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

I’m so lost in my despair for Wright that I forget where I am, who I’m with and the fact that all of us need to breathe. Like a Nephilim, we’ll drown in the water. A sharp elbow in the side reminds me.

I close my eyes and focus. The first and only time I tried this I only had to transport myself thirty feet. This time, there are four of us and the opposite side, which could also be completely flooded, is miles away. I address the most immediate concern first, drawing air from the stone walls of the flooded High River tunnel. A bubble forms around our upper bodies, providing air to breath. Pulling the air toward us is tiring, but keeping it in place is far easier.

Em and Kainda are momentarily stunned by what’s happening. Neither knew I could do such a thing. That makes three of us, I think.

“What should we do?” Em asks after catching her breath. I can tell that she’s uncomfortable about leaving Wright behind. As am I. And it takes all of my will power not to race back up to save him. What keeps me in place is that, one, he’s likely already dead, and two, his dying wish was that I complete the mission. He understood better than all of us that this fight, this war, isn’t about any one person, but about all people. If one of us dies, so be it. If all of us have to die to save the world, then that’s the cost.

Wright was a good man. I could have learned a lot from him. So I’m not going to ignore his last lesson. “We need to finish the mission.” It’s what Wright wanted, but I can’t help feel like I’m the one condemning him.

“But how?” Em asks. “We can’t just stay here. And we can’t go back up.”

“We move forward,” Kainda says.

Blood drips from a wound on her lip. I want to wipe it away, but my hands are locked in place, holding Whipsnap so the others can cling to it like a rollercoaster-ride safety bar.

Kainda looks at me, oblivious to the blood on her face. “You can do it.”

Her confidence in the wake of our defeat is kind, but I’m not feeling it. She must sense this because she quickly changes tactics. “Push forward, Sol. You owe it to Wright. To Em. To me.” She nods to Kat. “To her.”

Guilt is a strong motivator for some people, but it kind of just sucks my strength. The sphere of air closes in around us as I lose focus.

“Solomon,” Kainda says, her voice growing harsh. “Look at me.”

I look all around her before finally settling on her eyes, burning with something I can’t quite place. The strangeness of the look keeps my attention on her. “You have become someone I thought you would never be, and you have made me someone I believed was impossible, but I cannot love a man who refuses to finish a fight. Win or lose this war, you will take this to the end, or you will lose me.”

She’s just spoken forty-nine words, but all I heard was something like, “blah blah love blah blah.” The rest of it slowly sinks in, leaving me confused. Is she talking about the possibility of loving me? Is she saying she loves me now? This is not only a huge step for me—a girl, or woman as the case may be, has never professed love for me before. That it’s Kainda, who I figured would never use the word, makes it even more powerful.

It centers me.

Gives me strength.

“Hold on,” I say. “Tight.”

When I’m sure that everyone is secure, I expand the bubble a bit, rotate us so we’re facing downhill, and push deeper into the flooded river. I move slowly at first, using most of my energy to weave through the stalagmites and stalactites turning the tunnel into an obstacle course. Twenty minutes later, we leave the tunnel behind, entering the massive chamber containing the ruins of New Jericho.

The city is below us, but out of sight, concealed by the liquid gloom. My first time here, I was just a boy, and I was chased away by the Nephilim, Ull, who would later become my master. My first return was after Ull’s death at my hands, and I discovered a statue of the beast, erected in his honor. On my third visit, the chamber was flooded, and though I did not see the city again, I felt its dark presence below. But this visit is different. I’m not fleeing the underworld. I’m heading deeper. On a mission. And the ghosts of the past, including this dark place and the memories it holds, can’t distract me from it.

I accelerate slowly, cutting through the water like a hot needle through wax. The bubble is hard to maintain while moving, but the air around us reduces the friction of the water on our bodies, creating the perfect environment for cavitation, which allows us to move very fast—best guess, we’re at fifty-two knots, or roughly sixty miles per hour.

We travel in silence, each lost in our own personal train of thought. Em is thinking of Luca. I can’t read minds, but I’ve seen that worried look on her face before, and every time I’ve asked, her mind was on my younger clone. Kainda, on the other hand, is likely replaying our last battle in her head, over and over, imagining ways it could have turned out differently. Her clenched jaw says as much. Me? I’m not thinking about anything.