Thoughts of my father and how we parted fill my thoughts. “My father,” I say.
Her hand pauses on my back. “Misses you horribly. As does your mother.”
“They believe I’m dead?”
After a pause, she whispers, “Yes. They stayed for a year searching for you.”
I remember seeing them now. Looking through the telescope. They looked so sad. A sob escapes my mouth. I know how heartbroken they must have felt. I’m feeling it now.
“You’ll see them again,” she says confidently, but it’s hard to believe.
It’s ten minutes before I’m able to speak again. “I’m sorry. For taking you.”
“I forgive you,” she says with missing a beat.
“Why?”
“You weren’t yourself.”
This is true, but, “If I had been stronger, this wouldn’t have happened.”
She turns my face toward hers. Dry white lines streaking over her cheeks from her eyes reveal she’s been crying too. “What did they do to you, Sol?”
I relate the story as best I can, concentrating on the important events: the night I was taken, my time in the pit, my first kill, my training, the three tests that ended with her capture. She listens to it all silently, reacting to everything with an array of facial expressions. When I’m done, tears fill her eyes again.
“My poor child,” she says, touching my cheek with her hand. “Why? Why did they do all this to you? Who are they?”
“I think you know who they are,” I say.
“The men of renown,” she guesses.
I nod.
“The Nephilim?” She shakes her head. I can see she thinks it’s impossible, but she looks around the room, seeing the reality of things. She can’t explain it. “But how?”
I relate the story Ninnis told me. About the Nephilim living among men, how they were worshipped, how they were our heroes, and then how we eventually turned against them and drove them away. “We pushed them underground,” I say. “And they’ve been living here since.”
As I relate the story, I feel a stirring of sympathy for my masters.
They’re not my masters!
I feel an invisible hand clutch my throat. They still have some hold on me. Like a trapdoor spider, everything they turned me into is waiting for my guard to drop. Then it will strike out, fill me with poison and consume my soul again. Ull, the hunter, is fighting for dominance.
I clear my throat and tense my body, mentally shoving Ull down deeper. Never again, I think. I will never be you again.
“Sol,” she says, “That’s not who the Nephilim are.”
I look at her like she’s crazy. Of course that’s who they are. Ninnis told me.
Ninnis is a liar!
Ninnis is your friend.
“No,” I say aloud.
She takes my shoulders. “I don’t know all the details, only what Merrill has told me. Which is actually quite a lot. But I’m not an expert.”
Merrill. Merrill is my friend. Merrill can be trusted.
NO!
Listen to her.
I clench my eyes shut, willing the voice of Ull to shut up.
I am Solomon. I am Solomon.
“The Sumerians believed they were gods. That much is true. And they record that the Nephilim were also referred to as the Elohim and Anunnaki, both of which mean: those who from Heaven to Earth came.”
“Heaven?”
She gives a quick nod.
I fail to hide my skepticism. I’ve seen and experienced the unbelievable, but Heaven? When I speak, my voice is layered with doubt. “Angels?”
She shakes her head and actually manages a small grin. “No, Sol. Not angels. Angels that come to earth, and make their home here are—”
“Demons,” I say. This word rings true. There is nothing heavenly or angelic about my mast—the Nephilim. They are, in every way, demonic. But are they really demons? Fallen angels? I still don’t think so. “The Nephilim aren’t demons.”
“You’re right,” she says. “They are the children of demons. The heroes of old. The men of renown. There is more to that quote, you know. ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God (demons) went to the daughters of men (human women) and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.’ There are several more references to them in the Bible, but that’s just one ancient text. There are records of the Nephilim in every ancient culture on Earth. Stories of giants with red hair—”
She takes my hair in her hand and holds it out for me to see. The blood red color makes me sick. I can now remember my real hair, so blond it was almost white. Like Andy Warhol.
“—half human, half animals, double rows of teeth, horns, and strange means of transportation. There are carvings of them all around the world created by cultures separated by thousands of miles and uncrossable oceans. The Nephilim once ruled over mankind, Sol.”
“Then what happened?”
“A flood.”
“The flood?” My skepticism is brewing again. “Like in the Bible?”
She nods. “But not just the Bible. The Sumerians divided time into two Epochs.”
“Like B.C. and A.D.?”
She nods. “But for the Sumerians, it was before the flood, and after the flood.”
“Then Noah was a Sumerian?”
She shrugs. “In the beginning, I think we all were. But the point is, every ancient text preserved from every ancient culture in the world features the Nephilim, or giants resembling them. A great flood. And the freeing of man from the Nephilim corruption.” She pauses, looking unsure of her next words, but speaks them anyway. “Which you have felt first hand.”
She’s right about that, at least.
“Solomon, the Nephilim are corruptors of mankind, not just our minds and bodies, but our souls as well. They are our oldest enemy.”
The truth of it all settles in. They are, in fact, planning to attack the surface. And I am part of that plan. I am the key. “They’re going to make me their leader,” I say. “I’m supposed to lead them in a war against humanity.”
Her eyes pop open. “When?”
“I don’t know. They don’t seem to be in a hurry, but within my lifetime.”
“Why you?” she asks. “You’re...human.”
“I’m special,” I say. “Merrill told you about what he saw the day I was born?”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s all true,” I say, and then explain about the spirit of the Nephilim, about how it resides in the land of Antarctica and how it bonded me with the continent when I was born.
“That doesn’t sound possible.”
“You have no problem with demons mating with humans and a worldwide flood,” I say.
She’s silent for a moment. “But how did it make you different?”
I close my eyes and focus on the air in the room. I can feel it around me, billions of microscopic molecules. I turn it in my mind. I spin it. When I feel the pull on my hair, I open my eyes. Aimee’s rags are waving in the wind. Her braid hovers over her shoulder, held out horizontally. She steps closer to me, into the eye of the small cyclone I have made.
“Okay,” she whispers. Terrified.
The wind falls away fast as I feel horrible for scaring her. But she believes me now. “I’m connected to the continent. I feel no cold. The wind, snow, water and land are part of me. I don’t know how it works. And they don’t know about it. I don’t think it was supposed to happen.”
“Then it’s a blessing,” she says. “A gift.”
“For what?”
“To fight them.”
“Fight them?”
She leans in close. “They will enslave the human race if they can, Solomon. They will corrupt us all. They have to be stopped.”
All I want to do is take Aimee and leave. I know this is probably impossible now, but I have to try to find a way. We can return to the surface and hop on a plane back to New Hampshire. Back to my parents. And Justin
. Mira and Dr. Clark. And forget all about this place. But fight them?
I can’t. “If I stay here... They want to— I’m supposed to—”
She takes my hands in hers. “It’s okay, Sol. We can figure this out together. You’re not alone anymore.”
“To become their leader, I need to offer myself...I need to take in the spirit of Nephil.”
“The spirit of the Nephilim? You said that happened when you were born.”
“Spirit is the word they use for supernatural energy. Like magic. That’s what I absorbed when I was born. In this case, it’s more of a traditional meaning. The spirit of Nephil, their leader. He was the first Nephilim. The first child born of a human woman and a demon father, if that’s what you believe. If I accept his spirit, which is trapped in Tartarus, far below us, it will live in me. I will become him and he me. Being born here, with the Nephilim magic in me, makes me strong enough to contain him, permanently.”
“Tartarus?”
“It’s a place worse than—”
“I know what Tartarus is, but I never imagined it was—”
“Real?”
She nods.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing every day since I got here.”
A smile stretches onto her face. “I’m sure you have.” The smile fades. “If everything you’ve told me is true, we can’t let it happen. We have to stop them.”
“Just the two of us?” I laugh at the insanity of it.
“No,” she says. “Just you.”
My smile fades. She’s serious.
“I’m not sure I’ll survive the day. I don’t know what they have planned for me, do you?”
I don’t, and I shake my head. “I won’t let them kill you.”
“You may not have a choice.”
“Why?” I say, my voice raising an octave. “Why do I have to do this?”
“It’s not fair,” she says. “Lord knows, it’s not fair. Your heart...your heart was so pure.” She looks at the floor as sadness sweeps over her face. She doesn’t want to say any of this to me. But she does, because she believes it. “Sometimes people are chosen for things that are so much bigger than them. But they are given the strength to persevere, to see it through.”
“But what can I do?”
“I don’t know.” Her honesty is killing me. “But you are the next step in their plan. They cannot move forward without you. And that gives you the advantage. No human child has been born on Antarctica since you. You are unique, Sol.”
“You think they won’t kill me?”
“What do you think?”
I’ve passed their tests. And I am the only human Antarctican. But can they wait for another? They’ve waited thousands of years to find me. But in another thousand years, where will the human race be? Probably living on other planets. Probably strong enough to resist them. She’s right. If they’re going to attack and win, it will have to be soon. With me as Nephil’s vessel. “You’re right. They won’t kill me. But maybe I should kill myself.”
She grabs my arm, squeezing tight. For the briefest of moments I have the urge to swat her away, but I fight it. I’m in control. Not Ull.
“Killing yourself is never an option,” she says. “You don’t think that ever again.”
When I don’t respond, she takes my chin and gives me a good motherly stare. It feels good to be so cared about. “Never again,” she says.
I concede. “Never again. But what then?”
A voice from the hallway makes my hair stand on end. It’s Ninnis. He’s calling for me. For Ull.
“You’re the smartest boy I know, Solomon,” she whispers quickly. “You can control the very elements around you. You know what they want. You’ll figure out how to stop it.”
“I don’t think I ca—”
Ninnis calls out again. He’s closer now. Approaching the door.
Aimee’s eyes widen with fear. “Your face,” she says.
I’ve been crying. My eyes are probably swollen. I can feel my dried tears on my cheeks. Ninnis will see my weakness the moment he opens the door. “Get on the floor. Don’t move until we leave.”
She listens and immediately dives to the floor, feigning unconsciousness. I jump over her, place Whipsnap next to me and plunge my hands into the bowl of water left for Aimee on a stone countertop. As the door opens I splash the water onto my face and scrub the tears away.
“Ull?” Ninnis says. “What are you doing?”
I turn to Ninnis, fighting a rising sense of doom, and smile. “She threw sand in my eyes.” I laugh.
Ninnis approaches and looks at Aimee’s motionless form, then to Whipsnap. “You struck her?”
Be Ull, I say to myself. Adopt his personality, for now.
“She deserved far more,” I say and then point to my vomit. “Once in the stomach to make her bow. A second to her head to silence her.”
Ninnis checks her pulse. “She’s alive.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why is she still alive?”
Ninnis smiles and looks up at my face, which is still dripping with water. “She’s to be a teacher.” He inspects my eyes. “She got you good.”
I rub my eyes. “Does it look that bad?”
“The redness will fade,” he says. “You’ll look yourself again for the banquet. Of course, we’ll have to keep this to ourselves, Ull the future Lord of the Nephilim almost bested by a human woman!” He lets out a guffaw that tenses my back.
I force a laugh of my own. “Let me help break her.”
“Alas,” he says, “Teachers are not broken. Her knowledge of the outside world is important. Her memories must remain intact, for now. I’m sure when they’re done with her, you can do whatever pleases you. Until then, she is not to be harmed.” He hands me Whipsnap. “Understood?”
I attach the weapon to my belt, as comfortable with it in my hands as ever. The personality of Ull may be suppressed, but my acquired skills and knowledge have remained. I nod.
“Good,” he says. “It’s time to go. There are many who want to meet you before we dine. Your reputation has spread to the coasts and beyond.”
Beyond? I think, but before I can ask what he means, I see movement outside the door.
35
“Ahh,” Ninnis says to the newcomer. “You made it.” It’s a woman, dressed in clothing similar to mine, but with a breastplate. The weapon hanging from her belt is a mallet with a stone head. One good whack from that could crush just about any skull in the underworld, except maybe a Nephilim’s. Her hair is red, like Ninnis’s (and mine), but her skin is deeply tan. She is far younger than Ninnis, but she’s an adult. I place her around thirty years old, but with time so different down here, she could be eighty. I’m shocked when Ninnis greets her with a hug.
He motions for me to follow him outside Aimee’s room, which I now realize is not locked because there is no chance of escape. I leave the room and close the door behind me. Pretending to be Ull will be easier if I know Aimee cannot hear the things I say.
“Ull,” Ninnis says, “I’d like you to meet Kainda.”
She takes my hand in a crushing grip. For a moment I nearly shout in pain, but then remember who I’m supposed to be. I return the squeeze and then some. My emotions may have returned to a more fragile state, but my body is still strong. I apply pressure until I see her wince. That’s when I see the resemblance.
“Your daughter?” I say.
Ninnis looks surprised. “How did you know?”
“You have the same eyes.” I work hard to hide my disturbing thoughts but can’t resist asking. “She was born here? On Antarctica?”
“I was,” she says, “but I’m not like you.”
I raise an eyebrow, allowing it to ask the question I can’t, because I fear my voice will quiver.
“The breeders have tried to bind humans to the spirit of Antarctica for longer than we have lived,” Ninnis says. “They have grown humans. They have bound humans to animals. They have even allowed us hunters to take wive
s and have children of our own. But nothing has worked. Not until you were born.”
“And we had nothing to do with that,” Kainda says and then smiles. She is much more pleasant to look at than Ninnis. Her teeth have yet to rot. “You’re special.”
An honest smile comes to my mouth. “So I’ve been told.”
“And please don’t say it again,” Ninnis says. “It’s going to his head.”
The friendly banter is confusing me. Ninnis seems like the polite English gentleman he would have been before his corruption. Maybe it’s Kainda, or simply that my trials have finished. Are the Nephilim more civilized than I have come to believe? Will pretending to be Ull be as hard as I thought?
“If you’d like,” Ninnis says, “You may have Kainda as your wife.”
My heart hammers in my chest. This will be even harder.
Kainda bows. “It would be my honor.”
Ninnis stares at me a moment and then breaks out laughing. “Our fearless hunter is blushing.” He claps me hard on the shoulder. “If Kainda is not to your liking, there are many more women for you to choose from. Perhaps even some your age.”
Kainda looks positively scorned as Ninnis leads me away. I turn back and offer a, “Nice meeting you.” She doesn’t reply. She just clips and unclips the hammer hanging next to her slender thigh.
She is beautiful, I think. In an Amazonian headhunter kind of way.
“Will she be angry?” I ask once we’re out of earshot.
Ninnis cackles. “She has killed for lesser offenses. But she wouldn’t dare touch you, lest she be sent to Tartarus herself. And you may yet change your mind about her. She is one of your clan, after all, and clan marriages are preferred.”
My mind runs through a list of Norse gods. The hammer is the giveaway. “She belongs to Thor.”
“Your observations serve you as well as ever,” he says. “Thor is Ull’s father. The hierarchy of the clan would normally allow Kainda to choose you as her mate. But your future as Nephil’s spirit holder gives you...special privileges.”
Like the privilege to not have a mate at all, I think. Not for a long time. And certainly not down here.
He leads me down a large spiraling staircase. The inner steps are small, human sized. The outer rim has four-foot steps built for Nephilim feet.
The Last Hunter - Descent (Book 1 of the Antarktos Saga) Page 17
