Council of Peacocks

by M Joseph Murphy

  “Look,” Echo said. “About last night….”

  “Please. Don’t.” Wisdom went over to her. He used his eyes to caress her. “Just let it be what it was. There are so many things I could apologize for, things I probably should apologize for. But I believe I’m well past seeking redemption from anyone. I love you, Andromeda. You know that. And I can sense how complicated your emotions are toward me. Just… be careful today. I don’t think I can handle losing you again.”

  Echo took a step back. “What do you mean ‘again.’?”

  Wisdom shook his head. “Slip of the tongue.”

  “Wisdom, you don’t have slips of the tongue. What aren’t you telling me?”

  He reached out now and placed tender fingers on her left cheek. “In many ways I’ve lost you many times. In other ways I’ve never really had you. Maybe, if we get through this – once we get through this – maybe we can start over. I’m not asking you to forget the things I’ve done, but…”

  Echo brushed his hand away. “No, you’re right. I can’t forget. Maybe we should just get this over with.”

  Nodding to himself, Wisdom sighed. Last time he had said different words but the result was the same: Echo rejected him and he could not blame her.

  ***

  Propates hated darkness, which, considering what he could do, was extremely ironic. With the abilities at his disposal he could travel around the world by jumping into shadows. He could slip into people’s minds and bring their nightmares to life. Still, Propates had spent far too many years huddled and frightened in underground places escaping one enemy or another. Wisdom, the Djinn, pagans, Christians, Jews, rival secret societies: all had tried to eradicate Propates and his followers at one point. During the decades of the Inquisition, membership in the Council of Peacocks dwindled and those that remained cut themselves off from the World Above. Then, around 1850, things had changed. Aristocrats and debutants fell in love with the occult and magic was reborn. The Council of Peacocks rose steadily out of the dark places. Now he was finally ready to leave the shadows forever.

  He wandered around the ceremonial room, casually examining the equipment to making sure everything was in place. Six stone tables engraved with gold runes encircled a central dais. Beside each table lay a silver tray with several gleaming, metallic surgical instruments and six vials of specially prepared ink. Soon, the last of Wisdom’s precious Anomalies would be strapped down and unconscious before him The process of Eyeness would begin. He would make the demons divine.

  The air above the central dais shimmered. Suddenly the air rippled and tore open. A puddle of darkness spilled out like Indian ink in oil. Splashes of purple and mauve shot through the shifting black.

  Propates went pale.

  “I thought our negotiations had ended.”

  A voice came out of the darkness. “Balance has shifted again. The Judas was caught.”

  “What about Josh?”

  Propates looked over his shoulder. Richard Wilkinson approached, wearing his ceremonial robes of turquoise peacock feathers. Every inch of his clothes bore an artificial eye looking out at the world.

  “He’s alive,” the darkness said. “My son, the idiot, is bringing him to you. Soon.”

  Propates inhaled sharply. “But you said….”

  “I promised you he won’t interfere. I hold my bargains. I will see to him. See to the children. Carla and Sanchez are away on a mission for Asmodeus but the Orpheans have eyes everywhere. Remember your deal with them.”

  Inky blackness poured in reverse back through the tear in space. The air shimmered again and was still.

  “Should I try to contact our friend from away?”

  “No,” Propates hung his head. He put both hands on the table beside him, leaning against it for support. “Even if he would help us, which is doubtful, we want to avoid bloodshed. We need them for our plan to work. Half the Anomalies we took from Echo’s compound died in the process of Eyeness. Let’s not waste the remaining ones.”

  Richard hesitated for only a moment. “I’ll double the guards.” He exited the room, leaving Propates alone.

  “So close,” Propates said. “For the sake of our world, please let this work.”

  ***

  When she finished arranging for the removal of Jared’s body, Garnet came back to her room and stared at the wall for fifteen minutes. The stink of death was still on her. Her mind ricocheted: an image of Jared laughing during Mortal Kombat. An image of his body, broken and bent – wide dead eyes and blood. She let down her hair and was brushing it when Jessica entered.

  “What’s up, Jess?”

  “Ugh. You know I hate that name. It’s not like I call you Gar. Please don’t call me that. It sounds so … I don’t know what it sounds like, but please don’t call me that.”

  “Okay. What’s up, Jessica?”

  Jessica did not bother to speak. She stood in the doorway, hands held behind her back, staring straight forward. One of the reasons Wisdom employed Garnet as his secretary was the high level of proficiency she possessed over her empathic powers: it helped during business negotiations and weeding out disloyal employees. Images and sensations clicked on in her like a daydream. In the space of time it would have taken to speak the words ‘I have a problem,’ she knew all of Jessica’s fear.

  “Oh. It’s time.” She put down her hairbrush. Her stomach was in knots as she studied her face in the mirror. Suddenly she felt very old. “Don’t worry. I’m serious. Don’t worry about it. Wisdom is many things – ruthless, emotionally stunted and extremely impatient – but he’s not stupid. He’s invested a lot in you, in all of us. He’s not going to throw that all away for nothing. He wouldn’t take us into something he didn’t think we could walk out of.”

  Jessica narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” Garnet straightened a few wrinkles in her dark grey pantsuit with strong, crisp movements. “Go on ahead. I’ll meet you in Wisdom’s office in a few minutes.”

  Garnet kept her composure until Jessica left the room. Then it slid off her like melting ice. No matter what she said, she couldn’t honestly say Wisdom had their safety in mind. It was completely conceivable that he planned to use the Anomalies as fodder for the Council. Maybe he saw her and the others as a disposable distraction while he snuck in and did the real damage. That could have been his plan all along. Only time would tell.

  She walked out of her room and headed toward the elevator, barely looking at the people she passed. All their petty thoughts irritated her.

  ***

  Garnet was seventeen when she first met Wisdom. Just a skinny girl in frumpy clothes who was a little too tall. At fifteen, her telepathy erupted. She heard how others saw her. They felt sorry for her and called her a loser behind her back. At first she was angry. Then she decided to do something about it.

  She shed her frumpy clothes for more flattering ones and took up Aikido to firm up her body. Boys looked at her differently. She knew when they were thinking about her, what they were thinking about her. She also learned just the right way to wink at them. Within a few months she went from frail to feral. Teenage boys, drunk with their hormones, became her playthings. At least until Jason Kupnicke.

  Jason was a football player, a cliché from a wealthy family, with a girlfriend named Allison on the cheerleading squad. Garnet thought he’d be a challenge. In the end, he was all too easy. She whispered things to him in the library, things he wanted but could never bring himself to ask Allison to do. Garnet promised him all that and more.

  After one kiss under the bleachers, he trembled at her touch. Conquest over, she moved on to other things. Jason did not.

  One night Garnet woke up from a dream and knew that someone was watching her. Jason. She slid out of bed and went to the bedroom window. There he was, in the shadows by the backyard shed staring up at her bedroom window. He was imagining her body naked under his hands. He would do anything to be with her, whether she wanted it or not.

&
nbsp; She backed away from the window, not sure what to do. She looked at her bookshelf, her eyes landing on Stephen King’s Firestarter. She thought of the father, the one who could control people’s minds. She wondered if she could do the same thing. She focused on Jason’s shadow and pushed with her mind.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then she saw the flames engulf his hair and clothes. Jason threw himself down and rolled in the dry grass, trying to smother the fire out. Her father entered the room to see why she was screaming. Outside, the fire grew larger and larger, the dry grass devoured by flame until the whole backyard was a sea of flames. She heard Jason’s last thought as he died. It was of her.

  She didn’t sleep for days.

  A rumor went around school: Jason had set himself on fire in her backyard because he did not want to live without her. It became accepted reality. Teenagers kill themselves every day.

  She did not go to the funeral.

  People whispered behind her back. Pockets of girls in the hallway talked about her between classes, wondering what was so special about her that had turned Jason crazy. She tried to tune out their thoughts, but that was something she only learned to do under the tutelage of Ms. Ryerson. Wave after wave of judgmental anger and jealousy struck her daily, mingled with an almost-incoherent flow of teenage sexual hunger.

  Eventually she struck out again.

  Despite the Aikido, she did not have the type of physique to pound someone’s head in. What she did have was the ability to see into their deepest, darkest secret. So, when Allison McGraw called her a tramp in gym class, Garnet asked her why she lay in bed listening to her parents having sex and masturbated with the image of her father on top of her. Allison was so shocked she screamed and ran out of the gym. Hitting someone with something that personal, that secret, did not allow time for a rebuttal.

  Allison never recovered. Garnet felt a shimmer of guilt when she saw the tired look in her eyes. But only a shimmer.

  By the time she was seventeen, she was bored and alone. She quickly discovered that boys were better lovers in their imagination than they were in reality. Even the fear and jealousy directed at her became tedious. So many people had exactly the same thoughts, it felt like facing a collective of petty, insignificant insects.

  Then she began using her power outside of school. That’s what drew Wisdom to her.

  Unlike Jason, she didn’t come from a wealthy family. Everything she wanted was so expensive. She started with extortion: next-door neighbors and people she stumbled upon at the mall. When you can read minds, it’s child’s play to blackmail people, easy to know which ones have the money to keep their secrets hidden. It was also easy to break into their houses when you knew their security codes, where they kept the spare keys, and when they would be away from home. It was so simple she called these break-ins ‘shopping.’

  During one of those little shopping sprees, she stumbled upon a ten-page report that changed the way she looked at the world. The house belonged to a member of Candleworks who broke protocol and brought home sensitive documents. The report covered a murder that Candleworks attributed to a crazed Sasquatch. If not for the full-colored pictures accompanying the report – the creature’s corpse on an autopsy table and mangled human bodies – she would have laughed the whole thing off as fiction.

  The photos forced her to see the truth. Some people would have run. Instead, it left her wanting to know more. Maybe she wasn’t the only impossible thing in the world. If Big Foot existed, maybe she wasn’t alone. Maybe there were others like her.

  She staked the house for several days before. When the agent was home, she read his thoughts from a car across the street. She discovered Candlework’s Vancouver location. On a Friday night, she told her parents she was going to the movies with friends and drove to a twenty-four-story building at 1169 Alexander. Outside, a sign proclaimed the company was Fault-Aid: Seismic Hazard Mitigation Experts. She parked across the street with a cup coffee while she scanned the building for random thoughts.

  Then there was knock on the window.

  She yelped, spilling coffee down her front. She felt like a mouse caught sneaking out of its home, too startled to even think of running. She looked at the man who knocked and realized something even as his smile filled her eyes. She had not heard him coming. She should have been able to hear his thoughts long before he'd approached the car. Wisdom’s mind was closed to her.

  ***

  She felt the tension long before she reached Wisdom’s office. It was a workday, not long past noon, but the reception area and the outer offices were deserted. Wisdom had sent everyone home early.

  Wisdom leaned against the window, looking like something from a fashion magazine in his expensive red suit framed by the backdrop of Hong Kong. All the wounds from his fight with his father were healed. Jessica sat in a chair against the wall to Garnet’s left. She held a ceramic mug filled with still-steaming coffee and stared into the liquid. Garnet flinched, instinctively thinking Jessica was too young to be drinking coffee. Jessica looked over and stuck her tongue out at Garnet. Obviously, she’d heard the thought.

  Todd, eyes red and face smudged with wet streaks, sat in one of the chairs next to Wisdom’s desk. He kept shaking his head: small measured movements. He was cleaning invisible dirt from beneath his fingernails, his eyes refusing to focus on anyone else in the room. Elaine stood beside another of the chairs, her body stiff and distant. She was decked out in a black pantsuit that showed a surprising level of class. Garnet was used to seeing Wisdom’s hired gun in leather trench coats and mud-soaked dark clothing. David sat in a third chair. Although sitting was not quite the right word for what he was doing. It seemed like his body had been bent in half. His head was in his hands, which in turn were almost lying on his knees. His body jerked in sharp spasms like a fish in lightning-soaked water.

  Josh sat on the edge of Wisdom’s desk, his body relaxed and, somehow, extremely present. Garnet gasped. ‘I can’t read his mind, either!’ She looked at him, seeing nothing but his body. ‘How?’

  Keeping her eyes on him, Garnet walked into the room and closed the door behind her. Josh pushed himself off the desk and took a few steps toward her.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I’m ready when you are.”

  “Oh, Jesus. We’re dead.” David stood up and paced in short quick strides.

  “Sit down, David.” From the tone in Wisdom’s voice, it was not the first time he’d said those words today. David sat down heavily.

  Echo yawned and ran her fingers through her hair. “Seriously, Wisdom, do we have to bring the child? We could bring Ms. Ryerson instead. David can barely stand right now, let alone fight a horde of Edimmu.”

  “Thanks for making it easier, Echo.” Wisdom walked away from the window and sat in his throne-like leather chair. “Current theatrics aside, I know what kind of strength lies in David. And to answer your implied question, Ms. Ryerson has her own assignment, one just as important as our own. We’ll likely hear from her tomorrow.”

  “What’s our plan?” Garnet walked further into the room and took her position at Wisdom’s side. Each step added more pressure to her, as if she was diving deeper and deeper into an ocean. Fears and doubts swam by like fish. “How are we going to fight them?”

  “How else?” David said. His voice was piercing. “Invasion. Brilliant plan, really. Wisdom is going to pop us over to Greece and we’re going to invade their headquarters like we’re some sort of Navy Seal ninjas.”

  “The Navy Seals don’t have ninjas, David.” Elaine shifted her weight. “And please lower your voice.”

  “Oh, you’re afraid someone is going to hear about this insanity?”

  “Not really, no. You’re just really annoying me.”

  “Too bad, so sad for you. Did you want to go and shoot my mother, too?”

  “Enough!” Wisdom snapped his fingers and bright light flashed through the room. Garnet screamed and covered her eyes. The room fell silent and she opened he
r eyes, her face flush red with embarrassment. Whatever Wisdom had done, it appeared to work. Now there was only one thought, one feeling in all their minds.

  Whatever lay ahead, they were all much more afraid of Wisdom than fighting.

  “Better.” Wisdom straightened his tie and leaned forward on his desk. “I know you’re all afraid. It’s a natural reaction. Now get over it. Quickly. And David, if I hear one more whine, one more pretense of weakness, I will pull your brain out through your nose. We both know what you’re capable of. I’m not sure if this little performance is for your benefit or mine, but it’s extremely tiring. I know you haven’t been trained, but I also know something else. No matter how hard you try to deny it, you like killing. You committed each murder not out of necessity or desperation, but out of desire. You wanted to see them dead. So stop your whining and deal. Feel guilty tomorrow after the Council’s destroyed.”

  Everyone turned to watch David’s reactions. It did not take long for Wisdom’s words to have their intended impact.

  David sighed, dejectedly, and hung his head. “When are we going?”

  “Now.”

  Wisdom walked around the table to stand beside Echo. She reached over and grasped his hand. Wisdom placed his other hand against her cheek. A moment later, he flicked his wrist and a 6-foot wide oval of bright light appeared. Elaine stepped through the portal first.

  “Come on, children,” Wisdom said. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can go back to … whatever it is we’ll be getting back to.”

  Jessica walked toward the portal, coffee cup still in hand. Todd and Josh waited until she disappeared before they made their move. David squared his shoulders and followed them. When it was just Garnet and Wisdom in the room, she walked over to him and smiled.

  “I’ll never forget the things you’ve done for me, Wisdom.” She felt blood rush to her face. “I’ve never been good with, you know, these sort of things, but I just wanted to say something in case something, well...just in case.”