Jan sniffed into the corner of Dana’s neck. “Her husband Richard is threatening to go on the Path of Life to Hell, along with their children.” Which would break Jan’s heart, Dana knew. Richard, Jan’s son, had died in the confrontation with Santa Fe and the multi-Paladin, but not badly enough that the Indigo’s normal tricks wouldn’t work. Dana wasn’t sure what had happened to Kara, but the fact Dana had caught Kara’s soul on the way by meant ‘too bad a death for the normal recovery methods’.
Kara and Richard stood at the portal, Kara on the Hell side, Richard on the Earth side, both emotionally distraught. Dana counted noses on both sides of the portal, grabbed Jan by the shoulders, thrust her away from her body and looked her in the face. “You, Grover and Lara are the only ones left of the first Indigo generation, and Abe, Richard and Karen are the only ones left of the second. That’s too few! How can you be even contemplating splitting the group?”
Jan wiped tears from her eyes and met Dana’s gaze. “It’s not just Earth that counts, or this timeline, either. You need to get over your prejudice, Dana. Besides, the Path of Death and Path of Life crap is only a limitation of our old story. Our new story, which includes new Angels like you, and the 99 Demigods, doesn’t include this as a limitation.”
Dana yanked her hands off Jan’s shoulders as if Jan’s harsh comment electrically shocked her. “January!”
“Get used to it,” the Godslayer said, snorting. “The fact they’re always a big pain in the ass is our connection to humanity.”
Dana decided she was Indigo enough to flip her hair and stick her tongue out at the Godslayer. “You want us to bring Kara back. I’ll help.” She turned to the Godslayer and Odysseia. “Come on, you two, it’s a three person operation.”
“Only if you define it that way,” Odysseia said.
“I believe Dana’s right,” the Godslayer said. “Otherwise, some asshole among the 99’s going to set up a for-profit Hell-based resurrection service in secret.”
“So you’re saving me a necessary kill,” Odysseia said. She sighed. “You’re probably right. Let’s do it.”
The three of them joined hands and willpower, and brought Kara back from Hell. Kara dived into Richard’s arms, and moment later, her two children dived into both of their arms.
“So, is it my imagination, or is someone in Hell howling in agony?” Dana said, still hand in hand with the Godslayer and Odysseia.
“Uh huh,” the Godslayer said, chortling. “It’s the sound of a long-established precedent shattering into a million pieces, and the howling of the remaining Younger Gods, who just realized their unnatural lives have become even more fragile. The Indigo really has become Hell on wheels, now.”
Both Dana and Odysseia groaned at the Godslayer’s latest.
“It’s like there’s a billion ‘me’s now,” Lydia said, after many hours of recovery and making out with Bob. Bob glowed whenever he saw Lydia or heard her voice. S’up and PheareChylde were still out, much worse off as they hadn’t had Angelic Dana to help them while they had been dead. “I thought I’d be an Angel.”
“Not yet,” Dana said. She had found Richard’s arms after she had recovered from bringing Kara Minor back from Hell, and they had exchanged the stories of their experiences. Afterwards, they had meandered back to Maria’s territorial headquarters, currently nothing more than a large dome of stabilized rubble. Nessa’s family was there, as was Odysseia. “I only get to be one, here on Earth, because I’m a leader of a future group of Angels.”
“The term’s Archangel, my dear,” Odysseia said…and then continued, sotto voice: “All bow down before her and despair.”
“Odysseia! Please!” Dana said. She finally understood Kara the Godslayer’s reluctance to use her titles. “There’s no need to rub people’s noses in my uniqueness.”
“Running from the truth isn’t wise.”
“An’ that’s no lie,” Nessa said, cuddling with Ken in a mound of blankets and pillows, mouth full of chocolate. She was back among the single-bodied and possibly sane, at least after they had talked her out of messing up reporters’ minds for grins.
“No worries,” Lydia said, rolling her eyes. “Okay, so what am I?”
“Besides a future Angel? You’re Lydia squared. You’re one of Bob’s neo-Supported, with the alterations associated with his change from Territorial to Ideological. Plus the purification effects of resurrection. Plus Natural Supported, complete with the benefits for being the first Natural Supported, as ‘being first’ is an important thing Mission-wise. In essence, you’re Bob’s best ever neo-Supported,” Dana said.
“Oh em gee, I’m a fucking video game character? This isn’t fair! I signed up for this not!” Lydia sighed and shook her head. “For one thing, no more warrior for me. I refuse. The peace of God is, um, contagious.”
“Is any of this what we signed up for?” Dana said. “Besides, I think it’s more than that. Much more than that. You’ll learn. Dive in and find out what’s there!”
“Yay for me.” Frown.
Objectively, the realization terrified her, making her wonder about the state of her own head. Dana put that firmly in the back of her mind, for deep cogitation when she had some meditation time.
She caught Dave’s eyes for a moment, and then nodded at his nod. As usual, they had changed; as usual, they had their usual urges to repress. They would likely fall into each other’s arms for a long kiss, followed by another long intimate talk; they would both continue to grow.
Lydia shivered. “I hope you don’t all mind that I’ve changed. Dana’s right, this death thing’s a hell of an eyelid remover. I’m more connected to things. This isn’t maturity. For one thing, I keep finding my inner child everywhere, and I like her. But this is spooky. I see things.” She paused and turned to Maria. “You know, you met Nessa and Ken back in your movie star days.”
Maria turned from her attempts to create functional furniture. So far, the furniture looked good, but all the pieces were made of stone. And every time she created a piece of furniture, she stole a chunk from the wall of the dome. “I did?”
“You were thinking of hiring them as psychic detectives, but you exorcised the ghost yourself,” Lydia said.
Dana frowned. Yes, inner child at work; yes, Lydia was indeed going to be more Lydia-like than before, and far more trouble.
Maria gasped, her eyes becoming wide Os. “Yes! I’d forgotten.”
“There was no ghost,” Ken said, not batting an eye. “I’d wondered if you had once been Karen Maria Haller.”
Nessa, head in Ken’s lap, turned a bit and winked at Dana. She looked like the cat that ate the canary. Telepaths…
“If not a ghost, then what was going on?” Maria said. She looked like her old Karen Maria Haller self, but better, far more diva. Her attempt to make Elorie so good looking the world forgot Maria’s old movie star looks had now failed.
“You’re an occultist, okay, you were an occultist,” Ken said. “The Lorenzi-magic version of a Psychic; you didn’t do magic but magic occurred around you, and you were sensitive to what you created. The ghost was a magic spell someone else cast that had gone evil and taken on a life of its own.”
“Me? An occultist?” Maria said, and then shrugged. “Okay, I guess that explains several other freaky things that happened to me before I became a God.” She frowned. “Out with it, Ken.”
“You don’t want to know,” Ken said, an annoyingly superior look on his face.
Dana frowned, thought, and figured it out. “They’re all occultists, weren’t they?” They being the 99 Gods.
“Uh huh,” Ken said. “I’m not sure we need to spread this around. The knowledge might confuse the issue.”
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Maria got it and her face went blank.
Lydia just grinned. “You know, Boss,” she said, changing the subject and turning toward Dana. “If I had to guess, I’d say you’re pregnant. Like, uh, as in today.”
What had Richard said, about three times being the charm – in reference to, well, the removal of her nicely former-again virginity. “Uh, Lydia,” Dana said. “I wasn’t going to bring this up until you were more recovered, but so are you. We’re going to be raising a couple of replacement North American Gods.”
“The cycle continues!” Nessa said, googley eyed. “Behold the powwwwer of the backwards marriage!”
Richard beamed; Dana leaned back in his arms and smirked at Nessa. Dave and Elorie, arm in arm, glowed with their now tangible linked immunities. Bob’s jaw dropped in shock; Lydia sidled over and let him lean on her. Maria, Bob’s birth mother, rolled her eyes. Nessa made a good Daughter of Light, though Dana suspected Nessa hadn’t figured out that ‘living fertility pill’ came with her job responsibilities.
“Go ahead, I dare you,” Ken said. “Tell that one to the next cable news reporter who comes by. I double-dog dare you!”
Nessa smiled.
Elorie, Dana and Lydia smiled back.
67. (John)
“We finally meet,” Sorrow said. She wiped tears from her divine eyes.
Bob bowed. “My companion, the one who transported me here, is Odysseia, the Great Satan.”
“You stole my name!” Bais said.
“Where you’re going the name would be a hindrance,” Odysseia said and winked.
All the Fallen Angels had awakened and gathered in the center courtyard of the village. At dawn, of course. The air carried the chill of oncoming winter in the darkness, and a solemn stillness. The Fallen Angels wouldn’t say a word, so John, Bais and Reed gathered as well; straggling in from a long night with Glory were a bleary eyed Lara and Grover. Lara’s eyes appeared puffy, sad and crying about something Indigo and obscure.
The Child of Morning’s appearance wasn’t a shock.
Odysseia was. John wanted to fight her. Just what the world needed, a Goddess of wrath. He realized his urges were artificial, a Mission-based skew, and ignored them.
“There are at least sixty gamme left to destroy, scattered all across the world,” John said, breaking the silence.
“Irrelevant,” Glory said. Her dalliance with Lara and Grover initially disgusted him, but he couldn’t argue with the results, as Glory no longer radiated evil. They had returned much of her former humanity to her. “The absent gamme we leave to the mortals to find and destroy in the fullness of time.”
“You leave this evil to the mortals?” John said. “I refuse.” The Fallen Angels rustled at his words, but did not speak.
“Don’t you worry,” Bob said. He had grown into an attractive young man, with shaggy brown hair, and a whipcord frame bursting with the energy of youth. “The last gamme we have to destroy is right here. There’s nothing more that needs to be done before I send you on.”
The Fallen Angels sighed, a sigh of divine pleasure.
“Last gamme here?” John said. “But we’ve already sent the Godkiller gamme on to God.” He turned to Cunning and Wisdom.
“Dig it up,” Wisdom said, solemn and formal.
Crap, John thought. He knew the damned Fallen Angels had been lying to him.
Earth fountained from the center of the courtyard. An iron box rose from deep underground, floated over to them, and landed. The chains unbound, the locks whirled, and the box opened.
Inside the box lay another, two feet by two feet by a foot and a half high, made of marble and ornately carved. The box inside glowed on its own.
“My my my,” Bais said. “Pandora’s box.”
“Yes,” Wisdom said. “The source of the legend. We won’t need to open the box.”
John rolled his eyes. “If only the destruction of this box would be able to undo the loosing of evil into the world.”
“As always, the legend did not match the truth, and the truth was far worse,” Wisdom said. “This box holds all the evil we were able to capture, the evil we made when we were young and foolish Gods and didn’t know any better. Untold Witch Mountains. The way to a million million universes lies in here. The close ones, that is, those within the ambit of the Land of Perils. With its end, we formally lay to rest humanity’s last chance at being the lords of the multiverse. With this gone, you can now calmly explore the multiverse without the fear of letting loose your imperialist dreams and nightmares.”
Sorrow smiled. “Any takers? Anyone want to take a peek inside at what we hid?”
“Over my dead body,” Bais said.
“I’ll second that,” John said.
“There’s no way,” Lara said, hand in hand with Grover. “It sounds too easy, and ‘too easy’ always leads to evil.”
“Too bad,” Sorrow said. “But, as we learned, the ‘lords of the multiverse’ future was nothing but a bad dream. Lara and Grover, the responsibility passes to you now.” They nodded. “You and your heirs will have the responsibility for preventing the other universes from becoming an obsession.”
“I thought you said any cross universe exploration would be corrupting,” Grover said.
Sorrow nodded. “I did, but Odysseia’s victory proves humanity can cope with small to moderate amounts of corruption. The key to how much lies within your Indigo group and the spreading of the inseeing skills. Inseeing, mindfulness by another name, is the key to the answer to the question of ‘how much is too much?’” Sorrow shook her head. “Though I do worry about your Indigo ethos, and how anyone could consider us loveable.”
“Love is how you fight off the terror of the dark,” Lara said. “The Constellations – the Elder Gods of Hell – are beyond the human word ‘evil’. You are like us.” She turned to Bob. “Let this be a warning about the Indigo. We may be full of love, but we, too, are capable of evil when we face an enemy or need to protect our friends.”
Bob nodded, but he radiated befuddlement. John predicted the now grown-up Kid God would be spending a great deal of time with Lara and Grover, attempting to understand them. If John read the situation correctly, the Indigo was moving into another period where Lara and Grover and the other non-combatants would lead the Indigo. Time for inspiration, studied paranoia, and love – and not war.
“So how do we destroy the box?” Bob said, after turning to John.
“We merge with the box, go in, and destroy the box’s abnormal soul,” John said. “When I did the job alone, Cunning went in with me.”
“This time I go in as well, as I am the Child of Morning’s companion,” Glory said. Sorrow snorted.
“Feel free,” Sorrow said. “I did my part shepherding the Father of Darkness for a millennia. I do not need to lend my effort to this.”
“Hey,” Bob said. “I thought you were Nessa’s shepherd.”
“She never knew, but I was her true companion,” Cunning, John’s body double, said. “I masqueraded as one of her ‘distant adult Telepath’ mind-friends for most of her life. She always bugged the crap out of me, and so I gave her hell, but I never even suspected she was the Daughter of Light until she came here and told us. Learn that lesson well: the Ha-qodeshim are tricky.”
John didn’t want to know. There was contagion here, the deep currents, the magic of holy Earth, all beyond his ability to sort out. Each of the prophesied ones had been played with by the Fallen Angels. He had no idea what Glory had done to Bob, but his thoughts instinctively turned to the tales he had heard about Richard of Orlando’s group’s long battles with the City of God. Deaths of friends, deaths of lovers, resurrection and now, the battles over, a marriage. Pain causing growth and heroism, yes, all was Glory’s way.
However, what of Cunning’s convoluted mind had rubbed off on the seemingly guile-less Nessa? Pah. He didn’t have time for such falderal now.
“In any event, let’s do this,” John said. He wished Nessa was her
e, but in truth she would likely fight with everyone about everything. She embodied conflict, and although it had taken him a thousand years of life to be able to understand such complexities and deep magic, conflict illuminated.
They went into the Pandora’s Box gamme.
“Archangel Dominick,” John said, surprised, bowing. Of all the people, loosely speaking, he hadn’t expected to arrive at the Fallen Angel village, Dominick led the list. “So you weren’t a figment of my imagination, eh?”
“You, I predict, are going to pinch God Almighty’s nose to verify his reality,” Dominick said. He towered over John, Angelic, otherworldly and wise. “I would have thought my Host’s work would have already proven my reality to you.”
John shrugged. “I’ve been wrong enough times before, and Dubuque’s hostility to me led me to suspect that the Host had, um, another origin.”
Five hundred and forty seven years had passed since the day he had rescued Archangel Dominick from a cabal of five Shamans and three evil magicians. They had bound Dominick into a stone and were using him for magical power. Dominick hadn’t been amused. John looked around for Bais, figuring that she needed to meet Dominick, just to verify John’s old story. He spotted her by the well, looking at him and right through Dominick.
“She cannot see me. I am here only as a witness, and only appear to you because of my debt.”
Ah. “I could have used your help earlier, you know.”
Dominick laughed. “Who do you think answered your prayer while you were stuck in a coffin in Dubuque’s old lair? All the many Angels who knew you in life did all we could for you, without violating the Test. How could we not?”
John licked his lips and shivered for a moment. “I thank you, then.”
The Archangel bowed back. “Father Philodelphius, now named Weeping for Cordoba, also sends his regards.” Dominick’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I shouldn’t say this, but he had to manfully restrain himself from strangling you during this mess. You’ve become far too dark for his taste.”
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 68