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

“But that’s not why you’re here,” I say, looking back down the tunnel. “You came alone.”


He grins. “I’m here to break you. Again. And bring back Ull, the hunter.”

When he pulls his hand out from behind his back, I give a yank on Whipsnap. My weapon cracks open, but is immediately pulled from my hand. Ninnis knew I would use Whipsnap and snared it with a line, yanking it away. He tosses my weapon behind him.

For a moment, I think he’s going to say something again. But he lets out a wail as savage as anything I’ve ever heard in the underworld or above it, and charges. His arms are outstretched. His fingers curve into hooks.

I fall back under him, unprepared for such ferocity. Ull would have been, but I’m not him anymore.

When I hit the stone floor, Ninnis has my arms pinned back. His long, thick, and sharpened fingernails are digging into my skin.

This is how it starts.

The breaking.

And I can feel a part of me—the part that flinches under Justin’s punches or weeps when my mother laughs at me—shrinking back. But I’m more than that now. I have been broken and repaired. I have all the skills of a Nephilim hunter. I am bonded with the continent of Antarctica on a supernatural level. I am the killer of warriors and have consumed the blood of Nephil, lord of the Nephilim.

“AND YOU THINK YOU CAN BREAK ME?”

The voice is unnatural.

I’m not even sure it was mine. But it came out of my mouth and roared like thunder.

A wind kicks up from the tunnel below and races toward us. Ninnis has let go of me and sat up. He’s shaking with fear.

Then an invisible force strikes him and carries him up the steeply graded tunnel. I pick up Whipsnap and give chase, but I lose sight of him when he’s launched from the tunnel like a human cannonball.

I enter the night and find a clear sky full of stars and a full moon. It’s bright enough to make me squint. Ninnis lies still, three hundred feet below. I go to him and crouch down. His chest rises and falls. He is alive.

I could kill him now. It would be so easy.

Without realizing I’m doing it, I place Whipsnap’s blade against his throat. I see myself cutting him open, watching his blood gush into the white snow.

And I remember the voice.

My voice, that was not mine.

The bloodlust reveals that I have more than just Ull inside me now. There is a new voice.

Nephil.

Some part of him is there. Fighting for control.

And I won’t give it. Not to either of them.

In all my time underground, I have killed to eat. I have killed in self-defense. Insects. Dinosaurs. Feeders. Dozens of other stranger creatures. Including Nephilim. But I have never killed a human being.

And I’m not going to start now. Not by the direct action of running him through, nor by the indirect action of leaving him to freeze to death.

I take Ninnis by the hand and drag him back to the tunnel entrance. This will be the second time I’ve spared his life. I doubt he will honor my mercy by returning the favor, but to save myself, I need to save him too.

I leave him sitting by the entrance and scrawl three words into the stone wall across from him. It will be the first thing he sees when he wakes up. I’m not sure the power of the words will affect him as they did me, but I can hope.

Further down the tunnel, I stop by a crack in the wall. It takes me thirty seconds to work the Polaroid photo out of the wall with Whipsnap’s blade tip. I risked everything for this photo, heading to familiar territory when I should have been headed deep. But when I look at the image and see my face, so young and so happy, and next to me is Mira—the sight of her breaks my heart—I feel the voices in me fall silent. This photo is my anchor to myself and to everything I’m fighting for.

But right now, I can’t fight. I’m not even sure how to fight what is coming. Despite all I can do, I am just one person alone against a supernatural army. So I run. As fast and as deep as I dare, I run.





39



Forty days later, I stop. Though I’m not sure it was really forty days, by underground standards or topside standards. I haven’t slept much. But I’ve traveled far and deep and have found a place I think the Nephilim, and the hunters will at least think twice about before following me.

It’s one of the largest caverns I’ve seen. The ceiling is hundreds of feet up but not concealed in darkness. Instead, it’s covered in the luminescent crystals that lined the pit. So many, in fact, that I need a few minutes to adjust to the light.