The Last Hunter - Ascent (Book 3 of the Antarktos Saga) (24 page)

“You know nothing of true strength,” he says, standing up straight. His eyes take on a manic sheen and a thin smile spreads on his lips. It’s almost like he’s gone into some kind of drug induced state. “You rejected the spirit of Lord Nephil. I, on the other hand, direct it!”

Four streaks of black shoot from Ninnis’s chest. When one of them strikes my chest, it’s with a force comparable to Kainda’s hammer. I’m thrown back into the jungle. At least my landing in the foot-deep water is cushioned. But I’m having trouble catching my breath and I’ve dropped Whipsnap. When I push myself up, I see that Kainda, Em and Tunis are in a similar state. In fact, Tunis seems to be unconscious, his head underwater.

I scramble to my feet and dash to Tunis, lifting his head and propping him up against a tree. It only takes a few seconds, but by the time I’m done, Kainda and Em have launched a counter attack. Em throws a volley of knifes at Ninnis, but he doesn’t even move. The blackness reaches out and swats the blades from the air.

Hoping I’m not being watched, I strap on my climbing claws and take to the trees, moving quickly up into the canopy, watching the scene below as I move in.

Ninnis begins to laugh. “You are no better than that fool, Tobias.”

Em screams in anger, throwing more blades as Kainda charges in. The combined attack is impressive and so refined that I think the two women have been practicing together, working on coordinated attacks the way Em and Tobias once did. Em’s blades pass just over Kainda’s shoulders as she runs and keeps all four black limbs busy. The attack is so well coordinated that when Kainda strikes, Ninnis has to leap back.

Kainda’s hammer smashes into the lake, exploding water into the air. As she draws back to strike again, all four black limbs strike her chest and send her flying. Her hammer is knocked from her hands when she crashes into a tree and falls to the jungle floor.

Em presses her attack, but not even one of the blades gets past Ninnis’s defenses. Still, they do provide a nice distraction.

When I reach the end of the canopy, I leap.

If not for the sun, my airborne attack would have been more successful, but it’s not a total failure. Ninnis sees me coming at the last moment. The blackness reaches up for me, but I twist my body around and land on Ninnis’s back like he’s going to give me a piggy back ride. I punctuate the attack by wrapping my arms over his chest and squeezing. The serrated, triangular feeder-tooth blades slip into his flesh.

Ninnis shouts in pain and we both fall back beneath the surface of the lake. He thrashes and kicks. I can feel the blades cutting through his skin, burrowing deeper. Is he trying to kill himself? I can’t imagine him panicking.

And then, he’s still. Motionless.

My hands begin to sting. It grows intense, like there is acid in the water. I’m about to let go when Ninnis’s body rises out of the water and takes me with it. What’s strange about this is that Ninnis did not move. It’s as though he levitated out of the water. When I look down and see the lake’s surface beneath his feet, I know that’s exactly what happened.

The sting on my hands becomes a burn and I let go.

But I don’t fall. I’m caught, as though I’m in the grip of a Nephilim warrior. As I’m drawn around in front of Ninnis, I can see the blackness around my waist. The appendage undulates from Ninnis’s chest, intangible, yet physical at the same time. I’ve seen it before. In my mind. The spirit of Nephil, but under Ninnis’s direction.

The six wounds left by my climbing claws at the top of Ninnis’s chest, above the darkness, ooze blood.

Purple blood.

How corrupt has he become? Could he really be so evil that he has become more Nephilim than human? Is that even possible?

The wounds stitch back together.

“No,” I say.

“Yes,” Ninnis says, taking delight in the word. “You’re beginning to understand.”

He’s been toying with us. Tunis is right. He’s not human. There is nothing that Em, Kainda or I can do to stop him. Not now. He’s just been toying with us.

Em shouts and throws a knife.

Ninnis
allows
it to strike him, right in the eye. The wet splotch of the blade burying itself in Ninnis’s face is revolting, but not nearly as bad as the slurp it makes when he pulls it out. The eyeball quickly reforms and the wound disappears. He flicks the blade aside, into the lake, as though he might a twig on a boring summer day. Then a spear of black launches out, wraps around Em, slams her to the ground twice and tosses her to the side. She’s motionless when she lands, and I hope the shallow water covering the ground softened the blow and that she’s merely unconscious. But I know that if Ninnis isn’t stopped, she will be dead along with the rest of us.

But I’m helpless at the moment.

Ninnis turns to me and I can see by his expression that he means to gloat. He never gets the chance. Kainda’s heavy stone hammer collides with his face and throws him backwards. The blackness around my waist slips away and I’m dropped into the water.

I scramble back on shore and see Kainda hunched over, clutching her side. “Run,” she says to me. “You have to live.”

I ignore her, looking for Whipsnap, searching the water-filled jungle. But there is no sign of it. Not that it would help.

Ninnis roars as he floats up out of the water, held aloft by a pillar of darkness. I turn to face him, but he pays me little attention. The darkness shoots out and slams me against a tree so hard that I black out.

I come to just seconds later, but a lot has changed in those seconds. The darkness has hold of Kainda and is pinning her against a tree. My vision flickers. I hear Ninnis shouting something about betrayal and weakness.

My vision returns.

Ninnis is holding his sword, Strike, poised over Kainda’s chest.

“No,” I say, but my voice is weak. “Stop. Take me.”

Ninnis’s head slowly turns around toward me, his neck spinning further than a man’s should. “Don’t worry, little Solomon. You’re next.”

Without looking back, he plunges the sword forward, burying it in Kainda’s chest.

34

I scream. I just scream. There are no words. I’m
beyond
words. I claw at a tree, pulling myself to my feet as adrenaline surges through my body like liquid fire. Back on my feet, I see the beige staff of Whipsnap shimmering under the water just a few feet away. I step over to the weapon, bend down and pick it up. I’m moving slowly, or at least feel like I am. This could be a dream.

But I know it’s not.

Water drips from the weapon as I bring it up into both hands and face Ninnis. The loud drips are all I can hear. He’s watching me, his head tilted in curiosity, a sick grin on his face.

A bead of water slips to the end of the wet hair hanging in front of my eyes. When the water falls, it too, moves slowly. Impossibly slow.

What…?

A loud hiss fills the jungle. A storm has moved in.

Fast.

Faster than is natural.

Something tickles the back of my mind.

The storm… Water pours through the canopy above me, striking my skin. I feel the impact, but not the coolness of the water. Just like the river. While Kainda shivered from cold, I felt nothing but room temperature warmth. During all those hours on the wall, in the baking sun, I did not burn.

The storm!

It struck shortly after my return to the surface, tearing Clark Station 1 apart. A theory comes together like puzzle pieces. I was born at Clark Station 1 and the storm came, eventually burying the station. Years later, I returned to Clark Station 1, digging through the ice with my bare hands to find its roof. And the storm returned on the night I was kidnapped, nearly burying Clark Station 2. And when I returned to Clark Station 1 after my time in Tartarus…

The storm is a catalyst, or a sign, or something, of my connection to Antarktos! My abilities returned while the fever gripped my body and I never realized it. All this time, I could have done things differently. I could have saved Mira myself.

I could have saved Kainda.

Ninnis sees the change in me as my confidence and menace rise together. His smile fades and is replaced, for just a flash, by confusion. His body roils from inside and the smile returns. “Come, little Solomon. Die like a hunter, if that’s what you believe yourself to be.” He retracts the sword from Kainda’s chest and her body slides down against the tree trunk, leaving a smear of red blood.

“Ninnis!” I shout and slam the mace end of Whipsnap into the water that fills the jungle. A sound like an explosion rips into the air from everywhere at once. The water all around us, for as far as I can see, bursts upwards and beads, cloaking my approach.

I splash through the wall of water and leap. The wind carries me up, covering the distance between us with ease. I swing the bladed end of Whipsnap downwards as I descend. The razor sharp blade slices even the tiniest water droplet in half as I pull it through the air.

The wall of water bursts open and I finish the strike.

Ninnis shouts in surprise, flinching back as a tendril of blackness streaks up and blocks the strike. I land on the now waterless jungle floor, willing the airborne water to strike. A powerful stream of water the size of a rhinoceros slams into Ninnis, stumbling him back. A second strike pushes him farther. The lake is behind him now.

He’s rattled, but still dangerous. The blackness strikes out at me.

I leap, carried far beyond his reach, by the wind. “The land itself opposes you, Ninnis. You cannot win.”

“You are nothing without it!” he shouts back, filled with anger. He hasn’t had a real fight in a long time, and probably thought he never would again.

I leap to the ground, softening the fall with a burst of wind. “Then I will stop.” The hovering water falls to the jungle floor once more. “Come, Ninnis,” I say. “Die like a hunter.”

And I mean it. I swore never to kill a human being, even Ninnis, but he has pushed me to the edge of reason this time.

The blackness retreats inside Ninnis and he takes a fighting stance with his sword, Strike. We charge at the same time, meeting with a flurry of strikes, all blocked by the other. There is no exchange of words. No taunting. This is a fight to the death and any lapse in concentration will mean a quick end to it.

After I nearly take his head off with the mace end of Whipsnap, Ninnis shouts and begins a flurry of chopping strikes that I block with Whipsnap’s staff. Chips of wood fly, but the staff remains whole and I realize that when the Nephilim improved my homemade weapon, they also gave its staff a metal core.

On the fifth blocked strike, Ninnis twists his sword so that the flat end hits the staff. The tip of the flexible blade wraps around the staff and he yanks it from my hand. I’m momentarily disarmed, but he’s left himself open to attack.

I kick out, hammering Ninnis’s gut with a kick that would have sent any other man to the ground. Ninnis lets out an “oof!” and pitches forward, allowing me to reclaim Whipsnap, but he recovers quickly, flicking Strike to its full length and swinging it at my face.

The blade cuts a path across my vision, slicing several strands of my hair, as I tilt my head back. As I lean by body back, Ninnis fails to notice that I’ve also flexed Whipsnap back and before I’ve even righted myself, I let go of the bladed end. The weapon springs out faster than I could strike by hand and catches Ninnis across his stomach. I can tell by the tug on the blade as it passes through his flesh that is it a deep cut. A mortal wound.

Ninnis clutches his hand over the gash.

Purple blood oozes.

If only Ninnis were mortal.

Still, the wound enrages him. Had he not been able to heal, it would have been a killing blow and he knows it. I am the better hunter.

He screams and the blackness returns, shooting out toward my face.

A surge of wind carries me back and I begin to feel the exhausting effect of using my abilities in unnatural ways. Things like floating water tax me more than bending the wind toward my will. Not to mention that I’m out of practice. I won’t be able to keep this up forever, and short of taking off Ninnis’s head, I won’t be able to kill him.

I smell blood behind me and look back. Kainda’s body has paled. The sight of her fills me with renewed rage, but I don’t lose control. Instead, I remember what Tobias taught me. Don’t distort nature, exaggerate it. I reach out, feeling the world around me, searching for a powerful force. I find it far away and high above.

The katabatic winds, created when the colder, heavier air above the mountains, rolls down the slopes to the coast. But the winds have been tamed by the jungle.
Not for long
, I think, as I draw the cold air down faster. I can feel the air moving, but the trees resist, so I weaken the earth around them and they part like peasants before a king. The effort drops me to one knee.

Ninnis approaches, taking my undefended posture as weakness.

The darkness swirls about, agitated and eager.

He draws in a breath through gritted teeth, and raises his sword.

A crack like thunder fills the air, rising in volume. At first, he ignores it, but when the sound grows deafeningly loud, he looks up.

The jungle behind me splits open as Antarctica’s most primal force—pushed faster than ever before and condensed into an area the size of a bus—surges over my head and strikes Ninnis head on. He’s lifted into the air as easily as a leaf. I bend the wind upward, watching as Ninnis is carried over the lake. I push harder. Faster. Until he’s just a speck. Then I let him go and momentum carries him high, and farther, hundreds of feet high and miles and miles away.

When he returns to earth, the impact will crush every bone in his body. If he falls through the jungle, it will tear him to pieces. I cannot imagine he will survive, but I will not make the mistake he did and assume he is gone forever. Something tells me I will see Ninnis again.

The effort has drained my body. I lean forward on my shaking arms, holding my head just above the waterline. I can feel consciousness slipping. But a voice brings me back.