Messenger of Fear (Messenger of Fear 1)

I was equivocating, beginning to feel my way toward escape, though a few minutes before I had been ready to accept my fate. There is something rebellious in me, something that does not readily accept limitation.

But then, I pondered the scene that had just been revealed to me by Messenger. I had been sobbing. That was me—me, Mara—and I had been sobbing with terrible remorse. What could possibly have happened to cause me to sob my heart out that way? What had happened?

What had I done?

Messenger, my teacher. Me, his student.

I will be the Messenger of Fear.

What did that mean?

One thing was clear as I drew a mental cloak over my defiant urges: right now it meant obeying him. Until I figured out what was happening.

Somehow, by some means I could not begin to guess at, I was in a very different reality with rules that included be

ing able to move effortlessly from place to place, to freeze time or speed it up. To simply know things that should be unknowable. To intrude on thoughts that were not my own. A place of sentient mists and stunning women and, above all, the boy in black, the Messenger with his mysterious manner and strange dress and too-intimate voice.

I had not forgotten—no, far from it—the visions I had seen on making physical contact with Messenger. I cautioned myself that however calm and controlled he seemed now, he was a creature whose mind was filled with dark scenes of unspeakable wickedness.

He was, in short, dangerous.

Time had passed since Messenger had warned Liam and Emma that I would be touching them, but if the two of them were impatient, they gave no sign. They waited, not frozen, but like a GIF, a loop, eyes blinking, mouths breathing, their fingers intertwined, the ginger boy and the dark girl.

Messenger waited too, and watched, interested by how I was digesting all this new information. It angered me, that calm way of his, that solemn but compassionate watching and waiting. The patience of him.

But what was I to do? This was his world, and I was sworn to be his student. Later I would find the way out, oh yes, as you see, already I was thinking of escape, even while suspecting that my thoughts were as open to him as the page of any book.

Flushing at that unsettling notion, I broke my trance and laid my hand against Liam’s faintly freckled cheek and against Emma’s at the same time, standing between the two of them, an intruder in their relationship. But that rude and too-familiar physical transgression was nothing compared to what I next experienced. For into my reeling mind poured the whole history of Emma and Liam.

I saw Liam’s first memory. He was on his back, looking up, and into his field of vision came a woman. She seemed tired, her eyes dark, hair straggling, but she smiled like a Madonna when she saw him.

His mother. I was seeing Liam as a baby, seeing his mother. I saw images of his father as well, a large man, with big hands and a look of perpetual skepticism. I saw his pets, his friends, his room, the posters on his wall as he grew older.

All of this came to me as a sort of accelerated slide show, pictures tumbling over pictures, snippets of video mingling with audio tracks, a vast hallucinogenic data dump.

A particular video caught my eye, and I plucked it out to examine. Liam was in a classroom and, judging by the other students around him, it must have been recent, from no more than a few months ago. In this, Liam was looking at Emma. I saw it as a glance, a look away to the white board and the teacher, a glance back, a look away, a glance, until Emma happened to spy him looking at her and she met his gaze with an arched brow and a dubious expression.

At the same time I saw Emma’s path to that same moment. I saw her earliest memories, her mother and father, her brothers, her cat, her room.

I felt ashamed. I had become a stalker, an invader of minds, an intruder in memories I had no right to. And yet it was fascinating and exhilarating at almost a physical level, a rush, a thrill ride. A nauseating intrusion, but with my own memory reduced to a few pencil sketches, this trove of memories and sensations—for I could feel the emotion in each memory—was luxurious. I swam in the warm waters of memories that were not my own.

Finally, reluctantly, I broke contact.

There were tears on my cheeks.

“They love each other,” I said. It was no great revelation, but I had felt the intensity of that emotion and knew in a way that left me feeling small and unimportant. Love, yes, the love I no doubt felt for my parents and a half-remembered brother, but this was a different thing. This was not a long-burning candle; it was roaring fire. This was desire and need and a willing surrender that empowered.

“Yes,” Messenger agreed. “And what of the wrong they have done?”

I frowned, not sure quite what he meant, though I had as well felt Liam and Emma’s panic and self-loathing at the violent act they had committed.

“They’re good people,” I said.

“Yes,” Messenger agreed. “What of the wrong they have done?”

“I . . . I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want to know your thoughts, Mara. What of the wrong they have done?”