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“Games.” I looked at Rose, but she was as confused as I was. “How does that work?”

“When you’re totally focused on a thing, it becomes real for you.” Aerin waved her hand toward Danya and Matthew. “Writers and artists do it all the time. They imbue their work with part of themselves, and that fragment speaks to others, making the work real for them as well. Same thing with a game. You get wrapped up in it, in making yourself better, or the best. You want to destroy your enemies, crush all resistance, and proclaim your victories. That striving, that drive for glory, is what Crom values. Someone dedicated to another deity won’t count as one of Crom’s followers, but anyone who isn’t spoken for does, as long as they’re playing or thinking about the game.”

Holy shit…no pun intended
. “That…could be a lot of followers.” The image of Ingrim Thain attempting to raise the dead at Mom’s funeral came to mind. Those who had been true believers in life were immune to his spell, regardless of who they had worshipped. That tended to support what Aerin was saying. Then my deep-seated abhorrence of proselytizing kicked in.

“There is a problem here. I don’t like the idea of recruiting for anyone. Promoting any faith by actively recruiting anyone is, well, against my religion.”

Angus snorted. “Good way to make sure your faith dies out. Why not forbid sex and recruiting new members, too?” He leaned forward. “Do your gods forbid showing your faith in action?”

I hesitated. “Well, no.”

“You can’t choose a faith you don’t know about.” He sat back and shrugged. “Anyway, it won’t impact anyone who’s already a believer.”

“Good, because that would be an absolute deal-breaker.” I took a moment to digest everything and try to think of what to do next. I came up short on ideas. On one hand, I could see the advantage in picking up the faith energy cast off by thousands of unwitting gamers. It wouldn’t be stealing so much as, well, Dumpster-diving. Collecting something that would otherwise be discarded and go to waste.

On the other hand, lack of refusal is not informed consent.

How much faith energy would this create? Enough to more than cover the effort expended, obviously. So it had to be a viable, dependable gain. It had to be enough to be worth working for.

I looked out at the lights of the Strip, staring at a bright orange sign blinking on the side of a pawn shop. Something about gold, no doubt, or how low their interest rate on loans was. Just another way the odds favor the house in this town.

I straightened up. The house percentage… A tiny little bite out of each dollar played. In the long run, with millions of dollars played in slot machines and table games, those millions of tiny bites add up. Enough to support an entire city.

I looked over at Matthew. He was still playing, but was low on lives and in the process of respawning. Someone had just killed him, and his body language made it clear he was looking for payback.
Destroy your enemies, crush all resistance, and proclaim your victories
, just as Aerin said.

It’s a gateway
. If Crom could establish dominion over the urge to win in gaming through one game, he could claim that energy from
all
games. It would unlock a vast influx of belief, without needing to convert believers. He’d be at least an order of magnitude more powerful.

Ancient and Mighty Crom, God of Pwnage, Sovereign of Gank, Dread Lord of Teabagging the Unrighteous…

Hmm. Maybe I should keep that train of thought to myself. I pushed the image away and focused on something safer. “What kind of game are we talking about here? What does Crom have in mind?”

Aerin said, “The working title is
Ecophage
. It’s a planetary-scale resource management game where the object is to guide humanity into creating a healthy environment, a stable political structure, and an economy that achieves true social justice while rewarding individual entrepreneurial spirit. The simulation parameters would use the Llewellyn world model as the resolution engine. At least, that’s how the Boss described it to me. Did any of that make sense to you?”

“Way too much of it. How much data does this model have?”

Geneva checked her notes. “Currently approaching twenty petabytes.”

“Blessed Mother…” I took a moment to check my math. Yep, twenty million gigabytes. I was glad I was already sitting down. It saved me from falling backward in my chair. “That’s…I don’t even know where to start. There is no way to put something like that on a DVD for a home PC.” I shook my head. “Honestly, I don’t know if I know enough to get past doing a design document.”

“You’ll have funding to pick the best people you know,” Aerin said. “Not to mention the full backing of Llewellyn Industries. It might be more possible than you believe.”

“I’ll have to think on it and try to get an idea of how to proceed. I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no, either.” The game parameters weren’t the only things I had to consider. Rose was keeping her feelings guarded, but I knew what her concerns would be. I picked up my wineglass again and filled my heart with liquid courage.

“Crom stands to benefit quite well from this arrangement, assuming I agree. What do I get out of it?”

“Aside from a god owing you a favor?” Aerin shrugged. “I’m sure money and success are part of the deal, since the whole plan depends on you turning out a product that sells well on a worldwide basis. If the afterlife concerns you, Odin and Crom are buddies. You could guarantee yourself a place in Valhalla as one of the
Einherjar
. Slaughter all day, party all night, never get older, and die so often you just stop counting. Besides, shield maidens are more fun than virgins of paradise, trust me.”

“I want Rose to be able to have children again.” I didn’t look at Rose as I said it; I couldn’t. “Can your god give her that? We’re past our allotted three years, and I don’t want it to end. It’s just…I love her too much not to ask.”

Aerin shrugged. “Let’s give it a shot.” She stood up and closed her eyes, touching a pendant of a sword through an anvil. The pendant lit up from within, golden motes of energy drifting out and racing around the room. They swirled around Rose, sinking into her skin—and then they vanished.

Aerin’s eyebrows went up. “Gonna need some more juice.” She touched her amulet again, and power filled her until she glowed. It seeped from her skin, surrounding her like the flames of a phoenix. I heard drums pounding out a march, the bellow of war horns, and thousands of voices shouting in agony, victory, and wrath. I didn’t know if I should kneel and avert my eyes or grab a sword and start looking for people who needed hacking.

The glow surrounded Rose, seeping into her until she glowed as well. The power flared, and vanished. It swirled back into Aerin, leaving her as she had been. She touched Rose’s cheek and shook her head.

I took Rose in my arms and she buried her face in my chest. She’d allowed herself to hope, just for a moment, and feeling her hope die wrenched at my guts.

Rose wiped her eyes as she looked up at Aerin. “Did your god find me wanting in some way?”

“No,” Aerin said. “What happened can’t be undone. I’m sorry.” She patted Rose’s shoulder, sorrow and frustration writ plain in her eyes. “It isn’t a simple matter of physical damage. This curse, or whatever it was, changed your entire genetic structure. I’m afraid there’s simply nothing to fix.”

Rose nodded, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “I understand. Thank you for trying. I knew it was a long shot. We’ll just have to ask your god for something else.”

“What did you do?” I asked. “I’ve never seen or felt power like that. Even the largest group rituals I’ve been in couldn’t raise that much energy. Is that normal for clerics on your world?”

“Didn’t we already have this conversation?” Aerin looked at Geneva. “We did, didn’t we?”

“Not in the last half-hour,” Geneva replied.

“Huh.” Aerin tapped her forehead. “What were we—oh, right, energy. No, regular clerics don’t have access to that level of power. I’m Crom’s Emissary. I serve as his hand and voice, and as a living embodiment of the faith.”

I limited my response to, “Oh,” but my skepticism must have been obvious.

Aerin snickered. “Yes, I know. I’m not what you’d expect. The first time I went to the main temple, Lilah was with me and all the priests thought she was the Emissary. She’s six feet something tall, solid muscle, battle scars—she looks like a barbarian queen. When they saw her, the priests started fawning all over her, begging for her wisdom. She glared at them and yelled, ‘drop and give me twenty!’ Fifty monks hit the floor and started counting off. The Forgemaster let them finish before introducing us.”

Angus nudged Aerin’s arm. “Explain Crom choosing you.”

Aerin nodded, squeezing his hand. “The church has a reputation of catering to big guys who think with their swords. The Boss is trying to change that, and encountering massive resistance from both the clergy and the general populace. He picked me because I’m about the farthest thing from his traditional audience.”

“How can you expand the faith when you’re here?” As soon as I said it, I realized the answer. “Scratch that. Games. I get it. He starts a civil war among the Drow, moves a bunch of refugees to Earth, and works them into a position to provide him with a huge influx of passive belief energy by adding obsessed gamers to his flock. And he needs me to pull it off. Does that sound about right?”

“I think that sums it up. I can do more for Crom here than I can back home, at least for now.” Aerin topped off my glass and hers with the last of the wine. “He needs time to reform the clergy and change the temple’s public image back home. I go back if he needs me for something, but otherwise I stay out of that part of it.”

I nodded. “All right. Where does the fusion battery figure into all this?”

Angus sighed. “That’s my fault. I’ve been far enough up the line to see items like that. Josephine asked if your patent was the real thing. I told her it was. She wants to develop large-scale power plants to secure the family’s long-term prosperity.”

“So I understand. What about developing energy weapons? I didn’t pick those plans up in a toy store.”

“She’s agreed not to develop weapons,” Angus said. “Not that she could with just the battery.”

A string of sibilant profanity from the front room cut off my response. Matthew snapped the game off and landed a flurry of punches on a defenseless cushion. Angus and Aerin shot disapproving frowns at him. Danya looked up from her sketches and flicked her fingers at him as she whispered an incantation.

Matthew gagged, holding a hand over his mouth as he raced into the kitchen. He spit frothy bubbles of soap into the sink, wiping and rinsing his mouth until the residue was gone. Even with Danya’s attention back on her art, he didn’t try for any payback. He spit one more time and started drying his hands.

Aerin gave him a cheerful smile. “Problem, dear?”

“Nothing that can’t be solved with a soft word and a big stick.” Matthew grabbed an energy drink and half of a cold pizza out of the refrigerator. “The same douchebag keeps ganking me over and over, even when we’re on the same team. The asshat only cares about his personal kill count and screw everyone else.”

This sounded eerily familiar. “Are you talking about RainbowSparklePwnie?”

“Yes!” Matthew turned around and actually looked at me for the first time. “You know that asshole?”

I nodded. “Oh, yeah. I tried organizing a team hunt to take him down once. We had him on the run until he flagged a referee and complained that we were harassing him. I hate that punk. If I find out he’s here, it might be worth getting arrested to punch him out.”

“Mom could teleport us to Texas once we grab him,” Matthew said. “Down there, “he needed killin’” is an affirmative defense.”

“I’m not letting you kill anyone over a game, young man. You can jolly well keep practicing until you’re better than he is and beat him in the game the way you’re supposed to.” Aerin might look like a teenager, but she had the mom-voice down.

Matthew wasn’t deterred. “What if he’s also a child molester?”

“Then we kill him for that, and not for annoying you.” Aerin paused and turned to Geneva. “He’s not a child molester, is he?”

“You haven’t checked yet,” Geneva said. “Although I think it’s more likely this person
is
a child, given the population I’ve seen here so far.”

“Could you at least see if he’s here for the convention?” Matthew gave Aerin his best Mournful Puppy expression. “The tournament starts tomorrow. If he’s here, I’ll track him down the old-fashioned way.”

“That better not be code for ‘have Geneva do it’.” Aerin pulled a steel-reinforced wooden case off her charm bracelet and set it on the table. With the lid open, the sides folded down to reveal a crystal sphere six inches across. Rose all but lunged forward and tried to swallow the crystal whole; while I got her settled I missed whatever Aerin did to activate it. When I looked again, a roiling silver mist filled the crystal ball. An image began to form…

Aerin burst into laughter and clapped her hands. The image and the mist both vanished. She nodded to Matthew, trying to stifle her laughs. “The person you’re looking for is here,” she said. “You’ll just have to keep an eye out.”

Danya stood and glided across the room to Aerin’s side. “Mother, would you please find Toni? I want to make sure she’s someplace safe.”

Aerin rolled her eyes. “She’s just as tough as any of the other street kids we’ve seen on half a dozen planets. If you want to ride in on a white horse and save the day, help her get a job.” Despite her tone, Aerin was tracing her fingers over the surface of the crystal ball and staring into the swirling smoke.

The smoke faded, revealing the interior of an abandoned house. Graffiti covered the walls and trash clumped in the corners of the room, piling up over the edges of a bare, filthy mattress. A skinny girl was sitting on a bar stool, surrounded by eight guys who appeared to be in their early twenties. She looked about fifteen and the guys were passing around a box of condoms.

Toni Aguilar was standing in the doorway, pleading with the men. “This is not the way angels of God behave. She came here for protection! Would any of you do this to your little sisters? You need the armor of God out there, but who among you will be righteous enough to claim it? Blessed Virgin,
Salve Regina
, smite the cocks of those who anoint themselves with virgin blood!”