03 - Evolution (2 page)

Her boots touched down at the foot of the cliff and she
marched forward, not even breaking her stride. She deftly snapped a
loaded clip into the Beretta.

We have to keep moving,
she
thought.
Dawn will be here too soon.

A figure awaited her in the woods. She strode past him
without missing a beat.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Michael Corvin hurried after her. The young doctor was
ruggedly handsome, with light brown hair and a face that somehow
retained a hint of innocence despite everything he had endured over the
last few nights. His brown leather jacket looked hardly adequate for the
wintry weather, but he was no longer as vulnerable to the cold as he had
once been. Three nights ago, he had been human, subject to the usual
mortal frailties. Now he was something else altogether, and not even
Selene truly knew what that meant.

She heard him trudging through the snow after her.
“Impressive,” he said to her back. An American accent betrayed his
origins.

Killing that beast? Selene had already put that
encounter out of her mind. Exterminating werewolves was just an ordinary
night’s work to her. It was what she lived for.

Or rather, it used to be.

Now she wasn’t sure about anything.

“Who was following us?” Michael asked. Anxiety colored
his voice. He still wasn’t used to hunting and being hunted, as she was.

“Not us. You.”

“Me?”

She paused and turned to face him.
He should know the hard truth,
she thought.
Our lives may depend on it.

“They were lycan. Like you.” She glanced up at the ridge
behind them. “They can sense one of their own for miles.”

Technically, of course, Michael was no longer just a
lycan. He had become a hybrid, blending the traits of both vampires and
werewolves. But apparently enough of the wolfen taint remained in his
blood to call out to others of that savage breed.

Lucky us,
she thought.

She walked on, while Michael struggled to assimilate
what she had just told him. “So, on your own, they couldn’t track you?”

Selene gave him a knowing look. Not for the first time,
she asked herself why she kept putting herself in jeopardy for a
stranger she had met only a few nights before.

He saved my life,
she
recalled.
And exposed the lie that my life had
become.

She left him standing bewildered in the snow, while she
trekked on through a stand of tall pine trees. Her mind was already
looking ahead to the challenges and dangers to come. A handful of
renegade werewolves were the least of her worries.

Viktor had died at her hands, his skull cloven in twain
by his own sword. It was a fitting death for one who had lied to her
since the moment they had first met, who had kept on deceiving her
throughout the long, bloody centuries. It was Viktor, she had
discovered, who had been truly responsible for the slaughter of her
mortal family, not the feral lycans she had blamed ever since the night
Viktor had first transformed her into a vampire. She had been hunting
the wrong enemy for her entire undead existence.

Yes, Viktor had deserved his grisly end, but his death
was not without consequences. Killing the powerful vampire Elder had
turned Selene from the hunter into the hunted. Her own kind would soon
be united against her, along with what remained of the lycan horde. Her
only hope of survival was to reach the last remaining Elder before her
final punishment could be decreed. She could only pray that the truth
would spare her life.

Soon, Marcus will take the throne,
and the tide of anger and retribution will spill out into the night.
A chill that had nothing to do with the inclement weather ran down her
spine.
And soon, I will become the hunted.

Hours had passed in the silent crypt. A trickle of blood pooled atop a polished
bronze disk bearing an elegantly engraved letter
M.

For Marcus.

Crimson rivulets seeped through the edges of the
burnished hatch, slithering downward into the buried sarcophagus, where
the last surviving Elder hung upside down in his tomb, like a slumbering
vampire bat. For over two hundred years he had hung thus, hibernating
deep beneath the earth while his fellow Elders took their turns ruling
over the coven. One above, two below… that had been the way of things
ever since he and Viktor and Amelia had agreed to the eternal cycle of
the Chain. Undisturbed within his sarcophagus, Marcus had no way of
knowing that both Viktor and Amelia had perished this night.

Two centuries of fasting had taken its toll on the
Elder’s appearance. Dry, blackened skin was stretched tightly over his
emaciated frame, so that he resembled a mummy more than a vampire. His
once-handsome face had shriveled into a grimacing, skull-like visage.
His eyes were squeezed tightly shut at the bottom of sunken, black
sockets. Yellowed fangs were locked together in a frozen scowl. Only a
few thin strands of hair still clung to his desiccated scalp. His rib
cage showed through the papery skin covering his chest. By all
indications, the Elder’s withered form looked dead beyond all hope of
resurrection.

But then the first few drops of blood fell upon his
parched lips. More blood trickled down his body into his waiting mouth,
bringing renewed life to the skeletal creature. A quiescent heart,
shrunken to the size of a walnut, began to pulsate once more, faintly at
first, but with increasing strength. Atrophied lungs whistled as they
sucked in the dank, stagnant air of the tomb.

What is this?
Marcus thought
dimly, as his consciousness began to emerge from centuries of darksome
slumber.
Has the time come again for my Awakening?

Perhaps, but this Awakening felt very different from
those in the past. A peculiar sensation seemed to spread throughout his
body, propelled by the very beating of his heart. Within his veins,
lycan blood mixed with his own, merging in an unexpected alchemical
reaction. He felt a change come over him, a fundamental transformation
in his very nature. Power such as he had never known surged through his
veins.

His eyes snapped open, revealing a pair of jet-black
orbs.

Hybrid eyes.

A.D. 1202

The village lay in ruins. Flames licked the
thatch roofs of peasant hovels. Smoke rose from the charred remains of
shops and wagons. Prodigious amounts of blood had been splashed upon the
snow-covered streets and market square. The wasted blood glistened
beneath the light of a full moon, turning the once-white snow into gory
slush. The tantalizing smell of so much blood made the vampire’s mouth
water, despite the dire matters weighing on his mind.

Oh, my brother,
Marcus
Corvinus thought mournfully.
What have you done?

Bodies were strewn everywhere. Men, women,
children… their throats ripped out as though by a savage beast. Entrails
spilled from corpses that had been sliced open by powerful claws. Many
of the villagers were still in their nightclothes, death having come for
them while the tiny hamlet slept. Their lifeless faces were frozen in
expressions of utter shock and horror. Despite abundant evidence of an
animal attack, too much flesh remained upon their bones for the
townspeople to have been killed for food. Instead they had been
slaughtered for sport.

The isolated village was located in a shallow valley
surrounded by dense woodlands. Snowcapped pines and firs bore mute
witness to the grisly scene, while an eerie silence reigned over the
valley. There were no whimpers of pain, no desperate cries for succor.
No sobbing kinsmen mourned their dead. Marcus heard only the crackling
of the flames and the crash of collapsing timbers.

The funereal silence spoke volumes. There were no
survivors.

We are too late,
Marcus thought.

“Yet again,” Viktor said, “we arrive to witness his
aftermath. But the onslaught ends tonight.”

“We must move quickly,” Amelia reminded him. “Or we will
be overwhelmed.”

The three Elders surveyed the slaughtered village from
atop a slope overlooking the valley. They sat astride their armored
warhorses, their faces grave behind their crested helmets. Like their
steeds, they were clad in fearsome black plate armor. Intricate runes
adorned the finely made armor, which gleamed like polished ebony in the
moonlight. Conversing atop their coal-black mounts, they resembled
three-quarters of the Four Horsemen, arriving belatedly in the wake of
the missing horseman: Death himself.

A company of armored Death Dealers accompanied the
Elders. Their weapons drawn, the vampire warriors awaited the Elders’
commands. Azure eyes glowed beneath the flickering light of their
upraised torches. The pungent smell of the blood had the soldiers all on
edge. They bared their fangs. They licked their lips.

The vampires had not yet fed tonight. This massacre was
not their doing.

Viktor turned to Marcus. “Is he still here?”

Marcus nodded reluctantly. His youthful appearance,
evident even through his Corinthian-style helmet, belied his true age
and immortality. His reddish brown hair, and neatly trimmed mustache and
beard, held not a trace of gray. Indeed, he looked several decades
younger than Viktor, even though he was actually the older of the two.

“Viktor, he must not be harmed.”

“I gave you my word, did I not?” Viktor turned his horse
around to address their troops. He raised his voice. “Burn the bodies.
Search the outbuildings.”

The Death Dealers rode forward, spreading out into the
ruined village. Their torches added to the glow of the burning carts and
buildings. Marcus spurred his own horse onward, anxious to join in the
search.

“Marcus!” Viktor called out sharply.

What is it?
Marcus wondered.
He pulled back on the reins. Steam blasted from the nostrils of his
impatient steed. He looked back at Viktor.

“Stay with me,” his fellow Elder instructed.

For a moment, Marcus considered disregarding Viktor’s
request. They were equals, after all, even though he and Amelia tended
to defer to Viktor on military matters. The other Elder had been an
experienced general and warlord even before he’d become immortal. Marcus
gazed intently at the burning village before reluctantly turning around
his horse and rejoining Viktor and Amelia. He had no wish to provoke
Viktor unless it was absolutely necessary.

I may need his goodwill before this
terrible night is over,
Marcus thought.
For
my brother’s sake.

The rustic hamlet reminded Istvan of the small
Wallachian village in which he had grown up, before he had been granted
the boon of immortality and recruited into the service of the Elders. He
seldom thought of his mortal days anymore, but the familiar setting
stirred long-dormant memories. A cold rage flared within him. These
butchered villagers might well have been his own family and neighbors, a
couple of mortal lifetimes ago. Lowly and short-lived as they were, they
had deserved better than this.

This atrocity cannot go unpunished,
he thought vengefully.
The Beast must pay.

With his fellow Death Dealers, he dismounted from his
horse and stalked the narrow streets. Bloodstained snow muffled the
tread of their heavy iron boots. Flaming torches set fire to gutted
corpses, creating grisly bonfires throughout the streets and square. The
nauseating aroma of burning flesh joined the smoky smell of the doomed
buildings. Istvan’s gorge rose.

But it was not enough to merely torch the bodies lying
outdoors. Istvan knew they could not afford to leave a single ravaged
corpse unburned. They had to search the shops and homes as well—or
suffer the consequences.

We don’t need another disaster like
last time. We’ve lost too many men already….

A peasant cottage caught his eye, and he gestured to one
of his comrades, a Death Dealer named Radu. Istvan had lost his own
torch in their breakneck ride to the village, but Radu still had a
serviceable brand. The other vampire nodded and they approached the
cottage together. A wooden door creaked on its hinges as Istvan kicked
it open. Leading with their swords, the two men entered the hovel
through a haze of smoke and shadow. Vampiric eyes penetrated the murk,
seeing the humble furnishings one would expect to see in such a lowly
domicile: wooden stools, a low table, a few straw pallets for beds, and
a hearth in the center of the hut, safely distant from the crude
wattle-and-daub walls. Dying coals glowed within the hearth.

A mauled corpse lay sprawled upon the packed-earth
floor. The body belonged to a full-grown man clad in the torn remains of
a linen nightshirt. His face and torso had been shredded by gargantuan
claws. Exposed ribs jutted from his open chest. Gobbets of bloody meat
still clung to the splintered bones, which were scored by deep claw
marks. The man’s heart and guts were missing, no doubt vanished down the
Beast’s gullet. Istvan wondered briefly what had become of the man’s
wife and children. Were their bodies among the corpses burning in the
streets?

He turned toward Radu. “Give me the torch.”

The sooner this disgusting chore was concluded, the
better. Then they could move on to the more important task of tracking
down the loathsome animal responsible for the carnage.

He shall not escape us again,
the Death Dealer vowed.

Radu handed him the burning brand. Istvan turned back
toward the corpse.

Before he could ignite the lifeless carcass, however, a
bestial roar erupted from the dead man’s throat. The “corpse” sprang to
its feet, already in the throes of a grotesque transformation. Glassy
mortal eyes turned into feral cobalt orbs. A canine snout protruded from
the scarred face, which appeared to be healing itself with preternatural
speed. Jagged fangs flashed within the creature’s open jaws. A new heart
began to form within the sundered chest cavity. Fresh entrails, writhing
like overgrown worms, blossomed beneath the heart, which beat with
unnatural life. A hairy hide swiftly spread over the creature’s torso,
hiding the pulsating organs from view. Human nails sharpened into
vicious-looking talons. Thick, black bristles sprouted from his face and
skin.