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

Kainda draws her hammer, while kneeing a man’s chin, breaking his jaw. With a glance, she sees the hunter approaching Em. She twists the hammer in her hand and Em throws the knife—at Kainda.

The action not only confuses me, but the attacking hunter as well. Before either of us understands what’s happening, the knife deflects off the hammer’s stone head and punctures the hunter’s heart. He drops to the floor with a look of surprise frozen on his face.

“Geez,” Kat says, equally impressed. “Take this,” she says to Em, tossing her a knife. “You’ll do better with it than I will.”

Kat, who’s rifle is missing, draws her silenced pistol and starts dropping the hunters I’ve knocked to the floor. I hadn’t intended to kill the men and women, just immobilize them, but I don’t say anything, despite my growing discomfort.

This is war.

People die.

But they don’t have to.

A woman screams, not in pain, but in fright. A female hunter lies on the stone floor. Kainda stands above her, hammer raised.

“Stop!” I shout.

To my surprise, everyone listens.

My instinct is to give some kind of speech, expose the error of their ways, turn them to our side, but there isn’t time for that. The hunters are closing in.

I back away from the two hunters still standing, and the woman cringing on the ground next to two dead bodies. Em, Kainda and Kat know enough to stay close to me. I focus on the air, moving it slowly. I’ve done this trick before, to fuel and starve a fire in this very chamber, but this time, I’m starving the hunters.

As one, they fall to the ground choking and gasping. Their faces turn red. Desperation fills their eyes. I have removed the oxygen from the air surrounding them, and just when their bodies are about to give in to death, I return it. Some fall unconscious, some wheeze, but all are incapacitated. Their lives are spared.

The warriors break into a jog. They’ll close the distance in seconds.

I try the same trick. It doesn’t work. They’re either holding their breath or know that killing me, or at least knocking me out, will undo the effect.

“What do we do?” Em asks.

Axes, swords, maces and spears rise up as the gods of old close in. They’re dressed for battle, wearing the fine armor of their various tribes: Egyptian, Sumerian, Norse, Olympian, Aztec and more. Wings open wide, making their presence even more massive and blocking any and all escape routes. From beneath the wings come long scorpion tails, twitching and eager to sting.

I try to push them back with a wind, but only manage to slow them down and drain my energy. Their united front is too large, and there are no natural katabatic winds to call to my aid in the underground.

We back away until we’re standing at the feet of Hades. He seemed so confident. But here he is. Dead. Maybe he was wrong? Maybe everything in this screwed up world is just wrong? And all of this—all of it—is just humanity and inhumanity, acting out in some base instinctual way, like Japanese fighting fish who fight to the death for no other reason than the instincts that drive them.

A shadow falls over us.

I look up.

A gargantuan body descends.

I move to defend, but notice the thing’s trajectory and pause. It lands between us and the warriors. The thing is twenty feet tall and concealed beneath a cloak, perfectly camouflaged to look like the plain gray stone that composes much of the underworld. When the cloak billows upon landing, I see that the inside is also camouflaged, but brown. We could walk right by it and never know it was there. The cloak is unfastened and falls to the floor behind the massive bare feet, revealing the pale-skinned legs and torso. Like Hades, its head, what little of it can be seen as it hunches forward, has been shaved bald. Its arms stretch out, all four of them, each wielding a tremendous curved sword.

For a moment, I think this must be some Indian god Nephilim. Shiva or something. But then it turns its face toward me, and then another, and another. Each of them looks just like me.

My sixth clone is Cerberus, a combination of me and a Gigantes.

Speaking one word at a time in three slightly different voices, Cerberus says, “Go. Solomon. Now!”





19



I don’t move. I can’t. The realization that my sixth clone is a three-faced, four-armed giant is staggering enough, but the faces and voices, are recognizable versions of myself. The tone. The emotion. The concern. This creature might be different from me in almost every physical way, but I sense its core personality is very similar to mine. With the exception of Luca, this monster might be the clone most similar to me.