The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (111 page)

“Fallen,” he says. “I am the last. The keeper of Tartarus. Guardian of Ophion.”

“You will be alone,” I say.

“Adoel would say that one is never alone in paradise,” he says. “But I will have company.”

Ninnis,
I think. “Before you go,” I say, reaching into a pouch attached to my belt. I pull out my very used, first edition copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and hand it to Cronus. “For Ninnis. It will help.”

He takes the book, offers a nod, and says, “Farewell, young King. Peace be with you.” And then he slides into the darkness of the gate and closes the giant door behind him.

Kainda, Em and Mira gather around Wright, Kat and me.

Mira gives Wright a hug and says, “Glad you’re alive, boy scout.”

“Likewise,” he says, then nods to Kainda and Em. “Thank you for taking care of my wife.” He kisses Kat’s forehead. “I’m not exactly an expert on this, but I think we should get topside before we miss the next year.”

He’s right. If we stay much longer, the day above will end before our return.

I lead them to the circle of earth upon which we descended into the depths. With everyone standing atop the stone, I look at each of them—Em, Kat and Mira, my sisters, Wright, my brother, and Kainda my wife. My family. My dear ones. I want to say something, but I’m at a loss for words.

“Just take us home, kid,” Kat says.

I laugh, turn my head to the ceiling and we rise. Through the air. Through the earth. Through Antarktos, the land that is me and is now, after thousands of years, free.

Epilogue
1

It’s been six months since the human race stood up against impossible odds and survived. In that time, the world has changed a lot. Nations are coming together to form a global alliance in which the new resources of Antarctica are shared responsibly, but also in the tracking down of any surviving Nephilim. The warriors are all but wiped out, but the other classes: gatherers, thinkers, breeders, feeders, shifters and more, are still living and active in numbers, though now in hiding. The most dangerous are the shifters, who hide in plain sight, looking like any other human being.

But we will find them all in time.

In addition to working together, world leaders have also recognized my individual claim to Antarktos. And when the hunters proclaimed me King, the outside world cheered. Videos and images of the final battle, how it was fought and won, have surfaced. I didn’t even know it was being recorded. But the whole world knows what happened and understands the sacrifices that were made. They also know what I can do, and of my connection to the land, which I suspect has a lot to do with their accepting my leadership.

After all, if someone decided to drill for oil on Antarktos without my permission, I would know just as easily as I would feel someone prick my skin with a needle. With every passing day, my connection to the continent deepens, and grows easier to control. The land is fertile. Life is plentiful. And the human population that has chosen to relocate to Antarktos, is happy.

Not that everyone wants to immigrate. Many prefer to stay where they were, comfortable in their own homes and a safe distance from Antarktos, where the supernatural world, dinosaurs and an underground labyrinth is all part of everyday life. And that’s why I’m here. In New Mexico.

As we left Antarktos, roughly thirty miles from the coast I felt my connection to the continent fade. It’s not gone completely, so I have no fear that the connection won’t come back in full upon my return, but my abilities have all but vanished for now. I feel a bit naked. And vulnerable. Not that I’m alone.

Wright and Kat, dressed in black, carry assault rifles. I wasn’t sure we’d be allowed to carry weapons once we got to the U.S., but I’ve been granted diplomatic immunity, pretty much everywhere. One of the perks of saving the world. Em and Kainda, who are dressed as average American civilians in jeans and T-shirts, carry their hammer and knives, unwilling to part with the weapons. They did change their clothes, though, which was surprising. Back on Antarktos, we still dress as we did as hunters. We’re accustomed to it, but given the tropical climate, it’s also more comfortable. For them. I still don’t feel the temperature...though I’m feeling it here. The summer heat, which is far more humid than New Mexico would have been before the global shift, is like a warm blanket, comforting me in this time of great stress.

I have faced many things over the past few years...but I don’t think anything could prepare me for this.

Mira, dressed like Em and Kainda, heads for the ranch’s front door. Like me, she is unarmed. Her weapon of choice these days has been the camera. She’s back at work, taking photos, sharing the wonders of Antarktos with the world through her camera’s lens.

As for me, I feel uncomfortable in cargo shorts and a T-shirt, but I manage. At least I can remember what it feels like to wear normal clothes. Em and Kainda never had the experience. My hair is still long, but it has been trimmed, and washed. The hardest change was actually wearing shoes again. I opted for flip flops. Whipsnap is in the car; I didn’t think carrying the weapon to this meeting would be appropriate.

Mira stops in front of the door and looks back at me. “You ready?”

I nod. I’m too nervous to speak.

She knocks.

“Coming,” a voice shouts in reply. I nearly break down in tears right then. The last time I heard this voice, it was being impersonated by a Nephilim creation, birthed by a breeder, and I was forced to kill it. My own mother.

The door swings open and there she is. Her hair has grayed, but only partially, and it’s just as wavy as I remember it. “Oh,” she says in surprise when she sees the large number of people standing outside her door. Then she notices Mira and her face lights up. “Mira, dear! How are you? We’ve been following your journeys. Mark keeps a box full of your photos. Seems like we have to add to it nearly every day.”

Mira embraces my mother. “Thank you, Beth. May we come in?”

My mom looks at the group again, this time meeting my eyes and showing no recognition. Her memory of me has been blocked, just as Merrill’s and Aimee’s were. The Clarks are living in Antarctica now, in what Merrill has deemed Clark Station Three. They’re studying the ancient human cultures that lived on the continent before it was buried beneath the ice. Merrill nearly passed out when he saw the paintings inside the nunatak.

“Sure,” my mom says. “I’ll get you and your friends something to drink.”

“Did I hear Mira?” my father says, rounding the corner into the hallway. His hair is still black and curly, but it’s receded to the sides and back of his head. He’s healthy and hale. His face lights up when he sees Mira. After giving her a big bear hug, he stands back and looks at the group. Once again, I’m not recognized. Though he is excited to see us. “You must be her friends from Antarktos! Come in, you have to tell me everything.”

Kainda puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. She knows how hard this is for me.

My dad leads the way through the front hallway. This house looks nothing like the one I grew up in. The style is all Southwestern. In fact, I can’t find a single relic of my past life. That is, until we pass the living room.

I stop in the doorway, staring.

The painting looks out of place. The lighthouse, and seascape are in stark contrast to the New Mexico feel of the home.

My father notices my attention on the painting when everyone else enters the kitchen with my mother.

“What is it, son?” he asks.

My heart skips a beat, but then I realize he’s using “son” as a generic term. He stands next to me. “It’s an ugly thing, that painting. But Beth likes it. Reminds her of the old house.”

“Why did you move?” I ask.

“I—I really don’t know.” He shrugs. “One day...it just didn’t feel like home any more.”

I turn to my father and ask, “Do you know who I am?”

He shakes his head, no.

“My name is Solomon.”

After a moment, his eyes widen. “
The
Solomon? The...the king?”

“Yes,” I say, exasperated by this response. “My full name is Solomon Ull Vincent.”

“Vincent?” he says, confused. “My last name is—”

“Vincent,” I say. “I know. I’m—” I stop. Trying to convince him is pointless. Even if he believed me, it wouldn’t change anything. I take his hand and recite a random sentence, spoken by my father in the past. “Summer in Antarctica begins in about seven weeks.”

He looks at me, dumbfounded. “Isn’t it always summer in Antarctica now?”

It didn’t work.

I had two fears about this trip. The first is that it wouldn’t work here. That I’d have to somehow get my parents to Antarctica to restore their memories. My second fear is that it wouldn’t work at all, no matter where we were. Xin gave me that ability to restore memories erased by the Nephilim, but maybe that gift only extended to the Clark family.

While my father is still impressed enough by my celebrity to not be worried about my strangeness, I say, “Mr. Vincent, can you have your wife join us? I’d like to ask you both something.”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” He heads for the kitchen.

While I’m waiting, I turn around and look at the painting again.

The painting!

I rush over to it, and pull the painting from the wall, revealing a safe. The
same
safe!

I turn the dial left and right, entering the combination: 7-21-38.

“Hey,” my father says, more confused than angry. “You can’t open that. It needs a combin—”

The safe door swings open silencing my father.

“Mark, what is he doing?” my mom asks.

The others have gathered around them. Nearly losing my mind, I rifle through the safe, spilling its contents on the floor until I find it. The pouch. Immediately, I know that something is different. There had been a photo inside, of my parents and the Clarks. It was inscribed with a note from Merrill, congratulating my parents on my birth. The Nephilim who erased me from history were thorough.

But the small, hard lump remains. I shake the stone out of the pouch. When it hits my hands, I feel a surge of power, not unlike the first time I held this stone, this fragment of Antarctica.

“Are...you okay?” my father asks.

Regaining my composure, I hold the stone up. “This is a part of Antarktos, a part of me.” I walk to my dumbstruck parents. The King of Antarktos has just broken into their safe and retrieved a small chunk of granite. “Just as the both of you are.”

Holding the stone beneath one thumb, I hold my hands out to both of them. “Take my hands.”

They look at each other, confused by the request, but Mira encourages them, saying, “It’s okay.”

They tentatively take my hands. I swallow, take a deep breath and then speak the words my parents said to me exactly seven thousand five hundred and thirty one times during the thirteen years I was with them, “I love you.”

Epilogue 2

Belgrave Ninnis stepped into the chilly darkness. His skin rose with goose bumps, and his bare limbs shivered. It had been a long time since he felt the biting chill of the underground. But it was not yet entirely foreign to him. A hunter never forgets these things. Of course, Ninnis wasn’t just a hunter. He was a husband. A father. And a man of honor.

He was also old, a fact that he was reminded of with every step of his upward journey. He walked without stopping, spurred onward by anticipation. Remembering his own training, he pushed through the pain until at last, he felt warm sunlight on his face. He stepped from the cave and found himself surrounded by lush green in every direction.

Without a location in mind, he set out, eating fruit from the land and drinking greedily from the clear flowing waters that he seemed to find whenever he grew thirsty. He walked for days like this until he found a stone path winding through the jungle. He looked in both directions, unsure of which direction to follow.

A distant thrumming grew louder. He recognized the sound and searched for a place to hide. But it was upon him too quickly. He turned to face the predatory dinosaur, but there was no need to fight. The dinosaur had a rider—a man with thick dark hair. The man gave a nod and removed his dark tinted sunglasses.

“You’re pretty far from anywhere useful,” the man said. “You want a ride?”

“On that?” Ninnis said.

“Are you new to Antarktos?” the man asked. “Are you lost?”

“No, but I’m afraid, yes.”

Accepting the man’s offer, Ninnis climbed onto the dinosaur’s back, finding a vacant second saddle waiting for him. They rode in silence for a long time, and Ninnis admired the jungle, the lushness of it, and the life. It reminded him of the place that had been his home for the past year.

As the sun began to set, the man finally said, “I never asked you where you were going?”

After a pause, Ninnis said, “To see the King.”

“You’re in luck, then,” the man said. “So am I.”

Not ten minutes later, a mountain citadel came into view. It was unlike anything Ninnis had ever seen before, in his time before Antarctica, as a hunter in the underworld or during his time in Tartarus. It occurred to him then, that far more than a year had passed. Nervousness swelled as he feared he was too late. “How many years has it been?” he asked, as they rode through the city gates, and were greeted with friendly waves from an assortment of people. “Since the war?”

The man looked back and said to himself, though Ninnis heard him clearly, “Man, I hope my memory doesn’t go some day.”

“Please,” Ninnis said. “How long?”

“Twenty years,” the man said.

Twenty years. Thank God.

The man tied the dinosaur to a post where several others were drinking from a fountain. “This way,” he said, leading Ninnis past a graveyard. Ninnis glanced at the stones. Some names meant nothing to him: Brigadier General Kent Holloway, Lieutenant Elias Baker, First Lieutenant Victor Cruz, Zok, Vesuvius. But others plucked at his heart, threatening to return a burden he had managed to leave behind in Tartarus. He read their names, one by one: Xin. Tobias. Cerberus. Hades. Zuh. Adoni. Men, women, and Nephilim who fought for what was right, against him, and sacrificed everything.

Ninnis looked up at the tower above. Its smooth surface, lacking any ornate décor, reflected the late day sun, glowing orange. The tower was surrounded by walls lined with trees, staircases and walkways. A flag blowing in the wind caught his attention. White, with an image of Antarctica, a single gold star at its core. He remembered seeing it on the battlefield, a symbol of mankind’s unity. Everywhere he looked, he saw people, living their lives in safety.

The sacrifices of the men, women and creatures lain to rest in this graveyard were not made in vain,
Ninnis thought.

He paused by the last two sets of gravestones. He only knew one of them, but he knew who the others were and what they meant to Solomon.
Dr. Merrill Clark and Aimee Clark, beloved parents who fought for us all.
And then,
Mark Vincent and Beth Vincent, beloved parents returned to the King.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Ninnis noticed the dates and found all of them to be more recent than not. It wouldn’t make up for the years he’d stolen from the boy, but it was something.

“Can you handle a few stairs?” the man asked.

Ninnis nearly laughed. He’d already climbed out of the depths of the underworld. A few stairs wouldn’t hurt. But there were more than a few. He had to stop twice to rest.

“Need some help?” the man asked, sounding genuinely concerned and less sarcastic.

Ninnis sighed. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

They climbed the rest of the stairs together. “Where are we going?” Ninnis asked when they reached the top flight of stairs. Before them stood a pair of large wooden doors, arched at the top. Over the top of the arch was a capstone engraved with the words,
None Shall Remove.

“To see the King,” the man answered.

“You can just walk in and have an audience with the King?” Ninnis asked. It didn’t sound logical or safe.

The man smiled. “No. I just happen to be his constable.”

“But...” Ninnis said, “I’m just an old man you plucked from the side of the road.”

The constable stopped with a hand on one of the doors. “Actually, he sent me to get you.”

“Sent you? Who?”

“The King, of course.”

The man shoved the door open and Ninnis froze. There before him was the last thing he expected to see. It was a banquet. An enormous bounty. But it was the people...hundreds of them, standing, staring at him.

The constable smiled and waved him inside.

Ninnis took an unsure footstep. Then another, lost in the sea of faces, until he stopped on one he knew. Solomon. The boy stood just ten feet away. But he looked so young, as though little time had passed. “S—Solomon?”

“No,” the boy chuckled. “I’m Luca. Sol is up there.”

Ninnis followed the young man’s finger to the center of the room, where a strong man with long blond hair, broad shoulders and a full beard stood smiling. Beside him was a woman whose strength radiated like the sun. Beside them sat several children, a veritable brood of them. As his eyes scanned to the side, he saw other faces he knew, aged, but living. These were Solomon’s friends, the ones who helped him save the human race.

Solomon cleared his voice and nodded to the constable, “Thank you, Justin.”

Solomon turned to Ninnis and smiled. “Welcome home, father,” he motioned to the children beside him. “Grandfather.”

Ninnis stared at the children, his
grandchildren.

The emotion of it all weakened his weary legs. He feared he might fall, but a strong grasp held him up. He turned to find the blazing eyes of his daughter, Kainda, the Queen, who had left her spot by the King. She held him up like he weighed nothing at all. “I have you, father, and I will not let you go.”

He smiled at her, tears in his eyes, and said, “Nor I you.”

With a loud voice, Solomon proclaimed, “Tonight we celebrate the return of Belgrave Ninnis, who was dead, and is alive again. Who was lost, and is now found. We welcome him not just as father and grandfather, but as the man who lost his life, who endured torture, the breaking, and enslavement, and in the end, when the world was on the brink, managed to find a strength that is impossible to comprehend. He bound the darkness and removed it from our world.”

Cheers and clapping erupted around the dining hall.

King Solomon raised a glass in a toast. “To Ninnis! The man who saved us all.”

Fin.