2 The Judas Kiss (23 page)

             
“Matter manipulation,” Alex said with a shrug.  She shifted onto her stomach and cupped her chin in her hands.  “It’s really simple.  You see, we’re all one big mass of energy trapped inside matter.  Every single ball of energy vibrates at a certain level.  The higher the vibration, the more control over matter we have.  It’s not really complicated, and it’s completely organic.  I can shift my energy away from me, wrap it around that bottle there,” she paused and Ben looked over to see the now-empty champagne bottle floating a few inches above the table, “and lift it up.  It’s the same as doing it with your hand, only I don’t need to use my own matter to do it.  I can use my energy.  And the more practice with it, the faster you get.”

             
“So why can’t humans do it?” Ben demanded.  “If, like you said, we’re all big, vibrating balls of energy.”

             
“Your evolutionary process,” Alex said.  “You’ll get there eventually, just like we did.  Soon enough your bodies will become unnecessary and your species as a whole will be ready to move on.”

             
Ben was getting a headache trying to contemplate everything she was saying.  On one hand, especially since he was drunk, it made complete sense.  On the other hand, he was talking to Thor inside of a young English woman’s body and that was just absolutely and completely insane.

             
He shook his head and groaned.  “Why are we still sitting here?”

             
“Unfortunately,” Alex said, now picking at her fingernails, “we’ve gotta wait on Andrew to return, and believe me, I don’t like being stuck in here any more than you do.  Truthfully I’d like to be out on that beach half naked watching people watch me.  It’s good for business, you know, understanding the psyche of these beach bros.  I sell a lot of crap to a lot of people based off of information from social experiments.”

             
Ben rolled his eyes and walked to the window, opening it to let some of the smoke out.  He was most certainly going to be charged for the cigarette smell at this point, but he resigned himself to his fate.  Insane situations with huge hotel bills to follow.  He sighed and pressed his forehead against the cool glass, kneading his skin gently from side to side. 

             
“I know this sucks, okay.  I get it.  I realize you don’t believe me, but I understand humans a lot better than my compadres do, and I sympathize.  I mean hell, you’ve got this whole big burden thing, you had to deal with the death of your sister, which by the way I hope Andrew bothered to tell you that she’s still alive.”

             
“He did,” Ben muttered tonelessly.  He was in no mood to drudge up that emotional tidal wave right then, and he wanted to move on.

             
“Good well, that’s something, then.  Andrew doesn’t really have the comprehension of human compassion, so I figured he was a bit rough, or that he’d forgotten completely.”

             
“Moving on,” Ben said quietly.

             
“Moving on,” Alex said.  Ben looked over his shoulder and saw she’d gotten up from the bed and was standing a few feet behind him.  “If I had any idea what Nike was up to, I’d stop her, okay?  I have a huge stake in this world with no intention of letting that crazy bitch put things upside down.  All I know right now is that you and your sister are important, and if we have a shot at ending whatever her madness is all about, it’s because we’ve got you working against her.”

             
“And what about Mark and Judas?  What’s their whole big deal about this?  I get Mark’s weird I can control cults with my words or whatever,” Ben said with only a touch of sarcasm, “but I don’t understand why they need them.”

             
“I don’t either,” Alex confessed.  She spread her hands out and gave a helpless shrug.  “The good news is, Nike loves to talk.  She’s a complete moron, really sort of Bond-Villain-y you know, spilling her guts when she thinks she’s won.  She thinks she’s really clever, but I’m betting by now she’s spilled everything to Judas and Mark, and what we have on our side…”

             
“They can’t die,” Ben finished for her.  Whether or not he believed that, he stayed sane by treating the insanity as fact.  He was a detective, he functioned on facts, and if he put these clues together like a case, he could keep his head from spinning in violent circles.  “So whatever she has planned for them, if we can get to them, we can figure out how to stop her.”

             
“Exactly.  And if my pally-pal Andrew pulls off what he’s trying to pull off right now, we may have a location on where she’s keeping those two biblical fellows.”

             
“And then what?” Ben asked, feeling the alcohol start to wear off and a headache start to form.  He grabbed for the water and took a big drink.  “Last time we had to blow up an entire goddamn compound to stop her from doing whatever it was she was planning on doing.  I don’t exactly have the resources to pull off something like that, and frankly, I don’t want to.  Innocent people died.  I shot people in the fucking head, for Christ’s sake, and I’m not exactly interested in having a repeat of that incident.”

             
Alex looked sad suddenly, her eyes going soft and arms falling to her sides.  “I know, and that was terrible, and I don’t want anything like that to happen again.  I promise.  Last time you didn’t exactly have a cohesive Scooby-Do gang.  I mean, you had Asclepius, for god’s sake, the stripper-loving boozer who really doesn’t exist to do anything besides have sex and spend all of Greg’s hard-earned money on over-priced Cuban cigars.  And Mark was a little deranged at the time, being all desperate for his friend and what not.  This time it’s a little better.”

             
“You mean some sociopathic god with no desire to have anything to do with humanity and an advertising exec who’s currently possessing an English nanny?” Ben challenged.

             
Alex threw her head back and laughed.  “Well when you put it that way…”

             
“I guess it’s the best I’ve got,” Ben said.  He pulled out his phone and stared at the screen, contemplating calling Stella.  He didn’t know what she was up to, or how deeply involved she was, but so far Alex hadn’t warned him off of her, and he took that as a good sign.  Depending on what she knew and how strong her god-side could be, Ben wondered if maybe she could help.

             
Then again, Ben thought, feeling his body go tense at the very idea, her god side could also be working against them.  It may have been Stella’s god-half that was drugging Abby, or worse, tipping off their locations and plans to rescue Abby.

             
“That’s not the best idea,” Alex said, startling Ben out of his thoughts.  She closed her hand around Ben’s wrist, lightly, but Ben could feel the power and strength behind the grip.  “I know what you’re thinking, but until we’re sure about Stella’s intentions, I think we should probably keep her out of this.”

             
Ben peered out the window again.  They’d been in the room for a few hours now, but the sun was still shining high, and the slight breeze was calling Ben out.  He started to feel claustrophobic, and he slipped the phone into his pocket as he fixed Alex with an almost begging stare.  “I need a walk.”

             
Alex glanced over at the small radio-clock on the nightstand and gave a small shrug.  “Andrew will know how to reach me if he needs me.  Let’s head down to the water.”

             
The hotel they were at was bayside, not a lot of tourists, a few shops, and the sand around the water was rougher, full of broken mussel shells and bits of rock.  There were boats at the dock nearby, but Alex led the way down to the shores where families had set up wide beach towels, rainbow colored umbrellas to blot out the sun, and children ran around, playing in the calm, shallow waters trapped in by the long, near-black jetties. 

             
Ben held his hand to his forehead as he toed off his shoes and kicked them near the low wall.  Alex did the same, smiling a little as she slipped her hand into Ben’s warm, clammy palm.  “Sweaty palms.  Do I make you nervous?”

             
Ben rolled his eyes.  “Don’t you think someone’s going to miss her?”

             
“Miss who?” Alex said as she pulled him down to where the tiny waves lapped at the sand.  The water was cold, the warm currents hadn’t made it to shore yet, but the warm summer waters were on their way.  The small rocks were smooth and gentle beneath Ben’s feet and he remembered loving Mission Bay when he was a boy. 

             
“Olivia,” Ben said a little impatiently.  “I figured you were just borrowing her for the morning.”

             
“Isn’t she on vacation?” Alex asked shoving her free hand into her pocket while clinging to Ben’s with the other.  “Her sister was telling her to enjoy her day when I popped on in.  She’s going to be fine, you know.  We’re not like those clumsy Greeks, tearing apart the human psyche, destroying their bodies, leaving a death toll in our wake.  We’re kind, we co-exist rather harmoniously and we can stay in the bodies indefinitely if we wish.”

             
Ben frowned, looking at Alex’s petite face, trying to picture this personality in the body of a broad, tall man heading up an advertising company.  “So some unwitting human just let you have his body for good?  Where is it right now, anyway?”

             
Alex was silent as she stared out at the water at a few people hurtling around on jet skis.  “On life support in a hidden room in my office,” she said, finally looking at Ben.  “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to body hop in my years wearing Mr. Alexander Torch.”

             
“Explain?” Ben asked shortly.  He trailed his foot a little in the sand, watching it shift up into small mountains on either side of the ditch he created with his toes.  A tiny sand crab popped up and scuttled down again, making Ben wonder if he’d seen it at all.

             
Alex was silent for a while as they walked, her eyes darting around to the families playing, eating, sunning themselves.  She looked at Ben and smiled a little, shaking her head.  “I never had children, you know.  My people, we didn’t really procreate the way the Greeks did.  We weren’t really built that way, and humans weren’t around when most of us had our corporeal nature.  I regret that, from time to time.  I think I’d make a pretty good father… or mother.  Or you know, whatever.”

             
Ben wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he stayed silent, following her along, enjoying the feel of the water on his feet, the sounds around him, the soothing nature of the place where the raging ocean met the steady land.  Her hand squeezed his a little tighter and for a moment he let himself slip into the idea that things were normal, he’d fallen in love, and he was just strolling the beach with his partner.  It was a nice fantasy, but so brief.

             
“I’d been without a body for several years.  A break, I called it, but it was at least five hundred years since I’d had a steady vessel.  People depressed me, as much as they fascinated me, and I couldn’t understand why they insisted on being so miserable when the keys to their enlightenment and peace were resting inside of themselves.  I watched them murder each other over a god that had abandoned this realm before any of them really even bothered to start worshiping him.  They tortured their fellow man over the color of their skin or who they chose to take to bed.  They still do, and it’s so confusing.”  She wiped the back of her hand across her brow and then on the side of her jeans. 

             
“Human nature,” Ben said, but truthfully, he didn’t believe that.  He knew that humans were capable of so much more, and he always felt that racism and bigotry were just excuses to give in to the violent side of things.

             
“That’s only one tiny corner in the vast infinity that is human nature,” Alex said with a small smile.  “Yet people love it, so much.  I still don’t fully understand it, though being in a human body gives me a better insight.  We don’t really hurt, the gods inside of vessels, but we have a better concept of mortality, of love and loss, of joy and pain, than we do when we’re existing in our natural form.  I’d been watching Mr. Torch for some time.  He was a smart enough kid, about nineteen when he discovered his condition.  Something genetic, rare.  I don’t remember the name, but it was killing him.  It was a trade, you could call it, I got his body, he got to spend the last days of his conscious human existence living in a fantasy world.  Booze, women, money, you name it, I created it.  He only lasted about a year, I think, and then he left.  I can sustain his body on life support when I’m away, but I try not to keep out for too long.”

             
“So what does that mean?  Do you die?  Does the body just go on living?” Ben asked quietly.  They’d come to the end of the beach and turned around slowly, heading back to where they’d kicked off their shoes.

             
“The cells in the body will eventually cease to replicate.  The body will age and die, and I’ll move on,” Alex said.  “It’s tough.  I grow to love my vessels.  I mourn and I’ll never forget them.  Alex was a good person, he wasn’t bitter when he left.  It was a fair trade, I think.”