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

“Worse,” she says, tightening her grip on her hammer.

Krane begins to mumble, speaking Sumerian. I catch just a few words. “Fathers.” “Hear me.” “Come.”

“What’s he doing?” I ask.

Kainda looks about ready to explode. “Speaking to the Fathers.”

“The Fathers?”

“The Nephilim Fathers.”

My mind figures things out. Krane is speaking to demons!

“But why would—”

“I didn’t think they were real,” Kainda says, and I think she’s talking to herself, but then she looks at me. “He is a shifter. A Nephilim who can look human.”

The ramifications of this are vast. I’ve heard in the past that there are Nephilim living out in the world among the human race. I wondered how such a thing could be possible. Here is my answer. Krane the hunter, friend to Em and Kainda, is a Nephilim. I can’t imagine what would have happened if he had been the one who held the knife when I placed it against my throat, instead of Tunis. But things could still get very bad. If he’s trying to speak with the demon fathers, he is no doubt communicating my presence.

A purple glow radiates from the ground in front of Krane and I see a deep pool of purple blood.

“They’re coming,” Kainda says. “We must stop him. Now!”

Kainda charges from the jungle. I follow close behind. And despite our ferocious intent, we both remain silent. No battle cries. No hint of approach. Kainda raises her weapon, preparing to strike Krane’s head. I shift the blade end of Whipsnap back, ready to strike with deadly force. If Krane is a Nephilim, there’s no need for me to hold back.

Five feet from Krane, the wind shifts. He sucks in a surprised breath.

Kainda swings hard.

And misses.

Krane ducks beneath the blow and Kainda’s momentum carries her beyond her target. Krane leaps up and spins around to face me, but he isn’t prepared for where he finds me. I leapt from a rock and am now airborne. On a collision course. Krane jumps back, but Whipsnap’s reach covers the distance. The bladed end arcs through the air, tracing a purple line down Krane’s chest.

We both land and square off. The purple blood at the end of Whipsnap’s blade reveals the cut down Krane’s torso to be an inch deep. Not a mortal wound for a Nephilim, but it’s something. Kainda takes a fighting stance behind Krane. She catches my eye and somehow I understand what she’s thinking. Our next attack will be as one. He cannot defend both sides.

We circle him slowly.

Tension builds as we prepare to attack.

Then I notice something strange. Krane’s wound is not healing. Nephilim warriors heal from physical wounds very quickly. Shifters must be different. Which means that I don’t need to hit this thing in the forehead to kill it. The wound catches my attention again. Not only is it not healing, it seems to be…growing.

“Something’s not right,” I say to Kainda.

“We’re wasting time,” she replies. Her voice is almost a growl.

I glance at the purple blood. The glow is fading. Whatever Krane was doing, we interrupted it. He needs to kill us to continue. So why isn’t he attacking? Nephilim don’t fear hunters. “He’s tricking us,” I say. “Wants us to get closer.”

Krane laughs. His voice morphs from something human to something else. Something horrible. He slaps his hands against his chest, digs his fingers into the wound and takes hold of his flesh.

What the—

With a roar, Krane tears his chest open. Purple blood showers to the ground, forcing Kainda and me to leap back. The blood has healing properties, but in its pure form is so powerful, it can kill. Had we been closer, as I suspect he desired, we would have been coated in the stuff. I cringe, expecting to see an exposed ribcage and slippery organs, but what I see is far worse.

Krane’s skin seems to explode away from him, falling like sheets of wet toilet paper. And his body…it grows. From within. His new skin is dark red and covered with scales. He grows taller. His already large muscles expand. It’s as though a much larger creature had been compressed and was barely contained within a human shaped shell. He’s now ten feet tall—just like the Nephilim skeleton Merrill uncovered by the wall. His face splits down the middle. The flesh slides away, teeth and all. An angular Nephilim face is revealed—yellow eyes, double rows of teeth and horn-like knobs on its forehead. In fact, he looks very devil-like.

“Lucifer?” I guess.