Chapter Twenty-Two

Arthur’s right eye fluttered open to the sight of a gleaming white hospital bedroom. He was lying in a bed with a couple of too-soft pillows propping up his head and a blanket tucked tightly around him and under the hard mattress. He couldn’t see out of his left eye and when he touched the bandage that had been wrapped around his face there, he found that the left side was numb. There was no other bed in the room and Joe was the only other occupant, staring out the window at an overcast day. From the view outside, Arthur guessed that they were on a high storey.

‘Dad?’ Arthur croaked. His throat was sore and dry.

Joe whipped around quickly, then ran to his son’s bedside. He took his hand and brushed some stray hairs out of his face. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot; either he hadn’t gotten much sleep or he’d been crying.

‘You’re awake!’

‘What …?’ He couldn’t manage to finish the question and broke into a fit of raspy coughing.

‘Shh, son. Here, have some water.’ He offered a small flask with a straw to Arthur, who sipped gratefully.

‘What happened?’ he asked – his voice still gravelly – when he was done drinking.

‘You were in an accident last night,’ Joe said, sitting down on the hard-backed chair next to the bed. ‘Your right shoulder was dislocated, but it’s been set, and your right leg was sprained. And …’

Arthur’s fingers instinctively went to the bandaged side of his face again. Although it was still mostly numb, he could feel the faint echo of pain there.

‘There was some shrapnel,’ Joe went on. ‘It scratched your cornea. Your left eye is … uh …’

He turned away, struggling to finish.

‘Blind,’ Arthur completed the sentence for him.

‘Yes. Yes, Arthur. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ Arthur said. He didn’t know how to feel or what to think. Part of him was devastated, the part that wanted to scream and cry and mourn his loss. The other part of him was just relieved he hadn’t turned into a wolf – that part of him figured that an eye was a small price to pay.

‘Are my friends OK?’

‘They’re fine, they’re outside. I’ll just get them.’ Joe went to leave but stopped before going through the door. ‘I’m really happy you’re safe,’ he said, then went out.

‘Me too,’ muttered Arthur.

A moment later, Ash, Max, Ellie and Ex entered the room. They rushed to the side of his bed.

‘How are you feeling?’ Ash inquired.

‘I’ve lost the sight in my left eye.’

‘We heard.’

‘Apart from that, I’m not too bad. So what happened?’

‘There was an explosion,’ Ellie told him. ‘You destroyed Hati’s Bite.’

‘I remember that,’ he said. ‘What happened next?’

‘We saw you, Loki and Fenrir thrown from the tower by the force of the blast,’ said Ash. ‘Even unconscious you still somehow kept a grip on the hammer as you fell and it lowered you safely to the ground like it did when it saved us from the lake. By the time we had finished checking on you, all of Loki’s army and Fenrir’s supporters had disappeared. When the tower blew up, most of them must have escaped down the hidden tunnels under the island. After we had a quick look around, we got you in the boat. You were unconscious and your eye was scratched but not bleeding too heavily. Your arm was, well … anyway, we knew we had to get back to Dublin as quickly as possible.’

‘Luckily Ex is a great driver,’ interrupted Ellie.

‘Right,’ Ash continued. ‘We brought you straight here to the hospital.’

‘And my hammer?’

‘I’ve got it safely hidden in my room right now.’

‘But what did you tell everyone?’

‘We pretended that I came home to find Ice missing again,’ said Ash. ‘I was so frantic looking around for her that I accidentally knocked over the coffee table, which smashed, and left the door open when I ran out. Eventually I discovered some older kids had taken her to that abandoned house nearby.’

‘The one we interrogated you in,’ Ellie interrupted again.

‘I said that these kids had been hassling us lately,’ Ash went on. ‘Anyway, you guys followed me and we watched as the bullies set up all these fireworks and bottle-bombs to throw at Ice. But you went in and saved her, Arthur – just as one of the bottle-bombs went off, injuring you.’

‘But what about Ice? I mean if she’s Drysi …’ he trailed off.

‘Easy. We told everyone that the fireworks spooked Ice so much that she ran off when you got blown backwards and we haven’t been able to find her since.’

‘And they bought all that?’

‘They did when they saw the fireworks that Ex set off after we dropped you here!’ Ellie said proudly.

‘Mom and Dad could see why Stace and Max called the Gardaí. They were still pretty paranoid after the museum raid,’ Ash added.

‘What else happened?’ Arthur asked.

‘Well, we called in a private tip to Detective Morrissey to tell him where he’d find the stolen artefacts.’

‘In a magically hidden tower?’

‘It’s not hidden any more,’ Ellie told him. ‘The spell must have been destroyed when the wolves fled. Guess they’ll be wondering where it came from, but at least they can’t trace it back to us.’

‘So what happened to Loki? And Drysi? And Fenrir?’

‘They all went missing after the explosion,’ Ash explained. ‘We don’t know where Loki or Fenrir fell and we couldn’t find any trace of either of them afterwards, so we have to assume they both survived and got away. ’

‘And after I destroyed the Bite, we turned back into humans,’ Arthur said.

‘That’s right,’ said Ellie. ‘And luckily, the magic never actually reached past the lake.’

‘What about the other wolves? Did they turn back?’

‘No. We saw some of them running off through the forest. Destroying the Bite had no effect on them, probably because they’d been turned fully already.’

‘So they’re all still out there?’

‘But scattered and injured, with no one to lead them.’

‘We won, though?’ Arthur said.

‘We won.’

‘And Ash learned some interesting facts,’ Ellie said.

Ash told him all she’d heard from Fenrir: how he’d turned good over the years and how Loki’s third child was still hidden somewhere out there.

Ash finished, ‘If we find Fenrir, he could tell us where to find the girl.’

‘How will we ever manage that?’ Arthur sank down further into the mattress, feeling disillusioned.

‘We actually might have a lead on that,’ said Ellie. ‘Ash lost her webcam during the battle in the hall and I saw Fenrir put it in his pocket. I’m not sure if we can use it, but it might help.’

‘It’s GPS-enabled so if he still has it we should be able to track him down,’ added Ash.

‘What do we know about this third child?’

‘The legends don’t say much about her,’ said Ellie. ‘She’s known as Hell’s Keeper and it’s said that she has the power to unleash Hell on Earth.’

‘Great!’ Arthur said sarcastically. ‘Will we ever be done saving the world?’ The five of them laughed – grateful that they were still alive but also to mask the fear they all felt.

The doctors kept Arthur in the hospital for the next week. They ran various tests on him, changed his bandages every couple of hours and gave him strong painkillers to numb the throbbing ache in his left eye. He only got to see the damage for himself on the third day. A nurse was changing his bandages and he asked for a mirror. Reluctant at first, she eventually conceded and got him a small one. A deep red scar ran across his left eye, starting just over his eyebrow and ending on his cheekbone. It was held together with black thread and was starting to scab already. A black line traced straight across the eyeball itself, slicing through the cornea. The rest of the eye was red, flushed with blood.

‘All right,’ he said steadily to the nurse, ‘thank you.’ But as she rewrapped the bandages, he kept picturing the injured eye in his head.

Life became more normal over the next few days. The others went to school daily and visited him often. They spoke little of their recent adventure; it frightened them to think about what had almost happened to their friends and families. When they did talk about it – usually in hushed tones – they spoke of Ash’s attempts to track down Fenrir with the GPS-cam. The camera was a lost blip, constantly ‘out of range’. They tried to work out other ways to find Fenrir, but to no avail.

Arthur was released on a bright Wednesday morning. The cut across his face was mostly healed by then, although a slick line of scar tissue was forming in its place. His attending doctor had fitted him with a leather eye-patch. He’d told Arthur that he could look at getting a glass prosthetic, but that he would have to wear the patch for a few months until the tenderness was gone. Arthur spent the next few days resting at home and trying not to scratch at the forming scabs. Then, on the following Sunday, Arthur and Joe Quinn moved out.

Arthur hadn’t mentioned the exact day to Ash and the others. Ever since his mother had passed, he’d never been a fan of goodbyes. But of course Ash had realised what was happening as soon as Joe started packing the car. Joe was trying to squeeze the last boxes in and Arthur was sitting in the passenger seat, his iPod earphones plugged in, when his friends walked up the drive. He popped the earphones out and let them hang around his neck, the music still playing faintly.

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ Joe said to him, eyeing his son’s approaching pals. ‘I have to check we haven’t forgotten anything inside.’ He left them to it.

Arthur shut his good eye momentarily, then climbed out of the car to face them: Ash, Max, Ellie and Ex.

‘Hi guys,’ he said.

‘So this is it,’ stated Ash, looking at the stuffed car.

‘Yup. I didn’t know how to …’

‘It’s OK,’ said Ellie, taking a step towards him. She embraced him in a firm hug. ‘I haven’t known you that long, but I’ll still miss you.’

‘Me too.’

When he pulled away, he found that Ex was standing in front of him. He clasped Arthur’s right hand and shook it surprisingly tenderly.

‘You’re not too bad, Arthur,’ he muttered.

Arthur leant closer so the others wouldn’t hear. ‘Take care of them, Ex,’ he whispered.

Max ran forward and wrapped his arms around Arthur’s waist, squeezing tightly. ‘I’ll miss you, Arthur! And I’ll miss our games!’

‘Well, you just keep practising, Max. And when I come to visit you’d better be great!’

‘I will,’ he promised, stepping back from Arthur. He pointed at the wooded area on the green. ‘Someone else over there wants to wave goodbye.’

Arthur had to squint to make out the forms of Eirik and Bjorn hiding in the trees. While Eirik seemed quite fond of using the make-up now, Arthur was surprised to see that Bjorn had also painted his face (although even from this distance it was clear that the effect wasn’t as subtle as Eirik’s). They were waving and Arthur waved back. Finally, he turned to face Ash.

Her upper lip quivered slightly as she moved towards him and her eyes were glistening, although she was managing to hold back the tears. He could feel his right eye watering as he looked at her and he half-wondered if he’d be able to cry from his damaged left one.

‘Arthur–’

‘Ash–’ They spoke simultaneously, then Ash continued.

‘I’m worried about you,’ she said. ‘What if Loki … you know.’

‘That won’t happen,’ he interrupted her. ‘We’ll find him. We’ll stop him.’

‘That’ll be harder with you in Kerry. And I’ll never get to see you.’

‘I’ll visit.’

‘I know. You’re my–’

‘All set?’ Joe asked, coming back out of the house.

‘Yup,’ Ash said. ‘All set. Stay in touch, Arthur.’

With that, she turned away from him. The others followed her back across the estate. Arthur watched them go, sadly.

‘You OK, Arthur?’

He looked up at his dad and tried to smile.

‘Yeah, I’m OK. Let’s go home.’