03 - Evolution by Greg Cox - (ebook by Undead) Read Free Book Online Page A

table
himself, while Lucian extracted Michael’s blood for his own arcane
experiments. The lycan leader had intended to use a unique enzyme in
Michael’s blood to transform himself into an unstoppable
werewolf/vampire hybrid, but his master plan had gone awry. In the end,
Lucian had perished, and Michael had become the hybrid.
    For better or for worse.
    Selene lifted a portable hydrocarbon analyzer from the
tray and inspected the digital readout. Michael couldn’t tell if the
numbers meant anything to her. Despite everything they had endured
together over the last few nights, he still found her beautifully
sculpted face difficult to read. Most of the time, Selene kept her
private thoughts and feelings locked up inside her, just as she probably
had for hundreds of years. Michael wondered briefly just how old she
really was.
    In theory, he was now immortal, too. Michael’s brain
rebelled against the concept, even though he knew for a fact that Viktor
and Lucian had been around since at least the Middle Ages. Would he also
live for uncounted centuries? Michael couldn’t even begin to wrap his
head around the idea. It’s hard to think about
living forever, he mused, when people keep
trying to kill you every few hours.
    Selene dropped the analyzer back onto the tray and
examined the shaggy corpse hanging nearby. “This thing’s been dead for
weeks.”
    “I don’t get it,” Michael said. He was still trying to
learn the rules of this strange new world he was now a part of. “I
thought lycans went back to their human form when they die.”
    “They do,” she replied. “This one’s been given a serum
to stop the regression so that it can be studied in its wolfen form.”
    Michael remembered the drug Lucian’s flunkies had
injected him with, to delay his own transformation into a werewolf. He
wondered if the serums were related. “How can you tell?”
    She flipped the beast’s toe tag toward Michael. A
notation read, Subject injected with 850 ml
Thasarine to arrest regression.
    “Oh,” he said. What the hell was Thasarine? Michael had
never heard of the drug before. “Not exactly your department, I guess.”
    “I just killed them,” she said bluntly. “I didn’t worry
too much about their anatomy.”
    Now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, Michael was
able to take a better look around. What had once been an empty mine
shaft had been converted into a well-stocked bunker and safe house.
Weapons lockers, packed with automatic rifles and handguns, lined gray
concrete walls, along with file cabinets, workbenches, and numerous
crates of ammo. One entire corner of the bunker had been taken over by
what looked like a high-tech operations center, complete with computer
consoles and plasma screens. A refrigerator hummed against another wall.
    The whole place reminded him of that safe house in Pest.
Stepping away from the werewolf’s cage, he made a mental note not to let
Selene handcuff him to a chair the way she had the last time. We’re sticking together this time around, whether
she likes it or not.
    He toyed with the scalpels and forceps on the tray. The
familiar tools comforted him in a way, providing him with a poignant
reminder of his old life. Do vampires ever need
doctors? he wondered. He remembered treating Selene’s injuries
after that car crash three nights ago. For all he knew, he might
actually have saved her life. Perhaps I can still
have a career of sorts, if and when people stop trying to murder us!
    “How long can we stay here?” he asked.
    “Not long,” Selene said grimly. She led him over to the
control center he had noticed before. Video screens mounted on the wall
above the main console offered views of the grounds outside the mine.
The night-vision photography glowed an eerie shade of green. A computer
monitor resting atop a metal counter ran through a series of maps and
status reports. “These safe houses are all linked together on