99 Gods: Betrayer

by Randall Farmer

  “Good enough.”

  A half hour later, Darrel hadn’t turned up anything, so Dave started to work on dinner. Elorie joined him, pushy, quiet and lost inside herself. Forty minutes passed. Dave sighed. His idea had been worth a shot, hopefully not with too embarrassing a postlude. Frustrated, he refocused himself on the dinner preparations. Beef stroganoff. The potato casserole. The braised green beans. The garlic bread.

  Luckily, no fish from the lake. Dave had a bad feeling about the quality of any fish pulled from a lake this silt-laden.

  As Dave tossed the garlic bread into the oven, Darrel whistled, loud enough to get everyone’s attention.

  “Got them,” he said. “September 2nd, Orly airport in Paris to Istanbul, then Istanbul to Ankara, all on Turkish Airlines. Nothing past Ankara.”

  No wonder the search took Darrel more than his allotted forty minutes; Dave had forgotten the Ecumenicists would likely need to change planes part way through their trip. So much for Mr. Practical, he grumbled to himself.

  “Hot damn,” Elorie said, her mood shattered, replaced by a grin. The rest of the room erupted in cheers, Mohammed and Osham clapping Darrel on the back repeatedly. Even Jack ran back to the cabin, interrupting his fishing, to see what was going on.

  “Okay, okay, everyone quiet,” Elorie said. She had run over to Darrel and given him a hug, but stepped back after she picked up Dave’s map. “How’d you locate them?”

  “Dave clued me in,” Darrel said. “He figured out the time, airport and location.”

  The room quieted to utter dead air for at least twenty seconds before Jack groaned. Georgia spent the time glaring at Dave, before she shook her head and went to look over Elorie’s shoulder.

  “Languages?” Elorie said, looking at Dave’s map.

  “He cheated,” Georgia said. She, for one, sounded envious. Georgia knew exactly what he had done.

  “Tell us how you figured this out,” Elorie said. “Was this some inside information from Lorenzi?”

  Dave shook his head, unhappy.

  “No,” Dave said. “I started with an unproveable hypothesis as an axiom – that we hadn’t been chosen randomly by the Recruiter – and worked from there. I’d noticed the languages people knew seemed to be centered on the same part of the world as your” Elorie’s “career in economic development. I plotted out the language concentrations, where people spoke them, and I found I was right. If you tossed Greek, Latin, Spanish and English, the rough center of language concentration was in Turkey on the west, Iran on the east, Jordan / Israel on the south and the trans-Caucasus nations on the north. Because of the languages, this had to be our destination, and, thus, the destination of the Ecumenists. For the origin, I noted the men in the Ecumenists weren’t raised in cloisters, they were recruited as adults from Europe and North Africa. The most predominant nationality among them was French. Although philosophically opposed to modernism, they grew up in modern times, unlike Mr. Lorenzi. The appearance of the 99 Gods was an emergency and they moved quickly to talk to Marseille. I figured they would have left their Pyrenees home right after their last notes hit the trashcans and gone to the closest major French air-hub, Paris. I discounted Marseille because of their run in with the God of that name and DeGaulle because I know it’s a dump.”

  “You lucked out,” Jack said. “What a load of crap.”

  “My idea worked, and that’s what counts,” Dave said. Truthfully, he hadn’t expected it to work this spectacularly.

  Elorie turned her back on him and looked over Darrel’s shoulder, likely double-checking the information.

  Smoke started to pour from the kitchen from the garlic bread from under the broiler. Dave ran.

  “Nope, not a Telepath,” Dave said.

  “Okay, a God in disguise,” Lisa said.

  “I bleed red blood. I have surgery scars.” He made to lift up his shirt.

  “I believe you, I believe you,” Lisa said. Dave let go of his shirt.

  “How you found them is unbelievable,” Mohammed said. “Allah must be on your side. Or at least Dubuque.”

  “Dubuque?” Jack said. “I can believe he’s a Dubuque Supported.” He muttered something about scaring away the fish while he shoveled in noodles and creamy beef.

  “Mr. Lorenzi vouched for the fact I’m not a Supported,” Dave said.

  Dinner, what remained of it, had turned into a ‘rib Dave’ session. If this had been in fun, he wouldn’t have had a problem. He didn’t enjoy the steel behind their words, though.

  “This was a worthy bit of inductive reasoning,” Georgia said. “Inspired. You sure you’re not a Telepath?”

  Dave glanced over at Elorie, uncertain about what to say.

  “He’s what they call a Psychic, someone who has a noticeable number of eerie coincidences. Nothing more than that,” Elorie said.

  The dinner table quieted.

  “Back in the day, he would have had those old psi researchers tearing out their hair,” Elorie continued.

  “What if they made a mistake?” Jack said.

  “Could you pass the noodles, please?” Dave said, glaring out the window overlooking the lake. In their eyes he was the local fool, their ‘pussy boy’, the Dubuque spy, the court jester. Since court jesters never solved real problems, they all assumed he had ‘cheated’. He hadn’t. He knew his woo-woo moments when he got a hunch, and he hadn’t had any of them recently. Not a one.

  16. (Dana)

  Velma came into Dana’s office. “Ma’am. He won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” Dana looked up from the endless paperwork and checked her surroundings. The ‘he’ in question was Jurgen Lowezski, one of the Indigo founders, and one of the Indigo she had specifically blacklisted – and he was in the building. She might still be using the Indigo to help her run her Regency over the old Atlanta territory, in return for protecting them, but she refused to deal with the Indigo’s Hell-fighting field operatives any longer. Her primary contacts now were Dr. Velma Horton and the Indigo’s current chief operations officer, Karen Cox Stevens. Neither were field operatives.

  Dana frowned. She knew the Indigo leadership would force the issue, but she had hoped for more than three weeks of peace before the expected brinksmanship started. She wouldn’t be backing down, and she expected the Indigo to go elsewhere, most likely to go work for Akron in return for protection.

  The Kid God, with the body of a toddler and the mind of an addled child-like adult, zipped in to Dana’s office, flying. He circled her desk twice, at about 40 miles an hour, sucking magazines, loose papers, and the paper plate remains of Dana’s lunch into the air, before flying away with a shouted ‘Wheee!’ At least he hadn’t taken out any walls this time.

  “I will be so glad when he gets tired of flying,” Velma said, sotto voice. “Was he wearing a cape?”

  Dana nodded, and scanned the former Immunogen complex. She employed, as Territorial Regent, six hundred and twenty seven people. She couldn’t make Supported, and Bob (the Kid God’s current self-chosen name) refused, or was too young, so she had to bargain and barter to get them. Portland, Orlando, Montreal, Boise and Akron all felt some responsibility for raising the Kid God, especially after Persona’s freakout when a talking baby climbed out of her womb after a too-brief pregnancy. Each of her backers provided different help; most of her borrowed Supported came from Portland and Orlando. Montreal and Boise provided just a few people, but their loaners were top-end Supported, Grade 1s as Portland now termed them. Akron provided money and trained bureaucrats, technically Supported (Grade 3s, using Portland’s scale) but to Dana they were just pencil pushers with personal protections. She still angled for more. War and Inventor had taken it upon themselves to provide training for Bob, freeing Dana up from her most difficult chore. The Kid God had the full power of a Territorial, but almost no control. He was a hazard.

  “Send Jurgen in,” Dana said. Might as well get this over with.

  “Thanks for being willing to meet with me,” Jurgen said, after he s
trode in. He stuck his leg over a visitors’ chair, twisted it around and sat down on the now backwards chair, leaning his huge frame and crossed arms on the chair back. “We’ve been worried about you.”

  “Don’t be,” Dana said.

  “How are your nightmares?”

  “My nightmares are none of your business. Now, if you don’t have any real…”

  “Bullshit, Dana,” Jurgen said, leaning forward. “Everyone who faces what you’ve faced ends up with nightmares. It’s one of the ways the powers of Hell discourage humans from interfering with their plots. We paid lives and blood and sweat to learn this, so don’t ignore the truth.”

  She hadn’t predicted the pressure point would be psychological maintenance. “I’m not talking about this.” Even if she was, the last person in the world she would want to be talking about her sleeping issues was Jurgen. Okay, not ‘last person’. Grover March held that distinction.

  Jurgen hesitated, thinking. “Lara, Elise and Gwen are worried about you.” The people she had been closest to, before. “They believe they owe you, or something equivalently feminine and strange, for letting you get caught up in the darker aspects of the Indigo without the proper preparation. They don’t believe they have the right to barge into your office. I’ll leave, though, if you promise you’ll call one of them, today, to set up a meeting.”

  Jurgen, a six foot six giant with a lazy basketball player’s build and an unkempt bushy beard, always bugged the crap out of her. His antiquated views on society irked her immensely, and he was as sexist as someone of his real age.

  However…‘they believe’? “You don’t believe the Indigo owes me anything for dragging me into that disaster?”

  “As for owing you anything, I believe that’s for you to state, not for my female peers to invent. Furthermore, the confrontation was not a disaster,” Jurgen said, giving her an overly manly stare. His haughty arrogance filled any room he entered, and now polluted hers. “We won. Nobody died. Thus, no disaster.”

  “Jan died,” Dana said, regretting the words the instant she said them. Flashbacks from the fight with the Hell-beast flickered through her mind, and her vision. She twitched and forced the unwanted images and their attendant emotions out of her mind.

  “Dana, people under my command have died in these. Close acquaintances of mine have died in these. Died and did not come back.” His sudden harsh voice vanished as he said next: “Jan came back.”

  Dana didn’t respond. She couldn’t, so she papered over her lack of words by glaring harder at Jurgen.

  He turned away from her slightly. “My reaction was the same as yours after my first real fight.”

  Dana didn’t respond. She just wanted him to go away.

  “I, too, had issues. Issues I papered over in my mind, issues I denied, issues I still require others to help me understand.” He paused. “Do I look like a touchy-feely sort of guy?”

  “No,” Dana said. “You look like a flaming asshole from Mars.” Perhaps he would leave if she insulted him.

  Jurgen, however, nodded in agreement. “Do you know how they – Jan, Lara and Epharis – finally got to me?”

  “I have no clue and most certainly no interest.”

  His eyebrows twitched in recognition of something, but if he had any real empathy he didn’t otherwise show it on his face. “I got so angry and annoyed at my nightmares and flashbacks that I started to deny what happened. To deny anything happened. No, I didn’t watch people die. No, I didn’t see Hell with my own eyes. No, I didn’t experience any magic. Skepticism is a good thing, right? They accepted Grover’s skepticism, so why not accept mine?”

  Whatever. Dana gave up on her anger, which wasn’t working. Perhaps if she got bored he would go away. Pedantic repetitive stiff-necked politically antiquated blowhard. Boring boring boring.

  “They called me on it. If you’re so skeptical, make this little magical illusion go away, they said. I couldn’t, and I said they were messing with me, trying to make me think something real was magical. Then they tricked Grover into disbelieving the illusion – back then, he didn’t have the control to skeptic things unless he got tricked – and the damned thing went away.”

  “What, you want sympathy from me?” Her boredom vanished into a frown.

  Now Jurgen smiled. “Sympathy is a disease that results in weakness.” Glare. “Exactly.” Dana’s glare turned into a sneer. “Jan’s right. You are very much like me, aren’t you?” He grimaced. “Me, as a commie.”

  “Uh huh,” Dana said. “In your tight little illusory world, there’s either you selfish Positivists or the rest of us, who are all commies. Moochers. No room for anyone else, no room for any divergent thoughts outside of your tiny mental box. Whatever.” She didn’t have time for this waste of time.

  “You’re young,” he said, not taking her bait and not echoing her tone. “You’ll get over it. Being a Positivist allows me to get people’s attention and make them think, the hardest task any individual ever faces. At times, you need to look at someone’s history, not their words, to understand them. Which you already know, but just needed reminding.”

  Dana sat back, drawn in despite her desires. She couldn’t help but think things through and discover his point. Dammit! “Mr. Selfish is willing to give his life to fight the forces of Hell,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Mr. Selfish is willing to donate far too much of his hard earned money to people fighting the forces of Hell, to even support them in charity, even though charity is a great moral wrong.”

  He nodded again.

  “It’s that important.”

  Another nod.

  “And Hell wins if I let what happened to me twist me up inside and reduce my effectiveness at fighting the good fight.”

  “Exactly.”

  She tapped her foot on a desk drawer. “Okay. Yes. I need someone to share my experiences with.” The last thing she was going to admit to this creep was a need for a shoulder to cry on. “No, I don’t have anybody I trust.”

  “Certainly not me,” Jurgen said.

  “Tell me Hell has not frozen over.”

  He smiled. “It always amazes me when I realize that despite Hell’s size and complications, and despite how different Hell is from everyone’s expectations, none of it is, indeed frozen over.”

  Her glare returned.

  “I’ve decided you need to talk to Jan,” Jurgen said. Dana shook her head ‘no’, an unwanted image of Jan’s death pallor and gaping open self-inflicted cut throat flashing into her mind. “She is the best of us for you, Olive Oil.” He stood. “I’ll make this easy. She’ll come to you, you don’t need to go to her. All you need to do is nod and accept the invitation.”

  Dana hesitated before nodding. Jurgen turned and left without saying goodbye.

  Dammit! She chewed her lip, anger and relief warring in her emotions. She knew she denied a great deal, starting with the day she became a Supported and not ending with the disastrous confrontation with the Hell-thing. Hell-beast. Talking to Jan would help, she realized, with reluctance, despite the fact she would rather bury herself in work than look at…

  Wait a second. Olive Oil? Why did that piece of male excrement call me Olive Oil?

  When the words ‘extra virgin’ came to her mind, she yelled in anger and threw her coffee cup out her office door.

  When the congregation of the righteous shall appear,

  And sinners shall be judged for their sins,

  And shall be driven from the face of the earth:

  And when the Righteous One shall appear before the eyes of the righteous,

  Whose elect works hang upon the Lord of Spirits,

  And light shall appear to the righteous and the elect who dwell on the earth,

  Where then will be the dwelling of the sinners,

  And where the resting-place of those who have denied the Lord of Spirits?

  It had been good for them if they had not been born.

  When the secrets of
the righteous shall be revealed and the sinners judged,

  And the godless driven from the presence of the righteous and elect,

  From that time those that possess the earth shall no longer be powerful and exalted:

  And they shall not be able to behold the face of the holy,

  For the Lord of Spirits has caused His light to appear

  On the face of the holy, righteous, and elect.

  Then shall the kings and the mighty perish

  And be given into the hands of the righteous and holy.

  And thenceforward none shall seek for themselves mercy from the Lord of Spirits

  For their life is at an end.

  -- The Book of Enoch 38, 1:6

  “ I won’t rest until I rip your lives from you and your souls burn in Perdition for eternity!”

  17. (Dave)

  Dave’s mental clock always ticked backwards when he waited for a fight to start. His mind always churned a million miles an hour in these situations and he always tapped his feet. Tiff had thought his trait ludicrous and giggle-worthy. He couldn’t see any way to avoid a fight with Elorie tonight. Utterly impossible.

  Not when he wanted to start one.

  Elorie turned off the water in the shower, and he took a moment to turn off the cable movie, ‘Machete III the Directors Cut’. Dave tapped his feet and listened in his mind to memories of the group’s dinnertime ribbing again. He wanted to refute, at length, all of their comments. Long involved detailed refutations. He tapped his feet.

  Steam poured out of the bathroom, followed by Elorie, in her robe. “You look angry enough to cook soup,” Elorie said, as she passed him on the way out into the cabin’s living room. Behind him, he heard the antiquated television click on. Cable news.

  He tapped his feet and stayed seated in the bedroom chair. In his mind, Elorie asked again whether some sort of inside information from Lorenzi had led him to his advice to Darrel. Damn her.

  What did he want? Why was he just sitting here? Then he remembered – his turn to take a shower.