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

I rub my fingers together. Raisins.

The memory brings a smile to my face. Then a frown. Will that world ever exist again? My frown deepens with the knowledge that my childhood, despite the teasing and bullies, was a paradise compared to kids in other parts of the world. Compared to what Em and Kainda endured, it would have been something closer to Heaven.

Something bumps my foot and I flinch away. My hand goes instinctively to my waist and I find Whipsnap locked in place on my belt.

“Solomon?” It’s Em. “You’re awake?”

I lift my foot out of the water and push off the ceiling, bringing my body upright. Em is just a few feet away. Her head is tilted up so that her chin is just above the water line. She has a hand jammed into a crack in the ceiling so she doesn’t have to tread water, like I’m doing now.

I try to speak, but water flows into my mouth. I spit it out, kicking to rise out of the water, and I bump my head on the ceiling. First things first, I think, looking for a handhold. I find a knob of stone above me and grip it. I stop kicking and pull myself up, an easy task while my body is ninety-five percent submerged. With my body stabilized, I tilt my head out of the water, looking over my nose at Em. “I’m awake.”

I turn slowly, taking in our surroundings. We’re in an oblong divot in the ceiling. “We’re still in the New Jericho chamber?”

“Yeah,” Em says. “Right above where we stopped. We followed the bubbles up.”

I don’t reply. My eyes have landed on Kat. Her glare looks as angry and savage as any I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen the worst this world has to offer. She blames me for Wright’s death.

So do I.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “About everything.”

She just stares.

“Are you—”

Em puts her hand on my submerged arm and squeezes. The gesture silences me and says, Now, is not the time.

“I’m just sorry,” I finish.

I twist, looking for Kainda and when I don’t see her, I panic.

Em senses my next question and says, “She’s okay. There are bubbles of trapped air all across the ceiling. She went to find the way out in case we had to move you while you were unconscious.”

“How long was I out this time?” I ask.

“Not long,” she says. Hunters don’t usually keep time. It’s pointless in the underworld. But Em knows I prefer modern human time and has made attempts to learn minutes and hours. “Best guess, thirty minutes.”

That’s actually much faster than usual. The few times Tobias, Em’s father, pushed me to my limit, I would sometimes crash for six hours. I once slept for eight and couldn’t be woken. A half hour is a dramatic improvement. Of course, it would be even better if I didn’t topple over like a fainting goat every time I pushed myself. It’s a weakness. I need to overcome it, before it gets someone killed, which was almost the case this time.

“I’m going to look for her,” I say, slipping under water.

Em grabs me and pulls me back up. “You can’t leave. What if you go two separate directions?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her, then slip beneath the surface again. I float down a few feet and close my eyes. I won’t be able to see her anyway. Nor will I hear her, or detect her using any other traditional sense.

I reach out with my thoughts, trying to connect with the water around me. While I don’t feel temperature changes physically, I am connected to the land. I should be able to know whether it is hot or cold.

And then, I do.

It’s not like a voice, a weather report or any other kind of tangible transfer of data. I just know.

It’s cold.

The others must be freezing. I expand my reach, merging my sense of touch with the molecules of water surrounding me. I have been bonded to this continent since the day of my birth. In many ways, it’s an extension of my own body, or perhaps more accurately, I am the focus of its power. Either way, not only can I direct the natural world of the continent, I can also sense things through it. I can feel earthquakes like a muscle spasm or a bird landing on a branch two thousand miles away like an itch on the sole of my foot. I have to clear my mind and focus on exactly what and where I want to feel. The challenge is not to let it all in at once. Letting in an entire continent’s worth of sensory information would likely destroy my mind. I’ve never tried it, but I suspect the result would not be beneficial to my health.

I start my search twenty-five feet out and expand it. I feel the water’s currents, fueled by the High River’s flow. The sharp shapes of New Jericho’s ruins emerge in my mind’s eye. My reach expands quickly now, moving out through the featureless water with ease. I’m sensing nearly two miles out now, looking for anything moving. There are scores of small fish, but nothing the size of a human being.