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

A slight shift of brush by the shore sends both of us into action. We separate quickly. Whipsnap springs out as I pull the weapon from my belt. Kainda quickly recovers her hammer from beneath the water. We stand side by side and face…


Em. She’s smiling and looks a little uncomfortable.

Busted.

“Umm,” she says. “I just wanted to tell you. There’s some food. If you want it.”

Kainda and I just stand there. Looking at her. No one knows what to say. Hunters don’t kiss. They don’t have feelings for each other. But that’s changing. Em loves me like a brother. Tobias loved her like a father. Those things aren’t supposed to happen, either.

“I’ll just…” Em takes a step back into the jungle. “We’ll talk later.”

Em disappears into the jungle and we’re alone again. I slowly turn to Kainda. She’s dripping wet from recovering her hammer, and she’s standing there, ready for a fight that isn’t going to come. She meets my gaze and I know I look equally silly because a glimmer of a smile creeps onto her face. That small smile is like a punch in the gut, but instead of wincing, I laugh.

Kainda’s smile widens. It’s not much, and it seems to confuse her, or at least the emotions accompanying it does, but it’s something I never thought I’d see. I trudge back to shore and take a seat on a fallen tree. Kainda follows and I force my eyes to the ground so I don’t get caught gawking. I have seen a number of hunters in my time underground and have never once noticed how little clothing we actually wear. And now I’m having trouble not noticing.

Being a teenager is so confusing.

Kainda takes a seat next to me. For several minutes, we watch the sun set. The light still stings my eyes some—midday is nearly unbearable without sunglasses—but the diffused light of the falling sun hits Kainda’s high cheekbones in such a way that a little discomfort is worthwhile.

“So…” she eventually says, “you’re friends with seals and dinosaurs?”

I’m about to ask how she knows about the cresties, when I remember she was there when the male cresty I named Grumpy allowed me to place my hand on his head. The small pack of predators later aided in her escape with Em.

“I don’t understand it, either.”

“What about the other things you can do?” she asks. “The wind. The storms.”

“I can’t do those things anymore,” I say.

“I noticed,” she says. “You wouldn’t have had any trouble defeating the others.”

That she excludes herself from those who would have been easy to defeat, by saying “the others,” makes me smile. Her confidence, I’m realizing, is one of the things I like best about her.

I begin explaining about how my abilities faded when I entered Tartarus. This brings up all sorts of questions about that strange land, how I got out and how I managed to find the lake. From there, we work our way back. My birth. My life before. When Ninnis took me. How he broke me. And how my memory came back to me. We laugh a little when I recall the things I said to her as Ull, and she seems pleased that some of my insults were made by me pretending to be Ull.

Sometime during the conversation, our hands find each other. The contact is like a static spark. We both draw back quickly and share an awkward smile. Sure, we kissed, and holding hands is kind of a step backward, but the kiss was…passionate. Holding hands is somehow more intimate. Less guarded. It implies a stronger bond that cannot be forged so quickly, or so it would seem, through a kiss.

After an awkward moment of silence, I ask her about her life. The story is short and details scarce. But that’s okay. I can fill in the blanks. She would have been broken at a young age. Molded really. She didn’t need to forget her previous life. The underground realm was all she ever knew. Pain. Blood. Violence. She was steeped in it from birth. That she can sit here now, holding my hand, is nothing short of a miracle.

Her story shifts quickly to current events. The freed hunters, what they are calling the freemen, have been slowly organizing. Word is spreading, but recruitment is dangerous. If the invitee is not receptive, violence is guaranteed. They had been planning to reach out to the outside world, but every encounter with mankind has ended in violence, too. The men and women who have come to Antarktos, have come to fight.

“Not all of them,” I say.

She looks at me, unbelieving. The sun is now down, but the light from the half moon and my now natural night vision make Kainda easy to see.

“I have friends,” I say. “From my life before. They’re here now. And I can’t picture either of them wanting to hurt anyone.”

“You saw them?” she asks.

“No.” The answer discourages me. But I know they’re here. I dig into my pack and pull out the bandanna. “This has Merrill’s scent,” I say.

Kainda takes the bandanna and smells it. Anyone from the outside world would think she was crazy, but it’s normal behavior for a hunter. In the darkness of the underworld, many things are identified by scent long before sight.