The Last Hunter - Lament (Book 4 of the Antarktos Saga) by Jeremy Robinson Page A

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