The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

Em steps away from the wall, confusion stitching across her forehead. “Which means I didn’t know everything.”


“We’re connected,” I say. “Since I arrived on Antarctica… Luca sees—he can see what I see. Not all the time, but big events. Big emotions. They’re like dreams for him, and they don’t affect him the way they do me. But he knows. I have no doubt he knows we’re coming for him.”

Em looks worried. “Do you think he heard? What I said?”

She’s afraid to say it again; that maybe rescuing Luca is a bad idea. I don’t know how the connection really works, but since I’m not feeling any kind of strong emotion, other than revolt over the smell, I doubt it. “I don’t think so,” I say, and hope it’s true.

Em doesn’t say anything, but I know the matter is settled. What kind of people would we be if we didn’t risk everything to save our six year old brother? He’d be tortured and killed, or worse, broken and trained to hunt and kill us.

I think leaving a child to that kind of fate would turn my blond hair red again and leave a tarnish on my soul that would remain for the rest of my life.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Em asks.

I hold out my hand in response, letting her see it shake. Every step we take closer to the source of the rancid odor, makes it worse. Without the smell, my fear might be manageable. I might be able to put my fate out of my mind for a moment. But the stink is a constant reminder that I’m about to face an army.

On my own.

While Em attempts to rescue Luca.

She takes my hand in hers and squeezes. The shaking abates some and I find my voice. “I’m terrified. I have hidden from this confrontation for a long time and I’m now headed straight toward it. I lost myself once before, and I’m afraid that’s going to happen again. Death would be preferable.”

Her face becomes that of a hunter’s. “If it comes to that…”

She’d kill me. She’d prevent me from becoming Nephil. I have no doubt she would do it, and it gives me comfort. “Thanks.”

“Let’s go,” she says, stepping away.

“If it happens,” I say. “If Nephil takes me, fully takes me, don’t wait. If you do, he’ll be impossible to stop.”

She looks over her shoulder, staring into my eyes. We have an understanding. She won’t wait.

We walk in silence for thirty minutes before coming to the end of our side tunnel. It exits into a larger tunnel where a river flows down, all the way to the massive chamber Behemoth calls home, where the gates of Tartarus await.

As Em starts for the tunnel, I’m suddenly glad I decided to breathe through my nose. A new odor has entered the mix, and it’s hard to separate from the others at first, but once I do, I lunge for Em and snatch her arm, stopping her just a few feet from the small tunnel’s exit. When she looks back at me, I put my index finger to my lip and shush her.

She mouths, “What is it?”

I put my hand atop my head, bending in a way that is instantly recognizable to any hunter as a cresty. Her eyes go wide. She closes her mouth and takes a few quick sniffs through her nose. She winces at the smell, but fights through it until she detects them too.

Somehow knowing it’s been detected, a large cresty lowers its head into the tunnel. It was waiting just outside, ready to snatch up whoever walked out of the tunnel next!

Or was it?

This cresty is acting strangely, just staring at us. The scent of a hunter is enough to trigger a strong fight or flight response in cresties. They either turn tail and run, or hiss and prepare for a fight. This one does neither. It simply looks at us.

Not us, I realize. At me.

I take a step forward.

It takes a step back.

I repeat the action, and the cresty does as well.

It’s giving me a wide berth.

Does it recognize me? Is it— “Grumpy?”

I walk toward the creature, reaching out an open palm. The cresty lowers its head.

“Solomon!” Emilie hisses. “Get back here!”

I ignore her and continue out into the large tunnel, entering the river until I’m knee deep and my hand is just a foot from the dinosaur’s snout. “It is you,” I say, “isn’t it?”

The twenty foot cresty male takes a single step forward, placing its forehead gently under my hand. Emilie’s telltale gasp issues from the tunnel behind me and Grumpy lifts his head and looks at Em.

I turn my back to Grumpy, which once again makes Em gasp, but I trust this creature. I don’t know if it’s because the cresties are so old, predating the Nephilim occupation of Antarctica, that I am in some ways bonded to them as I am to the land, or if it’s merely the fact that I killed Alice and the intelligent dinosaurs feel some kind of obligation, but the connection is real.

Em holds two knives at the ready. They seem like tiny weapons to use against a large carnivore, but she’d have no trouble blinding the creature and then moving in closer for the kill, which is something I really don’t want her to do.

“Em, put the knives away,” I say.

She hesitates.