99 Gods: Betrayer

by Randall Farmer

  “That wasn’t love in my eye, it was an eyelash,” Satan said. Reed was in. That is, he had chosen to learn Nessa’s dirty secrets and become anathema.

  “Bah. John, what’s wrong with you today?” Reed said. “If Satan here says jump, you’re jumping. Has something changed?”

  “Yes,” John said. “I’ve surrendered to her. Not for the first time, either. Look, Reed, if Satan here camps out on your doorstep, you can either surrender or you can run – or you’re going to end up with the worst imaginable luck. Besides, she made a good point about what happened to Willie. Because of our situation, the infernal voices are louder now.”

  “How much danger are you in?” Reed asked.

  Lorenzi shrugged. “I’ve lived with them for so long that I can’t even hear them anymore.”

  Satan frowned. His comment didn’t sound right. Self-deceit? Probably. The danger would come, as Willie had learned, from exposure to violence and potential violence. If Lorenzi was to avoid becoming an evil magician, and if he was as powerful as he said, he needed to be steered away from violence.

  “What are we going to do, then?” Reed asked. “How can we dodge the Gods? Shouldn’t we be moving from place to place?”

  “Well, none of the Gods care about this place, and with my troop of magicians here they would need an army of Supported to do us ill. If I or one of the others had seen one coming, we would have moved. Now, with my magicians gone, I’m counting on Satan to protect us. Another reason why I’m saying we’ve surrendered.”

  “You’ve surrendered. I’m not.”

  “You’d best do so too, Reed,” Lorenzi said.

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Reed said, unhappy. He went into Nessa’s computer room, booted the system, and started to work.

  “Don’t forget you’re clearing out of here and moving to another trailer,” Satan said.

  Lorenzi nodded. “What do you suggest I do, Satan? Besides move out of here.”

  “Hmm. Let me think.” There had to be a way to steer Lorenzi away from violence. She didn’t, as of yet, have any good ideas.

  “Be my guest. I’m going to pack.”

  According to what she stole or overheard, the Ecumenists had gotten themselves killed quite quickly after the 99 Gods arrived; apparently, they had gone to pester the Fallen Angels. Watchers, indeed, Satan snorted to herself. Those idiots were the Fallen Angels of legend, beings of horror and mischief. She suspected Lorenzi even remembered this, given his extensive ecclesiastical studies, and didn’t use the term out of politeness.

  So why did the Ecumenists go there?

  She came up with two explanations. First, the Ecumenists may have feared the Fallen Angels created the 99 Gods. Second, the Ecumenists may have feared the Fallen Angels would corrupt the 99 Gods. Not the only two explanations, but the two most likely.

  According to Nessa, a number of the Ecumenists had been Cabbalists, what Nessa termed others and Lorenzi termed non-Telepath Mystics. In ancient times, they had been the Sibyls of the Greeks and the Magi, the Priest caste of ancient Persia. She suspected they had used other names throughout history and there were multiple groups of them scattered throughout the world. Despite their instinctive urge to factionalize and instinctive need to cause trouble, only on rare occasions were they anything other than pawns of the usual mortal powers.

  She didn’t understand enough about this current incarnation of the Cabbalists to judge them. Were there more of them than just the Ecumenists? Were there other, opposing, Cabbalist groups? The Ecumenists had been canny enough to fool Lorenzi for the entire time he had worked for them, a good trick. This group of Cabbalists had been smart. Then why did they become stupid and go after the Fallen Angels? Didn’t they realize they had no chance of success?

  A mystery.

  Bah. Mysteries were such a bother.

  “I’m ready,” Satan said.

  Lorenzi interrupted his packing and sat down.

  “First, you must give up on the war against Dubuque and the other 99 Gods,” Satan said.

  “What?”

  Satan blinked at his expected incomprehension and took a sip of fruit juice. “What can you do alone?”

  “Little, but if called on by, say, Nessa and her Telepaths, why shouldn’t I help?”

  “Because of the evil of the Watchers, which contaminates your magic,” Satan said. “How much success have you had against the 99 Gods, so far?”

  “Little.”

  “It’s because of the Watchers’ evil, Johnny. We need to face reality: at least for the moment the 99 Gods are too suffused with goodness and holiness to be fought with part-evil weapons.”

  Lorenzi sighed. “You’re right, I’m afraid. I can’t just sit back, though. What if they attack me, here?”

  “That’s different,” Satan said. “Self-defense would give you the moral strength you lack on the attack. With moral strength, and my help, this would make such an attack quite problematic for them.”

  “Your help?”

  “Uh huh,” Satan said. “I’m too fatigued to be starting any of my big games: I broke the Seven Suits’ power, humbled Portland until she saw some sense, and got played for a fool by Dubuque. I’m out of targets and I and my luck need a rest.” She frowned at Lorenzi, matching his frown. “You of all people should realize I’m not infallible or unbeatable.”

  “I was hoping you’d go after Dubuque again, or perhaps Verona,” he said.

  “Not anytime soon.” She shook her head. “Here’s a good a place for me to be, at least until I come up with something better.”

  “You’re saying I need to give up on any pretense of offense, hunker down, and enjoy your company,” Lorenzi said. He sighed and leaned back. “Hell, I’m likely more mentally exhausted than you are. I’ll agree to do nothing.”

  Reed sat down next to John. “Hey! I think this might work better if we had something to do to occupy our time,” he said.

  “I was getting to that, young man,” Satan said. This one? Heh. This one she didn’t like, this Reed Matús. He needed training. She hadn’t trained in a while and training a Telepath was one way for them to survive her dislike. The trick got around her intractable mental quirks. Besides, the time felt right for an apprentice, especially one with a few good hunches. If he had more raw power this would work better, but those were the breaks. Power, truthfully, was quite fungible. She figured all it would take is a bit of bad luck and he would surrender. Then she would start training him.

  Training this one would indeed kill some time.

  “What you need is a quest, Johnny. It’s become clear to me that you don’t know as much as you think you do about the Ecumenists. Who were they? What did they know? What was their real purpose and what’s their connection to what’s going on with the Watchers and the 99 Gods? Why did they go haring off against the Watchers? What are the Watchers? If you answer those questions, you’ll learn your true purpose in this mess. I think you do have a purpose; it’s just not what you thought.”

  Lorenzi shook his head. “I know all this already, save for why the Ecumenists decided to go visit the Watchers.”

  “You do?” Satan asked. “Then tell me. What are the Watchers?”

  He leaned forward and whispered “Fallen Angels.”

  “That’s just another name for them, Johnny boy,” Satan said. “Rephrase it, then. What are Fallen Angels? Really. Face the truth. You don’t understand anything about your own order.”

  Lorenzi raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me. Luckily for me, I have all of the Ecumenists records in a warehouse in Seattle. I should be able to get them here lickety split. You can even help me. You’re literate in quite a few ancient written languages, aren’t you, Satan?”

  “I know all the bad words that ever were,” she said, chuckling. “I’ll agree to help. Get some gym equipment, too. You need to work out as much as I do. It’ll keep your mind sharp.”

  At that, Reed laughed.

  And on that
day the holy Michael answered, saying to Rufael: “The power of the spirit forces me and angers me, and on account of the severity of the judgment of the secrets, the judgment over the angels; who can endure the severity of the judgment which is passed and remains, and before which they melt away?”

  And the holy Michael answered again and said to Rufael: “Who is he whose heart is not softened concerning it, and whose reins are not shaken by this word? A judgment has come overt them from [i.e. on account of] those whom they have thus led out.”

  And it came to pass as he stood before the Lord of the spirits, the holy Michael spoke to Rufael: “And I will not be for them under the eye of the Lord, for the Lord of the spirits is angered at them, because they act as if they were like gods.

  Therefore judgment which is hidden comes over them, to all eternity; therefore, neither angel nor man will receive his portion, but they alone will receive their judgment to all eternity.”

  The Book of Enoch 68, 2-5

  “Might as well call me an olive and lick me to see if I taste like a martini.”

  51. (War)

  “Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Iowa,” Portland said. Her projection paced. “They can’t get Texas because their legislature’s not in session this year, and the Governor resigned instead of calling a special session. It wasn’t in the budget.”

  War snorted. “Pathetic.” The City of God would have the rest of the United States within two weeks, War knew, including all the States in Portland’s territory. The details weren’t relevant. Portland thought she would be able to stop the process. Pure hubris.

  “You need to do the stealth attack now, War,” Portland said. “If there’s any hope your attack will work, that is.”

  “There’s hope, but not much.” War thought. “I still think we need more time to up the odds.”

  “We can’t afford the wait. Any longer and the attack won’t matter; if the attack doesn’t succeed we’re done,” Portland said. At least she knew and fully understood the precipice they crawled on, a precipice of War’s creation. If not for War’s first betrayal, the entire Indigo leadership team would be sitting here talking with Portland today, giving Portland enough of an information boost to lead Portland to personal and eternal world domination, with the Indigo as one of her major arrows in her quiver. “Do I need to call a plenary session of the Divine Compact and have you ordered to attack?”

  “The formality won’t be necessary,” War said. She needed just a little more time to finish her secret prep work on the Telepaths. Right now, she could only count on Alt. Would that be enough?

  Hell. “We’re going in this afternoon.”

  “Portland’s ordered us to go in ASAP,” War said, pacing the sparsely furnished living room of one of Lorenzi’s secondary cabins. She looked the team over – Alt, Javier, Nicole, Walter and Angela the functional Telepaths. Lydia, their one Natural Supported. Freddy, Tony, and Blair the Grade One Supported. The rest of the Supported and Mindbound bodyguards were, in War’s eyes, little more than cannon fodder. Persona, along for the ride as emergency defense, didn’t count one way or another for the fight.

  They stared back at her wearily from chairs and sofas. They all would appear to be Dubuque Supported for the attack. The mental illusion would get them past the easier layers of defense and give them the confidence they lacked.

  “You still able to get through Dubuque’s protections?” War said. They needed to be able to spy on Dubuque again, and War had found the necessary trick.

  “Thanks to those secret enchantments of yours, yes,” Alt said. He had claimed the big chair, some monster relic from the turn of the century, with a dozen cushions and a matching hassock. The left side leaked stuffing from where some ambitious cat had left its mark. “He still doesn’t know we’re coming, and his defenses remain unchanged. I don’t sense any of Verona, Lodz or Santa Fe’s people in his lair.”

  “Good, good,” War said. Any changes and they would need to abort. They needed to get to Dubuque for her plan to work.

  “I still think not telling any of the other Territorial Gods about your enchantment trick is a mistake, Gears,” Lydia said. “They’re our allies, dammit.” War frowned, unhappy about Lydia’s nickname for her, Gears, after Gears of War, some damned videogame. Sass appeared to be Lydia’s specialty.

  “Territorials leak information like a sieve,” War said. Lydia nodded, reluctantly. “Giving the information to one is equivalent to giving the information to all of them.” This bit of tech, appropriated from the Practical God Engineer and warped for Telepath use, needed to stay hidden. Her long-term plans would never succeed if it got out. “We need to get going.”

  “So much for my incipient bedgasm,” Lydia said, showing off her big black bags under her eyes. She had been practicing her Natural Supported tricks for nearly twenty hours a day, for over a week. The kid would have made a wonderful Marine.

  “I’ll get everyone ready,” Alt said. “You’re flying us with that appalling willpower fly of yours?”

  “Yes,” War said. “I need to do some preparation of my own, first.” She glared at Lydia. “And no, you’re not going to be recording this on Lias for your followers. The Territorials have Lias bugged.”

  “But that strack woulda been awesome,” Lydia said, pouty.

  War walked back across the lake – today, she preferred to walk as opposed to fly, although there was a level of tackiness involved with the walking on water trick, even as a projection. She had taken Lorenzi’s former cabin as her own; within hours after the Host declared him anathema, he hired a moving crew to remove his boxed up equipment for storage or moving elsewhere. She hoped to have him on this team, he and his magicians, as his involvement would have finally gotten them out of the way in an explicitly permanent fashion. No such luck.

  She sat down, cross-legged, on the middle of the floor, and summoned herself into the Place of Time. After nosing around for a moment, she sat back and rested.

  “I’m not sure I can do this,” she said, aloud, in the Place of Time.

  “I can’t help you with moral problems,” Future said. The Future was always there, waiting. He didn’t have any wisdom worth listening to, though.

  War had other plans. She waited and waited but Nessa didn’t show up. No gabfest this time. Damn.

  “If you can’t help, then just listen,” War said to Future. Moral problems. That was her problem, wasn’t it? Normally, she didn’t have any such problems, but now, faced with the worst of the Betrayal…well, what she planned would cause more than a mere moral problem; no minor sin this. The chosen path ached within her.

  “I owe them, personally.” The Telepaths, Alt’s group, had become hers, in some manner that War didn’t understand but she suspected had to do with where her real body was. “After this, I’m going to owe them more, and I’ll never be able to repay them.”

  “Death cancels all debts,” Future said.

  War nodded. True, although painful.

  “I could back out and wait for a better opportunity.”

  “Your leverage to change the future is going to weaken when the other Gods figure out about this place,” Future said. “Their collective use of this place will make this pointless for internecine conflicts.

  “Yah.” The logic didn’t improve her mood. “Fuck. I just don’t want to be such a skunk.”

  “Consider this line of development, then,” Future said, and showed War a set of events flowing from War’s betrayal. “An unintended consequence.”

  “Oh, it’s intended,” War said. “I’ve seen it before, and it’s part of the plan. This is one of the reasons why I need to get Lydia out. The Gods will need to treat the Natural Supported as allies, giving the Natural Supported quite a bit of political power.” Even after the creation of the next generation of Supported, the Gods would still need the Natural Supported.

  “No, there is something else,” Future said. “Look at the details.”

  War looked, and gasped. “Oh, holy fuck.” Now s
he understood. “So that’s what got Nessa and Ken declared anathema.” She thought. “Strange. The Host won’t anathemize me unless I admit I know the information, spread the information, or act on this crap in such a way I reveal I know what’s going on. Why not?”

  “Look deeper.”

  War looked and after a good bit of analysis, she smiled. “The Host can’t read my mind anymore,” she said. “They haven’t been able to read me since I found the Place of Time.” What would happen if she aborted the betrayal and worked on spreading knowledge of the Place of Time?

  She checked. The Host would lose control of events, what turned out to be a bad thing. Later, gigging the Host would be a good thing, but not now.

  Her surprise discovery decided her. No more questions. As Nessa would say, time to just do it.

  Dubuque’s headquarters had a glaring hole in its defenses; none of the guards on the pilgrims’ entrance were Grade One Supported (Grade Zero in Portland’s new terminology that War didn’t use). The entrance guards, Grade Twos, had the power but not the brains and faith to be Grade Ones. Dubuque counted on willpower tricks to make sure they weren’t fooled.

  Willpower tricks needed minds to work, though. War provided those minds with a distraction, a group of armed religious zealots from the Holy Zion Third Temple Waiting, a noxious Book of Revelations group who believed in abstinence for everyone except the cult leader. Today the zealots were after Dubuque.

  The gunfire rang out as Dubuque’s Supported fought Holy Zion, the expected distraction. Alt led his team in, just another group of Dubuque Supported doing various Supported jobs. After War flew the group here, she had shrunk her projection to fairy-size, stripped most of the power from her projection, and hid behind Alt’s ear. Active willpower uses would alert Dubuque far too soon; their telepathic illusion disguises wouldn’t alert anyone at all.

  Late afternoon was a busy time at the Foundation of the City of God. Most people didn’t even register the cultist attack on the front door due to the soundproofing and other protections. Alt’s group made their nonchalant way through the bowels of the Foundation until they reached the interior and needed to go down a side corridor to Dubuque’s office. War had two other reasons for choosing this time of day: Dubuque would be hip deep in paperwork and Blind Tom would be napping.