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

But they have never seen anything like me.

I smile at them and say, “I am Solomon Ull Vincent, the first and only child born on Antarctica.” I stand up feeling a sense of purpose like never before. I’m framed on either side by Em and Kainda. “I am the last hunter.”

I look the man in the eyes. “Will you help me?”





Epilogue



Lieutenant Ninnis stared up at the sky. The vibrant blue looked brighter than he’d ever seen it. Birds swooped into his field of view, calling loudly, hovering on the breeze. He recognized them as seagulls, the rats of the sea. An image flashed through his mind. A boat. A voyage.

He shook his head and it was gone. A vision.

Pain filled his chest as he took a deep breath. But through the pain, he smelled salt. The ocean.

Flash.

A wedding. A beach.

Ninnis tried to scream, but only managed a hiss of air. His body, which had sailed miles through the air, had been ruined when he fell from the sky and collided with the solid, rocky coast. A little further and he would have landed at sea, where he would have likely drowned. A little more inland and he would have been hacked to pieces by the jungle trees.

But he was fortunate. His body had landed on the stony shore. Everything inside him had been obliterated. His bones. His organs. Even his mind. He’d become nothing more than a loose sack of flesh. But even now, it stitched itself back together. The pain was nearly unbearable, but he was accustomed to it.

What he could not bear were the snapshots of someone else’s life replaying in his thoughts as his brain physically reformed.

Flash.

A woman. Her smile.

“Ahhh!” Ninnis found his voice as his neck came together. “What did you do to me, Solomon?”

Speaking the boy’s name made it even worse. The pup had beaten him. Again. Even with the power granted him by the body and spirit of Nephil. Solomon, and his gift, had somehow been stronger.

The admission sent a wave of sickness through Ninnis’s body. If he could have moved, he would have curled into a fetal position. But he was stuck in place, staring up at the sky. His hearing returned and brought the crashing of waves.

Flash!

The woman’s face again. Her lips. A kiss.

Something broken inside Ninnis stitched back together, but it had nothing to do with physical repair. It was something broken long before the injuries he received today, and with the repair, came a name.

“Caroline!”

Ninnis shuddered and convulsed.

The name made him weak.

It stole his will.

His skin roiled and pulsed.

Ninnis screamed again, this time in horror.

Darkness emerged from his body, lifting him off the ground. It spun around him, forcing his body back together far quicker than the Nephilim blood could. And when he was hale again, the darkness returned, filling his body.

Consuming his mind.

Taking control.

Lieutenant Ninnis was no more.

Now, there was only Nephil.

Lord of the Nephilim.

“Solomon,” the demon spoke. “You’re alive.”

Motion above drew his eyes back up. His brethren filled the sky like locusts, flying out to destroy the world of men. But it was not yet time.

Nephil raised Ninnis’s hand to the sky and shouted, “My brothers!” His voice boomed out over the ocean. Powerful. Unnatural. But even those too far away to hear his voice, heard him in their thoughts. “Return,” he told them. “Our fight here is not yet over. The boy still lives.”

Nephil turned his eyes to the jungle behind him and the continent beyond it.

“Go! Find him! Bring him to me!”





Prologue



Lieutenant Ninnis watched his life from the inside out. He could sense the world around him, but he could no more interact with it than if he were trapped in Tartarus. His body and its actions, no longer belonged to him.

They belonged to Nephil, lord of the Nephilim. In his arrogance, Ninnis thought he could control the dark spirit that now possessed him, and for a time, he did. His strength and will proved powerful enough not only to contain the darkness, but also to direct it. And for the first time in thousands of years, since the Sons of God lay with human women and bore them immortal—but soulless—half-human, half-demon children, the hordes of Nephil were led by a human being.