‘Get off me! Get off!’ he grunted, feeling teeth on his arm … and then there were shouts from the other end of the alleyway, the snarling, yelping sound of dogs. The sickos dropped back, turned, milling around in confusion. The lead mother broke away. Something had rattled them – the kids had their chance.

‘Charge them!’ DogNut yelled. ‘Force them back down the alley and let’s get out of here.’

‘You heard the man,’ Marco shouted. ‘Let’s go!’

The kids raced down the alleyway with a roar, smashing sickos out of their way. As they chased them into the road they saw that another group of kids was attacking the grown-ups from behind. That was what had startled them.

This new bunch of kids was heavily armed and wore various bits of homemade leather armour. They also had five big dogs on chains: three staffs, a bull terrier and a massive Rottweiler. The dogs were jumping up at the fleeing sickos, snapping and barking wildly.

The sickos scattered, limping off in different directions, howling in fear and frustration.

The two groups of kids joined together and chased the largest pack of sickos, cutting down the slowest ones. But when they came to Birdcage Walk, the wide road that ran along the side of St James’s Park, the sickos broke up and their leader, the mother with the knife, got away.

A tall boy wearing a leather mask hissed a quick order to two girls who were smaller and more agile than their friends.

‘Stay on them! Don’t lose their scent.’

The girls sprinted off, light on their feet, keeping their distance, but staying on the tail of the command group.

The dogs now turned their attention to DogNut’s crew, and strained at their leads, snarling and barking and spitting foam from their bared teeth. Their owners shouted at them and lashed them with short whips until they calmed down.

Courtney checked out the gang of kids who had saved them. There were about fifteen of them and they were a heavy-looking bunch. They wore a mixture of leather and fur and camouflaged material, and carried spears, bows and clubs. Several had helmets or masks.

Their leader came over. He was carrying a wooden club banded with metal strips. His mask resembled a human face.

Courtney gasped. It didn’t resemble a human face – it was a human face. Gnarled and leathery and stiffened by the sun. It had to be. She felt a wave of nausea and swallowed the bile that was rising in her throat.

He pulled the mask down. His own face wasn’t much better – it was scarred and pockmarked from old acne. He looked quite old, maybe sixteen, and stared at DogNut’s crew without any expression.

‘You a’right?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Marco. ‘Thanks to you.’

‘We been chasing that lot all day,’ said the boy.

‘Are you hunters?’ Courtney asked, remembering what Nicola had told them.

‘Yeah. The gym bunnies moved into the area ’bout two weeks ago. Is our job to move them out.’

‘Gym bunnies?’ Felix looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The last few minutes had been pretty intense, and these new kids didn’t make him feel too comfortable.

‘Yeah, gym bunnies.’ The boy nodded up the road after the retreating sickos. ‘They look like they work out. Toned. They’re much fitter and less diseased than most of the mothers and fathers we hunt down. They’re hard work. We been chasing them all over trying to get them out of the area. Finally found their nest this morning. Must have been about fifty of them in there. An old fitness centre.’

Courtney spotted a string of what looked like dried mushrooms hanging from the boy’s belt. The boy caught her looking.

‘They’re ears,’ he said, still with no expression. ‘Trophies.’

‘That’s sick,’ said Courtney, and the boy shrugged. His friends were squatting in the road, staring at DogNut’s crew in silence.

‘You don’t worry you might catch something? Their disease?’

‘Nah. We ain’t none of us got sick yet.’

‘But those are human ears …’

‘So what? The mothers and fathers are just scum to be hunted down.’

‘And made into decorations for your outfits.’

‘We need proof of what we do,’ the boy explained.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Marco, rubbing his arm where the mother had scratched him.

‘You not from round here?’ said the hunter.

‘No,’ said Courtney. ‘We’ve come up the river from the east to look for friends, yeah?’

The boy whistled. ‘Cool. But if you was from round here you’d know that us hunters work the streets; we get hired by the local settlements. They give us food and water and supplies – clothes, weapons, whatever we need – so long as we chase off any mothers and fathers that come sniffing around. But these gym bunnies is giving us a right headache. My name’s Ryan Aherne, by the ways. Don’t you forget it. You in trouble you ask for me. Other hunter gangs is nothing compared to us.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ DogNut bumped fists with him and introduced his crew.

‘Which way you headed then, Dog?’ asked Ryan.

‘We’re going to the palace,’ said DogNut. ‘We hoping the kids there might know something about what’s happened to our friends.’

Ryan spat on to the pavement. ‘We can get you close,’ he said. ‘But we won’t take you to the doors. We don’t like the man.’

‘David?’

‘That’s him. We did some dirty work for him one time and he never paid us. You can’t trust him. He your friend?’

‘Not really,’ said DogNut. ‘But our friends was travelling with him.’

‘OK, listen up, tourists. We mercenaries. We work for whoever pays us best. But this one time we’ll get you up near the palace for nothing. Special Introductory Offer.’

‘Thanks, blood,’ said DogNut, and they high-fived.

‘You be on your watch up there in the palace, man,’ said Ryan. ‘Guy’s got eyes and spies everywhere, geeks with guns. Check the exits. Your man has a habit of not letting people out once they in.’

‘No worries,’ said DogNut. ‘I reckon I can handle him. He’s just a kid. We’ll be there and gone before he clicks.’

‘Yeah,’ said Finn, walking past DogNut and heading off up the road, Olivia back on his shoulders. ‘This David guy can’t be any worse than the sickos.’

10

Despite the hunters’ skill, despite the fact that they’d learnt to read the signs and always be alert to any danger, despite the fact that they never relaxed and always knew what was going on around them, they none of them had noticed that they were being watched. All the while that they’d been talking to DogNut’s gang someone had been spying on them.

He was sitting alone among some bushes in the shadow of a big plane tree at the edge of St James’s Park, utterly still and utterly quiet. He had a homemade cloak wrapped around his body, the hood pulled over his head so that only his eyes showed. And they were narrowed to slits. He wasn’t taking any chances that he might give himself away. The cloak was camouflaged for the city, with splotches of grey on a dull green and brown background. His face and hands were smeared with soot so that they too were grey. Hidden beneath the folds of his cloak was a long, narrow knife. He gripped the handle in his right hand, ready, not that he thought he would need to use it, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

He could stay like this for hours if necessary. He was used to it. He had learnt to live in the shadows. When he moved, he moved unseen, patrolling the streets around the palace. There was nothing that went on around here that he didn’t know about. He knew where all the settlements of kids were, where the grown-ups crawled away to sleep, where there were secret stashes of food, where all the good hiding-places were: the dark places.

He’d always been like this – a watcher. Hanging back. It had earned him the nickname Shadowman a long time ago and the name had stuck. He didn’t always use the name now when he mixed with other kids. He used a variety of aliases. A different one for each group so that nobody could properly know him. Even when he was among people he was hidden.