The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (28 page)

8

Carrying Xin’s limp, seven foot tall body saps my energy. His wiry build holds more muscle than I would have guessed. By the time I get him to a tall mound of oversized bones, my legs burn. I slide him gently off my back and feel a slick ooze of blood left behind. I’ll have to scrub hard to get his scent off of me. Of course, it might also come in handy in concealing my own scent.

The concept of covering my scent with another living thing’s blood should repulse me, but it doesn’t. For a moment, I wonder if Ull is back, but then I realize that it’s just me. And I’m changing. How could I not?

I turn my full attention to the bones and see a large intact ribcage at the base of the pile. It’s concealed within the pile, but also holding the mass of bones at bay, creating a boneless nook. By the looks of it, it belonged to a massive cresty, perhaps even larger than Alice. I shift a few bones out of the way, clearing a passage to the open space.

With the path clear, I hoist Xin up over my back again and pull him inside. No one will be able to see our white bodies hidden inside the bone mountain, but anything with half a nose will sniff us out. Xin’s bloody trail across the enormous chamber guarantees it. Of course, that’s also part of the plan, because the first scavengers to follow a trail of blood are always the oversized albino centipedes. The creatures are numerous in the underground and are the staple food for many of the denizens here, but their cottage cheese flesh is also good for sealing wounds and fighting infection.

I lay Xin down on the stone floor, propping his head up on a loose bone. A sigh escapes his mouth as he settles down. I expect his eyes’ll pop open and he’ll slice into my mind, but he doesn’t move. I can see his pulse thumping behind the flesh of his neck. Still alive.

After covering the passage into our hideaway with bones, I sit down and think about how much I miss things like couches. It’s been so long since I was comfortable. Though I have to admit, the beds in Asgard, made from layers of egg-monster skins, can hold their own against the best memory foam. But out here, in the wilderness, on the run, the best I can hope for is to not have my throat slit while I sleep.

Thinking of sleep pulls on my eyelids. I don’t think I’ve been awake for a full day, but since I last slept, I’ve battled Alice, nearly drowned, was chased through the underground and slugged it out with Xin, Ull and Nephil in my mind. My body is fairly well conditioned so I think it must be the mental battle that wore me out. Then I remember that Xin took control of my body and used my abilities, which taxes both body and mind. Add to that several adrenaline highs and crashes and it’s no wonder I’m tired.

I sit up cross-legged, determined to not fall asleep. The risk is too great. Aside from Xin, there are countless dangers in the underworld that could be drawn by his blood. But my head is spinning now. I close my eyes to fight the rising nausea.

“Hey Schwartz,” my father shouts.

A memory.

One of my favorites.

We’re at the beach, scouring the rocky shore in search of tide pools. The sun is shining, warming my shirtless torso. Clouds roll past in the distance. The air smells of sea water but is tinged with the odor of grilling burgers.

Justin’s head pops up from behind a large rock. He’s wearing his tinted sports glasses, as usual. “I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.”

I laugh.

“Justin, I swear,” says my father, standing from his position nearer the breaking waves, “Can I call my son by his nickname just once without you saying that? Just once?”

“Not likely,” Justin says.

My father looks at me.

“What?” I say with a shrug. “I’m not his mother.”

My father grins and motions with his head for me to join him. “Found a good tide pool. Lots of crabs. A few shrimp, too. Water is nice and clear, so I’ll get some good close-ups out of it.”

I climb through the rocks carefully. It’s not uncommon for me to go home from the beach with a fresh wound, if not several. My parents call me clumsy, but it’s an understatement because I seem to walk into doorframes and slip down stairs just as often as I trip on rocks at the beach. But I make it to my father okay, and I grin at the size of the tide pool. It’s the perfect contained ecosystem, at least for a few more hours, and it’s mine to explore.

While my father takes photos, Justin and I explore every nook and cranny of the tidepool. No rock is left unturned, no shell left submerged.

“What are we up to?” Justin asks me, knowing that I’ll have perfectly retained the number and name of each creature we’ve discovered.

I could give him the Latin names for the animals in this tide pool, but he hates that, so I keep it simple. “Five crabs, three shrimp, eleven hermit crabs, thirty two snails and too many barnacles to count.” That last part is a lie. There are three hundred and seventy-two barnacles, but sooner or later, I think Justin will decide I’m too weird to be around.

“There you are,” my mother says as she climbs over the rocks toward us. She’s far more agile than me or my father, even with the four boxed lunches she’s carrying. The scent of burgers and fries arrives a moment before she does. We eat in silence, enjoying the view and the sunshine. I eat the tinfoil-wrapped dill pickle first, then the fries before they get cold, and then turn my attention to the burger. This is a perfect moment. The food. The view. The smells. The company. With a smile on my face, I bite into the burger and wince.

It tastes wrong.

I spit out the food in my mouth and bring the burger up for inspection. I peel open the bun, expecting to see a large flat cheeseburger patty covered in ketchup and pickles. Instead, I find a crab. One of its claws is missing, a casualty of my first bite.

I drop the burger and step back. The crab crawls from the burger, but then it’s not a crab at all. It just keeps on coming. Shell and legs emerge from the burger bun in a never ending chain, just like a big…centipede.

I’m dreaming.

I’m dreaming!

Wake up!
I shout at myself.

Wake—

“…up!” I flail as I awaken, flinging the centipede on my chest against the rib ceiling, where its shell cracks. It falls to the stone floor, cracking some more, oozing white now.  I turn to Xin and find three more centipedes gathered around an open wound on his leg. I can hear the munching of their mandibles as they fight to chew past his tough scales.

Whipsnap sails through the air bludgeoning one of the centipedes. As the dying creature twists in on itself, writhing as death takes it, the remaining two scurry away and disappear into the mountain of bones. When I hear the tick, tick, tick of the centipedes’ sharp feet fade to nothing, I stab the two dying creatures to put them out of their misery. In the past, when I was fully Ull, I amused myself by watching a mortally injured centipede writhe around for fifteen minutes. The sight now makes my stomach twist. I hate seeing things suffer.

Have since I was a kid. One of my mother’s favorite stories about me is about how after my father did a poor job of stepping on a carpenter ant, I crouched down and watched it squirm around on the floor. The thing was broken, and oozing and appeared to be trying to straighten itself back out. I looked up at my mother, tears in my eyes (not uncommon for me at the time…or any time before Ull took control) and asked, “Do ants suffer?”

My father heard the question and joked, “Yes, now let him crawl back to his colony and tell them to stay out of my kitchen.”

This didn’t help any, but my mom understood. She knelt down next to me, shook her head sadly and then stepped on the ant again.

“Better?” she asked.

I nodded, and wiped my eyes. I’ve always had a hard time accepting the suffering of others, whether it is a person, an ant or Xin—a half-human, half-Nephilim, who nearly killed me.

After retrieving a small stone bowl from my pack, I crack open one of the centipedes and scoop a dollop of its white flesh into the bowl. Using the knobby end of a bone, I mix the stuff, crushing away the lumps. When it’s the consistency of yogurt, I bring the fresh ointment to Xin. He has three wounds that need tending. I move from one wound to the next, prying them open with my fingers and filling the gap with the creamed centipede meat. While the meat on the inside will ward off infection, the outside will harden into a protective, flexible shell that will slowly dissolve as the wound stitches back together. I’ve never actually used the technique on myself, but I saw Ninnis do it once.

With all three wounds sealed, I sit back and wait. I’ve done what I can. Whether Xin lives or dies is now up to him. But I’ll watch over him. Make sure the centipedes don’t come back. When he comes to, he might try to kill me again. It’s a very real possibility. But until then, I’m his protector.

The ground shakes.

An earthquake,
I think. Antarctica sits atop one big tectonic plate, but that doesn’t mean the earth never shifts. With so much ice bearing down on the continent, the plate can actually shift up and down during times of rapid melting or freezing.

The earthquake repeats.

An aftershock?

Maybe, but the vibration felt stronger the second time.

When the ground shakes a third time I know this is not an earthquake. Something approaches. Something large.

Keeping Xin alive might be harder than I thought.

9

“Run.”

The voice of Xin startles me and I flinch away from it. His eyes remain closed and I wonder for a moment if I’m hearing things. Then I see his tiny lips twitch.

“Run,” he repeats.

The ground shakes. Xin’s eyebrows turn up. The tremors have him worried. Which isn’t good—it’s hard to picture him being afraid of much—but it changes nothing. I’m committed to the task of protecting him. “I won’t leave you.”

His eyes blink open, yellow and serpentine, and he looks at me. “I tried to kill you,” he says. “I took control of your body. Violated your mind.”

“You’re like me,” I say.

He sighs and shakes his head. “I am nothing like you.”

“You saw my thoughts,” I say. “My past. You felt what I felt.”

The ground shakes again. I keep thinking the thing is nearly upon us, but each tremor is more violent than the last and I’m starting to think this giant might still be a ways off.

Xin stays silent.

“I experienced your past, too,” I say.

His eyes widen. He did not know our thoughts were shared simultaneously.

“We’re both…broken,” I say.

He stares at me with those yellow eyes, but I see no malice in them now. He turns away, staring at the ceiling of our bony hideaway. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s going to kill us both.”

I can see he’s resigned to his fate. Whatever is coming, he has no doubt it will be the end of us. But that can’t be true. I’ve killed cresties and even a Nephilim warrior—who are supposed to be unkillable. I control the very air, water and land of the continent. And Xin…not only is he a formidable tracker and fighter, but he can manipulate the mind as easily as I can the weather. What could we not face together?

The ground shakes so hard that the bones above us rattle and shift. If the ribs give way we’ll be buried beneath a mountain of the dead.

“You know me, Xin. Perhaps better than anyone else. You’ve seen who I am and know I wouldn’t lie.”

He nods.

“You are a better hunter than any I’ve met,” I tell him. “Far better than even Ninnis and Kainda, both of whom I have beaten in combat. And
you
beat
me
. Beat Ull. I have never faced a foe as dangerous as you. The Nephilim are fools for not realizing it.”

“And yet it is a boy, Solomon, that has defeated me.”

My face scrunches. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I didn’t beat him in combat. That was Nephil. And without Xin, I wouldn’t have been able to contain that evil spirit, either. “It wasn’t me who beat you.”

“But it is,” he says. “Because I cannot kill you now. I can’t even bring you back alive.”

Despite the question being absurd, I ask, “Why not?”

“Because you have shown me a different path.”

Small bones drop through the giant ribcage as a thunderous boom sounds from just outside our shelter. Xin grunts and sits up.

“You shouldn’t move,” I say.

He grunts a wet laugh. “If we are to survive the next few minutes, we will both need to move. And quickly.” He looks me in the eyes, deadly serious now. “Behemoth is here.”

Behemoth?
“What is it?”

“I saw in your mind that you call them egg-monsters. Ninnis once told you about what happens to them in the wild. The size to which they grow? Their insatiable appetites? Behemoth is one of the three. It guards the gates to Tartarus. And though its hearing is all but useless, it will soon sniff us out.”

“Tartarus! We’re near the gates?”

“Yes,” he says. “They lie at the other end of this cavern, ten miles from here. That is the second reason the other hunters will not follow. They fear the gates will open and consume them.”

“But you don’t fear the gate?”

“It is hard to feel fear when losing your life means little,” he says sadly.

“Then why do you look so afraid now?” I ask.

I think I see a small grin on his face. “Because you have given me a reason to fear losing my life,” he says. “Hope.”

The sound of loud sniffing surrounds us. I can actually feel a breeze float past me as the air is siphoned past us. There is no doubt Behemoth will soon discover us.

“How do we beat it?” I ask.

“The Nephilim have been building an army for the specific task of killing Behemoth, so they might one day access the gates of Tartarus—the day you are to be bonded with the spirit of Nephil. In fact, if word of you being here reaches them, they might bring that army to bear immediately with the hopes of performing the bonding ritual now.”

A new sense of urgency fills my body. “Then we’ll run.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” he says. “You might be able to hold it at bay with your considerable abilities, and I might be able to attack its mind. But not today. We are both weak. And achieving the task alone might kill us both, if we’re not eaten. Running is our
only
choice.”

He climbs to his feet, stooping under the six foot high ceiling. He’s moving fast for someone I thought nearly dead.

He notes my attention and says, “My blood is red, like a human’s, but I still heal quickly. A gift from the genetic tinkering of my creators.”

The concept of being created rather than born makes me feel even more empathy for Xin. He has never known the love of a parent, the comfort of family or even the concept of having come from somewhere. He has no ancestors. No lineage. He’s truly alone.

Bones rattle as something large digs into our hiding space. The creature is testing our fortifications. A vibration pulses through the air, shaking my body and making me feel nauseous.

“Time is short,” Xin says. “We must go now.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Purring,” he says. “Behemoth is known for playing with its food. We will suffer horribly before being devoured.”

Lovely
.

“Are you able to trust me?” he asks.

“Do I have a choice?”

He shakes his head, no. “Our only chance of escape is distraction. As soon as we move, it will lock on to us and give chase. We need to give it something else to chase first.”

“A distraction.”

“Yes.” He points at the bones around us and I understand what he wants me to do. The effort will leave me taxed and my escape, and my survival, will be completely dependent on Xin, who nearly succeeded in killing me only hours ago.

The bones around us shake violently. The creature is coming. I close my eyes, focus on the air in the giant cavern and put my life in Xin’s hands. There is a howl outside, but it is not from Behemoth. It is my wind, swirling around. I can feel the giant form of Behemoth standing in the way of my wind, slowing it down, and I have to push harder to build speed. With a shout, I pull the wind in, and then up.

My hair flies up as the strongest gust of wind I’ve ever generated slides beneath the bone mountain and lifts it high into the air.

A confused roar deafens me and shakes the walls of the cavern. I open my eyes. The bone shelter is gone and Xin is running toward me. He scoops me up with little effort and throws me over his shoulder. The wind is knocked from my lungs repeatedly as Xin runs, and I am too weak to stiffen my stomach muscles or even adjust myself. But I do manage to look up.

The bone mountain has shot a hundred feet in the air and has bloomed out like a mushroom cloud. But it’s not nearly high enough to block Behemoth’s vision. The monster stands one hundred and fifty feet tall. Its black bulbous eyes are the size of swimming pools. Its body is similar to the smaller egg-monsters—essentially egg shaped, mostly jaw and teeth, but the red clumps of hair growing from random spots on the creature’s body are long—and moving. Like tentacles, they whip out and snatch bones from the air, snapping them in two.

The giant head is tilted to the side, like a dog thinking, as it watches the flying bones finish their arc through the air and begin falling back down. That’s when it sees us. Something within the black eye nearest us shifts and I know we’ve been spotted.

Behemoth lets out a roar that shatters the cloud of bones before it and sends the shards flying away. One of them catches Xin in the shoulder and I hear him grunt, but he does not slow. Which is good, because Behemoth takes a step in our direction and cuts the distance between us in half. Rope-like strands of red hair shoot out in pursuit.

I try to shout a warning, but I don’t have enough air in my lungs to even whisper. In fact, my vision is starting to fade.

The jolts of Xin’s footfalls slow and I feel we’re moving downward, or perhaps he’s crouching. I can’t tell. But the deceleration allows the living hairs to gain and one of them launches toward my face. A surge of panic rips through me and a gust of wind strikes the hair to the side.

My life is saved for the moment. But the effort has taxed me beyond my limits. A fuzzy haze fills my vision and consciousness fades as a faint scent tickles my nose. The other hunters are near. Xin has betrayed me.