Part 13 (1/2)
If he doesn't, she mused, we're out of options.
A short flight of stairs brought them to Macaro's private office overlooking the ops center. The elegant furnis.h.i.+ngs reminded her of the opulent decor back at Ordoghaz. She felt a minor pang at the thought that she might never again set foot in the mansion, her home for so many generations. She was hardly the sentimental sort, and yet...
Moonlight filtered through the skylight in the ceiling, adding to the illumination provided by the crystal chandelier and Tiffany lamps. Selene eyed the skylight with a touch of apprehension; Marcus's newfound wings had her on guard against aerial attacks.
Lorenz Macaro greeted them from behind a large mahogany desk, beneath the watchful gaze of a carved wooden G.o.ddess. Selene noted the man's dignified bearing and concerned expression. For a human, he conveyed an aura of quiet authority. If he had any misgivings about being in the presence of a vampire and a hybrid, no trace of it showed upon his regal features.
He nodded at the pendant in Selene's hands. ”May I?”
Selene handed it over. Lucian's precious keepsake had brought them this far. Maybe the pendant could somehow convince Macaro to help them stop Marcus.
It was a worth a try.
The elderly human contemplated the infamous pendant, running his finger over its intricate detail. Selene noticed his signet ring, although she couldn't quite make out the design upon it. She wondered what was going through the old man's mind. His inscrutable expression defied her attempts to read his reaction to the pendant.
Four armed bodyguards stood by the stairs, watching Selene and Michael warily. Lifting his gaze from the pendant, Macaro motioned for the men to leave. ”But, sir,” one of them protested, looking with alarm at the Death Dealer and her companion. He was obviously reluctant to leave his employer unguarded.
”You can go,” Macaro insisted brusquely. He waited for the men to depart before resuming his inspection of the pendant.
”You're familiar with this then?” Selene asked.
Macaro gave her a cryptic smile, then gently nudged the hidden switch with his fingertip. The concealed blades emerged from the pendant like clockwork. ”Intimately.”
She and Michael exchanged a startled look. Did everybody know about the pendant's secret workings except them? A thought occurred to her and she took a closer look at Macaro's signet ring, even as she recalled that woodcut ill.u.s.tration of the armored soldiers marching across a plagueravaged countryside. The stylized C upon the ring matched the crest upon the knights' s.h.i.+elds.
By the Elders! she thought as the truth struck home. She looked at the aging human with new eyes. Although she tried to maintain her cool, her hushed tone betrayed the awe she felt.
”You're Alexander Corvinus.”
The man who called himself Lorenz Macaro blinked in surprise at the name. He glanced at his ring with a rueful sigh. ”There was a time that I was known by that name.” He rose from his chair and circled around his desk to face Michael. He laid his hands upon the younger man's shoulders. Parental pride showed upon his face. ”But by any name, I am still your forefather.”
Corvinus, as Selene now thought of him, handed the pendant back to Michael, who refastened the chain around his neck. He gaped at the older man, seeming uncertain how to respond. Selene recalled Michael telling her that his grandparents had immigrated to the United States after the Second World War. Surely, when he had decided to move to Hungary after his fiancee's death, he had never expected to come face-to-face with an ancestor from the fifth century.
”How have you stayed hidden all these years?” Selene asked. Truth be told, she was feeling slightly overwhelmed herself. By her reckoning, the man standing before her was over sixteen hundred years old, an impressive span even for an immortal. The legendary Corvinus was indeed what Tanis had called him.
The father of us all...
”For centuries I've stood by and watched the havoc my sons have wrought upon each other...and upon humanity.” He sighed wearily and turned away from them. ”Not the legacy for which I prayed the night I watched them enter the world. ”He sat back down behind his desk. ”And a tiresome duty: keeping the war contained, cleaning up the mess, hiding my family's unfortunate history.”
”Couldn't you have stopped them?” Michael asked.
”Yes,” Selene insisted.
Corvinus looked sadly at his descendant. ”Could you kill your own sons?”
”You know what Marcus will do,” Selene said. She leaned across the desk to confront him. ”If he finds me, he finds William's prison. You need to help us stop him.”
He regarded her skeptically, then laughed harshly. ”You are asking me to help you kill my son? You? A Death Dealer?” His face was stern and unforgiving. His cultured voice dripped with scorn. ”How many innocents did you kill in the six-century quest to avenge your family? Spare me your self-righteous declarations. You are no different than Marcus, and even less n.o.ble than William. At least he cannot control his savagery.”
Selene was taken aback by his verbal attack, but only for a moment or two. She wasn't about to be treated with contempt, not even by Alexander Corvinus. ”Anything I've done can be laid at your feet. Hundreds of thousands have died because of your inability to accept that your sons are monsters. That they create...monsters.” She was honest enough to include herself in that category. ”You could have stopped all of this.”
”Do not come groveling to me,” he said, scowling, ”simply because you are weaker than your adversary.”
Selene refused to be intimidated. She found it ironic that, essentially, she was taking Viktor's side in his long dispute with Marcus. ”You know what kind of devastation William caused before he was captured. He can't be set free.”
Corvinus had no ready response. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his chair, obviously wrestling with his conscience. He knows I'm right, she thought, no matter how much he hates to admit it.
”Let me tell you about what your other son has become....”
The sentry paced the deck of the Sancta Helena, keeping an eye out for trouble. Colin Langely had served with the Cleaners for nearly three years now, after being recruited from Her Majesty's Secret Service, but tonight he felt unusually on edge. You didn't need to be a top-grade intelligence a.n.a.lyst to know that things were up. Elders a.s.sa.s.sinated, the vampires' headquarters burned to the ground, now a Death Dealer and a suspected lycan visiting the Old Man in person. All of this was unprecedented in Langely's experience.
Sounds as if this cold war is becoming hot.
Shallow waves lapped against the hull. A full moon cast its reflection on the surface of the Danube. Langely scanned the sh.o.r.eline with a pair of night-vision binoculars. Beyond the silent docks and warehouses, traffic flowed upon the Belgrade Parkway. In the distance, the lights of central Pest lit up the night. Despite his apprehensions, he spotted nothing amiss.
Without warning, a dark figure dropped into view. Langely caught a glimpse of huge, demonic wings. Clawed feet smacked down upon the deck. A hideous face, with flared ears and a batlike snout, glared at him.
b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! Langely thought, dropping the binoculars. The grotesque creature before him bore no resemblance to any vamp or lycan he had ever encountered before. He reached for his Uzi, but the winged monster was too fast. His shots went wild as a savage claw ripped off half his face.
The sound of gunfire, coming from topside, electrified Michael and the others. Corvinus leapt to his feet, while Selene drew her new Walthers. They heard anxious gasps and chatter from the ops center below. Michael recognized the sound of automatic weapon's fire, something he had become all too familiar with over the last few nights.
Now what? he worried. Has Marcus found us already?
Corvinus opened his mouth to demand a report, but was interrupted by an enormous crash directly overhead. Michael jumped backward as a body, wearing the black uniform of a Cleaner, came smas.h.i.+ng through the skylight, landing on top of the desk amidst a shower of splintered gla.s.s. Corvinus and Selene also reacted with shock.
Michael saw at once that the guard was dead. His face and chest had been ripped to shreds. An Uzi, strapped to the Cleaner's chest, had obviously done the poor guy no good. Blood dripped off the edge of the desk onto the expensive carpet.
Instinctively, Michael clutched the pendant hanging around his neck. He understood that at all costs they had to stop Marcus from getting his claws on the key. A hybrid Elder was bad enough; they couldn't allow Marcus to free William as well.
He looked to Selene, hoping she would know what to do. But before she could answer, the window behind him exploded inward. Vicious talons tore through steel shutters as if they were tissue paper, then stabbed all the way through Michael's shoulders. He screamed in agony as he was abruptly hoisted off his feet and yanked out of the office through the broken window.
A cold wind rushed against him, but was not frigid enough to numb the searing pain in his shoulders. Looking down, he saw the Sancta Helena shrink away below his dangling feet. Guards upon the s.h.i.+p's deck fired up at them, apparently none too concerned about hitting Michael as well as Marcus. He heard the Elder's powerful wings flapping in his ears.
Michael cried out. High in the air above the dock, he thrashed wildly upon the talons spearing his shoulders. Blood streamed from the wounds, falling hundreds of feet to the pier below. Vertigo threatened as he gazed down at the empty air beneath his feet. How high up was he?
Not that it mattered. A heartbeat later, Marcus hurled Michael at the ground. A scream tore itself from Michael's lungs as he plunged downward at heart-stopping speed. Hitting the run-down wharf, he smashed straight through the rotting timbers into the ice-cold water below. The sudden immersion came as yet one more shock to his system, on top of his crash landing and skewered flesh. The moonlit waters took on a reddish tinge.
Stunned, he sank toward the bottom of the river.
”Michael!”
Selene rushed over to the ruptured window, just in time to see Michael crash through a nearby pier. Splinters flew from fractured wooden beams, followed by a tremendous splash of water erupting from the river below. A second later, a winged figure dived after him.
Was Michael strong enough to survive the fall? Probably, provided he didn't drown before Marcus got to him. But that still left the ruthless Elder to deal with.
Hang on, Michael, she thought desperately. You don't have to fight him alone.