Council of Peacocks (24 page)

“Mother would have loved the view from here.”
She sat down on a nearby rock, took deep breaths and stared out
over the wilderness below. It was strange for her to think how old
she was, far older than the trees. Most of the years slid through
her memory, mercurial and jumbled, but her childhood stayed with
her. Playing games by the river. Days watching clouds and birds.
And the day Wisdom took her. He had been a different person then.
Violent and cruel. Now he genuinely seemed to care about her. It
was easy, sometimes, to forget what he had done to her. To her
family. Now, it was all she could think about.

Echo covered her face with trembling hands
and tried to push the memory of screams away. Somewhere in the
world, people were dying because she had run out on them. In and of
itself, that was no concern to her. Humans died every day, after
all. But she had made a promise. A promise to Wisdom to keep the
children safe. If they died on her watch, he would be angry. Or
worse, disappointed.

She shut down the voice of instinct and rose
to her feet. She opened another circle of light. Echo looked back
once more on the mountains and forests of Moravia. Then she was
gone.

***

Something pounded against the door again.

The sofa moved back another inch.

“We have to do something.” Jessica said. She
brought her right arm up to her head and squinted her eyes.

“What?” David licked his lips. He slapped
himself across the face several times. “I can’t die like this.” He
ran forward and slammed his body against the sofa until it slid
firmly back up against the door.

“Not that way,” Jessica said. “Use your
EFHBs. They’re stronger than your body.”

“I don’t know how!” His voice came out in a
shrill and broken fashion. The realization that this little girl
was handling the situation far better than him embarrassed him. The
only thing that infuriated him more than his own weakness was
having someone else recognize it. He howled and slammed his fists
against the floor. “I’m flippin’ useless! Damn!”

“Stop it!” Jessica shouted. She tried to push
herself off the couch with her good arm but the effort made her
woozy again. “Stop your whining or they’re going to kill us! Quit
being a baby and fight back!”

Radiant rage and a kind of hush crept through
David. He turned to Jessica. He wanted to slap her. Then he set his
jaw in determination.

“Good. I’m angry,” he said. “Now I can fight
back.”

He stood up, moved away from the couch and
focused his mind on the other side of the door. Beads of
perspiration built up along his arms as the temperature in the room
rose sharply. The air around the door rippled. Sweat dripped off
his face and fingertips.

The pounding stopped.

On the other side of the door, something
hissed.

Then it began to scream.

***

Echo stepped out of the portal just as an
Edimmu grabbed Todd by the throat. The lizard with wings stood over
eight feet tall. It slammed Todd’s head against the ceiling several
times in quick succession until the stone was dark with blood. The
creature turned at the flash of light as the portal opened. Before
he could focus on Echo, though, Elaine stepped from the portal and
started shooting.

Three more Edimmu appeared, one of them
dragging a mess of clothing and flesh that looked like Bethany.
They stopped, eyes flashing yellow as Elaine fired her modified
Mossberg Mariner shotgun in quick succession. Echo stretched out
her hands, took a strong grip on the magnetic strings of reality,
and twisted them. Bolts of lightning shot through the air and
singed the Edimmu’s chests. They dropped the body and rushed toward
a pool of shadow that hung suspended in the air a few inches from
the wall.

“Not today,” Echo said. She brushed her hands
through the air toward the Edimmu’s escape route. She clenched her
fingers into a fist. The dark portal warped like a piece of paper,
crinkled and shredded. Then, with a soft pop, the shadows
disappeared.

The Edimmu stopped mid-stride, wings
flapping. They turned as one, joined by a common intelligence.

Elaine emptied her shotgun into one of them.
When the creature fell, she threw the shotgun aside, pulled out her
MP-5 sub-machine gun
and turned it on the
other three. Echo rushed to Todd, who now lay slumped atop a table
under the body of the Edimmu. Fingers to his throat, she felt for a
pulse and let out a sigh of relief. At least the boy was still
alive.

The remaining
Edimmu each held their right arm outstretched, palms open and
outward. The bullets from the sub-machine gun sprayed against an
invisible barrier several feet in front of them. They started
walking toward Elaine.

“
Enough, Elaine.”
Echo said. “I’ll take care of these three. Go check on the
others.”

With a nod, Elaine
stopped firing and rushed toward the living quarters. A few steps
later, an unseen force lifted her off the ground and tossed her
backwards. She landed on her back with a thud. One of the Edimmu
laughed, a mixture of hissing and guttural
sounds.

‘
I hope I made the
right choice,’ Echo thought. ‘Even with Elaine’s help, this isn’t
the sort of thing I’m good at.’

From somewhere deep
in the living quarters, a scream that was not human filled the
air.

Chapter Eighteen

David waited until
the scream stopped and then moved toward the
door.

“
Don’t,” Jessica
said. She pulled her tattered shirt closer to her skin, closing the
holes in the fabric. “It’s not dead.”

‘
I wish I could
feel that,’
he thought.
He gave his head a single shake but kept moving. ‘It has to be at
least incapacitated. I felt the flames hit his flesh. Whatever
these creatures are, I know now they can be
hurt.’

He bent down,
braced his feet, and pushed the couch away from the entrance. When
there was enough space for him to open the door just a crack, he
stopped pushing. Just in case.

He put his hand on
the doorknob and started to turn.

“
You’re being
stupid.” Jessica was standing now. She brushed sweaty hair away
from her face. Whatever signs of weakness there had been when she
had broken down in tears was gone. She still looked like a broken
doll with her damp, red eyes and the ugly break of her arm. Her
stance and the steadiness of her eyes radiated nothing but
strength. “It’s stronger than that. It’s stronger than
us.”

David turned the
knob all the way and heard it click open. “You don’t know how
strong I am,” he said. Slowly, he let the door
open.

He peeked
through.

On the ground,
black as coal, was a pile of scaly legs and arms and wings. It
twitched, the movement amorphous and subtle like snakes squirming
under a black blanket. Then he saw the eyes, white ovals with thin
green slits down the middle.

Looking at
him.

“
Damn.”

As quickly as he
could, he pushed against the door to slam it shut. His arms felt
heavy and thick like he was moving through water. Before he could
blink, the Edimmu was on its feet. It hissed – a forked tongue
shooting out through human teeth – and slammed its shoulder against
the slightly open door. Pain shot through his forehead where the
door hit him. He flew back, falling on his shoulder as the creature
charged into the room. Its black, oily wings fluttered back and
forth. It grabbed the sofa in one enormous hand and tossed it away
like so much cardboard.

David’s anger was
gone, replaced again by the fear that made him powerless. He closed
his eyes, instinct screaming at him to flee. He pushed and pushed
with weak arms that kept buckling at the elbow as he tried to get
up. Something smacked him in the back of the head. His face slammed
forward, breaking his nose. Somewhere behind him, Jessica
screamed.

***

The Edimmu, caught
off guard by their colleague's howl of pain, turned slightly toward
the living quarters. For just a moment their concentration was
divided between curiosity and keeping the shield in
place.

“
Go!” Echo shouted
at Elaine.

Elaine jumped to
her feet and ran toward the scream. Echo reached out, twining her
fingers within the weave of energy and force that held the atoms of
the room together. Then, once again, she clenched her fists.
Nosebleeds accompanied tiny hemorrhages she set off in the Edimmu’s
brains. Elaine rushed past them as each Edimmu fell to its knees,
reptilian hands over the all-too-human faces.

Echo tore at the
magnetic strings again. Forks of lightning shot from her fingertips
across the dry air. Scaled flesh sizzled. The Edimmu
shrieked.

Then, corner by
corner, the shadows began to grow.

***

Elaine fought the
urge to run down the hallway. The submachine gun hung around her
neck on a tight strap. She held it firmly with sweaty palms.
Recklessness could be fatal. She inhaled through her mouth to avoid
the stench of the scorched bodies and smoldering fabric that
littered the hallway. All the doors she passed were open, revealing
room after room of carnage.

‘
Only a few
bodies,’ she thought. ‘They must have taken the others.’ Several of
the dead wore white uniforms. Garnet’s employees. ‘Wisdom knew this
was going to happen. He chose to let this happen. I can only
imagine the alternative.’

Down the hallway,
she heard a scream. Jessica.

‘
At least she’s
alive,’
Elaine thought.
Wisdom would have been most upset if he lost her. From what Wisdom
had told had her, Jessica was vital to their success. She let the
submachine gun fall back against her body and took an M-9 handgun
in each hand. These weapons would minimize the risk of Jessica
getting caught in the crossfire.

Jessica screamed
again.

Elaine moved
quickly now, a brisk walk with outstretched arms. She fired as soon
as she stepped into the room. The Edimmu had its back to the door,
both hands round Jessica’s neck. It held her above its head while
she kicked at its body and beat at its hands. Neither made its grip
on her any less firm. Elaine aimed both guns at the Edimmu’ knee
caps. The creature howled and tossed Jessica like a sack of
potatoes aimed right at Elaine. She rolled out of the way, letting
the tiny body crash behind her. Whatever damage Jessica took in the
fall, Elaine had still accomplished her goal. There was nothing now
between her and the Edimmu.

The Edimmu hissed
again. The air filled with the stench of ozone, like damp air after
a lightning strike and, hands clenched in fists, it vomited bright
red flame from his mouth. Elaine twisted to the left, barely
escaping the attack. She dropped to the ground and tossed the gun
in her right hand away. Then she grabbed the handle of her hunting
knife, throwing it as hard as she could. It spun a full rotation in
the air before the blade stabbed into the Edimmu, firmly in the
middle of its forehead. It looked up, struggling to see the thing
imbedded in its skull. It screamed again, a war cry. Then it fell
and was silent.

Elaine ran to
Jessica. The girl coughed but wasn’t moving. Elaine recognized five
serious injuries that were potentially life
threatening.

“
No time for
caution,” she whispered to herself. She squatted down and carefully
helped Jessica to her feet while she talked. “Listen, Jessica. We
have to get you away from here. I know you are hurt, but we’re
going to have to move quickly. Can you do
that?”

Jessica nodded.
Elaine put an arm around her waist and let the child put most of
her weight on her. Then Jessica pointed at a nearby
body.

“
David is still
alive,” she said.

Elaine looked over
at the crumpled man. The back of his head was a mash of blood and
matted red hair. As if prodded by her eyes, David twitched and
pushed himself up on tenuous arms until he was on all fours. He
blinked several times, every movement maddeningly slow. Then his
eyes landed on Jessica and Elaine.

“
You look like
hell, Ross.” His face was a mass of broken and bruised flesh.
“Injuries like that require a hospital. You’re lucky to be alive.
You wouldn’t be standing if you were a normal person. Anomalies are
fast healers. Just don’t pass out. You’re still vulnerable to
concussions.” Elaine looked at Jessica. “How many others are still
here?”

Jessica shook her
head, a tear falling down her cheek.

Elaine bit her
lips, took hold of her sub-machine gun again and used it to motion
them out into the hallway.

Then there was a
series of screams. A whoosh of hot air rushed past
them.