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

“You look weak, hunter.” Nephil lowers himself toward the ground. He raises a hand toward Hades. “Though, you are certainly faring much better than our mutual friend.”


I glance at the giant and notice something I’d missed before. He’s not breathing. My eyes dart to his forehead. The dark purple blood drying on his bald head nearly conceals the wound, but I see it—a two inch slit. I look back to Ninnis and find his sword, Strike, hanging from his waist. The first twelve inches of the blade are coated in Hades’s blood.

“No,” I whisper, then louder, “You killed him?”

“He betrayed me,” Nephil says. “Betrayed all of his brothers. His life alone could not repay what was taken.” He grins. “Fortunately, he has so much more to give.”

“He knows,” I whisper to Kainda.

“Yes,” Nephil says, as though he could hear my words as easily as though I’d shouted them. “I know...everything. Not even the mighty Hades can resist the touch of my spirit.”

Despite the fact that Hades was a Nephilim warrior with a reputation for bloodlust, his death causes me great sadness. He had tasted the freedom of Tartarus, yet returned to the underworld with the Nephilim. He gave up a life of peace, living among the enemy, his true intentions concealed by the blood and gore that repulsed him. And now he has paid the cost for that sacrifice, with his life. He has been erased. As though he never was.

But my memory of the giant, and the lesson to be learned by his sacrifice, will live on.

My eyes, wet with tears, look beyond Nephil, to the gates of Tartarus. He was so close. Just a mile away. He could have covered the distance in a minute. Anger replaces my lament.

“I’m going to throw you through those doors,” I say, stalking toward Nephil.

A howling wind fills the chamber, summoned by my unconscious.

“I am the storm,” I tell him.

Thunder rumbles through the cavern.

“Solomon,” Kainda says.

I ignore her. “I am the wind.”

Ninnis’s hair whips wildly as a gust of wind strikes him, but the tendrils hold him still.

“Sol,” Em says, and I detect the warning in her voice.

“I am the—”

“Hey kid!” It’s Kat. “Cut the melodramatic bull crap and turn around!”

I turn.

And face an army.

It’s not just the hunters. Or my two clones. There are at least fifty warriors as well. Some step out from behind stone pillars, others from behind bone mounds, and still more step out of side tunnels all around.

Nephil chuckles. “Like I said, I know everything. I missed you at Hades’s chambers by hours, but was able to track his descent. We found him here, just short of his salvation. Once possessed, the mind gives up its secrets rather quickly. I know about the Jericho shofar, Solomon. I know what it does. How it works.” He grins with a burning hatred that not even Ninnis could achieve. “And I know where it is.”

No... This can’t be. Not even I know where it is. Hades gave me vague hints that I’m supposed to figure out along the way to prevent this very thing from happening.

To my surprise, Nephil moves away from me. We’re surrounded. Outnumbered and out-muscled. Escape might be possible, but not without exacting a toll on my already weary body. He knows that, too, I think. He’s not here to waste time trying to kill me. He’s here to slow me down. Or rather, that’s why this small army is here. Nephil intends to find the shofar first!

“Take them,” he says, before his tendrils, moving like squid legs over the stone floor, carry him away.

“Ninnis!” I shout. “Resist him! Fight!”

“Ninnis is no more,” Nephil says as he drifts away. “His voice has been silent for some time now.”

I’m not sure why I’m reaching out to Ninnis. He’s as black-hearted as the rest of the Nephilim and hunters now closing in around us. But I know he never intended to give himself fully to Nephil. If the man could fight back, return to himself, it could disrupt their plans. But it seems even Ninnis has been lost.

Wright. Hades. Ninnis. Even the stranger slain by Pan. I can feel their deaths adding weight to a newly forming burden. This war needs to end—I turn to face the force encircling us—but not, it seems, without fighting another battle.

“We can’t defeat them,” Kainda says.

“We don’t need to,” I reply. “We need to follow Nephil. Down.”

“Where?” Em asks.

This, I don’t know. Nephil is now out of sight. “We’ll break through the circle and figure it out from the—duck!”

An arrow zips past our heads, carried high by a gust of wind. The shot was intended for Em. It serves as a trigger. The hunters rush in. Five make it close before I can act, but the rest are knocked to the floor when I bring the air above rushing down.

Kainda meets the five attackers first, kicking one in the gut and backhanding another.

“Kain,” Em shouts, lifting her single remaining knife.