01 - Underworld

by Greg Cox

  Gun-toting soldiers jostled shoulders with shaggy biped beasts. Heated profanities competed with canine growls as the pack rushed to defend its lair.

  The final battle had begun.

  The prison chamber.

  Soren paced restlessly up and down the spurious “lounge.” His fists were clenched at his sides, and he hissed through clenched fangs as he heard the unmistakable sounds of warfare without. To be locked away from the combat, trapped inside this sumptuously furnished cage, infuriated him.

  More shouts and gunfire echoed outside. Frustrated, his men looked to him for a solution. His dark brown eyes scanned the interior of the camouflaged prison chamber, settling on a vertical chrome pipe about five centimeters in diameter. That will have to do, he decided.

  He seized hold of the post with both hands and attempted to wrench it from its setting. It was sturdier than it looked, which boded well for his ultimate objective. Straining his muscles, he snapped the pipe off at its base. He twirled the liberated bar in his grip, then aimed it at the locked steel door like a battering ram.

  Armed lycans stalked down a debris-littered access corridor leading to the violated entrance shaft. The gloppy floor was awash in the blood and mangled remains of their murdered comrades. Fragments of deadly silver shrapnel were still embedded in the flaking brick walls surrounding them.

  More fully transformed werewolves joined their ranks, crawling up through open sewage grates from dens and whelping chambers one level down. Their monstrous, oversized heads and pointed ears brushed against the soot-stained ceiling, and their enormous paws left Sasquatch-sized tracks in the rampant blood and gore. The beasts’ furry hackles were raised in warning, and their rubbery black lips were peeled back to expose their serrated yellow teeth. Cruel cobalt eyes glowed in the shadows.

  The mixed lycans and werewolves crept closer to the arched stone doorway opening onto the entrance shaft. Grisly evidence of the devastating explosions was everywhere, in the freshly gouged brickwork and in the splattered residue of their fallen pack mates. Smoke hung in the charnel-house atmosphere of the shaft, and the acrid odor of gunpowder and high explosives offended the sensitive nostrils of the werewolves on point, making it all the harder to scent their prey. A faint metallic click came from above, and the beasts’ ears rotated toward the noise.

  Too late! Gunfire erupted from the top of the blood-spattered elevator shaft, driving the wolves and lycans back before a blistering cascade of unleashed firepower.

  Taunting gravity, Selene and the Death Dealers came swooping down through the veil of smoke like leather-clad angels of death. Bright white flashes blazed from the muzzles of their clattering weapons as they cut down the first wave of lycan defenders. The clamorous report of the guns drowned out the screams and yelps of lycans and werewolves alike. Bodies both human and otherwise dropped onto the floor of the tunnel, joining the ghastly agglomeration of mud, blood, and shredded carcasses clotting the corridor.

  Although caught off guard, the surviving lycans hurriedly regrouped and took the battle back to the enemy. All hell broke loose as the embattled defenders returned fire. Red-hot silver streaked past glowing UV rounds in the smoky air between the oncoming vampires and the besieged lycans.

  Selene impatiently squeezed the triggers of her twin Berettas. She emptied one pistol completely then discarded the spent weapon. This was taking too long; the lycans were putting up too much resistance. She didn’t have time for this.

  She needed to find Michael.

  The prison chamber.

  A metallic clang reverberated through the plush containment cell as Soren rammed the ruptured steel bar into the locked door at the end of the refitted bomb shelter. The door shuddered in its frame before bursting from its hinges. It landed with a heavy thud on the floor of the decaying brick tunnel outside.

  Soren was the first one out the exit, quickly followed by the rest of his security team. His palm itched for his captured P7. He felt naked without a loaded firearm.

  A burly lycan, his rumpled shirtfront bearing the greasy residue of an interrupted meal, came charging around the corner, no doubt attracted by the noisy demise of the prison door. He gripped a butcher knife in one hand and a wooden stake in the other.

  Soren swung his metal staff like a baseball bat, catching the oncoming lycan in the midsection. Ribs shattered with a satisfying crunch, and the poleaxed barbarian dropped to the ground, where Soren gave his skull a few more whacks for good measure.

  I’d rather be demolishing Raze, he admitted, frowning, but this unwashed savage will do for now.

  Once he was convinced the pulverized lycan wasn’t going to be getting up again, Soren stepped back from his victim and tossed the brute’s knife and stake to two of his unarmed men. To his disappointment, the dead lycan didn’t appear to be carrying anything with a bit more firepower.

  Very well, he conceded, hefting his bloodied staff. He didn’t need bullets to kill lycan scum.

  His narrowed eyes searched the darksome tunnels, trying to remember the route back to Lucian’s quarters where he had left Kraven with the treacherous lycan leader. Why did these loathsome animals have to live in such a tangled warren, anyway?

  This way, he decided quickly. He nodded at the other vampires. “Move, come on!” Holding the captured steel rod like a club, he led his men away from the prison chamber.

  It was time to teach their lycan allies a lesson.

  Raze held on tightly to the large glass syringe, filled with the blood of the female Elder, as he hurried in search of Lucian. The lair was clearly under attack by their enemies, but the scarlet elixir in the syringe, combined with the mortal blood Lucian already had injected into his veins, surely would deliver victory to the pack, provided he got the blood to Lucian in time.

  These arrogant bloods are in for a nasty surprise, he mused, grinning wolfishly in anticipation. Soon Lucian would be unstoppable.

  He arrived within minutes at Lucian’s private quarters. Barging into the room unannounced, he was shocked to find a familiar figure lying motionless in a puddle of blood upon the gritty concrete floor. A metallic pendant glittered around the casualty’s neck.

  “Lucian!” The lycan lieutenant could not believe his eyes. Their supreme commander was sprawled face first in the blood. Gory bullet wounds, leaking a peculiar metallic fluid, gaped from the back of Lucian’s brown leather duster, making it abundantly clear how the legendary immortal had met his end.

  Those stinking bloods have betrayed us! Raze raged inwardly. And by slaying Lucian, they had extinguished the packs last, best hope for victory over the hated vampires. Despair vied with blood lust within the lycan’s wild heart. We should never have trusted those cold-blooded leeches!

  Rapid bootsteps approached from outside. Raze tore his homicidal gaze away from Lucian’s martyred corpse to see Soren—Soren!—and his men rushed through the bunker’s main chamber, looking slightly lost. A cascade of water poured down from a broken pipe high overhead.

  Raze shook with fury, unable to contain himself. For all he knew, Kraven’s detestable bodyguard had fired the shots that had killed possibly the greatest lycanthrope of all time. The blood-filled syringe slipped from Raze’s shaking fingers, to shatter upon the hard cement floor. He didn’t even notice as he maniacally threw himself through the window at the vampires.

  Glass exploded outward as Raze tackled Soren, knocking a bloodied steel truncheon from the janissary’s grasp. Grunting and growling, they rolled across the drenched, uneven floor of the bunker before breaking apart and springing to their feet a few meters away from each other.

  Soren’s henchmen surged forward, but the vampire waved them back, a bloodthirsty smile on his face. He had been looking forward to this battle for as long as Raze had. He peeled off his leather jacket, revealing a pair of twin silver whips wrapped tightly around his torso. Sneering at his bald-headed lycan nemesis, he uncoiled both whips in two fluid movements.

  The infirmary.

  Growls, gunsh
ots, screams, and explosions gnawed away at Michael’s nerves as he frantically struggled to free himself from the angled examination table. He was alone in the dingy laboratory, while what sounded like an all-out war raged somewhere outside the walls of the converted subway station.

  I’ve gotta get out of here! He panicked. His veins stood out like steel cords as he strained to break apart the cuffs trapping his arms behind the table. The cold steel edges of the cuffs dug into his wrists, threatening to cut off his circulation, but Michael kept tugging on the chain. Anything was better than being locked up inside a war zone, unable to defend himself.

  At the back of his mind, an eerie howl was rising again. Whatever those “cops” dosed him with was apparently wearing off; even God knows how many feet beneath the ground, Michael somehow could sense the moon ascending in the distant sky, shining full and bright over the city above. Its celestial influence penetrated dense layers of stone and concrete to trigger something dark and primordial within Michael’s soul. Goosebumps broke out on his skin, and every hair on his body seemed to stand up at attention. His heart rampaged wildly, flooding his veins with renewed strength and adrenaline. One more try, he thought stubbornly, straining his quivering muscles to the utmost.

  SNAP! The chain linking the cuffs broke apart, freeing his arms. He had torn a solid metal chain in two.

  “Holy shit,” Michael whispered.

  Chapter Thirty

  The silver whips felt at home in Soren’s grip, just as in the old days when he had served as overseer on Viktor’s sprawling estate in the Carpathians, before the damned lycans rose up in revolt. Time to remind these insolent mongrels of their place, he decided.

  “Go!” he ordered his men gruffly. “Keep looking for Lord Kraven.” Standing on the soaked floor of the bunker’s main chamber, he faced off against that black barbarian, Raze. Water rained down from above, slowly flooding the vast excavation. “Don’t worry,” he assured the other vampires as they fanned out into the branching tunnels. “This won’t take long.”

  One after another, the whips lashed out, claiming first blood. Twin lacerations opened on Raze’s cheeks, and the snarling lycan raised a hand to his face, bringing away fingers stained brightly red.

  Soren smiled, pleased that Lucian’s guards had missed the coiled whips earlier. Next time, they would have to frisk him more carefully—if there was a next time.

  Angry brown eyes glared back at Soren, then instantly changed color, turning a brilliant shade of blue. A low rumble began in Raze’s broad chest, rapidly deepening in timbre. Bone and gristle crackled loudly as the lycan’s shaved skull began to stretch and deform.

  Despite his confidence and adamantine sense of certain superiority Soren felt a tremor of apprehension as his lycan adversary transformed before his eyes.

  Lucian’s quarters.

  More explosions rocked the underworld, rousing Lucian despite the silver nitrate that was surely killing him. His seemingly lifeless body twitched on the floor, and he slowly forced his eyes open.

  Groaning in misery, he sat up and rested his back against a hard brick wall. His somber garments were soaked through with his own blood, and he could taste the deadly silver on his swollen tongue. He reached instinctively for Sonja’s pendant, relieved to find it still dangling from his neck.

  He was dying, he realized, but he was not done yet.

  The lycans’ sleeping quarters were just as revolting as Kraven had envisioned them. Filthy mattresses littered the floor, along with gnawed bones and half-empty bottles of wine and beer. Crumpled pornographic magazines of exceptional coarseness added to the squalor, along with heaps of unwashed clothing. The pungent stench of the place was unendurable.

  The mattresses were unoccupied now, with every lycan gone to defend his sanctuary, so Kraven had the squalid chamber to himself. He looked about him in haste, trying to figure out the quickest way back to the surface—and out of the catastrophe his eternal life had become.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and Kraven froze in fear. He wasn’t sure whom he dreaded most, the rapacious lycans or the invading Death Dealers. It might even be preferable to be devoured by a horde of carnivorous werewolves, rather than face Viktor and his unthinkable wrath.

  At least I don’t need to worry about Lucian anymore, he consoled himself, happy to have blasted the lycan leader full of silver nitrate. It was perversely amusing in a way: after years of falsely taking credit for Lucian’s death, he finally had killed the legendary monster after all. It’s not a lie anymore but too late to do me any good!

  The footsteps turned out to belong to a squad of lycan soldiers rushing past the doorway. Kraven retreated into the shadows of the sordid den, hiding from sight.

  There has to be some way out of this calamity, he thought. He held his breath as he listened to the snarling lycans. A cold sweat glued his silk tunic to his skin. I’ve lived too long and too well to die in some godforsaken sewer!

  So far, lycan tenacity had proven no match for Death Dealer expertise. Their enemies either fallen or fleeing before them, Selene and Kahn had swept relentlessly down the cramped access corridor like an unstoppable killing machine. Selene fired her Beretta at will, shooting every hairy apparition that dared to show a flash of yellow fang or claw.

  An unaccountable emptiness afflicted her. This was what she lived for, after all, so why did it now feel so hollow? Killing lycans by the score brought her no pleasure, not while Michael remained missing and in deadly jeopardy.

  Viktor expects me to kill Michael, she recalled. And Kahn and the others will be more than happy to help.

  The explosions had opened a sizable crack in the tunnel’s poorly maintained brick wall. Pausing to peer through the gap, Selene spied a vast central chamber, the size of a football stadium. Some leftover wartime bunker? she speculated. The massive excavation looked large enough to house a small army of lycans.

  Harsh fluorescent lights flickered from inside an abandoned Metro station, located on the perimeter of the central chamber. Her chestnut eyes widened as she spotted a slender brown-haired figure through the windows of the station, fighting to break free from some sort of restraints. She recognized the struggling prisoner instantly.

  Michael!

  Kahn led the assault team down the stygian corridor, past an apparently empty intersection. His expert eyes and ears were alert to danger. So far, the invasion was going smoothly, but he was taking no chances. The cramped and underlit nature of the lycans’ underground lair made it the perfect venue for ambushes and booby traps. They were going have to be extremely careful—and lucky—to avoid losing any Death Dealers in this operation.

  There had been no choice but to attack, though. The shocking assassination of Amelia and her entire Council demanded immediate retaliation, especially if the infamous Lucian was indeed still alive and plotting against the coven. Capturing Kraven, and bringing the fugitive regent to justice, was also a priority.

  Kahn’s cold blood seethed at the thought of Kraven’s treachery. To think that Kraven once had been a Death Dealer himself. Never in spirit, Kahn admitted in retrospect, and now it appeared that Kraven’s greatest accomplishment as a warrior—slaying Lucian—was nothing more than a self-serving hoax. I should have known, Kahn thought. He castigated himself for not seeing through Kraven’s treasonous deceptions earlier. Selene tried to warn me.

  At least the stubborn female Death Dealer had been exonerated after a fashion. Kahn had no doubt that Selene would prove herself by eliminating this Michael that Viktor was concerned about. Kahn had fought beside Selene in many a battle. Her commitment to the war could not be questioned.

  Something rustled in the darkness behind him. He turned to make sure Selene was still watching his back. To his surprise, she wasn’t.

  “Selene?”

  He whirled around in time to see the tail of her black trench coat snapping around a corner. The flapping garment swiftly disappeared down one of the branching corridors, heading toward only the
Elders knew where.

  “Selene!”

  The crack in the wall was too narrow to squeeze through, so Selene was forced to find another route to Michael. She ran down a muddy tunnel, holding the Beretta in front of her. Brackish water trickled down the moldy walls. Spider webs impeded her progress, clinging to her like filmy fingertips.

  Brick and mortar crashed behind her. She spun around and saw two rampaging werewolves explode from a collapsed archway. The gigantic beasts howled at the sight of her and immediately gave chase, pouncing from wall to wall as they charged toward her, fangs bared, eager to tear her to pieces. Froth flew from the corners of their snapping jaws.

  Selene ran for her life, firing back over her shoulder. Gunshots echoed loudly in the dusky corridor, and the lead werewolf hit the mucky floor. His furry bulk tumbled end over end, splashing mud and clay everywhere. Smoke rose from the silver-tainted bullet holes in his pelt, filling the tunnel with the smell of burning flesh.

  One down, Selene thought, not slowing down for a second. Her lungs sucked down the polluted air as she sprinted at full speed down the tunnel. For all she knew, every second counted. She prayed that Lucian had not already drained Michael of every last drop of his precious blood.

  Not far behind her, the second werewolf lunged through the acrid smoke hissing from his dying partner. His powerful hind legs carried him forward by leaps and bounds.

  Selene could practically feel the beast’s hot breath upon the back of her neck. She tore around a corner, still heading roughly toward Michael, and risked a look over her shoulder. Shit! The werewolf was still in hot pursuit, splashing through the slimy puddles like a veritable hound of hell.

  Her head snapped around to see where she was going—and another werewolf suddenly reared up in front of her. An inhuman roar assailed her ears as a monstrous claw swiped at her.