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

My heart still beats. My blood still carries oxygen to my brain. But the punctured lung will fill with blood, and I will die. Slowly. Like a fish out of water, I will gasp for air and never receive quite enough, until my lung fills with blood and it seeps into its healthy neighbor.

I realize all of this in an instant, but then I see the fire in Ninnis’s possessed eyes and know that I will not live long enough to drown in my own blood. With a quick, sideways yank of Strike, the beast could end me, right here and now.

But he doesn’t get the chance. The wind that holds me aloft reacts to my instincts as much as it does my thoughts. I’m carried away from the blade. I feel the thin metal slip from my chest, and the heavy blood begins to gather in my deflated lung. Feeling light headed, I take a deep breath. While one lung fills, the other makes a sick farting sound as the air slips right out of my chest.

There’s no pain now. Shock has taken over, numbing body and mind.

Nephil laughs at me. “Do not worry, Solomon. I will not let you die.”

Forgot about that. My fate won’t be death. It will be eternal enslavement to the spirit of Nephil. I’ll get to watch as the beast controls me and wipes out the rest of the human race.

As my energy falters, I glide slowly away from Nephil. He keeps pace, never letting me out of striking distance. Or catching distance, I think, realizing he doesn’t want me to fall.

“The shofar and my vessel,” he taunts. “I will soon have you both.”

“No,” I say, but it’s more of a pathetic groan.

I breathe deep. It does little. My vision spins. When I let the breath from my good lung out, it tastes of blood.

I look at the garden below and think that at least they will be spared by Nephil not letting me die. This place will always be an untouched oasis, even as the Nephilim conquer the rest of the planet. The mists part, and I see the tree and the green carpet of tall grass surrounding it. I see specks near the jungle. Kainda, Em, the Kerubim and Ookla.

I’m sorry, I think to them. I failed.

Nephil snickers, slowly closing the distance between us. As weakness overcomes me, I close my eyes and wait for his embrace.





25



A voice reaches me before Nephil can. It’s muffled. Distorted. Distant.

Em?

Kainda?

Kat?

The Kerubim? If anyone is capable of carrying their voice that far, it would be him.

It comes again. Louder, but still indistinct.

“What?” I say aloud. I’m sure the statement confuses Nephil, but the monster probably thinks I’m succumbing to delirium.

Delirium. That’s what this is. I’m hearing things. There is no voice. It’s in my head.

In your head, the voice says.

Your head. Not my head. The voice is my own, but not. It’s as though my thoughts are being projected into my mind from the outside.

Xin, is that you? I think, trying to communicate. He has reached out to me before, helping me at just the right moment. But there is no reply to the name.

Luca? Are you there? The boy can see through my eyes during times of intense stress. Is he watching now? Has he figured out a way to reverse the connection and communicate? If he has, he doesn’t have much longer to say goodbye.

I don’t hear a reply, in my ears or in my mind, but I feel it. No, the voice comes from within, but it’s not my voice. This is some kind of presence. Something other than me. In me. As the feeling radiates out through my core and down my limbs, I’m reminded of when Nephil possessed my body, but the experience is different. Where Nephil exuded anger and control, this is more peace and freedom, with a hint of suggestion.

The feeling subsides.

The voice fades.

But I experience a strange kind of, “eureka!” moment where I suddenly know what to do. There is a weapon with greater range and power than even this fiery sword, and it’s within reach, not of my hands, but of my will.

While my body weakens, my invigorated mind reaches out for the alcove. I can’t feel the horn in a traditional sense, but I can sense the tug of something resisting the breeze. I wrap my thoughts around it, lift it and pull the weapon free of its hiding place for the first time in thousands of years. Best of all, this happens behind me, out of sight.

Nephil closes in slowly, reaching for me now. “Come, Solomon. It is time to end this fight and take your place as—”

The monster’s voice catches in his throat as the shofar suddenly appears in my hands and I open my eyes. The curled ram’s horn is large, perhaps two and a half feet long, and it ends with an opening the size of a teacup’s saucer. The brown and blood red flecked exterior of the horn is scored with lines that might be natural or perhaps carved by the original owner—some ancient priest stalking around the walls of a long gone Nephilim stronghold. Despite its size, color and threatening shape, it looks wholly inadequate for defeating an enemy, human or otherwise, but I have little choice left, and that quiet whisper inside me persists.

“With the last of my breath, I will undo you.” I place the ancient weapon to my lips and blow.