Author's note: Well my loyal reviewers I've finally updated, deepest most sincere apologies for not doing so sooner. I didn't vanish off the face of the earth, the last three months have been crazy, I'm nowhome for summer vacation after freshman year in college, I'm currently looking for a publisher of my original novel and I had a bit of minor surgery on my foot, broke it in pointe classand got a little side sidetracked with resting up. Well I'm all better now and thank everyone of you for your kind reviews and hope you are all well too. By the way for those of you who don't know Underworld: Evolution was announced to be released in theaters December 2nd, 2005 or January 20th 2006, I'm hearing different things about this, point is, it's coming soon.Anyway the long awaited next chapter. Enjoy!
Oh yeah of course: I do not own Underworld or the characters and make no profit out of using Selene and Michael and several others for my own sick twisted world I call an imagination.
Chapter Three
AN UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT
Michael groaned, his eyes opening slowly. His sharpened vision quickly adjusted to the dimness of the room. There was a terrible ache within his shoulders, chest, arms and legs. Everywhere actually, but still he stood shakily.
He was surprised to see his wrists without the manacles of the previous night.
Instinctively he sniffed the air deeply.
Selene…
He wasn't surprised to find his female companion's scent led to the armory.
She stood in the middle of the mat her back to him with a sword upraised in one hand; she was still as a stone and watching what seemed to be an invisible enemy moving toward her. Without note of warning Selene parried her sword so swiftly he didn't see it looking with human eyes, however his predatory vision made a quick, automatic adjustment to the movement and it seemed the weapon was going in slow motion.
Pivoting she flung the silver blade backward in an effortless and artful gesture, the blade singing as it cut through the air and impaled itself deep into the wood of the wall.
Selene headed straight past him without hardly an upward glance.
"It's nearly mid-afternoon."
With a sharp jerk the blade came free into the vampiress's hand. "Yes, I know."
Michael wasn't surprised when she lacked anything but a short, give-nothing response, Still didn't stop him from trying once more. "Have you slept?"
"No."
Of course she hadn't.
"I'm sorry."
This time she sheathed her sword and placed it back into it's position on the wall then with pensive eyes studied him. "For what?"
Awkwardly Michael shrugged, massaging the back of his neck. "Keeping you up and if I…scared you."
The innocence Michael was able to portray in just a glance was something Selene was learning quickly not to underestimate, inside the black-eyed hybrid watched and waited for the right time to emerge. With a bit of training Michael would be able to take on an army of Death Dealers and a pack of lycans single-handedly but until then…
Selene was oddly weary, something was wrong.
Michael could feel the tension Selene was feeling in his blood, it was so strong it couldn't have been part of his imagination. More than memories were guaranteed through the viruses, there was also a sort of sixth sense of empathy he could feel when Selene's emotions were strong and unguarded.
Just as abruptly as the feeling had come it was gone and Selene once more faced away from him.
Michael chose not to ignore her tension despite knowing he might not get an answer. "What?"
"We've far outstayed our welcome. Night will fall within the next hour, the instant it does we must leave."
She quickly began to gather weapons from a silver chest engraved with some sort of ancient symbols. The vampiress retrieved from it a great sword that she then placed into a long black canvas bag sitting on the matted floor, another blunter sword but no less short than the previous wicked-looking blade, was placed into the bag too.
Swords, daggers, guns he could identify but some of these weapons he knew nothing of and were probably hundreds of years old. But Selene had sought the most bizarre ones out with confidence in her ability to use them. It was no doubt they were extremely dangerous, looking at the jagged edges and lethal tips meant for completely lacerating an enemy.
Selene lifted a booted foot to the edge of the weapon's table to further examine her preparedness. Twin silver pistols were placed in the holsters of each boot and Michael glimpsed the mean cleat-style blades on the bottoms of her boots.
"Here."
She had placed within Michael's hands a large-barreled gold-plated pistol, an emblem of a dragon's head was on each side of the barrel.
"One of our latest weapons," Selene explained. "The gun holds a clip of twenty-six bullets and still maintains the weight of your standard pistol. The trigger has three settings: standard, semi-automatic and automatic and delivers a shot three times as forceful as a hunting rifle would. Powerful," Michael noticed Selene looking at the weapon as though it were her newborn child, her eyes filled with pride. "Extremely dangerous but a good starter weapon with a good teacher."
For a moment Michael just stared at the weapon wanting desperately to get rid of it. He'd never killed anything in his life!
"Selene I don't know how to--
"It's quite simple," she cut him off with an unusually patient tone.
She took his hand in her own clutching his fist to the weapon the right way. Her index finger she placed over his own to rest lightly on the trigger, feeling the warmth of his blood already working it's magic on her skin. Selene ignored the sensation even mentally scolded that annoying inner voice of hers she felt lacked all reason.
"Straight arm," she instructed. For added emphasis she ran her other hand along his arm to correct his elbow.
A passion fire enflamed Michael straight to his toes. The action had been so simple, so innocent but still his hybrid nature…he could feel it responding fighting his reason hard, the vampire and the lycan both fully agreed only to two things: a good hunt and kill and Selene.
Selene herself was not as unaware of the effect of the gesture on Michael as she pretended to be. She hadn't meant to, she argued to her thoughts that spoke of great disapproval.
She just wanted to feel him, the graceful and lithe musculature of his limbs, there was a beauty to them and the warmth, the sweet, sweet warmth, because under that skin and the cause of that warmth was what she hungered for.
"Now," Selene spoke, shaking away previous thoughts. "Release the safety, take aim, right between the eyes of that statue there."
Michael released the trigger without hesitation and without Selene's help, and despite the heavy kick of the weapon Selene knew accompanied it's shot, he didn't react and his hand didn't waver one bit.
The weapon made slightly less noise than a regular gunshot.
Without approaching the statue Selene noticed the shot was dead center of it's target. Impressive.
Selene nodded her approval. "Very good." She scooped up the discarded weapons bag and using the momentum of her swing she placed the bag over her shoulder. "Keep that gun with you at all times if we are separated you may need it. Half are ultra-violet rounds, the other are silver nitrate bullets, we don't know which group will find us first and what that means. Do not hesitate to use it," she warned.
It seemed they were well equipped and ready to go perhaps earlier than the next hour and find someplace safer to stay, someplace further at least out of the country. The Death Dealers were very efficient in everything they did and being anywhere less than a thousand miles away from them would make finding herself and Michael a walk in the park.
It was about thirty-five minutes later when the two exited the house, Selene didn't run but walked at a brisk pace scanning the dark perimeter.
The sky started to rumble and a crackle of lightning scorched the night. It was going to rain soon.
Selene took the driver's seat and for that Michael was grateful, the previous night's aches and pains hurt terribly and seemed to grow worse the second he awakened. He said nothing to Selene about it, knowing full well how insignificant such a thing probably was at this point and time.
The rain began to fall within the instant of turning onto the main road and the silver Jaguar flew off into the night. Selene cut from the main road onto another less traveled. Thunder began to roll through the night breaking the tense silence.
Glancing through her rear view mirror Selene noticed just one car behind their own, what looked like a red Ford truck and another, a black Corsica, about twenty-five feet in front of them traveling at leisurely pace, but with all the curves and turns of Hangman's highway it would be a few minutes before passing was possible without endangering the two of them.
It was a road not often taken by the people of Budapest, it was a narrow mountain highway in which falling boulders onto the road happened often sometimes killing persons inside their cars instantly.
Selene hadn't forgotten their first encounter within a car that nearly killed them both, in fact she was still a little embarrassed about it, especially the part where she had been saved by a human from the near-drowning encounter when she was Selene, a highly respected Death Dealer a reputation earned due to her ability to easily escape death many, many times.
But because she owed Michael as safe and as comfortable ride as possible she was more than cautious despite her eagerness to flee the country promptly. She was also very concerned when she heard nothing from him, an unnatural silence and then what her ears perceived as the slowing of his heart.
Selene gingerly touched Michael's shoulder. "Michael."
Michael shifted a bit making a small noise of discomfort before answering. "Sorry, I--uh-" he groaned a bit at a suddenly sharp pain within his stomach, "fell asleep."
A possible explanation that would have made Selene let him be considering he hadn't slept really more than two hours the previous night, the rest of the time he spent slipping in and out of consciousness whimpering quietly, but the diminutive sound of pain from him didn't escape her hearing.
"It's all right but listen carefully now. The moon will rise very soon and I need you to try to focus, hold off the transformation as long as you can until we reach somewhere safe. Do you understand?"
"Yeah," came Michael's listless reply.
Selene started to wonder if maybe giving Michael a sedative was a better alternative. She had decided instead to wait it out see if tonight would be better on him, besides, tonight since they were on the move she wanted him awake in case there was trouble.
Selene glanced over to him, he was lying on his side facing the window, his breathing getting faster and shorter, as though he were lacking air.
So much power in him, both vampire and lycan wanting to dominate Michael's blood. Both viruses rapidly cutting and reshaping every gene they could find within him had to be the most painful sensation in the world.
Despite assuring herself that Michael would survive the process and knowing that the pain was the natural order of things Selene felt that familiar panic grip her.
He's the descendant of Alexander Corvinus, he'll be fine, he'll be all right, she told herself.
What if the lycans were wrong? What if the viruses are too much on a human being, even a descendant of Corvinus?
His skin was ice cold and sweat saturated his blonde locks, he seemed to have exercised all of his strength to lean into her touch.
Selene swallowed the bitter lump of fear in her throat and spoke in a clear, strong voice, "Michael listen to me you're going to have to--
At that moment there was a roar of an engine and the car quaked with the impact. The red Ford truck had slammed into Selene's own car and there followed the screeching of metal on metal as the passenger's side of the car hit the guardrail.
Selene quickly righted the car back onto the road and her eyes widened in shock to see two men in the truck, both in familiar black suits and holding familiar silver weapons.
The two cars were exactly nose and nose to one another and Selene dared meet their eyes. The vampire, a well-known Death Dealer by the name of Treyson in the passengers seat had extended a well-muscled and no-doubt accurate aiming arm out the window holding a magnum less than four feet from Selene's temple.
"Stop the car Selene," he warned.
Selene's challenge and unwillingness to comply to the order was easy to read in her bold green eyes and she assaulted the accelerator at the same time pulling from the edge of her seat her own weapon and firing it.
The bullet missed her foes by inches due to the driver's quick maneuver, the side door of the Ford on the driver's side scrapped the rocky mountainside disrupting the delicate foundation and causing a shower of rock to come tumbling down and they were back on Selene's tail within a second.
"Selene!" Michael called a warning.
Selene swerved just in time narrowing missing a falling boulder, the slick road of rain water caused the silver Jaguar to skid almost out of control before Selene managed to right them. "Hold on," Selene advised as they slid round another narrow bend.
The road had straightened but the Death Dealers were gaining and that wasn't all.
The black Corsica previously in front of them was less than a quarter mile in ahead and--
Michael had managed to sit up a bit, his breathing only in periodic gasps. "It's coming right at us," he choked out.
A bullet broke through the middle of the windshield, injuring neither but taking out a windshield wiper.
They were approaching a bend in the road…
Selene didn't even slow knowing full well as they approached the vampires in front of them their accuracy would only get better and better. Selene knew she didn't even have a chance of speeding past them, trying to dodge to the left and turn that sharp corner unscathed at such a high speed in the rain would send them careening off the road to their deaths.
The Ford was back at their side again, this time Treyson was shooting to kill. One of the tires went and for moment the Jaguar almost spun out of control.
Selene didn't have a chance with either option and both teams knew but what they didn't know was that Selene wasn't looking to use either option, the clever vampiress was going to do what she did best…improvise.
Pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor Selene roared her car towards the Corsica and bullets sprayed the vehicle.
"Stay down!" she shouted to Michael.
When they were only twenty-five feet away from the black car Selene switched to squeezing the brakes of her car and the tires screamed and the smell of burning rubber stung her nostrils.
It seemed the vampires in the Ford had sensed Selene's intentions and they too braked to move some distance behind her.
The silver Jaguar barreled into the Corsica sending it spinning out towards the guardrail and allowing Selene an opening to the left and just the right amount of slowing to make the turn. As they rounded the corner, Selene fired her weapon four times right where she intended to.
The black Corsica exploded into flames taking the red Ford truck trying to peel past with it.
Selene sighed in relief until she felt a sticky warmness trickle down her side.
I've been shot.
Seemed Michael had fallen unconscious again and absently Selene stroked his skin despite her own injury that needed attention.
Forcing herself awake Selene's pale hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. She had to make it to someplace very, very soon.
Selene's hand rested over Michael's heart and that familiar sound of his existence was absent.
Michael wasn't breathing.
Yes, yes, I know I am a cruel mistress, Michael's just so cute all hurt and helpless. Anyway more next week and if you have some time please read and review, if not well, life goes on.