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

“Are my friends okay?” I ask.

He rolls his eyes at my concern. “They will survive.”

Thinking about the others reminds me of the corpses scattered around the room. I look down and see a hunter below me. He’s covered in purple blood now. I point to him. “And them?”

“They are very dead,” he says, still smiling.

“Why are they dead?” I ask.

“In service to you,” he says.

“Me? I didn’t ask for this.” I look at the human hunter. “I don’t kill people.”

“But they would have killed you had I not intervened,” he explains. “Not all hunters are loyal to your cause. You haven’t eluded capture on your own, boy.”

This surprises me almost as much as the fact that I’m flying, which is actually starting to take its toll. I’m slowly, but steadily growing tired. “You’ve been protecting me.”

“Not me,” he says. “My servant.”

The stench of Nephilim blood turns my stomach. “And the blood? Where does it come from?”

“You don’t care where it comes from. It is Nephilim blood. If I slew my fellow warriors, gatherers, seekers, breeders or feeders, you would be indifferent to its origins. Nephilim are deserving of death, of being erased.”

I agree with him, but saying so to a Nephilim who’s supposed to help me doesn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, I chew my lips nervously, which doesn’t exactly exude confidence, either.

“Do not worry, boy. I would agree with you. Our kind...was not meant to be. We are...unnatural.” His eyes look down at the floor and I think I see a flash of shame cross his face, but then it’s gone and his gaze turns back to me. “What you really want to know is why. Why do I bathe in the blood of my brothers? I have heard you have an intellect worthy of your namesake. You tell me. Why do I bathe in blood?”

I’m not sure if this is another test, but I decide to treat the riddle like it is, just in case. I look at the pool of purple blood. There are dark, almost black, stains around the edge. Dried blood. So this is not the first time he has done this. My eyes fall on the blade he used to shave his head, and likely his whole body. He is hairless. He looks like a Nephilim, but the blood red telltale sign of his corruption has been removed.

Why?

The answer hits me like a cannonball to the gut and I blurt out, “You’re not corrupt.”

He opens his arms and smiles, this time lacking any kind of sinister intention. “And yet my dark heart is feared more than most.”

“You shave to hide your hair.”

“As yellow as your own,” he says.

“You bathe in blood to mask your scent.”

“And to further my mad reputation. I make no secret of it when I pluck a lesser Nephilim from the halls above and drain its blood into my pool. As a result, I have very few visitors and have been left alone to watch, and wait...for you.”

“Why didn’t you help me before?” I ask.

“Even the finest ore must be melted in the hottest flames before it can be forged into a great weapon. You needed to...suffer. You needed to break. Without these things, you could not have been remade.”

When I was ten, my uncle Dan lost his job. I heard my mom talking to my father one night. They thought I was sleeping, but I was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, listening to every word. Uncle Dan had some kind of mental breakdown, but not from losing the job. It was the job itself that created a wellspring of depression and anxiety in the man who wanted to be a painter. He didn’t want to sell insurance. But he had bills to pay, and mouths to feed and a mortgage. All the things that trap people into thinking they are stuck, like mice cowering in front of a cardboard cutout of a cat despite the exit to freedom being just beyond it—my father’s analogy, not mine. And finally, his despair overwhelmed him.

Broke him.

And my parents, who were not the kind of people to be trapped by circum-stances of their own creation, weren’t worried about Uncle Dan. They were excited for him.

“It’s too bad he had to get so low to realize his life was his to shape,” my father said. “But I’m glad he did.”

“Rebirth is never painless,” Mom replied.

I couldn’t see them from my position on the hallway stairs, but they shared a quiet laugh. In my mind’s eye, I could see them smiling, and I smiled with them. I heard kissing after that and went to bed, but the next day we went to visit Uncle Dan. He was a different man. A happy man. A remade man.

The idea that I, like Uncle Dan, had to be brought to my lowest point so I could reach my highest is horrible.

But true.

That doesn’t make it okay, though. Uncle Dan chose to sell insurance. He chose to buy a big house. And nice cars. I was kidnapped. Taken against my will. I’m not reaping the results of my own poor choices. I’m adapting to an abusive world that would have killed me a thousand times over. What did Uncle Dan have to worry about? Bad credit?

Uncle Dan would have made a horrible hunter.

“I didn’t choose this,” I complain.