“You trapped me, but now you want to strike a bargain.” Mr Glad’s words trembled through the ether. Finn gripped harder on the chain, drew the locket closer through his fingers.
“Y-yes,” he said.
Finn stood back again. He had a sense that Mr Glad was more powerful now than he had been when they met before, fuelled perhaps by anger, or revenge, or dust, or something Finn had yet to even contemplate. He felt so out of his depth.
“I can see you have no idea if the dust will work,” sneered Mr Glad. “It may return your friend Steve, or maybe just parts of him. It may destroy him. But you are willing to take that chance, because of your noble sacrifice. Right?”
Finn blinked. “Erm …”
“I thought as much. So I have a better deal for you.”
Mr Glad raised a hand. Three stars appeared above, a flare of light flickering round each of them. “You drop the locket and come with me. Or I will manipulate one of them so that they open a gateway in you.”
In the sky above them came the flickering of lightning in a sky empty of cloud. A single star floated down from its moorings in the night sky. Mr Glad had a black, charred hand raised towards it, summoning it. As it neared the ground, it very slowly began to find form. Nose. Eyes. A mouth gasping for mercy.
Kenzo.
Above, the remaining two lights grew into faces stretched in agony, bodies being sculpted out of sheer anguish.
Douglas.
Steve.
The Trapped.
Kenzo was closest to Finn, and getting closer, though Finn could see he was acting very differently from Mr Glad. He was being pushed towards him, a puppet under Mr Glad’s control. It was hard to know how much of the old Kenzo was still there, but this version of him was a tormented, controlled phantom. Coming straight for Finn.
Kenzo flowed towards Finn, reaching out to open a gateway in him.
Finn realised he was clutching the locket at his chest now, tight against the fighting suit’s painting of a Minotaur’s gaping jaws. His knuckles were white from gripping so tightly. His mouth was dry. His vision was filled with the howling visions of the Trapped, led by an entity so molten it was hard to focus properly on him. And all he could hear were the bells ringing out a simple rhythm.
“I …” he said.
Mr Glad had moved closer, the Trapped now forming a crescent above Finn, their howling silent but visceral.
Church bells rang out.
Finn swallowed hard, found clarity in his mind. “I’ve just remembered something,” he said. Mr Glad’s face showed the tiniest quiver of curiosity. Kenzo paused, frozen in torment.
“The bells,” said Finn. “It means it’s after midnight. It’s my birthday. And, if it’s my birthday, then there have to be fireworks. RIGHT, EMMIE?!”
That was the moment. They had a secret plan, a brilliant one worked out quickly between the two of them in the minutes before Mr Glad appeared. A truly brilliant plan.
Which wasn’t actually happening right now.
“ISN’T THAT RIGHT, EMMIE?” Finn shouted, louder, a squeak of desperation in his voice as he did his best not to be intimidated by the hovering phantom of a half-dead man hellbent on revenge.
But still nothing happened.
Out there, hidden away in the dark, Emmie was at the control box of the fireworks, smacking a button while staring in horror at the rockets strapped with packets of dust. They were supposed to have risen majestically in the air, to burst and spray dust over Mr Glad and the others, to return the Trapped, to restore Mr Glad to his human form and take away his powers, to end this madness.
But they had failed to launch.
Mr Glad smiled venomously, floating above the ruined stage. At least, Finn thought it was a smile. It was hard to tell through a shifting mass of molten features.
But it was enough to make Finn step back instinctively, scramble up on to the ruins of the stage, where he put a foot on a loose piece of scaffolding, and fell on to a pile of rubble.
The locket spilled from his grasp, slipping away through the cracks.
Finn looked at Mr Glad. Who was definitely smiling now.
In the dark bowels of the crumpled stage, beneath toppled pylons, heavy steel, right at the bottom where no human could survive, someone stirred.
It was no human.
Gantrua’s face was pressed into the trampled grass and soft earth of the Promised Side. It smelled extraordinary to him. This dirt contained such life. The sound of microscopic creatures mulching the soil filled his cavernous ears. The scent filled his equally cavernous nostrils.
He assessed the pain in his bones, allowed the torture in his head to build, urged it to turn into rage. Rage gave him strength. Strength was what he needed right now.
Something dropped against the back of his skull, tinked against his helmet and landed by his hand. He pawed it closer, held it in his palm, a small object on a chain. It smelled of human. It smelled of that human boy.
Gantrua found his rage.
He pressed at the ground, pushed up at his back, tried to feel movement in this collapsed structure. He felt it give a little at his right shoulder. Just enough for him to gain a bit more room, to plant a foot a little deeper into the ground, to push again.
Another nudge, more give, the other leg finding space.
One more effort. One more summoning of his anger and he would be free.
The debris shook as he threw the great weight from his shoulder, bursting through into the clear air.
It was not often Finn would have welcomed the sudden appearance of a furious Fomorian conqueror. But this was turning into a night of firsts.
Gantrua emerged out of the debris between him and the oncoming Mr Glad, and immediately thrust his sword out so that its tip rested on Finn’s nose.
But Mr Glad was still moving and, when he reached Gantrua, he touched the Fomorian’s back.
Gantrua dropped the sword, as the heat of the tiny gateway Mr Glad was making bored into him. He howled in agony.
Seemingly operating on pure instinct, Gantrua turned and thrust the locket into Mr Glad.
Mr Glad recoiled, a splash through his liquid form reacting to the dust in the locket. Behind him, for an instant, Steve, Kenzo and Douglas shifted in form too.
Hand still plunged into the writhing Mr Glad, Gantrua lifted his sword again. He held it once more to Finn’s neck.
The cold dark steel of the sword remained steady on Finn’s skin, stretching away from him until it met with the hilt in the grasp of the furious Fomorian. Finn looked along its length, trying not to move, not to trigger even the slightest push. That would be enough to end it all. To end him.
But Gantrua did not strike. Not yet. Instead, he examined Finn, assessed him. Finn stared back, at eyes boring into his mind. He couldn’t hold his glare so averted it to the grille with its now shattered serpent’s tooth. All those other teeth and fangs there too. One looked human. He was not to know it had once belonged to his grandfather, Niall Blacktongue, many, many years ago.
Finn wanted to find that anger within him, that energy he had drawn on to topple the stage. To use whatever power he had against Gantrua. But when he searched for it he found only fear.
Through the spectral shimmer of Mr Glad’s body, Finn saw his locket dangling from Gantrua’s fist.
With the locket still inside him, Mr Glad was spasming, seemingly on the edge of some final change. To return. Or to rupture. In the sky, Steve’s face buckled, distorted. It was the same with Kenzo and Douglas. Their pain filling the night.
“I never trust humans,” sighed Gantrua. “Even the half-dead ones. You are only useful dead.”
There was a rumble at the remnants of the stage. A judder. Finn and Gantrua each looked to its source.
Emmie had her hands on a long piece of metal propping up a corner of the stage. She yanked it free.
The debris jolted, Gantrua briefly lost his footing, dropping to one knee as the pile slumped beneath him. This released his
hand from Mr Glad’s chest, allowing him to surge away. Finn took his chance to escape. He rolled back, then crawled away over the wreckage, sharp steel sticking into his knees and hands.
Gantrua steadied himself and followed, feet mashing through steel and wood. He kicked up detritus that landed loudly and dangerously close to Finn’s head.
Finn reached the grass, stumbled. Gantrua kicked a pipe at his feet. He hit the ground on his shoulder, but spun, got up, kept going round the edge of the stage. A large slab of wooden flooring thudded in front of him, sticking upright in the ground, forcing him to a halt.
Gantrua followed it, great strides eating up the ground and reaching Finn where he was backed against the obstacle.
Gantrua held his fist steady, and his sword straight at Finn’s nose. Finn felt like he was being swallowed by the darkness of the Legend’s shadow, which grew larger as the grotesque broken wings rose unfolded on his back. They were lit by the strobing of the snapped, sparking wire.
Finn had no defence. No weapon. He had a penknife and a torch; he had a compass. He had a belt with a ridiculous buckle on it. None of it was much use right now.
Gantrua raised his sword to strike.
A voice interrupted. An already familiar one, laced with the usual layers of disappointment. “Is this the best the Infested Side can send here these days?” asked Gerald the Disappointed as he appeared on the beach, slightly out of breath.
Gantrua hesitated.
Finn grabbed a stake from the ground, a splintered length of wood hardly enough to even graze this formidable Legend. But he had to try. He stabbed forward and struck Gantrua hard on the side. The Fomorian’s wings sprang open. Finn backed away quickly.
“Was that intended to hurt me?” asked Gantrua and started to follow. Then he grunted in irritation. He couldn’t move. His wings had wedged him into the broken pieces of stage around him.
“Finn!” shouted Hugo, running up behind Gerald, catching something from him and, while running, throwing a small egg-shaped object in Finn’s direction.
Finn caught it one-handed.
Gantrua was using his blade to cut away at the straps attaching the wings to his torso. Finn jumped in, shoved the egg on to the broken serpent’s tooth on Gantrua’s grille and retreated immediately.
The egg leaked. Burst. Purple plasma splashed all over the Fomorian.
Deep in the helmet, Gantrua’s eyes widened with hatred. Crackling flumes of plasma ran over him, through him. Teeth cracked and burst on his grille. His wings shattered as if glass.
Schlloop.
An instant later, the mighty Gantrua was roughly the size and shape of a biscuit tin.
Gerald and Hugo reached Finn.
“Why can’t you be more like Finn, Hugo?” asked Gerald. “That was superb work from the boy.”
“Do you have to ruin even our last moments together?” responded Hugo.
“How old are you again?” Gerald asked, still more interested in Finn. “Fourteen, fifteen? That’s impressive stuff.”
“Mr Glad’s coming back!” Emmie shouted.
Mr Glad had recovered even as the gallery of the Trapped remained in agony around him. He appeared renewed, re-energised, ready again to strike.
“What now?” he asked in his spectral voice. “You have lost Steve and the others. You will never get them back.”
Under his control, the Trapped began to move in, to converge on Finn, Emmie, Gerald and Hugo.
“Desiccate them!” Finn said.
“We used up the ammo fighting off the Fomorians at the church,” said Hugo as they backed away.
“Hugo used his last shot to take out three in one go,” said Gerald. “I’d have got four, of course, but it was still impressive.”
Loose electricity fizzed and hissed behind them as they edged back from the phantoms flowing towards them – a cable that had been split in two so that each end thrashed, spitting sparks.
“Stop,” said Gerald. “We’ll be electrocuted.”
They were cornered.
“The dust will not protect you,” Mr Glad said, remaining where he was as Douglas, Kenzo and Steve separated to surround those on the ground. “Nothing will protect you.”
The electricity sparked, the snapped cable cutting them off, hemming them into a circle of descending Trapped.
“The wire,” said Finn, an idea hitting him hard.
“We’ll have to jump it,” said Hugo.
“No, it can save us,” said Finn. “The split wire is the reason why the fireworks won’t ignite. Emmie strapped dust to the rockets, but they wouldn’t fire.”
“Of course,” said Emmie. “The switch was hooked up to the wire.”
“So all we have to do is reconnect it,” said Finn.
“All we have to do?” said Hugo, looking at the two sparking ends of the cable whipping on the ground, trailing electric fire.
“Just trust us,” said Finn and started to bolt for the wire, but Gerald reacted quicker, grabbing him and shoving him out of the way.
“I trust you,” he said, “but this is a job for a dead man.”
The Trapped were converging on them, fast, zombified spectres. Kenzo flowed towards Finn. Douglas towards Hugo. Steve’s spectral hand reached out to grab Emmie.
Each was on a collision course with destruction.
Only Gerald was free. He threw himself at the loose electric cable, and turned on to his back as he grabbed either end and slammed them together. He held on even as the electricity shot through him, fixed in a union of sparks and lethal power, until he could hold on no longer and was shot violently away, rolling on to his front.
The Trapped stopped.
Above them all, Mr Glad poured through the back of his head to see what had shot into the sky.
A streak of light rose into the night. Then: crack. There was a green sparkle of a flowering firework. Another followed.
Crack.
Two more. This time a boom shook the air. The sky began to fill with fireworks. A blossoming display of colour and noise and sparkles and, most importantly, dust, drifting down, sparkling red in the light.
Kenzo had got so close that Finn would have been able to smell his breath, if he had been breathing in the first place.
He was certainly close enough that Finn saw the change immediately. The hardening in his face. The anguish taking hold, clear and painful. In the continuing firework display, the dust tied to the rockets had blown through the sky and was now drifting all across the Trapped. The fabric of the air about them pinched and twisted. To Finn it was like they were being hauled into the world, pulled from where they had been stuck.
“Dad!” Emmie shouted. Finn turned to see Steve, his mouth widening, and widening, and widening yet more until it enveloped the face, such as it was. He was being turned inside out, the rest of him being pushed up and through his mouth, pouring forward until …
Steve was there.
Collapsed on his hands and knees on the grass beside Emmie.
The same was happening to Kenzo, his mouth stretching in the most grotesque, repulsive way as he solidified. Finn rolled away as Kenzo dropped to the ground, leaving the dissipated remains of his own phantom.
Douglas was last, so that he too was left exhausted and gasping on the grass. Hugo stood over him, cautious, hands raised in anticipation of trouble. But none came.
“What’s happening to Mr Glad?” Finn asked, and Hugo and Emmie turned their attentions skywards. Where the others were turned inside out, Mr Glad was spreading, growing as he fought the dust that fell in a curtain around them. He flowed across the sky in the storm of the fireworks, like oil thinning on water.
The last firework launched upwards, a blur of bright light exploding into a golden palm tree that cut through the smudge of the shimmering veil of red dust.
It was followed immediately by a thunderous boom.
The dust settled, a scarlet snowfall. And when it was finally done, and the curtain had fallen, Finn searched for one person
alone.
“He’s gone,” said Finn. “Mr Glad is gone.”
Steve was on his hands and knees, gasping for air. Emmie was hugging him round the waist, laughing through tears. Then she started pounding him in the side. “Don’t be so stupid again!” she ordered him. “Don’t scare me like that.”
Hand on his head, he wobbled to his feet while Emmie tried to support him. “The strangest thing …” he said, then patted himself down and appeared relieved to find his legs there. Then his face. Then the hands themselves. “Just the strangest thing.”
Kenzo stayed down, mumbling one word only. “Nibbles …”
Meanwhile, Douglas sat on the grass, looking around. “Did a’ miss anythin’?”
“He’s gone, Dad,” Finn repeated, finding his father in the settling dust. “Mr Glad is gone. Or not here. He should be here too. Why?”
But Hugo didn’t seem to hear him, and as Finn got through the cloud he saw why. His father was leaning over Gerald, who was lying on the ground looking broken and blackened and barely alive.
“Stay awake,” Hugo was telling him. “Stay with us, come on.”
Gerald mouthed something through a cracked mouth.
“Save your strength,” Hugo said to him. But Gerald just about summoned the energy to beckon Finn towards him, urging him closer. Finn leaned in, his dad close too.
Gerald gripped Finn’s arm with surprising strength and fixed him with eyes that were burning their last.
“You … brought them back.”
“It’s OK,” Hugo said to him gently. “Save your strength.”
“It’s what the dust does,” Finn told him, Gerald’s grip digging into his wrist. “We figured it out.”
Gerald’s look of disappointment, which had seemed so firmly frozen on to his face, melted away for the first time. His face was softer than Finn realised. Kindly almost.
“You … did well,” said Gerald. He went quiet, his head lolling back, his grip releasing.
Hugo and Finn stayed by him in silence.
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