03 - Evolution (30 page)

William paused before the open archway. Chest heaving,
he glared balefully down at Selene. Gloating over his imminent escape?

Like hell!
Selene thought.
Plucking four explosive throwing stars from a pouch upon her hip, she
hurled the rigged
shuriken
in rapid
succession. The stars whistled through the cavernous dungeon like
harbingers of doom.

Upon the ledge, William saw the razor-sharp stars
spinning toward him. Selene watched intently, glued to the action, as
the agile werewolf jumped to one side, barely avoiding the hungry
blades. They whizzed right past and stuck into the eroded archway above
the exit.

William growled defiantly at Selene, as if daring her to
take another shot. Behind him, unobserved by the distracted werewolf,
the embedded stars began to pulse with light. They flashed faster and
faster as their explosive charges armed themselves at an accelerated
rate. The flashing was intended as warning, alerting the user to get the
hell out of there before it was too late.

And then it was….

The stars went off one after another.

“Jesus Christ!”

The helicopter pilot reacted in surprise as a series of
violent explosions went off inside the ruined fortress. Shock waves
rumbled through the ancient edifice, stirring up clouds of snow. Massive
sheets of ice cracked open.

An enormous hole opened up right in the middle of the
gutted castle, swallowing up tons of snow, ice, and rock. The pilot
gulped as he realized that, in theory, Samuel and the rest of the strike
team were somewhere below the gigantic avalanche.

The gunner was equally shocked. “What was that?” he
blurted.

“Hell if I know,” the pilot said. He frantically tried
to raise the strike team via their comm links. “Lynx One to Alpha Team,
can you read me? Please respond. Repeat, Lynx One to Alpha Team…”

No answer came.

The throwing stars were even more destructive
than Tanis had boasted. Selene ducked into a narrow passage as an
avalanche of snow and ice came crashing down into the dungeon with a
thunderous roar. Chunks of masonry as large as boulders slammed into the
floor like meteors. She threw a hand up against the wall to steady
herself. Tremors shook the floor.

Selene began to fear that she would be buried alive.

Fine,
she thought.
Just so long as Marcus and William are, too.

Her life would be a small price to pay to rid the world
of those monsters.

A tremor shook the hidden crypt. Marcus reacted
in surprise as a seismic rumbling penetrated the thick stone walls. Dust
and gravel rained down from the ceiling.

An earthquake?
he wondered,
momentarily pausing in his attempts to break free of his prison. No,
more like an explosion, taking place somewhere within the forsaken
castle. He had no doubt that Selene and her mortal allies were
responsible.

The very thought that his father’s soldiers now served
Selene, just as his father’s blood now flowed in her veins, galled him
beyond endurance. Had Alexander Corvinus willingly shared his blood with
Selene, or had she stolen it from his dying body? Knowing his father, he
suspected the former. Were there no ends to which he would not go to
thwart his own sons?

He betrayed us with his dying breath.

More rubble fell from the ceiling as the battered
structure settled in the wake of the explosion. Had William survived the
attack? Marcus was tormented by his inability to take part in the battle
raging outside the crypt.
I have to escape this
accursed rathole, join with my brother against our enemies!

His black eyes tracked the falling debris. Bits of
gravel splashed into the water in front of the partially submerged door.
A thought occurred to him as he recalled the great chunks of granite
that had been sent flying when he had slammed Selene into the wall
outside the alcove. Was it possible that some of that debris might have
fallen across the floor of the portal before Selene had brought the
secret door crashing down again? If so, then perhaps the door had not
been able to close entirely.

His claws dove beneath the water, probing for a crack
along the bottom of the door.

Yes! There it was!

At last, the deafening roar of the avalanche
died down enough that Selene could actually hear herself think. Stray
stones and chunks of ice clattered down from above, but the worst of the
collapse seemed to be over. A cloud of raised powder reduced her
visibility as she cautiously ventured out of the relative safety of the
tunnel.

An eerie silence, broken only by the occasional falling
rock, descended over the dungeons in the wake of the explosions and
their cataclysmic aftermath. Selene listened in vain for the growl of an
approaching werewolf. Peering up through the snowy haze, she saw that
the exit by the ledge had been completely buried beneath a mountain of
snow and ice.

She wandered beneath what was left of the bridge.
Samuel’s body was tangled in the heavy cables hanging underneath the
wooden span. His eyes stared blankly into hers. Blood dripped from his
mangled throat onto the snow several yards below.

To her slight surprise, she wasn’t even remotely tempted
by the mortal’s blood. Her mouth failed to water at the sight of the
crimson fluid. Her fangs remained snugly inside her gums. Corvinus’
blood, it seemed, had satisfied her thirst for the time being. She
wondered briefly how long it would sustain her.

The snowy whirlwind began to settle, clearing the air
before her eyes. High overhead, the dense clouds parted to let the full
moon shine through. Selene instinctively noted that the moon was sinking
behind the mountains in preparation for the coming dawn. The night was
almost over. Soon she would need shelter from the sun.

That shouldn’t be a problem,
she thought. Looking up at the sky, she saw the helicopter soar above
the castle. Even if the chopper didn’t come back for her, now that the
other Cleaners were dead, there were certainly any number of gloomy
catacombs in which she could wait out the day if necessary.
First, though, I need to determine whether William
is still on the prowl.

The silver moonlight filtered down through the icy haze.
At last, Selene was able to truly appreciate the vast scope of the
dungeons. She found herself standing at the bottom of a cavernous space
surrounded on all sides by rubble both new and old. A timeworn set of
steps led up to the demolished landings on the upper level. Amazingly,
the bridge had remained more or less intact, aside from the snarl of
ropy cables hanging beneath the wooden planks. Snow-covered debris was
scattered all around her, along with the bodies of both Greenway and
Levin. A gaping crater had opened in the floor before her.

Feeling only slightly like a grave robber, she claimed
an Uzi and ammo from Levin’s body. She locked and loaded, just in case
either William or Marcus came after her. She felt bad about leading the
Cleaners to their deaths, but, ultimately, that had been more Corvinus’
doing than hers. They had merely been fulfilling his final commands. She
could only hope that their deaths had not been in vain, that both
William and Marcus had been neutralized for good.

The moon’s cold radiance crept across the floors of the
dungeons, spilling into the shadowy nooks and crannies while falling
upon the scattered bodies of the Cleaners. Selene failed to appreciate
the significance of this development… until she heard the ropes rustling
over her head.

What the fuck?
She looked up
to discover that she was standing directly beneath Samuel’s corpse,
which abruptly jerked back to life. His eyes peeled open, revealing evil
cobalt orbs. Enmeshed within the dangling ropes, he thrashed and
squirmed against his bonds. His jaws snapped spastically, revealing
elongated canines that were already starting to resemble fangs. The
bones and muscles of his face shifted painfully, contorting themselves
into a more beastly countenance. His feral eyes locked on her. He hissed
like an animal, groping for her with clawlike nails. He twisted himself
into a frenzy, doing everything in his power to break free and tear her
apart.

Selene remembered the infected peasants in those old
woodcuts. Tanis’ words echoed in her brain:
“These
weren’t the lycans we know…. These were raging monsters, never able to
take human form again.”

Apparently, the historian had not been exaggerating.

Selene knew what she had to do. Steely-eyed, without
remorse, she raised the submachine gun and unleashed a fully automatic
burst of silver ammo, chewing Samuel to shreds. She kept firing until
the revived corpse stopped moving once more. She felt certain that was
what the Cleaner would have wanted. His bullet-riddled body slumped
limply into the tangled cables.

Once again, there was no time to mourn his death. The
bridge creaked loudly, as though someone was running across it. Selene
looked up in time to see a blurry form drop down behind her. She spun
around to confront the resurrected corpse of Greenway, the young Cleaner
who had died upon the bridge. If he recognized her, or remembered how
she had saved his life, his crazed animal eyes gave no sign of it.

Like Samuel, the infected Cleaner was caught in the
throes of a grotesque and painful transformation. His body was changing
in fits and starts, some parts morphing faster than others, so that he
presented a horrifying spectacle: part man, part beast, part shambling
zombie. His ravaged throat still hung in tatters, despite the claws
jutting from his fingertips and the fangs protruding from his gums.
Patches of thick black bristles sprouted at random over his face and
hands. Foam dribbled down his chin.

Some part of him must have recognized the Uzi in her
grip, because he turned and fled instead of attacking her. Selene fired
off the last of the submachine gun’s ammo, then snatched a fresh rifle
from Samuel’s corpse.

Greenway ran below the length of the bridge. Selene
whipped up the rifle and fired nonstop as she chased after him. The
bullets slammed into his back, eventually bringing him down. He
collapsed face-first onto the rubble. Selene squeezed a few more rounds
into his skull just to make sure he stayed down this time.

A bestial snarl heralded the attack of yet another
newborn lycan. Selene recognized Levin, whose body had nearly dropped
onto her head before, as he came charging at her from the shadows. She
opened fire, but Samuel’s gun ran out of ammo almost immediately.

Shit!

Levin’s own Uzi still dangled from a strap around his
shoulder, but the infected Cleaner ignored his gun, intent on using his
fangs and claws instead.

Tossing her empty gun aside, she grabbed on to the
lunging lycan and flipped him over her shoulder, so that he landed flat
on his back on the ice behind her. A sideways kick to his skull took the
fight out of him, but only for a moment. Selene drew her silver-plated
hunting knife from its sheath, just as two more lycans appeared on the
scene.

She recognized the two Cleaners who had been killed near
the water. They were further along in their transformations, looking
more like werewolves and less like zombies. Bones cracked loudly as
their wolfen snouts pushed outward from their faces. Their shredded
black uniforms began to burst at their seams as their inner wolves
swelled within them. Low growls emerged from their throats. Foam
speckled their lips.

The third lycan, recovering from her kick, scrambled
back onto his feet. Selene found herself outnumbered and armed only with
a single knife. She could probably bring one of the lycans down by
throwing the knife at his skull, but that would leave her completely
empty-handed. The lycans circled her warily, slowly closing in on her.
Selene twisted from side to side, trying to keep her eyes on all three
lycans.

Things weren’t looking good….

The helicopter made another pass over the
castle. Now that the clouds had blown away from the moon, the pilot
could see all the way down into the open pit the ruined fortress had
become. He saw the vampire woman, Selene, cornered by three
nasty-looking lycans who seemed to be well on their way to transforming
completely into werewolves. He couldn’t help wondering what had happened
to Samuel and the others.

Death Dealer or not, the woman was only moments away
from being ripped to pieces by the hungry pack. According to Samuel, the
Old Man had been quite emphatic about doing whatever it took to help the
vampire complete her mission.

“What are you waiting for?” he shouted at the gunner.
“Shoot ’em.”

The gunner peered down the sights of his fifty-caliber
machine gun. “I can’t!” he yelled back. “Not without taking her out,
too! I can’t get a shot!”

Damn!
the pilot thought.
Something fluttered at the corner of his vision, and he looked around to
see the American’s body bag blowing around the cockpit. His eyes widened
as he realized that the unzipped bag was empty.

The gunner spotted the loose bag as well. Both soldiers
spun around in their seats to see Michael Corvin, alive and well,
standing behind them.

The fugitive doctor no longer looked human. His eyes
were pools of molten blackness. His skin shone like silver in the
moonlight. Powerful muscles bulged atop his bare chest. Claws jutted
from his hands and feet.

“Holy shit!” the gunner gasped. His jaw was practically
on the floor.

The pilot knew how he felt.

Ignoring the two humans, Corvin threw open the side door
and stared intently down into the exposed dungeon. He growled savagely
at the lycans converging on Selene. Without hesitation, he snatched up
one of the coiled rappelling ropes piled up inside the copter and hurled
himself out of the chopper into the empty air.