True Believers (12 page)

Jessit looked up in time to see tangled arms pawing at the entrance drapes. Rachel muffled a cry as he pushed her behind him. Senit tumbled into the room, his head dropping to the floor with reverence, one hand clutching the radiation monitor that pinged in rapid fire.

“Many pardons, my lord.”

“It can wait, Senit,” Jessit hissed.

“No, sir. It can't.” Senit refused to lift his head.

“In the other room.” There was no way to hide his anger, and the ache in his groin only made it worse.

His thumb stroked the side of Rachel's cheek in apology. Without any words, he lifted her out of the pool. There would be time for them later. Right now he had to wring Senit's neck. Friend or not, Senit was going to rue this intrusion.

Jessit pulled on his robe, barely tying it closed before he slapped the curtains away, leaving Rachel to dress alone. Senit followed, his eyes lowered, apologizing profusely though it did nothing to soften Jessit's ire.

“Are you insane?” Jessit grabbed him by the coat collar and shook him.

“The monitor,” Senit said, as if it were explanation enough.

“If you got a signal, investigate it. You don't need my permission.”

“You don't understand, Taelen. I did investigate it. It brought me here.”

“What?”

“It came from here.” He pointed to the bathing room. “Actually…from there.”

“That's not possible,” Jessit said, still outraged.

Senit huddled close to him and whispered, “Are you sure she's human?”

Jessit was about to answer him unequivocally when Rachel slipped past the curtains. She stood there in her dress too big, her eyes round and frightened. Senit once again fell to the floor in obeisance, refusing to look up at her.

“Is something wrong, Taelen?” She approached Jessit with a look of startled confusion, tiptoeing around Senit's propped-up backside.

She was a waif, not a god. Senit was wrong.

A frantic knock at the door introduced yet another disheveled man, his orange robes swishing and tangling around his rickety legs. Long stone beads clunked against each other, announcing his every step.

Senit tugged on Jessit's robe to get his attention. “Under the circumstances, I thought it best to include Kalya.” He offered Jessit the scanner once more.

He was insane. They all were. Rachel was no god. And yet, he couldn't take the chance.

“Lord Kalya, would you be good enough to take the lady to the ship's steward? Please see that she's made comfortable.”

Senit's eyes stayed glued to the ground while Kalya complied with dumb obedience. The elderly man bowed to the lady and offered his arm in escort.

Rachel looked up at Jessit. “Have you changed your mind about me?”

Jessit turned toward her, a hesitant hand reaching out to touch hers until he caught Senit peeking up, his eyes pleading with him not to do anything foolish. Jessit picked up the translator he had tossed on the floor earlier and helped her put it on.

“Lord Kalya is our high priest. He will show you to your room.” He paused, the hurt look in her eyes begging him for an answer. “Rachel.” He leaned his face close to her ear. “I have something I have to do. I am sorry.”

Kalya once again offered his arm, but Jessit grabbed it instead and pulled him aside. “Say nothing,” he whispered. “I will attend to this.”

Senit had spent enough face time on the floor to count the threads in the carpet. He didn't rise until Kalya escorted Rachel out.

“The machine is wrong.” The words rumbled out of the deepest reaches of Jessit's belly.

Senit staggered over to the bar and grabbed a glass, pouring it to the rim from a bottle of the brandy Jacob Denman had sent Jessit. His hands trembled as he downed the first drink and poured himself another. Jessit had never seen him so shaken.

“Senit, honestly.”

Senit gulped down his second drink. “You don't understand. The machine was going off when I escorted her here on the shuttle. I thought it was broken. When I took it to the engineer, he recalibrated it and we tested it. It went off. He took out another monitor, and it went off. Taelen, we did this with three monitors, and then from the mainframe. If Rachel wasn't giving off the radiation, someone else was in that bathing room with you.”

“It can't be her.” His world was unraveling before his eyes. How could he have been so wrong?

Senit poured another glass for Jessit and handed it to him before pouring himself a third. He flopped down on a side chair and wiped the sweat off his brow. The alcohol was starting to do its work. “I hope you pleased her. I'd hate to have a Divine One unhappy because you didn't do your job.”

“I didn't get to finish
my job,”
Jessit said through gritted teeth. “You interrupted us.”

Senit's face blanched to a greenish-white. “Anu forgive me. Do you think she'll blame me?”

“I know I already do.”

Jessit sat down, face buried in his hands, trying to sort things out. “Even if it is Rachel, why would the monitor register
glory
only once in a while? It doesn't make sense.”

“Maybe she has to be excited.” He had never seen Senit so enthused. “Maybe you should go back and finish. We can monitor the room and—”

“Are you listening to yourself?”

“Taelen, we found a god, a real god. I thought you'd be happy.”

“It can't be her,” he repeated.

“Why not? There are hundreds of stories of how the gods have masqueraded as common mortals. Maybe she's been doing the same.”

Jessit felt physically ill. The broken ankle that suspiciously healed, the surly attitude, her nonchalance in dire circumstances; things were starting to make sense, and he didn't like where it led.

He had told his superiors about his last vision, but not that he had seen Gilgamesh earlier, without the aid of the incense. If Rachel was a Divinity, his secret was in danger of being exposed. How could he admit to seeing a god if he had
failed
the test of the Holies? They would
strip him of his commission and force him to take the priesthood, donating his testicles along the way.

Another thorn prickled his conscience. Rachel never once acknowledged knowing Gilgamesh, even when he mentioned his name. Surely they knew one another.

Jessit sat back and closed his eyes, the fragile memory of Rachel's body still teasing him. Two gods had revealed themselves to him. Were they rivals or allies?

He looked at Senit, the glow of a new believer fresh on his face. Rachel had changed him, and Senit was filled with the enthusiasm of a convert. Jessit felt only shame and dread. He had tried to turn a god into his courtesan. “I can't make love to one of the Holies,” he said with a shudder.

Senit pounced on him. “Why not?”

Jessit shook his head. “I'm not worthy.”

“Well, I'll do it.” The swell of opportunity lit Senit's voice.

“You're not worthy either!” He scowled at him, the thought of Rachel in Senit's arms aggravating him all the more.

Jessit needed time to think, and he couldn't do it with Senit's excited prattle. He dismissed him, pacing back and forth trying to sort the events of the last few days. Frustrated, he flopped down on his bed and landed on something hard.

He yanked a silver collar from underneath him and stared at it in dumb terror.
Gods help him.
He had dared to make a Divine One his concubine. How was he ever going to repent for that?

What had started as a mild amusement turned into a nightmare. A dozen legends ran through his mind, recounting all the ways gods had been known to show their displeasure. Would Rachel be just as vengeful?

Paul's wrists pinched inside the handcuffs, panic growing when they taped his mouth shut with duct tape. Someone yanked a thick black hood over his head that stunk of old grease, rubber and something worse.

They walked. Up ladders, down corridors and into a tight space where someone had to force his head down to duck.

He kept his breaths short and shallow to no avail. Panic mode set in, driving him to hyperventilate. Paul forced them to stop for a moment, a hesitation that cost him a hard smack to the head.

Paul slowed down his breathing with what little self-control he had left. They hadn't killed him yet. That could only mean they intended to interrogate him first. He swallowed a thick glob of phlegm, sickening an already sour stomach.

Hacking into a black ops computer system and getting captured by jackbooted soldiers was not in the university brochure for this dig. All he wanted to do was hike the high desert.

The thug who had been prodding him with a thick rounded cudgel pushed him into a chair with a hard smack to his kidney.

One of his cuffs was removed so his arms could be jerked behind him. Once again, the handcuffs snapped shut. The hood came off next, and he inhaled a big breath of untainted air. The blindfold stayed on. Three, four, maybe five men were in the room with him. They stunk of vomit and sweat.

No…that was him.

They took off the blindfold, but all Paul could see were shadows. One fluorescent light crackled overhead, struggling to stay lit, and there was a small wood table two feet in front of him. The rest of the room, what he could see of it, melted into darkness. A soldier emerged from the shadows, a lean Hispanic.

Paul felt a knot rise to his throat when he recognized him. It was Chavez, the colonel who had ordered them off the plateau.

Chavez nodded to another soldier, who oozed out of the shadows like spilled ink. Paul wished the man had stayed where he was. The soldier marched over to him and ripped the duct tape from his face, along with two days' growth of beard. Paul was so shocked by the pain he couldn't scream at first. He hung his head over his lap and gasped, agonizing over his seared flesh. “Sonovabitch!”

Chavez leaned back on the table, his right foot planted between Paul's legs. Two wide ridges cut across his brow. His black hair was short and neat and combed back to reveal deep, piercing eyes. He reminded Paul of a hawk. And right now he felt like a scared little mouse ready to piss on himself.

Chavez pulled out a large gleaming knife from a boot sheath then leaned toward Paul. He tapped his cheek with the side of the blade. “I could ask you how you got down here,
maricone,
but I'm more curious about how you managed to hack into the computer.”

Paul swallowed, the nausea welling up in his belly. “It let me in.” There was no point in lying. He hoped his honesty would at least assure him a quick death.

“Bullshit!” Chavez jabbed his knife into the wood table. He punched Paul in the head, sending him crumbling to the floor. “Bubba doesn't let anyone in.”

Paul thought his head had exploded. It throbbed, pounding like a drum. Something warm spilled down his ear. “I'm telling you, it let me in.” He let the last word stretch out. It was like talking to imbeciles. No one was listening.

Another soldier picked him up, hauling him up like road kill before planting him back in his chair. Chavez was in his face once more.

“Don't jack with me, man. I know you're a pro.”

Chavez's voice sounded far off as if he were in another room. The hearing in his left ear was gone. His right was still working—so far. Paul stared down at the floor, shaking his head, incredulous that this could be happening to him. To make matters worse, he started to cry. “Your goddamn computer let me in,” he yelled. “It let me in!”

Chavez lunged at him, knocking him out of the chair. He dragged him up by the hair and shoved him against the cold cement wall. Two soldiers appeared out of nowhere, pinning him to the wall. Chavez grabbed his knife and sliced him across the chest. The slash seared through him. It didn't feel very deep but pearls of blood dotted his scrubs. “Lie to me again, fuckhead, and I'll run this knife straight down to your dick.”

Sweat ran down both sides of his neck. He closed his eyes and struggled to form words. “I designed firewalls for the military twenty years ago. I didn't expect it to work.” He looked up at Chavez. “I'm telling you the truth. It let me in. It recognized me.” It hurt to talk. His throat was on fire from all the yelling.

“Impossible.” A voice from the shadows boomed out. “Bubba is programmed with all the latest firewalls. It should never have let you in.”

The voice soon had a body, and Paul recognized him too. It was the balding, older man in starched khakis who had followed the aliens around.

A younger man stepped behind him. This one was tall with smooth brown skin and long white hair so bright it shimmered like silver. Impeccably dressed in a black pinstripe and shiny black shoes, he looked like a model out of
GQ.
He had an amused grin on his face, as if this whole thing was one big game.

Paul felt his chest tighten. The man waved at Chavez dismissively as if the colonel was nothing more than an insect.

Chavez nodded toward the older man before withdrawing with the rest of his soldiers. Paul faced the two civilians alone.

The silver-haired man approached Paul first, a soft curve to his lips. There was something unsavory about his placidness, as if the man was privy to some sick joke. Paul's muscles twitched when his back pressed harder against the wall. The silver-haired demon was a young man, not much older than himself. Paul cringed when the man drew closer and sniffed him.

“You are a delicious man, Paul Domino. Where have you been hiding all my life?”

“I told you everything I know, sir. The computer let me in.”

“Of course, it did. And yet before you left you were able to scramble enough codes to alarm an entire compound. These men have been running around with their asses on fire. You're a very clever man.”

“I can fix it.”

“Can you?” His voice was smooth and fluid. A tiny inflection in the pronunciation of his soft
A
s seemed to be the only indication he was not a native English speaker. Mr. Suave turned to the older, balding man. That one had to be CIA. His manner was far too aloof and meticulous to be anything less.

“Jacob,” the silver-haired man said. “Don't kill him yet. I may have a use for Mr. Domino.”

Jacob was not pleased, but he didn't refuse. Paul noticed how he bristled at
Mr. Suave's
self-assured demeanor. What was more surprising was that Jacob appeared submissive, obeying the younger man without question.

“I can't keep him here, sir.”

“I'm sure you'll think of something, Jacob. I have faith in you.”

A well-manicured fingertip ran the length of Paul's cheek down toward his lips. Mr. Suave smiled with delight.

For some reason it made Paul feel dirty.

“Find us something nearby. Something private.” He looked down at Paul's taut arms still bound behind his back. “And take those shackles off the boy. They must be very uncomfortable.”

He turned and drifted back into the shadows, while Jacob called Colonel Chavez and his men back in. Paul didn't hear where they were taking him. All he knew was that he was leaving…with a man who had way too much interest in him.