LITMIR.BIZ

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      His eyes scanned a glass case that held a series of tiny knight figures made of metal, a kind Simon collected. He didn’t know why he liked them, but he did. No one else his age ever wanted these.

      He bought a little black knight and a Halloween mask that matched it, and he was just starting to talk to the girl about the masquerade when he was interrupted.

      With a bang the shop door opened and a group of boys from his school herded in noisily, arrogantly pushing Simon aside as they argued over costumes. The girl almost instantly forgot about him, and after trying to be heard over their voices, Simon left the boys and the shop behind. Today just wasn’t his day.

      It was a relief to get out. His face was burning red from embarrassment at having the knight toy in his hand with the other kids around him. He didn’t dare glance at the girl for fear she was looking at him like he was an overgrown little boy.

      The fog had become worse since he’d gone into the shop. Cars crawled along like wounded soldiers on a battlefield. The streetlamps were nearly useless, their pale light illuminating nothing except more fog.

      Going home to the lighthouse alone did not seem like such a wonderful idea in this mess, Simon was thinking. The morning had taken a turn for the stranger. Simon saw a German shepherd bounding up over dustbins and working its way to the roof of a store. All over town dogs had retreated up to the rooftops, howling. He could see their forms dimly in the fog. Something had scared them beyond belief.

      Then something shuddered in the air, the sound of flapping wings. A torrent of white shapes flashed by, white bats, descending to land at the town clock.

      Simon eased back into the space between two buildings. Watching them. The bats seemed to stare down at him.

      Before anything else could happen, the other boys clanged out of the novelty shop.

      o“It’s got cold out here,” one of them said. Simon fell in behind them, hiking his jacket collar up against the weirdly icy breeze. He thought he heard the bats shuffling in the distance. He didn’t have the nerve to look back.

      He was just about to ask the others if they’d seen the bats, but it was a rare thing for him to be part of a group and the boys shot him unfriendly glances before he could even speak. Feeling unwelcome, he trailed back, letting them go on without him.

      They were stuck-up kids, the richest of the rich, and they tended to torture Simon with constant questions about the St George family. Simon never had any answers.

      At the Lighthouse School, the children knew every branch of their entire family tree, going back to their great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers, and before that. These were boys from families with histories to be proud of and futures all mapped out for them. If your dad was a doctor, you’d be a doctor; if he was a banker, that was your lot. There was a sureness to this that made the boys feel strong and at ease. There were not many of them who questioned what was laid out for them.

      Simon had no past and no certain future. There was a blankness all around him. At his age, you were supposed to have some idea of what you want to do in life. Supposedly.

      He finally glanced back at the strange white bats, but the town clock was nearly buried in the pearly air.

      He followed the boys down a familiar sloping street, a street that sank down a hill to an old streetcar stop. The boys stomped through the gloomy day, slapping the poles, kicking down dustbins and doing anything they could to keep from thinking about how creepy the weather had become.

      Simon stood apart from them, waiting in the cold for the streetcar. Even though the boys knew it was coming, when they heard it deep in the fog, approaching with a clang and a rattle, everyone jumped. It was that kind of day.

      Simon started to join them at the streetcar stop, but something stopped him.

      The boys. They were staring, the looks on their faces changing from curiosity to a kind of horror. For an instant, Simon thought it might be a stupid trick, but then he saw they were looking at his feet. Looking down, Simon saw beetles flooding the street in the pale light, flowing down the hill, swarming around them!

      Behind him the streetcar tore out of the fog with a clang.

      The first boy stepped back in surprise. All over the metal car, more beetles were swarming. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny white beetles. There were so many they were tumbling off the roof and scattering about their shoes. The boys were so stunned all they could do was stare.

      “Get inside!” someone shouted. They rushed aboard the streetcar, pushing through the rain of beetles, and the door closed behind them.

      They were safe. The car was warm, very warm. It was like stepping into a greenhouse on a June day. The lights inside flickered strangely. The boys noticed that lights in the nearby buildings were flickering on and off as well.

      Simon was the last to board the streetcar. As he got on, he could swear he heard the roar of some tremendous animal far off in the gloom.

      It was the strangest thing.

      It sounded familiar.

       CHAPTER TWO

       The Original Dragonhunter

      Days before this, in an old suburban town near Chicago, Illinois, far from the Lighthouse School for Boys, five men rode their horses down a street frosted with autumn leaves. The sight would have been a strange one had anyone bothered to look out of their window. No one did. It was a quiet part of town. Quiet folks lived there, mostly old people, and they minded their own business. It was as if a spell kept them half asleep most of the time.

      But if anyone had bothered to look out, they would have seen that it wasn’t just the arrival of horses that was strange. The riders were dressed in dull, iron-coloured armour with ornate writing carved into the metal, a runic writing so old and so secret no one would have recognised it.

      The man in the middle was tall and strong, though not as stocky as the others. He had the beginnings of a beard that would have been grey if he’d let it go further. His hair was black and grey, and long and greasy, and he kept it swept back, out of his way. His face was handsomely chiselled, if you could see it under the dirt and the occasional scars. He had not washed for days. He had been on the road a long time.

      “This is it,” he said to the other men. “The time is now.” His voice was deep and painted with an English accent.

      He looked to a taller Englishman, who nodded. The tall one gave the others a grave smile and said, “Aldric is right. Let’s not give the wretch time to think.”

      The men put on their helmets. They were now covered head to toe in armour.

      Each helmet was an angular box with tiny slits for the eyes, in the crusader style. They were marked with a small symbol looking like a cross mixed with the fleur-de-lis; every warrior’s symbol was a different colour.

      The horses were in an awful state of agitation. They fidgeted backwards and side to side, preparing themselves for the fight ahead.

      Ahead of them lay a stone wall and a wrought-iron gate, and a stone house taller than the others nearby. The place looked haunted. It had two round turrets with long windows, though the curtains were always pulled shut. Rarely did sunlight enter this home.

      The trees in the yard were dead and rotting. Beetles swarmed around their exposed roots. The twisted branches were home to the skeletal remains of many birds that had died in them as soon as they landed. The house itself smelt rancid and whoever did the gardening, such as it was, constantly replanted perennials to cover the stink, but these flowers always died.

      The riders moved forward and the lead man pulled at his horse so that it reared up and smashed open the gate with its huge front legs. There was no point in being silent. A surprise

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