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

It tastes wrong.

I spit out the food in my mouth and bring the burger up for inspection. I peel open the bun, expecting to see a large flat cheeseburger patty covered in ketchup and pickles. Instead, I find a crab. One of its claws is missing, a casualty of my first bite.

I drop the burger and step back. The crab crawls from the burger, but then it’s not a crab at all. It just keeps on coming. Shell and legs emerge from the burger bun in a never ending chain, just like a big…centipede.

I’m dreaming.

I’m dreaming!

Wake up! I shout at myself.

Wake—

“…up!” I flail as I awaken, flinging the centipede on my chest against the rib ceiling, where its shell cracks. It falls to the stone floor, cracking some more, oozing white now. I turn to Xin and find three more centipedes gathered around an open wound on his leg. I can hear the munching of their mandibles as they fight to chew past his tough scales.

Whipsnap sails through the air bludgeoning one of the centipedes. As the dying creature twists in on itself, writhing as death takes it, the remaining two scurry away and disappear into the mountain of bones. When I hear the tick, tick, tick of the centipedes’ sharp feet fade to nothing, I stab the two dying creatures to put them out of their misery. In the past, when I was fully Ull, I amused myself by watching a mortally injured centipede writhe around for fifteen minutes. The sight now makes my stomach twist. I hate seeing things suffer.

Have since I was a kid. One of my mother’s favorite stories about me is about how after my father did a poor job of stepping on a carpenter ant, I crouched down and watched it squirm around on the floor. The thing was broken, and oozing and appeared to be trying to straighten itself back out. I looked up at my mother, tears in my eyes (not uncommon for me at the time…or any time before Ull took control) and asked, “Do ants suffer?”

My father heard the question and joked, “Yes, now let him crawl back to his colony and tell them to stay out of my kitchen.”

This didn’t help any, but my mom understood. She knelt down next to me, shook her head sadly and then stepped on the ant again.

“Better?” she asked.

I nodded, and wiped my eyes. I’ve always had a hard time accepting the suffering of others, whether it is a person, an ant or Xin—a half-human, half-Nephilim, who nearly killed me.

After retrieving a small stone bowl from my pack, I crack open one of the centipedes and scoop a dollop of its white flesh into the bowl. Using the knobby end of a bone, I mix the stuff, crushing away the lumps. When it’s the consistency of yogurt, I bring the fresh ointment to Xin. He has three wounds that need tending. I move from one wound to the next, prying them open with my fingers and filling the gap with the creamed centipede meat. While the meat on the inside will ward off infection, the outside will harden into a protective, flexible shell that will slowly dissolve as the wound stitches back together. I’ve never actually used the technique on myself, but I saw Ninnis do it once.

With all three wounds sealed, I sit back and wait. I’ve done what I can. Whether Xin lives or dies is now up to him. But I’ll watch over him. Make sure the centipedes don’t come back. When he comes to, he might try to kill me again. It’s a very real possibility. But until then, I’m his protector.

The ground shakes.

An earthquake, I think. Antarctica sits atop one big tectonic plate, but that doesn’t mean the earth never shifts. With so much ice bearing down on the continent, the plate can actually shift up and down during times of rapid melting or freezing.

The earthquake repeats.

An aftershock?

Maybe, but the vibration felt stronger the second time.

When the ground shakes a third time I know this is not an earthquake. Something approaches. Something large.

Keeping Xin alive might be harder than I thought.





9



“Run.”

The voice of Xin startles me and I flinch away from it. His eyes remain closed and I wonder for a moment if I’m hearing things. Then I see his tiny lips twitch.

“Run,” he repeats.

The ground shakes. Xin’s eyebrows turn up. The tremors have him worried. Which isn’t good—it’s hard to picture him being afraid of much—but it changes nothing. I’m committed to the task of protecting him. “I won’t leave you.”

His eyes blink open, yellow and serpentine, and he looks at me. “I tried to kill you,” he says. “I took control of your body. Violated your mind.”

“You’re like me,” I say.

He sighs and shakes his head. “I am nothing like you.”

“You saw my thoughts,” I say. “My past. You felt what I felt.”

The ground shakes again. I keep thinking the thing is nearly upon us, but each tremor is more violent than the last and I’m starting to think this giant might still be a ways off.

Xin stays silent.

“I experienced your past, too,” I say.