Читать книгу Hero Rising - Shane Hegarty, Shane Hegarty - Страница 12

The gateway opened for a few seconds.

About three minutes later, four panting assistants finally arrived at the scene, carrying Desiccators awkwardly. They’d been delayed by an argument about which alley to run down. Half of them had said they should go right. Half said they should go left. They ended up going straight ahead which, by sheer luck, was exactly where they should have gone in the first place.

They burst into the dead end near the back of Woofy Wash, where the gateway had torn its way into our world.

But there was no gateway.

There were no Legends.

Even the rain had gone, stopping so suddenly it was as if someone had turned off the shower tap.

The assistants looked at each other with some bemusement.

“There’s nothing here,” said one of them.

“I told you we should have gone right,” said another.

“You said we should have gone left. I said we should go right,” said a third.

A noise startled them and the assistants lifted the Desiccators they’d brought.

But it was only Hugo, throwing out a basin of dirty, rabbit-poo-filled water.

They kept their weapons raised. He paused, liquid slopping about the edge of the basin.

The assistants lowered their weapons. Hugo threw the water along the ground, so that it lapped and splashed at their gleaming shoes, then returned inside.

As if a single entity, the assistants turned to clatter and bump their way away from the dead end back towards the main street, still arguing about which direction they should have gone in.

But someone else remained unseen. Emmie had followed their movements, knowing they’d be so wrapped up in the thought of catching Legends that she could shadow them easily.

She crouched to the ground, found a patch of dust, exactly the sort created when something comes through a gateway. But there was only one smattering, as if a large foot had been placed in this world, and immediately withdrawn. Otherwise, there was no sign of scratch marks on walls, or bite marks on bins.

Nothing.

She was about to leave the scene when something else caught her eye. A small bottle of Shampoodle rolling across the ground, spilling a dull blue chemical from its open top.

Emmie walked to it, rolled it with her foot and glanced back at the door of Woofy Wash.

Something was wrong, although she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Finn would know what to do, she decided.

She set off to find him.