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

But was this a trick? Who are you?

A shape began to form in the light. A figure.

A woman.

Belgrave, the voice said again, and this time he recognized it.

Caroline!

As she came fully into view, revealing the face of the woman he loved, married and lost, she spoke again. Your time has not yet come, husband.

I can feel you, Ninnis! Nephil shouted.

As his emotions swelled, he sensed the darkness closing in, tracking him down.

Ninnis fled the darkness and into the arms of his wife. He clung to her and she to him, their embrace impossible to sever. Ninnis felt a flood of love, forgiveness and mercy, qualities that, since the time of his own breaking, he’d experienced from only one source: Solomon.

With the boy’s image locked in his thoughts, pressure consumed Ninnis’s formless mind, pressing him into the arms of his wife, merging them together until nothing, but light, remained.





Prologue



“Belgrave Ninnis, come inside this instant, before Death himself decides you are too easy a target to pass by.”

Lieutenant Ninnis leaned back in his chair, “Just a moment more.” He took a slow drag from his pipe, allowing the warm smoke to thaw his lungs a touch. Momentarily relieved of the cold air’s sting, he set his charcoal to the page once more and lost himself in the image.

He didn’t notice that the gray cloud coming from his lungs with each breath wasn’t pipe smoke. He didn’t notice the brightness of the stars overhead or the thin crust of ice forming atop his water glass. The cold suited him. Always had. It was part of the reason he’d been selected to join Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic expedition—that and his father of the same name was the Inspector Surgeon General of the Royal Navy and a member of the Vice-Admiral’s Arctic expedition that explored the coasts of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. His father’s legacy was more inspiration than pressure, but Ninnis couldn’t deny a desire to outdo his father. Antarctica was further, colder, more dangerous and far less explored.

The charcoal, reduced to a nub, crumbled between his fingers. He lifted it from the page and looked down at his hands.

“Lord,” came a sweet, but concerned voice. “You’re shaking.”

Ninnis watched his hand twitching back and forth, stricken by the cold. “So I am.”

“I don’t understand why you’re out here, tonight of all nights,” she said.

Ninnis turned back to his wife of four hours and smiled. She was wrapped in blankets. Her brown hair hung in ringlets, recently freed from a braid. Her deep brown eyes mesmerized him. “To prepare myself,” he said.

“A full year will pass before you leave my side,” she said. “Prepare yourself when winter returns.”

“I was not speaking of my future adventures at the bottom of the world, or of the frigid lands that await me there,” Ninnis said. “Rather, I was speaking of the warmth this night yet promises.”

A grin formed on her lips, followed by a shiver that ran up through her body. “Devil.”

“The devil could not love one as fair as you,” Ninnis said, and then leaned to the side, revealing his drawing. “For you, dear, sweet Caroline. My wife.”

When her hands went to her mouth, the blankets fell, revealing that the braid was not the only wedding decoration she had shed. She now wore delicate undergarments that both hid her body and accentuated it. Stunned by the sudden revelation, he was still in a stupor when she took the page from his hands and stepped inside, off of the balcony and away from the chilled London air.

He watched her walk away with the sigh of a man who knew, without a shred of doubt, that he had somehow won a lottery in Heaven and had been given one of God’s finest creations. He lifted his water glass to his lips and tipped it back. When no fluid reached his mouth, he looked down, saw the layer of ice and laughed.

Shaking his head, he stood and looked out from the Cavendish Hotel’s penthouse balcony. The lamp-lit streets, homes and businesses of London surrounded him, a sea of orange lights beneath a sky of white stars. Normally, he might gaze at the view, searching for interesting details or listening to the late night revelers defeating the cold with liquor, but the woman waiting for him inside was far more interesting. He spun on his heels and entered the suite, closing the doors to the balcony behind him.

The heat greeted him first, prickling his skin. The room felt like an inferno, though he knew it was just because he was so chilled. The fire had dwindled to a small flicker, and a new log would be needed to accommodate a late night. Half way to the fire, he paused when the heat became unbearable. Scratching his itching skin, he turned to his new wife and watched. Noting his attention, Caroline met his gaze.