The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (38 page)

27

By the time we reach the outer fringes of Asgard, Emilie hasn’t said two words. The only way to know you’ve entered Asgard is the mark of Odin carved into the tunnel wall. Asgard isn’t like New Jericho—a city with buildings inside a giant cavern. It is a series of tunnels and chambers carved out of stone beneath a mountain. Ninnis once told me that if the snow ever melted, much of the city would be exposed. Daylight would pour in through windows. Fresh air would seep through the cracks. At the time, I found the notion disagreeable. Now, in the depths of the Earth, I wouldn’t mind a little fresh air. It might sweep away the stench of blood and rot that plagues this place.

Em stops and traces her fingers over the mark of Odin—three interlocking triangles—carved into the tunnel wall. She stares at it, remembering.

“I grew up here,” she says. “Trained here. With my fath—with Tobias. And Kainda. And Ninnis. Ull, too. I can’t say it was a happy place. We had no concept for that word. But when I lived within these walls, the halls of Asgard…” She looks at me. “I felt safe.”

I’m not sure what to say to her. Safety is an illusion in the underworld, especially in the presence of the Nephilim, who might randomly decide that you look delicious and eat you. I’ve never heard of that happening, but they eat their own young, so it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

“It was all a lie,” she says. “Everything they told me. About my mother. About my father. I never belonged here.”

“It wasn’t all a lie,” I say, surprising myself.

She whips an angry eye toward me, suspicious of why I’d say such a thing.

“Tobias loved you,” I say.

“He wasn’t my father.”

“This kind of thing happens a lot where I’m from. It’s called adoption. Children are adopted by a father and mother that aren’t biologically related. But they’re raised as though they were. And they’re loved just the same.”

“No one tells the child?”

“It’s up to the parents. Some do. Some don’t. But the ones that don’t usually have a reason. Maybe Tobias was protecting you from something?”

She pulls her hand away from the wall. “My father told me—told everyone—that I wasn’t born here, in Asgard. Or any of the cities. My mother, a hunter named Dalia, delivered me deep in the tunnels and died of childbirth complications. Tobias emerged from the tunnels with a baby girl and the story of Dalia’s death; no one questioned it. He raised me on his own. I suspect that’s why they gave Luca to him, too.”

“So he lied about your birth, to you, and everyone else.”

She nods slowly. “Outlanders that are deemed unfit are given to Behemoth.”

“Is it possible,” I say, “that your father and mother were meant to give you to the monster?”

She sniffs and wipes her nose. “I’ve never heard of a baby bearing the mark being kept.”

“Then his lie saved you,” I say.

She rubs the tattoo with her hand. “And now?”

“Now,” I say, puffing out my chest, “You are married to Ull, scourge of the underworld.”

A smile creeps onto her face. “C’mon, scourge, let’s get this over with so we can go be eaten like I should have been all those years ago.” She turns and steps past the mark of Odin, officially entering the halls of Asgard. “Sorry,” she says.

I follow her beyond the mark. “For what?”

“You are my adopted brother,” she explains. “As is Luca. I didn’t mean to imply that our bond is less than that of blood. I’m proud to call you brother.”

I laugh as the tunnel opens up into a grand hall. Pillars carved with the faces of Norse gods stretch down either side. They serve little function other than decoration and intimidation. When I see Ull’s face, my stomach turns. The intimidation factor works. But I’m Ull now. So I wipe the growing fear from my face and try to project confidence.

The hall is devoid of life, so I still speak freely. “Em, are there any…customs, any rules about marriage that I should know about?”

Her telltale gasp springs from her mouth. She immediately stops and takes a step back so that she’s behind me. “Wives are subservient to husbands,” she says. “Not in battle. Then we’re all equal. Hunters do not see sexes. But here, in Asgard, and in the other cities, wives must follow close behind their husbands, eyes to the ground.”

“What about wedding rings?” I ask.

“Wedding rings?”

“Forget it,” I say. Nothing here could be so romantic. Marriage in the under-world is about territory, alliances, spawn and other human needs. But not love. There is no place for love here.

As the pat of bare feet slapping the floor approaches from the branching hallway ahead of us, I realize my last minute lesson in Nephilim marital culture was just in time. He enters the grand hall dressed for the hunt, in skins. His red hair is long, but trimmed, and poufy in a way that reminds me of Kevin Bacon. A chain wrapped around his waist holds two spiked metal balls. I recognize the weapon as a meteor hammer from Justin’s ninja books. They were a rare, but deadly weapon used in feudal Japan. Apparently they found a home in the Antarctic underworld as well.

He’s still some distance away but walks straight toward us.

“Do you know him?” I whisper.

If Em knows this man and he sees her tattoo, it could cause problems if he realizes the details surrounding her birth are a lie. Actually, she’s a fugitive, so there’s that, too.

“No,” she says. “He must be from one of the other kingdoms. His hair looks Olympian.”

At first I think it’s strange that she doesn’t know him, but Antarctica is as vast as the United States and has several cities spread out across, and beneath it. I never estimated the total population of the underworld. There could be millions.

The thought fills me with dread and I have to work hard not to show it on my face as we approach the stranger.

I meet his eyes, knowing that to do otherwise would be a sign of weakness, something Ull would never do. The man squints at me as we pass, and then he sees Em, head bowed, tattoo exposed.

The man laughs under his breath.

I stop in my tracks and while thinking a panicked,
what are you doing?!
I say, “You find something funny?”

Ull would have never let the laugh pass. I can’t, either.

The man turns toward me. He’s nearly twice my size and appears to be forty years old, which could mean he’s been here for twice that time. A grin forms on his clean shaven face. “When I first saw you I thought it strange that a pup like you could have claimed a wife,” the man says. “Then I saw the mark on her forehead.” He shakes his head in disgust. “You lower yourself too far, pup.”

What would Ull do? “If you call me, “pup,” one more time—”

“Pup,” the man says.

The attack comes immediately, but it’s not from me, or the stranger. Em leaps out from behind me, knives in hand. She lets two fly. The first finds the man’s thigh, burying two inches deep into his flesh. He grunts, and dodges the second knife, moving quickly.

In a flash, he’s got the meteor hammer spinning like a helicopter blade. It deflects Em’s next two knives.

She won’t be able to penetrate his defense.

Ull, however, would have no trouble.

I yank Whipsnap from my belt. The weapon springs to life in my hand. I approach the man with a spin that makes it look like I’m going to strike from the side, but instead I thrust the mace end of Whipsnap into the spinning chain. The meteor hammer’s chain wraps around Whipsnap’s shaft and with a yank, I disarm the man and toss his weapon across the hall.

The action has stumbled the man and his back slaps against one of the hall’s columns. Before he can pull himself from it and consider a counter attack, Whipsnap’s blade is against his neck. I knick his skin, letting the blood run down the blade so he can see it.

“Do you know who I am,
pup
?” I say with a growl.

He looks me up and down. He has no idea. And he still doesn’t care. I see nothing but hatred in his eyes.

Ull might have killed the man by now, but there is only so far I am willing to take this act. “Why are you here, Olympian?”

When he answers, I know Em pegged him right. “I am traveling to the gates of Tartarus, to represent my master, Poseidon, who must continue work on the fleet.”

I can tell he thinks Poseidon’s name will generate some fear or respect in me, but I am Ull, who will one day bear the essence of Nephil and rule over all Nephilim, including Poseidon. I fear no Nephilim.

At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. In truth, I’m terrified of the Nephilim. Of this hunter. But I need to keep up the act, for Luca. “And who is it you wait for in Tartarus?”

He scoffs. “You truly are a pitiful one, pup.” Even in the face of death, he taunts me. Are all the hunters like this? Like Ull?

I push the blade a little deeper, careful not to accidentally open his jugular. I stop when he winces. “Had you half a brain you might realize who it is you are speaking to.”

With a sneer, he says, “Tell me, please, so that I might pass on your name to—”

“I am—Ull!” I shout, drawing the blade back and kicking the man in the gut. When he pitches forward I give him a hard chop to the back of his head and send him to the floor at my feet. “Vessel of Nephil, Lord of the Nephilim. And it is
me
whom you go to see at the gates of Tartarus!”

While he recovers, Em takes my hand and squeezes it.

I’m shaking.

I take a deep breath and speak slowly. “Do you know who
I
am now?”

He nods without looking up, which is a good thing because my hand is still shaking.

“Tell me,” I say. “Why shouldn’t I kill you?”

As I ask the question, I hope his answer is good, and that he doesn’t just go ahead and ask for death.

“I am shamed and forever your servant,” he says.

Ull might still run him through, but his answer is enough for me, and useful.

“What is your name?” I ask.

“Doug,” he says.

I nearly laugh.
Doug
?
Really
? It’s the most mundane and normal name I’ve heard in the underworld. Like Norman. Or Chuck. Or Bob. The name also reminds me that he wasn’t born here. He wasn’t always a hunter. He had a family once. Maybe children. And the menace he feels toward me and everything else was instilled in him by the Nephilim. “Do something for me, Doug” I say.

“Anything.”

“The hunters, Preeg and Pyke, do you know them?”

He shakes his head, no. “Then you will learn who they are.”

“I will find them,” he says.

“They will have a boy with them. A boy who has yet to be broken. Find him and take him, but do not harm him. I would break him myself. Make him my first protégé.”

“And if they do not release the boy?” he asks.

I hadn’t considered that possibility in my hasty plan, or considered the fact that Luca might now be with Ninnis and Kainda. I give the only answer that Ull could give, “You will give them no choice.”

“Understood.”

“Now go,” I say. “Speak of this to no one. Succeed and I will elevate your status. Fail and I will finish what we began here today.” I turn to Emilie. “Fetch his weapon.”