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

The ground shakes beneath me as the giants close in.

I ignore their approach and focus on the atoms of gold and iron, pushing them apart. The metal resists my unnatural urge. With a shout, I shove them apart, changing the density of the metal to something more closely resembling chocolate syrup.

Confused grunts open my eyes and I see the rings oozing down over the Nephilims’ faces. Their charge comes to an abrupt halt as they paw at the sticky metal now covering their eyes.

“Now!” I say.

Kainda throws her hammer. Em lets her knife fly. And Kat squeezes off three silenced rounds.

All three women find their targets.

All three Nephilim drop, their existences from this world and any other, extinguished forever.

While Em and Kainda rush to retrieve their weapons, a shout of pain catches my attention, mostly because it’s my voice. Cerberus is surrounded. I count six Nephilim warriors lying dead, and there are still forty more closing in around him. But the source of his pain isn’t from one of the warriors, it is from the other two clones.

The bigger of the two has severed one of Cerberus’s arms with an ax. Blood—red blood—flows from the wound. Cerberus falls to one knee, clutching the wound with one hand, still brandishing swords with the other two.

But he is done. He can see it as well as I can.

One of his faces looks up at me. For a moment, I’m lost in his gaze. It’s like looking in a mirror. Then he smiles, gives a faint nod and stands, swinging around in a wide arc. The speed of the attack catches the larger, ax-wielding clone by surprise. His arms are raised high, ready to strike, when the long sword strikes his waist and cleaves him in two.

The bold attack is effective, but flawed. And Cerberus knew this. By turning to face the ax-wielder, he left his back open to attack. And the wiry clone, the one using the original Whipsnap, leaps into the air and drives the spear tip deep into Cerberus’s core. The blade emerges from his chest, right where his heart should be. It’s a killing blow.

Without a sound, Cerberus closes all six eyes and falls to the ground. Once again, I feel an intense sense of loss for something that should terrify me. Cerberus was an abomination—a combination of my stolen genetic material merged with that of ancient Gigantes, which were lab created to begin with, thousands of years before modern labs existed. But his heart was good. His blood, human. And he gave his life, willingly, to save me and all of mankind. Once I got past the strangeness of his appearance and the fact that we share thirteen years of memories, I think we would have been friends. More than friends. Like Luca and Xin, we would have been brothers.

I shake my head, anger welling up again. The body count on my side of this conflict is rising far too quickly. People die in war. I understand that. But I can’t accept the idea that people I’ve never met will die for me.

The wiry clone yanks Whipsnap from Cerberus’s back, unfazed by the fact that it is now coated in red blood, and charges toward me. He’s followed by the warriors, who take to the air.

“To the far wall,” I tell the others, pointing the way. “Go!”

“I won’t leave you,” Kainda says.

“I don’t intend to stay long.”

After just a moment’s hesitation, Kainda acquiesces and runs with the others—straight toward a solid wall of stone.





20



I stand and wait.

The creature’s bare feet slap over the stone floor.

Its oval head bobs with each step. The frizzy red hair growing in splotches all over its body, like on a young feeder, bounces. Muscles beneath its dirty, green skin tense, as it raises the original Whipsnap, ready to strike.

The creature is fast and outpaces the flying Nephilim, giving me about thirty seconds to exact revenge on Cerberus’s behalf.

It strikes, swinging the blade end down toward my head. But it has failed to utilize the power of the flexible staff, and I easily block the blow. Though the clone isn’t a skilled fighter, it stands a good three feet taller than me.

“You are unworthy,” the thing hisses. “I am the best of us.”

I quickly realize that the “us” in “best of us” refers to the six clones and me. His boast serves only to increase my anger.

“You are the least,” I say, and I release the flexed mace the moronic clone hadn’t yet noticed. The metal, spiked ball snaps forward, striking and destroying the thing’s knees. It shrieks in pain, hopping back.

But then it grins, taking pleasure in the pain, like the warriors, and it begins laughing when the wound quickly heals.