. Elorie-the-death-wish. He kept up with Elorie as the
y ran through the rain-soaked brown grass of the clearing, watching Lorenzi and the other as they flickered in and out of his vision, sometimes seeing one, then two, then neither of them. Sorrow appeared translucent, some form of projection.
What in the blue bloody blazes was a goddamned Watcher doing here in Eklutna, Dave wondered. And why was she dressed so archaically?
“John, watch out!” Elorie said, loud, as she skidded to a halt four paces away from Lorenzi. Lorenzi turned to her, then Dave. He appeared to be almost drunk.
“Quick, what do you see?” John said.
“You’re kneeling on the ground next to Sorrow, the Watcher,” Elorie said.
Dave nodded.
“But, but…” John turned back to Sorrow. “Holy Mother?” Sorrow nodded. “How can they see you?”
“I am what I am,” Sorrow said. Dave pushed his mental immunities on to Elorie as Sorrow spoke. He knew what the Watchers did to their minds. “Elorie, Dave – you are intruding. Go. Now. Forget what happened here.”
Brickbats assailed his mind for a moment, until Elorie joined her immunity to his. Then, as the assault ended, Sorrow became surrounded by a holy white light. True holiness.
Shit shit shit.
“Elorie named you correctly, didn’t she?” John asked Sorrow.
Sorrow paused, and sighed. “If I can no longer fool you, then you are indeed the Father of Darkness,” she said.
“If you can make that comment, then you are indeed a Fallen Angel.” Lorenzi might be old and hidebound, but he was, as always, very quick on the uptake.
“That name has been used, yet it is less appropriate than the name Watcher,” the Virgin said. “Yes. I am the one Dave, Elorie and the Daughter of Light met, and Sorrow is the name I gave them. Fear not, for I am also the Virgin Mary.”
Lorenzi appeared ready to vomit. Dave’s voice caught in his throat, filled with panic and fear. “Then my life is a fraud, has always been a fraud,” Lorenzi said. “I’ve been nothing but a house larry.”
“Something strange is going on here,” Dave said. “Sorrow herself said she thought you had died in the French Revolution. However, the Watchers never overtly lie. On the other hand, John, I know how often you have prayed to the Virgin Mary and been answered.” At least once a decade, according to Lorenzi. Recently quite often.
Now Sorrow looked like she was about to vomit. Dave suspected Elorie’s immunities were the only things keeping the two of them alive. “Your unwanted presence has ruined this prayer,” Sorrow said to Elorie and him. “You know the answer already. God be with you, and may we never meet again.” Sorrow’s projection vanished.
Lorenzi muttered a foul intense not-very-Priestly curse in English, then switched to German and then to Latin as he continued. After, he gathered himself and stuck out a hand. Dave helped the old man to his feet. Lorenzi got into his face. “You owe me an explanation for this intrusion,” Lorenzi said, murderous. “Now!”
Dave frowned, but Elorie answered. “We came out here for some private nookie,” she said, finally buttoning up her shirt. Lorenzi backed off about an inch. “I ran over because I thought you were in danger.”
“I got that part, my dear demi-rep,” Lorenzi said, nasty and harsh. Elorie stiffened. “I’m looking for the answer the Virgin said you two knew.”
Elorie, upset, turned to Dave. He took a deep breath. “Give me a second to think this through.” Lorenzi might be only a Mindbound but he did have the presence of an angry Telepath when he got intense. Dave banished his thought and covered Elorie with his mind shields again, after taking her hand. Her upset turned to anger.
Dave sifted through his memories until he came up with a likely answer. “Here’s my guess, John.” He took a deep breath. “Much of the Watchers’ magic is set up to work automatically, held in objects they call ‘gamme’, especially their magics that do the purest good and purest evil. One example is the device Elorie broke in Arrhenius’s Room of Finding, which the Watchers named the Demon of Abelsha. Another was a cursed troll bridge outside of the Watchers’ castle Nessa and Ken destroyed. I suspect that most of the time when you’ve been talking to the Virgin, you’ve been talking to a gamme set up to direct prayers away from Sorrow and to God.”
“Impossible,” Lorenzi said. “You two are somehow deluding yourselves. And me. I was speaking with the Virgin Mary, not some damned Fallen Angel!” He turned and stalked away. Dave winced. He had seen this reaction from John before, after Elorie told everyone that the Watchers were Gods. The Watchers made people forget. Lorenzi had already forgotten that just moments ago he had known that Sorrow was the one answering his prayer.
“This isn’t good,” Dave said, feeling sick again. The Watchers’ magic was so potent and tricky that only he and Elorie, because of their immunities, knew and believed the Watchers were Gods.
“Yah,” Elorie said. She leaned up against him, shivering, radiating unease. “Really really not good.” Pause. “Dammit!” A pause and a sigh. “I hope you don’t mind, love, but I’ve totally lost the mood.”
“Me, too. Let’s just get our stuff and go back.”
No, his day wasn’t getting any better.
“…completely, intensely embarrassing,” Dave said, returning to their conversation about his telepathy. “Worse, I don’t know what’s going on in my head any more, what’s real or what’s not.” After a cautious several minute wait, they followed Lorenzi down the hill, on foot. “For instance, even though I didn’t get any sleep last night, I’m not completely zonked.”
“Hmm,” Elorie said, opening the door to their trailer. “I’m real glad I didn’t have to go through what you did. It sounds far too much like the hell Nessa put the other Telepaths through when she made them functional.” They hung up their now-damp sleeping bags to dry and changed clothes. “You should try and get some sleep anyway.”
He shook his head. “Something else’s bothering me and I’d like to show you. If you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all. I’m so keyed up I can barely stand in one place. I was going to have to go out running to burn off the adrenaline.”
He led Elorie out of their trailer, down the path to the driveway. Their feet crunched gravel after Dave led them out onto the rural road.
“Hey! There’re people in that white van down there.”
“That’s what I wanted to show you,” Dave said. “Feeling nervy?”
Elorie stopped for a moment, met Dave’s gaze, and made the hand-opening gesture that meant that Dave should open his mind shields. He did so.
The bodyguards were long gone, sent away by Ken after one of his paranoid breakdowns. Dave really hoped he wouldn’t end up with Nessa and Ken’s mercurial personality issues. Nessa’s shifting personality, vocabulary, and schemes often got on his nerves. Elorie had the same problem with Ken. That he didn’t want to borrow.
“I’d hoped to get word back from Vanessa’s mother before we talked to any of you, but since you’re forcing the issue…I’d rather talk in here, where it’s at least warmer and not raining,” the unnamed guy said. He was stocky and muscular, with a casual grace of movement that said athlete. Or warrior. Dave couldn’t take his eyes off the man, who wore a presence and aura as magnetic as Lorenzi’s.
Dave turned to Elorie, who nodded. Elorie, using Ken’s teek, kept
the rain off and her boots a half inch above the mud. Dave kept his mind closed. He followed Elorie and the unnamed guy into the van.
“So, are you going to introduce yourselves or are you going to keep up your operational security?” Elorie said, after she sat down in an empty seat in the third row. Dave took the seat by the door in the second row. Beside him, a sleepy-looking woman with pillow-prints still on her cheek eyed him suspiciously. She wore expensive clothes, blonde hair, several bruises, a blood soaked bandage on her wrist, and was still attractive enough to be distracting. He identified her as a Seer.
The unnamed man wore an oxford shirt with a pullover vest, Dockers for pants, and belonged on the cover of GQ instead of in backwoods Alaska. He sat in the driver’s seat and sighed. “Christine’s being a bit snippy today?”
Elorie nodded. “She’s not always snippy?”
“We’ve been having a rough go recently,” he said. The unnamed man actively masked what form of enhanced being he was. Besides him and the Seer next to him, the van contained two more men, of which one was another Seer and the other was a Supported, and one woman, a Sybyl. All four of them appeared worse for wear, though none as bad off as the cranky Seer sitting next to him. The preppy guy chewed on his lip for a moment. “My name’s Abe Cox. I’m in charge.”
“In charge of what?” Elorie asked, sweetly. “My name’s Elorie, by the way.”
“In charge of the last functional Indigo field group,” Abe said. Finally, something. Only he had no idea where in the crazy Indigo organization this group stood. He hadn’t ever convinced Uffie to reveal even the most minimal information about the Indigo and their allied subgroups.
The male Seer, a tall lean bearded man with hostile dark eyes, reached over the rear seat and grabbed Dave’s arm. “This one’s a powerful Telepath! I’ve never sensed anyone this overwhelming before! And I didn’t even notice beforehand!”