The Last Hunter - Lament (Book 4 of the Antarktos Saga) (11 page)

“I know where it
was
,” he says. “If it is still there?” He shrugs. “But not even I could retrieve it now. It is beyond my reach.”

“Tell me,” I say. “Where is it?”

“To the deepest realms you must go,” he says. “Beyond the dark gates.”

He’s speaking of the gates to Tartarus, but I thought that was the lowest point of the underworld.

“In the roost Edinnu, you will find the great horn.”

I clear my throat. “Sorry. That sounds poetic. It’s nice. Really. But do you think you could be a little clearer?”

“If you can resist a direct encounter with a seeker,” he says.

I can’t. We both know it.

“Then the less you know the better,” he says. “You will not forget the things I’ve told you. They will remain with you until the end of your days, whether that is today or a hundred years. You know where to start. Do not think about your path until you’ve arrived at the beginning. In this way you will protect the path from those that would seek out the shofar to destroy it.”

“They know about the shofar?” I ask.

He nods. “But not who protects it.”

“If I’m caught,” I start, worried that my knowledge of Hades could compromise his covert activities.

He rises from the blood bath, standing to his full height. Like me, he wears minimal leathers, though his are the size of ship sails. “I,” he says, “will not be here, or anywhere my brothers will follow.”

For a moment, I’m lost, but then I figure it out. “You’re going back to Tartarus?”

He nods slowly. “I have lived with the stench of blood and filth, death and torture for as long as this old heart can bear. If I do not leave for the release of Tartarus, I would rather return this body to the dust from which it came and be no more.”

I have never once seen sadness in the eyes of a Nephilim, but there is no disguising the emotion as it grips Hades. He shakes the blood from his arms and steps out of the pool.

The wind carries me back, giving him room to move. It’s a subtle movement, but it drains my energy more quickly. I glance back at the large doorway one hundred feet away. Will I have enough energy to cover the distance in the air?

“How is my old friend?” he asks.

The question is so casual that it catches me off guard.

“Cronus,” he says. “Is he well?”

“He was concerned for you,” I say. “Said it had been a thousand years.”

Hades confirms the time with a nod. “A necessary break as more of my kind, and yours, populated the underworld. And Eurymedon?”

My muscles tense at the memory of the winged, two-faced Gigantes that pummeled me in Tartarus. Cronus explained that the Gigantes, like Nephilim and Titans, are born from half-demon blood, but they are not conceived and born to human mothers. They are created. Like Xin. Like Luca. But while Luca and Xin were created to mimic me, the Gigantes were created for one purpose. Destruction. Eurymedon dwarfs even the tallest of Nephilim. “I can’t say I’m fond of the Gigantes.”

He laughs and it sounds genuine this time. “Perhaps you will change your mind if given another chance?”

“I’ll pass,” I say. I sense the conversation drawing to a close, but there is one last question nagging at me. And next to the shofar’s location, it is the second most important question I have. “Hades, what does it do? The shofar.”

“You know the story?” he asks.

“Joshua, an Israelite general and forty thousand men marched on Jericho...a Nephilim city. They marched around the city once a day for six days while seven priests blew into these shofars. On the seventh day, they marched around the city seven times, all the while blowing their horns. Then when the people shouted, the walls of Jericho fell.”

“The walls of Jericho,” Hades says thoughtfully. He closes his eyes, drifting. “The walls...”

“You were there,” I say. “Weren’t you?”

“The walls that fell at Jericho were more than mere physical walls. The shofar’s blast shook the city walls, but they decimated the walls protecting the blackened hearts of the Nephilim. Some power in the sound strips the darkness away and exposes us to the truth of what we are, how we live and who we fight against. The pain is unbearable to a Nephilim. Four thousand Nephilim warriors were slaughtered that day. More than enough to kill forty thousand men.”

He’s right about that. A ten to one ratio isn’t a challenge for a Nephilim warrior especially when the Israelites were armed with Bronze Age swords.

“But when Joshua’s army stormed the walls and entered the city, they found four thousand warriors bowed down and weeping.
Weeping
! Not one of them fought back when the swords pierced their heads. They craved death. All were slain.”

“Except for you,” I note.

“On the sixth day, I defiantly stood atop the wall when the horns sounded. I was the first to feel the shofar’s effect. When night came, I fled, and in the morning, I watched the stronghold’s destruction from a distance. But it was the shofar’s lasting effect that prepared my heart for Tartarus and the mercy granted there. If not for the shofar, I would have returned to the world with a dark heart, like the others. And if not for the shofar, I would not have returned at all.

“There were seven in the beginning. But they were sought out and destroyed one by one. I volunteered to lead the seventh and final raid. When the shofar was found, I slew my brothers, hid the weapon in the depths and claimed failure. Ambush. Then, as now, I bathed in the blood of my brothers and my intentions were never questioned. And here I have remained. Until now.”

He steps past me, heading for the door to the front room. I follow him, floating over the spilled blood, but my energy quickly wanes and my altitude drops.

“Hades,” I say, fearing I will fall into the blood and die.

He looks back at me from the doorway where he stands over clean floor. “You have a strength within you that has been granted to fewer men than I have fingers. You can make it on your own.”

Just two feet from the floor, I grit my teeth and push. I’m carried faster, but my vision fades in response. I’m not going to make it! A wellspring of fear pumps adrenaline into my body. My vision fades and for a moment, a jolt of energy carries me up and away. I’m crossing the distance now, but not in a protective bubble of air. I’ve simply managed to shoot myself as though from a cannon and now I’m sailing, limp, across the chamber.

My eyes close. I feel myself falling again. I think I should brace for impact, but have no strength to do so.

Just when I think I’m going to strike the floor, I’m caught.

Hades.

A grin slips onto my face as he places me on the ground.

“What makes you smile, boy?” the giant asks.

“You passed my test, too.”

“What test?”

“You didn’t let me die.”

“Nor will I,” he says. “Watch for Cerberus in the days to come. He will protect you if need be.”

Cerberus
? I think, but don’t ask. I feel the hard stone floor beneath me now. “You’re leaving?” I ask, drifting off to sleep.

“I will prepare the way for you,” he says. “Ave atque vale, Solomon.”

I hear the large door open, and then close. Hades has left. The last of my energy wanes and I drift off to sleep, surrounded by blood, bodies, skulls and hope.

12

I dream of home. Of the house I grew up in. I’m in the front yard. Small details leap out at me. The tall tree that arcs over the street is heavy with the red buds of early spring. Its thick bark peels off in great chunks, perfect for building action figure forts. A slab of sidewalk is lifted up by the tree’s roots, perfect for jumping bikes. The puddles in the driveway are the same familiar oblong shapes, filled by a recent rainstorm and full of wriggling worms drawn out by the moisture. After the puddle evaporates, they’ll die and dry out—food for the ants.

I breathe deeply and catch several distinct scents: salty ocean air, the residue of the red berries growing on the evergreen shrubs, melted crayons and cut grass. I’m sitting on the stairs to the front door. There are eight of them. Chipping black paint curls up from the cast iron railings. I peel off a flake and snap it between my fingers until all that remains is dust.

Everything about this place feels familiar.

Safe.

I’m suddenly gripped by sadness, as deep and profound as any I have felt.

My old friend is dead
. The thought pulls tears from my eyes and as the saline slides down my cheeks, a snowflake drifts down and settles on my knee. It’s joined by a second. And a third. And now the sky is full of white. A blizzard.

My first blizzard was in nineteen seventy-eight. I was four, but I remember watching the storm in amazement, my breath fogging the windows as the snow slowly grew taller than me and then taller than my father. This storm is worse. In minutes, I’m buried up to my waist. The neighborhood around me is reduced to a solid sheet of white, as though erased from the page.

My old friend is dead
, I think again.

The cold shakes my body, just a shiver at first, but then violently.

I don’t want to leave
!

I want to be home
!

I want this life
!

“Solomon,” Kainda says, shaking me awake.

I blink my eyes, focusing on her face, and for a moment, I’m not happy to see her. The faint memory of ocean air is destroyed by the strong scent of Nephilim blood. I remember my childhood home perfectly. But at times, it is a curse. My dreams can recreate the past so realistically that I feel like I’ve just been there. The memory of that place clutches my heart. Tears, real this time, drip down my cheeks.

“Solomon,” Kainda says with uncommon softness. “What’s wrong? Who died?”

“W—what?” I ask. Did the others somehow experience my dream?

“You spoke of someone dying. An old friend.”

I don’t feel like explaining. “Just a dream,” I say, wiping away the tears with my bare arm. “Wasn’t even a person.”

With the last pangs of regret fading along with the dream, I sit up. Em and Kat aren’t far away. They’re helping Wright get to his feet. Kainda offers me her hand. I take it and stand.

“What happened?” Wright says, rubbing his head. “Feels like I got hit with a hammer.”

“Me, too,” Kat says.

I can tell by Em’s squinted eyes that she feels the same, though she’d never admit it, at least not in front of other hunters. Kainda probably has a headache, too, but she’s so stubborn and tough that she’s managed to erase any sign of pain.

“How about you?” Kainda asks me. “Is your head—”

I smile at her continued concern.

“What?” she says defensively.

My smile widens.

She grunts and says, “Shut-up.”

“My head is fine, by the way,” I say before stretching. “Slept like a baby.”