Underworld: Blood Enemy (21 page)

“right before I strip the flesh from their bones!”

“But first we must dispose of Lucian,” Nicolae insisted. “He is the figurehead of this incipient rebellion. Crush him, and the other lycans will remember their place.” A cruel smile lifted his lips, offering a glimpse of his fangs. “Spartacus was crucified, as you’ll recall, and the Roman Empire endured another four hundred years. As immortals, I expect we can count on an even longer reign—but only if Lucian is put down like a rabid dog.”

Easier said than done,
Viktor thought. He lived for the day Lucian was in his power once more, but trying to find a single lycan in the wilderness was like searching for virgin blood at a brothel. How
can we hope to lay hands on him again?

A knock at the door interrupted the meeting. The door swung open hesitantly, and Kraven stuck his head into the room. “Excuse me, milord,” he began.

“I told you we were not to be disturbed!” Viktor snapped irritably.
Can I depend on no one
this miserable century?
At times, he wished that he had never been Awakened.

“Forgive me, Lord Viktor,” Kraven persisted, “but you must hear this.” He pushed the door open farther, revealing an undead messenger whose leathers were splattered with mud and dust, as though from a frenzied ride. A rusty iron bucket was clutched to his chest.

The urgency in Kraven’s tone, along with the disheveled appearance of the messenger, caught Viktor’s attention. He knew before hearing another word that something was badly amiss.

“What is it?” he asked.

The messenger staggered forward, visibly short of breath. Sweat plastered his dusty hair to his brow. “Dreadful news, milord. The mines at Mount Vrolok have been seized by bandits. Lycans, no less!”

“What?”
Viktor rose from his chair in shock and indignation. “How can this be?”

“I do not know, Elder,” the messenger replied. “When no ore arrived at the smelter, the foreman sent one of his apprentices to investigate. He found the mines themselves in the hands of a sizable band of rogue lycans, who tortured him severely before setting him free with a message from the bandits’ leader—the lycan criminal known as Lucian.”

Lucian!

Viktor’s nails dug into his palms, drawing blood, as he struggled to contain his fearsome wrath.

He shot Nicolae a meaningful glance. Perhaps the rumors of Lucian’s rebel army were not so baseless after all.

“What of Zoltan?” he inquired. The undead administrator in charge of the mining operation was a cousin of sorts to the late Ilona, only a few generations removed from the bloodline of Viktor’s own beloved wife. “What news of him?”

The messenger swallowed hard before stepping forward and offering Viktor the bucket he held before him. “This Lucian instructed the apprentice that these… remains… be delivered to you personally.”

The Elder accepted the bucket. He feared he already knew what it contained.

Inside were the fragments of a shattered skull. Fangs jutted from a piece of a broken jawbone, suggesting that the bones had once belonged to a living vampire.

“We believe that to be Zoltan,” the messenger reported unnecessarily.

Viktor seethed with impotent fury. He looked about for something to vent his anger on and spied Soren standing glumly a few feet away. “Damn you, you incompetent Irishman!” He lashed out at the overseer, not caring who heard him. “If you had kept a closer eye on my daughter, as you were sworn to do, none of this would be happening! By the dark gods, we should have left you to rot with your Viking masters!”

Soren opened his mouth to protest, but Nicolae intervened once more. “Wait, milord.

Distressing as this news is, there may be, if you’ll pardon the jest, a
silver
lining to the present crisis.”

He smiled shrewdly. “At least, now we know where Lucian is to be found.”

Quite right,
Viktor realized. Disciplining Soren could wait; Lucian was the true wellspring of all this turmoil and tragedy.

“Our moment has come, then,” he declared, baring his fangs in anticipation of the decisive battle ahead. “You wanted Lucian crushed, Nicolae? Very well, let us spare no expense or effort to do so.” He drew his mighty broadsword from its scabbard and raised it before him like a scepter. “This sorry state of affairs has dragged on long enough. We will answer this outrage with an overwhelming show of force—the only language these mongrels understand!”

Chapter Twenty

CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS

Lucian felt a storm coming on. Dark clouds rolled across the night sky, obscuring the stars, while the very air seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of a violent disturbance in the atmosphere. He watched the sky with a worried expression, acutely aware that it was the first night of the new moon, when all lycans were at their weakest.
If
I
were Viktor,
he brooded darkly,
now
is
when I would
attack.

He had been anticipating a vampiric assault for days now, ever since he’d sent Zoltan’s skull back to the castle in pieces. Viktor would surely attempt to retake the mines, but when?

Lucian stood atop the shingled roof of the soldier’s barracks, which his own followers had appropriated for their use. The displaced miners, whom Lucian had conscripted to re-excavate the collapsed mine shafts, had been forced to sleep outside upon the ground or else within the silver-laden depths of the mine itself, where the other lycans still refused to venture.

From his perch atop the barracks, Lucian surveyed the camp’s newly erected defenses. A wooden palisade, stretching across the width of the gorge, blocked the sandy road leading up to the mine. Additional timbers had been driven into the ground along the sides of the gorge, their sharpened tips tilted upward at the rocky slopes leading to the forest above. In theory, the pointed stakes would impale anyone who attempted to charge down the hill as he and his lycan warriors had recently done.

Lucian drew comfort from the mine’s imposing fortifications.
At least we’re ready for Viktor
and
his troops.

I hope.

“Lucian!” a lookout posted on the palisade called out to him. The lycan sentry waved his torch to catch his leader’s attention. “Something’s happening on the road!”

I knew it!
Lucian thought, cursing beneath his breath. Viktor was not going to let this moonless night go to waste.

He leaped from the slate rooftop to a narrow walk running just below the top of the palisade.

The sentry, whose name was Odon, hurried to meet him. A dented kettle helmet, looted from one of the mine’s former guards, protected the lycan’s skull. “Look!” he said, pointing south. “There’s something moving up ahead.”

“Where?” Lucian asked anxiously. He peered out over the pointed tips of the fence, his eyes probing the darkened road descending from the gorge. The dark clouds overhead made the night even blacker than usual, and at first, he could see nothing; slowly, however, he began to discern vague shapes rolling up the road toward them. He glimpsed the outline of a large wooden structure, some eight hundred feet down the road. He heard the creaks and groans of heavy machinery.

The truth hit him with the force of, well, a catapult.

“Watch out!” he cried, even as the first missile came arcing through the sky at them. A whistling noise filled the air as a large chunk of solid rock hurtled toward the palisade.

Lucian leaped to the ground in time, but Odon was not so fortunate. The speeding rock slammed into the upright timbers beneath him. Stripped pine trunks shattered, and Odon went flying from the walkway, crashing down onto the stony ground amid an explosion of wooden debris.

More boulders followed, quickly reducing the palisade to splinters. A few of the missiles overshot the demolished fortifications, raining down on the mining camp itself. Missiles smashed through the slate roof of the barracks, eliciting screams of shock and injury from the lycans housed within. Lucian watched in horror as a load of flaming coals crashed down from the sky. A red-hot lump struck a fleeing lycan in the back, knocking him to the ground. Flames leaped up from his hair and clothing.

“To arms!” Lucian shouted, trying to rally his followers, but all was pandemonium. Panicked lycans ran about in confusion, seeking shelter from the terror that fell from the sky. “Gather ’round me!” he cried, drawing a double-edged sword from his belt. “We must make ready to defend ourselves!”

At that moment, the storm broke, adding to the chaos. Lightning streaked across the sky, followed almost immediately by a booming crack of thunder. Rain poured from the sky, dousing the blazing coals and soaking everything else. A howling wind blew against Lucian, carrying away his urgent commands.

Then a new noise joined the clamor. It sounded at first like thunder—before growing loud enough to be recognized as the sound of pounding hooves, racing up the gorge toward the camp.

No!
Lucian thought.
Not now, not like this!

A legion of mounted Death Dealers came charging out of the night. Silver glinted on the hooves and armor of the galloping warhorses, as well as on the spikes jutting from the horses’ gleaming steel headpieces. Undead cavalrymen, wearing crimson surcoats over their mail and leather armor, held their swords and spears aloft as their fearsome mounts easily hurdled the splintered remains of the palisade before chasing after the terrified lycans.

“Death to the lycan scum!”

The hateful cry went up from the Death Dealers as they hacked and stabbed at the disorganized lycans, trampling the bleeding bodies under the argent hooves of their armored destriers. Olga, cradling baby Ferenz in her arms, tried and failed to outrace a mounted vampire who pursued her relentlessly past the shattered barracks. Leaning from his saddle, the Death Dealer caught her in the back of the head with a silver-studded mace, and her brains burst from her shattered skull. Her long red hair turned a brighter shade of crimson.

Grief and guilt stabbed Lucian’s heart as he saw the vampires armored steed ride roughshod over Olga’s fallen body, silencing the heart-rending cries of little Ferenz.
She trusted me, and I
jailed her,
Lucian thought in despair. If there was indeed an afterlife for those of their breed, he prayed that mother and child were now reunited somewhere far beyond the cruel inequities of this world.

But not every lycan fled before the enemy’s advance; a few fought back furiously. Crossbows, captured from the mine’s previous defenders, fired at the vampires and their steeds, while unarmed lycans pounced at the Death Dealers, sometimes managing to unseat the mounted warriors. Alas, these valiant defenders were all too soon cut down by the flashing swords of Viktor’s troops.

The rout reminded Lucian of countless other raids against unwary lycans, many of which he had participated in himself, but this time he was on the receiving end of the Death Dealers’ lethal attentions.
We were not ready,
he realized.
I launched my campaign too soon.

“There you are, you bastard!” a familiar voice shouted at Lucian. It was Ulrik, the Death Dealer he’d wounded in Sonja’s bedchamber the night they were exposed. The furious vampire turned his horse and galloped toward Lucian, raising his sword above his head. “Your head is mine!”

But Lucian ducked beneath the swinging blade, then sprang onto the horse’s back behind Ulrik.

He clamped his legs onto the destrier’s flanks and grabbed the vampire’s shoulder. Ironically, the warrior’s crimson surcoat protected Lucian’s palm from the silver chain mail beneath the heavy fabric. Before Ulrik could react, Lucian drew his sword across the Death Dealer’s throat, slicing it through. Cold vampire blood sprayed onto the gleaming steel crinet protecting the horse’s upper neck and mane. Ulrik clutched at his throat, but blood continued to spurt through the fingers of his metal gauntlet.

My head was not for you to claim,
Lucian thought triumphantly as he shoved the dying vampire off his saddle into the mud below. Alarmed, Ulrik’s steed reared up onto its hind legs, throwing Lucian free of his precarious perch on the animal’s back.

He hit the ground hard, only a few paces away from where Ulrik lay, gasping out his last breaths.

The agitated warhorse spun about and tried to trample Lucian with its silver-shod hooves, as though to avenge its fallen rider.

Lucian rolled away from the crashing hooves. Jumping to his feet, he let out a bloodcurdling roar and jabbed at the horse’s exposed flesh with the point of his sword. The injuries he inflicted were minor but proved sufficient to chase the riderless warhorse away.

He had slain yet another vampire, but the battle was far from over. “Stand fast!” he urged the pack, brandishing his bloody sword, but to no avail; without the moon to embolden them, the routed lycans stampeded past him, almost carrying him along in their headlong flight. He felt like a salmon fighting its way upstream.

Fear-crazed lycans, desperate to escape the vampire cavalry, squeezed past the sharpened stakes facing the sides of the gorge, scrambling up the rocky slopes despite the torrents of rain streaming down the hillside. Unable to gain purchase on the slippery incline, many of the distraught men and women slid back down the hill onto the waiting stakes. The agonized screams of impaled lycans added to the deafening clamor.

A tremendous burst of lightning illuminated the sky, briefly turning night into day, and Lucian spotted Viktor astride his coal-black charger. The scalloped batwings on his helmet were silhouetted against the flashing clouds as the Elder withdrew his gigantic broadsword from the back of a skewered lycan. His cold blue eyes met Lucian’s across the field of battle.

“Defiler!” he shouted over the thunder.

“Murderer!” Lucian accused him back.

Digging his spurs into Hades’ flanks, Viktor barreled down on Lucian. The silver horn on the horse’s brow aimed straight for the lycan’s chest, while the Elder’s gore-stained sword was raised and ready. Lucian hesitated, uncertain whether he could outrun the charging warhorse. He raised his own sword, eager to avenge Sonja despite the odds against him.

The golden sunbeam fell directly on Sonja… her pale face blackened and crumbled…

Before he could engage her murderous father in battle, however, a steel-tipped arrow came whizzing out of nowhere to strike Viktor in the side, knocking the Elder from his saddle. Caught by surprise, Lucian turned to see Josef standing several yards away, his great yew bow in hand.

“Are you mad?” the grizzled soldier exclaimed. He reached back to draw another arrow from his quiver. “That bastard would have run you down!”

He opened his mouth to chastise Lucian further, only to stiffen in shock as the silver horn of another warhorse stabbed him from behind, the point of the horn erupting from his chest. Blood gushed from Josef’s mouth. His bow slipped from his fingers, landing in the mud at his feet. The armored destrier reared upward, flinging the lycan’s body into the air.

Lucian was shocked by the speed and suddenness of his lieutenants demise. To think that the doughty soldier had survived the Crusades, only to perish so abruptly
Farewell, my friend. Your sacrifice shall not be in vain.

Turning back toward Viktor, Lucian saw the undead overlord rising to his feet amid the turmoil of the massacre. Mud covered the Elder’s crimson surcoat, concealing the rampant dragon embroidered thereon. Sword in hand, Viktor glared at Lucian through the jumble of fleeing and fighting figures. “I am coming for you, lycan!” he promised. “My daughters honor will be avenged!”

You, avenge Sonja? The father who ordered her execution?
The Elders misplaced wrath infuriated Lucian.
If not for you, Sonja and I could have lived in happiness for all eternity, with
our child at our side!

Every primitive instinct in his body urged him to stay and fight, to exact justice for his martyred love, yet reason counseled otherwise. He remembered Viktor’s overpowering strength from their confrontation in Sonja’s bedchamber; in single combat, he wouldn’t stand a chance against the powerful Elder.

His instinct for survival won out.

Lucian turned and ran.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, making Kraven thankful that he had not accompanied Viktor and the other Death Dealers on tonight’s assault on the captured silver mines. Immortality, as far as he was concerned, was too short to spend wet and shivering in the cold, slogging through the mud in heavy armor, just for the chance to get yourself killed by some upstart lycan. He was quite content to stay snugly indoors tonight, watching over the castle in Viktor’s absence.

The same could not be said for Soren, who clearly resented being left behind once again. The bearded overseer sat glumly at a trencher table in the great hall, nursing his grievances as he stared sullenly in the direction of the far-off storm. His silver whips lay idle on the table.

Kraven, who had been raised on palace intrigues in the court of King Henry I, saw an opportunity
A disgruntled subject can be a useful pawn,
he observed.

“Come, let us share a drink,” he said heartily, sitting down opposite Soren. He placed a flagon of mulled blood and a pair of leather tankards on the table between them. “What’s the point of living forever if we don’t enjoy the finer things in life?”

Like power,
he thought.

Soren grunted but poured himself a tankard of blood. His scowling face remained as morose as before. Clearly, it was going to take more than just a shared drink to get the Irish vampire talking.

“I have been thinking,” Kraven began, glancing around to confirm that no one else was listening.

He and Soren appeared to have the hall to themselves for the moment. “There is a distinct drawback to serving the Elders. Do you know what that is?”

“Their fucking ingratitude?” Soren muttered.

Kraven silently congratulated himself on drawing a response out of the taciturn overseer. “No, it’s that, as immortals, they need never surrender their power to those who come after them. No matter how far you or I may rise—or fall—in their esteem, they shall always be there, retaining ultimate power to themselves.”

Indeed,
he reflected,
what use is ambition when the throne itself remains forever out of
reach?
It had become very clear to him over the past few months that, no matter how obsequiously he catered to Viktor, the tyrannical Elder was always going to treat him as nothing more than a vassal.
I did not become a Death Dealer, risking mortal injury for the sake of social
advancement, just to spend eternity sniffing at the very threshold of absolute power and
luxury.