James Swain - Dark Magic

“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.

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 seances, 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.”

“Be my guest.”

The elders began to talk amongst themselves. Not knowing their names, Wolfe had learned to differentiate them by their accents. The elder on the left had attended either Oxford or Cambridge, and spoke like an aristocrat; the middle elder had worked in broadcasting and had what was commonly called a BBC accent; while the elder on the right was a commoner, and spoke with a Cockney bite. Finished, the elders resumed looking at him through the Web cam.