The Last Hunter - Lament
Author: Jeremy Robinson
Date: 2012-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Adventure; Science Fiction; Action; Fiction; Young Adult; Urban Fantasy; Thriller; Mythology
Description: In all the days since my kidnapping, breaking and transformation into a hunter at the hands of the half-human, half-demon Nephilim, my life has been a mass of chaotic actions and reactions to the horrors of the Antarctic underworld. I have battled unnatural monsters, fled for my life, and sacrificed everything—or thought I had, when I stepped through the gates of Tartarus. Every choice I have made was in response to forces beyond my control, lacking any kind of direction. But now, reunited with my friends, Kainda and Em, and in the company of new friends, Wright and Kat, I am taking control of
Publisher: Breakneck Media

The Last Hunter
LAMENT

By Jeremy Robinson

© 2012 Jeremy Robinson. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: info@jeremyrobinsononline.com

Visit Jeremy Robinson on the World Wide Web at:

www.jeremyrobinsononline.com

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FICTION by JEREMY ROBINSON

(click to view on Amazon and buy)

SecondWorld

The Antarktos Saga

The Last Hunter - Pursuit

The Last Hunter - Descent

The Last Hunter - Ascent

The Last Hunter - Lament

The Jack Sigler Thrillers

Threshold

Instinct

Pulse
Callsign: King - Book 1

Callsign: Queen - Book 1

Callsign: Rook - Book 1

Callsign: Knight - Book 1

Callsign: Bishop - Book 1

Callsign: Deep Blue - Book 1

Callsign: King - Book 2 - Underworld

Callsign: King - Book 3 - Blackout

Origins Editions (first five novels)

Kronos

Antarktos Rising

Beneath

Raising the Past

The Didymus Contingency

Short Stories

Insomnia

Humor

The Zombie's Way (Ike Onsoomyu)

The Ninja’s Path (Kutyuso Deep)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

About The Author

Sample - ANTARKTOS RISING

Prologue

Lieutenant Ninnis watched his life from the inside out. He could sense the world around him, but he could no more interact with it than if he were trapped in Tartarus. His body and its actions, no longer belonged to him.

They belonged to Nephil, lord of the Nephilim. In his arrogance, Ninnis thought he could control the dark spirit that now possessed him, and for a time, he did. His strength and will proved powerful enough not only to contain the darkness, but also to direct it. And for the first time in thousands of years, since the Sons of God lay with human women and bore them immortal—but soulless—half-human, half-demon children, the hordes of Nephil were led by a human being.

Fused with the power of Nephil, Ninnis had set out on a quest for vengeance against the hunters, including his daughter Kainda, who betrayed their kind to follow the memory of the boy named Solomon Ull Vincent, the Last Hunter. As the first and only human child born on Antarctica, Solomon was imbued with a supernatural bond to the continent that not only protected him from the harsh elements, but also gave him dominion over them. The earth, water, air and fire of Antarctica were his to command, though not without a physical toll.

The boy had proven resourceful in the past, but when he stepped through the gates of Tartarus, Ninnis believed his former protégé to be trapped in that land of torture for all eternity. Three months later, he discovered his mistake. Solomon had escaped from that awful place, and during their last conflict, the boy had harnessed Antarctica’s katabatic winds and flung Ninnis miles through the air. When he landed on the rocky Antarctic coastline, Ninnis was broken: body, mind and soul.

The Nephilim blood coursing through his veins, fueled by the spirit of Nephil, stitched his body back together. But the repairs had a side effect. So ruined was Ninnis’s mind that when it was reformed, it was made anew, free of the damage caused by his time as a hunter.

Many hunters, with the exception of those born hunters, like Kainda, were comprised of men and women who had been kidnapped, either from the outside world or from the surface of Antarctica. Their future mentors dragged the kidnapped victims underground and violently broke them. All memory of their lives before were blocked out and forgotten, hidden behind a mental wall forged by torture and starvation. Once broken, the victims could be remade into hunters, loyal to their Nephilim masters.

Ninnis kidnapped and broke Solomon. The boy became Ull the hunter, serving the Nephilim also known as Ull, son of Thor, son of Odin, leader of the Asgard warrior clan. But the boy’s memory later returned, and though damaged, Solomon became himself again—something that had never happened to a hunter before.

But it happened once since.

When the blood and spirit of Nephil healed and took control of Ninnis’s body, there was an unforeseen side effect. Memories of a life before Antarctica returned as flashes.

A smiling face.

A gentle kiss.

And a name.

Caroline.

His...wife.

His real wife.

Ninnis had been given a wife—a fellow hunter—in the underworld, but he did not love her. He did not love anything. She bore him a child, Kainda, but that was all. However, the woman he now remembered—Caroline—he loved her. Nephil claimed Ninnis, body and soul, but Caroline had done likewise long before.

The memories flickered through his mind as images, words and feelings that he couldn’t hold on to for more than a moment. He remembered Caroline. Her aquiline face. Her soft touch. Her existence. But he could not remember everything. Where they met. When they married. If they had children. And why he left such a woman to join the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole that brought him to Antarctica in the first place.

The incomplete memory of something so...beautiful caused him intense pain, far greater than anything he’d ever experienced. Because he detested it. Despite his reforming memories, he was still Ninnis, the hunter.

Ninnis had been the greatest hunter, feared and renowned by all others. For a time, he contained the very spirit of Nephil. He had attempted to exert his will over the spirit again, but it was no use. His weakness had been exposed.

Caroline.

The name came to him as a whisper, but not in his ear. It was the voice of Nephil, in his mind. Taunting him.

Caroline.

The emotional weight her name carried struck his heart like a sword. It filled him with regret. Made him weak. Controllable. But it also infused him with a deeper hatred than he had ever experienced before.

For Solomon.

The only time Ninnis found himself freed from the influence of Nephil was in his dreams, and his subconscious envisioned detestable violence against a sole victim. The boy.

There would come a time, he knew, when Nephil and the Nephilim warriors and hunters he once again commanded would find the boy. When they did, the dark spirit would leave Ninnis’s body to claim young Solomon, whose unique abilities had earned him the high honor of being deemed the true vessel of Nephil.

In that moment, when the spirit of Nephil fought to control Solomon again, the boy would be defenseless. That was when Ninnis would strike, and Solomon would die. Nephil might die along with him, but it was a sacrifice Ninnis would gladly make to have his revenge. Nothing else mattered.

So he stopped fighting for control.

He ceased replying to Nephil’s voice in his head.

And the beast forgot about him.

Ninnis watched Nephil’s progress through the underground, as he led a troop of hunters through the subterranean realm, searching for some sign of the boy’s passing. He listened to the plans being made, the reports being delivered and the battle plans that would bring destruction, first to the humans who had dared set foot on the Nephilim continent, and then to the rest of the world.

I could have found him already, Ninnis thought to himself, careful not to let the boast reach Nephil’s consciousness. He had seen several clues already. A scuffmark on a cavern floor. The faint scent of the boy’s passing several days previous. He knew Solomon better than any other hunter. Most of the skills the boy employed had been taught to him by Ninnis. But Ninnis could not help Nephil. Offering advice would reveal he wasn’t as defeated as he seemed. So he waited.

And he watched.

Nephil, in the body of Ninnis, stood in a wide cavern, deep underground. Five hunters stood by his side. One of the men crouched by a shallow river that ran through the center of the cave. He sniffed the air. “They’ve been through here,” he said.

Nephil smelled the air. Ninnis detected Solomon’s scent, but Nephil knew nothing of tracking. “When?”

Days ago, Ninnis thought.

Perhaps distracted by the god in their midst, the man said, “They’re just hours ahead of us.”

“Very good,” Nephil said.

The hunter brimmed with pride.

A lie, Ninnis realized. The hunter sought only to elevate himself in the eyes of Nephil. So he exaggerated his claim, not realizing that he was merely sealing his own fate. The hunters who had failed to track down Solomon earlier had all been slain. This group is not long for the world, either, Ninnis thought, unless...

“Which way?” Nephil asked.

All five hunters scoured the cavern, searching for tracks—there wouldn’t be any—and smelling the air for a scent, which they found.

“Downstream,” one of them pronounced. The others quickly agreed.

Dead men all, Ninnis thought.

Solomon had simply sent some article of clothing downstream, scoured himself clean in the river and then headed the opposite direction from the easily followed scent trail. It was a simple tactic. Had Nephil sent these hunters in pursuit of Solomon on their own, they would have seen through the ruse. But with lord Nephil in their midst, they were all but useless.

As Nephil looked around the cavern, Ninnis noted the glitter of glowing crystals, their light blue coloration and the rounded stalactites hanging from the ceiling. He knew this place. The river ran for hundreds of miles, casually snaking its way through the subterranean realm and ending at the great feeder graveyard where the bones of countless meals were discarded. As Solomon’s scent trail neared the graveyard, the overpowering stench of death would conceal it. The trail would end there, far away from the boy.

As Nephil followed the hunters downstream, Ninnis turned his thoughts in the other direction. If Solomon wasn’t heading downstream, he was heading upstream. Ninnis followed the path in his mind.

Olympus, he thought. Solomon is headed to Olympus. He couldn’t conceive of a reason why, but if the boy could be caught within those ancient halls, surrounded by the likes of Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo and the worst of them, Ares, there would be no escape.

But Ninnis would not reveal himself or what he knew. He was a patient man. He believed he could wait for his vengeance. But he was wrong. Every step away from the boy fueled his outrage. When he could no longer contain his vehement disapproval for these hunters, Ninnis settled on a course of action, or rather, inaction.

It’s a false trail, he thought calmly. The phrase was simple and lacked any trace of his true emotion. He thought it again and again, repeating it like a mantra until it filled the small portion of his mind to which he had retreated. He let it seep out slowly with the hope Nephil would notice the phrase and treat it as an original thought, rather than as Ninnis’s inner voice. If Nephil could just speak the words, these hunters would see the truth.

It’s a false trail.

It’s a false trail.

It’s a false trail.

“It’s a false trail,” Nephil said, seven days and nearly two hundred miles later. In the minutes that followed his realization, Nephil tore all five hunters apart and turned around.

1

“Get down!” I shout, but the warning comes too late. A ten-foot long albino centipede lunges from a hole in the cave wall, its mandibles flexed open and ready to snap shut on Kat’s face.

But Kat, aka Katherine Ferrell, is far from easy prey. In the short time I’ve known her, I learned that in the world before the cataclysm that rotated the Earth’s crust, repositioned Antartica to the equator and killed several billion people, Kat was an assassin. She is a skilled fighter, but is most dangerous from a distance, with a sniper rifle. In the modern world, she is a killer without match, but underground without a rifle and being tackled by an oversized monster unknown to her, she is out of her element.

Nevertheless, she reacts with skill and without fear. Falling backward under the long creature’s squirming girth, Kat takes hold of its mandibles, forcing the centipede away from her head, and keeping the deadly pincers from snapping shut.

Em, aka Emilee, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister, draws one of her many knives to throw at the creature, but she’s stopped by the actions of Steven Wright, who insists we refer to him by his last name.

Wright tackles the centipede and grapples with its body, but he’s unable to move the creature and ends up just hanging on while the thing bucks him around.

I raise my hand toward the melee, intent on separating the group by controlling the wind and smashing the centipede into the wall. But Kainda places her hammer—a human sized version of Thor’s mighty Mjölnir—on my arm and pushes it down.

I turn to her. “Why?”

“They need to learn,” she says plainly.

Through grinding teeth, Kat growls, “A little help!”

Kainda moves the hammer out in front of my chest, but it’s not needed. I don’t move. She’s correct. If Wright and Ferrell are to join us in the underground, they need to learn how to survive it, and overcoming this obstacle, which Kainda, Em and I could handle without breaking a sweat, is their violent initiation.

A knife appears in Wright’s hand. He jabs the body, punching the blade through the pale carapace. Thick, white innards seep through the puncture holes, but the creature is undaunted. Wright sweeps the blade along its body, severing fifteen of its limbs, but all he accomplishes is making the body slick with gore and removing his handholds. The centipede flings him to the floor, leaving Kat to face the beast alone.

With a grunt, she shoves the centipede back, draws her own knife and slices the thing’s throat. Only, it’s not the creature’s throat. It’s a sack of fluid the thing uses to predigest its food. Like saliva but far fouler smelling. On the bright side, nothing will pick up her personal scent for weeks.

“Ugh!” Kat says, as the fluid spills onto the black military fatigues that she wears. But she doesn’t slow. As Wright regains his feet and starts hacking at the creature again, Kat withdraws her blade, redirects it and plunges it up through the bottom of the centipede’s head, finding its small brain.

The centipede curls back, taking the knife with it, and flinging Wright to the cave floor once again. It twists and coils, writhing around in death throes before falling still.

Wright gets to his feet quickly and jumps to Kat’s side. “You all right?” he asks, his voice full of concern for his wife. They had kept their relationship secret from the outside world. Wright was an Army Captain and Kat was a contract killer. Granted, she killed for the same team, but their love was forbidden. Of course, down here, marriage between killers is common. I look at Kainda, who is grinning at Kat’s messy misfortune, and I think that our relationship isn’t all that different from these two, except for the marriage part.

Kat shrugs away from her husband and stands up with a scowl on her face. I know that look. Things are about to get ugly...er. Kat pulls the knife from the centipede’s head and points it at me. Kainda and Em tense.

“Why didn’t you help!” Kat shouts.

“Keep your voice down,” Kainda says.

“Keep my— Girl, someone needs to beat a little sense into you.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, Kainda steps forward. It’s my turn to stop her. I place my hand on her arm. “She has every right to be angry,” I say.

“You’re damn right, I do,” Kat says.

Em steps forward, hands away from her knives, and says, “You needed to learn.”

Kat rolls her eyes. “Learn what? How to kill a ten foot insect?”

“Chilopoda,” I say.

Kat’s burning glare locks on me. “What?”

“Chilopoda,” I repeat. “Insects are...”

Kat’s anger grows.

I raise my hands. “Sorry, sorry.” One drawback of having a perfect memory is the ability to spout facts like that. Of course, if I could keep my mouth shut, it wouldn’t be a problem. I decide to make up for it by explaining the situation. “The underground is full of these creatures. They used to grow to a few feet in length. They were the bottom of the food chain, and they posed little danger to anyone. But since the rest of the subterranean species fled to the underworld and they found a reliable food source—” I don’t bother mentioning the giant body of Behemoth, which the centipedes gorged on, “—they’ve become massive.”

“This is the first we’ve seen of them,” Wright says.

He’s right. The centipedes don’t normally hunt this close to the surface. Food must be scarce. “I once faced several thousand of them, some reaching thirty feet long.”

Kat’s not buying the story, but Wright, with whom I have a good rapport, blanches a little.

“Right,” Kat says. “How’d you handle that?”

I grin. “The only way possible. I ran like hell.”

My honest admission takes some of the fire out of Kat’s eyes. But she’s still not pleased. “Look, I get why you did it, but you’re kids. You’re not our parents. Or our mentors. If I ask for help, and you are able to give it, you will. Am I understood?”

Never one for tact, Kainda says, “No.”

Kat turns to Wright, “Please let me put her over my knee.”

I’m not sure if Kainda understands the parental spanking reference, but she knows a threat when she hears one. She takes another step forward, muscles tensing.

Wright stands between the women. “Kat, stand down.”

“That an order, Captain?” Kat says, oozing sarcasm.

“Actually,” Wright says, “I really don’t want you to get your head bashed in.”

Kat’s anger turns toward her husband. She doesn’t say anything, but I know what she’s thinking. To her, we’re kids. Amateurs. I might have impressed her with the demonstration of my abilities, but she has yet to see us in battle. It doesn’t matter that in surface years, I am actually her senior. I still have the body of an eighteen year old. But she’s going to have to get past that mental hurdle sooner or later.

So I let the second centipede, which is creeping up behind Kat and Wright, get a little closer. She needs to understand or she will never follow our lead. And down here, in our element, that will get her killed.

“Okay, Captain Know-It-All,” Kat says to me, “How would you handle a giant centipede?”

I look to Em. “Go ahead.”

In the blink of an eye, Em reaches to her waist like a gunslinger, draws a large knife and flings it with a snap of her wrist. The blade slices through the air, just missing Kat, whose eyes have just squinted with refined focus. I see her throwing her own blade toward Em, but I use the wind to knock it from the air, just as it leaves her hand.

Kat is about to rush in and press the attack when she hears the thump of a body hitting the ground behind her. She spins and finds a second massive centipede lying dead at her feet. Em’s blade is buried in the center of its head.

Wright steps back and whispers a curse. He had no idea the creature was behind them.

Kat just looks down at the dead creature. She bends, plucks the knife out of its head and wipes the gore off on her pant leg. Just then, a third, smaller centipede that I hadn’t sensed, launches from a burrow in the tunnel wall. Kat sidesteps the airborne centipede and brings the knife down, impaling its head and driving it down to the stone floor. She holds it there until it stops writhing.

The whole attack and killing takes just seconds.

She looks up at us and grins. “I’m a fast learner.”

Kainda returns the smile. The two women who were ready to beat each other senseless just moments ago have found some common ground—the quick and efficient killing of their enemies. She nudges me. “I like her.”

Wright recovers his dropped knife and sheaths it. “So, what’s next?”

We’ve been slowly and carefully working our way toward the bowels of Mount Olympus. Our goal is to find the Nephilim known as Hades, lord of the Underworld, and friend—possibly former friend—of the Titan known as Cronus. Hades, according to Cronus, knows the location of the Jericho Shofar, which is supposedly one of the horns that brought down the walls of the Biblical city of Jericho. I’m not sure I buy that story, but when a several thousand-year-old Titan trapped in Tartarus tells you about a weapon that can turn the tide of battle against the Nephilim, you at least look into it. And honestly, I don’t have a better plan.

But Olympus has to wait a little while longer. We’ve been so busy dodging waves of hunters scouring the underworld that we haven’t eaten in a long time. We might have to fight our way into and out of the Nephilim citadel, nevermind the possibility that Hades will not be pleased to see us or to hear that Cronus sent us to him. We’re going to need our strength.

I point at the dead Chilopoda. “Now, we eat.”

2

A gentle breeze generated by my connection to the continent swirls around our group, keeping our scent, and the odor of our three kills, contained to this small portion of cave. A hunter could still stumble upon us, but they won’t track us by scent.

Kainda separates five segments of the largest centipede and carves open the tops so that each resembles a bowl full of lumpy plain yogurt. She demonstrates how to scoop out the gelatinous flesh with her fingers and scrapes it off into her mouth before swallowing the dollop whole.

“How does it taste?” Wright asks. He’s trying to sound curious, but the skin around his nose is pinched up in disgust.

“Like dung,” Kainda replies.

“It’s not that bad,” Em says, trying to put our guests at ease.

Her efforts are undone when I laugh and say, “Yes it is.” But I follow my statement with a demonstration of my own. I scoop out some of the gooey flesh. “It’s fatty, full of protein and provides an energy boost. Oh, it’s also great for wounds. Just shove some of this in an open wound and bandage over it. It accelerates healing and fights infection.”

“That’s...disgusting,” Wright says.

“The trick is to hold your breath.” I scrape the flesh into my mouth and swallow without chewing. “Mmm, Mikey likes it.”

Wright and Kat both laugh lightly. Like me, they’re children of the 80s and recognize the catchphrase from the Life cereal ads.

“Where’s the beef?” Wright asks, mimicking the old woman from the equally popular Wendy’s advertising campaign. When I got chicken pox, my mom bought me a “Where’s the beef?” T-shirt. I loved that shirt.

As Kat and I laugh a little bit louder, Em and Kainda look at the three of us like we’re crazy.

“They’re television commercials,” Wright tries to explain. “From when we were kids.”

“I notice that he’s including me in the, ‘when we were kids’ statement, which says he’s starting to believe that my surface age is close to his. But his explanation is lost on my fellow hunters.

“They’ve never seen a TV,” I say.

Wright’s forehead wrinkles. “Never?”

“How long have you been here?” Kat asks, then scoops a wad of cream cheese meat into her mouth and swallows it down. She winces, but doesn’t complain.

“I was brought here as a child,” Em says, rubbing her head. Her brown hair, which is still two-thirds blood red, is just a few inches long now, but it’s enough to cover the tattoo that was exposed when she shaved her head to pose as my wife. That double-ring tattoo revealed that she had been kidnapped as a baby and brought to Antarctica. It meant that Tobias, who raised her, was not actually her father. More than that, it meant that she might have family in the world outside Antarctica. Like me.

Wright and Kat look surprised by this, but Kainda’s admission stuns them. “I was born here.”

“Born here?” Kat says.

“The Nephilim have lived beneath the surface of Antarctica for thousands of years,” I say. “During that time, they have routinely taken humans from the outside world. They use torture and violence to break the will and blind the past, if you’re old enough to remember it, and turn us into hunters, servants that are small enough to reach portions of the underworld that are too tight for their large bodies.”

“What about Aimee?” Wright asks. “Merrill’s wife. She wasn’t at all like you three.”

The question twists my gut. “Aimee was a teacher. They don’t break teachers. They use them to learn about the outside world. Our languages. Our customs. Our weaknesses.” They haven’t asked, but I feel that full disclosure is important with my new allies. If they discover the truth later on, they might have cause to doubt my sincerity. “She was here because of me.”

“She was here with Merrill,” Wright says, scooping his first glob of centi-flesh onto his hand. He winces at the feel of it. “He told us the story. About the dig site. About how she was taken by the Nephilim.” He scoops the flesh into his mouth.

“She wasn’t taken by the Nephilim,” I say. “She was taken by me.”

The admission makes Wright take a breath while the fatty meat is still in his mouth. He tastes it instantly and nearly spits it out. He clamps his mouth shut, swallows the bite and chases it with a mouthful of water from his canteen. “Ugh.”

“Care to explain that?” Kat says. The edge has returned to her voice.

“I wasn’t myself at the time. I had been broken and remade into Ull, the hunter. She was my final test. So I took her.” My eyes drift to the floor. “But she saved me. Freed me. I was born on Antarctica. My parents were part of Merrill’s original expedition. Aimee helped deliver me. I have a perfect memory and hers was the first face I ever saw. When I saw her face again, I remembered everything. I became Solomon again.”

Telling the story in such a compressed way reveals the nearly fate-like quality of those events. If I hadn’t taken Aimee, I wouldn’t have been set free from my bondage. I would still be Ull, and I would have willingly given myself to the spirit of Nephil. There would be no resistance of hunters. Nephil would be stronger than ever. And the human race might very well be wiped out. But none of those things happened, all because I kidnapped Aimee. The realization helps remove some of my lingering guilt over the act.

“When they passed us on the river, I was on my way to help them escape. Aimee’s freedom and the Clark family’s safety has always been part of my core. Without them, all of them, I would have been lost to this place.”

Kat’s only response is to take a fresh scoop of flesh and swallow it down.

Wright grimaces at the ease with which she eats the meat. He looks at me. “Sounds like the three of you have been through a lot.”

“You’ll get a taste of it soon enough,” Kainda says.

“I’d say we had a pretty good taste already,” Wright says.

Kainda is about to argue. And I understand why. The endlessly violent and hate-filled life of a hunter is probably impossible to imagine without experiencing it firsthand. But we’re not here to compare scars.

“You encountered the Nephilim?” I ask. I know the answer, but not the details.

Wright gives a nod. “Several times.”

“Killed them, too,” Kat adds, scooping another wad of flesh into her mouth. She takes a chew, which even I think is gross, swallows and then notices the three stunned expressions staring back at her. “What?” she says a little defensively. She motions to her half empty segment of centipede. “This isn’t that bad.”

“You...killed a Nephilim,” Em says. It’s not a question, but it’s full of disbelief.

“More than one,” Kat says. “Once you get those metal bands off their heads, you can just pop them in the head like anyone else. She looks at Whipsnap, Kainda’s hammer and Em’s collection of knives strapped around her waist and across her chest. “You guys really need to upgrade your arsenal.”

“Could you do it again?” I ask.

“If you can get me a gun, sure.”

Kat’s confidence, similar to Kainda’s, is refreshing.

Em’s eyes brighten. “I know where to find some.”

“We don’t have time to go somewhere else,” I say. “We need to get to Olympus.”

“They’re at Olympus,” Em says. “The warriors keep the weaponry of those they capture in a cell on the prison level. I’ve seen it.”

Kainda nods. “They do the same in Asgard.”

“We’d be a hell of a lot more useful if we had some weapons,” Wright said.

I mull the options around in my head. The distraction wouldn’t add too much time to our journey. And we might not find Hades where Em believes him to be. We might very well have to search all of Olympus. And if that’s the case, it seems likely that we’ll encounter some kind of resistance. It would be good to have all of us armed, especially if the husband and wife team are able to take down Nephilim warriors. Before meeting them, the only two people to kill a Nephilim, not counting the ancient stories, were Mira, who slew Enki with a grenade, and me, when I killed my master, Ull, with his own arrow.

I take a dollop of flesh and eat it. “Weapons it is.”

3

Olympus. Despite conjuring visions of opulence, white columns and gilded gold, everything is actually quite similar to Asgard. Brown and gray stone coated with thousands of years of grit, subterranean moss and the occasional blood stain, both purple and red. That’s not to say the massive halls, hewn from the inside of the mountain aren’t impressive. The sheer size alone is stunning. But the place is dark, brooding and full of death’s scent.

It’s so dark, in fact, that Wright and Kat, whose eyes are not accustomed to the permeating darkness of the underground, can’t see well enough to walk. Wright keeps a hand on my shoulder and Kat keeps a hand on Em’s. It slows our progress, but that’s okay. We need to move in silence, anyway. Not that we’ve come across anyone.

While we’ve only just entered the outer halls of the citadel, Em expected to find hunter sentries at all the entrances to the underground city. But as we step past the fifty foot arch leading to the first of many grand hallways, there isn’t a soul in sight. In fact, even the mixture of human and Nephilim scents seem faint, like no one has been here in a week. A breeze tickles my neck, reminding me that the surface of this previously snow and ice covered mountain is now warm and lush. Could everyone be on the surface? Or perhaps the breeze is removing odors that would normally linger.

I decide to err on the side of caution and assume the latter.

“Where is everyone?” Kainda asks, though she sounds more disappointed than confused.

“There were a hell of a lot of those Nephilim on the surface,” Kat says. “They were everywhere.”

“But the hunters stationed here,” Kainda says. “They shouldn’t have left.”

“Maybe the old citadels are no longer important?” I ask as it occurs to me.

Kainda chews on this. With the surface open to them once again, the Nephilim might have no use for these ancient subterranean structures.

“How far are we from the surface?” Wright asks.

“About a half mile,” I tell him.

“Geez.” Wright shakes his head. “In that case, it’s possible they are on the surface, and near the surface. The outer fringe of this place was a beehive of activity when we first saw it. If they’re smart, and I think they are, they won’t fully abandon the underground bases. It’s just bad strategy. They could survive a nuclear assault down here. They’re just not guarding the lowest levels because, let’s be honest, who in their right mind would try to attack the Nephilim in the pitch black, a half mile underground.”

That’s an easy answer, “Nobody.”

Wright grins. “Which is why this is going to work. They’ll never expect it. Now let’s move.”

Em leads the way in and up. The first stairwell we reach spirals up to the next level, fifty feet above. The solid stone stairs are carved out of the wall, following the perfect curve. I’m not sure how the ancient Nephilim carved stone with such precision, but the more I see of it, the more I understand they had a hand in the creation of the ancient world’s religious wonders: the pyramids at Giza, Stonehenge, Pumapunku, Teotihuacán, Machu Pichu, Tiwanaku, Easter Island—there are similar structures all over the world. Most of the megaliths were built to worship the ancient gods, who I now know were the Nephilim posing as gods.

Glowing crystals embedded in the wall light the stairs running along it, and allow Kat and Wright to move without help. The outer stairs are four feet tall and equally deep—sized for Nephilim. But the stairs running up the inner edge of the spiral are human-sized, which makes the ascent bearable. Two fifty foot flights later, I’m starting to find this climb particularly unbearable. So when Em holds up her open hand, signaling for us to stop, I’m relieved.

I crouch and climb up to the top of the staircase where Em is ducking down. “What is it?” I ask.

She taps her nose.

I smell the air. People. Lots of them.

But they don’t smell like hunters. They smell afraid. That doesn’t mean there aren’t hunters nearby, using the heavy odor to mask their own.

“This is the prison level,” Em says. Pleading voices echo off the walls. “Sounds like the cells are full.”

“What will they do with them?” I ask. I can’t imagine what Nephilim would want with this many people. They don’t need any more hunters. And they don’t need to interrogate anyone. They know everything they need to know about the outside world, except where I am.

She shrugs, but Wright has an answer.

“They’re eating them,” he whispers. “Eating us. We saw the remains of a Nephilim barbeque in the jungle. The people being kept here are nothing more than cattle.”

This news is not surprising. Not at all. The Nephilim are cannibals. They eat anything and everything. But knowing that people, locked away in the Nephilim cells on this floor, are destined for the slaughter house is an offense that I can’t shirk off for the sake of the mission. This cannot stand.

“We will set them free,” I say.

My four comrades have four different reactions to what I’ve just said. Wright clearly agrees. Kat is skeptical. Em isn’t sure. And Kainda is offended, which bothers me. A lot.

“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 asks.

“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 smirk 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?”

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. Struggling 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 tightness 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.”

“Are you part gatherer now?” she says, oozing sarcasm. “Did you read his mind?”

“I don’t have to read his mind, Em.” I step away from her, standing without help. “He’s a hunter. Think about it.”

She understands after just a moment of thought. “Fine.”

Hunters do not run from a fight. They don’t back down against insurmountable odds. And they would never, even in the face of death, run for help. Death would be preferable. They wouldn’t even call for help. That this hunter saw me, recognized me and then bolted can mean only one thing, and before I can explain it, the man returns, saying, “There he is.”

There are five of them, three men, one woman and a girl around my age, which is to say she looks eighteen, but could be forty for all I know. All are strangers to me, but Em says, “Zuh?”

The younger girl steps forward. “Emilee,” she says. “What are you doing here, you—” She sees the cages and her eyes go wide. Her mouth clamps shut for a moment and then she says. “Where are they?”

“Wait,” I say. “Don’t answer that.” They might not be attacking us, but that doesn’t mean I’m a fool. “Let me see your hair.”

It’s a vague request, but they all understand what I’m getting at. Zuh, whose dark black skin would make her nearly impossible to see in the darkest recesses of the underground, steps forward. Her blood red hair is like a pom-pom around her head. It’s the first bona fide afro I’ve seen on a hunter, but it fits her. She’s scantily clad, wearing brown leathers, but also has a menagerie of chains crisscrossing her waist and chest. It’s her weapon, I think, but I can’t identify it.

“Like what you see?” she says with a smirk.

My cheeks instantly flush.

She chuckles. “It’s a kusarigama.” She turns so I can see the sickle blade attached to the end of the chain. “He’s as innocent as they say,” she says to Em. Then she takes some of my hair and rubs it between her fingers.

I recover from her teasing and do my best to sound nonplussed. “Now yours.”

She gives me a wicked grin that’s full of mischief, but then tilts her head down and parts her pom-pom of hair. At the core is a dark bundle of black hair that she has curled up tight and tied down so that it cannot be seen. I nod and step past her. One my one, I inspect the others and see their carefully hidden shocks of untainted hair.

When I step back, I ask a question none of them are expecting. “How is this possible? None of you have met me. None of you have been with Kainda or Em.”

“Word is spreading,” says the man who first discovered us. “At first, we doubted. Then we heard that you had returned from Tartarus.”

“But the underworld is full of hunters seeking me out,” I say.

He smiles, but seems confused by the genuine nature of it. “Not all of them are your enemies. There are those still loyal to the masters. The oldest generations. But many of those seeking you out simply wish to follow you. And others are guiding the masters on false trails.”

“They are no longer your masters,” I point out.

He concedes the point with a nod.

“We would like to join you,” Zuh says.

It’s a tempting offer. Having five more hunters along would make us a formidable force. But I really don’t know these people and the mission we are on, and currently being distracted from, is too important to risk telling them about. I remember Xin’s warning, to trust no one. One of these hunters could be a shifter, a shape-changing child of trickster demons like Lucifer, the most famous of them all. I don’t think so, given the nature of our chance encounter, but I cannot risk the mission.

“Actually,” I say, “I could use your help with something else.”

Zuh nods, speaking for all of them, and I lead them down the hall. When we round the corner, we’re faced with a fully armed human army. Kainda, Wright and Kat stand at the front of the two hundred strong group. Elias is with them, discussing the best route out of Olympus.

Kainda tenses when she sees the hunters following me, but she draws her hammer when she sees Zuh. Great.

I hear a rattle of chains and turn to find the sickle end of Zuh’s kusarigama in her hand.

“Seriously?” I say. “Are you two for real? Look, whatever issues you two have had in the past, suck it up and get over it. You’re not those people anymore.”

Kainda opens her mouth to object, but I speak over her. “The men behind you are from countries that have been warring since before any of us were born. Their feuds go back hundreds of years, if not more. Yet they stand here, united against a common enemy. I expect the same from you.” Kainda backs down, though she’s clearly not happy about it. I turn to Zuh. “Both of you.” She puts her weapon away.

I wave Elias over and introduce him to Zuh and the four other hunters, whose names are Jozz, Felix, Pietr and Kaleb. “These five, are hunters, like Kainda, Em and I.” Elias nods in understanding. “They know the land, and the enemy as well as I do.”

To the hunters I say, “These men are capable soldiers. They know how to kill the Nephilim. But they can also reach the outside world and get a much larger army. I want you five to lead them out of Olympus and to the coast. Elias will point the way and lead the men. You five do what you can to protect them and mask their progress.”

Zuh doesn’t look pleased with the assignment, but then asks. “Can I train them?”

“You can start with me,” Elias says, flashing a winning smile.

Zuh returns the smile, but her mischief is impossible to hide.

“Gently,” I tell her. “We need them to survive the trip.”

She chuckles. “I will not lose a single man, my king.”

King? What the? I’m about to object, but Zuh claps Elias on the shoulder and starts giving orders, which he relays to the other English speakers and they translate for the rest of the group. Soon they are all moving, swarming into a tunnel leading down.

Elias pauses at the rear and says, “We will wait for you.” He grins and adds, “my king.” Then he’s gone with the rest and our number is back to five.

I know Elias was teasing, but I’m really uncomfortable with this king thing. Honestly, I don’t really want this leadership position and think that if some kind of higher power selected me for the job, like Cronus believes, then it made a poor choice in me. I can put on a good show now. Flex my muscles. Bend the wind. But I’d still rather be in my parent’s living room eating Captain Crunch and doodling with Justin.

Before I can join Kainda, Wright and Kat, Em takes my wrist and squeezes hard enough to get my attention.

“Ouch,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

“Zuh,” she says in a tone that makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have sent the woman after all. “You should know about her past.”

I wait for more.

“When the Nephilim became aware of your return to the continent, they held a match between the top hunters, and their daughters. The winning father would break and train the last hunter, vessel of Nephil. It was the greatest honor a hunter could have. The winning daughter...”

I see where this is going. “Could marry me.”

She nods. “Zuh and Kainda were those daughters.”

“And Kainda won,” I finish.

“No,” she says. “They nearly killed each other, but their fight was a draw when neither could stand. It was the fathers who decided the fight.”

Ninnis was the man who broke and trained me, so I already know who won that fight, but the details are a revelation.

“Ninnis killed Zuh’s father,” she says, “but he didn’t stop there. He drank the man’s blood. It is the gravest of insults.”

I shake my head. Ninnis. I called the man a friend once. If not for Aimee, I could have become just like him.

“So Zuh wants revenge for her father?” I ask.

“Not at all,” Em says. “He lost the fight. Ninnis was the better hunter. She would respect that. The problem is she and Kainda never finished their fight. Kainda’s claim to you, while no longer relevant to you or me, is still disputable to Zuh and Kainda. They never finished their fight. And I can tell by the way Zuh looked at you, she wouldn’t mind a rematch.”

I look up and see Kainda keeping an eye out for trouble, though I can see she’s flexing her arms, crushing the handle of her hammer.

“Thanks for telling me,” I say to Em and then make my way to Kainda. She hears me coming and glances in my direction. Tension radiates off her like heat from a stove.

I put a hand on her shoulder and feel the muscles beneath tense. Then I lean in, kiss her cheek and whisper, “I am yours,” before moving on. She says nothing in reply, but a moment later, she snaps at the others and says, “Get moving. Hades awaits.”

8

Em takes the lead again and we head deeper into the citadel. Every step feels like a walk down a plank over shark infested waters. We killed a gatherer and a warrior, and we saw a man killed, but those horrors feel like gentle distractions compared to facing a Nephilim renowned for his loathing of mankind and a reputation for collecting souls. According to Cronus, Hades is the best of them. To Em, he’s the worst.

And Kainda agrees. “Nothing good can come from this.”

“We can’t beat the warriors in outright battle,” I say.

“But we—”

“Em,” I say, cutting her off. “Killing a single warrior bound in place is not the same as facing them in battle. In the open. Right now, our army consists of several hundred men—trained men, sure—but they’re malnourished, frightened and by the time they reach the coast, they’ll be exhausted. The Nephilim warriors number in the thousands. The high thousands. And when they are free to act, and move, and attack, they will not be so easy to kill. We need help.”

Em stops. She’s led us to the lowest finished level of Olympus. The true underworld begins just below. We stand before a tall black door that looks similar to the gates of Tartarus, only much smaller—just fifty feet. “I don’t question the need for help. Only that this—” She motions to the door, “—is the last place you should go for it.”

I ignore her fears, not because I don’t value her counsel, but because if I acknowledge the foolishness of what I’m about to do, I might not do it. Especially with Kainda agreeing with Em. While Em is often the voice of caution, Kainda pretty much never backs down from danger. She’d normally take out that hammer and knock on the door while we stood here debating. But she seems nearly as concerned as Em.

Wright sighs and puts a hand on my shoulder. When he speaks, I can tell by the tone of his voice and the distant look in his eyes that he’s quoting someone. “The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.”

“General Patton,” I say, recalling the quote from one of many history books.

Wright nods. “No one fought or won battles like Patton. He captured more land and killed more enemies faster than anyone in the history of mankind. The point is, you made this decision already. It’s time to turn off your fear.”

“In other words,” Kat says. “Man up.”

I haven’t heard the phrase ‘man up’ before, but I understand the intent. I’m not sure if they’re speaking from true bravery—it’s hard to imagine someone being braver than Kainda—or simply from ignorance. They can’t yet fully understand the depravity of the Nephilim. But their advice is sound.

I’m doing this.

It’s time to let go of my fear.

Man up, I tell myself, and walk to the door. When I’m within arm's reach of the black metal, I pause. What do I do? Knock?

Cronus’s words about passing through the gates of Tartarus return to my mind, “For the worthy, all that separates this world from the other is a door. And you, Solomon, were deemed worthy at birth. All you need do, is push.” Maybe the similarity between this door and the gates of Tartarus isn’t a coincidence? Maybe only someone who has been inside that strange realm and exited again would understand the significance?

I don’t have any better ideas, so I push.

The door opens as easily and as quietly as those massive gates of Tartarus did. But the sight on the other side is far more horrific than the barren landscape of Tartarus.

The room, if it can be called that—lair seems like a better word—is fifty feet tall, a hundred feet wide and perhaps two hundred feet long. By Nephilim standards, its average sized. By human, it’s an auditorium. But it’s not the size of the room that’s shocking, the fact that it’s lit by hundreds of glowing red crystals embedded in the ceiling or that it smells like a fresh corpse. What holds my eyes and fills me with dread is that skulls coat the walls, from top to bottom.

Human skulls.

Crap.

But that’s not the worst of it. A thick viscous liquid oozes out of the wall where it meets the ceiling. It rolls over the skulls, sliding through eye sockets and out of jaws spread in a perpetual scream. The odor, deep maroon color and thickness of the fluid reveals what it is: blood.

A lot of blood.

It pools at the bottom of the wall, filling a foot deep moat before flowing away through some unseen drainage system. Hades has surrounded himself with the sight and smell of human death.

“Still think this is a good idea?” Kainda whispers to Wright.

“I never said it was a good idea,” Wright replies. “Only that he needed to overcome his fear and push forward.”

“Quiet,” Em says, still the voice of caution.

But even I’m not sure silence is necessary. The room contains a large stone bed, covered by a feeder skin blanket. My first thought upon seeing the blanket is that it must have taken a lot of feeders to form a cloth so large. But when I see no seams, I realize this skin was taken from a massive feeder, one that would have grown to the size of Behemoth had it been allowed to grow further.

A stone table and large boulder that must serve as a stool are the only other objects in the room. If you ignore the gore-fest covering the walls, the room is rather plain. What does he do in here?

That’s when I notice an aberration on the back wall. Some of the skulls look strange. Smaller. Distant.

There is a doorway. The smaller skulls are a wall that’s further away. I start across the room without a word, but notice the footfalls of the others keeping pace. I pause and say, “You don’t need to come.”

No one replies. Their strident stares say enough.

They’re coming.

The cautious walk across the room takes nearly a minute. In that time, I become aware of a subtle sound. There is a hum, like a motor, somewhere behind the walls. The blood is not flowing as supernaturally as it appears to be. It is being pumped, like a fountain in a coy pond. As I near the open doorway, I move closer to the wall and wave the others to me.

Putting my lips close to Wright’s ear, I whisper, “Flashlight.”

He takes the flashlight from his pocket and hands it to me. The small device casts a bright beam thanks to its LED bulbs, which require very little power. I kneel down close to the trough of fluid by the base of the wall and shine the white light on it. The liquid is brown.

Not blood. The red glow from the ceiling gives it that appearance. It’s an illusion. I stand and place my hand against one of the skulls. “Stone,” I whisper.

It’s all an illusion. The room is designed to look like hell. It’s horrible enough to intimidate even hunters. Perhaps even fellow Nephilim. But it gives me hope. Hades might not be as bad as everyone believes.

I turn around to tell the others and find them lying prone on the ground.

Not one of them is moving.

I was so wrapped up in my discovery that I didn’t even hear them fall.

I rush to Kainda’s side, whispering her name. I check for a pulse and find it in her neck. The beat of her heart is steady, but not as powerful as it should be. I check Em next, then Wright and Kat. All the same. Without wound, but unconscious, as though sleeping. Then I see the residue of purple powder on the floor around them. It’s a potent sedative, but not life threatening.

Knowing the others aren’t in immediate danger, I tune my senses into the world around me. I am not alone. I know that now. But who is here with me, and how did they subdue the others without being detected?

A scent, previously masked by the stench of death, tickles my nose.

A Nephilim.

Hades is here.

The sound of splashing echoes from the next room. He’s no longer concealing himself. “Come Solomon.”

The voice is ragged, like a smoker’s, but deep and powerful. That doesn’t intimidate me nearly as much as the giant knowing my name. And it’s not lost on me that he could have subdued me with the others, but chose not to.

I free Whipsnap from my belt and walk to the next room, ready for an attack. But my bravery seeps from my body as I round the corner and see the horrors on display. Bodies, very real bodies—human and Nephilim—litter the floor. At the center of the carnage, lounging in a pool of purple blood, is Hades.

He’s worse than I could have possibly imagined.

9

The giant uses his two six-fingered hands like a ladle, scooping the thick, purple fluid over his head. It oozes over his face. Rivulets of supernatural plasma flow down his forehead, over his closed eyes and around his mouth, which is turned up in a grin. But the blood bath doesn’t hold my attention nearly as much as his bald head. I’ve never seen a bald warrior before. In fact, he’s more than bald, he’s hairless. No beard. No chest hair. No arm hair. The warriors are generally covered in blood red hair. But Hades has the smooth skin of an Olympic swimmer.

More surprising than the lack of hair on his head is the missing golden ring that should be covering his weak spot. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Nephilim warrior without one unless it was forcibly removed. That he’s not wearing one means he’s either supremely confident, ready to die or insane. Given the setting, I’m thinking door number three.

He picks up a blade. To me, it’s a sword. To the giant, it’s a razor. He draws the blade over his blood-soaked, bald head, filling the chamber with a scraping sound. After completing a pass, he shakes the razor in the pool of blood and begins a second pass.

A distant memory comes to mind and slams into my thoughts. I’m six. Same age as Luca. I’m sitting on the closed toilet in the upstairs bathroom with three dinosaur books clutched in my hands. The hot water heater next to me pops and hisses, fighting against the winter air flowing through the drafty window above.

“Why do you put whipped cream on your face?” I ask.

My father laughs, dips his finger in the white foam and holds it out to me. “Smell it,” he says. “Don’t taste it.”

I take a whiff and scrunch my nose. “Ugh. Yuck. What is it?”

He motions to the compressed air can, which looks an awful lot like a whipped cream bottle to me. I pick it up and speak the words aloud as I read them, “Shaving cream. For skin so smooth—” I stop reading and watch my father drag a razor across his cheek. He shakes the foam off in the full sink. “Aren’t men supposed to have rough skin?”

He smiles again. “Not according to your mother.”

“So you do this for her?” I ask.

He gives me a look that says, You know I do.

“Would mommy still love you if you had a beard?”

“I had a beard when she fell in love with me,” he says. “I shaved it off when I fell in love with her.”

I’m only six, but I get it. I know my dad would like to have a beard. He says so occasionally, but he shaves his skin smooth because he knows my mother prefers it that way. She doesn’t say so. Not with words. But she rubs his face a lot. And kisses his cheeks almost as much as she kisses mine. I wonder if I’ll shave for her, too, someday.

And then I’m back, out of the apple-shampoo scented bathroom of my youth and into Hades’s hellish den. But a question nags at me. Who does Hades shave for?

I consider backing out. He hasn’t shown any signs of noticing my arrival. Then I remember the others, passed out in the next room. He knows I’m here.

As the thick curtain of blood flows down his body and back into the pool, I notice a series of tattoos decorating his skin. They are ornate, expertly drawn symbols resembling others I’ve seen in the underworld. I recognize them as being similar to crop circles found around the world.

Ignoring the bodies strewn about the room, I do my best to sound casual and ask, “What do they mean? The symbols, I mean. The—the tattoos.”

So much for sounding relaxd.

I suppose it’s a good thing that I can’t feign indifference to the things around me. If I could, I imagine I’d be more like Hades than I’d prefer.

He draws the blade over his head again, and rinses it off.

Did he not hear me? Is he ignoring me?

“They are signs,” he finally says, his voice vibrating though my chest. “Of things that have come to pass and of things to come.”

Okay. Vague. But he hasn’t torn off my head and drunk my blood so we’re off to an acceptable start.

“More generally, it is the language of our fathers, passed down from the time before man.”

Less vague. Almost helpful. Perhaps there is hope for—

A curtain of purple blood rises from the pool, propelled by Hades’s right arm, sweeping across the surface. It careens toward me, threatening to saturate my body. Were it water, I would think little of it, but so much Nephilim blood would kill me, quite painfully.

A bubble of wind forms around me, deflecting the wave. The purple spray coats the floor around me, leaving a ten-foot diameter patch of clean stone around me. My reflexes saved me from the deadly blood, but I’ve also just confined myself to this ten-foot patch of floor. The circle of blood spreads out for thirty feet in every direction. I won’t be walking away. A single step with my bare feet would drop me to the floor.

That doesn’t mean I can’t cover the distance. A good leap, propelled by the wind would get me clear. But Hades isn’t about to give me the chance.

He rises from the blood pool, bringing up a sickle and swinging it at me with enough force to cleave me in two. I leap to avoid the strike, carrying myself high with a gust of wind.

More of the floor is covered with blood as the sickle and the arm carrying it spray the purple stuff in a wide arc. In fact, when I look down, I see very little floor that would be safe to land on. The wind carries me to the wall and I grasp onto one of the faux stone skulls that’s free of blood, Nephilim or the fake stuff.

“Hades!” I shout at him. “I need to speak to you!”

“Then speak,” he says, swinging again.

I leap to the opposite wall, carried by the wind.

His strike misses, but it wasn’t because I moved. He didn’t even come close to landing the blow. He wasn’t trying to hit me, I realize. I look back at the far wall and see that much of it is now coated in purple blood. At this rate, the entire chamber will be coated in the stuff and I will have nowhere to go.

“I was sent here by Cronus!” I shout.

The next swing comes close. I leap up, moving to the highest reach of the fifty-foot wall, just above the newest coat of purple blood.

“Cronus,” he grumbles. A sneer reveals his sharp teeth. “Cronus!”

His shout precedes a fresh attack. I barely escape the sickle blade this time, but I’m out of places to run. Most of the clean walls are close enough to Hades that he could reach out and pluck me from the wall. All that’s left—I look up—is the ceiling. A gust of wind carries me up and I jam my hand into a crack, flexing it tight so that my fingers hold me in place like a rock climber’s cam.

“Stop!” I shout. “Please! I don’t want to fight you!”

“Fight me?” he says with a laugh. “You have yet to even draw your weapon. I’m afraid that the whispers about you are exaggerated. You are a coward!”

My temper flares, but I don’t make a move. Instead, I attack with my words, “It would be easier to kill you than talk to you.”

“Then come, little one, show me.” He places the sickle on the floor next to the pool. “Kill me. Free me from this wretched world.”

I hang there, tempted to grant his wish. I have no qualms about killing Nephilim. But I need to know where the Jericho shofar is hidden. And I’ll never find out if he’s dead. My indecision lasts just a moment, but it is too long for the impatient giant.

“I thought not,” he says, then brings both hands up out of the pool and flings a thick spray of the stuff up at the ceiling.

There is no dodging it this time. My fingers release and I drop. Wind kicks up around me as I fall, pulling my hair in wild directions. I catch the strong scent of Nephilim blood, but the wind keeps its stinging effects from my body.

As I descend, my emotions take over. I have let Hades assault me too many times without a response. I pull Whipsnap free as my fall is arrested and point the bladed tip at the monster. “Do you know how my master, Ull was killed?” I shout. “Slain by his own arrow! Doing the same thing to you now would be a simple thing. I have seen your kind killed by simple throwing knives. I have seen the bits and pieces of your brothers strewn across the jungle floor. You cannot win this war.”

He stares at me for a moment, frozen in place. And then, he laughs.

His last mistake. Few things set me off like being laughed at.

“There you are,” he says. “You entered here as a boy. Fragile and afraid. I could smell it on you. But here you are now, Solomon, the man, killer of demons, who descended into Tartarus and rose from the depths three months later.”

I’m poised to throw Whipsnap through his forehead, but stop. His voice still sounds horrible, and ragged, but there was a tinge of something else hidden in there. Respect?

“Why did you attack me?” I ask, sensing the battle has come to an end.

“I needed to know.”

“Know what?” I ask.

“If you were capable.”

Get to the point, I think. “Capable of what?”

“Of becoming more.”

I’m about to ask, “more what,” but this time he continues without prodding.

“More...than a man. More than you understand. More than even you believe is possible.”

Of course, he’s being vague again, so all the talking in the world isn’t going to help. “What are you talking about?” I ask.

He points a finger at me. Purple blood trickles from the long fingernail. “Tell me, last hunter, did you know you could fly?”

10

If I’d been asked, I would have said I’m standing on the floor. Not because I feel the stone beneath my feet, but because it’s the only thing that makes sense. I jumped from the ceiling, and without thought, instinctually placed my feet on dry patches of floor. That makes sense. But what I see when I look down...that’s something else.

The floor is ten feet below me. And there are no dry patches. Had I landed in the blood, I’d have likely died. At least I got something right; my instincts had taken over. But not in a way I would have predicted. The wind that normally carries me higher when I leap, cushions a fall or shields me from projectiles, now whips around my body, holding me aloft. I can feel its strength pulling at my limbs. My hair whips about. And my scant leather clothing is being pulled in a way that makes me fear I will soon be flying and naked.

“I can fly,” I say dumbly, as much to myself as to Hades.

The giant settles back in his blood bath, as though lounging in a hot tub.

I focus on the wind currently being generated by instinct and test out this new found trick. I move higher and then closer to Hades. “So you weren’t trying to kill me?”

“You could have died at any time,” he says.

“Then you were trying to kill me?”

“Yes,” he says with a sick grin. “But I was hoping you would survive.”

I don’t know why I’m trying to understand the methods of a Nephilim, especially one with the reputation of Hades, but I understand now that it was some kind of test. Pass or fail. Live or die. There was no in between. And I don’t think Hades intended for me to fly, only to see how I would escape his trap.

“Are my friends okay?” I ask.

He rolls his eyes at my concern. “They will survive.”

Thinking about the others reminds me of the corpses scattered around the room. I look down and see a hunter below me. He’s covered in purple blood now. I point to him. “And them?”

“They are very dead,” he says, still smiling.

“Why are they dead?” I ask.

“In service to you,” he says.

“Me? I didn’t ask for this.” I look at the human hunter. “I don’t kill people.”

“But they would have killed you had I not intervened,” he explains. “Not all hunters are loyal to your cause. You haven’t eluded capture on your own, boy.”

This surprises me almost as much as the fact that I’m flying, which is actually starting to take its toll. I’m slowly, but steadily growing tired. “You’ve been protecting me.”

“Not me,” he says. “My servant.”

The stench of Nephilim blood turns my stomach. “And the blood? Where does it come from?”

“You don’t care where it comes from. It is Nephilim blood. If I slew my fellow warriors, gatherers, seekers, breeders or feeders, you would be indifferent to its origins. Nephilim are deserving of death, of being erased.”

I agree with him, but saying so to a Nephilim who’s supposed to help me doesn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, I chew my lips nervously, which doesn’t exactly exude confidence, either.

“Do not worry, boy. I would agree with you. Our kind...was not meant to be. We are...unnatural.” His eyes look down at the floor and I think I see a flash of shame cross his face, but then it’s gone and his gaze turns back to me. “What you really want to know is why. Why do I bathe in the blood of my brothers? I have heard you have an intellect worthy of your namesake. You tell me. Why do I bathe in blood?”

I’m not sure if this is another test, but I decide to treat the riddle like it is, just in case. I look at the pool of purple blood. There are dark, almost black, stains around the edge. Dried blood. So this is not the first time he has done this. My eyes fall on the blade he used to shave his head, and likely his whole body. He is hairless. He looks like a Nephilim, but the blood red telltale sign of his corruption has been removed.

Why?

The answer hits me like a cannonball to the gut and I blurt out, “You’re not corrupt.”

He opens his arms and smiles, this time lacking any kind of sinister intention. “And yet my dark heart is feared more than most.”

“You shave to hide your hair.”

“As yellow as your own,” he say.

“You bathe in blood to mask your scent.”

“And to further my mad reputation. I make no secret of it when I pluck a lesser Nephilim from the halls above and drain its blood into my pool. As a result, I have very few visitors and have been left alone to watch, and wait...for you.”

“Why didn’t you help me before?” I ask.

“Even the finest ore must be melted in the hottest flames before it can be forged into a great weapon. You needed to...suffer. You needed to break. Without these things, you could not have been remade.”

When I was ten, my uncle Dan lost his job. I heard my mom talking to my father one night. They thought I was sleeping, but I was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, listening to every word. Uncle Dan had some kind of mental breakdown, but not from losing the job. It was the job itself that created a wellspring of depression and anxiety in the man who wanted to be a painter. He didn’t want to sell insurance. But he had bills to pay, and mouths to feed and a mortgage. All the things that trap people into thinking they are stuck, like mice cowering in front of a cardboard cutout of a cat despite the exit to freedom being just beyond it—my father’s analogy, not mine. And finally, his despair overwhelmed him.

Broke him.

And my parents, who were not the kind of people to be trapped by circumstances of their own creation, weren’t worried about Uncle Dan. They were excited for him.

“It’s too bad he had to get so low to realize his life was his to shape,” my father said. “But I’m glad he did.”

“Rebirth is never painless,” Mom replied.

I couldn’t see them from my position on the hallway stairs, but they shared a quiet laugh. In my mind’s eye, I could see them smiling, and I smiled with them. I heard kissing after that and went to bed, but the next day we went to visit Uncle Dan. He was a different man. A happy man. A remade man.

The idea that I, like Uncle Dan, had to be brought to my lowest point so I could reach my highest is horrible.

But true.

That doesn’t make it okay, though. Uncle Dan chose to sell insurance. He chose to buy a big house. And nice cars. I was kidnapped. Taken against my will. I’m not reaping the results of my own poor choices. I’m adapting to an abusive world that would have killed me a thousand times over. What did Uncle Dan have to worry about? Bad credit?

Uncle Dan would have made a horrible hunter.

“I didn’t choose this,” I complain.

“Who would?”

No one, I think. And that’s the point. No one would choose to be broken and remade in the way that I have been. No one with half a brain anyway. So whoever was chosen, or fated, or whatever to defeat the Nephilim would be remade unwillingly.

“Your kind never come willingly,” he says, “but once you do...”

“You mean humans?” I ask.

“Moses,” he says. “Jonah. Noah. Thomas. Paul. All resisted at first. All of them eventually broke.”

He sees my skepticism. “Would you prefer examples from other sources of literature? Or perhaps modern history? Your United States didn’t enter World War II until it was broken at Pearl Harbor.”

My deeper confusion prompts a smile on the beast.

“I’ve had many teachers over the years,” he says.

“Your examples were all old men. And a country. I was thirteen years old when—”

“King David slew my brother when he was just a boy.” He shifts in the pool, getting comfortable.

“He also did horrible things,” I counter.

“As have you.”

I tense. My anger builds. But I reign it in, remembering Cronus’s gift. “I have been forgiven.”

Hades concedes with a nod. “As was David.”

Arguing with Nephilim who have been alive for thousands of years is really annoying. I’m not accustomed to being on the receiving end of a verbal checkmate, but there it is. So I change the subject. “I’m here for the Jericho shofar.”

“I have been waiting for you since you entered the gates of Tartarus,” he replies. “I knew who you would find there. And I felt confident you would return, and eventually find me. But...despite having seen you do great things, worthy of the chosen ancients, I am not convinced you will return with the shofar, and your life. One must be sacrificed for the other.”

11

Out of all the confusing things Hades has said thus far, “One must be sacrificed for the other,” takes the cake. If I am sacrificed, how can I retrieve the shofar? If the Jericho shofar is sacrificed, how can I retrieve the shofar! I decide that this riddle can wait because, obviously, both the shofar and I need to make it through in one piece. If we don’t, then all of this is for nothing. “Do you know where it is?”

“I know where it was,” he says. “If it is still there?” He shrugs. “But not even I could retrieve it now. It is beyond my reach.”

“Tell me,” I say. “Where is it?”

“To the deepest realms you must go,” he says. “Beyond the dark gates.”

He’s speaking of the gates to Tartarus, but I thought that was the lowest point of the underworld.

“In the roost Edinnu, you will find the great horn.”

I clear my throat. “Sorry. That sounds poetic. It’s nice. Really. But do you think you could be a little clearer?”

“If you can resist a direct encounter with a seeker,” he says.

I can’t. We both know it.

“Then the less you know the better,” he says. “You will not forget the things I’ve told you. They will remain with you until the end of your days, whether that is today or a hundred years. You know where to start. Do not think about your path until you’ve arrived at the beginning. In this way you will protect the path from those that would seek out the shofar to destroy it.”

“They know about the shofar?” I ask.

He nods. “But not who protects it.”

“If I’m caught,” I start, worried that my knowledge of Hades could compromise his covert activities.

He rises from the blood bath, standing to his full height. Like me, he wears minimal leathers, though his are the size of ship sails. “I,” he says, “will not be here, or anywhere my brothers will follow.”

For a moment, I’m lost, but then I figure it out. “You’re going back to Tartarus?”

He nods slowly. “I have lived with the stench of blood and filth, death and torture for as long as this old heart can bear. If I do not leave for the release of Tartarus, I would rather return this body to the dust from which it came and be no more.”

I have never once seen sadness in the eyes of a Nephilim, but there is no disguising the emotion as it grips Hades. He shakes the blood from his arms and steps out of the pool.

The wind carries me back, giving him room to move. It’s a subtle movement, but it drains my energy more quickly. I glance back at the large doorway one hundred feet away. Will I have enough energy to cover the distance in the air?

“How is my old friend?” he asks.

The question is so casual that it catches me off guard.

“Cronus,” he says. “Is he well?”

“He was concerned for you,” I say. “Said it had been a thousand years.”

Hades confirms the time with a nod. “A necessary break as more of my kind, and yours, populated the underworld. And Eurymedon?”

My muscles tense at the memory of the winged, two-faced Gigantes that pummeled me in Tartarus. Cronus explained that the Gigantes, like Nephilim and Titans, are born from half-demon blood, but they are not conceived and born to human mothers. They are created. Like Xin. Like Luca. But while Luca and Xin were created to mimic me, the Gigantes were created for one purpose. Destruction. Eurymedon dwarfs even the tallest of Nephilim. “I can’t say I’m fond of the Gigantes.”

He laughs and it sounds genuine this time. “Perhaps you will change your mind if given another chance?”

“I’ll pass,” I say. I sense the conversation drawing to a close, but there is one last question nagging at me. And next to the shofar’s location, it is the second most important question I have. “Hades, what does it do? The shofar.”

“You know the story?” he asks.

“Joshua, an Israelite general and forty thousand men marched on Jericho...a Nephilim city. They marched around the city once a day for six days while seven priests blew into these shofars. On the seventh day, they marched around the city seven times, all the while blowing their horns. Then when the people shouted, the walls of Jericho fell.”

“The walls of Jericho,” Hades says thoughtfully. He closes his eyes, drifting. “The walls...”

“You were there,” I say. “Weren’t you?”

“The walls that fell at Jericho were more than mere physical walls. The shofar’s blast shook the city walls, but they decimated the walls protecting the blackened hearts of the Nephilim. Some power in the sound strips the darkness away and exposes us to the truth of what we are, how we live and who we fight against. The pain is unbearable to a Nephilim. Four thousand Nephilim warriors were slaughtered that day. More than enough to kill forty thousand men.”

He’s right about that. A ten to one ratio isn’t a challenge for a Nephilim warrior especially when the Israelites were armed with Bronze Age swords.

“But when Joshua’s army stormed the walls and entered the city, they found four thousand warriors bowed down and weeping. Weeping! Not one of them fought back when the swords pierced their heads. They craved death. All were slain.”

“Except for you,” I note.

“On the sixth day, I defiantly stood atop the wall when the horns sounded. I was the first to feel the shofar’s effect. When night came, I fled, and in the morning, I watched the stronghold’s destruction from a distance. But it was the shofar’s lasting effect that prepared my heart for Tartarus and the mercy granted there. If not for the shofar, I would have returned to the world with a dark heart, like the others. And if not for the shofar, I would not have returned at all.

“There were seven in the beginning. But they were sought out and destroyed one by one. I volunteered to lead the seventh and final raid. When the shofar was found, I slew my brothers, hid the weapon in the depths and claimed failure. Ambush. Then, as now, I bathed in the blood of my brothers and my intentions were never questioned. And here I have remained. Until now.”

He steps past me, heading for the door to the front room. I follow him, floating over the spilled blood, but my energy quickly wanes and my altitude drops.

“Hades,” I say, fearing I will fall into the blood and die.

He looks back at me from the doorway where he stands over clean floor. “You have a strength within you that has been granted to fewer men than I have fingers. You can make it on your own.”

Just two feet from the floor, I grit my teeth and push. I’m carried faster, but my vision fades in response. I’m not going to make it! A wellspring of fear pumps adrenaline into my body. My vision fades and for a moment, a jolt of energy carries me up and away. I’m crossing the distance now, but not in a protective bubble of air. I’ve simply managed to shoot myself as though from a cannon and now I’m sailing, limp, across the chamber.

My eyes close. I feel myself falling again. I think I should brace for impact, but have no strength to do so.

Just when I think I’m going to strike the floor, I’m caught.

Hades.

A grin slips onto my face as he places me on the ground.

“What makes you smile, boy?” the giant asks.

“You passed my test, too.”

“What test?”

“You didn’t let me die.”

“Nor will I,” he says. “Watch for Cerberus in the days to come. He will protect you if need be.”

Cerberus? I think, but don’t ask. I feel the hard stone floor beneath me now. “You’re leaving?” I ask, drifting off to sleep.

“I will prepare the way for you,” he says. “Ave atque vale, Solomon.”

I hear the large door open, and then close. Hades has left. The last of my energy wanes and I drift off to sleep, surrounded by blood, bodies, skulls and hope.

12

I dream of home. Of the house I grew up in. I’m in the front yard. Small details leap out at me. The tall tree that arcs over the street is heavy with the red buds of early spring. Its thick bark peels off in great chunks, perfect for building action figure forts. A slab of sidewalk is lifted up by the tree’s roots, perfect for jumping bikes. The puddles in the driveway are the same familiar oblong shapes, filled by a recent rainstorm and full of wriggling worms drawn out by the moisture. After the puddle evaporates, they’ll die and dry out—food for the ants.

I breathe deeply and catch several distinct scents: salty ocean air, the residue of the red berries growing on the evergreen shrubs, melted crayons and cut grass. I’m sitting on the stairs to the front door. There are eight of them. Chipping black paint curls up from the cast iron railings. I peel off a flake and snap it between my fingers until all that remains is dust.

Everything about this place feels familiar.

Safe.

I’m suddenly gripped by sadness, as deep and profound as any I have felt.

My old friend is dead. The thought pulls tears from my eyes and as the saline slides down my cheeks, a snowflake drifts down and settles on my knee. It’s joined by a second. And a third. And now the sky is full of white. A blizzard.

My first blizzard was in nineteen seventy-eight. I was four, but I remember watching the storm in amazement, my breath fogging the windows as the snow slowly grew taller than me and then taller than my father. This storm is worse. In minutes, I’m buried up to my waist. The neighborhood around me is reduced to a solid sheet of white, as though erased from the page.

My old friend is dead, I think again.

The cold shakes my body, just a shiver at first, but then violently.

I don’t want to leave!

I want to be home!

I want this life!

“Solomon,” Kainda says, shaking me awake.

I blink my eyes, focusing on her face, and for a moment, I’m not happy to see her. The faint memory of ocean air is destroyed by the strong scent of Nephilim blood. I remember my childhood home perfectly. But at times, it is a curse. My dreams can recreate the past so realistically that I feel like I’ve just been there. The memory of that place clutches my heart. Tears, real this time, drip down my cheeks.

“Solomon,” Kainda says with uncommon softness. “What’s wrong? Who died?”

“W—what?” I ask. Did the others somehow experience my dream?

“You spoke of someone dying. An old friend.”

I don’t feel like explaining. “Just a dream,” I say, wiping away the tears with my bare arm. “Wasn’t even a person.”

With the last pangs of regret fading along with the dream, I sit up. Em and Kat aren’t far away. They’re helping Wright get to his feet. Kainda offers me her hand. I take it and stand.

“What happened?” Wright says, rubbing his head. “Feels like I got hit with a hammer.”

“Me, too,” Kat says.

I can tell by Em’s squinted eyes that she feels the same, though she’d never admit it, at least not in front of other hunters. Kainda probably has a headache, too, but she’s so stubborn and tough that she’s managed to erase any sign of pain.

“How about you?” Kainda asks me. “Is your head—”

I smile at her continued concern.

“What?” she says defensively.

My smile widens.

She grunts and says, “Shut-up.”

“My head is fine, by the way,” I say before stretching. “Slept like a baby.”

Kainda eyes me and with all humor gone from her voice, and asks, “What happened?”

The others hear the question and come closer. They’d all like to know.

“Hades,” I say. All of them tense at the name.

“He was here?” Em asks.

I nod. “Put the four of you to sleep with that purple powder.”

“The four of us,” Wright says. “What about you? You were sleeping, too.”

“Oh, I was just tired,” I say. Four sets of glaring eyes tell me I need to elaborate on that statement, and fast. I point to the next room, which is now full of drying Nephilim blood. “I was in there.”

Kainda is the first to realize the implications of the plasma-coated ceiling, floor and walls. “In there? How?”

“Like this,” I say. Their faces, when they turn around and see me hovering a few feet above the floor, are priceless. What I wouldn’t give for Mira’s Polaroid camera right now.

“You...can fly,” Kat says, sounding dubious.

“I didn’t know, either,” I confess. “But I didn’t have much of a choice. It just kind of happened.”

Kainda stays on task, nonplussed by my new ability. “But you spoke to Hades.”

“Yes,” I say. “And he’s not as bad as everyone thinks, or rather, as he wanted everyone to think.” I tell them about my encounter with the giant, summarizing as best I can.

When I skim past his instructions about the shofar’s location, Em asks for more details. I explain Hades’s warning about mind readers and she and Kainda agree. We’ll figure out each step as we go along. Knowing the location ahead of time could be dangerous, especially if one of us is captured on the way.

I reach the end of my story, explaining how my energy waned, how Hades caught me and laid me on the floor with the others. When I mention Cerberus, neither Em nor Kainda show any recognition. Wright and Kat, however, go wide-eyed for what must be the thousandth time since they arrived on the new world of Antarktos.

“Seriously?” Kat says. “A giant three-headed hound?”

I shrug. “It wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve seen. But it’s something or someone none of us has seen before. So, if you happen to come across a three headed...something, maybe be sure it’s trying to kill you before shooting at it.” Then I finish my story with, “Ave atque vale. That’s what he said when he left. It’s Latin, but I’m not sure what it means.”

“Hail and farewell,” Wright says.

“You speak Latin?” Kat asks, sounding surprised.

“It’s from the Army,” he explains. “When a new commander takes over, there is a dinner where the previous commander speaks those words. It’s a sign of honor to the new leader and a goodbye. Historically, the words have been spoken to generals, sometimes kings.”

There’s that word again. King. I ignore it with a casual shrug and say, “Weird.”

All four of them turn to me like I’ve just farted.

Em shakes her head. “Hades, the most feared of all Nephilim, honors you as a new leader, perhaps a king—his king—and all you can say is, ‘weird?’”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” I say. “There isn’t time.”

No one argues the point, but I suspect this conversation will be continued at some other time.

“The shofar is deep,” I say. “Very deep. We’re going to have to move fast.”

“We’ve been moving fast,” Wright notes.

“Faster,” I say. “Time is...different in the underworld. What feels like a day could be a week. I spent two years down there and later found out that twenty years had passed on the surface.”

“Won’t we be discovered?” Kat asks. “Aren’t there hunters, and other...things looking for us?”

“If we’re fast enough, they won’t catch us by the time we reach the gates. After that, I don’t think anyone will follow us.”

“The gates?” Kainda says. “We’re not going to Tartarus?”

The fear in her voice seems out of place. Having seen the truth of Tartarus, I no longer view it as a land of eternal torture, but a place of freedom. Granted, to those unwilling to be separated from the burden of their personal darkness, it is a land of torture. But for those like Cronus, Hades and me, it is a paradise—a land of mercy, even for those born with the unfortunate circumstance of having a demon for a father.

“We’re not going through the gates,” I tell her. “We’re going past them. Deeper. I don’t know how, but we’ll figure that out when we get there. But we can’t stop. Time will not be on our side. If we linger, we might return to find the battle already lost.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Kainda says.

I turn to Kat and Wright. “Can you keep up?”

Kat just looks insulted.

Wright nods. “I survived hell week. This can’t be much worse.”

“I hope you’re right,” I say, and then head for the exit. I pause by the closed door. “Stay quiet until we’re out of Olympus.”

Wright pats me on the shoulder. “Then we’ll run like hell. Got it.”

Despite looking twenty years apart, Wright and I are the same age. I feel a kinship with him. In some ways, he reminds me of Justin. “Right,” I say, and then push the door open.

I take one step and stop. The open door has revealed two figures. One is fifteen feet tall—not quite a full-grown warrior, but close enough. He’s got long red hair bunched in messy dreadlocks. He holds a large double bladed ax in each hand, and he looks like he can use them.

The other is thin and wiry, like Xin, but green skinned and sporting tufts of wildly growing red hair. He’s dressed in rags, and seems to be covered in some kind of caked on muck. Given the odor rising off him, it could be something worse. His chosen weapon is...Whipsnap! I’m confused for a moment, but then recognize the stone mace and bone tip. He has the original Whipsnap that I created. This offends me deeply, like he’s taken an old friend of mine hostage, but I don’t linger on the weapon.

Something else has caught my eye. While I have never seen anything like these two before, they share a matching feature I know well.

Their blue eyes.

My eyes.

Like the thinker clone, these two share my eyes.

These are two of my three remaining duplicates. My stomach twists with revulsion. I felt the same thing upon discovering Xin was my duplicate, but he turned out to be a brother—more human than Nephilim despite his appearance.

But these two, the hatred in their eyes is easy to read. They are the hardhearted sons of Nephil through and through.

The pair snaps into action. I’m not sure what they’re going to do, but I respond with overwhelming force, thrusting my hands out. A gust of wind flows past me. My whipping hair stings my forehead.

Then they’re airborne. Part of me wants to stay and take care of these two, but I hear shouting voices echoing from distant hallways. We are found.

“Change of plans,” I say to the others. “Run. Now!”

13

The slapping of feet on stone pursues us downward through the network of subterranean tunnels. The hunters giving chase have abandoned stealth. Their numbers have bolstered their confidence, and since we’ve given up stealth in our flight, tracking us is a simple thing. This has become a race.

Wright and Kat, who had been saving their flashlight batteries earlier, click their lights on, illuminating our path. Kainda, Em and I don’t need the flashlights, having long since grown accustomed to the pitch black, but the light brings out details that would normally remain hidden and allows us to pour on the speed.

Our path is winding, but downhill. There are more direct routes to the gates of Tartarus, but they would be tight fits for a group of five and might require squeezes that Wright and Kat are not accustomed to navigating. So I stick to the underground’s version of a freeway, following a shallow stream that was once a raging river. The stream leads toward Asgard and more familiar territory. It eventually merges with a larger river—what I call the High River. In the past, it flowed to a waterfall that emptied out in the massive chamber containing the ruins of New Jericho. But the last time I saw that cavern, after leaving Tartarus, it was nearly flooded. If we can make it to the water, we’ll be okay. Hunters are good at many things, but swimming, since there is little call for it, is not one of them.

Several miles into our downward run, I slow to a walk and sniff the air.

“What are you doing?” Kainda says, sounding urgent and confused.

“Trying to get a sense of the—”

“Is your nose not working?” she says, taking a deep breath through her nose. “They are nearly upon us!”

“If it makes you feel better,” Wright says, his hands on his knees, his head lowered. “I can’t smell a thing.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “We’re safe for now. You can only smell them because I am pulling the air toward us more quickly. They’re miles behind us now.”

“I thought you hunters were supposed to be real hotshots,” Kat says. She looks winded, but ready to keep going if need be. “How come they can’t keep up?”

Em smells the air. “Because they’re not trying to catch us anymore.”

I nod. “At least half of them have separated from the main group, though the two...creatures are still with them.”

“It’s a trap,” Wright says, doing a half way decent impression of Admiral Ackbar from Return of the Jedi.

The quote and memories of seeing the movie with my father and Justin makes me laugh. Wright and I are definitely part of the same generation.

“Seriously?” Kat says. “You’re quoting movies?”

“The point is,” I say, “Sooner or later, we’re going to be cut off. Those that make it ahead of us will try to stall us long enough for the rest to catch up.

“Hunters working together, against us,” Em says. “This isn’t normal.”

She’s right. Hunters typically think only of themselves, at least while they’re still loyal to the Nephilim. They must have a very good reason to cooperate. “It’s Ophion.”

“Who?” Em and Kainda ask together.

“Nephil. Ophion was his original name. He’s a Titan, like Cronus, one of the first twelve born of human mothers and demon fathers. He must have promised rewards, or more likely threats. They’re being compelled.”

“Which gives us an advantage in combat,” Wright says, standing back up. “They might be moving together, but they’re not going to fight together. Not like us.”

“Right,” I say, starting downward again, though at a slower pace. If the group behind us starts closing the distance, we’ll speed up, but I don’t want us to be exhausted when the hunters, who are likely already ahead of us, spring their trap. “Just steer clear of the two clones, if—”

“Clones?” Wright says, sounding surprised.

I’ve tried to fill Wright and Kat in on as much as I could since I met them. I left nothing out, including my explanation of Luca, Xin, the thinker clone and the three mystery clones, all created in a failed attempt to duplicate my abilities. So he understands the implications of what I’ve said. He just hadn’t seen it.

“Are you sure?” Em asks.

Apparently, neither did she.

Kainda shakes her head, looking angry and confused. None of them noticed.

“The eyes,” Kat says. “They had your eyes.”

“That’s all they have,” I say. “I should have killed them before we ran.”

Silence falls over the group as we jog downhill for what feels like several hours, merging with the High River’s vast tunnel, full of stalactites and stalagmites, and continuing down. I can still smell the group following us. When we slow, they slow. They’re keeping what they believe is a safe distance, so they won’t be detected. They’re following our scent trail, left every time we step on the stone floor, determining our distance by the odor’s strength.

Wright jogs up next to me. The glow of his flashlight bounces over the terrain ahead with each step. “So I think I have this time paradox licked.”

It’s the last thing I’m expecting him to say, and I stumble when I glance at him.

He looks at his watch. “We’ve been running for twelve hours. I’ve never run for twelve hours straight before, have you?”

“Occasionally,” I say, recalling the times I have fled for my life in the underworld.

“Down here, right?”

I nod. Good point.

“I’m tired, but I’m not about to collapse,” he says. “I should have passed out from exhaustion long before now. And I sure as hell shouldn’t be able to have a conversation right now. So my mind perceives the passage of time the same way it would on the surface, just like my wrist watch. But my body perceives time differently. I feel like I’ve been running for an hour. Not twelve.”

His observations are sound. I’ve experienced these things in the past.

“But, here’s the kicker. Assume we’re the world’s best marathon runner, able to complete a twenty-six mile race in just over two hours. Hell, lets round it to two hours. I’m no good with math.”

I smile and don’t bother telling him that I am, in fact, good with math. I sense he’s getting somewhere and don’t want to ruin his train of thought.

“If a marathon runner could keep up the pace for twelve hours he would travel...”

When his pause lingers, I say, “One hundred fifty-six miles.”

He shakes his head at the absurdity of it all. The idea that we’ve run so far is—I gasp.

Wright smiles. “You’re figuring it out? Using that memory of yours?”

When I run, I subconsciously count my steps. I always have. Since leaving Hades’s chambers, I have taken one million, two hundred twenty six thousand, nine hundred and sixty steps. With an average three-foot stride, that’s three million, six hundred eighty thousand, eight hundred and eighty feet. Divide by five thousand two hundred eighty feet in a mile and you get, “Six hundred ninety-seven miles.”

Wright smiles. “Which is—”

“How far we could travel in two and a half days on the surface if we maintained the pace twenty-fours a day and never took a break.”

“A little more precise than my guess, but yeah. So now we know that two and half surface days have passed in the last twelve hours.”

“But the effect grows more significant the deeper we go.”

“Then it’s been growing more significant this whole time. As long as you keep moving, and counting your steps, we can figure out how much time has passed.”

He’s right. It won’t work if we’re standing still, but we can guesstimate how much surface time has passed based on the number of steps we’ve taken. Our minds and bodies don’t perceive actual time down here, but miles are miles and it takes the same number of steps to cover them.

A distant sound tickles my ears. The rushing water of the High River sounds muffled ahead. Quieted. I pull the air from below toward us and smell it. Water and stone. That’s all there is. There are no hunters cutting off our passage.

I test the air from behind, counting the seconds it takes the hunting party’s scent to reach me. My eyes go wide. “They’re closing in.”

“Are the others near by?” Kainda asks, testing the air. “I smell nothing.”

“No,” I say, “they’re gone.”

“Gone?” Em sounds flabbergasted. It doesn’t make sense to any of us.

Then we reach the strange silence of the river and everything is clear. The downward sloping tunnel ends at a flat pool of water that rises several feet by the minute as the river adds to it.

The New Jericho chamber has fully flooded and the waters are rising up toward the surface. There’s at least a half mile of water between us and the chamber and then several more to cross to the other side.

“This is the trap,” I say.

“What about the—”

I cut off Em’s idea, saying, “The side tunnels leading to New Jericho will be flooded, too. To get to the gates, we need to backtrack—”

The sound of slapping feet on stone rises in the distance.

“—through them.”

Wright and Kat are quick to take up positions behind a pair of boulders, aiming their modern weapons up the tunnel. Wright looks at me. “You don’t kill people, right?”

“I don’t,” I say, though I’m not sure how we will escape this if I don’t. I think he’s about to tell me as much, but then he says, “Then you focus on the two clones and we’ll take care of the hunters. I have no qualms about taking them out.”

“Nor do I,” Kainda says, unclipping her hammer.

Em draws two knives. “Nor I.”

Kat looks down the site of her rifle. “I think you all know where I stand.”

I’m glad for their willingness to take that burden from me, but I would still like not to kill these hunters. They aren’t our enemies. They just haven’t figured that out, yet. But if I hinder the others’ ability to defend themselves, it’s likely that some or all of them will die. The worst part is that we’re in such tight quarters I’m not sure if I can use my powers without also affecting my friends.

I remove Whipsnap from my belt and prepare to fight the first real battle of the war for Antarktos.

And the world.

14

They charge as a mob, each hunter vying for the front spot and the first shot at glory. They might be cooperating in a general sense—to herd and trap us—but when it comes down to the fight, these hunters are battling as individuals, not a team.

I shout at the oncoming horde, “Stop!” But the big half-me, half-warrior gives a battle cry that drowns out my voice. Does he think I could talk these hunters out of the fight? Is their loyalty in question?

When Wright says, “Steady,” to Kat, I know I’ll never get a chance.

The hunters aren’t thinking. They rush through the bottleneck, open targets for Em’s throwing knives and our special ops friends’ rifles. When they close to within a hundred feet, Wright says, “Fire.”

I hear a series of coughing sounds. Three hunters at the front of the group drop clumsily. One of them face plants into a stalagmite rising from the chamber floor and I hear a crunch as his neck, or something in his face, cracks.

I glance at Kat and watch her calmly pick a target and pull the trigger. She repeats the action again and again, firing off a shot about once a second. And the hunters fall just as fast, each one dead. I can tell, by the way they don’t reach out when they fall. They’re like toys that have been switched off. In contrast, Wright fires bursts of gunfire. It’s not exactly wild, but he lacks Kat’s perfect aim. His targets fall wildly, reaching out, spinning and stumbling. They’re not all dying, but they’re stumbling up the hunters behind them.

Em crouches next to Kat and I hear her say, “See if you can get the big one.” She taps her forehead.

Kat nods, adjusts her aim and pulls the trigger. The giant’s head twitches, but he keeps on coming. She fires four more rounds, but the effect is negligible and the reason is obvious. The warrior-me can heal like a Nephilim, but lacks the weak spot on his forehead.

As nearly half the hunters drop under the skillful barrages, the big warrior howls. The undisciplined charge morphs into something else entirely. The smaller clone falls in line behind the warrior and all of the hunters follow suit. They close the distance like a snake, winding their way through the stalagmites and river water in two lines, each protected by the regenerative girth of the big clone.

Wright opens up on the warrior, unleashing a full clip. Purple spots of blood appear on the giant’s body, but they disappear just as quickly. A grin appears on the monster’s face. Like our former masters, this creature enjoys the pain.

“It’s no good,” Wright says, falling back toward the water. Kat ceases fire and pulls back. They are clearly a formidable pair with modern projectile weapons, but all they’ve got for hand-to-hand combat is a pair of knives. The incoming force is armed with an array of weapons that can out-power and outreach the knives.

Em, Kainda and I step forward. It’s our turn.

Kainda turns to me. “Can you slow them? Stumble them? Something to give us the advantage?”

“To affect all of them, I would have to hit us as well,” I say.

“But we’ll be ready for it,” Em says.

Kainda nods. “Do it!”

I turn back to Wright and Kat, who are crouched and aiming, waiting for targets to appear. “Get down!”

I drop to my stomach and assume that my team has done likewise. Then I focus on the air. The breeze is rolling down from above, pulled by gravity. I could send a blast of air up at the group, but that would require a more concerted effort, and I want to be at full energy when they arrive. So I pull the air down, forcing it faster. The howl of the approaching pressure wave fills the cavern.

Wind whips my hair.

And then it hits.

My ears pop and grit scours my exposed skin. The pulse of air is gone as quick as it came. Hunters shout in surprise and anger. It worked, I think, looking up. Hunters are scattered, just twenty feet away, but they’re already picking themselves up. I catch a glimpse of the wiry me with the tufts of red hair. He’s already back on his feet and staring at me, a sick smile on his face like he knows something I don’t.

“Solomon!” Wright shouts. “Above you!”

I look up in time to see the head of an ax descending toward my skull. Without thought, I roll to the side. Sparks fly as the giant metal blade strikes the stone floor where my head had been. The ground beneath me vibrates as the giant lands. He used the wind, I realize, to cover the distance with a jump. He swings again, sweeping the blade horizontally. I push off the ground, and I’m carried up by a gust of wind. The ax passes by beneath my face, severing a shock of my blond hair.

Before the last strike is complete, he swings with the second ax, bringing it down with the strength to cleave my body in two. I leap back, out of the way. Is he really trying to kill me? I wonder. I thought Nephil would want me alive. Then I remember his blood. In theory, he could kill me and bring me back with his blood if he was fast enough, a fact that does little to comfort me. Better to be dead than a vessel for Nephil.

The attack persists without pause, and I know this giant won’t grow tired. I’m forced back as blow after blow narrowly misses me. When my foot strikes water, I know I’ve run out of room. Something has to change, I think, no matter the cost.

I focus. Hard. The giant’s progress is arrested. A manacle of stone rising from the floor binds one of his legs in place. It’s the same technique I used to trap Pan, but only one leg to conserve energy and time.

He swings at me, not knowing what has happened and misses without me needing to dodge. I am out of range. Despite having altered the world in an unnatural way, I’m not exhausted by the effort, but I think that’s thanks to adrenaline. I’m going to feel this later. But for now, it’s my turn to press the attack.

He swings again, grunting with confusion. I leap up, bending Whipsnap back as far as it will go. As the ax blade passes beneath me, I let go of the mace end. The shaft springs straight, adding its force to my strike. The spiked mace strikes the monster’s wrist, shattering it. The result is both disturbing and advantageous. The ax falls away, propelled by the force of the missed strike. But it hurtles straight for Wright. He sees it coming and leaps away, but not before the heavy handle strikes his leg across the shin. I don’t hear the bone break over the warrior-me’s howl of pain and ecstasy, but I can tell it did by the look on Wright’s face.

Wright lands in knee deep water, clutching his leg.

Stupid, I think at myself. Stupid! My powers are as dangerous to my friends as they are to my enemies.

But there is no more time to berate myself. The warrior swings at me again, and I block the strike with Whipsnap’s staff, which flexes. The force of the strike combined with the flexing staff propels me through the air. I land twenty feet away, splashing into the water. A gust of wind picks up around me, bracing me for landing as it usually does, but instead of cushioning my fall, it carves a hole right into the water, and I continue falling through it like it’s not even there. By the time I realize what has happened, I’m thirty feet down.

I cut the wind and water envelopes me.

How did I do that? I wonder. The air around my body repulsed the water and I fell through it. But can I direct myself through it? I turn toward the surface, focusing on the water around me, pulling trapped air out of crevices and down from the surface. A bubble forms around me and I can breathe.

I push the air up, and it takes me with it. Faster. Faster!

I break the surface, rising from the water like a missile fired from a submarine. As I cross the tunnel, I see Kainda to the left, swinging her hammer wildly. She’s surrounded. In danger of being overwhelmed.

Em fights on the other side of the tunnel, keeping her enemies at bay with an array of flung knives, but several of the perfectly aimed projectiles are struck from the air before reaching their targets. The spindly clone has drawn the original Whipsnap and blocks the knives with perfect accuracy. Then he turns my weapon on Em, using its reach and his long arms to open a straight gash across her lower back. She grunts in pain, but presses her attack. She will fight until the end, which I think might come sooner than later.

I see Kat last, now by Wright’s side. He’s propped up against the wall. Both are firing their weapons at the warrior, who is about to throw his second ax at the pair. Kat might be able to dodge the strike, but Wright is lost.

A gust of wind directs me toward the giant and I announce my presence with a battle cry, drawing his attention and convincing him to keep the ax. He turns to me, but he’s too slow. I plunge the bladed end of Whipsnap into the giant’s eye, shoving it through to his brain.

I draw my blade back out and aim to strike again. With the blade tip just inches from the monster’s other eye, my attack is stopped. I glance back in time to see the end of a whip wrapped around the staff, and then my weapon is yanked from my hands.

One of the hunters has stopped me, and taken my weapon. I leap away, out of the giant’s reach. His eye is already healing, but he acts disoriented by being blind in one eye. “Aim for his eyes,” I say to Kat. “It will slow him down.”

I land and face off against the hunter. For a moment, I’m concerned it’s the dual whip-wielding Olympian I let go and sent to help the escaped prisoners. But I quickly see that it cannot be him. This whip-wielder is a woman. And now she has Whipsnap.

“I don’t want to kill you,” I tell her.

“Nor I you,” she says, pointing the blade end of Whipsnap at my chest. “Yield. Now.”

“You can join us,” I say. “Fight for your brothers and sisters again.”

“I am fighting with them,” she says.

“Not with them. For them.”

She scoffs at the idea, and I can see I’m not going to get anywhere. I move in close, preparing to fight her, hand-to-hand, when suddenly her eyes go blank. She drops Whipsnap at my feet and collapses. There’s a knife in her back.

Em. I turn to thank her, but she’s fully engaged with four hunters and the clone. Not engaged, I realized. Retreating. She’s out of knives. She used the last one to help me. The wiry clone moves in fast, striking Em’s shoulder with the mace end of the original Whipsnap. The blow is hard and sends Em reeling back toward Wright. She clutches her shoulder.

I pick up the new and improved Whipsnap and rush to their aid. I leap over the giant’s back and feel a rush of air as he swings and misses. When I land, Kainda is at my side, hammer at the ready. She’s covered in cuts and bruises, but the hunters that had surrounded her now lie in a heap.

Had this just been hunters, we would have won this fight, but the Nephilim clones are too much in this small space. A mass of shouting voices turns my eyes further up the tunnel. More hunters.

The fight is lost.

Wright echoes my thought, shouting, “Retreat! Get the hell out of here!”

I’m not sure how that’s possible. I look over my shoulder at the water.

The water...

The Nephilim, who can drown, will not follow us there.

“In the water!” I shout. Em and Kainda take defensive stances as they walk backward into the slowly rising waters. Kat wrestles with Wright, trying to get him up. They hobble toward us, but every step is agony for Wright.

“Leave me,” he says, shrugging away from his wife.

Kat growls out her words. “I’m not going to—” A stone flung by a slingshot-wielding hunter strikes her. A direct hit could have killed her, but the glancing blow only knocks her unconscious.

Standing on one leg, Wright thrusts his wife toward me. “Take her! I saw what you can do with the water. Take them all. Now!”

I don’t argue, but I stand and stare dumbly. “Solomon,” he says, looking me in the eyes. “This is war. People die. Find the shofar and get back to the FOB. That’s your mission. Now go!”

He turns away from us, slapping in a new magazine, and opens fire on the hunters advancing into the water. “Go!” He shouts one more time, spurring me into action.

I wade back. When I’m waist deep, the warrior shouts, “No!” He raises his ax, and for a moment, I think he’s going to throw it at us, but then he screams, swings down and severs his own leg. Purple blood sprays from the severed limb, but it quickly starts to grow back. Free of the stone binding him in place, he charges forward, into the water, limping on his half formed leg bones.

I wrap my arms and Whipsnap around Em, Kainda and Kat. “Hold on,” I tell them, “And to her.”

Em and Kainda hold on to my weapon with one hand each, and grip Kat with their other hands. We push back into deeper water, sinking below the surface. The warrior clone’s angry shout chases us beneath the water. His face plunges into the water, staring at us as we sink out of sight.

As we descend, my thoughts turn to Wright’s fate above. He’s dead, I know, perhaps dying right this moment—the recipient of the giant’s rage. It’s my fault, I think. It’s all my fault.

15

I’m so lost in my despair for Wright that I forget where I am, who I’m with and the fact that all of us need to breathe. Like a Nephilim, we’ll drown in the water. A sharp elbow in the side reminds me.

I close my eyes and focus. The first and only time I tried this I only had to transport myself thirty feet. This time, there are four of us and the opposite side, which could also be completely flooded, is miles away. I address the most immediate concern first, drawing air from the stone walls of the flooded High River tunnel. A bubble forms around our upper bodies, providing air to breath. Pulling the air toward us is tiring, but keeping it in place is far easier.

Em and Kainda are momentarily stunned by what’s happening. Neither knew I could do such a thing. That makes three of us, I think.

“What should we do?” Em asks after catching her breath. I can tell that she’s uncomfortable about leaving Wright behind. As am I. And it takes all of my will power not to race back up to save him. What keeps me in place is that, one, he’s likely already dead, and two, his dying wish was that I complete the mission. He understood better than all of us that this fight, this war, isn’t about any one person, but about all people. If one of us dies, so be it. If all of us have to die to save the world, then that’s the cost.

Wright was a good man. I could have learned a lot from him. So I’m not going to ignore his last lesson. “We need to finish the mission.” It’s what Wright wanted, but I can’t help feel like I’m the one condemning him.

“But how?” Em asks. “We can’t just stay here. And we can’t go back up.”

“We move forward,” Kainda says.

Blood drips from a wound on her lip. I want to wipe it away, but my hands are locked in place, holding Whipsnap so the others can cling to it like a rollercoaster-ride safety bar.

Kainda looks at me, oblivious to the blood on her face. “You can do it.”

Her confidence in the wake of our defeat is kind, but I’m not feeling it. She must sense this because she quickly changes tactics. “Push forward, Sol. You owe it to Wright. To Em. To me.” She nods to Kat. “To her.”

Guilt is a strong motivator for some people, but it kind of just sucks my strength. The sphere of air closes in around us as I lose focus.

“Solomon,” Kainda says, her voice growing harsh. “Look at me.”

I look all around her before finally settling on her eyes, burning with something I can’t quite place. The strangeness of the look keeps my attention on her. “You have become someone I thought you would never be, and you have made me someone I believed was impossible, but I cannot love a man who refuses to finish a fight. Win or lose this war, you will take this to the end, or you will lose me.”

She’s just spoken forty-nine words, but all I heard was something like, “blah blah love blah blah.” The rest of it slowly sinks in, leaving me confused. Is she talking about the possibility of loving me? Is she saying she loves me now? This is not only a huge step for me—a girl, or woman as the case may be, has never professed love for me before. That it’s Kainda, who I figured would never use the word, makes it even more powerful.

It centers me.

Gives me strength.

“Hold on,” I say. “Tight.”

When I’m sure that everyone is secure, I expand the bubble a bit, rotate us so we’re facing downhill, and push deeper into the flooded river. I move slowly at first, using most of my energy to weave through the stalagmites and stalactites turning the tunnel into an obstacle course. Twenty minutes later, we leave the tunnel behind, entering the massive chamber containing the ruins of New Jericho.

The city is below us, but out of sight, concealed by the liquid gloom. My first time here, I was just a boy, and I was chased away by the Nephilim, Ull, who would later become my master. My first return was after Ull’s death at my hands, and I discovered a statue of the beast, erected in his honor. On my third visit, the chamber was flooded, and though I did not see the city again, I felt its dark presence below. But this visit is different. I’m not fleeing the underworld. I’m heading deeper. On a mission. And the ghosts of the past, including this dark place and the memories it holds, can’t distract me from it.

I accelerate slowly, cutting through the water like a hot needle through wax. The bubble is hard to maintain while moving, but the air around us reduces the friction of the water on our bodies, creating the perfect environment for cavitation, which allows us to move very fast—best guess, we’re at fifty-two knots, or roughly sixty miles per hour.

We travel in silence, each lost in our own personal train of thought. Em is thinking of Luca. I can’t read minds, but I’ve seen that worried look on her face before, and every time I’ve asked, her mind was on my younger clone. Kainda, on the other hand, is likely replaying our last battle in her head, over and over, imagining ways it could have turned out differently. Her clenched jaw says as much. Me? I’m not thinking about anything.

I’m focused.

And not on the mission. Or on avenging Wright. Or finding the shofar. My thoughts are narrow: keep the bubble open and keep moving. With each passing minute and mile, I push harder and harder, because the effort is taking a toll. I can’t do this forever. And if I stop, we’re all going to drown.

What a way to go that would be. Solomon Ull Vincent, the last hunter, the first and only natural human child born on Antarctica, bonded to the continent and gifted with extraordinary powers, capable of killing Nephilim and dinosaurs, and the only human to set foot in Tartarus and return...killed by drowning. Something about the idea feels like the taunting of past schoolmates, and it fuels my effort for another minute.

But exhaustion is catching up to me.

How far have we come? Five miles? More? It’s impossible to tell without knowing our true speed. The other side of the chamber could be several miles away or a hundred feet. I start to consider our options, when I feel one of my passengers shift.

Without looking, I know it’s Kat. She’s between Em and Kainda, but pulled up against my body. She shifts again with a moan. She’s waking up.

“This might not be good,” Em says as quietly as she can over the rush of water flowing around the air bubble.

I’m not sure what she’s talking about until Kat wakes up and says, “Where’s Wright?”

I feel her head turn back and forth. She can’t see a thing, I’m sure. Even by my standards, the abyss is dark.

“Where’s my husband?” she asks, growing angry.

“We—had to leave him,” I answer.

Honesty is supposed to be the best answer. Even liars say so. But in this case, trapped in a bubble, surrounded by endless water, I think a temporary lie might have been the best option.

“Go back!” she shouts.

“We can’t,” Kainda says, then with a more scolding tone adds, “Calm down.”

Kat reacts to the demand about as well as I’d expect Kainda to, which is to say, not well. She leans forward and then drives her head back into my gut, knocking the air out of my lungs. She has no idea what kind of danger she’s in, only that her husband has been left behind to die.

“Stop,” I say, but the words get lost as I gasp for air.

Kat twists, taking Em and Kainda’s grasp as restraint rather than support. “Let go of me!”

Rather than breathing, I focus on slowing down. I can’t maintain this speed without any air in my lungs, and the bubble around us is rapidly shrinking. I take a deep breath, hoping to explain when Kat manages to wrench herself free, plant a foot against my chest and shove. She slips out of the bubble and is sucked away into the water.

My surprise at this is so severe, that my concentration breaks. The bubble supplying our air bursts. Water envelops us. The pressure is intense. I can feel the weight of all this water pushing on my chest, urging my lungs to let go of that last breath, while my lungs are still urging me to gasp after being struck in the gut.

I reach out for the fleeing air bubbles, trying to draw them back. If I can just reform the bubble, I might be able to get moving again. I might be able to get back to Kat.

But it’s not going to happen. The bubbles bounce through the water, rising toward the surface somewhere above. My energy is gone. I have pushed my abilities to their limit several times over the past few days—stone manacles, flying, and now cavitating through water with three passengers—and while I can do more with each attempt, the end result is still the same. Mind numbing exhaustion.

I need more time, I think, as my vision fades. I need to practice, to build skill and endurance. I’m not ready to fight a war yet. These despairing thoughts and a thousand others flash through my mind as the dark, wet world around me turns black and my consciousness slips away.

16

I awake from my dreamless slumber with a gasp. Last I knew, I was about to drown. But since I’m breathing, I’m pretty sure I’m not dead. Which is good, but confusing. The first question that needs answering is how I survived—a question that is directly tied to answering my second question, where am I?

The space is lit by a single glowing crystal embedded above me. It reveals the brown stone just inches from my face. I’m floating face up, on my back. My ears are partly in the water, so the echo of my breathing sounds funny. I remember floating like this when I was a kid. Not in pools. I had issues going to pools. The water was always too cold and my scrawny body embarrassed me. But I loved to float in my parents’ tub. It was the big kind. A Jacuzzi tub with heated jets. I would float there, daydreaming, until my fingers and toes looked like raisins, or until my parents feared I’d drowned and came to my rescue.

I rub my fingers together. Raisins.

The memory brings a smile to my face. Then a frown. Will that world ever exist again? My frown deepens with the knowledge that my childhood, despite the teasing and bullies, was a paradise compared to kids in other parts of the world. Compared to what Em and Kainda endured, it would have been something closer to Heaven.

Something bumps my foot and I flinch away. My hand goes instinctively to my waist and I find Whipsnap locked in place on my belt.

“Solomon?” It’s Em. “You’re awake?”

I lift my foot out of the water and push off the ceiling, bringing my body upright. Em is just a few feet away. Her head is tilted up so that her chin is just above the water line. She has a hand jammed into a crack in the ceiling so she doesn’t have to tread water, like I’m doing now.

I try to speak, but water flows into my mouth. I spit it out, kicking to rise out of the water, and I bump my head on the ceiling. First things first, I think, looking for a handhold. I find a knob of stone above me and grip it. I stop kicking and pull myself up, an easy task while my body is ninety-five percent submerged. With my body stabilized, I tilt my head out of the water, looking over my nose at Em. “I’m awake.”

I turn slowly, taking in our surroundings. We’re in an oblong divot in the ceiling. “We’re still in the New Jericho chamber?”

“Yeah,” Em says. “Right above where we stopped. We followed the bubbles up.”

I don’t reply. My eyes have landed on Kat. Her glare looks as angry and savage as any I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen the worst this world has to offer. She blames me for Wright’s death.

So do I.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “About everything.”

She just stares.

“Are you—”

Em puts her hand on my submerged arm and squeezes. The gesture silences me and says, Now, is not the time.

“I’m just sorry,” I finish.

I twist, looking for Kainda and when I don’t see her, I panic.

Em senses my next question and says, “She’s okay. There are bubbles of trapped air all across the ceiling. She went to find the way out in case we had to move you while you were unconscious.”

“How long was I out this time?” I ask.

“Not long,” she says. Hunters don’t usually keep time. It’s pointless in the underworld. But Em knows I prefer modern human time and has made attempts to learn minutes and hours. “Best guess, thirty minutes.”

That’s actually much faster than usual. The few times Tobias, Em’s father, pushed me to my limit, I would sometimes crash for six hours. I once slept for eight and couldn’t be woken. A half hour is a dramatic improvement. Of course, it would be even better if I didn’t topple over like a fainting goat every time I pushed myself. It’s a weakness. I need to overcome it, before it gets someone killed, which was almost the case this time.

“I’m going to look for her,” I say, slipping under water.

Em grabs me and pulls me back up. “You can’t leave. What if you go two separate directions?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her, then slip beneath the surface again. I float down a few feet and close my eyes. I won’t be able to see her anyway. Nor will I hear her, or detect her using any other traditional sense.

I reach out with my thoughts, trying to connect with the water around me. While I don’t feel temperature changes physically, I am connected to the land. I should be able to know whether it is hot or cold.

And then, I do.

It’s not like a voice, a weather report or any other kind of tangible transfer of data. I just know.

It’s cold.

The others must be freezing. I expand my reach, merging my sense of touch with the molecules of water surrounding me. I have been bonded to this continent since the day of my birth. In many ways, it’s an extension of my own body, or perhaps more accurately, I am the focus of its power. Either way, not only can I direct the natural world of the continent, I can also sense things through it. I can feel earthquakes like a muscle spasm or a bird landing on a branch two thousand miles away like an itch on the sole of my foot. I have to clear my mind and focus on exactly what and where I want to feel. The challenge is not to let it all in at once. Letting in an entire continent’s worth of sensory information would likely destroy my mind. I’ve never tried it, but I suspect the result would not be beneficial to my health.

I start my search twenty-five feet out and expand it. I feel the water’s currents, fueled by the High River’s flow. The sharp shapes of New Jericho’s ruins emerge in my mind’s eye. My reach expands quickly now, moving out through the featureless water with ease. I’m sensing nearly two miles out now, looking for anything moving. There are scores of small fish, but nothing the size of a human being.

How far could she have gone in thirty minutes?

I stop when I reach the far wall and our exit. She’s not there. Did she leave? Maybe she drowned and sank to the bottom? I was searching for something moving. If she’s dead, I might never find her.

Distracted by thoughts of losing Kainda, my reach pulls back quickly, sifting through the water already explored. Two miles. One mile. Three hundred feet. Two. One. Twenty five. My eyes twitch, about to open.

That’s when I see her, just two feet away. Her face is carved into my mind by the strange sense, glowing luminous blue in the water. She must have been inside my twenty-five foot radius when I began my search. Was she watching me?

I imagine Kainda, the mighty warrior, watching me like a love-sick schoolgirl. The thought brings a smile to my face and I “see” her do the same without opening my eyes.

She slips through the water, and gently places her lips against my own.

My connection with Antarctica is severed like an amputated limb, though the sensation is far more pleasant.

When I open my eyes, she’s right there, lips pressed against mine. Her brown eyes look almost black in the gloom. I’m transfixed, frozen by the touch of her lips. She pulls away slowly, letting no other part of her body touch mine. Then she turns her head up, and swims.

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.

“Nephil,” I say in greeting. “Or do you prefer Ophion?”

He waves his hand dismissively, turning to face me. “Whichever you prefer.” Ninnis’s eyes are solid black. The black tendrils extend out of his body, but don’t physically alter it. There are no wounds. This is the spirit of Nephil in its raw form, contained within Ninnis’s body, but able to extend its reach outside of it.

Despite my rising fear, I analyze the situation. Nephil is here, alone. That hasn’t worked out so well for Ninnis in the past, which he must know. So why is he here? To talk? That doesn’t fit.

Unless he’s not alone.

I turn back to the others, looking into the darkness of the tunnel behind them. I pull the air toward me and sniff as it flows past me. One hundred feet. Two hundred. Three hundred. There! Just a football field away, hidden behind a bend is the gang of hunters and the two clones that pinned us in the High River tunnel and killed Steven Wright.

We’re trapped.

Again.

18

“Stay close,” I whisper to the others. “We’re not alone.”

Kainda, Em and Kat leave the shelter of the tunnel and join me in the wide open space. We head for the center of the chamber, keeping a steady distance from Nephil, while getting as far from the tunnel as possible. We’re severely outnumbered, but there is plenty of room to run if need be. Plus, out here in the open, I can use my abilities in a much bigger way. Trouble is, I’m still feeling a little tired, a fact that Nephil quickly picks up on.

“You look weak, hunter.” Nephil lowers himself toward the ground. He raises a hand toward Hades. “Though, you are certainly fairing much better than our mutual friend.”

I glance at the giant and notice something I’d missed before. He’s not breathing. My eyes dart to his forehead. The dark purple blood drying on his bald head nearly conceals the wound, but I see it—a two inch slit. I look back to Ninnis and find his sword, Strike, hanging from his waist. The first twelve inches of the blade are coated in Hades’s blood.

“No,” I whisper, then louder, “You killed him?”

“He betrayed me,” Nephil says. “Betrayed all of his brothers. His life alone could not repay what was taken.” He grins. “Fortunately, he has so much more to give.”

“He knows,” I whisper to Kainda.

“Yes,” Nephil says, as though he could hear my words as easily as though I’d shouted them. “I know...everything. Not even the mighty Hades can resist the touch of my spirit.”

Despite the fact that Hades was a Nephilim warrior with a reputation for bloodlust, his death causes me great sadness. He had tasted the freedom of Tartarus, yet returned to the underworld with the Nephilim. He gave up a life of peace, living among the enemy, his true intentions concealed by the blood and gore that repulsed him. And now he has paid the cost for that sacrifice, with his life. He has been erased. As though he never was.

But my memory of the giant, and the lesson to be learned by his sacrifice, will live on.

My eyes, wet with tears, look beyond Nephil, to the gates of Tartarus. He was so close. Just a mile away. He could have covered the distance in a minute. Anger replaces my lament.

“I’m going to throw you through those doors,” I say, stalking toward Nephil.

A howling wind fills the chamber, summoned by my unconscious.

“I am the storm,” I tell him.

Thunder rumbles through the cavern.

“Solomon,” Kainda say.

I ignore her. “I am the wind.”

Ninnis’s hair whips wildly as a gust of wind strikes him, but the tendrils hold him still.

“Sol,” Em says, and I detect the warning in her voice.

“I am the—”

“Hey kid!” It’s Kat. “Cut the melodramatic bull crap and turn around!”

I turn.

And face an army.

It’s not just the hunters. Or my two clones. There are at least fifty warriors as well. Some step out from behind stone pillars, others from behind bone mounds, and still more step out of side tunnels all around.

Nephil chuckles. “Like I said, I know everything. I missed you at Hades’s chambers by hours, but was able to track his descent. We found him here, just short of his salvation. Once possessed, the mind gives up its secrets rather quickly. I know about the Jericho shofar, Solomon. I know what it does. How it works.” He grins with a burning hatred that not even Ninnis could achieve. “And I know where it is.”

No... This can’t be. Not even I know where it is. Hades gave me vague hints that I’m supposed to figure out along the way to prevent this very thing from happening.

To my surprise, Nephil moves away from me. We’re surrounded. Outnumbered and out-muscled. Escape might be possible, but not without exacting a toll on my already weary body. He knows that, too, I think. He’s not here to waste time trying to kill me. He’s here to slow me down. Or rather, that’s why this small army is here. Nephil intends to find the shofar first!

“Take them,” he says before his tendrils, moving like squid legs over the stone floor, carry him away.

“Ninnis!” I shout. “Resist him! Fight!”

“Ninnis is no more,” Nephil says he drifts away. “His voice has been silent for some time now.”

I’m not sure why I’m reaching out to Ninnis. He’s as black-hearted as the rest of the Nephilim and hunters now closing in around us. But I know he never intended to give himself fully to Nephil. If the man could fight back, return to himself, it could disrupt their plans. But it seems even Ninnis has been lost.

Wright. Hades. Ninnis. Even the stranger slain by Pan. I can feel their deaths adding weight to a newly forming burden. This war needs to end—I turn to face the force encircling us—but not, it seems, without fighting another battle.

“We can’t defeat them,” Kainda says.

“We don’t need to,” I reply. “We need to follow Nephil. Down.”

“Where?” Em asks.

This, I don’t know. Nephil is now out of sight. “We’ll break through the circle and figure it out from the—duck!”

An arrow zips past our heads, carried high by a gust of wind. The shot was intended for Em. It serves as a trigger. The hunters rush in. Five make it close before I can act, but the rest are knocked to the floor when I bring the air above rushing down.

Kainda meets the five attackers first, kicking one in the gut and backhanding another.

“Kain,” Em shouts, lifting her single remaining knife.

Kainda draws her hammer, while kneeing a man’s chin, breaking his jaw. With a glance, she sees the hunter approaching Em. She twists the hammer in her hand and Em throws the knife—at Kainda.

The action not only confuses me, but the attacking hunter as well. Before either of us understands what’s happening, the knife deflects off the hammer’s stone head and punctures the hunter’s heart. He drops to the floor with a look of surprise frozen on his face.

“Geez,” Kat says, equally impressed. “Take this,” she says to Em, tossing her a knife. “You’ll do better with it than I will.”

Kat, who’s rifle is missing, draws her silenced pistol and starts dropping the hunters I’ve knocked to the floor. I hadn’t intended to kill the men and women, just immobilize them, but I don’t say anything, despite my growing discomfort.

This is war.

People die.

But they don’t have to.

A woman screams, not in pain, but in fright. A female hunter lies on the stone floor. Kainda stands above her, hammer raised.

“Stop!” I shout.

To my surprise, everyone listens.

My instinct is to give some kind of speech, expose the error of their ways, turn them to our side, but there isn’t time for that. The hunters are closing in.

I back away from the two hunters still standing, and the woman cringing on the ground next to two dead bodies. Em, Kainda and Kat know enough to stay close to me. I focus on the air, moving it slowly. I’ve done this trick before, to fuel and starve a fire in this very chamber, but this time, I’m starving the hunters.

As one, they fall to the ground choking and gasping. Their faces turn red. Desperation fills their eyes. I have removed the oxygen from the air surrounding them, and just when their bodies are about to give in to death, I return it. Some fall unconscious, some wheeze, but all are incapacitated. Their lives are spared.

The warriors break into a jog. They’ll close the distance in seconds.

I try the same trick. It doesn’t work. They’re either holding their breath or know that killing me, or at least knocking me out, will undo the effect.

“What do we do?” Em asks.

Axes, swords, maces and spears rise up as the gods of old close in. They’re dressed for battle, wearing the fine armor of their various tribes: Egyptian, Sumerian, Norse, Olympian, Aztec and more. Wings open wide, making their presence even more massive and blocking any and all escape routes. From beneath the wings come long scorpion tails, twitching and eager to sting.

I try to push them back with a wind, but only manage to slow them down and drain my energy. Their united front is too large, and there are no natural katabatic winds to call to my aid in the underground.

We back away until we’re standing at the feet of Hades. He seemed so confident. But here he is. Dead. Maybe he was wrong? Maybe everything in this screwed up world is just wrong? And all of this—all of it—is just humanity and inhumanity, acting out in some base instinctual way, like Japanese fighting fish who fight to the death for no other reason than the instincts that drive them.

A shadow falls over us.

I look up.

A gargantuan body descends.

I move to defend, but notice the thing’s trajectory and pause. It lands between us and the warriors. The thing is twenty feet tall and concealed beneath a cloak, perfectly camouflaged to look like the plain gray stone that composes much of the underworld. When the cloak billows upon landing, I see that the inside is also camouflaged, but brown. We could walk right by it and never know it was there. The cloak is unfastened and falls to the floor behind the massive bare feet, revealing the pale-skinned legs and torso. Like Hades, its head, what little of it can be seen as it hunches forward, has been shaved bald. Its arms stretch out, all four of them, each wielding a tremendous curved sword.

For a moment, I think this must be some Indian god Nephilim. Shiva or something. But then it turns its face toward me, and then another, and another. Each of them looks just like me.

My sixth clone is Cerberus, a combination of me and a Gigantes.

Speaking one word at a time in three slightly different voices, Cerberus says, “Go. Solomon. Now!”

19

I don’t move. I can’t. The realization that my sixth clone is a three-faced, four-armed giant is staggering enough, but the faces and voices, are recognizable versions of myself. The tone. The emotion. The concern. This creature might be different from me in almost every physical way, but I sense its core personality is very similar to mine. With the exception of Luca, this monster might be the clone most similar to me.

When it turns to me and says, “Remember. The. Baseball. Card. Bully,” I understand why. Somehow, beyond my understanding, my sixth clone ended up with my childhood memories.

It was 1988, just months before I came to Antarctica. I was thirteen. My cousin, Shawn, who was twice my size and an avid baseball card collector, had come to visit. Shawn, Justin and I walked to Fred’s Baseball Card Shop. Shawn bought six packs of cards, chewing the cardboard-flavored bubble gum sticks all at once. Justin picked up an equal amount of Garbage Pail Kids cards. And I thumbed through the box of comic books at the back of the store.

The place was frequented by a lot of kids, so I didn’t think much of it when some other boys my age started looking around at the back of the store. When I caught one of them looking at me, I smiled, said, “hi,” and went about my business.

Upon leaving the store, the boy who’d been staring at me, confronted me. Using expletives, some of which I had never heard before, the boy claimed that I had been his second grade nemesis at Beatle School. I denied this, of course, claiming to have attended Cove School on the other side of town, which was true, but that was third grade. In second grade, I did indeed go to Beatle School. I imagined the boy younger and recognized him as Rick Carson, the boy who had tortured me in second grade. Funny that he remembered me as the antagonist.

But my lie, backed up by Justin, who knew to lie as well, was convincing. Rather than just beating me on the spot, Rick offered me a five-second head start. It was generous, but I wasn’t a very physical person. I knew I couldn’t escape. And while Justin was much more athletic than me, I knew he wasn’t a fighter. But we had a trump card that day. Shawn. He casually stood between me and Rick, looked back at me and said, “Go ahead. I’ll see you at home.”

And I ran. Justin rode his bike next to me. We fled the scene, out of breath, but unharmed. Half way home, we stopped and looked back. Rick was nowhere to be found. So we waited and ten minutes later, Shawn walked into view like nothing had happened. He simply held up a Mark McGwire baseball card and said, “Got a McGwire.”

The memory comes and goes in a flash. Cerberus is filling the role of Shawn. I trusted that my cousin would be okay handling the bully. He’s asking me to do the same with him. This isn’t quite the same situation, but there is little choice. Every second I wait, Nephil gets closer to retrieving the Jericho shofar first, and I have no doubt he’ll destroy it if he does.

“Thank you,” I say and leave my new ally behind. I round the pillar to which Hades is bound and find three Nephilim warriors blocking my path. It’s not good, but it’s better odds than what Cerberus is facing. A battle cry pulls my head around and I see Cerberus charge. His arms move like blurs, the blades flashing in the dull light provided by the crystals embedded in the ceiling high above. With uncommon grace and power he launches himself into the Nephilim, combating several of them at once and holding his own.

Inspired by my clone’s bravery in the face of certain death, I mimic his battle cry and charge the warriors blocking my path.

But the warriors don’t back down or even flinch. They shout right back at me and charge.

“Em,” I say as she runs by my side. “Aim for the center warrior.”

She nods and aims the large knife retrieved from the hunter’s body. I ignore the red blood staining the blade and focus on my enemy. I harness the wind, bringing it down from above, over my head and straight for the head of the central warrior. Then I bend it up and pour on the speed.

The giant’s hair whips up as the blast of condensed air strikes. His head snaps back as though punched. But my intended target—the gold crown protecting its weak spot—remains unaffected.

What the—

“Solomon,” Em says, sounding worried as the distance closes between us and the warriors.

“It’s not coming off,” I say, and then I see why. Twin streaks of purple blood trickle down the sides of the Nephilim’s forehead and cheeks before getting lost in the deep red beard. The golden crown has two circular indentations, just above the beast’s eyes.

They nailed the rings to their heads! Removing them won’t be so easy anymore. If the Nephilim topside have made the same change, then the human forces, including our band of escaped prisoners, are in a lot of trouble. I’m a little surprised they didn’t think of it sooner. The pain must be excruciating—just the way they like it.

Wind, bullets and physical strength can no longer remove the rings, but I have other options. Unnatural options.

“All of you,” I say to Kainda, Em and Kat, who come to a stop with me. “Be ready!”

I close my eyes and reach out toward the Nephilim. I feel the air and the building pressure in it as the three massive warriors push through. I feel their leathers, tailored from the skin of their feeder young. And I feel the metal bands, forged from iron and gold—metals pulled out of Antarktos—my continent.

The ground shakes beneath me as the giants close in.

I ignore their approach and focus on the atoms of gold and iron, pushing them apart. The metal resists my unnatural urge. With a shout, I shove them apart, changing the density of the metal to something more closely resembling chocolate syrup.

Confused grunts open my eyes and I see the rings oozing down over the Nephilims' faces. Their charge comes to an abrupt halt as they paw at the sticky metal now covering their eyes.

“Now!” I say.

Kainda throws her hammer. Em lets her knife fly. And Kat squeezes off three silenced rounds.

All three women find their targets.

All three Nephilim drop, their existences from this world and any other, extinguished forever.

While Em and Kainda rush to retrieve their weapons, a shout of pain catches my attention, mostly because it’s my voice. Cerberus is surrounded. I count six Nephilim warriors lying dead, and there are still forty more closing in around him. But the source of his pain isn’t from one of the warriors, it is from the other two clones.

The bigger of the two has severed one of Cerberus’s arms with an ax. Blood—red blood—flows from the wound. Cerberus falls to one knee, clutching the wound with one hand, still brandishing swords with the other two.

But he is done. He can see it as well as I can.

One of his faces looks up at me. For a moment, I’m lost in his gaze. It’s like looking in a mirror. Then he smiles, gives a faint nod and stands, swinging around in a wide arc. The speed of the attack catches the larger, ax-wielding clone by surprise. His arms are raised high, ready to strike, when the long sword strikes his waist and cleaves him in two.

The bold attack is effective, but flawed. And Cerberus knew this. By turning to face the ax-wielder, he left his back open to attack. And the wiry clone, the one using the original Whipsnap, leaps into the air and drives the spear tip deep into Cerberus’s core. The blade emerges from his chest, right where his heart should be. It’s a killing blow.

Without a sound, Cerberus closes all six eyes and falls to the ground. Once again, I feel an intense sense of loss for something that should terrify me. Cerberus was an abomination—a combination of my stolen genetic material merged with that of ancient Gigantes, which were lab created to begin with, thousands of years before modern labs existed. But his heart was good. His blood, human. And he gave his life, willingly, to save me and all of mankind. Once I got past the strangeness of his appearance and the fact that we share thirteen years of memories, I think we would have been friends. More than friends. Like Luca and Xin, we would have been brothers.

I shake my head, anger welling up again. The body count on my side of this conflict is rising far too quickly. People die in war. I understand that. But I can’t accept the idea that people I’ve never met will die for me.

The wiry clone yanks Whipsnap from Cerberus’s back, unfazed by the fact that it is now coated in red blood, and charges toward me. He’s followed by the warriors, who take to the air.

“To the far wall,” I tell the others, pointing the way. “Go!”

“I won’t leave you,” Kainda says.

“I don’t intend to stay long.”

After just a moment’s hesitation, Kainda acquiesces and runs with the others—straight toward a solid wall of stone.

20

I stand and wait.

The creature’s bare feet slap over the stone floor.

Its oval head bobs with each step. The frizzy red hair growing in splotches all over its body, like on a young feeder, bounces. Muscles beneath its dirty, green skin tense, as it raises the original Whipsnap, ready to strike.

The creature is fast and outpaces the flying Nephilim, giving me about thirty seconds to exact revenge on Cerberus’s behalf.

It strikes, swinging the blade end down toward my head. But it has failed to utilize the power of the flexible staff, and I easily block the blow. Though the clone isn’t a skilled fighter, it stands a good three feet taller than me.

“You are unworthy,” the thing hisses. “I am the best of us.”

I quickly realize that the “us” in “best of us” refers to the six clones and me. His boast serves only to increase my anger.

“You are the least,” I say, and I release the flexed mace the moronic clone hadn’t yet noticed. The metal, spiked ball snaps forward, striking and destroying the thing’s knees. It shrieks in pain, hopping back.

But then it grins, taking pleasure in the pain, like the warriors, and it begins laughing when the wound quickly heals.

“As I said,” the clone taunts, “I am—”

Krack! The clone is crushed to oblivion beneath the immense weight of the stone pillar to which Hades was bound. While the beast was distracted, I severed the pillar and tilted it toward us. After a quick calculation of the column’s size, I met him precisely at the spot where he would be crushed and I would be spared. The end of the severed column is just two feet away. Purple blood gushes out from under its girth. I step back to avoid getting any on my feet and catch sight of the first Whipsnap.

I won’t leave you behind, old friend. I quickly pick up the weapon, forgetting that it’s covered in Cerberus’s blood. I look down at the red for a moment, then catch a shadow shifting overhead in the cloud of dust kicked up by the crashing pillar. With a gust of wind, I toss the dust higher, obscuring the flying warriors’ view.

After attaching the bone and stone Whipsnap to my belt, I make for the far wall, sprinting through the obscuring layer of dust. When I clear the cloud, I see that I’ve miscalculated the speed and intention of the warriors. Several of them are nearly upon Kainda, Em and Kat.

I will my legs to move faster, but my muscles have limits. So I leap and the wind carries me up. I’m not flying. Not this time. I simply shoot myself across the chamber and allow the laws of physics to keep me in motion and arc me toward the floor and my friends. I might be able to move faster with a constant wind propelling me, but I don’t want to risk running out of energy before I attempt my ridiculous plan.

Gravity takes hold and pulls me down. I use the wind to adjust my trajectory twice and then fall, like a cannonball toward the far wall where it meets the floor.

“Keep running!” I shout as loud as I can.

Em glances back, and then up. Her eyes widen when she sees me descending.

I’m sure all three women are questioning my plan. I have them running toward a solid wall of stone. But there is a fissure in the rock running vertically from the floor for ten feet. It’s far too small to pass through. You’d only see it from a few feet away. But it’s a weakness I can exploit.

However, I’m not the only one dropping toward them. One of the Nephilim has sprung its attack.

I surge forward with another gust of wind, directing myself at the warrior like a demon-seeking missile. As I streak beneath its extended wing, I stab up with Whipsnap’s sharp metal blade and shred the wing. It will heal quickly, but the momentary lack of control throws the monster off course and slows its descent.

With just seconds before I pancake on the stone floor, and before my three friends run into a solid wall, I turn my attention to the natural fissure. I raise my hands like I’m parting window curtains and the stone wall opens up just as easily.

Without missing a beat, Kainda, Em and Kat dash through the fresh opening. The effort tires me some, but I made sure only to open the space twenty feet in. Any more and I might risk passing out before I hit the ground.

I’m moving so fast that it takes a strong burst of wind in the opposite direction to slow me down. The torrent twists me, and I stumble when I hit the ground. But I turn the fall into a roll and get back to my feet long enough to dive into the cave, just before the pursuing giant with the now healed wing, pounds the stone floor behind me. His bones crack loudly from the missed blow, but his attack continues. Even as the six broken fingers reform, the giant reaches in.

“Kid, look out!” Kat shouts.

I jump back, just out of reach and bring my hands together. The stone walls close together, returning to their original state, fusing the Nephilim’s arm with the wall. I have no doubt the giant will simply sever his arm and grow a new one, but we are out of its reach.

“They cannot follow us here,” I say, out of breath.

The wall shakes. The warriors are pounding on the stone.

“Someone should tell that to them,” Kat says.

The small stone tunnel glows yellow, green and blue as Kat takes out her glowing crystal. “Just call me Rainbow Bright.”

Kat’s change in attitude confuses me, but then I remember who she is. An assassin. A trained killer. Unlike Kainda, Em and me, she chose a life of daring escapes, close calls and, let’s be honest, killing. “You enjoyed that,” I say to her.

Kat looks at me, a half smile still on her face. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?” I ask.

She stops, thinks and says, “Because it showed we could win. You’ve got more tricks up your sleeve than David Copperfield.”

It’s a good answer and not the one I expected.

“Plus it was kind of fun.”

There is it. Her honesty brings a smile to my face.

“Sorry about the big guy,” she adds, her face going serious. “I saw his face. I know what he was. That couldn’t have been easy.”

“He gave his life to save ours,” Kainda says. “It was a good death.”

“Yes,” Kat says, nodding. “It was.”

I’m pretty sure that Kat is thinking of Wright now, not Cerberus, but I don’t mention it. What matters is that their sacrifices aren’t for nothing. And that means pushing forward, or in this case, downward.

I place a hand on the stone, tune out the shaking and pounding from the warriors trying to reach us and feel the subterranean realm around me, searching for some sign of Nephil. After nearly a minute, I open my eyes.

“I can’t find him,” I say.

“Who?” Kat asks.

“Ophion,” I say. “Nephil.”

“You feel vibrations,” Em says, “right?”

“Yeah,” I reply and see what she’s getting at. “He must be moving on those tendrils.”

“So he could be anywhere,” Kainda says, growing frustrated.

“No,” I say. “I know where he’s going. Down. And there is only one way.”

I focus on the rock and it parts with a crack. I keep the tunnel small, three feet wide, six feet tall, just big enough for us to fit down single file. I push it as far as I can, stopping just twenty feet from our destination. The Low River. It passes through the giant cavern and then drops down again. The laboratory is there, where I killed the thinker clone, but we’re going far beyond that, to another cavern, more massive than the one we’ve just left behind, where ceaseless vibrations tell of abundant life.

With the tunnel complete, I drop to a knee, catching my breath.

“Should you rest?” Em asks. More than anyone, she knows my limits and that I’m well beyond them now.

She also knows my determination to expand those limits, so she doesn’t argue when I pull myself back up and say, “No.”

I take the lead in the tunnel, walking with Whipsnap for a crutch. We’re not moving fast, but the fastest route between two spots is a straight line and Nephil is following the winding path of a river.

A river...

I pause and place my hand on the stone again. There is water all around us, flowing through the underworld like blood through veins. I pull it to us. Water leaks from the floor at my feet.

“What are you doing?” Kainda asks.

I don’t have time to answer. The water is coming. I bend down and touch the floor of my tunnel, stretching my thoughts out along its surface, curving and polishing it with my mind. The effort is harder than I thought it would be, but it will speed our progress and provide some respite.

Kat sits on the floor and answers Kainda’s question. “What? Never been to Water Country?”

Kainda just looks confused. “Should...I sit?”

I sit down in the lead spot and say, “Probably a good idea.”

Kainda and Em quickly sit and wait. Water flows from the walls around us, leaking through cracks and holes. Soon there is a stream of water all around us, running downward faster than we could ever move. The pressure builds on my back and I keep myself in place by bracing my feet on the wall.

“Just go with the flow,” I say, and let go.

My homemade waterslide launches me downward. Memories of The Goonies and at least twenty different 80’s action-adventure movies featuring a surprise water slide fill my mind. I can’t help but smile. I glance back. Kainda and Em look serious. To them, this is an express ride to a battle with Nephil, and that’s it.

But Kat sees me and grins. “You know how cliché this is, right?” she shouts over the roar of the water.

I smile back at her, but can’t reply. The grade steepens and the speed picks up to the point where my stomach lurches. The discomfort wipes the smile off my face and the nostalgia from my thoughts, which is probably a good thing. Even the smallest distraction could get one of us killed.

Twenty minutes later, or at least what feels like twenty minutes—we might have been sliding for an entire topside day for all I know—we splash into the large Low River, ending our long slide.  After drifting in the current for a few more minutes, and seeing no sign of Nephil’s passing, I find myself distracted once again, perhaps more distracted than I’ve ever been in my life.

21

We stand at the precipice of a waterfall where the Low River drains into a massive chamber, and by massive, I mean I can’t see the end of it. I can’t even see the ceiling because it’s obscured by a layer of fog—more commonly known as clouds. A bright yellow light filters down through the white mist. It almost looks like sunlight, but I think it’s more likely a dense deposit of yellow crystals.

The waterfall pools fifty feet below us before carving across the chamber as a wide, lazy river, disappearing over the horizon many miles away. The land is lush, similar to the cavern in which I spent two years hiding. But this is different somehow. More…pure.

I breathe the air, feeling energized by it. It’s wet, and clean, and smells of life.

But not death.

That is the difference. A pack of cresties stalked my cavern, slaying the giant albino goats on a regular basis. The place, like much of the underworld, reeked of blood and decay. But there is nothing like that in the air here. Not even rot.

The others seem equally stunned.

“What is this place?” Kainda asks. She actually looks a little uncomfortable.

Em crouches at the edge of the falls, clinging to an outcrop of rock. She leans her head out a little further and breathes deep. “There is no corruption here.”

Kat is more practical. “How do we get down?”

“We jump,” I say, holding out Whipsnap. “Just like moving through the water.”

“You have enough juice for that?” Kat asks.

I take a deep breath of the electrifying air. “Actually, I’m feeling pretty good.”

Kat, Kainda and Em step close and I wrap Whipsnap around them. When everyone is holding on, I say, “Jump together. Ready?”

Nods all around.

“Jump!”

As one, we leap over the edge, falling beside the waterfall. A gust of wind slows us and then swirls around our bodies, depositing us on the soft grassy floor next to the shimmering pool at the bottom.

When we separate, I notice that Kat is sweating. “Is it hot?”

“Gotta be around ninety degrees in here,” she replies. “You can’t feel it?”

“I don’t feel any temperature changes,” I say. “I can walk through fire or swim in ice water. It’s all the same to me.” I motion to her black military garb. “You don’t need to wear all that. The dress code in the underworld is a little less strict.”

She looks me up and down, and then Kainda and Em. We’re all dressed for a day at the beach, if you ignore the weapons.

“No thanks, kid,” she says, and I’m surprised by her modesty. “Most of the underground is a lot colder than this. I can handle a little heat.”

“Um, Sol,” Em says.

She and Kainda are standing a few feet away. Both have their weapons drawn. I didn’t see them recover the knife and hammer from the Nephilim they killed, but then again, I was pretty preoccupied. I step to the side and see what has them on guard.

A lion.

A big lion. It has clean tan fur that shimmers when it moves. Its dark mane flows with streaks of yellow. The cat just stares at us, twitching its tail.

“It must be at least twenty feet long,” Kat says, slowly drawing her pistol.

When the lion takes a step forward, everyone tenses. Kainda raises her hammer. Em brings the knife back, ready to flick it forward. Kat takes aim.

But something is wrong. I’ve seen enough nature specials to know what a hunting lion looks like—low to the ground, ears back, claws splayed—and this is not it. If anything, the cat is mildly curious about our presence.

Kainda’s muscle’s tense. She’s about to strike.

“Wait!” I say, placing my hand on Kainda’s hammer.

“If we don’t strike first—”

“Watch,” I say, moving forward, toward the cat.

“Sol...” Em says, using the tone reserved for when Luca or I decide to try something stupid.

I’m just feet from the lion when the brush at the edge of the clearing rustles. The lion turns its head toward the sound and lets out a roar, but it’s more of a friendly sound than a threatening one. A deer prances out of the jungle and skips up to the lion.

I tense. I have my suspicions, but a deer in front of a lion seems like too tasty a treat for the big cat to resist. But the lion doesn’t budge. In fact, the deer comes right up next to the lion, leans its head into the big mane and nuzzles. The lion leans its head down, rubbing the deer’s back. The big cat purrs, the sound so deep and powerful that I can feel it in my chest.

Then the deer trots on its way, stepping into the pool for a drink.

“I find this so much more strange than giants with six fingers and two rows of teeth,” Kat says.

I think I agree with her. This would be odd behavior in the outside world, never mind in the underground where absolutely everything is either killing or being killed.

The lion steps toward me, lowering its head.

I recognize the gesture. It’s similar to what the big male cresty did when I killed the dominant female, Alice, to save Kainda. I stab the blade end of Whipsnap into the grass and step away from the weapon, reaching a hand out. The lion’s fur is softer than I would have guessed. I rub the giant’s forehead, right between its eyes.

The lion purrs again, stepping forward, rubbing its head against my chest. I nearly stumble back, but the big cat lifts its head over my shoulder and pulls me closer. My face is buried in the thick mane as the cat nuzzles me. When it squeezes me tight, I realize that it’s not just nuzzling me, it’s embracing me. With a laugh, I wrap my arms around the beast’s large neck and squeeze. The lion lifts its head and steps back.

“You’re a friendly boy,” I say, and it licks my cheek.

I look back at the others. Em has a hand over her mouth. Kat wears a subtle smile. Kainda has a single eyebrow raised. “Disgusting.”

I turn back to the cat. He’s staring at me with his big brown eyes. There’s intelligence in those eyes. “I’ll call you...” When the name comes to me, I smile. “Ookla.”

Thundarr the Barbarian was one of my favorite cartoons growing up. It featured a barbarian, Thundarr, who I actually now resemble—blond, muscular and primitive. His friends were Ariel the sorceress, and Ookla the Mok, a lion-man like beast who roared a lot and bashed wizards’ heads. I always liked Ookla, not because of his ferocity, but because of his loving, loyal allegiance to Thundarr. The name is a compliment.

The lion lets out a gentle roar. His breath smells clean. Almost fragrant. Then he turns and enters the jungle. Before disappearing from sight, the lion turns back and roars again.

“This is going to sound ridiculous,” I say, “but—”

“He wants us to follow him,” Kat finishes.

My surprise is evident.

Kat shrugs. “I’ve seen enough episodes of Lassie to know when an animal wants to be followed.” She heads after the lion and he steps deeper into the jungle.

I motion for Kainda and Em to follow before starting after the cat.

“I am tiring of these outsider references,” Kainda complains to Em. They’re ten feet back, but I can hear them fine.

“Agreed,” Em says. “And why must he name every creature we come across?”

I can’t see her, but I’m sure Kainda is shrugging. “He is a mystery to me.”

“A mystery worth solving,” Em teases.

I turn around in time to see Em ribbing Kainda with her elbow. At first, I just smile, making eye contact with both of them, sharing a laugh, but then I’m struck by the strangeness of what is happening. Kainda is not only allowing herself to be teased, but seems to be enjoying it. There is no embarrassment and no angry response to it.

It’s this place, I think, looking around. The jungle is thick and alive with life. Creatures move all around, just out of sight, but I have no fear of them. The lion leads us through, pushing past giant ferns and rubbing against the thick bark of trees as it walks. The yellow glow from above becomes a diffuse, green shimmer as the thick leaves of the canopy shift in a breeze that carries the scent of flowers. I don’t know if there is something in the air, but this place is having an effect on us, melting away our tension and putting us at ease.

We clear the jungle a moment later, entering a field of tall green grass that rises up to my knees. The grass bends and sways in the breeze, rising up a gentle hill. At the pinnacle of the hill stands a towering tree, full of lush green leaves and twisting branches heavy with fruit.

The lion turns in a circle, smelling the grass, then satisfied, lies down. It flops onto its side and closes its eyes. The lion’s chest rises and falls slowly, but otherwise it’s motionless. Sound asleep.

“Maybe it didn’t want us to follow it?” Em says. “Maybe it’s not like your Lassie lion?”

Kat grins. “Lassie was a dog.”

I’m about to join the banter when I notice the grass near the top of the hill is bending, as though blown by a hard wind. But there is something odd about the grass. As it bends, it’s forming a path, as though something were moving quickly, just above it, leaving a trail of flattened grass in its wake. But there is nothing there. I focus on the air above the grass and see it just before it arrives—a shimmer, like heat rising from summertime pavement.

I take a defensive position and realize that I’ve left Whipsnap back at the waterfall pool, stabbed into the ground. I can’t believe I did that! Has my guard been lowered that much by this place? Remembering I have the original Whipsnap attached to my belt, I pull the weapon free and take a defensive stance.

With a gust of wind, the shimmer arrives. A voice says, “You have come close enough.” The voice is commanding and baritone, but somehow soft and gentle at the same time. Then it reveals itself and I’m undone.

My legs go weak.

I fall to my knees.

My face turns to the grass.

I’m...terrified.

22

“Do not be afraid,” the voice says, but I am afraid. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so afraid in all my life. Sure, I’ve been horrified and disgusted by the tortures of the Nephilim. They’ve taken me from my home, broken me, made me do evil things, posed as my mother and made me the vessel for the physical essence of Nephil, which I swallowed, whole. I have been afraid for most of my time in the underground, but never like this. I have never been reduced to inaction.

“Solomon,” it says.

That it knows my name causes my arms to tremble, and I nearly fall flat on the ground.

Quieter now, it says, “You have nothing to fear from me, son of man. Look.”

My eyes turn up just a little and I see two feet standing before me in the grass. They glow brightly, as though composed of light, but the recognizable form reduces some of my fear. I look up slowly. Its legs are solid, but the energy contained within roils with power. Brilliant light obscures the thing’s waist and lower torso, but I catch a glimpse of a white robe. Its chest is broad and powerful. Its arms like solid, living ivory. Its face, if it has one, is lost in a flickering white flare that crackles with electricity.

As I feel my arms begin to weaken again, I wonder if this creature really thought its form would put me at ease. If so, it was gravely mistaken.

“What is it?” Kainda asks, her voice full of unusual fear.

“I am one of the Kerubim,” it replies, “guardian of Edinnu. Daughter of man, I mean you no harm.”

I don’t miss the fact that this is the third time it has assured us we are safe. The glow emanating from its body fades. The bolts of electricity snapping around its face pull back and disappear. Human features emerge. Muscles beneath skin. Fingernails. Silver hair. Eyebrows. It’s all little things, but they help put me at ease. The light pulls inward, contained by a human form complete with almost luminescent blue eyes, a full silver beard and a pure white smile. “It has been a long time since I stood in the presence of your kind,” the being says and then bows his head. “I am honored.”

“H—how did you know my name?” I ask.

“All things have been written,” he says. “I have been waiting for you.” He looks at the others. “All of you.” He turns to Kat. “Katherine Wright.” Then to Kainda, “Kainda Ninnis.” The use of Kainda’s last name throws me. To me, Ninnis has always just been Ninnis, but it was his last name, not his first, so it is Kainda’s name as well. She frowns at its usage, but stays quiet.

The being turns to Em, dips his head and says, “Rachel Graham.”

What? Who is—my mouth drops open and I blurt out, “That’s your real name.”

Kat seems surprised. “Graham is her last name?”

Em looks stricken. “What?”

“The name you were given by your parents. You’re real parents. In the outside world! If we know your name, we can—”

“Stop,” she says, eyes damp with tears. “Just stop. I don’t want to hear any more.”

My mouth clamps shut.

“Where you are and how things are possible are not important,” the being says. “The mysteries of creation are often best enjoyed without the knowledge of all things.”

Is he trying to tell us something?

“Solomon,” he says, turning his blue eyes on me. “You have been chosen.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Cronus was not mistaken.”

The fact that this being knows about Cronus, and what he told me is baffling. I don’t think he gets out much, if ever. His not seeing people comment revealed as much. But he has knowledge about me. About Cronus. About things no one on this Earth should know about.

“Your commitment to stopping the dark one—”

“Ophion,” I say, just to make sure we’re on the same page.

He nods and continues, “…is without question. Yet your quest is in peril. The shofar is nearly lost to you.”

“Nephil is here?” Kainda asks, fire returning to her voice.

The being points a glowing fingertip toward the ceiling. “He is above. Crossing the perch.”

“Can’t you stop him?” I ask.

“I could,” the being replies and looks back at the tree atop the hill. “But it is not my task. It is yours.”

I take a step away, intending to find a way to chase Nephil down.

“Wait,” he says. “There is more and still time to tell it.”

“What is it?” I say, growing impatient. “Tell me.”

“You are incomplete,” the being says, taking me by surprise. Sensing my brewing argument, the creature adds, “You have mended your soul. You have found your passion, your focus and your faith. But you lack the hope that binds these things together. You will not be strong enough to defeat Ophion until you find it.”

“I don’t suppose you could be less vague about this?” I ask.

“Revealing such things would reduce the impact of discovering them for yourself,” he says. “But be warned, there will come a time, when hope seems lost. Do not turn your back on it, or you will be lost.”

I sense the conversation is about to shift back to the task at hand, but Em surprises everyone by asking, “Are they alive? My parents?”

The being turns to her and just stares.

“You know,” she says. “You must. Tell me.”

He regards Em, looking her over.

“Tell me now!”

“Yes,” he says. “Your parents yet live. As do your three siblings. Two older brothers and a younger sister.”

That last part was a gift. Em smiles. “A sister.”

A question strikes me like a lightning bolt. This being might know about my parents, too. I open my mouth to ask, but the glowing man holds his hand out in the universal motion for, stop.

“Knowing the answer to your question, one way or the other, will only serve to distract you,” he says.

I close my mouth. It’s a horrible answer. A painful answer. But I can’t argue the logic. If I knew my parents were alive, I might try to reach out to them, or at least spend time thinking of our reunion, or what their lives were like and if they had any more kids. But if I find out they’re dead... Depression would grip me. I would eventually overcome it, but right now, at this moment, a lapse in strength or focus on my part could be disastrous. Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t push for more information on Em’s family.

“Where?” I ask, desperate for the knowledge that could reunite Em with her family. “Where is Em’s family?”

The being turns his head to Kat. His eyes glow brightly. “Tell them.”

I nearly fall over when I yank my head toward Kat. What could she possibly know? Has she met this creature before? Is she not who she claims to be?

Kat stares at the grass, lost. She looks up slowly, first at me and then at Em. “They’re in New Mexico.”

“How can you possibly know that?” I ask.

“It’s where I grew up,” she says.

Em is stunned. “You know them?”

“I work in a dangerous business,” Kat says. “The people I know, the people I love, they’re always in danger. I do what I can to protect them. Including changing my name.” A tear trickles down her cheek. “My last name—maiden name—isn’t Ferrell, it’s Graham. My name is Katherine Graham.” Tears flow freely. “I’m...” She looks at the being and he nods. “I’m your sister.”

Em gasps. Both hands go to her mouth. “No,” she says. “You’re lying.”

“I was a baby when you were taken,” Kat says. “You were only two. But I’ve seen your picture a thousand times. I didn’t see it at first, but I do now. Your eyes. You have our mother’s eyes.”

“She speaks the truth,” the glowing man says.

Em lowers her guard and approaches Kat. She regards her slowly, inspecting her face, the hint of freckles around her eyes, the shape of her lips.

They do look similar, I think.

Em smiles, crying now as well. She puts her hand on the back of Kat’s neck and lowers her head. Kat does the same, lowering her head until their foreheads touch.

“Sister,” Em says. It’s just a whisper, but it carries the weight of familial recognition.

Kat confirms the new bond, repeating the word. “Sister.”

Even Kainda is getting a little misty eyed. I started crying around the same time Kat did, but it doesn’t take much to turn on my tear duct faucet. For Kainda, this is a powerful moment. She’s not used to seeing a true family bond at work. I take her hand, and she squeezes me tight.

“Family bonds the four of you with a strength that cannot be broken.” He motions to Em and Kat. “Sisters.” He motions to Em and me. “Brother and sister.” Then he motions to me and Kainda. “And betrothed.”

My face reddens and I nearly crack a joke to change the subject, but Kainda’s grip on my hand tightens. She was offered to me by her father, Ninnis. I turned down the offer then, but from what I know about hunter custom, the offer still stands. I look at Kainda, and nod.

She doesn’t gush. Doesn’t break down in tears. She just sniffs, straightens herself up, and with just a hint of a smile, says, “Good.”

I realize I’ve just made a huge life decision, but honestly, who else could stand by my side for the rest of my life? She’s beautiful, and strong, passionate and trustworthy, and we share the pain of being broken by the man she called father. We share an understanding that no one else could. There is no one else like her.

The being’s tone becomes deadly serious. “It is time.”

He reaches to a belt I had not yet noticed and takes the hilt of a sword. When he draws the blade out, it glows with an intensity that makes me squint. As I grow accustomed to the light, I see the blade more clearly. It’s a long, ornate sword, unlike any I’ve ever seen before. The sword itself is normal, almost common looking, but the light blooming from it comes from a fire that even I can feel.

“I have never released this sword,” the being says. “Nor do I want to, but the choice has been made.”

“All things are written,” I say.

He nods and turns the handle toward me. “Nothing can stand against the power of this blade. Not even the dark one’s spirit. Take it and turn Ophion away.”

“I can kill him?” I ask, eyes going wide. “I can stop him, right now?”

“No,” he says. “Death cannot come to this place. Not Ophion’s. Not yours. Do not kill him. Do you understand?”

I nod, feeling a mixture of confidence and disappointment.

He places the handle in my hand. The sword, despite its size, feels light. I can feel the heat from the fiery blade, but it does not burn me.

“Go,” the being says. “Retrieve the shofar and return the blade to me. Quickly.”

I look up toward a ceiling I cannot see. “But how? He’s up there.”

“Solomon,” the being says, a smile appearing on his face. “Sorrow. Weariness. The hardships of mankind. They cannot be felt here.”

“What about pain?” I ask.

“Pain and death are a condition of man that cannot be avoided in this life, though death is forbidden here.” The being looks at me more intently. “Listen to my words. Hear me. You will not grow tired in this place.”

My eyes slowly widen. “Are you sure?” I ask, but don’t give him time to respond. I form a wind around me, lifting my body off the ground. Before I get too high, I focus on the clouds above. They quickly swirl, forming a hurricane overhead. Lighting flashes. Rain pours down. It’s big and bold, and effortless. I smile wide.

“Try not to destroy my valley,” the being says.

I turn my head upward and fly. Five seconds into my flight, I break the sound barrier and a boom rips through the cavern. I am a living missile tipped with a flaming sword. Despite all of the energy I am exerting, I will not grow weary. But none of this power can leave this place with me. Only the shofar. I pour on the speed, punch through the swirling clouds and see my enemy high above, moving quickly across the ceiling.

“Ophion!” I shout, and pour on the speed.

23

Tactically, shouting out your enemy’s name just before attacking is a bad idea. Even people who have never been in a schoolyard fight know this. Maybe honorable medieval knights would give warning, perhaps even give the enemy time to prepare, but I suspect that’s more of a fiction created by storytellers, or if not, a good number of knights died because of their noble ways. I’m far from noble and have no qualms about attacking a Nephilim from behind, but Nephil’s tendrils were just feet away from an alcove in the ceiling that I suspect might be the shofar’s hiding place.

Shouting stopped him.

But it also prepared him.

And I pay the price. My ascent is too fast, my flying abilities far from perfected, and my plan of attack—well, I hadn’t got beyond flying fast and shouting. So when two black tendrils shoot at my chest, there’s little I can do, but try to dodge.

I jerk to the right, narrowly avoiding the first tendril, but I’ve maneuvered directly into the path of the second. The blackness strikes my chest hard. The blunt force of the blow knocks the air from my lungs and breaks my concentration. I sprawl upwards and crash into the ceiling.

The impact knocks me silly, but it also spooks one of the valley’s smaller residents. A flock of tiny birds, hiding in holes in the ceiling, bursts out, clogging the air like living smoke. This is the roost Hades told me about.

I fall, first through the swarm of birds and then through the open air. The swirling clouds below slow to a stop. It’s only been seconds since I shouted Ophion’s name, but he’s managed to staunch all of my bravado.

My head is spinning.

My body aches.

But...I’m not tired. Not even close.

My fall comes to an abrupt halt. The wind gathers round me again.

Nephil’s voice echoes through the chamber, frustration billowing down as though spewed from a volcano.

The birds, I think, he can’t see the alcove because of the birds.

On one hand, this is a good thing. If he can’t see the alcove, he can’t find and destroy the shofar. On the other hand, he is likely to kill the birds. The Kerubim’s words are still fresh in my mind. Death cannot come to this place. He was talking about Nephil when he spoke those words, but I suspect it applies to the animals living here, too.

I don’t think the birds have ever been frightened before. And I don’t think they would have been frightened by me. It’s Nephil’s dark presence that’s scaring them. Instead of flying away, or flocking for safety, they’re just circling erratically. Sooner or later, two of them are going to collide and break their necks without any help from Nephil.

Hovering thirty feet below the tumult, I generate a wind at the core, right around Nephil, and gently push it out. The birds move with the air, further and further away from Nephil, who is watching me through Ninnis’s eyes.

“You fear for these creatures,” he says.

It’s not a question. I’ve exposed a weakness. But he’s too late to do anything about it. The birds are now a hundred yards away. I cut the wind and the birds quickly settle into new ceiling perches. Safe, for now.

I point the sword at Nephil and slowly rise toward him. That I didn’t drop it when he struck me or when I hit the ceiling is something of a miracle, but life in the underworld has taught me to never, not ever, lose my weapon during a fight. It’s a lesson that has saved me several times in the past.

“Leave this place,” I say. “Now.”

“Leave?” Nephil says, sounding honestly confused. “You want to kill me. You want to kill this body. I can feel your radiating hatred for us both.”

“I don’t hate Ninnis,” I say, and it’s true. I have forgiven the man, despite his despicable actions, on more than one occasion. “He is not the man you made him.”

“All men are evil,” Nephil says. “We just remove the shackles that bind it. Like we did with you. Like Ninnis did with you. It’s still there, you know. I can taste it. How many people have you killed?”

I’m nearly within striking distance now, slowly closing the distance. “I have not killed a human being,” I say. “And I will not.”

He chuckles. “You have killed billions.”

“That was you.”

“You allowed it, Solomon. You could have repelled me at any time. You had the strength before I changed the world, just as you did afterward, but you waited. Why? Because you wanted it. You wanted all those people to die.”

He’s trying to make me upset. And it’s not working. I have been freed of my guilt. His tactic can’t work. He must see it, so why is he—

He’s keeping me talking.

The shofar’s hiding place is behind him!

I glance around him quickly and see a tendril snaking out toward the alcove. It’s almost there!

I propel myself forward, swinging the flaming sword in an arc, not so much to strike Nephil, but to force him into action. He lunges to the side, pulling himself just out of reach. I circle the monster, keeping track of its ten black tentacles. Three cling to the ceiling, the rest flail about like agitated snakes. But one still reaches for the alcove. That’s where I focus my attack.

I feign a charge at Nephil. He drops back and leaves the single limb exposed. A gust of wind carries me sideways, and I swing without looking. I feel nothing as the blade slices through the air, but Nephil suddenly lets loose a scream that is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before—one part human shriek, one part...something else. The scream of a demon.

It’s so charged with energy that I think Nephil has never truly experienced pain before. He once had a Nephilim body, a warrior like the others, but pain is a delight to them. And it wasn’t Ninnis’s body that I cut, so the pain he’s feeling isn’t human pain.

I look to the side and see the severed two-foot length of tendril turn to dust, scattered by the wind holding me aloft.

I didn’t just remove a limb. I cut away part of his spirit.

I could kill him. It would be easy.

Though it would likely mean killing Ninnis, too. As the temptation grows, I realize that Nephil is right. There is still darkness in me. I might have been freed from the Nephilim corruption, but I am still human, capable of making mistakes and doing evil. But I can also turn away from it. Killing Ninnis, and Nephil, in this pure place goes against everything I’m fighting for.

But I have no problem causing the beast pain.

When I set my angry eyes back on Nephil, I see fear in his eyes. It lasts just a moment. But it was enough to swell my confidence.

With the sword held high, I charge, hacking at the air, aiming for his limbs. Each swing comes closer than the previous, but he is on the defensive now, acutely aware that this weapon poses a very real threat.

Our dance shifts across the ceiling, but never moves far from the shofar. He’s not giving up. Is the shofar really that powerful?

I swing hard at a tendril, but it pulls away just in time. The missed blow twists me in the air. Before I can right myself, a second tendril lances out like a spear. The black needle-sharp tip pierces my chest, punching through muscle and striking the bone of my ribs. A gust of wind carries me back before it can go any further.

I wince in pain, but don’t shout. I won’t give Nephil the satisfaction. I glance at the wound. A killing shot, directly over my heart. If I’d been just a little closer...

This sword might be capable of destroying Nephil’s spirit, but he is, and always has been, capable of killing my body. We are both at risk. Nephil shifts away from me. The tendril he used to strike my chest coils back. He extends Ninnis’s tongue and swipes the tendril across it. A streak of red is left behind. My blood. He closes his mouth and revels in the taste. A smile emerges. “I will miss the taste of human blood when you are all gone. Perhaps I will keep some of your friends alive that I might drink of them.”

He charges, fueled with bloodlust. Burning with anger, I surge forward to meet him.

24

We meet like two middle school kids having a fight on the playground, flailing and striking without much thought. I’d never taken part in such a fight, but I’d witnessed a few. The outstretched striking fists, the heads leaned back in fear, the utter chaos and senselessness. The fights were violent, but rarely ended with severe injuries given the relative inexperience of the combatants.

This is not the case with Nephil and me.

Black dust sprays away as I sever the tips of his limbs.

Rivulets of blood trickle down my body as I’m cut, punctured and bludgeoned.

One of my thoughtless strikes comes close to reaching Ninnis’s head, and the monster flails back, just out of reach, but in doing so loses its grip on the ceiling. Nephil falls momentarily before a single tendril shoots up and finds purchase. I take stock of the monster. Several of the black arms are shorter than they had been. I’ve whittled down his reach. He looks tired, perhaps limited by Ninnis’s old body, though Ninnis handled it just fine.

His moment of weakness fills me with a kind of sinister anger. I could hack off the one limb and let him fall. How well could he fight while Ninnis’s body was broken? I could rush him, right now, and plunge my sword into his chest, killing them both. There are a hundred different ways I could end this fight, and maybe even the war, right here and now.

No one else needs to get hurt.

Or killed.

No other families need to be broken.

Children can stay with their parents.

The human race can recover.

And what would be the cost? The corruption of some subterranean oasis that managed to stay untouched by the Nephilim? It’s a small price to pay for the salvation of mankind.

I know this for a fact.

But I don’t believe it.

Why! I shout internally, watching Nephil recover. I’m frozen. Unable to deliver the final blow. What is it about this place that I can’t—

My subconscious does the work my conscious is unwilling to do, slipping the puzzle pieces gently together, revealing the image that I hadn’t yet considered. When the answer is revealed, I whisper, “It can’t be.”

But then I look around and realize it is.

The unspoiled landscape.

The kindly lion and the fearless deer.

The strange being. He referred to me as a “son of man,” the same language used by angels to describe men in the Bible. He called himself a Kerubim, pronouncing it Keh-roo-bim, but modern man has changed the sound and spelling to Cherubim, and picture them as naked little babies with wings. But that’s not factual. I search my encyclopedic mind for answers and find them quickly in the Hebrew Torah, collectively known as the Pentateuch—what has become the first five books of the Bible’s Old Testament. Cherubim, or Kerubim, were one of the highest orders of angels. They appeared as multi-winged, glowing beings that emanated power. Ezekiel saw them in a vision. The Ark of the Covenant held two Cherubim on its cover, laden in gold, symbols of the very power of God. The last mention of a Cherubim in the Pentateuch is the one that sucker punches me.

After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

The tree.

The being...the angel...stopped us short of the tree. He was protecting it.

The full force of this revelation stuns me. My guard falters. The sword lowers.

I look at the fiery blade in my hand. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. An angel’s weapon.

Edinnu is Eden!

I look down at the jungle, staring through the mist that has grown still. Could this really be the Garden of Eden? Is this the birthplace of mankind? Is such a thing even possible? I realize, of course, that it is. I’d believe just about anything now. I used to be totally science minded, applying scientific theory to every new discovery, but I have seen, touched and battled things that make it impossible for me to not believe in a spiritual realm beyond my understanding.

That is why the animals here are kind. They aren’t just uncorrupted by the Nephilim, they aren’t corrupted at all. And that is why I can’t kill Nephil. The story tells of the first man and woman corrupting themselves and the outside world, and as a result, all of mankind, but it doesn’t mention the garden itself being corrupted. If I killed Nephil in this place, I would bring human and Nephilim corruption to a garden in which, the story says, God himself would walk. The knowledge disarms me.

And as a result, death nearly comes to the garden anyway.

Nephil lunges at me.

I hadn’t even noticed his slow recovery.

Three tentacles flail out to my right, and I’m forced to keep them at bay. The fiery blade slices through each one of them, but the move was a sacrifice. A distraction. The real attack came in close, the weapon clutched in Ninnis’s hand. Strike. The blade slips through my chest, between two ribs and puncture’s my lung. I feel the organ deflate inside me. It’s a pain unlike anything I have felt before, not so much because it hurts—I have endured unspeakable pain—but because some instinctual part of my mind knows I am dead.

My heart still beats. My blood still carries oxygen to my brain. But the punctured lung will fill with blood, and I will die. Slowly. Like a fish out of water, I will gasp for air and never receive quite enough, until my lung fills with blood and it seeps into its healthy neighbor.

I realize all of this in an instant, but then I see the fire in Ninnis’s possessed eyes and know that I will not live long enough to drown in my own blood. With a quick, sideways yank of Strike, the beast could end me, right here and now.

But he doesn’t get the chance. The wind that holds me aloft reacts to my instincts as much as it does my thoughts. I’m carried away from the blade. I feel the thin metal slip from my chest, and the heavy blood begins to gather in my deflated lung. Feeling light headed, I take a deep breath. While one lung fills, the other makes a sick farting sound as the air slips right out of my chest.

There’s no pain now. Shock has taken over, numbing body and mind.

Nephil laughs at me. “Do not worry, Solomon. I will not let you die.”

Forgot about that. My fate won’t be death. It will be eternal enslavement to the spirit of Nephil. I’ll get to watch as the beast controls me and wipes out the rest of the human race.

As my energy falters, I glide slowly away from Nephil. He keeps pace, never letting me out of striking distance. Or catching distance, I think, realizing he doesn’t want me to fall.

“The shofar and my vessel,” he taunts. “I will soon have you both.”

“No,” I say, but it’s more of a pathetic groan.

I breathe deep. It does little. My vision spins. When I let the breath from my good lung out, it tastes of blood.

I look at the garden below and think that at least they will be spared by Nephil not letting me die. This place will always be an untouched oasis, even as the Nephilim conquer the rest of the planet. The mists part, and I see the tree and the green carpet of tall grass surrounding it. I see specks near the jungle. Kainda, Em, the Kerubim and Ookla.

I’m sorry, I think to them. I failed.

Nephil snickers, slowly closing the distance between us. As weakness overcomes me, I close my eyes and wait for his embrace.

25

A voice reaches me before Nephil can. It’s muffled. Distorted. Distant.

Em?

Kainda?

Kat?

The Kerubim? If anyone is capable of carrying their voice that far, it would be him.

It comes again. Louder, but still indistinct.

“What?” I say aloud. I’m sure the statement confuses Nephil, but the monster probably thinks I’m succumbing to delirium.

Delirium. That’s what this is. I’m hearing things. There is no voice. It’s in my head.

In your head, the voice says.

Your head. Not my head. The voice is my own, but not. It’s as though my thoughts are being projected into my mind from the outside.

Xin, is that you? I think, trying to communicate. He has reached out to me before, helping me at just the right moment. But there is no reply to the name.

Luca? Are you there? The boy can see through my eyes during times of intense stress. Is he watching now? Has he figured out a way to reverse the connection and communicate? If he has, he doesn’t have much longer to say goodbye.

I don’t hear a reply, in my ears or in my mind, but I feel it. No, the voice comes from within, but it’s not my voice. This is some kind of presence. Something other than me. In me. As the feeling radiates out through my core and down my limbs, I’m reminded of when Nephil possessed my body, but the experience is different. Where Nephil exuded anger and control, this is more peace and freedom, with a hint of suggestion.

The feeling subsides.

The voice fades.

But I experience a strange kind of, “eureka!” moment where I suddenly know what to do. There is a weapon with greater range and power than even this fiery sword, and it’s within reach, not of my hands, but of my will.

While my body weakens, my invigorated mind reaches out for the alcove. I can’t feel the horn in a traditional sense, but I can sense the tug of something resisting the breeze. I wrap my thoughts around it, lift it and pull the weapon free of its hiding place for the first time in thousands of years. Best of all, this happens behind me, out of sight.

Nephil closes in slowly, reaching for me now. “Come, Solomon. It is time to end this fight and take your place as—”

The monster’s voice catches in his throat as the shofar suddenly appears in my hands and I open my eyes. The curled ram’s horn is large, perhaps two and a half feet long, and it ends with an opening the size of a teacup’s saucer. The brown and blood red flecked exterior of the horn is scored with lines that might be natural or perhaps carved by the original owner—some ancient priest stalking around the walls of a long gone Nephilim stronghold. Despite its size, color and threatening shape, it looks wholly inadequate for defeating an enemy, human or otherwise, but I have little choice left, and that quiet whisper inside me persists.

“With the last of my breath, I will undo you.” I place the ancient weapon to my lips and blow.

Nothing happens.

I understand the workings of a shofar. It’s a horned instrument, but unlike the trumpet or tuba, it has no reed. So the user must vibrate the lips while blowing to produce a sound. And I’m doing that. Vibration isn’t the problem. It’s my lungs. I can’t push enough air with my one remaining lung to generate any kind of sound.

I watch as Nephil’s look of shock and fright morphs into elation. “Pitiful. Even with the shofar in hand, you are incapable of harnessing its power. When our bloods merge, that wound sapping your strength will be a welcome delight. Give yourself to me, Solomon, and eternity will be yours.”

“No,” I say. It’s a feeble whisper, but carries my determination just the same. “I’m not done yet.”

The horn weighs little, and I have no problem lifting it over my head.

The beast squints at me.

“Can’t you feel it?” I ask him. “The air. All around you. Shifting. Pulsing.” I take a breath, filling my single functioning lung. As the air seeps down my throat, the wind picks up, blowing toward my body, whipping Ninnis’s hair. “This whole cavern is my lung. The air is mine to command. And right now, I command it—”

Nephil’s eyes burst open with realization.

“—to blow.”

He charges.

A tiny whirlwind of quickly vibrating air flows through the shofar. The sound it produces rips through the cavern. The noise diffuses over the distance, but Nephil is caught in the direct path of whatever kind of supernatural sound waves are shooting out from the horn. To me it’s just a high-pitched grating noise, but Nephil reacts like he’s just been set on fire.

The black limbs flail madly, shooting in and out of Ninnis’s body, which is arched back in a contorted spasm. His scream almost drowns out the sound of the shofar, but it peters out to nothing as the black limbs retreat inside Ninnis, silencing the beast’s voice.

With the black tendrils gone, Ninnis begins to fall. I reach out with the wind and catch him. Despite functioning with just one lung, it takes no effort to control the winds around me. I use this control of the elements to keep a steady flow of air flowing into my ruined lung. The slurp of blood and air escaping my chest grows louder, but at least the organ is temporally inflated.

As the full amount of oxygen returns to my brain, my vision settles and thoughts clear. I am far from not dying, but I’ve delayed the effect of being stabbed in the chest for a little while—long enough for me to deliver the shofar to Em, Kainda and Kat, and leave before defiling Eden.

“Solomon?”

The voice startles me to the point where I nearly drop Ninnis. When I redouble my effort to hold Ninnis up, I notice that his eyes are open.

And they’re Ninnis’s eyes. Not Nephil’s. All trace of the monster has been erased.

“Ninnis,” I say. It’s as non-threatening a greeting as I can come up with.

“Belgrave,” he says.

“What?”

“My name is Belgrave. Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis. Lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and husband to Caroline Rose Ninnis.”

To say I’m stunned is an understatement. Hunters don’t remember their pasts. Every memory, every happy moment, every loved one, is erased by the breaking process. Hunters are molded from clean slates, honed into killers without conscience because there is no memory of right and wrong. “You remember?”

“I remember...everything.” The wounded tone of his voice makes my eyes water. The flicker of a smile forming on his lips forces the wetness out over my cheeks. He reaches a hand toward me; it’s extended like he wants to shake. “Thankyoeeeeaaaarrrgghh!”

The voice of Nephil returns like a crashing wave. The tendrils shoot out, clinging to the ceiling. And the eyes of Belgrave Ninnis disappear. The effect of the horn is temporary on Nephilim, apparently very temporary on one as strong as Nephil. But even though the beast has regained control over his host body, he is still reeling from the attack.

He hisses at me, contorting his face into a thousand different expressions, and then flees like a spider across the ceiling. He won’t come back. Not by himself. Not now that I have the shofar and know how to use it. Granted, I’m still not sure how I’m going to stop an army with it, but whatever the horn did to him, he didn’t like it.

With the shofar and sword in my hands, I slip down from the ceiling, slowly descending to the green meadow. Em and Kainda smile as I return to them victorious. They don’t know about my fatal wound. When I land on the ground, the wind cuts out around me and my lung deflates once again. Blood and air spatter from the wound, causing Em to gasp.

“Solomon!” Kainda shouts, catching me as I fall to one knee.

Kat quickly inspects the wound. “Even with a field med kit, I wouldn’t—”

I look up at the angel and cut Kat off. “What is your name?”

His brilliant head turns down toward me, “I am Adoel.”

I hand him his sword and then give the horn to Em. “Teach them how to use it.”

“What are you saying?” Kainda asks.

That she’s upset is an understatement. But the big angel stops her brewing tirade with a hand on her shoulder. The hand is immense on her and she must sense his power because she stops and looks at him.

The angel stops for a moment, whispering to himself as he sheaths the sword, extinguishing the flame. He turns his attention back to Kainda. “Daughter of man—” He brings his hand back around, revealing a small wooden bowl. “Go to the river. Fill this.”

When she hesitates, he adds a booming, “Now,” and Kainda is off and running. Without her support, I slump to the ground. Em kneels by my side, holding my hand.

“Stay with him,” the Kerubim says, heading toward the tree.

“You’ll be okay,” Em says, trying to sound confident, but she’s seen enough wounds in her life to know that this one is fatal for a human being. Of course, knowing where we are, that might not be the case.

“This is Eden,” I tell her.

She looks at me like I’ve just spoken another language. And in a sense, I have. Hunters don’t speak of, or learn about, things like Eden. Kat, on the other hand, knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“You can’t be serious?” she says. “We’re in a cave.”

“I’m not saying I can explain it,” I say, and I quickly tell them everything I deduced about Adoel and this garden of literal Eden.

“What is Eden?” Em asks, growing impatient with the conversation, though I can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t understand or because I’m basically dying in front of her.

“The story says that this is where the first man and woman lived,” I tell her between gasps. “Where God once walked.”

Kat turns toward me when I say this. I can see it’s sinking in, and it has her spooked, as it rightly should. It means we’re in the presence of something...beyond understanding.

“The one you—” She searches for the word. “—prayed to when we buried Tobias?”

I nod.

“You believe in this now?” Em asks.

The question catches me off guard because I’ve been kind of feeling this stuff. I haven’t questioned believing or not believing. It just is. When my logic kicks in, I say, “I’m—I’m not sure. But look at this place.” We take in the scenery, which ends with Ookla sitting up and looking at me. He gives a gentle roar and lays back into the grass, ignorant to my plight.

Kainda returns from the jungle, walking quickly, but careful not to spill the water.

“Give it to me,” the angel says.  Both Em and I flinch. We hadn’t heard him return.

I look up at the otherworldly being as he holds the bowl up. He holds a small fruit in his hand. He squeezes it gently until a single drop of juice gathers on the underside and drips into the bowl. He pockets the fruit and then stirs the water with his finger.

“Am I supposed to drink that?” I ask.

His reply is loud and stern. “No. To do so would...it is unthinkable.” He drops to one knee beside me. “Lie back.”

I obey, lying flat on my back, which makes it harder to breathe. I quickly get lightheaded.

“If this doesn’t work,” I say, “you have to get me out of here before its too late.”

“Quiet, son of man,” Adoel says. He stirs the water twice more, then removes his finger from the liquid. He allows most of the moisture to drip away. “Do not be afraid,” he says, and then traces his finger over the puncture wound.

Nothing happens.

“What did you do?” I ask. “I didn’t feel anything.” When I see the relief on Kainda’s, Em’s and Kat’s faces, I don’t really need to look, but I do. The wound is healed. No trace of it remains.

“Breathe,” the angel commands, and I do. My lungs expand, healthy again.

“Thank you,” I say.

Adoel stands and walks to Ookla. He places the bowl at its face. The big cat leans up and clears the bowl with three laps of his big tongue. When he turns back to us again, he’s whispering.

“Who are you speaking to?” I ask.

“The breath of life,” Adoel says. “You are saved because of it.”

“No, I mean—”

“The surface awaits, young king, and your enemy rises to consume the world. You must not let this happen.”

I want to argue. I’m not a king, despite what everyone in the underworld seems to think. I’m still not even sure how I can stop an army of Nephilim, and hunters, and whatever else they have planned. “But before you leave I must give you this warning. Should you—” He looks to Kainda and Em. “—any of you, return to Edinnu, I will cut you down. There will be no warning. No ground covered. No awareness of my presence.”

Message received. Loud and horribly clear. But a question remains. “I thought no death can come to this place?”

“The sword works differently in my hands,” Adoel replies. “Being slain is not the same as being unmade.” He points his finger in the direction we originally came from. “Go now. Ookla will take you.”

The lion stands, stretches, and heads for the jungle. I start after him and then stop and turn back to the ancient Kerubim guarding this eternal garden. “Wait, what? Ookla?”

A faint grin emerges on the angels lips. “It is a good name.”

I nod, offer a smile of thanks, and then head off after Ookla with Kainda, Em and Kat. As we cross into the jungle, I give one last look back. Adoel is there, but he’s shimmering now. Six glowing wings extend out around him. Each wing is covered...in eyes. And he’s not alone, four others are with him. They stand there, still and silent, watching me leave.

I rub a hand over my healed chest, and say, “Thanks.”

It might be an illusion created by the brilliant light and heat like waves rolling from the beings, but I think Adoel nods. I turn away from four angels and the tree they guard. I’m pretty sure that Nephil didn’t know what this cavern was when he entered. If he had, that tree might have been his first stop, though I’m sure he wouldn’t have made it that far. Of course, maybe that’s why he didn’t try for the tree. Being unmade is basically what Nephilim fear already. Pondering these things and many more, I let the jungle close behind me and run to catch up with the others. We still have a long, very upward road ahead of us.

26

As we near the edge of the jungle, I’m struck by a nearly overwhelming sense of loss. It feels like the last day of summer camp, saying goodbye to new friends, who you promise to keep in touch with, but subconsciously know you’ll never see again. It’s like a weird kind of death. Those intense relationships, forged during daytime capture the flag matches, trailblazing, canoe races, nighttime stories and pranks are suddenly torn away as you’re thrust back into the real world.

The real world. It’s full of death and misery, suffering and blood. But here, in this Eden, there is life, peace and something else I can’t quite peg. I feel...loved, like the very air is embracing me.

If the first humans really did come from this place, I can’t imagine how horrible they felt when they left. I’ve been here for just a short time and the temptation to never leave grows with every step I take toward the waterfall entrance.

But the knowledge that Nephil is headed back to the surface, never mind the fact that if I tried to stay I would be unmade, keeps me moving. I stretch my hands out, letting the foliage brush against them, coating my skin with clinging dew. I breathe deeply, trying to saturate my lungs with the air. I want to absorb as much of this place as I can.

All too soon, we leave the jungle behind and step into the clearing by the river. Em, Kainda and Kat are standing still, like a wall, blocking my path. Why have they stopped? A surge of panic grips my chest. “What is it?”

Em turns back. She’s smiling, which instantly puts me at ease. She steps aside. “I think they came to see us off.”

There in the grass by the river are some fifty animals, all different. Some I recognize: rabbit, tiger, fox and such. Others I don’t recognize from the modern world or the fossil record. And still others are extinct, like the ten foot tall flightless bird deemed Phorusrhacidae by paleontologists, but more commonly referred to as “terror-bird”.

“Do not even think about naming them all,” Kainda says. Her voice is stern, but I see a small smile on her lips. Even the hardened warrior can be softened here. As I step out next to my friends, the docile menagerie parts down the middle, providing a path to the water’s edge. Ookla accompanies, or maybe escorts, us past.

The animals just watch us. Some call out gently, but none of them move.

“What are they doing?” Kat asks.

“I don’t think they’ve ever seen people before,” Em says.

“Actually,” I say, stopping half way through the crowd. I kneel down and lower my open hand to a red squirrel. It hops onto my hand and scurries up my arm. The little claws tickle as it climbs. When it reaches my shoulder, it dips its head down and nuzzles into my cheek in the same way the deer did with Ookla. Goodbye my new friend, I think and then say, “It’s just been a long time since they saw a person. They miss us...if that’s even possible here.”

Ookla gives a gentle roar, prodding us to follow. The squirrel scampers back down my arm and we continue toward the water. A small finch suddenly appears and lands on Kainda’s shoulder. She’s surprised by its arrival and nearly swats it away—she might be happier here, but her instincts haven’t been dulled. The bird chirps at her, hops twice toward her head and gives her neck a quick nuzzle before flying off again.

She slows, watching the bird fly away. When I walk up next to her, she whispers, “Do we have to leave?”

To see her like this—at peace and happy—it’s almost worth trying to fight off the Kerubim. But there is more to life than personal happiness.

“You know we do,” I tell her. I want to tell her there are places like this in the outside world, but that’s a lie, and I think she’d know it. Then I think of something that might dull the pain of leaving the garden. “I saw your father.”

Her face darkens slightly. “I saw. He nearly killed you.”

“That was Nephil.” I nearly correct her by saying that he didn’t want to kill, but to possess me, but I don’t want to argue semantics right now.

“Ninnis would kill you, too.”

“Belgrave,” I say.

“What?”

“Your father’s name is Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis.”

She looks me in the eyes and without saying a word, asks how I could know such a thing.

“He told me,” I say, teasing out the moment.

“His name is Ninnis. Only Ninnis. That’s all he has ever known.”

I nod. She’s right about that. “Until I blew the shofar.”

She stares at me, not quite following.

“It returned him,” I explain. “All of him. He remembered his past. His life before Antarktos. His wife. Everything. It was just a moment, but when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see a hunter. He was just a man. And...he thanked me.”

We stop by the shore. “Then there is hope,” she says, “that I will not always...be like this?” She motions at her body, strong and battle-hardened.

The question catches me off guard. Kainda is so tough, so confident in herself and her abilities that it never occurred to me that she might not like the hunter in her. Somewhere in there is the woman she could have been if she wasn’t born into a world of murder, hate and bloodlust.

She pulls her red braided hair around where she can see it. “I am so tired of this color.”

Kainda’s not vain so I immediately understand that she’s talking about the corruption the hue represents. It’s a constant reminder of the tortures she endured and the killer she was raised to be.

Em has overheard the conversation. She’s looking at us with wet eyes. This is hard for them both. Edinnu has provided them with a taste of what it feels like to not be corrupted, to be freed from the Nephilim. As hard as it is for me to leave the garden, it must be far more difficult for them.

Only Kat seems indifferent, but I suspect it’s because she has never been broken and reformed. She’s a killer, sure, but she is who she is, not who someone else made her to be. She waits by the river with Ookla, holding the shofar in both hands like it’s a rifle.

Seeing the shofar brings an idea to the forefront of my mind so fast and powerful that I let out a gasp similar to one of Em’s.

“What’s wrong?” Kainda asks.

I ignore her, waving frantically to Kat. “Give it to me.”

“Slow down, kid,” she says, bringing the shofar to me. “You’re going to break your wrist.”

I ignore the taunt and rather rudely snatch the horn from her hands.

“Careful,” she says in a stern voice. “You almost died to get that thing. Don’t break it.”

Remembering what I’m holding in my hands, I slow down. “Right. Sorry.” I step back a few feet, merging with the line of animals still watching us. Ookla stands in the river, head cocked back. He’s watching, but not urging us forward.

“Stand together,” I say to Kainda and Em. Then I motion for Kat to move back, and she does. I can see that she understands what I’m about to do. As do Em and Kainda. They look a little bit excited, but mostly afraid.

I raise the horn to my lips, aim it at Kainda and Em, and blow.

The sound isn’t nearly as loud as when I used the wind to create a sound, and it’s kind of horrible, but the effect on the two women is immediate. Kainda’s body tenses and her head tips skyward, mouth open in a silent scream. Em drops to her knees, fingers clutching the grass. Neither makes a sound, though I can see they are in agony.

Despite their physical discomfort, I have to fight my growing smile so I can keep blowing. The red retreats from their hair from the follicles out, like it’s being erased. When it’s finally gone, and I’m nearly out of breath, I stop blowing the shofar and lower it.

The tension gripping Kainda’s body melts away. She staggers and I rush to catch her. “I have you,” I say, but I nearly don’t. Her legs are rubbery. She slowly starts to recover, like she’s coming out of a stupor. As she clings to my neck, she reaches back for her braid, brings it around and lets out a gentle sob.

Her hair is black. All black. Not a trace of red remains.

“It worked,” she whispers.

We both look to Em. She pushes herself up so she’s sitting on her knees. Kat is there, helping steady her older sister, whose hair is now brown. Em looks up and sees Kainda’s hair. Her eyes widen. She pulls her hair, trying to get a look at it, but it’s still too short. She grips some hair between her fingers and gives a tug, pulling a few strands free from where it had previously been red. She holds the strands out in front of her face and grins. She looks to Kainda again. “We’re free!”

I laugh and hug them both. Before today, I was the only hunter to ever be freed totally from the Nephilim corruption. Now there are three of us.

Soon, I think, there will be an army.

27

“You look like our mother,” Kat says to Em.

We’ve just returned to the top of the waterfall leading to Edinnu, carried up the distance by the wind. As with everything in the garden, getting us all up was an effortless task, but as soon as I stepped into the tunnel, I felt weary. Not exhausted, but sort of like if you play too hard one day and wake up all stiff the next.

Em smiles, though she looks a little weary herself. “I think I remember you.”

“You were only two,” Kat says. “I can barely remember you, and I think the memories I do have are just from photos. You couldn’t—”

I clear my throat in a way that says, hello, guy who can remember his own birth, standing right here.

Kat rolls her eyes. “Not everyone has a perfect memory.”

“It’s just an image,” Em says. “I’m lying on my back. There are bars around me—was I kept in a cell?”

“A crib,” I guess. “It’s not a bad thing.”

“And I see you leaning over me. And a man. With a beard.” She rubs her head. “And no hair.”

“Well I’ll be damned. That’s our father.” Kat removes her black top revealing a black tank top beneath, which she also removes. This wouldn’t be strange if Kat were a hunter, but she’s insisted on staying fully clothed up to this point.

“Going native?” I ask her.

Kat, who is now wearing black cargo pants and a tight black sports bra, reaches out for the shofar and motions for me to give it to her, which I do. She takes the tank top and stuffs it inside. Then she wraps the shofar in her shirt and uses the sleeve to tie it tight. “We can’t risk it breaking.”

“Right,” I say, feeling a little stupid for not thinking of it myself. That’s what I like about Kat, she’s focused. Always on task. Even while talking to her long lost sister.

“He looks about the same now,” she says to Em. “Except the little hair left on his head, and the beard, are gray.”

“Is he...kind?” Em asks.

“We learned not to push the limits he set,” Kat says. “But he was kind enough and is pretty much a pushover now.”

“Does he know what you do?” I ask. “Or what you did?”

“That I kill people?” Kat says. “He thinks I’m a dancer for a cruise line. Correction, he thinks I’m a clumsy dancer for a cruise line. Explains the long times I’m out of touch and the occasional injury. No one in the family knows the truth.” She looks at Em. “Well, except for you, I suppose.”

“If you’re worried about what they’ll think of you,” Em starts, “I can always tell them about the things I’ve done, and you’ll look like one of those little animals.” She motions toward Edinnu with her head.

We all take a look back at the garden. The lush, glowing paradise stretches out as far as I can see. I feel its pull on me even now. “We should go,” I say, the words just a whisper forced through my lips.

Without a word, we turn and walk away from the garden, new friends and the birthplace of the human race. As the darkness surrounds us once more, and Kat takes out her blue, green and yellow crystal, my thoughts turn to the story of Adam and Eve. Whether they were the first man and woman created by God himself, or the leaders of the first human tribe that evolved in the garden, I don’t know, or care, but if they really did get the human race kicked out of Edinnu so long ago, I think they’re a couple of jerks.

The journey upwards is long and tiring. There are no downhill slopes or waterslides to help us along. My knees feel it first, then the rest of me. I’m in good shape, conditioned for this more than most, but I think leaving Edinnu made me more keenly aware of my physical discomfort. Kat seems a little more tired than usual as well, but Kainda and Em are struggling even more. Not only are they feeling the effect of leaving the garden, but the anger and pride of hunters that kept them from expressing their tiredness, even as a facial expression, is now gone.

When we finally reach the massive cavern containing the doors to Tartarus and I suggest a rest, Kainda and Em both sit without saying a word. I’m tempted to point it out, but I don’t want them to feel any regrets about their freedom. There are other kinds of strengths that can replace the darkness that was removed, they just need to discover them.

We gather near one of the cavern’s entrances, but don’t enter. I can see the bone mounds clearly, and though I neither see nor smell any danger, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Part of me wants to return to the location of our last battle with the warriors and see what happened with the bodies of Hades and Cerberus, but we’re actually miles away from that scene and the distraction would waste time, energy and quite possibly lead us into a trap.

The more I think about it, the more I’m certain a trap is unlikely. Now that I have the Jericho shofar, the Nephilim and their hunters will be at a severe disadvantage in the underworld, where sound carries and numbers are limited by the size of the tunnel you’re in. No, I suspect we’ll find our path to the surface all but empty. It’s on the surface that the real danger lies. With all that empty space, the shofar, for all its supernatural power, won’t be able to turn away thousands of Nephilim warriors.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, stepping into the giant chasm.

“Where are you going?” Kainda asks. She might be tired, but she’s still vigilant.

I sigh. She won’t believe any answer but the truth. “I have to pee.”

She couldn’t care less. Hunters are accustomed to pretty much dropping their pants and doing their thing wherever and whenever the urge strikes, unless they’re trying to conceal their scent or in one of the citadels. “Don’t go far.”

“I won’t,” I mutter. It’s a lie. I might be a fellow ex-hunter, but I’m still me. Even when I had access to a bathroom with an actual door, I couldn’t go if someone was standing outside the door. My solution was to turn on the fan, if one was available, run the water and sit on the seat, rather than standing. When I confessed all this to Justin, he laughed and teased, but when I pointed out that he had to run home every time he had to go number two, he dropped the subject.

I walk maybe fifty feet away and stand behind an outcrop of rocks. They won’t see me, but all three women have good ears. I’m going to have to angle this against the wall just right, I think, and then I spread my feet apart so the ensuing puddle doesn’t reach me.

After one last look around, I start to pee. I close my eyes in relief. I’d been holding it for a while.

“Solomon!” The voice is so loud, so close, that I shout out and stumble back, stepping in the little river of urine. I look back, but no one is there.

“Are you okay?” Kainda shouts. I can hear her running toward me. Actually, I hear three sets of feet coming quickly. I rush to put myself back together, momentarily forgetting about the voice.

“I’m fine!” I shout back. “No worries. No big deal.”

I finish cinching my leathers around my waist just before Kainda arrives. She’s got her hammer out and ready, looking for an enemy to smash. All she finds is me, glowing red from embarrassment.

“What happened.” It’s not a question. It’s a demand.

That’s when I remember the voice. I replay the sound in my head, remembering it perfectly, and recognizing it instantly. “Xin.”

“Where?” Em asks, coming into view, knife in hand.

I look around, but I already know the answer. “In my head.” I turn my thoughts outward. Where are you?

Coming, Xin replies. He sounds casual. Almost friendly. Not that we’re not friends. We are brothers. I trust him more than most. But he’s serious. He knows what’s at stake and he’s been actively pursuing our mutual cause on his own despite not being accepted or trusted by the other hunters who have pledged themselves to me.

Why did you frighten me?

Apologies, Solomon, he says. I found it...humorous.

I can’t help but smile. That Xin finds anything funny is in itself, funny.

“What...are you doing?” Kat asks.

“Huh?” I say.

“You’re just standing there,” she says. “And you’re making faces like you’re talking to someone or hearing voices.”

“I am,” I say.

“Which one?”

“Both. Xin,” I say aloud and think at the same time, “say hello to Katherine Ferrell.”

Hello Katherine. I hear the voice, and I know that the others do too because they all jump and look around. Greetings Kainda, daughter of Ninnis. Greetings Emilee, daughter of Tobias.

“Where is he?” Kainda asks, sounding irritated.

Look to the north.

Despite being in a sunless cave, Kainda, Em and I all turn to the right, instinctually knowing the direction.

Kat turns with us. Though she lacks our subterranean sense of direction, she can see much further in the well-lit cavern. “I see something, just beyond the large pile of bones.”

For a moment, I see nothing, but then a shaky line of green emerges. The line grows bigger, stretching across a large portion of the cavern.

“What the hell is that?” Kat asks.

“No idea,” I say. Xin, should I be worried?

Only if you are against us.

The line collapses, bunching up, and then slips behind the bone mound.

A vibration reaches my feet. The floor is shaking.

A mass of green bodies round the bones and the truth is revealed.

Cresties. A herd of them. No, not a herd, an army. There’s a few hundred of the subterranean apex predators. A large male leads the pack and as the others slow to a stop, the big one pounds forward. The green and red cresty is a giant. The crest on its head, just behind its eyes, is nearly a foot tall on its own. It’s at least thirty feet long from snout to tail, easily as big as Alice, if not bigger.

Kainda shifts uncomfortably. Alice nearly killed her, after all.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I recognize him.”

Kat looks surprised. “You do? Just so you know, a pack of these guys nearly killed us.” She’s got her hand on her holstered pistol.

I nod. “They like to eat people. But this one won’t.”

She points to the rest of them, lining up next to each other like soldiers in formation. “And them?”

I shrug.

The big cresty stops with a final stomp of his foot, sending a vibration through my body. I reach a hand up. “Hello, Grumpy.”

The big dinosaur lowers his head until my hand rests on his snout, just between his eyes.

“It’s him?” Kainda asks. She was present the first time I petted Grumpy like this. Alice nearly killed Kainda, but she terrorized her own hunting pack. After I killed her, Grumpy became the pack leader.

I just look at her and smile. She steps up next to me and places her hand on the dinosaur’s snout. He sniffs her. She says, “hello.” It’s not exactly a Kodak moment, but hunters and cresties are bitter enemies. This is big.

A clicking sound comes from behind the dinosaur. I glance to the side and notice that it actually has reigns around its neck. The dinosaur rears up and turns to the side. Sitting on the dinosaur’s back like some kind of alien cowboy, is Xin. But he’s not alone. Clinging to his back is a second rider.

Luca.

28

“Luca!” Em says, surprised and happy, but then quickly repeats his name, this time with fear and anger, “Luca, what are you doing here?” She turns to Xin, “Why is he here? Why is he with you?”

“You don’t trust me?” Xin asks, squinting his serpentine eyes. It’s a challenge as much as a question. He taps Grumpy’s sides with his heels and the big predator crouches down.

“No,” Em says. “I don’t.”

“It’s okay, Em,” Luca says. He’s smiling and fidgeting, clearly eager to get down. He waves at me. “Hi, Sol!”

“Nor do I,” Kainda says.

Kat just looks mystified, probably by the large number of dinosaurs and Xin’s alien appearance. His white scaly skin, yellow eyes and slender, but strong frame look inhuman. But his blood runs red, the same as mine. Exactly the same as mine.

Xin takes Luca’s hands and helps the boy down. Once his toes reach the chamber’s stone floor, he’s running at Em. She bends down to greet him, sweeping him up for a tight hug. She might not be pleased by Luca being in this dangerous place, but she’s still happy to see him.

As am I. Luca dives at me next, and I lift him from the ground in a great bear hug before planting him back on the floor. He looks at Kainda and says, “Hey Kain,” and then at Kat, “Hi Kat.”

Kat scrunches her nose. “How does he know my name?”

“This is Luca,” I say. “He is one of my...twins.”

“Yeah, I can actually see that, but—”

“I can see through his eyes,” Luca explains. “I saw the sword. And Ookla. And the garden. And Nephil. But you took care of him. And—”

“We both saw,” Xin says. “He through you and I through him.”

Kat turns toward Xin. “And you’re Xin? The other...twin?”

He nods. “We saw what happened to the others. We also witnessed your success. That is why we came to greet you.”

“You could have waited on the surface,” Em says.

“I make the outsiders uncomfortable,” Xin says.

“And the hunters,” Luca adds with a smile.

Xin actually smiles a little bit. “And the hunters.” He stretches his arms out, motioning to the massive, empty cavern. “Nephil has retreated to the surface to prepare his forces. The underworld is empty, and safe. And we were very well protected.”

“I left Luca in Adoni’s care,” Em says, still angry.

“Adoni is busy,” Xin says to Em, but then turns to me. “Your forces gather at the coast. Hunters and outsiders alike.”

“The prisoners we set free?” I ask, assuming he’ll know what I’m talking about if they made it.

“They were received a week ago, weakened and down fifty men, but perhaps the most eager and willing to fight. They have been telling of how you slew the mighty Pan. But stories can only bolster their strength so much. They need you. Soon.”

I look back at the dinosaurs. “That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it? Transportation.”

Xin smiles.

“You’re smiling,” I note.

“A side effect of spending time with our brother,” Xin says. “He softens the heart.” He nods to me. “Much like you.”

“Hey,” Luca says, sounding excited. “Em! You’re hair!” He looks at Kainda. “Yours too!”

“Guess you didn’t see that part,” I say.

“Uh-uh.”

Xin inches closer to Em. He reaches out a hand to touch her hair, but she flinches away. He seems to not notice and whispers, “It works...”

I take the shofar from Kat and carefully unwrap it. Xin marvels over it, but doesn’t touch it. What would the horn do to Xin? I wonder. He’s part Nephilim, but he’s also part human. He has no hair to speak of, but the Nephilim corruption is no doubt rooted in him as well.

“You can be free,” I say, raising the horn toward Xin and placing it to my lips. I close my eyes and fill my lungs.

“Wait—” Xin starts, but I’ve already begun to blow. The sound echoes through the chamber. The cresties respond to it with roars, but they don’t move.

When I open my eyes and lower the horn, Xin is gone. For a second, I think I’ve somehow obliterated him, but then I hear a shifting sound to my left. Xin steps out from behind a tall, stone outcrop.

Can you hear me? he asks in my mind.

Yes, I reply.

He seems relieved by the answer.

“Why did you move?” I ask.

“We don’t know what effect the Jericho shofar will have on me. If it removes the Nephilim corruption fully, I could die. I could lose my mental abilities. When the battle is won, we can see what happens. Until then, I must remain as I am.”

“He clings to his corruption,” Kainda remarks.

“No,” I say. “He loathes it as much as you both did.” I look her and Em in the eyes. “He is making a sacrifice. For me. For both of you. For all of us. I trust him with my life. With Luca’s life. He is my brother, and I expect both of you to trust him as such. We cannot be divided by the hatred of the world we knew. We are better than that, and you both have been freed from it.”

Neither of them reply. They have no argument against what I’ve said, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow and the change will take time, so I let that be the end of it for now.

I give the shofar back to Kat and let her wrap it back up. She’s become its protector. I didn’t ask her to take on the job, but she carries the horn at all times and even rests with it in her arms. It never leaves her side except for when I ask for it. Maybe she simply recognizes its worth, but I suspect she sees the shofar as the object for which Wright gave his life, and now she’s protecting it with hers. Whatever the reason, I appreciate it. “Thanks,” I tell her.

“We should go,” Xin says. “The path to the surface is long. Nephilim forces are gathering at Asgard and I suspect Nephil will strike within the week. It will be our last stand. If we cannot stop him, the war will be lost.”

“We’ll stop him,” I say. “He’s felt the horn’s power.”

“Which is why he will strike with everything he has. Warriors. Thinkers. Gatherers. Even feeders. Every Nephilim tribe and the horrors they possess will be brought against mankind, first for possession of you, and then the world.” He turns his head to the dinosaurs. He says nothing, but four of the larger specimens break formation and stomp toward us. Each is fitted with a seat and a harness.

I let out a laugh. Justin would have loved this.

The dinosaurs split up and stop in front of each of us. When Xin mounts the one in front of me, I give him a quizzical look.

“Grumpy is yours,” he says. “Always has been.”

Kainda grumbles as she mounts the dinosaur provided her, but she looks absolutely amazing once she’s sitting atop its back, like some kind of Edgar Rice Burroughs jungle queen. The dinosaur tilts its head up and roars. Perhaps understanding the power she now wields, Kainda grins wickedly. She looks at me and says, “Name it.”

My smile is impossible to hide, but I manage not to tease her about wanting to name animals now. The dinosaur she rides is a female, perhaps twenty-seven feet long. Second in size only to Grumpy. Sticking with my childhood cartoon theme, I say, “Zok.”

“Zok,” Kainda says, testing the word. Then she leans toward the cresty’s head and says, “Come, Zok. To the surface!”

To my amazement, the creature obeys, turning round and heading across the cavern. The rest of us follow, close behind. As we pass through the army of dinosaurs, they split to make room for us, but they don’t let us pass all the way through. Instead, they surround us, a moving protective barrier.

Luca laughs as he clings to Em’s back. This is as fun for him as it would be for any six year old boy—or is he seven now? I’m not even sure when his birthday is. Em looks a little worried, but she’s managing. Kat, riding next to them, looks like her normally focused self, neither enjoying nor fearing the ride on the back of a dinosaur.

I turn to Xin, riding next to me. Thank you, brother.

Anything in service to my king.

Though he hasn’t spoken the words aloud, I still hear the humor in them. He must have heard talk of this on the surface, perhaps from the hunters I sent along with the escaped prisoners. And he knows, without a doubt, how uncomfortable it would make me feel.

I shake my head. King Solomon. Ridiculous.

29

The journey back to the surface is uneventful. The cresties carrying us move at a steady quick pace, far faster than we could have traveled on foot. The path we take—a long since dried up riverbed—rises at a steady incline toward the coast. The cavern is tall and wide, easily accommodating our oversized transport, which is probably why Xin chose this route.

“How long were we gone?” I ask. Wright’s timekeeping trick, while handy, won’t work because we weren’t always walking, and we were far deeper than any of us have been before. Xin mentioned that the prisoners reached Wright’s FOB. Traveling from Olympus, the journey would have likely taken weeks, so I’m prepared for his reply.

“A little more than a month in surface time.”

Good, I think. There is nothing worse than going deep and returning only to find far more time than expected had passed. I lost twenty years surface time that way. Even better, this time my enemy went deep with me. Nephil lost the month, too. Though I’m sure his army continued with their preparations.

“How long before they attack?” I ask him. “Best guess.”

He shrugs. “Could be today. Could be tomorrow. But I suspect we have several days still. The Nephilim warriors can travel great distances quickly, but they will strike from the land as well. Traveling the distance will take time and we have sentries keeping watch through the jungle at fifty-mile intervals. We’ll see them coming.”

“Were these defenses your ideas?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “They still fear me.”

“Then how do you—” I was going to ask him how he knew all this, but then I remember Xin’s special gift. He can be a fly on the wall from miles away. I tap my head.

He nods and says, “Your friend, Merrill Clark, seems to have sway with the leader of your nation.”

“The President?” I ask.

“Yes. Though Clark has never met the man, your President was fond of his daughter, Mira. Also, a soldier that served with Clark during their time here, a Marine named Cruz has supported Clark’s claim to be an expert on the Nephilim, how they will attack and what they want. To a large extent, he is right, but he knows nothing of you or Nephil’s desire to capture you.”

Knows nothing of me? I wonder, and decide he’s talking about my larger role in all of this. How could he know? Then I remember Aimee. She knows everything. Wouldn’t she have told him?

“A man called Brigadier General Kent Holloway is in charge of the base and its defenses, but he also trusts Clark’s opinions on the Nephilim, because they share the same beliefs. You will have to gain their trust to—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Kat says. I hadn’t realized she’d been listening. “Clark, Cruz and the President will all listen to me.”

I’m about to add that Merrill will trust me, and that Aimee will back me up, but Xin pulls back on the reins, slowing his cresty, which seems to put the brakes on the whole pack, even those ahead of us. “The exit is just ahead.”

I lean around the side of Grumpy’s head and peer up the tunnel. A speck of light in the distance reveals the exit. I breathe a sigh of relief. Almost there. When we started our descent into the depths of Antarktos, I wasn’t sure we’d see the sun again. But we’re close now and despite the darkness to come, the thought of walking in the light of day again brings a smile to my face.

The dinosaurs part, making a path for us.

“What are they doing?” I ask.

“The soldiers and hunters are aware of me, my allegiance and my control over the dinosaurs, but they do not trust us. If the dinosaurs were to exit first, the sentries posted at the exit might take action.”

“They would attack the cresties?” I ask in surprise.

“I believe they would call for help,” he says. “I do not have a firm grasp on what these things are, but I have heard terms like ‘surgical strike,’ and, ‘lase the target.’”

“That,” Kat says. “Would not be good.”

A laugh from behind turns me around. Kainda, Em and Luca are catching up, moving through the open path in the middle of the pack.

“What’s so funny?” I ask Luca, the source of the laughter.

“I like it when Xin makes them do things like this,” Luca says, motioning to the dinosaurs.

For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that Xin was controlling all these cresties. The concept of controlling so many minds at once seems positively daunting, even to someone who can control the entire continent’s elements. “You’re doing this?” I ask.

“They have simple minds,” he says. “And they are willing participants. I simply send out the command and they obey. But that is rarely required. They follow Grumpy’s lead and he often obeys without the use of my—” he taps his head, mimicking my previous gesture. “They are good soldiers.”

“Good dancers, too,” Luca says with a laugh.

“You didn’t?” I say, smiling wide.

“The boy missed his family,” Xin says with a shrug. “I did what I could.”

Shaking my head at the mental image of Grumpy doing a jig, I thump his sides with my heels and move forward, if only to spare my prehistoric steed from further embarrassment. “Let’s go.”

“I think I would like to see the dancing dinosaur,” Kainda says with a trace of humor.

“I’d like to see you dance,” Luca says to her, which gets a laugh out of Em.

“That might be even stranger than a dancing cresty,” Em says.

The good humor lasts all the way up the tunnel as the group discusses who would make the worst dancer. In the end, the winner is me, on account of my lack of rhythm and clumsiness when embarrassed. I try to defend myself, but Luca knows these things better than the others do, because he’s the same exact way. “But I’m a kid,” he says, “So it’s okay if I look silly.”

We slow at the exit and our humorous exchange fades.

“Are the men outside hunters or outsider military?” I ask.

“Most of the sentries are what outsiders call Army Rangers,” Xin says, “but the entrances to the underworld are watched by hunters, who are more familiar with what lurks below. They have been trained to use modern communication devices, though, and could call in an attack if they feel we are a threat.”

“They wouldn’t attack us themselves?” I ask.

“The old ways are changing,” Xin says. “Freedom makes men less willing to throw their lives away.”

I take the lead and motion for the others to hang back a bit. I squint in the bright light of a noonday sun, shading my eyes with my arm. Grumpy steps into the light cautiously, perhaps because he senses danger, but more likely, because his eyes are adjusting to the light, too, and his stubby forearms are incapable of shading his eyes.

I don’t see anyone, but there are a thousand hiding places in the thick jungle surrounding the small clearing at the cave’s exit. I’m no doubt being watched, if not targeted. “Do not be afraid,” I say, finding it strange that I’m using the same words of greeting as the Edinnu Kerubim.

No response. Not a greeting or a thrown weapon. Of course, it would take a minute for a missile to get here. I decide to put them at ease as quickly as possible to avoid any confusion. “I am Solomon Ull Vincent,” I announce. “Your...leader.” Still feels funny saying that, but that’s the way it is for all of us, like it or not. “Show yours—”

I turn around and find one man and one woman standing above the cave entrance. They are dressed in brown leathers and coated in mud, impossible to see in the shadows, but easy to spot in the glaring bright sun. Both of them bow.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say, feeling instantly uncomfortable. “Really. You can stand up.”

When they stand, I realize they’re just obeying, not relaxing. Ugh. “What are your names?”

“Mellitt,” says the man. He’s tall, bearded and carries a long spear. His blood red hair is mostly covered by mud, but I can see it clearly enough. What I can’t see, is any streak of reclaimed innocence. It could be there, but the mud obscures it as well, which might be the point. Not all hunters are with us. Which also means that this could be a trap.

“Turner,” says the woman. She is lanky and slender like a snake. The perfect body for the underworld. Her skin is pale, which hints that she’s only recently come to live in the sun. The sunglasses covering her eyes confirm it.

Do you know them? I think to Xin.

They are with us, he replies.

“There are five more with me,” I tell them. “Xin, Kainda, Em, Luca and Kat, one of the outsiders.” I pat Grumpy’s head, which makes the woman fidget uncomfortably. “And about three hundred more of these guys. They are friends. All of them. You’ll let them pass.”

Both nod, bow again, and slip back into the jungle shadows above the cave.

The others exit the cave and Xin takes the lead.

“You handled that well, kid,” Kat says. “Authority suits you.”

I laugh at this, but my humor is short lived when Xin says, “Follow me closely. Do not stray far from my path. The jungle is full of traps.”

“Traps?” I say.

“For the Nephilim,” Xin explains. “They were Clark’s idea.”

“Traps won’t kill the Nephilim,” Kainda points out.

“No,” Xin says, “But they might slow their progress long enough for our forces to get in place.”

With no more disagreement from Kainda, Xin leads the way. We follow him single file through the jungle, though we really don’t have to try. The dinosaurs maintain the formation on their own, forming a living train of green and red striped carnivores just over a mile long.

We journey in silence for nearly thirty minutes before starting up an incline that takes us high above the jungle below. Looking back, through the gaps in the canopy, I catch glimpses of distant jungle. There’s a river and beyond that, a streak of gray.

The wall, I think. It’s the wall upon which I first discovered that Merrill had returned to Antarktos, and the wall that took me inland to where I found Em, Kainda and Luca. The river running in the same direction must be the one that leads to the lake, the same river on which Merrill, Aimee and eventually Mira, on the back of Gloop the Weddell seal, made their escape to the coast. We’re not far from Clark Station II. That little bit of knowledge brings me some peace. In many ways, this is my home—where I was born, where I last saw my parents, where I lived with Em and Luca, and trained with Tobias. It looks far different now, of course, but it’s still familiar.

The trees thin and then clear as we reach the hill’s crest, though it might actually be a small mountain rather than a hill. Xin leads me toward a cliff’s edge.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “The others will stay back.”

“But why?”

“I want you to see,” he says.

“See what?” I ask, but then the trees part and the view is exposed. I can see all the way down the mountain, as the jungle stretches toward the coast. It all looks normal until about a mile inland where the tree line abruptly ends at a field of stumps. The jungle has been cut away.

Half the distance to the coast is the forward operating base. It is far more massive than I was expecting. Sandbag walls, razor wire and armed guards fringe the whole compound. Hundreds of guards, both modern military and hunter alike. There are artillery cannons, large jeeps, helicopters and even a handful of giant looking tanks.

So much for the Antarctic Treaty, I think. Part of the treaty’s mandate was that no country would deploy military on Antarctic soil. Not that I’m complaining. The military hardware is a welcome sight, for now at least.

There are several buildings, a sea of tents and a level of activity that reminds me of ants at work, which is probably how the Nephilim will see it too. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them. The memory of the Old Testament verse comes and goes quickly, not because it’s a poignant reminder of what we will face, but because I see what lies beyond the FOB, in the ocean.

An aircraft carrier and many more dangerous-looking naval ships fill the ocean. Jets. Missiles. Heavy guns. And an army of men and dinosaurs. It’s a gathering of forces unlike any ever seen before...except maybe for the Nephilim army that will eventually descend on this place like a plague of impervious, oversized locusts.

All of this is yours to command, Xin thinks to me, but only if you take it.

Take it?

Men do not give up control of such power willingly. Kat’s opinion of you alone will not be enough. Trust between men forms like fossils found in the earth—very slowly. Time is short, so trust in you must be...forced. He looks at me, his yellow eyes serious. “I do not mean for you to attack them,” he says aloud. “But you will need to impress upon them your right to lead. There can be no doubt. If you fail to do this, all else is lost.”

30

Approaching the FOB gates feels similar to when I stood before the gates of Tartarus for the first time. The sight of soldiers and hunters, all training their untrusting eyes—and weapons—on our prehistoric caravan is unnerving. I am powerful. I know this. But could I stop every single bullet if these men decided I was an enemy? Could I protect the people with me? The shofar wouldn’t help in that situation. So I decide to do everything in my power to avoid it.

I pull back on the reins, bringing Grumpy to a stop, two hundred feet from the still closed gates. The rest of the dinosaurs follow suit. Xin looks a little surprised, but then nods at me.

The beasts, at least, will follow you, he thinks to me.

I climb down and motion for the others to follow.

I should wait here, Xin thinks.

I will probably need your help, I reply.

They fear me.

They need to learn not to, I think. You are my brother and they will learn to accept you, just as they will learn to follow me.

Very well, Xin thinks in reply. But you may find yourself safeguarding me rather than the other way around.

It would be a nice change, I think. Let’s go.

The dinosaurs part for us and we continue along the path to the gate on foot. When the dinosaurs start to fan out behind us, turning toward the jungle and forming a living, sharp-toothed wall, I ask, “The clearing isn’t mined, is it?”

“Mines?” Xin asks.

“Explosive traps triggered by weight,” Kat explains.

“No,” Xin says, “though I suspect such devices were used in the jungles surrounding us.”

The gates are chain link, topped with razor wire—a feeble stumbling block against just about anything that might come out of the jungle, including us, with the exception of Turkquins, the big predatory birds that look like a cross between a turkey and a penguin. Two soldiers in a ten-foot tall guard tower stare at us. One points a large machine gun in our direction. As dorky as it feels, I force myself to smile and wave.

Both men look like they’ve smelled something foul. They have no idea who I am, and though they might recognize Xin, they don’t trust him. The machine gun is proof enough of that.

“Stop right there,” says one of the men, his voice cut with the threat of violence should we not obey.

I stop, just ten feet from the gate. Fifteen feet from the men. I look at their guard post and frown. Even up there, they’ll still be looking up at the warriors. Of course, they can also jump out and survive the fall if need be.

“See something you don’t like?” the second man says. He’s noticed my frown.

“We’d like to come inside,” I say. “I’m a friend of Merrill Clark.”

“Far as I know, he’s never said anything about you.”

I meet the man’s eyes. He’s young, maybe my age if you ignore the fact that despite my late teen appearance, I’m in my mid-thirties by surface years. “My name is Solomon Ull Vincent. I am the last hunter and leader of the men and women you now know as hunters.”

This catches their attention. They start eyeing me up and down, whispering to each other, but loud enough for me to hear.

“This is the guy?”

“He doesn’t look like much.”

“What if he’s lying? Could be lying.”

“He is with that freakjob...”

I glance at Xin. He’s unfazed by the insult, or perhaps doesn’t realize it’s an insult.

“The kid, too.”

They would let us in if I told them to, Xin says to my mind, but when he looks at me, his eyes say something else.

I know, I know, I think back, make an impression.

Without lifting my arms, or making a movement that might make me a target, or reveal I am the source of the phenomenon, I direct a sphere of wind to form around one of the men. His whispered sentence is cut off by a “Whoa!” He rises into the air.

“Charlie!” the man shouts, reaching out for his partner. “Dude! Help me!”

But Charlie doesn’t move. He’s stuck in place, part of him in shock, the other part bound to the wooden floor, which has twisted around his feet. The wood, hewn from the trees that once filled this clearing, bends to my will.

The airborne soldier flails like a bird with broken wings until I bring him down, outside the gate. I spin him upright and hold him just a foot above the ground so that we’re face to face. It’s then that I’m struck by the man’s stature. “You’re short,” I say.

“W—what?” he replies. He looks me up and down. “You—you’re tall.”

I am? I look down, confused by this. Over the past years, I have grown taller and muscular. I grew a beard. All without noticing. “How tall?”

“Like six-five,” he says.

“Huh,” I say. It’s not really surprising. One of my uncles is six-seven.

Xin clears his throat.

Right. Make an impression.

“What’s your name?”

“Duane. Corporal Duane Cairns.”

“Well, Corporal,” I say. “You know who I am, yes?”

He nods. There’s no doubting it now. He’s probably heard stories about me, from the other hunters and from the freed prisoners, but I doubt he, or many of the other people here, believed them. He does now, of course.

“Could you open the gate so I don’t have to melt it?” I ask. “I’m trying to be polite.”

His eyes go wide. I’m not certain I could do such a thing. I think I could, but I’ve never tried. Still, since he’s floating in the air at the moment, he’ll believe I can do just about anything.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Charlie, open the gate!”

I motion to Charlie with my hand so that he knows it is, without a doubt, me who sets him free from the wood binding his legs. An electric motor buzzes a moment later and the gate grinds open.

Cairns looks relieved when I put him on the ground.

“Could you go tell the people in charge that I am here?” I ask.

And... Xin’s voice fills my head.

“And,” I say, cringing inwardly as I speak the words, “that I am ready to take command.”

He looks at me like I’m insane, but then nods quickly and hurries into the base.

I glance up at Charlie and the man snaps a salute.

Kat chuckles and says, “At ease soldier. We’re on the same side.”

I step through the gate, followed by the others, and am surprised when Zuh steps out from behind the guard tower. She’s now wearing a pair of black cargo pants, though her top is still...scant. I can see her pockets are filled with supplies.  Is she hoarding? It wouldn’t surprise me. She might expect to be on the run again at any time.

Her dark red pom-pom of hair makes me smile. She takes this as an invitation to wrap her arms around me in an embrace. I flinch away, but am ensnared.

“Zuh!” Kainda shouts.

I’m released as Zuh’s kusarigama appears in her hands. “Would you like to finish, daughter of Ninnis?”

Kainda unclips her hammer.

I shoot her an angry look. “Seriously?”

She doesn’t draw the weapon, but she remains tense. She’ll defend herself if she has to.

I step closer to Zuh, which brings a smile to her face. It disappears when I put my hand on the chain attached to the kusarigama’s blade. I lean in to her ear. “I admire your strength. And your courage.”

A flicker of a smile returns.

“But,” I say, my voice a whisper now. “The old ways are dead. The laws that bound hunters are gone. You are free. As am I. And only I can choose...”

I look back over my shoulder. I can see by the strained looks on everyone’s faces that they’re trying to hear me, but can’t. Well, maybe Xin can, but there isn’t much I can do about that. I lower my voice and continue. “...who I will love. Who I will marry.”

I lean back and look at Zuh’s face. She looks quite unhappy, but I don’t think she’s going to attack anyone. I search for hurt in her eyes and find none. She doesn’t know me. Doesn’t love me. For her, as it once was for Kainda, marriage to me was about status and power. She’ll get over it.

“You called me King, before,” I say.

Her eyes grow and lock onto mine. “I still do.”

“Then you will listen. And obey.”

She nods.

“You. Are. Free.” I enunciate each word. “To live and love and fight anyway you choose with anyone you choose. Do you understand?”

Her eyes squint. Despite not moving her lips, I recognize the expression as a smile. Perhaps the first genuine smile of her life, which might be why it looks so awkward.

She offers a slight bow and steps back, avoiding Kainda’s gaze. I clear my throat, offer a smile at my entourage and head into the base.

A gathering throng greets us as we walk into the central quad of the large base. Men and women dressed in military uniforms eye us. The few hunters present whisper to each other. Some bow, which incites ridiculing glances from the soldiers. We’re being judged right now, I know, so I keep my head up, bury my fear and ignore my lack of confidence. As a kid, I was terrified of authority. Once, when I was still in school—seventh grade, I think—my teacher, Mrs. Baker, who was a fairly pleasant and non-threatening woman, lost her patience with my inattentive boredom. (I was years ahead of the subject matter.) She took me aside while the students filed to the next classroom for English. Three sentences into her gentle rebuke, I broke into tears. She felt awful. I know she did because she apologized several times despite having done nothing wrong. But my thin-skinned wall had been chipped, and all the fear and anxiety I had over school came gushing out.

If I can keep from crying, I think, I should do okay.

That’s when I see Aimee walk out of one of the metal buildings. She’s followed by Merrill and a man I don’t know, but who is clearly General Holloway. He is followed by Cairns, then Adoni, then the Latino soldier known as Cruz and finally, by Mirabelle Whitney.

The sight of the Clark family altogether is more than I can bear, and the tears I would so like to hide trace a line of wetness on my lower eyelid. I take a deep breath, control myself and pretend to have something in my eyes as I wipe away the wetness. So much for not crying.

As the group approaches, I can no longer just stand and wait. I break formation and move to greet my friends. Merrill is in the lead, I suspect because he’s the unofficial guide to all of the strangeness on Antarctica. He looks older than I remember, which makes sense because it’s been twenty-one years. His hair is gray, as is his full beard, and he looks a little thicker around the waist, though still fit enough to handle an expedition.

“Dr. Clark!” I say as a smile too impossibly wide to hide, spreads across my face.

Merrill glances back to Adoni, who waves to me and offers a bow.

The following words spoken by Merrill don’t sink in.

“Is this him?” he asks Adoni. “Your leader?”

“Yes, it is him.”

By the time Merrill turns back to face me, I’ve reached him.

My mind races back to the first time I met him, how I stumbled out of the car and hit my head like a clumsy oaf. He saw the whole thing, but didn’t say a word. Not until later at least, by which time we had become fast friends. Merrill knew everything about me, gave me my middle name and suspected before anyone, even me, that I might have some kind of power upon my return to Antarctica.

I reach out to shake his hand, which he returns, but my excitement gets the better of me. I reach my hands around him, hugging him tight. He coughs, surprised, and doesn’t return the embrace. But I don’t notice because I’m already moving on to Aimee, who is watching us with a grin. But when I open my arms to her, she just looks confused. And then a little afraid.

A tight hand on my biceps stops me and turns me back to Merrill. My smile disappears when I see his angry face.

“Son, I don’t care who you are to these people, you need to explain yourself before you put your hands on my wife.”

“What? Merrill, I—” It occurs to me that I might look so different now that he can’t recognize me. “It’s me. Solomon. Solomon Vincent.”

He stares at me dumbly.

“I’m Mark and Beth’s son.”

“I know who they are, but I’m not sure how you know them,” he says, looking a little defensive now.

“We came here, to Antarctica, twenty-one years ago. You, and me, my parents, and Aimee,” I point to Mira, who I am dying to greet, but she just looks angry, “and Mira. We went to Clark Station Two. I was kidnapped. Taken—”

“Hold on,” Merrill says. “I did come here with the Vincents, and with Mira, but you were not with us. I do not know you. And you are not the Vincents’ son.”

“I was born here,” I argue, then point to Amiee. “You caught me. Made me stop crying.” I turn back to Merrill. “You gave me my middle name, Ull.”

His face twitches at this, though I don’t think it’s in remembrance, but in recognition that it’s the kind of name he would give.

“All of this is impossible,” he says, growing angrier.

“It’s all true!” I shout at him, losing my patience. I turn to Aimee again. “Tell him! You’ve been here this whole time. You’ve seen me. You freed me. Tell him!”

“Son,” Merrill says quietly. “I can see that you’re upset, and in a minute, you’re going to tell me everything you know about my wife’s abduction and what you know about her time here, but you are either delusional or a liar.”

“You know I’m neither,” I say through grinding teeth.

Then he delivers the verbal knockout blow.

“It’s impossible, because the Vincents never had a son.”

31

“I am their son!” I shout, growing angry. Soldiers start to inch closer, hands by their weapons. I ignore them, focusing on Merrill. I decide to recall something from my parents’ shared past with the Clarks, something that only the four of them, or someone close enough to have heard the story, would know. The details, told to me by my father, come to me as though my father were speaking them into my ear.

“You introduced them. On a boat. A sailboat. The Argos. You all went searching for humpbacks in the Gulf of Maine. But you found nothing and the sea was flat.” I stab a finger at him. “You fell asleep.” I turn to Aimee. “You read a romance novel. And my parents talked. ‘By the end of the day, I was madly in love. Best day of my life.’ That’s what my father told me. They were married six months, fourteen days later, and you gave the toast. Quoted Virgil. ‘Ómnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori.’ ‘Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to love.’”

All of the anger drains from Merrill’s face. Aimee’s too. But they’re still confused. Mira still looks angry, like she loathes me.

“How do you know all that?” Merrill asks.

“My father, your friend, told me.”

Merrill looks to Aimee, but she’s shaking her head. I’m still a stranger to her, too. I consider telling Aimee about her years as a captive, at least to see what lines up with reality, and what she remembers. She knows she lived among the Nephilim. She recalls being rescued. But all trace of me in those years of memories has been forgotten. How could they just forget me?

I feel the rest of my crew approach from behind and see the eyes of the group in front of me dart to each of them, looking a bit uncomfortable when they land on Xin. Kat steps to the front of the group. “You can trust him, Merrill.”

Merrill’s eyes go wide. “Katherine!” A genuine smile appears on his face for the first time. He gives her a quick hug and then looks around. “We thought you were dead. Where is Wright?”

“He is dead,” Kat says. “But he didn’t die at the river. He died later on, to save us.” She motions to our group, and then to me. “He died to save him. Because he is who he says he is. Did you know that my husband’s father was on that expedition? Steven Wright.”

Merrill eyes widen. “It never occurred to me.”

“Well he knew,” she says, pointing to me. “He remembered everything about Wright’s father, including that he didn’t bring his son to Clark Station Two because he was convinced the boy would die on Antarctica. And now he has. For him.”

Merrill chews on his lower lip. “I would like to believe you. But I have no memory of the boy. It’s too much to believe.”

“If she’s with him,” Mira says. “She might be compromised.”

“Whitney,” Kat grumbles, using Mira’s last name, her voice revealing the sting she feels at Mira’s accusation. “The hell?”

If Kat’s support isn’t enough to convince them, then I’m not sure what will. I decide to focus on events that might not make sense with me removed from them. “When you came back to Antarctica, with my parents, and with Mira, do you remember the Sno-Cat ride?”

Merrill nods.

I look to Mira. “Do you remember riding with Collette?”

Mira says nothing. She just glares.

“How could he know this?” Aimee whispers.

“Do you remember stopping?”

Both shake their heads, no.

“Do you remember the storm that arrived later that night?”

This gets a nod from Merrill. “We had to leave because of it.”

“Aimee was injured that night.”

“Yes,” Merrill says, searching his memory.

“How?” I ask.

Both of them think hard on this, but can’t come up with an answer.

“She was unconscious,” I say. “Bleeding. And you can’t remember how it happened?”

They’re both more confused than before.

“You need to leave them alone,” Mira says, stepping between Aimee and me. Her fists are clenched, and I note she has a gun holstered to her hip, along with a machete. The holster strap holding the gun in place has been unclipped. This is not the girl I remember. Could she have changed so much?

I ignore her demand. I know this is hard for her parents, but they need to remember, and not just to keep my heart from breaking.

“And you know how it happened?” Merrill asks.

“The storm woke me up. I wandered outside. You had attached a bell to my door—”

Aimee’s eyes blink. “I remember the bell... It woke me up.” She looks at Merrill. “Why did we—”

“The bell was for me. To let you know that I was awake.” I sense Merrill is about to ask a slew of question, but continue on, getting to the point of the story. “It was snowing. The wind was picking up. But I wasn’t alone. A man—a hunter—was watching me from the dark. He spoke to me. Threatened me. And when I felt a presence behind me, I struck out. But it wasn’t the man. It was Aimee.”

I sense Merrill’s growing anger. I’ve just confessed to knocking out his wife.

“It was an accident,” I say. “I was just thirteen. One year older than Mira at the time.” This additional information doesn’t calm him at all, so I push on. “While Aimee lay on the floor, the power went out.”

“I remember that, too,” Aimee says. “I had just woken up.”

“Who went out to turn it back on?” I ask.

They both search for an answer but find nothing in their memory.

“Someone you never saw again? Someone lost in the storm?”

Merrill starts to nod slowly.

“How can you not remember that person?” I ask, growing a little bit angry myself. That they cannot remember me going missing is offensive. “How can you not remember the name of the thirteen year old boy who went out into an Antarctic storm and never came back? I was kidnapped that night. Taken underground and tortured. I was turned into a monster. And, like you, I forgot—”

The last words out of my mouth hit me hard. They haven’t forgotten, they’ve been made to forget. They’re compromised somehow. In the grip of the Nephilim.

I step back away from them, a bit of fear creeping into my eyes.

Kainda and Em react to my body language. Kainda reaches for her hammer, Em for her knife. The soldiers around us subtly switch off the safeties on their rifles.

“Everyone calm down,” General Holloway says. “I’ve given you all long enough to work this out, but it’s clear there’s some confusion. If you are intent on settling this through violence, you will not survive.”

The General doesn’t quite understand what he’s up against. He doesn’t know what I can do, what Kainda, Em and Xin are capable of, or that the hundreds of hunters spread out among his men might not respond well if I’m attacked. A lot of people will die.

So I relax my posture, despite feeling like we’re in real danger, and ask Em and Kainda to do likewise. Neither of them likes it, but they listen.

The General steps forward, “Glad to see you’ve got some self-control, now let’s—”

I tune out the general. I recognize the beginning of a lecture designed to disarm and placate, and I’m hardly interested.

Xin, I think.

I know, he replies. I am searching their minds. Adoni is confused, but himself. The same is true for the General. He does not trust you, or me, though.

I feel Xin’s tension rise. What is it?

Merrill is himself, but his memories of you have been blocked. The change was put in place long ago, after Aimee was taken. He has not remembered you for some time.

How? I ask.

Gatherers sometimes initiate blocks on the people close to those they have abducted, especially if those people are in a position to uncover the truth about their loved one’s disappearance. Before the rise of Antarktos, secrecy was of the utmost importance to the Nephilim plot. Merrill must have been searching for you. You were removed from his mind.

Sorrow mixes with rage and leaves me feeling confused, but Xin’s grim prognosis isn’t completed yet.

It is likely they did the same to Mira...and your parents.

Sorrow takes a quick backseat to rage, and I have a very hard time keeping my reaction to this revelation from appearing on my face. I’m not sure what the General is saying, but I’m willing to bet an angry look on my face wouldn’t be the appropriate reaction.

But Aimee knew me this whole time, I think. How could she forget me so quickly?

Xin is quiet for a moment, and I know he is searching her mind now, too.

Her memories are similarly locked, Xin determines. But much more recently. The mental scarring is fresh.

Can you undo it? I ask.

With your help, yes. I will check the daughter’s memories as—

Something the General has just said pulls me out of my conversation with Xin. I use my perfect memory to replay his words.

“Now if you’ll kindly follow these men to the brig, we can all stay safe until we sort this out.”

I blink, back in the present conversation.

“Son, did you hear me?” he asks. “Did you hear a word I just said?”

“No,” I confess without thinking. My eyes wander to Merrill and then to Aimee. They look the same, confused and concerned, as they should be. My eyes go to Mira. She’s blinking oddly, twisting with discomfort.

Xin’s voice smashes into my mind along with a flood of emotions. It’s her! He shouts. The daughter!

The surge of emotion squeezes my eyes shut. It’s just for a moment, but when I open them again, Mira has freed her handgun and leveled it at my chest. And when she pulls the trigger, I am too stunned to even react.

32

The striking mechanism inside Mira’s handgun springs forward, connecting with a bullet. The gunpowder ignites, propelling the round out of the gun faster than the speed of the shot’s explosive report. Despite the differences in speed, it all seems to happen in the same fraction of a second, though the moment is dragged out as though moving through tree sap.

Pain stabs my ears as the gunshot reaches them. Then again and again.

Three rounds fired in quick succession.

An impact, like being punched hard, strikes my chest.

The world spins. I see blue sky. The wet, muddy earth of the trampled quad slaps against my back as I topple over.

Air rushes out of my lungs as something heavy pushes down on me.

For a moment, I’m dazed, but then my mind clears, the pain fades and I know without looking that I am not severely injured.

What happened? I think, looking down.

The weight on top of me. It’s Xin!

“Xin!” I shout, “Are you—”

He lifts his head slowly and looks into my eyes.

She is a shifter, he thinks. Not your Mira.

I look around him and see Mira with her hands raised. Several guards are taking the weapon from her hands. Several more think they are keeping Kainda and Em in place. Kat is the only thing holding them back. Merrill and Aimee look horrified, and honestly, so does the General.

I am sorry, Solomon, Xin thinks. Though he’s not speaking audibly, he sounds different. Distant. Mira is dead. Shifters—

I know, I think. Shifters kill the people they duplicate. They are an elusive tribe of Nephilim that I only recently encountered after returning from Tartarus. From what I understand, they have only recently returned to Antarctica as they spent most of their time among humanity, in disguise, causing strife, instigating fear and causing wars. They were, and perhaps still are, the trickster gods—Loki, Hermes, Asmodeus, Puck and the like—sons of the most notorious demon, Lucifer. The Devil himself. It is they, not the warriors, who are regarded as the most dangerous of Nephilim. They simply lack the numbers or desires to lead. They’re all about deception, and they excel at it.

You must kill her, Xin thinks. Avenge me.

Avenge you?

I am lost, he thinks, pushing himself up a little.

I look down and see a golf ball sized hole in his chest. The bullet must have struck his back and exited through his chest, missing me entirely. Red blood drips from his chest to mine.

I will last a little while longer, but I will not survive. You must kill her before she realizes her assassination attempt has failed.

Xin... Brother...

Act now, Solomon! My death has always been inevitable. Show them why only you can lead!

His words and urgency fuel my brewing rage. I roll Xin onto his back as gently as I can. As I stand and face the doppelganger, Xin transmits a name into my thoughts. Amaguq. Countless encyclopedias worth of knowledge flits through my head. Amaguq. The Inuit trickster god. A massive wolf that killed hunters at night.

Not this hunter, I think, then call out the name. “Amaguq!”

Mira’s eyes lock on mine, confirming that she is not, in fact, Mirabelle Whitney.

Whipsnap cracks to life in my hand, making those around me jump back. Some of the soldiers point their weapons at me. “Put them down,” I growl.

“Don’t kill her,” Merrill says, stepping in front of me. “She’s my only daughter.”

“Mirabella...” Sadness threatens to dull my anger, but I remind myself that the creature responsible for all of this is pretending to be Mira. “Your daughter is dead.”

Merrill just looks confused. Mira appears to be alive and well.

“Amaguq,” I say, repeating the name, confident that he’ll understand.

“The Inuit trickster god, but what—” Merrill has seen the Nephilim. He knows that strange and otherworldly things have happened here. He might not remember me, but he remembers his encounters with the Nephilim—the giants who posed as gods to the ancients. “No...”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But this is not your daughter. You might not remember me. Or trust me. But you know your daughter. She tried to kill me, and instead killed my brother.” Merrill glances down at Xin, who now has a crying Luca kneeling by his side. Neither are speaking, but I’m sure they are saying goodbye in a more private way. Luca is Xin’s brother as much as I am. “Look at her, Merrill. That is not your girl.”

Merrill glances back at Mira, sees the hate seething in her eyes. When he turns back to me, tears have begun filling his eyes. Without another word, he steps aside. The message is clear to everyone.

“Merrill!” Aimee says. He holds her back, whispering urgently into her ear.

When I step toward Mira, who is being held by two soldiers, General Holloway blocks my path. “Son, I will not let you—”

When the air suddenly leaves his lungs, Holloway loses his voice and stumbles back. I didn’t make a move, but the soldiers surrounding us somehow know that I am to blame. Weapons turn in my direction. The only two soldiers not pointing weapons at me are the men holding Mira. Right now, they’re in the most danger. Again, without making a move other than to step closer to Mira, I command the wind. It drops down fast from above, directly over Mira’s head, sending the two soldiers sprawling away.

Half the men with guns turn their weapons on Mira now, believing her to be the source of the strange power that sent their comrades flying. It’s not accurate, but it’s a welcome shift in attention.

Mira hisses at them, and then at me.

The inhuman sound elicits a sad wail from Aimee. Merrill has no doubt told her the truth. The hiss confirmed it, but I know they’re about to get a much less subtle confirmation that this is not their daughter. I’ve seen the transformation from human form to Nephilim once before, when I killed the shifter known as Eshu. It is something I would like to forget, but it is also something I need to instigate now. If I kill it now, while it looks like Mira, I will appear to be the monster, but if it changes...if these men who have not yet seen the enemy, get a taste of what they are facing, and see how I handle it, they might very well recognize the need for my leadership.

“I killed your brother,” I taunt. “Eshu.”

Another hiss, a bit angrier than the last.

“He was weak,” I say. “Frail. He died pitifully. Begged for mercy.”

It doesn’t sound like much of an insult, but to a Nephilim, it is blasphemous.

Mira’s fingers stiffen into hooks. The beast inside wants to tear me apart. But first it must expose itself.

I point Whipsnap’s blade at its face. “You will beg, too.”

Mira turns her head skyward and screams, “Father! I will not bear these insults any longer!” She hooks her fingers into her open mouth.

And pulls.

A wet tearing sound makes me cringe. I know this is not Mira, but seeing her form tearing itself apart makes me feel ill.

The roar grows louder as Mira’s light brown skin tears in two. Two horns, each nearly a foot long, emerge from the forehead. Her body expands, as though pumped full of air from within, then the weak spots burst. Purple blood sprays in every direction, forming a circle around her body.

The mass of spectators who had not yet backed away, do so quickly now. As the monster grows, shedding its human skin and clothes, Em, Kainda and Adoni arrive at my side. All of them have their weapons ready.

“Same as last time,” Adoni says with his thick Australian accent. When I faced Eshu, I was not alone. It took the four of us to defeat him. But this fight is mine to face on my own.

“No,” I say. “I need to do this.”

“Sol,” Em says, “Eshu nearly—”

“I remember. But I need to do this for me.” I nod to the Clarks and then to all the soldiers watching. “For them. As their leader.”

“Be careful,” Em says.

“No,” Kainda grumbles. She looks me in the eyes and speaks with conviction. “Be merciless.”

An explosion of flesh pulls me back to the shifter. His ten-foot form is now fully exposed. Red skin and shiny scales cover his devil-like body. Double rows of sharp teeth gnash. The six fingers on each hand are hooked like talons, each sporting a sharp, one-inch long fingernail.

The soldiers, rightly terrified, open fire. Ten of them empty their magazines into the beast. Purple blood pours over the red body. Amaguq reels back, roaring in pain. But this is a Nephilim. The bullets piercing his skin and spilling his blood, delight him. Still, he is wounded and off balance.

I could end it. Right here. Right now. He wouldn’t be able to stop me.

But I don’t.

I wait.

They need to see. They need to understand. Hearing stories is one thing, seeing is believing.

“What the hell?” a man says behind me.

Wounds cover Amaguq’s body. The small dark holes oozing purple blood are easy to spot. But one by one, the wounds disappear.

“Get back!” I shout. “Everyone back!”

They listen. Even the General. And just like that, I’m in charge. At least for the moment.

Now all I need to do is survive this fight.

Amaguq rights himself, twists his neck from side to side, and roars at me.

I roar back. And charge.

33

Rage fuels my attack, and for a moment, I feel like Ull again. All of my cunning, intellect and yes, mercy, take a back seat. The problem with this is that Amaguq fights in the exact same way, but with one enormous advantage. He heals, fast. So it doesn’t really matter that I draw first blood, stabbing the bladed tip of Whipsnap into his shoulder and yanking it out, cutting muscle and flesh. The arm hangs limp for just a second, and as a result, I’ve left myself open for a counterattack.

The wind aids my leap away, responding to my instincts rather than any mental command. If it hadn’t, the fight would have been lost. Amaguq’s long fingernails would have eviscerated me, spilling my guts. Instead, the bone-like nails leave six horizontal scratches across my belly.

The sting should have sobered me up, but I’m still drunk with fury. This monster, this abomination, killed Mira—the girl who filled me with hope all those years in the underworld. For the longest time, the Polaroid photo I carried of her was all that kept me sane. And then she was here, returned to her mother. She even managed to kill Enki before falling unconscious into the lake where she was saved by Gloop.

Gloop.

If Mira was captured by Amaguq, it would have happened while Gloop and the seal pod were transporting her out to sea. I come to the conclusion that Gloop is also dead. How many friends and allies is that now? Six?

A roar builds from deep inside me and I lunge at Amaguq. I strike out several times with the blade tip, thrusting, swinging and spinning. The ceaseless flurry forces the shifter back, but he is in no danger. He stands ten feet tall. To kill him I must remove his head, which means I either need to get airborne or bring him to his knees. I’d prefer the latter—I don’t just want to kill him, I want to humiliate him—so I press the attack.

Purple blood flies as I hack away. Bones break as the mace, powered by the flexible staff, crushes Amaguq’s forearms again and again. But the beast never slows. Never tires. And has even begun to laugh.

“Pitiful thing,” he taunts. “If you mean to impress your flock, I believe you are failing.”

I glance to the side and see a terrified line of faces. They’re not just afraid of Amaguq’s horrible visage, they’re afraid I can’t win because no matter how much I hack away, he keeps on fighting. Worse, he’s making a show of how much he enjoys the pain.

Pointing this out was Amaguq’s first real mistake, because it returns some sanity to my mind. I’m not just fighting to avenge Mira, and Xin, I’m fighting to show these people that the Nephilim can be defeated. I had hoped to do it without using my powers, to reveal a man can kill the beast, but that’s not what they need.

They need inspiration.

I twist Whipsnap around, pointing the tip at Amaguq’s chest. We square off, circling each other.

“Any last words?” I ask.

He squints at me, perhaps confused by the confidence leaking into my voice.

“I will kill you,” he says.

“I am the vessel of Nephil,” I reply.

He sneers, understanding the message. He cannot kill me. The Nephilim need me alive.

“I am a son of Lucifer,” he growls back. “I do not answer to Ophion, or to any warrior.”

“You will answer to me,” I say, and make sure it’s loud enough for everyone to hear. I let a grin show.

A gust of wind strikes his back like a charging bull. He falls forward. The impact arches his back and flings his arms out to the sides. I don’t even have to move. The blade tip of Whipsnap stabs through his chest, tearing through breastplate, flesh and heart, if he has one. With a crunchy slurp, the blade emerges from his back, covered in purple gore.

I will need to clean Whipsnap’s staff where the blood runs over it before I can touch it again, but it doesn’t matter now. The fight is over, though Amaguq doesn’t quite realize it yet.

He laughs loudly, straightening himself. I see his fingers hook and the shimmer of his red, scaly skin as his biceps flex. He’s going to try grabbing me. If he succeeds, I’ll die quickly. But I don’t intend on giving him the chance. Without moving a muscle, I send a gust of wind in the opposite direction, slamming him away from me.

There’s a hard tug on my arms as the blade pulls free from his already healing body. But the wound is grave and he’s not so quick to recover. He sits up, clutching his chest. Purple blood flows from the wound, and from his mouth. For anyone else, it would have been a mortal wound. For Amaguq, it’s a speed bump, which is all I wanted.

He laughs again and I hear a moan of fright from some of the spectators.

Purple blood covers his double rows of sharpened teeth. It’s a sick grin. And I take pleasure in wiping it from his face.

“You should have got the wings,” I say.

The look on his face says, huh? but then understanding fills his eyes.

Amaguq is scooped from the earth by an invisible force. It happens so quickly, so violently, that many of his bones break. He’s launched skyward like a rocket, his scream fading into the distance. Inside of ten seconds, he’s just a speck.

That’s when I let him go.

The scream returns, growing louder as the ten foot, devil-like giant reaches terminal velocity.

As I watch him fall, I hear gasps, excited talking and even a few claps. But this won’t be the end of it, and I don’t intend it to be. Not quite yet.

The impact is horrible, disgusting in every way imaginable. The sound is a wet, dull thump combined with a crack loud enough to be a fireworks explosion. The impact shakes the ground. One of his arms flies free, separated at the shoulder joint. Fluids, purple and white, flow from the body. The head cracks open and for the first time, I get a glimpse of a Nephilim brain—it’s as black as I imagine their hearts to be.

The slowly rising cheer around me cuts off quickly when Amaguq moves.

He’s broken, but not yet dead.

“It’s alive!” someone shouts. It’s the voice of a young man, perhaps someone who has never seen battle before and is now faced with this. Amaguq’s body begins to reform, though very slowly. There isn’t a part of him that doesn’t need to heal. I’m not even sure he can think right now.

I could kill him. Take off his head right now and be done with it. But I have one more demonstration, and for Amaguq, it will be far worse than having his body reduced to sludge.

“He is alive,” I shout to the men and women surrounding us. “You have probably heard that your enemy, these Nephilim, are monstrous and impossible to kill. But now you have seen it for yourself. You have seen what your bullets can do against them.”

It’s not the most inspirational speech, I know, but it’s the truth and it is the only thing that will prepare these soldiers for what is coming.

“They delight in pain. They revel in death. After they have killed you, they will consume your flesh. And when they are done with you here, they will move out into the world like a plague, bringing terror and death to all of humanity.”

I turn slowly, looking as many of the soldiers in the eyes as I can. I find Em in the crowd. She looks unsure. I give her a wink that says, “I know what I’m doing,” and she’s put at ease, though just a little bit.

Are you still with me, brother?

I am here, Solomon, but time is short, Xin responds. Your method is intriguing.

Can you connect me with Kat? I ask.

It is done.

“All of this will come to pass,” I say aloud. “Unless you follow me.”

A wet gurgle of a laugh fills the air. Amaguq is recovering. I glance over my shoulder. He’s on one knee, struggling to stay upright, but healing faster now.

Kat walks toward me, responding to my request. Amaguq cannot see her, but our audience can. She slowly unwraps the bundle in her arms, which garners confused comments from the crowd.

“Turn,” Amaguq demands. “Face me at your end!”

Kat stops in front of me. I drop Whipsnap to the ground and take her delivery in my hands.

“Bold move, kid,” she whispers. “I like it.” She glances over my shoulder. “By the way, I think he’s going to kill you now.”

I feel the rumble of Amaguq’s footstep behind me. He’s just ten feet away. Two more steps and he’ll be close enough to kill me.

I let him take one more step before turning around.

The look in his eyes when he looks down at what I’m holding is priceless. The abject fear and horror that cuts into his face is so pure that every man and woman watching will recognize the expression.

The unkillable monster is terrified.

I put the Jericho shofar to my lips, and I blow. Hard.

The sound that comes out is both deep and high pitched—not exactly pleasant on the ears, but Amaguq reacts to it like he’s just been doused with acid. He falls to the ground flailing, thrashing and spitting. He screams in agony—real agony. All of the pleasure is gone from his voice, replaced by unadulterated pain. And torture.

The soldiers watching don’t know what’s happening, but I do. Amaguq’s heart is softening, perhaps breaking, as he is made to understand the darkness of his kind. The weight of all the evil, corruption and death that he has spawned over the past few thousand years is landing square on his shoulders. An impossible weight to bear.

When I end the horn blast, the words that come from his mouth bring a smile to my face.

“Please stop!” the monster wails. “Please! I’m sorry!” His words descend into a blubbering mess of desperate pleading and sorrow. I hand the shofar back to Kat, who carefully wraps it again. Turning back to Amaguq, I crouch and pick up Whipsnap.

Amaguq sees the weapon in my hand, and then begs me, “Kill me, please! I don’t want to live anymore.”

I step closer. “You will cease to exist.”

“Please, kill me!”

Even I am surprised by the shofar’s effect. I expected something less, maybe a painful distraction. But not in my wildest dreams did I think the Nephilim would drop to the ground, bow their heads and beg for death. The effect will wear off, I know, but the result is far more powerful than I expected, which is also a testament to Nephil’s power. The horn hurt him, but it did not do this.

I grip Whipsnap well below the poisonous purple blood coating the bladed end. I step closer, intending to grant the beast’s request.

Wait.

It’s Xin.

Why? I ask.

Place your hand upon his head. In his weakened state, we will have full access to his mind.

Quickly understanding the benefit of this, I stand above the bowed form of Amaguq and place my hand on his forehead. I feel the force of Xin’s will move through my body and into Amaguq’s mind, then I’m tugged along for the ride, entering the consciousness of a Nephilim.

34

At first, there is nothing but darkness and chaos, a tumultuous descent full of raw feelings. A heavy sense of agonizing regret blankets me and then fades as the darkness resolves. Flashes of reality, experienced through Amaguq’s body, appear, moving backwards through time.

I see myself, consumed by anger, slashing with Whipsnap, and for a moment, I feel the delight that pain brings. Then we’re back, smaller now, inside the form of Mira. Images of Merrill and Aimee flit past. The General. Soldiers. Cruz. All expressing concerns and fears. The sounds of their words amuse Amaguq. Back further, on a ship, looking up at the sky. Nephilim warriors fly above, an army heading out to sea. Merrill looks up at them and speaks, “Your will be done,” praying to the God who has clearly abandoned mankind. It’s all Amaguq can do not to laugh.

Back again.

Amaguq feigns weakness while Merrill holds Mira in his arms, reunited with the daughter he believed dead.

Back again. Riding on the back of a seal. I recognize it right away as Gloop. The rest of the pod follows. He controls them with pain, twisting his fingers beneath Gloop’s flesh. But the seal lives. I know that now. After being delivered to the ship, he couldn’t then kill the seals, and why bother? They’re just animals after all.

The next flash fills my body with an uncommon chill. Darkness envelopes our view, and then resolves. I sense the scene is about to pass and think, wait!

Our reverse trip through time via Amaguq’s memories stops and plays forward.

What is it? Xin asks.

I saw her.

Who?

Mira.

We are still in her form, Solomon. You do not want to see her like—

There!

The image of Mira comes clear. Amaguq walks to her and crouches down. Her clothing has been shredded. Dirt and filth coat her body, darkening her blond hair, which is tied back. Her eyes are closed and fresh blood covers one side of her face.

Amaguq traces his finger through the blood on her face and brings it to his mouth, licking it with his tongue. I can taste Mira’s blood in his mouth, experiencing all of his senses. He chuckles, stands and turns to leave.

Were we not inside a Nephilim’s mind I would have smiled. Did you see it?

I saw nothing I would like to see again before my own life fades, Xin replies.

His eyes saw, but his mind wasn’t paying attention, I think. Watch.

The scene replays. I taste her blood. Amaguq stands, turns and...

Her eyes, Xin thinks. They opened.

It’s hard to see. Just a quick flutter. But the motion is combined with a rising in her chest.

She’s alive, I think.

With a flash of light, I am back in the real world.

He has repelled us! Xin shouts in my mind. The effect is wearing off. Quickly!

I blink twice, focusing my eyes, and see the guilt plaguing Amaguq fade. Without a shout of warning or final words, I bring Whipsnap up and swing the blade down as hard as I can. There’s a sound, like shucking corn on the cob, and Amaguq’s head falls free. His body collapses. A pool of violet forms around his torso.

I step back from the beast, breathing hard, and doing my best not to show the toll this battle and the trip through a Nephilim mind has taken on me. When it is clear that Amaguq will not be returning to this world, the soldiers clap and cheer, their relief flooding over me.

As I step away from the body, General Holloway approaches me. He looks like he’s about to give me some kind of speech, but the words seem to come and go several times before he simply extends his hand.

I take Holloway’s hand and shake.

“Welcome aboard, son,” he says. “We’ll follow your lead, but the orders to my men go through me.”

“Understood,” I say, glad to finally have an army, small as it is, to direct.

As others come to congratulate my victory, Xin’s voice reaches me, though barely. Brother...

He’s dying.

“Xin!” I shout, turning to where I last saw him and breaking into a sprint. I reach him quickly and drop down to my knees beside Luca, who never left his side. When I say his name again, tears are pouring down my face, damn what these men and women think of me now.

Brothers, Xin thinks, speaking to Luca and me simultaneously. Before I knew you, my heart was as dark as Amaguq’s. Together, you granted me forgiveness and a taste of innocence. I carry the burden of what I have done to the next life, if such a thing waits for me, but you have given me the strength to find peace.

I can sense Luca’s overwhelming sadness. It’s a pretty fair match to my own.

Xin’s body quakes. The motion elicits a sob from Luca. Em arrives behind the boy, putting her hand on his shoulder.

Xin reaches up, placing his hand on the back of Luca’s neck, pulling him closer. Before my life ends, he thinks, a gift. For each of you.

Luca’s forehead touches against Xin’s and I’m suddenly separated from the two. Luca’s eyes flutter for just a moment. Then he gasps and sits up.

Xin turns to me. Now you.

I lean down and place my head to Xin’s. His words fill my mind.

This is the last time I will speak to you in life, brother. You have become the man I wish I could have been and I believe, with all that remains of me, that you will destroy the monster Nephil and all who follow him.

Though I am in my mind with Xin, I can feel the warmth of my tears on my face, the shake of my trembling muscles as I hold myself over him, and the tightness in my throat that would keep me from speaking if we were using our mouths to talk.

You taught me how to love, brother. And that is a gift I can’t possibly pay back, but I will try. Next time you speak to the Clarks remember something they have told you. Goodbye, Solomon.

Goodbye, Xi—

A wave of energy fills my head. I clench my eyes shut, afraid they will burst. The pressure builds. It moves deeper into my mind, spreading, seeping into every fold. And then, it stops.

And Xin, my brother, is gone.

I open my eyes and look at his body. His chest rises and falls, but more slowly with each breath. Just seconds remain. As I look at him, I remember his words about his burden. About the world to come, if such a thing waits for me. I feel the fear in those words. He is part Nephilim. Does he have a soul? Or will he simply cease to exist?

I don’t know the answer, but there might be a way to be sure.

I stand quickly and shout, “Kat!”

She appears by my side still clutching the rewrapped shofar, as I knew she would. “Give it to me!”

Xin’s chest falls and for a moment, I fear it will not rise again.

I feel the shofar in my hands and turn it to face Xin.

His chest rises. It’s a shallow breath, but it is enough.

The horn sounds loudly, its blast pouring over Xin’s body. He doesn’t writhe, shriek or react in a way that a Nephilim might. Instead, he changes. The scales covering his body rise up, like flower petals and blow away in the breeze. A soft skin is revealed, human skin. The shape of his body changes, shortening and bulking. His head grows smaller, taking on a more human shape, though he remains as bald as ever. His serpentine, yellow eyes, which are staring up at the empty sky, shrink. The pupils turn circular. The color becomes blue. The transformation completes just as I run out of breath.

The horn blast fades.

A gentle smile forms on his human lips.

His chest falls as his last breath escapes his now fully human body.

Xin is dead.

In the distance, three hundred cresties roar sorrowfully, lamenting the passing of the man who led them, a mantle that now passes to me.

I hand the shofar back to Kat, who carefully wraps it. Kainda appears by my side. “I’m sorry,” she says and then glances down at Xin’s body and gasps. “He’s...”

“Me,” I say. The transformation removed all about Xin that was Nephilim and changed him to all that remained. He is a hairless, but otherwise perfect copy of me. “This is who he always was.”

Someone, I’m not sure who, hands me a blanket and I use it to cover his body. When I’m done, I feel a gentle touch on my shoulder. It’s Luca. I turn to him and hold the little version of myself tightly. I know how big I felt things as a kid. I’m kind of a mess now, and I’m supposedly hardened. I can’t imagine how hard this is for him. But then he surprises me.

What did he give you?

The little boy’s voice is in my head.

A laugh escapes my mouth and I pull away, looking Luca in the eyes. He’s smiling through his tears.

I don’t know, I reply. In fact, all I do know is that my head feels very full, almost like a sinus infection, and I’ve got a constant dull pain just behind my eyes. It might just be from the intense emotions and crying, but if Xin did something to my mind, I have no idea what it is. I certainly can’t read people’s thoughts.

Xin is given a burial within the hour, complete with a chaplain, a prayer and a three-volley salute. It’s especially moving given the fact that most of these men and women, including Em and Kainda, either feared or did not trust Xin. In the end, he proved to be the best of us, willing to give his life for mine, and ultimately, for theirs.

When it is done, I’m approached by Merrill, Aimee, General Holloway, Kainda, Em and Kat.

The General takes the lead, stopping in front of me. “I’m sorry for your loss, son, and for our...behavior toward him. Toward you. But from what I understand, we might see some action within the next few weeks and I would like to prepare for it.”

I nod, but say nothing.

“What would you have us do?” he asks.

I look at the familiar faces around me and stop at Merrill. He’s watching me. On my side, but he doesn’t know me. Xin’s strange request regarding the Clarks returns to my mind. Remember something they have told you.

“Merrill,” I say. He steps forward and I extend my hand, recalling all the conversations I had with Merrill before being kidnapped by Ninnis.

He looks unsure, but he takes it and says, “I’m sorry for your confusion and I hope we can move past—”

“We weren’t put on this Earth to be stagnant,” I say.

For a moment, he just looks confused, but then a surge of energy flows from my head, across my arm and into his. He gasps as though rising from deep water. His eyes settle back on me a moment later, and widen. He looks me up and down.

“Solomon!” A smile appears on his face, but I only see it for a moment because then he’s got me in his arms, crushing me with love. I can feel the sobs wracking his chest. His memories have been restored.

“Merrill?” It’s Aimee. She sounds confused. He lets me go and turns to her. “It’s Solomon! He’s alive!” He seems to realize what has happened and turns to me. “She doesn’t remember yet.”

“Merrill, what are you—”

I step up to Aimee. This one is easy. “You are a precious boy.” I kiss her forehead. The same surge of energy courses through my lips to her head, and I don’t even get a chance to step back and see the change in her eyes before her arms are around me. She hugs and weeps and rubs my back like only a mother can. When she finally separates and looks in my eyes, she says, “You are a precious boy.”

With a gasp, I remember the news I have for the Clarks, which is also the answer to Holloway’s question.

“She’s alive,” I say to Aimee, and then turn to Merrill. “Mira is alive.”

“But, the shifter,” Em says.

“Didn’t kill her,” I say. “Xin and I saw it. In his memories. She’s alive.”

Holloway speaks up. “If you’re right, we can send a squad to—”

“No,” I say. “I’ll go.”

“Son,” Holloway says, growing angry. “You have just proven your worth to my men, and me. You have also instilled in us the firm belief that we cannot win this war without you. If you leave now—”

“General, please,” Aimee says. She might understand the logic of Holloway’s words, as do I, but as a mother, Mira comes first. As she does for me, as well.

“I will not leave her,” I say. “How many people have died because of me? Xin. Hades. Cerberus. Wright. How may more whose names I don’t even know? I will not lose someone else—”

“Solomon,” Kat says, stepping up next to me. She looks angry. “My husband died so that we could live to finish this fight, and I will not let you invoke his name in defense of running off to save a single girl. Your place is here now. You need to focus.”

On the surface, I agree with Kat. There is a lot at stake, so why am I so intent on rescuing Mira? Is it for the Clarks? My promise that they would be reunited? Is it selfish? Or nostalgia. Some kind of need to see the girl in the photo again? I find the answer in Kat’s words.

Focus.

You have found your passion, your focus and your faith. The Kerubim’s words replay perfectly in my mind. But you lack the hope that binds these things together. You will not be strong enough to defeat Ophion until you find it.

I look at Kat.

Focus.

Then at Kainda.

Passion.

And finally, Em.

Faith.

“Hope is a person,” I say. “You remember what Adoel said.” I point at each of them, identifying them one at a time. “Focus. Passion. Faith. Mira...is hope. The Kerubim said I would not be strong enough without her.”

I’m shocked by who replies first and what she says. Kainda steps forward. “I’m coming with you.”

I can see that Em is also about to volunteer, but I stop her. “You and Kat stay here. Prepare them. Protect the shofar. Use it if you have to. Kainda and I will travel fast.”

We back away toward the exit.

“Thank you,” Aimee says.

Merrill holds her shoulders and says, “Godspeed, Solomon.”

“We will return as fast as we can, General,” I say. “I know it’s hard to understand, but if I’ve learned anything over the past years, it’s that one person can change the outcome of a battle, or the course of history.”

Kainda and I hurry for the gate, where Grumpy and Zok wait for us, as though summoned. I don’t understand why or how, but I’ve learned not to question everything.

Before leaving, I turn back to the group and say, “Don’t be afraid. Hope still lives. I’m going to bring her back.”

Epilogue

Lieutenant Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis remembered.

Everything.

His long life as a hunter, every detail of it, still resided in his mind. All of the skills learned and knowledge attained, were still a part of him. But the burning hatred that consumed his being, especially for the boy, Solomon, had been dulled.

More than dulled, it had been beaten down. Crushed. By a new anger, one shared by the boy himself. Their lives—what they could have been—had been stolen.

Ninnis remembered taking Solomon. Remembered breaking him. Training him. Even feeling some sense of pride in all of it. But now he knew how the boy viewed those events. Exactly how the boy felt, because Ninnis now recalled his own breaking.

It took nearly a year. Endless days spent in the dark. Fighting off feeders. Eating their flesh. Tending his wounds. Slowly losing himself and the memories of the woman he adored. Solomon was just a boy. Ninnis had been a man. A soldier. And when he broke, it was a violent thing that filled his heart to overflowing with rabid hatred.

He killed the hunter who broke him first. Many more followed.

He remembered them all, too. Their faces. Their own hatred. The smell of their blood in his nose and the look in their eyes as life faded away. All that time, Ninnis never fully realized why he enjoyed killing so much, or why he always stayed to watch their lives slip away.

But he knew now.

He envied them. Their freedom. And he hated them all the more for it.

He also knew, as Solomon did, that these things were not him. Not really. Lieutenant Ninnis, the soldier, had never killed a person. He put his training to use by exploring the world. He kept a sketchbook with him wherever he went, drawing landscapes and technical drawings of animals and plants he’d never seen before. He scribbled notes about what he saw and penned letters to his wife. His Caroline. That was the real Ninnis.

The man who had returned, though far too late.

He hid within his own mind, a fragment of consciousness surrounded by a turbid blackness that now sought him out.

When Solomon blew the shofar, Ninnis, who’d watched the events as though from afar, was thrust back into his mind and body, fully and completely. It was a gift, and he thanked the boy for it, but Nephil now knew Ninnis was not gone. And if he could not hide, the monster would destroy him.

Were he still a hunter, Ninnis would have charged toward his fate, never knowing that he secretly longed for the release of death, or in this case, banishment from his own body. But now that he remembered himself, and the good person he once was, Ninnis wanted to fight.

Ninnis, the voice echoed in his thoughts, filling his mind, seeking him out. I am close, Ninnis.

And for once, the dark lord Nephil, the ancient Ophion, was not lying. Ninnis could feel the cold closing in around his consciousness.

Ninnis.

A whisper this time. Not Ophion.

Despite having no body, he saw a bloom of light, distant at first, but then growing closer. He felt warmth.

Ninnis, the voice beckoned.

He moved toward the light, drawn by its warmth and repelled by the cold blackness at his back.

But was this a trick? Who are you?

A shape began to form in the light. A figure.

A woman.

Ninnis, the voice said again, and this time he recognized it.

Caroline!

As she came fully into view, revealing the face of the woman he loved, married and lost, she spoke again. Your time has not yet come, husband.

I can feel you, Ninnis! Nephil shouted.

As his emotions swelled, he sensed the darkness closing in, tracking him down.

Ninnis fled the darkness and into the arms of his wife. He clung to her and she to him, their embrace impossible to sever. Ninnis felt a flood of love, forgiveness and mercy, qualities that, since the time of his own breaking, he’d experienced from only one source: Solomon.

With the boy’s image locked in his thoughts, pressure consumed Ninnis’s formless mind, pressing him into the arms of his wife, merging them together until nothing, but light, remained.

Older Kindle model? Click here for estore!

JEREMY ROBINSON is the author of numerous novels including PULSE, INSTINCT, and THRESHOLD the first three books in his exciting Jack Sigler series, which is also the focus of and expanding series of co-authored novellas deemed the Chesspocalypse. Robinson also known as the #1 Amazon.com horror writer, Jeremy Bishop, author of THE SENTINEL and the controversial novel, TORMENT. His novels have been translated into ten languages. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and three children.

Visit him on the web, here: www.jeremyrobinsononline.com

—SAMPLE—

ANTARKTOS RISING by Jeremy Robinson

Available on Kindle for $2.99. Click here to buy!

DESCRIPTION:

THE WORLD RACES TO CLAIM A NEW CONTINENT

A phenomenon known as crustal displacement shifts the Earth’s crust, repositioning continents and causing countless deaths. In the wake of the global catastrophe, the world struggles to take care of its displaced billions. But Antarctica, freshly thawed and blooming, has emerged as a new hope. Rather than wage a world war no nation can endure, the leading nations devise a competition, a race to the center of Antarctica, with the three victors dividing the continent.

It is within this race that Mirabelle Whitney, one of the few surviving experts on the continent, grouped with an American special forces unit, finds herself. But the dangers awaiting the team are far worse than feared; beyond the sour history of a torn family, beyond the nefarious intentions of their human enemies, beyond the ancient creatures reborn through anhydrobiosis—there are the Nephilim.

...ONLY TO FIND IT ALREADY TAKEN.

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.”
– Genesis 6:4

EXCERPT:

CHAPTER 1

Angutagrew more terrified as each paddle stroke carried his bone-and-sealskin kayak across the unusually placid Arctic Ocean and closer to the whale. His knotted muscles shuddered in spasms, not from the cold but from the realization that his lifelong goal might finally come to fruition. At age fifty-seven, the idea of single-handedly killing a sixty-foot humpback and towing its carcass back to the village seemed a ridiculous task. And while this rite of passage had been a long time coming, his aging body didn’t feel up to the job.

Grasping a bone-tipped spear in his gloved hand, Anguta did his best to ignore the throb of arthritis attacking his knuckles and waited . . . patiently . . . for the leviathan to return to the surface. Three days of tracking and sustaining himself on cured salmon had taken him this far. If he didn’t take the beast this year, he would return to the arctic waters off the coast of Alaska to try again—and he refused to consider that option. This was the year. He knew it.

“Come to me, whale,” Anguta mumbled through his thickly scarfed mouth. “Come to me and I will honor you with a quick death.” Anguta knew the death would only be quick if he were lucky enough to pierce the whale’s eye and penetrate its brain on the first blow. Otherwise, his first strike would tether his kayak to the whale’s body and a day-long struggle between man and beast would begin. The tradition belonged to his tribe alone, and Anguta was the only man who had yet to achieve the task. He had tried every year since he was nineteen.

Anguta cursed himself for finding the largest humpback in the entire ocean. He had hoped to find a young calf, newly weaned from its protective mother, but instead he had encountered a large bull, perhaps close in age to Anguta himself.

The old man’s only consolation was that he was not cold. After years of fruitless arctic hunting trips, he had learned that technology could be useful. His outer layers were traditional Inuit—furs of caribou, bear, and seal hide. This covered him from head to toe, leaving only his eyes exposed. Underneath the furs was a combination of moisture-wicking fabrics and a military-grade thermal bodysuit. His eyes were sealed behind a face mask that not only warmed his skin, but by virtue of its tinted surface also dulled the harsh glow of bright sun on white ice.

Anguta let his eyes wander across the mirrored water which perfectly reflected the cloud-specked sky. He looked for any distortion that would reveal the presence of a rising whale, but saw only sky. His thoughts drifted with the clouds. He pictured his wife, Elizabeth, a French Canadian originally out of Quebec, feeding the dog team. Their marriage had been extremely unconventional at the time but was more common these days. Though shunned at first for his choice of wife, Anguta and Elizabeth’s marriage had produced five children and seven grandchildren, all of whom he now missed greatly and wished were there beside him, hunting the whale. His marriage and half-breed children had already broken so many of his people’s customs. Why not one more?

CHAPTER 2

Looking down at the canteen in his hand, Dmitriy Rostov wished that it was full of vodka instead of water. But his lust for the clean spirit’s warmth on his tongue lasted only a moment, a much shorter duration than it had only a year ago. Dmitriy, at the age of thirty-seven, had learned he was an alcoholic, a plague that claimed 45 percent of his Russian compatriots. It was said that two-thirds of Russian men die with a bottle in their hands, a fate Dmitriy had resigned himself to . . .

“Dima, come see this.”

. . . until he’d met her.

Viktoriya Petrova.

“Coming, Vika,” Dmitriy called as he picked his way across the stone-strewn shoreline of Vadim Bay. The bay was part of the Kara Sea, a remote region off the northern coast of Siberia which could only be navigated during mid-summer. The bay was a large U-shaped inlet with cliff walls on either side. Behind the rocky shore grew a forest of strong pines that creaked and swayed in the salty sea breeze.

Rounding a boulder, Dmitriy came face-to-face with Viktoriya; it was the closest their faces had ever come to touching, though still not quite close enough for Dmitriy. She was bundled in a red parka and thick snow pants. Even in the summer, the temperature at Vadim Bay, located hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, was cold enough to chap the skin.

Surprised by Dmitriy’s sudden appearance, Viktoriya stumbled back and tripped over a loose rock. She yelped as she plummeted down.

“Vika!” Dmitriy’s strong and steady hand had sprung out before he could think about what to do and snagged the arm of her parka. Her descent stopped. Dmitriy thanked God he was sober. A year ago, she would have fallen to the rocks and he would have laughed drunkenly. He realized now that he would never have come this far without her encouragement. He had been headed for a very early retirement from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, but when Viktoriya had been assigned as his new partner, she had seen something worth saving in him. She had an iron will and whipped him into shape; when the reviews came in, his report showed a marked productivity increase. Now only ten days away from his fortieth birthday, he was a new man. His job was saved.

No. More than his job. He not only began to care for himself while on the job but also at home. Showering daily, brushing his teeth, wearing deodorant—all the good habits that Dmitriy had abandoned during his days as a drunk returned. The pale, oily-skinned, puffy-faced waste of a man had, underViktoriya’s influence, changed to the core. He’d shed pounds, smelled clean, and when he finally began shaving again, displayed the handsome face of which his mother had once been so proud. It wasn’t that Viktoriya had changed his mind—she’d infected his heart. Like his person, he kept his apartment neat and nicely decorated. Just in case she came to visit. Just in case the day came that he would tell her everything he felt. He’d always imagined being at home, in the city, on that day. But here, alone, in the wild, he felt brave. Today would be the day.

He pulled her up until her cushioned body rested against his. They were closer still than ever before—close enough for Dmitriy to smell the subtle fragrance of her perfume. Rose.

“Vika, are you all right? I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Fine. I’m fine.” Viktoriya looked into his eyes and paused for a moment. Unspoken words flashed between them, stripped away his bravery, and transformed his mind into that of a nervous fourteen-year-old boy on his first date.

CHAPTER 3

From her perch high above the city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Mirabelle Whitney could see that the trip into town for an ice cream wouldn’t be worth it. Not for another few hours, anyway. Her royal red, nineteenth-century Victorian house sat atop Prospect Hill, the tallest hill in the seacoast region at two hundred feet. From her second-floor bedroom deck, she had clear views of downtown Portsmouth and the ocean beyond. To her left, she could see Kittery, Maine, across the Piscataqua River, and to her right she could see the thick tree lines of Greenland and Rye.

This was the view that kept her anchored. There wasn’t a single time of the year when the scenery dulled. Her eyes lingered on the downtown again. The congestion that clogged the streets and spilled onto routes 95, 1, and 16 was due to the combination of summertime revelers and rush hour traffic.

Tonight, she thought. I’ll get ice cream tonight.

Whitney stretched her lean body, allowing her midriff to peek out from between her white tank top and khaki shorts, absorbing every ounce of warmth she could. She wasn’t a huge fan of the moist New England summers, but she knew warm summer air would soon be a thing of the past.

Sweet ocean air passed through her nostrils as she breathed deeply, took half of her long blond hair, and rolled it into a bun on the side of her head. A quick jab with a decorative chopstick she’d saved from a trip to Tokyo held the bun in place. As she rolled up the other side, a frigid breeze tickled the hairs on her forearms. She shivered.

Ocean breeze is cold today, she thought.

After finishing the second bun, she looked at her reflection in the window glass. She looked like an anime version of Princess Leia . . . a dark-skinned, nappy-blond-haired version. Whitney smiled. For the first time in a long time, she thought she looked good. Maybe it was the reflection of Portsmouth and the ocean in the background that caused her to cast a fairer gaze at herself. She wasn’t sure. But her brown skin and darker brown eyes hadn’t looked this vibrant in a year.

Whitney knew that while her outward appearances were improving, her heart was still healing. No amount of exercise or sleep could erase the torment she had endured the past year.

Cindy Bekoff, her friend and psychologist, believed Whitney’s upcoming trip to Antarctica was an excuse to flee from the pain. “There aren’t many places on earth more remote,” she had said. “You need to deal with your pain before moving on.”

What Whitney hadn’t, and wouldn’t, tell her, was that it was where he was . . . it was where he had been hiding all this time. She wasn’t running from pain; she was accelerating straight toward it.

The wind reversed direction, flowing up and over the red Victorian home’s shingled roof and heading for the ocean. As the gust spilled across Whitney’s body, she took note of its sudden warmth. The temperature shift struck her as odd—a cold front and heat wave battling for supremacy. New England was known for its drastic weather changes, but this variation in temperature during a mid-summer day seemed downright freakish.

CHAPTER 4

Longing for home and family, Anguta failed to notice the first ripples in the water’s surface. Something was rising. Bubbles expressed from the emerging creature churned the surface and snapped Anguta’s attention back to the task at hand. Raising the spear over his head, Anguta waited for the right time to strike.

The water parted to expose the dark gray flesh of the humpback’s hide. Still Anguta waited. An early strike might connect with the beast’s tail, causing the man to be thrashed about with every pulse of its mighty fluke. As the whale’s head breached the surface, Anguta focused, waiting for the moment when the whale would exhale a spray of mist and expose its eyes.

Anguta felt his heart stop when he made eye contact with the whale, but there was no exhalation from its blowhole to trigger his throwing arm. He stood solidly, gripping his spear, muscles taut, but did not throw. He stared into the eye of the creature, which appeared to be blinded by cataracts. With a heavy heart, he realized that he and the whale weren’t so dissimilar. They’d sired families. Traveled the Arctic. Fought the elements. And they’d grown old. Then he remembered their crucial difference. He was a hunter. Years of failed hunts flashed through Anguta’s mind, and all the mercy he felt for the blind whale evaporated quickly as the spear sailed from his hand.

As soon as he released his hold on the spear, he knew his aim was true; it was a killer shot into the humpback’s eye. The tow line unfurled at Anguta’s feet as the spear covered the twenty-foot distance to the whale. The tip of the spear struck home, dead center in the whited eyeball—and glanced off.

The sound and physical reaction of the spear would have been no different if Anguta had flung it at a stone.

He followed the ricocheted spear with his eyes in disbelief at what had happened and annoyance that he’d have to retrieve the spear. But when the weapon struck the ocean, it bounced again. The surface was frozen.

There’s no ice here, Anguta thought. Perhaps an iceberg?

The old man scanned the world around him. It was white and frozen. His eyes turned back to the whale. Its skin sparkled with frost—it was frozen solid. It was only then that he noticed the biting cold nibbling at his skin. He had never felt such a degree of cold through his arctic gear. The sensation was similar to rolling stark naked in the snow.

As his muscles involuntarily twitched, working to warm his body temperature, he tried to get his bearings. He had to find shelter. But as he searched the newly frozen ocean for a glimmer of hope, his goggles fogged and he became as blind as the now-petrified whale.

Frustrated and panicked, Anguta removed his goggles and immediately regretted the decision. His eyeballs froze. A jolt of savage pain threw Anguta off his feet and ripped through his body. Images sailed through his mind: Elizabeth, the kids, their little ones . . . would this cold front reach them as well?

Anguta’s body hit the kayak with a thud, solid as stone.

CHAPTER 5

Dmitriy stared, willing his mouth to form words to express his love, but he remained silent. He swallowed audibly and felt a sick feeling in his stomach. He glanced to the side, avoiding her penetrating eyes as his silent embarrassment grew, and noticed she was holding her Geiger counter. He remembered why they were there and wondered if she had found something important. He didn’t really care at the moment, but it gave him something to say. “You wanted to show me something?”

She seemed startled by the question. “I, uh . . . ” She noticed Dmitriy’s eyes on the Geiger counter. “Oh, yes, I . . . Look at this.”

Viktoriya pulled herself away from Dmitriy’s arms and stepped out toward the waterline where small, frigid waves lapped against the shore. She stopped and held out the Geiger counter. Sweeping left to right, the counter clicked slowly at first, then rapidly, then slowly again. She repeated the sweep two more times.

Dmitriy stood next to her and studied the shoreline beneath her feet. It looked as harmless as the rest of the beach, but he suspected something was buried there. He looked at the Geiger counter’s gauge as she swept it over again. The radiation levels read slightly above normal, but not high enough to kill them.Enough to shorten their lives by a few hours, perhaps, but otherwise safe.

They had been sent to the faraway place to investigate mishandling of environmental pollutants during the Cold War. Siberia, at that time, had been used primarily for dumping toxic waste and exiled criminals. Now, after all these years, it was finally being recognized as a natural wonder. But severe damage had been done, and Dmitriy believed they were about to uncover more evidence of his country’s environmental neglect.

He bent down and scraped several small stones aside. As he set his eyes on a larger stone, he felt sweat gather on his forehead. He was hot. He wrote it off as exertion—he still wasn’t in very good shape— picked up the large stone, and tossed it to the side. Beneath it were more stones. This was going to take a while.

“Dima?”

Dmitriy turned and saw Viktoriya removing her parka.

“Are you hot?” she asked.

“Da, but I think I haven’t worked this hard in . . .” He noticed she was sweating, too.

Something was wrong. The temperature had risen. Removing his parka, Dmitriy let the heat soak in as he attempted to remember a time in his life when, if ever, he’d felt the air so hot. He couldn’t. The temperature seemed to be rising exponentially.

“Dima . . . the radiation?”

Dmitriy looked into Vika’s eyes and recognized fear. Had the radiation sprung a leak when he removed the stones? Were they being poisoned? He took the Geiger counter from her hand and swept the area. He shook his head. “No, something else.”

Still the heat rose.

His throat began to sting. He took a swig of water and offered the canteen to Viktoriya. She gulped it greedily.

The trees behind them groaned as they bent under a burst of pummeling wind. The wind was dry and hot, like bending over an open oven. Dmitriy blinked his eyes as the moisture was wicked from them. Something was very wrong.

“We have to leave!” he said. He glanced up the shoreline where they had landed the helicopter, a football field away. “Get to the helicopter!”

He took Vika’s hand and helped her across the loose rocks. The rising heat made his heart beat wildly in his chest, urged him to sprint at full speed. But he couldn’t leave Vika behind. She had saved his life. She was his life. He would not let her die now.

Viktoriya slipped on a stone and fell forward, but Dima was there to catch her. He swept her into his arms and stumbled toward the copter.

The heat continued to rise. Dmitriy struggled to keep his eyes open. The heat was so intense that it felt as though his eyes were peeled grapes. He looked at Viktoriya. Her eyes were clenched shut.

They were halfway to the copter now, and Dmitriy was wheezing. His body was dry. Every bead of sweat that his body produced evaporated. A loud crack drew his eyes back to the forest. He saw a tree falling to the ground, pushed over by the punishing winds, but what shocked him was the state of the trees. The needles, moments ago vibrant green, were now tinged brown, dried out. Dead.

A rising cloak of darkness, like an evil apparition, caught Dmitriy’s attention as it plumed into the sky above the forest. It assaulted his nose first: acrid smoke laced with sulfur. The trees were burning, and while he couldn’t see it, he suspected a volcano had erupted. The blackness poured out from the tree line and rolled over the beach. Dmitriy found it impossible to breathe.

He struck out for the helicopter again, Viktoriya now a dead weight in his arms. He glanced down to check her condition, but found his eyes blinded by the heat and smoke. A jagged boulder caught his shin and he fell forward, dropping Viktoriya and landing on top of her.

The intensity of the heat blistered Dmitriy’s skin. His scream was cut short from lack of breath. Through parched eyes, he looked back at the forest in time to see the trees explode into flame. Their heat washed over his body, blinding, searing, and suffocating. He hoped that Vika might survive the inferno protected by his body, but he sensed that she had already passed. So close, he thought. So close.

With a seismic boom, the gas tank of the helicopter exploded. It was the last thing Dmitriy heard before his parched body burst into flame.

CHAPTER 6

Mirabelle Whitney glanced past her shoulder and out at the town. Everything looked normal. Traffic was still congested. The red brick buildings still glowed in the sun. But something was off. She leaned out her bedroom window to look further.

Strawberry Banke was a well-maintained park, complete with historic buildings and a flower garden. It was often used for functions during the summer months: clambakes, lobster fests, and chili cook-offs. Whitney searched the sea of people for a sign of today’s event. She found the answer in the gleaming white glow of a veil caught by the seaward wind: a wedding.

Whitney looked away quickly, avoiding her own memories, and moved her eyes out to sea.

What she saw next made her forget the pain from the emotional scab that had just been picked open. The ocean seemed more distant. In its place was a very long beach where there had been no beach before. This was a port town. If you wanted a beach, she thought, you go south to Hampton or north to Ogunquit. Not to Portsmouth.

Whitney noticed the wedding party and park patrons clambering onto the docks along the river. They saw it, too. She followed the waterline up the Piscataqua River and saw that its shores had shrunk inward. The water that remained was quickly rushing out to sea.

When she looked back, all that was left of the coastline was a small river flowing out of the Piscataqua and a sliver of blue, far on the horizon. The ocean was gone. All that remained was a sandy expanse speckled with grounded boats and flickering reflections of light that Mirabelle realized were struggling fish drowning in the open air.

As the hordes of vacationers began running in droves, fleeing Strawberry Banke and flooding into the downtown streets, Whitney realized what must be happening.

Tsunami.

Remembering a lesson learned from the killer waves that had recently struck Indonesia, India, and so many other countries, people headed for high ground. Whitney watched as rooftops began to fill with people in a panic. The top level of the five-story parking garage was full in minutes, and people on the lower levels struggled to get higher, but room was running out.

Whitney tore her eyes away from the impending train wreck to wonder if there was something she should do. She couldn’t get any higher without heading up Route 16 into the mountains, but she should do something.

Whitney turned from her deck and entered the house. She walked into her bedroom, which had once been a decorative masterpiece but was now a laundry disaster area. She took the hallway stairs two at a time, moving swiftly. One by one she swept through the downstairs rooms, closing windows and locking doors. She paused at the front door and looked out at the green grass of the estate that had once belonged to her parents.

She missed them now.

A hiss of leaves drew her attention to the green maple trees bordering the yard. The wind had picked up, but was still headed out to sea.

Whitney slammed the door shut and headed for the basement. Two years ago, she had converted the basement into a base of operations for her photography work. She spent six months of every year on location in one remote part of the world or another, shooting landscapes and animals that most people avoided for fear of life and limb. It was dangerous work, but exciting and rewarding. She worked in the field, but this was her home base for expedition prep, film development, and camera maintenance. For the past year, the room had served as the staging area for her upcoming Antarctic venture. The dim basement was now stacked with food supplies. Gear for surviving the frozen wasteland filled the main room, and electronic gizmos lined the workbenches. Leaning over the GPS satellite phones, she picked up a pair of binoculars and charged back up the stairs.

As she passed through the bedroom, she noted the time: noon. It had taken her five minutes to lock up the window and doors and return to her bedroom. She burst onto the deck and squinted against the sun, which shone down directly above her. She put the binoculars to her eyes and colorful blurs filled her vision. She adjusted the focus and settled on the parking garage. Like penguins huddling from the cold, a mass of humanity crammed itself onto the top floor of the garage, some dangerously close to spilling off the edge. She lowered her view. The next two floors were also full, and everyone was moving in one direction—up.

Whitney removed the binoculars and shook her head. Looking through the field glasses again, she turned her gaze toward the ocean . . . or what used to be the ocean. It had not returned. In fact, she could no longer see any water, save the trickle of the Piscataqua, all the way out to the horizon.

She wracked her brain for an answer. A sinkhole. Something must have opened up in the ocean and sucked the water down . . . something huge. It was the only answer.

Keeping her vigil, she scanned all of Portsmouth. Word of the phenomenon must have reached every nook of the seacoast town by now. The only cars she could see were driving away from town. Even the emergency vehicles were clearing out. They weren’t fools—all the sirens, flashing lights, and ladders in the world wouldn’t stop whatever was coming. Downtown was deserted, except for the rooftops. Whitney felt the anticipation of every soul on whom she gazed . . . all waiting for something to happen.

She paced about the house unsure of what to do or think. She frantically cleaned her counters and shined her sink; ridiculous, given the situation. When she could no longer stand staring at her warped reflection in the perfectly polished sink, she looked at the clock. It had been an hour.

She looked again at the parking garage; it looked less congested. People were lowering their guard, moving down to the lower levels, some even out onto the street. Whitney wanted to shout at them to run, to leave town, but they seemed slow, almost dazed by the surreal events.

Whitney looked up, forehead furrowed. It was past one o’clock, but the sun still appeared to be directly overhead. In the past hour, the sun had not moved.

“What . . .?”

Everything changed in that instant.

The sun began moving.

The wind shifted directions, billowing southwest from the barren ocean bed.

The temperature dropped and continued to fall with every gust.

Biting her lower lip, Whitney raised the binoculars to her eyes.

She saw an illusion. It had to be. A wall of blue and white churning water surged back into view, spilling from the northeast straight for shore. As the wall grew closer, she knew it was real. A tsunami, more massive than she’d ever imagined the phenomenon to be, was headed straight for her home town.

The people atop the parking structure were the first to see it. They were also the first to realize they weren’t high enough to avoid it. Whitney shuddered as a collective wail of panic and despair rose from the city below. Tears brimmed and spilled over onto her face. They were all going to die. And she could only watch.

She’d seen death before and knew she lacked the stomach to witness what was coming. Turning away from the city of her childhood, from the home she had made, from all the places and people she loved, Whitney ran to her bedroom and closed the deck doors behind her. The distant voices were silenced. She leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor, hoping the water wouldn’t reach her as well.

The next minute was spent in silence as she waited. In her mind’s eye she saw the citizens of Portsmouth clambering over each other, trampling the weak. She knew it was human nature to step on the next guy if it meant saving one’s own life. She felt certain a number of people were already dead, long before the wave struck. A sob escaped her as she remembered Cindy’s office was downtown. The tears flowed freely now.

Then the voices returned. Grew louder.

Closer.

Whitney stood, opened the door, and stepped out onto the porch. Her timing couldn’t have been worse. A seventy-foot wave of water slid through Portsmouth and consumed it all. The people still on rooftops ceased to exist. Those on the streets were swept up and churned in the grinding waters as easily as the brick, concrete, wood, and mortar that held the city together.

The voices returned: “Open the goddamn gates!”

A small group of perhaps fifteen people had flocked to her front gate, probably neighbors who knew her home stood on the tallest peak of the hill. She cursed her father for building the eight-foot stone wall and metal gate that sealed off the estate from the rest of the world, protecting her from unknown predators.

Whitney glanced toward the downtown. The rising waters had consumed the city and were now racing toward her, pounding up the steady incline. Whitney dashed back into the bedroom, calculating how long it would take her to reach and unlock the front door, sprint the hundred feet to the gate, unlock and open it by hand, sprint back to the house with fifteen people, and shut the door behind her.

Too long.

If only she’d fixed the gate’s remote! That kind of thing hadn’t been her concern lately, and she’d let it go for six months.

A slight vibration in the floorboards at the base of the stairs reinforced the idea that she wouldn’t have time. Still, she had to try.

She reached the front door, unlocked the deadbolt, and flung it open. Vaulting down the five front stairs in one leap, Whitney hit the driveway at a sprint. She heard roaring water, breaking glass, and the horrid wrench of metal as the unseen torrent pounded relentlessly forward.

Not waiting for the gate to be opened, the fleeing group began climbing over it. To the left, a little girl struggled with the smooth metal bars. The others were leaving her behind. Whitney leapt at the gate and clung to it like a monkey. She yanked herself to the top, feeling the muscles in her arms tear. At the top, she reached over and thrust her hand out to the girl. “Take my hand!”

The little girl’s fingers intertwined with Whitney’s, and the girl was pulled steadily up. A bearded man next to the girl saw that she’d clear the gate first and took hold of Whitney’s arm to hoist himself.

“Let go!” Whitney shouted as the gate dug into her arm.

“Amber!” another man shouted with shock in his eyes. He lunged at the bearded man pushing the girl back down, and Whitney knew the girl’s rescuer was her father. Amber’s father wrapped one arm around the aggressor’s neck and pushed off the gate with his feet. The action added an unbearable amount of weight to Whitney’s arm, but both men fell to the ground. The father seemed willing to die for his child, and as the two men rolled away from the gate pummeling each other, she realized he would.

The water was upon them.

Whitney pulled with all her might, but her muscles had little strength left. The water hit her like an explosion. Whitney was flung back ten feet, her grip on Amber’s arm lost. She sat up quickly and looked to the gate. The people were gone, replaced by a churning wall of water that roared like a wounded Kodiak bear.

Whitney shouted as she pushed herself up and ran back to the house. Ten feet from the front stairs, her feet began splashing through ocean water. A surge of water hit her knees and threatened to knock her down, but she lunged up the stairs, freeing herself from the water’s grasp.

She entered the house, closed the door, slammed the deadbolt home, and careened for the stairs, hoping another ten feet would be enough to save her life. She reached the top stair in four leaps. As she stepped into the hallway, a force struck the house so hard that she was shaken from her feet. She fell forward and heard a loud crack, but it wasn’t the house; it was her head. A stab of pain shot through her skull. As she fell, she saw the wooden chest she’d struck as she’d fallen.

It was the last thing she saw. Her vision blurred and turned black.

As her consciousness faded, the sound of rushing water and groaning wood surrounded the house.

Whitney awoke with a start and clasped a hand to her throbbing head. She struggled past the pain, attempting to gather her thoughts. As the pulsing headache in her left temple eased in intensity, she remembered: the wave. The people. The death. Despair, rage, and confusion attacked her all at once, an emotional lion pride, circling with hackles raised and talons extended. They wanted to devour her alive. But they were old enemies she’d faced before. Using willpower built over the past year’s suffering, she pushed the emotions away and faced her grim new reality.

She forced herself to calm and became more aware of her surroundings. She was still on the hallway floor of her house, but she was freezing. Wondering if she was wet, she checked herself and found her clothing to be dry. She looked down the stairs. Even the downstairs floor was dry.

From her position on the floor, she could see her alarm clock, but the power was out. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been unconscious, but it couldn’t have been long. It was still daylight, though the previously blue sky was now thick with ashen clouds . . . and something else.

Standing came only after a concerted effort. Her head pounded with every step, and she found herself walking through the bedroom and toward the deck door with her eyes closed. Hands outstretched, she stopped when she reached the wall. She slid her fingers from the wall to the glass of the sliding door.

When the flesh of her finger made contact with the glass, Whitney yelped and pulled her hand away. The pain was like searing heat, but she knew from experience that it was cold. Freezing cold. Whitney’s eyes flew open and blinked at the brightness. Despite the overcast sky, something outside was abnormally bright.

Through squinted eyes, Whitney took in her new view.

Extending out from ten feet below her home’s foundation all the way to the horizon was a sheet of ice. Thick flakes of snow fell from the sky. She seemed to have been transported to the North Pole. She didn’t dare go outside dressed for summer as she was, but from her view behind the glass she could see that everything, from Maine to Massachusetts, was buried under hundreds of feet of snow and ice.

And now she was alone, completely, and she feared that the most. More than the wave. More than the cold. Being alone with her thoughts, with her demons, was just about the worst way she could imagine to die.

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