Underworld

by Greg Cox

  “Tanis…”

  He started, almost losing his balance. He turned around to see Marcus standing at the other end of the table.

  “You seem anxious,” the Elder said. “Why do you flee from the very sight of me?”

  Tanis was too frightened to form a coherent response. He stepped nervously away from the table.

  Marcus flashed him a predatory smile. He took a seat and politely motioned for Tanis to do the same. “Please, sit. There’s no need for this to be unpleasant. I’ve always rather enjoyed your company.” Tanis hesitated, and glanced toward his recently depleted armory. The Elder’s voice took on a more threatening edge. “Now you’re being rude.”

  “Sorry.” Tanis sat down at the opposite end of the table, as far from Marcus as possible. This appeared to satisfy the Elder, who nodded approvingly.

  “Viktor struck two keys,” he stated. “What do you know of them?”

  Tanis resisted an urge to glance over at his library, where not long ago he had shown Selene and her cohort the original diagrams of the lock. He tried to remember if that particular volume was still lying open on the other table.

  “Keys? I don’t know of any keys,” he lied.

  Marcus cocked his head. An instant later, his wings snapped forward like the jaws of a trap. Razor-sharp talons pierced Tanis’s shoulders, slamming him facedown onto the table. Tanis shrieked in shock and agony. Kicking and screaming, he tried to tear himself free from the Elder’s vicious pinions, but the talons were inserted too deeply into his flesh. Using his wings, Marcus effortlessly dragged Tanis across the table. Copper plates and cutlery clattered to the floor.

  Tanis felt like a fish twisting upon an angler’s hook. Lifting his head from the rough wooden tabletop, he came face-to-face with the Elder’s saturnine visage. He saw neither patience nor mercy in Marcus’s eyes.

  “Oh, yes, those keys,” Tanis stammered. “One was kept in plain sight, draped around his daughter’s lovely neck…right there for you to see.”

  Marcus didn’t like the implication. He lifted his wings, violently hauling Tanis up closer to his face. “And the other?”

  “Kept with Viktor,” Tanis said hastily. “At all times.”

  “Where?”

  “Within him…beneath the flesh.”

  Marcus glowered balefully at Tanis, weighing the historian’s words. Tanis dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, he might come through this night with his immortality intact. If I do, he vowed, I’m going to bury myself so deep that no vampire, lycan, or hybrid will ever find me again. My books will be my only companions.

  Then Marcus smiled, baring his teeth, and Tanis realized it was already too late. “No, I beg you…no!”

  Marcus paid no heed to his frantic cries. Still holding on to the impaled historian with his wings, the Elder drove his fangs into Tanis’s throat.

  As the blood poured down his throat, Marcus sifted expertly through the scribe’s memories. As the sole surviving Elder, he alone now possessed the knowledge and experience required to control the flow of the blood memories, so that they presented a cohesive narrative rather than a flood of incoherent images. As with Kraven before, Marcus readily found the moments he required:

  “But I know who can stop him,” Tanis informed Selene, in a shameless attempt to curry her favor and preserve his own miserable existence. “Perhaps I can arrange a meeting….”

  Marcus lifted his mouth from Tanis’s neck and withdrew his talons from the historian’s shoulders. The vampire’s head slumped lifelessly onto the table. Andreas Tanis would never again betray the buried secrets of the past. Now he was nothing more than history himself.

  His wings folded around him, Marcus left the cellar without a backward glance. He now knew where to find Selene and Michael, and in whose company they were likely to be.

  Of course, he thought. I should have anticipated as much.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Sancta Helena was docked on the east side of the Danube, between the Chain and Elizabeth bridges. Piers and warehouses dominated the sleeping waterfront. Towering steel cranes, abandoned for the night, perched over dilapidated wharves. Rusty freighters, bearing goods from all over Europe and beyond, were anchored along the shore. The Sancta Helena, sleek and immaculate, looked rather out of place among the weather-beaten cargo ships berthed nearby. No doubt Lorenz Macaro had his own reasons for staying away from the more upscale docks.

  Selene and Michael were parked in a narrow alley overlooking the pier. Their view of the stationary vessel offered few clues regarding what sort of reception they might encounter aboard the ship. “How do we know Tanis isn’t setting us up?” Michael asked.

  “He’s not brave enough to set me up,” she replied. Seated behind the wheel, she questioned whether this was a good idea. She had heard of these so-called Cleaners before; the Death Dealers had been aware for centuries that a secret society of mortals was determined, for reasons unknown, to conceal the existence of the immortals from their fellow humans. The origins and motive of the Cleaners had been the subject of constant rumor and speculation, but the Elders had always discouraged Selene and the other Death Dealers from probing too deeply into the matter. Why was that? she wondered. What were Viktor and the others trying to hide?

  At this point, she didn’t trust any of the Elders’ edicts anymore.

  She considered how best to approach the ship. Maybe I should do some reconnaissance first? Michael wouldn’t like being left behind again, but she was reluctant to walk into the lions’ den without assessing the ship’s security first. If nothing else, she thought, we should know where the viable escape routes are.

  Furious barking, coming from right outside the car, startled her. A snarling rottweiler threw itself against the driver’s-side window, planting its front paws up against the glass. Selene reached for her guns, but held her fire. The slobbering rottweiler was just a dog, not a werewolf.

  With a sharp command, the dog was pulled back away from the window. A flashlight beam searched the interior of the car. Squinting into the glare, Selene saw that the light was attached to an AK-47 assault rifle being held by a looming figure in a black, paramilitary uniform. A second beam entered the car from the opposite direction. Glancing over, she saw another guard and watchdog standing watch outside Michael’s door.

  So much for casing the ship in advance, she thought. Looks like we’re meeting the Cleaners even sooner than I anticipated.

  The first guard stepped forward and shouted at her through the window. “You’re trespassing,” he declared in French. “Get out of the car slowly so I can see your hands.”

  Selene resisted the temptation to draw her own weapons. They were here for information, not a firefight. “We’re here to see Lorenz Macaro.”

  Ignoring her explanation, both guards raised their weapons and took aim at the windows. “I told you to exit the vehicle so I can see your hands.”

  “You want to see my hands, do you?” She slowly raised her arms, then slammed her open palms against the window.

  Sonja’s pendant gleamed in the light of the first guard’s search-beam.

  That did the trick. Within minutes, she and Michael found themselves being escorted through a high-tech operations center aboard the ship. Selene was impressed at the scale and sophistication of the setup. The advanced, state-of-the-art equipment rivaled anything possessed by the coven. She allowed a flicker of hope to enter her heart. Perhaps this Macaro really did have the resources to deal with the threat posed by Marcus.

  If he doesn’t, she mused, we’re out of options.

  A short flight of stairs brought them to Macaro’s private office overlooking the ops center. The elegant furnishings reminded her of the opulent decor back at Ordoghaz. She felt a minor pang at the thought that she might never again set foot in the mansion, her home for so many generations. She was hardly the sentimental sort, and yet…

  Moonlight filtered through the skylight in the ceiling, adding to the illumination provided by
the crystal chandelier and Tiffany lamps. Selene eyed the skylight with a touch of apprehension; Marcus’s newfound wings had her on guard against aerial attacks.

  Lorenz Macaro greeted them from behind a large mahogany desk, beneath the watchful gaze of a carved wooden goddess. Selene noted the man’s dignified bearing and concerned expression. For a human, he conveyed an aura of quiet authority. If he had any misgivings about being in the presence of a vampire and a hybrid, no trace of it showed upon his regal features.

  He nodded at the pendant in Selene’s hands. “May I?”

  Selene handed it over. Lucian’s precious keepsake had brought them this far. Maybe the pendant could somehow convince Macaro to help them stop Marcus.

  It was a worth a try.

  The elderly human contemplated the infamous pendant, running his finger over its intricate detail. Selene noticed his signet ring, although she couldn’t quite make out the design upon it. She wondered what was going through the old man’s mind. His inscrutable expression defied her attempts to read his reaction to the pendant.

  Four armed bodyguards stood by the stairs, watching Selene and Michael warily. Lifting his gaze from the pendant, Macaro motioned for the men to leave. “But, sir,” one of them protested, looking with alarm at the Death Dealer and her companion. He was obviously reluctant to leave his employer unguarded.

  “You can go,” Macaro insisted brusquely. He waited for the men to depart before resuming his inspection of the pendant.

  “You’re familiar with this then?” Selene asked.

  Macaro gave her a cryptic smile, then gently nudged the hidden switch with his fingertip. The concealed blades emerged from the pendant like clockwork. “Intimately.”

  She and Michael exchanged a startled look. Did everybody know about the pendant’s secret workings except them? A thought occurred to her and she took a closer look at Macaro’s signet ring, even as she recalled that woodcut illustration of the armored soldiers marching across a plagueravaged countryside. The stylized C upon the ring matched the crest upon the knights’ shields.

  By the Elders! she thought as the truth struck home. She looked at the aging human with new eyes. Although she tried to maintain her cool, her hushed tone betrayed the awe she felt.

  “You’re Alexander Corvinus.”

  The man who called himself Lorenz Macaro blinked in surprise at the name. He glanced at his ring with a rueful sigh. “There was a time that I was known by that name.” He rose from his chair and circled around his desk to face Michael. He laid his hands upon the younger man’s shoulders. Parental pride showed upon his face. “But by any name, I am still your forefather.”

  Corvinus, as Selene now thought of him, handed the pendant back to Michael, who refastened the chain around his neck. He gaped at the older man, seeming uncertain how to respond. Selene recalled Michael telling her that his grandparents had immigrated to the United States after the Second World War. Surely, when he had decided to move to Hungary after his fiancée’s death, he had never expected to come face-to-face with an ancestor from the fifth century.

  “How have you stayed hidden all these years?” Selene asked. Truth be told, she was feeling slightly overwhelmed herself. By her reckoning, the man standing before her was over sixteen hundred years old, an impressive span even for an immortal. The legendary Corvinus was indeed what Tanis had called him.

  The father of us all…

  “For centuries I’ve stood by and watched the havoc my sons have wrought upon each other…and upon humanity.” He sighed wearily and turned away from them. “Not the legacy for which I prayed the night I watched them enter the world.” He sat back down behind his desk. “And a tiresome duty: keeping the war contained, cleaning up the mess, hiding my family’s unfortunate history.”

  “Couldn’t you have stopped them?” Michael asked.

  “Yes,” Selene insisted.

  Corvinus looked sadly at his descendant. “Could you kill your own sons?”

  “You know what Marcus will do,” Selene said. She leaned across the desk to confront him. “If he finds me, he finds William’s prison. You need to help us stop him.”

  He regarded her skeptically, then laughed harshly. “You are asking me to help you kill my son? You? A Death Dealer?” His face was stern and unforgiving. His cultured voice dripped with scorn. “How many innocents did you kill in the six-century quest to avenge your family? Spare me your self-righteous declarations. You are no different than Marcus, and even less noble than William. At least he cannot control his savagery.”

  Selene was taken aback by his verbal attack, but only for a moment or two. She wasn’t about to be treated with contempt, not even by Alexander Corvinus. “Anything I’ve done can be laid at your feet. Hundreds of thousands have died because of your inability to accept that your sons are monsters. That they create…monsters.” She was honest enough to include herself in that category. “You could have stopped all of this.”

  “Do not come groveling to me,” he said, scowling, “simply because you are weaker than your adversary.”

  Selene refused to be intimidated. She found it ironic that, essentially, she was taking Viktor’s side in his long dispute with Marcus. “You know what kind of devastation William caused before he was captured. He can’t be set free.”

  Corvinus had no ready response. He shifted uneasily in his chair, obviously wrestling with his conscience. He knows I’m right, she thought, no matter how much he hates to admit it.

  “Let me tell you about what your other son has become….”

  The sentry paced the deck of the Sancta Helena, keeping an eye out for trouble. Colin Langely had served with the Cleaners for nearly three years now, after being recruited from Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but tonight he felt unusually on edge. You didn’t need to be a top-grade intelligence analyst to know that things were up. Elders assassinated, the vampires’ headquarters burned to the ground, now a Death Dealer and a suspected lycan visiting the Old Man in person. All of this was unprecedented in Langely’s experience.

  Sounds as if this cold war is becoming hot.

  Shallow waves lapped against the hull. A full moon cast its reflection on the surface of the Danube. Langely scanned the shoreline with a pair of night-vision binoculars. Beyond the silent docks and warehouses, traffic flowed upon the Belgrade Parkway. In the distance, the lights of central Pest lit up the night. Despite his apprehensions, he spotted nothing amiss.

  Without warning, a dark figure dropped into view. Langely caught a glimpse of huge, demonic wings. Clawed feet smacked down upon the deck. A hideous face, with flared ears and a batlike snout, glared at him.

  Bloody hell! Langely thought, dropping the binoculars. The grotesque creature before him bore no resemblance to any vamp or lycan he had ever encountered before. He reached for his Uzi, but the winged monster was too fast. His shots went wild as a savage claw ripped off half his face.

  The sound of gunfire, coming from topside, electrified Michael and the others. Corvinus leapt to his feet, while Selene drew her new Walthers. They heard anxious gasps and chatter from the ops center below. Michael recognized the sound of automatic weapon’s fire, something he had become all too familiar with over the last few nights.

  Now what? he worried. Has Marcus found us already?

  Corvinus opened his mouth to demand a report, but was interrupted by an enormous crash directly overhead. Michael jumped backward as a body, wearing the black uniform of a Cleaner, came smashing through the skylight, landing on top of the desk amidst a shower of splintered glass. Corvinus and Selene also reacted with shock.

  Michael saw at once that the guard was dead. His face and chest had been ripped to shreds. An Uzi, strapped to the Cleaner’s chest, had obviously done the poor guy no good. Blood dripped off the edge of the desk onto the expensive carpet.

  Instinctively, Michael clutched the pendant hanging around his neck. He understood that at all costs they had to stop Marcus from getting his claws on the key. A hybrid Eld
er was bad enough; they couldn’t allow Marcus to free William as well.

  He looked to Selene, hoping she would know what to do. But before she could answer, the window behind him exploded inward. Vicious talons tore through steel shutters as if they were tissue paper, then stabbed all the way through Michael’s shoulders. He screamed in agony as he was abruptly hoisted off his feet and yanked out of the office through the broken window.

  A cold wind rushed against him, but was not frigid enough to numb the searing pain in his shoulders. Looking down, he saw the Sancta Helena shrink away below his dangling feet. Guards upon the ship’s deck fired up at them, apparently none too concerned about hitting Michael as well as Marcus. He heard the Elder’s powerful wings flapping in his ears.

  Michael cried out. High in the air above the dock, he thrashed wildly upon the talons spearing his shoulders. Blood streamed from the wounds, falling hundreds of feet to the pier below. Vertigo threatened as he gazed down at the empty air beneath his feet. How high up was he?

  Not that it mattered. A heartbeat later, Marcus hurled Michael at the ground. A scream tore itself from Michael’s lungs as he plunged downward at heart-stopping speed. Hitting the run-down wharf, he smashed straight through the rotting timbers into the ice-cold water below. The sudden immersion came as yet one more shock to his system, on top of his crash landing and skewered flesh. The moonlit waters took on a reddish tinge.

  Stunned, he sank toward the bottom of the river.

  “Michael!”

  Selene rushed over to the ruptured window, just in time to see Michael crash through a nearby pier. Splinters flew from fractured wooden beams, followed by a tremendous splash of water erupting from the river below. A second later, a winged figure dived after him.

  Was Michael strong enough to survive the fall? Probably, provided he didn’t drown before Marcus got to him. But that still left the ruthless Elder to deal with.