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

The cold disappears.

My senses clear.

As does my vision.

I can feel the world outside. As though it’s a part of me.

Somewhere, far away, an ice shelf the size of Los Angeles breaks free from the continent. The snap is powerful and violent. I start screaming, unable to comprehend first being separated from my mother, and then being connected to something so much larger. The memory ends as Aimee draws me up to her face and smiles.

I snap out of the past and back into the present. Cronus stumbles back and plops back onto his chair. He’s lost. And to be honest, so am I. I’d never gone that far back. My memories begin with Aimee’s face. But in the few seconds before that, when I drew my first breath, I bonded with the continent, and I could feel it. It strengthened me. Made me immune to the cold. And it frightened me. The shock of it must have blocked that memory.

“I…do not understand,” Cronus says. The way he has his head in his hands is so very human that it shocks me. “You have been given a most unusual gift, the likes of which have not been bestowed on a human being in thousands of years. After the great flood, in which many Nephilim perished, the Nephilim were still above ground and active among humans. I stayed in contact with humanity, teaching leaders how to resist the Nephilim corruption, how to defend against attack and even how a boy with a stone could slay the mighty Nephilim. On occasion, heroes would rise up, blessed with abilities and weapons beyond understanding. And over time, the Nephilim were pushed back to the land where all things began. As the land froze, they fled underground, nearer to the gate than they preferred and bound by ice and snow. It is then that my contact with humanity came to a close and I believed the days of heroes had come to an end.”

He opens his arms toward me. “Yet here you are. A human. In Tartarus. Whose life was touched by light at birth, destined to rise up, a hero, against not just the Nephilim, but my old nemesis, Ophion, as well.”

I’m confused and more than a little intimidated by the things he’s suggesting, which includes me being chosen, at the moment of my birth, to do battle with the Nephilim. Did I ever have a chance at a normal life? Or did some higher power move me like a chess piece?

“You are not a pawn,” Cronus says, reading my thoughts.

“Get out of my head!” I shout.

“Your thoughts are strong,” he says. “I can no more shut out your shouted thoughts than I can erase the moon by closing my eyes.”

“You can see the moon? Here?” I ask, suddenly confused.

He shakes his head, no. “I do miss it sometimes.”

“We went there,” I say. “To the moon. People did.”

He grins, confirming my belief that he had two rows of teeth. “I have always marveled at the ingenuity of humanity. Your individual lives are short. Just a blink. But collectively, from time’s start to its completion, humanity is capable of amazing things.”

“Like defeating Nephilim.”

“On occasion.”

“You said I was touched by light at birth,” I say, but never get to form my question, as he seems to know it already.

“You believe, as do the Nephilim, that the strength and abilities granted you at your birth came from the corruption of the Nephilim spirit possessing the continent you call Antarctica.”

“Antarktos,” I whisper, remembering the word Dr. Merrill Clark preferred to use for the continent. Cronus looks at me oddly. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve interrupted him or because of the word I spoke.

“Antarktos,” he says. “I prefer it as well. The Nephilim have many rituals; some are effective and give them access to the supernatural world, and our fathers. Others, like the spilling of their blood into the bowels of Antarktos, are futile efforts to claim the land as their own. There is no spirit of the Nephilim possessing the land. And it certainly did not fill you at the moment of your birth. If it had, you would embrace them, not resist them.”

“But what about the dark thoughts?” I ask. When I was younger, my imagination would sometimes veer in horrible directions. If I stood near a knife, I would imagine picking it up and stabbing it into the chest of whoever stood nearby. The thoughts came fast and always left me disturbed. “You saw them, didn’t you?”

Cronus cracks his knuckles. It sounds like his big bones are actually snapping, but he shows no discomfort. “Humanity contains the potential for both good and evil. As do Titans and Nephilim, though we are more inclined toward the negative thanks to our fathers’ influence. It is the choice you make that defines you, not the conjuring of your imagination. You abhor the dark thoughts, as you do Nephil. The darkness has always sought you out, perhaps more than others, but you have repelled it. That it exists doesn’t make it part of you.”