The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (79 page)

25

A voice reaches me before Nephil can. It’s muffled. Distorted. Distant.

Em?

Kainda?

Kat?

The Kerubim? If anyone is capable of carrying their voice that far, it would be him.

It comes again. Louder, but still indistinct.

“What?” I say aloud. I’m sure the statement confuses Nephil, but the monster probably thinks I’m succumbing to delirium.

Delirium
. That’s what this is. I’m hearing things. There is no voice. It’s in my head.

In your head
, the voice says.

Your head. Not my head. The voice is my own, but not. It’s as though my thoughts are being projected into my mind from the outside.

Xin, is that you
? I think, trying to communicate. He has reached out to me before, helping me at just the right moment. But there is no reply to the name.

Luca
?
Are you there
? The boy can see through my eyes during times of intense stress. Is he watching now? Has he figured out a way to reverse the connection and communicate? If he has, he doesn’t have much longer to say goodbye.

I don’t hear a reply, in my ears or in my mind, but I feel it. No, the voice comes from within, but it’s not
my
voice. This is some kind of presence. Something other than me. In me. As the feeling radiates out through my core and down my limbs, I’m reminded of when Nephil possessed my body, but the experience is different. Where Nephil exuded anger and control, this is more peace and freedom, with a hint of suggestion.

The feeling subsides.

The voice fades.

But I experience a strange kind of, “eureka!” moment where I suddenly know what to do. There is a weapon with greater range and power than even this fiery sword, and it’s within reach, not of my hands, but of my will.

While my body weakens, my invigorated mind reaches out for the alcove. I can’t feel the horn in a traditional sense, but I can sense the tug of something resisting the breeze. I wrap my thoughts around it, lift it and pull the weapon free of its hiding place for the first time in thousands of years. Best of all, this happens behind me, out of sight.

Nephil closes in slowly, reaching for me now. “Come, Solomon. It is time to end this fight and take your place as—”

The monster’s voice catches in his throat as the shofar suddenly appears in my hands and I open my eyes. The curled ram’s horn is large, perhaps two and a half feet long, and it ends with an opening the size of a teacup’s saucer. The brown and blood red flecked exterior of the horn is scored with lines that might be natural or perhaps carved by the original owner—some ancient priest stalking around the walls of a long gone Nephilim stronghold. Despite its size, color and threatening shape, it looks wholly inadequate for defeating an enemy, human or otherwise, but I have little choice left, and that quiet whisper inside me persists.

“With the last of my breath, I will undo you.” I place the ancient weapon to my lips and blow.

Nothing happens.

I understand the workings of a shofar. It’s a horned instrument, but unlike the trumpet or tuba, it has no reed. So the user must vibrate the lips while blowing to produce a sound. And I’m doing that. Vibration isn’t the problem. It’s my lungs. I can’t push enough air with my one remaining lung to generate any kind of sound.

I watch as Nephil’s look of shock and fright morphs into elation. “Pitiful. Even with the shofar in hand, you are incapable of harnessing its power. When our bloods merge, that wound sapping your strength will be a welcome delight. Give yourself to me, Solomon, and eternity will be yours.”

“No,” I say. It’s a feeble whisper, but carries my determination just the same. “I’m not done yet.”

The horn weighs little, and I have no problem lifting it over my head.

The beast squints at me.

“Can’t you feel it?” I ask him. “The air. All around you. Shifting. Pulsing.” I take a breath, filling my single functioning lung. As the air seeps down my throat, the wind picks up, blowing toward my body, whipping Ninnis’s hair. “This whole cavern is my lung. The air is mine to command. And right now, I command it—”

Nephil’s eyes burst open with realization.

“—to blow.”

He charges.

A tiny whirlwind of quickly vibrating air flows through the shofar. The sound it produces rips through the cavern. The noise diffuses over the distance, but Nephil is caught in the direct path of whatever kind of supernatural sound waves are shooting out from the horn. To me it’s just a high-pitched grating noise, but Nephil reacts like he’s just been set on fire.

The black limbs flail madly, shooting in and out of Ninnis’s body, which is arched back in a contorted spasm. His scream almost drowns out the sound of the shofar, but it peters out to nothing as the black limbs retreat inside Ninnis, silencing the beast’s voice.

With the black tendrils gone, Ninnis begins to fall. I reach out with the wind and catch him. Despite functioning with just one lung, it takes no effort to control the winds around me. I use this control of the elements to keep a steady flow of air flowing into my ruined lung. The slurp of blood and air escaping my chest grows louder, but at least the organ is temporally inflated.

As the full amount of oxygen returns to my brain, my vision settles and thoughts clear. I am far from not dying, but I’ve delayed the effect of being stabbed in the chest for a little while—long enough for me to deliver the shofar to Em, Kainda and Kat, and leave before defiling Eden.

“Solomon?”

The voice startles me to the point where I nearly drop Ninnis. When I redouble my effort to hold Ninnis up, I notice that his eyes are open.

And they’re Ninnis’s eyes. Not Nephil’s. All trace of the monster has been erased.

“Ninnis,” I say. It’s as non-threatening a greeting as I can come up with.

“Belgrave,” he says.

“What?”

“My name is Belgrave. Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis. Lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and husband to Caroline Rose Ninnis.”

To say I’m stunned is an understatement. Hunters don’t remember their pasts. Every memory, every happy moment, every loved one, is erased by the breaking process. Hunters are molded from clean slates, honed into killers without conscience because there is no memory of right and wrong. “You remember?”

“I remember...
everything
.” The wounded tone of his voice makes my eyes water. The flicker of a smile forming on his lips forces the wetness out over my cheeks. He reaches a hand toward me; it’s extended like he wants to shake. “Thankyoeeeeaaaarrrgghh!”

The voice of Nephil returns like a crashing wave. The tendrils shoot out, clinging to the ceiling. And the eyes of Belgrave Ninnis disappear. The effect of the horn is temporary on Nephilim, apparently very temporary on one as strong as Nephil. But even though the beast has regained control over his host body, he is still reeling from the attack.

He hisses at me, contorting his face into a thousand different expressions, and then flees like a spider across the ceiling. He won’t come back. Not by himself. Not now that I have the shofar and know how to use it. Granted, I’m still not sure how I’m going to stop an army with it, but whatever the horn did to him, he didn’t like it.

With the shofar and sword in my hands, I slip down from the ceiling, slowly descending to the green meadow. Em and Kainda smile as I return to them victorious. They don’t know about my fatal wound. When I land on the ground, the wind cuts out around me and my lung deflates once again. Blood and air spatter from the wound, causing Em to gasp.

“Solomon!” Kainda shouts, catching me as I fall to one knee.

Kat quickly inspects the wound. “Even with a field med kit, I wouldn’t—”

I look up at the angel and cut Kat off. “What is your name?”

His brilliant head turns down toward me, “I am Adoel.”

I hand him his sword and then give the horn to Em. “Teach them how to use it.”

“What are you saying?” Kainda asks.

That she’s upset is an understatement. But the big angel stops her brewing tirade with a hand on her shoulder. The hand is immense on her and she must sense his power because she stops and looks at him.

The angel stops for a moment, whispering to himself as he sheaths the sword, extinguishing the flame. He turns his attention back to Kainda. “Daughter of man—” He brings his hand back around, revealing a small wooden bowl. “Go to the river. Fill this.”

When she hesitates, he adds a booming, “
Now
,” and Kainda is off and running. Without her support, I slump to the ground. Em kneels by my side, holding my hand.

“Stay with him,” the Kerubim says, heading toward the tree.

“You’ll be okay,” Em says, trying to sound confident, but she’s seen enough wounds in her life to know that this one is fatal for a human being. Of course, knowing where we are, that might not be the case.

“This is Eden,” I tell her.

She looks at me like I’ve just spoken another language. And in a sense, I have. Hunters don’t speak of, or learn about, things like Eden. Kat, on the other hand, knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“You can’t be serious?” she says. “We’re in a
cave
.”

“I’m not saying I can explain it,” I say, and I quickly tell them everything I deduced about Adoel and this garden of literal Eden.

“What is Eden?” Em asks, growing impatient with the conversation, though I can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t understand or because I’m basically dying in front of her.

“The story says that this is where the first man and woman lived,” I tell her between gasps. “Where God once walked.”

Kat turns toward me when I say this. I can see it’s sinking in, and it has her spooked, as it rightly should. It means we’re in the presence of something...beyond understanding.

“The one you—” She searches for the word. “—prayed to when we buried Tobias?”

I nod.

“You believe in this now?” Em asks.

The question catches me off guard because I’ve been kind of feeling this stuff. I haven’t questioned believing or not believing. It just
is
. When my logic kicks in, I say, “I’m—I’m not sure. But
look
at this place.” We take in the scenery, which ends with Ookla sitting up and looking at me. He gives a gentle roar and lays back into the grass, ignorant to my plight.

Kainda returns from the jungle, walking quickly, but careful not to spill the water.

“Give it to me,” the angel says.  Both Em and I flinch. We hadn’t heard him return.

I look up at the otherworldly being as he holds the bowl up. He holds a small fruit in his hand. He squeezes it gently until a single drop of juice gathers on the underside and drips into the bowl. He pockets the fruit and then stirs the water with his finger.

“Am I supposed to drink that?” I ask.

His reply is loud and stern. “
No
. To do so would...it is unthinkable.” He drops to one knee beside me. “Lie back.”

I obey, lying flat on my back, which makes it harder to breathe. I quickly get lightheaded.

“If this doesn’t work,” I say, “you have to get me out of here before it’s too late.”