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

Ninnis watched Nephil’s progress through the underground, as he led a troop of hunters through the subterranean realm, searching for some sign of the boy’s passing. He listened to the plans being made, the reports being delivered and the battle plans that would bring destruction, first to the humans who had dared set foot on the Nephilim continent, and then to the rest of the world.

I could have found him already, Ninnis thought to himself, careful not to let the boast reach Nephil’s consciousness. He had seen several clues already. A scuffmark on a cavern floor. The faint scent of the boy’s passing several days previous. He knew Solomon better than any other hunter. Most of the skills the boy employed had been taught to him by Ninnis. But Ninnis could not help Nephil. Offering advice would reveal he wasn’t as defeated as he seemed. So he waited.

And he watched.

Nephil, in the body of Ninnis, stood in a wide cavern, deep underground. Five hunters stood by his side. One of the men crouched by a shallow river that ran through the center of the cave. He sniffed the air. “They’ve been through here,” he said.

Nephil smelled the air. Ninnis detected Solomon’s scent, but Nephil knew nothing of tracking. “When?”

Days ago, Ninnis thought.

Perhaps distracted by the god in their midst, the man said, “They’re just hours ahead of us.”

“Very good,” Nephil said.

The hunter brimmed with pride.

A lie, Ninnis realized. The hunter sought only to elevate himself in the eyes of Nephil. So he exaggerated his claim, not realizing that he was merely sealing his own fate. The hunters who had failed to track down Solomon earlier had all been slain. This group is not long for the world, either, Ninnis thought, unless...

“Which way?” Nephil asked.

All five hunters scoured the cavern, searching for tracks—there wouldn’t be any—and smelling the air for a scent, which they found.

“Downstream,” one of them pronounced. The others quickly agreed.

Dead men all, Ninnis thought.

Solomon had simply sent some article of clothing downstream, scoured himself clean in the river and then headed the opposite direction from the easily followed scent trail. It was a simple tactic. Had Nephil sent these hunters in pursuit of Solomon on their own, they would have seen through the ruse. But with lord Nephil in their midst, they were all but useless.

As Nephil looked around the cavern, Ninnis noted the glitter of glowing crystals, their light blue coloration and the rounded stalactites hanging from the ceiling. He knew this place. The river ran for hundreds of miles, casually snaking its way through the subterranean realm and ending at the great feeder graveyard where the bones of countless meals were discarded. As Solomon’s scent trail neared the graveyard, the overpowering stench of death would conceal it. The trail would end there, far away from the boy.

As Nephil followed the hunters downstream, Ninnis turned his thoughts in the other direction. If Solomon wasn’t heading downstream, he was heading upstream. Ninnis followed the path in his mind.

Olympus, he thought. Solomon is headed to Olympus. He couldn’t conceive of a reason why, but if the boy could be caught within those ancient halls, surrounded by the likes of Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo and the worst of them, Ares, there would be no escape.

But Ninnis would not reveal himself or what he knew. He was a patient man. He believed he could wait for his vengeance. But he was wrong. Every step away from the boy fueled his outrage. When he could no longer contain his vehement disapproval for these hunters, Ninnis settled on a course of action, or rather, inaction.

It’s a false trail, he thought calmly. The phrase was simple and lacked any trace of his true emotion. He thought it again and again, repeating it like a mantra until it filled the small portion of his mind to which he had retreated. He let it seep out slowly with the hope Nephil would notice the phrase and treat it as an original thought, rather than as Ninnis’s inner voice. If Nephil could just speak the words, these hunters would see the truth.

It’s a false trail.

It’s a false trail.

It’s a false trail.




“It’s a false trail,” Nephil said, seven days and nearly two hundred miles later. In the minutes that followed his realization, Nephil tore all five hunters apart and turned around.





1



“Get down!” I shout, but the warning comes too late. A ten-foot long albino centipede lunges from a hole in the cave wall, its mandibles flexed open and ready to snap shut on Kat’s face.

But Kat, aka Katherine Ferrell, is far from easy prey. In the short time I’ve known her, I learned that in the world before the cataclysm that rotated the Earth’s crust, repositioned Antarctica to the equator and killed several billion people, Kat was an assassin. She is a skilled fighter, but is most dangerous from a distance, with a sniper rifle. In the modern world, she is a killer without match, but underground without a rifle and being tackled by an oversized monster unknown to her, she is out of her element.