The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

Yes, I looked with more than casual interest at his chest and shoulders, at his long black hair as it blew behind him, at his compassionate eyes. Yes, Oriax, I confess.

But even in my dream I knew it was false, for I knew that Messenger’s body was covered in the tattoo-vivant marks of the horrors he had seen and made to happen.

I did not, in my dream, look at the single such terrible decoration that now marked my own body. I never looked at that, not in dreams, and only reluctantly in reality.

But in my dream Messenger did not look at me as I looked at him. Instead he whispered a single word. The crashing waves tore that word from his lips, but I knew in my heart that what he had said was, “Ariadne.”

Ariadne, not Mara. Nor could it ever be Mara.

I think I cried in my sleep then, though I remember no dream, for my pillow was damp upon waking.

“It’s time,” Messenger said, but he was no longer the laughing boy by the ocean. He was back, looming above me, the real Messenger of Fear, grim and relentless.

5

“ARE WE GOING AFTER TRENT AND PETE?” I asked.

“Yes. But not yet. Later. For now we have a very different matter to address.”

I was on the point of asking him where we were about to suddenly appear next, but by the time I could form the question, we had already stood in a wrecked, abandoned room.

It took me a while to establish just where we were. Messenger, of course, did not volunteer to help, preferring I suppose, that I use my own powers of observation. I don’t think I’d ever been particularly observant before, but I had changed and grown since becoming what Oriax liked to call “mini-Messenger” and I now paid a great deal more attention to my environment.

In this case the environment was an abandoned business of some sort. That it was abandoned was evident from the filth, the dust, the cobwebs and spiderwebs, the lack of any light aside from the ghostly greenish-gray of streetlights filtering in through a grimy window and grimier glass door.

There was a waist-high counter that surely once held a cash register. Behind the counter was a twisted mess of wire racks, a torn cardboard poster for Camel cigarettes. Strewn across the linoleum tile floor of the room were random bits of shelving, an upended round cooler splashed with the Pepsi logo, and a liberal scattering of trash—candy wrappers, empty chips bags, plastic cups, paper hot dog holders, empty water bottles, cigarette butts, and dried feces.

Against the back wall were empty spaces that would once have held refrigerated cases.

“It was a convenience store,” I announced proudly, as though I really was playing Watson to Messenger’s Sherlock.

Messenger was not wildly impressed by my powers of deduction.

The place stank of human and animal waste, of rotting garbage and dust. The room appeared empty. I heard a slight scratching sound, assumed it was a rat and carefully scanned the floor around me while wondering if there was a weapon at hand should the rat come my way.

Messenger moved to the back of the room, to the empty rectangles where the cold cases had once dispensed beer and soda and packs of salami and cheese. The glow of streetlights did not reach this far, but to my surprise the space was not entirely dark. There seemed to be a candle within, judging from the buttery light that flickered and at times disappeared entirely.

The scratching sound came again and something about it contradicted my assumption that it was an animal. It was too slow to be a rat. Too random.

I leaned into the void and saw the candle first, and the person lying near the candle second. I saw that it was a girl, a girl hard to place age-wise, though I guessed she might be seventeen or so. She had dark hair that looked as if she had made an effort to gather it all together with a scrunchie, but wisps and entire hanks of hair had escaped. Her face might be pretty. I wasn’t entirely sure, as it was both dirty and marked with too much makeup.

She was dressed like a bargain basement Oriax, but the net effect spoke not of supernatural allure but rather of vulnerability and despair.

I don’t know why it took me so long to notice the syringe in the crook of her elbow. Maybe I just didn’t want to see it.

It lay there, the needle still in the vein. A trickle of blood had started to dry. A leather belt lay loosened around her bicep. A tablespoon with a blackened bottom was on the floor beside the guttering candle.

“Her name is Graciella Jayne, though she has taken to calling herself Candy. She is seventeen.”

“Is?” I asked sharply, for I had leaped to the sad conclusion that she was dead.

“She lives still,” Messenger said. He cocked his head, as did I upon hearing a sound of footsteps and low conversation. From the direction of what must have been the store’s back door came a boy and a girl, both much the same age as Graciella.

Both looked to be in the same . . . business . . . as Graciella, the boy dressed in a skintight T-shirt that bared his lean midriff, while the girl wore the shortest of shorts and a top that would have doubled for a bathing suit.

“Candy!” the boy cried. They rushed to Graciella and knelt beside her. The rush of bodies extinguished the flame and for a moment they were in near pitch-darkness. Then a lighter flared in the boy’s hand and the candle was relit.

“Oh, my God, she OD’d,” the girl said.