He hadn’t even gotten far enough in his conversation with Dubuque to talk about his suspicions regarding Atlanta’s actions.
“This coffin is a sign from God,” John said to himself, reminding him again of that box in Cordoba, and how he ended up inside. He had messed up. Badly. The fact he didn’t sing with angels surprised him, another sign from God, this one saying ‘you still have work to do, boyo, so go do it’.
Dubuque had killed him while doing his exorcism, or afterwards, controlling John’s mind in some screwy fashion to keep him from resisting. As usual, John’s unconscious mind, wielding his normally oath-quieted magic, brought him back after his death.
John had found many varieties and nuances of the supernatural over the years, but his mission focused on magicians who called on infernal spirits for their power and those taken over by the infernal spirits. He could undo their ability to use magic, and he knew through experience he was able to undo anyone’s ability to use any form of unnatural abilities.
However, the only form of the unnatural or supernatural he was able to undo directly was magic. He couldn’t free a victim from a Telepath’s mind control, or stop his telekinesis from picking up a rock, or stop a Shaman’s ritual from taming a wolf, or stop a Mystic from gaining his hunches. Not without attacking his ability to use his variety of unnatural.
John chose to view his current predicament as a test from God. He tried to open the coffin lid, physically, but he couldn’t. Dubuque’s holy willpower held it closed.
He pushed at the holy willpower lock, and it gave. Shocked, John pulled back, and didn’t dispel it. Dubuque’s holy willpower was magic. The 99, as he now feared, weren’t Living Saints wielding the miraculous power of angels and of God Almighty, but magicians wielding their own power, a new power akin to magic, but different.
The strictures of John’s mission thus allowed him to stop Dubuque.
But should he? God Almighty sent the 99 Gods. About this, John had no doubt. However, the chosen of God were still able to choose to do evil. Judas had. Besides, how many magicians had John met over the years who started out on the path of holy glory and who later fell to the infernal voices that plagued all magicians? Far far too many. And some fell fast. On the other hand, an magician God created and sanctioned by the Almighty might have been given the moral right to do whatever he wanted whenever he damn well wanted, even to someone like John, and John wasn’t sure he possessed the moral right to oppose a magician who wielded God’s authority.
He didn’t know enough. He needed to delve into the issue of the 99 Gods, all of whom he now suspected.
However, did he have the authority to do something even as minor as undoing Dubuque’s holy lock on his coffin? Even so small an act might cross a line he feared to cross.
Fearful, John did what he always did in such situations. He prayed.
The fact he had survived Dubuque’s anger was a message from God. It said, ‘submit to MY will’.
Thy will be done, John prayed. I submit myself to you. Whatever thou wilst, let it be done to me.
No answer.
John finally understood the voices outside his casket. One voice in particular, the same message spoken repeatedly: “Here lies a spawn of Satan, a witch, an evil man. Learn truly this lesson, that evil raised up against the power of a Living Saint must fall.”
A Living Saint must fall. The message made him shiver. His shiver was the prayer answer, a true call.
The Living Saint must fall.
His morality assuaged, John focused his own willpower, his own magic, and targeted it at the coffin lid. Undo! Dubuque’s hold on the coffin vanished and the coffin lid opened.
John sat up, his body old and creaky. The young man who spoke the words fled in terror in one direction, the audience of eleven men and women, slower to react, backed away and out of the room, similarly afraid. With a dusty ‘oof’, John climbed out of the coffin and stretched. Not too bad. His bier sat in some sort of rotunda, accessed by several halls. He picked a hall and started to jog, trying to figure out where in Dubuque’s home he might be, and where he needed to go to find Cosmo.
John didn’t find Cosmo, but he did find the main entrance to Dubuque’s abode. A functionary, not the same one who had admitted him but still young, healthy and athletic, protested as John passed him and a short line of petitioners waiting admittance. John ignored him.
As John stepped through the door, he looked up to see Dubuque, still glowing in his white holiness and streaking across the night sky like a comet, fly from elsewhere to meet him. John realized he had no options left but to fight, which despite the answer he had received from his prayer, sickened him. He wasn’t remotely prepared, physically or morally.
“Far enough, demon,” Dubuque said as his feet touched the faux marble steps to his home. John stopped, still under the cover of the entryway roof, yet again undone by Dubuque’s mental control. “Attend me, my friends, for another lesson. We have…”
These Gods didn’t know what they were doing, John realized. They possessed tremendous power, but didn’t understand how to use their power properly and efficiently.
John didn’t bother with any time-wasting banter. Instead, he muttered his old well-used magician-removal spell, fixing his eyes and mind on his target, the chattering Dubuque. His magic flowed into Dubuque and struck. The so-called Living Saint screamed and began to melt Wicked Witch of the West style. As he melted the faux building around them melted as well, revealing the parking lot it stood on, as well as a great many people.
Dubuque’s functionaries screamed and ran.
John chuckled, sick and thrilled at the same time. His magic was powerful.
He looked around, quickly, and didn’t spot Cosmo. Even with Dubuque’s magical house gone, he couldn’t find Cosmo. No choice remained but to leave his old companion in Dubuque’s hands.
Angry at the loss of Cosmo, his companion for nearly twenty years, John sprinted away, lumbering into the artificially lit night. Outside of the area where Dubuque’s faux house once stood, parked vehicles partly filled the Living Saint’s large parking lot. “You! Give me your car keys!” John said, loud and bellowing. The terrified woman stammered for a moment, gave John her keys, and ran away screaming. It appeared he had acquired himself a reputation.
John opened the car door and hauled himself in.
His attack on Dubuque confused him. He had fought long and hard fights in the past, often against powerful magicians able to destroy him in an instant if he didn’t strike first, but this? This was oil and water. Fast. He thought he whipped a horse with a buggy whip and instead set the saddle on fire. The fight had been flat out wrong. He came closer to killing Dubuque than removing Dubuque’s ability to use magic. John had to admit he didn’t know what in the hell happened.
Dubuque melted! What sort of beings were these Gods, anyway?
John blinked and saw, in the car’s side mirror, Dubuque’s parking lot home rebuilding itself. “Well, that was bloody fast,” he said, chewing his white moustache in consternation. John turned left, out of the parking lot now, and stamped the gas pedal to the floor. The vehicle sprang forward faster than he dared hope, but quietly, and he realized he was driving an effeminate electric vehicle.
He suspected little time left remained for him among the living. Any instant now the God would come nigh after John and smite him to his death in personal battle. John readied his dispel, fearful that another fight wouldn’t go so well as the last. Dire worries rumbled through John’s mind, horrible speculation of what a magician with the power of a God might do in this situation. He couldn’t get a sense for the power level of these Gods. Or their limitations. Or their morality.
While John scanned the sky behind him for a flying God, the car’s radio turned on.
“Lorenzi, you are now marked for justice,” Dubuque said, over the radio. “The entire world will know that Satan’s demon is on the loose. You will have nowhere to run. Your picture shall adorn the front page of
every news website. Surrender now!”
“Or what, you skanky dog?” John said under his breath, and turned off the radio. Melodramatic oaf. “I have to act fast, get some new identity papers, and move my resources around.” All the usual things. “Dubuque’s too newly empowered to know how to stop me. If I give him enough time to learn his chops…”
John sped on into the night, unwilling to finish that last spoken thought.
9. (Atlanta)
“It’s good to see you again in person,” Phoenix said. Atlanta shook his hand. Phoenix had been an older Hispanic man before his apotheosis, but to Atlanta the Marine Corps tattoo on his shoulder had made all the difference in the world. She had told him she flew CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift helicopters for the Corps first thing, and he immediately stopped looking at her as a pushy black bitch. “I sense Portland on her way here. Did you invite her?” Phoenix appeared two decades younger than the last time Atlanta had seen him, a level of Imago change she hadn’t had the nerve to try. The most she had done was darken her skin from coffee brown to jet black.
“Yes. This is Dana Ravencraft, a magician, um, supported, with Portland’s power.”
“Pleased to meet you, Phoenix,” Dana said, and shook his hand. Dark circles bagged under Dana’s eyes, and her minimal makeup had worn thin. She was exhausted, no sleep since her rescue, four different flights as Atlanta had ferried her from one location to another, the meeting in the Anime Café and now this meeting. Less than a day had passed since she had rescued Dana.
“Interesting,” Phoenix said to Dana. He and Dana chatted while Atlanta paced around the motel room Dana had rented for her. Dana had given her a very strange look when Atlanta had asked Dana to arrange the rental, but the state of Atlanta’s pathetic finances could remain a secret until Dana officially accepted her chief of staff job.
“You’re nervous,” Phoenix said to Atlanta a few minutes later. “Something’s bothering you.”
Atlanta nodded. She perched herself on the end of the motel room bed. “Lots of things. I’m not going to talk about my issues until Portland gets here.”
Phoenix shook his head and went back to chatting with Dana.
“They what?” Portland said. She frowned. “Absurd!”
“Nevertheless,” Dana said, more relaxed after Portland’s arrival. “I’d done nothing more than talk to some of the people they’d bludgeoned into vacating their lease on the 64th floor of the Trump Tower when Indulgence grabbed me and accused me of spying.”
Portland’s physical appearance hadn’t changed a bit since Apotheosis. She remained an exceptionally short woman of ample thickness, middle aged, with Native American or Hispanic ancestors, possibly both. At least she dressed well.
Portland’s eyes had become warier, though.
The three Gods and Dana sat around a table in the motel room, all official-like. Phoenix, the most careful among them about appearances, had enlarged the table to a more impressive godly size and had temporarily vanished the rest of the motel furniture.
Atlanta told the other Gods about her encounter with the Suits and how she had discovered their actions because of the impact on the joint godly Integrity. The others didn’t much like to hear how they had missed something so significant to them all.
“I worry most about the Ideological Gods,” Atlanta said. “Our creators implied the Ideological Gods needed to keep their heads down for Mission success, which I thought was backwards at the time, but the Seven Suits listened. They’re up to something bad and secret, and I don’t like their attitude toward mortals with unnatural tricks.” Far too many of them she considered under her protection. “I also wonder what the other Ideologicals are doing and whether the world is going to survive. How much meddling can our world take before it falls apart?”
Phoenix drummed his fingers on the divinely enlarged table. “I don’t know the answer to your questions, but you’re right. Unfortunately, we know so little about ourselves. What I want to know is how our disruptions as Territorial Gods are going to affect things. I find myself hesitant to act for fear of causing more problems than I solve.”
His statement fit, unfortunately, with her analysis of Phoenix.
“I’ve run into some problems, too,” Portland said. “In a different area. Worshippers.”
Atlanta frowned, surprised.
“I don’t understand,” Phoenix said. “The Angels implied we’d be worshipped.”
“You forget something Dominick spoke of, Phoenix,” Atlanta said, about the chief of the Angelic Host, the entity Jan and the other Indigo analysts hypothesized was an honest-to-God Archangel. Atlanta still wasn’t happy with Jan’s follow-up comment that according to Atlanta’s description Dominick possessed the same ‘what I say defines mundane reality’ aura possessed by the one alien Archangel they had met. Atlanta knew the Indigo got into some hairy messes, but alien Archangels? “I quote: ‘The three aspects of Rapture are adoration, awe, and the holy strength of your followers; each has its own pitfalls and benefits; as you explore you will find a path of moderation to be best.’ Unquote.”
“Adoration means worship, Atlanta,” Phoenix said. Portland shook her head.
“Yes, but outright worship doesn’t fit with the moderate aspects of adoration. I’m afraid I agree with Portland,” Atlanta said. “I had some people worshipping me and their worship made me both sick and high. I stopped them.” After figuring out she had a problem, but not knowing why, she had searched her feelings and found the point of illness in her mind. In the same way as she later would find the hurt to the Gods’ Integrity, she had searched out and found the source of the sickness and pleasure. Her meditations had led her to a church and to a minister who had his whole damned Baptist church worshipping her instead of God Almighty.
“Did any survive?” Dana said, tsk tsking.
Atlanta frowned. “They’d done me no wrong save from ignorance,” Atlanta said. She had given them a divinely charismatic sermon straight out of her childhood memory, the one about the Israelites turning their back on God to worship the golden calf. Her sermon convinced them to desist, though afterwards she suspected she could get the whole lot of them to jump off a cliff for her if she asked.
“So you detected a harm to your Rapture?” Phoenix said. She nodded. “You’re more sensitive than I am. You proved that with the Integrity hit. Some people do worship me, people who’ve put me on an exceedingly tall pedestal. I may be in danger.”
“You need to stop them,” Portland said. “Atlanta’s right. Worship is like a drug. I didn’t experience the effects of worship in exactly the same way she did, but I felt the worshippers’ thoughts and desires eating at my mind and my willpower – in the mundane sense of the word – and they continued to do so until I stopped them from worshipping me. I sent them all off to counselors.”
“Counselors?” Atlanta said. The Host had given Portland divine gifts powerful enough to stop wars and blessed her with the moral responsibility to do so, but when she ran into a problem with some normals she sent them to counselors?
Portland shook her head and politely ignored Atlanta’s comment. “Several Territorial Gods are encouraging worshippers. I shudder to think what this is doing to them. They need to be told and led back to the more moderate path.”
“But when does adoration turn into worship?” Phoenix said. “This is a very difficult line for me, and the mortals will have even more problems, I fear.” Atlanta wanted to bark out a comment to stop acting like a potential recruit with an ASVAB waiver, but held back. His reaction felt a hair off, his voice deeper and smoother than his question entailed.
“Think celebrity worship and role models instead of ‘great holy God, you’re everything to me’ religious worship,” Dana said. “I believe the difference is, if I may say so, that you’re supposed to be leading us to God, not to yourselves.” The thing that most struck Atlanta about Dana was her ability to debate, forcefully, with the Gods. She was the only mortal Atlanta had found with enough spi
ne to do so.
Portland made a face. “God. This would all be so much easier if God had shown his face to us. Or Jesus had. Or Buddha. Muhammad. Or even the Archangels named in the canonical Bible and the Apocrypha. Instead, we got a bunch of screwy named spirits who implied they were Angels, called themselves the Angelic Host and said they represented God Almighty, leaving us to take their claim on faith. They felt holy to me…” She paused. “But not all of the 99 agreed.”
“What did they claim?” Dana leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “What’s their origin?” Phoenix froze and turned away. Portland’s eyes unfocused. Atlanta could tell Portland struggled for the right words. Atlanta hesitated herself, finding something innate in her that didn’t want to spill the secrets of the Angelic Host. She willed her way around the restriction, at least a little.
“In their own words, our creators said they were newborn, just under half a millennium old, and they served God Almighty,” Atlanta said.
“That sounds like a lot of nothing,” Dana said. “Surely they said something?”
“Well, in addition to the ‘no wars between nations’ commandment we were to relay from God, our creators also said they had been invited by Earth’s holiest to judge the ills and potential strengths of modern civilization,” Atlanta said. Given the resistance within her, to her own words, she suspected Dana was the first mortal to hear this. “The Host says we, the 99 Gods, are the living embodiments of modern civilization, the archetypes of modern civilization, and the success or failure of humanity and modern civilization will be judged by our actions. Through our miraculous willpower the appropriate rewards and punishments will appear.” She paused. “All of which I struggle to understand. The more time goes on, the less sense his words make.” When she had heard Dominick’s reality-defining words the first time she had been fully convinced, and intuitively and fully understood all the nuances.
But no longer.
“Yes, his words make less and less sense,” Phoenix said, unfrozen. He smiled at Dana, finally appreciating what had attracted Atlanta to the pushy young woman. “I’m afraid, though, that Portland’s right and true worship of us is wrong. The Angels, and I wish you two would admit they are Angels, didn’t tell us to be worshipped. My hubris led me to twist their words to that end.”
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