Dark Hunter

by Andy Briggs

“We can move them. How about bringing them here?”

  Mr. Grimm shook his head. He looked weary, as though he had been through a battle. “This place is no longer safe. If Chameleon tracked you down here, others will too.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  Mr. Grimm hesitated for a moment. “You have a choice. With all your powers and abilities you could really be somebody. Shape the world. Or … you could try to be a normal boy once again. Then nobody would be looking for you. You would have robbed both sides of their superweapon.”

  Jake pondered that. If he was normal again, then he could stay with his family, see Lorna, be an average kid. Would he really miss having his powers? Conversely, if he kept the powers then he could defeat those after him, and still be with his family. But he would always be addicted, a slave to Villain.net.

  “If I wanted to be normal and get rid of my powers, how could I do it?”

  “I have an idea. But it’s a long shot. There has been a new turn of events. You may have an unexpected ally, although he doesn’t know it yet.”

  Jake felt a jolt of excitement. “Who?”

  Mr. Grimm looked uncomfortable. “This is a delicate situation, Hunter. As you are learning, the world is a complicated place. Not everything is black-and-white. Sometimes you have to turn your enemies into your friends.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The final decision is yours to make: power and glory, or stability and normalcy. What I am about to tell you is highly sensitive for both of us. You must tread carefully.”

  “I don’t think things can get any more mixed up than they are right now.”

  Mr. Grimm steepled his fingers under his chin. His black eyes seemed to bore straight into Jake.

  “I assure you, they will.”

  Jake closed his eyes and calmed himself. He was about to walk into an entirely new world of trouble. He rested a hand on the door handle and hesitated. Beyond was a possible answer to rid him of his addiction.

  And it was going to be far from easy to deal with. He opened the door and entered.

  “Jake!” Lorna Wilkinson turned in surprise, a smile stretching across her face. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard there’d been an accident,” said Jake. He hoped he was acting convincingly. “I just had to see you. Make sure you were okay.”

  He crossed the room and hugged Lorna tightly. His mouth felt dry. The one person he had extended his feelings to had turned out to be a real dark horse.

  She was a superhero. Mr. Grimm had told him everything.

  Jake looked around the room. “Hi, Toby. And you’re Emily, right?”

  Lorna’s brother, Toby, and her friend Emily both nodded, their brows knitted with suspicion.

  “I think I better explain,” Jake said with a smile. “Lorna and I have been … sort of dating.”

  Toby looked like he’d just been slapped. He looked at Lorna, aghast.

  “He’s your boyfriend?”

  Lorna blushed, and kept her arm around Jake’s waist. “Yeah. He is.”

  Jake grinned, although inside he felt like hitting them all with a radioactive blast. They were heroes, friends of Chameleon—which automatically made them his enemies.

  And Lorna … well, that was complicated.

  He looked at the patient lying in bed, hooked up to an armada of machinery.

  “How’s the Profes—sorry, Pete?”

  “Why would you care?” growled Toby.

  “A friend of Lorna’s is now a friend of mine. I may have been a little short with him, but if he’s really hurt …”

  “What exactly did you hear?” Toby asked suspiciously. “This is a private hospital.”

  “Heard he was hit by a truck. I went to your house earlier to see Lorna,” Jake said, recalling the excuse Grimm had armed him with. “There was some guy there called Mr. Grimm. He told me where to find you.”

  Toby nodded, apparently satisfied.

  “Yeah. A truck. He’s not in very good shape.”

  Jake stared at the boy in the bed. Pete Kendall had been his favorite bullying target back at school. A real wimp who never fought back. And now it appeared that he had been one of Hero.com’s foot soldiers. Jake recalled when he’d last seen the Professor at school. It was when Knuckles had been pounded into a bunch of cars. Jake had originally thought that it was because Chameleon was on his tail, but now he realized it was the Professor who had attacked Knuckles.

  “Hope he pulls through,” Jake said earnestly.

  According to Grimm, Pete had fought a huge battle with Basilisk at the Foundation’s secret headquarters. Jake didn’t believe it, until Grimm showed him security footage of the event. As he had watched the two figures fight on screen, Jake started to respect the nerd he had been bullying for years.

  During the fight Pete had smashed through numerous vats of superpowers, exposing himself to higher dosages than Jake had ever been subjected to. Then he’d fallen into a coma. Nobody knew what the effects of absorbing so much superpower, so quickly, would be, and the only benchmark they had was what had happened to Jake.

  Jake’s DNA was entangled with the whole Villain.net system, but Pete had no such issues. Only when he recovered would they truly know how he had changed.

  The solution to Jake’s final problem lay inside the victim of his most aggressive bullying.

  * * *

  Jake excused himself from the hospital as soon as he could. He had wanted to see the evidence with his own eyes. He had also wanted to see Lorna, somebody he had once liked and trusted but who had turned out to be the enemy. Luckily she knew nothing about him and Villain.net, a fact he could manipulate at a later date.

  Jake crossed the dark hospital grounds to the cover of a small wood from where he intended to teleport back to the castle. He would try to see his family tomorrow, and give them a plausible explanation of why he had disappeared and heavily armed soldiers had stormed the house.

  His thoughts were turbulent once again. Then he heard his name being called. He stopped. Had he imagined it?

  “Hunter,” came the whisper in the darkness.

  The voice was behind him. He spun around—and came face-to-face with Chromosome. She leaned against a tree, not a hair out of place, and smiled warmly at him.

  “You’re such an easy man to follow, Hunter.”

  Jake smirked. “Follow me now!”

  He closed his eyes to teleport—but nothing happened. He looked around in panic.

  Chromosome laughed. “Sorry to have to take that power away, but I couldn’t have you vanishing again before we resolved our differences.”

  Jake’s heart sank. He couldn’t fight her alone. He knew that just a few hundred yards away sat three

  superheroes who could help him out … but that meant revealing his true colors to them.

  “I’m not helping you,” snarled Jake. He clenched his fists and they burst into brilliant blue flames. “I’ll strike you down so hard …”

  He trailed off. Chromosome was no longer looking at him. She was staring wide-eyed behind him. Jake sensed movement and turned to see a little girl staring levelly at him.

  “Kid, get out of here! Run!” Jake urged her.

  “I think not, Hunter.”

  There was an edge in her voice that instantly alarmed Jake.

  “How do you know my name? Who are you?”

  “Yohg-Shuggor, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Bringer of the Night, the Spawn of the Damned, Eater of the Dead, the Apocalypse Harbinger, and the Shaker of Worlds. But you can call me Amy.”

  Jake backed away from the crazy kid. Then there was more movement in the shadows. It was difficult to make out features in the dim light, but he heard Chromosome gasp as six newcomers surrounded them both. Jake discovered that he was standing back-to-back with Chromosome.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, sounding much braver than he felt.

  “I am Necros, leader of the Council of Evil.”

  Jake shivered at the despai
r in the voice. He glanced at the shadowy figures circling him. Their forms were mostly hidden, but there was no escaping the sense of immense power that came from them.

  There was no way out of this situation. He was going to die.

  “Finally we catch up with you,” hissed Necros. “You thought if you tried to overthrow the Council of Evil, that the Council Memberss would not hunt you down?”

  “It wasn’t me. It was Basilisk,” Jake stammered before he realized that they were addressing Chromosome.

  “This has all been a misunderstanding, Necros. A plot to remove me from the Council.”

  Jake could hear her voice tremble. He slowly moved away from her.

  “Then it has succeeded. You will be banished!”

  “No, you can’t do that to me!” Chromosome screamed as the seven circling figures each raised a hand and pointed at her in unison.

  Jake saw gossamer threads stream from their fingers and smother Chromosome. They quickly wrapped around her before she could struggle. Then she began to disintegrate, her body collapsing from head to foot as though she’d been turned to sand. The thin threads fell to the floor, eating away the fine dust until nothing remained.

  It had been a swift execution. Her blood-curdling screams still rang in Jake’s ears. He lowered his hands, the flames extinguishing. He knew it was pointless trying to fight his way out. The seven most powerful supervillains on the planet were studying him, but he could only see silhouettes and glowing eyes, and smell something like rotting meat.

  “We have been searching for you too, Hunter.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. So you found me. You going to kill me too?”

  He just hoped it would be quick and painless. The Council members broke into laughter around him. It sounded just as bad as Chromosome’s wailing.

  “Kill you? You labor under a misapprehension,” hissed Necros. “Why would we want to kill somebody so unique? So special? No, Jake Hunter. We sought you out because it appears we have a vacant place on the Council of Evil.”

  Jake was silent. This was the last thing he’d been expecting.

  “Me?”

  “Yes. We are offering Chromosome’s place to you. To join the Council so that you can grow to understand your condition, powers, and potential. I guarantee that a place at the Council will ensure all your hopes and desires come to pass. We want you, the Dark Hunter, to join us and reign supreme.”

  Jake was surrounded, and he was facing death—but he was also being made an unbelievable offer.

  A once in a lifetime offer, literally.

  He hesitated, remembering Grimm’s words: power and glory or stability and normalcy. He’d gotten his family back. Now to be with them, he just had to make a decision.

  Surely he would be a fool to turn the offer down?

  Author’s Note

  Andy Briggs was born in Liverpool, England. Having endured many careers, ranging from pizza delivery and running his own multimedia company to teaching IT and filmmaking (though not all at the same time), he eventually remembered the constant encouragement he had received at an early age about his writing. That led him to launch himself on a poor, unsuspecting Hollywood. In between having fun writing movie scripts, Andy now has far too much fun writing novels.

  He lives in a secret lair somewhere in the southeast of England——attempting to work despite his two crazy cats. His claims about possessing superpowers may be somewhat exaggerated. …

  Don’t miss the stories of how

  Villain.net and Hero.com got started!

  Available now!

  THE WORLD IS COUNTING ON YOU!

  Done fighting on the side of treachery and evil?

  Want to get in touch with your heroic side?

  Luckily, Andy Briggs, the evil genius behind DARK HUNTER,

  has a heroic side too. Join him in the struggle for justice in:

  Turn the page for a teaser chapter, and prepare to find your inner superhero!

  All in a Day’s Work

  The rusted bow of a battered cargo vessel churned through the ocean, its destination a sliver of land on the horizon. Faded lettering on the dented bow revealed the ship’s name: The Watchman. It moved with no running lights on, making it a black whale cutting through the sea. Dense smoke poured from its weatherworn funnel, but otherwise the vessel looked abandoned. At first glance, no one would have suspected that the crew were all ruthless smugglers, armed with automatic weapons and not a conscience among them.

  They were being tracked by three superheroes silently flying above. The heroes were all thinking the same thing—the automatic weapons below were nowhere near as dangerous as the fact that they were out way past their parents’ curfews. The consequences of that were too dire to contemplate.

  Toby squinted, trying to make out more detail on the boat. He regretted not having tried to download some kind of night-vision power from Hero.com. But then again, he’d had no idea they would be out so late—plus he wasn’t sure what the stick-figure icon for it would be. He just hoped none of them had downloaded any useless powers, as they sometimes did.

  Lorna and Emily flew close on either side, talking in low voices.

  “I’m getting cold,” complained Lorna. Having learned from previous adventures, they were all dressed in thick black clothes, but the chill still permeated.

  Toby didn’t bother replying. Over the last few weeks his sister’s complaints had increased with each job they had downloaded from Hero.com. His best friend, Pete, had even started to agree with her, which wasn’t good news. Luckily Pete wasn’t within earshot. Toby glanced around, suddenly aware that his friend had been gone longer than he’d anticipated. He glanced at the lights on the horizon.

  “We’re running out of time,” he warned. “We can’t wait for Pete. We have to stop this thing now.”

  “It’s a massive boat. How are we supposed to stop it?” said Emily.

  “Why bother? This is something we should leave for the police,” Lorna grumbled.

  “Police don’t patrol out here,” Toby snapped back.

  “The coast guard, or customs, or border patrol or whatever you call it. What’s the point in having these great powers if we’re just stopping normal people?

  What about the supervillains out there? We’re supposed to be fighting them.”

  Toby rolled his eyes. “It was on the job board and it needed to be done.”

  The list of jobs on Hero.com seemed to be growing by the day, although not every job was a direct result of an errant supervillain. “Besides, I thought we decided after the trouble with Doc Tempest that we should take things a little easier?”

  “You decided, Toby,” Lorna retorted.

  Emily tried to avoid getting involved with the argument. Which was just as well, as she detected movement on the deck below. Figures had left a cabin and were running to the bow of the ship. The moonlight glinted tellingly off the rifles they carried in both hands.

  “Shush, you two! Look, they’re coming out!” she said—maybe a little too loudly. One of the figures looked up and began yelling in Spanish. He pointed at the three figures with the barrel of his rifle.

  Toby realized with dread that, while arguing, they had moved so that the moon was behind them—highlighting their silhouettes so the men below could easily spot them.

  “Down!” he yelled.

  They all plummeted just as the dull clatter of gunfire broke out across the deck. Bullets shrieked through the air—too close for comfort.

  Toby dived straight for the ocean’s surface, aware that he hadn’t downloaded any power that would render him bulletproof. He was so low that foam from the boat’s wake soaked his chest. He glanced up to see that Lorna had thrown up a protective shield of energy that rippled as bullets harmlessly struck it. Emily cowered close behind her. Typical of Lorna to pick a defensive power, thought Toby. Not that selecting powers on Hero.com was a straightforward process.

  Chameleon, the only heroic Prime that Toby had ever met, had tol
d them there was an instruction manual on the Web site. When he’d eventually found it, Toby had been baffled by the complex jargon used. He did learn that the stick figure icons, which represented the powers, were laid out with some degree of logic. Lorna always seemed smart enough to pick the most useful powers for their missions, whereas he just chose the most fun-looking ones.

  His thoughts were interrupted as a deckhand leaned over the gunwale of the ship and spotted him. Toby could make out the square night-vision goggles the man wore. The muzzle flash of the weapon flickered and a stream of bullets zipped past him.

  Time to end this, he thought.

  Toby barrel-rolled to one side to make himself less of a target. He extended his hands and fine black tendrils shot from his fingertips, each no wider than a strand of cotton, but bunched together they were as thick as rope. The sticky tendrils splattered against the man’s night-vision goggles and the gun. Toby yanked the strands back, tearing the equipment from him. He shook his hands and the strands broke away, falling into the sea. The startled man stared in Toby’s direction as if he’d just seen a ghost, then spun around and ran across the deck, shouting in panic.

  Above, Emily peeked around Lorna’s energy shield and flicked her hands. A pair of golden orbs, no bigger than Ping-Pong balls, sprang from her palms and raced toward the crew. She watched in fascination as the heat-seeking orbs were guided toward two men, striking them in the chest. The orbs exploded with a dull plop and the men were catapulted across the deck. They slammed into the bulkhead, weapons skittering away.

  A third man gaped as his colleagues were blown aside, and then looked up as if realizing for the first time that the two girls were suspended in the air as if by magic. He hesitated in firing—giving Emily an opportunity to fire another set of golden orbs.

  The man dropped his weapon and fled. He glanced behind him to see the orbs were weaving across the deck in his direction. He skidded around a corner leading to the main cabins and checked behind him. The orbs were relentlessly pursuing. He increased his pace and threw himself into an open cabin door, pushing his whole body against the steel door to close it.