99 Gods: Betrayer

by Randall Farmer

  “Akron, Montreal and Worcester. They’re not mine, per se, but are part of the State Government’s various investigative apparatuses. We pride ourselves in being as forward thinking as possible.”

  Satan frowned. “Then why haven’t you raided the Suits before this?” If they had the firepower, they should have at least tried.

  “The list of problems is endless, including the Suits suborning of people in the State Government,” Smithers said. “Mostly, fear. Our Supported aren’t soldiers, Bais. They are primarily investigators and troubleshooters, and they’ve had an incredibly hard time getting any information about the Seven Suits and their coterie of Gods. That is, until you raised such havoc in the Empire State Building yesterday.”

  “You have people inside right now?”

  Smithers nodded.

  “When the Suits recover, your people had best be out of there unless we do something.”

  “You’re volunteering?”

  “I like you, Smithers,” Satan said. “My presence can’t protect an army and won’t be worth a minnow’s poop if the people I’m nominally protecting start shooting guns or doing Supported style attacks. The chaos I cause is often harmful to those with me unless they can protect themselves. With Willie’s help” Willie groaned “I think we can come up with something useful. We need to be quick, though. The Suits and their enslaved Gods won’t take long to recover from what they did to themselves fighting me off yesterday.”

  “I’m in a hurry myself,” Smithers said. “Unless we can show the State Government is not helpless, the City of God agitators are going to do the same thing they’ve done elsewhere and force the State Government to dissolve itself. The fact they’ve already got to the Federal Government isn’t going to help, either.”

  Satan nodded. Events moved entirely too fast for her taste. Her beloved modern world melted away around her, and – dammit – nothing she did helped.

  Her temper up, she visualized ruin for the Suits.

  “Go, then, if you are sickened by me,” Satan said. Change groveled before her, while Freedom puked up his guts behind him. The cell had once been a meeting room, but now held nothing but a now vomit-stained carpet. A moment ago, it had looked like a dungeon cell, with stone walls, damp straw in the corners, and a pail. Such accoutrements were gone now.

  “We’re free?” Change said, voice a whisper.

  “That’s the whole point, fool.” Both of them looked worse for wear; the Suits had definitively proved how one could torture a God. The Gods were both raw and open, perfect for turning, which she had interrupted. Their trauma also made them open to her own aura, why she sickened them.

  The torture proved Dana’s suppositions correct: the Suits had gone about as far into ‘might makes right’ as it was possible to go.

  Satan didn’t have any respect for Change and Freedom. Gods of their strength – for Change had been one of the stronger Ideological Gods, once upon a time – shouldn’t have let the Suits capture them in such a humiliating fashion.

  Satan leaned back in her scooter and waited. After fifteen seconds, Change nodded, got to his feet, picked up Freedom and tried his willpower. First, dust. Then a hole in the wall, letting in the foul reek of New York City. “Thank you, Bais,” Change said. He flew off with Freedom in his arms.

  So far, today’s haul had been good. Excellent, actually, better than Satan expected. Their initial rush had so confused the Suits that two of them, Passion and Indulgence, started shooting at each other and each other’s followers. What bad luck!

  She knew she always brought out the worst in tyrants. Goading these idiots into a backstabbing contest was the sort of thing she loved to do. The way Passion and Indulgence had been going after each other, Satan suspected their enmity was now a blood feud.

  In total, they had taken down four of the Suits and taken six other Gods into custody. Now, she had freed Change and Freedom, which meant Portland and her faction would owe her.

  Hisses and cracks echoed into Change and Freedom’s prison room from further down the hall. Satan drove her scooter, following the noise, and found Willie and Smithers’ attack crew in an office, engaged with yet another God and following Satan’s orders to use their abilities only defensively. The others backed off and the longhaired young-looking God panicked, attacking Satan.

  His attack worked about as well as Satan expected. Less than a minute later, the God fell to the floor, after skittering back into a corner of the room, scorched by his own pathetic willpower attacks.

  “What’s your name, little Godling,” Satan said. Willie walked up to stand at her side, as did three of the Supported attackers and Smithers.

  “Ecologist,” the God said. He wiped divine flop sweat from his greasy forehead and poked long hair out of the way.

  Satan hadn’t heard of Ecologist before. “Practical or Ideological?”

  “Practical,” Ecologist said. Appalling. The fact the Angelic Host made a God like this meant there was something to the ecology crap Satan found so silly and annoying. As much as she disliked the idea and the work involved, she would need to look into the science.

  “What’s a God like you doing working for the Seven Suits?” Smithers said. “You should be on the other side.”

  Ecologist moaned. “They found out who I was before apotheosis and threatened my family. To prove their seriousness, they killed one of my cousins.”

  Satan cursed under her breath. The Suits were thugs, tyrant mobsters of the worst ilk.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you need to let your previous life go?” Willie said. “So they killed one of your loved ones? That’s not on your shoulders, but theirs. You should either be ignoring the murder, or thinking revenge.”

  Ecologist’s eyes widened. “I’m not that sort of person.”

  “You’re a fucking God, you’ve got immense responsibilities and you ought to be ashamed of the way you’re acting,” Willie said.

  Poor Ecologist. He lowered his eyes.

  “You going to cooperate now?” Smithers asked the putative God, after one of the Supported investigators whispered something in Smithers’ ear. Ecologist nodded. “I’m going to turn you over to a Supported team for questioning. There’s a good chance that if you cooperate you’re not going to be charged.”

  “Thank you,” Ecologist whispered. “Let me show you something, to prove my cooperation.”

  They followed Ecologist through his office, to a makeshift laboratory next door. “What they’ve forced me to do is disgusting.”

  The lab was another converted meeting room, substantially larger than Change and Freedom’s cell. No willpower illusionary restructuring in this one, though. Everything here was real. The carpet had been replaced by ceramic tile, and black-topped tables lined the edges of the room, topped with incomprehensible instruments. In the center stood a half dozen cages. Inside one was a thing, a giant-sized human, thick legged and ugly. Satan took a moment to figure out what was wrong – the creature’s over-large head had four faces, one facing each direction. Smithers turned and dry heaved on the floor. Today’s visit had been a very large lesson in the evil of unconstrained power.

  “Tell me,” Satan said to Ecologist.

  “The beast is four merged Supported,” Ecologist said, revolted. “I had no choice! They, they…”

  Gunfire rattled down the hallway. Satan held up her hand, stopping Ecologist. She motored out to the hallway; Willie and the rest following behind her. The bit about following her had taken some convincing; they didn’t much like the idea that the elderly woman in the electric scooter should lead them, but they had grown used to her being in front.

  Five thugs with guns approached from around the corner, followed by two Supported and a God in a silk tuxedo with diamond studs. “Materialism,” Satan said, identifying the God. He reminded her of a rich British dandy, the epitome of the Tory MP. One of the Seven Suits. “Your people will kill themselves unless they lay down their weapons.”

  “Eat air,” Materi
alism said, and removed the floor from underneath Satan with a wave of his be-ringed hand. Willie winced and worked magic. Materialism’s thugs did shoot and they did kill each other, as predicted. One of Materialism’s Supported tried to maintain bullet-stopping shielding, but he exploded, frying himself and falling to the floor due to some Supported-level mistake. Satan smiled.

  “You notice I’m not falling,” Satan said. “Too bad your compatriot Suits turned on you and let me in.”

  Materialism’s second Supported fled. Perhaps a Supported of a different God. One of Smithers’ Supported moaned, and Satan glanced to see why. Bullet holes riddled the Supported’s clothing, but no blood. Given he wasn’t a combat Supported, Satan suspected her own good will and protections behind the Supported’s survival. This time. Not something a person should count on.

  “I’m afraid your days as a tyrant are…”

  Materialism interrupted Satan’s goad by tossing a thick gold chain from around his neck at Satan and the rest. The chain disgorged thousands of pounds of gravel as it flew above her, which fell on Willie’s shields. Some got through, filling the air around Satan with dust and lodging several annoying bits in her hair and dress. Smither’s second Supported screamed. Enough gravel had gotten through Willie’s shield to flatten her.

  “Fuck this,” Willie said. He muttered a spell, causing electricity to arc from one electrical outlet to another, right through Materialism. Two more of his spells dismembered the God, and then Willie set Materialism’s beautiful tuxedo on fire. “This is the way we fight the Gods, fight the Gods, fight the Gods,” Willie said, a chanted whisper. “This is the way we fight the Gods, all the live-long day.” He continued his attacks; Materialism screamed and writhed under Willie’s non-stop and highly offensive onslaught even after he had fallen. The lights dimmed as Willie channeled far too much juice through the wires leading to the electrical sockets.

  Satan winced. Willie had finally given in to the infernal forces polluting his mind. “Willie, stop!” Satan said. “This is wrong.”

  Willie ignored her, but his next spell rebounded off Materialism, right back at Willie and nearly ripped his left arm from his body. He moaned and fell, clutching the arm and muttering spells.

  Satan listened to her scooter fall through the floor to the level below; she had leapt for the tiled floor immediately after telling Willie to stop, knowing the inevitable flashback would weaken the spell he used to make a fake floor under her scooter.

  Satan turned to Smithers and his people. “We’re done for the day,” Satan said. “My magician has given in to evil and I can’t protect him any longer.” She even had a hard time thinking of Willie as ‘her magician’. Her test was over.

  Now things got dangerous. She had to get out of this skyscraper before someone found a way to bury her in it or drop her several hundred feet. She regretted telling Change and Freedom to get the hell out while they had the chance, as she wouldn’t mind some vaguely non-pathetic Divine help right about now. She wasn’t sure she would die if someone dropped the Empire State Building on her, but her body wasn’t invulnerable and she had no idea how much she could regenerate from. The worst, in the past, had been very bad and required years of recovery; she had crawled out of more than one grave in her day.

  “What do you mean?” Smithers asked, as his minions gathered up the fallen Materialism. Smithers was unharmed; lucky him. Disasters always picked those with power over those without. At least to start with.

  “We can’t count on him for protection,” Satan said.

  “Sure you can,” Willie said, his voice a low octave wall-rattling growl. “Just lead me to some more of these fucking Gods. I’ll blast them into fucking oblivion!”

  Satan knew better. What happened around her always depended on how she thought of people. “I have pressing business elsewhere,” she told Smithers. “Get your people out of here and chalk this one up as a success.”

  “Two of the Suits are still unaccounted for, as are several of their enslaved Gods,” Smithers said. He talked into his headset anyway, ordering a retreat. The man had sense, a rarity for his gender.

  “True, but what we’ve done today broke the power of the Suits,” Satan said. “Even when they’re freed they’re going to think of each other as enemies, at least most of them. Trust me, I feel good about what we’ve accomplished here.”

  “Ma’am,” Smithers said.

  Satan smiled. “Willie, let’s go,” she said. She started down the hallway, wincing as she walked, hunched over, leaning on Smithers arm.

  Willie stumbled to his feet and hobbled off behind Satan.

  The Suits would never recover from this, Satan knew. Not that it mattered, given Dubuque’s actions.

  The Dubuque conflict, she feared, was over, and decided in Dubuque’s favor.

  And Enoch went and said: 'Azâzêl, thou shalt have no peace: a severe sentence has gone forth against thee to put thee in bonds: And thou shalt not have toleration nor request granted to thee, because of the unrighteousness which thou hast taught, and because of all the works of godlessness and unrighteousness and sin which thou hast shown to men.' Then I went and spoke to them all together, and they were all afraid, and fear and trembling seized them. And they besought me to draw up a petition for them that they might find forgiveness, and to read their petition in the presence of the Lord of heaven. For from thenceforward they could not speak (with Him) nor lift up their eyes to heaven for shame of their sins for which they had been condemned. Then I wrote out their petition, and the prayer in regard to their spirits and their deeds individually and in regard to their requests that they should have forgiveness and length. And I went off and sat down at the waters of Dan, in the land of Dan, to the south of the west of Hermon: I read their petition till I fell asleep. And behold a dream came to me, and visions fell down upon me, and I saw visions of chastisement, and a voice came bidding (me) to tell it to the sons of heaven, and reprimand them.

  And when I awaked, I came unto them, and they were all sitting gathered together, weeping in 'Abelsjâîl, which is between Lebanon and Sênêsêr, with their faces covered. And I recounted before them all the visions which I had seen in sleep, and I began to speak the words of righteousness, and to reprimand the heavenly Watchers.

  -- The Book of Enoch 13, 1:10

  “The elixer will, unfortunately, also ease your pain.”

  48. (Dave)

  Dave awoke in his tent, alone, aching. Nothing had been decided in last night’s discussions, and as the discussion ebbed he had realized Nessa and Ken did more yakking telepathically than verbally. They would decide whether to tell the Watchers their story, not anyone else.

  They hadn’t even been able to convince the Watchers to tell them whether Elorie remained alive or not.

  Which left him where? He didn’t know. He had a few ideas, things he had thought of while waiting for his broken body to relax enough to sleep. The Watchers hadn’t attacked them, and he held onto that tidbit like a log in a storm tossed sea. They talked only with those people they chose to talk to. Who did they talk to, and why?

  This gave him hope for Elorie.

  Logistics would soon be a problem. They had little food left and the Watchers weren’t sharing. Although Nessa and Ken didn’t seem to eat much of anything, their bodyguards did. Dave was starving. They gleaned breakfast from a stash of power bars found among his team’s supplies. Before he ate his power bar, Dave inspected himself. His wound had closed after Jasmine, the Supported Goth princess, finished her healing. “The regenerated tissue is going to be tender and fragile for weeks. No poking!” she said. A faint tracery of scar tissue decorated the edge, the result of his own now-depleted Supported self-healing, but the regrown tissue remained baby pink. Scary, and disquieting.

  He dressed in his now ruined clothes, not having any other choices. Ken had done something he termed ‘telekinetic cleaning’ – don’t leave home without it! – which removed some of the blood stains and dirt, but too much still rem
ained.

  Nobody spoke this morning, bothersome and terrifying, reminding him of his disastrous last day with Elorie’s team. Dave followed the group as they, after breakfast, wandered up to the place where the Watchers had appeared yesterday. The heads on poles stared down at them, angry, but luckily the fallen from the Ecumenist quest were farther down the path. He ignored their heads for now, best for his nerves. None of them deserved their fate, and he had grown to almost like several of them.

  Dave remained uneasy about Nessa and Ken’s group. Deirdre, the tall amazon, still hadn’t spoken to him at all and had bumped him away twice. The huge six-footer acted rough and didn’t seem particularly smart, based on what little she said and how she spoke. The rest were a little better, less abrupt, but none of them had shown any warmth to him save Jasmine, although even their healer appeared to be put out most of the time. Nessa’s tendency to call her people things like Party Boy and Loser Lady couldn’t help.

  The four Watchers from yesterday’s meeting appeared when they reached the front gate to the Watchers’ fortress.

  “Good morning,” Nessa said. “This is morning, and whether or not the morning remains good…”

  “I have a question for you,” Dave said, interrupting Nessa and stepping forward. Neither Nessa nor Ken stopped him, so he continued. “Yesterday, you told us you speak only to those people you agree to speak to. Is there anything we can do to make us such people?”

  “Besides the mundane, occasionally we teach,” Wisdom said.

  “I am willing to learn,” Dave said.

  Wisdom laughed. “You are not one we might call, Psychic. Your Bodhisattva companion is.”

  “Ah,” Dave said. “If the Ecumenists hadn’t come in anger, you would have taught them?”

  “Yes. Some of them.”

  “I’m still willing,” Dave said. “Perhaps, since times are changing, you…”