03 - Evolution

by Greg Cox

  The cop’s pounding footsteps chased after him.

  Selene was dismayed to find the front entrance to the mine open when she arrived back at the safe house. Had the winged creature been here already? Half-buried boot prints, sunk deep into the snow, led away from the mine. Fresher tracks, made more recently, bore the unmistakable imprint of taloned paws. No werewolf had made those tracks; Selene knew wolfen spoor when she saw it, and these were something different. Hybrid tracks?

  “Michael!” She raced into the bunker, afraid that she was already too late. Twin Berettas rested in her hands. Her fingers hovered on the triggers. She called out his name, but no one answered. A quick search confirmed that the bunker was empty. Her heart sank further as she spotted the untouched bags of cloned blood resting atop a counter. Her mouth watered at the sight, but there was no time to satisfy her own thirst. For all she knew, Michael was under attack at this very minute.

  Could he defend himself against another hybrid? Selene didn’t want to find out.

  A series of loud reports echoed in the distance. Gunshots, she realized instantly. Coming from somewhere outside.

  “Shit.”

  She dashed back out into the snow. The sound of the shots was coming from the east. The boot prints, which she assumed belonged to Michael, seemed to be heading in the same direction. Toward town, she guessed. Selene didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry that Michael hadn’t stayed put in the bunker. Everything depended on who found him first, her or… that thing in the sky.

  I don’t care if he is Marcus. He’s not taking Michael away from me.

  She glanced to the east, where a faint pink haze was beginning to form on the horizon. The sun would be up soon. If she was smart, she would take cover in the bunker until nightfall. There was no point in getting herself incinerated for a man she barely knew.

  Fuck it.

  She raced down the mountain road as if her immortal life depended on it.

  More shots blared in the night.

  The older cop, recovered from his close brush with death, came rushing out into the alley, joining his partner in pursuit of the fugitive. Michael heard both sets of footsteps pounding on the pavement behind him. Blood streamed from the bullet holes in his perforated black shirt. His chest and back felt as if they had been stabbed over and over with a red-hot poker. If he had still been human, he would almost certainly be DOA by now. Instead he managed to keep on running, despite having been shot repeatedly in the back. The bullet wounds throbbed with every step.

  “Halt!” a cop yelled at him. “Stop right there!”

  No way, Michael thought. He was less afraid of being captured by the police than of losing control again and possibly ripping both officers to shreds. Even now he could feel the hunger—and the madness—growing inside him once more. His black eyes gleamed in the night. He clenched his fangs together, fighting back the urge to turn around and savage the clueless humans with his bare hands and teeth. His mouth watered at the thought of their blood pouring down his throat….

  No! he thought. That’s not who I am!

  The forest beyond the alley beckoned to him. He glimpsed skeletal oak and beech trees through the open end of the alley. If he could just make it to the woods, he might be able lose his pursuers in the dense wilderness. He scooted out of the alley onto a one-lane street leading out of town. The woods were only a few yards away now, on the other side of the road. He was almost there….

  A wailing siren and flashing blue light caught Michael by surprise as a black-and-white squad car came squealing around the corner, blocking his path. It screeched to a halt directly in front of him. The glaring blue light hurt his eyes.

  Michael didn’t even slow down. Using the hood of the car as a springboard, he leaped over the vehicle into the forest. Behind the windshield, the backup cops gaped in amazement. A startled curse was drowned out by the screaming siren.

  The two new cops piled out of the car. Toting rifles, they joined the original pair of officers in chasing after Michael. Great, he thought. Now I’ve got four cops on my tail.

  A steep hill tested his dwindling endurance. He limped up the wooded slope, occasionally grabbing on to icy tree trunks for support. Flashlight beams raked the hill behind him as the cops followed him into the forest. He heard them shouting back and forth to each other. They sounded mad, anxious… and completely bewildered. Michael couldn’t blame them for being confused. They probably weren’t used to fugitives who kept running even after they were shot. Despite his injuries, he was still outpacing them.

  But for how much longer? He could feel his strength ebbing. Halfway up the hill, he dropped to his knees, exhausted. Every muscle in his body ached. His legs felt like overcooked spaghetti. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that the cops were gaining ground, no more than thirty yards behind him. Their flushed, angry faces promised little mercy at their hands. Michael felt like an old-time movie monster being chased by a mob of torch-wielding villagers.

  Have to keep going, he realized. Lurching to his feet, he stumbled up the hill. He gasped for breath, the frigid air searing his lungs. Each new step was an unbearable ordeal. Sweat soaked through his bloodstained shirt. Perspiration dripped from his face. Lactic acid built up painfully in his muscles. Michael knew he was nearing his limit. I’m hitting the wall.

  “Halt! Stop where you are!” The policemen hurled threats and orders at him. He heard them panting in exertion as they clambered up the slope after him. “Stop or we’ll shoot!”

  Michael wasn’t even listening to them anymore. Reaching the crest of the hill at last, he spotted a dilapidated structure a few yards ahead. A rusted tin roof topped a crude stone building missing entire chunks of bricks and mortar. An old mining shed, he guessed. He staggered toward it, desperate for any kind of shelter. He tottered upon unsteady legs. The ground seemed to tilt vertiginously beneath his feet. He took a few more steps, then toppled forward onto the ground. Six inches of snow cushioned his fall. The frosty powder chilled his face, so cold it burned. Chest heaving, he lay prone upon the snow, unable to move another inch. He could barely lift his face out of the snow.

  Guess I should have chugged that cloned blood when I had the chance. He felt thoroughly drained, as if he had just run a marathon wearing iron boots. Darkness encroached on the periphery of his vision.

  He wondered if he would ever see Selene again.

  “Get him!” a furious cop yelled in Hungarian. Flashlight beams converged on Michael’s fallen form. “Careful! He’s a real lunatic!”

  The cop’s threatening tone sent one last jolt of adrenaline through Michael’s system. He started crawling toward the ruined shed, dragging himself through the snow like a wounded animal. Fear drove him onward, but it was no use. His hybrid strength had completely evaporated.

  Instinct took over. Looking back over his shoulder, he glared at his pursuers with jet-black eyes. Their flashlight beams all but blinded him as he bared his fangs and roared furiously in defiance.

  “Holy shit!” the youngest officer exclaimed. He opened fire and the other policemen joined in. A hail of bullets slammed into Michael’s body, which thrashed wildly beneath the lethal barrage. All four cops kept on firing as they advanced cautiously toward their writhing target.

  Then…

  Thwack! Selene took out the first cop with a ridge-handed blow to the neck. The mortal dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the snow. He wouldn’t be getting up again anytime soon.

  One down, three to go, she thought. Her Berettas remained holstered to her thighs. Despite their attack on Michael, she wasn’t about to employ lethal force against human police officers.

  She didn’t need to.

  Fifty feet away, the second cop heard his partner hit the ground. “Sandor?” Puzzled, he turned his flashlight toward the sound. The bright white beam fell upon the limp body of the other cop, sprawled facedown in the snow. The look on the other cop’s face was almost comical in its stunned bewilderment.

  “T
he fuck?”

  Selene touched down right in the flashlight’s beam, a vision of black leather and pale white skin. Landing only inches away from the startled policeman, she dealt with him up close and personal, inflicting a punishing combination of jabs before spinning him to the ground with a noisy crunch. He was out cold before his head even hit the snow.

  Two down.

  By now, the remaining cops were aware that something was amiss, but Selene barely gave the men a second to react before attacking them as well. She moved with preternatural speed and efficiency, striking in the night like the veteran Death Dealer she was. The odds against her were not even cause for concern. Selene had been fighting for her life against werewolves since before these mortals’ great-great-grandparents had been conceived.

  The cops didn’t stand a chance.

  A third officer took aim with his rifle, yet Selene passed before his sights like a blur. Three deafening blasts from the gun shredded the bark of an innocent chestnut tree, but that was it. He swung the muzzle of the gun around, trying to get another shot at the woman taking him and the other cops apart. “Who—?”

  Suddenly, Selene was right beside him. She punched him so hard that his feet left the ground and he went hurtling into the trunk of a massive oak. His unconscious body slid down the side of the tree onto the snowy forest floor, then toppled over onto its side. It was lights out for him, too.

  Three down, one to go.

  The fourth and final cop spun around with his shotgun, but Selene was no longer where she had been standing only seconds before. In a heartbeat, she was closer than he expected, less than a foot away from him. She grabbed on to the barrel of the gun with surprising strength, and the cop squeezed the trigger in a panic. The shotgun went off, blasting Selene in the ribs.

  Damn! she thought, wincing at the sudden explosion of pain in her midsection. The bullets hurt like hell, just as they always did. She closed her eyes and let the pain pass through her. The heated gun barrel burned her palm, but she didn’t let go of the rifle. Stupid! she thought angrily, castigating herself for her carelessness. I was overconfident… sloppy.

  The policeman stood frozen at the other end of the rifle, paralyzed perhaps by the enormity of what he thought he had done. He gasped as Selene’s eyes snapped open. No longer chestnut brown, they now burned with an eerie blue fire. Ivory fangs gleamed between her lips.

  Next time, try ultraviolet rounds, the pissed-off vampire thought. She was through messing around. With her right fist still wrapped around the barrel of the gun, she hammered the cop with a vicious left hook that damn near took his head off. He collapsed onto the snow, joining his fellow officers in unconsciousness. Selene didn’t waste a second feeling sorry for him. You’re just lucky that I don’t kill humans.

  An agonized groan from Michael reminded her of what was truly at stake. Hurling the rifle into the snow, she launched herself into the air, before landing as gently as a snowflake next to the injured young American. Packed snow crunched beneath her as she dropped down onto her knees beside him. “I’m here, Michael.”

  She saw at once that he was in a bad way. He had rolled onto his back and the front of his shirt had been reduced to tatters, exposing a bullet-ridden torso. Blood was smeared over everything, but she counted at least ten bullet wounds, maybe more. Sonja’s pendant dangled from a chain around his neck, the crest-shaped emblem symbolizing untold centuries of heartbreak and sacrifice. Michael’s eyes were glazed and unfocused. She couldn’t even tell for sure that he knew she was there. His breathing came in ragged gasps. Placing a hand against his throat, she could barely feel his pulse. His eyelids drooped alarmingly. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, evidence of internal bleeding.

  He’s dying, she realized. For a second, she flashed back to that stormy night six hundred years ago, when she had knelt in the wet straw beside her father’s body. She had been helpless then to preserve the lives of those she cared about. Now she felt as if she were reliving that nightmare all over again.

  Except… she was no longer the trembling, defenseless maiden she had been back then. She was a very different Selene now, with options her younger self could never have dreamed of. I’m no doctor, she thought with grim determination, but I know what Michael needs. The last time he had been at death’s door, after Kraven had shot him full of silver nitrate, Selene’s bite had been enough to save him. This time the reverse is required.

  Raising her arm to her mouth, she bit her wrist. Blood flowed from the severed veins and she thrust the wound against Michael’s lips. At the barest taste of her blood, his eyes opened, growing clear and more focused than before. But as awareness dawned of what he was doing, he turned his face away, denying the salvation she was offering. Selene felt a curious pang of rejection. Was he repelled by her blood, or just unwilling to take of her own strength? Crimson droplets fell upon his cheek, but he twisted his head to keep them away from his mouth.

  She urged him to accept her sacrifice.

  “Michael, take it.”

  “No…” he insisted, turning his head to the side.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Michael, you’ll die.”

  He heard her voice as from a great distance. Selene? As usual, there was no trace of emotion in her voice, but somehow he sensed just how much this meant to her. She had returned for him, hadn’t she? That was the important thing. She wouldn’t be offering him her blood if she didn’t want to….

  I can’t let her down.

  His mouth found her wrist again and he began to drink. Her blood was as cool as a mountain stream and just as invigorating. He lapped gently at the wound at first, but an all-consuming thirst swiftly overpowered him. He sucked furiously, gulping down her precious blood as quickly as he could swallow it. For the first time in hours, he felt the gnawing emptiness inside him abate. This was what he had been craving all this time, even if he hadn’t realized it. His tongue probed hungrily at the open wound. He couldn’t get enough of her.

  She flinched against his draw and let out a tiny gasp of pain. The bleeding clearly stung, but she did not pull back her arm. She cradled his head against her lap as the blood flowed between them. He felt her heartbeat pulse within his head, but unlike the pounding he had experienced before, this rhythmic drumming was oddly soothing, especially as their separate heartbeats began to converge. The more blood he took in, the more synchronized the disparate pulses became… until at last they merged in a perfect union.

  A feeling of ineffable peace washed over him, carrying away all his pains, fears, and doubts. He stared upward at her beautiful face, drinking in every lovely plane and angle of her alabaster features. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her unearthly azure eyes took on their customary brown tint. White teeth bit down gently on her lower lip, perhaps to keep her from gasping out loud again.

  Selene.

  He realized that he needed to control his thirst, before he took too much from her. Allowing himself just one last sip, he released her wrist and let his head sag back against her lap. A contented sigh escaped his lips, and for the first time he wondered why exactly she had returned, and how she had happened to arrive in time to rescue him. What does it matter? he thought. She came back… for me.

  He smiled woozily up at her, the taste of her still upon his lips.

  “I didn’t feel like watching you die today,” she said coolly, as though what had just transpired between them was no big deal.

  Yeah, right, Michael thought. He wasn’t fooled by her hard-boiled soldier routine, but he let it slide. If that was how she wanted to play it, he was okay with it for now. Let her have her shell. I’ve heard her heartbeat. I know how much she cares.

  She helped him up into a sitting position. He glanced down at his tattered shirt and was shocked by the sight of nearly a dozen bullet wounds in his flesh. He tentatively fingered the scars. Not even the best emergency room in the world could have saved him the way Selene had. By all rights, he should have been dead.

  “Shi
t.”

  If he needed any more proof that he was no longer remotely human, this cinched it. Still, maybe there were compensations.

  He licked the last few drops of blood from his lips.

  Michael’s adoring gaze made Selene uncomfortable. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a moment like this. She had no idea how to respond.

  He’s alive, she reminded herself. That’s what matters. Her detached expression failed to convey the overwhelming relief she experienced deep inside. For a few moments there, as Michael was slipping away from her, she had felt utterly bereft and alone. Just like when I found my father’s corpse.

  Away from the natural anticoagulant in Michael’s saliva, her sliced wrist was already starting to heal. She glanced up at the lightening sky; the rosy glow to the east was creeping steadily higher. Was Michael strong enough to travel? They had to get a move on. She didn’t relish the idea of spending the entire day trapped inside that ramshackle shed up ahead, not with the dazed policemen due to wake up at some point. She could just imagine the irate officers dragging her out into the sunlight—with fatal results.

  A distant rustle, like the flapping of enormous wings, drove that scenario out of her mind. Her muscles tensed in anticipation of danger. In her desperate effort to save Michael from the policemen’s bullets, she had almost forgotten the mysterious apparition she had sighted before.

  Until now.

  Her eyes searched the sky as a score of frightened crows suddenly took wing, erupting out of the trees in a flurry of agitated black feathers. The birds fled the scene en masse.

  That can’t possibly be a good sign, she thought.

  “Can you walk?” she asked Michael. Her eyes continued to search the surrounding treetops. “We need to go.”