“But he hasn’t let me out, has he?” said Broonie, looking toward the door, a gleam in his eye.
Finn’s face fell in defeat.
“Okay,” he said, after a pause.
Emmie looked surprised. “If you want my advice, Finn . . .”
“I don’t.” Finn put his Desiccator down and stood over Broonie. “I need you to tell me what you know. If you do that, I’ll help you leave. I’ll help you escape.”
Broonie licked the edge of his hand, savoring the last clinging drops of his water. “Then I will tell you what I know, which is that he is coming. It may already be too late.”
“Who’s coming?” asked Finn.
“Gantrua.” He registered Finn’s blank look. “Gantrua? Big, violent type? Scars on top of scars? Rules over many Legends? Collects teeth? Owes me a finger?” Broonie held up his mutilated hand. “You haven’t heard of Gantrua? Well, him. And his army. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve got across just how terrible Gantrua is. He once used his bare hands to pull the head from—”
“Don’t,” interrupted Finn.
“Pulled the head off what?” asked Emmie.
Finn lifted a hand for silence. “Just tell me, what does that have to do with me?”
“I was getting to that,” said Broonie. “There’s a prophecy, a warning. I was sent here to give it to you.”
“A prophecy about me?” asked Finn, his mind clogged as he tried to process the information.
“A child of the last Legend Hunter. They say he will be key to the closing of worlds.”
“What does the prophecy say exactly?”
Broonie drew a breath in through his nose, his nostrils flaring like tiny green parachutes catching the wind. Then he recited what he knew. “The Legends are rising, the boy shall fall.”
“What?” asked Emmie. “Like, he’ll fall over? That doesn’t sound—”
“No,” said Broonie testily. “The boy shall fall. Die.”
45
The word sat there between them for a few moments, foreboding and horrible.
Die.
“That’s probably just a threat,” Emmie insisted.
“No,” said Broonie. “The prophecy is quite clear really. The boy shall fall.”
“I . . . ,” started Finn, but he didn’t really know what to say.
“But maybe it’s not even about Finn,” Emmie said. “It’s a bit vague.”
“No, it’s quite detailed actually,” said Broonie. “There’s more, you see:
“Out of the dark mouth shall come the last child of the last Legend Hunter.
He shall end the war and open up the Promised Land.
His death on the Infested Side will be greater than any other.”
“Oh,” said Emmie.
“It’s quite specific in fact,” added Broonie.
Finn was breaking it down in his head, trying to put it back together in a way that might reassure him it was about something else or nothing at all. “I’m not even Complete yet,” he said. “How do I know I’m even the last? It could mean someone else entirely.”
He looked at Emmie, who realized she was supposed to be reassuring him. “Yeah, Finn. Could be anyone.”
“Except,” said Finn, “you said the Twelve sent you here to watch me, Emmie. Do you think they know something? I’m pretty sure my dad does.”
“Could be,” said Emmie.
There was a long pause.
“You going to be okay about it?” asked Emmie.
“About which bit? The whole finding-out-I’m-going-to-die thing? Or the Legends-rising-up part?”
Emmie dropped her head. “Oh.”
Finn looked at the Hogboon standing beside him and recalled something. A little giddiness skipped through him. “It can’t happen yet, though, can it?”
“What can’t happen?” replied Broonie.
“You said my death will be the greatest, but ‘on the Infested Side.’ Unless I travel there, I’m not going to die.”
“Well, if that makes you feel better, then why not?”
“As long as I’m here,” said Finn, “I’m safe.”
“Maybe you’ll be fine,” said Broonie. “I mean, to start with you have to end the war, that’s the first part of the prophecy. And how hard can it be to close off the gateways between two worlds and end thousands of years of war between humans and our kind?”
The Hogboon coughed up a forced laugh. Finn and Emmie stared at him.
“Ahem,” said Broonie. “Anyway, I’ve told you what I know. Now it’s your turn to hold up your end of the bargain.”
“What a load of rubbish,” said Emmie. “Give me the Desiccator. I’ll shoot him.”
“No!” shouted Broonie. “You’re not blasting me with that thing again. I gave you what you needed, now give me what I was promised.”
Finn grabbed Broonie by the arm and dragged him toward the back of the room.
“If you work that evil shrinking trick on me again,” said Broonie, “I swear by my mother’s feet I’ll haunt you until the day your skin turns to soil.”
Finn pulled Broonie through the dusty space, onto the street, and released him.
“Run,” said Finn.
Broonie looked around. “Run where?”
“Anywhere,” said Finn. “Just don’t come back.”
But before the Hogboon could move, orange flashed against the night sky, a splash of fire from somewhere deep in Darkmouth. It was quickly followed by the crack of an explosion.
“What was that?” asked Emmie.
Finn’s eyes told him one thing, but his heart confirmed it. He knew immediately the blast could only have come from one building.
46
Broonie ran from the house, dashing as fast as he could up the street and away. But Finn and Emmie didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t flinch, even as a flash of lightning threw their silhouettes against the wall and thunder cracked hard against the sky. For a few moments, they felt their world burn in that fire, saw their worst fears engulfed in the smoke now pouring upward into the black sky. When they finally spoke, they said the same word, at the same time.
“Dad.”
Then, from the library, they heard a radio crackle into life and Finn’s father coughing out an inaudible message.
Finn ran back inside to the radio, picked up the receiver, and shouted, “Dad? You’re alive!”
“Just about. Booby trap. Shop destroyed.” He coughed again through waves of static. The radio cut out briefly. “. . . only just made it out in time. Bad news about Steve, though.”
Emmie looked at the radio, her dread clear.
“He’s alive too,” said Hugo, followed by an audible and angry protest from Steve. Emmie slumped in relief.
A crackle of interference bit through the radio static. A second later, a peal of thunder rumbled across Darkmouth. Rain began to hammer down.
“Finn!” shouted Hugo. “That sky. Get your suit on. Something big is . . .”
The rest was lost in white noise.
The alarm began to wail.
Lightning tore through the sky, shocking a realization into Finn. “When my dad finds out about all of this, about me letting a Hogboon go, it won’t matter whether I’m on this side or the Infested Side. He’s going to kill me first.”
From A Concise Guide to the
Legend Hunter World, vol. 6,
chapter 13: “Prophecies—Past,
Present and Future”
Despite its adherence to secrecy and bureaucracy, the Council of Twelve has traditionally been content to let prophecies spread on the basis that the only thing you can truly predict is that they won’t come true. Most of the time. Even the many Legend Hunters of the past whose names related to their supposed power of divination—Leo the Seer, Agnes the Foreseeing, Dermot the Tomorrow-Knower—were notoriously unable to tell you what they would have for breakfast the next morning.
Prophecies tend to be maddeningly imprecise with their dates, dependent on circumstan
ces, always open to adjustment, and too easily reassessed once the predicted apocalypse fails to materialize. Occasionally, they have been just the right side of wrong as to let the so-called prophet almost get away with it.
Most famous is the case of the Deathriddlers, a group of Korean Legend Hunters who, through complex rhyme, predicted that they should leave their Blighted Village for the top of the nearest mountain, where—they claimed—a cataclysmic inferno would take them away to a Legend-free paradise. Reaching the summit, they watched as, far below, their village burned to the ground because one of them had left the oven on.
Even now, as the gateways have almost entirely shut, there are many active and new prophecies. In each term of the Council of Twelve, there is a member whose role is to keep an eye on all developing prophecies, to assess and monitor them, keep them secret if necessary, and to report on just how wrong they turn out to be.
Except that sometimes, though not very often, one of these prophecies will show some signs of being . . . true.
Yet, even then, no one will be sure exactly what it will mean. All they can predict with certainty is that it will be trouble.
47
Finn 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 irreg
ularly. 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.
48
Leaping 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?
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