The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (99 page)

18

I’m vaguely aware that I’m moving. I see a kind of red haze, but I’m not sure I’m actually seeing it. I sense that some part of me is able to see, and act, but the real me—the Solomon me—feels small and trapped.

Distant voices reach me. The words are hard to make out and the voices impossible to identify. I feel like I know them, but can’t think of names or faces to go with them.

“Look out!”

A shout of pain.

“Here, here! Now!”

I sense a stab of pain, but its more like a memory.

“Down!”

Grunting follows. Then a shout, loud and angry.

More pain. A surge of energy.

“Kainda!”

Kainda? Is that a name?

“Hold on!”

“I’m coming!”

“Hurry!”

“Ready!”

A wave of dizziness spins my fragile consciousness.

Then weightlessness.

“Oh no,” someone says.

“I didn’t think he could do that.”

There’s a
whump
, and a surge of energy.

“Solomon!”

A second surge of energy follows.

“Solomon!” The voice is screaming. Desperate. “Solomon, please st—”

Whump!

SOLOMON!

Everything stops.

This voice is stronger than the others. It’s unfiltered by the haze.

“Who are you?” I say aloud.

Stop
, says the voice.
See!

“I can’t.”

Then we are lost.

“We?”

You are connected to Antarktos, and it to you.

I know this. I think.

The earth is your flesh. The atmosphere, your lungs. The water, your blood. You can shape them. Bend them. Control them.

“Who are you?”

Listen! Hear me. As the continent is, so is your body. They are joined. Control your body as you control the wind. Push this evil out. Burn it from your blood. Push it from your pores. Expel it!

“How?” I ask.

Open your eyes.

“They are open,” I say. “I can’t see.”

Then
choose
to see! Will it!

“Can you help me?”

I...must save myself. For another time. But...I will try.

The real world around me flickers into view for just a second, but it’s enough for me to get a glimpse of my surroundings, and in the brief moment, I understand everything I’m seeing.

Kainda, Kat and Mira are all lying on the ground, unconscious and bleeding from various wounds. A portion of the surrounding jungle has been bent or broken, all of it leaning away from me. I did this. I hurt my friends. I—

The red haze returns.

I sense my memory of what I’ve just seen grow distant.

No!
I shout inwardly.

The voice said to burn it out. Earlier, Em said I was hot. I remember that now. I had a fever. But Kat gave me some painkillers and the fever was reduced, which allowed the berserker infection to run rampant through my body.

But I
can
stop it.

The voice believed it. I can control it like I do the elements.

Burn
, I think, and for the first time in a long time, I start to feel heat. But it’s not on the outside, it’s inside. I feel the sting working its way through my body. Itchy pinpricks cover my skin as I start to sweat. Chills wrack my body, and I fall to my knees, feeling the impact keenly. I can feel my body again, though I haven’t quite taken control of it.

A surge of anger pushes back as though the infection has a will of its own. And it very well might. Created by the Nephilim, this virus might have a supernatural element I don’t understand. My perfect memory replays a scene from
The Exorcist
, a movie I watched during a sleepover at Justin’s house. It’s one of the things in my life I most wish I could forget, especially now that I fear I’ve got some kind of demon living in me.

But I’ve already faced that and won
, I tell myself. I expelled the spirit of Nephil. I can push this thing from my body.

I double my efforts, cringing into a ball on the ground, clenching my eyes shut and focusing my attention inward, to my core. I don’t need my white blood cells to attack the virus, or whatever this is. I can do it myself. It takes intense focus to identify the plague, but once I identify it, I’m able to locate it in my blood, in my organs, in my bones.

With a shout of exertion, I expel the madness from my body. The effort nearly sinks me back into unconsciousness, but I sense the plague returning. I didn’t find it all! It’s spreading again!

I scream from the effort this time, but it clings to me. It’s hooked into me and will come back no matter how hard I push. All the burning and purging in the world can’t make it go away.

I’ve lost
, I think.

We’re lost
.

“I’m sorry,” someone says.

I turn toward the voice as the madness reclaims my body once more. In the moment before my vision fades I catch a glimpse of Em. She looks...sad, but determined.

Then I see the knife in her hand.

She snaps her wrist forward, throwing the knife.

I feel a jolt.

My head turns down.

The knife is in my chest, buried to the hilt.

19

Pain explodes from my chest like my heart is the catalyst for an atom bomb. I can’t scream. In fact, my senses are so immediately overwhelmed that I just fall, crumpling to my side.

But I haven’t lost consciousness.

And the madness has been turned back.

I suppose it has no power in death.

But I’m not dead.

I manage to turn my eyes down and look at the blade. Yeah, it’s there. An expert shot. The sideways blade slipped between my ribs and punctured my heart. I’m sure of it because I can’t feel it beating.

Any second now, my mind will fade, deprived of oxygen.

But it doesn’t.

Instead, my body convulses. The pain in my chest flares with each electric jolt, before I’m slammed back on the ground.

Through the shaking and pain, and the tears in my eyes, I see Em stand above me. She lifts a foot and places it on my chest, holding me down. “I’m sorry,” she says again, sounding as wounded as I feel.

I want to tell her it’s okay; that I understand. She had to do it or I would have killed them all, been lost to the madness and eventually captured by Nephil who would use me against the whole planet. Killing me and preventing all that makes sense. The human race stands a far better chance of defeating the Nephilim if I am not under their control. The odds are still not good, but last time Nephil controlled my body, just for a few seconds, he managed to kill billions of people.

She reaches down and takes the knife handle in her hand. I try to tell her to leave it, not because I want to die, but because I know it’s going to hurt. A lot.
Take it out when I’m dead!

She tugs.

I feel the metal sliding out of my body. The sting is intense, and it’s followed by a wicked itch and a radiating pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

That’s not true.

I have felt this before...

As the blade comes up into view, a slick of red blood slips down the polished blade toward the tip. But there is something wrong with the blood near the hilt. It’s tinged...purple.

My eyes widen with the realization that Em just stabbed me in the heart with a knife laced with Nephilim blood. For a moment, it feels like a vile invasion, but then I remember the blood’s ability to heal the human body when used in low doses. I used Nephilim blood to save Kainda’s life not long ago. Sure, stabbing me in the heart was a bit extreme, but she knew it wouldn’t kill me. She just needed to stop me from killing the others, which it seems I was on a path to do.

I clench my eyes against the pain wracking my body.
It will end soon
, I tell myself.
You’ll be okay. You’ll live.

But will the madness return?

I try to get a sense of my mind. I feel like myself. I can remember everything. Literally, everything. I’m in control. I can’t even feel it at the fringe of my mind. The Nephilim blood destroyed the plague. Odd that the blood of something so vile could be the cure for a madness created by a Nephilim. In fact, I recognize the blade as Mira’s. It’s the knife she used to slash Ares’s knee. Ares was the source of the madness, and the cure for it. Part of me wishes he was still alive to hear this.

“Solomon,” Em says. I can’t see her. My eyes are still shut, but her voice is above me.

I’m about to reply when an intense energy blooms in my chest and spreads through my body.

“Something is happening,” I say quickly. “Move back!”

An intense pressure covers my body. Wind tugs at my hair. Then a sound like thunder explodes all around me.

As quickly as it began, it stops.

I’m not sure what just happened, but a steady wind is circling me, and I can no longer feel the ground. I open my eyes slowly, prepared to find myself airborne, but I’m not remotely ready for what I find.

“Whoa!” I say, panicking and dropping a good fifty feet before catching myself and leveling out. I’m at least two miles above the ground. And I covered the distance in seconds.
That boom
, I think.
I
broke the sound barrier!

I look down and see nothing but jungle, but there is a little black hole in the green canopy directly beneath me. That must be where I came from, but it looks like I kind of exploded out of the trees. I feel no pain on my body. At all. In fact, I’ve never felt better.

I’m tempted to enjoy this moment, but then I remember my friends on the ground. Kainda, Mira and Kat were hurt, maybe badly. And Em just stabbed her brother in the chest and had him take off like a missile. That’s probably not easy to deal with. I’m about to head down, but a shift of movement pulls my eyes to the west.

The Nephilim army.

They’re like a black stain. From this height, I can see a trail of destruction behind them winding across the continent. They’re at least fifteen miles off, so the behemoths are the only two of the bunch I can make out individually. They look like two giant egg-shaped Weeble toys I had when I was little, bobbing back and forth with each enormous step.

Knowing where the Nephilim are heading, I turn east. The strip of blue water marks the horizon. This is the Southern Ocean, though it’s no longer in the South, so maybe the Equatorial Ocean is a better name. I spot a large clearing and what looks like a tiny man-made scar. The FOB. It looks miniscule compared to the incoming enemy force. But there are more shapes out in the water. A lot of them.

The base is roughly twenty miles off.

The Nephilim are just thirty-five miles from the base
, I think. I look up to the sun and note its position in the sky. Still morning.

The Nephilim don’t grow tired, and the hunters and berserkers they command have been trained to endure long stretches without sleeping. They’ll march through the night.

“They’ll be there tomorrow,” I whisper to myself. We need to move.

I look down, preparing to descend when I spot an aberration sliding over the jungle canopy. Shadows. I trace the angle of the sun up and find the source of the shadows.

Warriors. Three of them.

My exit from the jungle has attracted attention. They haven’t spotted me, but they’re headed for the hole in the trees.

And my friends.

I cut the wind and drop through the sky. I angle my body downwards, urging myself to reach terminal velocity.

The Nephilim slip into the jungle and disappear, cloaked in shadow.

Terminal velocity isn’t going to be fast enough.

I summon the wind.
Faster! FASTER!

Pressure builds in front of me and I push against it. A white bloom suddenly forms, and then it ruptures with a thunderous
boom
. Free from the sound barrier, I plummet downward. My violent acceleration has created a shockwave that tears a fresh hole in the canopy. I surge the final two hundred feet through the trees to the ground in a fraction of a second.

In that brief moment, I think
I’m going to smear myself on the jungle floor
, but then I remember the lesson learned from the strange voice, which I now think might have been Luca, though it sounded older or wiser. The voice taught me that connection between the continent and my body goes both ways, and in the same way I control the elements of this continent, I can control my body. There are all sorts of possibilities this opens up, the first of them being, I should be able to stick this landing like Mary Lou Retton.

The explosive force of my landing outdoes the sonic boom by at least twice. Which is to say, it’s loud. And it’s created a genuine two-foot deep, ten-foot wide crater around my body, which is uninjured by the dramatic arrival. I think I probably made far too much noise, but the effect on the three Nephilim is almost comical.

They turn around slowly, wings folded down, tails tucked between their legs and mouths slightly agape with expressions that say something like, “What the…?” and I’m pretty sure that’s a phrase never uttered by a Nephilim before, even if just in facial expression form.

Beyond them I see Em and Kainda on their feet. They look weary and wounded, but they have their weapons at the ready. Kat is helping Mira to her feet. But right now, none of them are moving either. They’re locked in place, staring at me.

I find Kainda’s eyes and grin, doing that silent human communication thing my mother and I perfected. I tell her I’m sorry with my eyebrows. She forgives me with a blink. Then I tell her, “Watch this,” with a grin, and I step out of the crater.