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

“Goodbye, Ull,” Nephil says, and I feel him pushing on me, forcing me from my own mind and into the oblivion that awaits Nephilim. I won’t die, I’ll simply be trapped in this dark place for the rest of time, or until an asteroid destroys the planet or the sun becomes a red giant and absorbs the Earth.

Before I wink out of existence, I feel a building pressure. It’s not Nephil, it’s opposing Nephil. Resisting him.

And it’s not me.

As the pressure behind me builds, a searing pain ignites in my mind and I feel, more than hear Nephil’s surprise.

Push him back, Solomon!

The voice screams at me, focusing my thoughts as I focus on the name of the one speaking to me. Xin!

This was his gift.

His consciousness has been buried in my head, waiting for this moment, defending my mind against the one who could take it.

Push him back, but do not expel him.

Then what? I ask.

Control him!

Bind him!

And then—I start to ask, but the answer comes to me.

As the wall of darkness is pushed to the fringe of my mind, I feel my body again. I can sense the world around me. I hear my own voice, screaming, but I also hear Nephil, screaming through Ninnis. He’s connected to both of us!

Zeus and Enlil look on. I doubt either knows what to expect from this bonding. They have no idea that Nephil is being repelled. Not repelled, I think, contained.

“Now, Solomon!” Cronus shouts, then I hear him scream to his remaining Titans, “For the King!”

Through foggy vision, I see Cronus charge past, sword drawn. He leaps at Zeus and with one swing, lops the surprised giant’s head from his shoulders. His second swing is parried by Enlil and the Nephilim horde rushes in, held at bay by twelve Titans, hacking and slashing with a bravery that sets my mind to the task.

Luca, I think, the horn!

I turn to find the small boy lifting the horn.

Over your head, I tell him.

He holds it high.

As I reach out to the elements, I feel Nephil grow stronger. He’s pushing Xin and me back. But then, the wind obeys and explodes through the shofar with a force beyond that of the amplified speaker system. The valley vibrates with its power. The Nephilim army shrieks and wails. And then, all at once, the shofar shatters, the last of its sound echoing off the valley walls.

Nephil’s darkness tears out of me, retreating to Ninnis’s body. But he finds no refuge there.

Ninnis...is himself.

His intense eyes lock onto mine and we come to an understanding. Ninnis twitches and screams as Nephil fights for control. He falls to his knees, clutching his chest. Tendrils of darkness squirm out of him, but are pulled back inside.

“I have him, boy!” Ninnis shouts and then screams again. “I can’t hold him for long.”

Ninnis’s strength is beyond comprehension. The combined consciousnesses of Xin and I struggled to repel the monster, but Ninnis is binding him on his own. Knowing what to do, I walk to Ninnis, but before I reach him, I fall to my knees. My stomach revolts, roiling. Then I vomit, a single glob of coagulated purple blood, coated in bile splatters to the ground.

Free of Nephil’s body, my strength returns. As it does, my sense of Xin’s presence fades. I will see you again, brother, he thinks, and then he’s gone. Again. But there’s no time to mourn the brief return and loss of Xin. I quickly focus on the glob of flesh below my face, removing the fluid from it with a thought. With the body of Nephil reduced to dust, I crawl to Ninnis and wrap my arms over his back, lending my strength to his. The darkness cuts through us both now, and together we fight.

But not alone.

I feel a hand on my back. Then another. I look up and find Kat and Mira supporting me. Ninnis raises his head, too, feeling the hands on him as well. “Daughter!” he says, surprised to find Kainda’s head just inches from his own.

“I’m here, father,” she says, her words full of compassion.

Ninnis’s lips tremble. When he looks the other way and finds Em, he sobs. “But—I killed your father!”

“And I forgive you,” Em says. She turns her eyes to me. “Do it.”

Finding strength in the faithful resolve of these four women, my hope, faith, focus and passion, I turn my thoughts to the Earth, to my larger body. I reach out, further than ever before, for hundreds of miles, until I feel the deep dark void that was the first behemoth’s home.

With a scream of exertion from me, the ground beneath us opens up and swallows us whole. We descend on a disk of stone and soil, rocketing downward at an angle like we’re on a rollercoaster fashioned in hell. Strata of Antarktos flash past in a blur as we descend through millennia of time, back toward the very beginning of mankind, of Nephilim and this ancient conflict.