03 - Evolution (8 page)

Suddenly, it was over. The screams and gunfire no longer
assailed his ears. Silence descended once more over the abattoir the
defiled crypt had become. Kraven trembled uncontrollably as he realized
that he was alone in the dark with… it.

“Milord?” Kraven had never known an Elder to Awaken in
such a bloodthirsty rage, but who else could it be.

He groped desperately for his own rifle, but could not
find the weapon amidst the rubble. He choked on the dusty air, coughing
loudly. Staggering to his feet, he gazed desperately at the open doorway
only a few yards away. His own cold blood continued to trickle down his
face.

The nearby exit tantalized him. Escape was so close!

But not close enough.

Something landed on the floor behind him with a meaty
smack. He could hear the creature’s raspy breathing. It smelled of
decaying flesh. Bony talons scraped against the broken tiles.

Kraven whimpered in fright. He wasn’t sure what was
worse, not seeing whatever was behind him or being forced to face it.
His hair stood on end, and he could hear the panicked palpitations of
his heart. Marshaling his last ounce of courage, he nervously turned
around to confront the mysterious apparition that had just slaughtered
his men so effortlessly.

Perhaps he could still talk his way out of this situation?

The smoke, dust, and dim lighting made it hard to see
the monster clearly, even though it was now standing only a few feet
from him. Kraven strained his eyes to see a hairless, mummified figure
wearing black silk trousers. A tarnished gold belt girded the creature’s
waist. Gilded armbands circled his bony biceps. Molten black eyes,
unlike any vampire’s, coldly examined Kraven. Fresh blood dripped from
its jaws. Its blackened skin was the color of a gangrenous limb.

Shrack!
Without warning, a
pair of batlike wings snapped out of the creature’s shoulder blades. The
wings spread out behind him, spanning nearly ten feet from tip to tip.
Arched bones and twisted networks of veins were visible throughout the
fleshy membranes. Ebony talons crowned the demonic wings.

Kraven’s eyes widened in disbelief. Never had he
witnessed anything like this. Tales of vampires transforming into bats
were foolish mortal myths, nothing more, so how was this possible? What
was
this creature before him?

“Please,” he begged.

A sudden flurry of movement cut off his desperate plea.
The creature’s wings exploded forward, striking Kraven with the force of
a wrecking ball. The regent’s back slammed against the wall behind him
so hard that the impact cracked the dense stonework. Deep fissures
spread like cobwebs across the face of the wall. The force of the
collision left Kraven stunned and breathless.

He felt a sharp, searing pain in his shoulders. Looking
down, he saw with alarm that both shoulders had been impaled by the
spearlike tips of the monster’s wings. Blood streamed down the front of
his black silk shirt. Kraven realized in horror that he had literally
been nailed to the wall of the crypt!

The creature leaned toward him. A beam of light from the
control room exposed a gaunt, emaciated visage with ebony eyes and an
aquiline nose. A mouthful of pointed, sharklike teeth dripped blood onto
the figure’s bare chest. Tapered ears lay flat against the creature’s
skull. Purple veins pulsed across the monster’s smooth, bald cranium.
Its mottled skin was dry as dust.

Kraven barely recognized the transformed Elder. His
overwhelmed brain struggled to account for the ancient vampire’s bizarre
metamorphosis. Marcus’ unearthly black eyes jogged Kraven’s memory, and
he suddenly recalled where he had seen such eyes before: on the face of
Michael Corvin during his final battle with Viktor, after Selene’s lycan
sweetheart had undergone a similar transformation—into an unnatural
hybrid of vampire and werewolf.

Just like Singe predicted,
Kraven recalled. His gaze darted to the body of the dead lycan
scientist. Before his well-earned demise, Singe had explained how a
unique component in Corvin’s blood, inherited from Alexander Corvinus
himself, allowed vampire and lycan blood cells to combine to form a new
hybrid species, theoretically more powerful than any other immortal
bloodline. According to Singe, Lucian had intended to use Corvin’s blood
to transform himself into just such a hybrid, but Kraven had killed the
scheming lycan before he had the chance to carry out his blasphemous
plan. Instead it had been Michael Corvin who had become the hybrid,
after Selene added her own bite to the lycan taint already infecting
Corvin’s blood.

Despite his immediate peril, Kraven could not suppress a
flash of jealousy at the memory of Selene bestowing her crimson kiss
upon Corvin’s unworthy throat.
She could have ruled
the coven by my side,
he recalled spitefully.
But instead she chose that ignorant American!

Marcus’ wings dug painfully into Kraven’s shoulders,
dragging the trapped vampire back into the present. He tried to grasp
how the Elder could have become a hybrid as well. Singe had implied that
only a pure sample of “the Corvinus strain” could permit the existence
of a hybrid, but apparently he had been mistaken. Although separated by
generations, Michael Corvin and Marcus Corvinus clearly shared the same
singular mutation. Singe’s blood had been enough to trigger the
transformation in the revived Elder. The gigantic bat-wings, however,
suggested that Marcus’ vampire side was clearly dominant.

Black eyes glanced at the dead lycan. The Elder’s voice
when he spoke was hoarse from two hundred years of disuse. “The blood
memories of this wretched creature have shown me that your treachery
knows no bounds.”

Kraven’s bloody face turned deathly white. Marcus had
obviously absorbed Singe’s knowledge of Kraven’s secret alliance with
Lucian. His heart pounded within his chest. “Milord… I can explain—”

“Why should I listen to your lies,” Marcus hissed, “when
the journey to the truth is so much sweeter?”

The Elder’s withered lips curled in a smile
of… forgiveness? Understanding?

Hardly.

Ivory fangs tore into Kraven’s throat. A crimson flood
poured down Marcus’ throat, and Kraven felt his own memories being
sucked out of his body along with his life’s blood. Images from the
recent past flashed across the minds of both the Elder and his victim:

Kraven sat in the back of a
parked limousine, conspiring with Lucian. Pouring rain streaked down the
sides of the tinted windows. A crest-shaped pendant dangled from the
lycan’s neck. The gleaming pendant had once belonged to Sonja, Viktor’s
daughter—and Lucian’s long-dead lover. It had been their forbidden
passion that had ignited the centuries-old conflict between the vampires
and their former servants.

“Remember,” Lucian warned Kraven,
“I’ve bled for you once already.” Kraven’s false claim to have slain the
dreaded lycan commander had led directly to his ascendance within the
coven. “Without me, you’d have nothing. You’d be… nothing.”

Later:

Kraven watched in dismay as
Selene sank her fangs into Michael Corvin’s throat, triggering his
transformation into a hybrid abomination. Lucian lay upon the floor of
the underground bunker, his dying body riddled with deadly
silver-nitrate bullets. Kraven had shot Lucian repeatedly, but the
stubborn lycan had clung to life with the last vestiges of his immortal
strength. Distended black veins snaked across his face.

He taunted Kraven with his final
breaths. “You may have killed me, cousin, but my will is done
regardless.”

Kraven opened fire once again,
emptying the last of the experimental rounds into the lycan’s writhing
body. Another dose of silver nitrate raced through Lucian’s throbbing
veins. Tendrils of yellow smoke rose from his lips and nostrils as his
internal organs combusted volcanically.

Lucian, champion of the lycan
hordes, died at last.

A few minutes earlier:

Kraven hurled the ugly
truth in Selene’s face, savoring her shocked expression. “It was Viktor
who killed your family, not the lycans. It was he who crept from room to
room, dispatching everyone close to your heart!”

He remembered laying eyes on Selene
for the first time, in those miserable stables six hundred years ago.
The female Death Dealer had been delectably mortal then, a vision of
nubile vulnerability in her soaked linen nightgown. If only Viktor had
let him ravish her that night, as Kraven had originally intended!

This entire disaster could have
been averted if Selene had simply died with the rest of her
insignificant, mortal family.

Later:

Hidden away in one of the
underworld’s many shadowy nooks, Kraven watched as Selene and Michael
Corvin battled Viktor in the lowest level of the lycans’ subterranean
den. Water streamed from broken pipes and rain-filled gutters, flooding
the floor of the abandoned bunker. Viktor stood ankle-deep in the turbid
water as he throttled Corvin with his bare hands. The American’s hybrid
strength was not enough to save him from the Elder’s murderous grip.
Corvin gasped impotently for breath. The iridescent sheen of his
gray-blue hybrid flesh began to fade.

Then Selene leaped past Viktor,
swinging the Elder’s own mighty broadsword. Her sleek black leathers
glistened wetly as she landed behind Viktor like a jaguar, still
clutching the double-edged sword. The Elder spun around and glared
angrily at his former protégée, enraged by her defiance. He drew a pair
of silver daggers from his belt.

Unafraid, Selene waved the sword
before his eyes. Fresh blood ran down the length of the blade. A stunned
expression came over Viktor’s face as he realized that Selene had
already delivered a killing blow. A thin red line materialized across
the Elder’s countenance, stretching diagonally from his left ear down to
the right side of his collar. A look of profound disbelief filled
Viktor’s eyes.

Fully half his skull slid away,
splashing into the filthy water around his ankles.

Moments later, Selene plucked
Sonja’s pendant from the rubble. She pressed the gleaming emblem into
Michael Corvin’s palm.

Marcus withdrew his fangs from Kraven’s throat. The
victimized vampire gasped in relief, but feared that it was already too
late for him. He had never felt so drained before, not even after the
most exhausting blood orgy. His entire body had been reduced to a dried
husk, stripped of every last drop of vitality. His mouth was as dry as
the Kalahari. His eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. Every breath
produced a spasm of agony. His bloody clothes felt like sandpaper
against his raw, dehydrated skin. An icy chill, infinitely more frigid
than the blizzard raging outside, penetrated the very marrow of his
bones. Kraven doubted if he could even stand under his own power
anymore. Only the Elder’s taloned pinions kept him upright.

Centuries of immortality passed before his eyes. Kraven
had enjoyed many lifetimes of power and pleasure, but he was not yet
ready to die. The prospect of eternal oblivion filled him with mortal
dread.
Not now!
he thought pitifully.
Not so soon!

“Please,” he croaked painfully. “I… can still assist you.”

Bright red blood was smeared all around the Elder’s
jaws. A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his lips.

“You already have,” Marcus said.

His wings snapped outward, tearing Kraven apart.

Michael couldn’t believe Selene planned to leave him behind again.

“If I can plead my case,” she insisted, “there’s a
chance we’ll be granted sanctuary.” She slipped her black trench coat
back over her shoulders as she prepared to depart the safe house. “Right
now you’d be killed on sight. I’m not prepared to risk that.”

“So what, I’m supposed to just sit here and wait for
you?” He laid his guns down on a nearby counter.
No
fucking way,
he thought. The last thing he wanted to do was hang
around the abandoned mine while Selene endangered her life on their
behalf… again. “Kraven may still have his men with him. You can’t go
alone.”

She looked him in the eyes. “You’re not as strong as you
might think.”

“What?” he blurted. Wasn’t he a superpowerful hybrid
now? Hell, he had almost held his own against Viktor in hand-to-hand
combat, and the formidable Elder was supposed to be one of the most
powerful vampires ever.
What does she mean by that?

Selene stepped away from the well-stocked weapons racks.
She crossed the floor to the refrigerator on the other side of the
bunker. Pulling open a clear glass door, she removed a few packets of
frozen cloned blood. The preserved fluid inside the translucent plastic
bags was purplish red. Michael had a horrible feeling he knew where this
was going.

“You’re unique, Michael,” she said. “There has never
been a hybrid before. However ambivalent you may feel about it, the
truth is that your power could be limitless. But you depend on blood.
You need to feed. Without it, you’ll be growing weaker by the second.”
She closed the door of the refrigerator. “Use the time for that.”

She lobbed the packets of blood at him. He caught them
with both hands, then gazed down at the swollen bags. A printed label
identified them as products of Ziodex Industries; he recalled Selene
telling him that Ziodex was fully owned by her coven. The frozen blood
felt cold to the touch, like an ice pack.

As a doctor, he had handled blood bags before, of
course, but this was different. The realization dawned on him that
Selene was deadly serious. She actually expected him to
drink
the blood… like a vampire.