LITMIR.BIZ

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wished that he would one day get to visit this, the only true Blighted Village left on Earth. It was not quite turning out how he had imagined.

      He could ask the other Half-Hunters for help, but that would require, well, asking for help. And he didn’t like to do that. A true Legend Hunter should not require assistance. They must be self-sufficient. Quick-witted. And, every now and again, a bit uncomfortable wherever they lay their head.

      So, Kenzo left, deciding to make his way towards where the houses crowded in on the rocky beach. He heard voices ahead of him in the fading light. A boy. Then a girl. She was laughing, and he could make out two small figures breaking into a sprint up a laneway that led back to the main street of Darkmouth.

      Away up the strand, he could see the scaffold being set up for the Completion Ceremony, what would be a stage for the big event. Even now, as it grew late, there was life, lights, busy Half-Hunters, tasked with setting up the platform, preparing to work through the night. Shivering as the chilly breeze moved across the stones, Kenzo saw the skeleton of an old boat, upturned and washed up on the beach, its hull rotten but holding on to enough wood to offer some shelter for the night.

      The crescent of the moon had been blanketed by cloud. There was a flicker of lightning. No thunder followed.

      The wreck’s hull had rotted away so that it looked like a giant’s ribcage half buried in the beach. Kenzo stooped to enter it, then smoothed out the shingle at his feet, pulled the coat from his shoulders and placed it across the flattened spot. He lay down. Kenzo would stay here tonight. It was not perfect, but he was always one to keep his spirits up. He would treat this as an adventure. It was the best he could do.

      Something stirred in his bag. Kenzo sat upright and undid its rope to reach in with both hands. He gently removed a white rabbit, and immediately began snuggling at its soft neck with his nose, shushing it to keep it calm. He took a head of lettuce from his pocket and let the rabbit eat it while it sat on his chest.

      “Good Nibbles,” Kenzo said. “Nice Nibbles.” His fluffy pal was the big star of his magic tricks at children’s parties.

      There was the scrunch of stone. Something was moving around the wreck.

      “Hello?” he said. “Who is there?”

      The stones scrunched again, footsteps forcing the beach aside.

      “Hello?”

      A presence moved in front of him, darkening the decaying wreck, disappearing again. Kenzo leaped to his feet, sending the rabbit hopping to the ground while he scrabbled for his sword, which was wooden because no parent wants a real samurai sword at a kids’ party.

      “Come out and show yourself.”

      The shadow moved behind him. He turned and arced the sword until it quivered at the nose of his stalker.

      A little boy gasped, his eyes wide with shock and fear. Behind him, two other kids gasped with fright.

      Kenzo exhaled, withdrew the weapon.

      “You must stop following me,” he said, but the children were already running away, scrambling across the stony beach, carried by the fright of nearly losing a nose.

      A little stunned, Kenzo watched them leave, shaking his head in bemusement before returning to his temporary bed, where Nibbles was already resting.

      Scrunch.

      Kenzo sighed, tired of these intrusions.

      Scccrunch.

      “Please, children,” he muttered, “I must get my rest.”

      Kenzo stood again, but this time found himself under a tall shadow. The shadow of a shadow. A shifting shape that emerged from the air, pulled from a scream, the edges coalescing in a swirl. Its hair was like thin snakes writhing from its head, the eyes pinwheels of red, and the distorted mouth carrying a malevolence that could cut a person in two.

      Kenzo swung his sword at the intruder, catching it in the side. But the ghost’s molecules moved away, letting the blunt blade pass through.

      The phantom reached out, touched Kenzo’s chest.

      The last thing Kenzo saw before he disappeared was the very person he had come to Darkmouth to celebrate. It was Finn. Approaching the wreck.

      Their eyes met.

      Then Kenzo was full of stars.

      

      To Finn it was as if the Half-Hunter had been sliced by light from neck to belly, the light dancing for a moment before spreading out in each direction and swallowing the man.

      The victim’s stare burned on to Finn’s mind. Eyes wide. Fear vivid. And then nothing. Just a vague yellow smudge carried across the air slowly. And, in the sand where he had stood, scorch marks around bootprints.

      Lingering, a face that was mutated and mutating, a figure rearranging itself in the breeze. But Finn recognised who this was instantly. Even if he couldn’t believe it.

      “Tick, tock,” said the phantom before scattering into nothingness in the grey light of evening.

      Emmie scrunched on to the scene. “What’s going on, Finn?” she asked. “Why did you come over here?”

      Finn gawped dumbly, hardly able to explain. “I thought I saw something, like a light dropping from the sky, and came over to look. But when I got here …”

      He stood aside to let her see the scratches in the air.

      He showed her the scorched bootprints.

      “That’s Kenzo,” he said. “The Japanese Half-Hunter. Was Kenzo. He was swallowed or something.”

      “It’s like those marks at the hotel,” Emmie said, eyes wide in amazement.

      “But that’s not the scariest thing,” said Finn.

      “It’s not?”

      “No. I saw what swallowed him,” Finn said. “It was Mr Glad. He’s back. He killed Kenzo.”

       The headquarters of the Council of Twelve was on a side street, in the small capital city at the heart of the tiny Alpine country of Liechtenstein. There was no sign above the door, no plaque on the wall, no hint at all that this was the nerve centre of the Legend Hunter world except for a missing chunk of the third floor caused when someone pressed the wrong button on the wrong weapon many years ago.

       Inside was a warren of corridors and staircases, criss-crossing at odd points, or leading to dead ends. There were large doors to small rooms and small doors to large rooms and at least one door that for some reason opened to nowhere but a fatal six-storey drop to the pavement outside.

       On the seventh floor – which could be reached only by first taking an elevator to the ninth floor – there was a small room with a plaque on the door describing it as the Office of Lost Arts.

      Inside that room sat a fellow by the name of Lucien, one of the great many assistants to the Council of Twelve. One early afternoon, he was pondering what was generally the most serious decision of his working day – whether to have a sandwich or a salad for his lunch – when a small canister arrived through the communications tubes that networked the building and landed with a fwhop on his

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