Underworld

by Greg Cox

  Their flashlights probed the darkened mine. Startled gasps and exclamations burst from the men as the intersecting beams fell upon the face of an enormous wolf. Unblinking cobalt eyes glared at them. Dagger-sized fangs gleamed between the beast’s open jaws.

  “Holy Mother—!” Hadik almost opened fire on the wolf, before he realized that the animal was neither moving nor making any sort of sound. “Hold your fire!” he called out to the other men. “I think it’s dead!”

  His heart racing, he swept his flashlight beam over the shaggy monstrosity. To his relief, he saw that the wolf-thing was hanging lifelessly inside some sort of cage. Lowering his gun, he breathed for the first time in several seconds. His shoulders drooped as he gave his heart a few minutes to slow down. Christ, he thought, that thing almost gave me a coronary!

  The other cops lowered their weapons as well. Hadik figured it was a minor miracle that there weren’t already bullets ricocheting around the mine. Olszanski stared at the suspended creature with wide, fearful eyes. “Sergeant?” he asked, a quaver in his voice. “What is that thing?”

  Hell if I know, Hadik thought. The carcass had the head of a wolf, complete with pointed ears and a protruding muzzle, but its body looked more like a man’s, built for walking erect. Fearsome claws dangled at the end of the monster’s sinewy limbs. It was at least eight feet tall, larger than any wolf or human he was familiar with. Some sort of ape? No, that wasn’t quite right. There was something distinctly canine about the beast’s head and paws. It’s a werewolf, his brain shrieked at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that word aloud. What was that old saying again? Speak of the wolf and you will see his teeth.

  “Maybe it’s a fake,” Officer Andrassy said. He had a reputation for creative thinking. “A prop for a horror movie?”

  “It looks real enough to me,” Hadik grunted. He swept his flashlight around the rest of the old mine shaft, which had obviously been refurbished at some point. His jaw dropped at the sight of a computerized communications center, a tray full of bloody surgical implements, and enough guns and ammunition to fight a war. Racks of automatic weapons lined the walls. Packets of whole blood rested on a nearby counter.

  Oh my God, he thought. What the hell have we stumbled into?

  “It’s a terrorist base!” Olszanski blurted. “Corvin and the woman…they’re terrorists!”

  “Or CIA,” Andrassy added. “He’s an American, remember?”

  The fourth policeman, Latja, just shook his head in disbelief.

  Oddly enough, Hadik found all this talk of spies and terrorists strangely comforting. Terrorism was a fact of life, nothing supernatural about it. Unlike, say, certain mythological creatures…

  In any event, his course was clear. “We need to call this in,” he said decisively. “Back to our cars, on the double!” A thought occurred to him and he turned toward the rookie. “Olszanski, you stay here and watch the exit. Don’t let anyone leave or enter until we get back. You got that?”

  “But…” Before the fresh-faced young cop could object, a sudden wind blew the open door against the wall. The men jumped at the unexpected clang, then looked in bewilderment at the open doorway. Fallen leaves and snow came blowing into the bunker.

  The cops rushed out of the mine into the open. Swirling winds whipped up the cold white powder. A loud whirring sound drew their gaze upward. They gawked in amazement at the sleek black helicopter hovering directly above them.

  Andrassy’s CIA theory was looking better and better.

  The nose of the chopper dipped toward the cops. A burst of automatic gunfire chewed up the snow in front of the men’s feet. An amplified voice addressed them from the copter: “Drop your weapons and stand down. Repeat, drop your weapons.” Another spray of bullets punctuated the command.

  The other officers looked to Hadik for guidance. He shrugged his stocky shoulders. I know when I’m outgunned. He glumly tossed his pistol onto the snow. His fellow cops followed suit.

  “Remain where you are,” the anonymous voice instructed, not bothering to identify itself. A half dozen long cables came tumbling out of the chopper, followed by a team of commandos who came sliding down the cables like goddamn ninjas or something. They wore black uniforms with no markings. Balaclavas covered their faces. Automatic rifles were slung over their shoulders.

  Who? Hadik wondered impotently. Allies of the woman in black?

  Boldly striking in broad daylight, the nameless commandos quickly eliminated any threat posed by the four police officers. Within minutes, Hadik found himself lying on his side on the snow, his wrists zip-tied behind his back. He strained to free himself, but the heavy-duty plastic cable ties were too strong to snap apart. He heard Olszanski and the other men grunting and swearing as well. For the second time that morning, the cops were freezing their asses off in the snow.

  They were not having a good day.

  At least we’re conscious this time. He watched helplessly as the commandos went about their business, emptying out the converted mine with practiced efficiency. They hauled out the computers, the crates of ammo, the medical supplies, and even an overstuffed body bag that almost surely contained the shaggy carcass of the dead wolf-thing. The potential evidence was quickly loaded into the helicopter, which had touched down on the road in front of the mine entrance. By the time the commandos were done, Hadik guessed, the bunker would be stripped clean of anything remotely incriminating. I wonder if we’ll ever find out what this was all about?

  The armed cleanup crew finished in less than fifteen minutes. The last commando out of the mine reported to the man who seemed to be in charge, a tall, rangy individual with a military bearing. The leader nodded and removed a handful of metal disks from a pouch on his belt. The polished silver disks resembled oversize coins. He hurled them into the bunker.

  Hadik heard the disks skitter across the concrete floor of the mine before coming to rest somewhere deep inside the hidden base. A faint hissing noise reached his ears.

  A commando unsheathed a knife as he approached the immobilized sergeant. For a second, Hadik thought he was done for, then the masked trooper stepped behind him and neatly sliced through the ties binding the cop’s hands together. As the circulation returned to his fingers, Hadik saw that other cops were being freed as well.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t stick around,” a commando said tersely. He spoke Hungarian without any discernible accent. “And stay away from the mine.”

  Don’t tell me what to do, Hadik thought angrily. He rubbed his chafed wrists as he stumbled to his feet. His bones felt as if they had turned to ice. I’m getting damn tired of being pushed around by strangers.

  The commandos left as briskly as they had arrived. The helicopter lifted off from the lonely mountain road, stirring up a blinding cloud of fine white powder. Hadik and the other cops watched the chopper vanish into the sky. Like the men, the black aircraft bore no identifying insignia.

  “I told you,” Andrassy said. “CIA.”

  Inside the mine, unseen by the four cops, the metal disks sprayed a fine mist from the tiny holes that had opened up along their edges. Gas fumes soon filled the bunker, which had been stripped to its bare walls. A timed mechanism caused one of the disks to split in half. Two shiny contacts were exposed to the volatile atmosphere inside the mine. A crackle of electricity arced between them….

  The explosion destroyed what little the anonymous men had left behind. A roiling ball of flame erupted from the mouth of the mine. The accumulated snow and ice was vaporized instantly. A deafening bang rocked the morning.

  “Wha—?” Hadik gasped, a second before the shock wave sent all four policemen flying backward into the woods. His head slammed into an unyielding oak and the world went black once more.

  It would be hours before any of the cops stirred again.

  An engine roared to life, waking Selene from a sound sleep. She sat up with a start and grabbed for her gun, but the weapon was not resting on the table next to her bed the way
it usually was. In fact, there didn’t seem to be a table.

  Or a bed.

  It took her a moment to get oriented. Right. She was naked in the back of the semitrailer, the gray wool blanket draped over her body. Her gun was with her clothing, scattered about on the floor of the trailer, surrounded by crates of engine parts. Sonja’s pendant rested on the floor next to where her head had been.

  “Michael?”

  He was nowhere in sight, but she thought she heard him stirring outside the trailer. A closed window was built into the wall at her right. Wrapping the blanket around her, she retrieved some fresh ammo from the pockets of her trench coat and reloaded the Berettas. Then she cautiously approached the window. Wary of sunbeams, she stood to one side of the window as she slowly drew open the metal blinds. No lethal shaft of light invaded the trailer, so she took a chance and peered out the window.

  Outside the trailer, several meters away, Michael was working on the engine of an old Land Rover. He had the hood up and his hands were busy performing surgery on the vehicle’s innards. She wondered if he could get the abandoned Rover up and running by nightfall.

  Why not? she thought. Michael is blessed with many talents.

  As I learned this morning.

  She watched him silently for a moment, then retreated back into the darker corners of the trailer. Sonja’s pendant caught her eye and she sat down to take a better look at it. She smiled at the thought of Michael leaving it for her to find when she woke up. No doubt he had been thinking of Lucian and Sonja, the star-crossed lovers whose forbidden romance had incurred Viktor’s terrible wrath, setting off long centuries of internecine warfare. Like Lucian and Sonja, she and Michael came from two different worlds, but had somehow found each other regardless. I only hope our tale ends somewhat less tragically…as unlikely as that seems.

  Her thoughts drifted back to their lovemaking earlier today. Despite her earlier doubts, she felt strangely at peace with what had transpired between them. There was no turning back now. For better or for worse, she had let Michael past the barricades that had long guarded her heart. Her old life was over. All she could do now was fight for their future together. It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a risky new campaign.

  Did Sonja feel this way, Selene wondered, after she slept with Lucian for the first time? She held up the crest-shaped pendant before her eyes. Dried blood caked its gilded design, marring its beauty. She frowned. Far too much blood had been spilled over this emblem for her liking.

  Licking her finger, she started to clear away the clotted gore.

  Click. Her fingertip accidentally depressed a concealed latch, triggering some sort of internal mechanism. Selene’s eyes widened in wonder as delicate bronze blades came sliding out of the pendant, not unlike the petals of a clockwork flower. Selene was briefly reminded of the silver throwing stars she often used against werewolves, but, no, the blades were not sharp enough to serve as weapons. Rather they resembled the teeth of some sort of complicated gear, as though the opened pendant were merely a component of a larger mechanical puzzle.

  But that wasn’t the strangest part of her discovery. What was truly unexpected, and disturbing, was the realization that she had seen this apparatus before, a long time ago….

  The dungeon was damp and cold. No more than six or seven, little Selene shivered beneath her woolen kirtle. The fair-haired child wandered down the gloomy stone corridor, fascinated by the gilded pendant in her hand. Torches mounted in sconces on the wall provided just enough light for her to admire the intricate runes inscribed on the newly made pendant. The shiny metal blades projecting from the device reflected the flickering glow of the torches. Selene thought she had never seen anything quite so beautiful.

  A heavy thud caught the little girl by surprise. She spun around, terrified….

  “Selene?”

  She snapped back to the present, startled to find Michael sitting across from her. Somehow he had slipped back into the trailer without her even noticing. He’s getting stronger, she realized; catching a Death Dealer unawares was no small matter. We still don’t know the full extent of his new abilities.

  “Sun’s setting,” he declared. Selene realized she had slept most of the day away. She knew she should get dressed; they needed to keep moving, if only to stay one step ahead of Marcus. But the forgotten memory, if that was indeed what it was, had left her deeply unsettled. She tugged the blanket tighter around her trembling body. She felt confused, uncertain, quite unlike herself. Her own past had caught her unawares.

  Michael noted the difference in her. “What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously.

  The Sancta Helena was docked at the pier in Budapest. Lorenz Macaro heard the Danube lapping against the hull of the ship as he sat behind his mahogany desk in the suite above the ops center. Samuel’s voice emerged from the intercom. He spoke loudly, to be heard over the whirring of the helicopter blades in the background.

  “Supplies were taken, used weapons were left behind,” the Cleaner reported. “The incident at the tavern occurred just before dawn. They couldn’t have gotten very far.”

  Macaro wished he had dispatched a team to the safe house in the mountains earlier. Perhaps they could have apprehended Michael Corvin and Selene before this situation had escalated further. He glanced at an antique clock. Dusk was approaching. Marcus would soon be on the move again, as would Selene and Michael. If Marcus hadn’t killed them already.

  “Remain airborne for the present,” he instructed Samuel. “I’m certain they’ll reappear in good time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Selene handed the pendant to Michael.

  “I’ve seen this before,” she told him, “when I was a child. I held it. When it was open like this.”

  Michael didn’t understand. “How’s that possible?” He hadn’t seen Selene in any of Lucian’s memories of the Dark Ages. Was this before Sonja died, before Lucian had claimed the pendant as his own? It has to be, he thought. That’s the only scenario that makes sense.

  “I don’t know,” she said, obviously troubled. He found it hard to imagine that Selene had ever been a child, even though he knew that she had once been human. Her eyes lit up as an idea popped into her head. “But I know someone that might.”

  Throwing aside the blanket, she hastily slid back into her leathers and geared up. Unafraid of the cold, she left her torn trench coat behind. Michael got into the passenger seat of the Land Rover, his own bloodstained jacket having seen better days. He was tempted to drive, but she knew where they were going, not him. Selene got behind the wheel and slammed her door shut.

  “Andreas Tanis,” she explained on the run. “He was the official historian of the covens, back when there was such a post.” She jammed the key into the ignition. Michael felt a surge of satisfaction as the engine fired up; his repair job seemed to have paid off. “But he fell out of favor after documenting what Viktor considered ‘malicious lies.’ Of course,” she added bitterly, “that means he was probably telling the truth.”

  She threw the Land Rover into reverse and hit the gas. The stolen SUV roared out of the garage in reverse, then expertly spun around on the icy pavement. Michael was thrown back against his seat and thanked God for his seat belt. Not for the first time, he wondered why he kept getting into cars with Selene. The Rover peeled out of the mining complex and took off into the night. Their headlights cut through the wintry darkness. Selene shifted gears and put the pedal to the metal. A sudden burst of acceleration sent them rocketing down the remote mountain road. It was no longer snowing, but there was still plenty of white stuff all around. Michael couldn’t see any other vehicles ahead or behind them. They seemed to have the road all to themselves.

  “He was exiled over three hundred years ago,” she continued, keeping her eye on the road.

  “Three hundred years?” Michael still had trouble grasping the huge spans of time in which Selene and the other immortals seemed to operate. “What makes
you think we’re going to find him now?”

  She shot him a look. “I was the one who exiled him.”

  Deep within the slimy drainage tunnel, Marcus sensed the sun go down. His wings were wrapped around him like those of a sleeping bat. They were strong and flexible once more, restored to health by the day’s long slumber. His black eyes opened and he flexed his deadly talons. All the scars and bruises he had received in this morning’s clashes were long since healed. He felt stronger and more vigorous than ever.

  At last! he thought. His daylong repose in the fetid tunnel had tried his patience, but now he need wait no longer. The golden pendant shone brightly in his memory, sharpening his resolve. Hatred flared within his heart as he recalled how Selene and Michael had dared to come between him and his prize. They would pay with their lives for their impertinence. Before the sun sets once more, he vowed, they will be punished…and the key will be mine.

  He had waited eight centuries already. He could not wait another night more.

  His wings rustled like dry leaves as he crept toward the mouth of the tunnel….

  They headed east, higher into the hills.

  The Land Rover thundered through a remote canyon. Towering walls of granite loomed above the road on both sides, all but blocking out the moonlit sky. Michael hadn’t seen a service station, telephone pole, or any other sign of human habitation for over an hour. That’s it, he thought, we’re officially in the middle of nowhere.

  Selene had spoken little during the long drive. Michael could tell she was deeply disturbed by this latest revelation, whatever it might mean. As if her whole life hadn’t been turned upside down already! He couldn’t begin to guess how her past could possibly be connected to Sonja’s pendant. The disgraced princess had died, and Lucian had stolen the pendant, years before Viktor had turned Selene into a vampire. By then, Sonja’s very existence had been stricken from the history of the coven, never to be spoken of again. Michael remembered Selene telling him that the Elders had forbidden the other vampires from probing too deeply into the past.