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

Rivulets of blood trickle down my body as I’m cut, punctured and bludgeoned.

One of my thoughtless strikes comes close to reaching Ninnis’s head, and the monster flails back, just out of reach, but in doing so loses its grip on the ceiling. Nephil falls momentarily before a single tendril shoots up and finds purchase. I take stock of the monster. Several of the black arms are shorter than they had been. I’ve whittled down his reach. He looks tired, perhaps limited by Ninnis’s old body, though Ninnis handled it just fine.

His moment of weakness fills me with a kind of sinister anger. I could hack off the one limb and let him fall. How well could he fight while Ninnis’s body was broken? I could rush him, right now, and plunge my sword into his chest, killing them both. There are a hundred different ways I could end this fight, and maybe even the war, right here and now.

No one else needs to get hurt.

Or killed.

No other families need to be broken.

Children can stay with their parents.

The human race can recover.

And what would be the cost? The corruption of some subterranean oasis that managed to stay untouched by the Nephilim? It’s a small price to pay for the salvation of mankind.

I know this for a fact.

But I don’t believe it.

Why! I shout internally, watching Nephil recover. I’m frozen. Unable to deliver the final blow. What is it about this place that I can’t—

My subconscious does the work my conscious is unwilling to do, slipping the puzzle pieces gently together, revealing the image that I hadn’t yet considered. When the answer is revealed, I whisper, “It can’t be.”

But then I look around and realize it is.

The unspoiled landscape.

The kindly lion and the fearless deer.

The strange being. He referred to me as a “son of man,” the same language used by angels to describe men in the Bible. He called himself a Kerubim, pronouncing it Keh-roo-bim, but modern man has changed the sound and spelling to Cherubim, and picture them as naked little babies with wings. But that’s not factual. I search my encyclopedic mind for answers and find them quickly in the Hebrew Torah, collectively known as the Pentateuch—what has become the first five books of the Bible’s Old Testament. Cherubim, or Kerubim, were one of the highest orders of angels. They appeared as multi-winged, glowing beings that emanated power. Ezekiel saw them in a vision. The Ark of the Covenant held two Cherubim on its cover, laden in gold, symbols of the very power of God. The last mention of a Cherubim in the Pentateuch is the one that sucker punches me.

After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

The tree.

The being...the angel...stopped us short of the tree. He was protecting it.

The full force of this revelation stuns me. My guard falters. The sword lowers.

I look at the fiery blade in my hand. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. An angel’s weapon.

Edinnu is Eden!

I look down at the jungle, staring through the mist that has grown still. Could this really be the Garden of Eden? Is this the birthplace of mankind? Is such a thing even possible? I realize, of course, that it is. I’d believe just about anything now. I used to be totally science minded, applying scientific theory to every new discovery, but I have seen, touched and battled things that make it impossible for me to not believe in a spiritual realm beyond my understanding.

That is why the animals here are kind. They aren’t just uncorrupted by the Nephilim, they aren’t corrupted at all. And that is why I can’t kill Nephil. The story tells of the first man and woman corrupting themselves and the outside world, and as a result, all of mankind, but it doesn’t mention the garden itself being corrupted. If I killed Nephil in this place, I would bring human and Nephilim corruption to a garden in which, the story says, God himself would walk. The knowledge disarms me.

And as a result, death nearly comes to the garden anyway.

Nephil lunges at me.

I hadn’t even noticed his slow recovery.

Three tentacles flail out to my right, and I’m forced to keep them at bay. The fiery blade slices through each one of them, but the move was a sacrifice. A distraction. The real attack came in close, the weapon clutched in Ninnis’s hand. Strike. The blade slips through my chest, between two ribs and puncture’s my lung. I feel the organ deflate inside me. It’s a pain unlike anything I have felt before, not so much because it hurts—I have endured unspeakable pain—but because some instinctual part of my mind knows I am dead.