The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (89 page)

1

“Gone? How could she be gone?” It’s a stupid question with a thousand different answers.

Kainda picks the most obvious reply. “She has legs.”

She’s right, of course. Mirabelle Whitney, daughter of Merrill and Aimee Clark, has legs. She could have walked out on her own, but when I saw her here, through the eyes of Amaguq the shifter, who had impersonated Mira and who would have killed me if not for the sacrifice of Xin, she didn’t seem hale enough to get far. The shifter had beaten her, near to death, before taking her form. That she survived is a testament to her strength, but escaping this cave in her condition doesn’t seem possible. Still, it did take us three days to reach the cave. A lot could have changed in that time.

Part of me is angry at myself for not arriving sooner, but we really couldn’t have traveled any faster. Grumpy and Zok, a pair of large cresties—my personal term for the green with maroon striped Crylophosaurs that populate the continent—moved at a sprint for a full day before nearly collapsing. Kainda and I considered continuing on foot, but the ground covered by the cresties was far further than we could go on foot, even without resting. So we stayed with our dinosaur companions, traveling faster and conserving our strength.

The cave is a quarter mile below ground—a shallow hole by hunter standards, but it’s slick with moisture and moss, and it’s coated in jagged stones. If she managed to climb out, she will have left a trail.

I sniff the air first. The scent of vegetation decomposing is the strongest, followed by a faint trace of human blood—Mira’s—and then something else. A lingering odor that is unfamiliar to my nose. I sniff again. “What is that?”

Kainda breathes in, long and deep, through her nose. She lets the air out, looking confused. “I have no idea.”

This is disconcerting. Kainda has been a hunter far longer than me and has experience with everything this continent has to offer, both natural and unnatural.

“Something from the outside world?” she asks, smelling the air again.

I shake my head. The scent is decidedly non-human. “It’s not Amaguq, either.” I got a big whiff of him before I removed his head. I can detect traces of the shifter, but they’re not strong. “I don’t think it’s just one scent.” I try to separate the commingling tang. It’s a bouquet of stink unlike anything I’ve smelled before—part Nephilim, part animal—like rotten milk and musk. It’s far too well mixed for me to sift through.

“There were at least eight of them,” Kainda says.

Surprised that she could get this out of the scents, I turn and find her crouching over a patch of moss.

“They weren’t too careful, either.”

I squat next to her and look at the moss. It’s been trampled. But the marks are confusing and unfamiliar. “What are they?”

Kainda just looks bewildered.

Looking more closely, I spot something familiar, but out of place. “That looks like a hoof.”

She nods. “Like Pan’s feet.”

We nod in unison. Pan, the Greek god of shepherds, flocks and music had goat-like legs and hooves. In that way, he was unique from other warriors I have seen. He kept a flock of human prisoners, eating them one by one until we freed them, gave them guns and sent them to the U.S. forward operating base. But Pan didn’t leave these footprints. The first indicator is that these prints are far too small. The second is that Pan is very dead. After Wright removed the protective metal band from Pan’s forehead, Em buried one of her blades in it—the Nephilim’s only weak spot. The only other way to kill them is to drown them...or cut off their heads entirely.

Thinking of Wright and Em twists my gut for a moment. Wright was a U.S. Army Captain who joined my small strike force along with his wife, Katherine Ferrell, a freelance assassin who worked, off the record, for the same government Wright served openly. Wright gave his life for our quest to locate the Jericho shofar, staying behind to fight an army of hunters and Nephilim while the rest of us fled. Katherine, who prefers to be called Kat, managed to forgive me for leaving him and was eventually identified as my
Focus
, by the Kerubim, Adoel, guardian of Edinnu, the mythological Garden of Eden.

Then there is Em—my
Faith
, whose full name is Emilee, or so we thought. Adoel also told us her real name—Rachel Graham, which led to the startling revelation that Kat’s true maiden name was also Graham and that the pair were long lost sisters. And since Em is kind of my adopted sister, I suppose Kat is, in a way, my sister and Wright my brother-in-law. The bond between us all is too uncanny to ignore. There is a design in it.

As there is with Mira, my
Hope
. She and I were short-lived, but very close friends—kindred spirits, I suppose. A photo of the two of us kept me sane during several of my years underground. She doesn’t know it, but I owe her my life. I will do everything I can to save her, not just because of our friendship, but because the angel, who gave names to my hope, focus, faith and passion, made it clear that I would need all four to overcome the war about to be waged. Mira, my Hope, is all that remains to be found.

And it is with Kainda, my
Passion
, that I will find her.

Kainda’s muscles flex as she leans out over the moss. “Three claws,” she says, inspecting a second footprint. “These aren’t the same creatures.”

She is one of the strongest hunters. As the daughter of Ninnis, the most renowned hunter of all, she had the best and harshest teacher for much of her life. She also had the most pressure to excel, which in hunter culture translates to brutality. But she, like many hunters, has shed some of her Nephilim corruption and even managed to fall in love.

With me.

And I with her.

We’re an unlikely couple—me a former nerd, klutz and bookworm, her a lifelong killer born out of darkness and hate—but we’ve both been broken and reformed. We are new together and we’re better for it. I was not sure how she would feel about risking everything to find Mira, who I admit, I loved in my younger years, but she was the first to volunteer. This revealed not just her deep trust in me, but also a keen understanding of what needs to be done to not just survive the coming war, but also to win it.

“There are no human prints here,” she says, then inspects another patch of moss that would be impossible to avoid while exiting. “None.”

When my head starts to hurt, I realize I’m clenching my teeth, and I try to relax. This is bad news. No human footprints, or boot prints, means that Mira didn’t walk out of this cave.

She was carried out.

And neither of us know who, or what, took her.

“More,” she says, pointing at another, larger print.

“It looks like a horse hoof,” I say.

“What is a horse?” she asks.

I shake my head in confusion. “A domesticated animal. People ride on them.”

“Maybe she rode it out?”

“Maybe,” I say, but neither of us believe it. All signs point to Mira being taken. She might have been on the horse’s back, but I doubt she went willingly. For a moment I think she’s been kidnapped by a herd of random farm animals, but then I recognize another print that’s not been trampled by the others. Four wide toes, each tipped with a long claw, and a thick pad, twice the width of my hand. “This one is a lion.”

She nods. Apparently lions are known to the underworld, probably because they’re renowned killers. Horses, not so much.

We follow the trail up through the cave. I’m kicking myself for not seeing it on the way in, but I wasn’t looking at the floor. I was too busy rushing to the last spot where I saw Mira. Seeing the trail earlier wouldn’t have really changed anything, but it might have saved a minute or two.

When we reach the cave exit and step out into the light of day, we’re greeted by our dinosaur companions. They look up from the river where they’re drinking and then they look back at us. They’re massive creatures, stretching thirty feet from snout to tail tip. Grumpy’s green skin shimmers, like new growth leaves in the sunlight. The maroon stripes over his neck, back and tail seem to absorb the light, creating a pattern of contrasting color and brightness that helps him blend into the jungle. But it’s the tall crest over his eyes that distinguishes him from other dinosaur species—well, that and the fact that most other dinosaurs are now extinct. I say most, because this continent is full of surprises, the most recent of which is whatever took Mira.

The cresties go back to their refreshment when we walk past without speaking to them. The trail is easy to follow. It’s a mash of footprints, a mix of species, following what appears to be a game trail through the jungle. Whoever has Mira is either so confident that they don’t fear being tracked, or they’re completely naïve to what is going on. I realize there is a third option a moment before Kainda speaks it aloud.

“This feels like a trap.”

She’s right. The trail is too easy to follow. But that’s also the problem. “It’s a really bad trap.”

She frowns. “Obvious.”

“Right.” I look at her. “Not that it changes anything.”

“Trap or not,” she says. “We push forward.”

I stop and take her hand. “Thank you.”

She looks back, meeting my eyes with hers. Her dark brown eyes look almost black, perfectly matching her tied-back hair. “You would do far more for me.” She scrunches her nose and then corrects herself. “You
have
done far more for me.”

I want to kiss her. The moment is perfect. Her face looks soft. And her tan body, clad in the scant coverings of a hunter, has a sheen of sweat mixed with humidity that makes her glow.
Focus
, says the voice of Kat in my head.

Focus
, I tell myself.
Mira is in danger.

I pull my eyes away from Kainda and search the jungle around us. The trees—a species unknown to me—rise hundreds of feet into the air, their branches twisting and splitting into a thousand different directions. They remind me of when I used to drop ink onto a page and blow it with a straw. But the diamond-shaped leaves are sparse, and large patches of sunlight beam to the ground, allowing thick vegetation to grow. Moving through this jungle on anything but this path would be very time consuming...unless...

I look up. “Let’s take the high road.”

Scaling the tree’s craggy bark is a simple thing. Soon we’re moving through the jungle faster, more silently and without any fear of being set upon by an ambush. Not that we see one. It appears that whoever left the tracks is just sloppy.

Twenty minutes and a little more than a mile later, the trail splits ninety degrees in either direction, skirting the base of a cliff. We climb down to the jungle floor and inspect the tracks.

“They head in either direction,” Kainda says. “And they’re all equally fresh.”

“She could have been taken in either direction,” I say.

“We need to split up.”

I don’t like this idea, at all. Not because I don’t believe Kainda is capable of rescuing Mira on her own, or that I don’t trust she really wants to. But there are some things in the jungle that she can’t handle alone, and if I manage to find Mira, but lose Kainda, I won’t be any better off than I am now. Before I can say any of this, I spot something that keeps me from having to.

I quickly inspect the tracks on one path, and then move to the second.

“What is it?” she asks.

I ignore her, and move back to the path leading up to the T junction. “There they are,” I say.

“What?”

“The lion tracks.” I point to the large paw print.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” she says, while I move to the path leading to the right. “Do you think this could be the lion from Edinnu? What did you call him?”