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

My lips squeeze tight. It can’t be that simple!

“It is that simple,” he says. “You need only accept.”

A strange emotion wells up inside me. I fight it, but cling to it at the same time. The weight lifts. I fall to my knees as pinpricks of pain ripple over my skin. Apparently, in Tartarus you can literally feel the burden being yanked away. And then, it’s gone. I gasp a breath and find the air sweeter. Refreshing.

Full of thanks and relief, I step forward and wrap my arms around Cronus’s leg. If Em could see me now. Solomon, the great Nephilim slayer, hugging a Titan.

Cronus rubs my head with the tip of his finger. “Solomon,” he whispers. “Look again.”

I loosen my grip and step back. After wiping the wetness from my eyes, I look. The hills are no longer barren. Thick green grass, full of flowers, covers the land. The sky has turned blue. The distant lake is shimmering and peaceful, and I have no doubt I could swim its water without fear of melting. But the most startling aspect of the transformed scenery is the tower. It’s no longer made of hard stone. It’s a tree. A massive tree stretching high into the sky. Above the tree is a light source, as bright as the sun, but indistinct.

“What…”

“The secrets of Tartarus are too many to tell,” he says before I can ask. “You have been here long enough.”

“How long?” I ask.

“Three months,” he says.

Three months. It sounds like a long time, but it could have been a hundred years and not felt any different to me. I’m about to ask him if three months Tartarus time is the same as three months surface time, but don’t. I think he knows exactly what I meant when I asked. “You mentioned a weapon.”

“The Jericho Shofar.”

My face screws up involuntarily. He can’t be serious. “A shofar? A ram’s…horn?”

“Like you,” he says, “The Jericho Shofar is…unique. Touched by the light. And in the right hands, a powerful weapon. One you will need.”

“What does it do?” I ask.

To my surprise, Cronus shrugs.

I can’t help but laugh. This is ridiculous. “You don’t even know what it does!”

“It was used by a man named Joshua to—”

“Destroy the walls of Jericho,” I say. “It’s a story from the Old Testament. Joshua destroyed the city and killed everyone inside.”

“Everything inside,” he says. “Jericho, as you know from your time under-ground, was a Nephilim city. The horn was used to defeat them.”

“New Jericho,” I say. He’s right.

“Where can I find the horn?” I ask.

Again, he shrugs. “I only know who to ask about it.”

“Who?”

He grins, this time I sense mischief. “Hades.”

I throw up my hands. “Hades! C’mon. Not only is he Nephilim, but he’s also the god of the underworld. Of hell!”

Cronus shakes his head. “That humanity has survived so long is a miracle. Has your mythology skewed everything? You have lived in the underworld for years, at times quite comfortably. Would you call it hell?”

“Antarktos is the underworld?” I ask. He doesn’t need to answer the question. It’s clearly what he meant. It’s just surprising.

“Hades is one of my oldest friends. The underworld—the land beneath Antarktos—was his domain long before the Nephilim sought refuge there. He was here, in Tartarus, for a time, and he felt his burden lifted. But when the Nephilim left, he went with them.”

“You couldn’t stop him?” I ask.

“I…sent him.”

“You what?”

“I needed someone to watch them, to observe, and to report back on occasion.”

“A spy?”

He waggles a finger in the air. “But…be careful when you approach him. I have not heard from him in some time and fear he may have finally been corrupted.”

“How long is a long time?” I ask.

He says nothing.

It feels strange, bullying an answer out of a Titan, but I need to know. “How…long?”

“Nearly one thousand years.”

Great. “So I find Hades, tell him Cronus says hello, see if he eats me and then say, ‘By the way, do you know where I can find the Jericho Horn?’”

The giant chews on his lips for a moment and then nods. “Precisely.”

“That’s got to be one of the worst plans I’ve ever heard,” I say.

“But…”

Jerk. The mind-reading giant already knows the punch line. He just wants to hear me say it. Fine. “It’s better than most of mine.”

“I thought you would like it.” He raises his hand up toward the massively tall black doors built into a cliff side that rises up into the clouds. “It’s time for you to go.”

“What do I do with the horn once I have it?” I ask. “Am I supposed to kill the Nephilim? Bring them here?”