The Last Hunter - Ascent (Book 3 of the Antarktos Saga) (19 page)

“Okay,” he says, and starts to tear down his creation.

I stop him with a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Em says I can’t leave any evidence,” Luca says. “So we have to take them down and flatten out the ground.”

“Huh,” I say, “Makes sense. But…let’s do it like this.”

I do my best impression of a Godzilla roar, and stomp toward my castle.

“What are you doing?” Luca asks.

“Being Godzilla,” I say. “Justin and I used to do this in the winter, in the snow when the plows made piles on the side of the road.”

Again, Luca couldn’t possibly understand what I’ve just said. He has no context for it. Godzilla, snow plows and roads are all foreign to him. But the wanton destruction of a freshly built mud castle seems to be a universal language to boys everywhere. Luca roars and joins in, crushing his castle beneath his feet.

“Is Godzilla like Behemoth?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But not as scary. He’s even a good guy sometimes.”

Luca gives his castle one last stomp, flattening it out. “Good.”

Then, in a flash, the boy’s mind moves on to something else. “Oh, hey, come see this!” He dashes to the water’s edge and stops when his toes get wet. He bends over and starts slapping the lake’s surface with his hand.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Calling my friends.”

“Your friends?”

“Well, they’re sort of my friends. Em says I should stay away from them. That they could be dangerous. I don’t think so, but—”

“If Em says they’re dangerous, you should probably listen to her,” I say.

“I know, I know,” Luca says with faux exasperation. “But they started coming here just after I woke up. And they come when I call them. Like this.” He slaps the water with a little more effort. “Just watch.”

He slaps the water for another minute. I can see he’s about to give up, but then something swirls just beneath the water, twenty feet out. I place a hand on Whipsnap.

“Luca,” Adoni says, his tone serious and very adult sounding. He has one hand on his bolas and a knife already in the other.

“I know, I know,” Luca says, waving away the man’s concern.

I look to Krane. He’s watching, too, but his arms are crossed and he looks only half-interested.

A puff of air brings my focus back to the swirling water. Something took a breath.

The swirling shape rises again, five feet closer. I can see a vague, large shape beneath the surface of the water. Had this been midday instead of sunset, I might have been able to see the true size of the creature, but the orange sun fails to pierce the water.

Again, five feet closer, the swirl emerges. As the creature surfaces, a cloud of expelled steam blocks its face for a moment. Then the air clears and a doglike face with big black eyes is revealed.

“Gloop!” I shout, charging into the water.

“Solomon?” Luca says, now sounding afraid.

“What’s he doing?” I hear Adoni shout. I can hear his feet, too, running toward the beach.

I wrap my arms around the Weddell seal that has saved my life twice. The seal nuzzles against my side and then swims circles around me.

Adoni arrives, bolas spinning above his head.

“It’s okay,” I say, raising a hand up. “He’s a friend.”

“You’re friends with this creature?” Adoni asks.

“Among others,” I say.

He lowers the bolas. “Right. The dinosaurs.”

“Grumpy is here, too?” I ask.

“Grumpy?”

“The male cresty.”

Adoni starts to sound annoyed when he says, “Cresty?”

“The dinosaurs.” I remember what Aimee called them. “The crylophosaurs.”

“Ahh,” Adoni says, finally understanding. “We have heard stories.”

“Have you seen them?” I ask.

Adoni attaches the bolas to his belt with a shake of his head. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things, but you… I saw them just once. They left. With Xin.”

Before I can ask for more details, a woman clears her throat behind Adoni. He falls silent and steps aside.

It’s Kainda.

Gloop slides beneath the water and disappears.

“Go get something to eat,” she says, then glances at Adoni and Krane. They nod and start away from the lake. “Take the kid, too.”

Adoni takes Luca’s hand and leads him away.

I take a step to follow them, but Kainda stops me with a stare and says, “You stay.”

Luca glances back at me apologetically before fading into the jungle.

Standing in waist deep water, I’m not sure what to say to Kainda. Our interactions have been brief and intense. Em clearly trusts her, but last I knew, Kainda would have liked nothing better than to cave in my skull.

She glances over her shoulder, listening, and then turns back to me. As she walks toward the water’s edge, her hand slides subtly down to the large stone hammer attached to her belt and unclips it.

Crap.

27

Not reaching for Whipsnap is a struggle. Kainda could crush my skull with a single hammer strike if I don’t defend myself. But she helped Em and Luca escape from the Nephilim. And Em clearly trusts her. They’ve been fighting together, leading this ragtag group of hunters for months.

Xin’s message repeats in my mind. Don’t trust anyone.

But how can I do that? Even if it’s a risk, I’m going to have to trust someone.

Em and Luca without a doubt.

But Kainda? Her ferocious reputation and past disdain for me make her the most likely candidate for betrayal. But it’s
too
obvious. The moment she started acting funny, someone would notice. Especially me.

She grips the hammer and pulls it from her belt.

And this intimidation is exactly what I’d expect from Kainda. She’s clearly made an effort to change, though. So I decide to risk trusting her. I hold my ground, but make no move to defend myself.
She won’t hurt me
, I tell myself.
She’s glad I’m alive, just like the rest of them
.

When she places the end of the hammer against my chest, I’m not so sure. Still, she has yet to bludgeon me. “You…” Her voice burns with contempt. “You changed everything.” She shoves the hammer forward, knocking me back a little deeper in the water.

Kainda steps closer, moving out of the shade and into the orange glow of the setting sun. The light transforms her. Her skin looks soft. Her deep red hair tied back in a braid looks pretty. Her eyes, though they burn with intensity, make my insides twist. I’m no longer seeing a fellow hunter. I’m seeing a beautiful girl.

“Everything used to make sense to me,” she says, nearly shouting. “The world made sense. Hunting. Killing. The Nephilim.
Everything
. Even hating you. You had everything I wanted, and then you took it all away. You destroyed it.”

She shoves me again. It hurts, but it’s bearable. And I’m still distracted by the new way I’m seeing her.

“You could have killed me,” she says. “Could have let that crylophosaur kill me. That would have made sense. But now, I’m just confused. What felt right then, feels wrong now. I don’t like it.”

She’s in my face now, like this is a WWF pre-match verbal smackdown. And she could probably intimidate any wrestler on TV. But I just stare into her eyes, listening, and trying to make sense of what I’m feeling. As much as she says I confused her world, she is doing the same to me now. Her strength, her passion and her beauty are making me forget that she is a killer and the daughter of Ninnis.

It’s not her fault, I remind myself. She wasn’t born hard. She was made that way, and she’s proven her true strength by turning against it.

“Why?” she shouts. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

When I don’t answer, she takes a deep breath, lets out a sigh, and tilts her head to the water between us. When she does, I see a streak of silky jet-black hair in the center of her head. It’s pulled back tight and mixed in with the braid, visible only from above.

Innocence reclaimed.

The sight of Kainda’s black hair is the last straw. My intellect takes a back seat for a moment and my emotions guide my hand to Kainda’s chin. I tilt her head up and two things surprise me. First, Kainda hasn’t broken my hand. Second, I lean in quickly and plant my lips against hers. It’s awkward at first. I’ve never done this before. In fact, I doubt Kainda has either. Hunters aren’t interested in romance.

But then something changes. Our bodies relax. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close. Her hammer drops from her hand with a plunk as it sinks beneath the water.

I’m not sure how long the kiss actually lasts. My mind normally keeps track of such minor details without any effort, but all sense of time is gone. When we finally do separate, she still has that dangerous edge about her—something I think I like—but all of her hostility toward me is gone.

Her shouted questions register, now that my intellect is free to think again. Why? Why didn’t you kill me? “That’s why,” I say, realizing the truth for the first time. When I saved Kainda from the matriarch cresty named Alice, I was being driven by Ull, who, as it turns out, represents the majority of my emotional side. And Ull is now a part of me. Ull is me, and I him. No longer separate. Which means all of the feelings he had for Kainda, despite her aggression—or perhaps because of it—are my feelings now. I am undeniably attracted to her.

And apparently, the feeling is mutual.

A slight shift of brush by the shore sends both of us into action. We separate quickly. Whipsnap springs out as I pull the weapon from my belt. Kainda quickly recovers her hammer from beneath the water. We stand side by side and face…

Em. She’s smiling and looks a little uncomfortable.

Busted.

“Umm,” she says. “I just wanted to tell you. There’s some food. If you want it.”

Kainda and I just stand there. Looking at her. No one knows what to say. Hunters don’t kiss. They don’t have feelings for each other. But that’s changing. Em loves me like a brother. Tobias loved her like a father. Those things aren’t supposed to happen, either.

“I’ll just…” Em takes a step back into the jungle. “We’ll talk later.”

Em disappears into the jungle and we’re alone again. I slowly turn to Kainda. She’s dripping wet from recovering her hammer, and she’s standing there, ready for a fight that isn’t going to come. She meets my gaze and I know I look equally silly because a glimmer of a smile creeps onto her face. That small smile is like a punch in the gut, but instead of wincing, I laugh.

Kainda’s smile widens. It’s not much, and it seems to confuse her, or at least the emotions accompanying it does, but it’s something I never thought I’d see. I trudge back to shore and take a seat on a fallen tree. Kainda follows and I force my eyes to the ground so I don’t get caught gawking. I have seen a number of hunters in my time underground and have never once noticed how little clothing we actually wear. And now I’m having trouble not noticing.

Being a teenager is so confusing.

Kainda takes a seat next to me. For several minutes, we watch the sun set. The light still stings my eyes some—midday is nearly unbearable without sunglasses—but the diffused light of the falling sun hits Kainda’s high cheekbones in such a way that a little discomfort is worthwhile.

“So…” she eventually says, “you’re friends with seals
and
dinosaurs?”

I’m about to ask how she knows about the cresties, when I remember she was there when the male cresty I named Grumpy allowed me to place my hand on his head. The small pack of predators later aided in her escape with Em.

“I don’t understand it, either.”

“What about the other things you can do?” she asks. “The wind. The storms.”

“I can’t do those things anymore,” I say.

“I noticed,” she says. “You wouldn’t have had any trouble defeating the others.”

That she excludes herself from those who would have been easy to defeat, by saying “the others,” makes me smile. Her confidence, I’m realizing, is one of the things I like best about her.

I begin explaining about how my abilities faded when I entered Tartarus. This brings up all sorts of questions about that strange land, how I got out and how I managed to find the lake. From there, we work our way back. My birth. My life before. When Ninnis took me. How he broke me. And how my memory came back to me. We laugh a little when I recall the things I said to her as Ull, and she seems pleased that some of my insults were made by me pretending to be Ull.

Sometime during the conversation, our hands find each other. The contact is like a static spark. We both draw back quickly and share an awkward smile. Sure, we kissed, and holding hands is kind of a step backward, but the kiss was…passionate. Holding hands is somehow more intimate. Less guarded. It implies a stronger bond that cannot be forged so quickly, or so it would seem, through a kiss.

After an awkward moment of silence, I ask her about her life. The story is short and details scarce. But that’s okay. I can fill in the blanks. She would have been broken at a young age. Molded really. She didn’t need to forget her previous life. The underground realm was all she ever knew. Pain. Blood. Violence. She was steeped in it from birth. That she can sit here now, holding my hand, is nothing short of a miracle.

Her story shifts quickly to current events. The freed hunters, what they are calling the freemen, have been slowly organizing. Word is spreading, but recruitment is dangerous. If the invitee is not receptive, violence is guaranteed. They had been planning to reach out to the outside world, but every encounter with mankind has ended in violence, too. The men and women who have come to Antarktos, have come to fight.

“Not all of them,” I say.

She looks at me, unbelieving. The sun is now down, but the light from the half moon and my now natural night vision make Kainda easy to see.

“I have friends,” I say. “From my life before. They’re here now. And I can’t picture either of them wanting to hurt anyone.”

“You saw them?” she asks.

“No.” The answer discourages me. But I know they’re here. I dig into my pack and pull out the bandanna. “This has Merrill’s scent,” I say.