The Last Hunter - Ascent (Book 3 of the Antarktos Saga) (8 page)

“Antarktos is the underworld?” I ask. He doesn’t need to answer the question. It’s clearly what he meant. It’s just surprising.

“Hades is one of my oldest friends. The underworld—the land beneath Antarktos—was his domain long before the Nephilim sought refuge there. He was here, in Tartarus, for a time, and he felt his burden lifted. But when the Nephilim left, he went with them.”

“You couldn’t stop him?” I ask.

“I…sent him.”

“You
what
?”

“I needed someone to watch them, to observe, and to report back on occasion.”

“A spy?”

He waggles a finger in the air. “But…be careful when you approach him. I have not heard from him in some time and fear he may have finally been corrupted.”

“How long is a long time?” I ask.

He says nothing.

It feels strange, bullying an answer out of a Titan, but I need to know. “
How
…
long
?”

“Nearly one thousand years.”

Great
. “So I find Hades, tell him Cronus says hello, see if he eats me and then say, ‘By the way, do you know where I can find the Jericho Horn?’”

The giant chews on his lips for a moment and then nods. “Precisely.”

“That’s got to be one of the worst plans I’ve ever heard,” I say.

“But…”

Jerk
. The mind-reading giant already knows the punch line. He just wants to hear me say it.
Fine
. “It’s better than most of mine.”

“I thought you would like it.” He raises his hand up toward the massively tall black doors built into a cliff side that rises up into the clouds. “It’s time for you to go.”

“What do I do with the horn once I have it?” I ask. “Am I supposed to kill the Nephilim? Bring them here?”

“I do not know,” he says. “I wish I did. Your destiny might be known only to others, but it has always been in your hands.” He shoos me away, nudging me with his big hand and then waving me forward. “Go.”

I move toward the gates, but walk backward so I can see him. There’s a lot I want to ask, and say. I have never been friends with a creature like Cronus. There’s so much I could learn from him. And this place, this paradise…how could anyone want to leave here? How could Hades stay away?

As this thought absorbs my attention, I trip and spill backwards. I manage to turn the fall into a graceful roll, but it’s still embarrassing. I’m supposed to defeat Nephil, aka Ophion, and an army of Nephilim and hunters, and I can’t even walk backwards. When I look up, Cronus is smiling and shaking his head.

I grin back at him, wave, turn to the gates and run. The grass is soft beneath my feet. The speed and the warm breeze washing over my face invigorate me. I cover the distance in a flash and find myself standing before a wall of black.

The gates of Tartarus.

All you need do, is push.

I place my hand against the cold black metal. It doesn’t seem possible that anything could open this massive door, human, Nephilim or Gigantes.

It opens for the worthy, and you were deemed worthy at birth.

I’m not sure I agree, but I decide to believe the Titan.

So, I push.

10

The massive door slips open silently, as though oiled by whatever WD-40 equivalent is available in Tartarus. The blackness of the door is replaced by a veil of more blackness. Even open, one cannot see the real world from Tartarus, or vice versa. But, according to Cronus, I can step through.

I take a look back, hoping for an encouraging nod, but Cronus is gone. I’m tempted to stay for a moment, as I look out at the paradise that revealed itself after my burden was lifted.
How could the Nephilim not want to be here?
I wonder. Then again, they’re all about hate, killing and pain. Of course, it’s far more baffling that even the Nephilim could find forgiveness here, if they wanted to. It doesn’t seem right, that such a deep-rooted evil could ever have the opportunity for redemption.

Then I remember Ninnis, whose heart is as dark as any Nephilim. Worse, if you consider that he is fully human. The Nephilim are half demon. They were born at a moral disadvantage. But then there is Cronus and the other Titans.

Evil is a choice, I decide. Human or demon, there is a choice.

There is always a choice. Cronus’s words.

But what about the hunters?Broken so that their former self is gone. They’re turned into killers. Like I was.

But there is still a choice. Tobias, Em, Xin and maybe even Kainda chose to fight the will of their masters. There is always a choice.

There is always hope.

Step through, I tell myself. Stop delaying.

I raise my hand and place it through the veil. It tingles, but I feel nothing else. There could be an army waiting for me. Or Behemoth. Or Ninnis.

No
, I think.
No one is waiting
. As far as they know, Tartarus is a one-way trip. Not to mention it’s been three months since I left. At most, there will be a hunter on watch. And that, I can handle.

I step through, eyes open.

The world turns black and then resolves again, like walking through a shadow. My eyes quickly adjust to the low light of the massive cavern on the other side, and I flinch back, nearly falling back into Tartarus.

Behemoth is waiting for me.

But there’s something wrong with the creature.

The massive body is shorter. Is it squatting? It’s leaned against the cavern wall, just to the right of the gates. Its mouth hangs open, revealing rows of giant triangular teeth. The body is limp. The long, red, tentacle-like hair hangs in loose bundles.

Is it sleeping? I wonder.

Then my senses pick up more details. The body lacks mass, as though deflated. The skin hangs loose in places. The normally black eyes are milky white and shriveled. And then there is the stench of decay.

Behemoth is dead.

I don’t even think Nephil could kill the giant beast on his own.

With my eyes turned toward the towering corpse, I step forward and I’m once again given cause to jump back. I’ve stepped in a puddle of water.

Cold
water.

My powers have not yet returned.

As the chill of the underworld wraps itself around me, I realize how easy I’ve had it all this time. The other hunters live in the underworld, never complaining about the constant fifty-five degree temperature, while I’ve been living in temperature-free bliss. If my powers don’t return soon, I’m going to have to have to adapt to the cold.

But there is something else confusing about this puddle—the fact that it exists at all. When I last stood in this spot, moments before stepping back into Tartarus, no water flowed through this portion of Behemoth’s cavern. I look up and find the cavern floor littered with puddles. Even the air is moist.

My eyes return to Behemoth’s dead body, the mouth upturned and agape, as though gasping for air.

He drowned, I think. Behemoth drowned. The whole cavern must have flooded. But how is that possible?

A gentle scratching sound pulls my attention down to the massive, shriveled stub of flesh that used to be Behemoth’s leg. I step closer, watching as a small spot of flesh the size of my fist pulses in and out, as though being poked from within. When I’m ten feet away, the skin tears and one of the underworld’s most common denizens—the giant albino centipede—slips out. This one is bigger than most. In fact, it might be the biggest specimen I’ve ever seen. The portion emerging is three feet long and nearly as thick as a football. If the proportions of this centipede match the ones I’m used to, it’s at least another six feet long!

Big enough to put up a fight.

Big enough to eat me.

When it senses my presence, it stops and turns its head toward me. Its two antennae dance in the air. This is the point where the creatures usually identify me as a hunter and attempt to flee.

This one stands its ground.

Oookay.

I feel like I’ve stepped into a world as foreign as Tartarus. Nothing here matches what I remember or what I expect.

A sharp clatter vibrates from the centipede as its mandibles twitch. This is new to me, too. What is it doing?

My answer comes from Behemoth’s body. At first, it’s just a few spots of raised flesh, then a hundred. Then a thousand. One by one, centipedes emerge from Behemoth’s mass. So many tear out of the stomach area that the flesh falls away in a giant sheet, revealing a squirming mass of living insides.

Centipedes.Some reaching twenty feet in length. They’ve been eating Behemoth from the inside out, and from the looks of it, have finished off pretty much everything worth eating. Not only are they big. Not only do they number in the thousands.

But they’re also hungry.

The staple food of the underground has become an apex predator. And based on the chatter emerging from the swarm, they’re also communicating. Coordinating.

I’m so dead.

For a moment, I think about retreating, back into Tartarus. But then I’d really be trapped there. No, I can’t go back. I need to push forward.

I need to get the hell out of here.

So I run.

And after my first few steps, I realize I might not be a fast enough runner. The mass of centipedes falls toward me like a living avalanche. If they catch me, they’ll tear me to pieces and devour me in a matter of seconds. My legs begin to cramp, as I will them to move faster. If my abilities had returned, I could fling myself out of reach with a gust of wind, but every time I reach out for that connection to the continent, I slow. So I ignore what I could have done in the past and focus on what is possible now.

The sound of thousands of sharp legs taps on the stone floor to my right. I glance over and see the outer edge of the living wave about to collide into my side. I dive forward, just out of reach and roll back to my feet. A smaller centipede specimen is flung from the mass and collides with my back. I nearly fall over, but manage to stay on my feet. I keep moving, even as the three-foot long creature stabs its mandibles into my forearm. I try to shake it off, but its segmented body coils around my arm and constricts.
It’s not trying to kill me
, I realize.
It’s trying to slow me down
.

“Fine,” I say to the centipede, “you’re coming with me.”

As I veer off to the left, heading for one of the side tunnels, I realize it’s a mistake. The tunnels surrounding the cavern are either tight squeezes or riddled with obstacles that will slow me down. Every single one of them leads uphill. And most connect with a maze of other tunnels through which the centipedes could speed ahead and lay in wait. The point is, I can’t outrun them in the side tunnels. So I push forward, hoping they’ll tire, but I doubt that’s going to happen.

I glance back.

A mistake.

The writhing wave of centipedes is just ten feet back. The one attached to my arm senses the end approaching and squeezes harder. I shout in pain, but then hear a roar over my own voice. It’s deep and constant—not from a living thing.

As the moisture in the air grows so thick that it starts collecting on my skin, I know what lies ahead.

A river.

And the centipedes can’t swim.

As I round a bend in the giant cavern, the river comes into view. It emerges from one side of the cave, races across the nearly two-mile distance and exits out the other end. It’s thirty feet across and filled with raging white rapids. I don’t stop to think when I reach the water’s edge. I simply jump.

As my feet leave the ground and the wet wind above the river strikes my side, I will it to carry me across to safety. I feel the wind kick up around me…

And then I drop like a stone into the wash of white.

The water is freezing cold. The centipede on my arm reacts immediately, trying to unwrap itself from my arm. But I hold on tight. I’m going to need it if I escape the river.

As I’m swept away, I look back and see that a few of the centipedes have fallen into the water. They writhe and then slip beneath the waves. Drowned and dead. The rest pile up along the shore, heads tracking me as I’m carried away. Behemoth might be dead, but Tartarus has a new guardian.

I lose sight of them as I’m pulled into the cavern’s sidewall and plunged into darkness.

11

After being pummeled by miles of racing rapids that twist through the underworld, I manage to scramble out of the widening waters and pull myself up onto a slab of gray stone. The centipede on my arm has long since drowned, but it’s still attached in a death grip. As my energy wanes, I unravel the creature from my arm and tug each mandible out of my flesh. I barely feel it thanks to the numbing cold of the river, but my blood flows freely. As I sense unconsciousness looming, I unhitch Whipsnap from my belt and use the mace end to bludgeon the centipede’s head. There’s no way to know if the centipede’s physiology was affected by consuming Behemoth and I don’t want to risk it reviving while I sleep.

I glance down at the twin wounds in my forearm. The blood is dripping onto the stone and running into the river. I should really take care of it. The scent of blood will draw predators to me. But my exhausted body gives me no choice. I lie down as my vision fades and place my head on stone ground.

“Have a cookie,” Aimee says to me. She’s standing in her room at Asgard, but there is a modern oven. She pulls out a tray of steaming cookies and holds it out to me. The cookies are centipede heads. “They’re just as sweet as brown sugar. Just don’t tell anyone I gave one to you or they’ll slit my throat.” The words are spoken with a broad white grin, as though everything is just dandy.

“Can I have one?” asks a small voice that I recognize.

I look at myself sitting in the corner. I’m six years old. And hungry. So hungry. I watch myself pick up a centipede head cookie and eat it with gusto. The cookie disappears in three bites and then the boy-me licks his fingers. “Thank you, Mrs. Clark.” Then, strangely, he notices me. How can I notice myself in a dream?