The Last Hunter - Lament (Book 4 of the Antarktos Saga) (9 page)

A lot of blood.

It pools at the bottom of the wall, filling a foot deep 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 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 coy 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 relaxd.

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 though 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.