The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (20 page)

34

My senses return long enough for me to close the door. I can’t be seen like this. They might kill us both. Or decide to break me again and steal my memories a second time. Were I still alone, I think I might prefer death to losing myself again, but I now have Aimee to consider.

And I brought her here.
I
brought her here.

With the door closed I sit on the bed and weep silently. Aimee sits next to me and rubs my back. Her affection only makes me cry harder, but I think that’s what I need—to pour the vileness out. The tears are purifying.

Thoughts of my father and how we parted fill my thoughts. “My father,” I say.

Her hand pauses on my back. “Misses you horribly. As does your mother.”

“They believe I’m dead?”

After a pause, she whispers, “Yes. They stayed for a year searching for you.”

I remember seeing them now. Looking through the telescope. They looked so sad. A sob escapes my mouth. I know how heartbroken they must have felt. I’m feeling it now.

“You’ll see them again,” she says confidently, but it’s hard to believe.

It’s ten minutes before I’m able to speak again. “I’m sorry. For taking you.”

“I forgive you,” she says with missing a beat.

“Why?”

“You weren’t yourself.”

This is true, but, “If I had been stronger, this wouldn’t have happened.”

She turns my face toward hers. Dry white lines streaking over her cheeks from her eyes reveal she’s been crying too. “What did they do to you, Sol?”

I relate the story as best I can, concentrating on the important events: the night I was taken, my time in the pit, my first kill, my training, the three tests that ended with her capture. She listens to it all silently, reacting to everything with an array of facial expressions. When I’m done, tears fill her eyes again.

“My poor child,” she says, touching my cheek with her hand. “Why? Why did they do all this to you? Who are they?”

“I think you know who they are,” I say.

“The men of renown,” she guesses.

I nod.

“The Nephilim?” She shakes her head. I can see she thinks it’s impossible, but she looks around the room, seeing the reality of things. She can’t explain it. “But how?”

I relate the story Ninnis told me. About the Nephilim living among men, how they were worshipped, how they were our heroes, and then how we eventually turned against them and drove them away. “We pushed them underground,” I say. “And they’ve been living here since.”

As I relate the story, I feel a stirring of sympathy for my masters.

They’re not my masters!

I feel an invisible hand clutch my throat. They still have some hold on me. Like a trapdoor spider, everything they turned me into is waiting for my guard to drop. Then it will strike out, fill me with poison and consume my soul again. Ull, the hunter, is fighting for dominance.

I clear my throat and tense my body, mentally shoving Ull down deeper.
Never again
, I think.
I will never be
you
again.

“Sol,” she says, “That’s not who the Nephilim are.”

I look at her like she’s crazy. Of course that’s who they are. Ninnis told me.

Ninnis is a liar!

Ninnis is your friend.

“No,” I say aloud.

She takes my shoulders. “I don’t know all the details, only what Merrill has told me. Which is actually quite a lot. But I’m not an expert.”

Merrill. Merrill is my friend. Merrill can be trusted.

NO!

Listen to her.

I clench my eyes shut, willing the voice of Ull to shut up.

I am Solomon. I am Solomon.

“The Sumerians believed they were gods. That much is true. And they record that the Nephilim were also referred to as the Elohim and Anunnaki, both of which mean: those who from Heaven to Earth came.”

“Heaven?”

She gives a quick nod.

I fail to hide my skepticism. I’ve seen and experienced the unbelievable, but Heaven? When I speak, my voice is layered with doubt. “Angels?”

She shakes her head and actually manages a small grin. “No, Sol. Not angels. Angels that come to earth, and make their home here are—”

“Demons,” I say. This word rings true. There is nothing heavenly or angelic about my mast—the Nephilim. They are, in every way, demonic. But are they really demons? Fallen angels? I still don’t think so. “The Nephilim aren’t demons.”

“You’re right,” she says. “They are the
children
of demons. The heroes of old. The men of renown. There is more to that quote, you know. ‘The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God (demons) went to the daughters of men (human women) and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.’ There are several more references to them in the Bible, but that’s just one ancient text. There are records of the Nephilim in every ancient culture on Earth. Stories of giants with red hair—”

She takes my hair in her hand and holds it out for me to see. The blood red color makes me sick. I can now remember my real hair, so blond it was almost white. Like Andy Warhol.

“—half human, half animals, double rows of teeth, horns, and strange means of transportation. There are carvings of them all around the world created by cultures separated by thousands of miles and uncrossable oceans. The Nephilim once ruled over mankind, Sol.”

“Then what happened?”

“A flood.”

“
The
flood?” My skepticism is brewing again. “Like in the Bible?”

She nods. “But not just the Bible. The Sumerians divided time into two Epochs.”

“Like B.C. and A.D.?”

She nods. “But for the Sumerians, it was before the flood, and after the flood.”

“Then Noah was a Sumerian?”

She shrugs. “In the beginning, I think we all were. But the point is, every ancient text preserved from every ancient culture in the world features the Nephilim, or giants resembling them. A great flood. And the freeing of man from the Nephilim corruption.” She pauses, looking unsure of her next words, but speaks them anyway. “Which you have felt first hand.”

She’s right about that, at least.

“Solomon, the Nephilim are corruptors of mankind, not just our minds and bodies, but our souls as well. They are our oldest enemy.”

The truth of it all settles in. They are, in fact, planning to attack the surface. And I am part of that plan. I am the key. “They’re going to make me their leader,” I say. “I’m supposed to lead them in a war against humanity.”

Her eyes pop open. “When?”

“I don’t know. They don’t seem to be in a hurry, but within my lifetime.”

“Why you?” she asks. “You’re...human.”

“I’m special,” I say. “Merrill told you about what he saw the day I was born?”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s all true,” I say, and then explain about the spirit of the Nephilim, about how it resides in the land of Antarctica and how it bonded me with the continent when I was born.

“That doesn’t sound possible.”

“You have no problem with demons mating with humans and a worldwide flood,” I say.

She’s silent for a moment. “But how did it make you different?”

I close my eyes and focus on the air in the room. I can feel it around me, billions of microscopic molecules. I turn it in my mind. I spin it. When I feel the pull on my hair, I open my eyes. Aimee’s rags are waving in the wind. Her braid hovers over her shoulder, held out horizontally. She steps closer to me, into the eye of the small cyclone I have made.

“Okay,” she whispers. Terrified.

The wind falls away fast as I feel horrible for scaring her. But she believes me now. “I’m connected to the continent. I feel no cold. The wind, snow, water and land are part of me. I don’t know how it works. And
they
don’t know about it. I don’t think it was supposed to happen.”

“Then it’s a blessing,” she says. “A gift.”

“For what?”

“To fight them.”

“Fight them?”

She leans in close. “They will enslave the human race if they can, Solomon. They will corrupt us all. They have to be stopped.”

All I want to do is take Aimee and leave. I know this is probably impossible now, but I have to try to find a way. We can return to the surface and hop on a plane back to New Hampshire. Back to my parents. And Justin. Mira and Dr. Clark. And forget all about this place. But fight them?

I can’t. “If I stay here... They want to— I’m supposed to—”

She takes my hands in hers. “It’s okay, Sol. We can figure this out together. You’re not alone anymore.”

“To become their leader, I need to offer myself...I need to take in the spirit of Nephil.”

“The spirit of the Nephilim? You said that happened when you were born.”

“Spirit is the word they use for supernatural energy. Like magic. That’s what I absorbed when I was born. In this case, it’s more of a traditional meaning. The spirit of Nephil, their leader. He was the first Nephilim. The first child born of a human woman and a demon father, if that’s what you believe. If I accept his spirit, which is trapped in Tartarus, far below us, it will live in me. I will become him and he me. Being born here, with the Nephilim magic in me, makes me strong enough to contain him, permanently.”

“Tartarus?”

“It’s a place worse than—”

“I know what Tartarus is, but I never imagined it was—”

“Real?”

She nods.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing every day since I got here.”

A smile stretches onto her face. “I’m sure you have.” The smile fades. “If everything you’ve told me is true, we can’t let it happen. We have to stop them.”

“Just the two of us?” I laugh at the insanity of it.

“No,” she says. “Just you.”

My smile fades. She’s serious.

“I’m not sure I’ll survive the day. I don’t know what they have planned for me, do you?”

I don’t, and I shake my head. “I won’t let them kill you.”

“You may not have a choice.”

“Why?” I say, my voice raising an octave. “Why do I have to do this?”

“It’s not fair,” she says. “Lord knows, it’s not fair. Your heart...your heart was so pure.” She looks at the floor as sadness sweeps over her face. She doesn’t want to say any of this to me. But she does, because she believes it. “Sometimes people are chosen for things that are so much bigger than them. But they are given the strength to persevere, to see it through.”