Dark Magic (12 page)

Peter had been told that he looked like a demon when he became enraged. It must have been true, because Rowe and his teacher backed away from the door.

“You going to fight him?” Rowe asked.

“That was the idea,” Peter replied.

Rowe grabbed a walking stick out of a bucket by the door, and thrust it into Peter’s other hand. It was made of walnut, and felt good and solid.

“Take this. It’s got some heft to it.”

“Thanks. Don’t come out until I say so.”

Max grabbed his arm. “Peter, please be careful.”

“I will, Max.”

“Make sure you hit him first, and hard.”

“Good idea.”

“Good luck, my boy.”

Rowe did him the courtesy of throwing back the dead bolt and opening the door. Peter squared his shoulders and stepped outside the apartment. He supposed he should have felt apprehensive, yet for some reason, he felt more confident than he ever had in his life.

He walked onto the landing, ready to slay the dragon.

16

Everybody had a history.

Peter had read that in a book whose author had survived the Holocaust. The book’s message had been clear. Every person had events in their past which were painful, and hard to bear. It was part of life, and there was no getting around it.

Deal with it.

He had been dealing with his parents’ deaths for as long as could remember. So long that it had become a fabric of his life. He had learned to cope during holidays, birthdays, and when he needed a shoulder to cry on, or an ear to listen. He had accepted that the two people who loved him most were gone, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

Deal with it.

He had, as best he could. Becoming a magician had let him escape to a make-believe world where he could manipulate reality, and pretend nothing bad had ever happened to him. But the anger was still there, and always would be. It rumbled inside of him like a volcano, bubbling just below the surface, hidden to everyone but himself.

Until now.

His footsteps sounded like cannons going off as he ran down the apartment stairwell. The coldness had returned to his joints, and he could not stop shivering. He stopped to look over the railing. Wolfe was on the landing below, holding a metal pipe in his hand.

“Hey, asshole,” Peter shouted.

Wolfe looked straight up. His mouth dropped open in surprise.

“Remember me?”

Peter threw the whiskey bottle at the wall behind Wolfe’s head. It shattered into a hundred pieces, spraying tiny shards of glass into his enemy’s face. Wolfe let out a startled yell, and bolted down the stairs.

“Coward!”

Peter hopped over the railing, and landed on the steps below. Wolfe was already to the next landing, and running hard. The young magician hopped over the railing again, then again. He’d never been much of an athlete, yet now he felt like he could have won a decathlon. Reaching the first floor, he stopped and looked around the empty lobby. Wolfe was gone. His breathing grew short, and his vision narrowed. In the theater of his mind, he saw Wolfe hiding outside the apartment house on the stoop, waiting to strike when he emerged. He could see the tiny cuts on Wolfe’s face, and even smell his foul breath. It was like having a target in his sights.

He clutched the walking stick. He’d never been able to project his thoughts like this before. A new gift, courtesy of the spirits. How long it would last, he had no idea.

Kicking open the front door, he came out of the apartment swinging. Wolfe was right where he’d expected, and he caught him on the side of the face with the stick. The cry of pain was worth savoring. He chased Wolfe into the street, and began to strike his enemy at will. Every blow found its mark, and produced howls of excruciating pain. Each time Wolfe attempted to counter or strike back, Peter saw the blow or kick coming seconds before it was delivered, and parried it. Wolfe was bigger and stronger, yet hopelessly outmatched. His eyes took on a desperate look.

“No more,” Wolfe said.

“You quitting?”

“Yes. Stop hitting me.”

“Put your arms in the air.”

Wolfe raised his arms in surrender. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and nose. Peter fought back the urge to strike him again, and finish the job. Looking into Wolfe’s soulless eyes, he saw a little boy who’d been tortured by his father, who’d grown up to be a torturer and killer himself. He had a history, too, only it was no excuse for who he’d become.

“Start talking,” Peter said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about the Order.”

“No thanks.”

Peter raised his stick and took aim. One blow was all it would take to send him straight to hell where he belonged. Wolfe recoiled in fear.

“All right, all right, I’ll tell you the little that I know. There are three elders of the Order. I’ve never seen their faces, nor do I know their names. They send me jobs to do, and pay me well. That’s the arrangement.”

Peter thought back to the three men he’d seen whisk his parents away. Were those the elders? Something told him they were, and he said, “One of the elders has crooked teeth and a twisted nose. What’s his name?”

“Like I told you, I’ve never seen their faces,” Wolfe said.

“You must have some idea.”

A spark of recognition sparked Wolfe’s eyes.
He knew something.
Peter whacked him in the kneecap. His enemy let out a muffled cry and sank to the ground like he was melting. Peter brought the tip of the stick beneath Wolfe’s chin, and raised his head so their eyes met. Wolfe’s life flashed before his eyes.

“Last chance,” Peter said.

Wolfe blinked. He was not ready to die.

“I don’t know who the elders are,” Wolfe said. “But the other members of the Order might. There’s one here in New York. A spy. I’ll bring him to you.”

“What do you mean, a spy? What does he do?”

“He gathers information. Before I arrived he emailed me the list of names of people I was supposed to kill.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know his name. Just his cell number.”

“Would he know who the elders are?”

“He might. He’s been with the organization for a while. Longer than me.”

“Give me his cell number.”

“It’s in my wallet.”

“Get it. And no funny stuff.”

Wolfe pulled out his wallet and extracted a slip of paper from his billfold. Peter leaned forward in anticipation. It was just the opening Wolfe had been waiting for. Springing up, he shoved Peter and sent him backwards, then hobbled over to his motorbike and jumped on. The engine barked to life.

“Bastard!” Peter shouted.

The bike sped away. Their eyes met in the motorbike’s mirror.

Wolfe was laughing at him.

The rage swelled up inside of Peter. The walking stick flew out of his hand and gyrated through the air, slicing the raindrops like a scythe. He hadn’t thrown it; it had just
gone.

The stick smacked Wolfe in the back of the skull. Wolfe lost control of the bike, and it went down in the intersection of Second Avenue and Houston. Several Good Samaritans got out of their cars to give help. Wolfe jumped into an idling vehicle, and sped away.

The slip of paper with the phone number lay at Peter’s feet. He picked it up, and unfolded it. It was a receipt from a restaurant.

“Damn you,” Peter swore.

Max had appeared on the stoop. He hurried over to his student.

“Peter, come with me.”

“Did you see that, Max?”

“Yes. You gave him a hell of a fight.”

“I mean the walking stick. It left my hand on its own accord. Did you see that?”

“Yes, Peter, I saw it.”

“How did I do that?”

“You did it very well. Now come with me, before the police arrive.”

Max pulled his student beneath a shop awning across the street, and hid in the shadows. Two police cruisers pulled up, and the sidewalk in front of Rowe’s apartment turned into a crime scene in the blink of an eye. Max suddenly looked afraid.

“I must get you out of here,” Max said.

“But I need to talk to the police, and tell them what happened,” Peter said.

“No, you don’t. You’ve got to stay away from the police. Let me deal with them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me, it’s for your own good.” His teacher pushed him down the sidewalk toward First Avenue. He did not stop pushing until they’d reached the busy intersection.

“Now go home. I’ll call you later, once the dust has settled,” Max said.

“All right, Max. But first answer my question. How did I do that?”

“I think you know.”

“With my mind? But that’s not possible.”

“For you it is, Peter.”

Peter didn’t understand what Max meant. A psychic’s powers were limited, and did not include mind over matter, or the ability to instantly anticipate what a person was going to do, as he’d done with Wolfe. He’d never heard of such powers before. Across the street he spotted a uniformed cop taking a statement from an eyewitness, who kept pointing in their direction.

Max pushed him. “Go. Before it’s too late.”

Too late for what?
Peter had more questions, but the tone of Max’s voice was enough for now, and he hurried up First Avenue, away from the chaos he’d just created.

PART II

THE CHILDREN OF MARBLE

17

With his ears ringing and his vision blurred, Wolfe staggered into his seedy hotel room. He’d ditched the car he’d stolen, and made his way back to where he was staying, through a series of alleys and crowded sidewalks. The police were everywhere, and he’d been lucky to escape their manhunt.

He kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto the bed. For a few minutes he stared at the water stains on the ceiling while trying to collect his wits. He was staying in the Hotel Carter on West 43rd Street. A search on Google had shown it to be the worst-rated hotel in Midtown. So far, it had lived up to its reputation. It wasn’t the kind of place where the police would come looking for him. At least, not right away.

His head was throbbing and he went to the bathroom and downed two aspirin with a glass of water. Then he gazed into the mirror above the sink. As a soldier, his speciality had been hand-to-hand combat, although he never would have known it by his reflection. His face was cut up, his left eye nearly shut. On the back of his head was a lump that made him wince every time he touched it, while his left ear looked like a blood sausage. He’d come out on the losing end of this one, that was for sure. The question was, why?

Everything had been on his side, from the element of surprise, to the fact that his opponent didn’t know how to fight. So why had he lost? He could blame it on bad luck, only that was a weakling’s excuse. Something else was going on here, and he was determined to find out what it was.

Sitting on the bed, he pulled his laptop from its case, and powered it up. It was noon, which made it five o’clock back home in England. The British lived for traditions. Tea at four, pubs closing at the stroke of midnight, and other strange rituals that were ingrained in the genes, and would never die. The Order was no different. He was required to contact them every day, rain or shine, come hell or high water, at five in the afternoon their time, regardless of what part of the world he was in, or what he was doing. Sometimes a phone call would do; if he was embedded in a city, as he was now, then it was over the Internet using Skype, which let the Order see and talk to Wolfe via the Web cam on his laptop. A loud beep signaled the connection had gone through. A minute passed.

“Come on, lads, I haven’t got all bloody day,” he grumbled.

A blue light flickered across his laptop’s screen. It expanded until he was staring at the Room of Spirits, a darkened chamber whose walls were covered with mystic signs from ancient Babylon. The room boasted several aquariums filled with poisonous reptiles and venomous snakes that snapped at the glass. Flanking the aquariums were life-size marble statues of the Oracle of Delphi, and the Greek sorceress Medea. It was here that the elders of the Order held séances, and peered into the future.

Three men dressed in black robes sat at a glass table encrypted with Zodiac figures, kabbalistic emblems, and algebraic symbols that pulsated with a life of their own. Each man wore a white plastic mask which covered his face. The elder in the middle addressed him.

“Hello, Major Wolfe. How are we today?”

“I’ve had better days,” Wolfe replied.

“Is something wrong?”

He tilted the laptop so the Web cam captured his damaged face. “See for yourself.”

The elders leaned forward in their chairs to study his face.

“You look rather beat-up,” the middle elder said.

“That would be an understatement. I nearly got bloody killed.”

“By who?”

“That little bastard Peter Warlock did this to me.”

“Did he catch you by surprise?”

“On the contrary. I had him right where I wanted him.” Wolfe paused to let the words sink in, then said what was on his mind. “He’s one of you, isn’t he?”

Clearly upset by his remark, the elders stirred in their chairs.

“What is that supposed to mean?” the elder on the left asked.

“Peter Warlock is more than just a psychic,” Wolfe replied. “He anticipated my every move, and knew exactly what I was thinking. I didn’t stand a chance.”

“You’re making excuses,” the middle elder said accusingly. “Admit it. You blundered.”

Wolfe brought his face inches from the screen. “Listen up, gents. I know when someone’s got my number, and Peter Warlock has it. He got into my head. Every time I tried to take him down, he anticipated what I was going to do. It was like trying to fight against myself.”

“You’re saying he’s different than the others,” the middle elder said.

“Much different.”

“Excuse us for a minute, Major. We need to discuss this.”