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

I grin. “The only way possible. I ran like hell.”


My honest admission takes some of the fire out of Kat’s eyes. But she’s still not pleased. “Look, I get why you did it, but you’re kids. You’re not our parents. Or our mentors. If I ask for help, and you are able to give it, you will. Am I understood?”

Never one for tact, Kainda says, “No.”

Kat turns to Wright, “Please let me put her over my knee.”

I’m not sure if Kainda understands the parental spanking reference, but she knows a threat when she hears one. She takes another step forward, muscles tensing.

Wright stands between the women. “Kat, stand down.”

“That an order, Captain?” Kat says, oozing sarcasm.

“Actually,” Wright says, “I really don’t want you to get your head bashed in.”

Kat’s anger turns toward her husband. She doesn’t say anything, but I know what she’s thinking. To her, we’re kids. Amateurs. I might have impressed her with the demonstration of my abilities, but she has yet to see us in battle. It doesn’t matter that in surface years, I am actually her senior. I still have the body of an eighteen year old. But she’s going to have to get past that mental hurdle sooner or later.

So I let the second centipede, which is creeping up behind Kat and Wright, get a little closer. She needs to understand or she will never follow our lead. And down here, in our element, that will get her killed.

“Okay, Captain Know-It-All,” Kat says to me, “How would you handle a giant centipede?”

I look to Em. “Go ahead.”

In the blink of an eye, Em reaches to her waist like a gunslinger, draws a large knife and flings it with a snap of her wrist. The blade slices through the air, just missing Kat, whose eyes have just squinted with refined focus. I see her throwing her own blade toward Em, but I use the wind to knock it from the air, just as it leaves her hand.

Kat is about to rush in and press the attack when she hears the thump of a body hitting the ground behind her. She spins and finds a second massive centipede lying dead at her feet. Em’s blade is buried in the center of its head.

Wright steps back and whispers a curse. He had no idea the creature was behind them.

Kat just looks down at the dead creature. She bends, plucks the knife out of its head and wipes the gore off on her pant leg. Just then, a third, smaller centipede that I hadn’t sensed, launches from a burrow in the tunnel wall. Kat sidesteps the airborne centipede and brings the knife down, impaling its head and driving it down to the stone floor. She holds it there until it stops writhing.

The whole attack and killing takes just seconds.

She looks up at us and grins. “I’m a fast learner.”

Kainda returns the smile. The two women who were ready to beat each other senseless just moments ago have found some common ground—the quick and efficient killing of their enemies. She nudges me. “I like her.”

Wright recovers his dropped knife and sheaths it. “So, what’s next?”

We’ve been slowly and carefully working our way toward the bowels of Mount Olympus. Our goal is to find the Nephilim known as Hades, lord of the Underworld, and friend—possibly former friend—of the Titan known as Cronus. Hades, according to Cronus, knows the location of the Jericho Shofar, which is supposedly one of the horns that brought down the walls of the Biblical city of Jericho. I’m not sure I buy that story, but when a several thousand-year-old Titan trapped in Tartarus tells you about a weapon that can turn the tide of battle against the Nephilim, you at least look into it. And honestly, I don’t have a better plan.

But Olympus has to wait a little while longer. We’ve been so busy dodging waves of hunters scouring the underworld that we haven’t eaten in a long time. We might have to fight our way into and out of the Nephilim citadel, nevermind the possibility that Hades will not be pleased to see us or to hear that Cronus sent us to him. We’re going to need our strength.

I point at the dead Chilopoda. “Now, we eat.”





2



A gentle breeze generated by my connection to the continent swirls around our group, keeping our scent, and the odor of our three kills, contained to this small portion of cave. A hunter could still stumble upon us, but they won’t track us by scent.

Kainda separates five segments of the largest centipede and carves open the tops so that each resembles a bowl full of lumpy plain yogurt. She demonstrates how to scoop out the gelatinous flesh with her fingers and scrapes it off into her mouth before swallowing the dollop whole.

“How does it taste?” Wright asks. He’s trying to sound curious, but the skin around his nose is pinched up in disgust.

“Like dung,” Kainda replies.