he would be needed to protect Darkmouth on his own.
Every bit of that responsibility weighed on him as he sulked home.
What made it worse was that he wasn’t ready. He had needed rescuing. Again. His third time on a hunt with his father. His third failure.
The first hunt, a few weeks ago, had been pure humiliation. The Legend in question had been a Basilisk, a particularly stupid, fat reptile with a beak. Basilisks were brought up to believe that a single stare was enough to kill a human being. When cornered, they stop, open their eyes wide and glare at an oncoming human. The only problem was that their stare was marginally less threatening than a baby’s giggle. A Hunter wouldn’t even break stride.
Only a particularly inexperienced or inept Legend Hunter could fail to capture such a creature. Finn happened to fit into both of those categories.
His father had strung the hunt out to show Finn how best to track a Legend using his own skills rather than any technology. “When their world meets our world, it creates a dust. Even the rain won’t wash it away. Follow those dust tracks. Know the streets. Go at an even pace …”
It was then that he noticed Finn wasn’t in his shadow any more. Instead, after quickly bagging the Basilisk, he found his son two lanes away, on his back, kicking his legs in the air like a stranded turtle. His dad’s fear had been that a Legend would fell Finn; instead, his son had been undone by the awkwardness of his own fighting suit and the not-exactly-famous fighting skills of a pavement.
There was an uncomfortable silence on the walk home.
The second hunt, just the previous week, had started well enough. Following a few modifications to his armour, Finn was even given his own Desiccator. His father stayed with him as they hunted the intruder. It was a small Manticore, with the body of a lion, the stubby wings of a dragon, a scorpion tail lined with poisonous darts and, most dangerous of all, an inability to shut up.
They moved quickly, Finn tracking the dust from the Infested Side, just as he had learned, until he cornered the Manticore in an alleyway. Then it all went wrong. When Finn tried to get his Desiccator the holster at his waist, he snagged his glove on his armour and couldn’t even raise his arm.
“Hold on a second,” he said to the Manticore.
This was a big mistake.
The first thing Legend Hunters in training are told about Manticores is: Never engage them in conversation. The Manticore will keep you there all day, talking almost exclusively in riddles. Bad riddles. You will eventually go quite mad.
Luckily, as the Legend opened its mouth to respond with a particularly devastating riddle, Finn’s father desiccated it.
He and Finn again walked home in a deeply awkward silence.
And then, of course, there was today.
In less than a year, Finn would be expected to Complete and become a full Legend Hunter. Among the criteria to even be considered were three verified, successful Legend hunts. Being cornered by the Minotaur that morning had instead completed a hat-trick of calamities.
He had caught the look on his father’s face as he got out of the car outside school, the disappointment furrowing his brow. Now, as Finn walked home, he had a greater understanding of how deep that disappointment ran. He faced two possibilities.
Either he would fail so spectacularly that he couldn’t become Complete, thereby preventing his father from being the only Darkmouth Legend Hunter in forty-two generations to bag every Legend Hunter’s dream job.
Or he would somehow succeed and be left with the responsibility of defending Darkmouth, and every soul in it, alone. Finn couldn’t decide which was the best outcome.
Or, more accurately, the worst.
Finn turned on to a street that featured a row of apparently derelict houses on one side, windows bricked up or boarded, some painted with childish images of flower boxes in an attempt to brighten them up a bit. A couple of trees sprouting from the pavement softened it a little, but a long blank wall on the other side of the street gave everything an inescapably austere look.
In a town with street names that spoke of Darkmouth’s violent past, this one had no name. Finn’s house was the last in the row, ordinary-looking and unremarkable.
As he approached, Finn could see a police car parked just behind his father’s. The front door to the house was open and he could make out the figure of the local sergeant just inside.
Finn scurried to the low wall that hemmed in the small patch of garden outside his house. Out of sight, he crouched and listened.
“You know we appreciate what you do, Hugo,” Sergeant Doyle was saying. “And we know you’ve got to teach the boy.” The sergeant was a large man who used to be barrel-chested, but that barrel had slumped into his belly with age. “But this is the third time in only a few weeks.” There was a pause. Finn peered over the wall into the open doorway and saw Sergeant Doyle flip open a notepad and begin reading. “Two walls pulverised in Fillet Lane. A car half destroyed by your boy at the Charmless Gap—”
“OK, Sergeant,” said Finn’s dad, raising his hands. “We’ll be sure to …”
“Two people treated for shock.”
“We can cover whatever costs …”
“The real cost is to you, Hugo. The people here are already scared stiff of the monsters; they don’t need to fear the people who are supposed to be protecting them.” Sergeant Doyle never looked pleased to be in Darkmouth. This day was no different.
“I have to train him, Sergeant—” began Finn’s dad.
“We know you need to teach the boy, but there must be a better way than giving him a weapon and letting him loose,” said Sergeant Doyle, stepping away from the door. Pressed against the wall, Finn felt the heat rise in his face. The sergeant walked right past Finn without noticing him, got into his car and rolled down the window. “Hugo, you and I both know people here wonder why Darkmouth is the last place left where these attacks still happen. They’re beginning to blame you. Some of them are even asking if you keep letting the monsters in deliberately to keep your job.”
“Ah now, Sergeant ….”
“There are people in Darkmouth who wonder if they might be better off dealing with this themselves. It’s the twenty-first century, Hugo. They think they can buy monster-killing kits on the internet.”
Finn’s dad sighed. “They’re called Legends.”
“What?”
