The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (88 page)

Prologue

“Belgrave Ninnis, come inside this instant, before Death himself decides you are too easy a target to pass by.”

Lieutenant Ninnis leaned back in his chair, “Just a moment more.” He took a slow drag from his pipe, allowing the warm smoke to thaw his lungs a touch. Momentarily relieved of the cold air’s sting, he set his charcoal to the page once more and lost himself in the image.

He didn’t notice that the gray cloud coming from his lungs with each breath wasn’t pipe smoke. He didn’t notice the brightness of the stars overhead or the thin crust of ice forming atop his water glass. The cold suited him. Always had. It was part of the reason he’d been selected to join Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic expedition—that and his father of the same name was the Inspector Surgeon General of the Royal Navy and a member of the Vice-Admiral’s Arctic expedition that explored the coasts of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. His father’s legacy was more inspiration than pressure, but Ninnis couldn’t deny a desire to outdo his father. Antarctica was further, colder, more dangerous and far less explored.

The charcoal, reduced to a nub, crumbled between his fingers. He lifted it from the page and looked down at his hands.

“Lord,” came a sweet, but concerned voice. “You’re shaking.”

Ninnis watched his hand twitching back and forth, stricken by the cold. “So I am.”

“I don’t understand why you’re out here, tonight of all nights,” she said.

Ninnis turned back to his wife of four hours and smiled. She was wrapped in blankets. Her brown hair hung in ringlets, recently freed from a braid. Her deep brown eyes mesmerized him. “To prepare myself,” he said.

“A full year will pass before you leave my side,” she said. “Prepare yourself when winter returns.”

“I was not speaking of my future adventures at the bottom of the world, or of the frigid lands that await me there,” Ninnis said. “Rather, I was speaking of the warmth this night yet promises.”

A grin formed on her lips, followed by a shiver that ran up through her body. “Devil.”

“The devil could not love one as fair as you,” Ninnis said, and then leaned to the side, revealing his drawing. “For you, dear, sweet Caroline. My wife.”

When her hands went to her mouth, the blankets fell, revealing that the braid was not the only wedding decoration she had shed. She now wore delicate undergarments that both hid her body and accentuated it. Stunned by the sudden revelation, he was still in a stupor when she took the page from his hands and stepped inside, off of the balcony and away from the chilled London air.

He watched her walk away with the sigh of a man who knew, without a shred of doubt, that he had somehow won a lottery in Heaven and had been given one of God’s finest creations. He lifted his water glass to his lips and tipped it back. When no fluid reached his mouth, he looked down, saw the layer of ice and laughed.

Shaking his head, he stood and looked out from the Cavendish Hotel’s penthouse balcony. The lamp-lit streets, homes and businesses of London surrounded him, a sea of orange lights beneath a sky of white stars. Normally, he might gaze at the view, searching for interesting details or listening to the late night revelers defeating the cold with liquor, but the woman waiting for him inside was far more interesting. He spun on his heels and entered the suite, closing the doors to the balcony behind him.

The heat greeted him first, prickling his skin. The room felt like an inferno, though he knew it was just because he was so chilled. The fire had dwindled to a small flicker, and a new log would be needed to accommodate a late night. Half way to the fire, he paused when the heat became unbearable. Scratching his itching skin, he turned to his new wife and watched. Noting his attention, Caroline met his gaze.

“How did you do it?” she asked, holding up the portrait. “It looks so much like me, but I wasn’t posing.”

Ninnis tapped his head. “There isn’t a detail of your face I do not have committed to memory. That is my true preparation for the expedition. When I miss you, and I will, I can recreate your face on the page. In pretending you are gazing back at me, as you are now, I will find peace…” He shivered and grinned. “And maybe a little warmth in that barren world.”

His grin widened when Caroline all but swooned at his words. She placed the page on the nightstand and lay back on the thick blanket. He moved to the fireplace, adding two more logs to the fire, and prodding the embers with a wrought-iron poker until the fresh wood caught. Satisfied that the fire would burn through the night, he turned to the bed.

Caroline smiled at him. “It’s nearly time.”

He smiled widely. “I know.”

“You have to go,” she said.

Ninnis paused, his shirt half lifted. “Go? Where?”

“Back,” she said.

“Did you leave something in the hall?” he asked. “At the church?”

“Belgrave,” she said. “You
know
. You remember.”

Tears pushed at his eyes. An invisible hand clutched his throat. He sat down on the side of the bed. “I hoped it had been a nightmare. A very long, detailed nightmare.”

She sat up next to him, hand on his back, tracing the contours of his shoulder blade. “I wish it were so.”

Ninnis looked at her, his tears running freely. “And you? Are you real?” He looked up at the sketch, a perfect memory of his Caroline. “Or are you just a memory?”

“Look at me,” she said. “Do you think you can remember me this well?”

His eyes traveled up and down her form. Every part of her was perfectly realized. “You’re right,” he said, “I’m not Solomon.”

Ninnis gasped. Saying the boy’s name solidified that this was a fantasy and the very bleak reality, where Caroline was long since deceased and his body had been kidnapped by an evil spirit, awaited him. His head sagged toward the floor.

“Chin up, Belgrave,” Caroline said in a tone that was far more chipper than seemed appropriate.

Ninnis stood and stepped away from her, offended. “My own fantasy taunts me?”

Caroline frowned while still maintaining some form of smile on her face. The expression was new to Ninnis. She slipped from the bed and stood before him, reaching out a hand.

Before her fingers reached his chest, Ninnis stepped back. “This isn’t real. The boy is real. The masters are real. It’s all darkness. And death! And evil! And—”

Her hand reached his chest, flattening over his heart. He collapsed to his knees, wracked by sobs. She fell with him, clutching his body to hers, steadying him. “I
am
real, Belgrave. I am not a conjuring of your imagination. We are not even within the confines of your mind.”

Ninnis snapped to attention at this, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Where are we then?”

“Where you needed to be.”

Ninnis looked around his honeymoon suite. He had never felt as loved and safe as he had on the first night he spent in this room. He thought he understood, but a question nagged. “If I must leave, will I see you again?”

“I...do not know,” she replied. “All I know is that it is possible.”

“But...how?” he asked. “I am...my life is...” He shook his head. “I do not deserve any of this.”

“You’re right,” she said, “you didn’t deserve to be taken from me, or to be broken and made into a monster, or to be the architect of Solomon’s trans-formation.” When it was clear that Ninnis was far from convinced, she added, “Do you think the boy is the only one capable of forgiving you?”

Ninnis raised his eyebrows and looked her in the eyes.

“You have lived a long life, Belgrave Ninnis, but you still have so much to learn.”

Tears, now of hope, fled from his eyes. “Then teach me.”

She reached out and took his hand. “There is no time for that. I can only show you.”

He resisted her pull toward the balcony door. The cold now reminded him of his frigid prison. But she didn’t relent, and soon, he found himself standing before the door.

“Open it,” she said. “And look.”

He found himself reaching for the door handle. When his skin touched the metal handle, it did not sting of cold. Instead, it felt warm to the touch. He twisted the handle and pulled.

Warm air washed over him.

The night was gone, replaced by a brilliant, deep blue.

He stepped onto the balcony.

London was gone. In its place was—

“An army,” Ninnis said.

And at the army’s core stood a man—barely a man now—who was at once intimately familiar and wholly alien. Ninnis pointed to him. “There I am.”

Caroline stepped up next to him, resting her hands on the railing. “Not you. Him. Ophion.”

“
Nephil
,” Ninnis said.

Caroline nodded.

He looked at her. “Tell me what to do.”