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

Ocean breeze is cold today, she thought.

After finishing the second bun, she looked at her reflection in the window glass. She looked like an anime version of Princess Leia…a dark-skinned, nappy-blond-haired version. Whitney smiled. For the first time in a long time, she thought she looked good. Maybe it was the reflection of Portsmouth and the ocean in the background that caused her to cast a fairer gaze at herself. She wasn’t sure. But her brown skin and darker brown eyes hadn’t looked this vibrant in a year.

Whitney knew that while her outward appearances were improving, her heart was still healing. No amount of exercise or sleep could erase the torment she had endured the past year.

Cindy Bekoff, her friend and psychologist, believed Whitney’s upcoming trip to Antarctica was an excuse to flee from the pain. “There aren’t many places on earth more remote,” she had said. “You need to deal with your pain before moving on.”

What Whitney hadn’t, and wouldn’t, tell her, was that it was where he was…it was where he had been hiding all this time. She wasn’t running from pain; she was accelerating straight toward it.

The wind reversed direction, flowing up and over the red Victorian home’s shingled roof and heading for the ocean. As the gust spilled across Whitney’s body, she took note of its sudden warmth. The temperature shift struck her as odd—a cold front and heat wave battling for supremacy. New England was known for its drastic weather changes, but this variation in temperature during a mid-summer day seemed downright freakish.





Chapter 4



Longing for home and family, Anguta failed to notice the first ripples in the water’s surface. Something was rising. Bubbles expressed from the emerging creature churned the surface and snapped Anguta’s attention back to the task at hand. Raising the spear over his head, Anguta waited for the right time to strike.

The water parted to expose the dark gray flesh of the humpback’s hide. Still Anguta waited. An early strike might connect with the beast’s tail, causing the man to be thrashed about with every pulse of its mighty fluke. As the whale’s head breached the surface, Anguta focused, waiting for the moment when the whale would exhale a spray of mist and expose its eyes.

Anguta felt his heart stop when he made eye contact with the whale, but there was no exhalation from its blowhole to trigger his throwing arm. He stood solidly, gripping his spear, muscles taut, but did not throw. He stared into the eye of the creature, which appeared to be blinded by cataracts. With a heavy heart, he realized that he and the whale weren’t so dissimilar. They’d sired families. Traveled the Arctic. Fought the elements. And they’d grown old. Then he remembered their crucial difference. He was a hunter. Years of failed hunts flashed through Anguta’s mind, and all the mercy he felt for the blind whale evaporated quickly as the spear sailed from his hand.

As soon as he released his hold on the spear, he knew his aim was true; it was a killer shot into the humpback’s eye. The tow line unfurled at Anguta’s feet as the spear covered the twenty-foot distance to the whale. The tip of the spear struck home, dead center in the whited eyeball—and glanced off.

The sound and physical reaction of the spear would have been no different if Anguta had flung it at a stone.

He followed the ricocheted spear with his eyes in disbelief at what had happened and annoyance that he’d have to retrieve the spear. But when the weapon struck the ocean, it bounced again. The surface was frozen.

There’s no ice here, Anguta thought. Perhaps an iceberg?

The old man scanned the world around him. It was white and frozen. His eyes turned back to the whale. Its skin sparkled with frost—it was frozen solid. It was only then that he noticed the biting cold nibbling at his skin. He had never felt such a degree of cold through his arctic gear. The sensation was similar to rolling stark naked in the snow.

As his muscles involuntarily twitched, working to warm his body temperature, he tried to get his bearings. He had to find shelter. But as he searched the newly frozen ocean for a glimmer of hope, his goggles fogged and he became as blind as the now-petrified whale.

Frustrated and panicked, Anguta removed his goggles and immediately regretted the decision. His eyeballs froze. A jolt of savage pain threw Anguta off his feet and ripped through his body. Images sailed through his mind: Elizabeth, the kids, their little ones…would this cold front reach them as well?

Anguta’s body hit the kayak with a thud, solid as stone.





Chapter 5