Dark Hunter (24 page)

“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?

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. …

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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:

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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 told 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.

Both orbs hit the door with such thunderous force that the metal buckled and the door was blasted from its hinges. The warped steel propelled the man across the cabin and into the far wall, knocking him unconscious.

Toby gained altitude to join Emily and Lorna.

“I thought there would be more of them,” said Toby. “And I thought pirates would be a lot tougher.”

“Wrong type of pirates,” said Lorna in her best “ye olde pirate” accent.

“It's turning!” exclaimed Emily. As they watched, the boat increased speed and began to slide in the water. “Must be somebody at the wheel.”

Toby felt slightly disappointed at what seemed like an easy victory—he had been expecting the mission to be a lot more fun, but knew better than to say so out loud. “We didn't need Pete after all, the slacker. Let's get onto the boat and stop it.”

Toby wondered if Pete was okay. The last time he'd seen him was when Pete had plummeted underwater several minutes ago, convinced he had downloaded aquatic powers. Toby wasn't too concerned, since Pete was a strong swimmer. Besides, his friend had been acting differently since they had been using the superpowers. Toby just hoped being a hero wasn't going to his head, like it was with his sister.

They edged forward toward the ship's dark helm at the front of the boat. As they drew nearer they could see the captain inside the control room, bathed in pale lights. The captain didn't look around, but instead stared at his instruments. The ship was old enough to be steered by a large wheel, instead of the small computer joysticks of modern vessels. The captain was using all his weight to keep the wheel level.

Toby landed on the raised deck and took a step forward when Lorna suddenly gave a loud yelp. She had been about to follow her brother through the control room door when she was violently dragged up and backward into the sky by some invisible force. She suddenly stopped and hung stationary for a second, before rapidly zigzagging through the air like a balloon—coming to another abrupt halt. She stopped screaming for a microsecond before plummeting into the water.