The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (65 page)

I take the canteen and step up to the wall. I place my hand against the stone and reach out. I can feel the earth, hard and heavy. There are pockets of air, tiny and cavernous. And there are veins of water, flowing like blood. I focus on one of these veins and open up a small fissure. Pressure helps me draw the water up, though opening the stone takes more effort. But I keep the hole small, splitting stone until it reaches the cave.

The pair remains silent when the spring opens and fresh water pours out. I could fill the canteen right there at the wall, but decide to leave no doubt that I am uniquely qualified to handle the Nephilim. I still have doubts about my ability to lead a war against these creatures that terrify me, but I seem to have a knack for vexing the monsters and foiling their plans. I don’t like it and I don’t feel prepared, but there is no one else.

The water transforms into steam as it exits the wall, as I coax it out. The fog fills the tunnel. I can feel it, moistening my lungs with every breath. Then I bring it in closer with a swirling breeze, condensing it over the open lid of the canteen. As though being wrung from the very air itself, water trickles from the cloud as it cyclones back into a liquid. As the canteen fills, I seal the hole in the wall with a thought. The swirling cloud disappears as the last of it converts back into water and tops off the canteen.

I screw the cap back on the canteen, give it a shake so they can hear it’s full and hand the canteen back to the stunned man. Ferrell actually has her hand over her mouth.

They’ve been to Olympus.

They’ve fought the Nephilim.

But they have never seen anything like me.

I smile at them and say, “I am Solomon Ull Vincent, the first and only child born on Antarctica.” I stand up feeling a sense of purpose like never before. I’m framed on either side by Em and Kainda. “I am
the last hunter
.”

I look the man in the eyes. “Will you help me?”

Epilogue

Lieutenant Ninnis stared up at the sky. The vibrant blue looked brighter than he’d ever seen it. Birds swooped into his field of view, calling loudly, hovering on the breeze. He recognized them as seagulls, the rats of the sea. An image flashed through his mind. A boat. A voyage.

He shook his head and it was gone. A vision.

Pain filled his chest as he took a deep breath. But through the pain, he smelled salt. The ocean.

Flash.

A wedding. A beach.

Ninnis tried to scream, but only managed a hiss of air. His body, which had sailed miles through the air, had been ruined when he fell from the sky and collided with the solid, rocky coast. A little further and he would have landed at sea, where he would have likely drowned. A little more inland and he would have been hacked to pieces by the jungle trees.

But he was fortunate. His body had landed on the stony shore. Everything inside him had been obliterated. His bones. His organs. Even his mind. He’d become nothing more than a loose sack of flesh. But even now, it stitched itself back together. The pain was nearly unbearable, but he was accustomed to it.

What he could not bear were the snapshots of someone else’s life replaying in his thoughts as his brain physically reformed.

Flash.

A woman. Her smile.

“Ahhh!” Ninnis found his voice as his neck came together. “What did you do to me, Solomon?”

Speaking the boy’s name made it even worse. The pup had beaten him. Again. Even with the power granted him by the body and spirit of Nephil. Solomon, and his gift, had somehow been stronger.

The admission sent a wave of sickness through Ninnis’s body. If he could have moved, he would have curled into a fetal position. But he was stuck in place, staring up at the sky. His hearing returned and brought the crashing of waves.

Flash!

The woman’s face again. Her lips. A kiss.

Something broken inside Ninnis stitched back together, but it had nothing to do with physical repair. It was something broken long before the injuries he received today, and with the repair, came a name.

“Caroline!”

Ninnis shuddered and convulsed.

The name made him weak.

It stole his will.

His skin roiled and pulsed.

Ninnis screamed again, this time in horror.

Darkness emerged from his body, lifting him off the ground. It spun around him, forcing his body back together far quicker than the Nephilim blood could. And when he was hale again, the darkness returned, filling his body.

Consuming his mind.

Taking control.

Lieutenant Ninnis was no more.

Now, there was only Nephil.

Lord of the Nephilim.

“Solomon,” the demon spoke. “You’re alive.”

Motion above drew his eyes back up. His brethren filled the sky like locusts, flying out to destroy the world of men. But it was not yet time.

Nephil raised Ninnis’s hand to the sky and shouted, “My brothers!” His voice boomed out over the ocean. Powerful. Unnatural. But even those too far away to hear his voice, heard him in their thoughts. “Return,” he told them. “Our fight here is not yet over. The boy still lives.”

Nephil turned his eyes to the jungle behind him and the continent beyond it.

“Go! Find him! Bring him to me!”

Prologue

Lieutenant Ninnis watched his life from the inside out. He could sense the world around him, but he could no more interact with it than if he were trapped in Tartarus. His body and its actions, no longer belonged to him.

They belonged to Nephil, lord of the Nephilim. In his arrogance, Ninnis thought he could control the dark spirit that now possessed him, and for a time, he did. His strength and will proved powerful enough not only to contain the darkness, but also to direct it. And for the first time in thousands of years, since the Sons of God lay with human women and bore them immortal—but soulless—half-human, half-demon children, the hordes of Nephil were led by a human being.

Fused with the power of Nephil, Ninnis had set out on a quest for vengeance against the hunters, including his daughter Kainda, who betrayed their kind to follow the memory of the boy named Solomon Ull Vincent, the Last Hunter. As the first and only human child born on Antarctica, Solomon was imbued with a supernatural bond to the continent that not only protected him from the harsh elements, but also gave him dominion over them. The earth, water, air and fire of Antarctica were his to command, though not without a physical toll.

The boy had proven resourceful in the past, but when he stepped through the gates of Tartarus, Ninnis believed his former protégé to be trapped in that land of torture for all eternity. Three months later, he discovered his mistake. Solomon had escaped from that awful place, and during their last conflict, the boy had harnessed Antarctica’s katabatic winds and flung Ninnis miles through the air. When he landed on the rocky Antarctic coastline, Ninnis was broken: body, mind and soul.

The Nephilim blood coursing through his veins, fueled by the spirit of Nephil, stitched his body back together. But the repairs had a side effect. So ruined was Ninnis’s mind that when it was reformed, it was made anew, free of the damage caused by his time as a hunter.

Many hunters, with the exception of those born hunters, like Kainda, were comprised of men and women who had been kidnapped, either from the outside world or from the surface of Antarctica. Their future mentors dragged the kidnapped victims underground and violently broke them. All memory of their lives before were blocked out and forgotten, hidden behind a mental wall forged by torture and starvation. Once broken, the victims could be remade into hunters, loyal to their Nephilim masters.

Ninnis kidnapped and broke Solomon. The boy became Ull the hunter, serving the Nephilim also known as Ull, son of Thor, son of Odin, leader of the Asgard warrior clan. But the boy’s memory later returned, and though damaged, Solomon became himself again—something that had never happened to a hunter before.

But it happened once since.

When the blood and spirit of Nephil healed and took control of Ninnis’s body, there was an unforeseen side effect. Memories of a life before Antarctica returned as flashes.

A smiling face.

A gentle kiss.

And a name.

Caroline.

His...wife.

His
real
wife.

Ninnis had been given a wife—a fellow hunter—in the underworld, but he did not love her. He did not love
anything
. She bore him a child, Kainda, but that was all. However, the woman he now remembered—Caroline—he loved her. Nephil claimed Ninnis, body and soul, but Caroline had done likewise long before.

The memories flickered through his mind as images, words and feelings that he couldn’t hold on to for more than a moment. He remembered Caroline. Her aquiline face. Her soft touch. Her existence. But he could not remember everything. Where they met. When they married. If they had children. And why he left such a woman to join the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole that brought him to Antarctica in the first place.

The incomplete memory of something so...beautiful caused him intense pain, far greater than anything he’d ever experienced. Because he detested it. Despite his reforming memories, he was still Ninnis, the hunter.

Ninnis had been the greatest hunter, feared and renowned by all others. For a time, he contained the very spirit of Nephil. He had attempted to exert his will over the spirit again, but it was no use. His weakness had been exposed.

Caroline.

The name came to him as a whisper, but not in his ear. It was the voice of Nephil, in his mind. Taunting him.

Caroline.

The emotional weight her name carried struck his heart like a sword. It filled him with regret. Made him weak. Controllable. But it also infused him with a deeper hatred than he had ever experienced before.

For Solomon.

The only time Ninnis found himself freed from the influence of Nephil was in his dreams, and his subconscious envisioned detestable violence against a sole victim. The boy.

There would come a time, he knew, when Nephil and the Nephilim warriors and hunters he once again commanded would find the boy. When they did, the dark spirit would leave Ninnis’s body to claim young Solomon, whose unique abilities had earned him the high honor of being deemed the true vessel of Nephil.

In that moment, when the spirit of Nephil fought to control Solomon again, the boy would be defenseless. That was when Ninnis would strike, and Solomon would die. Nephil might die along with him, but it was a sacrifice Ninnis would gladly make to have his revenge. Nothing else mattered.

So he stopped fighting for control.

He ceased replying to Nephil’s voice in his head.

And the beast forgot about him.

Ninnis watched Nephil’s progress through the underground, as he led a troop of hunters through the subterranean realm, searching for some sign of the boy’s passing. He listened to the plans being made, the reports being delivered and the battle plans that would bring destruction, first to the humans who had dared set foot on the Nephilim continent, and then to the rest of the world.

I could have found him already
, Ninnis thought to himself, careful not to let the boast reach Nephil’s consciousness. He had seen several clues already. A scuffmark on a cavern floor. The faint scent of the boy’s passing several days previous. He knew Solomon better than any other hunter. Most of the skills the boy employed had been taught to him by Ninnis. But Ninnis could not help Nephil. Offering advice would reveal he wasn’t as defeated as he seemed. So he waited.

And he watched.

Nephil, in the body of Ninnis, stood in a wide cavern, deep underground. Five hunters stood by his side. One of the men crouched by a shallow river that ran through the center of the cave. He sniffed the air. “They’ve been through here,” he said.

Nephil smelled the air. Ninnis detected Solomon’s scent, but Nephil knew nothing of tracking. “When?”

Days ago
, Ninnis thought.

Perhaps distracted by the god in their midst, the man said, “They’re just hours ahead of us.”

“Very good,” Nephil said.

The hunter brimmed with pride.

A lie
, Ninnis realized. The hunter sought only to elevate himself in the eyes of Nephil. So he exaggerated his claim, not realizing that he was merely sealing his own fate. The hunters who had failed to track down Solomon earlier had all been slain.
This group is not long for the world, either
, Ninnis thought,
unless
...

“Which way?” Nephil asked.

All five hunters scoured the cavern, searching for tracks—there wouldn’t be any—and smelling the air for a scent, which they found.

“Downstream,” one of them pronounced. The others quickly agreed.

Dead men all
, Ninnis thought.

Solomon had simply sent some article of clothing downstream, scoured himself clean in the river and then headed the opposite direction from the easily followed scent trail. It was a simple tactic. Had Nephil sent these hunters in pursuit of Solomon on their own, they would have seen through the ruse. But with lord Nephil in their midst, they were all but useless.

As Nephil looked around the cavern, Ninnis noted the glitter of glowing crystals, their light blue coloration and the rounded stalactites hanging from the ceiling. He knew this place. The river ran for hundreds of miles, casually snaking its way through the subterranean realm and ending at the great feeder graveyard where the bones of countless meals were discarded. As Solomon’s scent trail neared the graveyard, the overpowering stench of death would conceal it. The trail would end there, far away from the boy.

As Nephil followed the hunters downstream, Ninnis turned his thoughts in the other direction. If Solomon wasn’t heading downstream, he was heading upstream. Ninnis followed the path in his mind.

Olympus
, he thought.
Solomon is headed to Olympus
. He couldn’t conceive of a reason why, but if the boy could be caught within those ancient halls, surrounded by the likes of Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo and the worst of them, Ares, there would be no escape.

But Ninnis would not reveal himself or what he knew. He was a patient man. He believed he could wait for his vengeance. But he was wrong. Every step away from the boy fueled his outrage. When he could no longer contain his vehement disapproval for these hunters, Ninnis settled on a course of action, or rather, inaction.

It’s a false trail
, he thought calmly. The phrase was simple and lacked any trace of his true emotion. He thought it again and again, repeating it like a mantra until it filled the small portion of his mind to which he had retreated. He let it seep out slowly with the hope Nephil would notice the phrase and treat it as an original thought, rather than as Ninnis’s inner voice. If Nephil could just speak the words, these hunters would see the truth.

It’s a false trail.

It’s a false trail.

It’s a false trail.

“It’s a false
trail,” Nephil said, seven days and nearly two hundred miles later. In the minutes that followed his realization, Nephil tore all five hunters apart and turned around.