99 Gods: War Read online

99 Gods: War

  Randall Allen Farmer

  Copyright © 2013, 2014, 2015 by Randall Allen Farmer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  99 Gods: War

  “I’ll make this short and sweet, as I’m not accustomed to public speaking in forums like this. As you’ve just seen, I can do miracles. My name is Dubuque, I’m a Living Saint directing God Almighty’s miracles, and I am but one of 99. We’re here to end national war, a new commandment sent by God, and our creators trained us in how to end wars. Beyond that, we’re here to do good. Venerate us as Living Saints and together we’ll do good, and make the Earth into a paradise.” … “The last thing our creators said to us was ‘Your capability to change the world does have limits. As we have hinted before, you are not alone.’ I take that as a warning to us Living Saints to be cautious, and cautious I shall be. Any questions?” – Dubuque, a North American Territorial God

  Seven weeks later…

  Part 1

  God’s Utopia

  “I apprehend that there is no sort of object which men seek to attain, whether secular, moral or religious, in which humbug is not very often an instrumentality.” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World

  “How’d you know about the spy mission?”

  1. (Atlanta)

  Atlanta climbed the outside of 40 Wall Street, leaving behind anger-fueled fingerprints in the fascia. All 72 stories of 40 Wall Street’s exterior stank from years of pollution. Built around the start of the Great Depression, the building was depressing all the way up to its perfectly classical pyramidal roof. The bastards she soon would confront were on the 64th floor. They had taken over the entire floor several weeks ago and now talked of buying out the entire building. Atlanta didn’t understand what they had done to mess up the Integrity, one of the major parts of the 99 Gods’ joint Mission, but they had messed it up more than anyone else in North America.

  The night swirled around Atlanta as she climbed through the off and on heavy rain, though she didn’t get wet. She didn’t want to get wet. Thus, she didn’t. She could have flown directly to the 64th floor, or jumped from an airplane or helicopter or even taken an elevator. However, after investigating which uses of willpower her peers found most difficult to detect, she had found ‘climbing skyscrapers’ near the top of the list. She couldn’t have done such a trick before Apotheosis, but eight years as an aviator in the Corps hadn’t left her with the Imago of a wimp and that’s what mattered now.

  Her senses reveled in the climb. Apotheosis had brought her world to life in a marvelous and unexpected way, and she devoted nearly a dozen thought streams in her now multi-track mind to simply enjoying her new senses.

  The never-ending mechanical song of New York traffic floated up from far below, muted by the spattering of rain and occasional rumble of thunder. Lightning streaked the sky to the southeast, and the rain’s fresh scent dominated all the other odors. Below that, not only could she smell the pollution and even identify the stench of old leaded gasoline exhaust in the deeper crevices of the brick, but she also smelled the difference between the businesses when she passed from one corporate domain to another as she climbed. She didn’t have X-Ray vision, but she tracked the internal temperature of each floor by how much heat came out each window. She sensed the air currents around her, as if currents in muddied water. Her most interesting discovery was the way the wind curled around the southeast corner of 40 Wall Street and caused a small cylindrical low pressure zone that had grown as she had climbed, up to about the 14th floor, leveled off, then started a rapid decline thirty floors later. Now, on the 48th floor, it had vanished completely. She even picked up the intensity and direction of radio, television and wireless internet. Not its content, though.

  Five more minutes of climbing brought Atlanta to the 64th floor. The skyscraper didn’t have ancient Depression-era style windows. Someone had replaced them some number of years ago with modern, non-opening, windows. She maneuvered herself around the skyscraper until she approached the source of the Integrity disturbance. She didn’t sense anything about the situation to change her mind, so she crashed the window and barged in.

  While she did, she put on her mental to-do list the need to find some better method for going through windows and walls than pranging them. A method using tricky willpower. Seven weeks of this God shit and she still hadn’t unmasked a measurable fraction of the possible tricks.

  She landed hard but on her feet, crunching thick stormproof glass under her big black boots as she took in the place and whistled.

  Atlanta craved bling as much as the next sister, but the meeting room here floored her. There’s nothing here that isn’t bling, she thought. Marble this. Gold that. Jesus! Considering the building’s owner, she had expected opulence, but her targets, referred to by the press as the Seven Suits, had outdone the old man in putting in bling improvements.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” a man said, not yet in sight. One of the Suits, another God. He strode in to Atlanta’s crashed room as if he owned the world.

  Not fucking yet, although he and his Godly cohorts were well on their way, according to her hush-hush military contractor contacts. As per the nickname, Mr. Whitey God wore an immaculate and expensive bespoke suit.

  On the other side of the meeting room, huddled in a chair against a wall, Atlanta saw a woman. Saw, but didn’t sense. Very peculiar. Special. Not an ordinary mortal, and different in a way she hadn’t encountered before. Not sure what to make of a woman she couldn’t sense but still knew to be special, Atlanta ignored her for the moment.

  The fact that someone had stripped the woman and chained her naked to the chair helped Atlanta make the decision. She hadn’t been attracted to weakness as a mortal.

  Apotheosis hadn’t improved her attitude on that matter in the least.

  “Which one are you?” Atlanta asked the white man. The Seven Suits had banded together even before Apotheosis’s end, a grouping of seven male Gods, five whities and two East Asians. Seven Ideological Gods at that, and their numbers made them the leading plurality faction among the Ideologicals.

  The Suit didn’t answer Atlanta. Instead, he raised his hand and conjured up chains and shackles around Atlanta’s lower arms and lower legs. They grabbed on tight. He slid over a leather office visitor’s chair with inlaid gold filigree and sat her in it. Atlanta counted to ten, backwards, and allowed herself this indignity. Information first. Attitude adjustment later.

  “Who sent you?” the Suit said. “Who!” Pressure beat on Atlanta’s mind. She smiled. Her experimentation with willpower hadn’t included anything in the area of mind-probing or mind reading. Mental track four took note number fourteen of the day: learn some mind-probing willpower.

  Good intel already.

  Even better, the Suit’s question and tone implied Atlanta hadn’t been the first someone ‘sent’.

  Then she got it. Her willpower-derived protections had successfully hidden her Divinity from the Suit. On the other hand, she had revealed herself by climbing the outside of their nascent palace and crashing in the window, so she suspected he would crack her identity any minute. None of the 99 lacked brainpower. Their creators, the Angelic Host, had made sure of that.

  “I sent myself, mofo,” Atlanta said. “I’ve got some questions for you. Like what the fuck you’ve done to mess up our Integrity?”

  “Hold on for a second, Indulgence,” a second Suit said on his way through the door, one she recognized, a Korean who went by the name of
Competition. The remainder of the wardrobe of Suits strode in behind Competition, noticeably agitated. “She’s one of us.”

  “You’re kidding,” Indulgence, her captor, said. “She feels like a mortal to me.”

  “It’s a trick,” one of the other Suits said. He turned to Atlanta. “I’m Capitalism. You are?” Capitalism had more than a passing resemblance to the fat dude from the Monopoly game. His skin looked bleached. If her contractor contacts had a bead on things, Capitalism led the Suits.

  “Atlanta,” she said. Several of the Suits blanched and took a step back. Apparently, she had acquired a reputation. Good.

  “A Territorial!” Capitalism said, suddenly wary. “You could have texted us for an appointment.”

  “Not my style.” She didn’t have any social media presence, even a minimal Facebook page or Twitter account. Too tacky for her.

  “Why are you here and not back in whatever digs you have down south?” Capitalism said. Condescension filled his words, something she hadn’t heard since she wore the bird, ball and chain. Before Apotheosis.

  “You Suits have harmed our Integrity. I’m here to figure out why and do something about it.”

  “Why do you care?” Capitalism said.

  “Because it’s obvious to me that us Gods were made to rule the Earth, and we can’t do it if you destroy our Integrity.” The Host hadn’t said as much, but their hints were unmistakable. At least to Atlanta.

  “You worry about your Integrity and we’ll worry about ours,” Capitalism said, his voice New Yawk nasal, a sneer on his face.

  A fool, then, Atlanta thought. “We have individual, subgroup and group Integrity, though it appears you’re too self-centered to acknowledge anything but your own,” she said. “You’ve harmed the Integrity of the 99 Gods as a group.” She sneered back at Capitalism. “What the fuck did you do? If I don’t get some answers soon, I’m going to inscribe some respect on your pasty white divine bodies, begging your pardons Competition and Wealth.”

  “There are seven of us and one of you,” Wealth said. “Numbers do not lie.” Wealth looked as old and Japanese as he had before Apotheosis. “We had the same training you did. It is you who are in danger here.” Training to suppress national wars, he meant. Atlanta had expected such suppression to take years, if not decades, but the leading nations had been more than happy to comply, especially after the 99 carried out their pre-agreed forcible disarming of North Korea, a nation even the Territorial who held responsibility for it refused to support. Their instant success left all of the 99 at loose ends, which Atlanta was beginning to suspect might not have been a good thing. Despite the Host’s comment about what they should do once the 99 finished their initial anti-war mission, ‘do good,’ Atlanta remained suspicious.

  “I don’t think so,” Atlanta said. Equal training or not, she trusted in the special extra her creators had given her as a Territorial God.

  “There’s no need to be so hasty,” Capitalism said. “Let’s sit down peacefully and talk this over. I’m sure we can find some mutually beneficial outcome. I’ve noticed that you Territorial Gods have limited monetary resources; your expertise lies in other areas. We can be of help.”

  Atlanta shook her head, pissed at the far too on-target offer. “The last thing I need is to be owned.” Especially by Mr. White Capitalist himself. She stood and left shattered shackles around her. Indulgence sucked air, hurt by Atlanta’s use of willpower for some unknown reason. “I wouldn’t mind negotiations about our mutual problem, though. I’m not looking for money, I’m looking for information. That is, what did you do to harm the Integrity of the 99 Gods, and what can we come up with together to fix the problem. It’s clear you want a piece of the action in this world-running business; I’m sure we can come up with a mutually acceptable solution.”

  Twelve eyes fixed on Capitalism. “What we’re doing is none of your business, and won’t be part of any negotiations,” he said. He took a deep breath and threw up his hands in utter disdain. “Get this pathetic figurehead Territorial out of here.”

  Definitely an attitude problem.

  Atlanta interrupted her combat preparations when the woman in the corner did something to the divine hold on her, a did something Atlanta didn’t recognize. “They kidnapped me,” the chained woman said. “I work for Port…” A wave of Indulgence’s hand undid whatever the woman had done and she fell quiet. Nevertheless, the mortal woman had Godlike willpower of some variety, even if overshadowed by the Suits.

  Portland, eh? Atlanta and Portland had talked for several long minutes back during Apotheosis. As a fellow Territorial God, Atlanta could see quite a bit of good coming from doing Portland a favor. Portland had struck Atlanta as indecisive, a softie, despite the extreme willpower she exuded. However, as a fellow woman, Portland would likely appreciate learning that good old-fashioned sexism still infected the minds of the non-Territorial Gods.

  Besides, if she helped Portland, Portland would owe her.

  All to the better.

  Atlanta changed her mind. Instead of continuing to give the Suits grief verbally, she focused her willpower on the naked woman and unbound her. Indulgence screamed.

  “She ripped the bitch right out of me!” Indulgence said. Atlanta boggled at the stupidity of Indulgence’s cheesedick tactic. Didn’t he understand anything about how to properly use the willpower?

  Freeing the woman also solved Atlanta’s joint Integrity mystery. The Suits had kidnapped another God’s protected underling, crossing a line that hadn’t been crossed before.

  Crap. She realized that if she fought these idiots, she would make the Integrity hit worse. Well, then…she would let them come to her. Self-defense at least wouldn’t harm her Integrity.

  Capitalism crossed his arms and glared. Divine willpower of the Suits gathered around Atlanta, confining her. “Stay put,” Capitalism said, guiding the willpower. Bodily immobilization.

  Atlanta analyzed Capitalism’s attack and raised her eyebrows in shock. Amazingly, her personal willpower dwarfed the Suit’s group willpower, at least expressed as a change to physical reality. She knew her local cleansing activities had strengthened her willpower, but she had no idea her activities had strengthened her willpower to such an extent.

  Truthfully, none of the 99 knew the details of what made them strong or weak. The Angelic Host had left that out of their war-suppression training and had refused to answer most questions on the subject, another part of their game. Much of what the Gods learned they kept secret from each other, seeking advantages to advance their personal Missions.

  They were all too new at this.

  Atlanta had calculated she could hold off the Suits and force negotiation, even though she suspected it would be close. That’s why she had risked the invasion of Suit territory. Phoenix, her personal sounding board about the Integrity problem, thought any personal confrontations with the other Gods too risky to contemplate so early in the game. He too had thought she would be able to force the Suits to negotiate, and had suggested she use a mortal go-between. She had considered his suggestion far too diplomatic.

  Neither of them had considered the idea that the Suits would refuse to negotiate the group Integrity issue. She suspected some innate difference between the Ideological and Territorial Gods at work.

  “You belong to us now,” Capitalism said, bending the Suit’s group willpower, another attack at her mind.

  Self-defense time. Atlanta broke Capitalism’s group hold, ran five steps forward and punched Capitalism in the jaw. The Suit’s head spun around, over 180 degrees, but without the crack of a neck. She turned and focused her willpower on Wealth, who as far as she could scrutinize had the second strongest willpower of the Suits. She visualized a rack. Wealth’s arms and legs flew off in the expected spray of silver divine gore. Wealth screamed.

  Three normal well-armed humans clattered into the room, drawn by the sound of fighting. Part o
f Atlanta’s mind boggled at one of them, a psychopath with dozens of murders figuratively notched into his belt. All three fired their 9 mils at her. All their bullets bounced. She ignored the three thugs for now.

  Atlanta grabbed Indulgence as he attacked her with his puny willpower and tossed him across the meeting room, to land on a gold-leaf covered copier. Competition and one of the unidentified Suits struck at her mind, but she shrugged it off. Instead, she picked up the marble meeting room table and swung it, baseball bat style, through the remaining four Suits. For a second, horror filled their eyes. Then the table. The perfectly swung table cut Competition and two others in half and shattered into fast moving shrapnel, pureeing the last of the Suits and the psychopath, whose blood and gore made mockery of the room’s opulence as it splattered a wall.

  The two non-psychopath normals didn’t even pick up a scratch.

  Excellent.

  “Shit!” the naked woman said. Atlanta glanced at her and saw a finger-sized fragment of shattered marble table imbedded in a flowing glowing something else that now surrounded the naked woman. Atlanta turned back as the last of the functional Suits charged her. He slapped her with one of his now purple hands, which she actually felt. The purple trick tried to destabilize her willpower, but wasn’t powerful enough to bother her. She stepped back.

  She and this Suit circled, crunching over shattered marble mixed with writhing silver God remains and bloody red human remains, just out of hand-to-hand range. “You can fight,” Atlanta said. “You should lead, not Capitalism. He’s pathetic.”

  “The name’s Passion.”

  “Fits,” Atlanta said. She stepped forward and tried to throw Passion. Passion threw her. She picked herself up and Passion’s purple fists thudded into her face and abdomen, followed by an elbow to the chin. Pain lanced through her. She tried to recover and take down Passion with a leg sweep, but he skipped out of the way, grabbed her arm above the elbow, and tossed her twenty feet into a gold-gilt marble wall, about five feet away from the naked woman. Atlanta felt her body thin and she almost blacked out.

  “Your martial arts skills appear to be years out of practice,” Passion said. “Too bad for you, as I am the ideological master of creative destruction.” He smiled and ran at her.

  Atlanta had mental track four make another mental note, this one to get her hand-to-hand retrained. She had learned the Semper Fu back in Basic and had kept it up until she won her place as a Marine aviator. She needed to bring it back up to speed.

  There went more damned time from the advanced college courses she currently audited. Her pre-Apotheosis life hadn’t prepared her for the responsibilities of being a Territorial God, and she was dancing as fast as her feet moved to do the job right.

  She really needed two hundred hour days to keep her from drowning in all of this shit.

  From where she crouched in pain on the floor, Atlanta leapt straight up into the air, hovered, and as Passion, master of the markets’ animal spirits, ran at her, she focused her entire will into her one big discovery, the golden fire. She loosed it from her fingers just before he reached her and blasted it into him and the area around him, which included the naked woman. Passion pancaked underneath the force of the willpower blast, flattened as thin as a rug. Atlanta hung in the air, drained, and as she took great deep breaths she sank slowly to lie flat on the floor. She met the eyes of the two remaining normal humans and growled. They dropped their weapons and fled.

  “Wow,” the naked woman said. “What did you do? It passed right through me. I thought I was a goner there.” She evacuated her chair, another one of those leather and gold filigree things, as if it threatened her personally, and attempted to avoid stepping her bare feet into shattered marble and gore.

  “Golden fire harms Gods but doesn’t damage the furniture,” Atlanta said. “Or even the mortals.” If she had a real body, she knew she would be a mass of bruises. Aching, she picked herself up off the marble tile floor. She needed a good long rest.

  “You’ve gone after Gods before?” the woman asked. Cheeky, forward and fearless, and not at all bothered by any aspect of divine awe. No feeling of hostility or murderous death on her, either. Special, though. Very special.

  “Nope,” Atlanta said. “Experimented on myself.” She looked around and save for the whimpering Indulgence, still spread across the copier, all the rest of the Suits were out cold, or whatever analog passed for ‘out cold’ with their screwy Godly no-flesh bodies. Utterly pathetic. “I’m Atlanta, as you overheard. You need some clothes?”

  “Dana Ravencraft. Yes, I’d like some clothes. These bastards disintegrated mine, and I don’t know any tricks to allow me to get them back.”

  Atlanta walked over to Dana and inspected the tall, willowy, black haired Middle Easterner. Iranian, perhaps? She backed away, to fall backwards into her chair again. “Interesting. You’re not half-bad looking at all, despite the smallish tits,” Atlanta said, wrinkling her nose. Dana’s skin was about as pasty white as Atlanta had ever seen. Dana shivered at Atlanta’s statement. “I can un-disintegrate your clothes for you.” Dana nodded, so Atlanta did. Dana’s clothes reappeared on her, a proper woman’s business suit.

  “Thank you,” Dana said, her voice now a bit unsteady, which pleased Atlanta. Normal humans should feel some respect for Gods. “May I ask a question?”

  “You may,” Atlanta said. She turned her back on Dana for a moment as she went over to Capitalism’s remains. She put her hand on Capitalism’s head and focused her willpower on Capitalism’s mind. If these idiot Gods could play with minds, there shouldn’t be any reason why she couldn’t.

  Nothing. Either Capitalism still maintained his mind shields or she didn’t have what it took. She suspected the latter.

  “Isn’t what you did here going to affect the Integrity of the 99 Gods as well?” Dana said. “You killed all but one of them.”

  “They attacked me first and the Suits aren’t dead, not even close,” Atlanta said. Offing another psychopath would be a plus, she already knew. “They’ll recover. No harm to the Integrity.” She hit Capitalism’s head with golden fire, pancaking it. “Some might recover faster than others, if I’m not careful.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dana said. “When Portland and I spar, what I do to her doesn’t heal so easily, or show this strange silver substance these Ideological Gods appear to be made from.”

  “Interesting,” Atlanta said. She found herself impressed that a softie like Portland had the sense to spar with the more dangerous varieties of willpower. “Our creators said mortals can hurt us if we’re not careful. It’s to keep us in our place, to remind us that although we’re Gods, we’re not God Almighty. I hadn’t realized this was a physical warning.”

  “Creators? You mean the Angelic Host, don’t you?” Dana said. She attempted again to escape from her captor chair and stood up. Atlanta nodded. “Uh, could we get out of here, Atlanta? This place creeps me out, and these Gods’ opinion about what to do with people like me, mortals with unnatural tricks, involves rape, torture and death.”

  “Don’t you want to finish your spying mission?” Atlanta said.

  Dana frowned. “It wasn’t that sort of spying mission. I followed Portland’s orders not to set foot into their lair or to approach the Suits.” Pause. “How’d you know about the spy mission?”

  “You just told me,” Atlanta said. Dana’s eyebrows lowered as several of the young woman’s precious assumptions evaporated. Portland’s servant hadn’t thought her cunning. Or smart. “Take my hand.”

  Dana did as Atlanta ordered. Atlanta bent her will and flew, carrying Dana along beside her. Out the window they went. Then up, Atlanta maintaining breathable air around them. Not that Atlanta believed she needed to breathe, but her Imago breathed, and the Host had warned all the Territorials not to quickly change their Imagos.

  2. (Nessa)

  “Fannie Mae!” Ne
ssa said, making her utterance sound like a four-letter-word. She walked across the worn tan low-pile carpeting of her trailer home to her wall-mounted gun rack. Her eyes flickered from top to bottom and she selected the over-under 30.06 shotgun, the third of seven. She flicked the weapon off the wall with an overhand grip grab, opened it, rummaged through the second drawer of a nearby cabinet, filled with shotgun shells, and grabbed a handful. She loaded two and stuck the rest in her baggy jeans pockets. On a whim, she spied an old pistol of hers, an Enfield revolver, which she grabbed and stuck in the front of her jeans. She smiled. This one wasn’t loaded.

  Trouble. Trouble coming.

  She walked over to a table near her couch, where she had a small mirror lying face down. Nessa looked at herself, not flat on but with her peripheral vision. Her eyes held deep hollows, her lips almost non-existent, her facial bones prominent. Her hair worried her. She flung her hair around to the front of her body, where it hung down to her waist. None of the gathers and clips had shifted at all. Perfect, in her mind, though enough gray shot through her hair a stranger would notice with a simple glance. Her hair almost shined, as it always had, a brown so dark it was almost black, a color on others often dead and lifeless.

  She turned the mirror over and straightened out a bit of clutter, noticing a drawing pad, open to a half-drawn snake’s eye view of a soon to be eaten mouse. She flipped the drawing pad closed and quickly stuffed it back into the magazine rack next to two fellow closed drawing pads.

  “Good enough,” she said, and walked out the front door, past the sod wall, and out to the stone porch. She had built it all, despicably difficult work. She had also built a wooden bench, a place to sit and ponder nature close to home. The bench already showed too much age. The morning cloud deck, not far above, hinted at breaking up, though from the faint ocean smell on the breeze she doubted the overcast would follow through, at least not today. If she wanted sunshine, she would be living somewhere else.

  She sat on the bench, put the shotgun across her legs, closed her eyes and waited. The temperature was in the fifties, but she no longer felt the cold. What passed for fall here would soon be over, and real cold would follow.

  Many long minutes later, car tires crunched on gravel down the hill below her trailer home and Nessa opened her eyes. Five dwellings shared this ill-maintained driveway, hers at the top. The car, a rental, pulled into view around the last corner of pines and parked in Nessa’s crude and empty parking spot. She didn’t own a car, but she contributed maintenance to the Wilson’s pickup, and used it when she needed wheels.

  Nessa shook her head. She had guessed right.

  The man she recognized climbed out of the rental. “Bolnick,” Nessa said. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Old memories skittered forward in her mind, bad memories, and she pushed them back to where they belonged.

  “Nice to see you too, Vanessa,” the man said, nonchalant, standing at the side of his rental car. A black man in a brown suit. He wasn’t armed. He didn’t flinch when Nessa raised the shotgun.

  “I asked you a question,” Nessa said, a growl entering her voice. “And my name’s still Nessa.”

  “I’m here to ask you a question” pause “Nessa,” he said. “Are you responsible for…”

  “Jesus!” she said, interrupting him. “You’re an idiot for coming here. Questions? Some damned investigation? I’m done with investigations.” Nessa stood and took five quick steps toward the man. He flicked several glances at the shotgun and wrung his hands, but he didn’t move back. “What’s the matter, Bolnick? Forget how to talk? You look old. Tired. Worn down.”

  Again, he didn’t respond. Nessa lowered the shotgun and began to circle the man. “What’s in your ear? Oh my god, little Kenny Bolnick has an ear stud. Woo hoo.” Nessa circled around behind him. “Where’s your ass? Did you lose the damned thing somewhere?” She came around his right side. He didn’t move. “I like the short hair. Much better than when you were shaving your head bald. Say something, Ken, dammit.” She stopped when she got back in front of him.

  Ken shrugged.

  “I guess you’re not leaving, are you,” Nessa said. She felt calmer now, the spoken insults carrying away her sudden ire, and with it her muscle-clenching tension. “Hell, Ken, I’m still bad news. Whatever you want can’t be bad enough for you to want to come here. I’m not into the old stuff anymore. I’ve changed. How’d you find this place, anyway?”

  “I’m a private detective, remember?” he said, his voice calm. His first words since she had gone off on him. “You used to work with me.”

  Nessa shrugged. Her memory wasn’t as bad as he imagined. “Yup, California private detectives, until the explosion and the confrontation. Well, this ain’t fuck’n California, shit for brains,” Nessa said, refinding her original anger. She turned her back on him, stalked back to the bench, and put down the shotgun. “I’m not any better than before. Recently, worse.” A wet sticky scent of pine crawled up the hill and past Nessa’s nose. Rain nearby.

  “I can tell,” Ken said. He reached into his suit jacket, slowly, and brought out a couple of half-pound chocolate bars. “You still like imported dark chocolate? I brought some for you.”

  Nessa laughed, turned and sat down on the bench, and put her head in her hands. “Bribes already, eh? ‘Good doggie, here’s a doggie treat’, shit. It’ll work, too. I’m pathetic. I’m sooo pathetic.” She paused as her mood changed from chagrin back to a few jiggles of ire. Ken didn’t approach. “If you were at all smart, you’d run like hell. I’m not fit company. Sorry about the abuse. You know how I am. Shit, I was abusing you like we’d first met or something. Normally I’m more polite, but I’ve been edgy this last six weeks.” She closed her eyes to quiet her nerves and the feeling of impending mess.

  “Haven’t we all,” Ken said.

  Nessa looked up at Ken. His comment didn’t make any sense to her. It made sense to him, which was enough for Nessa for the moment. “You want to come inside? I can make you some coffee.” Her anger exhausted, her voice faked pleasantly human. Of course she would invite him in after she exhausted her anger.

  Why else had she straightened up her place beforehand?

  Ken took a deep breath and lowered his shoulders. “Okay.” He walked up to Nessa, slow and careful, who stood as he approached. His wary eyes looked down at her from a mere two inch advantage. She opened the trailer door for him and motioned him inside. He went.

  “You still freak near guns, don’t you,” Nessa said, as she followed him in, close behind. Ken grunted and didn’t otherwise answer, bringing a half smile to her face. “Pick a couch, any couch.” She owned only one.

  He sat on the couch and tossed the chocolate bars to Nessa. She caught them, opened one, and broke off a square. As she did, she spied one of Uffie’s ethological manuscripts, a draft paper from four months ago, peeking out from under a corner of the couch. She kicked the document out of sight. “You can lose the pistol. It isn’t loaded,” Ken said.

  “You didn’t used to be able to tell,” Nessa said, words garbled by the piece of chocolate in her mouth. She sucked on the square as slowly as she could, to make it last. The chocolate was wonderful. She took the old Enfield revolver out of her jeans and put it on the kitchen counter before she hunted around for the instant coffee. She didn’t drink the stuff but she always kept a jar of it handy for her infrequent visitors. If instant coffee could go stale, hers had years ago.

  “This’s yours, Nessa?” Ken said. Nessa turned and saw him ogling one of her inexpert paintings, of a chimpanzee Uffie called Crackback. Crackback had a dead vole in his hand, surrounded by his native jungle. The chimpanzee was just about to eat the vole. “It’s perfect, as if you were another chimp crouching and warily watching this important male.”

  Nessa made the instant coffee, taking a moment to straighten out her napkin holder. “Thanks. That’s wh
at it’s supposed to look like.” Although she kept the painting out because Uffie adored it, she saw all the flaws. Horrid.

  “You’re forgetting to eat again, aren’t you?” Ken said.

  “You’re one to talk. You know how things go.”

  Ken looked at his own thin arms. “If I’m with people who eat, I remember to eat too.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t care,” Nessa said. “If I really need food, I’ll eat.” She grinned and broke off another piece of chocolate. “With one exception.” She glanced at her gaunt hands and lower arms. The veins on her hand did stick out, and the skin looked sucked in around her hand bones, her wrist reduced to a big knob. Age, she had thought, but Ken could be right. The last six weeks had been exceptionally bad. She couldn’t remember consuming anything but tea. “How much chocolate did you bring me?” she said. “Out in the rental vehicle?”

  “Enough.”

  “Dammit, you have some sort of job going and you want me functional, don’t you?” Nessa said. She brought Ken his coffee and placed the mug in his hands. She sat down on the coffee table in front of him, crowding him on purpose. He took a sip and made a face. She wiggled around so her legs thrust rudely between his.

  “Now you’re trying to poison me,” Ken said.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You interrupted my question, but perhaps the questions can wait,” he said. He studied her closely, as if she was the target of his investigation. “So, how’s life been treating you?”

  Nessa shook her head. He meant work questions, not chit-chat questions. “I’m alive,” she said. “I work, when I can, with my collaborator. You never met her. Her name’s Uffie Zumbrennen and she’s a Professor of Zoology at Stanford.”

  “Back home, not here,” Ken said.

  “Back home. The work doesn’t pay much, so when I need money I do odd jobs around here. Cleaning, mostly.”

  “Anyone in your life?” Ken asked. “You didn’t ever get back with Ron, did you?”

  “No, his luck ran out,” Nessa said. Ken blinked but didn’t respond to her limp joke. “No, dammit, I didn’t get back with him or kill him, though I thought about it. I eventually divorced the son of a bitch.” Last Ken knew she and Ron had separated. “Nobody since him, though. I learned my lesson after the explosion.” She looked at Ken, careful like. “Isn’t your question getting a bit too close to our last big fight?”

  Ken turned away as she examined him. She put together what she saw and made connections. “You’re not wearing a wedding band anymore.”

  Ken nodded.

  “How long?”

  “A little over a year,” he said. “Eat some more chocolate.”

  She nibbled down a quarter square without thinking. “Why do you keep prompting me to eat?”

  “Your appearance, Nessa,” Ken said. He slowly raised his hand toward her, and when she didn’t flinch back, he ran an index finger over her face. “You’re nothing but skin and bones and your hygiene’s slipped.”

  “Crap, I hadn’t realized about the hygiene,” Nessa said, more physically self-aware than normal. Almost embarrassed. “This bothers you? You still care?”

  Ken nodded.

  His comment brightened Nessa’s day. “Well, those problems sort of happen. Especially recently. You know about me and mirrors,” Nessa said. Ken shrugged. “If you want, I’ll let you wash my face. Like old times.” Old bad times.

  “Okay,” Ken said. Nessa directed him to a washcloth, which he dampened in the kitchen sink. He put a tiny drop of dish soap on the cloth, grabbed a towel, and came back to wash off Nessa’s face. Slowly. Carefully. Impersonally. Unwanted memories filled her mind again, memories from before the confrontation, and she banished them to where they belonged.

  “We all have our quirks,” Nessa said, after Ken finished. Ken looked her over, unhappy.

  “I worry about you,” he said. “You’re showing far too many stress signs. The ones we were told to watch for.”

  “Which leads into your real question,” Nessa said. Stern. Ken raised his hands in surrender, sheepish.

  “This isn’t working out the way I’d imagined,” Ken said, and sighed. “I guess I should start by apologizing for the argument we had nine years ago about my marriage. I was wrong. You were right. Livie and I turned out exactly as you predicted. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have chased you off.”

  “Oh,” Nessa said. She hadn’t expected an apology, and he meant what he said. She hadn’t thought of the fight aftermath, after the confrontation, as ‘chasing her off’, but she could understand how he might. Emotions awoke inside her she had long thought discarded. His comment changed everything.

  Damn the unexpected!

  “Six months after Livie and I split, I asked her for a divorce. She’s been trying to get me to come back to her. She wants us to go through marriage counseling.”

  Nessa barked laughter. “Marriage counseling? Oh, that would go well. You should have either told her everything, or told her nothing.”

  He nodded. “You were right. She hates me. She hates me bad enough to kill me, and her hatred slips out whenever her concentration slips. But she’s still in love with me.”

  “Bitch,” Nessa said. “At least Ron didn’t waffle. When he got to where he hated me bad enough to kill me, he did his damned best to do so. None of this love-me-anyway shit.”

  “I’m still amazed you didn’t kill him,” Ken said. “Or…”

  “Or what?” Nessa said. She stood and walked away from Ken. She wrapped the foil around the remains of most of the chocolate bar, and set the bar on the kitchen counter. Self-control was no problem. She had learned self-control, incredible self-control, though the lessons had cost her a lot. Nothing beat multiple physical drug addictions as a stern taskmaster. She hadn’t had much self-control back when she worked for Ken. A disastrous valley of experiences lay between them, years of mistakes and losses of control. Over for now, she hoped.

  She crossed to the other side of her living room, where she kept a boom box and a neat rack of old-fashioned CDs. She put one on, turned the volume down, and waited for the music to start.

  “You still could, couldn’t you?” Ken said. “With your tricks?”

  “Of course,” Nessa said. She didn’t realize what she had done until thirty seconds into the first song.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked herself.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she answered herself.

  Dammit!

  His eyes held too many questions. She feared his questions. “Ol’ Johnny was right, with those last lessons he taught us. You’re still doing your detective shit. You don’t want to ask me your questions directly, so you’re going around and getting the answers to them by asking other questions.”

  Ken didn’t answer. “What sort of crazy music is this, anyway?”

  Nessa smiled and danced to the music. “European EDM. Electronic dance music. Only good dance music around. I especially like the music nobody’s heard of.” She easily lost herself in it, nice, impersonal music. She often danced for herself, but not now. Now, she danced a dance for Ken.

  “I didn’t realize you danced,” Ken said. He didn’t know her as well as he thought. Heh. She wanted to giggle, but she didn’t even allow herself a smile.

  “Stand up and join me.” She had no desire to answer his question. Not in words. Instead, she swung her hips.

  Ken stayed seated. Nessa continued to dance; legs, hips, arms, hands, eyes. She could dance like this for hours, enough to freak out anyone who bought into her starving waif appearance. Some guy she met down in Anchorage three years ago she suspected was still running from her. She had danced six hours with him and for him, partly pissed off because he couldn’t make himself believe she could.

  “You really want this?” Ken said.

  “Get up and dance.”

  Ke
n took a deep breath and stood. Danced. With Ken up and dancing, Nessa let herself get lost in the music and the dance, the way her dancing should be. She danced by herself often, as a way to quiet her thoughts and center herself. Which wasn’t the real motive of this dance. She had other plans now.

  She danced for Ken. Twenty minutes in, her CD slowed down. She stepped imperceptibly closer to Ken with every step, soon close enough to slow dance.

  He didn’t run.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Ken said. His voice was a light whisper in her ear as he took her into his arms.

  “Why speak of the obvious?” Nessa said. “Hush and dance.”

  They danced.

  The next song was even slower.

  “You sure you want this?”

  He just had to talk about it.

  “You’re hot,” Nessa said.

  “Your fault.”

  “Enjoy yourself,” she said. She didn’t want to say anything else.

  He pressed his body up tight against hers. She laid her head on his shoulder and let him lead them as they danced. He was nearly as waif-like as she was, though he called himself wiry, not gaunt. His particular scents were as foreign to her as always. The mystery attracted her. She had always wanted to learn what he was like, what his secrets were.

  She had never had the chance before.

  They hugged each other tight.

  She ran her fingers down his back, feeling all of the knobs of his spine. He turned his head to her and offered a kiss. She accepted.

  Coffee mixed with chocolate.

  “You’re beautiful,” Ken said, about ten minutes later.

  Nessa shifted around in the crumpled sheets and smiled. “I’m not beautiful,” she said. “Not compared to you. I’m a goddamned nightmare.” Their clothes were still on, and given Ken’s addiction to foreplay, likely would stay on a while longer.

  “Not to me. Never to me,” he said.

  “I’d never thought we’d be free to do this. Even beyond our respective mental problems. You remember when we first met? I wanted you then.”

  Ken chuckled. “You weren’t legal, then. You were, what, thirteen?”

  “Twelve,” Nessa said. “A precocious twelve. You were seventeen.”

  “I wanted you too, but you were too young. Going after you wouldn’t have been right. Besides, we would have messed each other up worse than we already were.”

  “Not fucking possible,” Nessa said. “I went to work for you, remember?” For three years, she had been an investigator for Ken, years after they first met. “I thought it was perfect. Boinking the underlings isn’t one of those things you do, so I thought working for you would defuse the tension.” She let her mind go to remember those three years. For years, she had soured on those memories of all those strange cases she and Ken got to work on, cases proving to her the world held more mysteries than she realized. Only after she came up north had the case memories turned pleasant, the only pleasant memories she had in her life before she came up north.

  Not counting the alternately seductive and terrifying episode with Opartuth, the big success.

  The dangerous cases, especially the one that had turned on them and made victims out of them, still soured, beyond remembrance.

  “Working together was perfect. Doing so helped both of us keep our minds whole.”

  “Uh huh, I think you’re right,” Nessa said, and flicked his ear stud with her tongue. “So, it’s clear I’m not going to get your clothes off until you ask your annoying question, so ask, dammit!”

  “Uh,” Ken said, his emotions shimmering and shivering inside him. “Right. Okay.” He paused, and she could feel him gather his courage into one small round robin’s egg, turquoise blue. “Are you behind the appearance of the 99 Gods?”

  Her eyebrows narrowed at his attempt at omelet making. “All this angst about asking a question about some damned rap band?” Nessa said. Without warning she got all freaky in the head, her arms all pins and needles.

  “Rap band?” Ken said, his emotional state leaping from anxiety to horror. “Nessa?”

  “Sorry. A rock band, then?”

  “You’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

  “What the fuck are you reacting this way for, Ken? Don’t scare me like this.”

  Ken backed away, slowly, and almost levitated out of her bed. “Surely you’ve heard of the goddamned 99 Gods. It’s only the biggest thing that’s happened in the new millennium, if not ever.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nessa said, now as cold as ice. She let herself open up a bit to the thoughts behind his words, and stopped in sudden disbelief. “You’re talking about real Gods, aren’t you?” He nodded. This was almost too strange for words, strange even for her life. Gods? Plural? Out in the open and everything? Things like that never happened. Never ever ever. Even in her much stranger than normal world. “Tell me.”

  “You don’t follow the news on the net?” Ken said. “I thought you did. You’ve got a lot of good tech in your office.”

  “The tech shit’s all from Uffie, so she and I can collaborate better,” Nessa said. “I don’t understand how to use anything she doesn’t send explicit instructions for.” All the computer crap made Nessa’s mind hurt, and every time Uffie sent her a new computer setup, the screens got larger and the computer got smaller, and everything moved faster. Uffie’s last comment on the subject was a threat to replace the whole mess with a smartphone able to control three big flat-screen displays. Gaah! “So…Gods?”

  “Uh huh. Gods. They appeared out of nowhere. They claim there are 99 of them, but only thirty or so are public. So far. I’m talking about physical Gods doing miracles and promising peace, love and utopia. They’re God Almighty’s gift to humanity. Sweetness and light, the end of all wars. Their miracles are showy enough to convince all but the most die-hard agnostics and atheists that these Gods are doing God Almighty’s will. Overnight, everything’s changed, all amazing, wonderful and heartening, and everyone’s utterly happy about them. Only…when I was down in Fort Myers three days ago, working a case, I got rousted by the God named Miami. He opened a big ol’ can of divine whoop-ass on me. I barely got out with my life.”

  “Miami? They name themselves for cities?” Fucking unbelievable.

  “Some do, the ones who call themselves Territorial Gods,” Ken said, all serious now.

  Nessa smiled. “You got away, though. These Gods aren’t very omnipotent, are they?”

  “I’ve got my tricks.”

  “That you do,” Nessa said. She sat up and unexpectedly felt the dark anger build within her. “So you came up here thinking I might be behind the appearance of some fucking Gods? You utter fucking asshole! Get the fuck out of here, dammit! Get the crap out of my life, you…” Nessa balled her fists and jabbed Ken’s jaw. It was like hitting a brick wall. “Owwh, fuck, I forgot about your trick.”

  Ken sat up in bed. “I had to ask the question. I’m sorry. I’ve seen you do…”

  “Fuck you!” Nessa screamed at full volume, interrupting the rest of his sentence and drowning out ‘the impossible’. She leapt out of her bed and stalked out of her bedroom. She wanted to kill something. Stomp it into the ground. Rip Ken’s head off and stick it up his asshole. No one came into her home to accuse her of such idiocy.

  “Wait, wait,” Ken said. “The chocolate wasn’t enough?”

  “You patronizing piece of shit,” Nessa said, half way across the kitchen to where she had stashed the remainder of the chocolate bar, before she caught herself. She stopped cold. “Wait just a goddamned second.” Her voice went back to normal, perhaps a bit quiet, the volume and anger leached out of it. “When did these supposed 99 Gods appear, anyway?”

  “August 6th. A day they said was specifically chosen to not commemorate any previous events,” Ken said.

  Oh.

  That’s what he meant when he said �
��haven’t we all’ after she said she had been on edge for the last six weeks. Duuuuh. “My last contact with Uffie was on the 11th of August.” Nessa paged through her memories and realized Uffie had been indirectly talking about the 99 Gods in the six days before she vanished, assuming incorrectly Nessa understood what her friend meant. “My goddamned collaborator’s vanished, and I’m not sure what to do, because she vanished in fucking Malawi and I don’t know shit about fucking Malawi save that Malawi’s somewhere in fucking Africa and not on a fucking seacoast.” Uffie’s disappearance had sent Nessa into a deep mental tailspin, uncivil, unfit for any of her normal community activities.

  “Damn,” Ken said. “This means the so-called utopian shit these Gods are spewing’s been a bunch of lies from the start.”

  “You’re acting paranoid.”

  “Personal experiences,” Ken said. The same ones as she had. She could sympathize. “I’d hoped only one of them was bad, though. I don’t like this at all.”

  “They’re really calling themselves Gods?”

  “Well, some are calling themselves Living Saints, some others are calling themselves Djinni, but, essentially, yes.”

  “Well, I still fucking didn’t do it,” Nessa said, worrying anew about Uffie. She would never do anything nasty to Uffie. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, though, I guess. I like knowing someone thinks I’ve, well, you know. Got what it takes.” Men. Always a complete pain in the ass.

  Ken stood and walked out into the living room. He took Nessa into his arms. She stiffened, but he rocked her until she relaxed a bit. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he said. “I had to ask, though. Something you were playing with might have gotten away from you.”

  “Well, I wasn’t,” Nessa said, opening herself up to him again. “Wait a second. Are you thinking we ought to do something about them? As in both of us?” she said. She closed her eyes and concentrated. “Hell, you are, aren’t you? What right do we have to mess with something like this?”

  “The same rights as always: since we can, we must. You’re the one who taught me.”

  “The person who taught you was a young self-centered egotistical piece of shit named Vanessa. Vanessa once held that philosophy, but Nessa doesn’t. You know where my idiot philosophy led me. Vanessa died.” He had been present when it happened.

  Yet, here she was.

  “So you’ll sit up here in your trailer in Alaska and ignore the problem?” Ken said. “You don’t care?”

  “Oh, I care,” Nessa said. What a way to ruin her intimate curiosity! Gods, indeed. As bad as constipation. “But I care more about Uffie and what happened to her. Tell you what. I’ll make a deal,” she said, thinking scheme. Yum. “I’ll help you with your glorious do-gooder plans and try and keep your black ass in one piece, if you help me find out what happened to Uffie, and help her if she needs help. I need people around me to keep my head on straight.”

  “This is new,” Ken said. “I thought lots of people caused your problems.” Problems? What a euphemism for a form of dysfunctional insanity the DSM didn’t even name. Well, beyond ‘other’.

  “Too many people are a problem; not enough people are a problem,” Nessa said. She slid over to the wrapped up chocolate bar and nipped off another piece, half embarrassed. “I put a lot of work into figuring out how many people is the right number. Ken, if I help you, if I go back out into the real world, I’m going to have breakdowns. I’m no longer Vanessa. I’m going to abuse you. I’m going to be screaming, catatonic, manic, and paralyzed by terror. You name a psych problem, it’s going to happen. I’m going to scheme, too. You know me. There’s got to be a way for my tricks to make me enough money to retire on, and having a bunch of newbie gullible Gods around sounds like an opportunity too good to pass up. I’m easily distracted by such things.”

  Ken laughed. “I’ll take the deal.”

  “Fine. Don’t argue with me. See if I care.”

  “Let’s talk.”

  “Not just yet. Find me something safe and unique on the internet about this nonsense that I can look at without having a fit,” Nessa said. “I need to figure out what the fuck’s going on with my world.”

  3. (John)

  “John Lorenzi?” the functionary said. In John’s first visit here, Dubuque hadn’t had functionaries. He had them now. This young man wore a preppy young-American-style suit without a tie, and open collar. An earnest man of good character, he guarded the door to Dubuque’s giant headquarters behind a plain table. He appeared discommoded by John’s appearance, not surprising, as John was shorter and wider than most people in this era. He was old as well, ancient in appearance, and what little hair remained on his head was snowy white. To better fit in this modern era, he had taken to wearing short-cropped whiskers, and they were white as well.

  The functionary did something with a miniature computer lying on the table in front of him. “Yes, here it is. The Living Saint is expecting you.” Dubuque lived in the small city of their shared name. John had called in a request for a second meeting, two weeks ago, and two days ago one of Dubuque’s people had called John’s small office and offered this appointment.

  The meeting was in Dubuque’s illusionary-reality home and place of business. The cheap miracle kept the rain, snow and wind off the people inside, but did little more than that. “Who’s this, Mr. Lorenzi?” the functionary said, pointing at John’s companion.

  “Cosmo. Don’t worry about him, he’s with me,” John said. The functionary frowned, as Cosmo hadn’t been on the invite, but let them through anyway. “Unless something’s changed, I know the way.”

  John and Cosmo walked down wide white halls to Dubuque’s office. Dubuque’s home appeared starker than before and more perceptibly holy. The faux decorations were gone, as were the potted plants. John glanced at Cosmo, but he didn’t react. During John’s first visits to the 99, he hadn’t risked Cosmo.

  Ahead of them, five sharp-dressed men in their forties and fifties exited Dubuque’s office. Protestant preacher types, John guessed. The five men argued among themselves, in quiet voices, agitated with Dubuque’s professed ability to sense the moment of ensoulment, and didn’t notice John or Cosmo as they passed.

  John whispered his name to the functionary at the door to Dubuque’s office. The young blond man eyeballed a hand-held electronic device, nodded, and led John and Cosmo into the Living Saint’s office. It was a big room, holding little more than a conference table, several chairs, and Dubuque’s own oversized desk and simple chair. Dubuque stood and walked around his uncluttered desk, smiling, and stuck out his hand to shake. “Mr. Lorenzi. Glad to see you again.” They shook hands, and John introduced Cosmo as ‘his aide, in his mission’. Dubuque nodded.

  Dubuque was a fine looking young man, six foot four, a strong jaw, piercing blue eyes, a long face, and light dirty blond hair. A natural leader. A wicked grin played across Dubuque’s face, and the Living Saint exuded enthusiasm. “You appear to be getting organized,” John said.

  “It’s been work,” Dubuque said, with a chuckle. “This business I’m now in has far more responsibilities attached to it than I suspected. So what can I do for you, today?” Dubuque’s voice was deep, but not bass, and uniquely penetrating.

  John still couldn’t sense anything about Dubuque save for the Living Saint’s palpable holiness, which filled the oversized office to the brim. Cosmo fidgeted, though, which meant Dubuque’s holy aura had gotten to him. “It isn’t what you can do for me, but what I can do for you,” John said. “In our first meeting, I said I was a man of the cloth, a person possessing knowledge of and experience with what the Angelic Host referred to obliquely when they told you that you Living Saints were not alone.” Dubuque nodded. Their first meeting had been during a mass meet-and-greet, and John had been just one of many. They hadn’t had time for a conversation. “After visiting several of the other North American Living Sain
ts, I decided to offer you my services. I’ve been waiting for you, or someone like you, for a long time.” Centuries, but he knew enough not to say that. John decided to accept Dubuque’s nod as permission to sit, and eased his bulk into one of the chairs around the conference table. Dubuque took the seat around the corner and rolled the chair backwards so the conference table didn’t come between them. Cosmo sat in a third chair. Dubuque wore a typical American business-class black pin-stripe suit over a white shirt and gaudy tie. “How much do you know about me?”

  “Only what you’ve stated publicly.”

  Dubuque met John’s eyes and spread wide his hands. “Very well. Other men of faith have already sought me out, but most want to preach at me, not serve me. Most claim to know more about me than I do, myself, and more about God than the Angelic Host did. I find your lack of preconceptions bracing,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “How would you serve me?”

  “With all my talents,” John said. The only one of the 99 he had met who had caught on to his supernatural tricks, Portland, had shrugged and moved on without comment after he had admitted to them. “I believe that the appearance of you and the other Living Saints, most of whom wrongly name themselves as Gods, marks the end of my appointed mission. If we can work together, you will find my knowledge extensive, my skills refined in many areas, and my needs minimal. I’m not interested in either goodies or moola. I’ll serve you faithfully, to the best of my abilities, and make my humble service to you my new mission.”

  “No goodies or moola, eh?” Dubuque said, with another twinkle. “I do appreciate the offer of aid, but I do wonder what an old man such as yourself can do for me. I’ve already attracted quite a few vigorous young volunteers, and I’m puzzled by your, um, claim of knowledge about the unknown entities the Host referred to.” Dubuque paused and met John’s gaze. “Can I tell you a little about where I’m coming from?” John nodded.

  “I’ve always been a man of God, Mr. Lorenzi,” Dubuque said, spreading his hands wide again. “Violence and war are my enemies.” In his speeches, Dubuque had said he had been, in his former life, a peaceful anti-war protester. John nodded again, happy, as most modern Popes felt the same way about violence. “I didn’t go to Divinity School, though, nor was I ever an official member of the ministry. However, I did do some informal preaching, to my fellow protesters, to spread the word of God. When not on the front lines of protest, I also taught adult Sunday school classes at various non-denominational churches. My only paying jobs were in the service of the Lord. I helped manage charities and did their bookkeeping. My background was about as mainstream Protestant, and as boring as it could be.

  “However, from the Angelic Host, I’ve learned to broaden my understanding of God, and to listen to those of faith, as they pray.” John’s eyebrows rose. Dubuque’s comment seemed better suited to an actual God, not a Living Saint. “Some might say I’m not as Christian as I used to be, after being confronted with the correctness of non-Christian faiths, but to me, I’ve just had my eyes opened to new truths, that there are more ways to God than I understood in my mortal days. I’m still torn, though, about many things, and I’ve become more of a seeker than in my mortal life. I do believe, though, that Christianity must unite as one family again and build stronger bridges to the other monotheistic faiths.”

  John nodded. “You’re not going to get any arguments from me about that,” he said. “My background is similarly ecumenical.”

  “Fantastic!” Dubuque said, smiling wider. “The Angelic Host gave me a new calling in life, a calling to help those who cannot help themselves and to do good works at a level I never before contemplated. A call to lead, one I don’t understand, yet, how I’m going to answer. I do know that I and my volunteers will be helping humanity make Heaven on Earth. What skills and knowledge do you offer to aid me in my Mission?”

  John leaned back for a moment, taking in the room. Everything here, he realized, was a creation of the Living Saint: the carpeting, the walls, the furniture, the few knickknacks on the desk, likely even the Living Saint’s clothes. Only a being doing God’s miracles could create such things and not leave the reek of evil magic. To John, that left no doubts about Dubuque’s origins.

  Yet, something seemed off. In the short month since John’s first meeting with Dubuque, the Living Saint had changed. He had gone from wide-eyed, overwhelmed and hesitant in the use of his power to, well, John wasn’t sure. More of a man on a mission, his power on an instant hair-trigger.

  “I possess ample monetary resources and a small organization of likeminded men of faith,” John said, more relaxed speaking about himself than hearing about Dubuque. A bustle of a half dozen of Dubuque’s volunteers walked by, outside the Living Saint’s office, debating some App called Splursh. John still wasn’t quite sure what an App was, and what it had to do with phones and the like. “I’m personally fluent in over two dozen languages, and I have decades of experience as an advisor to those seeking to do good.” He paused. “But my real offer concerns the supernatural. When the Angelic Host said the Living Saints aren’t alone, they were saying you aren’t the only supernatural beings on Earth. Some, such as myself, wish to help you.”

  “Supernatural?” Dubuque concentrated for a moment and edged away from John. The smile left his face and the twinkle left his eyes. “You are different, Mr. Lorenzi,” the Living Saint said, now artfully expressionless. “You’re not a normal human being, now are you?”

  The Living Saint must have opened himself up to John in some miraculous way. “You sensed that, eh, pardner?” John said, smiling. “I’m offering all that I am to you, to serve you with my fullest abilities.”

  “Something like you wants to help me?” Dubuque said. “God’s miracles are holy, not supernatural in the least.” He adjusted his red tie with a hostile yank and frowned. John, startled by Dubuque’s words and his sudden hostility, froze in place. The Living Saint likely sensed some aspect of John’s checkered past, a penetration John hadn’t considered possible in this casual setting. Nothing else made sense. He had gambled the Living Saints would possess the same general limitations and capabilities as the other holy saints he had run into in his long life. He had expected the Living Saints to wield more of God’s Grace, not something completely different.

  He realized, belatedly, that he had landed himself in deep trouble. Sincerely and truly deep trouble.

  “Are those you speak of, who want to ‘help’, similarly possessed by the supernatural?” Dubuque said, frowning.

  “No, I am unique, and it’s not possession,” John said. “Those I know of, the people who would be willing to aid you, possess more subtle abilities and tricks. Talents of knowledge and self-control most find disquieting, or impossible.” He didn’t mention the more paranoid Telepaths, who would likely all run and hide rather than serve a Living Saint, even for an instant. Their abilities were anything other than subtle. “However, humanity does face supernatural enemies. Such are rare, especially in this day and age, but they exist in enough varieties to shock the casual observer.” Who, in most cases, would forget about these supernatural enemies once their shock wore off, if they lived through the experience.

  “You don’t say,” Dubuque said, deadpan, his eyes boring into John.

  “I’m not your enemy, spiritually or otherwise, Living Saint Dubuque. I serve God, the same as do you,” John said. He had to defuse the situation; he and Dubuque, the most pacifist of the Living Saints, must become friends. Dubuque nodded and visibly relaxed, his hostility abating.

  “Go on,” the Living Saint said. John guessed the Living Saint could tell whether John lied or not.

  “As I said before, my background is quite ecumenical. I agree with your mission wholeheartedly.” John had lived the ecumenical dream for most of his long life.

  “Now that’s interesting,” Dubuque said. “You aren’t a liar. You are plain spoken and direct. You said you
are a man of faith, correct?”

  John nodded.

  “Do you pray?”

  “Yes, of course,” John said.

  “Who do you pray to?”

  “I pray to Jesus, to Mary and to God.”

  “You are Catholic, then?”

  “Yes.” Ah. That fear. “I don’t serve the Pope, if that’s your worry. None of the Popes of this century or the last knew my name.” None of the Popes since the Napoleonic era had known of him by name.

  “As you said, though, you are a leader of men. I can sense that in you,” Dubuque said, glaring at John. “You lead men of faith?” the Living Saint asked, glancing at Cosmo. John nodded. “If you don’t serve the Pope, then who do you follow?”

  “I work on my own these days, though I do maintain loose ties to an ancient ecumenical Holy Order.” John paused. “I must tell you about my mission, and my fears. It’s…”

  “I wonder, though, if what you represent is a test,” Dubuque said, interrupting John and pointing his index finger at him. “I’ve been waiting for one.”

  “A test?” John didn’t understand. He had offered himself to Dubuque to do with whatever Dubuque wanted. That should be enough for anyone, mortal or Living Saint.

  “Yes. I’d been wondering when the other side would appear and what they would do, whether they would arrive in numbers or arrive speaking seductive words.” Dubuque tapped the fingers of his right hand nervously on the chair arm. “Things have been too easy for me, so far. When the Host spoke of us Living Saints not being alone, to me they were clearly warning us about the other side.”

  Uh oh. “Who would oppose you?” John said. “Are you talking political, spiritual, religious or perhaps supernatural opposition?” Dubuque tensed. “I assure you, I am fully on your side. I can help you against any and all natural and unnatural opposition. I serve God, and have done so for years.”

  Dubuque’s glare told John the answer; the Living Saint thought he, John, belonged to the other side. “Do you accept Jesus as your personal savior?” Dubuque said.

  “Yes,” John said. “Absolutely.”

  “I sense doubt, though.”

  “I possess an old man’s doubts,” John said. This veered into dangerous territory. He had lived too long and experienced too many things, creating far too much doubt in his once perfect faith. What he knew about Heaven and Hell didn’t match any known holy scriptures, the teachings of his youth, the teachings of the Renaissance era, the Enlightenment, or the absurd, almost fictional, modern day beliefs.

  Worse, many of his experiences and actions had taken place in harsher times. John had done many things that people born in this far too civilized era would reject.

  Dubuque tsk-tsk-tsked and began to glow, aggressively holy. “Now you’re shading the truth. Lying to me,” Dubuque said, as if no one could lie to him. Yes, John realized, he had misjudged the capabilities of these Living Saints.

  What were they, if they were not an amplified version of God’s holy saints? Were they actual Gods, then? Physical-bodied demigods, as the ones written about in innumerable Indo-European myths?

  That would be terrible, especially in this overly secular age.

  “I wouldn’t call my comments a lie,” John said. “I have upset you, sir. Let me take my leave, and we can sit and discuss this at a later time, when you have seen the world longer as a Living Saint.” John began to stand.

  “Sit back down,” Dubuque said, nonchalant. John sat, against his will, terror creeping into his mind. This was impossible! Nothing had the power to control his mind; the Earth’s most potent Telepaths, the One Mind group, had trained him, centuries ago, in how to resist mental takeovers, both telepathic and magical.

  The Living Saint’s face filled with ire. “My logic is inescapable. You are a magical creature, a foul spirit in an old man’s body, a liar, and a prevaricator. You are either Satan’s demon, or Satan himself.” Beside him, Cosmo boggled at Dubuque’s display, lost in holy wonder. “You are what I feared you were, after I first opened myself up to you. Satan, begone!”

  John did not move, could not move, but Dubuque’s wave of holy willpower passed through him without effect. Dubuque frowned, and his hold over John’s mind evaporated in confusion.

  “I am not that being,” John said, quiet and unthreatening.

  “Then what are you?”

  John didn’t know what to say.

  “You did lay yourself in my holy hands,” Dubuque said, pointing a finger at him. “Answer.”

  John hesitated, fearful and confused, before gathering himself and deciding to try to talk his way out of this debacle. “Very well, sir. I trust God, who led me here, so let me tell you what I believe myself to be,” John said. Whenever any such conundrums arose, he submitted himself to God’s will. He had learned that lesson in his youth. The puzzled expression returned to Dubuque’s face. “I’m a former Benedictine monk whose life-long mission, given to me by the Virgin appearing in vision, is to remove the ability to do magic from those who wield it, and to undo magic itself. I do not kill, as I am not worthy to take life. Yet to remove the ability to do magic from a person, or undo magic, I must do magic. It is my magical ability to undo magic that you sense. Yes, this magic has its infernal connections, but my holy pledges lock my magic away from my will, save for what magic I use to undo magic. Because of this limitation, I escape corruption.” Magic was the most corrupting of all forces, luring all who used it to the seductive call of the inferno. John had purged himself of that call centuries ago, in the only way open to him, by locking his magic away except for the one outlet of destroying other magic. In his youth, he had prayed for someone like himself, who possessed the strength to remove John’s magic, but he had found no one in all his long centuries who possessed greater magic than his own.

  “You then admit you are a mortal magician, and evil,” Dubuque said. His mouth puckered. “A male witch.”

  “I am open to you,” John said. “What evil in me do you sense?”

  “Omission. Do not suffer a witch to live, the Good Book says,” Dubuque said, frowning.

  John realized he had shocked the Living Saint, exposing Dubuque to something he had never imagined could exist. Dubuque, unlearned in the classics, as was common in this modern era, thought of the other side in terms of popular media representations of the Books of Revelation and Hell. Fictional representations. Hollywood movies!

  John doubted he had ever been in such grave danger, at least since the beginning of his holy mission.

  “The Holy Bible also says not to murder. When I am done with those I save from magic, they are no longer witches, or warlocks, or magicians of any kind. I’m cool, man. I don’t interfere with the authorities if they so choose to take further action. If I find that those with the ability to do magic committed crimes against God or man, I inform the authorities. Often, I give testimony.”

  “Despite the truth I read in your honeyed words, you stink of murder and violence. Darkness surrounds you like a cloak,” Dubuque said. He raised his right hand, as if in protection, and his holy aura grew. “You hew to expedience, to a dark religion no one else practices. I sense this. Your motivations come not from faith in God, but from something else, something horrific.”

  “Certainly not,” John said, hiding his shocked disbelief. “I serve God directly; what I believe about God I learned from the Church, and from ecumenical theologians of all the monotheistic religions. That must be what’s confusing you.”

  Dubuque sighed. “You’re deluded. I do have much to learn, but this I already know: a true person of faith leads by example; a person changes the world by their actions, their words and their moral authority.

  “I can sense what you do, though, and I do not like what I sense. You lead by doing evil magic; your clothes reek from the fires of the Inquisition. You ignore the poor and helpless, you don’t evangelize, and like many supposed people of faith,
you selectively moralize. You don’t even believe in such basic human rights as freedom from slavery and torture!”

  John shrank back from the Living Saint’s pronouncements. The Living Saint could sense all his ancient deeds and beliefs from the darker eras of the past, and as John feared, judged them out of context. “My mission is…”

  Dubuque stood and transformed, his entire body glowing white, holy certainty replacing moral doubt. Even his suit and shoes became white in the extremity of his holiness. “I understand my test now, Lord. This man before me is possessed by an evil spirit,” Dubuque said, eyes to heaven. “Following in the steps of Jesus, I must save him by casting it out!”

  “You’ll find no evil spirits in me, or any possessing spirit of any kind,” John said, resigned to his fate, despite the fact he knew, again, that Dubuque was controlling his mind. “I won’t fight you on this, daddy-o. Do what you must, and we’ll talk, afterwards.”

  Battered by Dubuque’s holy power, John’s conscious mind winked out.

  When John awoke, surprised at being awake at all, he found himself in a coffin.