The Last Hunter - Descent (Book 1 of the Antarktos Saga) (30 page)

Everything moves slowly. The crown is still sailing away, flipping end over end like a tossed coin. Ull’s forehead is exposed. The loose skin pulses with his heartbeat. I can hear it. Thum. Thum. Thum. I focus on it. Even as I fall, I will the wind toward it.

The arrow passes over me in a blur, moving as fast as it did from Ull’s bow. But this time, the projectile finds its target. I hear a tearing sound followed by a
slurp
. The impact knocks the giant off his feet. He falls beneath me.

I land on Ull’s still chest. The arrow is buried in his forehead. And he doesn’t move. The giant is dead.

The Nephilim
can
be killed.

I stand up, looking down at my former master and realize I am free. Not from pursuit, or threat of life, slavery or future breaking. But free of the monster I called my master. A part of me loved this thing, the way an abused person loves an abuser, but my eyes have been opened.

“I am free,” I say, and a single set of ears hears me.

I turn and face Ninnis, who has just reached the top of the staircase. He’s soaking wet and has a funny look on his face. I realize it’s because I’m standing on the chest of a dead Nephilim. “They can be killed,” I say to him.

His face is grim. Unreadable. He shakes his head, and then runs away.

Though this is out of character for Ninnis, I know not to waste time questioning it. My retreat takes me in an opposite direction, and I find the path wonderfully free of pursuers.

* * *

I squeeze through a maze of passageways, covering my tracks as best I can. I travel in water whenever possible to erase my scent. I move for days without stopping for food.

Despite my hunger, every step away from Asgard fills me with a hopeful energy. Even in the darkness, there can be light. My mind returns to that day in the car. We’re on the way to Logan airport. Mira is sitting next to me. The photo of us is in my hand. And
Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Light Shine In)
by Gail & Rosemary Clooney is playing on the oldies station. Mira knows it and sings along.

Mommy told me something a little girl should know

It's all about the Devil and I've learned to hate him so

She says he causes trouble when you let him in the room

He will never ever leave you if your heart is filled with gloom

So, let the sun shine in, face it with a grin

Smilers never lose and frowners never win

So, let the sun shine in, face it with a grin

Open up your heart and let the sun shine in

The memory is infectious and the lyrics reflect how I feel. I play it back in my head, and I’m soon singing along quietly. I’m whistling the song, feeling hopeful about the future and eventually rescuing Aimee, but when I reach my destination, Ninnis is waiting for me.

“Nice tune,” he says, leaning against the tunnel wall. He looks calm, collected and refreshed.

“How did you find me?” I ask, my hand resting on Whipsnap.

“If you’re wondering how I tracked you, I didn’t. You covered your scent nicely. But I knew where you were going.”

I squint at him, asking
how
without saying a word.

“Where is it?” he asks. “Where did you hide it?”

I stay silent. I answer only to myself now.

“I knew you couldn’t destroy it.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about it?”

He smiles. “We all keep trinkets from the topside. You were doing so well I didn’t see the harm in it.”

“Whoops,” I say.

“Was it the photo?” he asks. “Is that what brought your memories back? They
are
back?”

I nod. There’s no reason to lie about that. “Not the photo.”

I shrug. “I think it was Nephil’s blood.” Now
this
I need to lie about. To protect Aimee. “Must have made my mind strong enough to undo the breaking.”

He ponders this before offering his own shrug. “You won’t come back?”

“What about Ull?”

“Without a witness they won’t know if you killed him or if you had help, which it certainly appears you did, though you and I both know that’s not true.”

“You weren’t witness?” I ask.

“A witness who also happened to be your trainer. When you killed Ull you put my reputation in jeopardy. I would be strung up, filleted alive and fed to a breeder if they knew the truth.”

“What do they know?”

“That something strange happened when you were bonded with the blood of Nephil. That you disappeared shortly after. And that someone, most likely another warrior, killed Ull.”

Which means
, I think,
with the exception of Ninnis, my escape has gone perfectly
. “When I stood up after taking the blood. Before the storm. What was everyone looking at?”

“You haven’t seen it?”

I shake my head. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

He motions to his head. “Your hair. There’s a streak in it.”

A streak? I’m fairly certain the coloring of my hair over time represented the progress of my corruption. I was fairly certain the change was permanent. “What color?” I ask.

“Blond,” he says.

I want to smile. To leap with joy. Maybe everything that’s been done to me can be undone or repaired? Maybe one day I’ll see the sky and not need to squint. Or I’ll share a birthday meal with friends. Or any number of things I took for granted before. But in my heart, I know those things are a long way off. “What happens now?”

He shifts away from the wall, casually holding his hands behind his back. “All of the hunters have been sent out to search for you. They will track you down, subdue you if necessary, and bring you back.”

“But that’s not why you’re here,” I say, looking back down the tunnel. “You came alone.”

He grins. “I’m here to break you. Again. And bring back Ull, the hunter.”

When he pulls his hand out from behind his back, I give a yank on Whipsnap. My weapon cracks open, but is immediately pulled from my hand. Ninnis knew I would use Whipsnap and snared it with a line, yanking it away. He tosses my weapon behind him.

For a moment, I think he’s going to say something again. But he lets out a wail as savage as anything I’ve ever heard in the underworld or above it, and charges. His arms are outstretched. His fingers curve into hooks.

I fall back under him, unprepared for such ferocity. Ull would have been, but I’m not him anymore.

When I hit the stone floor, Ninnis has my arms pinned back. His long, thick, and sharpened fingernails are digging into my skin.

This is how it starts.

The breaking.

And I can feel a part of me—the part that flinches under Justin’s punches or weeps when my mother laughs at me—shirking back. But I’m more than that now. I have been broken and repaired. I have all the skills of a Nephilim hunter. I am bonded with the continent of Antarctica on a supernatural level. I am the killer of warriors and have consumed the blood of Nephil, lord of the Nephilim.

“AND YOU THINK
YOU
CAN BREAK ME?”

The voice is unnatural.

I’m not even sure it was mine. But it came out of my mouth and roared like thunder.

A wind kicks up from the tunnel below and races toward us. Ninnis has let go of me and sat up. He’s shaking with fear.

Then an invisible force strikes him and carries him up the steeply graded tunnel. I pick up Whipsnap and give chase, but I lose sight of him when he’s launched from the tunnel like a human cannonball.

I enter the night and find a clear sky full of stars and a full moon. It’s bright enough to make me squint. Ninnis lies still, three hundred feet below. I go to him and crouch down. His chest rises and falls. He is alive.

I could kill him now. It would be so easy.

Without realizing I’m doing it, I place Whipsnap’s blade against his throat. I see myself cutting him open, watching his blood gush into the white snow.

And I remember the voice.

My voice, that was not mine.

The bloodlust reveals that I have more than just Ull inside me now. There is a new voice.

Nephil
.

Some part of him is there. Fighting for control.

And I won’t give it. Not to either of them.

In all my time underground, I have killed to eat. I have killed in self-defense. Insects. Dinosaurs. Feeders. Dozens of other stranger creatures. Including Nephilim. But I have never killed a human being.

And I’m not going to start now. Not by the direct action of running him through, nor by the indirect action of leaving him to freeze to death.

I take Ninnis by the hand and drag him back to the tunnel entrance. This will be the second time I’ve spared his life. I doubt he will honor my mercy by returning the favor, but to save myself, I need to save him too.

I leave him sitting by the entrance and scrawl three words into the stone wall across from him. It will be the first thing he sees when he wakes up. I’m not sure the power of the words will affect him as they did me, but I can hope.

Further down the tunnel, I stop by a crack in the wall. It takes me thirty seconds to work the Polaroid photo out of the wall with Whipsnap’s blade tip. I risked everything for this photo, heading to familiar territory when I should have been headed deep. But when I look at the image and see my face, so young and so happy, and next to me is Mira—the sight of her breaks my heart—I feel the voices in me fall silent. This photo is my anchor to myself and to everything I’m fighting for.

But right now, I can’t fight. I’m not even sure how to fight what is coming. Despite all I can do, I am just one person alone against a supernatural army. So I run. As fast and as deep as I dare, I run.

38

Forty days later, I stop. Though I’m not sure it was really forty days, by underground standards or topside standards. I haven’t slept much. But I’ve traveled far and deep and have found a place I think the Nephilim, and the hunters will at least think twice about before following me.

It’s one of the largest caverns I’ve seen. The ceiling is hundreds of feet up but not concealed in darkness. Instead, it’s covered in the luminescent crystals that lined the pit. So many, in fact, that I need a few minutes to adjust to the light.

I stand at the edge of a waterfall, looking down. Below me is a lake, not as vast as the one at New Jericho, but big enough. And the light shines on the water just right, so I can see the animals living in the water. There are fish, lots of them, but none are large enough to eat me. There are no seals here, either. If there were, I imagine the cavern’s primary denizen and topper of the food chain—a pack of cresties led by a thirty-foot matriarch—would have eaten them long ago.