01 - Underworld

by Greg Cox

  The looming janissary looked somewhat out of place among the mingling socialites, but Kraven felt better to know that Soren and his hand-picked team of vampire enforcers were on hand should anything untoward occur. Kraven had long ago seen the need for a security force of his own, independent of the obsessed and often intractable Death Dealers, and Soren—ruthless, pragmatic, and brutal when necessary—had proven just the right vampire to carry out the more draconian elements of Kraven’s agenda.

  Unfortunately, it appeared that not even Soren could guarantee Selene’s attendance at even so glittering an affair. He shot Soren a questioning look, but the stony-faced enforcer shook his head curtly. Kraven resisted an urge to charge up to Selene’s room and personally drag her down to the party. I’ve had quite enough of her willfulness and insubordination, he fulminated silently. My patience is wearing thin.

  A gaunt, epicene vampire wearing a red silk sash across the front of his tuxedo stepped into the center of the room and tapped a long white fingernail against the side of his chalice, calling the room to silence. Kraven recognized Dmitri, the eldest of Amelia’s envoys. The ageless diplomat waited patiently for the chamber’s conversations to subside, then cleared his throat. Kraven realized, with a touch of impatience, that the old fool was going to make a speech.

  “Our noble houses may be separated by a great ocean,” Dmitri intoned sonorously, “but we are equally committed to the survival of our sacred bloodlines. When the illustrious Amelia, whom I have the honor of serving, arrives to awaken the slumbering Marcus, in just two nights’ time, we will once again be united as a single coven.” He raised his chalice high, leading the assembled aristocrats in a toast.

  “Vitam et sanguinem,” he recited.

  Life and blood.

  A chorus of clinking crystal seconded the toast, and Kraven raised his own glass, grateful that the pompous envoy had kept his remarks short. Kraven snuck a peek at the open doorway, hoping to see Selene make a tardy arrival, but he was disappointed once more. I swear, he thought in righteous indignation, if she were not my intended queen, I would never let her get away with such effrontery!

  A cool hand tugged on his elbow, and he turned to see that same blond servant wench—Erika—standing at his side. She was wearing, in keeping with the occasion, a dark sequined dress, with elbow-length black gloves, which did not look too conspicuously threadbare amidst the more dazzling finery of the vampire nobles. What the devil does she want? he wondered, irked by the intrusion.

  The elfin maidservant pointed demurely at her lips, then beckoned for his ear. Curious, Kraven bent over and let Erika whisper in his ear. His annoyance at the servant girl was instantly superseded by a more volcanic fury directed at another. I don’t believe it! he thought, aghast. How dare she?

  Without bothering to make his apologies to his esteemed guests, he stormed out of the salon. He dashed up the mansion’s grand staircase, taking the steps two at a time, until he came to the heavy oak door guarding Selene’s room. He threw open the door and charged inside, quickly confirming that the chamber was just as deserted as Erika had predicted.

  A car engine roared to life outside, and Kraven ran to the window just in time to witness Selene’s sporty Jaguar speeding past the estate’s outer gates, tearing off into the night.

  Damnation! He gnashed his fangs in fury as he watched the Jag’s taillights disappear into the distance. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was after five a.m. The sun would be rising in a matter of hours. So where in Hades could she be going in such a confounded hurry, he wondered angrily, and tonight of all nights?

  Kraven retreated from the window, perplexed and grievously offended. Scanning the room for some clue to Selene’s inexcusable behavior, he noted her laptop sitting open on the desk; in her unseemly haste, she had left the machine up and running.

  Frozen on the screen was the profile of some insignificant mortal, apparently lifted from a hospital employee database. A color photo of a brown-haired youth was accompanied by the human’s name, Michael Corvin, and various pieces of personal information: age, nationality, address, and so on. Kraven noted with disdain that this Corvin creature was a mere twenty-eight years old. He was a callow pup even by mortal standards.

  Who? Kraven vaguely remembered Selene saying something ridiculous about the lycans stalking a particular human, but he failed to see what could possibly be so important about one nondescript mortal. For this, he thought indignantly, she left me without an escort at my own reception?

  Whoever this Michael Corvin was, Kraven already disliked him intensely.

  The grungy apartment building was a far cry from the stately decor of the manor. The carpeted hallway was badly in need of vacuuming, while the plaster walls were scuffed and cracked in places. Harsh fluorescent lights hummed and crackled.

  Good, Selene thought. These were exactly the sort of low-rent lodgings where she would expect to find a struggling medical student. Must be the right place.

  According to his employee file, the mysterious Michael Corvin lived on the top floor of the five-story apartment building, which was located within walking distance of the Metro station at Ferenciek Square. Striding down the empty corridor, she counted down the numbers toward Corvin’s apartment, 510. Tarnished brass numerals, nailed to a cheap plywood door, confirmed that she had arrived at her intended destination.

  She paused outside the door, consulting her watch.

  Five-fifty. Less than an hour to sunrise.

  With little time to spare, she did not waste precious minutes picking the lock. Instead, she effortlessly kicked the door open with a single burst of superhuman strength.

  Unlike the vampires of myth and movies, she required no invitation to enter the apartment.

  The ICU at Karolyi Hospital smelled unpleasantly of antiseptic. Pierce was grateful that in his human form, his nose was not nearly as acute as when he was a wolf.

  He and Taylor had arrived at the hospital, disguised in the distinctive blue uniforms of Hungarian policemen, in search of the elusive Michael Corvin. Pierce looked forward to succeeding where Raze had failed—capturing the human, pleasing Lucian, and thereby raising his and Taylor’s standing in the pack.

  Unfortunately, Corvin apparently had left the hospital already, and his colleague, a frazzled-looking human named Lockwood, was not proving of much assistance.

  “Sorry,” the lanky physician said with a shrug. “You just missed him.”

  Pierce had given Lockwood the impression that he and his fellow “officer” just wanted to ask Corvin a few more questions about the incident in the underground. The lycan’s long black hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, the better to impersonate a cop. “You know where we can find him?”

  Lockwood threw up his hands. “He’s working a split shift. You’ll either have to try him at home or wait until he comes back.”

  Scowling, Pierce exchanged an impatient glance with Taylor. The other lycan still had an ugly-looking cut on his cheek, left over from their gladiatorial battle down in their lair. Pierce remembered inflicting the wound with his own bloody claws and regretted that Lucian had aborted the contest before either of them could have claimed victory. I know I could have beaten him! Pierce thought savagely. My jaws were strong, my teeth were red!

  Perhaps Lockwood noted the bloodthirsty gleam in Pierce’s eyes, or maybe he just picked up on the two lycans’ tense and edgy mood; in any event, a worried tone entered his voice:

  “Michael isn’t in any kind of trouble, is he?”

  Despite the early hour, Michael Corvin was not at home. Selene did not find this too surprising; she was well aware that student doctors often kept ungodly hours. Not unlike vampires, she thought wryly.

  That was not the only thing she had in common with Corvin. Like her own rooms back at Ordoghaz, the human’s apartment had a stark, utilitarian feel. The furniture was functional, not decorative, and the barren, off-white walls offered little insight into the American’s personality and tastes. The bland
, featureless apartment almost could have passed as a hotel room.

  Why would the lycans be interested in this human? Selene took advantage of Corvin’s absence to search his apartment, hoping to discover some clue to the mystery. Moving with near-surgical precision, she conducted a thorough sweep of the premises, sifting through his sparse personal effects. There was no need to turn on the lights; vampire vision was all she required to probe the shadowy corners of the apartment.

  A stack of mail piled on an end table yielded nothing incriminating, only bills and junk mail. His bookshelf was equally innocuous, holding only an assortment of medical textbooks, an English-Hungarian dictionary, and a couple of paperback novels, in English, of course. Mysteries and thrillers mostly. Nothing remarkable, not even a dog-eared copy of Dracula or The Werewolf of Paris.

  The apartment was also devoid of guns, drugs, pornography, or anything remotely illicit or dangerous. No silver bullets, no wooden stakes, no garlic… nothing. His small refrigerator contained only TV dinners, not plasma or human flesh. Michael Corvin appeared to be exactly what he seemed: a perfectly normal human being, albeit rather far from home.

  So why were Raze and that other lycan stalking him?

  She was on the verge of giving up her search, when she stumbled upon a battered manila envelope, tucked away at the back of his desk drawer, where she had missed it before. Carefully opening the envelope, she discovered a sheaf of color photographs.

  A cavalcade of unfamiliar faces smiled at her. Corvin’s friends and family, she guessed. The brown-haired youth appeared in a number of the photos himself, his smiling semblance captured in a variety of unsuspicious contexts: birthday parties, graduations, camp-outs, beaches, ski trips, and so on.

  The sunny images, radiant with warmth and fun and fellowship, provoked a peculiar melancholy in the driven vampiress. Her throat tightened as she flipped through the carefree photos, which suddenly struck her as painful reminders of the humanity she had lost over the course of time. She remembered the faded portrait residing on her own desk and wondered why Corvin chose to keep these golden memories hidden away and out of sight.

  Doesn’t he realize how lucky he is?

  She came upon a heartbreaking photo of Corvin and an unknown woman posing arm-in-arm in front of a breathtaking sunset, of the sort that Selene had not seen since she had first learned to fear the sun. There was no mistaking the obvious affection and intimacy between the couple. They were deeply, happily, hopelessly in love.

  Selene felt a yearning that was almost physical. Her brown eyes gleamed moistly. Had she ever known a love like this? Not truly, she admitted. She had been a mere slip of a girl, fresh-faced and virginal, when Viktor had first turned her, ages ago. Since then, her immortal existence had been consumed by her sacred war against the lycans, so that she had all but forgotten the simple, everyday joys of friends and family.

  Let alone love.

  The same woman, sun-kissed and radiant, appeared in several of the photos. Corvin’s sweetheart? Girlfriend? Fianc�e? Wife? Selene felt a sudden, irrational surge of jealousy.

  Enough, she thought firmly. She was wasting time. It was clear the innocent snapshots held no explanation for the lycans’ unaccountable interest in Corvin.

  Dropping the photos onto the floor like so much trash, she wandered back toward Corvin’s overstuffed bookshelf, just in case she had missed something earlier. She ran a gloved finger along the spines of the books, once again finding nothing but a surplus of medical tomes. Perhaps the lycans are trying to draft a medic? she speculated. Someone had to pry the silver bullets out of their mangy hides. But why Corvin? Why now?

  A stethoscope hung on a nail not far from the bookshelf. She fingered the rubber tubing thoughtfully, while wondering just how long she intended to wait for Corvin to return home. Dawn was near, and she was far from the mansion…

  The phone rang, startling her.

  Chapter Nine

  Michael heard the phone ringing as he trudged down the hall toward his apartment. He briefly considered making a dash for the phone, but it was late, and he was too damn tired. That’s what answering machines were for.

  He had to wonder, though, who was calling him in the wee hours of the morning. Had one of his friends back in the States forgotten about the six-hour time difference between Long Island and Budapest? Probably just a wrong number, he figured. Or maybe Nicholas wanting him to work an extra shift.

  No way, he thought. Between the bloodbath in the underground and the not-quite-full-moon madness in the ER, he had paid his dues for the evening. All he wanted now was a couple hours of unbroken sleep.

  His groggy eyes widened in surprise, however, as he found the door to his apartment ajar. What the hell? he wondered, even as his answering machine finally kicked into gear. Michael heard his own voice, oddly distorted by the cheap electronic device, issue from the darkened apartment: “Hey, this is Michael. You know what to do.”

  The greeting was delivered first in English, then repeated in somewhat shakier Hungarian, while the real Michael cautiously entered his defenseless apartment. I don’t frigging believe this, he thought, torn between alarm and exasperation. First the shoot-out, now this! Was he interrupting a burglary in progress, or had the perpetrators already fled the scene? Michael fervently rooted for the latter scenario. After all, it wasn’t as if he had anything worth stealing…

  The answering machine beeped loudly, and Michael froze in his tracks as the machine recorded a frantic message: “Hey, Mike, it’s Adam.” Michael heard an uncharacteristic degree of anxiety in his friend’s voice. “Look, the police were just in here looking for you, and I got the definite impression that they’re convinced you were involved in the shoot-out. I told them there was no way you’d be mixed up—”

  The police? Michael reacted in surprise, a second before a shadow exploded from the darkness and viciously slammed Michael against the wall, pinning him there. He glimpsed a feminine face, obscured by the darkness. Powerful fingers, amazingly strong, gripped his throat tightly. A cold, hard voice demanded answers.

  “Who are you? Why are they after you?”

  Michael was too shocked and bewildered to reply. He glanced down and was startled to see that his feet were a good six inches off the floor. How is that even possible? he wondered, dumbfounded. Who the hell is this? Darth Vader?

  His assailant leaned forward. A shaft of light from the hallway exposed her face, and he was stunned to see that it belonged to that gorgeous, dark-haired woman from the subway station. Recognition flooded his face.

  “You.”

  Before he could even begin to process what was happening, the entire apartment trembled. Plaster rained down from the ceiling as three heavy objects landed on the roof. Huh? he thought, unable to keep up with the flood of unexpected jolts. What just smacked down on the roof?

  Hissing like a cat, the mystery woman let go of Michael, dropping him back onto the floor, and drew a lethal-looking automatic pistol from beneath the folds of a black leather trench coat. Without a moment’s hesitation, she unloaded an entire clip into the ceiling. Michael’s ears rang with the explosive thunder of automatic weapons fire.

  Her high-caliber assault on the ceiling provoked a chorus of ferocious roars from whoever—or whatever—was on the roof. Shaking like a leaf, Michael wasn’t sure what terrified him more, the blaring gunfire or the horrendous howls.

  “Stay down!” the woman shouted at him.

  Screw that! Michael thought, and bolted for the door.

  Unlike Michael, Selene knew exactly what was on the roof. Expert ears recognized the monstrous tread of three fully transformed werewolves. They must be desperate to get Corvin, she realized, if they’re willing to reveal their beast forms so readily.

  Her trusty Beretta discharged an empty clip, and she hastily reloaded before turning to check on the baffled human, who so far had shown no sign of understanding what was happening. To her dismay, she found herself alone in the apartment.

 
Michael Corvin was gone.

  Damn! she cursed in frustration. She raced out of the apartment into the hall, just in time to see a pair of elevator doors closing on Corvin.

  He was getting away!

  Wood and glass exploded to her right as, one after another, three snarling werewolves burst through a fire escape window at the far end of the hall. Fangs bared, cobalt eyes gleaming, they bounded down the dimly lit corridor, heading straight for her. Foam dripped from their frothing jaws.

  Selene looked hurriedly for an exit. Alas, the other end of the hallway ended in a closed apartment door. Worse still, the only stairs were at the opposite end of the corridor, beyond the charging werewolves.

  She was trapped—or was she? Thinking quickly, she opened fire on the rampaging beasts while simultaneously yanking a second Beretta from her belt. The barrage of silver bullets barely slowed the ravening werewolves; they were in a berserker fury now, and nothing short of a clean kill was going to stop them. There was no way she could take out all three wolves before one or more of them tore her apart.

  Time for a quick getaway. Spinning on her heels, she fired at the floor with her second gun, tracing a circular pattern around her boots with automatic fury. Splinters flew wildly about her ankles, and a jagged hole opened up beneath her.

  Gravity seized her, and she dropped through the gap to the next floor down, landing hard in a dusty avalanche of shredded wood and carpet. She glanced quickly at the elevator, only to see it bypass this floor, heading toward the lobby. Great, she thought sarcastically. Corvin was still getting away from her.

  She whirled around toward the stairwell, her only escape route. It was at the far end of the hall, approximately thirty paces away. If she hurried, maybe she could still elude the werewolves and beat Corvin to the ground floor.