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

  So much for not using my powers. Perhaps showing these men that someone more powerful than a Nephilim is on their side would be just as helpful?

  Before I can decide, Pan turns on me.

  “Ull,” he says, recognizing me for who I am. His wings flare wide, blocking out a thirty-foot swath of the hallway. A twitching scorpion tail lowers into view. It’s ten feet long and tipped with a sickle-like stinger. When I first came to this place, the warriors had no tails or wings. But they’ve been modified genetically since, given the wings of a Gigantes and the stinger of a Titan, both of whom I met during my time in Tartarus. The modifications not only make them more formidable, but also grant them easy access to the outside world. The giants would normally have to cross the seas in ships, something they are likely not fond of doing since one of the few ways they can be killed is by drowning.

  The tail snaps out, catching me off guard. I am still the vessel of Nephil. The underworld is full of hunters seeking me out. Nephil needs me. Alive.

  A gust of wind, generated by instinct, carries me up and away. When I land, a few cheers and whoops emerge from the prison cells. Pan glares at the prisoners, silencing them.

  “You can’t kill me,” I say. It’s not meant as a boast, but as a reminder.

  “Ahh, little one,” he says. “You forget that I have the power to take your life and give it back.”

  He’s right. If he’s quick enough, he could shove that giant stinger through my heart and bring me back with just a drop of his blood. I need to be careful.

  No, I think, I need to put on a show. If I’m going to use my abilities to bolster these men, I’m really going to use my abilities.

  “And you forget who you are speaking to,” I say.

  “I have yet to be impressed. The stories about you are—”

  I flick my hand up like I’ve just given him an imaginary slap in the face. A gust of wind, compressed into a tight area smashes the horned helmet from his head. His mouth clamps shut. He has no idea how much he has underestimated me.

  His tail strikes out, but falls short of my position.

  “That doesn’t belong to you,” I say. I raise my hand like I’m scooping up a handful of sand. The stone floor rumbles in response. A spire rises from the stone floor, splitting and wrapping around the scorpion tail. I make a tight fist and the stone crushes down, severing the tail from his body like a very dull guillotine.

  Pan roars, not in pain—Nephilim delight in pain—but in anger. I am humiliating him. The sound of his voice might attract unwanted attention, so I use the wind to push air into his lungs, rather than out, and silence his voice.

  More stone rises, this time wrapping around his hoofed feet. He can’t move. But he is still dangerous.

  The giant uses his long reach, and sends his hooked staff sweeping in my direction. I leap the strike with ease, but this time I spin in the air and swing down with the bladed end of Whipsnap. The strike severs tendons in the warrior’s arm. Even as the blade emerges from the giant’s flesh, the wound is already healing, but that momentary cut of tendon is enough to loosen his grip. The crook falls to the floor. I kick it out of reach.

  Silenced and disarmed, all Pan can do is glare at me.

  I look around at the prisoners watching this. They’re shocked. Some are afraid. I’ve impressed them enough. Now they need something else. “Who here can speak English?” I ask.

  A smattering of hands rise from various cells.

  “Translate this for the others,” I say, then add, “You came to my continent to fight and kill each other.”

  I hear several people speaking in foreign languages. When they’re done, I continue.

  “But now you have a common enemy. These giants are the Nephilim, heroes of old, men of renowned, the ancient false gods who ruled over our ancestors. Stories of their dominion are told in the cuneiform tablets of Sumer, the Book of Enoch and the Bible’s Old Testament. Evidence of their dominion can be found in every part of the world. But they were defeated. By humanity.” With a little help, I think, but I keep that tidbit to myself since I don’t yet fully understand it.

  Eyes widen around me at the translation continues.

  “And we will defeat them again.”

  After another quick translation, someone asks, “How?”

  “Together,” I say, then turn back to find my four friends standing in the hallway. “Wright. Em.” I wave them to me.

  Wright is the consummate soldier. They’ll recognize him as one of their own. Em is a freckled, five foot four girl. They’ll see her as less than a soldier, despite the fact that not one of them could stand against her.

  As they join me, I feel a wave of nausea sweep through my body. Using my powers in unnatural ways, like creating manacles of stone or keeping a constant wind to silence a giant, tire me quickly. We need to do this quickly.

  “Killing them is easy,” I say. “If you know how.”

  I turn to Wright. “Take off the ring.”

  Wright aims and squeezes off two three-round bursts. The first three bullets loosen the ring around the forehead. The second three send it flying. The baseball-sized pulsing flesh of the Nephilim’s weak spot is revealed.

  Pan’s eyes widen.

  With fear.

  Nephilim aren’t afraid of much. Pain is an aphrodisiac. Suffering is a way of life. But death? For their soulless kind, it is the end. They simply cease to exist. While they would never admit it, there is nothing a Nephilim fears more than death, and as Em raises a single knife up in the air, that’s exactly what Pan is now facing.

  Em understands the point I’m trying to make. She turns around, holding the knife up for all to see. It’s a simple five inch blade. There were boxes of knives just like it in the armory. When she’s sure that everyone has had a good look, she turns to Pan.

  The giant struggles against his bonds. My will contains him, but not for long.

  Em snaps her arm forward, releasing the blade. It spins, end over end, and in a flash, covers the distance between her hand and Pan’s forehead. The blade buries itself up to the hilt in the soft spot.

  Like a marionette with its strings cut, the giant collapses to the floor.

  Dead.

  I quickly release my control of the wind and allow the stone floor to revert to its previous state. All trace of my involvement has been erased. Anyone who finds the scene later on might assume the prisoners got loose and got the better of Pan.

  As cheers erupt around me, I fall to one knee, exhausted from the effort. Not wanting the soldiers watching me to see my moment of weakness, I close my eyes and bow my head, as though in prayer.

  And then I am. “Thank you,” I whisper. It’s only the second time I’ve ever prayed. The first was at Tobias’s funeral. This time is short and sweet, and though I’m not entirely sure who I’m speaking to, I’m pretty sure the message is received. My energy returns and I stand again to more uproarious cheering. For my coup de grâce, I raise a hand, silencing the prisoners. I reach out with my mind, feeling the air, the stone and the metal of the locks. I focus on the molecules binding the iron together, and slowly push them apart.

  “My name is Solomon Ull Vincent. I am the leader of...” What am I the leader of? A small band of hunters? No, it’s more than that. The world may not yet know it, I’m the leader of, “...the human resistance. And you,” I say, looking at the men around me, “are free.”

  I clench my hand shut and the locks all up and down the hallway snap free and fall to the floor.

  6

  The soldiers emerge from the cages slowly. There’s a palpable sense of bewilderment as they try to comprehend the things they’ve seen here. Not just Pan and my unnatural abilities, but the ease with which Wright and Em killed the giant that had made their lives a living hell. How many of them had he taken, I wonder. But before I can ponder the question, a wave of dizziness spins my vision.

  Setting the men free with one bold act, while impressive, has further drained my strength. Stru
ggling to stay on my feet, I take Wright’s arm. Sensing my weakness, he helps prop me up. “You okay, kid?”

  “We’re the same age,” I remind him with a weak voice.

  “Right,” he says.

  “I’ll be fine in a minute,” I add and then change the subject. “Your people are on the coast, right? At the end of the river?”

  “There’s an aircraft carrier group just off the coast. I’m sure they’ve got an FOB set up by now.”

  “FOB?” I ask.

  “Forward operating base,” he explains.

  I make a mental note to find a book about the armed services and read it cover to cover. Would make speaking to Wright a lot easier. Then I dig into a satchel hanging from my hip and take out the modern mapping device I christened maptrack. I found it on a Chinese General who’d been killed by the Nephilim. It helped me find Em, Kainda, Luca and the others, but I have no need for it now. I show it to him. “Can you program the coordinates so these men can find their way to the FOB?”

  He takes maptrack and looks it over. The touch screen display is in Chinese, but he seems to have little trouble navigating through the options.

  “Can you read Chinese?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, pushing buttons. “But the interface is fairly common and the icons are universal.” Then he’s done. “All set. They can follow the river most of the way.”

  I take the device and look at the map. “There aren’t any dots.”

  “It’s a GPS device.”

  I’m about to ask what GPS means, but I think he’s catching on to the fact that I’ve missed out on the last twenty years of technological advances. “Global Positioning System. It uses satellites in orbit. The signal can’t go through a mountain, so the positioning dots will appear once it’s outside.”

  When I look up from the device, a sea of faces is staring at me. The freed prisoners have gathered around us, filling the hallway. Kainda and Em have taken up defensive positions on either side of me, their hands hovering just over their weapons.

  “They’re waiting on you, boss,” Kat says to me.

  My dizzy tiredness is replaced quickly by a horde of frantic butterflies in my stomach. They’re waiting on me.

  “Kainda, Em,” I say, “Can you keep watch?”

  Both nod and walk through the crowd, heading for either end of the hall. While the citadel is fairly quiet, this is still a Nephilim stronghold. There isn’t a lot of time. Now if I can just figure out what to say.

  Maybe it’s the lack of a threat, or the laser-like focus of my captivated audience, but I’m suddenly very uncomfortable. “Umm, hi.” Stupid. Next, I’ll thank them for coming. Not that they’d understand me. Ahh, that’s where I’ll start, the language barrier. “Can those of you who speak English come closer?”

  “I believe we already have, mate,” says an Australian man in green fatigues.

  I look at the inner circle of men and see a kaleidoscope of nationalities surrounding me. “Where are you all from?”

  “I’m a Kiwi,” says the man I thought was Australian. Kiwi is a nickname given to people from New Zealand. “One of the few remaining, I’m sad to say.”

  I look to the next man.

  “Turkey,” he says with a nod.

  I look from one man to the next, and they rattle off their respective countries. India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, China, North and South Korea and Germany. When they’re done, Wright and Ferrell are tense. “What’s wrong?” I ask Wright.

  “Not all of them are exactly friendly to the U.S. or each other,” he whispers.

  Some of the nations represented here were enemies twenty years ago. It’s disheartening to hear that things haven’t changed. They will now, I think. “Your individual countries no longer matter,” I say.

  Several of the men tense. I’m offending their national pride. But I don’t back down. “You’re all here because of a global catastrophe. Billions died. Entire countries were wiped out. Many of you probably lost families. Maybe your home towns.” I have their attention now. “This event was not natural. It was the opening attack in a war on all of humanity.” I leave out the fact that the repositioning of the Earth’s crust was caused when Nephil’s spirit momentarily took control of my body and supercharged my abilities. I don’t think that would go over too well.

  “You are no longer men from opposing forces. You are united.” I realize I’m not asking if they agree with this. The truth is they don’t have much of a choice. Then I add the real kicker, “You are my army. My soldiers. And if you want to stop our enemy, you will do as I say.”

  I fully expect some of them, if not all of them to object.

  But they’re silent.

  I look at the men around me. They’re unsure. Their training and loyalty to their individual countries is no doubt at war with the things they have experienced on Antarctica.

  It’s the Kiwi who responds first, perhaps because, like he said, there isn’t much left of his homeland to be loyal to. He snaps a salute and says, “Lieutenant Elias Baker, at your service.”

  One by one, the other men around me offer salutes. The gesture is different from country to country, but the intent is the same; I have their allegiance.

  I motion to Wright. “This is Captain Steven Wright of the United States Special Forces. He’s going to tell you how to reach the U.S. forward operating base.”

  “And then what?” Elias asks.

  “You wait for us to join you,” I say.

  “But they will shoot us,” says the man from Iran.

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  But Wright has it covered. “If just one unarmed man approaches the gate, hands up, you can deliver a message from me. It will go straight to the president. They’ve seen what we’re up against. They’ll take care of you.”

  “Until then, Lieutenant Baker is in charge,” I say. “The rest of you can translate his orders.” I don’t think they’ll like it, but if memory serves, no one has a beef with New Zealand. The fact that no one argues proves it.

  “Captain Wright is going to take you to an armory,” I say to Elias. “Take everything.”

  He nods and grins, clearly happy at the idea of being armed again.

  I turn to Wright. “Have Kainda explain the quickest route to the jungle.”

  Back to Elias. “Stay under the canopy. Move quickly. If you’re confronted by Nephilim—”

  “Remove the ring,” Elias says. “Shoot the forehead.”

  I smile and nod. These men are experts. A real army.

  “Go,” I say.

  Wright and Kat make their way through the crowd. Baker and the other English speaking men follow them and soon the entire mass of men moves quickly and quietly around the corner, headed for the armory that will give them a fighting chance.

  Despite the number of soldiers, they move in near silence, fully aware that they are deep in enemy territory. I stand my ground, nodding at the men who make eye contact as they walk past. Some whisper their thanks in a variety of tongues, and I do my best to repeat the words back to them. I’m as thankful for them as they are for me.

  Then they’re gone. As the last man rounds the corner toward the armory, I turn around and look at Pan’s corpse. I feel nothing for the eater of men. He’s now just an empty vessel, his spirit, or whatever Nephilim have, has become nothing. I’m struck at that moment by the realization that I now believe men have souls that continue living after death. After everything I have seen and learned, how can I not? The belief that men are like this dead Nephilim is so sad, so horrible, that I cannot comprehend how atheists live, believing they will simply cease to exist at the moment of their death.

  My eyes linger on the giant for just a moment before turning and seeing a second corpse—the man that Pan killed. I stumble toward the body, still feeling drained. When I see the pleading look frozen on his upturned face, the last of my strength fails me and I fall to my knees. His dead eyes stare at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to the man as tig
htness clutches my throat. “I should have saved you.”

  A gentle hand touches my shoulder. I can tell it’s Em without turning around. “You can’t save everyone,” she says.

  She’s right, I know. The Nephilim are likely killing human beings all over Antarctica as we speak. But this man was right in front of me. I saw him die. One moment, he was living and looking at me with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. The next, he was dead, killed violently to spite me. My logical side can get past it. The man would have died if I hadn’t been here. His decapitation might have even been merciful compared to what Pan had planned. But my emotional side, the part of me that used to be Ull, feels a burning hatred for the killing of this man, and a deep sadness for those who will miss him.

  I’m about to tell Em how I feel about the sanctity of human life, when an angry voice says, “In the name of Zeus, what happened?”

  I look up into the eyes of a hunter I do not know. In the second it takes me to see the man’s Olympian garb and the twin whips strapped to his hips, Em has flung a knife at the man’s heart.

  7

  The knife is knocked to the ground by an unseen force. It lands at the hunter’s feet. The man’s eyes go wide with understanding. “It’s you.”

  Em draws two more knives, but it’s not necessary. The hunter backs out the way he came—and runs.

  “What did you do that for?” Em says, wheeling around on me. I can’t remember her ever being so angry with me before. I see the look of a hunter in her eyes. But then she reels it in. “He’s going to get help. All those people you just freed are going to die.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, still on my knees.

  She helps me up. “Solomon, even if those men get their weapons, if they get caught in Olympus, surrounded by hunters, warriors and who knows what else, they are going to die. And don’t tell me you will protect them. You can barely stand.” She sighs, shakes her head and says, “If only Tobias had a few more weeks with you.”

  I note that she no longer calls Tobias her father. It seems she’s come to accept that her actual father might still be alive somewhere. But I don’t bring it up. “He’s not going to get help.”