23
“We thought you were dead. Gone forever,” Em says, still clinging to me and oblivious to the bowing hunters around us.
“I came back,” I say, stating the obvious.
“How did you escape Tartarus?” The voice is unbelieving, yet surprised.
I look up and see Kainda’s strong body step out of the light. Unlike the others, she’s not bowing. Her skin is deeply tanned, and she’s dressed in black leathers. There isn’t even a hint of a smile on her face, but she’s a vision. Em has always been a sister to me. Kainda is…something else. I’m not sure. As Ninnis’s daughter, she was offered to me as a wife, which I—being the impetuous Ull at the time—rudely turned down. Insulted, Kainda became a bitter rival out for blood. But when we met next, I saved her life, and when Ull’s personality emerged, I felt something for her. And now, that personality is part of the whole person I have become. My first impression of Kainda was that she was much older than me, but time is funny in the underworld and she now looks about my age. But I also think it has something to do with her current lack of makeup. I hadn’t realized she’d been decorating her face before, but her natural beauty is now clear to see. As is her confusion, from my lingering stare.
“I left,” I say.
“You just left?” Kainda sounds annoyed by my answer. “You were in
Tartarus
.”
I understand her confusion. Tartarus is a place regarded as a tomb of eternal torture that the Nephilim fear more than anything else. When I stepped through that door, I had no idea how easy it would be to return. Not that letting go of my burden was easy. People seem to be wired to cling to the things that make them feel bad about themselves.
“It’s a long story,” I say, “but yes. I opened the door and walked out.”
Kainda looks enraged by my casual reply. She takes her hammer and slams it into a tree. With a crack, the tree topples and nearly crushes some of the bowed hunters, but the branches tangle in the canopy and the tree’s fall is arrested. “Then what the hell took you so long!?”
With that, Kainda stomps off into the jungle.
I look down at Em and ask, “Did I do something wrong?”
Em smiles up at me. “You did something right. She just wasn’t expecting it.”
The hunters around us stand up as Em explains.
“I knew you would come back.” She motions to the others. “And they believed it too.”
“We all saw what happened at the gates,” the aborigine says. “Behemoth. The fire. Nephil.”
The big bald man steps forward. “When you rejected Nephil and gave up his body, some of us were…inspired by your strength. We fled to the surface, and over time have managed to find each other and band together.”
A group of rogue hunters. The thought brings a smile to my face. “How many?”
“Thirty-one,” Em says.
“Your army,” the aborigine says.
“My
army
?”
“We have been waiting for you to return,” Em says. “Preparing for it.”
“How could you have known?” I ask. While I’m thankful for their faith in my abilities, I didn’t even think it was possible, so how could Em, not to mention these hunters I’ve never met, be so sure that I would escape Tartarus?
“Luca,” Em says. “When you left, he fell into a deep sleep. He would eat, and drink on occasion, but mostly he just slept. And spoke. About you. Little of what he said made sense, but the things he described are like nothing in the underworld. When he mentioned your name, I felt sure he was seeing you, as he did before.”
“You knew about the drawings?” I ask.
“I heard him tell you about them,” she says. “Thin walls.” Em starts collecting her knives from the trees and the ground around us. “About a week ago, Luca woke up.”
“When I left Tartarus,” I say.
“Said he saw you in his dreams,” Em says. “Said you were flying over the lake. Tried to call you.”
“I’m here,” I say. “I’m right here.”
“What?” she says.
“I saw him on the shore, yelling to me. It’s what led me here.”
She stops, looks at me and smiles. “Tobias would be proud of you.”
I look around at the group of hunters. “Of both of us.”
She shrugs and sheathes the last of her collected knives. Then she walks right up to me and stops. She’s looking me over like an art student observing a classic painting. In that quiet moment, I return her look, remembering the face of the one I call sister. Her deep blue eyes shift back and forth, from my face to my hair. Her skin is darker, but so are the freckles on her cheeks. Her hair is still a mix of brown—her natural color—and blood red, revealing the taint of Nephilim corruption.
“How did you do it?” she asks, her voice a whisper.
“I told you,” I say. “I walked out.” Thinking she wants a longer explanation I add, “We all carry burdens—the weight of the bad things we’ve done—and in Tartarus, those—”
“What?” she says. “No. Not that. Your hair.”
My hair? I haven’t given my hair a second thought. A streak of blond hair emerged when I remembered who I was and fled from the Nephilim, years ago. I’d hoped more of it turned blond since, but never thought to check, not to mention I didn’t have a mirror handy. The shock of hair that occasionally hangs in my face has been blond for a long time, so I haven’t noticed any change. But it sounds like the red might have retreated a little more. “Has more of the red gone away?”
Em laughs and shakes her head. “Solomon…” She reaches a hand out to the bald hunter. “Krane. Your sword.”
The bald man, whose name is Krane, steps forward and hands his scimitar to Em. The curved blade is wide toward the end, and very shiny. I imagine that Krane uses its reflective surface to blind opponents before striking, but it also makes for a handy mirror. She holds the flat surface of the sword up in front of me.
The face of a stranger stares back.
No…not a stranger. Someone long forgotten, mixed with an aged exterior. While I still look young, the stubble on my face has become a full-fledged beard. When I look at my bright blue eyes, I see Luca’s, too, and the small razor-clawed thinker double, but mostly I see the eyes that looked back at me in my parents’ bathroom mirror.
But there is something else. Something that is both new and old. And as I realize that what I’m seeing is not an illusion, my knees start to grow weak. I take the sword in my hands and fall to my knees. Turning my head in either direction, I inspect the change for any trace of corruption.
I find nothing.
My hair—every single strand—is blond.
My widening smile turns into a laugh. Now I understand, in part, why the hunters here are bowing to me. They know who I am, who I was and what I did. They know I entered Tartarus, where I stayed for three months, and I’ve not only returned, but I’ve returned purified. Free of the Nephilim corruption.
I look at each and every one of the hunters around me and see blood red hair on all except for the bald Krane. While all of them also have streaks of their original hair color to varying degrees, the red is a constant reminder of who they served, what was done to them and what they have done to others.
“You didn’t know?” Em asks.
I shake my head. “There’s a mirror shortage in Tartarus.”
Em laughs and takes Krane’s sword from me. After handing it back to the big man, she pulls me up. “We need to move.”
The serious tone of her voice cuts through my relief. “What’s been happening?” I ask.
“The jungle is a dangerous place. Outsiders have come. Their weapons are…”
“We lost a few hunters,” Krane says.
I nearly scoff at the idea, but remember the Arab man’s reaction to seeing me. And the Chinese soldiers were armed for war. But if they’re shooting at people and are clearly not prepared to fight Nephilim, then who are they looking to fight?
Each other, I realize. They’re here to kill each other.
Feeling discouraged by this revelation, I look up and find the eyes of twenty hunters on me. Are they looking for guidance? Leadership? I meet the aborigine’s eyes. He seems to understand my plight and gives me a slight nod of encouragement. They’re looking for hope.
I’m not ready for this
, I think. I can’t lead these people. They’re all older, and… I nearly say they’re smarter than me, but my intellect revolts. They’re not smarter than me. Few people are. And they’re not stronger than me, either. Even without my powers, the group had trouble fighting me, not to mention the fact that I’ve killed a Nephilim warrior and survived Tartarus. Maybe I am the best person for the job, but I still don’t feel ready. I’d rather be home, lying in bed and staring at a map of Antarctica, the place where I was born but never meant to go.
But I’m here. And they’re watching me. So I do my best to look strong and fearless and say, “Take me to…”
I falter. Take me where? To your leader? Home? Your base? Where the heck do they live anyway?
Then I realize what I really want to say. “Take me to Luca.”
24
We make our way around the lake like a military platoon, quietly stalking, wary of enemies. Kainda takes the point position, scouting ahead and then giving the all clear. A small group brings up the rear, erasing our trail. I’m essentially in the middle of the group, protected like I’m the President of the United States and the hunters are my secret service. The attention makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t need protecting, but there was no stopping them.
Em is near the front, too, though I can tell she doesn’t want to be by the way she keeps looking back at me. We have a lot of catching up to do, not to mention strategizing, but I get the impression that she, and Kainda, despite being two of the younger hunters in this group, are in charge. Em gives orders with the calm of someone who has done so for a while, and her words are followed without question.
Her new authority feels strange to watch. When we last saw each other, we were both outcasts. Alone. And now, here she is surrounded by an army of hunters.
My
army of hunters, they say.
But since no one is asking me what to do, they are still, quite clearly, Em’s army. And I think I like it that way. I’ve caused a lot of damage and ruined a lot of lives on my own. I don’t want to consider the cost if all these hunters tag along with me. I’m not saying I won’t need their help. I’ll need it, there’s no doubt. But I will not put them in danger until I’m sure it will matter, until the benefits outweigh the risks.
“Are you okay?”
I turn to the voice and find the aborigine walking next to me. He is a skilled hunter. I didn’t hear him coming, probably because I was lost in thought. “Yeah. Fine,” I say.
“You seem…distracted,” he says. When I don’t reply, he continues. “I don’t blame you. You’ve been through a lot.”
I almost say, “You have no idea,” but stop, first because it’s rude, and second because I don’t know who this man is, or what he’s been through. Thankful for the distraction, I offer him my hand. “I’m Solomon.”
He shakes it and with a grin, says, “I know.”
The man’s smile creases deep crow’s feet on the sides of his eyes, and I wonder how he could have ever been a hunter. He’s kind, soft-spoken and his eyes lack any trace of the ferocity that hunters, rehabilitated or not, cannot hide. I stop in my tracks. “You’re not a hunter.”
His smile is wide and full of gleaming white teeth. He reaches up and pulls the wig of red dreadlocks from his head. The hair underneath is short and black—not corrupted. “You’re smart
and
a skilled fighter.”
“And you’re a teacher,” I say.
“Have you met many other teachers?” the man asks eagerly. I suspect he hasn’t met any, but would like to, perhaps to share, and work through, their tribulations.
“Just one,” I say. “Aimee. She serves under the Norse.” It strikes me that Aimee would have a place among these hunters. “She was my friend.”
“A hunter and teacher…friends? Before this, before we escaped, most of these hunters might have beaten me for looking at them the wrong way.”
He’s telling the truth. Though he lives among the hunters now, and is quite skilled himself, he still fears them.
“We were friends before I was taken,” I say.
“Strange that she would end up here, too,” he says.
“She’s here because of me.” I start walking again, eyes to the ground. “She was my final test. I took her.”
“Oh,” he says, tagging along.
And I’m going to get her back
, I determine. Even if I have to put my quest for the Jericho Shofar on hold for a day. I can’t let Aimee stay with the Nephilim any longer. Not when there is someplace else for her to be.
“If she’s with the Norse, she might not be too far away,” he says.
I stop again. “What? Why?”
“The strongest of the warrior tribes are gathering at Olympus.”
“Olympus?”
“You saw the mountain range beyond the lake?” he asks.
In my dreams and in reality
, I think, but I answer only, “Yes.”
“The tallest mountain, straight out from the lake, is Mount Olympus.”
Not only am I close to my goal of finding Hades, who must be at Olympus, but Aimee could also be nearby. Perhaps I can visit with Hades and escape with Aimee all at once?
“I am Adoni,” he says. “I have been a teacher to the aboriginal gods of Australia for nearly fifty surface years, though it felt more like ten to me. My children are now adults. My wife might be dead.”
When I don’t reply, he sees the sadness creeping into my face. “You have experienced the same.”
“My three years have been more than twenty on the surface. I was just a boy when they took me.”
“You are still just a boy,” Adoni says. “The muscles and beard and status might fool most, but I can see through it.”
I smile at him. Why do the Nephilim take such kind people to be their teachers? Is it because they think they’re less likely to cause problems? Or try to escape? Adoni seems like he would have been capable of making a run for it. “You fight well for a teacher,” I say.
“My father taught me how to hunt—animals—in the bush,” Adoni says. “I suspect the Nephilim didn’t know this about me when they brought me here.”
“Did you ever try to escape?”
He gives a shrug. “No.”
“But—”
My question is an obvious one and he answers before I can finish. “I did more good by staying. When you’ve been among the Nephilim as long as I have, you are afforded a bit of freedom.”
I remember finding Aimee alone in the Norse library, and nod.
“Thanks to that freedom, I was able to facilitate the escape of—”
“You helped Tobias escape with Em and Luca!”
He smiles and bows his head humbly. “Among others, some of whom are with us now. And when I heard about what you had done, I knew it was finally time for me to leave. Emilie found me not too long after that. I was sad to hear of Tobias’s passing, but he managed to pass on some of his skill to Emilie, and to you.”
“So you and Tobias were…friends?” I ask.
“Not at first. Like all hunters, he terrified me. And when he came to me for help, I turned him down. Twice. I thought it a ruse. A trap. It wasn’t until I met young Luca that I decided to help them escape. The boy’s innocence won me over. As yours does now. In fact…” He takes my arm and turns me toward him. He looks at my face, and then in my eyes. With a gasp he says, “It’s true. Luca
is
a clone.”
“A clone?” I ask.
“A duplicate,” Adoni says. “A clone is what modern humans call an organism that is a genetic copy of the original. Luca is your clone, and unlike the others, like Xin, he is a perfect clone.”
“People can do this?” I ask, feeling unsettled that the human race is working on something that feels decidedly Nephilim.
“According to my studies, it is possible. The first cloned animal was a sheep. They’ve done other animals now. Pets even. Cloning people is illegal, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.” He sees that this bothers me. “People are still people,” he says. “The world hasn’t changed that much in twenty years.”
He might be right. People have always pushed science to questionable limits. But I don’t think many people would like the idea of cloning after nearly being gutted by a half-thinker version of themselves with razor blades for fingers. Not that all of my clones are bad. “You mentioned Xin. Is he alive? Is he here?”
“Alive, yes,” Adoni says. “Here, no. Despite Luca’s insistence that Xin be trusted, the hunters, Kainda included, couldn’t be convinced. Only Emilie and I believed the young man. That may change now that you are here.”
“I’m not sure how much will change,” I say.
“Now that you’re here,” Adoni says. “Everything will change.”
Before I can reply, a voice calls out. “Solomon!”
For the first time since my conversation with Adoni began, I take a long look at my surroundings. We’ve entered a clearing in the trees that is still somehow covered by the thick canopy. I can see the blue glint of the lake off to my left. And to my right is the entrance to a cave. A water source, cover, quick access to the underground. Motion above pulls my eyes up, and I get my first real look at where the hunters are living—tree houses. They’re crude structures built from branches and large leaves, but they’re hard to see. Ropes connect the trees and can be drawn up or thrown down for access to the ground.
“Solomon!” A small body swings around a tree, leaps to the ground and rolls before running straight toward me. I recognize the nearly white hair and bright blue eyes immediately.
“Luca!” I shout.
As Luca passes Em, she crosses her arms with a smile on her face and watches her adopted brothers reunite. Krane stands just beyond her, watching the scene with curiosity. Luca leaps up with surprising skill and I catch him in the air. We squeeze each other hard and fast.
When Luca pulls back, he says, “You heard me?”
“I did,” I say. “Thank you.”
Luca looks around like he’s making sure no one is listening, then he whispers in my ear. “Xin says hello, and don’t trust anyone.”