03 - Evolution (9 page)

“Jesus Christ.”

He held the blood in his hands, the frozen packets
representing the end of his old life and the beginning of a strange,
unknowable future. Even after everything he had gone through already,
the prospect of drinking the blood struck him as some sort of monumental
turning point. After this, there could be no denying what he had become.

“And what if I don’t?” he asked her. “What if I can’t?”

Selene offered him no way out. “Normal food would be
lethal. If you don’t anticipate your cravings, you will attack humans.”
Her voice acquired a melancholy tone. “Believe me, you don’t want that
on your conscience.”

Michael had to wonder if Selene was speaking from
personal experience. According to her, modern vampires were forbidden
from preying on innocent humans. Synthetic blood had been used as a
substitute, until replaced by the cloned variety. Still, wasn’t it
possible that, sometime over the centuries, Selene might have been
forced to sample the real thing?

He didn’t have the nerve to ask her.

“There really is no going back, Michael. I’m sorry.”

He could tell that she meant it. Did she ever regret
becoming a vampire herself, especially now that she knew the truth about
her family’s death? He recalled that he wasn’t the only person whose
life had been turned upside down tonight.

“Look, I understand what you did, why you bit me back
there in the tunnels. I’m grateful. You saved my life.” He gave her a
wan smile. “I wasn’t ready to die.”

She nodded. Although her expression remained guarded, he
somehow sensed that she was relieved by his reaction.
Heck,
he thought,
I was
already a werewolf by then. What was one more bite between friends?

“I don’t know… everything’s changed.” He took a deep
breath. “I probably just need a minute to make it fit in my head, you
know? It’s a lot to process all at once.”

“If it’s any help,” she said quietly, “everything’s
changed for me, too.”

“I know….”

Naked emotion hung in the air between them. Michael
stared into her bottomless brown eyes, uncertain what to do next. He had
been drawn to her since the first moment their eyes had met down in the
Ferenciek Square subway station, before all this craziness had begun.
Did she feel the same way about him? They had been so busy fighting to
stay alive that they had barely had a chance to get to know each other
more intimately. True, she had kissed him once, but only to distract him
long enough to handcuff him to that chair. Or had that been her only
motive? His lips still remembered the cool softness of her mouth. His
neck tingled where her fangs had pierced his skin. His blood now flowed
in her veins.

“Look, go,” he told her. “I’ll be here. You just make
sure you come back.”

She walked past him without a word, the tail of her long
black coat flapping behind her. Michael stood by silently as she left
the safe house without a single backward glance.

Same old story,
he thought wryly.
Here I am, left holding the
blood.

A heavy fog hovered over the cold, oily waters of the Black Sea. A bell tolled
hauntingly in the distance. Salt water scented the frigid night air. The
prow of an imposing ship sliced through the mist, cruising toward the
coast of Romania.

The
Sancta Helena
was a
refitted naval frigate, registered under the Hungarian flag. Over three
hundred feet long, from bow to stern, it plowed through the choppy waves
without hesitation, despite the limited visibility. Radar and sonar
equipment helped the ship navigate through the fog. A powerful diesel
engine provided plenty of horsepower. A helipad occupied the aft section
of the ship, behind the rear control room, funnel, and upper decks. A
radar tower rose like an old-fashioned mainmast behind the elevated
bridge. Gun turrets were no longer visible upon the converted frigate,
but that didn’t mean the
Sancta Helena
was
unarmed.

Samuel looked down on the ship as his helicopter
approached the vessel. “Easy does it,” he instructed the pilot. Strong
winds buffeted the sleek Lynx military copter, making for a bumpy ride.
A trim-looking Caucasian with close-cropped blond hair, Samuel rode
shotgun beside the pilot. The rest of his Cleaner crew were strapped
into the seats behind him. Like their leader, they wore unmarked black
commando uniforms and fixed, unsmiling expressions. No badges or other
insignia betrayed their identity. If the turbulent ride had any of them
worried, the soldiers’ neutral faces gave no sign of it. Samuel was
proud of their professionalism.

The chopper touched down on the ship’s landing deck. The
Cleaners didn’t wait for the Lynx’s rotors to stop spinning before
piling out of the copter smoothly and efficiently. The deck listed
restlessly beneath them, but every member of the team had long ago
earned his or her sea legs. Samuel watched silently as the Cleaners
began to unload the copter. Crates of specialized equipment and
confiscated evidence were stacked neatly on the deck, before being
transported into the ship’s waiting storage areas. The team moved like a
well-oiled machine, as well they might. This was hardly the first time
they had pulled off an operation of this nature. Samuel’s eyes narrowed
as three sealed body bags were removed from the chopper’s cargo bay.

Macaro will want to inspect those
carcasses personally,
he guessed.
No doubt
he is impatient to hear my report.

Samuel decided not to keep his commander waiting.
Confident that the team could finish unpacking on their own, he turned
and marched across the flight deck toward the forward control center. A
reinforced steel door kept the clammy mist outside. Samuel barely
noticed the change in the temperature as he entered the enclosed upper
deck. He had more important matters on his mind.

A short hike through the ship’s corridors brought him to
the
Sancta Helena
’s primary operations
center. The chamber was a high-tech mecca, equipped with a battery of
state-of the-art computer stations, screens, and speakers. A dedicated
team of researchers and technicians manned the surveillance stations.
Macaro had recruited them from most of the world’s major intelligence
services, including the CIA, MI6, and the Mossad. Casting a wide net, he
had also cherry-picked the worlds of organized crime and the
international computer-hacker community for the best talent available.
This usually involved faking the deaths of new recruits; to work for
Macaro meant becoming a virtual non-person as far the rest of the world
was concerned. The Cleaners operated in near-total anonymity. Not only
did they officially not exist, they had not even become the stuff of
myth or urban legends.
The vampires and the lycans
get more press than we do,
Samuel reflected,
despite our best efforts to cover their tracks.

Curious eyes looked up to note his arrival, before
turning back to the keyboards and monitors in front of them. As Samuel
strode through the busy ops center, he overheard snatches of various
news reports and police communications. The latest skirmish in the war
had been unusually messy. The control room was abuzz with captured
chatter:

“…no new leads in the case of the brutal subway
shoot-out in downtown Budapest. Police suspect gang activity…”

“…search for bodies continues after private train is
found deserted…”

“…gunfire heard in tunnels beneath Metro station…”

“…large quantities of blood found inside the train…”

“…secure crime scene immediately! Repeat, secure crime
scene…”

“…heavy snowfall interferes with investigation…”

“…American doctor wanted for questioning…”

“…evidence of a struggle at Corvin’s apartment…”

“…interview all known associates and coworkers…”

“…watch all airports and train stations…”

“…contact U.S. embassy for more information…”

“…no eyewitnesses can be found…”

And they won’t be,
Samuel
thought. He and his team had seen to that.
Now if
we can just lay our hands on this Michael Corvin.
The missing
American seemed to be at the center of the current crisis. Listening to
the reports, Samuel found himself disturbed by the way the twilight war
between the vampires and the lycans had escalated over the last few
nights. Bloody shoot-outs in public? A massacre at a train station? The
warring immortals were usually more circumspect than this.
I don’t like the sound of this.

The walls of the ops center were plastered with digital
photos and video captures of the latest casualties in the ancient blood
feud. A dismembered vampire lay in pieces upon the tracks behind a
stalled subway train, evidently torn to shreds by an enemy werewolf; one
of Macaro’s crack researchers had already identified the mangled remains
as belonging to a Death Dealer named Nathaniel. Another dead vampire had
been found on the subway platform nearby. His body had been thoroughly
carbonized, as though exposed to a lethal amount of sunlight. Samuel
suspected that the charred corpse was going to be all but impossible to
identify conclusively.

The subway battle had occurred three nights ago. His
gaze shifted to photos from a more recent bloodbath, one that had taken
place earlier tonight. The gruesome shots depicted the plush interior of
a private passenger train. Dried blood was splattered all over the red
paneled walls and polished gold fittings. Bullet holes perforated the
windows and crimson leather shades. A silver candelabra rested on the
deep red carpet, next to an overturned divan with crimson upholstery.
The bodies of over a dozen butchered vampires were strewn about the
luxurious dining car. High-ranking members of the New World Coven and
Vampire Council had been torn apart and disemboweled, their mutilated
remains joining those of Death Dealers assigned to protect them. Judging
from the shocked expressions on their lifeless faces, the undead
delegation had been caught completely off-guard by the werewolves’ sneak
attack.

Sloppy,
Samuel thought. The
dead bodyguards should have been prepared for anything. He wasn’t too
surprised, though. The vampires had grown overconfident since hunting
the lycans to the brink of extinction over the last few centuries.
They weren’t expecting anything like this.

Frankly, neither were we.

His eyes were drawn to a close-up of a strikingly
beautiful vampire woman. Even contorted in fear, her glassy green eyes
wide with horror, her face would have been the envy of any aspiring
supermodel. A priceless jeweled pendant dangled from her throat.
Raven-black hair lay in disarray about her shockingly pale head and
shoulders. Her pallid complexion suggested what an on-site examination
had already confirmed: every last drop of blood had been drained from
the Elder’s body.

Even though there could be no mistaking her identity,
Samuel still found it hard to wrap his head around the idea that the
legendary Lady Amelia was no more.

And Viktor as well. Two Elders dead in a single night!

But the werewolves had taken some serious losses, too.
The bodies of several known lycans had been recovered from a known
vampire safe house in Pest, their cooling bodies riddled with silver
bullets. And more bodies, both lycan and vampire, had been extracted
from the underground tunnels and bunkers—including what appeared to be
the body of Lucian himself—where an apparently major battle had been
fought.

Overnight, it seemed, the leadership of both the
vampires and the lycans had been completely uprooted. All the more
reason to report to Macaro at once. Samuel could only hope that his
leader could make some sense of these troubling new developments.

If he can’t, who can?

A staircase at the far end of the ops center led to
Macaro’s private suite, overlooking the bustling activity below. In
contrast to the futuristic ambience of the control room, the palatial
suite reeked of Old World opulence. Antique furniture and genuine
Persian carpets decorated the office. A nineteenth-century ebony
armoire, of Hungarian secession style, held Macaro’s personal collection
of historic weapons. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling,
surrounded by swaths of billowing fabric. A life-size wooden carving of
a Grecian Muse dominated the back of the suite, ascending from the
hardwood floor to the ceiling like Aphrodite rising from the foam. Only
the stainless-steel shutters over the windows, and the sturdy metal
bulkheads composing the walls, reminded Samuel that he was still aboard
a ship and not entering the drawing room of some stately old mansion. It
was like stepping from Launch Control at Cape Canaveral into a
Merchant-Ivory movie.

The man who called himself Lorenz Macaro sat behind a
large mahogany desk, facing the stairs. The carved figurehead loomed
behind him like a guardian angel. Despite the ongoing crisis, the man’s
desktop was clean and meticulously organized. An antique hourglass
rested next to an empty in-box. Fountain pens, stationery, and a
leather-bound journal were meticulously arrayed atop the imposing desk.
A skylight in the ceiling allowed the moonlight to fall across the deck.
A Tiffany lamp added a touch of extra illumination.

Macaro looked up from his journal as Samuel approached.
The master of the
Sancta Helena
was an
elderly man who appeared to be in his late sixties. A neatly trimmed
white beard matched his snowy hair and bangs. A maroon coat, which had
the look of something that might have been worn by the naval commander
of a bygone era, graced his dignified frame. An engraved signet ring
glittered upon his right hand.

Despite his apparent age, no trace of infirmity could be
seen in Macaro’s mien or manner. His cool gray eyes were fully alert. A
quiet authority radiated from his presence, along with a certain weary
melancholy.