The Last Hunter - Lament (Book 4 of the Antarktos Saga) (16 page)

I stay there, hovering in the void, still feeling her lips on mine. My stomach is in knots. My chest feels ready to burst.
Is this what love feels like?
I wonder, but then I realize that it’s actually what asphyxiation feels like. I need to breathe.

I kick to the surface, careful not to rush and smash my face on the ceiling. I slip out of the water’s grasp, find my handhold and turn to the others. “What did you find?” I ask Kainda—all business—knowing that any hint of a romantic gaze would be unwelcome, both by Kainda because she’s, well,
Kainda
, and by Kat, who just lost her husband.

“We can’t swim out,” she says. “I nearly didn’t make it back.”

“We don’t need to swim out,” I say. “The exit is just a few miles away. I can get us there.”

“You’re sure?” Em asks.

“I’ll be tired after,” I admit. “But you can help me if I need it. Even if I do pass out again, we don’t have much of a choice. We need to push forward. We’re deep underground now. We’re losing surface time.”

To my surprise, it’s Kat who replies. “He’s right. Let’s go.”

There is no emotion in her words, just cold calculation. She swims in front of me, glaring at me. I’m feel like a mouse staring into the eyes of a lion. Then she turns around and waits. I remove Whipsnap from my belt and bend the staff around her. She holds on with both hands. Em and Kainda duck beneath the water and rise inside the loop of my arms and Whipsnap. They hold on with both hands.

I focus on the air trapped against the ceiling, pulling it toward us from all the neighboring bubbles, which makes the effort easier. The swirling air whips our hair and quickly dries our bodies, pushing the water away. When I’ve gathered enough air around us, I push us down into the water. As the red glow fades above us, I turn toward the exit, accelerate and race through the depths.

17

Reaching the tunnel that exits the New Jericho chamber proves simple enough. Of course, most things are when you’re not being pursued by half-demon monsters and trained killers, or being head-butted in the stomach by someone you’re trying to rescue. I’m exhausted when we finally reach a side tunnel that’s not flooded, but I don’t pass out.

When I take my first furtive step out of the water and discover my legs have been transformed into Jell-O, I wonder if we’d be better off letting me sleep. But I decide against it. I need to build up a tolerance.

Kainda braces me. “Do you need—”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“That’s great, kid,” Kat says. She places a hand against the plain stone wall and stands motionless. “But in case you three haven’t noticed, I’m blind down here.”

“Did you lose the flashlight?” Em asks.

“I might have put it down when I was trying to save
my husband
,” she says.

Though I cannot feel the cold, I shiver. Her anger is palpable. But is it dangerous? Will she turn on us? Her relationship with Wright reminded me of my Solomon/Ull split—gentleness and intellect matched with passion and energy. But now that balance has been disrupted by the removal of Wright, Kat’s counterbalance. If I’d remained all Ull and no Solomon, I would have become a monster.
I was a monster
. Will the same thing happen to Kat?

“Hold on,” I say, placing my hand on the wall. I reach out, feeling layers of stone and pockets of trapped gas. Then I find what I’m looking for. It taxes my already weary body, but I manage to extract two crystals from the stone, one blue and one yellow. They’re brighter than any of the crystals I’ve seen, perhaps because they’ve never been exposed before.

I fight a wave of dizziness as the crystals fall into my hand like a snake’s disgorged meal. I brace myself, closing my eyes. I’m fading. After a deep breath and a shake of my head, I fight back the exhaustion and turn my attention back to the crystals. It takes just a moment of thought to bind them together, forming a glowing chunk of crystal the size of a large walnut. I hold the newly formed light source up and find it does a better job lighting the tunnel than the flashlight did. The gray stone walls glow blue and yellow with a strip of green where the colors meet.

I hold the light out to Kat. She stares at me, gauging me in some way I can’t quite understand. “Was it hard for you?”

“I’ll be okay,” I say, thinking she’s talking about retrieving the crystals from the stone.

“Was leaving him hard?” she asks, this time sounding like she might tear my head off. “Or is abandoning your friends something you hunters do?”

That stings, because not leaving my friends behind has always been a priority for me.

Em knows this more than most and she responds before I can. “Solomon sacrificed his life to save my brother. He didn’t have to. He knew it was a trap. He knew he would likely die. But he gave himself up and risked
everything
to save him. He spent three months in Tartarus, what you would call hell, as a result.”

“There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to kill Solomon,” Kainda says.

Her admission, while well known to Em and me, is a surprise to Kat. Her eyes go wide a little as she turns to Kainda.

“Given the chance,” Kainda continues, “I would have crushed his skull and taken pleasure in the scent of his blood.”

Can’t say I’m enjoying the details, but they’re driving the point home. Kainda and I were once mortal enemies.

Kainda crosses her arms. The story still makes her uncomfortable. “But I was wounded—mortally—by one of the cresties, what you call, crylos. He could have left me to die. It would have been a simple thing. The cresty matriarch was powerful. Hunters were closing in. Solomon was not as strong back then. They would have killed him. But he stayed. He fought for me. He saved me. And...he
forgave
me.”

Kainda’s final words nearly bring a smile to my face. Kainda, one of the most feared hunters, daughter of Ninnis, just delivered a fairly convincing morality lesson about forgiveness. My mind is officially blown.

When Kainda is finished, Kat turns her eyes back to me. She wants to hear my answer.

“I will regret leaving your husband behind every day of my life,” I say. “But I will also learn from it. He said, ‘This is war. People die.’ He wanted me to finish the mission. To win this fight. To do what it takes even if that means losing a life.”

Her head sags. Her shoulders drop. With a shake of her head, she says, “You got it wrong.” When she looks up again, there are tears in her eyes. “War is the act of taking lives. A
lot
of lives. On both sides. Leaving Wright behind was just the first of many to come.”

“Not if I can help it,” I say.

Faster than I can react, she’s in my face. “You can’t help it, kid. That’s the point. People are dying right now.” She stabs a finger upward. “On the surface. Some of them in your name. And now, we’re dying down here, too!”

My patience evaporates and some of that Ull passion comes out. “What would you have me do?” I shout. “Give up? Stop fighting? I didn’t bring you to Antarctica. That was you! You and the rest of the screwed up human race, in the wake of a worldwide catastrophe, decided the solution was to kill
each other
over a new chunk of land. That’s why
you’re
here. To kill
people
. I’m just trying to save people.” I turn away from her. “I’m trying to save everyone.”

I shake my head and start to walk away. “We’re wasting time.”

“You’re right,” Kat says, stopping me in my tracks, but is she talking about wasting time or my tirade?

“You’re right,” she says again, this time with a hint of sadness. “I just wanted to be sure Wright didn’t die to save a fraud.” She steps past me, leading the way into the tunnel with her glowing crystal.

“Kat,” I say.

She pauses.

“Despite what he said, I’m pretty sure Wright died to save you. We just happened to be there.”

She considers this, gives a nod and continues on without another word.

I try to follow quickly when I realize that Kat has no idea where she's going, but my weak legs fail me and I fall to my knees. Kainda picks me up and helps support my weight.

“Go with her,” I say to Em, motioning to Kat as she descends deeper into the underworld.

With Em and Kat in the lead, we fall into a slow, but steady pace, traveling for what I calculate is three surface hours. We merge with one of the larger tunnels that lead directly to the massive chamber containing the gates of Tartarus and the decomposing remains of Behemoth. From there we will have to find our way deeper, but it will not be easy, not if the giant albino centipedes still hunt these grounds. My fears are put to rest just a minute later when we come upon the corpse of a thirty-foot centipede. Its head has been crushed.

Just beyond the centi-corpse, we find a second, and a third.

“What happened to them?” Em asks.

“Hades,” I say, realizing the truth when I count the tenth dead centipede. “When he left, he said he would, ‘prepare the way.’ I think this is what he was talking about.”

Ten more minutes and twenty-three more dead centipedes later, the cavern opens up. We’re there. Em approaches the tunnel exit slowly. There is no sign of trouble, but we’ve been trained to never enter an exposed space without first searching for danger.

Em’s search lasts about half a second. She ducks down and back. Her eyes are wide. Her skin goes so pale that even her freckles fade.

Kat pushes past her and takes a look. When she turns back, she’s equal parts confused and afraid.

Kainda puts me down and moves to take a look, which frustrates me because I’m supposed to be the leader of our little ragtag rebellion, and I’m going to be the last to see whatever it is that has them all so spooked. Kainda looks for just a moment, then turns back to me. Unlike the others, she seems unfazed by what she’s seen, but her clenched jaw reveals she’s hiding her fear. She waves for me to join them. I stand, testing my legs without her help, and find myself mostly recovered. My muscles twitch as I walk, but I
can
walk. The question is
can I run
? Because I suspect that might be necessary soon.

I squat down and crouch-walk to the edge of the tunnel exit. Directly ahead is nothing but endless space. The chamber is massive, miles in every direction. If not for the enormous piles of bones—human, Nephilim and other—scattered around the space, its scale would be lost.

After a deep breath and a silent promise that I will control my fear, I peer around the corner and look toward the gates of Tartarus. The black doors are at least a mile off, and the flaccid corpse of Behemoth, now mostly a skeleton, lies nearby. But the source of everyone’s fear is much closer.

A towering stone spire stretches from the floor to the ceiling hundreds of feet above. Several natural columns like this one help support the naturally formed chamber’s ceiling. But only this one has Hades bound to it by massive chains. He’s covered in drying purple blood, though there are no wounds evident on his fast-healing body. He’s being tortured.

His torturer hovers in the air, held aloft by black tendrils.

Ninnis.

He’s alive.

His head tilts to the side slightly. He laughs. The sound is sickening. Inhuman. Like a hundred different voices trapped in a single body.

This is
not
Ninnis.

“Welcome Solomon,” Ninnis says, his voice deep and booming, like a Nephilim’s.

I step out of hiding. He knows I’m here.