“No, Dad, we need to stop now,” insisted Finn.
“In two days you’ll become a teenager,” his father pressed, his voice low, as if someone was listening.
“I know, but—”
“Tomorrow you have your Completion Ceremony and become a true Legend Hunter.”
“I haven’t forgotten—”
“The first new Legend Hunter in many years,” continued his father. “We need to have these manoeuvres nailed down for the event or they mightn’t let you go through with it.”
“But—”
“And they will cancel it. Trust me. That’s the reason Billy the Loser got his name.” He wound up to attack again. “Well, one of the reasons anyway.”
“No, that’s not the problem,” Finn said, leaning forward while whispering. “It’s my shorts. I’ve torn them.”
His father relaxed from his cobra pose, lifted the visor on his helmet and peered round Finn’s back where, sure enough, the top layer of his shorts was splitting and threatening to reveal the stripy boxers beneath.
Hugo stood tall, seemed to think about it for a moment, before turning to the mirror. Finn looked at it too and again got a glimpse of how weak he appeared beside his father. Then his father flipped the visor down, and immediately resumed his attack stance. “Come on,” he said. “No one can see it.”
In despair, Finn’s eyes opened wider than the split in his shorts. “What? Of course they can see it!”
“They can’t,” Hugo insisted.
Petulant, Finn stepped to a switch on the wall.
“Don’t,” said his father.
Finn pressed the switch anyway.
From a point at the mirror’s dead centre, the reflection cleared, like condensation evaporating from a window, until the full length of the wall became completely see-through. On the other side, two rows of seats were revealed, packed with a couple of dozen people. Some in a variety of fighting suits. Some in just ordinary suits. One wore an all-in-one bodysuit of shimmering blue scales. There was even a family there, a mother and father watching in wide-eyed delight, while their teenage son gazed on with a look of such boredom it would be a wonder if his face ever found the muscles to smile again.
“Half the Half-Hunter population is watching me,” said Finn, pointing at the audience behind the glass. They had won tickets in a raffle: the chance to see the apprentice train before the Completion Ceremony.
“It’s tradition,” Hugo said. “They get to see you.”
“Yes, but I don’t want them to see everything,” said Finn, jabbing his thumb at the tear in the back of his shorts before heading for the door.
Hugo pulled the helmet from his head. “Should we take a break at this point?”
On the other side of the mirror, the Half-Hunter in blue scales shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“Yes,” sighed Hugo. “Let’s take a break.”
With a shake of his head, humiliation complete, Finn marched up the corridor, past the paintings of all those Legend Hunters who had gone before him, ignoring the judgemental glare of his famously unhappy great-grandfather, Gerald the Disappointed. The further up the corridor he went, the older the portraits became, until the earliest paintings had faded into faces made unrecognisable by peeling paint. It was a constant reminder of how long Finn’s family had been Darkmouth’s Legend Hunters.
He reached the hallway, where a narrow door brought him into the stark contrast of a house as ordinary as any other in Darkmouth. Apart from one thing: all the people at the windows. Outside were the Half-Hunters who hadn’t won tickets to see him train. The flash of cameras. The dark flicker of silhouettes crossing the garden.
“It’ll all be over soon,” said Finn’s mother, Clara, as she arrived from the living room on her way to the stairs. “But not soon enough. Hold on, you’re wearing shorts.” She looked through the door to the Long Hall, where Half-Hunters were gathering their things to leave. “Your father’s fault, right? Did training not go well?”
Finn bit his lip.
“Just remind yourself it won’t be like this for ever,” Clara said, putting an arm round his shoulder. “I’ve done that pretty much every day since I married into this family.”
Outside, Finn heard the murmur of those loitering Half-Hunters, watched the shapes cross the door, saw one grow larger and darker until it poked a nose through the letterbox.
“Hello. Let me in,” said a voice desperately. A man’s voice. “Please, there is about to be a terrible disaster.”
He sounded French. Or Swedish. Or maybe Korean. Finn wasn’t great with accents.
“Please,” said the Half-Hunter. “I need help.”
Finn sighed, closed his eyes in a long blink to compose himself, while Clara carefully opened the door. A Half-Hunter was dancing about on the doorstep, wearing some kind of black, naval-type uniform, complete with coloured strips on his left breast and chunky red and black cufflinks.
“Thank you,” he said as he burst in. “Where’s the toilet?”
Clara nodded towards a door under the stairs, and the Half-Hunter dashed straight for it.
There was another knock on the door. “Toilet’s already full,” said Finn.
“Do you need me to unblock it?” asked Emmie, pushing her head round the door.
“That’s not what I …” said Finn, flustered. “Hi, Emmie. You’re here.”
“I wouldn’t have missed your big ceremony for anything,” she beamed. “You know you’ve a split in those shorts?”
Finn felt himself blush. “Good. Not my shorts. I mean, it’s good you’re back.”
“Just for the ceremony,” she said. “Unless something goes terribly wrong again in Darkmouth. I’ve my fingers crossed for that.”
“I’ll do my best,” he smiled, while hoping nothing whatsoever would go terribly wrong.
“Hey, Finn, Clara,” said Emmie’s father, Steve, walking in after her. “You know there are a lot of people out there taking pictures of your garden wall.”
“I signed an autograph,” said Emmie, excited.
“No one wanted mine,” said Steve, failing to pretend that this hadn’t bothered him a bit. “I guess no one cares about the guy who rescues you every time you need it.”
Hugo arrived from the Long Hall. “We’re all about to need rescuing from the tourists following me up from the training room.”
“I’m always available to bail you out,” said Steve. “Unless it’s an issue with the toilet.”
Hugo looked puzzled. They heard the toilet flush. The door opened. The now much calmer intruder emerged, drying his hands on his trousers before giving an exaggerated swipe of relief across his forehead. Realising he’d hit the Legend Hunter jackpot, he thrust out a hand to shake Finn’s, who took it reluctantly and squirmed at how damp it still was.
“Oh boy,” said the excited Half-Hunter. “I am Nils, from the Norwegian Blighted Village of Splattafest, and you are all here. In Darkmouth. Together. Are those flowers poisonous?” He inspected a bunch on a small table.
“No,” said Clara.
“But those coat hooks shoot deadly darts, yes?”
“I’ll just get that door for you,” said Hugo. “It’s been lovely to meet you, but …”
“We are all looking forward to the great Completion,” said Nils. “Especially what they plan to do with the dozen golden monkeys. Something to do with the six hundred scorpions, I think.”
“OK, it’s about to get crowded in here,” said Hugo, looking back at the group of raffle winners coming up the Long Hall.
“I made special souvenir cufflinks—” Nils said, but he was cut off as Clara politely ushered him out. As she did, the front door gently swung open to reveal a queue of maybe half a dozen Half-Hunters.
“I need the toilet as well,” said the one at the front, dancing on the spot for added effect.
“Oh yeah, me too,” said the next.
“I’m bursting,” said the third.
Either side of
Finn, there were Half-Hunters crowding into the house. He looked at Emmie. “I need rescuing.”
“Rescuing you is my speciality,” she smiled. “Let’s get out of here. Although you should probably put on some trousers first.”
“Do you still get the stink?” Emmie asked Finn, and offered him a sweet from a brown paper bag.
They were sitting on a low step at Darkmouth’s largest monument, a grey, grimy obelisk with a white plaque whose words were so worn no one knew any more why it had been put there. There was warmth in the day, and blue sky mixed with bubbling cloud. Finn had his hoodie pulled tight over his head as a disguise against the Half-Hunters swarming the town.
“Do you mean the smell of the Infested Side?” Finn replied. “Like rotting vegetables that were already stuffed with old cheese?” He dug in the brown paper bag.
“I’d say it smells more like a fish wearing yesterday’s socks,” said Emmie, chewing on something that was gradually turning her tongue blue.
Finn crunched down on a red sweet, letting the sugar fizz through his mouth. “It’s been worse for my dad,” he said. “Because the serpents hid him among Legends so smelly that no one else would go near them, that stench lasted ages afterwards. He had to burn his clothes. And then he had to burn the bonfire he’d burned those clothes on.”
“At least there’s been no Legends since,” said Emmie.
“Yeah,” said Finn.
“Just normal stuff, like school and whatever.”
“Yeah. Just normal stuff.”
They each rummaged in the paper bag open between them, popped a sweet in their mouth and sat quiet for a little while longer.
“It’s boring, isn’t it?” Emmie exclaimed eventually.
“So boring,” said Finn with a burst of relief at being able to share. “I never thought I’d say it. Never. But it’s just that after everything we went through …”
“Legends. Crystals. Serpents,” said Emmie.
“Gateways. Shapeshifters,” said Finn.
“And everything we saw there.”
“Stuff no one has seen,” said Finn. “At the time, I thought I never wanted to see a gateway again, didn’t want to meet another Legend. I just wanted to go on as normal. But—”
“Normal is boring, right?”
Finn gave her a guilty look. “Kind of. I mean, me and Dad still train a lot, but now I’ve nothing to use the moves on.”
“Welcome to my life,” said Emmie.
“He doesn’t like to show it, but I think Dad’s bored too,” said Finn. “He spent weeks on the Infested Side and, even though all that time he just sat there, waiting to escape, it was still like nothing anybody had done before. Well, nobody except Niall Blacktongue, but no one likes to talk about that.”
“At least people know he went to the Infested Side,” said Emmie. “I’m back at school in the city and no one there has a clue what I did. They just think I was away for a while with my dad’s work, but they have no idea what he really does.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That he’s a travelling DJ.”
“What?” laughed Finn.
“I didn’t know what else to say,” she said. “And it sounded kind of cool.”
“DJ Steve.”
“Hmm. Maybe not so cool.”
Finn threw a green sweet into his mouth.
“Anyway,” Emmie said, “you must be all set for the Completion Ceremony, right? It’ll be a big deal. The whole Legend Hunter world is going to be watching.”
Discomfort immediately contorted Finn’s face.
“Sorry,” Emmie said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No,” he grimaced. “Be careful of those green stripy sweets. They’re really sour.”
She laughed at that. He swallowed the offending sweet with an anguished wince.
“Oh, I wish they’d go away,” said Finn, nodding towards a couple of Half-Hunters across the street, irritating locals by taking pictures of every hole in a wall.
“Maybe we can sign another autograph.”
Finn grimaced at the thought. “Or maybe we can get out of here before they spot us,” he said, pushing himself up and heading away from the obelisk.
They darted round a corner, across a couple of narrow alleys with walls that rose high over them and were topped with whatever sharp objects might keep a Legend out. But here and there were gaps, where nails or broken glass had fallen free and not yet been replaced by whoever lived behind the walls. There had been no Legends in a while. The people of Darkmouth were growing a little too used to that.
Down a cobbled lane, Finn and Emmie encountered a couple of Half-Hunters in fur coats rushing excitedly to the spot where Mr Glad’s shop used to be. It had been gutted by fire on the night Mr Glad had turned on Hugo, nearly destroying the town as a result. That was almost a year ago now, but to Finn it was beginning to feel like a lifetime away. It was certainly long enough that the shop had since been rebuilt as a hairdresser’s. Those Half-Hunters in furs would leave not with pictures of the lair of an infamous traitor, but of Snippy Snips.
“Down here,” Finn suggested, and the two of them slunk along an adjoining laneway, in and out of the town’s maze of streets, until they squeezed through a gap and on to the strand close to the slumped remnants of the cliffs. Surrounded by busy Half-Hunters in boiler suits, a scaffold was rising from the ground. It was a stage, still just a half-formed skeleton of steel rods, with huge rectangular pieces of floor leaning against them ready to be put in place.
“Is that it?” Emmie asked.
Finn nodded. This was the place where, the following night, he would become Complete. No matter how incomplete he felt.
“Is that a cannon up there?” said Emmie, looking closer.
“Apparently so,” confirmed Finn.
“And over there, in those tubes?”
“Fireworks,” said Finn, not even looking at them.
“That’ll be enough of a racket to, like, wake the dead,” said Emmie.
“I wouldn’t mind a bit of Legend Hunting,” said Finn. “It’s just becoming a Legend Hunter in front of everyone that I’m not so keen on.”
That triggered something in Finn, and he reached in under his hoodie to withdraw a silver chain. On the end was a cylindrical locket, an ornate swirling pattern on its case surrounding a small window that revealed sparkling scarlet dust within. “Do you still have yours?” he asked.
Emmie pulled out an identical locket from beneath her jacket. Inside was dust and sand, the last pulverised remains of the crystals they’d found in the cave before it was destroyed. Finn’s dad had presented one to each of them, as a reminder of what they’d been through together. “It was nice of your dad to give us these,” she said.
“I know,” said Finn. “For my last birthday he got me a box of spanners. But I think his time on the Infested Side has mellowed him a bit. He’s softer on me too. Some of the time.”
“Even my dad wears his locket,” said Emmie. “Although he says it itches a bit.”
“It does itch,” admitted Finn, rubbing at the front of his neck.
“It’s better to be itchy than dead,” Emmie smiled. “Or worse.”
“Yeah. Suppose.” Finn pushed the locket inside his clothes, tilted his head back to shake out the last sticky shards of sweets from the paper bag. A couple of them fell into his nostrils, irritating his nose. He sneezed.
Down the road, away from the strand, they heard the screech of a car, the growl of an engine.
“Since the Infested Side, my sneezes can, you know, set things off. My parents look at me funny if I get annoyed about anything, like I might blow up the kitchen,” Finn said. The car engine grew louder. “But this is a new one.”
The growling grew nearer, and a moment later a large black block of a car hurriedly took the corner.
“It’s Dad,” said Finn.
The car pulled up in front of them. The tinted window on the passenger side whirred down and Hugo lean
ed towards them.
“Get in,” he said urgently. “Something’s happened at the hotel.”
Finn, Emmie and Hugo stood at the entrance to the hotel room. Dust still swam in the air from where the door had been roughly pushed open.
But the dust was not what they were looking at.
“I should never have reopened this place,” the hotel owner said, pushing in between them. Mrs Cross held a fluffy yellow towel, or at least half of one, torn raggedly. “But I was begged to. Pushed into it. Convinced it’d only be a few days and they’d be no bother. But it’s been only bother from the start. All I’ve had is complaints since your lot started arriving here. The beds are too soft. The pillows too feathery. The shampoo smells too fruity. And now this.”
From downstairs came the ting of the reception bell. She ignored it. Instead, she pointed at something very strange in the air.
Finn’s father stepped forward to examine it. On the far side of the room, just to the side of a narrow window, about two metres off the ground but fixed and unmoving, was a scar in the air. Three gouges, as if great cracked nails had clawed at empty space.
Ting, ting went the reception bell downstairs.
Hugo walked round the phenomenon, his face registering a measure of surprise. He motioned Finn over to him.
As Finn approached, he examined the marks without touching them, saw how they were almost puckered, with edges raised and uneven like roughly stitched skin. As he passed, the angle narrowed until the marks disappeared entirely. When standing behind them, they were completely invisible. There was nothing at all to see except for Mrs Cross’s deeply annoyed face staring back. Her displeasure was almost strong enough to burn its own hole in the air.
Finn and Hugo moved back round to the front of the room until they could again examine the strange markings from the front.
“Now what am I going to do?” the hotel owner asked them. “I can’t exactly rent out this room, can I? I’ve been in this trade for sixty years and I can tell you this: no one wants a room with ghostly scratch marks imprinted in the ether.”
Chaos Descends Page 2
