The Last Hunter - Descent - Jeremy Robinson [81]
“What do they know?”
“That something strange happened when you were bonded with the blood of Nephil. That you disappeared shortly after. And that someone, most likely another warrior, killed Ull.”
Which means, I think, with the exception of Ninnis, my escape has gone perfectly. “When I stood up after taking the blood. Before the storm. What was everyone looking at?”
“You haven’t seen it?”
I shake my head. I have no idea what he’s talking about.
He motions to his head. “Your hair. There’s a streak in it.”
A streak? I’m fairly certain the coloring of my hair over time represented the progress of my corruption. I was fairly certain the change was permanent. “What color?” I ask.
“Blond,” he says.
I want to smile. To leap with joy. Maybe everything that’s been done to me can be undone or repaired? Maybe one day I’ll see the sky and not need to squint. Or I’ll share a birthday meal with friends. Or any number of things I took for granted before. But in my heart, I know those things are a long way off. “What happens now?”
He shifts away from the wall, casually holding his hands behind his back. “All of the hunters have been sent out to search for you. They will track you down, subdue you if necessary, and bring you back.”
“But that’s not why you’re here,” I say, looking back down the tunnel. “You came alone.”
He grins. “I’m here to break you. Again. And bring back Ull, the hunter.”
When he pulls his hand out from behind his back, I give a yank on Whipsnap. My weapon cracks open, but is immediately pulled from my hand. Ninnis knew I would use Whipsnap and snared it with a line, yanking it away. He tosses my weapon behind him.
For a moment, I think he’s going to say something again. But he lets out a wail as savage as anything I’ve ever heard in the underworld or above it, and charges. His arms are outstretched. His fingers curve into hooks.
I fall back under him, unprepared for such ferocity. Ull would have been, but I’m not him anymore.
When I hit the stone floor, Ninnis has my arms pinned back. His long, thick, and sharpened fingernails are digging into my skin.
This is how it starts.
The breaking.
And I can feel a part of me—the part that flinches under Justin’s punches or weeps when my mother laughs at me—shirking back. But I’m more than that now. I have been broken and repaired. I have all the skills of a Nephilim hunter. I am bonded with the continent of Antarctica on a supernatural level. I am the killer of warriors and have consumed the blood of Nephil, lord of the Nephilim.
“AND YOU THINK YOU CAN BREAK ME?”
The voice is unnatural.
I’m not even sure it was mine. But it came out of my mouth and roared like thunder.
A wind kicks up from the tunnel below and races toward us. Ninnis has let go of me and sat up. He’s shaking with fear.
Then an invisible force strikes him and carries him up the steeply graded tunnel. I pick up Whipsnap and give chase, but I lose sight of him when he’s launched from the tunnel like a human cannonball.
I enter the night and find a clear sky full of stars and a full moon. It’s bright enough to make me squint. Ninnis lies still, three hundred feet below. I go to him and crouch down. His chest rises and falls. He is alive.
I could kill him now. It would be so easy.
Without realizing I’m doing it, I place Whipsnap’s blade against his throat. I see myself cutting him open, watching his blood gush into the white snow.
And I remember the voice.
My voice, that was not mine.
The bloodlust reveals that I have more than just Ull inside me now. There is a new voice.
Nephil.
Some part of him is there. Fighting for control.
And I won’t give it. Not to either of them.
In all my time underground, I have killed to eat. I have killed in self-defense. Insects. Dinosaurs. Feeders. Dozens of other stranger creatures. Including Nephilim. But I have never killed a human being.
And I’m not going to start now. Not by the direct action of running him through, nor by the indirect