Billy: Messenger of Powers

by Michaelbrent Collings

  “She’s,” Billy stammered, “she’s not. She can’t be…. She just….” His voice disappeared like a sigh in the night, petering out to silence. He felt his breath hitching in his throat, felt his head spinning. Blythe, a Darksider?

  Billy tried to look away, but found that he couldn’t. As with the first time he had seen her, she was beautiful, mysterious, captivating to him in a way he had never before felt. But now, looking at her was not mere fun, it was tinged with a deep fear.

  What if Wolfen and Mrs. Black are right? he thought again. I never heard any other side of the story. Maybe Mrs. Russet, and Ivy, and Tempus, and Vester…maybe they were wrong. Maybe they deserve to be in prison.

  He wrenched his eyes away from Blythe Forrest and looked back at the stack of glass cells that housed the Dawnwalkers. It sparkled in the sky, catching the sunlight and turning the scene into something almost beautiful.

  Billy felt something tugging inside him. This was a moment of choice, he realized. When he went back to the Accounting Room on Powers Island—if he ever did so—would his “Billy—unDetermined” badge now say “Billy—Dawnwalker”? Or would it proclaim that he was a Darksider.

  For a moment, Billy didn’t know. And for a moment, he honestly didn’t know what he even wanted it to say.

  Below him, far away, Blythe laughed again.

  How can she be happy if this is a bad place? Billy thought. How can the one person who was nice to me be evil?

  He thought about staying on Dark Isle. Staying with Blythe. Being, as he had said he wanted to be, her friend.

  Being a Darksider.

  That tugging feeling deep inside Billy teemed and writhed, like a living creature that dwelt inside his heart and was only now awakening. But would it be a creature of the Dawn, or one of the Dark?

  Billy took one more long look at Blythe.

  “Stay,” whispered Wolfen.

  The creature in Billy’s heart opened its eyes, and Billy suddenly saw what he was.

  “No!” he shouted. He shook Wolfen’s hands from his shoulders, shrugged away from Mrs. Black’s matronly touch on his neck. Suddenly, Blythe disappeared from his view and he found himself back on the rock again, high above Dark Isle, Wolfen in front of him and Mrs. Black behind. “You’re lying!” he screamed at Wolfen. “You weren’t trying to save me on top of the tower, you were trying to stop me, to hurt me. Good people don’t hurt other people to help them!”

  “Billy,” began Wolfen, his voice the embodiment of calm reason. “Think this through. Look at it from our point of view.”

  “No,” insisted Billy. “I won’t. Your point of view is wrong. It’s not what I believe. It’s not what I am.”

  “What you are?” said Mrs. Black, the mocking tone returning to her voice now. “Just what are you, Mr. Jones? A no-Power human? A boy with no friends at school, a boy with no future in life, a boy with—”

  “Stop!” Billy shouted. “If that was all I was, you wouldn’t be wasting your time up here with me like this. Neither of you would be.” He looked into Wolfen’s eyes, returning the dark master’s gaze steadfastly. “But that’s not all I am. I am the Messenger. I speak for the White King.” He glanced back at Mrs. Black, who was looking at him with a mixture of surprise and disgust on her face. “And you would do well to remember that, witch.”

  Billy saw Mrs. Black’s expression change to one of searing hatred and rage. “You…dare?” she snarled. Her cheeks went white, her lips pale, all the blood seeming to rush from her face as she drew herself up to her full height.

  Billy thought for a moment that she was going to hit him. But she didn’t. She stood as still as marble, as silent as a gravestone. But that wasn’t all she was doing, he knew. He could feel the air around him start to crackle with energy. Nearby him, Wolfen sighed, as though resigned to what was going to happen.

  “Hear this, false messenger,” said Mrs. Black at last. “Hear this, false speaker. None shall dare to challenge the Dark and live.”

  With that, a small insect rose from behind Mrs. Black. It fluttered around her hair for a moment, then flapped its way over to Billy. It was a bug, he saw, a large gray moth. It flew before him in lazy patterns, its wings a blur. Then suddenly it was as though Billy could see the insect in slow motion, every detail of the moth clear to him.

  It was a moth, but not alive. It was in the shape of an insect, but was only a mockery of such a thing. Instead of a body with pliant wings, it was made entirely of tiny bones, of minute skeletons that created a lacework of grays and blacks. The back of the moth’s bone-wings were patterned strangely, in the shape of a skull. Billy couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of the strange creature. Even though it was tiny, he could sense the power coming off of it in waves.

  “The Death’s Head Moth,” said Mrs. Black. “One of my own little contributions to the artistry of the Dark.” The moth continued to fly slowly in front of Billy, as though showing off for him. “Do you want to know what it does?”

  Billy didn’t. He looked around for an escape from the doom he could feel coming toward him. But there was nothing. Wolfen was on one side, Mrs. Black on the other. And on the other side there was nothing but a steep fall to a deep ocean full of deadly sea life.

  “It is a Harbinger,” said Mrs. Black. “It foretells doom. Your doom, Billy Jones.” She licked her lips in that disconcerting way of hers. “But don’t worry. You won’t be gone. You’ll be dead, but will remain under the power of the Dark.”

  Billy didn’t understand what she was saying. He didn’t know what would happen if the Death’s Head Moth touched him, and he didn’t want to find out. However, it appeared that he didn’t have a choice in the matter, because the moth at that instant swooped in toward him. Billy ducked away from it, which made Mrs. Black laugh. At the same time, he felt Wolfen’s hands close around his arms, holding him tightly in place.

  The moth fluttered lazily before him, wheeling about for another chance to land on Billy and do its evil work. It swooped straight at Billy’s right eye, and Billy could only scream.

  There was a flash, a sizzling sound. Then he heard Wolfen swear behind him, and saw that Prince had chosen its moment to fight. The Fizzle had erupted from its hiding place in Billy’s shirt, and caught the Death Head’s Moth in its flaming jaws at the last second.

  Mrs. Black shrieked as though in pain, and clutched at her eye like she had been stabbed there. Wolfen’s grip loosened at that moment. “Eva!” shouted the dark master.

  Billy hurled himself away from the fracas, moving in the only direction left to him: towards the edge of the cliff. He moved instinctively, without thinking about it, but as soon as he had taken only a few steps, he looked behind him.

  Prince was on the craggy ground behind him, the lava Fizzle working its jaws back and forth as it tried to get a death-drip on the moth. The bone insect was fluttering its skeletal wings, trapped in Prince’s mouth. The Fizzle grew brighter as it chewed, and Billy could feel heat rolling off it in waves as Prince tried to snuff the Death’s Head Moth out of existence. Mrs. Black screamed again, and sank down to her knees, still clutching at her eye.

  The moth struggled to get away, but Prince just clamped down tighter and tighter, and grew brighter and brighter as its heat intensified. Soon Billy could barely look at the Fizzle, which was now a white-hot line of heat on the ground.

  Then, slowly, the heat faded. The Fizzle let its fire dim. Billy was elated. Prince had done it! The snake had saved him again! The Death’s Head Moth lay unmoving in its mouth, crushed and broken.

  But Billy’s elation was short-lived. He squinted, barely able to believe his eyes, as the crushed bones that made up the moth’s body slowly re-formed and knit themselves back together again. Worse, Prince was no longer moving.

  “Fool!” shouted Mrs. Black, still on her knees, clutching at her eye with one shaking hand. “You can’t kill Death!” She laughed then, an insane laugh that sent shivers up and down Billy’s spine.

  Billy look
ed back at Prince. The Fizzle was writhing. It had seemed as though the snake had caught the moth, but now Billy could see that it was the other way around: Prince was trying to get away, but couldn’t. The Death’s Head Moth flapped its wings again, beating them around the lava snake’s eyes. Billy could see Prince’s ember-eyes blinking, fading, dimming like coals left too long in a fire-pit.

  “Prince!” he shouted.

  The snake twisted and jerked, but could not pull itself away from the fearful creature of death that Mrs. Black had conjured up. It rolled its fire-lit eyes toward Billy. Run, it seemed to be saying with its look. “No,” Billy said. “I won’t leave you.”

  Run, Prince’s eyes continued to say. Run now.

  But Billy couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave his friend. He moved toward where the snake and the moth were struggling, and reached out to grab the insect, to pull it away from Prince. But before he could, Prince’s tail flashed out. It hit Billy’s shin like a flaming whip, and Billy winced in pain as he was burned right through his pants.

  Prince opened its jaws, and a dreadful keening wail issued from its mouth. It quivered rapidly now, and its color dimmed from yellow to orange to deep red.

  It was still looking at Billy, though. Looking with eyes that now seemed to be covered by a white coating, like it was wearing a veil. Run, fool, run! said the snake’s look.

  The moth had settled down onto Prince body, now, and was walking along the length of the Fizzle. Wherever it touched, Prince’s body turned to gray. Soon, Prince was more gray than red.

  And then, with a final shudder, the snake whipped about once again. There was a crackle, and a smell like sulfur, and then the Fizzle was motionless. It still remained, but no fire was in it. Instead, it was now only a gray carcass. Then, to Billy’s horror, the body seemed to transform. The Fizzle’s gray skin resolved into thousands of tiny thread-like shapes. The eyes opened once again.

  “Prince?” said Billy in an uncertain voice. But the Fizzle looked at him now without any love. Its eyes, once bright friendly embers, were now emotionless pits of darkness. The lines on its body shifted and hardened, and Billy suddenly realized what had happened.

  “Prince,” he said again. But he knew it was no use. Prince, his friend, was gone. In its place was only a long serpent made of the same tiny bones as the Death’s Head Moth that flapped near its head. It was a newly born servant of Death.

  The new Death Fizzle hissed at Billy. Then, with the dry rasp of bone scraping across stone, the snake crawled to Mrs. Black and wound itself tightly around her ankle.

  Mrs. Black, though still holding her eye in pain, laughed at Billy’s expression. “They all leave, don’t they?” she taunted. “All your friends. They leave you alone to face your fate.” She grunted, and pulled her hand away from her eye.

  Billy almost screamed at what he saw there, but bit back his terror, knowing he had to keep his wits about him if he was to survive.

  Wolfen helped Mrs. Black to her feet, then both the Darksiders turned their terrifying gazes on Billy full force. Billy stepped back, trying to move as far as he could from them, but suddenly he felt his heels hanging over nothing. He had come to the edge of the cliff.

  He chanced a glance behind him, and saw nothing. Only a long fall to an angry surf and treacherous rocks. As though they could sense that a meal was nearby, the circling sharks below drew in close, swimming restlessly.

  “Nowhere to go,” said Wolfen. His voice was only a whisper, but it hit Billy like a hammer. Because there was nowhere to go. His friends were imprisoned, or worse. He had no powers of his own. He had no one to help him.

  Then, unbidden, the words that Terry had spoken came to him mind:

  “Through fires of fate and storms that save

  Through winter’s gate and water’s grave

  Shall come the One, once lost, now found

  Seen by the Son whose love abounds.

  A sword, a spear, and armor strong

  A shield to wear, and dagger long

  To fell the Dark and bring the Light

  To call the spark that ends the night.

  And through it all, one twist of fate:

  A child whose call will seem too late

  But though the Dark seems once to win

  The child will spark the light again.”

  Billy looked below him. The sharks still waited, the sea still clearly hungered for him.

  “Water’s grave,” Billy whispered. Then he looked at the Darksiders as they stepped confidently toward him. “You can’t have me,” he said.

  “What?” said Mrs. Black, stopping for a moment in surprise.

  “You can’t have me,” said Billy again. “I know what you want. You want to make me yours. But you can’t. Because I’m not yours.”

  He looked down again. Gulped.

  “You are!” shouted Mrs. Black, her voice almost hysterical with frenzied rage. “You’re ours because all things come to us in time. All things come to Death!” And on her ankle, what used to be Prince hissed angry agreement.

  Billy just smiled. “Not me,” he said, surprised at the calm that he suddenly felt. “I’m not yours. I am the Messenger. I am not here to be your servant, but to destroy your world.” The words came as though from a great distance, like he was hearing someone else say them. But he felt their truth, even more so than he had before, when braving the touch of the zombies. “I am no one’s servant. I am the Messenger, and I answer only to the White King.”

  “You…will…be…mine!” shouted Wolfen, and lunged at Billy.

  But before he could take more than a single step, Billy smiled. The truth of what he had said coursed through him like a cool stream through a desert. He looked at Wolfen without fear. He gazed at Mrs. Black with sudden pity.

  “I am not yours,” he whispered. And he knew it was true. He was Billy, the Messenger, servant of the White King, and ender of the world.

  And with that thought in his mind, Billy jumped from the cliff.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST

  In Which Billy is Eaten, and hears the Music of the deep…

  Billy discovered something very surprising in the next instant: falling to certain death, either by splattering oneself all over pointy rocks, or by drowning in raging surf, or by being eaten by ravenous sharks, is not as fun as it sounds.

  He was totally sure—positive in fact—at the moment he had jumped from the cliff that it had been the right thing to do. But falling rapidly toward a three-way doom had done amazing things—bad things—to his self-confidence. He supposed that this was probably normal: anyone in his position probably would have self-confidence issues.

  Or, at least, he would have supposed all this if he had been thinking about the subject somewhere else. Somewhere slightly safer. In a magical palace made entirely of pillows where everything was wrapped in a foot of three-ply toilet paper, for instance.

  But Billy wasn’t falling to such a wonderful place. No, he was falling, falling, falling, to the raging sea below. He seemed to recall something about the fact that a person could be killed if jumping into water from too high. The surface tension—the power of the water’s surface holding itself together—could make the water feel like concrete.

  Luckily, there was no real surface tension, because the ocean below was so very turbulent that the water felt only as hard as dropping headfirst onto a pile of cardboard boxes, instead of onto a garage floor. But it still hurt when Billy slammed into the water with a huge splash. The breath was knocked out of him, and he gasped in a lungful of water as he plummeted downward below the ocean’s surface.

  He coughed and hacked, trying to resist the urge to inhale. He clawed at the water, pulling manically, trying to swim to the air above. But before he could do so, he realized he was not alone.

  The sharks.

  They were huge, with gaping jaws full of teeth like broken bottles, dark eyes, and a decidedly unhappy look on their faces. Worse, they were everywhere, thick gray bodies swimming powerfully
all around Billy, eyes on the lookout for prey.

  Billy tried to calm down, not an easy task when one finds oneself twenty feet underwater in a stormy sea surrounded by man-eating sharks just off the rocky coast of an island devoted entirely to dark magic. But he did succeed to some extent. His panicked thrashing went to a mere manic swimming, and he managed to stop the coughing attack that had threatened to drown him. He thought as he did so that he noticed two or three of the sharks notice him, but decided to concentrate on that later.

  First things first, he thought. Air now, sharks later.

  So Billy pulled himself upward as quickly as he could, his lungs burning from lack of oxygen, and only barely managed to break the surface before his body decided to inhale whether he wanted it to or not. He gasped a huge drought of air. It smelled of brine and salt, but to him it was sweeter than anything he’d ever smelled before.

  Unfortunately, he had only a short moment to savor the experience before a wave crashed over his head, pushing him downward once more. He fought his way up again, coughing and spluttering, and did his best to look around.

  That turned out to be a bad move. He would have preferred ignorance. He found himself now in the middle of a trio of twenty-foot-high rocks, which jutted out of the water like a witch’s teeth. The rocks funneled the surf toward Billy, and the pounding waves threatened to crush him at any moment against one of the rocks or against the cliff face at his back. It was stormy, too, a contained thunderhead seeming to hang directly above Billy, lightning flashing from it periodically with a crash and a boom.

  Worst of all though was that Billy had been right about what he thought he saw below: the sharks had noticed him. He couldn’t see much, but he could make out several dark shapes in the water, gray forms that were larger than a man. They circled around him as Billy desperately tried to remain afloat, and more and more of the shapes joined the hunting party until Billy felt like he was in the eye of a hurricane made of sharks.