Billy: Messenger of Powers (40 page)

“Why so quiet?” purred the Power. He approached Billy with a kind of deliberate casualness, appearing to walk in an almost meandering gait that nevertheless moved him closer to Billy with every step.

Run, Billy thought to himself. Run.

But he couldn’t move. His feet were planted as firmly on the tower as though he were part of the stone it was made of.

Wolfen was still wearing the black clothing covered by a white coat, the exact same outfit Billy had seen him wearing before, on the day that Wolfen had sworn allegiance to the Council. From what Billy understood, Wolfen’s words had to have been true, because the Diamond Dais had turned green when the Power spoke them. Nonetheless, the Council had been attacked, and Wolfen stood before him now, his smile broadening as he contemplated the fear-ridden Billy.

“I must confess,” said Wolfen, “you’re somewhat less than I expected. The way Lumilla spoke of you, I rather pictured someone a bit more imposing.” Wolfen paused, leaning in close to Billy. “At the very least, a bit braver.”

Billy felt his lip quiver. He was surprised at how terribly frightened he was. Not that Wolfen wasn’t scary. He was. But Billy could somehow feel, in a strangely disconnected way, that his fear was far out of proportion to what it should have been.

Wolfen waved a hand, and Billy’s fear doubled in intensity, almost causing him to fall over. Billy clutched at his stomach in raw terror, biting his lip to keep from shouting.

“What you are feeling,” said Wolfen in a calm, conversational tone, “is the Dread. It’s one of my specialties.” The way he said that left Billy with no doubt that Wolfen had other specialties, and that some of them were much, much worse.

Every bad thing that Billy had ever experienced, every frightening moment, every pain from the smallest sliver to the time he had broken his leg in grammar school and had to have surgery, crowded into Billy’s mind. It was as though he was made of fear, a writhing snake of horror that would suffocate him in its constrictive grasp.

Billy could feel his heart pounding. Far too hard, far too fast. He could hear his pulse in his eardrums, beating with machine-gun speed and intensity, and knew his heart couldn’t keep up like this for much longer: he would literally drop dead of fear.

Wolfen walked slowly around Billy, taking his time, a hawk circling an injured field mouse before dropping in for the final blow. He spoke as he walked, and the words confirmed Billy’s suspicions: “If I don’t let up soon, Billy, you will simply fall over and be consumed by your greatest fears.” He made a small movement, a crook of his finger, and Billy felt the terror ease somewhat. It didn’t go away entirely, but his heart slowed from its dangerous speed.

Billy’s mouth still felt dry, but he managed to croak out a single word. “Why?” he said.

“Always an interesting question,” responded Wolfen. He smiled. “But not to be answered today, I think.” He suddenly stopped circling, standing behind Billy. Billy still couldn’t move, but he felt the intensity of Wolfen’s hateful gaze boring into him. “Instead,” continued the evil Power, “I think I will ask the questions, and you will answer them.” He leaned toward Billy, and Billy could smell the man’s rank breath, rotten and fetid, as though he hadn’t brushed his teeth in a million years. “Who are you, Mr. Jones?” asked Wolfen.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Billy managed to answer through chattering teeth.

“Who are you?” repeated Wolfen. “What is it about you that made Lumilla think you were so special?”

“What have you done with her?” Billy asked.

Immediately, he knew that was the wrong response. His fear redoubled, and he fell to his knees. “I’ve done as I pleased with her,” was Wolfen’s cryptic response. “Just as I will do with any Power who crosses me.” He stood in front of Billy now, legs wide, fists clenched as though he was restraining himself from physically attacking Billy.

Instead, however, he reached out to Billy. He extended a finger, and Billy was reminded for a moment of the clutching hands of the zombies he had repeatedly escaped from. But this was no zombie reaching for him now, it was something much worse. And Billy couldn’t even
move
this time, much less actively flee from the reaching grasp.

Wolfen’s claw-like hand moved closer to Billy. The finger was only a centimeter away from Billy’s heart, from his chest. Billy braced himself for whatever might come, knowing at the same time that whatever it was, he couldn’t possibly prepare for it. It would be devastating, and Wolfen would have no mercy.

But at the last second, something intervened. There was a hiss, and a bright flash of light. Billy had a quick glimpse of a red form. Whatever it was moved too fast to be made out, but it was lithe and angry, and had appeared from somewhere close, before disappearing once again to wherever it had come from.

He had no time to ponder this strange event, though, because at the same time it happened Wolfen cried out in rage and pain. The hand that had only a millisecond before been reaching out to Billy was now clutched against the Darksider’s chest. In that same instant, Billy felt himself suddenly free to move again, the icy grip of the Dread gone.

Billy wasted no time, but stood and ran as fast as he could. Behind him, he heard Wolfen whisper, “How?” Then, in a voice that was so full of hate Billy could hardly bear to hear it, the Black Power screamed, “You will be
mine
!”

But Billy didn’t turn around to see if Wolfen’s expression matched the sound of his voice. He just ran for all he was worth. Billy had never been athletic—just one more reason he had been picked on all his life—but fear of the terrible force behind him lent him strength and fleetness. He felt as though he could have outrun a cheetah.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know where he could go. He was just running aimlessly, without a plan of any kind. As far as he knew, there was only the Diamond Dais, the river, and the plant life on the tower. The Diamond Dais was where Wolfen was at, the very place Billy least wanted to go. The river was fast moving, and both sides of it ended in waterfalls that would send Billy plummeting over the side of the tower, thousands of feet to certain death. And the plant life that had once covered much of the tower was now either buried in rubble or dried and withered, offering no place to hide.

Billy heard Wolfen scream again; apparently whatever had just happened had really hurt him. Then Billy heard Wolfen’s feet as the Darksider began to run after him.

Billy looked around, still running as fast as he could, but hearing Wolfen right behind him. Rubble and rock were scattered everywhere, some of the pieces quite large, but Billy knew hiding behind a big stone would be futile, since Wolfen could undoubtedly just zap him right through it.

However, seeing the rubble gave Billy an idea. He glanced around and saw what he was looking for, running as quickly as he could to a particularly large stone nearby. He prayed silently as he ran that Wolfen wouldn’t guess what Billy was going to do; he remembered Mrs. Russet saying that the most powerful Black Powers could level entire cities, so he was sure that hitting Billy with a crippling Dread—or something even worse—would be no problem for Wolfen. Indeed, Billy suspected that the only reason he wasn’t already laid out flat was because Wolfen’s concentration had been broken by whatever pain he had just experienced. But that wouldn’t last for long, and Billy knew that if he was caught before he could put his idea in motion, if Wolfen so much as laid a finger on him, he would be trapped again, and this time for good.

But Wolfen didn’t seem to guess what Billy was planning, apparently blinded by rage that someone—anyone—had dared to escape from him or hurt him in any way.

Billy made it to the stone he had spotted. Now there was nowhere farther to run, he was literally between a rock and a very hard place.

“There’s nowhere to go, Billy!” Wolfen screamed triumphantly, now only a few yards behind Billy. His triumph turned to indignation and anger however as he finally realized what Billy was doing. “No!” he screamed.

But it was too late. Billy hurriedly traced the word “Transport” on the rock with his finger, and just as it had done before, a golden doorway—the doorway to the anteroom that was hidden in this stone—opened up.

Billy yanked the door open and stepped through it, slamming it shut behind him. Wolfen’s incoherent cry of wrath was instantly cut off. Billy backed away from the doorway as fast as he could, looking around for a chair or something to wedge under the door. But then he realized that the door opened
outward
, so putting a chair under the door handle would be useless. Besides, just as before the only thing to sit on in this cheery room was a collection of colored beanbags. He couldn’t even throw anything through the large window that looked out onto the beautiful snow-caked vista outside the room. The glass looked very thick, and he doubted he could muster the power to smash through it with a beanbag and flee out into the dazzling storm of snowflakes beyond.

Billy ran around the bar from which Vester had served him the hot chocolate that had tasted so wonderful at the time. It seemed like a million years had passed since then, a thousand lifetimes in which Billy had experienced so many new things that he bore little resemblance to the boy he had been.

Behind the bar, on a small shelf below it, was a mug that was already full of hot chocolate. Not a “Vester special” this time, but a simple cup of cocoa. That was all Billy had been hoping to find, and he realized that the magic hot chocolate bar would serve the hot chocolate wished by anyone in the room.

Billy hefted the mug. He dumped the chocolate unceremoniously on the floor, then held the empty cup over his head, waiting for the anteroom door to open. When Wolfen came in, Billy would chuck the mug at the evil wizard as hard as he could. Billy knew it was a useless gesture—he never got picked for baseball teams at school precisely because he could throw a ball about as accurately as a paralyzed earthworm—but he was determined to do something.

So he held the mug overhead, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And the door….

finally….

didn’t open.

Billy lowered the cup, frowning. What had just happened? Why wasn’t Wolfen barging in here? Then he realized: the doorway to the anteroom was activated by a special key word, a word that Billy had known because Mrs. Russet had told him. But Wolfen, apparently, did
not
know the word. So Billy was safe. For the moment at least.

Billy breathed a sigh of relief. Then new terror flooded him as he felt something scuttle across his foot! Billy screamed and threw himself backward. Unfortunately, there was a wall right behind him so instead of getting away from whatever monster was now attacking, he just managed to bounce gracelessly off the wall and then go down in a pile on the floor, where he saw what had run across his foot.

It was one of the rock Fizzles that cleaned this room. It had a rag in its many dexterous hands (or was that feet?), and was conscientiously and rapidly cleaning the mess Billy had made when he dumped out the cocoa on the floor. Within an instant, the spill was gone, as though it had never been. The Fizzle, though it had no eyes in its tiny rock head, seemed to look at Billy. It shook its top two arms/legs at Billy, clearly communicating the idea of “Be more careful next time!” And as soon as it did, it immediately ran over and scrubbed a bit of cocoa off Billy’s shoe, sighing in exasperation.

Then the Fizzle spotted the remains of the cocoa mug, which had fallen to the ground and shattered when Billy fell. The Fizzle seemed to droop a bit, not in depression, but almost as though its low expectations of Billy’s ability to keep things tidy had just been fulfilled.

Billy watched, his terror at the thought of Wolfen barging in after him momentarily alleviated, as the rock Fizzle expertly flicked the dirty, cocoa-saturated rag it held. The rag whipped around the rock creature, wrapping itself around the Fizzle like a toga. The move reminded Billy of an expert kung fu fighter throwing nunchuks over his shoulder: clearly this was a kind of Bruce Lee of cleaning.