The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (75 page)

17

Reaching the tunnel that exits the New Jericho chamber proves simple enough. Of course, most things are when you’re not being pursued by half-demon monsters and trained killers, or being head-butted in the stomach by someone you’re trying to rescue. I’m exhausted when we finally reach a side tunnel that’s not flooded, but I don’t pass out.

When I take my first furtive step out of the water and discover my legs have been transformed into Jell-O, I wonder if we’d be better off letting me sleep. But I decide against it. I need to build up a tolerance.

Kainda braces me. “Do you need—”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“That’s great, kid,” Kat says. She places a hand against the plain stone wall and stands motionless. “But in case you three haven’t noticed, I’m blind down here.”

“Did you lose the flashlight?” Em asks.

“I might have put it down when I was trying to save
my husband
,” she says.

Though I cannot feel the cold, I shiver. Her anger is palpable. But is it dangerous? Will she turn on us? Her relationship with Wright reminded me of my Solomon/Ull split—gentleness and intellect matched with passion and energy. But now that balance has been disrupted by the removal of Wright, Kat’s counterbalance. If I’d remained all Ull and no Solomon, I would have become a monster.
I was a monster
. Will the same thing happen to Kat?

“Hold on,” I say, placing my hand on the wall. I reach out, feeling layers of stone and pockets of trapped gas. Then I find what I’m looking for. It taxes my already weary body, but I manage to extract two crystals from the stone, one blue and one yellow. They’re brighter than any of the crystals I’ve seen, perhaps because they’ve never been exposed before.

I fight a wave of dizziness as the crystals fall into my hand like a snake’s disgorged meal. I brace myself, closing my eyes. I’m fading. After a deep breath and a shake of my head, I fight back the exhaustion and turn my attention back to the crystals. It takes just a moment of thought to bind them together, forming a glowing chunk of crystal the size of a large walnut. I hold the newly formed light source up and find it does a better job lighting the tunnel than the flashlight did. The gray stone walls glow blue and yellow with a strip of green where the colors meet.

I hold the light out to Kat. She stares at me, gauging me in some way I can’t quite understand. “Was it hard for you?”

“I’ll be okay,” I say, thinking she’s talking about retrieving the crystals from the stone.

“Was leaving him hard?” she asks, this time sounding like she might tear my head off. “Or is abandoning your friends something you hunters do?”

That stings, because not leaving my friends behind has always been a priority for me.

Em knows this more than most and she responds before I can. “Solomon sacrificed his life to save my brother. He didn’t have to. He knew it was a trap. He knew he would likely die. But he gave himself up and risked
everything
to save him. He spent three months in Tartarus, what you would call hell, as a result.”

“There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to kill Solomon,” Kainda says.

Her admission, while well known to Em and me, is a surprise to Kat. Her eyes go wide a little as she turns to Kainda.

“Given the chance,” Kainda continues, “I would have crushed his skull and taken pleasure in the scent of his blood.”

Can’t say I’m enjoying the details, but they’re driving the point home. Kainda and I were once mortal enemies.

Kainda crosses her arms. The story still makes her uncomfortable. “But I was wounded—mortally—by one of the cresties, what you call, crylos. He could have left me to die. It would have been a simple thing. The cresty matriarch was powerful. Hunters were closing in. Solomon was not as strong back then. They would have killed him. But he stayed. He fought for me. He saved me. And...he
forgave
me.”

Kainda’s final words nearly bring a smile to my face. Kainda, one of the most feared hunters, daughter of Ninnis, just delivered a fairly convincing morality lesson about forgiveness. My mind is officially blown.

When Kainda is finished, Kat turns her eyes back to me. She wants to hear my answer.

“I will regret leaving your husband behind every day of my life,” I say. “But I will also learn from it. He said, ‘This is war. People die.’ He wanted me to finish the mission. To win this fight. To do what it takes even if that means losing a life.”

Her head sags. Her shoulders drop. With a shake of her head, she says, “You got it wrong.” When she looks up again, there are tears in her eyes. “War is the act of taking lives. A
lot
of lives. On both sides. Leaving Wright behind was just the first of many to come.”

“Not if I can help it,” I say.

Faster than I can react, she’s in my face. “You can’t help it, kid. That’s the point. People are dying right now.” She stabs a finger upward. “On the surface. Some of them in your name. And now, we’re dying down here, too!”

My patience evaporates and some of that Ull passion comes out. “What would you have me do?” I shout. “Give up? Stop fighting? I didn’t bring you to Antarctica. That was you! You and the rest of the screwed up human race, in the wake of a worldwide catastrophe, decided the solution was to kill
each other
over a new chunk of land. That’s why
you’re
here. To kill
people
. I’m just trying to save people.” I turn away from her. “I’m trying to save everyone.”

I shake my head and start to walk away. “We’re wasting time.”

“You’re right,” Kat says, stopping me in my tracks, but is she talking about wasting time or my tirade?

“You’re right,” she says again, this time with a hint of sadness. “I just wanted to be sure Wright didn’t die to save a fraud.” She steps past me, leading the way into the tunnel with her glowing crystal.

“Kat,” I say.

She pauses.

“Despite what he said, I’m pretty sure Wright died to save you. We just happened to be there.”

She considers this, gives a nod and continues on without another word.

I try to follow quickly when I realize that Kat has no idea where she’s going, but my weak legs fail me and I fall to my knees. Kainda picks me up and helps support my weight.

 “Go with her,” I say to Em, motioning to Kat as she descends deeper into the underworld.

With Em and Kat in the lead, we fall into a slow, but steady pace, traveling for what I calculate is three surface hours. We merge with one of the larger tunnels that lead directly to the massive chamber containing the gates of Tartarus and the decomposing remains of Behemoth. From there we will have to find our way deeper, but it will not be easy, not if the giant albino centipedes still hunt these grounds. My fears are put to rest just a minute later when we come upon the corpse of a thirty-foot centipede. Its head has been crushed.

Just beyond the centi-corpse, we find a second, and a third.

“What happened to them?” Em asks.

“Hades,” I say, realizing the truth when I count the tenth dead centipede. “When he left, he said he would, ‘prepare the way.’ I think this is what he was talking about.”

Ten more minutes and twenty-three more dead centipedes later, the cavern opens up. We’re there. Em approaches the tunnel exit slowly. There is no sign of trouble, but we’ve been trained to never enter an exposed space without first searching for danger.

Em’s search lasts about half a second. She ducks down and back. Her eyes are wide. Her skin goes so pale that even her freckles fade.

Kat pushes past her and takes a look. When she turns back, she’s equal parts confused and afraid.

Kainda puts me down and moves to take a look, which frustrates me because I’m supposed to be the leader of our little ragtag rebellion, and I’m going to be the last to see whatever it is that has them all so spooked. Kainda looks for just a moment, then turns back to me. Unlike the others, she seems unfazed by what she’s seen, but her clenched jaw reveals she’s hiding her fear. She waves for me to join them. I stand, testing my legs without her help, and find myself mostly recovered. My muscles twitch as I walk, but I
can
walk. The question is
can I run
? Because I suspect that might be necessary soon.

I squat down and crouch-walk to the edge of the tunnel exit. Directly ahead is nothing but endless space. The chamber is massive, miles in every direction. If not for the enormous piles of bones—human, Nephilim and other—scattered around the space, its scale would be lost.

After a deep breath and a silent promise that I will control my fear, I peer around the corner and look toward the gates of Tartarus. The black doors are at least a mile off, and the flaccid corpse of Behemoth, now mostly a skeleton, lies nearby. But the source of everyone’s fear is much closer.

A towering stone spire stretches from the floor to the ceiling hundreds of feet above. Several natural columns like this one help support the naturally formed chamber’s ceiling. But only this one has Hades bound to it by massive chains. He’s covered in drying purple blood, though there are no wounds evident on his fast-healing body. He’s being tortured.

His torturer hovers in the air, held aloft by black tendrils.

Ninnis.

He’s alive.

His head tilts to the side slightly. He laughs. The sound is sickening. Inhuman. Like a hundred different voices trapped in a single body.

This is
not
Ninnis.

“Welcome, Solomon,” Ninnis says, his voice deep and booming, like a Nephilim’s.

I step out of hiding. He knows I’m here.

“Nephil,” I say in greeting. “Or do you prefer Ophion?”

He waves his hand dismissively, turning to face me. “Whichever you prefer.” Ninnis’s eyes are solid black. The black tendrils extend out of his body, but don’t physically alter it. There are no wounds. This is the spirit of Nephil in its raw form, contained within Ninnis’s body, but able to extend its reach outside of it.

Despite my rising fear, I analyze the situation. Nephil is here, alone. That hasn’t worked out so well for Ninnis in the past, which he must know. So why is he here? To talk? That doesn’t fit.

Unless he’s not alone.

I turn back to the others, looking into the darkness of the tunnel behind them. I pull the air toward me and sniff as it flows past me. One hundred feet. Two hundred. Three hundred.
There
! Just a football field away, hidden behind a bend is the gang of hunters and the two clones that pinned us in the High River tunnel and killed Steven Wright.

We’re trapped.

Again.

18

“Stay close,” I whisper to the others. “We’re not alone.”

Kainda, Em and Kat leave the shelter of the tunnel and join me in the wide open space. We head for the center of the chamber, keeping a steady distance from Nephil, while getting as far from the tunnel as possible. We’re severely outnumbered, but there is plenty of room to run if need be. Plus, out here in the open, I can use my abilities in a much bigger way. Trouble is, I’m still feeling a little tired, a fact that Nephil quickly picks up on.

“You look weak, hunter.” Nephil lowers himself toward the ground. He raises a hand toward Hades. “Though, you are certainly faring much better than our mutual friend.”

I glance at the giant and notice something I’d missed before. He’s not breathing. My eyes dart to his forehead. The dark purple blood drying on his bald head nearly conceals the wound, but I see it—a two inch slit. I look back to Ninnis and find his sword, Strike, hanging from his waist. The first twelve inches of the blade are coated in Hades’s blood.

“No,” I whisper, then louder, “You killed him?”

“He betrayed me,” Nephil says. “Betrayed all of his brothers. His life alone could not repay what was taken.” He grins. “Fortunately, he has so much more to give.”

“He knows,” I whisper to Kainda.

“Yes,” Nephil says, as though he could hear my words as easily as though I’d shouted them. “I know...
everything
. Not even the mighty Hades can resist the touch of my spirit.”

Despite the fact that Hades was a Nephilim warrior with a reputation for bloodlust, his death causes me great sadness. He had tasted the freedom of Tartarus, yet returned to the underworld with the Nephilim. He gave up a life of peace, living among the enemy, his true intentions concealed by the blood and gore that repulsed him. And now he has paid the cost for that sacrifice, with his life. He has been erased. As though he never was.

But my memory of the giant, and the lesson to be learned by his sacrifice, will live on.

My eyes, wet with tears, look beyond Nephil, to the gates of Tartarus. He was so close. Just a mile away. He could have covered the distance in a minute. Anger replaces my lament.

“I’m going to throw you through those doors,” I say, stalking toward Nephil.

A howling wind fills the chamber, summoned by my unconscious.

“I am the storm,” I tell him.

Thunder rumbles through the cavern.

“Solomon,” Kainda says.

I ignore her. “I am the wind.”

Ninnis’s hair whips wildly as a gust of wind strikes him, but the tendrils hold him still.

“
Sol
,” Em says, and I detect the warning in her voice.

“I am the—”

“Hey kid!” It’s Kat. “Cut the melodramatic bull crap and turn around!”

I turn.

And face an army.

It’s not just the hunters. Or my two clones. There are at least fifty warriors as well. Some step out from behind stone pillars, others from behind bone mounds, and still more step out of side tunnels all around.

Nephil chuckles. “Like I said, I know
everything
. I missed you at Hades’s chambers by hours, but was able to track his descent. We found him here, just short of his salvation. Once possessed, the mind gives up its secrets rather quickly. I know about the Jericho shofar, Solomon. I know what it does. How it works.” He grins with a burning hatred that not even Ninnis could achieve. “And I know
where it is
.”

No... This can’t be. Not even
I
know where it is. Hades gave me vague hints that I’m supposed to figure out along the way to prevent this very thing from happening.

To my surprise, Nephil moves away from me. We’re surrounded. Out-numbered and out-muscled. Escape might be possible, but not without exacting a toll on my already weary body. He knows that, too, I think. He’s not here to waste time trying to kill me. He’s here to slow me down. Or rather, that’s why this small army is here. Nephil intends to find the shofar first!

“Take them,” he says, before his tendrils, moving like squid legs over the stone floor, carry him away.

“Ninnis!” I shout. “Resist him! Fight!”

“Ninnis is no more,” Nephil says as he drifts away. “His voice has been silent for some time now.”

I’m not sure why I’m reaching out to Ninnis. He’s as black-hearted as the rest of the Nephilim and hunters now closing in around us. But I know he never intended to give himself fully to Nephil. If the man could fight back, return to himself, it could disrupt their plans. But it seems even Ninnis has been lost.

Wright. Hades. Ninnis. Even the stranger slain by Pan. I can feel their deaths adding weight to a newly forming burden. This war needs to end—I turn to face the force encircling us—but not, it seems, without fighting another battle.

“We can’t defeat them,” Kainda says.

“We don’t need to,” I reply. “We need to follow Nephil. Down.”

“Where?” Em asks.

This, I don’t know. Nephil is now out of sight. “We’ll break through the circle and figure it out from the—duck!”

An arrow zips past our heads, carried high by a gust of wind. The shot was intended for Em. It serves as a trigger. The hunters rush in. Five make it close before I can act, but the rest are knocked to the floor when I bring the air above rushing down.

Kainda meets the five attackers first, kicking one in the gut and backhanding another.

“Kain,” Em shouts, lifting her single remaining knife.

Kainda draws her hammer, while kneeing a man’s chin, breaking his jaw. With a glance, she sees the hunter approaching Em. She twists the hammer in her hand and Em throws the knife—at Kainda.

The action not only confuses me, but the attacking hunter as well. Before either of us understands what’s happening, the knife deflects off the hammer’s stone head and punctures the hunter’s heart. He drops to the floor with a look of surprise frozen on his face.

“Geez,” Kat says, equally impressed. “Take this,” she says to Em, tossing her a knife. “You’ll do better with it than I will.”

Kat, who’s rifle is missing, draws her silenced pistol and starts dropping the hunters I’ve knocked to the floor. I hadn’t intended to kill the men and women, just immobilize them, but I don’t say anything, despite my growing discomfort.

This is war.

People die.

But they don’t have to.

A woman screams, not in pain, but in fright. A female hunter lies on the stone floor. Kainda stands above her, hammer raised.

“Stop!” I shout.

To my surprise, everyone listens.

My instinct is to give some kind of speech, expose the error of their ways, turn them to our side, but there isn’t time for that. The hunters are closing in.

I back away from the two hunters still standing, and the woman cringing on the ground next to two dead bodies. Em, Kainda and Kat know enough to stay close to me. I focus on the air, moving it slowly. I’ve done this trick before, to fuel and starve a fire in this very chamber, but this time, I’m starving the hunters.

As one, they fall to the ground choking and gasping. Their faces turn red. Desperation fills their eyes. I have removed the oxygen from the air surrounding them, and just when their bodies are about to give in to death, I return it. Some fall unconscious, some wheeze, but all are incapacitated. Their lives are spared.

The warriors break into a jog. They’ll close the distance in seconds.

I try the same trick. It doesn’t work. They’re either holding their breath or know that killing me, or at least knocking me out, will undo the effect.

“What do we do?” Em asks.

Axes, swords, maces and spears rise up as the gods of old close in. They’re dressed for battle, wearing the fine armor of their various tribes: Egyptian, Sumerian, Norse, Olympian, Aztec and more. Wings open wide, making their presence even more massive and blocking any and all escape routes. From beneath the wings come long scorpion tails, twitching and eager to sting.

I try to push them back with a wind, but only manage to slow them down and drain my energy. Their united front is too large, and there are no natural katabatic winds to call to my aid in the underground.

We back away until we’re standing at the feet of Hades. He seemed so confident. But here he is. Dead. Maybe he was wrong? Maybe everything in this screwed up world is just wrong? And all of this—all of it—is just humanity and inhumanity, acting out in some base instinctual way, like Japanese fighting fish who fight to the death for no other reason than the instincts that drive them.

A shadow falls over us.

I look up.

A gargantuan body descends.

I move to defend, but notice the thing’s trajectory and pause. It lands between us and the warriors. The thing is twenty feet tall and concealed beneath a cloak, perfectly camouflaged to look like the plain gray stone that composes much of the underworld. When the cloak billows upon landing, I see that the inside is also camouflaged, but brown. We could walk right by it and never know it was there. The cloak is unfastened and falls to the floor behind the massive bare feet, revealing the pale-skinned legs and torso. Like Hades, its head, what little of it can be seen as it hunches forward, has been shaved bald. Its arms stretch out, all
four
of them, each wielding a tremendous curved sword.

For a moment, I think this must be some Indian god Nephilim. Shiva or something. But then it turns its face toward me, and then another, and another. Each of them looks
just like me
.

My sixth clone is Cerberus, a combination of me and a Gigantes.

Speaking one word at a time in three slightly different voices, Cerberus says, “Go. Solomon. Now!”