The Last Hunter - Lament (Book 4 of the Antarktos Saga) Page 3

  “We will be exposed,” Kainda says. “You will be exposed.”

  What I took for indifference to the plight of these people has been revealed to actually be concern for my welfare.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I say. “The men in these cells are probably soldiers, yes?”

  Wright nods. “Though I can’t say where they’re from. Not everyone here will be happy to see a bunch of Americans.”

  “We’re not Americans,” I remind him. “We are Antarctican. And I’m fairly certain the soldiers in those cages now know the world has a common enemy.”

  “Agreed,” Wright says.

  I look at Kainda. She reluctantly nods.

  I move to exit the stairwell. Kat stops me with a hand on my arm. “Wait.”

  I turn around, not really interested in hearing another reason to abandon my fellow man, but ask, “What?”

  “Guns first,” she says. “The prisoners will be guarded. They have to be. If things go south, I want a gun.”

  “Go south?” Em says, not understanding the modern slang.

  “Go wrong,” I say to her, then to Kat, “You’re right.” Back to Em. “Guns first.”

  We move fast and silent. The solid stone makes moving silently fairly easy, but if we do make a sound, it will be amplified by the vaulted ceilings. Em stops by a human sized wooden door. It’s simple and unlocked. Not exactly the kind of place you would expect an arsenal to be kept, but Nephilim and hunters have no need for modern weapons, and there’s generally no one else around to take them. I suspect they are kept only to be studied and understood.

  Em opens the door. The room is pitch black, but she steps inside. A moment later, I hear a click and the room blooms with yellow light. As I step inside, my eyes are drawn up to the electric glow. It’s one of the over-sized light bulbs, like the one I saw in the Asgard library, and like what can be seen in ancient Egyptian pictographs, such as those depicted at the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, in central Egypt.

  When Kat curses in glee, I look at the rest of the room. Stone shelves are covered in black, metal weaponry. I see handguns, rifles, machine guns, knives, grenades and an assortment of gear I don’t recognize. While Kainda closes the door behind us, Wright and Kat fan out into the room, scouring the weapons like kids loosed in Toys “R” Us with a million-dollar gift certificate.

  I join them, looking over the guns. “What should I look for?” I ask.

  “Anything with a sound suppressor,” Wright says. “In these caves, our ears would be ruined by anything without one, and our position would be given away.”

  “You mean like a silencer?” I ask. My knowledge of weapons is mostly based on what could be seen on daytime TV in the 80s.

  “No such thing,” Wright says, “but, yeah, that’s the general idea.”

  “In that case,” I say, heaving a heavy rifle off one of the stone shelves. “Will this do?”

  Kat turns to me and her eyes light up. “Oh dear boy, you know the way to a woman’s heart.”

  Kainda grumbles, but doesn’t say anything.

  Kat takes the weapon from me, whispering its features, as she looks it over. “Sound suppressed FN FAL. Selective fire. Collapsible stock. Good. Should make it easier to carry underground.” She hefts it in her hands. “About ten pounds.” She ejects the magazine. “Standard NATO rounds. Thirty round magazine. This is good.” She holds up the straight magazine with a distinctly angled bottom. “Any more of these?”

  “Three,” I say, holding up a brown leather satchel.

  She takes the satchel, looks inside at the three fully loaded magazines, and grins. “Perfect.”

  “I fail to see what this...weapon will be good for,” Kainda says.

  It’s at that moment that the door opens and a Nephilim gatherer steps into the room. Gatherers are what most people know as “grays.” They’re widely considered to be alien in nature, which isn’t too far from the truth. They gather humans from the outside world, for hunters (like Em) or for genetic experimentation—the sort that led to me having six clones. The first is Xin, a half-human, half-seeker, who is now my ally. The second was a horrible little half-human, half-thinker creature that I killed in a subterranean laboratory. And then there is Luca, a six year old, fully human duplicate of me currently hiding underground with the other rebel hunters. There are three other clones I have yet to meet, but from what I’ve been told, by Aimee and Xin, I’d be better off not meeting them. Of course, Aimee said the same thing about Xin, and I would be dead without him.

  The gatherer, whose hands hold a wooden box full of dog tags, stops in its tracks. Its oval, jet black eyes go wide with surprise. But it quickly recovers, and before anyone can act, a painful pressure fills my mind. Gatherers and seekers are telepathic. This is a well-known fact in UFO/alien folklore, but the skill isn’t just for communication. Gatherers can literally kill you with a thought.

  It recognizes the three hunters in the room as the predominant threat and targets Kainda, Em and me first, dropping us to our knees. But this gatherer has made a mistake. I hear a sound, like a cough, repeat three times in rapid succession. A fraction of a second later, three neat holes form a triangle on the creature’s forehead.

  The wooden box drops from the creature’s hands, landing at its feet with a loud thunk. The gatherer’s limp body starts to fall backward, out into the hallway, where the purple blood from its forehead is sure to leave a stain and a scent trail that will alert any hunters nearby.

  But Wright moves quickly, snagging the gatherer’s wrist and pulling it inside the room. He drags the body to the back corner, while Kat silently closes the door. When Wright stands up from his body disposal duty, it’s as if nothing happened. There isn’t even a drop of blood on the floor.

  Kainda grins. “I stand corrected.”

  4

  “What the hell is that?” Kat asks, standing over the body of the gatherer she’s just killed. It’s large, black, almond shaped eyes are now lifeless. “Looks like something out of Close Encounters.”

  “It’s a gatherer,” Em says.

  “Close Encounters was based on them,” I say. I remember the movie more for its depiction of late seventies family life, but the aliens conjured by Steven Spielberg were actually Nephilim. As I look over the three, clean holes in its forehead, I can’t help but wonder aloud, “Is it dead?”

  Everyone stiffens, even Kainda and Em. They don’t know either.

  “I’ve never seen one killed,” Em admits.

  “Nor I,” says Kainda.

  “There’s no exit wounds,” Kat says. “So the bullets either bounced around inside the skull, turning the brain to pudding, or they fragmented on impact and, well, turned the brain to pudding. Plus, I aimed for the same spot where the big ones are vulnerable.”

  But the gatherers are different from the warriors in every way except for their unnatural parentage. Who’s to say what they are capable of, if they have a weak spot or if they can heal. Certainly not any of us. It has purple blood like the warriors, but a warrior would have healed by now. I’ve suspected that only the warriors could heal rapidly, which enables them to rule the various tribes, but these lesser Nephilim could still heal, perhaps just more slowly.

  “There is one way to end the debate,” Kainda says, lifting her hammer over the gatherer’s plump head.

  “Wait!” I shout.

  She holds her strike. I turn to Wright and Kat. “Do you have everything you need?”

  Wright holds up a silenced pistol, and then turns around so I can see the silenced assault rifle slung over his back. Kat throws her beloved FAL over her shoulder and reveals that she has also found two sound suppressed handguns as well. She holds one out to me. “Sure you don’t want one?”

  I hold up a hand. “Not a fan of guns.”

  “And yet, you’re okay with your girlfriend bashing in a dead man’s head?”

  “They’re not men,” I say with a touch of venom.

  “What is girlfriend?” Kainda a
sks.

  “Later,” I say. The classification of our relationship in modern terms might freak her out. It’s freaking me out. I would prefer to be just...us. Hunters. Together. It feels more natural just to be, without adding the social pressures of what is expected of girlfriends and boyfriends. Of course, Kainda is oblivious to those things, but I’m not.

  “Suit yourself,” Kat says, before wrapping a dual holstered belt around her waist. She slips both weapons home. “I’m good.”

  Kainda lifts her hammer again. She looks back at the group. “This could be...messy.”

  We all step back. The hammer rises. Kainda’s muscles ripple as she tenses. Then she strikes.

  In the fraction of a second that it takes the hammer to descend, I see a flicker of movement in the thing’s black eyes. Not dead. But then the hammer strikes and it is, without doubt, very, very dead.

  The head implodes under the weight of Kainda’s strike. But there is no splatter of purple blood. The head, which is roughly the size of a watermelon, is also somewhat similar to the fruit on the inside. Where there should have been a brain, there is only a thick, purple gelatinous substance, like jelly donut filling.

  “It has no brain,” Wright notes.

  “Or blood,” Kat adds. “Not really.”

  I turn to them. “Like I said. Not a man.”

  “Doesn’t smell like a man, either,” Wright says.

  While the gatherer might not be oozing gallons of blood, its jellied insides have a strong odor. Wright gathers some shotgun shells, pries them open and dowses the ruined cranium with gunpowder. The strong chemical smell quickly masks the scent of gatherer gore.

  Kainda covers her nose, finding the modern odor more offensive than the insides of a dead Nephilim. “What is that smell?”

  “Cordite,” I say.

  “Not quite,” Wright says. “Cordite isn’t used in modern weapons. This is basically wood chips soaked in nitroglycerin and coated with graphite. Bigger bang for less buck and a much stronger odor.”

  “Huh,” I say, feeling awkward. It’s not often that someone knows something I don’t. But I was never very interested in modern weapons before coming to Antarctica. My knowledge of the subject is limited to what’s in textbooks.

  Armed and satisfied that the gatherer is now fully dead, we sneak back into the hallway. After closing the door to the armory behind us, I pause and sniff the air. There’s just a hint of the gatherer’s scent. But someone would have to walk right by the door to pick it up. And since the hall is still devoid of life, I don’t see that happening any time soon.

  We quickly backtrack to the steps and then turn down the hallway leading to the cellblock. The scent of humanity is thick in the air, but the prisoners’ voices have faded to nothing. Are they all dead? I wonder. Have they been taken away? It doesn’t seem possible. We were in the armory for just ten minutes.

  As we reach the end of the hall and peek around the corner into the cellblock, I have my answer. The prisoners are terrified. A single Nephilim warrior wanders down the massive hallway, bending down before each cell, looking at the men contained within.

  The twenty-five foot giant wears a chrome helmet that resembles a goat’s head, with twin curling horns. His cape is coated with white fur and...there’s something different about his legs. While the other warriors I’ve seen thus far were human like in appearance—if you ignore their height, dual rows of sharp teeth, six fingers and toes and demonic eyes—this one has hoofed feet and hairy, goat-like legs. Tucked into his belt is something that looks like a flute. The weapon in his hands resembles a shepherd’s crook, but the hooked end is flattened and sharpened like a scythe, and the other end of the weapon’s staff holds a barbed tip.

  From his appearance and our location, I have no trouble guessing the identity of this monster. “Pan,” I whisper. He’s nearly three hundred feet off, but Nephilim have exceptional hearing.

  “You’ve met him?” Em quietly asks.

  I shake my head, no. “But I recognize him. From the outside world’s mythology. What I don’t understand, is why a warrior is guarding prisoners? Where are the hunters?”

  “Looking for us,” Kainda whispers. “And Pan does not guard prisoners, he watches over his flock. These men are food. He is selecting them for a meal.”

  Voice’s rise in panic, bringing my gaze back to Pan. The long hallway is lined by barred, twenty-foot square cells, each jam packed with soldiers from the outside world. I see a variety of different uniforms and hear a number of languages, most of which are not English. But they’re all afraid. As well they should be.

  Pan opens one of the barred cell doors and reaches inside. The men swarm away from the oversized, six fingered hand like shoaling fish fleeing a pod of whales. One of the men is caught and pulled from the cage. He kicks and punches bravely, shouting at the giant in what I think is Russian.

  The Nephilim shepherd just laughs at the man, his voice a booming chuckle that smacks of Jabba the Hut’s, “Huu huu huuu.” When the sharpened end of the crook comes up, I realize what’s about to happen. He’s going to decapitate the man!

  I stand and step into view, shouting, “Stop!”

  “Solomon,” someone hisses, but I’m not sure who because my heart races as Pan’s cold gaze turns on me. Then he laughs again, “Huu huu huuu,” and licks his lips. Apparently, I look delicious.

  5

  “Who are you, little one, to speak to me so boldly?” the giant asks.

  He doesn’t recognize me, I realize. Which makes sense since we’ve never met and it’s not like there are wanted posters with my face hanging around the underworld. He might recognize Whipsnap, based on its description, but it’s still wrapped around my waist. But perhaps the most convincing misdirection is my all blond hair.

  Hunters have blood red hair like their Nephilim masters. I don’t fully understand how it happens, but it’s an outward representation of the Nephilim corruption. As that corruption fades, so does the coloration. Em has a patch of brown hair that covers her bangs and a portion of the side of her head. Kainda has a black streak on the top of her head, but she combs it in with the red, masking it in a tight braid.

  But my hair is nearly white blond. There is no trace of Nephilim corruption. Such a thing is unheard of for a hunter, even a freed one. If anything, he’ll take me for a teacher.

  The giant licks his lips.

  Or maybe just a snack.

  Movement to my side brings my attention back to the others. All four look ready to charge out. “No,” I say to them. “I need to do this on my own. I need to know I still can.”

  The first and only time I killed a Nephilim warrior was when I used the wind to fling a giant arrow into his unprotected forehead. I haven’t repeated the task since. In fact, I pretty much dread this. While I can face down Ninnis, vessel of Nephil and the man who broke me, I find fighting something so big, so inherently evil, unnerving.

  It’s a fear I need to conquer.

  Whispers reach me as I stride down the hall toward the giant. The voices grow louder with each cell I pass. I can’t understand them, but I hear the tone. Some are disbelieving. Some think I’m crazy. And others are simply lost.

  A few words of English reach me. “Now the monster will kill them both.”

  I look for the speaker, but only find a sea of grimy, frightened faces. These men are soldiers, but their spirits have been broken. They don’t believe their new enemy can be killed.

  I determine to give them hope. Which means I can’t use my powers. I need to do this as a man, so that they know it is possible.

  I stop fifty feet from the giant, who is just watching me with a sick toothy grin. “Let him go,” I say, speaking with authority.

  Pan cocks his head to the side, no doubt pondering my bravado. Then he says, “I will free him.”

  The prisoners’ voices rise up in wonder about the boy who commands giants. And for a moment, I share their astonishment.

  Then the warrior squints. A sm
irk slips onto his face.

  “No!” I shout. But it’s too late. Pan yanks his staff to the side, drawing the hooked blade through the man’s neck, and severing his head. I turn away from the sight. While I have no trouble watching Kainda bash in the head of a gatherer, the sight of a dying human being revolts me to the core.

  Panic returns to the prison population as they realize that this monster thinks nothing of me or my commands. In the battle of wills, I’m losing. It’s time for a different kind of battle.

  I sprint toward the warrior. The slap of my bare feet on the hard stone floor silences the men. They must think I’m insane. The sound catches Pan’s attention, too, and he turns to greet me. His face reflects surprise, but it’s more like delight than fear. He’s underestimating me.

  Good.

  But he’s no fool. Rather than let me reach him, he swings low with his staff, no doubt intending to separate my torso from my limbs. But it’s exactly what I was hoping he would do.

  I leap up over the blade as it whooshes beneath me. The momentum of his swing spins the giant around, but not before I plant my feet on the giant’s arm and leap again, aiming for his head. As I rise through the air, I tug Whipsnap from my belt. It springs open in my hand and I quickly drive the razor sharp spear tip into Pan’s chest and pull myself higher still. With this final surge upwards, I bend Whipsnap back and prepare to knock away Pan’s goat helmet and the golden ring beneath, both of which protect his weak spot.

  I never get the chance.

  I mistook the giant’s spin as off balance motion fueled by his missed strike, but it was actually an attack.

  From its wings.

  The black, bat like wing strikes me hard, pounding me into the stone wall, twenty feet off the floor. My head spins from the impact, but then I’m falling. The ground rushes up to greet me. It’s a fall that could kill me. But it doesn’t.

  The wind catches me, and rights me, depositing me gently on the floor.

  The prisoners have seen this. Their voices rise in surprise. Somewhere, someone says, “Did you see that?”