03 - Evolution (10 page)

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 excavated 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.

Baffled by the mystery, he turned his attention to the
final body bag. Inside he found the remains of Viktor, along with the
severed half of the warlord’s skull. The gruesome sight did not repel
Macaro; he had seen too much of life—and death—to be taken aback by such
things. In his time, he had looked on far greater horrors and expected
to do so again.

Such was his curse.

Still, the realization that both Viktor and Lucian now
rested in this morgue was enough to give him pause.
This is a historic night,
he realized,
for
those few of us who know the truth.
In many ways, Lucian and
Viktor had been the architects and prime movers of the immortal war that
had raged in the shadows of human history for the better part of a
millennium.
Does this mean that the war is finally
over?
Macaro would have liked to believe so, but the carnage at
the vampires’ mansion belied that comforting supposition.
I fear that this is merely the beginning of a new
chapter in the endless conflict, God help us all.

In the meantime, there were serious matters to be dealt
with. He glanced at one of the X-rays mounted upon the wall. The glowing
film clearly revealed a small, round object attached to one of Viktor’s
ribs.
Interesting,
Macaro mused. He opened
Viktor’s embossed leather tunic, exposing the Elder’s bare chest, and
dragged his fingertips across the cold, stiff flesh.
Aha,
he thought as his fingers detected a
peculiar lump just below Viktor’s rib cage. Macaro nodded in
satisfaction. This time he had found what he was looking for.

Donning a pair of latex gloves, he plucked a scalpel
from a nearby tray and rested the tip of the blade against the dead
Elder’s chest. Macaro’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he sliced open
the vampire’s flesh, creating an incision large enough for him to thrust
his fingers inside the unprotesting body. His fingers closed around a
small, solid object that seemed to have been deliberately attached to
the Elder’s ribs.

There you are,
Macaro
thought.
Viktor hid you well, but not well enough.

It took a bit of effort to disengage the object from the
vampire’s ribs, but the Old Man soon succeeded in dragging his prize out
into the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights. He held the object up for
his inspection.

The lights exposed an ornate, circular bronze device.
Intricate runes were inscribed upon the metal ring, whose complexity was
matched only by its unsettling beauty. Macaro wiped the device off with
a silk handkerchief, then safely tucked it away in his clothes.

A cryptic smile lifted the corners of his lips.

The abandoned mine felt much more desolate now that Selene was gone.

Michael stared at the blood-filled packet in his hand.
The warmth of his body was already causing the frozen blood to thaw.
Reddish purple fluid sloshed inside the sealed plastic bag. Did Selene
expect him to drink it cold, or should he zap it in a microwave first?
Either way, the very thought of consuming the blood turned his stomach.

Can I actually do this?
he
thought dubiously. As a doctor, and a surgeon, he had performed numerous
blood transfusions, but he had never asked a patient to swallow the
blood whole. For a moment, he considered setting up an IV and
transfusing the blood into his own veins; at least that didn’t seem as
gross and unnatural as pouring the stuff down his throat. But would that
satisfy the growing ache in his stomach? Michael tried to remember the
last time he had eaten anything. It had to have been a day or so. One
way or another, he had been on the run ever since Lucian had bitten him
three nights ago.

No wonder I’m starving.

He contemplated the blood some more. Technically, it was
only cloned blood, but it looked real enough to him. All he needed to
do, according to Selene, was rip open the packet and gulp the blood
down. He had to assume she knew what she was talking about. For all he
knew, she drank this stuff every day.

He gagged at the thought.

“Forget it!” he blurted. There was no way he could go
through with it. Besides, maybe Selene was wrong. She said herself that
he was unique, that nobody really understood how this whole hybrid
business was supposed to work. Maybe he didn’t need blood after all.

He tossed the bag away in disgust. It plopped onto a
nearby counter.

That’s better,
he thought.
He definitely felt weak, though, and light-headed.
I need food. Real food.

On impulse, he threw his leather jacket back on. Selene
would not be back until nightfall, if she returned at all. He had plenty
of time to go find something to eat and still get back to the bunker
before she came looking for him. Besides, he’d go stir-crazy if he had
to stay cooped up here all day, alone with his thoughts.

Time for a breakfast run.

He passed a weapons rack on his way to the door. Should
he grab a gun or two? The idea made him uncomfortable. He had gone his
whole life without packing heat, and he resisted the idea that he had to
go armed from now on.
The sun will be coming up in
an hour or so,
he rationalized,
so I’m not
likely to run into any insomniac vampires or werewolves.
Plus, he
could always change into his hybrid form if he had to. He hadn’t needed
any firepower to defend himself against Viktor before….