Darkmouth (7 page)

B
roonie walked through the gate and emerged into a world of rain.

What he noticed first was not the scenery, but the air. It had a purity that was invigorating. At least, it had a purity once he sniffed his way past the many impurities that were layered over it: fatty foods, burned fuels, seaweed, decaying flowers, all overlaid by tons of perfume-doused sweat. It carried in the breeze and through the light rain.

But, underneath all that, the air was so fresh that he wanted to drink it.

Everywhere he looked there was a vibrancy that he had never experienced. Each color was divided into shade upon shade—even the grays exploded across a spectrum.

This was the Promised World. This was what centuries of war had been waged over. He understood it now.

He was on a Darkmouth street.
So orderly,
he thought.
Flowers growing from baskets in the air: novel. Numbers on doors: curious. The ground is painted with rectangles and vehicles are abandoned in them. Odd.

Broonie felt grubby in his dull rags crusted with his own blood. He saw that he was covered in a fine layer of dust that seemed resistant to the rain. Instead, it shed from him as he nervously shuffled on the spot, trying to decide what he had to do next. He had been told his mission. He still didn't understand exactly what it was.

“When you see them, you can attack,” the Fomorians had said.

“Attack?”

“Attack.”

“Shouldn't I take a bigger weapon with me?” he had asked, holding up the small knife they had given him.

“Your best weapon is your ingenuity,” they told him.

“While I appreciate the compliment, I'm not sure it will be entirely sufficient to—”

At which point a boot had kicked him through the rippling gateway.

There was an incessant ache where his finger had been removed and clumsily replaced with a new digit made of crystal. It already felt loose at the knuckle. Even in his disbelief and pain, he was annoyed at the Fomorians'
shoddy workmanship.

An older human in a headscarf crossed his path, pulling some kind of square bag filled with provisions. When she saw him, she screamed and scuttled away, leaving her bag to spill at his feet. Broonie rummaged through its contents. He was desperately hungry, and slurped from a carton of milk, then bit into an egg and sucked out its contents. They tasted so fresh he shuddered in delight. He rifled through the bag some more and recoiled. Inside a clear package was meat. Bloody. Sliced neatly.

These people must be more vicious than it is taught. Even the elders carry the raw parts of their prey.

It was time to run.

He struggled through Darkmouth's maze of dead ends and blind alleys, continually failing to find a clear path.

Turning onto a wide street, he ran into a bustle of humans moving through the town. One noticed him and his shriek alerted the others. A small hairy animal at the end of a leash went wild, straining and snarling until Broonie thrust his knife at it, pricking the creature in the paw so that it squealed and withdrew, bleeding.

Its owner kicked at him and Broonie stabbed impulsively at him too, nicking his ankle before jumping backward into the road where there was a horrible squeal
of machinery as an oncoming metal vehicle braked only an ear hair's width from his face.

Adrenaline coursing through his raised black veins, Broonie darted through the nearest doorway to crouch inside its large window while he tried to figure out an escape route. Outside, the scene was chaotic. Some ran off right away, while others stopped first to stare at him with mounting disgust before following the others.

Broonie became aware of something above him. And behind him. And around him.

Carcasses, stripped down to their flesh, hung on sharp hooks. Torn and cut and placed on display. Ribs, livers, tongues, all manner of sliced hunks of animals were neatly laid out behind a glass partition. Broonie guessed they must be the fresh kills of the fat human currently standing behind the glass counter in a bloodstained apron, with one hand on a large cleaver and the other on a half-sliced body laid out on a table beside him.

If Broonie had opened his eyes any wider, they would have popped out and rolled across the floor to the butcher's feet.

On the street, there was the squeal of metal and a great roar, and another vehicle arrived through the crowd of humans that was heading in the opposite direction. A
figure emerged from it, tall and imposing, fully armored and wielding a gun.

Broonie immediately knew who this was. The Legend Hunter.

“A Hogboon,” he heard the Hunter say clearly. “Hardly a challenge, especially if it's carrying little more than an apple peeler.”

Broonie sprang at the butcher, wincing at the blood smeared on his clothes, and wrapped himself tightly around his head, grasping firmly at the man's face until he dropped the cleaver with a clang. Broonie then slid down onto the human's shoulders, holding his bloodied knife to the butcher's neck as the Legend Hunter burst into the shop, gun raised.

“Hugo . . . ,” whimpered the butcher.

“Don't worry, Leo, we'll soon have this sorted.”

From his dry throat, Broonie summoned the best rasp he could. “You're a cruel species. Let me go or I will show you how cruel I can be too.”

“You want me to drop this Desiccator?”

“Now,” said Broonie, pulling tighter on the knife. His fear of having to carry through with his threat was outweighed by the thought of his insides hanging in this window while his outsides spent the rest of eternity as a
comfortable pair of shoes.

“If I put it down, you won't hurt this man?” asked the Legend Hunter.

“On the rotting soul of my uncle.”

“I'll drop my weapon.” He bent down and placed it on the ground. “But on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“That you look behind you.”

Broonie glanced around. There, at a back door, was another armored human, much smaller, far less imposing, but with a weapon pointed right at his head.

“The boy?” muttered the Hogboon just as a large piece of meat struck him in the side of the head and sent him crashing to the ground, the knife slipping from his grasp. The butcher barged out of the door to safety.

The Legend Hunter stood over Broonie, Desiccator pointed at him.

There was a
blip
from somewhere. Then another.
Blip. Blip
.

Realizing the sound was coming from somewhere on him, the Legend Hunter patted his fighting suit until he found a pocket containing a rectangular device, which he pulled out and examined.

“The scanner's identified another open gateway, over
by the harbor.” Silence. No
blip
. “Hold on, it's gone again. Odd. Anyway, where were we?”

The boy joined the Legend Hunter, standing over Broonie too, lifting his visor for a better look.

“He looks hurt, Dad.”

“Of course he's hurt, Finn.”

“Should we help him?”

“Help him?
Help him?
We shoot him,” insisted the Legend Hunter, sounding exasperated.

“But he's just lying there,” said the boy.

“So, what, we bring him home for tea and biscuits? No, we desiccate him.
You
desiccate him. Here's your chance for a first confirmed hunt.”

The boy looked pained. “That just doesn't feel right.”

“Stop babbling, Finn, and do it.”

“Wait!” interjected Broonie.

The humans focused on him. Broonie pointed at the boy, calmed himself, and recited the words he had been given. “I have a message,” he said. “The Legends are rising. The boy shall fall.”

Then the Legend Hunter shot him.

F
inn saw it at the same time his father did. A diamond, spinning to a stop beside the hard leather ball that had only seconds before been a Hogboon. This one was smaller than the one Finn had picked up after his encounter with the Minotaur, but sharper.

His father casually tossed the ball of Legend to Finn, who juggled it before getting a hold against his chest, then punched in the code for a container he was holding and placed it inside. In the meantime, his father had picked up the diamond and was quietly examining it.

“What was that?” asked Finn.

“Some kind of diamond,” his father replied slowly.

“No. I mean, what did he say? About me?”

“He didn't say anything about you.”

“Yes, he did. He looked at me and said ‘the boy.' He wasn't looking at you at the time. It was definitely me. And he said I would fall.”

“It was about all of us.”

“No, it was as if he recognized me.”

“Maybe you're a big celebrity on the Infested Side,” said his dad. “He probably got you in the Legend Hunters collector cards. It was just a trick, Finn. A delaying tactic. Give these Legends a hand and they'll take an arm.”

They both knew this was literally so in the infamous case of Graham the One-Armed.

Broonie's knife—a harmless piece, barely capable of slicing paper—remained where it had fallen. Finn picked it up and handed it to his father, who was hardly interested in it.

“That doesn't matter. This diamond is more important,” his father said, studying it. “You saw the Desiccator swallow him pretty well, didn't you? So why was this left behind?”

“He must have dodged at the last moment.”

“I couldn't have been closer to him. He didn't move.”

Finn shrugged, dropped his gaze, tried not to betray what he already knew. The Minotaur had been hit full-on by the Desiccator and a crystal had been left behind there too. He should have told his dad at the time. He should tell him now. But he reckoned his father would desiccate him on the spot if he knew he'd been hiding a precious
stone from the Infested Side in his underpants drawer.

“This,” his dad continued, still focusing on the jewel, “is the first thing I've ever seen survive the Desiccator net intact. It was definitely on his hand. I spotted it, where his little finger should have been, but just presumed it was some sort of decoration. Hogboons are thieving little beggars. He must have lost the finger at some point and used this as an artificial one.”

“You're sure it's a diamond?” asked Finn.

His father turned it over in his hand.

“I don't know, Finn. But there's someone who will.”

T
he shop was hidden down one of Darkmouth's narrowest alleyways. Finn had been there before, but not since he was younger when he would be brought along by his dad and left to wait outside on the step, where weathered paint peeled from the shop front in sharp, fat flakes. Finn had never been inside.

The red lettering on the sign over the door was almost, but not entirely, faded. It read:

Specialities? Nothing about the shop looked special from the outside. Its window was caked with grime and anyone peering inside could see that the store was overflowing with
odds and ends: parts of old electronics, guts of televisions, remnants of toasters, gaping insides of CD players. The clutter spilled onto the alleyway at the front of the shop, cardboard boxes filled to the brim with tiny fuses, plugs trailing cords, old and worn radios, and ancient phones.

Finn's father paused at the door, crouching down to pick through a box. “I love this shop,” he said as he stood up with what looked like a dusty old computer game in his hands. “You don't get their sort anymore.”

“I wonder why,” said Finn with as much sarcasm as possible in case it wasn't obvious enough.

“You'll be surprised what you can find if you know where to look,” his dad replied, a touch of glee in his voice. He tossed the game at Finn. “Come on. It's about time you were properly introduced to my old friend.”

Finn felt a flash of excitement as he followed his dad. He had never before crossed the threshold—instead, his memories were all of sitting on the sidewalk outside, or playing along the lane, barely seen silhouettes shuffling around inside. His father greeting another man, a mumbled discussion, the occasional glance toward Finn before they disappeared.

Now, finally inside, his excitement turned to disappointment. He could see the place was as messy as the
exterior had promised it would be. Wire hoops hung from the walls, disembodied screens dangled from the ceiling, and towers of dusty DVD players teetered on the floor.

“What do you want for one of those old Space Invaders games?” Finn's dad called out.

“Some bread would be nice,” came the reply. A man appeared behind a counter. Finn hadn't noticed him amid the clutter. He hadn't even noticed the counter.

“Business that bad, old man?” continued Finn's father.

The shopkeeper grunted. He looked as worn out as the electronics scattered around the place. His dark, unkempt hair hung like black spaghetti past his ears, his suit was frayed at the edges, and his fingers were the yellow of old newspapers.

“Well, I might have something interesting for you, Glad,” said Finn's dad, gently placing the diamond on the countertop.

Mr. Glad didn't acknowledge it, but instead fixed his glare on Finn.

“Your boy has grown, Hugo. I haven't seen him since he was small, waiting on that step outside. Well, since he was smaller, that is. Let me have a look at him.”

Stretching out both hands, he grabbed Finn by the back of the skull. Startled, Finn wasn't sure if he was
under threat, but he wasn't in a position to wriggle free anyway. Mr. Glad turned Finn's head one way, then the other, examining him like a vet might search a dog for fleas.

“Will he be Complete?” he asked as if Finn didn't have a voice of his own.

Finn's father pushed up his lower lip in an attempt to exude confidence.

“Three successful hunts done yet?”

Finn's dad waggled a hand in a not-quite-there gesture.

Mr. Glad kept hold of Finn for a few more seconds. Under his grip, Finn thought his head might crack open like an egg, letting his brain ooze out. It would be a welcome release.

“He'll have to do, I suppose.” Mr. Glad snorted in a way that didn't convey much satisfaction, then released Finn, who rubbed the back of his skull, where a bruise was already blooming.

“Now what's this you have for me?” asked Mr. Glad, picking up the object and examining it.

“I'm not sure,” said Finn's dad. “But it looks like a diamond. A Hogboon came through a gate a short while ago and left it behind.”

“Where's this Hogboon now?”

“In the car, doing a good impression of a stone.”

“And did he say anything?”

“He didn't get the chance.”

“He's some man, your father,” said Mr. Glad, addressing Finn. “I've known him since we were boys. And your mother too. We all grew up in this godforsaken town. He went his way, I went mine.”

Finn hid his surprise that his parents and Mr. Glad were the same age. Time had treated them quite differently.

“Your father did some extraordinary things, even when we were young,” said Mr. Glad. “Has he told you about the day he fought—?”

“Yes,” said Finn wearily, because he had heard the same stories over and over.

“And the time he invented—?”

“That too.”

“Well then, we're in agreement.” Mr. Glad turned and passed through a curtain of beads behind him.

Before following, Finn's father stopped and bent down to Finn. “You want to know what those ‘specialties' are? You're about to find out.”

He pushed aside the beads, beckoning Finn through. In the back room, much to Finn's surprise, there was . . . order.

It was not necessarily neat, nor was it any brighter or more cheerful than the shop, yet as Finn looked closer he began to see a strong semblance of organization. The floor could be seen and actually walked on without fear of tripping over a fossilized tape recorder. There was even a bed, roughly made, in the corner.

But it was the equipment that most caught Finn's attention.

One wall was lined with shields of various sizes, some with spikes arranged round the rim or protruding from the middle. On another hung parts of armor—a breastplate, a pair of iron trousers, and a steel cup that Finn knew was particularly important for protecting the vital bits of male Legend Hunters. On the shelves were a variety of objects, including triggers, handles, tubes, small boxes with fat wires, and fat boxes with small wires.

Specialties
, thought Finn.

His attention was caught by what looked like a long fork, with two prongs and a smaller blade jutting between them. Mr. Glad seemed to notice his interest and handed it to him for a closer look.

“It's a Tooth Extractor,” he said. “If you get bitten by a Legend, you don't want to leave any stray teeth in there. Poison, you see. It'll gradually worm its way into your skin
and seep deep into the tissue. Then it'll turn rotten and eat away at your flesh so that you're left in terrible agony for hours, or days, unless . . .” Mr. Glad leaned in to Finn. “S
chlupp!
You pop it out with one of these. It's a proper relief when you do. Trust me.”

He tucked his hair behind his right ear. Finn could just make out the edges of a scar on his temple. It was deep and circular, with two small punctures on either side. He looked at the prongs of the Tooth Extractor, then back at the scar.

Mr. Glad let his hair fall back over his ear and moved away.

Finn glanced at his father and raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

“Mr. Glad is what is known as a Fixer,” said his dad.

“What do you fix?” Finn asked.

“Whatever it is you need,” answered Mr. Glad conspiratorially.

“Mr. Glad has been a Fixer for a long time, Finn,” said his father. “He's one of the best.”

“And one of the last,” interjected Mr. Glad, sitting down on a rusted seat at a large desk by the wall. “Civilians can't become Legend Hunters, but some of us have found other ways to become useful. Traveling to the
Blighted Villages, making weapons, fixing equipment, sourcing materials. It's not what you'd call an official role. The Twelve like to keep us hidden, as you can see.” He gestured at his surroundings.

Finn stared at Mr. Glad, trying to figure out how to react. He felt his dad watching him, waiting for his reaction, willing it to be positive. “Interesting,” said Finn because he reckoned he should say something.

Mr. Glad opened a wooden drawer and lifted out a brass microscope. He placed it on his desk and opened a cap on its lens before giving it a once-over. “I used to move around a bit. It was the best of times, it was the bloodiest of times, and all that,” he said. “Soon neither of us might be needed by anyone. Unless
you
plan to keep us in business.”

He paused for a moment, before slapping his knees in an unexpectedly cheery gesture. “But such is the small price of a great victory! Now let's take a look at this diamond, or whatever it might be, before we get chewed up by nostalgia.”

Mr. Glad placed an edge of the crystal just below the lens. The only sound was the rattle of his breath as he examined it.

“Well, it's not a diamond, I can tell you that right away,” he announced, sitting back and inviting Finn's father to have a look. “I don't believe that diamonds dance like that, do you?”