Underworld

by Greg Cox

  No! Selene thought. Everything was happening too quickly!

  Greenway was the next to go. He fired wildly at the unstoppable werewolf, but William’s bloody claws tore open his throat and chest with a single slash. The wounded Cleaner collapsed onto the creaking wooden planks, his life’s blood pouring out of him. His body twitched once, then fell completely still.

  In what felt like an instant, the last of the strike team had been wiped out. Selene suddenly found herself alone with William on the bridge. The werewolf lunged at her, swiping with his claws, but Selene dodged the attack by flipping backward through the open gap in the bridge. William’s claws missed her back by inches.

  She landed like a panther on the floor below. Hastily reloading her guns, she fired up at the creature on the bridge. Silver bullets erupted from the wooden planks beneath William’s paws. He recoiled from the stinging silver, retreating into the shadows once more.

  Dammit! Selene thought. She would mourn the murdered Cleaners later; right now she took advantage of William’s disappearance to make sure her Walthers were fully loaded again. Too bad Kraven stole the prototype of the silver-nitrate gun, she thought. I could definitely use that right now. She stepped out from beneath the shadow of the bridge and stared up at the level above her, hoping to catch sight of William. Collapsed stonework and empty ledges helped to conceal the bloodthirsty werewolf from sight.

  Then she caught a break. A loud crash came from above, sounding like a pile of loose rubble collapsing. Selene zeroed in on the noise instantly. She caught a suspicious blur of movement and let William have it with both guns blazing.

  Bullets viciously raked the walls, sending shards of granite flying everywhere. William burst from his hiding place and scrambled for cover, leaping from ledge to ledge as he defied gravity by climbing higher and higher up the craggy walls looming over the bridge. He jumped across the open shaft above Selene’s head, trying to keep one pounce ahead of her bullets. His preternatural agility was astounding to behold.

  No way! Selene thought. You’re not getting away from me!

  She rushed across the floor of the dungeon, trying to catch William in her line of fire. She did her best to keep the heat on the fleeing werewolf as he scrambled up the wall of the dungeon, frantic to escape the merciless silver. Automatic firearms were definitely coming as a shock to the ancient werewolf; swords and crossbows had been the order of business when last he had faced off against a Death Dealer. Selene was glad to bring him up to speed, one bullet at a time.

  Click. Click.

  Selene cursed in frustration as her pistols ran dry.

  Afraid of losing her quarry, she kept her eyes locked on William. She experienced a sudden rush of anxiety as she saw that William was heading toward the entrance of a dark tunnel tucked away at the far end of a crumbling ledge.

  Had the werewolf found a way out of the ruins? All was lost if William escaped the castle to spread his wolfen taint throughout the unsuspecting populace. If Tanis was to be believed, the world would soon be overrun with rampaging lycans even more rabid and uncontrollable than the ones Selene was accustomed to. Human society was not remotely prepared to cope with such an outbreak. Civilization itself might collapse into a new Dark Age.

  William paused before the open archway. Chest heaving, he glared balefully down at Selene. Gloating over his imminent escape?

  Like hell! Selene thought. Plucking four explosive throwing stars from a pouch upon her hip, she hurled the rigged shuriken in rapid succession. The stars whistled through the cavernous dungeon like harbingers of doom.

  Upon the ledge, William saw the razor-sharp stars spinning toward him. Selene watched intently, glued to the action, as the agile werewolf jumped to one side, barely avoiding the hungry blades. They whizzed right past and stuck into the eroded archway above the exit.

  William growled defiantly at Selene, as if daring her to take another shot. Behind him, unobserved by the distracted werewolf, the embedded stars began to pulse with light. They flashed faster and faster as their explosive charges armed themselves at an accelerated rate. The flashing was intended as warning, alerting the user to get the hell out of there before it was too late.

  And then it was….

  The stars went off one after another.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Jesus Christ!”

  The helicopter pilot reacted in surprise as a series of violent explosions went off inside the ruined fortress. Shock waves rumbled through the ancient edifice, stirring up clouds of snow. Massive sheets of ice cracked open.

  An enormous hole opened up right in the middle of the gutted castle, swallowing up tons of snow, ice, and rock. The pilot gulped as he realized that, in theory, Samuel and the rest of the strike team were somewhere below the gigantic avalanche.

  The gunner was equally shocked. “What was that?” he blurted.

  “Hell if I know,” the pilot said. He frantically tried to raise the strike team via their comm links. “Lynx One to Alpha Team, can you read me? Please respond. Repeat, Lynx One to Alpha Team…”

  No answer came.

  The throwing stars were even more destructive than Tanis had boasted. Selene ducked into a narrow passage as an avalanche of snow and ice came crashing down into the dungeon with a thunderous roar. Chunks of masonry as large as boulders slammed into the floor like meteors. She threw a hand up against the wall to steady herself. Tremors shook the floor.

  Selene began to fear that she would be buried alive.

  Fine, she thought. Just so long as Marcus and William are, too.

  Her life would be a small price to pay to rid the world of those monsters.

  A tremor shook the hidden crypt. Marcus reacted in surprise as a seismic rumbling penetrated the thick stone walls. Dust and gravel rained down from the ceiling.

  An earthquake? he wondered, momentarily pausing in his attempts to break free of his prison. No, more like an explosion, taking place somewhere within the forsaken castle. He had no doubt that Selene and her mortal allies were responsible.

  The very thought that his father’s soldiers now served Selene, just as his father’s blood now flowed in her veins, galled him beyond endurance. Had Alexander Corvinus willingly shared his blood with Selene, or had she stolen it from his dying body? Knowing his father, he suspected the former. Were there no ends to which he would not go to thwart his own sons?

  He betrayed us with his dying breath.

  More rubble fell from the ceiling as the battered structure settled in the wake of the explosion. Had William survived the attack? Marcus was tormented by his inability to take part in the battle raging outside the crypt. I have to escape this accursed rathole, join with my brother against our enemies!

  His black eyes tracked the falling debris. Bits of gravel splashed into the water in front of the partially submerged door. A thought occurred to him as he recalled the great chunks of granite that had been sent flying when he had slammed Selene into the wall outside the alcove. Was it possible that some of that debris might have fallen across the floor of the portal before Selene had brought the secret door crashing down again? If so, then perhaps the door had not been able to close entirely.

  His claws dove beneath the water, probing for a crack along the bottom of the door.

  Yes! There it was!

  At last, the deafening roar of the avalanche died down enough that Selene could actually hear herself think. Stray stones and chunks of ice clattered down from above, but the worst of the collapse seemed to be over. A cloud of raised powder reduced her visibility as she cautiously ventured out of the relative safety of the tunnel.

  An eerie silence, broken only by the occasional falling rock, descended over the dungeons in the wake of the explosions and their cataclysmic aftermath. Selene listened in vain for the growl of an approaching werewolf. Peering up through the snowy haze, she saw that the exit by the ledge had been completely buried beneath a mountain of snow and ice.

  She wandered beneath what was left
of the bridge. Samuel’s body was tangled in the heavy cables hanging underneath the wooden span. His eyes stared blankly into hers. Blood dripped from his mangled throat onto the snow several yards below.

  To her slight surprise, she wasn’t even remotely tempted by the mortal’s blood. Her mouth failed to water at the sight of the crimson fluid. Her fangs remained snugly inside her gums. Corvinus’s blood, it seemed, had satisfied her thirst for the time being. She wondered briefly how long it would sustain her.

  The snowy whirlwind began to settle, clearing the air before her eyes. High overhead, the dense clouds parted to let the full moon shine through. Selene instinctively noted that the moon was sinking behind the mountains in preparation for the coming dawn. The night was almost over. Soon she would need shelter from the sun.

  That shouldn’t be a problem, she thought. Looking up at the sky, she saw the helicopter soar above the castle. Even if the chopper didn’t come back for her, now that the other Cleaners were dead, there were certainly any number of gloomy catacombs in which she could wait out the day if necessary. First, though, I need to determine whether William is still on the prowl.

  The silver moonlight filtered down through the icy haze. At last, Selene was able to truly appreciate the vast scope of the dungeons. She found herself standing at the bottom of a cavernous space surrounded on all sides by rubble both new and old. A timeworn set of steps led up to the demolished landings on the upper level. Amazingly, the bridge had remained more or less intact, aside from the snarl of ropy cables hanging beneath the wooden planks. Snow-covered debris was scattered all around her, along with the bodies of both Greenway and Levin. A gaping crater had opened in the floor before her.

  Feeling only slightly like a grave robber, she claimed an Uzi and ammo from Levin’s body. She locked and loaded, just in case either William or Marcus came after her. She felt bad about leading the Cleaners to their deaths, but, ultimately, that had been more Corvinus’s doing than hers. They had merely been fulfilling his final commands. She could only hope that their deaths had not been in vain, that both William and Marcus had been neutralized for good.

  The moon’s cold radiance crept across the floors of the dungeons, spilling into the shadowy nooks and crannies while falling upon the scattered bodies of the Cleaners. Selene failed to appreciate the significance of this development…until she heard the ropes rustling over her head.

  What the fuck? She looked up to discover that she was standing directly beneath Samuel’s corpse, which abruptly jerked back to life. His eyes peeled open, revealing evil cobalt orbs. Enmeshed within the dangling ropes, he thrashed and squirmed against his bonds. His jaws snapped spastically, revealing elongated canines that were already starting to resemble fangs. The bones and muscles of his face shifted painfully, contorting themselves into a more beastly countenance. His feral eyes locked on her. He hissed like an animal, groping for her with clawlike nails. He twisted himself into a frenzy, doing everything in his power to break free and tear her apart.

  Selene remembered the infected peasants in those old woodcuts. Tanis’s words echoed in her brain: “These weren’t the lycans we know…. These were raging monsters, never able to take human form again.”

  Apparently, the historian had not been exaggerating.

  Selene knew what she had to do. Steely-eyed, without remorse, she raised the submachine gun and unleashed a fully automatic burst of silver ammo, chewing Samuel to shreds. She kept firing until the revived corpse stopped moving once more. She felt certain that was what the Cleaner would have wanted. His bullet-riddled body slumped limply into the tangled cables.

  Once again, there was no time to mourn his death. The bridge creaked loudly, as though someone was running across it. Selene looked up in time to see a blurry form drop down behind her. She spun around to confront the resurrected corpse of Greenway, the young Cleaner who had died upon the bridge. If he recognized her, or remembered how she had saved his life, his crazed animal eyes gave no sign of it.

  Like Samuel, the infected Cleaner was caught in the throes of a grotesque and painful transformation. His body was changing in fits and starts, some parts morphing faster than others, so that he presented a horrifying spectacle: part man, part beast, part shambling zombie. His ravaged throat still hung in tatters, despite the claws jutting from his fingertips and the fangs protruding from his gums. Patches of thick black bristles sprouted at random over his face and hands. Foam dribbled down his chin.

  Some part of him must have recognized the Uzi in her grip, because he turned and fled instead of attacking her. Selene fired off the last of the submachine gun’s ammo, then snatched a fresh rifle from Samuel’s corpse.

  Greenway ran below the length of the bridge. Selene whipped up the rifle and fired nonstop as she chased after him. The bullets slammed into his back, eventually bringing him down. He collapsed face-first onto the rubble. Selene squeezed a few more rounds into his skull just to make sure he stayed down this time.

  A bestial snarl heralded the attack of yet another newborn lycan. Selene recognized Levin, whose body had nearly dropped onto her head before, as he came charging at her from the shadows. She opened fire, but Samuel’s gun ran out of ammo almost immediately.

  Shit!

  Levin’s own Uzi still dangled from a strap around his shoulder, but the infected Cleaner ignored his gun, intent on using his fangs and claws instead.

  Tossing her empty gun aside, she grabbed on to the lunging lycan and flipped him over her shoulder, so that he landed flat on his back on the ice behind her. A sideways kick to his skull took the fight out of him, but only for a moment. Selene drew her silver-plated hunting knife from its sheath, just as two more lycans appeared on the scene.

  She recognized the two Cleaners who had been killed near the water. They were further along in their transformations, looking more like werewolves and less like zombies. Bones cracked loudly as their wolfen snouts pushed outward from their faces. Their shredded black uniforms began to burst at their seams as their inner wolves swelled within them. Low growls emerged from their throats. Foam speckled their lips.

  The third lycan, recovering from her kick, scrambled back onto his feet. Selene found herself outnumbered and armed only with a single knife. She could probably bring one of the lycans down by throwing the knife at his skull, but that would leave her completely empty-handed. The lycans circled her warily, slowly closing in on her. Selene twisted from side to side, trying to keep her eyes on all three lycans.

  Things weren’t looking good….

  The helicopter made another pass over the castle. Now that the clouds had blown away from the moon, the pilot could see all the way down into the open pit the ruined fortress had become. He saw the vampire woman, Selene, cornered by three nasty-looking lycans who seemed to be well on their way to transforming completely into werewolves. He couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Samuel and the others.

  Death Dealer or not, the woman was only moments away from being ripped to pieces by the hungry pack. According to Samuel, the Old Man had been quite emphatic about doing whatever it took to help the vampire complete her mission.

  “What are you waiting for?” he shouted at the gunner. “Shoot ’em.”

  The gunner peered down the sights of his fifty-caliber machine gun. “I can’t!” he yelled back. “Not without taking her out, too! I can’t get a shot!”

  Damn! the pilot thought. Something fluttered at the corner of his vision, and he looked around to see the American’s body bag blowing around the cockpit. His eyes widened as he realized that the unzipped bag was empty.

  The gunner spotted the loose bag as well. Both soldiers spun around in their seats to see Michael Corvin, alive and well, standing behind them.

  The fugitive doctor no longer looked human. His eyes were pools of molten blackness. His skin shone like silver in the moonlight. Powerful muscles bulged atop his bare chest. Claws jutted from his hands and feet.

  “Holy shit!” the gunner gasped. His
jaw was practically on the floor.

  The pilot knew how he felt.

  Ignoring the two humans, Corvin threw open the side door and stared intently down into the exposed dungeon. He growled savagely at the lycans converging on Selene. Without hesitation, he snatched up one of the coiled rappelling ropes piled up inside the copter and hurled himself out of the chopper into the empty air.

  He plunged toward the ruined castle, clutching the rappelling line with one hand.

  Selene slowly backed into a corner. The three proto-lycans closed in on her. Her eyes shifted from one to another, trying to anticipate which of the beasts would make the first move. As their transformations progressed, it was getting harder and harder to tell them apart. Not that it mattered. Their human identities were no longer relevant. They were nothing but bloodthirsty beasts now.

  She waved her silver blade back and forth in front of them. Come and get me, she dared them. In her heart, she had always intended to go down fighting against one lycan or another. That was how a Death Dealer died.

  The lycan on the right—she thought it used to be Levin—gave away its intentions by peeling his lips back away from his fangs. Tapered ears tilted forward, another sure sign that he was about ready to attack. Selene watched him carefully, while still trying to keep track of the other two lycans. That pair had evolved completely into werewolves by now. The shredded remnants of their uniforms lay discarded upon the snow, replaced by the shaggy black fur covering them from head to toe. Wolfen snouts drooled and snapped at her.

  With a hostile growl, the third lycan lunged at her, but Selene was ready for him. She feinted with the silver blade, then punched the monster square in the face, nearly breaking its jaw. The startled lycan yowled in pain, but did not retreat. Blood gushed from its nostrils as it came at her again, even as the other two werewolves joined in for the kill.