Darkmouth (2 page)

T
hinking back on it all later, Finn identified that morning as the time when things began to go badly wrong.

Mulling it over a little bit more, he realized he could identify just about any morning of his first twelve years as when things began to go wrong. At the time, though, he wasn't doing much thinking. Instead, he was running. As hard as he could. In the rain. Away from a Minotaur.

Five minutes earlier, everything had
seemed
to be going according to plan, even if Finn wasn't entirely sure what that plan was.

Then it had been Finn doing the chasing, carrying a Desiccator, a fat silver rifle with a cylinder hanging in front of the trigger. He was the Hunter, lumbering through the maze of Darkmouth's backstreets in a black helmet and fighting suit—small dull squares of metal knitted together clumsily—so that when he moved it
sounded like a bag of forks falling down stairs.

It was oversize because his parents had told him he should leave room to grow into it. It rattled because he had made it himself.

From somewhere in the near distance, about two alleys away, he had heard the sound of glass being mashed into stone, or maybe stone being pounded into glass. Either way, it was followed by the scream of a car alarm and the even louder scream of a person.

Darkmouth was a town of dead ends and blind alleys, with high walls that were lined with broken glass, sharp stones, and blades. The layout was designed to confuse Legends, block their progress, shepherd them toward dead ends. But Finn knew where to go.

He followed the Legend's dusty trail, emerging onto Broken Road, Darkmouth's main street, where vehicles had screeched to a halt at wrong angles, and those townspeople who hadn't scarpered were cowering in still-closed shop doorways.

And at the top of the street was the Minotaur. It was part human, part bull, all terrifying. Finn's heart skipped a beat, then hammered three more in quick succession. He took a shuddering breath. He had spent his childhood looking at drawings of such creatures, which were always depicted as mighty, almost noble, Legends. Seeing one in the flesh, Finn realized they had captured a Minotaur's strength, but had not really conveyed any sense of just how rabid it looked.

From where its jutting, crooked horns met its great bull's head, the Minotaur was covered in the mangy hair of a mongrel. As it looked over its shoulder, slobber dripped from its great teeth and ran through the contours of muscles bulging along its back, past its waist, down to patches of skin as cracked as baked clay. It
stood on two legs that tapered down to menacing claws instead of hooves.

The Minotaur was worse than Finn had ever imagined it could be, which was impressive, as he had imagined it to be pretty bad.

And now the Legend was looking straight at him.

He ducked into a doorway. A woman was already hiding there, her back pressed against the door, a dog pulled close. Her face was tight with fear.

“Don't worry, Mrs. Bright,” Finn told her, his voice muffled by the helmet. “You and Yappy will soon be safe, won't you, boy?” He pet the dog, a Basset hound, with his free hand. It sneezed on him.

The woman nodded with unconvincing gratitude, then paused. “Where's your father, young man? Shouldn't he be—?”

There was a smash farther up the street. The Minotaur had disappeared around the bend at the top of Broken Road. Finn took another deep breath and moved on after it.

From the other side of a wall, there was a thud so forceful it sent a shudder from Finn's feet to his brain, which interpreted it as a signal to run screaming in the opposite direction.

But Finn didn't run. He had trained for this. He had been born into it. He knew what was expected of him, what he needed to do. Besides, if he ran now, his dad would be disappointed in him. Again.

I'll be there when you need me,
Finn's father had told him that morning.

Pressing a radio button on the side of his helmet, Finn whispered, “Dad? Are you there?”

The only response was the uncaring crackle of static.

A dark, looming hulk barreled across an intersecting alleyway, tearing along its narrow walls. Finn raised his Desiccator and followed. At the corner, he crouched and peered around. The Minotaur had paused no more than twenty yards away. Its great shoulders heaved under angry, growling breaths as it figured out which way to go next.

It was all up to Finn now. He recalled his training. Focused on what he had been taught. Thought about his father's expert words. Carefully, he aimed his stocky silver weapon, steadied himself, exhaled.

At that exact moment, the Minotaur turned to face him, its eyes like black pools gouged beneath scarred horns. Froth dripped from chipped and jagged tusks. For a second, Finn was distracted by the way drool, blood, and rain clung to a crystal ring wedged through the Legend's nose.

The Minotaur roared. Finn squeezed the trigger.

The force of the shot sent Finn tripping backward. A sparkling, spinning blue ball flew from the barrel of the Desiccator, unfurling into a glowing net as it was propelled toward where the Minotaur had stood only a moment before . . . and wrapped itself around a parked car.

Finn groaned.

With a flash and a stifled
whooop,
half the car collapsed in on itself with the anguished scrunch of a ton of metal being sucked into a shape no bigger than a soda can.

Finn looked for the Minotaur. It was gone.

He pressed his radio switch. “Erm, Dad?”

Still nothing.

He paused, calmed his babbling mind as much as he could, and moved off again through the alleyways. Using the ancient methods handed down to him, Finn began carefully tracking the trail of the Minotaur.

He needn't have bothered. The Minotaur got to him first.

N
aturally, Finn fled.

As he did, several thoughts went through his head, mainly to do with whether he should turn and shoot, or find a hiding spot, or whether he had time to stop and fling aside his clattering armor.

For its part, as it chased him, the Minotaur had only a single thought in its head. Finn was better off not knowing just how many times the word “gouge” featured in it.

Finn ran down the alleyway as fast as his rattling fighting suit would allow, his breath hot inside the helmet, his weapon flailing from a strap around his wrist. He spotted a gap and turned into it just before the Minotaur reached him. The creature smashed into a dead end, throwing up a cloud of brick, dust, and drool.

Finn pushed on, darting across alleys, stumbling around corners, squeezing through gaps, until it occurred to him that the only sound he could hear above the noise
of his suit was that of his own panting.

With some effort, he persuaded his legs to stop running.

Crouching at a corner, he looked around for any sign of the Minotaur. There was none. He sank down, feeling the rivulets of sweat running down his cheeks, the itchiness of the suit, and the thump of his heart in his chest.

There was a rustle close by. The briefest flicker of a shadow.

“Dad?”

The Minotaur burst through a wall in front of Finn, collapsing with dreadful force into the alleyway, its horns scraping and sparking off the concrete, before righting itself and looming over him. Finn raised his Desiccator, but the Minotaur reached out a huge arm and swiped it from his hands.

Backed up against the brick, Finn could taste the deathly sourness of the Minotaur's breath and see the deep blackness of its mouth. He was briefly mesmerized by the radiance of the fat diamond ring lodged in the Legend's nose.

Finn tried to think of a way out, of a fighting move his father had taught him, a plan, an escape route, anything other than just giving in to the inevitable pounding thought that he was about to die.

As it poised to strike, the Minotaur still had just one thought in its head, although it had evolved to include repeated use of the word “maim.”

If this Legend had been a little less single-minded, however, it might have realized that the sliver of time it took to move in for the kill was long enough for a shadow to pass above it and the boy; for that shadow to grow larger, darker; for it to become solid as it bounded across the creature's great shoulders and landed behind it.

The Minotaur turned. The armor on this new human shimmered; it was hard to focus on. He seemed to be there yet not there. The figure carried a weapon similar to the boy's, but larger. And the Minotaur knew instantly who it now faced.

This was not
a
Legend Hunter. This was
the
Legend Hunter.

The Minotaur had moved barely an inch in attack before it was struck by the glowing net of the Legend Hunter's weapon. For the briefest of moments, it was frozen in an all-enveloping web of sparkling blue. Then, with a stifled
whooop,
the Minotaur imploded. All that was left was a solid, hairy sphere no bigger than a tennis ball.

The Legend Hunter remained steady, a thin wisp
of blue smoke drifting from the barrel of his weapon. “Bull's-eye,” he said, popping open his visor to reveal a face as solid as the helmet and an obvious delight at his quip.

Finn picked himself up off the ground and glared at him. “Where
were
you, Dad?”