The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (66 page)

1

“Get down!” I shout, but the warning comes too late. A ten-foot long albino centipede lunges from a hole in the cave wall, its mandibles flexed open and ready to snap shut on Kat’s face.

But Kat, aka Katherine Ferrell, is far from easy prey. In the short time I’ve known her, I learned that in the world before the cataclysm that rotated the Earth’s crust, repositioned Antarctica to the equator and killed several billion people, Kat was an assassin. She is a skilled fighter, but is most dangerous from a distance, with a sniper rifle. In the modern world, she is a killer without match, but underground without a rifle and being tackled by an oversized monster unknown to her, she is out of her element.

Nevertheless, she reacts with skill and without fear. Falling backward under the long creature’s squirming girth, Kat takes hold of its mandibles, forcing the centipede away from her head, and keeping the deadly pincers from snapping shut.

Em, aka Emilee, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister, draws one of her many knives to throw at the creature, but she’s stopped by the actions of Steven Wright, who insists we refer to him by his last name.

Wright tackles the centipede and grapples with its body, but he’s unable to move the creature and ends up just hanging on while the thing bucks him around.

I raise my hand toward the melee, intent on separating the group by controlling the wind and smashing the centipede into the wall. But Kainda places her hammer—a human sized version of Thor’s mighty Mjölnir—on my arm and pushes it down.

I turn to her. “Why?”

“They need to learn,” she says plainly.

Through grinding teeth, Kat growls, “A little help!”

Kainda moves the hammer out in front of my chest, but it’s not needed. I don’t move. She’s correct. If Wright and Ferrell are to join us in the underground, they need to learn how to survive it, and overcoming this obstacle, which Kainda, Em and I could handle without breaking a sweat, is their violent initiation.

A knife appears in Wright’s hand. He jabs the body, punching the blade through the pale carapace. Thick, white innards seep through the puncture holes, but the creature is undaunted. Wright sweeps the blade along its body, severing fifteen of its limbs, but all he accomplishes is making the body slick with gore and removing his handholds. The centipede flings him to the floor, leaving Kat to face the beast alone.

With a grunt, she shoves the centipede back, draws her own knife and slices the thing’s throat. Only, it’s not the creature’s throat. It’s a sack of fluid the thing uses to predigest its food. Like saliva but far fouler smelling. On the bright side, nothing will pick up her personal scent for weeks.

“Ugh!” Kat says, as the fluid spills onto the black military fatigues that she wears. But she doesn’t slow. As Wright regains his feet and starts hacking at the creature again, Kat withdraws her blade, redirects it and plunges it up through the bottom of the centipede’s head, finding its small brain.

The centipede curls back, taking the knife with it, and flinging Wright to the cave floor once again. It twists and coils, writhing around in death throes before falling still.

Wright gets to his feet quickly and jumps to Kat’s side. “You all right?” he asks, his voice full of concern for his wife. They had kept their relationship secret from the outside world. Wright was an Army Captain and Kat was a contract killer. Granted, she killed for the same team, but their love was forbidden. Of course, down here, marriage between killers is common. I look at Kainda, who is grinning at Kat’s messy misfortune, and I think that our relationship isn’t all that different from these two, except for the marriage part.

Kat shrugs away from her husband and stands up with a scowl on her face. I know that look. Things are about to get ugly...er. Kat pulls the knife from the centipede’s head and points it at me. Kainda and Em tense.

“Why didn’t you help!” Kat shouts.

“Keep your voice down,” Kainda says.

“Keep my— Girl, someone needs to beat a little sense into you.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, Kainda steps forward. It’s my turn to stop her. I place my hand on her arm. “She has every right to be angry,” I say.

“You’re damn right, I do,” Kat says.

Em steps forward, hands away from her knives, and says, “You needed to learn.”

Kat rolls her eyes. “Learn what? How to kill a ten foot insect?”

“Chilopoda,” I say.

Kat’s burning glare locks on me. “What?”

“Chilopoda,” I repeat. “Insects are...”

Kat’s anger grows.

I raise my hands. “Sorry, sorry.” One drawback of having a perfect memory is the ability to spout facts like that. Of course, if I could keep my mouth shut, it wouldn’t be a problem. I decide to make up for it by explaining the situation. “The underground is full of these creatures. They used to grow to a few feet in length. They were the bottom of the food chain, and they posed little danger to anyone. But since the rest of the subterranean species fled to the underworld and they found a reliable food source—” I don’t bother mentioning the giant body of Behemoth, which the centipedes gorged on, “—they’ve become massive.”

“This is the first we’ve seen of them,” Wright says.

He’s right. The centipedes don’t normally hunt this close to the surface. Food must be scarce. “I once faced several thousand of them, some reaching thirty feet long.”

Kat’s not buying the story, but Wright, with whom I have a good rapport, blanches a little.

“Right,” Kat says. “How’d you handle that?”

I grin. “The only way possible. I ran like hell.”

My honest admission takes some of the fire out of Kat’s eyes. But she’s still not pleased. “Look, I get why you did it, but you’re kids. You’re not our parents. Or our mentors. If I ask for help, and you are able to give it, you will. Am I understood?”

Never one for tact, Kainda says, “No.”

Kat turns to Wright, “Please let me put her over my knee.”

I’m not sure if Kainda understands the parental spanking reference, but she knows a threat when she hears one. She takes another step forward, muscles tensing.

Wright stands between the women. “Kat, stand down.”

“That an order, Captain?” Kat says, oozing sarcasm.

“Actually,” Wright says, “I really don’t want you to get your head bashed in.”

Kat’s anger turns toward her husband. She doesn’t say anything, but I know what she’s thinking. To her, we’re kids. Amateurs. I might have impressed her with the demonstration of my abilities, but she has yet to see us in battle. It doesn’t matter that in surface years, I am actually her senior. I still have the body of an eighteen year old. But she’s going to have to get past that mental hurdle sooner or later.

So I let the second centipede, which is creeping up behind Kat and Wright, get a little closer. She needs to understand or she will never follow our lead. And down here, in our element, that will get her killed.

“Okay, Captain Know-It-All,” Kat says to me, “How would you handle a giant centipede?”

I look to Em. “Go ahead.”

In the blink of an eye, Em reaches to her waist like a gunslinger, draws a large knife and flings it with a snap of her wrist. The blade slices through the air, just missing Kat, whose eyes have just squinted with refined focus. I see her throwing her own blade toward Em, but I use the wind to knock it from the air, just as it leaves her hand.

Kat is about to rush in and press the attack when she hears the thump of a body hitting the ground behind her. She spins and finds a second massive centipede lying dead at her feet. Em’s blade is buried in the center of its head.

Wright steps back and whispers a curse. He had no idea the creature was behind them.

Kat just looks down at the dead creature. She bends, plucks the knife out of its head and wipes the gore off on her pant leg. Just then, a third, smaller centipede that I hadn’t sensed, launches from a burrow in the tunnel wall. Kat sidesteps the airborne centipede and brings the knife down, impaling its head and driving it down to the stone floor. She holds it there until it stops writhing.

The whole attack and killing takes just seconds.

She looks up at us and grins. “I’m a fast learner.”

Kainda returns the smile. The two women who were ready to beat each other senseless just moments ago have found some common ground—the quick and efficient killing of their enemies. She nudges me. “I like her.”

Wright recovers his dropped knife and sheaths it. “So, what’s next?”

We’ve been slowly and carefully working our way toward the bowels of Mount Olympus. Our goal is to find the Nephilim known as Hades, lord of the Underworld, and friend—possibly
former
friend—of the Titan known as Cronus. Hades, according to Cronus, knows the location of the Jericho Shofar, which is supposedly one of the horns that brought down the walls of the Biblical city of Jericho. I’m not sure I buy that story, but when a several thousand-year-old Titan trapped in Tartarus tells you about a weapon that can turn the tide of battle against the Nephilim, you at least look into it. And honestly, I don’t have a better plan.

But Olympus has to wait a little while longer. We’ve been so busy dodging waves of hunters scouring the underworld that we haven’t eaten in a long time. We might have to fight our way into and out of the Nephilim citadel, nevermind the possibility that Hades will not be pleased to see us or to hear that Cronus sent us to him. We’re going to need our strength.

I point at the dead Chilopoda. “Now, we eat.”

2

A gentle breeze generated by my connection to the continent swirls around our group, keeping our scent, and the odor of our three kills, contained to this small portion of cave. A hunter could still stumble upon us, but they won’t track us by scent.

Kainda separates five segments of the largest centipede and carves open the tops so that each resembles a bowl full of lumpy plain yogurt. She demonstrates how to scoop out the gelatinous flesh with her fingers and scrapes it off into her mouth before swallowing the dollop whole.

“How does it taste?” Wright asks. He’s trying to sound curious, but the skin around his nose is pinched up in disgust.

“Like dung,” Kainda replies.

“It’s not that bad,” Em says, trying to put our guests at ease.

Her efforts are undone when I laugh and say, “Yes it is.” But I follow my statement with a demonstration of my own. I scoop out some of the gooey flesh. “It’s fatty, full of protein and provides an energy boost. Oh, it’s also great for wounds. Just shove some of this in an open wound and bandage over it. It accelerates healing and fights infection.”

“That’s...disgusting,” Wright says.

“The trick is to hold your breath.” I scrape the flesh into my mouth and swallow without chewing. “Mmm, Mikey likes it.”

Wright and Kat both laugh lightly. Like me, they’re children of the 80s and recognize the catchphrase from the Life cereal ads.

“Where’s the beef?” Wright asks, mimicking the old woman from the equally popular Wendy’s advertising campaign. When I got chicken pox, my mom bought me a “Where’s the beef?” T-shirt. I loved that shirt.

As Kat and I laugh a little bit louder, Em and Kainda look at the three of us like we’re crazy.

“They’re television commercials,” Wright tries to explain. “From when we were kids.”

I notice that he’s including me in the, ‘when
we
were kids’ statement, which says he’s starting to believe that my surface age is close to his. But his explanation is lost on my fellow hunters.

“They’ve never seen a TV,” I say.

Wright’s forehead wrinkles. “Never?”

“How long have you been here?” Kat asks, then scoops a wad of cream cheese meat into her mouth and swallows it down. She winces, but doesn’t complain.

“I was brought here as a child,” Em says, rubbing her head. Her brown hair, which is still two-thirds blood red, is just a few inches long now, but it’s enough to cover the tattoo that was exposed when she shaved her head to pose as my wife. That double-ring tattoo revealed that she had been kidnapped as a baby and brought to Antarctica. It meant that Tobias, who raised her, was not actually her father. More than that, it meant that she might have family in the world outside Antarctica. Like me.

Wright and Kat look surprised by this, but Kainda’s admission stuns them. “I was born here.”

“Born here?” Kat says.

“The Nephilim have lived beneath the surface of Antarctica for thousands of years,” I say. “During that time, they have routinely taken humans from the outside world. They use torture and violence to break the will and blind the past, if you’re old enough to remember it, and turn us into hunters, servants that are small enough to reach portions of the underworld that are too tight for their large bodies.”

“What about Aimee?” Wright asks. “Merrill’s wife. She wasn’t at all like you three.”

The question twists my gut. “Aimee was a teacher. They don’t break teachers. They use them to learn about the outside world. Our languages. Our customs. Our weaknesses.” They haven’t asked, but I feel that full disclosure is important with my new allies. If they discover the truth later on, they might have cause to doubt my sincerity. “She was here because of me.”

“She was here with Merrill,” Wright says, scooping his first glob of centi-flesh onto his hand. He winces at the feel of it. “He told us the story. About the dig site. About how she was taken by the Nephilim.” He scoops the flesh into his mouth.

“She wasn’t taken by the Nephilim,” I say. “She was taken by me.”

The admission makes Wright take a breath while the fatty meat is still in his mouth. He tastes it instantly and nearly spits it out. He clamps his mouth shut, swallows the bite and chases it with a mouthful of water from his canteen. “Ugh.”

“Care to explain that?” Kat says. The edge has returned to her voice.

“I wasn’t myself at the time. I had been broken and remade into Ull, the hunter. She was my final test. So I took her.” My eyes drift to the floor. “But she saved me. Freed me. I was born on Antarctica. My parents were part of Merrill’s original expedition. Aimee helped deliver me. I have a perfect memory and hers was the first face I ever saw. When I saw her face again, I remembered everything. I became Solomon again.”

Telling the story in such a compressed way reveals the nearly fate-like quality of those events. If I hadn’t taken Aimee, I wouldn’t have been set free from my bondage. I would still be Ull, and I would have willingly given myself to the spirit of Nephil. There would be no resistance of hunters. Nephil would be stronger than ever. And the human race might very well be wiped out. But none of those things happened, all because I kidnapped Aimee. The realization helps remove some of my lingering guilt over the act.

“When they passed us on the river, I was on my way to help them escape. Aimee’s freedom and the Clark family’s safety has always been part of my core. Without them, all of them, I would have been lost to this place.”

Kat’s only response is to take a fresh scoop of flesh and swallow it down.

Wright grimaces at the ease with which she eats the meat. He looks at me. “Sounds like the three of you have been through a lot.”

“You’ll get a taste of it soon enough,” Kainda says.

“I’d say we had a pretty good taste already,” Wright says.

Kainda is about to argue. And I understand why. The endlessly violent and hate-filled life of a hunter is probably impossible to imagine without experiencing it firsthand. But we’re not here to compare scars.

“You encountered the Nephilim?” I ask. I know the answer, but not the details.

Wright gives a nod. “Several times.”

“Killed them, too,” Kat adds, scooping another wad of flesh into her mouth. She takes a chew, which even I think is gross, swallows and then notices the three stunned expressions staring back at her. “What?” she says a little defensively. She motions to her half empty segment of centipede. “This isn’t that bad.”

“You...killed a Nephilim,” Em says. It’s not a question, but it’s full of disbelief.

“More than one,” Kat says. “Once you get those metal bands off their heads, you can just pop them in the head like anyone else.” She looks at Whipsnap, Kainda’s hammer and Em’s collection of knives strapped around her waist and across her chest. “You guys really need to upgrade your arsenal.”

“Could you do it again?” I ask.

“If you can get me a gun, sure.”

Kat’s confidence, similar to Kainda’s, is refreshing.

Em’s eyes brighten. “I know where to find some.”

“We don’t have time to go somewhere else,” I say. “We need to get to Olympus.”

“They’re
at
Olympus,” Em says. “The warriors keep the weaponry of those they capture in a cell on the prison level. I’ve seen it.”

Kainda nods. “They do the same in Asgard.”

“We’d be a hell of a lot more useful if we had some weapons,” Wright said.

I mull the options around in my head. The distraction wouldn’t add too much time to our journey. And we might not find Hades where Em believes him to be. We might very well have to search all of Olympus. And if that’s the case, it seems likely that we’ll encounter some kind of resistance. It would be good to have all of us armed, especially if the husband and wife team are able to take down Nephilim warriors. Before meeting them, the only two people to kill a Nephilim, not counting the ancient stories, were Mira, who slew Enki with a grenade, and me, when I killed my master, Ull, with his own arrow.

I take a dollop of flesh and eat it. “Weapons it is.”