Underworld

  But for how much longer?

  Samuel found it hard to believe that even Alexander Corvinus could survive such grievous wounds. Urgently, he called for a first-aid kit and started applying pressure to the worst of the sucking chest wounds. If he could just stop the bleeding, maybe there was still a chance to save him!

  Macaro waved him away. “No,” he insisted. “The time has come, my friend.” Gasping for breath, he hurriedly explained the nature of the threat posed by Marcus. “Find the girl.” He coughed up blood. “Bring her to me.”

  Beneath the pier, Selene tried hopelessly to revive Michael. Her blood had saved him once before; perhaps it could do so again? She squeezed her hand, forcing the blood to stream from her wounded palm onto the gaping wounds in Michael’s chest, which nevertheless stubbornly refused to heal. In desperation, she pressed her bleeding palm to his lips. Drink, she pleaded with him silently. Drink, please.

  His lips were cold to her touch. His mouth did not welcome the blood.

  It was no use. Michael was past saving.

  Hunched over his body, she cradled his head with one arm. Only days ago, she recalled, Michael had tended her own wounds beneath a similar pier, after he’d rescued her from a sinking car. Perhaps he would have been better off letting her die; in the end, she had brought him nothing but a violent death.

  Fresh tears streaked her face as she wept openly. It was all too much. She had lost everything, including any last hope for happiness. She felt as though her own future had died with Michael.

  Caught up in her grief, she didn’t even hear the Cleaners coming down the steps until their flashlight beams cut through the darkness below the dock. A hand landed on her shoulder and she spun around violently, knocking the hand away. She sprang to her feet and raised her gun.

  The leader of the Cleaners stepped back and raised his hands to signal that he didn’t want a fight. “No, wait.” Behind him, his men lowered their weapons. Selene held her fire, but kept her gun ready. As far as she knew, Corvinus’s soldiers were not her enemy, but she wasn’t about to take any chances.

  “Well?” she demanded hoarsely. Her throat ached from sobbing.

  “My name is Samuel,” the lead Cleaner identified himself. “If you want Marcus, you’ll need Alexander’s help.”

  Marcus! The Elder’s name inspired a burst of volcanic rage. Selene realized that she still had one thing left to live for: stopping Marcus and avenging Michael’s death. But to destroy the hybrid Elder she would need all the assistance she could get.

  She nodded, then glanced down at Michael.

  “We’re not leaving him here.”

  The opulent suite had changed little since Selene had last seen it, aside from the bloodstains on the wall and the gore-covered sword lying upon the floor. She found Corvinus propped up against one wall, surrounded by his own immortal blood. A museum-quality medieval dagger rested upon his lap.

  She could tell at glance that he was at death’s door. His face had taken on a grayish cast and he was breathing with great difficulty. Her mind reeled at the very idea of the near-mythical Alexander Corvinus succumbing to death at last, but now was not the time to dwell on the historic significance of the moment. According to Samuel, the ancient warlord had only a short time left to live. They had to make it count.

  “Did he get the pendant?” he gasped.

  Selene remembered Marcus wrenching his prize away from Michael. “Yes.”

  “He is too powerful for you alone,” Corvinus said, unsurprised by her admission.

  It took her a moment to realize what he had in mind. Her gaze darted at the waiting dagger.

  “You’re the only one older than he is,” she protested, “the only one stronger. You could have killed him yourself.”

  Corvinus shook his head. “No matter what he has become…he is my son.”

  “Well, he’s not mine.”

  He nodded grimly. “You are the last hope left,” he told her. Selene wondered if he had even tried to defend himself. “There is only one way to defeat him.” Picking up the dagger, he drew the tip of the blade across his wrist. A crimson line seeped up from beneath his skin. “Quickly now, before there is no more legacy left in my veins.”

  Selene recalled offering her own wrist to Michael only one night ago. Her heart ached at the realization that her sacrifice had only kept her lover alive for another twenty-four hours or so. She hoped that Corvinus’s blood would not be similarly wasted.

  She knelt beside the dying immortal and lifted his wrist to her lips. His blood touched her tongue and an unexpected shock rushed through her body. Her brown eyes instantly flashed to a luminous blue. Corvinus’s blood, the font from which both the lycan and vampire races had been born, possessed a dynamic energy like nothing she had ever tasted before. Already she felt its powers coursing through her veins.

  Startled, and more than a little frightened, she drew back her lips. Her eyes stared anxiously into his. She spoke in a whisper:

  “What will I become?”

  Corvinus lifted his wrist toward her mouth. His voice, when he answered her, was suffused with a near-religious fervor.

  “The Future.”

  What does he mean? She contemplated his bleeding wrist, uneasy about the momentous step she was about to take. Even without knowing the full consequences of the act, she knew that she faced a crucial turning point that would change her immortal existence forever. After this, nothing would ever be the same. She hesitated briefly, then realized she had no choice. Marcus had to be stopped, and this was the only way she could become strong enough to oppose him. Also, if she was completely honest with herself, the lure of Corvinus’s potent blood was just too intoxicating to resist.

  Opening her mouth wide, she sank her fangs deeply into the immortal’s wrist. An electric thrill raced through her quivering flesh as she hungrily gulped down the potent elixir flowing through the old man’s veins. Her body convulsed in sync with Corvinus’s fading pulse. Her own heart pounded like the hooves of medieval warhorses. Blue fire blazed in her eyes as the blood of the First merged with her own. For the first time since Michael’s death, she felt alive once more.

  Is this what Michael felt, when my bite made him a hybrid?

  Finally, she could drink no more. She tore her mouth away from the old man’s wrist. To her surprise, she saw contentment on his face, even though his end was near. He gazed up at her with an enigmatic smile upon his lips, as though he knew something both sublime and wonderful:

  What she would become. What worlds she would bridge.

  “Go now,” he told her.

  The console lit up as the helicopter pilot flipped the switches. The aircraft’s powerful turboshaft engine whined to life. The rotary blades spun into motion.

  Selene settled into her seat aboard the chopper. Her lips still tingled from coming into contact with Corvinus’s blood, but now she thirsted only for vengeance. Her face was a mask of icy determination. Her eyes glittered coldly.

  I’m coming for you, Marcus, she thought. Before this night was over, either she or the murderous Elder would be dead. And, if fortune was kind, William would still be locked away for all eternity. I have to end this madness, once and for all.

  The alternative was unimaginable.

  The Lynx’s pilot calmly went through his takeoff procedure. Selene was impressed by the smooth professionalism of the Cleaners, who reminded her favorably of the Death Dealers. Besides Samuel, who was riding shotgun beside the pilot, their strike team consisted of the pilot, a gunner, and four additional commandos. The armed soldiers sat beside her in stony silence, seemingly committed to carrying out Corvinus’s final orders. She was struck by the loyalty the ancient warlord commanded even as he lay dying.

  Michael’s corpse, sealed up in a body bag, rested beside her. Selene could not bring herself to leave his body behind and fully intended to give him a decent burial, provided she survived her final confrontation with Marcus. It was the least she could do for him, after all he ha
d meant to her. She unzipped the bag, and her throat tightened at the sight of his lifeless body, with its cold, clammy skin and gaping wounds. Dried blood was crusted over his punctured chest. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  Had it really been less than a day since they had made love?

  She choked back a sob. The time for weeping was over.

  She had a mission to fulfill.

  Nearby, the gunner swung his fifty-caliber machine gun into position. He unlatched the safety and racked the slide back. Selene was glad to see that the copter was ready for an aerial attack. She wondered if even Marcus would willingly take on an armed helicopter.

  Welcome to the twenty-first century, she thought.

  The rotors engaged fully and the chopper lifted off from the deck. It banked sharply, leaving the Sancta Helena behind.

  Selene didn’t look back.

  Alexander Corvinus sat behind his desk in the blood-spattered office. Samuel and his men had carted the body of the unfortunate guard away, but broken glass was still scattered all over the desktop. The cold of winter invaded the suite through the splintered skylight. Through the open ceiling, he watched the helicopter carry Selene and his men away.

  Godspeed, he thought. The future depends on you now.

  He was alone now. Samuel had assured him that no other living soul remained aboard the Sancta Helena. This was as it should be; it was almost time to perform one final cleanup operation. He reached into the pocket of his coat and extracted one of the explosive disks he had removed from the weapons cabinet earlier. Ultimately, he had lacked the will to use the destructive device against Marcus, but it could still serve a useful purpose.

  A coughing fit racked his body and he hacked up a gobbet of clotted blood. He was almost surprised there was any blood left in him after satisfying Selene’s thirst. He felt like a hollowed-out shell, dried-up and ready to blow away in the wind. He wheezed painfully, every breath an ordeal. A numbing chill swept over his body. Darkness encroached on his vision.

  So this is dying, he thought. It was a peculiar sensation, after sixteen centuries of immortality. “We owe God a death,” the Bard had written centuries ago. If so, Corvinus thought, my payment is long past due. He turned to look at the elegant face of the massive carving behind him. The Muse’s divine countenance was modeled on that of Helena, his long-dead wife and the mother of his children. He was grateful that she did not live to see the monsters their sons had become. At long last, Helena, we shall be reunited once more.

  He depressed the disk, activating it. The miniature holes opened in its side, releasing the concentrated gas fumes into the air. The acrid smell of the accelerant offended his nostrils. He tossed the disk into an open crate filled with over twenty identical devices. Understanding his purpose, Samuel had been good enough to fetch the crate before departing with Selene.

  That should do quite nicely, he thought.

  The original disk automatically split in half, exposing the contacts inside.

  Corvinus closed his eyes for the last time.

  A spark of blue electricity arced between the contacts….

  A gigantic fireball tore the Sancta Helena apart. The devastating explosion shook the waterfront. Jagged shards of flaming shrapnel spiraled into the night. Churning black smoke billowed up from the sinking wreckage.

  Selene heard the blast even over the noise of the chopper. The shock wave sent a shudder through the Lynx, but the helicopter kept on flying. A muscle twitched beneath Samuel’s face, but that was the only sign of emotion displayed by the stoic Cleaner. “Oh, man,” one of the younger soldiers whispered, before a glare from his leader shut him up.

  So much for Alexander Corvinus, she realized. Sixteen hundred years of life had come to an end, perhaps many centuries too late. Better he should have died of the plague in the first place. Selene didn’t know how to react to the first immortal’s death. Too many cataclysmic events in too short a time had left her numb.

  Alexander. Viktor. Amelia. Lucian. All the giants of the past lived no more. Now only Marcus and William remained.

  But not for much longer, she vowed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Over time, waters had infiltrated the underground passageway. Marcus waded through waist-deep water as he trekked through the ancient tunnel he had seen in Selene’s memories. The dark, silty water was bitterly cold, but Marcus barely noticed. This close to the end of his sacred quest, he was not about to let a little freezing water slow him down.

  Soon, William. Your long captivity is almost over.

  His right hand held aloft a blazing torch. In human guise, he navigated the subterranean labyrinth. His eyes searched the shadowy nooks and crannies. The passage of time had taken its toll on the flooded tunnel. The granite walls were crumbling and coated with fungus. The air within the corridor was dank and smelled of mildew. Water dripped from the arched ceiling.

  A dash of faded color caught his eye. Above the waterline, vestiges of red and yellow paint still clung to the moldering stonework. His finger traced the lingering smears of paint and he chuckled in amusement. Although the design was barely discernible now, he recognized the sun and flowers that little Selene and her sister had scrawled upon the walls some six hundred years ago. He felt destiny’s multifarious strands coming together at last.

  Almost there, he thought.

  The primitive drawings were the final proof that he had come to the right place. Indeed, he felt as though he could almost sense his twin’s presence nearby. Their shared blood called out to him, urging him onward. He quickened his pace through the turbid waters.

  At long last, I will fulfill my vow—and the sons of Corvinus will be united once more.

  Just beyond the childish paintings, he came to a wall of blackened stone. The barrier appeared solid enough, yet an ornate design had been cut into the heavy granite blocks. In the center of the pattern was a depression in the shape of the open pendant.

  Marcus smiled.

  Traveling at over 250 kilometers per hour, the Lynx headed southeast, crossing the border into Romania. Soon the jagged peaks of the Carpathian Mountains loomed before them. At six thousand feet in altitude, dense forests of firs and pines gave way to desolate outcroppings of barren rock, now surmounted by tons of accumulated snow and ice. Selene felt a pang of nostalgia at the sight of the mountains, familiar to her from her long-vanished childhood, but swiftly thrust the feeling aside. This was no time for bittersweet reminiscences. She had an Elder to kill.

  She sat beside Michael’s body in the cockpit. The top of the body bag was still unzipped, so that she could gaze upon his lifeless features. Even in death, his face retained its rugged good looks. She found it hard to accept that his eyes would never look upon her again. The gross injustice of it all stabbed at her heart. After six centuries of solitude she had finally found the love of her life, only to lose him in a matter of days.

  Her face hardened as she took her grief and converted it into anger. A hunger for revenge came easily to her, and she let her all-consuming need for vengeance fuel her determination to end Marcus’s obscene existence. Forget the threat posed by William and his highly infectious brand of lycanthropy; Marcus would pay for taking Michael from her. She would see to that…or die trying.

  Marcus stood where Selene’s father had once stood, six centuries before. He ran his fingers over the intricate design etched into the wall, then inserted Sonja’s pendant into the matching depression. He flicked the switch upon the pendant’s side and its bronze blades emerged from hiding. The blades fit perfectly into the slots intended for them, locking the key into place. Marcus reached out and gave the key a decisive turn.

  Click. Concealed machinery came to life after centuries of slumber. Reanimated gears creaked loudly, before being drowned out by the grinding of stone against stone. A sizable portion of the wall began to lift from the floor, receding into the ceiling. The newly exposed doorway opened onto a hidden corridor, just as Selene’s childhood memories had promised. Through a
shimmering curtain of dripping water, Marcus glimpsed the flooded alcove beyond. For a moment, he feared that the frigid waters might have filled the dungeon entirely, drowning William in his forgotten cell, but then, to his relief, he saw a dusty stone staircase rising up from the water on the other side of the alcove. The polished stone steps, which looked as though they had been untrodden ever since the dungeon had first been sealed off centuries ago, led off into the darkness.

  Marcus’s eyes gleamed in anticipation. He smirked at the thought that, somewhere beyond the grave, Viktor’s restless spirit was crying out in dismay.

  You hid my brother well, he thought vindictively, but not well enough.

  He removed the pendant from the lock, then stepped forward through the falling water.

  The chopper soared above the frothing waters of a rushing river. This high in the mountains, the rocky passes churned the river into turbulent rapids. White water tumbled down a winding path toward the dense pine forests below. The tumultuous course of the river matched the turmoil in Selene’s soul, although she did her best to hide her heartache behind the cool, emotionless mask of a warrior. She needed to be a Death Dealer now, more than ever before.

  “We’re getting close,” Samuel announced.

  Good, she thought. Reluctantly looking away from Michael, she focused on the mission before her. The Lynx banked sharply, roaring around a bend in the river, and the ruins of a medieval castle came into view.

  Viktor’s once-mighty fortress had been destroyed by centuries of warfare and neglect. Selene recalled it rising proudly from the craggy slopes of the mountain. Now, however, nothing more than a skeletal remnant of its former glory remained. Its formidable walls had collapsed altogether in places. Fallen stones dotted the snowy landscape. The wooden roofs had rotted away, exposing the castle’s gutted interior to the elements. The drawbridge leading up to the gatehouse was long gone, discouraging visitors, although that was hardly likely to keep out the winged Elder. Frost-covered spires and parapets jutted upward from the packed snow and ice like the stumps of amputated limbs. Thick black clouds obscured the moon, adding to the impenetrable shadows veiling the lower levels of the abandoned citadel. Selene tried not to remember playing with her sister on the sunlit slopes below the castle.