Council of Peacocks

by M Joseph Murphy

  The figure laughed lightly. “The way you’ve been jumping back and forth through time tells me you have all the time in the world. Tell me, do you honestly think you can change what has already been written? Creation is like a painting. If you try to erase what’s on the canvas, you improve nothing and ruin everything. Just let her die and be done with this nonsense.”

  What little resolve he’d mustered dissipated. Were any of his actions a secret? “If you know about the time traveling, you must also know I’ve killed you before. Just stay out of my way, you old bastard, and I won’t do it again.”

  The towering figure of smokeless fire took a step back and shook his head. “You killed me? Really. How interesting. Well, that would explain why the future is unclear to me. Partly. You should know, as a Djinn I don’t fear death. I exist outside of time as the humans see it. If you destroy this body, this incarnation, I simply return to the Mother Flame from which all our kind are made. If you had been born in Kaz you would understand that. But look at you. You’re useless and lazy. You were given amazing talents and what do you do with them? Petty intrigues and capitalism. You’ve always been a disappointment to me, Akushula.”

  “My name is Wisdom.” He clenched his fists and felt old angers stir up the fire in him. “You’re no one to talk about wasting gifts. Especially to me. I’ve made a difference with my life. Each day, because of me, people’s lives are better. Over a thousand people work for me directly. I teach the Anomalies to live with their demonic nature. If not for me, every one of them would have succumbed to their darkest nature by now. So, don’t you dare say I’m wasting my life!”

  “But you could have been so much more if…”

  “If what? If I’d been more like you? What do you do with your life? You watch. That’s it. You bathe yourself in the narcotics of voyeurism while I’m actually in the world making a difference. Just because you’ve wasted your life doesn’t mean I’m wasting mine.”

  The Djinn took a step forward, the heat of his body pushing Wisdom back. “If you had spent more time watching and less time doing, you would understand why I withdrew from the world. Something is coming, Wisdom. Something far beyond anything you can handle. The only reason I’m here is to take you back where you belong. For once, live up to the name you’ve chosen and come with me. You can’t be here when the end game starts.”

  “I am where I belong. And I’m not going anywhere. I remember what you did to my mother. You raped her. Tried to murder her.”

  The Djinn sighed. “I apologized for that. What more can I say?”

  “What more can you say? It’s not something you can apologize for! It pretty much puts you under the bad guy column for all time. Growing up, you beat me, treated me like a slave. So now you’re old and you want me to forgive all your sins? Well, sorry. I do not forgive!”

  For a moment, the clearing crackled with unseen energy, a tension on the verge of breaking. The Djinn shook his head and sighed again. “Fine. Have it your way. I’ve tried to be reasonable but you’re still weak, short-sighted. A complete waste of life. If you won’t come home willingly, I will beat you into submission.”

  Wisdom called forth the hellfire. “Old man, that’s not going to work anymore.”

  And the battle began.

  Chapter Sixteen

  August 6th

  “I won again,” Jared said.

  By 11:00 p.m., the common room in London was deserted. Most of the refugees from Toronto chose the isolation of their private quarters over the threat of conversation with others. Small talk inevitably led back to the attack, which made everyone uncomfortable.

  “Give her a break.” Josh took the controller from Garnet as Jared did his happy dance. For the third night in a row, the three of them had played Mortal Kombat after supper. “She’s getting better. At least this time she landed a punch.”

  “Bite me,” Garnet said as she ran her fingers through her hair. “Some of us haven’t wasted our lives mastering video games.”

  “Your loss,” Jared said. Then he put his controller down, no longer smiling. “Something’s very wrong, isn’t it?”

  “D’ya think?” Garnet rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. She looked several years older than she had when Josh had first met her. “Wisdom disappeared again and no one seems to know where the rest of the Anomalies are. I’m glad to see those psychic powers of yours aren’t going to waste, bud.”

  Jared rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. It’s worse than anyone is letting on. There’s way more security than normal. Since when does Wisdom need security, anyway?”

  Josh raised his hand. “If we’re taking votes I’m all in favor of enhanced security. Maybe Wisdom just realizes that, whatever he is, he’s not immortal.”

  “He’s close enough.” Garnet frowned and went to the window. Late at night, the city was lit with street lamps and illuminated rectangles from office buildings.

  “You can’t be serious,” Josh snorted.

  “Of course I’m serious. I’m telling you, I’ve seen the things he’s capable of. Unbelievable things. You’ve seen the way he travels. How is that even possible? The physics are mind-numbing. Nothing our scientists know about reality today can explain it, and I’ve done the research. Aside from that, do you have any idea old he is?”

  “No,” Jared said, returning to his game. “And neither do you.”

  “Well, not exactly. But I have a pretty good idea. I know for a fact he was alive during the Inquisition.”

  “Bull,” Josh said. He returned to the game but it was difficult to concentrate. Pressure kept building up at the base of his neck. His head started to spin.

  “Scout’s honor.” Garnet put her hand on the window. She squinted her eyes as if trying to focus on something down on the street. “In fact, I’d put money on him being over a thousand years old.”

  “You’re on drugs.” Josh threw the controller down on the couch and pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead. The pressure was unbearable.

  “Every chance I get, but that doesn’t change the facts.” Garnet leaned back. “He’s definitely not human.”

  “So, if he’s not human, what is he, then?”

  Jared slowly lowered his controller and turned toward the window.

  “A demon.”

  “What?” Josh almost choked on his own tongue.

  Jared stood and shook his head. “Not Wisdom. Out there. I can feel it. A demon is heading up the street. I think it’s coming here.”

  Garnet backed away from the window. She walked over to the phone and dialed an extension.

  “We have incoming,” she said into the receiver. “I don’t know how many. Just get the entire staff on alert. Have someone check with Hong Kong, too. I need to know if this is a coordinated attack.”

  She hung up the phone and turned to face Josh.

  “I hope the reports on you are correct, Wonder Boy, because this could get really interesting.”

  ***

  Garnet looked down her nose at the building’s chief security officer. He was a white-haired old Irishman with a bulbous nose on a bulbous face. He was currently tracing out escape routes on a blueprint of the building. Garnet had already explained, at length, that she knew the layout of the building better than he did. He didn’t seem to hear her. In fact, all he seemed to notice was the curve of her cleavage.

  “Enough,” she said, biting the word. “Just go watch a door or something.” She waved him away and turned her back on him. The old man grumbled something and walked briskly away. This left the security room deserted, except for the three Anomalies. A bank of video monitors showed several sections of the building, the visitor’s parking area, and all entrances. There were even cameras in the surrounding sewer system. The security room was overtly luminous and spartan in its décor. Being here helped Garnet feel safe. No matter which direction the demon took to get here, they would see it coming.

  Jared sat nearby in a wooden chair that faced north. He did not t
urn around at the sound of Garnet’s heels against the tiled floor as she approached. She placed her hands on the back of the chair and lowered her lips to his ears.

  “Anything?”

  Jared shook his head and kept staring forward.

  “Does he know you’ve spotted him, Jared?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Is it an Edimmu?”

  “Don’t think so. He’s powerful, though. Worse than them, I think.” Jared looked up. His lower lip trembled slightly. He opened his mouth, on the verge of saying something else. Garnet, sensing what it was, bent down even further and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

  “Don’t worry, little man,” she said. “We’re not exactly powerless ourselves.”

  “How do you know it’s a demon?” Josh paced back and forth in front of the wall of monitors. He had an open bottle of water in his hands. He had been holding it for some time and had not yet taken a drink.

  Garnet straightened and turned to him. “What’s your deal, anyway?”

  Josh stopped pacing. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what do you do?” She crossed her arms and shrugged.

  “How the hell should I know? I haven’t been to X-men school like you guys.” Looking at the drink in his hand, Josh moved it to his mouth. Then, letting out a sigh, he placed it back on the bar. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just lucky. Things just happen around me. Things that shouldn’t happen.”

  “Well, that sounds particularly useless.” Garnet rested her hands on her waist as she scanned the monitors. “Jared, how much longer before…?”

  The lights went out.

  Josh stood frozen. He listened to his heartbeat until his eyes adjusted. With a clunk, the air conditioning stopped. The absence of background noise was almost as unnerving as the power failure.

  “He’s in the building.”

  The voice was Jared’s. Josh squinted his eyes until he could distinguish which shadow was the boy’s. In the dark, he seemed very far away.

  “Shouldn’t a building like this have a backup generator?”

  A shadow moved close to him. Garnet. “It does. It should have cut in by now. It must have been taken out, too. Look, Josh, I don’t know you very well, but – no offense – what I’ve seen so far hasn't really impressed me. I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all, but….”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not always so nice.”

  “Well, thanks for that uninspired bit of machismo, but I’m still not impressed. I’m just saying the security team here is good but I don’t think they can stop the demon.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Jared said. “You’re talking like they’re going to fail. Like we’re all going to die. We can’t think that way.”

  Josh lifted the bottle of water to his lips and gulped half of it. Then he shook his head clear off the last of his uncertainty.

  “You’re right about one thing, Garnet,” he said. “You don’t know me very well. Let’s move.”

  “Where are we going?” Garnet started after him, then paused. “I mean, where do you think you’re going?”

  Josh smiled and started walking toward the door. “We are not going to just sit here and wait for that thing to take us down. Whatever it is, we outnumber it. We may have to be sneaky about it but we are going to take this demon down.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  David rolled over in bed, on the verge of waking. He needed to go to the washroom, but it was so warm and numb under the blankets, he balked at leaving. The last few days had been lazy. He’d spent hours talking with Todd and Bethany but most of his time was spent alone in his room. He read Robert Jordan novels on an ereader, making sure he didn’t touch the walls.

  He pushed himself up slowly. A strange feeling was building in his stomach. It was like the fear that settled over him when he was immersed in a scary movie. Dread. The room was still fully lit; he still hadn’t found the light switches. He could see everything around him. There was not even the hint of a shadow anywhere. Still…

  He quickly searched the edges of the room again, listening for any sound, any movement.

  Nothing.

  He pushed the sheets away. Beads of sweat accumulated along his forehead. The veins in his temples throbbed violently, like the onset of a migraine. He massaged the back of his neck, trying to coerce the pain away. It was no help.

  He heard a loud bang followed by a scream.

  Trickles of dust fell from the ceiling.

  He rubbed the sweat from his palms against the lower edge of his t-shirt and crept tentatively toward the front door. Each breath he took seemed very long: exaggerated. He was very aware of the sound of his exhalations, the beating of his heart and the pounding in his head. He could not stop blinking and his mouth was dry.

  “I keep this up and I’m going to hyperventilate,” he whispered to himself.

  ‘They’ve found us’, he thought. It was the only explanation for the way he felt and the things he had heard.

  He ran a hand through his hair. When he brought it down, it was soaking wet. A slow survey of the room confirmed what he believed: no weapons. One step at a time, he approached the door, opening and clenching his fists, not sure what to do. He couldn’t just walk out into the hallway, not without knowing what was going on. But he also could not ignore the scream and just hide under the bed.

  He heard a young girl call out for help.

  David inched toward the door, his breaths short and shallow now. He turned the knob and let the door swing open.

  Jessica fell onto the carpet just inside the room. She must have been lying on the ground, her back pressed up against the door. David grabbed her by the shoulders, dragging her completely into his apartment. She cradled her left arm. Jagged bone jutted out from the top of her left shoulder. Her clothes were charred as if she had run through a fire. A large bruise was forming around her eyes. It looked like her nose was broken.

  “Amy,” she said. Tears streamed down her face. Her lips were coated with blood.

  “Where is she?” David asked.

  He looked up in time to see something fly through the air. He howled, a primal scream, when he realized it was Amy. She flew like she’d been thrown, like a ball. He peered out the doorway to see where she landed. She hit the floor thirty feet away. She did not get up.

  Then shadow sprayed up from underneath her, a fountain of black ink that spread out over the hallway and covered her body. As quickly as they appeared, the shadows retreated. In their absence there was no sign of Amy.

  “She’s gone,” Jessica said. “I can’t feel her anymore. I think they killed her. We’ve got to…” She pushed against the ground with her right hand. “We’ve got to get away.”

  “What about the others?” David knelt beside her and searched for a part of her body that wasn’t wounded. With his help, she got to her feet. He led her to one of the sofas, then rushed back to look back into the hallway. “Are they safe?”

  “Close the door. Quickly.” Jessica rubbed at her eyes with her fingers. Then she took a look at how filthy her hand was and stopped. “They took most of them. Killed the rest. I can still feel Bethany, though. I think she’s hiding in her room. Todd … I think they’re doing things to him right now.”

  “Who is it?” He bolted the lock on the door. Then he ran to one of the larger sofas, dragged it over to the door, and pushed it until the entrance was blocked off. He was thankful the living quarters did not have the rollaway round doors he’d seen in different parts of the underground city.

  Jessica glanced at the bone poking out of her shoulder. She bit her lip. “Those guys with wings. They followed us. Somehow. I was…” Tears fell down her face and she sobbed. In that moment, she looked just like the little girl she really was. She shook her head, becoming cold and impersonal again.

  “I was in the sitting room with Amy. We both got up early. We always do. A bunch from the other classes were out there talking to Echo, trying to get more information out of her, I think.
Todd was there, too. Next thing I knew, something picked me up. I slammed into the ceiling and I felt something crack. Then I fell. When I hit the ground, I think that’s when I dislocated my shoulder. Her face went slightly green. Before David could reach her, she coughed up blood.

  “Perfect,” she said. She wiped her chin with her right hand and then scraped it clean against the fabric of the couch. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how they snuck up on us. I didn’t even feel them coming, and I always feel them coming.”

  “They’ve come for you guys before?” Breathing heavily, he lifted and twisted the couch until it was flush against the entrance. From the other side of the door, he heard a man scream out in pain. It sounded like Todd.

  “They’ve poked around before. Or something has. Many times. Never as bad as this. Usually they just watch us. When they attacked in Toronto, that was the first time they ever came into a building. Wisdom has been moving us around. At least he has since I got here. We never spent more than a few months in one building. It must have been Madeline. Maybe they made her talk before they killed her.”

  Something pounded on the door.

  “We are so dead.” David slowly backed away from the door. He pounded his fists against his head in frustration.

  The pounding came again. This time, the sofa moved back an inch.

  ***

  “No!”

  Bethany screamed as an Edimmu grabbed her by her ankles and dragged her face down toward the sitting room. Reptilian hands dragged her over the carpet. Her chin slammed repeatedly into the hard floor as she bounced along. She was certain her back was going to break at any moment.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a dead body and she stopped screaming. It was a teenage girl from one of the other classes. Bethany didn’t know her name. The girl’s face was frozen in a scream; eyes wide and face ridged with burn marks. The side of her neck had been chewed open, but there was little blood. As if something had sucked the blood away. She saw dozens of other children dragged into the shadow, disappearing.