The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (24 page)

Epilogue

When Ninnis woke, he didn’t open his eyes. He allowed his other senses to reach out first, showing no signs of consciousness. There was a cold breeze on his skin, but not too cold. He’d been brought back into the tunnel. And though his body ached, he could tell his wayward protégé hadn’t beaten him. In fact, it seemed the boy had saved his life by dragging him back inside.

Ninnis could still smell Solomon, but the scent was faint, faded by hours.

He listened but heard nothing more than the distant wind outside.

He was alone.

With his head tilted toward the floor, he opened his eyes. He inspected his toes and remaining fingers. No signs of frostbite.

Why?
He thought.
Why didn’t he kill me?

He must know I’ll find him again. And if I can’t break him, I’ll kill him. Better that he disappears forever than stain my reputation with the truth.

But can I kill him?

He repeated the question in his mind, over and over, and never came up with an answer. He was mortal. That was certain. But the true extent of the boy’s abilities were unknown.

His affronts against the masters couldn’t be overlooked. If he would not serve them, he would die, and the battle against the human race would have to be fought under Enki’s rule—something that had been proposed in the past. Only Enki’s insistence that they free Nephil had stopped the movement.

But with Nephil’s blood consumed by a hunter turned rogue, what was to stop them? The hunt for Solomon would continue, but at some point, whether he was never found or found by Ninnis and killed, the war would have to be waged.

And what could stop them? What force on earth could stand in the way of the mighty Nephilim?

Ninnis looked up and found the answer to his question etched in the stone wall.

I forgive you
.

Prologue

Lieutenant Ninnis was once a proud man. An adventurer with a scruffy beard, blazing blue eyes and a swarthy disposition akin to a pirate—the nice sort. But that man died long ago. Or at least the parts of him that understood things like love, friendship…and forgiveness did. The latter of the three had vexed him for the past several months.

Little Ull, the hunter he had kidnapped, broken and trained, had turned against their masters. And a final conflict with the boy, whose memories of his life before Antarctica had returned, had left Ninnis wounded, inside and out. The pain from the broken arm and several snapped ribs paled in comparison to the shame that boiled his insides and kept sleep at bay.

As punishment for his failure to recapture the boy, Ninnis’s wounds were left to heal naturally, over time, rather than accelerated by the blood of the masters. This not only heaped hot coals of disgrace on his head, but also kept him out of the ongoing hunt. No one knew Ull better than Ninnis, and without him, they would never find the boy. And if they did, they wouldn’t stand a chance, not without the knowledge Ninnis possessed.

First, the boy had some kind of power over the elements. At first Ninnis had thought it was a side effect of being bonded with the body of Nephil, but Ull had always shown a strange resistance to the cold. Second, the boy’s memory had returned. He knew he was really Solomon Ull Vincent, not simply Ull the hunter. So his choices and strategies would vary greatly from those of a typical hunter. And third, some part of Nephil did indeed reside in the boy. He’d heard it in the boy’s voice when they last met. That made him unpredictable and more dangerous than Ninnis wanted to contemplate.

But none of this weighed as heavily on Ninnis’s thoughts as the three simple words Ull had scratched into the stone wall. Ull could have left Ninnis for dead, having knocked him unconscious in the freezing Antarctic air. But he didn’t. The boy had dragged Ninnis underground, laid him in a tunnel and left a message for him to find upon waking.

I forgive you
.

Ninnis had scratched the message away, but it had been etched into his memory, haunting him every time he closed his eyes. After everything he had done to the boy—taken him from his family, starved him, broken him, stolen his memory and treated him like a dog—Ull had
forgiven
him? It didn’t make sense. Even with the boy’s memory returned, what kind of a person could do such a thing?

The strength of that gesture frightened Ninnis more than anything he’d faced before, but it also enraged him. He had little doubt that the message was left to taunt him. It made him look weak. Frail. Like an old man whose mind and actions were not his own. Poor, poor Ninnis.

It was time to set the record straight.

It was time to find Ull.

He would bring Ull back and break him again, or kill him.

Ninnis sat on a stool, checking over his equipment. Satisfied, he wrapped his belt around his skinny waist and tied it tight. He carried a water skin, binoculars, the trusty knife he’d had since his time in the British Army and an empty pouch for food rations he would hunt along the way.

Ninnis looked around his small room covered with symbolic graffiti left by the hunters who occupied this space during the thousands of years before his birth. After spending months recuperating here, he loathed the place. He was a hunter. Meant to roam the underground, to seek out and battle the enemies of his master—not to nurse wounds. He stood, walked to the door and yanked it open. A massive foot greeted him.

Ninnis stepped out of the room and looked up into the large eyes of a giant. He gave a bow and spoke his master’s name with reverence. “Lord Enki.”

“Rise, Ninnis,” Enki said, his voice resonating in the tall hallway that held two rows of doors to the quarters of other human hunters and teachers. “You join the hunt?”

“If it pleases you, Master.”

“It does,” Enki replied. “You have handled your punishment with strength and character, as I knew you would.”

“Thank you, Master.”

Ninnis stepped back, surprised by Enki crouching before him. “I have something for you. A gift I think will come in useful.” He held out a sword that glimmered in the flames illuminating the tunnel. It reminded Ninnis of a machete, but longer.

Ninnis took the offered blade and tested its weight in his hand. It felt good. Light. He swung the blade noticing how little effort it took. But it would not do. “Master,” he said carefully, “It is a blade without comparison, but its size will slow my progress through the underground. I cannot use this.”

“An assessment I knew you would make,” Enki said with a nod. “But you are wrong.”

The giant took the sword, pushed a small switch Ninnis had not noticed and gave it the tiniest of twitches. The blade curled in on itself, snapping into a tight roll of metal that would take up very little room.

Ninnis’s eyes widened. A grin spread on his face.

Enki handed the sword back to him. “Test the blade,” he said. “On my flesh.” The giant held out his forearm. “The blood that spills is yours.”

Sword in hand, Ninnis toggled the small switch back to its original position and shot his arm out towards Enki. The blade unfurled quickly as it arced through the air, fully extending as it passed by the master’s arm. A two inch deep, ten inch long slice opened up on Enki’s arm, but only a single drop of blood emerged before the wound healed.

“I will call it Strike,” Ninnis said. “As it resembles the serpent.”

When the drop fell, Ninnis reached out for it, and caught the purple fluid on the sword’s blade. He brought the weapon up to his mouth, paused for a moment, and looked up at the giant. Enki gave a nod and Ninnis licked the blood from the blade.

A moment later, the old hunter fell to the stone floor clutching his stomach. The intense pain felt like a fire raging inside his body. But then, just as quickly as it had begun, the flames subsided. Ninnis stood, feeling stronger than he had in years, and when he looked up at his master again, a newfound malevolence had entered his eyes.

“Now go, my hunter. Find Ull and bring him back to us so that his body might be bonded with the soul of my father. Do anything it takes. Do you understand?
Anything
.”

Ninnis nodded. He did understand. There were laws in this kingdom, and even Enki, who ruled the warrior clan, was subject to them. But he had just given Ninnis permission to break them if need be. That meant Ninnis could kill anything or anyone that got in his way, whether another hunter, a watcher, a gatherer or even a warrior. Ninnis and all his fury were to be unleashed on the underworld for the first time. He smiled at his good fortune and thought,
Your forgiveness will be your undoing, Ull
.

I am coming
.

1

It starts with a shriek. The hunt. High pitched wails follow. Breaking branches. The pounding of panicked feet. A squeal and then silence. I’ve grown so accustomed to the sounds that I can sleep through them; I know, because I sometimes discover kills I did not observe, which is rare, because here, in this massive cavern I now call home, I know
everything
.

The hunters are a pack—fourteen strong—of meat eating dinosaurs I call cresties, and not because they have clean teeth. A large boney crest rises up behind their yellow serpentine eyes, giving them an ominous appearance. At first I believed the crest was involved in attracting a mate, but since both the male and female cresties have crests, my assessment makes little sense. And it’s the females that cause the real trouble. Not only are they the hunters, but they’re also far larger than the males. The pack’s leader, who stretches thirty feet from snout to tail and stands fifteen feet tall, is the only creature here that really poses any threat to me. She’s built like a T-Rex, but more agile. She has razor sharp talons, teeth the size of butcher knives and the disposition of a—well, of a meat eating dinosaur, I suppose. She is constantly nipping the others and once eviscerated one of the males who mated with a lesser female. I suspect she is unloved by the others, but she is respected.

I named her Alice after the Allosaurus from
Land of the Lost
, one of my favorite TV shows before coming to Antarctica. I can’t remember how long ago that was now. My brain tells me it was two years ago, but my body, weary from life a mile below ground, says it’s been longer. But time works differently here. What feels like two years to me could have been five on the surface. Maybe more. But I’m fairly confident my two year estimation is close to the mark.

The hunt has ended. The herd of oversized subterranean, hairless, albino goats has stopped bleating and returned to their non-stop grazing, confident that the cresties have been satiated for the moment. I can’t see them from my cliffside perch where not even Alice could reach me, but I can hear the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones. Inside of twenty minutes there will be nothing left but a blood stain. The cresties eat everything, including bones and horns.

I roll over on my bed of palm fronds. The dry leaves crunch beneath me and I long for my bed back home. I turn my perfect memory to that place. The home in Maine. My second floor bedroom. The window next to my bed looked out into the backyard. I used to lie there during springtime rainstorms, feeling the water as it splashed through the screen window. It smelled of new grass and wet metal. A childhood scent. The memory breaks my heart and a tear drops from my eye.

I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry while living in this new world, but I wasn’t myself then. I was Ull the hunter, vessel of Nephil, Lord of the Nephilim. But before that, for most of my life, I was Solomon Ull Vincent, son of Mark and Beth, friend to Justin McCarthy and all around bookworm with a perfect memory. But I was born here on Antarctica. The first and only Antarctican. And that made me special. More special than
anyone
realized, even Ninnis, the man who stole me and brought me here.

I think of my parents. Of the night I was taken from them and dragged beneath the snow. I still feel the pain of losing them, my perfect memory repeating the events again and again, searching for a way things could have been different. But how could I have known that a race of half-human, half-demon monstrosities—the Nephilim—lived beneath the surface of Antarctica. How could I have known that these heroes of old, these men of renown, who used to pose as the polygamist gods of the ancient world, would know about my birth? How could I know about how their spirit entered me upon my birth or about how they wanted my body to house the soul of their leader Nephil, the first Nephilim, who is currently trapped in Tartarus in the depths of the earth?

I couldn’t.

It’s insane.

But it’s my life.

I have to live with it, and the awful things I did as Ull. I know it’s not all my fault. I was broken, beaten, starved and forced to do awful things to survive. In the end, my mind was not my own and the memories of my former life were masked by a haze of hatred and violence. I hunted. I killed. And I kidnapped Aimee Clark, the woman who welcomed me into the world at the moment of my birth. She is the wife of Merrill Clark, the man who named me, and the mother of Mirabelle Clark, their daughter—whose photo I carry with me at all times. Mira is my hope. I think of her every day and cling to her memory. Not only do I long to see her again—she brought out the best in me—but I wish to reunite her with her mother. I know the pain of losing a parent and my chest aches from the knowledge that I did that to her.
I
took Aimee.
I
brought her to the Nephilim. And I left her behind when I escaped.

After consuming the physical essence of Nephil—a partially congealed dollop of his blood—meant to strengthen my body so that it might contain the giant’s soul, I ran. Being born on Antarctica filled me with the “spirit” or magic of the Nephilim, but it also bonded me to the continent, to the earth, air and water. They are mine to control, though I do not understand how, and the effort often drains my body. But I was able to use this ability to conceal my flight, filling the underground with a snowstorm. I escaped from the Nephilim citadel of Asgard, named for the city of the Norse gods, in dramatic form, killing the real Ull, son of Thor, son of Odin, and the giant who I called ‘Master.’ I ran far and deep and eventually came across this subterranean oasis.

I once was just a boy. I became a hunter. And now I…am the hunted.

Although none of the hunters have discovered me yet, I can sense them out there. Searching. I am far too important to their cause—the destruction of the human race that cast them out so long ago. And the hunters will find me. Eventually. Until then, I’ll build my strength, test my abilities and come up with a plan.

And the plan so far? I have no idea. But I’m central to their plot and without me, they’re stuck. I know that’s not enough. I’ll eventually have to do more, not because I
want
to do more, but because I
can
. The honest truth is that I’m terrified. I’m afraid that I’ll be caught, that Ninnis will break me again, that I’ll become Ull once more. The idea of facing another Nephilim makes me sick to my stomach. While I have physically adapted to this harsh world, I am not cut out for it. I would like nothing more than to leave this place, find McMurdo Base and fly back to Maine and my parents. I could be home in a month. But no one else can fight the Nephilim. And then there’s Aimee, held prisoner somewhere. I can’t leave without her. And she won’t leave until the Nephilim are defeated. And that’s what scares me the most; knowing I’ll one day have to face my fears, most likely before I’m ready, and against my will. Someday I’ll have to face the darkness inside me, the ancient malevolence called Nephil that seeks to consume me. I’m almost certain I will lose.

My train of thought disturbs me, so I sit up and stretch. The cavern is bright, but not with morning light. It’s always bright, lit from the small glowing crystals that cover the walls and ceiling. In other caves, like the pit in which I was broken, the crystals are spread out and twinkle like stars in the darkness. Here they’re so tightly packed that the cave is lit like dusk on the surface.

The sounds of the feast have faded. The albino goat is no doubt consumed. The cresties will take another before the day is through. It’s a good thing the goats reproduce like rabbits and grow fast. Otherwise the cresties would have burned through the cavern’s main food source long ago. I don’t eat the goats. I tried once, but the cresties took exception and nearly killed me. If not for a sudden rainstorm—something these subterranean dinosaurs had never seen—Alice would have gotten me for sure.

I’m hungry and I search the perimeter for movement. The lake is one hundred yards to the left of my perch. It supplies me with fresh water and an abundance of fish, which has become my staple diet along with an assortment of mushrooms, leafy plants and the occasional oversized albino centipede. “All the nutrition a growing boy needs,” I say.

I focus my eyes in the distance, searching the canopy of lush trees that somehow manage to grow green in this underground tropical Shangri-La, far away from the sun—a subterranean rainforest, sans the rain. Despite my genius intelligence and photographic memory, I have yet to figure out how this is possible and have chalked it up to being one more magical mystery that is the underworld. Trying to understand how grass, trees and flowers can grow green without photosynthesis from a scientific perspective is maddening. I gave up the task long ago.

Movement catches my eye. That’s when I see her. Alice. Her head, shaped similarly to the large palm fronds, stands fifty feet away, her yellow eyes staring at me. Despite my being here for some time, she still sees me as an intruder. Perhaps it’s because I escaped her wrath before, or maybe it’s the scent of my hair. Originally a stark white blond, my shoulder length hair turned dark red, like the Nephilim’s, as I was corrupted by them. A blond streak had emerged—some of my innocence recaptured—but for the most part, my hair is still blood red. And the scent of it, of the Nephilim in me, offends the cresties.

And there is Nephilim in me. The spirit of Antarctica. The physical body of Nephil. And I became one of their best hunters, serving under the Norse house. They transformed me into Ull, and while I was him, I reveled in their violent, mankind-hating culture. And a part of Ull still lives in me, calling for blood and for dominance. But far more frightening than that dark side of myself, is Nephil. His voice, buried deep, surfaces in my weakness and in my dreams. He is hunting for me, too.

Everyone is. “Including you,” I say to Alice, letting her know I’ve seen her.

With a snort, Alice ducks back. I hear her feet pounding away. She prefers to ambush prey. And I’m pretty sure she realizes that’s the only way she’d be able to kill me.

“Someday, Alice,” I say, “you and I are going to have it out.”

A distant roar responds. I don’t know if she heard me or not, but I find humor in the moment, and allow myself an uncommon smile. Then I jump from my cliff-side hideaway and drop thirty feet to the ground.