The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (48 page)

5

The thing has its back to me, so I can’t see its face, but the full head of red hair tells me this is a Nephilim. I expected as much—this place was designed to hold Nephilim—but the sight makes my insides twist with fear. It’s crouched at the flat stone shore of a large lake. Or an ocean. I can’t really tell because the orange liquid stretches to the horizon.

I duck away, breathing hard. There is nothing I fear more than the Nephilim. I have fought them. Killed them. But they broke me. Made me serve them. Respect them. Maybe even love them. And the remote possibility that I could be bent in that direction again horrifies me.

But could it happen here? In Tartarus?

I’m not sure, but if it did, I would regret it for all eternity.

In a flash, my course of action is reversed. I need to get away from this Nephilim. Bearing my burden on my own is hard enough. I take a step away from the lake and am stopped in my tracks by a high-pitched squeal. The dismantled creature is still alive, and shrieking in pain with its last breath.

A wet pop silences the creature.

Its heart has been crushed. I close my eyes. The poor thing.

A wail rips through the air. It’s tortured, like the small creature’s final scream, but louder and full of something else.

Anger.

Rage.

Confusion.

The tone and pitch of the voice fills me with a strange kind of understanding. The thing around the bend doesn’t
want
to kill. It’s compelled to. And it’s tortured by that compulsion. This realization makes me reevaluate the situation. I gasp as a detail flies in the face of my assumptions.

The red hair coupled with the fact that this is Tartarus made me assume the killer is a Nephilim. But the height is all wrong. It—he—didn’t look much bigger than me.

He’s human, I think. A hunter. But why would another hunter be here in Tartarus?

Before I think too much about it, I slide back to the bend and take a peek. He’s still there, crouched by the water, but he’s not moving and his head is turned to the side slightly. Listening. To me.

He heard my gasp.

I’m sure of it.

There is no turning back now. No running. My only hope to avoid conflict is to make the first move a peaceful one.

I step out from hiding, doing my best to stand up straight and look tough. But my words are soft spoken and kind. “Are you all right?”

The question sounds ridiculous as it floats through the air. He sniffs with a single sharp intake of air. Is he smelling me? Or just surprised by my voice? Or my words?

“Do you need help?” I say.

The man’s head spins toward me in a blur. Long tendrils of red hair whip around his face, concealing it from me. “Help!” he screams, sounding both offended and desperate. “Help!”

Then his hair falls away and I see his face.

My face.

“Ull?” The word flies from my mouth. Revulsion spreads through my body like thick, rotting syrup.

He’s just as surprised as I am. “Solomon!” He falls backward and crab-crawls away from me until his hand slashes into the liquid lake. He screams in pain, lifting his now smoldering hand from the liquid. Not water.

Confusion sweeps across Ull’s face, as I’m sure it does mine. This is a physical world. Ull has only ever existed in my mind. He’s an aspect of my personality, not a living, breathing person. This makes no sense.

But he’s still me. A part of me. And what he’s doing is vile. “Why are you killing these creatures?” I ask.

He shakes his head quickly, eyes darting back and forth. He looks at everything but me. His breathing speeds up. He grinds his teeth.

“Ull!” I shout.

“Can’t…stop!” he screams. The shaking grows worse, like he’s about to explode. “Don’t…want…this!”

“Ull,” I say, feeling compassion for the violent me.

“Don’t…want…to kill…” His eyes lock on me. “You.” He’s quick to his feet and I notice that unlike me, Ull is strong. Very strong. All sinewy with muscle and taut skin. His face is covered in stubble. While I retained all of my mental abilities, he retained our physical prowess. While we’re both clearly dealing with emotions, Ull was never good at controlling his and the weight of this place must be crushing him—pushing him deeper into madness, to the point where he wants to kill me.

“You can’t kill me,” I say. “We’re in Tartarus.”

His eyes dart around again. He’s trying to understand, but I suspect he’s too far gone.

When he turns his head toward the sky and lets out a Nephilim howl, I know I’m right. He opens his hands, hooks his fingers into talons and charges. He’s weaponless, dressed only in ragged leathers, but he’s far quicker than I am. The best I can do as he closes the distance is raise my hands up.

Our hands collide first. Fingers entwine. A moment of resistance is followed by the tearing of flesh as his hands push down hard on the three blades of the climbing claws. He screams as the blades slip through flesh and bone before poking out from the back of his hands.

Then our bodies collide and I’m slammed into the stone wall behind me. My head collides with the wall and I hear a crack. I’m dazed, but conscious, and still pushing against Ull’s arms with everything I’ve got. His strength has been sapped by the pain of the teeth piercing his hands, but he’s still more than a match for me.

He roars at me, coating my face with spittle and blood. His mouth is bleeding.
He must have bitten his tongue when we collided
, I think. I feel pain in my mouth for a moment.
Why am I worried about him? He’s trying to kill me!
“Get off me!” I scream.

“Die!” he shouts back. “Must die! Kill!”

I twist my hands, shifting the blades buried in his flesh.

He screams and then spews a few indiscernible lines.

My lips begin to quiver. Tears drip from my eyes. I’ve seen what he did to the small creatures. The pain he is about to inflict on me will be beyond comprehension. My arms weaken. “Please,” I say. The word sounds more like a whimper. “Why are you doing this?”

“No!” he shouts. “No, no, no! Choice!”

No choice?

He doesn’t want to kill me.

He didn’t want to kill those creatures.

My arms lose the battle and slap back against the stone over my head. He’s in my face now, his teeth chattering. He’s going to bite me. I can see it in the way his head is turning. He’s going to bite my nose off! But he’s fighting it. Resisting.

“You can stop!” I shout back.

“C—can’t!” His desperation matches my own. I’m shocked to see tears in his eyes, too. He doesn’t want to hurt me. I am him. We are each other. And he’s anything but self-destructive. “Need!”

His mouth opens, baring his teeth just inches from my nose. “Need!” he screams again.

I’m too terrified to speak now. The true pain of Tartarus is about to begin.

“Need…help!”

Help.

The word flashes into my mind.

Help.

I beheld in my dream, that a man came to him, whose name was Help.

I’m not the burdened traveler, I realize. I…am Help. Ull is in the Slough. But how can I help him?

Christian sank in the Slough of Despond because it amplified the burden he carried. The weight of the darkness of his heart overpowered him. I think about the awful things I’ve done. Most…were Ull. The weight on his shoulders must dwarf mine.

Escape from the Slough only came with Help’s aid. Give me thine hand: so he gave him his hand, and he drew him out.

I look at our hands, bound by bone and blood.

The same blood.

The same burdens.

They do not belong to Ull alone. They are
ours
to bear.

I clench my fingers around Ull’s hands, pulling him closer.

His head snaps back like he’s been slapped in the face. “What are you doing?”

We look at our hands, no longer bound by fingers and bone, but by actual flesh. Our bodies are merging. The sight of it sends him into a panic. He draws away and manages to yank a hand free. But I hold on tightly and catch him around the base of his neck. He grinds his teeth, fighting to pull away, but I can feel his strength fueling my grip.

“What are you doing?” he screams.

“Helping,” I say, pulling his head toward mine.

“Helping!?” His eyes dart up to our merged hands. There is only one hand now. Our hand. I understand his fear. I’m absorbing him. In a sense, I’m killing him the way he was just trying to kill me.

“Ull! Listen to me!” When his eyes meet mine, I instill my voice with the kind of affection my mother once used when I was hurt. “We can’t fight each other anymore. Ninnis divided us. But we are not separate. We aren’t Solomon
and
Ull. We are Solomon Ull Vincent.”

The use of our last name takes the fight out of him some. “We need each other. We’re weaker without each other.”

He stiffens and is about to argue.

“We are incomplete,” I say. “Intellect without emotion lacks power. Emotion without intellect lacks direction. We need to accept each other. We…need to be
I
.”

His resistance fades, but I don’t think this should be forced. We have been separated for a long time now and like submitting to the will of Nephil, I think this merger has to be a willing one. This needs to last.

“There are people depending on us,” I say. “Em and Luca.” There’s a reaction, but it’s not strong. Those relationships were formed when his personality was suppressed. “Mom and Dad,” I say. He trembles with emotion. “And Aimee.”

The memory of my birth fills my mind. Aimee holds me in her arms. Her smiling face is all I can see. I hear her voice, “You are a precious boy.” They are some of the most powerful words ever spoken to me. I repeat them, speaking to Ull. “You are a precious boy.”

We cry together, sharing our burdens, and in each other, we find uncommon strength. I feel Ull’s forehead touch mine. His free hand wraps around my neck.

As one, we pull.

6

When I open my eyes, Ull is gone. It’s just me, the gorge and the lake of burning fluid. I’m alone.
No
, I think,
Ull is here
.

I am Ull.

Solomon Ull Vincent.

I’m complete. Whole.

I look down and find my strong body returned. The stubble on my face tickles my hand as I rub it. The burden of my past failures still weighs upon me. But the burden is shared now. And bearable, despite being locked in Tartarus. In fact, in some ways I feel better than I have in a long time. There is no conflict in my thoughts. Only unity.

And apparently, that is against the rules.

The horn blast is deep and resonates through the land so powerfully that pebbles dance along the ground. The rumbling, monotone horn drones on for five seconds, shaking my body, and then stops. I can’t be certain, but I suspect the horn is an alarm. That it sounds just moments after I’ve found a way to resist the power of this place is a little too coincidental for my taste.

The tower
, I think. Whatever controls Tartarus must be there. This is a jail, after all. Someone must be in charge. Without any kind of debate or internal argument, the decision is made, and I set out at a run in the direction I last saw the tower. The ease with which I make up my mind brings a smile to my face. Split personalities are no fun.

The journey goes swiftly. The landscape is barren and inhospitable, but also easy to navigate. The footing is firm and free of any real obstacles. The only hindrances are the valleys, which twist and turn in unpredictable directions. After having to backtrack several miles, I’ve begun avoiding them altogether. At first, I stayed in the low lands as much as possible. After all, an alarm only sounds when there is a force that will respond to it. But I haven’t seen another living thing in hours. Or days. Who knows? I no longer let the timelessness of Tartarus bother me.

I stop at the bottom of a stone hill. Its surface is covered with loose slabs of stone. I would normally skirt the edge of this rise, but it’s tall and will provide me with an excellent view. The flat rocks slip under my feet and clatter loudly down the grade. Halfway up, I start to question the wisdom of my ascent. I’m being far too noisy. But at this point, going down will make as much noise as finishing my climb. So I push onward.

Near the top, I crouch down low (as though I haven’t already alerted anything nearby to my presence) and peer at the surrounding landscape. The endless stony expanse greets me anew. The orange sky is unchanged. I watch the turbulent clouds for a moment, wondering if it ever rains here, and if that rain is actually the acid-water held in the lake. That…would be horrible.

I see the tower clearly without the use of my telescope. I’m more than half way there. I trace the landscape back toward me, mapping the route I’ll take, when my eyes land on a strange aberration. It’s a cart. A wooden cart, like something a horse might pull, but oversized. It’s empty except for what looks like patches of green mold and dark purple stains.

Dried blood.

Nephilim blood.

Before I can ponder my new discovery, I hear the gentle
tink
,
tink
,
tink
, of a stone bouncing down the hill behind me. Without a single thought, I leap over the top of the hill, dropping fifteen feet over the grade. I no longer have the ability to slow my descent with a gust of wind, but I have all of the knowledge and instincts of a hunter, and the skills to match. I land with a roll on the loose stone, which explodes away from my body and rattles down the hillside. As I come upright, I tug Whipsnap from my belt and stand my ground.

I watch the top of the hill, waiting. But nothing happens.

Perhaps the falling stone was a fluke caused by my presence on the hill. It’s possible, but I definitely felt something behind me. And the cart stained with Nephilim blood… Someone brought it here.

“Show yourself!” I shout, and then smile. I can’t help myself. My boldness and confidence feels right, but it’s also new.

The ground shakes. Loose stones rattle and slide away. A plume of stone dust and debris billows from the top of the hill as a second impact resounds.

Why am I always picking fights with giants? And how did it sneak up behind me without making a sound?

The third impact brings a three-fingered hand over the top of the hill. The digits are at least three feet long, coated in mottled, gray skin and tipped with sharp, hooked fingernails.

Not a Nephilim. They have six fingers.

As the second hand comes over and I watch it pulverize the stone beneath its weight, I take a step back. Then the thing rises up over the crest, and I work hard to stifle my revulsion. The two gray hands are attached to long muscular arms. But each cluster of sinews is contained within skin. When the arm flexes, the separate strands of skinned muscles slap together. When relaxed they slide apart, and I can see through the spaces between them. The torso is built similarly, with each bunch of muscle wrapped in its own skin. Even more revolting is the thing’s gut. What I assume are internal organs, hang from the stomach area, dangling by stretched out strands of skin. The pulsing, moving masses sway beneath it as the creature rises up over the hill.

But the absolute worst aspect of this thing is its head, or rather, heads. It has two of them. And like the rest of its body, the muscles controlling its face are separated and contained. It opens and closes its mouth, snapping its teeth together like it’s tapping out Morse code. The enclosed cheek muscles hiss, as air slides through them. Its eyes are solid black, like a shark’s—like a feeder’s, but they lack the same malevolence, which surprises me. The thing is more indifferent. Like it doesn’t care how things turn out. Or, perhaps more likely, like it already knows how things are going to turn out.

When it dips a head down to look at me, I see its skull and realize there is a third option. It’s indifferent because it can’t think for itself. Where there should be a rounded skull, there is a concave crater, like the back of its head was scooped away. The other head is the same. If there is any brain left in there, I’m not sure where it would be. But the creature is still functional. Still moving. And right now, I am the sole focus of its unflinching attention.

It has only revealed half of its mass and it’s already over thirty feet tall. It’s not quite Behemoth, but it dwarfs any Nephilim. I look down at Whipsnap’s metal blade and spiked mace before turning my gaze back to the monster looming above me.

And then I do the only thing I can.

I run.

Loose shale slides down the hill, matching my speed. As I descend, I see that the wooden cart is far larger than I first thought. Easily big enough to pull a fully grown Nephilim warrior. Perhaps two. It occurs to me that the cart likely belongs to the creature behind me. And if that creature is moving bloodied Nephilim around, I don’t stand a chance.

I pick up the pace and reach the bottom of the hill moments later. I veer left and head for what looks like another gorge. If I can reach a tight spot, I might slip away.

The sound of my quick breathing fills my ears. I focus beyond it and hear my bare feet slapping on the flat stone ground. Beyond that, I hear nothing.

No pounding footsteps.

No crush of stone.

No howl.

Nothing.

I risk a glance back. The thing is gone. The cart is still there, but the hilltop is barren.
What the
—
?

A loud
boom
and a pressure wave strike me simultaneously. My forward momentum ceases and I’m thrown back. Dust rolls over me as I sit up. Holding my breath so I don’t start coughing, I look up to find the monster standing before me. It’s at least forty feet tall, but it’s squatting on powerful hind legs, whose individually wrapped muscles ripple with energy. The sky above me is blotted out for a moment, like night has finally fallen, but the shades pull in and fold against the thing’s back.

Wings
! That’s how it gets around so quietly.

Four large black eyes turn down toward me as the creature leans forward onto its hands. As it descends, its wrapped organs dangle close to the ground. One of them must be vital. If I can sever something important, maybe I can escape. I charge forward, beneath the giant. With all of my strength, I leap and instinctually will the wind to carry me forward. But the wind does not obey and I fall short, swinging out and striking the base of my target rather than the thin strand of flesh binding it to the creature’s insides. I see the thin trace of a line where the blade met flesh, but there’s no blood. I merely grazed the surface.

I’m struck in the side and sent sprawling. Whipsnap falls from my grasp. I’m still conscious, but when I sit up, a sharp pain and a near audible grinding in my side tell me several ribs are broken.
What hit me
?

For some reason, I am more disturbed by the thing’s almost casual attack. It’s not angry. Not growling or shrieking like the predators I’m used to. It’s business as usual. So when it reaches down and plucks me from the ground, I lose my temper. I hurl insults and foul language that have been unused by my vocabulary, even when I was Ull the hunter.

My flung expletives are as useless as my weapons and skills.

The grip tightens, constricting my lungs.

I can’t die
, I tell myself. This is Tartarus. The afterlife.
I can’t die
.
I can’t die
.

The two massive heads watch me and then speak, each one saying a single word, forming complete sentences by speaking one at a time. “You
can
die in Tartarus,” they say. “Again. Again. And again.”

It’s the first time I sense any kind of emotion from the thing.

Pleasure.

It’s going to enjoy what it’s about to do.

The fist holding me turns to the ground and then stabs forward. With me in its grasp, the giant punches the stone ground. I shriek in pain. The impact breaks several of my bones and causes who knows how many internal injuries. Shock washes over me and the pain subsides some, but my mind begins to slip away.

I feel a breeze over my face as the fist draws up. My stomach lurches as it punches down again. The impact knocks the air from my lungs and my ribcage implodes. Consciousness fades quickly, but before I slip away, I feel my body rise and fall several more times. The monster is punching the ground, with me in its grasp.

Again.

Again.

And again.