99 Gods: Betrayer Page 9

Elorie looked into his eyes, blank faced, and didn’t answer. Perhaps he had been more strident than he should have been for a schmo who hadn’t yet talked in person to a Living Saint or a God.

  “Perhaps the Ecumenists ran afoul of one of the 99 Gods,” Dave said. He didn’t want the issue of their different divine supporters to ruin what he and Elorie had found. “Any Gods or God factions in opposition?”

  The blankness melted from Elorie’s face. “Yes. Tradition, the faction led by the Chinese Territorial Gods Beijing and Guangzhou, along with the Ideological Gods Confucianism and Three Flowers. Of course, they’re opposed to anything positive to do with the Christian, Jewish or Islamic religions as well as anything to do with Western Civilization, so we’re hoping they won’t be too big a problem. In addition, the World Peace faction thinks our mission is a good thing, something to bring Portland’s Helping Hands Gods and the City of God Living Saints together.” Dave didn’t know much about the World Peace faction, save that they had allied with the City of God to force the US Congress into truly demobilizing the military, as required by the 99 Gods commandment that all national wars stop. From what he knew, World Peace didn’t have any of the North American Territorial Gods in their faction, just a smattering of local Ideological and Practical Gods.

  Elorie paused and looked away. “My gut says we’re not going to find any of the 99 Gods behind this. What I fear is that we’re going to end up opposing something that’s a danger to the Gods, with no chance of success. Don’t forget the Angelic Host, the entities who made them, told the Gods they had peers.”

  “You don’t have faith in your own talents?” Dave said. “You’ve lived abroad and seen the bottom of life. Compared to most people in the world, our education, our luck and our experience have made us into the masters of the universe. We’re not unique, but we’re not chopped liver, either. So these Ecumenists got themselves in to something strange? They wouldn’t be the first. I’m sure we’re going to be able to figure out what happened to them.”

  Elorie snorted. “Wait until you meet the rest of my crew before you make such claims, Dave.” Dave shrugged and didn’t give in. She climbed off the bed, opened her briefcase, and tossed him a thick binder. “Okay, be that way, oh master of hubris. Here’s what we have on the subject. Feel free to read it. Do you want the shower first?”

  “No, go ahead,” Dave said. He opened the binder and started to read, immediately engrossed.

  Bad shit’s coming, his gut said, about half way through his reading. Bad shit’s coming.

  8. (Satan)

  “What I don’t understand is how you consider God…and the Gods…superfluous,” Willie asked. “I can’t believe someone of your age and name could be an atheist.” Willie’s sweat smelled like garlic. He had an incipient ulcer as well, and he ate too much beef. Took all kinds, Satan decided. Someone had to eat those cows. Otherwise, there would be too many cows, right?

  “Atheist?” Satan snorted, ignoring the name comment for now. “I’m no atheist. However, Gods are a luxury. You can do damn well without them.” Clip clip scrape scrape. She sat herself down at the dining room table, resting her back. She took a sip of tea while keeping a watchful eye on the magician. Her magician now. Little voices trickled through the back of her mind, chiding her for grabbing a magician. Talk about asking for trouble!

  “But without God, there would be no morality,” Willie said. “That’s what I despise about the 99 Gods. They’re confusing the issue by letting themselves be called ‘Gods’, detracting attention from God Almighty himself.”

  “The issue was already confused,” Satan said. She took another sip of tea. “This is a typical Western philosophical argument: no morality, no civilization, no nothing at all without a strong God-o-centric religion just like their sect. Sheesh! The strongest continuous civilization around, the Chinese, has been Animist, Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, and Communist…and they’re now going back to Confucian. My guess, at least. All the while able to resist Hinduism, Islam and Christianity without going genocidal. Now if you make the argument kingdoms, nations and empires require some form of organized religion for morality and civilization, you might be on to something. Leave God out of the argument, though. Not necessary.”

  Something about the situation bothered the crap out of her. No matter what she did she couldn’t make sense of her feeling of wrongness. Willie? Well, Willie was part of the problem, but he and John Lorenzi and even the nobody-would-ever-believe-this 99 Gods felt like… she stumbled through her mind, looking for the right idiom, trying to think American… Oh, right, like the tip of the iceberg. Only the tip of the iceberg. Like things teetered on the edge of becoming much worse, much much worse.

  Which had to be the stupidest hunch cracking through her brain in the past five hundred years. She took her final sip of tea and swirled the dregs in a circle in the bottom of the cup, lost in anticipatory thought. Her fears of hidden puppetmasters and sudden apocalypses were surely just baseless fears frightened up by last year’s appearance of the 99 Gods. The fears of a very old woman who had never liked her elbows joggled.

  Those fears had even prodded her to come here, to America, to a place she previously avoided because of what she had considered their fatal flaw, an inbred and innate national disrespect for authority. Her insight had been that perhaps the American innate disrespect for authority might be just what it took to solve the problem of the 99 Gods. Disrespect for authority would at least make things more interesting.

  Willie’s eyes lit up and he drew a glyph in the air, despite Satan’s frown. “Finally. They’re coming for me, just like I said they would,” Willie said.

  “So?” Satan stood and walked her empty teacup back toward the kitchen. Clip clip scrape scrape. Damned left leg ached today. “Let them come, for all the good it will do. You feeling a need to be tied up again, you ridiculous excuse for a magician?”

  Willie shook his head and watched her out of the corners of his eyes, knowing her distaste for any use of magic. He sat alone on a couch, in a house Satan had decided to inhabit while plans coagulated and ideas percolated. Fears or no fears, at least she had to try to understand the 99 Gods and the problems they created. Direct wouldn’t work. Satan couldn’t solve problems of this magnitude with just a swat of unreality or a jigger full of bad luck. She had tried her classic approach in Eastern Europe, but all it bought her was endless minor harassment. She needed thought. Comfort. Leverage. Besides, the house’s owners vacationed in Paris, doing high fashion. They would never miss the air Satan used.

  “About the earlier stuff? I don’t understand you one bit, ma’am,” Willie said. “Do you believe in God Almighty or not?”

  “You mean belief? Faith? Fuck those. Experience is better,” Satan said. “I’m so far beyond belief it’s not funny. Live as long as I have. You’ll understand.” She paused and sipped tea. She had no idea where this American tea had come from, but she suspected cardboard filler in the tea bag. She tipped the teapot and its contents into the ornate narrow and sinuous two meter long sink. It was most likely a Dali, or at least a knock-off. Who could tell with Americans? “So, what do you believe, William Ganiji?”

  “I’m a born again Christian.” Huh. Odd for someone with an East Asian Muslim background. Or had she spent too long in Europe and picked up on some of their prejudices? “Must give you ulcers being a magician, eh?” Satan asked. She would have to pick a damned born-again type. Her damned name would give him ulcers!

  “I’m not a biblical literalist,” Willie said. “A common misperception. My preacher’s strict but not, well, that strict. Besides, John said the biblical injunction against…”

  “Don’t you go there,” Satan said. “Johnny boy’s been able to convince fools to jump on enemy swords for a thousand years. Ignore his blather.” Uh oh. Damn. “Hush now.”

  They came in fast, flying, bending reality their own way as they fell from the slate gray sky. Damn, there were an indecent number of them. Satan stood and walked slowly,
clip clip scrape scrape, over to the oversized window overlooking the snow-covered back lawn. Their souls cast a shadow dark enough to make Satan blink tears, an unexpected edge of fear. Never had Satan faced such a weighty opposition before.

  Numbers, though, meant nothing. So Satan hoped.

  Satan had lived through the Inquisition and spat on many a tonsured idiot’s robes.

  “Perfect comeuppance,” Satan said, shifting futures, seeing realities, gathering storms of probabilities, and making a solid judgment. “Land there.” There being a swimming pool some fool forgot to drain for the winter. Not much of a winter this year due to global warming, even in the northern Rocky Mountains, but enough to freeze the top of a below ground swimming pool suffering from a failed heater. Covered with snow, it looked like ground if one couldn’t sense reality.

  Satan smiled. Child’s play. Such nice thin ice…

  They landed right where Satan wanted, on top of the frozen-over swimming pool. Six Telepaths, four Mindbound, two Gods (one masquerading as a Mindbound, of all things), a God projection and that ever-so-damned Johnny Lorenzi, outweighing any two of the others. “Crack!” Satan said.

  Hah.

  The ice underneath the group gave way after the God-projection turned off the flying miracle, but none of them got more than their lower legs wet before one of the Telepaths bent reality and held them up long enough for the surprised God projection to re-establish his ability to fly. Satan laughed uproariously and took careful notice of the incredible power of the Telepath who had held them up. That one Satan didn’t want as an enemy. No way no how.

  Could he be the one? The hidden puppetmaster, the author of her nightmarish fears? Perhaps. She would need to keep an eye on him.

  “Why’d you do that for, Satan? Is this your idea of fun? You want to piss them off?” Willie said. “Can I make some suggestions?” He had bespelled himself a viewer and watched in sly amusement as the putative attackers extricated themselves from the icewater.

  Willie had been Lorenzi’s star magician pupil until Satan had grabbed him last week. Although Satan had a dozen reasons for the grab, she favored the fact that Willie thought and spoke like a standard American. Perfect practice for Satan, who had a good ear for voices and hadn’t wanted to talk like a refugee from the Eighteenth Century. Or from Poland, Polish being the last modern tongue she had learned.

  The real reason for the dunking? A hunch. Nothing more than a hunch.

  “Bothering me, here, shows a great lack of wisdom,” Satan said. “Now they will pay the price.” Lorenzi knew not to do this. Did he think this mob had a chance with her?

  Not if they acted like squeamish idiots. If they wanted a chance at her, they should have hit hard and fast. They should have blasted the house to flinders, grabbed Willie and skedaddled before Satan had a chance to react. Not a good chance, mind you. If their actions threatened Satan, there would have been hell to pay for them as her unconscious stuff wiped them off the face of the planet.

  However, their chances would have been better than this.

  The idiots had decided to stage a peaceful confrontation.

  Satan let them. Satan never lost a peaceful confrontation.

  The gaggle of unnatural humans and Gods took two whole minutes to politely break into Satan’s borrowed mansion and find the room, a library, where Satan and Willie relaxed. Well, Satan relaxed, after she examined and scanned the dirt mover who saved the group from a full dunking. He didn’t possess the right emotions to be a puppetmaster. Nah, he was a natural leader. When he was in charge, he made sure people knew it. Willie didn’t relax, as he still hadn’t come to grips with the finality of his new position in life. His ulcer just wouldn’t stop. He still thought they would be able to rescue him.

  Satan didn’t care what Willie thought. She had given up on her worries, picked up a book of schlock fantasy written by the monarch of the trade and started reading on the page she had left off, what, nine years previous?

  A couple of bodyguards, a man and woman, opened the library door and peeked in, handguns out. “Here’s Willie. There’s another hostage as well,” the tattooed woman thug said, before backing out of the room. Satan snickered. Americans. So impolite.

  Willie wanted to speak, but Satan bent luck and tied his tongue in knots to keep him from speaking. Hostage? Lorenzi might be synonymous for food, but she hadn’t realized he had stooped so low as to keep secrets from his own people. Satan went back to reading, no danger here. Tea parties stirred the blood more than this.

  The Telepaths and the rest trooped into the library, as if they owned the place. Lorenzi came in at the rear. They chattered meaningless comments, which Satan ignored. “That’s not a hostage,” Lorenzi said, after he took a moment to evaluate the situation. Lorenzi. He Satan couldn’t ignore. “That’s Satan.”

  Finally.

  Satan closed the book about the manic evil automobile and looked at the group dynamics as her opposition arranged themselves in, what, some sort of a battle order? In any event, their placement showed the divisions among them, just waiting for her to exploit. Most of them looked at her and muttered in disbelief…or covered their noses from her unfortunate stench.

  “The twin emaciated women…Persona and Nessa? Good to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to speaking to you,” Satan said, and put on a pleasant face when she spoke to the two of them.

  That’s all it took. The group arrayed here against Satan shattered for all time.

  Satan rubbed fingers and waited. Neither the heretic God named Persona nor the amply telepathic Nessa spoke. “John, what in the hell are you talking about?” a tall man said, from the middle of the mob. The tall man tried for incognito, dressed in a black leather floor-length coat and dark sunglasses, but Satan recognized him from the television and internet. Alton somethinglongwindedorother. Alt the Recruiter. The nightmare of the Gods. “The ancient woman Telepath? She’s Satan?” He tried hard but hadn’t graduated to ‘hard case’ yet, despite his best efforts. Still, he did possess the reach and at least some of the power of her feared puppetmaster. Yet, no, he couldn’t be. Said puppetmasters, if they existed, had been active long before the 99 Gods arrived. Unless the media had been sheep-dipped again, Alt the Recruiter hadn’t even been a fully functional Telepath back when.

  “What in the fuck did you expect, pencil-neck? Cloven hooves and red leather skin?” Satan said, driving the other half of the ten-penny nail into this group’s coffin. Alt rocked back in shock, as Satan’s voice didn’t match her looks. When she wanted it to, her bark could move armies, or at least well-disciplined companies, a trick she shared with Johnny Boy. She thought of this as the voice of command. The modern people thought of it as politician’s charisma, and expected it only from tall men. Certainly not from someone only four and a half feet tall, hunched of back, ugly as sin and smelling like volcano farts. “Exercise your pathetic excuse for a brain. Johnny isn’t going to tell anything about what’s going on unless you pin him down. Violently. Wise up, youngster. You’re smarter than to let some old man fool you.”

  Satan stood, leaning on her two canes. She clattered forward, clip clip scrape scrape, until her worn out hunched over osteoporosis-wracked body reached Alt. Her eyes hovered at Alt’s belly button level. “Put the guns away. You’ll only hurt each other or Willie if you shoot at me. I’m so far beyond you that you can’t even contemplate what I am. Let’s talk.”

  “You’re not a supernatural creature,” the black man beside Nessa and Persona said. Satan pegged him as the impressive dirt-mover, a telekinetic in the modern cant, the one she didn’t want as an enemy, the one who had the power but not the inclination to be one of the hidden puppetmasters behind the growing disaster she feared. Ken, Nessa’s husband.

  “Never said I was, Ken,” Satan said, as politely as she could. Unlike Alt, this one had no problems contemplating her reality. “My tricks, what you people call telepathic powers, looked like yours once upon a time, but long ago they changed into what they
are now.” Ken and Nessa looked at each other, nervous, exchanging telepathic jabber. They had met someone like her before and the meeting hadn’t gone well. “I’m a normal old woman with a few tricks. Nothing more, nothing less, unless you figure in the ravages of an unnatural lifespan.” She cleared her throat. “The bastard with you, Johnny Lorenzi, named me Satan to make people think I’m something supernatural. I’m not a Fallen Angel. Or a Prince of Hell, though I’ve fought them. I’ve been called many things in my time: Death, Crone, Monster…but if you want to be nice to me, you can call me by my preferred name, Bais.” She snorted. “I’ll answer to Satan, though. It’s got a good ring to it, culturally, and some interesting effects. Makes Priests wet their pants and stop thinking about little boy’s bottoms.”

  “Don’t let her charm you, people,” Lorenzi said, from the back of the pack. “She’s hideously dangerous and corrupting to your mind, body and soul.”

  Satan snorted. He had the nerve to say that about her? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! The group of Telepaths and Mindbound, mostly frozen in shock, didn’t move as Satan clattered her way through them and approached Lorenzi. Only the God projection reacted. The projection, of an old man as nasty as her, complete with projected flies and fleas, interposed himself between her and Lorenzi. He had to. His parochial Mission required him to protect those allied with him while working in his Territory.

  Satan ignored him. Projections didn’t scare her. If this God had been here in person…well, that would have certainly made things more interesting, now wouldn’t it? Lucky for everyone, he wasn’t.

  “Nice dick,” Satan said, waving her left hand cane through the projection and at John’s privates. “What color does it write?”

  Nessa, Ken, and Persona laughed. Perfect.

  “Release Willie to me and we’ll go on our way,” Lorenzi said. “That’s all we want.”

  “As I said to you the first time, you need to be taught a lesson. Training magicians! Pfaugh! You know better than this whim of yours, Lorenzi.”