03 - Evolution (6 page)

For better or for worse.

Selene lifted a portable hydrocarbon analyzer from the
tray and inspected the digital readout. Michael couldn’t tell if the
numbers meant anything to her. Despite everything they had endured
together over the last few nights, he still found her beautifully
sculpted face difficult to read. Most of the time, Selene kept her
private thoughts and feelings locked up inside her, just as she probably
had for hundreds of years. Michael wondered briefly just how old she
really was.

In theory, he was now immortal, too. Michael’s brain
rebelled against the concept, even though he knew for a fact that Viktor
and Lucian had been around since at least the Middle Ages. Would he also
live for uncounted centuries? Michael couldn’t even begin to wrap his
head around the idea.
It’s hard to think about
living forever,
he mused,
when people keep
trying to kill you every few hours.

Selene dropped the analyzer back onto the tray and
examined the shaggy corpse hanging nearby. “This thing’s been dead for
weeks.”

“I don’t get it,” Michael said. He was still trying to
learn the rules of this strange new world he was now a part of. “I
thought lycans went back to their human form when they die.”

“They do,” she replied. “This one’s been given a serum
to stop the regression so that it can be studied in its wolfen form.”

Michael remembered the drug Lucian’s flunkies had
injected him with, to delay his own transformation into a werewolf. He
wondered if the serums were related. “How can you tell?”

She flipped the beast’s toe tag toward Michael. A
notation read,
Subject injected with 850 ml
Thasarine to arrest regression.

“Oh,” he said. What the hell was Thasarine? Michael had
never heard of the drug before. “Not exactly your department, I guess.”

“I just killed them,” she said bluntly. “I didn’t worry
too much about their anatomy.”

Now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, Michael was
able to take a better look around. What had once been an empty mine
shaft had been converted into a well-stocked bunker and safe house.
Weapons lockers, packed with automatic rifles and handguns, lined gray
concrete walls, along with file cabinets, workbenches, and numerous
crates of ammo. One entire corner of the bunker had been taken over by
what looked like a high-tech operations center, complete with computer
consoles and plasma screens. A refrigerator hummed against another wall.

The whole place reminded him of that safe house in Pest.
Stepping away from the werewolf’s cage, he made a mental note not to let
Selene handcuff him to a chair the way she had the last time.
We’re sticking together this time around, whether
she likes it or not.

He toyed with the scalpels and forceps on the tray. The
familiar tools comforted him in a way, providing him with a poignant
reminder of his old life.
Do vampires ever need
doctors?
he wondered. He remembered treating Selene’s injuries
after that car crash three nights ago. For all he knew, he might
actually have saved her life.
Perhaps I can still
have a career of sorts, if and when people stop trying to murder us!

“How long can we stay here?” he asked.

“Not long,” Selene said grimly. She led him over to the
control center he had noticed before. Video screens mounted on the wall
above the main console offered views of the grounds outside the mine.
The night-vision photography glowed an eerie shade of green. A computer
monitor resting atop a metal counter ran through a series of maps and
status reports. “These safe houses are all linked together on one
mainframe, with motion sensors revealing which ones are active. Someone
could have picked us up already.”

Someone
being Selene’s
fellow vampires, Michael realized. Thanks to him, she was now a fugitive
from her own people.

Turning away from the computer station, she started
looking over the guns in the nearest weapons rack. She shrugged off her
damp leather coat, revealing a lithe figure encased in skintight black
leather. Dropping the coat on top of a waist-high metal filing cabinet,
she cracked open a crate of ammo and began to reload her guns. Twin
holsters were strapped to her thighs. A hunting knife was sheathed on
her ankle.

“Now that Viktor is dead,” she continued, “the hunt will
be on for his killer. It’s only a matter of time before I’m found.”

“But none of this is your fault,” he protested. “We have
proof that Viktor lied. Kraven, too.” Kraven was a double-crossing
vampire slimeball who had plotted to take control of the coven. Michael
had only met him once, but was not likely to forget him, considering
that Kraven had shot him in the chest with bullets filled with deadly
silver nitrate. If not for Selene, Michael would have died there and
then. “I have Lucian’s genetic memories.”

Those memories, transferred to Michael when the lycan
commander had bit him, had revealed the true origins of the war between
the vampires and the werewolves. It was Viktor who had started the
war—by executing his own daughter after she’d fallen in love with a
lycan. As far as Michael was concerned, Viktor had fully deserved to
have his head sliced in half by Selene.

Surely the other vampires would take that into account?

Selene didn’t seem to think so. “All that will be beyond
useless if Kraven reaches Marcus first and kills the last remaining
Elder.” According to Selene, one more vampire Elder was still residing
in a tomb underneath the vampires’ mansion; she had done her best to
fill Michael in on the intricacies of vampire politics on their way to
the mine. “Kraven’s a coward. He’ll want to strike while Marcus is still
vulnerable. He knows he’s no match for him awake.”

Michael had experienced Viktor’s awesome power
firsthand. He didn’t want to think about how strong this “Marcus” might
be.
Selene and I barely beat Viktor on our own,
he recalled.
I’m in no hurry to go up against
another Elder.

A thought occurred to him and he glanced at his
wristwatch. Like the clothes on his back, the watch had been salvaged
from a dead lycan on their way out of the underworld.

“There’s only about an hour until daylight,” he said.
“Can you make it back to the mansion before the sun comes up?”

Sunlight was fatal to vampires, just as silver was to
werewolves. Something the movies got right for once.

“Just,” she said grimly.

Michael didn’t like the sound of that. Joining Selene by
the weapons cabinet, he picked out a couple of pistols more or less
randomly. He wasn’t about to admit to her that he had never pulled a gun
on anyone in his life, let alone shot somebody. He didn’t know the first
thing about firearms.
Then again,
he
thought,
I’ve never been a hybrid monster before
either.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get what we need and go.”

Selene laid a restraining hand upon his arm. “No,” she
said softly.

Huh?
Michael looked at her
in confusion. What did she mean by that?

Her eyes avoided his. She hesitated, obviously
uncomfortable.

“I’m going alone,” she insisted.

The mansion was known as Ordoghaz in the local tongue, or “Devil’s House”.
Located about an hour north of downtown Budapest, near the sleepy town
of Szentendre, the imposing Gothic estate deserved its evil reputation,
having served as the vampires’ lair since the days when Viktor had ruled
over feudal Hungary with an iron hand. Freshly fallen snow blanketed the
jagged spires and battlements rising above its looming stone walls.
Majestic columns and pointed arches adorned its brooding facade. A
cast-iron fence, equipped with spikes and mounted security cameras,
guarded the coven’s privacy.

To Kraven, Ordoghaz offered sanctuary of a sort, but
only if he moved swiftly enough. He limped through the snow toward the
forbidding stone gates, drawn by the lights shining from the mansion’s
narrow lancet windows.
I must reach the crypt
before Selene,
he thought desperately.
She
cannot be allowed to rouse Marcus and plead her case.
Kraven knew
his punishment would be severe if the dreaded Elder ever learned of his
alliance with Lucian.

Kraven had seen better nights. Every inch of his fine
silk garments and elegant jewelry was coated with blood, muck, and snow.
The dark fabric was soaked completely through; had he been human, he
would have succumbed to hypothermia by now. His shoulder-length black
locks were plastered to his skull. His aristocratic face was taut and
drawn. A burning pain in his right leg reminded him of Lucian’s dying
blow, when the lycan commander had stabbed him with that damned
spring-loaded blade of his!

At least that bastard is dead for
good,
Kraven thought, although that came as scant comfort at the
moment.
I should have killed him ages ago.

Just like I always claimed to have done.

After centuries of plotting and scheming, everything had
gone wrong. By now, Kraven had hoped to be the undisputed leader of the
coven, having conspired with Lucian to overthrow the Elders and bring an
end to the eternal war between their two species. Kraven had expected to
be hailed as a hero and peacemaker; instead he had found himself on the
run after Selene had exposed his treachery to Viktor. Forced to seek
refuge with Lucian in the lycan’s squalid underground warren, he had
barely survived the final battle between Viktor’s Death Dealers and
Lucian’s lycan army. Only by scurrying away like a rat through the
sewers had he been able to escape the underworld in one piece—but not
before watching from the shadows as Selene executed Viktor with his own
sword!

Bile rose in his throat as he thought of Selene. This
was all her fault, she and that freakish hybrid lover of hers! Hidden
from sight, he had witnessed the obscene abomination Michael Corvin had
become, making Selene’s obvious affection for him all the more
appalling. Kraven had long lusted after Selene’s svelte body, but now he
craved only her complete and total annihilation.
She will pay for rejecting me,
he vowed,
and
bringing all my plans to ruin!

To his relief, the limestone gates opened automatically
at his approach. Viktor, one hundred years out-of-date at the time of
his premature Awakening, had clearly neglected to revoke Kraven’s
electronic security clearance.
Thank the dark gods
for small favors,
he thought. He was in no condition to climb
over the spiked fence.

A long, paved driveway led to the mansion’s front
entrance, beyond a sculpted marble fountain. With the temperature well
below freezing, the fountain’s water display had been shut off. Plumes
of churning white water no longer reached toward the sky.

Kraven staggered up the marble steps in front of the
mansion. He pounded loudly on the heavy oaken doors barring his way.
“Open up!” he shouted to whoever might be on the other side of the door.
With luck, most of the Death Dealers had joined Selene and Viktor on
their ill-fated sorties into the underworld. Hopefully, that left his
own private security force in control of the mansion. “Let me in,
goddammit!”

The huge double doors swung open. A large, stocky
vampire peered out at him. Kraven recognized the face of Miklos, one of
Soren’s thuggish underlings. He stared at Kraven as though he barely
recognized his leader through all the blood and gunk. “Regent?”

Kraven was in no mood to explain his filthy appearance.
He shoved his way past Miklos into the mansion’s sumptuous foyer.
Antique tapestries and oil paintings decorated the polished oak-paneled
walls. Marble tiles stretched across the floor to where a majestic grand
stairway ascended toward the upper stories of Ordoghaz. A spectacular
crystal chandelier hung above the foyer. Compared to the lycans’ fetid
ratholes, the mansion’s richly appointed interior struck Kraven as more
palatial than ever. He brushed the snow from his head and shoulders,
glad to be out of the blizzard at last.

Although it was nearly dawn, the entire mansion was
still wide-awake. Undead gentlemen and ladies, stylishly attired in
shades of red and black, came pouring out of the adjacent parlor in
response to his arrival. More of the mansion’s residents rushed down the
stairs, having not yet retired for the morning. No Death Dealers these,
the milling vampires were instead sophisticates and dilettantes, much
like Kraven himself, who preferred to spend their immortality in various
hedonistic pursuits, as opposed to never-ending battles against the
lycan hordes. Many of them still clutched crystal goblets filled with
spiced blood cocktails. Tonight, however, the vampires’ habitually jaded
faces bore expressions of fear and concern. Desperate for news from the
front, they pelted Kraven with anxious questions: Was Lucian still
alive? Had the lycans been destroyed? Where were Viktor and the others?
Was it true that Amelia had been assassinated by the lycans? What had
become of Kahn, and Soren, and Selene…?

As far as Kraven knew, he was the only vampire to emerge
from the underworld alive. Not counting Selene, of course. But he had
better things to do than waste time answering the questions of these
worthless parasites. Glancing over the throng in the foyer, he was
grateful to spy no trace of that amorous servant girl Erika. Was she
sulking in her room, or had she fled the mansion altogether after he had
slammed the car door in her face during his last escape?
No matter,
he thought,
just so long as she is gone.
The last thing
he needed right now was that lovesick blond trollop clinging to him.

His mind raced frantically, considering his options.
With Viktor and Amelia both deceased, there was still a chance to turn
matters to his advantage.
All I need to do is
destroy Marcus,
he reasoned,
while the Elder
is still asleep and vulnerable. Then the coven will be mine to command.