Underworld

by Greg Cox

  Hang on, Michael, she thought desperately. You don’t have to fight him alone.

  Thrusting her handguns back into their holsters, she swiped the dead guard’s Uzi and racked another round into the chamber. Turning away from Corvinus, she headed for the open window. “No, wait,” he called after her. “You’re no match for him.”

  She hesitated, but only for a moment. Corvinus was undoubtedly right, yet that wasn’t going to stop her from coming to Michael’s aid. Hell, she thought, I’ve already killed one Elder this week. Let’s go for another.

  She dived headfirst out the window, then landed like a panther on the dock below. She raced across the wooden planks to the gap Michael’s falling body had punched through the floor of the dock. She peered through the hole into the murky shadows beneath the pier. Rusty iron struts supported the crumbling wharf. Excess crates and barrels were stacked on slime-covered wooden planks along the shore. A set of concrete steps led up to the pier. Lengths of thick, knotted rope helped hold the dock’s substructure together. Crimson water lapped against the riverbank.

  “Michael!”

  Oily water sprayed against her face as Marcus burst from the surface of the river, clutching Michael’s bleeding body. The Elder, in his monstrous hybrid form, hurled Michael onto a muddy bank beneath the pier. Selene felt a surge of relief as she saw Michael roll to his feet upon the shore. Marcus touched down in front of him. The shattered pier was high enough above their heads to allow the Elder to unfurl his wings to their fullest.

  Michael snarled at the other hybrid. His eyes shifted to black.

  But Marcus did not give Michael time to complete the transformation. The deadly wings snapped forward, spearing Michael in the chest. Blood sprayed freely as the lethal talons stabbed Michael again and again, like the stingers of an angry scorpion. Michael recoiled from the furious onslaught. He stumbled clumsily, too overwhelmed to strike back. He swiped impotently at the darting wings, trying and failing to fend them off. His face was contorted in agony. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  No! Selene thought. Michael was being tortured to death before her very eyes. Leave him alone, damn you!

  She dropped through the hole in the dock, splashing down into the shallow water along the shore. Raising the Uzi, she took aim at Marcus, but…

  With a wicked growl, Marcus seized hold of Michael and rammed him into one of the rusty iron struts supporting the dock. The metal split in two and Michael’s body smashed down on the bottom half of the sundered strut. The force of the collision drove the steel beam up through Michael’s chest, impaling him from below. Blood gushed from his open mouth.

  Selene froze in horror, transfixed by the awful tableau. She felt as if an iron bar had just been run through her own heart as well. Please, no, she thought despairingly. Not Michael.

  Marcus, on the other hand, was not at all dismayed. He tore open Michael’s shirt and wrapped his claws around the blood-spattered pendant. A look of triumph crossed his malevolent face as he claimed the precious ornament once and for all.

  The sight of the pendant snapped Selene out of her grief-induced paralysis. Screaming in fury, she emptied the Uzi, peppering Marcus with red-hot silver. The muzzle of the submachine gun flared like the anger erupting inside her. Die, you ugly bastard! she thought, wishing she could make the heartless Elder feel just a fraction of the pain she was going through. Die!

  Marcus hissed loudly, whether from pain or annoyance she couldn’t tell. With preternatural speed, he retreated into the shadows, taking the pendant with him.

  Shit, she thought.

  Aboard the ship, Corvinus strode briskly to the ebony armoire on the starboard side of his office. He opened the cabinet to reveal an impressive collection of antique weapons: broadswords, battle-axes, rapiers, daggers, pikes, maces, scimitars, stilettos, and other mementos of his martial past.

  A fitting memorial, he mused, for one whose legacy has long been written in blood.

  Selecting a seventeenth-century broadsword from the armoire, he withdrew the double-edged weapon and prepared to meet his vampiric son for the first time in centuries. He eyed the sword dubiously. If and when the moment of truth arrived, was he truly willing to take arms against his own flesh and blood? Chances were, he would soon find out.

  Not for one moment did he expect Selene to defeat Marcus on her own.

  Murder in her eyes, Selene crept along below the dock, searching the shadows for her foe. Part of her wanted to rush to Michael’s side, see to his injuries, but she knew she couldn’t afford to let her guard down for a moment. Even though Marcus had claimed the first part of the key, he still needed a taste of her blood to discover the location of William’s hidden prison.

  Come and get it, she thought coldly.

  The empty Uzi lay in the mud behind her. She gripped a loaded Walther in her left fist. She regretted that all she had was silver bullets to work with; the experimental UV ammo had not been the right caliber for her new handguns.

  Excited voices shouted up above. Racing footsteps pounded across the pier, as though the Sancta Helena was being abandoned en masse. Selene did her best to tune the distracting noises out, trying to listen for the flutter of bat-wings instead. All she heard, however, was the sound of the water against the shore…and Michael’s dying moans.

  Dammit, she cursed silently. Where the hell was Marcus?

  Suddenly, the misshapen hybrid leapt out at her from behind a large wooden pillar. His wings lashed out at her, but Selene instantly flipped into the air, grabbing on to the underside of the pier with her right hand. The deadly pinions passed beneath her, missing by inches.

  Hanging by one hand from the rotted timbers, she fired down at Marcus with her Walther. Nine millimeters of solid silver tore through the Elder’s flesh, causing him to grimace in pain. Instead of falling down, however, he flapped off the ground at Selene. Gritting his teeth against the impact of the bullets, he flew toward her like the Angel of Death, while she fired ceaselessly at his misshapen hybrid face.

  His wings lashed out, his left nailing her right hand to the wooden crossbeam, while his right wing pierced her hip. Selene bit down on her lip to keep from crying out, while squeezing the trigger of her pistol until it ran dry. Gory bullet wounds marked the hybrid’s mottled hide, but Marcus kept on coming. A sadistic grin twisted his lips.

  Selene screamed in frustration as her gun clicked uselessly. Marcus drove his taloned wings even deeper in her flesh as he positioned his open jaws beneath her skewered hand. She watched helplessly as her blood streamed down toward the Elder’s waiting maw. Her heart pounded against her will, speeding the crimson flow.

  This is just what he needs!

  The blood splattered across the hybrid’s face. Closing his eyes to better savor the moment, he gulped it down eagerly, chasing after stray droplets with his tongue. He sighed in rapture as Selene’s memories coursed through his brain:

  The dungeon was cold and damp. Selene was tired of playing there. “Come on, Cecilia!” she called to her sister as they ran up the stone passageway toward the sun. Giggling, the girls raced past the straining laborers with their heavy carts. “Last one there is a silly goose!”

  “No fair!” Cecilia complained as she dashed after her sister. “You’ve got a head start!”

  Cecilia gave her a good chase, but the outcome was never in doubt. Selene burst out of the gloomy tunnel into the bright afternoon sunshine. “I win!” she shouted to Cecilia, who came rushing out of the dungeon only moments later.

  Selene turned around to look back the way she had come. The entrance to the dungeon had been dug into the forbidding face of a craggy mountaintop. A river wound its way through the rocky mountain passes, while high above the raging torrents, Lord Viktor’s castle sat atop the very peak of the mountain, its magnificent turrets and battlements reaching toward the sky. The imposing sight of the mighty fortress imprinted itself on the little girl’s memory.

  Marcus’s black eyes snapped open. Selene�
��s blood dripped from his chin as he smiled triumphantly.

  Bastard! Selene thought angrily. She felt violated by the Elder’s attack. Fury helped her overcome the shock to her system as she reached for her spare handgun and blasted Marcus in the chest. The demonic hybrid shrieked in pain and tumbled back toward the water below.

  His talons were yanked from her flesh and she fell like a rock toward the river below. The freezing water jolted her as she splashed into the Danube, sinking below the shallow waves. She kicked madly back up to the surface, and her head burst free of the river. Her eyes searched anxiously for Marcus, but the Elder was nowhere to be seen.

  Of course, she thought bitterly. He got what he came for. The pendant and my blood. Now all he needs is the second half of the key, wherever that is.

  Her gaze fell upon Michael, his unmoving body impaled upon the bloody strut, and every other consideration fled her mind. Heedless of her own injuries, she ran out of the river and over to the shattered strut. Icy water streamed down her soggy leather gear as she splashed through the shallows up to the shore.

  Michael!

  It was even worse than she remembered. At least a foot of rusty metal jutted from Michael’s chest. His body was limp and still, his arms drooping at his sides. His agonized groans had fallen silent. His eyes, reverting to their mortal brown tint, stared blankly at the pier above them.

  “Michael…” She gently lifted him off the impaling iron beam and laid him down on the wooden planks along the shore. Bending over him, she laid her hand against his cheek, hoping to get a response. Her fingers searched for a pulse. “Michael!”

  It was no use. His chest had been torn to shreds, with a gaping hole where his heart should have been. Not even an Elder could survive such a wound.

  Michael was dead.

  “No!” Anger, an emotion she knew far better than grief, rushed over her. “Damn you!” She fell to her knees beside the body. Her clenched fists pounded upon his ravaged chest, coming away stained with his blood. Tears gushed from her eyes, mixing with the cold water dripping from her hair. Six hundred years of loss and heartbreak surged up inside her, spilling over the dams she had erected around her heart. Violent sobs racked her body.

  “Fuck!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Hello, Father.”

  Alexander Corvinus recognized his son’s voice, even after centuries. The voice approached him from behind, Marcus having dropped through the shattered skylight into the office. Broken glass crunched beneath the intruder’s feet, grinding the brittle fragments into the carpet.

  In his hand, Corvinus held the second half of the key, the one he had extracted from Viktor’s rib cage. Facing his father’s back, Marcus could not see the key. Corvinus prayed he never would.

  “You are unwelcome in my presence,” Corvinus said sternly.

  He turned to face his son, but the vital key was no longer in evidence. To his slight surprise, he saw that Marcus looked like the son he remembered, not the hybrid abomination described by Selene. His beard and hair were the same reddish tint they had always been. A leather overcoat was draped over his bare shoulders, concealing his wings. Corvinus recognized his son’s cruel, sardonic smile. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or dismayed by Marcus’s deceptively human appearance.

  “Ah, the predictable heart that never thaws,” his son said mockingly. He placed his hand atop his chest, as though wounded to the core. “Pity it beats within such a fool. The eldest of the immortals, yet you’ve made no attempt to seize your destiny.”

  The ancient broadsword rested on the desk between them. The carved goddess upon the wall was the sole witness to their reunion. In hopes of sparing their lives, Corvinus had ordered the ship’s staff and guards to evacuate the vessel. What transpired now was between him and Marcus alone.

  As it was always meant to be.

  “We are oddities of nature, you and I. Nothing more.” He leveled a disapproving gaze upon his son. “This is a world for humanity.”

  Marcus sneered at him. “And that petty sentiment explains why you rejected your sons? Why you stood by for over half a millennium as William suffered alone in darkness?” Contempt registered in his voice. “No Father. I have no respect for your pitiful excuse.” He stepped forward ominously, circling around the desk. “Viktor’s key. Where is it?”

  “Whatever plan you have for William is futile.” Corvinus did not quail in the face of his son’s advance. “You cannot control your brother.”

  Lord knows I tried, he thought sadly, before William’s bloodlust grew beyond all control.

  “I am stronger now,” Marcus replied, “and our bond is greater than you have ever wanted to acknowledge.”

  The same old delusion, Corvinus mused. Marcus had never been able to recognize the truth about his beloved twin. “You’re wrong. Soon you will be drowning in lycans…just like before.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Not lycans, Father, or vampires. A new race, created in the image of their maker…their new god. Me.”

  Fervor burned in his eyes, and Corvinus realized that his son had truly gone mad.

  “And a true god…has no father.”

  Corvinus reached for his sword, but he had waited too long…perhaps intentionally. Marcus’s wings unfurled, the unnatural sight causing Corvinus’s eyes to widen in amazement. A demonic pinion snapped outward, knocking the older man against the starboard wall. A spear-tipped talon pierced his shoulder, pinning him to the solid steel bulkhead.

  Immortal blood flowed from his injured shoulder, but Corvinus had survived worse in his time. He grunted in pain, but refused to beg for his life, not even when he saw Marcus lift the heavy broadsword with one hand. He was still Alexander Corvinus, and he would not give Marcus the satisfaction of seeing his father tremble in fear.

  My death is long overdue, he thought. Let me face it with dignity.

  There was nothing dignified about the hate-filled expression on Marcus’s face as he slowly drove the point of the sword through his father’s chest. Despite his resolve, Corvinus could not help gasping out loud as the double-edged blade sliced through his body inch by excruciating inch. The sword cut through bone and tissue alike.

  Was I truly too slow to defend myself, Corvinus wondered, or was it that I simply could not bring myself to slay my son—not even to save my own life?

  He suspected the latter.

  Marcus thrust the entire length of the blade into his father, all the way up to the hilt. Only then did he withdraw his left wing from his victim’s shoulder. Coughing up blood, Corvinus slumped against the steel bulkhead, held up by the broadsword alone. As he writhed upon the blade, his son reached into his wool coat and began searching Corvinus’s pockets.

  Forgive me, Viktor, Corvinus thought in despair. The deceased Elder had been a liar and a hypocrite, but at least he had understood the importance of keeping William locked away from the world. You hid it better than I.

  Marcus’s eyes lit up with malevolent glee. Grinning evilly at his father, he plucked the key from an inside pocket. Corvinus’s dying heart sank at the sight; he had no doubt that, despite Selene’s best efforts, Marcus had already obtained the pendant and the location of William’s hidden prison. Now his insane son had it all…and all of humanity was in danger.

  “You will fail,” Corvinus said, looking into his son’s eyes.

  But Marcus wasn’t quite done with him yet. Tucking the key into the pocket of his overcoat, he turned to face his father once more. It was time to deliver the coup de grâce.

  The talons of both wings sprang forward, converging on the old man’s heart.

  Whirring blades sliced through the air as the helicopter touched down on the ship’s landing pad. Peering from the cockpit, Samuel could have told at once that they had a situation on their hands, even if they hadn’t already received an emergency distress signal from the Sancta Helena. Dead guards littered the deck, along with blood and empty shells. A gaping hole had been torn in the dock alongside th
e ship, while the broken skylight testified that even the sanctity of Macaro’s private office had been violated.

  The Sancta Helena had obviously come under attack. Samuel feared that he and his men had arrived too late. Was the Old Man still alive?

  Rifles and machine guns ready, the Cleaners piled out of the copter and raced toward the ops center. They found the corridors of the ship strangely deserted, which suggested that most of the crew and staff had managed to escape the assault. Samuel dared to hope that Macaro might be among the survivors, but in his heart he knew otherwise. Their commander was definitely one who would want to go down with his ship.

  Leading the way, Samuel rushed through the abandoned ops center and up the stairs to the palatial suite. A quick glance confirmed the worst: Macaro sat slumped against one wall, barely breathing. A bright red streak upon the steel bulkhead testified to how the Old Man had slid onto the floor. A bloodstained broadsword rested on the polished wooden planks a few feet away, its grisly work accomplished. Scanning the office, Samuel spotted the inert body of another Cleaner sprawled atop the mahogany desk. Colin Langely, he believed, although the corpse’s mutilated face threw some doubt on the matter.

  “Look sharp!” he ordered his team. Searching the office, they quickly determined that the enemy was no longer present. Then, and only then, did Samuel hurry to see to Macaro. A look of horror transformed the soldier’s usually impassive features as he registered the full extent of his commander’s injuries. Gaping wounds perforated Macaro’s chest, many of them passing all the way through the man’s body. A crimson froth bubbled up from his punctured lungs. Blood pooled beneath him, seeping through the cracks in the hardwood floor. His face was drawn and pale. Pain showed in his ageless gray eyes.

  Samuel was one of the few operatives Macaro had trusted with the secret of his true identity. The Cleaner realized that any other man would already be dead by now; only Macaro’s immortal nature had kept him alive so far.