99 Gods: Betrayer Read online

  “A Communicant,” Diana said, with a smile. “I’m adjusting your tone and presence to match ours. I’ve been practicing with Psychics.”

  “Thanks,” Nessa said. The tension in the van didn’t vanish, but Richard and Abe both backed their hands away from their weaponry. “Not that I understand your bafflegab, but thanks.” Nessa paused and adjusted things on her end. “Do me a favor and move the van three blocks farther and take a left. I’ve got you covered from the Telepath, he’s no longer going to be a problem for you. I’d rather not have to walk too far in this neighborhood. I’m lazy and my feet hurt because I’m pregnant.”

  Abe shook his head and did as asked.

  The immature Telepath slavemaster had holed up in the bed of a ratty pick-up truck in the back of a seedy motel; Nessa smelled the old game of living in hotel parking lots and helping oneself to the free breakfasts. She had played this game herself, years ago.

  Abe and Richard went with Nessa, leaving Diana and the rest behind.

  “I’ll bet you’re not even going to tell me why you’re in charge of this mess, are you, Abe,” Nessa said.

  “Nope.”

  “Or how you and Mom ended up working together.”

  “Also correct.”

  Nessa sighed. She had bashed her head up against that brick wall far too many times in her life, with her mother and her mother’s ‘friends’, and gotten nowhere. Losing her temper wouldn’t get her anywhere, though the fit she wanted to throw would certainly make her smile.

  “I worked with your father and mother once, a long time ago,” Nessa said. “They had me help knock the mental shit out of some Hell-beast’s mind while they killed it, so they could clear a Hell portal and get one of their own back.”

  “Owwwh shit,” Abe said, now grumbly annoyed. “Your Mom said you’d repressed the incident because of the nightmares.”

  Nessa chortled, and repressed the old nightmares. “Uh huh, but I’ve had Portland doing sewage excavation in my mind. Lots of things I’ve forgotten I’ve remembered recently.”

  “Well, okay.” Abe sighed. “You’re right, and you need to know the person you’re rescuing is the daughter of the woman you helped bring back from Hell. She’s also my half-sister, and Richard’s wife.” Abe almost put his hand on Nessa’s shoulder, to stop her and turn her to face him, but leapt back in shock. Training, Nessa guessed. “I’m hoping that won’t be a problem,” Abe said, now all tense around the shoulders.

  “Connections help,” Nessa said. “Coincidences and psi-echoes make everything better. Trust me on this. Stay here.” They understood psi-echoes, but referred to them by a different name. Story something-or-other. Abe took a moment to connect the two before he nodded.

  Nessa strode away and knocked on the side of the pickup truck.

  she sent.

  The sleeping man woke up and screamed. He tried to run, but Nessa cut off his control over his feet and he fell to the bed of the pickup with a crash. He had lousy mental shields against close-range telepathy.

  “What’s up, hon?” the woman sleeping beside him asked. She was one of the Seer types, set up to spoof magic at range, and also able to raise and lower her mental shields as needed. If she remembered correctly, the Indigo referred to people like her as Skeptics.

  “You’re enslaved, sister,” Nessa sent. She reached into Walter’s mind and turned off his unconscious control over the lady. “That’ll teach you not to lower your mental shields at the wrong time,” she said to the young lady.

  “Yipes!” the young lady said, with barely a pause to figure things out. Like all the others Nessa had met, the formerly enslaved lady was sharp. She scrambled out of the pickup, took one look at Nessa, yelped again, and dove into the arms of Abe and her husband. “Thank God. I couldn’t even think straight. What are you doing here with her? Does she have the two of you?”

  “Kara?” Walter the ratty so-called Telepath asked. Kara didn’t even look back. “What’s going on?” He looked at Nessa and didn’t recognize her.

  “You’ve been a bad boy, Walter,” Nessa said. “Enslaving the wrong people.” She crossed her arms and rested them on the side of the pickup bed.

  “Kara’s not my slave. Be serious, lady.”

  “Bets? Didn’t you think it sort of strange that a reasonably well off young beauty like Kara would run away with a twerp like you? You know you’re a Telepath, don’t you?” Kara, a bit taller than Nessa and much younger, was one of those obnoxiously lucky women with a thin build and oversized breasts.

  “I’m… I couldn’t be. Could I?” Walter said. “No way. I’m just lucky.”

  Lies, lies, lies. Typical for an immature Telepath. “Wrongo.”

  With her other ear, Nessa attempted to follow the hushed conversation between Abe, Kara and Richard. Kara was apologizing for screwing up, something about her husband being with another man and her getting bored and going bar-hopping, and, well…

  Ah, the inherent dangers of open relationships, Nessa thought. Some damned regressing Telepath might come by and make off with your mind.

  Javier sent.

  Nessa sent back, sighing inside. So much for privacy.

  Javier relayed Nessa’s message to Alt. Alt replied.

  “The reason she went with you is that you had her enslaved,” Nessa said. “Just goes to show you can’t run from the Gods without causing a fuss.”

  “But I have to run,” Walter said. “They’re dangerous.”

  “No shit,” Nessa said, rolling her eyes. “How’d you like to be part of a group doing something about it? You’ll have to associate with some friendly Gods, though. Portland, for one.”

  “Huh. I came here because I didn’t think I’d be in any danger,” Walter said. Hunches about Portland, eh? Oh, he had potential, no doubt about that, Nessa decided. “I guess.” Walter made the logical connection. Good.

  “You should have come alone,” Nessa said. She turned to Abe, who was a hell of a lot less excitable than what Nessa remembered about his father and had far smaller breasts than what she remembered about his domineering red-haired mother. “I’d like a ride back to my friends, with Walter. He’s not going to be any problem at all. Right, Walter?”

  “You’ve turned off my luck, haven’t you?” Walter said.

  “Yes, although it’s not luck, it’s psychic illusions mixed with telepathy,” Nessa said. This recruiting crap used to be such a nasty problem, but like most things, once she had done it a bazillion times, everything came natural to her. “My name’s Nessa, and yes, I turned you off for now. Don’t try and fight me or I’ll run you around like a zombie.”

  Walter gulped at the name. Kara and her husband didn’t look any happier, either, at the ‘run you around like a zombie’ comment. Nessa imagined the stories the Indigo told about their little adventure together, years ago, hadn’t been flattering. Back then, she, as Vanessa, had been a young show-off.

  “You’ll get your ride back,” Abe said. He looked like he had lost some sort of bet with himself or compromised some bit of personal honor.

  Nessa smiled, happy to be working at or near her best. Oh, the ways she could have messed this up…

  “So, Mom, I want some real telephone numbers and email addresses this time,” Nessa said. She took a pad of paper out of her purse and propped it carefully on the arm of the captain’s chair as she wrote down her mother’s answers. The men were out getting some real food for Kara, and it was just Mom, Diana the witch and the now drooling eyes-unfocused Walter in the van. “We need help, we being us Telepaths. The Gods, save for a few, are out after us, either to enslave us or to kill us. Those of us with decent tricks can protect ourselves, mostly, but we all think we’re running out of time. They’re getting better and we’
re not.”

  “We have the same problems, and we think we’re running out of time, too,” Mom said. “As bad as everything that’s already happened, those of us with a good sense of things think it’s going to get worse, much worse.” She took Nessa’s hand. “I worry about you all the time, now, Nessa. Especially because you’re pregnant. What made you think now would be a good time for that? We’ve talked about the dangers before, you know. Or did you forget?”

  “Mothhhher,” Nessa said. “Actually, being pregnant helps me focus on the here and now. Having kids will help as well.”

  “But how will the world survive you giving birth?” Mom asked. “I know full well how strong you are.” Appalled and proud at the same time.

  Nessa smiled. She liked having her strength recognized. “I’ve got lots of Telepath associates now who can help me. Including the God Portland.”

  “I wouldn’t count on the latter if I were you,” Diana said, from the rear seat. “I foresee an unfortunate separation in the not so distant future.”

  “Diana? Shut up!” Nessa said. She didn’t want to hear that. Worse, she knew Diana hadn’t lied. “Anyone ever tell you that premature pessimistic predictions piss people uh, off?”

  “I thought you’d appreciate the truth.”

  “Not so far in advance. Premature truth messes up the digestion.” The ‘lazy’ in her didn’t like to plan. “Besides, I suspect Portland’s boot in my booty is the least of my problems.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Diana said, smiling.

  Mom turned away, biting her lip, radiating unease.

  “Don’t worry, they’re going to need to work extra hard to off me these days,” Nessa said. “I’m living for three, don’t you forget.”

  Abe dropped Nessa off far too many blocks from Ken, Alt and the gang, who had grown deathly silent in Nessa’s mind. She waved bye at Mom and the Indigo second generation people and sauntered off, wondering what in the hell had gone wrong this time. Couldn’t her Telepath crew do anything right while she wasn’t there?

  Her biggest fear, that they had killed the Goth loser lady out of disgusted annoyance, turned out to be wrong. The Goth looked out of the loop, though, and not at all happy to see Nessa dragging back a similar age guy just as bedraggled as her. Nessa guessed the Goth drifters and whatever gang of drifters Walter belonged to didn’t see eye to eye.

  “…and the motto of Prostitutes Anonymous is that you have to take life one lay at a time,” Ken said. Nobody laughed. Things were bad if Ken had to resort to his appalling jokes to keep the tension down.

  “Say hello to Walter,” Nessa said. “I’ve been clearing out the crap in his mind on the way, so you wouldn’t need to watch me doing it in front of you.” They were all still so squeamish about the procedure, especially Alt.

  Walter, his brain blown out his ears by Nessa’s clearing of his relatively reasonable Telepath immaturities, shuffled along zombie-like and didn’t respond. He didn’t have the neurons to respond with right now, Nessa guessed. He needed a good night’s rest. Then he would be just fine.

  “What I can’t figure out is how this is connected,” Alt said, stern, commanding and as tall as he imagined himself, which was plenty tall enough. “While you were out amusing yourself with your secret society of cultish whatevers, Satan broke into John’s vacation home and stole Willie Ganiji.” Alt blamed her. Tough.

  “No big loss,” Nessa said. Willie, the mongrel east-Asian mostly Japanese magician trainee who headed John’s group of magician trainees, always struck her as a fool. Power mad. Of course, all the magician trainees were power mad. Power madness appeared to be a job requirement.

  “Nessa, John’s our partner now,” Ken said. “He’s officially called us in to help him rescue Willie.” Ken sent, private. She heard the tinkling of gold rings echoing in his mind.

  Nessa sent back. “I guess we don’t have any choice, then. First we drop off these two losers…”

  “Hey!” the Goth said, now extremely unhappy at Nessa. Tough.

  “…then we go see if we can calm John down. At least we should finally be able to get him to cough up what he knows about this Satan person he’s been cryptically warning us about for months.” Nessa sent back to Ken.

 

 

  “Okay, let’s go do this,” Ken said.

  Nessa said.

  Ken sent back. He came up to her as they trooped back to their large van and took her hand in his.

  They drove off into the darkness.

  And now I know this mystery, that sinners will alter and pervert the words of righteousness in many ways, and will speak wicked words, and lie, and practice great deceits, and write books concerning their words. But when they write down truthfully all my words in their languages, and do not change or minish ought from my words but write them all down truthfully - all that I first testified concerning them.

  -- The Book of Enoch 104, 10:12

  “After you’ve wrecked my day and exposed yourselves, you’re still going to cater my meeting?”

  7. (Dave)

  “Better?” Dave asked. Morning light filled the hotel room, and he had awakened when Elorie shifted on top of him.

  “Guess so.” She turned her head to meet his eyes. “Thank you, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome. For what?”

  “For last night. For all you did and didn’t do.” She inhaled slowly, and exhaled. “Catharsis, wonderful catharsis. Now we just have to deal with the cost.”

  Unlike last night, he had her full attention now. The real Elorie, without the canned presentation. A tense Elorie, though. “Too true,” Dave said. He understood the comment about cost, and realized his real worry. People couldn’t go through what the two of them had gone through last night and not make a deep connection. Not with the old connection between them already there. The connections, the entanglements, those were why all the possible ways forward from here hurt. “So, El, do you have any idea where we go from here?”

  Elorie shook her head and tensed more. “I’ve decided the Telepaths didn’t mess with my mind to set me up to want you.”

  Dave blinked, appalled and shocked. “The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.” Blinding insight struck him, a hunch he recognized as leaking through from his unconscious. “The one night together idea wasn’t yours at all.”

  “Nope,” Elorie said, confirming his hunch. “The Telepaths told me I needed to do this to bind the group together. They had to talk me into the plan. I almost quit.”

  Goddamned Telepaths! Why did they do this to Elorie? Why had they done this to me? What had either of them done to deserve this? Somewhere, some Telepaths had to be laughing hysterically. His urge to strangle them grew.

  The Telepath’s trick also told him too much about a number of people, and he didn’t like it much. Elorie’s pain over her physical mutilation was clearly evident. If she had been able to think even a little clearly past her pain, she would never have agreed to something so warped.

  Worse, though, was the fact the trick actually worked. Those other team members should have been able to cope, maybe not as well as he did because of his medical history, but at least a little. The fact Elorie threw them so much made Dave suspect he had fallen in with a group of shallow people, too tied to surface appearances. Their reaction didn’t speak well of them.

  “By the way, you haven’t asked me anything about what I’ve recruited you for,” she said, inappropriately professional. “What do you want to know?”


  Damn. He would rather be having a personal conversation with Elorie than a work conversation. “Everything.”

  “Okay,” Elorie said. She relaxed in his arms. “You’ve heard of John Lorenzi, the magician?”

  Oh, shit on a garbanzo bean shingle. “Yes.”

  “It’s his religious order, the Ecumenists, who vanished without a trace, a monastic religious order that’s lasted over a thousand years, surviving far too many bad spots. Our mission is to find out what happened to them.”

  “How come Dubuque’s not opposing this?”

  “The answer to your well-debated question is ‘we don’t know’. Dubuque’s stated he thinks the Ecumenists belong in the City of God. Our best guess is Dubuque thinks there’s a good chance he can turn the Ecumenists into his personal followers and they can rein in Lorenzi for him. We might easily be wrong.”

  “I’d think Mr. Lorenzi, the Gods or the Telepaths would be able to find these lost Ecumenists easier than a group of normal types.”

  “Ahh. The scary part. They’ve all tried their tricks and had no luck. Their best guess is the Ecumenists are dead.” Elorie sat up and wrapped the blanket around her. “This mission is also the best chance we know of to defuse the conflict between Dubuque and the rest of us. Not that this is a good chance, but it’s better than nothing. By the way, don’t you mean ‘Living Saints’, not Gods?”

  “Only the members of Dubuque’s City of God alliance deserves the title,” Dave said. “Since the rest of them think of themselves as Gods, let them live with the name. God will have his vengeance on them in his own time.”