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

No time, I think. Ares is about to knock me silly and I don’t think it matters to Nephil whether or not I’m a berserker. He might actually enjoy the rage added to his own. I have to end this threat, fast, and then worry about what’s happening to my body. Right now, my rage is certainly growing, but I’m still me. Still in control.

The trees behind me whoosh as the wind rushes toward the back of my head. It rushes past, bending the trees all around, and strikes Ares head on. The giant stands his ground. He can’t move forward, but he’s also still standing, which was not part of the plan.

Instead of a tightly compressed surge of air, I summoned a broad, sweeping wind, like a tornado. Knowing the swaying trees might attract attention, I stop the attack.

Ares steps toward me. “Give into the madness. The change will be less painful and a part of your mind will remain, for a time.”

All I can do is look at the ground. Stabs of burning pain move up my arm, spreading out into my chest.

Ares kneels in front of me, places an index finger on my chest and flicks it out. I sprawl backwards, unable to stop even this simple, humiliating assault. I see layers of green shifting high in the canopy, some glowing almost yellow under the direct gaze of the sun.

“In minutes, the rage will consume you,” Ares says. “Then darkness. And when you awake, you will be one of my creations.”

I let out a groan at the realization that Ares is not only the berserker commander, but also the source of the plague that turns men into mindless monsters beyond redemption.

I’ve amused him again. “I expected more from you, Ull. But I see now that the growing legend of the boy hunter is...exaggerated. You are weak. A pitiful thing.” He laughs. “You are without hope.”

As I look up my nose at the giant leaning over me, I see a flash of blond hair covered by blue. Ares rears up, shouting in pain-fueled joy. When he stands, I see a slash across his knee. Then it’s gone. I turn my head, following the blur of motion.

Mira.

No...

She’s not fast enough.

Ares reaches out for her. If he catches her, all he’d need to do is squeeze. She has faced Nephilim in the past. She even killed Enki. But she has no grenades, and I don’t think Ares will bother having a conversation with someone he doesn’t need to keep alive.

No!

His fingers are just inches from her back.

“No!” I scream, thrusting my hands out, generating a burst of wind as though it came from my body itself. There’s an explosion of purple on Ares’s chest, then a circle of light.

I stare up at it for a moment, unsure of what I’m seeing.

Then the image resolves.

Trees.

I’m seeing trees in Ares’s chest?

Not in his chest, through his chest! I punched a hole straight through him, using just the wind.

Fueled by rising anger, fear for Mira’s safety and the fact that I’ve just formed an invisible force into a horrible weapon, I stand to shaky legs.

Ares stumbles back. Despite enjoying pain, he must be experiencing so much of it right now that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s like a kid with a cake to himself who knows, at some level, too much of it is bad for him. He puts his fingers on the wound and looks down. It’s already closing, healing the meat and bones that had been torn away, but he’s still afforded a clear view of the forest behind him.

He looks up at me, and then to his spear, still embedded in the tree. He runs for it.

I let him, picking up Whipsnap as he runs. With a tug, Ares removes his spear from the tree, turns around and throws it at me. I can feel the spear moving through the air. I can detect its molecules and its origins. The metal, was dug from the Antarctic earth and the shaft taken from a long dead tree that grew in Antarctic soil. My earth. My tree.

With an anger-fueled thought, the spear disintegrates just before striking my chest. It falls to the ground as dust.

As I step toward the Nephilim, a wind swirls around me, bid by my emotions rather than by my will. My hair flails in the air around my head, like living gorgon snakes. A darkness settles inside me and I grin.

Ares sees my cocky smile and balks at the challenge. Then, with an anger matching my own, he roars and charges. He could crush me underfoot. He could bite my head off, or sever me at the midsection with a swipe of his fingernails. He could sting me with that Titan tail or simply thrash me about.

But he’d have to get close to do any of those things. That’s not going to happen.

I lift him off the ground and then return him to it with enough force to leave a crater. Before he can recover, grunt or enjoy the pain, I fling him against a tree.

Hearing the monster’s bones break fuels my own dark rage, and I let out a battle cry of my own. As Ares recovers from his wounds at the base of the tree, I rush in and leap into the air.