“Five of us walked down that corridor into this room, right?” asked Finn.
“What of it?”
“Then how come there are six of us in the room?”
The four assistants looked at each other, then around.
A fifth assistant was in the room.
Grey hair. Grey suit. Grey skin.
Silent, watchful, a fly landed on his forehead and he didn’t so much as flinch. Nothing. It was as if he wasn’t human.
His eyes burned yellow.
All hell broke loose.
One hour before all hell broke loose, Finn walked through a gateway with the yellow-eyed Legend, having finally learned that it was a Skin-Walker. A Shapeshifter. A creature capable of taking on the form of anything it touched.
At that moment it was shaped as a dog, though, so it was never going to have much to say. More specifically, because it had never met a real dog, it was in the form of the closest reference it had to one – the Orthrus, only with the snake-tail tucked between its legs so as not to be obvious. This was at least better than its natural shape of a large bottle-green monster of the kind that would have stopped traffic.
The Skin-Walker didn’t say much. As a Shapeshifter, its speech was always limited to whatever words it had heard the individual it was imitating say anyway. But this one took it further: it was silent. It could have spoken like Hiss or Cornelius, but not so much as a “sausages” passed its lips. Maybe it couldn’t say anything. Maybe it just didn’t want to.
In the last moments on the Infested Side, before they had travelled together through the gateway, Finn had tried to engage it in conversation. He’d seen a Skin-Walker once before, in a cave many years ago. That poor Legend had ended up dead, something that gave Finn an abiding sense of guilt, and which worried him now he was about to travel on a mission with its cousin.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said, just before the gateway opened.
The Skin-Walker looked at him, so like Cornelius that Finn felt like grabbing his ears and giving him a big cuddle.
“If you know about what happened, that is,” Finn said. “If you don’t, then forget I said anything.” He had no idea whether that made sense or not. He guessed not.
The first thing they did when they arrived in Slotterton was to find a new form, because there was only so long the Skin-Walker could hide a snake out of sight. Finn pointed at a café, told it to hurry before the assistants came for him, so the Skin-Walker trotted off in there.
Finn heard some kind of commotion and shouting, plus maybe the breaking of crockery.
A few seconds later a waitress was jogging from the scene and, with a flash of yellow eyes, she indicated for Finn to follow.
“We’ll use that as a signal,” he said, when he caught up. “I might have no idea who you are and when, so you’re going to have to use the eyes to tell me. Otherwise I could end up dragging the wrong person into a lot of trouble. Deal?”
Another flash of those yellow eyes. Deal.
They’d parted before Finn walked into the arms of those trying to find him, and he had to trust that the Shapeshifter would hide in plain sight.
He was relieved when it finally showed itself in that small room. Then he ducked out of the way as the Legend became a blur of action, a controlled frenzy of hands and feet and shape changes, knocking out assistants swiftly, each touch giving it a new form to take.
The Skin-Walker morphed almost as quickly as it moved, until, one by one, it incapacitated them, and it was the double of the now unconscious Ricardo.
It left only Olaf conscious, under its powerful grip, pressed against the join of the wall and floor, trembling with fear as the Skin-Walker – in the guise of an unconscious colleague – stared at him.
“What are you?” asked the assistant.
The Skin-Walker showed him. Slowly shrinking in size, turning into the lead guard, as if wanting to taunt him with this unveiling of his doppelgänger. The nose rearranged itself, eyes shifted position on the face, face turning like water running down a plughole, hair disappearing, shoulders sinking, chest rising, until the assistant was looking at a clone.
Olaf tried to faint.
“Don’t faint,” Finn ordered him, and the Skin-Walker gripped Olaf tighter to keep him conscious.
“Unlock these,” Finn said, holding out his hands.
Woozily, Olaf did as requested, and the cuffs fell away.
“You have the desiccated Fomorian here,” Finn said, rubbing his wrists. “Where is he being kept?”
Outside, they heard the sound of the truck spluttering into life. The low revving of an engine.
“Not here,” Olaf said, strained, his own clone pressing against him.
“Don’t lie,” Finn said. “We know he was being brought here.”
The truck’s engine revved again, followed by the sound of it jolting and pulling away from the door outside the room.
“T-t-truck,” stuttered Olaf, still doing his utmost to pass out with shock.
“The truck doesn’t matter,” said Finn. “Let it go without us. Where are the Legends?”
“Truck,” repeated Olaf before finally passing out.
Finn looked through the blinds of the room’s window, the large vehicle visible through smudged glass as it waited to pull out on to the road out of Slotterton.
“The truck,” said Finn to himself. “The truck!”
It angled on to the road and drove away, with Gantrua on board.
Finn was first out of the room, checking down the corridor to see if anyone had followed. They hadn’t.
No one was in this part of the building. There was only the open door swinging a little in the breeze, and the sight of the truck’s trailer moving past the trees at the edge of the building. The revving of its engine was fading into the distance already.
The Skin-Walker stood beside him, in the guise of the finally unconscious lead assistant.
“We need to get after that truck,” Finn said, darting outside. “Maybe you can turn into a car or something and chase it?”
The Skin-Walker looked at him, eyes pulsing, face blank.
“Oh, so you can only turn into living creatures?” Finn asked.
Just a nod from the Skin-Walker.
“It would help if you were a bit chattier,” Finn complained. “Look, that truck is heading away quickly. Unless we move now, our chance to get Gantrua is gone, and we won’t stop that Bone Creature from destroying your world and then levelling mine. So you’d better be able to turn into a horse or something that’ll help us chase down that truck, or we are all finished.”
The Skin-Walker nodded again, took several big steps out of the door into the car park while stretching out its arms.
“Whatever you’re about to turn into, just make sure it’s something that doesn’t stand out too much.”
The Skin-Walker pulsed. Jerked its shoulders. A welt grew from one side of its back, while a hollow dug into the other. Hair sprouted. Teeth grew. Ears lengthened. From the welt on its back, something rounded emerged. The other head retracted below, to create a belly, while the legs split, each strand developing hooves.
“It’s a horse!” said Finn, delighted.
But the legs kept splitting, four at each end.
“It’s not a horse,” sighed Finn.
A handsome, muscular and sleek Sleipnir stood ready on its eight legs, hooves clopping at the ground, head tossing back, eager to get going.
“I have no choice, do I?” asked Finn, but he wasn’t really looking for an answer.
He climbed on the back of the Sleipnir, wrapped the mane around his wrist and prepared for the acceleration.
When the Legend charged after the truck, Finn felt like he would be flung off immediately. He was reminded of when someone in Darkmouth had thought it a bright idea to organise a sheep race down the main street, complete with teddy-bear jockeys flopping about helplessly on the woolly backs.
In the rush of wind as they hit the road, Finn’s neck
was being whipped, his hands burned, his brain bounced around inside his skull so much he could almost hear his head rattle. But at least they were gaining on the truck. And gaining attention.
The people of Slotterton stopped dead as Finn and the Sleipnir passed, gawped, dropped their shopping. A couple of them pointed dumbly. The only ones who seemed to know how to react appropriately were the kids.
“No way!” Finn heard a boy shout.
“Yeah!” screamed a pair of teenage girls. “Yeeesssssss!”
Then they jumped out of the way, because four of the Sleipnir’s hooves almost took their heads off. Instead, however, the Legend cut a postbox in half as it swung around a corner, leaving behind a blizzard of letters and enough stories to keep the people of Slotterton talking for generations.
Finn had begun to get his equilibrium on the back of this great beast, to get a good grasp of the mane and steady himself. The Skin-Walker had managed to get a handle on its current body, to pick up rhythm and speed.
Gradually, they gained on the truck.
The vehicle reached a crossroads, slowed as traffic lights turned red. Finn’s ride swerved to the centre of the road to skirt the traffic. He heard the crack and tinkle of a wing mirror being broken off the side of a car.
“Sorry,” he shouted back, but kept looking ahead.
Another wing mirror was swiped.
“Sorry!”
Ahead, the driver of the truck, wearing the standard grey suit of the assistants, was reflected in its wing mirror. He was squinting at the commotion behind, his eyes widening as he realised the horse bolting loose down the road behind him wasn’t the usual type of horse. And wasn’t too loose either. It had a rider, and it was heading straight for the truck.
The vehicle accelerated through the red light, forcing cars to brake and swerve in either direction. Two met side-on at the centre of the road, just as Finn and the Sleipnir caught up. Finn gripped hard as the Legend leaped high over the cars, landing clear, its sharp rear hooves scraping the bonnet of one so that it crumpled and sprang open.
“Sorry!” called Finn.
At which point he decided that if he apologised for every bad thing that was about to happen, he’d never stop saying sorry. Instead, he needed to concentrate on holding on to the Legend, and to figure out just what he was going to do when he reached the truck.
They emerged into a square, busy with market stalls, lines of them under awnings, shoppers and smallholders turning as one to see what the screech of brakes was and, more importantly, where that great clatter of hooves was coming from.
The truck turned sharply, almost tipping over with the effort and sending the Sleipnir careening into the corner of a market stall, Finn hugging its back to avoid being clobbered by poles. When he looked up again a dress and a hat were hanging from the Sleipnir’s ears. He pulled them away, sent them flying high behind them.
“Quicker,” he told the Sleipnir. “We’re almost there.”
The truck swerved around a traffic island. The Sleipnir vaulted it.
The vehicle swung right, mounting the pavement to curve through a garage forecourt. The Sleipnir was now far more agile, and cut the corner efficiently.
An ache throbbed in Finn’s arms, where he clung on for dear life.
In the blur of the chase, he saw the truck’s driver on his radio. Hailing someone. Lucien, no doubt.
As the truck straightened up again along a stretch of road leading away from the town, Finn and the Shapeshifter reached it, managed to draw alongside its trailer. The rear door was locked.
“Bridge!” shouted Finn, as the truck bounced over the narrow arched structure spanning the river ahead, forcing the Sleipnir to slow suddenly, throwing Finn forward. He ducked just in time to avoid a road sign, before fighting his way back on to the broad back of the Legend.
A narrow road made it difficult to get alongside the truck, driving recklessly in its attempts to get away.
The Shapeshifter’s neck began to morph and stretch, most of it staying as a Sleipnir, but its head becoming something far more serpentine and horrible. Under Finn’s hands, the Sleipnir’s silky coat became hard and scaly, and he had to wrap his arms around the neck as it thinned and carried him forward.
A second head sprouted, stretching forward to keep an eye on the road, while the long neck Finn clung on to carried him to the link between the truck’s cab and its trailer. He hung on desperately to the now part Sleipnir and part Hydra, hovering over the tarmac whipping past below them, certain to break every bone in his body twice over should he hit it.
The space between the truck’s cab and its trailer was a mass of coiling cables and wires, obscuring the actual joining mechanism, forcing Finn to shout at the Skin-Walker, “I don’t know what to do.”
They were running out of time.
The half-Sleipnir, half-Hydra Skin-Walker was tiring, panting. It stumbled, just a step, and Finn almost fell from it, until it pushed itself to catch up again.
As Finn swung out from behind the cab, he saw trouble ahead. A steep hill out of the town, a tunnel through which the truck might fit, but which would force the Skin-Walker Sleipnir–Hydra amalgam to drop back. If it did that, there was no way they’d catch up again. The exhaustion of the creature was palpable, its sweat greasing the neck Finn tried to keep a hold on.
“I can’t do it,” he said, pulling at the wires and seeing a large heavy pin locked into place below. “I need to stop him some other way.”
Abruptly, the Skin-Walker lifted its long neck, Finn just about clinging on, and rammed its head against the window of the truck.
Safety glass shattered.
And Finn found himself half through the smashed window, inside the cab.
“Hi,” he said to the driver, almost apologetically.
Then he did the only thing he knew what to do with a car, and turned the key in the ignition, switching off the engine.
He flung the keys away over his shoulder.
“Sorry.”
As the truck began to slow, the assistant’s face was a mask of pure rage. It blinded him from seeing that he was about to drive straight into a wall until the last second. He swerved, spun the steering wheel one way, then the other, until – through some miracle of physics – the truck cab stayed upright.
Behind it came a groan. A creak. The sound of snapping as wires pulled free, and of metal bending as the trailer tipped at an angle. The Skin-Walker jumped away, Finn thrown from its back to land in a hedge. The trailer kept tipping over, crashing and rolling across the road in a spray of glass and metal.
Its rear door clanged open, revealing only a wall of plain brown boxes.
Finn’s heart sank.
Slowly the boxes tipped forward as one, scattering apart as they hit the ground. They revealed a large bell-shaped cage rolling out from the jack-knifed trailer and on to the road.
It rolled a little further towards Finn, stopping as its broken door swung open and a case popped out. Its lid springing unlocked, a large hard ball rolled to where Finn lay half buried in the hedge. Streaks of leather and metal, with stolen serpent wings folded up like a chrysalis along its back. Gantrua.
Finn picked it up.
At the centre, almost like an eye, was a small hint of emerald green. This was the charm.
In time for the Legends to stop the Bone Creature in their world before it reached Finn’s.
In time for him to return it and then intercept the experiments and prove that Lucien was trying to open gateways outside of Darkmouth that would endanger everyone.
Yet what there wasn’t time for was to enjoy the victory. Alerted by the driver’s call, Finn heard the sound of engines heralding the arrival of the chasing pack of assistants.
The Skin-Walker responded by shifting from its freakish form to become an assistant again. But the chase had exhausted it and it was struggling to maintain the form, face shifting a little, eyes bright yellow, hair bottle-green, and lumpen skin crawling about its body. It wouldn
’t be able to pass as anything human if examined too closely.
“We need to get out of here now,” Finn told the Legend. “If we open a gateway we can save them.”
But the Skin-Walker did not move. Instead, it watched the arriving assistants as they screeched to a halt, jumped from their cars and began to run towards the crash scene. Several of them were armed with Desiccators.
The Skin-Walker simply put a hand on Finn’s shoulder. Starting at the arm, the change travelling up to the swirling skin and features of its face, it morphed into a new form.
“Me?” Finn said, looking at himself. “You’re going to be me?”
Finn felt queasy. He had seen this before, in the cave in the Infested Side when that Shapeshifter wanted to eat him for breakfast. He really never wanted to have to see that again. But this time was different.
Now in the guise of Finn, even as it struggled to maintain its shape, the Shapeshifter smiled. It wasn’t the most convincing smile ever, but it got the message across.
“Save us,” it said – in a mechanical version of Finn’s voice, the first thing Finn had heard it say – then it turned and ran towards the road where the assistants and police were about to arrive.
Finn watched himself run across the road – a surreal experience, but dragging attention away from the real him.
The assistants followed the Shapeshifter immediately, chasing down what they thought was the boy they’d been searching for.
Finn ran across the field, away from the scene, hiding among the thorns of a high, unruly hedge. He pulled the map of Slotterton from his back pocket, found his bearings and started trying to figure out how to get to the “2” marked on the map. The site of the experiment. Smack in the middle of the crosses of the “ancient graveyard”.
His watch told him it was 7.30pm. The experiment was due to start at 8pm. He needed to get the charm to the Infested Side and hoped they could stop the Bone Creature before Lucien’s experiments opened up a way for it to come through to Slotterton.
The map told him that a short distance ahead there was a small park, hidden within trees. That’s where he’d open the gateway. That’s where he’d hand the charm over.
Hero Rising Page 14