The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (73 page)

14

They charge as a mob, each hunter vying for the front spot and the first shot at glory. They might be cooperating in a general sense—to herd and trap us—but when it comes down to the fight, these hunters are battling as individuals, not a team.

I shout at the oncoming horde, “Stop!” But the big half-me, half-warrior gives a battle cry that drowns out my voice. Does he think I could talk these hunters out of the fight? Is their loyalty in question?

When Wright says, “Steady,” to Kat, I know I’ll never get a chance.

The hunters aren’t thinking. They rush through the bottleneck, open targets for Em’s throwing knives and our special ops friends’ rifles. When they close to within a hundred feet, Wright says, “Fire.”

I hear a series of coughing sounds. Three hunters at the front of the group drop clumsily. One of them face plants into a stalagmite rising from the chamber floor and I hear a crunch as his neck, or something in his face, cracks.

I glance at Kat and watch her calmly pick a target and pull the trigger. She repeats the action again and again, firing off a shot about once a second. And the hunters fall just as fast, each one dead. I can tell, by the way they don’t reach out when they fall. They’re like toys that have been switched off. In contrast, Wright fires bursts of gunfire. It’s not exactly wild, but he lacks Kat’s perfect aim. His targets fall wildly, reaching out, spinning and stumbling. They’re not all dying, but they’re stumbling up the hunters behind them.

Em crouches next to Kat and I hear her say, “See if you can get the big one.” She taps her forehead.

Kat nods, adjusts her aim and pulls the trigger. The giant’s head twitches, but he keeps on coming. She fires four more rounds, but the effect is negligible and the reason is obvious. The warrior-me can heal like a Nephilim, but lacks the weak spot on his forehead.

As nearly half the hunters drop under the skillful barrages, the big warrior howls. The undisciplined charge morphs into something else entirely. The smaller clone falls in line behind the warrior and all of the hunters follow suit. They close the distance like a snake, winding their way through the stalagmites and river water in two lines, each protected by the regenerative girth of the big clone.

Wright opens up on the warrior, unleashing a full clip. Purple spots of blood appear on the giant’s body, but they disappear just as quickly. A grin appears on the monster’s face. Like our former masters, this creature enjoys the pain.

“It’s no good,” Wright says, falling back toward the water. Kat ceases fire and pulls back. They are clearly a formidable pair with modern projectile weapons, but all they’ve got for hand-to-hand combat is a pair of knives. The incoming force is armed with an array of weapons that can out-power and outreach the knives.

Em, Kainda and I step forward. It’s our turn.

Kainda turns to me. “Can you slow them? Stumble them? Something to give us the advantage?”

“To affect all of them, I would have to hit us as well,” I say.

“But we’ll be ready for it,” Em says.

Kainda nods. “Do it!”

I turn back to Wright and Kat, who are crouched and aiming, waiting for targets to appear. “Get down!”

I drop to my stomach and assume that my team has done likewise. Then I focus on the air. The breeze is rolling down from above, pulled by gravity. I could send a blast of air up at the group, but that would require a more concerted effort, and I want to be at full energy when they arrive. So I pull the air down, forcing it faster. The howl of the approaching pressure wave fills the cavern.

Wind whips my hair.

And then it hits.

My ears pop and grit scours my exposed skin. The pulse of air is gone as quickly as it came. Hunters shout in surprise and anger.
It worked
, I think, looking up. Hunters are scattered, just twenty feet away, but they’re already picking themselves up. I catch a glimpse of the wiry me with the tufts of red hair. He’s already back on his feet and staring at me, a sick smile on his face like he knows something I don’t.

“Solomon!” Wright shouts. “Above you!”

I look up in time to see the head of an ax descending toward my skull. Without thought, I roll to the side. Sparks fly as the giant metal blade strikes the stone floor where my head had been. The ground beneath me vibrates as the giant lands.
He used the wind
, I realize,
to cover the distance with a jump
. He swings again, sweeping the blade horizontally. I push off the ground, and I’m carried up by a gust of wind. The ax passes by beneath my face, severing a shock of my blond hair.

Before the last strike is complete, he swings with the second ax, bringing it down with the strength to cleave my body in two. I leap back, out of the way.
Is he really trying to kill me
? I wonder. I thought Nephil would want me alive. Then I remember his blood. In theory, he could kill me and bring me back with his blood if he was fast enough, a fact that does little to comfort me. Better to be dead than a vessel for Nephil.

The attack persists without pause, and I know this giant won’t grow tired. I’m forced back as blow after blow narrowly misses me. When my foot strikes water, I know I’ve run out of room. Something has to change, I think, no matter the cost.

I focus. Hard. The giant’s progress is arrested. A manacle of stone rising from the floor binds one of his legs in place. It’s the same technique I used to trap Pan, but only one leg to conserve energy and time.

He swings at me, not knowing what has happened and misses without me needing to dodge. I am out of range. Despite having altered the world in an unnatural way, I’m not exhausted by the effort, but I think that’s thanks to adrenaline. I’m going to feel this later. But for now, it’s my turn to press the attack.

He swings again, grunting with confusion. I leap up, bending Whipsnap back as far as it will go. As the ax blade passes beneath me, I let go of the mace end. The shaft springs straight, adding its force to my strike. The spiked mace strikes the monster’s wrist, shattering it. The result is both disturbing and advantageous. The ax falls away, propelled by the force of the missed strike. But it hurtles straight for Wright. He sees it coming and leaps away, but not before the heavy handle strikes his leg across the shin. I don’t hear the bone break over the warrior-me’s howl of pain and ecstasy, but I can tell it did by the look on Wright’s face.

Wright lands in knee deep water, clutching his leg.

Stupid
, I think at myself.
Stupid!
My powers are as dangerous to my friends as they are to my enemies.

But there is no more time to berate myself. The warrior swings at me again, and I block the strike with Whipsnap’s staff, which flexes. The force of the strike combined with the flexing staff propels me through the air. I land twenty feet away, splashing into the water. A gust of wind picks up around me, bracing me for landing as it usually does, but instead of cushioning my fall, it carves a hole right into the water, and I continue falling through it like it’s not even there. By the time I realize what has happened, I’m thirty feet down.

I cut the wind and water envelopes me.

How did I do that?
I wonder. The air around my body repulsed the water and I fell through it. But can I direct myself through it? I turn toward the surface, focusing on the water around me, pulling trapped air out of crevices and down from the surface. A bubble forms around me and I can breathe.

I push the air up, and it takes me with it.
Faster. Faster!

I break the surface, rising from the water like a missile fired from a submarine. As I cross the tunnel, I see Kainda to the left, swinging her hammer wildly. She’s surrounded. In danger of being overwhelmed.

Em fights on the other side of the tunnel, keeping her enemies at bay with an array of flung knives, but several of the perfectly aimed projectiles are struck from the air before reaching their targets. The spindly clone has drawn the original Whipsnap and blocks the knives with perfect accuracy. Then he turns
my
weapon on Em, using its reach and his long arms to open a straight gash across her lower back. She grunts in pain, but presses her attack. She will fight until the end, which I think might come sooner than later.

I see Kat last, now by Wright’s side. He’s propped up against the wall. Both are firing their weapons at the warrior, who is about to throw his second ax at the pair. Kat might be able to dodge the strike, but Wright is lost.

A gust of wind directs me toward the giant and I announce my presence with a battle cry, drawing his attention and convincing him to keep the ax. He turns to me, but he’s too slow. I plunge the bladed end of Whipsnap into the giant’s eye, shoving it through to his brain.

I draw my blade back out and aim to strike again. With the blade tip just inches from the monster’s other eye, my attack is stopped. I glance back in time to see the end of a whip wrapped around the staff, and then my weapon is yanked from my hands.

One of the hunters has stopped me, and taken my weapon. I leap away, out of the giant’s reach. His eye is already healing, but he acts disoriented by being blind in one eye. “Aim for his eyes,” I say to Kat. “It will slow him down.”

I land and face off against the hunter. For a moment, I’m concerned it’s the dual whip-wielding Olympian I let go and sent to help the escaped prisoners. But I quickly see that it cannot be him. This whip-wielder is a woman. And now she has Whipsnap.

“I don’t want to kill you,” I tell her.

“Nor I you,” she says, pointing the blade end of Whipsnap at my chest. “Yield. Now.”

“You can join us,” I say. “Fight for your brothers and sisters again.”

“I am fighting with them,” she says.

“Not with them.
For
them.”

She scoffs at the idea, and I can see I’m not going to get anywhere. I move in close, preparing to fight her, hand-to-hand, when suddenly her eyes go blank. She drops Whipsnap at my feet and collapses. There’s a knife in her back.

Em
. I turn to thank her, but she’s fully engaged with four hunters and the clone.
Not engaged
, I realized.
Retreating
.
She’s out of knives. She used the last one to help me
. The wiry clone moves in fast, striking Em’s shoulder with the mace end of the original Whipsnap. The blow is hard and sends Em reeling back toward Wright. She clutches her shoulder.

I pick up the new and improved Whipsnap and rush to their aid. I leap over the giant’s back and feel a rush of air as he swings and misses. When I land, Kainda is at my side, hammer at the ready. She’s covered in cuts and bruises, but the hunters that had surrounded her now lie in a heap.

Had this just been hunters, we would have won this fight, but the Nephilim clones are too much in this small space. A mass of shouting voices turns my eyes further up the tunnel. More hunters.

The fight is lost.

Wright echoes my thought, shouting, “Retreat! Get the hell out of here!”

I’m not sure how that’s possible. I look over my shoulder at the water.

The water...

The Nephilim, who can drown, will not follow us there.

“In the water!” I shout. Em and Kainda take defensive stances as they walk backward into the slowly rising waters. Kat wrestles with Wright, trying to get him up. They hobble toward us, but every step is agony for Wright.

“Leave me,” he says, shrugging away from his wife.

Kat growls out her words. “I’m not going to—” A stone flung by a slingshot-wielding hunter strikes her. A direct hit could have killed her, but the glancing blow only knocks her unconscious.

Standing on one leg, Wright thrusts his wife toward me. “Take her! I saw what you can do with the water. Take them all. Now!”