99 Gods: Betrayer
Page 62
“I did it again, didn’t I?” Nessa said, plaintive, weak voiced. She hurt, bruised above and below, but she had asked for the hurt. Hell, she had slapped Ken hard enough to provoke him to telekinetically protect himself, which got his attention; what came afterwards wasn’t lovemaking but the nasty hard fuck she wanted.
“You mean the fact you scraped up my back with your fingernails? Yes,” Ken said.
Nessa smiled, staring up at the bright orange fabric of their tent. She liked orange. “No, not that. I mean when I took over both of us, knocked back Wisdom, killed their troll bridge and scared the crap out of our bodyguards. That ‘it’.”
“Oh,” Ken said. “Like on the plane. Only, well, there’s something I need to tell you. I hope you’re not too upset. You see, from my perspective, I took you over.”
“Oh good,” Nessa said, and chuckled. “So you’re not going batshit crazy because I’m running you around like a puppet?” She rolled over on the rumpled sleeping bag and snuggled close to Ken.
Ken telekinetically stuck her right sock on her right hand. “Ken?” she said.
“Listen to the sock.”
Nessa closed her eyes. “We are becoming far too familiar with each other,” she said, speaking in a bare whisper. The world wouldn’t be able to cope with the two of them being loony tunes in exactly the same way.
“Exactly,” said her right sock. “Exactly. You’re learning to function as one. You’ve been edging toward this ever since Nairobi. This is a good thing.”
“Pretty weird, sock,” Nessa said. “This isn’t what it appears to me.”
“How else would working as one be? If it felt like someone else was in control, someone else would be in control. If both of you think each of you is in control, yet there is no conflict, then you’re working as one. This isn’t a diminishment, but an enhancement.”
“I’m sorry, Nessa,” Ken said. “I know what happened but I couldn’t explain. I’m not sure I believe the explanation your sock gave you, but at least it’s an explanation, which is more than I was capable of.”
“Don’t worry,” Nessa said. She was bone tired and fatigued. “Sock? Should we just go, thieves in the night? I have no desire to see Dave and Elorie’s heads on poles tomorrow morning.”
“You have to face the consequences of your actions, no matter how unpleasant they may be,” the sock said.
Nessa winced, yanked the sock off her hand and threw the sock puppet across the tent. “Dammit!”
Ken licked sweat off Nessa’s breasts, lonely long licks waking Nessa from deep sleep. He had blinkered his mind again and she swatted his head. “Surely you’re not ready for more?” she said.
“Just a bit thirsty and down on salt,” Ken said. He moved down to her bellybutton and began to lick…
“Stop that, it tickles,” Nessa said, giggling. Her belly bulged but her innie hadn’t turned into an outie, that was so gross when things like that happened, yuck! “What’s bothering you? Don’t you need to sleep?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Spill it or die.” Sleep was important.
Ken laughed. “This is important, but I was waiting until you got over the just awakened grumpies.”
Hemmity hemmity. Not fair. He knew her far too well. “Okay, I’m over them,” she said, and tried to knee him in the balls. She missed.
“Have some chocolate.”
“Dammit, I need more sleep.”
“If I’m right, we’re not going to be getting any more sleep.”
“You have a plan?”
“I have a plan.”
Nessa closed her eyes and wrapped her mouth around a gooey chocolate bar that had seen too many melting and rehardening cycles. She gave the bar a long slow chocolate blowjob to tease Ken, but his mind was on his plan and he didn’t even notice. Unfair!
“Tell me,” Nessa said, finally, exasperated.
“We’re going to do the linkup we did before, reach out and whack Portland around until she comes up with a way to communicate with us,” Ken said. “Get us some help, I hope.”
“I can’t reach that far.”
“You can’t telep that far with your verbal acumen, but I know you can reach that far. You’ve done so before. You’re going to help me project my telekinesis.”
“If we’re going to do this, why don’t we get Javier’s attention?” Nessa said.
“Hunch. Getting Javier’s attention’s a bad idea. Don’t know why.”
“Why Portland?”
“Your idea, Nessa. Remember? Mid sex?”
“Of course not. I never remember what I come up with while we’re fucking. Portland, though – hmm – makes sense. She might be able to give us some help with these damned Watchers. An army of Supported would do the trick, I think. The Watchers aren’t powerful, from the 99 Gods’ perspective.”
“Let’s find out,” Ken said. He grabbed Nessa to him and she draped herself over him, full skin contact. “Go on. Do it.”
“Do what?”
“The link thing. You’re always the one who’s initiated it before.”
“Uh, Ken? The link just happens. I don’t know how to initiate the linkage.”
“Think about the Watchers trying to trick you into killing your unborn…”
Ken’s voice vanished.
They were one.
At least so Nessa thought. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be any fun in the bedroom. As ‘one’ she lost her sense of touch, and she certainly couldn’t use Ken’s sense of touch. Mind, though…all was mind.
Anxious urges directed her to Portland’s lair in Seattle. Strange. Though it was the middle of the night, the sun was out. Time zones – oh, right, she remembered time zones. Part of her expected daylight over there. Guess being one did have its uses. This had to be a Ken thought, not hers.
Look – well, there wasn’t any looking, this was knowing – there’s Portland. Let’s tap her to get her attention. Oops, there she goes, right into the wall. Sorry, the teek wasn’t supposed to be so strong, Portland.
Only her voice came out over there as loud noise, loud enough to knock over two Supported.
Portland’s mouth moved, and Nessa knew, not sure how, that Portland spoke her and Ken’s name. “Yes, yes!” Nessa said, and clapped Portland on the back. Congratulations! Oops, Nessa hoped the brick wall wasn’t structural or something equivalent.
Stop, Portland mouthed. Hold still and I’ll send a projection through you.
Nessa held still.
“Jesus!” Portland said, through her projection. It was a good thing she was short – she didn’t have to duck to clear the ceiling of the tent.
“Oh, sorry about the lack of clothes,” Nessa said as she sat up. Portland frowned. “We’re trying an experiment.”
“You’ve been out of contact for days,” Portland said. “People were getting worried.”
“Not our fault,” Ken said, also sitting. “There was a nasty 99 God curse on the missile that hit the airplane and we still haven’t figured out how to remove the curse. Working as one we found a way around.”
“So…” Portland stopped mid-sentence, backed away, and then screamed “No! No!” She closed her eyes and winced; her projection wavered but stayed in one piece. She did fall to the tent floor, actually passing through the tent to end up with her head and upper torso outside the tent. Apparently, the projection was one of the weaker ones without any solidity. An illusion.
Portland stayed down.
Highly strange. Suspicious. Portland was supposed to be the steady one, not the one doing strange and inexplicable things.
“Okay, Nessa, any ideas?”
“I don’t think the curse is affecting her,” Nessa said. “This is something else.”
“You could look into her mind,” Ken said.
Nessa chewed on her lip. Hunches flooded over her, shocking in number and the ease of their flow. This had to be from the hookup with Ken. She had never gotten hunches so easily before. “No
t a good idea right now,” Nessa said. She had to stay away from telepathy. So she did. “I think Portland’s been grabbed by the Angelic Host. If I go in there and talk with the Host either Portland, or I, or both of us will die.”
Ken’s eyes widened. “No.”
“Yes,” Nessa said. “This is bad. I think we’ve just done something to ourselves worse than we ever have before, and that’s saying a lot.”
Nessa huddled in Ken’s arms and waited for Portland to recover. He had grabbed a blanket and thrown it around them. The pre-dawn twilight already lit the mountains above the village, dimly illuminating ice and snow.
He turned red.
Nessa laughed, the image in her mind of Ken telekinetically lifting chocolate bars from various hard-up grocery stores in small Turkish towns, and floating them up into her purse and his backpack, as they flew by overhead.
Nessa sent.
Portland’s projection groaned and sat up. Nessa sighed. It figured the damned God wouldn’t wake up until she and Ken were going to again, this time slow and soft and comforting, his style.
“Care to join in?” Nessa asked Portland.
Ken hadn’t noticed Portland and freaked. This was worth a few laughs, although Nessa was the only one laughing. Portland looked ready to cry.
“I would rather not have to say this, but I must,” Portland said, once their dishabille was unshabbied. “If you tell me where I am, or what’s going on, the Angelic Host will pull the plug on me. Kill me.”
“Say what?” Ken said.
“Those bastards,” Nessa said. “They’re supposed to be the good guys.”
“They are. You’re no longer good guys.” Not this again. Being the bad guy always pissed Nessa off. “You and Ken. Worse, you’re contagious.”
“Portland, mommy dearest, start making some sense please,” Nessa said. “Your dutiful daughter’s done…” Nessa couldn’t come up with an appropriate ‘d’ word “come crazy confused.” She had done better in her life.
“The quest to find out the mystery of the deaths of the Ecumenists has succeeded, according to the Host. Apparently, the quest should have failed. Someone – Dubuque, I suspect – was supposed to have arranged the failure. Whatever you’ve found is something so bad, so disruptive, the Angelic Host has declared you anathema, open to being destroyed by any of the 99 Gods, just for finding this whatever.”
“And we invited you here,” Ken said. “Lucky us, lucky you.”
“Luckily for us this is a powerless projection,” Portland said. Nessa whistled.
“They’ve got you good, haven’t they?” Nessa said. “Only your background’s so high-toned you don’t know squat about how to get out from under the monkey on your back.”
“Don’t make this any harder,” Portland said. “I don’t hold you at fault. The Host is at fault and they’re not making any logical sense. I’m going to do my best to rectify the situation; and, no I’m not going to try and hunt you down and no, if we randomly meet I’m going to give you fair warning to flee before I do anything. I do have to reduce…” Loser Lady One “…from Grade One to Grade Two Supported. Grade One’s are too intimate with their supporter. I can keep the rest as Grade Twos, though, at least for the moment.”
“Oh, an honorable betrayal,” Nessa said. “Pardon me, but we’re way up shit’s creek here and we thought we were inviting you in to get some help from you.” This is a disaster, Nessa thought. But why? Oh, of course.
This should teach us not to do missions for that asshole Lorenzi.
“There’s more. If you get back in contact with the rest of the Telepaths, the Host will declare them anathema. I would like it if you didn’t, at least until their current mission is done. They’re…”
“Current mission?” Ken said. “They’re taking another shot at Dubuque? Are you mad? Are they mad? Who thought this up?”
“War.”
“No, she can’t be that stupid. Alt’s certainly not that stupid. Get them to stop. We’re talking suicide, with a zero chance of success,” Nessa said. This bit of understanding came from Ken, but since the two of them remained closely linked, even if they weren’t ‘one’, she wasn’t bothered about sharing the info and treating it as her own. “Surely Alt’s figured this out.”
“Alt has; he thinks the attempt won’t work but War’s convinced him his hunches aren’t always right and he errs too often on the side of caution. We don’t have time for caution. Dubuque’s pressing the City of God hard right now and the old established governments are tumbling world-wide, being sucked into the City.”
“Something’s wrong, Portland. We need to talk to War and Alt, clear…”
“War’s going to get the same orders I did from the Host and she’s far more bloody minded than I am,” Portland said. “If you contaminate Alt and his group and mess up this attack, War will probably do the job herself.”
Nessa closed her eyes. “Dammit dammit dammit!” She remembered Ken’s earlier comment about who they were going to be left with on their side. “Let me guess…Lorenzi and his magicians have been declared anathema as well.” At least the bastard got caught in his own cesspool. She wouldn’t have been able to cope if he had ensnared everyone else and come out clean.
“I was going to get to that,” Portland said. “That’s the big shocker, since I can’t figure out how this is connected to them at all, save through Lorenzi’s former order. Especially Lorenzi’s magicians. He doesn’t tell
them anything. They’re innocents in this game.”
“You want a hint? I think…”
“No!” Portland said. “Are you trying to get me killed? Nesssssa…”
Portland’s projection vanished. They hadn’t even gotten to the part about Elorie’s plight. Portland’s damned Mission would take a big hit if Elorie died due to a failure of Portland’s gang of Gods to follow through with their promise to make Elorie whole after she succeeded on the Ecumenist quest. Looked like Portland was on her own.
“Fuck,” Ken said. “What was this hint of yours, anyway?”
“Oh, that? I was just yanking her chain,” Nessa said.
“Nessa!”
50. (Satan)
“You don’t trust me anymore, but he’s here. I know where my master is,” Willie said.
Master. As if Willie was Lorenzi’s servant. How long, Satan wondered, before Willie got the bright idea that he needed to replace his master? Not long, given the worms churning in Willie’s mind.
Then Satan would need to kill Willie. She tried to remember the last time she actually killed someone directly, and couldn’t; her last homicide happened a long long time ago. She doubted she would be able to cause Willie’s accidental death; the adage about ‘arrange enough accidents and eventually the person succumbs’ didn’t hold with magicians. She would have to go after him directly. He would probably take her with him, something horrible and painful, with a long and painful recovery. Not what she wanted to be doing. Unfortunately, the responsibility went with her decision to take Willie under her ‘care’.
The proper solution? Convince Lorenzi to do the job. The lesson, why she grabbed Willie to begin with. Why she went to Lorenzi now.
Luckily, Willie remained clueless. He thought they were searching out his ‘master’ for consultation about the remaining two uncaptured Seven Suits. Luckily – and Satan hoped that her ‘luck’ hadn’t caused this – the fact Lorenzi had just been declared anathema, along with (to Satan’s horror) Ken and Nessa proved a perfect excuse.