Billy: Messenger of Powers (67 page)

Still, another noise
was
heard: the noise of one of the elevators sliding up through the floor of the tower top and whispering open. The elevators had improved in temperament over the past weeks as they realized that the Darksiders were no longer in charge of the island. But then they had apparently heard some Dawnwalkers talking about everyone’s impending doom and had immediately gotten quiet again. Billy had tried to jolly a few of them out of their gloom, but finally had stopped when one of them said point blank to Billy, “Look, you seem nice enough and all, but if you’re all going to get wiped out in the next few days, it’s probably best that we not get too personal with you guys, all right?”

“Uh, sure,” said Billy.

“Good,” said the elevator. “That’s why we’re not even calling anyone by their names any more, to avoid attachment.”

“What?” asked Billy, still dumbfounded that even the elevators thought the Darksiders’ triumph was a foregone conclusion.

“Like you, for instance,” replied the elevator. “We all know your name is Billy Jones, but what we call you amongst ourselves is Boy Number 3583Q.”

“3583Q?” Billy repeated.

“Yeah,” said the elevator in the closest thing to a cheery tone that Billy had heard from them since the Darksiders had first assumed control of the island. “You know, like rats.”

“Rats?” Billy said, his head spinning.

“Like with scientists,” clarified the elevator. “I mean, no one wants to take ‘Fluffy’ out and inject him with something that might make him lose all his fur or something. But you can give White Rat Number 3583Q a shot of whatever and not feel bad about it at all.”

Thankfully, the doors of the elevator had opened at that point and Billy had been able to get out without going any farther along on that particular line of discussion. But the conversation had stuck with him, and he had avoided the elevators since then.

Now, however, the elevator that was opening at the top of the tower had his complete attention. Three Powers—Napalm, Bellestus, and another Red Power—staggered out of the elevator. These three, Billy knew, had been in the Accounting Room, serving on guard duty. Now, something was clearly very wrong with them. Fulgora was on her feet in an instant, rushing to them in a flash of red armor. All three of the arriving Powers looked like they might fall over at any second.

“What happened?” she demanded.

“They… they came,” wheezed Bellestus in a frightened English accent, his bobby’s uniform smudged and dirty. His eyes bugged out of his head with fear, exhaustion clear on his face.

“What do you mean they came?” demanded Fulgora. She shook Bellestus, but the Gray Power’s eyes closed and he either fell asleep in exhaustion from overuse of his powers, or fell unconscious because of something more malignant.

The low, intrusive thud happened again. Fulgora whipped around to Napalm, who was holding up the remaining Red Power, an old woman who Billy knew was named Ursula. “What happened, Napalm?” she demanded. “Is the attack under way? Are they storming the Accounting Room?” Without waiting for answer, she whirled to Vester and snapped, “Call up the special forces squad we prepared for the bottleneck defense.”

Vester whirled immediately to comply, but Napalm weakly said, “Wait.”

Vester stopped. Fulgora wasn’t happy. “We can’t wait. We have to act. If the Darksiders have come, we have to get everyone we can into the Accounting Room to stop them.”

“That’s just it,” said Napalm. He weaved on his feet as though he too was about to pass out. But at the last second he managed to steady himself. “They came into the Accounting Room, and we were waiting.”

“How many of them arrived in the room?” demanded Fulgora. “And why did you abandon your posts?”

“Only three came through,” said Napalm. “And we didn’t abandon our posts.”

“What do you mean? What are you saying?” screamed Fulgora, almost enraged at the fact that she wasn’t getting answers as fast as she wanted them.

“Take it easy, Fulgora,” murmured Mrs. Russet. “We need speed, not panic.”

“I don’t panic,” said Fulgora. But she closed her mouth and let Mrs. Russet continue the talk with the other Red.

“There were only three Darksiders?” asked Mrs. Russet.

Napalm nodded. As he did so, Ursula, the other Red Power that Billy thought looked like a barracuda with tennis shoes on—spoke. “Only three. But that was enough.” She shuddered. “It was Wolfen. Wolfen, and Eva Black, and her son.”

“And they fought you?” prompted Mrs. Russet.

“No,” said the tall Red woman. “No, there was no fight.” She laughed to herself, and Billy could see terror in Ursula’s eyes. “They just appeared, and before we could say a word they had us at their feet, cowering.”

“The Dread,” said Mrs. Russet quietly.

“More than that,” replied Napalm. “More than just Dread. This was something worse.”

“But you got away,” said Mrs. Russet.

Again Ursula shook her head. “We didn’t get away. They let us go,” she said.

“Why?” said Mrs. Russet.

Napalm wrung his hands and looked up at the night sky. He suddenly looked to Billy like a little boy about to ask his parents not to turn the lights out at bed time, because the monster under the bed might eat him. “They let us go because they wanted us to tell you something,” he said.

“What?” demanded Mrs. Russet.

Billy felt his insides curl in on themselves. He could sense that something terrible was coming.

“They wanted us to tell you that…that…,” began Napalm. But before he finished his thought, he screamed. The scream was long and horrible, seeming to go on forever before he finally fell to the ground and was still.

Billy couldn’t be sure, but he thought Napalm was dead.

Then Billy found out that the Red Power wasn’t dead. It was much worse. With a shudder, Napalm’s body twitched as though it was being electrified. At the same time, all the lights—torches mostly—that had illuminated the area on top of the tower flickered and went out. The Diamond Dais glowed with an inner light, but the illumination was dim, allowing Billy to see little.

Still, what he saw was enough. Enough and too much. The Red Power who had once been strong enough to Challenge Fulgora continued twitching and convulsing. Then, in the dim light, Billy could see Napalm’s skin…
changing
. It looked like it had liquefied, crawling over itself in a flowing pattern, while still managing to cling to the underlying musculature. Then the skin solidified, and Billy could see it was now a latticework. A lace pattern he had seen before. Napalm was gone, and the body that now climbed slowly to its feet was a creature made of tiny bones. As it stood, a small form flickered up from its shoulder.

The Death’s Head Moth, Billy realized. It must have come up with Napalm and the others, and done this to him.

Billy tensed, ready to run if the deadly insect should swoop toward him, but the infernal creature just landed on what had been Napalm. The new-born creature of Dark looked at them all impassively, the power of speech gone from Napalm—or what had once been Napalm—in his new, horrifying state.

Everyone was silent for a moment, dumbstruck by what they had just seen.

“What is this?” whispered Fulgora finally.

“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Russet quietly. She was looking around them, and Billy could see how tense she was. Then a chill wind whipped up. Lightning ripped through the night sky, illuminating the top of the tower. Billy and the others were standing in the pillbox that Mrs. Russet had constructed, but suddenly a flash of lightning crashed into the structure, reducing it instantly to an ash-like dust that rained down on their heads.

The lightning continued, and in a sudden brief flash of strobing light, Billy could see something. Something terrible, something awful, something impossible. One moment the top of the tower was dark and mostly deserted, just Billy, Mrs. Russet, Fulgora, Vester, Ivy, the two unconscious Powers who were left from the Accounting Room, and the new Death’s Head Power that had once been Napalm. No one else.

Then the lightning came. It flashed, and then darkness fell. An instant later there was another illuminating flash, and this time Billy and his friends were no longer alone.

Darksiders were among them. Everywhere. The Dark Powers had just appeared among the Dawnwalkers on the tower, in the time it took for the lightning to erupt across the sky and then disappear again.

And, at their head, close enough to Billy that he could smell the Power’s fetid breath when he spoke, was Wolfen. And right behind him stood Eva Black and her son Cameron, both of them glaring murderously at Billy.

The Dark Master looked at the bone-body of Napalm. “Sorry about him,” he said, “but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a messenger who doesn’t know how to deliver the messages I want him to deliver.” He said this last while looking directly at Billy, a wicked smile playing across his lips.

“How did you get here?” whispered Vester. “You didn’t come through the Accounting Room. How did you get here?”

“Well, see, that’s the thing I wanted your three friends to tell you,” said Wolfen with an amused grin. He looked to Billy like a fox who has just been asked by the chickens if he’d like to come in for some chamomile tea and a scone.

He leaned in to Billy, and lightning tore through the sky again. It made the Darksiders appear like ghosts, bright white in the flashing light, and then disappearing into nebulous black forms among them.

Billy could not see Wolfen’s eyes in the darkness, but he felt them on him. Burning him. The Dark Master spoke, and his voice was filled with the terrible threat of death and mayhem. And worse, with a sound that made it clear how much he would enjoy those things when they came.

“The thing I wanted them to tell you was this,” said Wolfen. He paused, then said quietly, “We don’t need to come through the Accounting Room any more. We can come through anywhere we want.”

And with that, a huge fireball ripped through the night sky, an explosion from somewhere in the middle of Powers Island. Then another and another. Wolfen laughed, and the lightning flashed again, this time illuminating white teeth that looked like those of a predator, spittle thick on the man’s lips.

Wolfen raised his arms, and when he spoke again it was with a voice of thunder, a sound that Billy immediately knew could be heard on the whole of the island. He spoke only a single word, just two syllables in that thunderous scream. But it was the single most terrifying word that Billy had ever heard.

“Attack!”

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH

The Darksiders around them all erupted into action, but before they had more than an instant to move, Fulgora responded to Wolfen’s battle cry with one of her own.

“Destroy them!” she shrieked, and whirled her bright sword of fire. A sheet of flame erupted in front of Billy and his friends, momentarily separating and protecting him from the nearest Darksiders.