Underworld

by Greg Cox

  A heavy fog hovered over the cold, oily waters of the Black Sea. A bell tolled hauntingly in the distance. Salt water scented the frigid night air. The prow of an imposing ship sliced through the mist, cruising toward the coast of Romania.

  The Sancta Helena was a refitted naval frigate, registered under the Hungarian flag. Over three hundred feet long, from bow to stern, it plowed through the choppy waves without hesitation, despite the limited visibility. Radar and sonar equipment helped the ship navigate through the fog. A powerful diesel engine provided plenty of horsepower. A helipad occupied the aft section of the ship, behind the rear control room, funnel, and upper decks. A radar tower rose like an old-fashioned mainmast behind the elevated bridge. Gun turrets were no longer visible upon the converted frigate, but that didn’t mean the Sancta Helena was unarmed.

  Samuel looked down on the ship as his helicopter approached the vessel. “Easy does it,” he instructed the pilot. Strong winds buffeted the sleek Lynx military copter, making for a bumpy ride. A trim-looking Caucasian with close-cropped blond hair, Samuel rode shotgun beside the pilot. The rest of his Cleaner crew were strapped into the seats behind him. Like their leader, they wore unmarked black commando uniforms and fixed, unsmiling expressions. No badges or other insignia betrayed their identity. If the turbulent ride had any of them worried, the soldiers’ neutral faces gave no sign of it. Samuel was proud of their professionalism.

  The chopper touched down on the ship’s landing deck. The Cleaners didn’t wait for the Lynx’s rotors to stop spinning before piling out of the copter smoothly and efficiently. The deck listed restlessly beneath them, but every member of the team had long ago earned his or her sea legs. Samuel watched silently as the Cleaners began to unload the copter. Crates of specialized equipment and confiscated evidence were stacked neatly on the deck, before being transported into the ship’s waiting storage areas. The team moved like a well-oiled machine, as well they might. This was hardly the first time they had pulled off an operation of this nature. Samuel’s eyes narrowed as three sealed body bags were removed from the chopper’s cargo bay.

  Macaro will want to inspect those carcasses personally, he guessed. No doubt he is impatient to hear my report.

  Samuel decided not to keep his commander waiting. Confident that the team could finish unpacking on their own, he turned and marched across the flight deck toward the forward control center. A reinforced steel door kept the clammy mist outside. Samuel barely noticed the change in the temperature as he entered the enclosed upper deck. He had more important matters on his mind.

  A short hike through the ship’s corridors brought him to the Sancta Helena’s primary operations center. The chamber was a high-tech mecca, equipped with a battery of state-of the-art computer stations, screens, and speakers. A dedicated team of researchers and technicians manned the surveillance stations. Macaro had recruited them from most of the world’s major intelligence services, including the CIA, MI6, and the Mossad. Casting a wide net, he had also cherry-picked the worlds of organized crime and the international computer-hacker community for the best talent available. This usually involved faking the deaths of new recruits; to work for Macaro meant becoming a virtual non-person as far the rest of the world was concerned. The Cleaners operated in near-total anonymity. Not only did they officially not exist, they had not even become the stuff of myth or urban legends. The vampires and the lycans get more press than we do, Samuel reflected, despite our best efforts to cover their tracks.

  Curious eyes looked up to note his arrival, before turning back to the keyboards and monitors in front of them. As Samuel strode through the busy ops center, he overheard snatches of various news reports and police communications. The latest skirmish in the war had been unusually messy. The control room was abuzz with captured chatter:

  “…no new leads in the case of the brutal subway shoot-out in downtown Budapest. Police suspect gang activity…”

  “…search for bodies continues after private train is found deserted…”

  “…gunfire heard in tunnels beneath Metro station…”

  “…large quantities of blood found inside the train…”

  “…secure crime scene immediately! Repeat, secure crime scene…”

  “…heavy snowfall interferes with investigation…”

  “…American doctor wanted for questioning…”

  “…evidence of a struggle at Corvin’s apartment…”

  “…interview all known associates and coworkers…”

  “…watch all airports and train stations…”

  “…contact U.S. embassy for more information…”

  “…no eyewitnesses can be found…”

  And they won’t be, Samuel thought. He and his team had seen to that. Now if we can just lay our hands on this Michael Corvin. The missing American seemed to be at the center of the current crisis. Listening to the reports, Samuel found himself disturbed by the way the twilight war between the vampires and the lycans had escalated over the last few nights. Bloody shoot-outs in public? A massacre at a train station? The warring immortals were usually more circumspect than this. I don’t like the sound of this.

  The walls of the ops center were plastered with digital photos and video captures of the latest casualties in the ancient blood feud. A dismembered vampire lay in pieces upon the tracks behind a stalled subway train, evidently torn to shreds by an enemy werewolf; one of Macaro’s crack researchers had already identified the mangled remains as belonging to a Death Dealer named Nathaniel. Another dead vampire had been found on the subway platform nearby. His body had been thoroughly carbonized, as though exposed to a lethal amount of sunlight. Samuel suspected that the charred corpse was going to be all but impossible to identify conclusively.

  The subway battle had occurred three nights ago. His gaze shifted to photos from a more recent bloodbath, one that had taken place earlier tonight. The gruesome shots depicted the plush interior of a private passenger train. Dried blood was splattered all over the red paneled walls and polished gold fittings. Bullet holes perforated the windows and crimson leather shades. A silver candelabra rested on the deep red carpet, next to an overturned divan with crimson upholstery. The bodies of over a dozen butchered vampires were strewn about the luxurious dining car. High-ranking members of the New World Coven and Vampire Council had been torn apart and disemboweled, their mutilated remains joining those of Death Dealers assigned to protect them. Judging from the shocked expressions on their lifeless faces, the undead delegation had been caught completely off-guard by the werewolves’ sneak attack.

  Sloppy, Samuel thought. The dead bodyguards should have been prepared for anything. He wasn’t too surprised, though. The vampires had grown overconfident since hunting the lycans to the brink of extinction over the last few centuries. They weren’t expecting anything like this.

  Frankly, neither were we.

  His eyes were drawn to a close-up of a strikingly beautiful vampire woman. Even contorted in fear, her glassy green eyes wide with horror, her face would have been the envy of any aspiring supermodel. A priceless jeweled pendant dangled from her throat. Raven-black hair lay in disarray about her shockingly pale head and shoulders. Her pallid complexion suggested what an on-site examination had already confirmed: every last drop of blood had been drained from the Elder’s body.

  Even though there could be no mistaking her identity, Samuel still found it hard to wrap his head around the idea that the legendary Lady Amelia was no more.

  And Viktor as well. Two Elders dead in a single night!

  But the werewolves had taken some serious losses, too. The bodies of several known lycans had been recovered from a known vampire safe house in Pest, their cooling bodies riddled with silver bullets. And more bodies, both lycan and vampire, had been extracted from the underground tunnels and bunkers—including what appeared to be the body of Lucian himself—where an apparently major battle had been fought.

  Overnight, it seemed, the leadership of both the vam
pires and the lycans had been completely uprooted. All the more reason to report to Macaro at once. Samuel could only hope that his leader could make some sense of these troubling new developments.

  If he can’t, who can?

  A staircase at the far end of the ops center led to Macaro’s private suite, overlooking the bustling activity below. In contrast to the futuristic ambience of the control room, the palatial suite reeked of Old World opulence. Antique furniture and genuine Persian carpets decorated the office. A nineteenth-century ebony armoire, of Hungarian secession style, held Macaro’s personal collection of historic weapons. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, surrounded by swaths of billowing fabric. A life-size wooden carving of a Grecian Muse dominated the back of the suite, ascending from the hardwood floor to the ceiling like Aphrodite rising from the foam. Only the stainless-steel shutters over the windows, and the sturdy metal bulkheads composing the walls, reminded Samuel that he was still aboard a ship and not entering the drawing room of some stately old mansion. It was like stepping from Launch Control at Cape Canaveral into a Merchant-Ivory movie.

  The man who called himself Lorenz Macaro sat behind a large mahogany desk, facing the stairs. The carved figurehead loomed behind him like a guardian angel. Despite the ongoing crisis, the man’s desktop was clean and meticulously organized. An antique hourglass rested next to an empty in-box. Fountain pens, stationery, and a leather-bound journal were meticulously arrayed atop the imposing desk. A skylight in the ceiling allowed the moonlight to fall across the deck. A Tiffany lamp added a touch of extra illumination.

  Macaro looked up from his journal as Samuel approached. The master of the Sancta Helena was an elderly man who appeared to be in his late sixties. A neatly trimmed white beard matched his snowy hair and bangs. A maroon coat, which had the look of something that might have been worn by the naval commander of a bygone era, graced his dignified frame. An engraved signet ring glittered upon his right hand.

  Despite his apparent age, no trace of infirmity could be seen in Macaro’s mien or manner. His cool gray eyes were fully alert. A quiet authority radiated from his presence, along with a certain weary melancholy.

  He raised his hand to signal an aide standing near the top of the staircase. Within moments, the hubbub from the ops center grew softer as the investigators below muted all the communications being monitored. Headsets were fastened over the ears of the researchers, so that they could continue their work in relative silence. The glow of the video screens flickered over the ceiling above the control room.

  The Old Man did not waste time with pleasantries. “The innocent who witnessed?” he asked Samuel. His voice was strong and clear, undiminished by age. Samuel heard the concern in his tone. “They’ve been silenced?”

  “But otherwise unharmed,” Samuel assured Macaro. “As you ordered.”

  A judicious combination of bribes, threats, and blackmail had been enough to ensure that any eyewitnesses to the immortals’ latest escapades would not go running to the press or the authorities. It helped, of course, that most of the witnesses could barely believe their own eyes or lacked any true understanding of what they had beheld. And who would believe them anyway, aside from the most credulous and disreputable tabloids?

  Macaro nodded, obviously pleased that no additional mortals had been harmed. He rose from his seat and stepped out from behind his desk. “Come,” he instructed Samuel, heading for the stairs. “Show me what you have.”

  Samuel followed his leader down the steps into the control room. Commandeering an empty workstation, Samuel slid a memory stick into the appropriate slot on the attached computer. The large plasma screen mounted above the computer came to life, displaying raw video footage of his team’s recent missions. Miniature cameras embedded in the Cleaners’ helmets had recorded the images as the team swiftly went about their work, eliminating any telltale evidence the vampires and lycans might have left behind…just as Samuel and his predecessors had done for countless generations.

  They’re not making it very easy for us this time.

  The first batch of footage came from the cleanup operation at the Ferenciek Square Metro station, where a trio of Death Dealers had engaged in an all-out firefight with at least two lycan foot soldiers. Operating a remote, Samuel clicked from one Cleaner’s point of view to another’s. Jerky, erratic images depicted army boots splashing through greasy puddles below the subway platform, gloved hands snatching up bodies (and body parts) and stuffing them into bags, chisels digging squashed silver bullets out of the tiled walls of the station, flashlights combing the subway tracks for tufts of dark wolfen fur, or anything else that might give away the inhuman nature of the combatants. Samuel recalled that no lycan corpses had been found at the site, although they had discovered traces of lycan blood deeper in the tunnels surrounding the station. Had both lycans survived the shoot-out, or had one of them carried the other’s dead body away?

  We may never know, he thought.

  Macaro surveyed the footage from the Metro station without comment. “Amelia,” he said after a moment or two.

  “Yes, sir.” Samuel used the remote to fast-forward through the images until he reached the footage taken at the blood-spattered dining car. According to their intel, Amelia and her entourage had been en route to Ordoghaz when they were ambushed by what had to have been a sizable pack of werewolves. Video from the helmet cams showed Samuel and the other Cleaners tidying up after the massacre, just as they had at the subway terminal. This time there had been many more vampire bodies to confiscate. Macaro watched as Amelia’s bloodless corpse was bundled into a body bag.

  Samuel knew what the Old Man wanted to see next and advanced the footage accordingly. The scene on the plasma screen shifted from the luxurious train interior to a murky subterranean bunker beneath downtown Budapest. Rubble and bullet-riddled wreckage hinted at the ferocious battle that had taken place in the underworld earlier tonight. The upper half of a severed head was matched to the remainder of a dead vampire’s body. When the two pieces of the head were held together, there was no mistaking the imperious features of Viktor himself. A conscientious Cleaner made sure that both segments of the Elder’s remains made it into the same body bag.

  “Viktor,” Macaro said.

  Viktor had clearly not been killed by a werewolf. The fatal cut was too clean, almost surgical in its precision. Under interrogation, a surviving lycan claimed to have seen a female Death Dealer slay the Elder. This jibed with earlier reports linking Selene to Michael Corvin. Samuel was well acquainted with the female vampire’s lethal reputation.

  How could she have turned against Viktor so quickly? he wondered. According to our files, she was utterly loyal to the coven and the Elders.

  Macaro had seen enough of Viktor’s disposal. He gestured again, and Samuel fast-forwarded to the most recent footage, taken only a few hours ago, shortly after Kraven had been spotted returning to the vampires’ mansion. The plasma screen lit up with scenes of Ordoghaz in flames. Yellow and orange flames leaped toward the winter sky as Viktor’s historic mansion, the coven’s home for nearly a thousand years, was consumed in a blazing inferno. Samuel kept the remote set on fast-forward so that the manor’s destruction seemed to take place at an accelerated rate. The time-lapsed images sped by until the mansion had completely burned to the ground. In the end, all that remained of Ordoghaz was a heap of red-hot embers piled atop the hidden crypt.

  Samuel felt a twinge of regret. All that history…lost forever. He wondered how many vampires had perished in the conflagration. Few immortals could withstand being burned alive. He slowed the footage down to the standard speed, allowing the smoking ruins to smolder in real time. Had any of the mansion’s inhabitants managed to escape the blaze?

  “And no trace of Marcus among the ashes?” Macaro asked.

  Samuel shook his head. Their preliminary investigation had found no body in the Elder’s tomb, where their intel had last placed him. It would be days before the site could be excavat
ed in its entirety, but Samuel felt in his gut that Marcus had not been among those killed in the fire. Indeed, some evidence suggested that many of the mansion’s residents had been torn apart before Ordoghaz had caught fire. “It seems he destroyed his own coven.”

  “It was never his coven,” Macaro replied.

  The morgue was located on one of the ship’s lower decks. As opposed to the palatial decor of Macaro’s office, the atmosphere within the morgue was cold, stark, and antiseptic. Heavy steel bulkheads insulated the chamber from the rest of the ship, not to mention the restless sea outside. Fluorescent lights mounted in the ceiling cast a harsh white light on the stainless-steel slabs, sinks, and gurneys below. Razor-sharp surgical implements rested atop metal trays. Freshly developed X-rays were displayed upon illuminated viewboxes. By design, the temperature was kept suitably refrigerated.

  Macaro could practically smell the embalming fluid. “Give me a moment,” he instructed Samuel.

  The loyal soldier stepped outside and closed the door behind him, leaving Macaro alone in the morgue. The older man knew he could count on Samuel to see that he was not disturbed while he did…what had to be done.

  Amelia’s body was already laid out on a slab, awaiting a full autopsy. Macaro suspected the procedure would tell them nothing they didn’t already know: the exquisite Elder had been bled to death by the same lycans who had butchered her retinue. An ugly death, he thought, especially for one so beautiful.

  A pair of sealed body bags occupied slabs of their own. Macaro took a deep breath, then unzipped the nearer of the two bags. Lucian’s lifeless face stared up at him. The blackened veins crisscrossing the lycan leader’s gray countenance testified eloquently to the cause of death: acute silver poisoning. Macaro guessed that Lucian had suffered horribly before he died. Had the rebel commander been united with his beloved Sonja at last? Macaro hoped as much.

  Perhaps someday I will see my own lost wife again….

  Unzipping the body bag farther, he opened Lucian’s scuffed brown jacket. A puzzled expression came over the old man’s face as he looked in vain for what he had expected to find. He groped beneath the jacket, but came up empty-handed. Where the devil is that pendant? he thought in surprise. Lucian was never without it, not once in six hundred years.