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

“Strange that she would end up here, too,” he says.

“She’s here because of me.” I start walking again, eyes to the ground. “She was my final test. I took her.”

“Oh,” he says, tagging along.

And I’m going to get her back, I determine. Even if I have to put my quest for the Jericho Shofar on hold for a day. I can’t let Aimee stay with the Nephilim any longer. Not when there is someplace else for her to be.

“If she’s with the Norse, she might not be too far away,” he says.

I stop again. “What? Why?”

“The strongest of the warrior tribes are gathering at Olympus.”

“Olympus?”

“You saw the mountain range beyond the lake?” he asks.

In my dreams and in reality, I think, but I answer only, “Yes.”

“The tallest mountain, straight out from the lake, is Mount Olympus.”

Not only am I close to my goal of finding Hades, who must be at Olympus, but Aimee could also be nearby. Perhaps I can visit with Hades and escape with Aimee all at once?

“I am Adoni,” he says. “I have been a teacher to the aboriginal gods of Australia for nearly fifty surface years, though it felt more like ten to me. My children are now adults. My wife might be dead.”

When I don’t reply, he sees the sadness creeping into my face. “You have experienced the same.”

“My three years have been more than twenty on the surface. I was just a boy when they took me.”

“You are still just a boy,” Adoni says. “The muscles and beard and status might fool most, but I can see through it.”

I smile at him. Why do the Nephilim take such kind people to be their teachers? Is it because they think they’re less likely to cause problems? Or try to escape? Adoni seems like he would have been capable of making a run for it. “You fight well for a teacher,” I say.

“My father taught me how to hunt—animals—in the bush,” Adoni says. “I suspect the Nephilim didn’t know this about me when they brought me here.”

“Did you ever try to escape?”

He gives a shrug. “No.”

“But—”

My question is an obvious one and he answers before I can finish. “I did more good by staying. When you’ve been among the Nephilim as long as I have, you are afforded a bit of freedom.”

I remember finding Aimee alone in the Norse library, and nod.

“Thanks to that freedom, I was able to facilitate the escape of—”

“You helped Tobias escape with Em and Luca!”

He smiles and bows his head humbly. “Among others, some of whom are with us now. And when I heard about what you had done, I knew it was finally time for me to leave. Emilie found me not too long after that. I was sad to hear of Tobias’s passing, but he managed to pass on some of his skill to Emilie, and to you.”

“So you and Tobias were…friends?” I ask.

“Not at first. Like all hunters, he terrified me. And when he came to me for help, I turned him down. Twice. I thought it a ruse. A trap. It wasn’t until I met young Luca that I decided to help them escape. The boy’s innocence won me over. As yours does now. In fact…” He takes my arm and turns me toward him. He looks at my face, and then in my eyes. With a gasp he says, “It’s true. Luca is a clone.”

“A clone?” I ask.

“A duplicate,” Adoni says. “A clone is what modern humans call an organism that is a genetic copy of the original. Luca is your clone, and unlike the others, like Xin, he is a perfect clone.”

“People can do this?” I ask, feeling unsettled that the human race is working on something that feels decidedly Nephilim.

“According to my studies, it is possible. The first cloned animal was a sheep. They’ve done other animals now. Pets even. Cloning people is illegal, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.” He sees that this bothers me. “People are still people,” he says. “The world hasn’t changed that much in twenty years.”

He might be right. People have always pushed science to questionable limits. But I don’t think many people would like the idea of cloning after nearly being gutted by a half-thinker version of themselves with razor blades for fingers. Not that all of my clones are bad. “You mentioned Xin. Is he alive? Is he here?”

“Alive, yes,” Adoni says. “Here, no. Despite Luca’s insistence that Xin be trusted, the hunters, Kainda included, couldn’t be convinced. Only Emilie and I believed the young man. That may change now that you are here.”

“I’m not sure how much will change,” I say.

“Now that you’re here,” Adoni says. “Everything will change.”