Dave blow-dried his thinning hair, put down the hair dryer, and put on his own robe. After walking out into the front room, he stood and watched the cable news from behind Elorie until he determined they didn’t have anything new and huge to report. He went and sat in a chair ninety degrees off from where Elorie sat when they segued into the every-half-hour celebrity news segment.
“You were in a foul mood earlier today, Elorie,” Dave said. “How come?” The last he said nastier than normal and quite on purpose.
“Nothing I want to talk about,” Elorie said, intent on news of one of the master auteurs’ latest projects. Her anger and moodiness had vanished after Darrel had found the Ecumenists.
Dave slumped in his chair. She hadn’t risen to the bait, which left him for a loss. She hated to talk about their work in the evening, the obvious next gambit. Of course, ditching their work talk left the living room elephant topic, their personal life, just sitting there. Elorie had been relieved to be able to ignore the subject. What irked him most was the grief he got from the others about his and Elorie’s imagined wild orgies…or lack thereof.
Time to be stupid, he decided.
“This is getting on my nerves, Elorie. I don’t like this, and…”
Elorie clicked off the television with the remote and turned to him, livid and angry. “I said I don’t want to talk about it!”
Caution froze Dave in place, staring at Elorie. He didn’t trust himself to answer or yell back. Instead, he waited.
“You don’t…” Elorie took a deep breath to erase the yell from her voice. “I could just kill Jack and Lisa. At least the others pretended to be happy when you and Darrel grabbed the prize out of their hands and found where the Ecumenists went.”
“You didn’t seem pleased either,” Dave said. If Elorie was starting a hated work discussion in the evening, he decided whatever she didn’t want to talk about was much worse.
“I’m trying not to play favorites,” Elorie said. “No, scratch that. I’m treating you worse than the others because I’ve been told by a couple of them I’ve been too easy on you.” She glared at him and dared him to take her to task for this.
“So was my discovery a good thing or not?”
“Yes, of course! Dammit, Dave, I’m not an imbecile.” Dave noticed Elorie’s hands shaking with small motions. She fought anger as well. “Your discovery was uncanny.”
“I didn’t appreciate the ‘okay, Dave, how’d you cheat’ comments from your or anyone else.”
“I never said you cheated.”
“You implied so when you asked if I had any inside information.”
Elorie leaned forward and gripped her knees. “That was an obvious question to ask. Don’t you dare give me a hard time for asking obvious questions!” The last she almost shouted.
“Well, pardon me if I’m a little upset because everyone thinks I’m such a dolt that I couldn’t have figured out the answers using logic.” His feet tapped.
“Things would work better if you weren’t so thin skinned.”
That dragged his goat. “Thin skinned? I’ve taken a lot of crap from the others and I haven’t barked back even once!”
“You don’t have to bark back at people to show you’re thin skinned. Your response is in your posture and in what you do. You frown. You stalk. You sit in the corner and stare.” Elorie took a deep breath and forced herself back down in her chair. “Not, mind you, that I wouldn’t have done much worse in your shoes,” she said, more calmly.
Dave’s heart hammered, but he managed to retrieve his lost control. “What would you have done?”
“The first time someone abused me, I would have told the perpetrator their behavior wasn’t professional and I would demand they acted in a more professional manner.”
“Well, you’re not me, then, because I’ve never had to do that in my professional life,” Dave said. “I’ve been harassed before and my normal tactic is to soldier on and do my job. Not respond. Eventually people give up. My tactic’s never failed like this before.”
Elorie waved her hands. “Okay, fine. Whatever you normally do isn’t working this time. Try something else. You’re making everything unbearable!”
She shouted her last sentence. He thought her comment excessive. He didn’t see where the anger in her last comment came from.
“El…”
“And I don’t like being called ‘El’ in a professional environment!” She stood, walked off to the bedroom, and slammed the door.
Hey, wait a moment, he thought. Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to be slamming doors and stalking off tonight?
Dave waited until he cooled down before he went into the now dark bedroom. Elorie huddled under the blankets on the bed. He went and snuggled up behind her. She took his hand and squeezed.
Her hand was wet, and her breathing had a wet sound. He didn’t say anything.
“I guess I owe you an explanation,” Elorie said, five minutes later.
Dave grunted affirmation.
“I ditched the last of my pain pills yesterday,” Elorie said. “They were making me feel mind-muzzy during the day, which I took to be a sign that I didn’t need them for the pain any more. I wasn’t fully correct. No excuses, just facts.”
“What sort of pain?”
“What sort do you want?” Elorie said, harsh. “I don’t know or care. The pain’s all over. Withdrawal from the pain pills perhaps. Or something funky with the brain surgery the doctors did before they wrote me off. They took a tumor from my brain the size of a small apple, I’ll have you know, and they said there were other, inoperable, tumors buried in my head. I have no idea what’s going on with me.”
Pins and needles wracked his arms as he listened to her description. “I…”
“Don’t say a thing,” Elorie said. She wouldn’t want sympathy, pity, or anything close to either of those. Let me be strong, Dubuque, Dave prayed. “I wish I knew what Persona did to me when she put my cancer into remission. Are the tumors still in my head? I…”
Dave felt a sudden surge of wind flow through his mind and body and heard a voice in his head speak the words ‘You must follow her and go where she leads’. He twitched in shock, overcome by the unexpected.
“Dave?”
“You must follow her and go where she leads.”
“What?” Elorie turned toward him, puzzled. “Dave, your comment didn’t make any sense at all. Is something wrong?”
“Yah,” Dave said. The wind blowing through his mind vanished, leaving behind calm thoughts and a feeling of immense intense fortitude. His anger seemed so petty and distant now, so easy to ignore. “Something upsetting just happened to me.”
“I’m listening,” Elorie said. The glare reentered her voice. He ignored the glare with ease.
“When you talked tumors, I prayed for strength,” Dave said. “I got a verbal answer. The answer I got was the strange statement I said.”
“Dubuque?”
“Who else?”
“Freaky,” Elorie said, anger gone from her voice. A smile glittered on her face, barely visible in the dark, and she bounced up and down on the bed a little. “A real life prayer answer? In words? Just like that? Dubuque wants you to follow me?” She paused. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen in my world.” She paused again. “Of course, neither does getting healed by someone like Persona.” Another pause, along with the appearance of a vertical furrow above her nose, neatly outlined in shadow. “You were about to do something stupid that involved not following me, weren’t you?”
Ironic pain. “The thought crossed my mind,” Dave said.
“As in going to live in the men’s cabin?” As in ‘I can’t believe you’d be so stupid!’
Elorie had him pegged. He had been thinking along those lines. “Yes. I’m positive I could win them over.” If he had done as planned, he wouldn’t have ever seen that furrow above Elorie’s nose. What was he thinking?
“So, you’ve correctly identified the problem: livin
g here with me,” Elorie said. “We figured this might happen during our first night together.”
Meaning his realization shouldn’t have been a surprise. “Uh huh.” He thought, back on that first night, he would be able use his most excellent social talents to find a work-around that didn’t involve leaving Elorie. Silly him.
She shook her head, not much, just a little. His body melted beside hers, his anger gone, vanished in the remembrance of his love for her.
“Hmm,” she said. “Nice.”
“Uh huh.”
“I have an idea I haven’t shared with you, Dave,” Elorie said, hesitant. “An idea based on what I read of the personalities of the Telepaths I met. Ready?”
“Warning me? When you rip bandages, rip quickly.” Life’s a bitch, until she cries.
Elorie stuck her tongue out at him. “Okay. For some reason we don’t know yet, it’s important you’re set apart from the others.”
“Oh, just what I wanted to hear,” Dave said.
His love was oh so frustrating. A deeper part of him said ‘get used to it because that’s not ever going to change’. She had been similarly frustrating in high school.
“We can’t always be the good guy, socially,” Elorie said, snickering. She pushed him over on his back and curled a robed leg over his body. “I think you look good in the black hat. You’ve got a nice stone-face glower…”
Yah, I’ll just run them over with my love handles, Dave thought.
“So you’re not going to get on my case if I bark back at these idiots?”
“What? No, if you do that I’ll give you so much grief, in public, you’re going to get mad at me.” Elorie giggled again. “In private, my advice is go ahead and bark.”
Dave didn’t say anything, at a total loss for words for far longer than a normal conversational pause. Then he saw exactly what he should say: “Oh great swami, I hear and obey.”
Elorie barked laughter. “Yah, and I love you too.”
Her first ‘I love you’. His eyes opened wider and she kissed him on the nose. He blinked and smiled at her. “Me, too.”
She rolled off him and got out of bed, humming gaily. He sat up as she put on a robe and started to mess with her luggage. “There they are.”
He didn’t know what she had found, and she didn’t appear to be willing to tell him. “Come here. Stand.”
He did so, clueless. Elorie got down on one knee and in the dim light of the room, looked up at him with a strange beauteous expression on her face. She opened her right hand, which held two gold bands, and grabbed his right hand with hers. “Dave Estrada, will you marry me? Here? Now?”
Without thinking, he opened his mouth to say ‘Oh, that’s romantic’ before a tidal wave of WTF anxiety closed in on his mind. This was beyond strange, setting his woo-woo senses on fire, the strongest déjà vu moment he had ever experienced. Worse, he felt a dozen pairs of eyes on him, people, not Gods, all holding their breath and waiting for him to say ‘yes’. One was the other him from his original woo-woo moment he experienced the day Elorie came back into his life, the younger-looking demigod version of himself. “Surely you know she loves you. You have no idea how bad a disaster this prevents. Say yes!” the mental apparition of himself said.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll marry you.” Between Dubuque’s advice and his own mental apparition’s advice, how could he possibly say ‘no’?
Elorie smiled and undid her hand from his, took the wider ring, and stuck it on his finger. The ring fit uncannily well. “With this I thee wed.”
He paused, almost undone by the cheering section in his mind. He met Elorie’s gaze and blinked in sudden incomprehension. “You’re supposed to say something,” she hissed.
Oh. He took the smaller ring and placed it on her ring finger. “With this I thee wed,” he said.
The roar in his mind reached a crescendo and vanished.
Elorie stood and kissed him, and threw him back on the bed. From the wild look in her eyes, he expected her to start ripping off his clothes, but she didn’t. Instead, she propped an elbow on his belly and put her head on his chest, facing him. “I have a story to tell you, one I’ve been sitting on since this started,” she said. “Once upon a time, a Telepath by the name of Nessa Binglehauser lived alone in Alaska. One fine day, her old buddy Ken drove up her driveway to ask her if she knew anything about the origins of the 99 Gods…”
Nothing Dave had experienced since his life exploded upset him more than learning about Ken Bolnick’s purchase of the wedding bands, which exactly fit his and Elorie’s ring fingers, a purchase made six months before Elorie’s proposal.
“Dave, I have another thought that I’ve been sitting on,” Elorie said, about a half hour later. Someday they would get married in an official and legal ceremony. Not yet, though. “Sorta grim, sorta not my style to talk about, but after today and tonight, why not. Hon, if we succeed…uh, if we succeed and live through this, I’m not only going to be cured of my cancer but I’m going to be rebuilt. Persona’s comment was: ‘it’s not a question of what you used to look like, but what you want to look like’.” Elorie dimpled and spoke, breathlessly. “Think of the possibilities.” Pause. “I’m willing to take suggestions.”
“I… I…” Dave stammered and let his train of thought derail for long enough for him to recover. The events of the day left him twitchy. “That’s an invitation to chew on my foot, El. No matter what I say you’re going to kick my ass for saying it.”
“Uh huh,” Elorie said. The smile never left her face. “I wondered how you were going to wiggle out of that one, to tell you the truth, although the response I dreaded most was ‘I love the way you look just now’.”
“I’m not that callous.”
“After the way you got treated today at our work, I half expected it. Followed by a ‘just kidding’. Seriously, my point is that my lack of response these days isn’t permanent. I’m positive I can get Persona to fix my issues. I’m willing to wait if you are.”
Dave licked his lips and stalled for time. Elorie wanted to give up on even attempting sex until this was over and Persona put her back together; their private marriage would bind them, not the expected physical intimacies. Backwards! Freaky! Still…
“Of course, El.” A hell of a lie, but he had to respect her wishes on the subject. Especially after her earlier brain tumor comment. Jesus, God, and the Living Saints! If something like what happened to Elorie had happened to him, he would have been stuck in his bellybutton for years. He had had enough trouble with a few hints of degraded mental functions. His awe at her personal strength couldn’t help but grow. “Only one thing,” Dave said.
“Only one?”
“If you see a way to make things work between us, if you get the urge, don’t hold back. Do what you need to do.”
Elorie nodded. “Okay, Mr. Estrada-Portath. I guess you are going to follow me where I lead.”
Dave didn’t think the somewhat prim Living Saint had meant that.
18. (Nessa)
“From here on in I fly everyone,” Ken said. Nessa’s feet gently lifted off the ground, as did Ken’s and the bodyguards. The crate lifted as well. Nessa locked everyone’s minds down tight, leaking no thoughts. Her illusions covered them as best as possible, invisible, even taking advantage of her telepathy for extra protection. This was the most difficult of her tricks to detect, and she hoped the trick would be good enough this time. Covering their entire group was a stretch for her and she wouldn’t want to try to fool another powerful mature Telepath. She doubted she would succeed.
They flew into a two story office building filled with doctors, dentists, accountants and lawyers’ offices. The front door appeared to remain shut to any onlookers. Her illusion. Their target resided on the second floor, in four offices merged into one. The building was as dirty and dingy on the inside as out, skimpy on the maintenance and showing the faults of its construction though only eleven years old. Water stains marred the floors and ceilings on th
e second floor. The walls showed many cracks. Holes dotted the carpeting.
They didn’t announce themselves at the door to the target’s office, though Ken did slow them to slower than a walk, to avoid disturbing the air flow. As with the front door, Nessa covered their entrance with a mental illusion of a shut door. Luckily, the one particularly difficult to fool person didn’t have line-of-sight on the front door.
Ken flew them through the now open door and placed them down gently in front of their target’s desk. The crate continued forward, slowly, landing softly beside the desk. Only then did Nessa release the invisibility.
Their target, the God Nairobi, a non-imposing black man, wore a perfectly normal business suit. He put down his cell and looked up at them.
“Proper etiquette means nothing to you, does it?” Nairobi said. His eyes flickered to Nessa and Ken’s bodyguards, who faced the now closed office door instead of Nairobi, and to the crate.
“We could have attacked you from the invisibility, sir, and did not,” Ken said. “Consider we might have just freed Ms. Zumbrennen and escorted her out of here.” Uffie sat in the office next door, radiating anxiety. She and the rest of Nairobi’s crew had been alerted, but found their weapons now weighed a half ton each and all of the office doors in the place had shut, held tight by Ken’s telekinesis. “You didn’t honor our earlier agreement to meet. We had to take steps.”
Ken stopped and let Nairobi work through the chain of logic given by their actions and the implications of what they did and didn’t do.
Nairobi didn’t speak, but he did communicate to his nearby Supported. The divine telepathy trick had spread quickly among the Territorial Gods. Nessa suspected they all used the trick now, too useful for the Territorials and their necessary organizations to ignore. Nessa listened to Nairobi’s status check and a decision by Nairobi to have his Supported phone their more distant Supported and have them go to ground.
Ken teeked two chairs over, and he and Nessa sat.
99 Gods: Betrayer Page 24