99 Gods: War

“Almost all the heathen ordeals have depended on fire, water, or something to eat or drink. Even in the Bible we find an ordeal prescribed to the Jews (Numbers, chap v.,) for an unfaithful wife, who is there directed to drink some water with certain ceremonies, which drink God promises shall cause a fatal disease if she be guilty, and if not, not. It is worth noticing that Moses says not a word about any “water of jealousy” or any other ordeal, for unfaithful husbands!” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World

  “Note that I did not strike back – again.”

  26. (Atlanta)

  As Dana dropped them toward the Davenport motel where the two powered mortals stayed, the two left their room and walked around to the scrubby back yard of the motel. Last time, the two had been a middle-aged man with a younger white woman; this time the white woman appeared to be black. Atlanta penetrated the mental illusion to find the scrawny and ugly white woman underneath. She rolled the idea of the disguise around on her tongue for a few moments, and decided she approved.

  “Let’s talk,” Atlanta said, after Dana landed them among the weeds.

  “Let’s not and say we did,” the woman said, wearing ornery like a fine fur coat. The sun had dropped down behind the trees far enough to leave the woman standing in deep shadow, but she still wore dark wrap-around sunglasses. She also wore layers upon layers of strange mental defenses. Atlanta found it hard to read anything about her. “Get the fuck out of here. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “We’re here to warn you of some potential trouble,” Dana said. “I think we’re…”

  “You leave us alone and we don’t have to fight,” the man said. He didn’t look like his mind was all here, definitely someone who had lost the bubble.

  Atlanta took a deep breath to steady herself. She hadn’t expected this level of hostility, or that the two powered mortals would be so ready to fight. “I don’t have any quarrel with either of you, whoever or whatever you are,” Atlanta said. “Let’s talk. I’m…”

  The woman stalked forward toward Dana and Atlanta, fists balled. The man followed and Atlanta noticed the air around him moving with him. “Get the fuck out of here, Atlanta,” the woman said. “We’ve already flattened one evil God. There’s no reason why we can’t flatten a second.”

  Evil. Atlanta wanted to rage against the unfairness. She wasn’t evil. Forceful, yes, but not evil. Unless what Dubuque… “If you take a swing at me, you’re going to hurt your hand,” Atlanta said. The woman’s misplaced aggressiveness was almost cute.

  “Fuck you,” the woman said. Her head bowed a fraction of an inch and a mental blast plastered into Atlanta. Beside her, Dana dropped like a rock. Atlanta almost physically fell apart; the woman’s mental blast had struck at her Imago, the aspect of her willpower keeping her body in one piece. Atlanta exerted willpower and pulled herself back together.

  The man’s force field thing darkened to translucency. Atlanta scanned Dana and found that although her shields had held, enough of the mental blast had leaked through them to stun her temporarily. Atlanta knelt down and put her hand on Dana’s shoulder, bringing Dana back to herself. The woman’s mental attack had been subtly different from a God’s, wicked and powerful.

  Uh huh, a Telepath.

  “Note that I did not strike back,” Atlanta said. She wanted to. She wanted to, badly.

  She wanted these Telepaths as allies far worse. Some well-directed powerful ornery types would do Atlanta’s forlorn and unborn alliance well.

  Of all things, they both reminded her of Marine Corps senior enlisted soldiers. Vets. They had seen the elephant, no doubt about it.

  Selling them on an alliance? Difficult at best. People like them rarely bought anything.

  The woman didn’t back off. “Noted,” the woman said. To Atlanta’s surprise, she realized the woman had ample Integrity and Rapture, though her Congregation sucked air. Was it possible the aspects of Mission were natural, not something made for the Gods by their creators? She double-checked and found no sign of divine backing on either of them.

  Learn something new every day.

  These two Telepaths had God-level capabilities, the woman with her telepathy and the man with his telekinesis. Goosebumps covered Atlanta’s fake body, tingling her spine with the realization the world really was a stranger place than she had imagined. She knew how the appearance of the Gods had affected normal people. How had the Gods’ appearance affected these two Telepaths? Were they hostile out of jealousy?

  There had to be a way to ally with them.

  This must have been what the Indigo people had gone through, before they decided to deal with Atlanta.

  “You’re here to recruit someone,” Atlanta said, now able to read the woman’s Mission. She studied the man and saw he shared the same Mission with the woman. They were, improbably, married.

  Oh, yes, she wanted these two. They were perfect.

  “Yes,” the man said, taken aback by Atlanta’s comments. He feared she had breached his mental shields. These mortals didn’t have even the slightest understanding of Mission and its aspects. Predictably, the woman showed anger at Atlanta’s observation. “What’s it to you?” the man said.

  “You’re in Dubuque’s territory. Less than an hour ago, he surprised us, trying to control our minds. We got out, but he’s clearly some kind of powerful mind control expert, an empire builder,” Dana said. “If Dubuque finds you he’s going to enslave you. He nearly got us. We’re here to help you. It was my idea to warn you, not Atlanta’s. I’m a fellow mortal, I know how this must feel, and…”

  The woman tapped her foot. “Good for Dubuque. Someone’s got to reign in you fucking evil Gods and their evil flunkies.”

  Atlanta remembered where the two Telepaths had been going when she had spotted them the first time, and the gossip about Miami’s encounter with an unknown enemy. “You had a run in with Miami and defeated him, didn’t you?”

  No answer. The man looked warier. The woman’s posture showed more anger.

  Well, that didn’t work. “Dubuque’s got a plan,” Atlanta said, banking to the conversational left. “He says he wants to make Earth into his version of heaven, a utopian thing he calls the City of God, only it appears he’s going to be doing it one mental slave at a time. You get me?”

  “A God’s worried about Theocracy. How unique,” the man said, sarcastic. He appeared younger than his forty plus years. He carried, improbably, about five pounds of chocolate bars in his pockets. Unlike the typical hard-bitten hard-life white trash woman, he was wiry and athletic, well maintained, accustomed to middle class niceties. A professional of some variety, Atlanta decided. A real hard-ass, but not military. No weapons. The white trash lady carried the firearms. A police officer, perhaps? A former police officer?

  “I am worried.”

  The man glared at her. “Prove it, sistuh.”

  Her patience gone, she walked up to the man to get into his face, but his force field stopped her. “Listen, shit-for-brains, we’re trying to save your scrawny asses and…”

  Wham. Again, Atlanta pulled herself together from the woman’s mental blast and again didn’t strike back. She backed away from the man and knelt, trying to put her Imago back together. Damn, the woman had power.

  “Enough, Nessa,” the man said. “We’re just starting to get along. Back off for a little while.” Getting along? The man sounded as whack as the woman.

  “Oh, you have names?” Dana said. “You need to quit with this holier-than-thou crap of yours. We’re trying to help you.”

  “This isn’t a good time for help,” the man said. “Try again later. We have our good days and our bad days, and this is a bad one.”

  Atlanta empathized. She closed her eyes and felt around with her willpower. There, the same damned trick that had frozen Dana and Melvin during the discussion. Fuck! “Dubuque’s already gotten to you. He’s the one giving you the headaches.?
?? She calculated the risk, and decided to take it. She exerted her minimal recovered willpower, leaving her open for more mental mayhem. “Here. I’ve shut off his trick.”

  Wham.

  This time Atlanta found herself flat on her back, her arms and legs deflated like balloons and punctured by stalks of brown grass. Worse, she had gotten a good sense of the woman’s potential: this time Nessa had blasted Atlanta with about a quarter of her full power.

  Only a quarter.

  Ouch.

  “Nessa!” the man said. “Dammit, Nessa, why’d you go and do that?”

  The woman put her hands on her hips and jutted her chin forward. “She’s messing with our heads.”

  “She’s helping us! She removed something adversely affecting us. Leave her alone.” The man grabbed his wife and shook her a little. She turned and gave him the glare. Wham again, this time aimed at the man. A set of shields inside his telekinetic shield glowed light blue, then faded. Atlanta picked herself up and went to stand next to Dana, putting a new layer of shielding up around her. Her new shield could now damp, a little, of the woman’s mental attack. However, if the man used his telekinesis on them, Dana would die, unprotected in that area. Atlanta covered Dana with her anti-reality-bending defenses, protecting her, and hoped.

  The man hadn’t even blinked when this Nessa woman had blasted at his mind with about half her full power. They were both absurdly powerful.

  “Dubuque’s trick wasn’t aimed at just you,” Atlanta said, to the two Telepaths. “For some reason, he’s rigged this part of his territory to mess up powered mortals. According to rumors, he had a run-in with a powered mortal some weeks ago. He must have decided it best to drive you all away.”

  “So he’s a ballsy piece of shit, eh?” Nessa said, glaring for a moment at Atlanta. “That can be fixed.” She turned back to take another telepathic poke at her husband.

  “They’re nuts,” Dana said.

  “Oh, it’s not just me?” she said. If their tiny lovers’ spats involved mind blasting each other, she wondered what their effect on the world around them would be if they had a real quarrel. These two were as potentially dangerous as any of the Gods, even if their mortality made them too conscience-bound to make regular use of their mental gifts. “Note that I did not strike back. Again,” Atlanta said to the two quarreling lovebirds, haughtily, with a loud sniff.

  She might not be able to hold back the next time. They needed to calm down.

  The man glared at Atlanta and Dana. “My name’s Ken,” he said, voice calm despite the glare. “This is Nessa. I assume you’re Atlanta, but who the hell are you, woman, and what’s with the strange abilities you have?”

  The latter he aimed at Dana.

  “My name’s Dana, and I have borrowed God powers.”

  “Don’t even talk to them,” Nessa said. “They’re evil. Can’t you sense the blood on Atlanta’s hands? She’s just like Miami.”

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Ken said. “If Atlanta was Miami’s ally, we’d be having a very different um conversation. We don’t know enough to understand what’s going on.”

  Finally, some sense.

  Nessa glanced at Atlanta, up and down. “She even knows she’s evil.”

  Which meant Nessa had mind-read Atlanta’s secret mental ruminations, which Atlanta thought she had covered. Damnation!

  “What if we’re evil, Nessa?” Ken said. “From their point of view. Consider the mission we’ve been given.”

  “Oh my God, they’re out to stop the 99 Gods,” Dana said.

  Ken smiled at Dana’s far too accurate statement. That put an entirely different spin on things. Wouldn’t allying with them make her a traitor to the Gods?

  On the other hand, after what Dubuque had labeled them, did they have any other choice?

  And who in the hell had enough juice to give these two overpowered crazies a mission?

  Atlanta backed off and dragged Dana with her. “So are we. At least to stop some of them,” Atlanta said.

  “Portland’s on her way here,” Dana said. Meaning Dubuque and the other three.

  “Another day, then?” Atlanta said. “Get us out of here,” she whispered to Dana.

  They took off and flew south.

  27. (Nessa)

  Nessa kept a close eye on Atlanta and Dana as they rose into the stratosphere and took off to the south-southeast at well over the speed of sound. Fifty miles to the north, she sensed the Gods the bitch had mentioned on the way toward them, poking along at about two hundred miles an hour. “We did it, Ken,” Nessa said and flopped herself to the ground. She took off her sunglasses and gazed up at the twilit sky. A thick deck of black clouds bore in from the west, portending rain. Little flecks of dust raised from Atlanta and Dana’s rapid ascent rained down on her and she smiled. “We did it without any breakdowns or explosions from either of us. That was clean.”

  Ken sat down beside her and Nessa maneuvered around to put her head in his lap. Scrubby brown grass wounded by early frost tickled her back. A quarter mile away trucks rumbled by on the Interstate, punctuated by the occasional hiss of air brakes and the rumble of the noisy engine brakes, trucks slowed from their cross-continental gallop by the minor rush hour of the Quad Cities. The smell of Chinese food from a nearby strip center restaurant wafted by, and Ken’s stomach rumbled into Nessa’s ear. “We did good. Was Dana right? Is there another God on the way?”

  “Uh huh,” Nessa said. “Four of them, along with another hopped-up normal like Dana and three hopped-up normals of an entirely different stripe.” She sifted emotions through her mind, back and forth, and decided she liked Dana. A lot. For one thing, she didn’t reek of evil. If anything, the young woman was a serious goodie-two-shoes, deeper into the light than Nessa herself. Which made her pairing with Atlanta quite strange…

  “Four? Plus hopped up normals? Shit shit shit!” Ken said, with a sudden high squeak voice of surprise. “Are they more or less dangerous than Dana? Do we need to get out of here?” He didn’t have Nessa’s range. However, Nessa didn’t understand what she picked up, other than ‘too much information all at once she couldn’t understand’, and she didn’t have the slightest sense of the danger involved, or what they might do about the situation.

  By her estimation, Atlanta had significantly more oomph in her than Miami, and she still hadn’t been too much of a problem. But four? Four Miami-level Gods would plaster them. Four Atlanta-level Gods? Disaster didn’t come close to describing what would happen. Nessa didn’t trust her senses at all at this range, but all four had a weaker mind-glow than Miami. However, this new variety of hopped-up mortal might tip the confrontation. Ken was right.

  “They’re different,” Nessa said. She scanned the three mortals with care. “I’m not sure, exactly, what their power level is. I can tell they have totally internal gifts.”

  “That doesn’t sound bad,” Ken said, and chuckled. “They’re probably set up so they can survive Godly temper tantrums.”

  “Given what we’ve seen, they need it,” Nessa said. “These Gods remind me of puppy dogs. House-training them is going to take far too many whacks on the nose. What happened to their sense of ethics and morality, anyway?”

  “From great power, great hubris is expected,” Ken said. Nessa giggled. “Damn if I know. Perhaps they were turned into Gods without them.”

  A spray of mist drifted out of the sky on to Nessa’s face, not even enough to wet all her face before it passed. Nessa smiled. The wind rose a little, kicking up dust. This place needed some rain.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that, don’t you, Ken?”

  “Me? You’re the one who’s beautiful.”

  Nessa rolled her eyes and ran her fingers over Ken’s body until she found a pocket with a chocolate bar in it. She extracted it, unwrapped it, and started to eat. She started each day with four of them in her fanny pack, but by the end of the day they wer
e always gone. Day. Bah. As soon as they found a place to settle down she would flip their day-night schedule again.

  Ken went jogging in the evening when they weren’t otherwise occupied. Nessa had taken to coming along, trying not to show off, because she badly needed the exercise. Everything worked better when she exercised.

  She munched chocolate. “My headache’s gone, even the residual one after Atlanta removed the curse or whatever it was.” The jogging nearly always got rid of her headaches. She made sure to eat well, beyond chocolate, and she hadn’t lost the weight she had gained before she joined Ken on his jogs. It seemed to be the right thing to do, but she didn’t know why, or care.

  “I’m not surprised, given you got to whack Atlanta’s puppy dog nose several times. I ever tell you how much I love you?”

  “Aren’t you jumping the gun by several weeks on the guy schedule?” Nessa said. He had professed his love for her when he proposed. That sort of comment usually lasted awhile, at least in Guy Time. “Okay, I give. How much do you love me? I assume you have it quantified and…”

  Ken stuck a hand over her mouth. “I love you beyond the moon and the stars,” Ken said. “Beyond the mountains, above the plains, greater than the oceans…” Nessa licked the palm of his hand for shitting her. “How about I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else?” Nessa grunted. Not the spontaneous romantic, Ken’s lines felt lifted from another source. Too much time as a private investigator. Too cynical. “You know, all the years we spent apart I always wondered if I would be able to love you, whether what I had was just an infatuation or…”

  Nessa took Ken’s hand off her mouth. “Infatuation?”

  “The idea of making love to another Telepath was always a secret turn on of mine,” Ken said. “Making love to you was far more than a mere turn on. There were times when I was almost overwhelmed by the desire. I always held back because, well, because I thought it a tiny bit indecent because I’d met you so young. Am I making any sense?” Nessa sighed and took another bite of chocolate. She knew she didn’t have any reason to complain, these days. The entire idea of romance had fled her system after the explosive lead-up to her divorce. At least romance from her perspective. She knew Ken considered her a bit of a helpless romantic at times. “So when we married, I had all these fears in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t be able to, um, perform with you, or I’d go nuts, or I’d find my feelings toward you were only physical. Guess what? None of my fears were correct. I’m closer to you than anyone before, including the best of times with Livie.”

  “Uh oh, minus two points for Ken. Never compare your current lover with an ex.” Ken mock-frowned and tapped his long fingers of his right hand on Nessa’s forehead. “That’s very sweet of you,” Nessa said. “I know what you’re trying to say, even if you’re not saying it well.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  Nessa snorted. “When I’ve paired up before, it always starts out rocky, but over time my love grows. The only good thing about the early parts of relationships is the sex, or it was, until now. My love for you bloomed overnight. It’s so right. I can’t believe I almost turned you down.”

  “You did?”

  “I almost…” She covered her mouth, remembering a certain carefully loaded handgun. “I was trying to hurt you, you know,” she said, anyway. She had promised herself never to talk about this. The words blurted themselves out on their own. Well, things happened.

  “I wondered.”

  “Sort of like ‘how dare someone invade my boring and tidy life’ followed by ‘he will pay’ followed by ‘perhaps I can mess up his mind so he doesn’t know his own name any more’ sort of thoughts. Pardon the scattered grammar. I almost tossed your proposal back in your face, but something in it touched me. You cared. I was shocked anyone still cared about me. My mental instabilities… I’d rather not think about what I must look like from the outside these days.” She hadn’t had time to properly wash her hair in days. No matter how often or thoroughly she brushed it, her waist-length hair refused to behave.

  “You’ve never liked mirrors,” Ken said. The clouds above started to mist again, and Nessa opened up her mouth and stuck her tongue out. She liked the taste of the rain, even when it tasted dusty.

  “I’ve never liked to look at the minds of people I talk to, and it’s so easy.” Nessa peeked at the progress of the Gods and their entourage, and found them less than five minutes away. “I don’t like to see what people think of me. It’s never any good.”

  “Ah, yes,” Ken said. “The bane of us Telepaths. If everyone had to face themselves the way we do, our species would have killed itself off long ago.”

  “Which is why I’m crackers.”

  “Me too, if you recall. You were the one who taught me…”

  “Yah, cutie, I remember,” Nessa said, interrupting.

  The mist had grown heavier and the streetlights around the motel’s parking lot had turned on.

  Nessa did so, and she felt Ken’s telekinesis smudge her face and raise bruises on it. She gritted her teeth through the swift pain. He also did something to her nose.

  Ken had picked them up about a half mile out. The Gods and their entourage had slowed and were weaving about in the air, almost as if they didn’t know quite where to go.

  Nessa wondered what it would take to successfully hide from the damned Gods. Until Atlanta had picked them out, twice, she thought she had it nailed.

  The divine company landed in the motel’s parking lot, about a hundred feet away. They looked around, confused, and talked to each other in whispers.

  Nessa sent.

  Nessa scanned the four Gods and agreed with Ken. The tall dude, Dubuque, if she remembered correctly, the supposedly likeable liberal preacher and the one who supposedly had done something to this part of his territory just to make people like them miserable, had much more power than Atlanta, screwy and diffuse power, and she couldn’t sense him directly. She could sense two of the other three Gods, and they scanned as less powerful than Miami. The last, a portly Hispanic woman God, remained a cipher.

  In fact, the mental aspect of the two Gods she could sense appeared wounded in some unexplainable fashion. Their entourage still confused her. The black dude with Dana-like add-ons sensed as Dana-lite, by far the best of the lot. She still couldn’t figure out the other enhanced mortals, but they didn’t have much of the loaned God-stuff at all.

  Ken sent.

  The fact the Gods’ tricks differed in kind as well as in power disturbed Nessa. Atlanta and Miami had seemed so similar. These Gods sensed as different, and different from each other, and different meant nasty surprises.

  Nessa lowered their protections. “Yoo hoo. They went that-a-way,” she said, pointing south. The entire divine company turned as one – freaky, raising Nessa’s hackles – and stared at her. Nessa stared back, challenging them. They took the challenge and slowly levitated closer. Nessa noticed that each of the four Gods and the one senior flunky had cute invisible divine umbrellas above them. The lesser flunkies did not.

  They landed in the grass fifteen feet away. “By ‘they’, miss, you mean Atlanta and her companion?” Dubuque said. After ignoring Dubuque’s subtle mental illusion, she saw that he looked much less impressive in person than in the internet pictures of him that Ken had showed her. Younger, more like a callow politician and less like a suave movie star.

  “Yes,” Ken said. “We and Atlanta had a little confrontation.”

  “You did well to fight them off,” Dubuque said. “I sensed the conflict from my place in Dubuque.”

  Nessa sent.

  “I’d rather we didn’t have to do so again,” Ken said. “I’m Ken Bolnick. This is my wife Nessa.”

  “Phoenix,” the other male God said. Nessa got a glimpse of his mind and to her horror saw the twists in his mind marking him as mentally controlled, the weakest God she had met thus fa
r. She scrabbled to her feet and helped Ken up, fighting panic. Ken grabbed her arm and mentally counseled patience.

  “Montreal.” Montreal radiated beauty, her mind not as twisted as Phoenix’s, but still under the influence, no doubt about that. Flawed but not weak.

  “I’m Portland. Glad to meet you.” The cipher. Even through the contact of an introduction, which should have given Nessa enough of an opening to worm through any set of mental defenses and pick up some approximations, Nessa picked up nothing at all. This one hid her power. Actively.

  Neat!

  “And I’m Dubuque,” their leader said. The puppet master. “I’m glad to meet the two of you. I’d heard rumors about a few mortals with mental powers who have met some of the other Living Saints, but I hadn’t had the pleasure myself.”

  The Gods didn’t introduce the non-Gods. Nessa licked her lips and tried to smile. She didn’t succeed. “So, what’s going on anyway, Dubuque?”

  “As you probably are aware, Atlanta’s gone rogue,” Dubuque said. “Why’d she seek you two out?”

  Nessa sent.

  Ken sent.

  Ken could always handle the subtleties better than she could. And, in the same way the real power of her telekinesis showed only on defense, the real power of Ken’s telepathy limited itself to protecting him, and these days, her.

  She didn’t like it when she had to deal with someone using her tricks. She threw up five more layers of shielding, not sure she did an iota of good.

  “Atlanta wanted to force us to go with her,” Ken said. “We resisted.”

  Nessa sent.

  “It isn’t safe for you out here,” Dubuque said. “And it’s wet. Why don’t you come back to my home and we’ll talk some more?”

  Ken sent.

  “I don’t think so,” Nessa said. She tilted her head up to let the light rain bead up on her face, and wiggled in enjoyment. “Pardon my paranoia, but the two of us have been attacked twice by Miami and once by Atlanta, and…”

  “You shouldn’t fib to me,” Dubuque said. “That’s unwise around…”

  That did it. Nessa despised patronizing bastards in general, and it fit that a mental puppeteer like Dubuque would be yet another one. The rain flashed off her face as her battle protections settled in around her. In hand mode her teek could move papers around at best, but as a static protective shield she could bounce bullets. “Fuck you,” Nessa said and glared at Dubuque. What a piece of shit. She readied a mental blast, but Ken gave her a mental ‘not yet’ nudge and she held back. “Okay, Ken was alone when he got rumbled by Miami the first time. I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I misspoke. Better?”

  Dubuque puffed out his chest. “Lady, I’m not sure I appreciate your…”

  Nessa stalked forward until she was close enough to have to look up to the tall God. “Back off, buster.” She found comments about her attitude as bad as someone patronizing her. Added together, enough was too much. She hit him with a small mental jab to get him to back off.

  Chaos. A dozen different varieties of shields flared around all the Gods. Dubuque staggered back, naked for a moment, his clothes mere illusions, his body revealed to be a mottled silver like Miami’s had been and Atlanta’s hadn’t (though Nessa suspected that was because she hadn’t hit Atlanta hard enough). Portland and Phoenix raised arms and yellow clouds of power rolled across the few intervening feet, and bounced harmlessly off Ken and Nessa’s standard outer shields. Montreal, however, projected her divine power right through their outer and inner shields, nothing visible, some sort of insinuation.

  Nessa growled and glared. Montreal’s attack hadn’t directly harmed Nessa, but it made her horny as hell and gave Ken an aching urgent hard-on. Nessa took a moment to understand the thrust of Montreal’s attack, and slammed a new set of shields around herself and Ken. The lust evaporated into the misty air. That would have been just ducky, screwing like imbeciles on the ground in front of Dubuque and his divine flunkies.

  As Nessa mind-spoke, Ken lifted Montreal up in the air with his telekinesis and slammed her against the side of the hotel. He held her there, upside down and measurably flattened. She ceased her screwy attack.

  Ken sent back to Nessa.

  “Enough!” Portland said. “All of you. Woman, that wasn’t called for.”

  Nessa glared at Portland; the God had directed her last comment at her. She caught Dubuque’s flicker of annoyance at Portland. He might think he was Portland’s boss, but he was sorely mistaken.

  “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen,” Nessa said. “Between Ken and me, what we did to Dubuque and Montreal was the equivalent of a mildly raised voice. If you want to do business with us, you’d better be much more polite if you’re to avoid more strongly raised voices.”

  Ken sent.

  Nessa ignored Ken, steaming mad at these idiot Gods. Damn their obnoxious attempts at snooty superior-being-hood!

  “I must apologize,” Ken said. “Our previous meetings with the 99 have left us edgy and ready to defend ourselves over the slightest provocations.”

  “I see,” Dubuque said. A thin smile grew on his face. “I apologize as well. Mortals with powers as potent as yours are new to me. In many ways you are like us, save physically.”

  Ken let Montreal go. She slid down the wall and stalked back to stand beside Dubuque, glaring hatefully at Ken.

  “What’s with your bodies, anyway?” Ken said. “Have you done any research to find out what the silvery stuff is?”

  Ken got only four divine glares as an answer.

  “Why are you in my territory?” Dubuque said, demanding.

  “Personal business,” Nessa said.

  “You seek allies,” Portland said. “For what purpose?”

  Ken sent.

  “I work with an academic, a non-Telepath, and she vanished soon after you 99 Gods appeared,” Nessa said. Dubuque bridled. “I’m not accusing you of anything. Geez. She vanished in the mountains of East Africa; she’s a research primatologist fergoshsake. She vanished from my mind as well, but I know she’s still alive. Logically, the only explanation is that she got grabbed by a God. One of the people I know volunteered the name Nairobi, but I’m not sure how much I trust my advisor. The reason we’re in Davenport is to find someone who can help us.”

  “What sort of person?” Portland said, subtly taking over leadership from Dubuque. Phoenix and Dubuque exchanged a glance, one that Nessa read as ‘shit, she picked that up from the United States?’

  “I’d rather not say,” Nessa said. She realized she liked Portland. “I don’t have the right to involve them in the affairs of the 99 Gods without their permission.”

  Dubuque cocked his head. “I applaud your sense of ethics and morality, on the question of the rescue of your friend and on your recruit. I counsel my volunteers much the same about the affairs of us Living Saints.”

  Nessa sent back.

  “I’d like to propose a deal,” Dubuque said.

  Ken sent.

  Nessa delved into her own thoughts and Ken’s. She studied Dubuque, and almost lost her mental equilibrium in terror and befuddlement.

  Ken sent.

  She paused, analyzing.

  “Propose away,” Nessa said.

  “I will honor your request to work independently,” Dubuque said. “Living Saints who have fallen from God’s Grace are vulnerable to mortals. Our creators, the Angelic Host, told us that’s one of the things that keeps us in line. What I’m going to offer you is a deputization, formal permission from the City of God – that is, from myself and the Living Saints who have allied with me – to seek out and bring to justice the rogue Living Saints Atlanta and Miami. Detain them if you can, defend yourselves as appropriate if they resist or attack you. In return, I’ll talk to Nairobi and arrange your friend’s liberation. The politics of the 99 may preclude a quick release, mind you.”

&nbs
p; “I understand,” Nessa said. “What’s this City of God stuff, though?” The rain started in earnest and pattered down on her defensive shields. Ooh, far too good to pass up. She lowered her shields to let the rain leak through and enjoy the cool wet.

  Montreal understood Nessa’s hedonistic motives and brightened. The rest of the entourage darkened, more wary.

  “The City of God is my plan to bring all the Living Saints together, some physically, some philosophically, in a way to further the work of God on Earth,” Dubuque said. He frowned at her antics with the rain. “To do good, as we must do.”

  Ken sent.

  Nessa stared at her feet for a minute and shuffled around aimlessly.

  Ken sent, half in disbelief.

  “Okay,” Nessa said. “We agree.”

  Dubuque smiled. “Excellent! What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Dr. Eufemia Zumbrennen of Stanford University, Uffie to her friends,” Nessa said. “She was in Malawi when she vanished. You treat her right. She’s not a Telepath like we are and she’s old.”

  “You have no need to worry on my account,” Dubuque said.

  Nessa and Ken sent to each other.

  “It’s so good to work with people on the side of the angels for once,” Dubuque said.

  Nessa caught a glimpse of Dubuque’s mind and laughed. “You ran into John Lorenzi, didn’t you?” She ran her hands through her wet hair and bounced on the balls of her feet.

  “I don’t find him to be a laughing matter,” Dubuque said.

  “Sorry,” Nessa said, and slowly calmed her laughter. “He’s an utterly royal pain in the gazotch to deal with in the best of circumstances.”

  “If you bring him to justice, I’ll grant you another boon. Two boons!” Dubuque said. His voice filled with laughter, but the frown never left his face.

  Ken snorted. “We’re good, but we’re not that good, sir.”

  That stopped Dubuque in his place. “You consider him more powerful than you are?” Dubuque said. His frown deepened. “I find that to be most disturbing news.”

  “His abilities are far different from ours, and from ample experience we know he can’t do much to us unless we let him, and vice versa,” Ken said. “Plus, he has centuries of experience on us. We try to avoid him if we can.”

  “I see,” Dubuque said. “I’ll trust your experience and wisdom on that matter. If either of our rebel Living Saints surrenders to justice or comes back to the light, I’ll send you a message. I’ll also let you know when I find a way to gain the release of your friend. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” Nessa said, a quaver in her voice, from her ever-growing nervousness. This conversation had to end, and quickly, before Dubuque fully wormed his way into their minds. “We’ll start on our agreed upon project after we secure our ally. Goodbye, then.”

  She waved at the Gods and their entourage and retreated with Ken into their motel room. Ken wiped sweat off his head and lay down in bed; Nessa stripped, toweled off, and lay next to him to rest. Five minutes later, the divine company flew off, back to the north, after a long discussion between Portland and Dubuque. Nessa took a deep breath and relaxed.

  “Fuck! Dubuque’s as foul as Miami,” Ken said. “Despite his saintly goody-two-shoes aura. I know you liked him, but, yetch!”

  “I don’t like the hold he has on Montreal and Phoenix’s minds either, even if he isn’t doing it consciously,” she said. “Half the reason I made this silly agreement was to stall for time.”

  “I understand. It galls me to say so, but I’m afraid Lorenzi’s right. It isn’t just a few bad apples among the Gods, it’s all 99 of them.”

  Nessa sniggered and climbed on top of Ken, straddling him. She put her hands flat on his chest and spoke with a vague imitation of Dubuque. “You shouldn’t fib to me. That’s unwise.” She couldn’t keep a grin off of her face.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it. I like Atlanta,” Ken said. He smiled back. “I like her style. I think she had Dubuque pegged perfectly and I’d rather not have to go after her.”

  “Subduing her and giving her to Dubuque wouldn’t bother me a bit,” Nessa said. Violent types always disquieted her, or pissed her off. “Subduing Miami and giving him to Dubuque would be worth a chocolate orgy.”

  “Yum,” Ken said, and tickled Nessa. She giggled back. “Miami first, then.”

  “Sure. Perhaps we can talk Atlanta into surrendering once we’ve got Miami. If we can,” Nessa said. “Besides, I think Atlanta’s disagreement with Dubuque is some sort of divine misunderstanding, likely over Dubuque’s accidental mind control trick.”

  Ken grunted. “I don’t like surrendering anyone to Dubuque.”

  “Every last God we’ve met has been bent, Ken.”

  “Portland’s not bent.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. You’re the big mind whiz, Nessa, but you know I can pick out more details than you can from minds if they’re close by. I couldn’t get through her shields, but I could tell that Portland’s mind’s similar to ours, convoluted, complex and a bit inhuman.”

  “Oh hell, that’s supposed to be a recommendation?” Nessa shook her head. “However, that matches with what I found. I thought she was pulling something on Dubuque, pretending to be controlled I think. I’ll tell you what. If we can take Miami we’ll give him over to Portland. It’s a risk, though. Despite her faking, she’s still partly under Dubuque’s control.”

  “No worse than we are,” Ken said.

  Nessa chewed her lip. “I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up.” She shrugged. “Whatever influence he had on us wasn’t large and will fade over time. I’m not sure we should go after Alton tonight, though. I need some recovery time and I’d like to give Dubuque’s influence time to fade.” A little good telepathic exercise would be all it would take, Nessa decided. “You know, I think we’ve finally gotten a handle on things. Only, I keep thinking I’m denying something I’ve figured out…”

  “Yah,” Ken said. “Same here. This mess seems simple but is a hell of a lot more complex than meets the eye.”

  “Uh huh.” Nessa sighed and arched her back. Something needy continued to rattle around inside her mind, something she couldn’t put words to. She relaxed and took a deep breath.

  Ken smiled. “It’s a little early to go to sleep, though.”

  “I’m glad we agree on that,” Nessa said. She stared into his eyes, smiled and wiggled.

  28. (Atlanta)

  “We’re all glad you’re willing to come here and help,” Lara said. She had guided Atlanta as Atlanta flew Lara and Dana to the Indigo group’s place in northeast Georgia, a few miles east of Clayton and up at the top of a four hundred foot tall hill towering above Warwoman Creek and the road named after it. Velma was on call in the ER today, and couldn’t make it. They landed, and Atlanta noticed some of the buildings extended into the bedrock, while others nestled in trees, elaborate tree houses doubling as fire support platforms. She sensed with her divine tricks radar, lidar, and sonar in use, as well as the electrical grid and wireless network connecting dozens of other visual and audio sensors. The paranoid fools also had a half dozen hoverdrones, not military spec but home-built and weaponized. Many of the trees were bare, the pecans and maples having already lost their leaves, but enough oak and balsam fir grew on this hill to provide some concealment. Farther down the hill, mountain laurels, rhododendrons and oversized azaleas covered the twisty driveway and hid the doubled security fence from view.

  “I’m impressed. I’d hate to be the idiots trying to take this place,” Atlanta said. “Pardon. Ex-military.”

  “That’s why we like you,” Jan Cox said, leading a group of over a half dozen people, mostly all in their twenties, to where she, Dana and Lara had landed. “To me, you’re one of us. Welcome to our Georgia refuge.”

  Atlanta made small talk as she tried to figure out what was bothering
her about the situation. She had been edgy and paranoid ever since the Dubuque incident and she suspected the Indigo was attempting to pull something on her.