The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (70 page)

8

Em takes the lead again and we head deeper into the citadel. Every step feels like a walk down a plank over shark infested waters. We killed a gatherer and a warrior, and we saw a man killed, but those horrors feel like gentle distractions compared to facing a Nephilim renowned for his loathing of mankind and a reputation for collecting souls. According to Cronus, Hades is the best of them. To Em, he’s the worst.

And Kainda agrees. “Nothing good can come from this.”

“We can’t beat the warriors in outright battle,” I say.

“But we—”

“Em,” I say, cutting her off. “Killing a single warrior bound in place is not the same as facing them in battle. In the open. Right now, our army consists of several hundred men—trained men, sure—but they’re malnourished, frightened and by the time they reach the coast, they’ll be exhausted. The Nephilim warriors number in the thousands. The high thousands. And when they are free to act, and move, and attack, they will not be so easy to kill. We need help.”

Em stops. She’s led us to the lowest finished level of Olympus. The true underworld begins just below. We stand before a tall black door that looks similar to the gates of Tartarus, only much smaller—just fifty feet. “I don’t question the need for help. Only that this—” She motions to the door, “—is the last place you should go for it.”

I ignore her fears, not because I don’t value her counsel, but because if I acknowledge the foolishness of what I’m about to do, I might not do it. Especially with Kainda agreeing with Em. While Em is often the voice of caution, Kainda pretty much never backs down from danger. She’d normally take out that hammer and knock on the door while we stood here debating. But she seems nearly as concerned as Em.

Wright sighs and puts a hand on my shoulder. When he speaks, I can tell by the tone of his voice and the distant look in his eyes that he’s quoting someone. “The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.”

“General Patton,” I say, recalling the quote from one of many history books.

Wright nods. “No one fought or won battles like Patton. He captured more land and killed more enemies faster than anyone in the history of mankind. The point is, you made this decision already. It’s time to turn off your fear.”

“In other words,” Kat says. “Man up.”

I haven’t heard the phrase ‘man up’ before, but I understand the intent. I’m not sure if they’re speaking from true bravery—it’s hard to imagine someone being braver than Kainda—or simply from ignorance. They can’t yet fully understand the depravity of the Nephilim. But their advice is sound.

I’m doing this.

It’s time to let go of my fear.

Man up
, I tell myself, and walk to the door. When I’m within arm’s reach of the black metal, I pause. What do I do? Knock?

Cronus’s words about passing through the gates of Tartarus return to my mind, “For the worthy, all that separates this world from the other is a door. And you, Solomon, were deemed worthy at birth. All you need do, is push.” Maybe the similarity between this door and the gates of Tartarus isn’t a coincidence? Maybe only someone who has been inside that strange realm and exited again would understand the significance?

I don’t have any better ideas, so I push.

The door opens as easily and as quietly as those massive gates of Tartarus did. But the sight on the other side is far more horrific than the barren landscape of Tartarus.

The room, if it can be called that—lair seems like a better word—is fifty feet tall, a hundred feet wide and perhaps two hundred feet long. By Nephilim standards, its average sized. By human, it’s an auditorium. But it’s not the size of the room that’s shocking, the fact that it’s lit by hundreds of glowing red crystals embedded in the ceiling or that it smells like a fresh corpse. What holds my eyes and fills me with dread is that skulls coat the walls, from top to bottom.

Human skulls.

Crap
.

But that’s not the worst of it. A thick viscous liquid oozes out of the wall where it meets the ceiling. It rolls over the skulls, sliding through eye sockets and out of jaws spread in a perpetual scream. The odor, deep maroon color and thickness of the fluid reveals what it is: blood.

A lot of blood.

It pools at the bottom of the wall, filling a shallow moat before flowing away through some unseen drainage system. Hades has surrounded himself with the sight and smell of human death.

“Still think this is a good idea?” Kainda whispers to Wright.

“I never said it was a
good
idea,” Wright replies. “Only that he needed to overcome his fear and push forward.”

“Quiet,” Em says, still the voice of caution.

But even I’m not sure silence is necessary. The room contains a large stone bed, covered by a feeder skin blanket. My first thought upon seeing the blanket is that it must have taken a lot of feeders to form a cloth so large. But when I see no seams, I realize this skin was taken from a massive feeder, one that would have grown to the size of Behemoth had it been allowed to grow further.

A stone table and large boulder that must serve as a stool are the only other objects in the room. If you ignore the gore-fest covering the walls, the room is rather plain.
What does he do in here
?

That’s when I notice an aberration on the back wall. Some of the skulls look strange. Smaller. Distant.

There is a doorway. The smaller skulls are on a wall that’s further away. I start across the room without a word, but notice the footfalls of the others keeping pace. I pause and say, “You don’t need to come.”

No one replies. Their strident stares say enough.

They’re coming.

The cautious walk across the room takes nearly a minute. In that time, I become aware of a subtle sound. There is a hum, like a motor, somewhere behind the walls. The blood is not flowing as supernaturally as it appears to be. It is being pumped, like a fountain in a koi pond. As I near the open doorway, I move closer to the wall and wave the others to me.

Putting my lips close to Wright’s ear, I whisper, “Flashlight.”

He takes the flashlight from his pocket and hands it to me. The small device casts a bright beam thanks to its LED bulbs, which require very little power. I kneel down close to the trough of fluid by the base of the wall and shine the white light on it. The liquid is brown.

Not blood. The red glow from the ceiling gives it that appearance. It’s an illusion. I stand and place my hand against one of the skulls. “Stone,” I whisper.

It’s all an illusion. The room is designed to look like hell. It’s horrible enough to intimidate even hunters. Perhaps even fellow Nephilim. But it gives me hope. Hades might not be as bad as everyone believes.

I turn around to tell the others and find them lying prone on the ground.

Not one of them is moving.

I was so wrapped up in my discovery that I didn’t even hear them fall.

I rush to Kainda’s side, whispering her name. I check for a pulse and find it in her neck. The beat of her heart is steady, but not as powerful as it should be. I check Em next, then Wright and Kat. All the same. Without wound, but unconscious, as though sleeping. Then I see the residue of purple powder on the floor around them. It’s a potent sedative, but not life threatening.

Knowing the others aren’t in immediate danger, I tune my senses into the world around me. I am not alone. I know that now. But who is here with me, and how did they subdue the others without being detected?

A scent, previously masked by the stench of death, tickles my nose.

A Nephilim.

Hades is here.

The sound of splashing echoes from the next room. He’s no longer concealing himself. “Come Solomon.”

The voice is ragged, like a smoker’s, but deep and powerful. That doesn’t intimidate me nearly as much as the giant knowing my name. And it’s not lost on me that he could have subdued me with the others, but chose not to.

I free Whipsnap from my belt and walk to the next room, ready for an attack. But my bravery seeps from my body as I round the corner and see the horrors on display. Bodies, very real bodies—human
and
Nephilim—litter the floor. At the center of the carnage, lounging in a pool of purple blood, is Hades.

He’s worse than I could have possibly imagined.

9

The giant uses his two six-fingered hands like a ladle, scooping the thick, purple fluid over his head. It oozes over his face. Rivulets of supernatural plasma flow down his forehead, over his closed eyes and around his mouth, which is turned up in a grin. But the blood bath doesn’t hold my attention nearly as much as his bald head. I’ve never seen a bald warrior before. In fact, he’s more than bald, he’s hairless. No beard. No chest hair. No arm hair. The warriors are generally covered in blood red hair. But Hades has the smooth skin of an Olympic swimmer.

More surprising than the lack of hair on his head is the missing golden ring that should be covering his weak spot. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Nephilim warrior without one unless it was forcibly removed. That he’s not wearing one means he’s either supremely confident, ready to die or insane. Given the setting, I’m thinking door number three.

He picks up a blade. To me, it’s a sword. To the giant, it’s a razor. He draws the blade over his blood-soaked, bald head, filling the chamber with a scraping sound. After completing a pass, he shakes the razor in the pool of blood and begins a second pass.

A distant memory comes to mind and slams into my thoughts. I’m six. Same age as Luca. I’m sitting on the closed toilet in the upstairs bathroom with three dinosaur books clutched in my hands. The hot water heater next to me pops and hisses, fighting against the winter air flowing through the drafty window above.

“Why do you put whipped cream on your face?” I ask.

My father laughs, dips his finger in the white foam and holds it out to me. “Smell it,” he says. “Don’t taste it.”

I take a whiff and scrunch my nose. “Ugh. Yuck. What is it?”

He motions to the compressed air can, which looks an awful lot like a whipped cream bottle to me. I pick it up and speak the words aloud as I read them, “Shaving cream. For skin so smooth—” I stop reading and watch my father drag a razor across his cheek. He shakes the foam off in the full sink. “Aren’t men supposed to have rough skin?”

He smiles again. “Not according to your mother.”

“So you do this for her?” I ask.

He gives me a look that says,
You know I do.

“Would mommy still love you if you had a beard?”

“I had a beard when she fell in love with me,” he says. “I shaved it off when I fell in love with her.”

I’m only six, but I get it. I know my dad would like to have a beard. He says so occasionally, but he shaves his skin smooth because he knows my mother prefers it that way. She doesn’t say so. Not with words. But she rubs his face a lot. And kisses his cheeks almost as much as she kisses mine. I wonder if I’ll shave for her, too, someday.

And then I’m back, out of the apple-shampoo scented bathroom of my youth and into Hades’s hellish den. But a question nags at me.
Who
does Hades shave for
?

I consider backing out. He hasn’t shown any signs of noticing my arrival. Then I remember the others, passed out in the next room.
He knows I’m here
.

As the thick curtain of blood flows down his body and back into the pool, I notice a series of tattoos decorating his skin. They are ornate, expertly drawn symbols resembling others I’ve seen in the underworld. I recognize them as being similar to crop circles found around the world.

Ignoring the bodies strewn about the room, I do my best to sound casual and ask, “What do they mean? The symbols, I mean. The—the tattoos.”

So much for sounding relaxed.

I suppose it’s a good thing that I can’t feign indifference to the things around me. If I could, I imagine I’d be more like Hades than I’d prefer.

He draws the blade over his head again, and rinses it off.

Did he not hear me? Is he ignoring me?

“They are signs,” he finally says, his voice vibrating through my chest. “Of things that have come to pass and of things to come.”

Okay. Vague. But he hasn’t torn off my head and drunk my blood so we’re off to an acceptable start.

“More generally, it is the language of our fathers, passed down from the time before man.”

Less vague. Almost helpful. Perhaps there is hope for—

A curtain of purple blood rises from the pool, propelled by Hades’s right arm, sweeping across the surface. It careens toward me, threatening to saturate my body. Were it water, I would think little of it, but so much Nephilim blood would kill me, quite painfully.

A bubble of wind forms around me, deflecting the wave. The purple spray coats the floor around me, leaving a ten-foot diameter patch of clean stone around me. My reflexes saved me from the deadly blood, but I’ve also just confined myself to this ten-foot patch of floor. The circle of blood spreads out for thirty feet in every direction. I won’t be walking away. A single step with my bare feet would drop me to the floor.

That doesn’t mean I can’t cover the distance. A good leap, propelled by the wind would get me clear. But Hades isn’t about to give me the chance.

He rises from the blood pool, bringing up a sickle and swinging it at me with enough force to cleave me in two. I leap to avoid the strike, carrying myself high with a gust of wind.

More of the floor is covered with blood as the sickle and the arm carrying it spray the purple stuff in a wide arc. In fact, when I look down, I see very little floor that would be safe to land on. The wind carries me to the wall and I grasp onto one of the faux stone skulls that’s free of blood, Nephilim or the fake stuff.

“Hades!” I shout at him. “I need to speak to you!”

“Then speak,” he says, swinging again.

I leap to the opposite wall, carried by the wind.

His strike misses, but it wasn’t because I moved. He didn’t even come close to landing the blow.
He wasn’t trying to hit me
, I realize. I look back at the far wall and see that much of it is now coated in purple blood. At this rate, the entire chamber will be coated in the stuff and I will have nowhere to go.

“I was sent here by Cronus!” I shout.

The next swing comes close. I leap up, moving to the highest reach of the fifty-foot wall, just above the newest coat of purple blood.

“Cronus,” he grumbles. A sneer reveals his sharp teeth. “Cronus!”

His shout precedes a fresh attack. I barely escape the sickle blade this time, but I’m out of places to run. Most of the clean walls are close enough to Hades that he could reach out and pluck me from the wall. All that’s left—I look up—is the ceiling. A gust of wind carries me up and I jam my hand into a crack, flexing it tight so that my fingers hold me in place like a rock climber’s cam.

“Stop!” I shout. “Please! I don’t want to fight you!”

“Fight me?” he says with a laugh. “You have yet to even draw your weapon. I’m afraid that the whispers about you are exaggerated. You are a coward!”

My temper flares, but I don’t make a move. Instead, I attack with my words, “It would be easier to kill you than talk to you.”

“Then come, little one, show me.” He places the sickle on the floor next to the pool. “Kill me. Free me from this wretched world.”

I hang there, tempted to grant his wish. I have no qualms about killing Nephilim. But I need to know where the Jericho shofar is hidden. And I’ll never find out if he’s dead. My indecision lasts just a moment, but it is too long for the impatient giant.

“I thought not,” he says, then brings both hands up out of the pool and flings a thick spray of the stuff up at the ceiling.

There is no dodging it this time. My fingers release and I drop. Wind kicks up around me as I fall, pulling my hair in wild directions. I catch the strong scent of Nephilim blood, but the wind keeps its stinging effects from my body.

As I descend, my emotions take over. I have let Hades assault me too many times without a response. I pull Whipsnap free as my fall is arrested and point the bladed tip at the monster. “Do you know how my master, Ull was killed?” I shout. “Slain by his own arrow! Doing the same thing to you now would be a simple thing. I have seen your kind killed by simple throwing knives. I have seen the bits and pieces of your brothers strewn across the jungle floor. You cannot win this war.”

He stares at me for a moment, frozen in place. And then, he laughs.

His last mistake. Few things set me off like being laughed at.

“There you are,” he says. “You entered here as a boy. Fragile and afraid. I could smell it on you. But here you are now, Solomon, the man, killer of demons, who descended into Tartarus and rose from the depths three months later.”

I’m poised to throw Whipsnap through his forehead, but stop. His voice still sounds horrible, and ragged, but there was a tinge of something else hidden in there. Respect?

“Why did you attack me?” I ask, sensing the battle has come to an end.

“I needed to know.”

“Know what?” I ask.

“If you were capable.”

Get to the point
, I think. “Capable
of what
?”

“Of becoming more.”

I’m about to ask, “more what,” but this time he continues without prodding.

“More...than a man. More than you understand. More than even you believe is possible.”

Of course, he’s being vague again, so all the talking in the world isn’t going to help. “What are you talking about?” I ask.

He points a finger at me. Purple blood trickles from the long fingernail. “Tell me, last hunter, did you know you could fly?”