A third soldier dashed toward the steps, only to be s.n.a.t.c.hed back by his collar and dragged back into the bloodbath. Smoke and dust concealed what happened next. An agonized shriek was cut off abruptly.

Miklos cried out frantically, momentarily exposed by the flare of his Uzi. A pair of gleaming fangs sank into his neck and his rifle fell silent. The strobing muzzle blinked out, shrouding the guard's fate in darkness. His dying scream trailed off into a pathetic moan before Kraven heard another body drop limply onto the floor.

Suddenly, it was over. The screams and gunfire no longer a.s.sailed his ears. Silence descended once more over the abattoir the defiled crypt had become. Kraven trembled uncontrollably as he realized that he was alone in the dark with...it.

"Milord?" Kraven had never known an Elder to Awaken in such a bloodthirsty rage, but who else could it be.

He groped desperately for his own rifle, but could not find the weapon amidst the rubble. He choked on the dusty air, coughing loudly. Staggering to his feet, he gazed desperately at the open doorway only a few yards away. His own cold blood continued to trickle down his face.

The nearby exit tantalized him. Escape was so close!

But not close enough.

Something landed on the floor behind him with a meaty smack. He could hear the creature's raspy breathing. It smelled of decaying flesh. Bony talons sc.r.a.ped against the broken tiles.

Kraven whimpered in fright. He wasn't sure what was worse, not seeing whatever was behind him or being forced to face it. His hair stood on end, and he could hear the panicked palpitations of his heart. Marshaling his last ounce of courage, he nervously turned around to confront the mysterious apparition that had just slaughtered his men so effortlessly.

Perhaps he could still talk his way out of this situation?

The smoke, dust, and dim lighting made it hard to see the monster clearly, even though it was now standing only a few feet from him. Kraven strained his eyes to see a hairless, mummified figure wearing black silk trousers. A tarnished gold belt girded the creature's waist. Gilded armbands circled his bony biceps. Molten black eyes, unlike any vampire's, coldly examined Kraven. Fresh blood dripped from its jaws. Its blackened skin was the color of a gangrenous limb.

Shrack! Without warning, a pair of batlike wings snapped out of the creature's shoulder blades. The wings spread out behind him, spanning nearly ten feet from tip to tip. Arched bones and twisted networks of veins were visible throughout the fleshy membranes. Ebony talons crowned the demonic wings.

Kraven's eyes widened in disbelief. Never had he witnessed anything like this. Tales of vampires transforming into bats were foolish mortal myths, nothing more, so how was this possible? What was this creature before him?

"Please," he begged.

A sudden flurry of movement cut off his desperate plea. The creature's wings exploded forward, striking Kraven with the force of a wrecking ball. The regent's back slammed against the wall behind him so hard that the impact cracked the dense stonework. Deep fissures spread like cobwebs across the face of the wall. The force of the collision left Kraven stunned and breathless.

He felt a sharp, searing pain in his shoulders. Looking down, he saw with alarm that both shoulders had been impaled by the spearlike tips of the monster's wings. Blood streamed down the front of his black silk s.h.i.+rt. Kraven realized in horror that he had literally been nailed to the wall of the crypt!

The creature leaned toward him. A beam of light from the control room exposed a gaunt, emaciated visage with ebony eyes and an aquiline nose. A mouthful of pointed, sharklike teeth dripped blood onto the figure's bare chest. Tapered ears lay flat against the creature's skull. Purple veins pulsed across the monster's smooth, bald cranium. Its mottled skin was dry as dust.

Kraven barely recognized the transformed Elder. His overwhelmed brain struggled to account for the ancient vampire's bizarre metamorphosis. Marcus's unearthly black eyes jogged Kraven's memory, and he suddenly recalled where he had seen such eyes before: on the face of Michael Corvin during his final battle with Viktor, after Selene's lycan sweetheart had undergone a similar transformation-into an unnatural hybrid of vampire and werewolf.

Just like Singe predicted, Kraven recalled. His gaze darted to the body of the dead lycan scientist. Before his well-earned demise, Singe had explained how a unique component in Corvin's blood, inherited from Alexander Corvinus himself, allowed vampire and lycan blood cells to combine to form a new hybrid species, theoretically more powerful than any other immortal bloodline. According to Singe, Lucian had intended to use Corvin's blood to transform himself into just such a hybrid, but Kraven had killed the scheming lycan before he had the chance to carry out his blasphemous plan. Instead it had been Michael Corvin who had become the hybrid, after Selene added her own bite to the lycan taint already infecting Corvin's blood.

Despite his immediate peril, Kraven could not suppress a flash of jealousy at the memory of Selene bestowing her crimson kiss upon Corvin's unworthy throat. She could have ruled the coven by my side, he recalled spitefully. But instead she chose that ignorant American!

Marcus's wings dug painfully into Kraven's shoulders, dragging the trapped vampire back into the present. He tried to grasp how the Elder could have become a hybrid as well. Singe had implied that only a pure sample of "the Corvinus strain" could permit the existence of a hybrid, but apparently he had been mistaken. Although separated by generations, Michael Corvin and Marcus Corvinus clearly shared the same singular mutation. Singe's blood had been enough to trigger the transformation in the revived Elder. The gigantic bat-wings, however, suggested that Marcus's vampire side was clearly dominant.

Black eyes glanced at the dead lycan. The Elder's voice when he spoke was hoa.r.s.e from two hundred years of disuse. "The blood memories of this wretched creature have shown me that your treachery knows no bounds."

Kraven's b.l.o.o.d.y face turned deathly white. Marcus had obviously absorbed Singe's knowledge of Kraven's secret alliance with Lucian. His heart pounded within his chest. "Milord...I can explain-"

"Why should I listen to your lies," Marcus hissed, "when the journey to the truth is so much sweeter?"

The Elder's withered lips curled in a smile of...forgiveness? Understanding?

Hardly.

Ivory fangs tore into Kraven's throat. A crimson flood poured down Marcus's throat, and Kraven felt his own memories being sucked out of his body along with his life's blood. Images from the recent past flashed across the minds of both the Elder and his victim: Kraven sat in the back of a parked limousine, conspiring with Lucian. Pouring rain streaked down the sides of the tinted windows. A crest-shaped pendant dangled from the lycan's neck. The gleaming pendant had once belonged to Sonja, Viktor's daughter-and Lucian's long-dead lover. It had been their forbidden pa.s.sion that had ignited the centuries-old conflict between the vampires and their former servants.

"Remember," Lucian warned Kraven, "I've bled for you once already." Kraven's false claim to have slain the dreaded lycan commander had led directly to his ascendance within the coven. "Without me, you'd have nothing. You'd be...nothing."

Later: Kraven watched in dismay as Selene sank her fangs into Michael Corvin's throat, triggering his transformation into a hybrid abomination. Lucian lay upon the floor of the underground bunker, his dying body riddled with deadly silver-nitrate bullets. Kraven had shot Lucian repeatedly, but the stubborn lycan had clung to life with the last vestiges of his immortal strength. Distended black veins snaked across his face.

He taunted Kraven with his final breaths. "You may have killed me, cousin, but my will is done regardless."

Kraven opened fire once again, emptying the last of the experimental rounds into the lycan's writhing body. Another dose of silver nitrate raced through Lucian's throbbing veins. Tendrils of yellow smoke rose from his lips and nostrils as his internal organs combusted volcanically.

Lucian, champion of the lycan hordes, died at last.

A few minutes earlier: Kraven hurled the ugly truth in Selene's face, savoring her shocked expression. "It was Viktor who killed your family, not the lycans. It was he who crept from room to room, dispatching everyone close to your heart!"

He remembered laying eyes on Selene for the first time, in those miserable stables six hundred years ago. The female Death Dealer had been delectably mortal then, a vision of nubile vulnerability in her soaked linen nightgown. If only Viktor had let him ravish her that night, as Kraven had originally intended!

This entire disaster could have been averted if Selene had simply died with the rest of her insignificant, mortal family.

Later: Hidden away in one of the underworld's many shadowy nooks, Kraven watched as Selene and Michael Corvin battled Viktor in the lowest level of the lycans' subterranean den. Water streamed from broken pipes and rain-filled gutters, flooding the floor of the abandoned bunker. Viktor stood ankle-deep in the turbid water as he throttled Corvin with his bare hands. The American's hybrid strength was not enough to save him from the Elder's murderous grip. Corvin gasped impotently for breath. The iridescent sheen of his gray-blue hybrid flesh began to fade.

Then Selene leaped past Viktor, swinging the Elder's own mighty broadsword. Her sleek black leathers glistened wetly as she landed behind Viktor like a jaguar, still clutching the double-edged sword. The Elder spun around and glared angrily at his former protegee, enraged by her defiance. He drew a pair of silver daggers from his belt.

Unafraid, Selene waved the sword before his eyes. Fresh blood ran down the length of the blade. A stunned expression came over Viktor's face as he realized that Selene had already delivered a killing blow. A thin red line materialized across the Elder's countenance, stretching diagonally from his left ear down to the right side of his collar. A look of profound disbelief filled Viktor's eyes.

Fully half his skull slid away, splas.h.i.+ng into the filthy water around his ankles.

Moments later, Selene plucked Sonja's pendant from the rubble. She pressed the gleaming emblem into Michael Corvin's palm.

Marcus withdrew his fangs from Kraven's throat. The victimized vampire gasped in relief, but feared that it was already too late for him. He had never felt so drained before, not even after the most exhausting blood orgy. His entire body had been reduced to a dried husk, stripped of every last drop of vitality. His mouth was as dry as the Kalahari. His eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. Every breath produced a spasm of agony. His b.l.o.o.d.y clothes felt like sandpaper against his raw, dehydrated skin. An icy chill, infinitely more frigid than the blizzard raging outside, penetrated the very marrow of his bones. Kraven doubted if he could even stand under his own power anymore. Only the Elder's taloned pinions kept him upright.

Centuries of immortality pa.s.sed before his eyes. Kraven had enjoyed many lifetimes of power and pleasure, but he was not yet ready to die. The prospect of eternal oblivion filled him with mortal dread. Not now! he thought pitifully. Not so soon!

"Please," he croaked painfully. "I...can still a.s.sist you."

Bright red blood was smeared all around the Elder's jaws. A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his lips.

"You already have," Marcus said.

His wings snapped outward, tearing Kraven apart.

Chapter Six.

Michael couldn't believe Selene planned to leave him behind again.

"If I can plead my case," she insisted, "there's a chance we'll be granted sanctuary." She slipped her black trench coat back over her shoulders as she prepared to depart the safe house. "Right now you'd be killed on sight. I'm not prepared to risk that."

"So what, I'm supposed to just sit here and wait for you?" He laid his guns down on a nearby counter. No f.u.c.king way, he thought. The last thing he wanted to do was hang around the abandoned mine while Selene endangered her life on their behalf...again. "Kraven may still have his men with him. You can't go alone."

She looked him in the eyes. "You're not as strong as you might think."

"What?" he blurted. Wasn't he a superpowerful hybrid now? h.e.l.l, he had almost held his own against Viktor in hand-to-hand combat, and the formidable Elder was supposed to be one of the most powerful vampires ever. What does she mean by that?

Selene stepped away from the well-stocked weapons racks. She crossed the floor to the refrigerator on the other side of the bunker. Pulling open a clear gla.s.s door, she removed a few packets of frozen cloned blood. The preserved fluid inside the translucent plastic bags was purplish red. Michael had a horrible feeling he knew where this was going.

"You're unique, Michael," she said. "There has never been a hybrid before. However ambivalent you may feel about it, the truth is that your power could be limitless. But you depend on blood. You need to feed. Without it, you'll be growing weaker by the second." She closed the door of the refrigerator. "Use the time for that."

She lobbed the packets of blood at him. He caught them with both hands, then gazed down at the swollen bags. A printed label identified them as products of Ziodex Industries; he recalled Selene telling him that Ziodex was fully owned by her coven. The frozen blood felt cold to the touch, like an ice pack.

As a doctor, he had handled blood bags before, of course, but this was different. The realization dawned on him that Selene was deadly serious. She actually expected him todrink the blood...like a vampire.

"Jesus Christ."

He held the blood in his hands, the frozen packets representing the end of his old life and the beginning of a strange, unknowable future. Even after everything he had gone through already, the prospect of drinking the blood struck him as some sort of monumental turning point. After this, there could be no denying what he had become.

"And what if I don't?" he asked her. "What if I can't?"

Selene offered him no way out. "Normal food would be lethal. If you don't antic.i.p.ate your cravings, you will attack humans." Her voice acquired a melancholy tone. "Believe me, you don't want that on your conscience."

Michael had to wonder if Selene was speaking from personal experience. According to her, modern vampires were forbidden from preying on innocent humans. Synthetic blood had been used as a subst.i.tute, until replaced by the cloned variety. Still, wasn't it possible that, sometime over the centuries, Selene might have been forced to sample the real thing?

He didn't have the nerve to ask her.

"There really is no going back, Michael. I'm sorry."

He could tell that she meant it. Did she ever regret becoming a vampire herself, especially now that she knew the truth about her family's death? He recalled that he wasn't the only person whose life had been turned upside down tonight.

"Look, I understand what you did, why you bit me back there in the tunnels. I'm grateful. You saved my life." He gave her a wan smile. "I wasn't ready to die."

She nodded. Although her expression remained guarded, he somehow sensed that she was relieved by his reaction. Heck, he thought, I was already a werewolf by then. What was one more bite between friends?

"I don't know...everything's changed." He took a deep breath. "I probably just need a minute to make it fit in my head, you know? It's a lot to process all at once."

"If it's any help," she said quietly, "everything's changed for me, too."

"I know...."

Naked emotion hung in the air between them. Michael stared into her bottomless brown eyes, uncertain what to do next. He had been drawn to her since the first moment their eyes had met down in the Ferenciek Square subway station, before all this craziness had begun. Did she feel the same way about him? They had been so busy fighting to stay alive that they had barely had a chance to get to know each other more intimately. True, she had kissed him once, but only to distract him long enough to handcuff him to that chair. Or had that been her only motive? His lips still remembered the cool softness of her mouth. His neck tingled where her fangs had pierced his skin. His blood now flowed in her veins.

"Look, go," he told her. "I'll be here. You just make sure you come back."

She walked past him without a word, the tail of her long black coat flapping behind her. Michael stood by silently as she left the safe house without a single backward glance.

Same old story, he thought wryly. Here I am, left holding the blood.

Chapter Seven.

Aheavy 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p navigate through the fog. A powerful diesel engine provided plenty of horsepower. A helipad occupied the aft section of the s.h.i.+p, behind the rear control room, funnel, and upper decks. A radar tower rose like an old-fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.h.i.+p as his helicopter approached the vessel. "Easy does it," he instructed the pilot. Strong winds buffeted the sleek Lynx military copter, making for a b.u.mpy 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 ident.i.ty. 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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+p'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 carca.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 quant.i.ties 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 a.s.sociates and coworkers..."

"...watch all airports and train stations..."

"...contact U.S. emba.s.sy 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. b.l.o.o.d.y shoot-outs in public? A ma.s.sacre at a train station? The warring immortals were usually more circ.u.mspect than this. I don't like the sound of this.