Council of Peacocks (23 page)

“
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 turn 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.

Bethany felt numbness shoot through her.

Then her chin bounced against the floor again
and everything went black.

***

It only took Echo an instant to realize she
couldn’t stop the Edimmu from taking the children. So she ran.
Before most of the Anomalies registered what was happening, before
the first of them fell to the ground with broken bones only to be
swallowed by darkness, she warped the spatial field and jumped into
the light. She closed the circle as quickly as she had summoned
it.

Silence.

She looked around, not sure at first where
her panic had taken her. The air was clear, clean and brisk. Below
were thick, green forests of healthy trees; above, snow and ice
hung to the ridges of untamable mountains. It took her brain
several seconds to confirm what her body knew instinctively.

“Home,” she said. She did not know if this
particular mountain had a name but she was somewhere in the
Jeseníky mountains in northern Moravia. “I was born not far from
here.” The village no longer existed, of course. Everyone she had
known in that old life was dead and buried. Even their graves were
long forgotten now.