The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (98 page)

When she’s safe, I fall to my knees and vomit. Hard.

“Feeling ill?” Ares says, stomping closer.

I know he doesn’t want to kill me. Nephil will want me alive. I am his vessel, after all. But that’s a fate worse than death.

“Shut. Up!” I scream, my voice more of a roar. I’m filled with a rage so intense that I wonder if my Ull personality has once again taken over.

Ares chuckles. “Feeling...angry?”

I grind my teeth, seething with raw hatred. Just as I’m about to leap up and launch myself at Ares, I see the wound on my arm again. It’s pink around the edges. Hot. Raw. The arrow wasn’t poisoned...it was laced with blood.

Infected blood.

I’m becoming a berserker.

16

No time
, I think. Ares is about to knock me silly and I don’t think it matters to Nephil whether or not I’m a berserker. He might actually enjoy the rage added to his own. I have to end this threat, fast, and then worry about what’s happening to my body. Right now, my rage is certainly growing, but I’m still me. Still in control.

The trees behind me whoosh as the wind rushes toward the back of my head. It rushes past, bending the trees all around, and strikes Ares head on. The giant stands his ground. He can’t move forward, but he’s also still standing, which was not part of the plan.

Instead of a tightly compressed surge of air, I summoned a broad, sweeping wind, like a tornado. Knowing the swaying trees might attract attention, I stop the attack.

Ares steps toward me. “Give into the madness. The change will be less painful and a part of your mind will remain, for a time.”

All I can do is look at the ground. Stabs of burning pain move up my arm, spreading out into my chest.

Ares kneels in front of me, places an index finger on my chest and flicks it out. I sprawl backwards, unable to stop even this simple, humiliating assault. I see layers of green shifting high in the canopy, some glowing almost yellow under the direct gaze of the sun.

“In minutes, the rage will consume you,” Ares says. “Then darkness. And when you awake, you will be one of
my
creations.”

I let out a groan at the realization that Ares is not only the berserker commander, but also the source of the plague that turns men into mindless monsters beyond redemption.

I’ve amused him again. “I expected more from you, Ull. But I see now that the growing legend of the boy hunter is...exaggerated. You are weak. A pitiful thing.” He laughs. “You are without hope.”

As I look up my nose at the giant leaning over me, I see a flash of blond hair covered by blue. Ares rears up, shouting in pain-fueled joy. When he stands, I see a slash across his knee. Then it’s gone. I turn my head, following the blur of motion.

Mira.

No...

She’s not fast enough.

Ares reaches out for her. If he catches her, all he’d need to do is squeeze. She has faced Nephilim in the past. She even killed Enki. But she has no grenades, and I don’t think Ares will bother having a conversation with someone he doesn’t need to keep alive.

No!

His fingers are just inches from her back.

“No!” I scream, thrusting my hands out, generating a burst of wind as though it came from my body itself. There’s an explosion of purple on Ares’s chest, then a circle of light.

I stare up at it for a moment, unsure of what I’m seeing.

Then the image resolves.

Trees.

I’m seeing
trees
in Ares’s chest?

Not
in
his chest,
through
his chest! I punched a hole straight through him, using just the wind.

Fueled by rising anger, fear for Mira’s safety and the fact that I’ve just formed an invisible force into a horrible weapon, I stand to shaky legs.

Ares stumbles back. Despite enjoying pain, he must be experiencing so much of it right now that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s like a kid with a cake to himself who knows, at some level, too much of it is bad for him. He puts his fingers on the wound and looks down. It’s already closing, healing the meat and bones that had been torn away, but he’s still afforded a clear view of the forest behind him.

He looks up at me, and then to his spear, still embedded in the tree. He runs for it.

I let him, picking up Whipsnap as he runs. With a tug, Ares removes his spear from the tree, turns around and throws it at me. I can feel the spear moving through the air. I can detect its molecules and its origins. The metal, was dug from the Antarctic earth and the shaft taken from a long dead tree that grew in Antarctic soil. My earth. My tree.

With an anger-fueled thought, the spear disintegrates just before striking my chest. It falls to the ground as dust.

As I step toward the Nephilim, a wind swirls around me, bid by my emotions rather than by my will. My hair flails in the air around my head, like living gorgon snakes. A darkness settles inside me and I grin.

Ares sees my cocky smile and balks at the challenge. Then, with an anger matching my own, he roars and charges. He could crush me underfoot. He could bite my head off, or sever me at the midsection with a swipe of his fingernails. He could sting me with that Titan tail or simply thrash me about.

But he’d have to get close to do any of those things. That’s not going to happen.

I lift him off the ground and then return him to it with enough force to leave a crater. Before he can recover, grunt or enjoy the pain, I fling him against a tree.

Hearing the monster’s bones break fuels my own dark rage, and I let out a battle cry of my own. As Ares recovers from his wounds at the base of the tree, I rush in and leap into the air.

He sees me coming and raises an arm in defense. His intent is clear, to take the blow on his forearm and then attack with his uninjured arm. But I have no intention of striking him with Whipsnap. The weapon serves only as a catalyst for my attack. I raise Whipsnap over my head and swing the blade edge down.

I’ve read about windstorms so strong and intense that people had limbs torn away, or skin scoured off, but for some reason, I’ve never thought to use the air as anything but a blunt object. Condensing it to the point where it becomes sharp...I’m not sure I would have come up with that without this berserker blood boiling my insides.

An invisible blade of wind cuts through the air with a sound that reminds me of those 1970s Kung Fu movies and ends with a wet slurp. I have struck Ares’s arm right where he intended me to, but the blow is far more powerful than either of us thought possible. Part of the giant’s arm and his hand fall to the ground.

I land and watch Ares react. The limb rolls twice, stopping between us. He looks at it with a level of confusion that I find funny. The laugh that escapes my lips sounds a lot like Ares’s laugh, only not as deep or resonating. The part of the arm still attached to his body begins to regenerate, but so much is missing, it’s going to take some time.

“My legend,” I say, but the words sound jumbled, like I actually said, “Muaye leoganada.” That I can’t seem to speak right sends a wave of frustration through my body. It’s all the catalyst I need. With a hate-fueled shriek I slash Whipsnap at an angle, left to right and then right to left, carving a deep X in Ares’s chest. It’s unnecessary. Some part of my mind recognizes this. But I don’t care.

I want him to know pain.

To feel fear.

To beg for his life.

I want to delight in his anguish.

A strand of hair blows across my eyes. It’s just for a second, but I see it clearly. It’s hard to miss.

Because it’s red.

Blood red.

I let out a scream so horrible and loud that my throat stings and becomes hoarse before the air in my lungs is extinguished. When Ares proves that we now share the same dark heart by laughing at my pain, I spin around, strike through the air with Whipsnap and send a razor thin streak of air through his neck.

His head comes off his body with a fountain of purple blood and rolls to the ground. The monster is dead. For good.

But I am lost.

I stagger back as the weakness claiming my body resurfaces. I mumble incoherently, only vaguely aware of Mira’s and Kainda’s voices. My foot catches on something and I fall back. But I never feel the landing. I simply slip away into the darkness promised by Ares.

17

I awake as something hard pounds into my gut, pushing the air out of my lungs. I wheeze, trying to catch a breath, but the impacts keep coming. It’s less severe, but it prevents me from catching a real breath.

I hear shouting. The voices are indistinct. The words warped as though shouted through a tin can. But the tone—hurried and desperate—reaches my ears. I try to move in response to the sound, but I’m unable. Am I too weak or am I restrained?

I open my eyes for a look, but my vision is blurry. Everything is distorted and moving, racing past like trees outside a car window.

Another jarring impact rattles my body. When I clench my eyes shut, spots of light explode onto the backs of my eyelids.

Then darkness again.

The car ride
is bumpy. Dad tells mom that it’s normal, but I know it’s the suspension. I think mom does too, but she’s just humoring him. I warned him about the problem a few weeks ago, but he didn’t believe me. I’m only eight, after all. I’m not even sure if he remembers dismissing me with a chuckle, but I do.

I don’t mind feeling every bump in the road. I don’t get car sick or anything. But it frustrates me sometimes, when I’m imagining Superman is running beside the car, jumping over signs and trees, or cutting through them with his heat vision. A solid bump can throw me off and my imagination, which is happy to follow its own course, will envision Superman tripping or falling in a heap. It’s embarrassing.

To make matters worse, it’s early Spring. In Maine. This means the roads have not yet been repaired after being scoured by snowplows all winter. Potholes abound, and if steering a car into every single hole in the road were a sport, my father would be the champion.

To prove the point, we strike a pothole so deep that the impact sends a vibration through the car strong enough to yank me completely out of my imagination.

“Dad,” I say, annoyed.

“What?” he says with a shrug. “I didn’t see it.”

“Mark, it must have been the size of Lake Ontario,” my mother says. She sounds annoyed, too, but the way she slaps his shoulder says she’s not. I think she finds his inability to spot giant holes in the ground amusing. Or cute. Which is just...yuck.

A moment later, I say. “Better pull over.”

“Why?” my father asks. “You have to pee? We’re almost there.”

My mother turns back to me. “You can hold it for ten more minutes.”

I sigh. “I don’t have to pee.” I nod my head toward the front left tire. “We’re losing air pressure.”

The slight dip is still subtle, but they’ll feel it in a moment.

“Schwartz,” my father says like he’s about to teach me something. But the
whupwhupwhup
of the now flattening tire and shimmying front end silences him.

We pull over to the side of the road. My father gets out and inspects the tire. As he does, I slide over and reach for the door.

“Sol,” my mom says in that tone that says, “Don’t.”

My reply is raised eyebrows and a stare leveled at my mother. I’ve always found it fascinating how much information can be communicated through body language and facial expressions. We have a silent argument in the course of three seconds, at the end of which she says, “Ugh, fine. Go.”

I open the door and slide out. I pause for a moment, enjoying the warm air—some of the first I’ve felt in five months. Red buds coat the trees lining the roads. The first strands of green grass are beginning to poke up through the brown. And in a week or so, the lilies in our front yard will push up through the earth and turn skyward. It’s my favorite time of year.

I close the door and find my father crouching down by the side of the olive green sedan, inspecting the tire like he’s an archeologist who’s just discovered the Rosetta Stone.

“You have no idea how to change a tire, do you?” I ask.

He looks over at me slowly. I can tell he’s trying to think of something to say. Maybe an excuse. Or a joke. But he gives up and says, “I’ve never had to before.”

“The spare is in the trunk. The jack is on the left side.”

He looks at me dubiously. “You’ve changed a tire before, have you?”

“I read the car manual,” I say.

He smiles wide, stands, puts his hand on my head and shakes my hair so blond strands are hanging in my eyes. “You’re my hero, Sol.”

“Whatever,” I say, moving for the trunk.

He takes my shoulders and turns me around. Leaning down so we’re face to face, he says, “Seriously, Schwartz, the way your mind works. It’s a gift. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if you saved the world someday.”

I wake again,
this time lying on my back. I’m no longer moving, and I can breathe, though I’m quite sore. But my vision feels off, and it’s dark. I try to sit up, but can’t. And it’s not from weakness. I can feel the tightness around my arms and legs. I’ve been restrained.

A surge of fear races through my mind. Have I been captured? Are Mira and Kainda still hurt? Or dead?

A shiver rolls up through my body, leaving a sickening tension in its wake. When it reaches my head, an all consuming rage flares out, burning my thoughts away and turning my emotions into a howl that explodes from my mouth. But I’ve been gagged, and the sound is muffled.

My teeth grind at the fabric in my mouth, but before I can chew through it, a canteen of water is emptied onto my face, making me gag and sputter.

A woman looms over me. “Shut up!”

I clench my fingers, reaching for her, intending to tear her apart.

“Hey!” she says, sounding offended. She leans closer and slaps me across the face. The impact is dizzying. “Look at me.”

Something about the voice calms me, and I try to look at the woman, but all I see is a vague shape. The gag is pulled quickly pulled away from my mouth.

“Dark,” I say, then growl and struggle some more.

A flicker of orange light illuminates the space...which I still can’t see clearly. The woman returns, her body lit, but still blurry. My eyes roll back and she strikes me again, harder. “Solomon! Focus!”

Focus...

The word slowly sinks into my mind like a stone, before reaching the depths where a small part of my sanity still resides.

Focus.

“Kat?” I ask.

“I think he’s back,” Kat says, stepping away.

Another person slides into view, this one close and gentle. She slides a hand across my face, trusting me implicitly to not bite it off.

“That might not be a good idea,” warns someone else. Kainda, I think.

“Solomon,” the woman leaning on me says. “Look at me.”

I try to see her, but it’s like looking through a dirty window.

“He’s burning up,” she says.

I know she’s saying I have a fever, but I can’t feel anything beyond a craving for violence.

Kat returns. She grips my mouth roughly, yanks back the gag and drops three small, solid objects in, then pours in water and shoves my jaw closed. I try to resist, but I feel weak now. When she says, “It’s Ibuprofen,” I swallow.

For ten minutes, the woman beside me bravely strokes my hair. And with each gentle touch, I feel my mania subside just a little. I lose myself for a bit, staring at what I think is a stone ceiling.

“Are we in a cave?” I ask.

“Yes,” the woman replies. “We’re twenty miles from the coast. Just a day’s journey from the base.”

I turn toward her. Her face is still blurred, but I think I recognize the shape...and her voice. “Em?”

I hear a sniff, and I wonder if she’s crying. Her hand reaches for my cheek and rubs it gently, the way my mother used to. “It’s me.”

“How?”

“Luca,” she says. “He still sees you in his dreams. He sent us to you, Kat and me.”

“Luca...” I say, picturing the boy, which is easy, since he looks like me. But then the face in my mind’s eye changes. Luca looks angry. Then furious. His eyes go black, red seeps from his skull and stains his hair. He shrieks at me.

Except he’s not the one shrieking, it’s me.

I hear shouting. And a pain-filled scream.

Something hard strikes my forehead and everything disappears.