01 - Underworld

by Greg Cox

  A deafening roar sounded overhead, and a fearsome claw reached through the gaping hole in the ceiling. Selene ducked just in time, barely escaping decapitation. She fired back at the werewolves, strafing the ceiling with red-hot silver as she scrambled for the stairs.

  The narrow hallway turned into a hellish gauntlet as yet more lycanthropic arms came thrusting through the ceiling, seeking to snag her before she reached the safety of the stairs. Sparks flew from fractured light fixtures, and knifelike claws raked the air around her. The clamor of the howling werewolves awoke the sleeping apartment building. Selene heard clumsy stirrings and fearful exclamations coming from behind the flimsy plywood doors.

  A lupine paw grabbed her long brown hair, the points of its bony claws brushing against her scalp, and Selene put on a burst of speed, tearing herself free of the creature’s murderous grasp. That was close, she realized, wishing she had a full cadre of Death Dealers on hand to back her up. The odds against her were three to one—or worse.

  Maybe coming after Corvin herself hadn’t been such a bright idea.

  Inside the elevator, Michael cringed at the thunderous growls and gunshots penetrating the dubious security of the descending metal compartment. His anxious brown eyes tracked his progress toward the lobby as he willed the creaky elevator to greater speed. His distraught mind worked feverishly to make sense of it all. Who was that woman, and what were those animals on the roof? It sounds like a jungle safari gone wrong out there, he thought, feeling as though he were trapped in a particularly incoherent nightmare. Shoot-outs in subways were one thing; that was just modern urban warfare in the early twenty-first century. Nasty but not unprecedented. But a leather-clad super-babe blasting away at roof-prowling beasts in his own apartment at six o’clock in the morning? Where the heck had that come from—and what did it have to do with him?

  The elevator bumped to a stop on the ground floor, and Michael expelled a gasp of relief. “Come on, come on,” he muttered, waiting endlessly for the sealed car to release him. His sneakers tapped impatiently on the floor, until the metal doors finally slid open—to reveal a stranger waiting in the lobby.

  “Hello, Michael,” the man said, speaking English with a crisp British accent. A slight, bearded man, maybe thirty-five years old, with cunning gray eyes and shoulder-length black hair, the stranger stood calmly in front of the elevator, his hands clasped behind him. Much like the gun-wielding amazon who had invaded Michael’s apartment, the nameless individual wore a long brown coat over equally dark attire, including a pair of dark brown gloves. A gleaming metal amulet dangled around his neck. He smiled at Michael with teeth that seemed altogether too white and sharp.

  As far as Michael knew, he had never seen this person before, not even in the subway earlier.

  Before either of the men could say another word, shots suddenly rang out in the lobby. The stranger stiffened as the bullets struck his body. Another shot grazed his right temple, opening a bloody gash along the side of his skull.

  Startled by the impact, the wounded man dived into the elevator, knocking Michael over as he did so. They hit the floor hard, the jolt knocking the wind out of Michael. He found himself lying flat on his back, tangled in a jumble with the other man. Rivulets of dark red blood streamed down the stranger’s face, as he instinctively reached for his head. He grimaced in pain, looking more pissed off than afraid.

  Who the heck is this dude? Michael thought. Strangely, he was more scared of the gunshot victim than for him. And who is shooting at us?

  Looking up, past the injured man’s shoulder, Michael saw the woman from his apartment suddenly appear in the doorway of the elevator. She thrust her smoking pistols into her belt as she ducked down and grabbed hold of Michael’s leg. Once again, he was caught off-guard by the astounding strength of her grip.

  Tugging on his ankle, she effortlessly dragged him across the floor of the elevator toward the lobby beyond. Before she pulled him completely clear, however, the other man lunged at him like a blood-soaked demon, sinking his teeth into Michael’s shoulder.

  Shit! He bit me!

  He yelped in shock, feeling razor-sharp incisors slice deeply into his flesh. But the strength of the mystery woman was too powerful to be denied; in an instant, he was yanked away from the piercing fangs and into the lobby of his apartment building, where she rapidly jerked him to his feet.

  Blood gushed from his punctured shoulder, but the leather-clad mystery woman seemed in too much of a hurry to notice. Grabbing him by the wrist, she dragged Michael with her as she raced for the door leading to the grimy alley outside. Michael didn’t even try to resist; he was just as eager to get away from the psycho in the elevator as she was.

  She kicked the front door open, and they hastily fled the building. The rain was coming down hard again, pelting the hood of a snazzy silver Jaguar parked right outside.

  Nice wheels, he thought absurdly as she threw open the passenger door and shoved him inside.

  * * *

  Lucian’s mouth was filled with the human’s blood. Still sprawled on the floor of the elevator, the injured lycan resisted the urge to swallow the hot, tangy fluid. Instead, he groped about in his pocket until he retrieved a tiny glass vial, which had somehow miraculously survived the vampire’s attack. Uncapping the vial, he spit a mouthful of fresh blood into the sterile glass receptacle.

  Mission accomplished, he thought coolly.

  Still, he couldn’t allow Michael Corvin to fall into the hands of the vampires, not if the American was indeed the one they sought. Even if the bloodsuckers were unaware of Corvin’s potential significance, Lucian had waited too long to let any candidate slip from his clutches.

  First, though, he had to do something about the wretched silver.

  The vampire’s bullets burned hellishly within his flesh. Unless he rid himself of their presence soon, the poison would spread throughout his system, killing him just as surely as if the female vampire had sliced off his head. The caustic taint of the silver blazed like acid beneath his skin.

  He climbed to his feet, ignoring the throbbing agony, and ripped open his shirt. A trail of gaping entry wounds riddled his chest, enough to kill any ordinary man or lycanthrope. Lucian counted at least a half dozen bullet holes. This isn’t going to be easy, he realized.

  He took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. A look of intense concentration came over his bloodstained face as he closed his eyes and focused on expelling the poison from his body. Straining muscles rippled beneath his skin, while the tendons in his neck stood out tautly like steel cords. Blood pounded at his temples. His jaws clenched as tightly as his fists.

  At first, nothing happened. Then, one by one, the yawning wounds contracted, disgorging warped silver slugs in what looked like a grotesque mockery of the miracle of birth. A single blood-red bullet clattered onto the floor of the elevator, followed by a string of identical pellets hitting the ground.

  Lucian’s ashen face remained a mask of utter concentration. It had taken him centuries to master this trick, and even now it required all his mental energy and discipline. Agonizing hours seemed to pass, but, in fact, it took him only a matter of minutes to extrude every trace of silver from his immortal form.

  He let out an exhausted gasp, and his shoulders slumped with released tension, as the last silver projectile clinked onto the floor.

  Now then, he thought, licking the last of Michael’s blood from his teeth. Time to catch up with Mr. Corvin—and that trigger-happy vampire bitch.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Michael demanded, strapped into the passenger seat of the sleek silver Jag. He didn’t know if he was being kidnapped or rescued or both.

  The mystery woman ignored his frantic query. Putting the pedal to the metal, she sent the Jag screeching out of the alley. The sudden acceleration threw Michael back against his seat, silencing him for the moment.

  He whipped his head around, peering back through the Jag’s rear window at the apartment building, his home away fr
om home in Budapest, and was shocked to see the lunatic from the elevator come striding out of the lobby, blood dripping from his forehead and bared chest. What the fuck? Michael thought, flabbergasted. His shoulder stung like hell where the bloodthirsty Brit had bit him. I thought she shot him full of bullets.

  The stranger sure didn’t look like a man who had just suffered multiple gunshots. Spotting the Jaguar, he raced after it with impossible speed. This can’t be happening! Michael thought in stunned disbelief. The blood-streaked madman was actually gaining on the sports car, as if he were the Six-Zillion-Dollar Man or something. Michael’s jaw dropped as the carnivorous stranger pounced at the car like a wild beast, leaping through the rain as though jet-propelled.

  Ka-runch! Their pursuer crashed down onto the trunk of the Jag, causing both Michael and the mystery woman to start forward in their seats. Michael’s eyes bulged from their sockets as he watched the indefatigable stranger scramble up the back of the car onto the roof, never mind the wind or the rain or the fact that the Jag was going at least sixty miles per hour!

  This was getting more insane by the second. Who are these people? Michael wondered desperately. And what do they want from me?

  The rain-slick metal was cold and slippery, but Lucian’s powerful fingers found purchase anyway, digging into the bonded aluminum with clawlike nails that were several centimeters longer than they had been a second ago. It would take more than bad weather to cheat him of his prize, not after all the centuries he’d spent plotting and planning his revenge against the vampires. Michael Corvin might well be the key to Lucian’s ultimate victory, and he wasn’t about to let some slinky vampire minx abscond with the hapless American.

  The icy wind hurled the rain against his face, washing away much of the blood from his head wound, as Lucian clambered up the back of the car onto the roof. His long black hair whipped back and forth in the gale. His left hand held on tightly to the chrome trim on the left side of the roof while he reared back in fury and raised his clenched right fist.

  Sha-shank! A black carbon steel blade, double-edged and thirty centimeters long, snapped out of his sleeve with spring-loaded force. Who needs to transform, he thought wryly, when you’ve got modern technology on your side?

  Michael stared in fear and confusion at the roof of the Jaguar. He couldn’t see the bloodthirsty seemingly indestructible stranger anymore, but Michael knew the other man was up there, only inches above their heads. He suddenly recalled the heavy whatsits landing on the roof of the apartment building, right before he ran like crazy out of his apartment. Had that been only five or ten minutes ago? It was hard to believe.

  Everything was happening way too fast. Michael held his breath, fearful and uncertain about what was coming next. What could the stranger do to them, up on top of the car as he was? Something bad, Michael guessed, none too eager to find out. Something really, really bad.

  A sharp black knife, thrusting through the metal roof of the accelerating Jaguar, fulfilled his dire expectations. The double-edged blade stabbed repeatedly through the rooftop over the drivers seat, trying to skewer the unknown woman behind the wheel.

  “Watch out!” Michael shouted too late. The blade found its mark, sliding all the way through the woman’s shoulder. She yelped in shock, then slammed on the brakes, which squealed like banshees as the Jag abruptly screeched to a halt. Michael thanked God for his seatbelts, which were all that kept him from flying headfirst through the rain-streaked windshield.

  Their attacker was not so lucky. The sudden stop catapulted him off the roof of the car. Michael watched with eyes agog as the madman hit the street, rolling to a stop several yards in front of the car. He lay facedown on the rain-drenched cobblestones. Michael feared that the man was seriously injured—until he raised his head and started to get up.

  What was it going to take to stop this guy?

  Blood streaming from her impaled shoulder, the woman floored the gas pedal. The Jag lunged forward, heading straight for the stranger, who was already clambering back onto his feet. Tires squealed against wet pavement. “No!” Michael yelled instinctively.

  The Jag slammed into the stranger with a sickening thud, launching him into orbit.

  The car hit Lucian head-on, its front end striking his entire body from the shoulders down. The force of the collision shattered ribs and knocked the breath from his body. Against his will, his feet left the pavement as he tumbled toward the moonlit sky.

  An ordinary human would be unconscious already, if not dead on impact, but Lucian, a pure-born lycanthrope, was not human and never had been. Although fundamentally more canine than feline, he twisted in the air like a panther, landing on his feet many meters behind the female vampire’s speeding sports car. Dark eyes smoldered with stringently controlled rage as he watched the Jaguar’s tail-lights pull away from him, disappearing into the night.

  That had to be Selene, he guessed, recalling the formidable reputation of a certain infamous female Death Dealer. His mole inside the vampires’ coven often had spoken of Selene and her intense hatred of all things lycan. Lucian always had suspected that their paths would cross someday, but this was not exactly the outcome he had intended. He sniffed the air, smelling the vampire’s cold blood upon his blade.

  The black knife retracted into his sleeve with a metallic click. Gloved fists clenched in frustration. Fractured ribs began to reknit themselves painfully. Lucian had scored first blood against Selene, yet somehow she had escaped with his prize.

  Not for long, he vowed. Michael Corvin was too important to his plans. Lucian checked his pocket and was relieved to discover that the precious vial of blood had survived his close encounter with the Jaguar’s front end. A partial victory, then, he concluded.

  He had the human’s blood. That would have to do.

  For now.

  Chapter Ten

  The Jaguar came power-sliding out of an alley, taking the curve at more than fifty miles per hour. The hair-raising turn threw Michael against the passenger door. His right shoulder flared in agony where the crazed stranger had bitten it.

  Despite his own injury, Michael was more worried about the mystery woman’s speared shoulder. The wound was bleeding profusely, much more than his. Years of medical training kicked in as Michael frantically attempted to apply pressure to the gash carved out by the madman’s knife. To his surprise, the woman’s blood felt strangely cool against his palm.

  “Stop the car!” he shouted. It was hard enough to try to treat a wound like this with his bare hands, let alone to perform first aid in a speeding vehicle. He’d ridden in rushing ambulances that had raced through city streets slower than the Jaguar was going now. “Stop the car!”

  The woman angrily slapped his hand away with her free hand, then snatched up her pistol and aimed it at Michael. “Back off!” she ordered.

  Michael took the hint and did just that. He sank back into his seat, nervously eyeing the gleaming firearm. From what he’d seen so far, he didn’t think she was bluffing.

  “Okay, okay,” he assured her, holding up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. He took a second to glance back through the rear window, but there was no sign of the nut with the knife, not that Michael much expected to see one. The Jaguar already had left the scene of the hit-and-run attack a couple of blocks behind. Michael found it hard to imagine that the stranger could still come after them after being turned into roadkill, but at this point he didn’t know what to believe.

  The Jaguar was heading west toward the Danube, zipping through the cobblestone streets and intersections as if there were a tyrannosaurus on their tail. The rain pouring down outside reflected the lights of the passing street lamps and traffic signals, giving them a fuzzy red, green, or yellow aura that only made the deranged drive seem all the more unreal and dreamlike. Sheets of water poured down the windshield, obscuring his view, but Michael glimpsed the imposing steel skeleton of Erzsebet Bridge, named after a nineteenth-century empress who was stabbed to death by an anarchist.
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  His worried gaze was drawn back to the Jaguar’s wounded driver. The woman’s face was, if possible, even whiter than usual. She kept one hand locked on the steering wheel while the other held the gun in Michael’s face.

  “Look,” he said, trying to reason with her. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Recalling the unnatural coolness of her blood, he guessed that she already had gone into shock. “If you don’t pull over, you’re going to get us both killed.”

  “Want to bet?” she said defiantly, smiling thinly through her pain. She slammed her foot down on the gas, throwing Michael back against his seat. The towering white spires of Erzsebet Bridge loomed dead ahead, growing larger by the second.

  Michael had dealt with uncooperative patients before, but never like this. “I’m not screwing around!” he shouted over the roar of the Jaguar’s powerful engine.

  “Neither am I!” she shot back. Her gaze was glued to the road in front of them. Was it just his imagination, or were her eyelids starting to droop alarmingly. “Now shut up and hold on! I’ll be fine.”

  Michael didn’t believe it for a second. He gripped the dashboard in horror as the crazed woman drove down Szabadsajto Avenue like a maniac. Who does she think is chasing us? he wondered. The entire Hungarian army?

  Once again, he recalled heavy shapes landing loudly on the roof of his apartment, followed by the roaring of inhuman beasts…

  The entrance to the bridge was right in front of them. At first, Michael thought she was heading over the river, but, at the last minute, she took a sharp turn onto the Belgrad Parkway, zooming north along the eastern shore of the Danube. Fashionable boutiques and department stores rapidly gave way to dockside piers and warehouses as the Jaguar rushed past the sleeping waterfront. Towering steel cranes, silent and inactive, perched like praying mantises over dilapidated wharves, while rusty freighters, bearing goods from all over Europe and beyond, were anchored along the shore, waiting for dawn to disgorge a horde of freshly awakened longshoremen and stevedores. Barbed-wire fences guarded wooden pallets stacked high with miscellaneous bales, crates, and bags.