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

The next swing comes close. I leap up, moving to the highest reach of the fifty-foot wall, just above the newest coat of purple blood.

“Cronus,” he grumbles. A sneer reveals his sharp teeth. “Cronus!”

His shout precedes a fresh attack. I barely escape the sickle blade this time, but I’m out of places to run. Most of the clean walls are close enough to Hades that he could reach out and pluck me from the wall. All that’s left—I look up—is the ceiling. A gust of wind carries me up and I jam my hand into a crack, flexing it tight so that my fingers hold me in place like a rock climber’s cam.

“Stop!” I shout. “Please! I don’t want to fight you!”

“Fight me?” he says with a laugh. “You have yet to even draw your weapon. I’m afraid that the whispers about you are exaggerated. You are a coward!”

My temper flares, but I don’t make a move. Instead, I attack with my words, “It would be easier to kill you than talk to you.”

“Then come, little one, show me.” He places the sickle on the floor next to the pool. “Kill me. Free me from this wretched world.”

I hang there, tempted to grant his wish. I have no qualms about killing Nephilim. But I need to know where the Jericho shofar is hidden. And I’ll never find out if he’s dead. My indecision lasts just a moment, but it is too long for the impatient giant.

“I thought not,” he says, then brings both hands up out of the pool and flings a thick spray of the stuff up at the ceiling.

There is no dodging it this time. My fingers release and I drop. Wind kicks up around me as I fall, pulling my hair in wild directions. I catch the strong scent of Nephilim blood, but the wind keeps its stinging effects from my body.

As I descend, my emotions take over. I have let Hades assault me too many times without a response. I pull Whipsnap free as my fall is arrested and point the bladed tip at the monster. “Do you know how my master, Ull was killed?” I shout. “Slain by his own arrow! Doing the same thing to you now would be a simple thing. I have seen your kind killed by simple throwing knives. I have seen the bits and pieces of your brothers strewn across the jungle floor. You cannot win this war.”

He stares at me for a moment, frozen in place. And then, he laughs.

His last mistake. Few things set me off like being laughed at.

“There you are,” he says. “You entered here as a boy. Fragile and afraid. I could smell it on you. But here you are now, Solomon, the man, killer of demons, who descended into Tartarus and rose from the depths three months later.”

I’m poised to throw Whipsnap through his forehead, but stop. His voice still sounds horrible, and ragged, but there was a tinge of something else hidden in there. Respect?

“Why did you attack me?” I ask, sensing the battle has come to an end.

“I needed to know.”

“Know what?” I ask.

“If you were capable.”

Get to the point, I think. “Capable of what?”

“Of becoming more.”

I’m about to ask, “more what,” but this time he continues without prodding.

“More...than a man. More than you understand. More than even you believe is possible.”

Of course, he’s being vague again, so all the talking in the world isn’t going to help. “What are you talking about?” I ask.

He points a finger at me. Purple blood trickles from the long fingernail. “Tell me, last hunter, did you know you could fly?”





10



If I’d been asked, I would have said I’m standing on the floor. Not because I feel the stone beneath my feet, but because it’s the only thing that makes sense. I jumped from the ceiling, and without thought, instinctually placed my feet on dry patches of floor. That makes sense. But what I see when I look down...that’s something else.

The floor is ten feet below me. And there are no dry patches. Had I landed in the blood, I’d have likely died. At least I got something right; my instincts had taken over. But not in a way I would have predicted. The wind that normally carries me higher when I leap, cushions a fall or shields me from projectiles, now whips around my body, holding me aloft. I can feel its strength pulling at my limbs. My hair whips about. And my scant leather clothing is being pulled in a way that makes me fear I will soon be flying and naked.

“I can fly,” I say dumbly, as much to myself as to Hades.

The giant settles back in his blood bath, as though lounging in a hot tub.

I focus on the wind currently being generated by instinct and test out this new found trick. I move higher and then closer to Hades. “So you weren’t trying to kill me?”

“You could have died at any time,” he says.

“Then you were trying to kill me?”

“Yes,” he says with a sick grin. “But I was hoping you would survive.”

I don’t know why I’m trying to understand the methods of a Nephilim, especially one with the reputation of Hades, but I understand now that it was some kind of test. Pass or fail. Live or die. There was no in between. And I don’t think Hades intended for me to fly, only to see how I would escape his trap.