Darkmouth (19 page)

F
inn ran down his street, his fighting suit clattering like cymbals alongside the unpredictable beat of the thunder crashing down on Darkmouth. He reached the end of his road just in time to be met by his father screeching to a stop, throwing open the door of the car, and telling him to jump in.

Finn's father looked scorched, his face bloodied and blackened, his fighting suit splattered with the dust of pulverized brick, but he seemed to be otherwise okay.

“Dad, I'm so glad you're—”

“Look at that,” Hugo said, gesturing at the scanner.

It was riddled with green pulses. Finn counted five, maybe six. Some flashed in and out and didn't reappear. Others seemed to be fixed and ominous.

“An attack?” asked Finn.

“An invasion,” said his father.

“Are we going to use that device in your library?”
asked Finn. “Just blast them all?”

“No,” his father said firmly. “It didn't work properly last time, and I still don't know why. It might destroy them, it might not. It might do worse. A few vaporized goldfish I can live with. A few vaporized townspeople would be a different matter. I can't risk that. Not yet. We'll take the old-fashioned route for now.”

“Are we going to be able to hold them all off?”

“There's only one way to find out,” said his father, pulling away again so fast the wheels threw up a spray of gravel. Steve's van screeched into view, skidding in front of them and forcing Finn's dad to swerve to a stop.

Emmie's father ran out from the van, his fighting suit and helmet on, visor pulled open as he squinted through the driving rain. He rapped on the window. “There are too many gateways opening for just the two of you.”

“Cover the harbor,” said Hugo. “There are two gateways there. Keep your radio on my frequency. No medieval weapons. Don't be an idiot. And, if I tell you to do something, do it. Think you can manage to handle that?”

Steve sighed and sprinted back to the van. As he opened the door, Finn could see Emmie in the passenger seat. She was wearing her fighting suit. Even from
a distance, both it and the helmet she held in her lap gleamed in their newness. He couldn't be sure, but Finn thought she flashed him a smile, perhaps an effort to be reassuring when she was clearly looking for reassurance herself.

He gave her a thumbs-up.

Both vehicles headed off, turning in different directions at the end of the street.

“Finn,” said his father, “this is probably going to get rough. You're going to have to cover a gateway by yourself. You can take the one near the school and I'll handle the couple that are popping up near the bridge.” He pulled the small screen from the dashboard and handed it to Finn. “Keep an eye on the scanner. If your gateway closes, run to the nearest alternative. Is your radio working this time?”

Finn pressed its button, wincing at the feedback that pained his eardrum.

“Dad, what happened at Mr. Glad's?”

“You were right about that man,” said his father. “That's what happened.”

Finn felt a mixture of relief and embarrassment at this strange moment in which he had been right and his father wrong, rather than the other way around. Even as
they sped through familiar streets, it felt as if the world had turned upside down.

The car splashed down a narrow road, bumping through a mini lake in the crater gouged from the main street by a Desiccator where the Wolpertinger had come through.

“There's something else on your mind, though,” his father said. “I can practically hear your brain working.”

Finn thought about saying more and decided against it. “I'm feeling okay, I think.”

The car pulled up at the school. Carrying his Desiccator and hooking the scanner to his belt, Finn pushed open the car door and jumped straight into a deep puddle. His boots immediately filled with water.

“Sorry I can't stay, Finn.”

“You'd only get in my way, Dad.”

Smiling, his father drove off.

Finn ran toward the school, diving through the narrow gap in its high front walls. On the other side of the empty parking lot, up a hill by the entrance to the school, he saw the gateway. There was no sign of anything else. No Legend scrabbling for a way out. No thick dust settling even in the wet. No man in a hat primed to strangle him. Nothing.

The gateway cast a golden glow on the water running down the brick and into a stream that snaked through the street. There was nothing for Finn to do but crouch down in his sodden boots and wait.

The radio hissed into action. He heard Steve's voice. “We're here. Lock and load,” he announced.

Finn winced, wondering how Emmie was reacting to her father's obvious giddiness. He imagined her out there in Darkmouth, at a gateway with her father, hair pushed back inside the helmet, mouth open at the sight of that window into the Infested Side. Untrained. Vulnerable.

“I'm at a gateway at the top end of Deadhill Lane,” said his father over the radio. “No sign of life here. Anybody?”

“Not here,” said Steve.

“Nothing, Dad,” confirmed Finn.

“There's another one a bit farther west,” said Hugo. “I'll check that. Stay alert, everyone.”

After a minute, Emmie's voice came over the radio. “Finn? Can you hear me? How are you doing?”

“Essential communication only, you two,” his father interrupted. “I'm at the other gateway now. It's about the same size, but nothing has come through it. I'm going to sit tight here. I'd suggest everyone do the same.”

Rain fired at the ground like shrapnel, a crescendo in
the alley where Finn huddled and waited. The gateway remained where it was, fixed in place, effervescent light gently pulsing at its edges. For something that had brought such terror into this world, Finn found it strangely inviting.

He edged closer, until the light lapped at his visor. Pulling a glove off his right hand with his teeth, he touched it.

The gateway's surface was warm, almost ticklish. He pushed his hand in a little farther and watched the light pool about it like liquid. His hand almost entirely disappeared until his fingertips registered a shock of cold air. Then he remembered the stories of Legend Hunters who'd gotten too close to these things, and he pulled back quickly, examining the dark dust forming over his fingers, thickening under his nails, stubborn even in the heavy rain.

He put the glove back on and resumed his wait.

Steve's voice came on the radio again. “They've got us on a wild Legend chase.”

Nothing followed but the hiss of the radio and the rumble of thunder.

Concentration wavering, Finn lifted his visor a little and, using his forearm to wipe the rain off the scanner screen, looked at the blinking green lights. They seemed to have become fixed in place, five in all, spaced irregularly. But there was something about the arrangement of the gateways that bothered him, something he thought he should be seeing.

But he didn't get a chance to think about it.

The gateway dimmed a little, then brightened again. Finn raised his Desiccator and took a step back as a Manticore appeared in the air, claws drawn and teeth bared. Finn pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

L
eaping from the gateway, the Manticore hit the ground awkwardly, collapsing onto its shoulder and skidding.

Finn pulled the trigger again. Still nothing. No blue fire. No glowing net. Only a pathetic, sickly wheeze from its malfunctioning barrel.

The radio clicked into action. It was Steve. “Hold on, Hugo, something is . . . Here they come!” It was followed by the violent
phzzzzt
of a Desiccator firing, then the hiss of static.

“What is it?” demanded Finn's father over the radio. “What type?”

Steve's response was drowned by the sound of shooting. Finn was sure he heard Emmie scream.

Then the radio cut out again.

The Manticore quickly righted itself and pounced at him. Finn yelped and threw his Desiccator at the
airborne Legend. With pure luck, it struck the creature right between the eyes and the Manticore crashed to the ground and lay there, unmoving.

Finn breathed heavy gulps of relief, the steam rising and fading on his visor, and tried to figure out if he'd been unlucky that his Desiccator didn't work or lucky with his throw. Either way, the Manticore was out cold because of him, and he allowed a small smile to force its way onto his face.

He remembered the radio and hesitated before pressing the button. “Dad . . . ,” he began.

His father came back on, shouting, “Contact! Contact!”

Over the radio, Finn heard a sound that was suddenly sickeningly familiar: the wheeze of a malfunctioning Desiccator.

Steve's voice returned, struggling to be heard above the sound of a fierce battle. “Manticores!” A
phzzzzt
. Silence again.

Hold on
, thought Finn.
Manticores?

Then his father's voice. “More coming through here too. Desiccator not firing. Switching to close-quarter weapons.”

“Time to get medieval, Hugo!” Steve yelled in glee over the din at his end.

“Finn?” asked his father. “What's your status?”

At that moment, Finn's head was busy with three competing thoughts.

First was how unlikely the odds were that both his and his father's Desiccators would seize up, in the same way, at exactly the same time.

The second was that there was still something about the pattern of these gateways that seemed a little too neat.

And third, gradually elbowing its way to the front of his mind, was the realization that in the gateway he faced, a dark blob was getting closer.

Another Manticore spilled onto the asphalt. A second emerged almost immediately behind, landing on top of the first, scratching and biting.

When the Manticores finally stopped attacking each other, Finn was gone.

F
or half a second, lightning showed Finn the way down the empty school corridor, illuminating a thousand forced grins on the faded class photos scattered along the wall.

Then blackness again. No sound but Finn's slow creak past classrooms. Through his radio, he could hear the sounds of a town under attack, his father occasionally shouting the latest from his hand-to-claw fight with invading Manticores, Steve responding with yells of delight and the spit of a Desiccator. He heard Emmie too, saying something. “I'll go to the car,” or maybe, “I'll throw the bar,” he wasn't sure. But she sounded okay, and he felt relief at that.

From inside or outside the school—he couldn't be sure which—Finn heard the distant sound of a Dumpster being knocked over and a crash of cans tipping out. He froze and lifted his visor a little to hear better. All he
could make out was the rain outside.

Finn kept moving through the corridors, looking for the right place to hide, perhaps to ambush. But ambush with what? He had his Desiccator, but it felt lifeless in his hand.

He crept onward through the building. Lightning briefly revealed a stuffed fox midprowl, midsnarl, in a glass box. A rumble of thunder followed.

He wondered what his father would do in these circumstances, but quickly remembered that his father
was
in these circumstances and wasn't creeping around a school, looking for somewhere to hide.

Maybe it was better to ask himself what his father would
want
Finn to do in these circumstances. But he knew it definitely wouldn't involve creeping around a school, looking for somewhere to hide.

Yet here he was.

It seemed as if the storm had abated a little. The gaps between flashes of lightning were longer, meaning greater stretches of the pitch black as Finn moved through the corridors. He checked his scanner and saw that the gateway outside the school had closed.

Finn reassured himself that he knew these halls, strolled through them almost every day, knew their angles
and turns, could have navigated them blindfolded. Then he walked smack into a wall he didn't expect to be there.

His grunt, and the sound of a small shock wave rippling through the suit, seemed to echo around the entire building. He held his breath and stood absolutely still, his eyes wide.

Lightning lit the hall. No Manticores. Darkness again.

He lifted his visor a little, but couldn't see any better. In the blackness, he searched for the button on the side of his helmet that activated the night-vision function and switched it on. Instantly, the world shifted, becoming a basic rendering of green blobs and dark patches.

Especially green was the Manticore-shaped blob only a couple of yards away.

Maybe it would go away if he turned the night vision off. So he did that.

An otherworldly voice, low and malevolent, floated across the blackness: “What is in the dark and not too bright?”

He turned the night vision back on. The green blob jumped at him, snarling.

Finn fell onto the floor and began scrabbling away backward, but the Manticore reached him quickly and sunk its teeth into the armor at Finn's knee.

He belted the Legend with the butt of his Desiccator until it let go, a couple of its teeth following after it. As the Manticore jumped again at him, Finn launched his Desiccator at it, striking it square in the jaw. Another tooth popped free.

Undeterred, the Manticore swung its tail toward him and fired off a poisonous dart. Finn felt the missile lodge in the small gap he had opened in his visor, its razor tip almost scratching at his chin.

In shock, Finn yanked the dart out. The Manticore came at him again, claws and broken teeth bared, and, just as its front paws reached his shoulder, Finn stabbed the creature in the belly with its own dart. The Manticore howled and, with its claws digging into Finn's suit, began to flail horribly until Finn threw the Legend free. The Manticore dropped to the ground, jabbering crazily. Despite its aggression, Finn felt a welling sympathy for it. This close up, it was actually a beautiful creature, its coat a golden sheen, the skin beneath it taut against its muscles. He half reached out, wondering if he should perhaps help it.

It tried to bite him. Finn jumped back, suitably chastened, feeling a crunch beneath his feet. The Manticore's jabbering calmed and it slumped suddenly into complete stillness.

As Finn's nerves settled again, he felt a growing delight bubble through.
Does this count?
he wondered. He had stopped two Manticores after all. He had felled them, immobilized them, finally beaten Legends.
Is this a successful hunt? And that crunchy stuff I stepped on: that was its teeth!

He stepped away and tried not to think about that.

His radio came to life again, but all he could hear were his father's steady, controlled grunts as he fought. It clicked off, then on once more, replaced by Steve's Desiccator firing furiously. Finn again thought of Emmie out there, and wondered if she was involved in that battle or stuck in the van, safely removed from the action.

His vision went white with lightning, except for the long dark shadow of the final Manticore, which loomed along the wall of a bisecting corridor.

Finn's radio crackled in his earpiece. Flustered, he grabbed at it to muffle its tinny sound. But it was too late.

Out there in the dark corridors, the remaining Manticore had heard the tiny disturbance. The Legend turned and stalked in his direction.