“Guess I don’t have to worry about the chocolate milk after all,” Nessa said.
Dead silence.
32. (Dave)
Dave rubbed his temples as he let the conversation flow around him, wondering how Nessa had gotten to him again. He had, and still had, his shields tightly locked up. Despite all that, she almost had him panting with desire. This was nearly as bad as the night she had blown a hole in his mind shields after dirty dancing with him until he had…
He briefly wished his chair would open itself up like a venus fly trap and just suck him down. At least the living room should be larger, so he could find more ‘back’ to retreat to.
He forced his memory away by going over the revelation that the dolphin group minds they had been communicating with for a week were as much Gods as the 99 Gods and the Fallen Angels, and had an established name from the old legends, the Ha-qodeshim. He couldn’t understand the ramifications, save this sounded bad, real bad. Learning this finally helped him make sense of Nessa and Ken’s post-99 Gods-appearance conversation with the dolphin group minds. Nessa and Ken had known without knowing the dolphins’ true importance. So had he, though Dave knew he could have never predicted that they were Gods ahead of time. All subconscious.
Uffie, bless her heart, figured this out, logically. He began to understand the true strengths of Uffie’s inseer tricks for the first time.
“Nessa, Glory would like to talk to you,” John said, mouthing the words ‘chocolate milk?’ without speaking.
Glory appeared on the computer Orlando had tricked up with his willpower. The computer perched on the end table beside the couch and made her almost as much a presense in the room as anyone sitting here. Dave flinched at Glory’s appearance, his hindbrain always expecting lightning bolts when she appeared. Two of the Indigo oldsters, Grover March and Lara Minor, appeared with her. According to Diana, those two had defected to the Watchers; he slipped out of his chair to make sure he kept out of sight of the webcam, not trusting them a bit.
“Getting enough pain?” Nessa said, twisting to face the screen, a sleeping baby on each shoulder.
“Yes, thank you,” Glory said, eyes unfocused, likely high as a kite from Nessa’s mental agony. “The entities you have labeled the Ha-qodeshim have offered to help you by revealing who we are to the world. They think we need something to match Dubuque’s appalling demonstration. I agree and must agree such a match is needed, but you do have to understand how reluctant my fellow Watchers are about doing this. We refuse, and must refuse, to do so without your approval, Daughter of Light.”
“Help us?” Nessa asked. “How would this help us?”
“This telepathic revelation is what the Angelic Host wishes to prevent. The reasons for you being Anathema would vanish.” Her voice sounded tinny from the underpowered computer speakers.
“Why my approval?”
“As this falls within the realm we understand to be your responsibility, as the Daughter of Light, your permission must we first gain.” Glory had an almost foreplay-like anticipation on her face, likely awaiting the pain this revelation would cause.
Nessa looked at Glory, her face blank, thought free. “What have you agreed to reveal?”
“That we are millennia old, we were birthed by an Angelic Host, Angelic Hosts last a maximum of a millennium and a half, the current Host has been around a half millennium already, there are many Angelic Hosts at work but few appear to anyone ever, we are called the Watchers and that our name means we are ‘retired’, worship of anyone or anything save God Almighty is bad, worshipping any of the 99 Gods will destroy them, and the Natural Supported of the 99 Gods need to be wary of being worshipped as they are even more easily destroyed.”
“Your revelation isn’t enough,” Nessa said. “You need to reveal that you’re Gods, the same as the 99 Gods are.”
“We choose not to do so.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is not our time to be Gods,” Glory said, haughty. “And so we aren’t Gods.”
“Well, okay,” Nessa said. “Couldn’t you at least drop a better hint that you used to be Gods?”
Glory sighed. “Yes, this is within the comfort of our words.”
Nessa shook her head. “I smell a price.”
“We have won an audience with the Child of Morning,” Glory said.
“Bet he’s thrilled.”
“He apparently predicted the price, after Elorie revealed to him he is the Child of Morning to the Ha-qodeshim as well.”
Dave hung close by Elorie. He still didn’t like the look in Bob’s eyes or Orlando’s eyes. Elorie’s tidbit pleased them not at all.
“Okay,” Nessa said. “I’ll agree to the deal.”
Glory turned to Lara. “Any comments, either of you? This agreement will make you targets and draw you into the conflict you wished to avoid.”
“You’re right, but this must be done,” Lara said. “Besides, these revelations have given us enough knowledge to allow us to bring in our backer. We’re not going to be as defenseless anymore.”
“Then this is settled. We agree, humbly and regretfully, but as is always true, completely,” Glory said. The real reason the Watchers had to go back to God was their convoluted sentence structure, Dave thought. Heaven help humanity if that ever caught on!
“Now, we must talk to the Child of Morning,” Glory said.
“Yo,” Bob said, stepping forward and presenting himself. He looked like he would rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else. “Bob Personason here. I appear to be also the Child of Morning.”
“I am named Glory, and I am and have always been the one waiting for you.” She spoke with wonder on her face. “You are not yet the Child of Morning. You are well on your way, but you have more development to encompass.” She paused.
“Yup,” Bob said. “I’m sorta surprised you agreed to this crazy dolphin scheme. Won’t you get in trouble?”
“Certainly, of course, trouble is inevitable,” Glory said. “Trouble, attracting enemy attention, is a secondary benefit of this broadcast. We should attract enough enemy attention to draw some of the danger away from you. Understand, Bob, that we are counting on you to mature quickly enough to save us before we are destroyed by the 99 Gods. They will try. Soon, I would predict.”
Bob nodded. “I’ll do my best. Only…”
“Yes?”
“If I rush things and take shortcuts…”
“…you will turn evil and will not be able to help us,” Glory said. “We understand the lure of evil.”
Bob visibly relaxed. He appeared to get along with Glory just fine. Dave wondered what that meant, if anything.
“Kewl,” Bob said. “So…how can you fight the lure?”
“This divergence is the only conflict you have to fight wholly and entirely within yourself,” Glory said. “This fight is the test of free will.”
“Oh,” Bob said. “That implies there are ways to fight off the other temptations outside oneself.”
Glory nodded. “Such as the lure of worshippers?”
“Yes.”
“We found a way to hold them off with our gamme.”
“You think…”
“Yes.”
Bob smiled. “I hadn’t thought of doing that. This seems counter-intuitive.”
“You will find that all your true power as a God will prove to be counter-intuitive,” Glory said. “This is enough for now. I graciously and expectantly look forward to the day where we can meet in person.” Glory turned and looked at Nessa. “Inform the Ha-qodeshim we are ready. We need to do this quickly, before the Angelic Host of the 99 learns of our plans and interferes, for interfere they will, they must, if they can.”
Nessa waved her hands in the air. Ken signaled Dave with a telekinetic rustle and made the hand-opening gesture –
Dave had inadvertently closed his mind shields again. He opened them and almost passed out as far too much of Nessa’s telepathy dropped into his mind. He felt Elorie’s mind stagger under a similar weight and felt Nessa’s mind fade into some form of purely Nessa cyclic dysfunctionality.
For a moment, they were one, and in the moment, using Nessa’s translation, the dolphin Gods broadcast the message. Then Dave’s mind returned to normal, reduced to his linkage with Elorie. Several calming hunches floated up into Dave’s conscious mind.
People bustled and started to move equipment down to the beach, including the tablet computers tricked by willpower into communication devices. Elorie pulled Dave away from Nessa, pushed Ken over to Nessa and grabbed the twins.
“Hi,” Nessa said to Ken. Dave relaxed. Nessa’s bedroom eyes had finally fixated themselves on her husband.
“Hi yourself,” Ken said.
“Wanna screw?”
“Okay.”
“Bedroom?” Nessa said.
“Better than here,” Ken said.
Off they went.
Elorie led Dave off as well, but she didn’t have bedroom eyes. She directed him to the twin’s bedroom, a long walk up stairs and down hallways with the usual elbow bumping and getting in each other’s way that had characterized their relationship in the past week. “You want to talk, perhaps?” he said as soon as he closed the door to the twin’s room behind them. Finally.
“I’d rather not,” Elorie said. She turned away, cuddling Zach. Alana, in Dave’s arms, woke up for a moment, gave him baby-wonder eyes for a moment, and went back to sleep. “You get so condescending when you get dense.”
“I don’t like being attacked by you. Which is all the time these days.”
Elorie licked her lips slowly. Her shadowed eyes reminded him of Nessa. “Be truthful, now. I’m only going after you when the sun is up.” Her eyes gave him an appraising crinkled smile.
He nodded. He didn’t know what had turned in their relationship, in their intimacy – but their nights this past week had been wild and raw, each session more furious than the last. Persona healed their incidental damage when they woke up, a deeper frown every morning.
The nights did noticeably cut down Dave’s anger, and his battle nightmares, and Elorie not only showed no signs of objecting, she demonstrably and repeatedly invited his hard attention. If Elorie was correct, though, and this was what they were getting out of Kara the Godslayer’s boost of their heroic tendencies, they needed to change the name of the trick.
“So? Dense, remember?”
“I’m sick and tired of having to bail you out every time Nessa gets frisky with you. You need to learn to handle this yourself!”
Dave reddened. He caught the start of some rough stuff between Nessa and Ken in the other room, which he blocked out. “Since I don’t invite her attention I don’t see how you can blame me.”
“I’m not blaming you for Nessa’s actions, I’m blaming you for not being able to stand up to her.” Elorie frowned. Her voice dripped ice. “I swear these days that all a woman has to do is blink fetchingly to you and you’re lost.”
33. (Betrayer)
Betrayer studied her captors on several tracks and on several other tracks she plotted her escape. The fact she could still divide her mind God-fashion into several streams of thought served as her starting point: her captors hadn’t found a way to turn off all her willpower. She had also stayed conscious throughout her captivity.
Her captors didn’t speak with her. They had taken her to a small multi-story office building near the downtown of Columbus, Ohio, to a room with a gurney-shaped enchantment, where they strapped her down. Most of the time they stayed out of the room. They never spoke in the room. She counted nine captors in total, seven men and two women. None of them had been with the crew who had captured her.
The gurney-shaped enchantment hadn’t been made by a North American God. It took Betrayer a full four hours of mental work before she pinned down the enchantment as the work of the Territorial God Paramaribo. Paramaribo was City of God, but one of the non-cooperative ones, similar to Boise and Montreal. Betrayer had met Paramaribo only once, during Apotheosis, and she had never interacted with any of Paramaribo’s underlings, acquaintances, confidants, or even her Facebook friends. She hadn’t ever given Paramaribo the slightest reason to be cross with her.
The only logical explanation for this enchantment to be here was that her captors had stolen the damned thing.
Her captors were decent thieves. After identifying the gurney enchantment, Betrayer did an inventory on the other enchantments in the area, and managed to identify enchantments from Inventor, Engineer, Dubuque and herself among the lot attached to her, along with a couple of sensors made by other non-North American Gods. What really cheesed Betrayer was the fact the enchantment she had made (as War) had once been knife shaped; the last time she had seen it, the knife had been stuck through the body of a dead Dubuque Supported.
What she had here were, among other things, battlefield gleaners. Vultures. The ‘parasites’ Montreal recently warned about. The people Jan and Knot quested after. Given that on their occasional trips into her prison cell (well, mid manager’s office, converted, complete with windows overlooking a not particularly impressive downtown and crates instead of furniture) her captors modified the willpower ‘settings’ on the enchantments, they had to be Shamans like Knot and Epharis.
The question of ‘why?’ came up, several times, as Betrayer considered the evidence before her. Although her captors could somehow work willpower, they showed many signs of ineptitude. Self-taught? Nonsense. The 99 Gods hadn’t been around for long enough. As time went on, her captors showed more signs of stress and agitation. Whatever their plan had been involving the capture of her projection, this hadn’t worked out the way they wanted.
Betrayer couldn’t help but mentally sneer at her captors.
Thirty-two and a quarter hours into her captivity, the last bit of evidence fit together when her captors let a cleaning lady into the room to vacuum and empty trash cans. Her captors didn’t know they had captured Betrayer’s consciousness! They didn’t know they had her trapped in here. Now her captors’ activities made much more sense. Instead of some suicidal kidnapping of one of the 99 Gods, they had sabotaged and stolen one of her dormant projections. And, by previous precedent, projections were fair game.
However, their plan had puked the aspirin because Betrayer’s projections were significantly different from the standard 99 Gods projections. As War she had become the projection expert, commonly wielding a half dozen to two dozen simultaneous projections of many different varieties; many of her projection designs were unique to her. As Betrayer she didn’t do simultaneous except through serious effort, and as Betrayer she didn’t have the willpower to maintain normal dormant projections ‘forever’. So her current set of projections were self-powered when dormant, leeching ambient magic as if Natural Supported, one of the many benefits she had gotten out of being the first to recognize the significance of the Natural Supported. Keeping a dormant projection from popping scraped the top of her current power-level limits.
Her nonstandard projections must have severely messed up her captor’s tech – and backfired on her as well, trapping her b
y accident. Given everything, she would be able to free herself if given enough time. Which of these traps were the most important? Which ones would alert her captors that something was wrong when she deactivated them?
Escape? Hell, Betrayer would settle for getting her sense of consciousness untrapped and somewhere else. Right now, she couldn’t afford to be, um, tied down.
Forty-six hours after her capture, Betrayer disabled an enchantment she thought tied her mind to this particular projection. Instead of freeing her mind, the disabled enchantment caused alarms to ring. With her cover blown, Betrayer gave up on the stealth approach, disabled the five other enchantments she had figured out how to disable (four of which she still didn’t know what they did!) and sat up.
She still couldn’t use willpower outside of her projection body.
Time to play this, she decided. “What is this?” Betrayer said, a basso profundo bellow. “Who had the temerity to steal one of my projections? Show yourselves and I will show you mercy by slaying you quickly.”
With any luck, her captors wouldn’t stop running until they reached Canada.
She had no such luck. Six of her captors came into her room, enchanted weapons pointed at her. This time they wore enchanted headpieces (derived from welder’s masks) attached to hooded capes. A quick analysis told Betrayer their enchanted masks were set up to stop willpower probes, not that Betrayer could do any such thing right then. The masks didn’t prove to be very good at all at stopping the emanations that Betrayer used in her multi-spectral detection suites, or the set of detections picking up willpower emanations, or the set picking up telepathy, etc etc. Hadn’t they ever dealt with a God in person before?
“Hands on your head,” one said, wiggling an enchanted ‘gun’ at Betrayer. She tried a spin-kick martial arts move to disarm the fool and ended up floating in mid-air, hands and feet splayed out wide, caught in an active willpower capture field adapted from one of Montreal’s sex toys.
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 37
