Chapter 222: Cooperation
Lucian had been thinking through the implications faster than the conversation was moving.
Jake could see it — the centuries of tactical intelligence processing the new variables in parallel with the surface conversation, the specific quality of someone whose mind operated several steps ahead of the words being exchanged. The hybrid objective was Lucian's life's work, the culmination of centuries of research and patience and loss. Any development that affected its timeline received his complete attention.
"Viktor being awakened changes the equation," Lucian said. Not to Jake specifically — working through it aloud, the verbal processing of a tactician who had been running scenarios since before most things currently alive had existed.
"Yes," Jake said.
"Amelia is still in transit," Lucian continued. "The werewolf contingent I sent to intercept her hasn't returned. Until her blood is secured, I have two awakened vampire elders against my current capability." He paused. "Even if the hybrid procedure succeeds, the deathcult numbers alone create a problem."
"Which is why the timeline matters," Jake said. "Viktor won't wait once he understands the scale of what you've built. He'll move against the sewer base within eighteen hours of full emergence." He looked at Lucian directly. "The plan you've been running for centuries has days left before it either succeeds or fails. There's no more patience available."
Lucian looked at him.
"What are you proposing?" he said.
"I told you what I want," Jake said. "Tanis's location. In exchange, I'll tell you what I know about the deathcult's movements and Viktor's specific capabilities as they stand now, which will allow you to calibrate your approach."
"And Viktor himself?" Lucian said. "You mentioned killing him."
"That's not my objective," Jake said. "I offered it because it's an outcome that benefits your position and I have the capability to contribute to it. But I'm not committed to the vampire political landscape one way or the other. What happens between your factions after I have what I came for is your business."
Lucian processed this.
"You fought alongside Selene last night," he said. "That positions you as a vampire ally in my people's assessment."
"I fought alongside whoever was shooting at werewolves," Jake said. "The alignment was tactical, not ideological. Selene and I have a different kind of relationship."
A slight adjustment in Lucian's expression — the specific recalibration of someone who had made an assumption and was revising it. "She trusts you."
"She's developing a provisional trust," Jake said. "Which is different. She's not a person who extends trust quickly."
"No," Lucian said, with the specific quality of someone for whom Selene was not an abstraction. "She isn't."
The mention of her name had landed differently than everything else in the conversation — a slight weight, the kind that attached to names of people who had mattered.
Jake let it sit.
"Andreas Tanis," Jake said, after a moment. "The exiled historian. He knows where Alexander Corvinus is. That's what I need from you."
Lucian turned away and stood at the workstation, looking at the equipment without seeing it. The thinking happening behind his expression had moved past calculation into something more fundamental — the weighing of things that didn't reduce to arithmetic.
"Sonia," he said, very quietly.
Not to Jake. To the room, or to himself, or to something that had been present in the conversation in a way that hadn't been named until now.
Jake said nothing.
"Victor killed her," Lucian said. "His own daughter. Because she loved me." He turned back, and the specific quality of what was in his face was different from anything Jake had seen there during the combat or the tactical discussion. "Selene looks like her. That's the truth of why Victor saved her — not mercy, not kindness. She was a replacement for something he destroyed."
"I know," Jake said.
"Does she know?"
"Not yet," Jake said. "She'll find it. That's her path to find."
Lucian looked at him for a long moment.
"The monastery is east of the city," he said. "Three hours by conventional transport. There's a stretch of road about thirty kilometers from the urban perimeter where the monastery's access route splits — take the northern fork, not the marked route." He gave the specific coordinates with the precision of someone who had maintained surveillance on the location for operational purposes. "Tanis has been there for three hundred years. He's not going anywhere."
"What's the security situation?"
"Several werewolves guard the perimeter. His arrangement with my people — he provides strategic intelligence and research assistance, we provide protection from the vampire community that exiled him." A pause. "They're not leadership-tier. They won't be a significant problem for someone who disemboweled me in an alley last night."
"Appreciated," Jake said.
"Tanis is a coward by nature and centuries of practice," Lucian added. "He responds to direct pressure. Don't waste time on the diplomatic approach."
Jake nodded.
He moved toward the door, then stopped. "Viktor is going to move against this location within eighteen hours. Whatever you're going to do — do it before then."
Lucian was already back at his workstation, the tactical recalculation visibly underway.
"One more thing," Jake said.
Lucian looked up.
"Michael Corvin is at a safe house three blocks south of his apartment building," Jake said. "He's stable. The hybrid potential is activating correctly." He paused. "When you're ready to complete the procedure, he'll be accessible."
Lucian looked at him with the specific expression of someone receiving information that had strategic value and was determining what it implied about the person offering it.
"You're helping me," Lucian said.
"I'm making a transaction," Jake said. "The Corvinus information, in exchange for operational intelligence and Tanis's location. The transaction is balanced." He held Lucian's gaze. "What you do with Michael Corvin after this is your choice. I'm not endorsing your methods. I'm completing an exchange."
Lucian was quiet for a moment.
Then: "The device you left. On my workstation."
"If circumstances change and you find yourself needing a way out of this world," Jake said, "that device reaches me. The offer has no conditions attached to it."
He walked out.
The Bat — the aircraft Bruce Wayne had provided as part of the equipment exchange in Gotham — had been stored in the coat's compression space since the London transit and had been waiting for an application that justified its capabilities. The monastery's location in Russia, east of the city, accessible in an hour by supersonic transit, was exactly that application.
Jake deployed it in an empty lot three blocks from the Lycan base, waited for the stealth systems to confirm the local airspace was unmonitored, and lifted off.
The aircraft moved through the overcast sky above Europe with the specific efficiency of something that had been designed for exactly this kind of operation — fast, quiet, the external profile minimal against the cloud cover that the franchise's Europe apparently maintained as a permanent atmospheric condition.
The Red Queen's voice came through the cockpit system.
"I've confirmed Tanis's location matches the coordinates Lucian provided," she said. "Satellite coverage of the monastery shows three Lycan-profile heat signatures on the perimeter, one interior signature that matches the historian's approximate physical profile from the franchise's established records." A pause. "Also one additional interior signature that's registering very cold."
"Vampire cold?"
"Consistent with it. Tanis appears to have company."
"That's fine," Jake said.
The aircraft descended through the cloud layer and the Russian landscape resolved below — the specific winter quality of terrain that had given up any pretense of warmth and committed to the aesthetic. Snow across everything, the monastery visible as a stone structure against the white expanse, the kind of building that had been built to last through conditions worse than this and had been doing exactly that for centuries.
He landed in the clearing before the entrance.
The snow came up around the landing with the specific physics of powerful downdraft meeting undisturbed powder, the crystals catching the aircraft's external lighting briefly before settling.
Jake stepped out.
The first werewolf came from the left — fast, committed, the specific aggression of something that had been stationed here with standing orders and was implementing them without the strategic consideration that Lycan leadership applied. Perimeter guard, not tactical asset.
Jake rolled right, came up with the shield already in position, and used the werewolf's own momentum to redirect it into the stone wall beside the monastery's entrance. The impact of Lycan physiology meeting stone, driven by its own velocity, produced a result that resolved the immediate problem without requiring significant additional effort.
The shield edge drew a line across the next werewolf's trajectory that the werewolf encountered before it had finished deciding what to do about the first one being down.
The third perimeter guard was smarter — it held position, assessed, and chose not to engage. Jake looked at it for a moment, then walked past it into the monastery.
The interior was not what the franchise's aesthetics typically produced.
The vampire coven spaces in Underworld were established as elegant and cold — the specific beauty of something that had accumulated centuries of wealth and had decorated itself with the objects that centuries of wealth made available. Tanis, exiled three hundred years ago, had spent those centuries developing his own version of that aesthetic in considerably more limited circumstances.
The result was elaborate in the way of someone who had very strong preferences and three centuries to pursue them without external input. The floor tile patterns were intricate. The animal skin draperies had been arranged with genuine care. The general effect was of a person who had been given an assignment he found deeply unfair and had responded by making the space as opulent as his isolation allowed.
It was also, immediately, clearly the space of someone currently occupied.
Jake coughed twice.
A figure emerged from behind a heavy curtain — pale, disheveled in the way of someone interrupted from an activity they'd been engaged in for some time, dressed in the specific clothing choices of a vampire who had been outside the coven long enough to develop their own aesthetic without external feedback.
Andreas Tanis looked at the intruder in his monastery and assessed the situation with the speed of someone who had spent three hundred years in exile and had developed strong instincts for which situations could be managed and which couldn't.
The triangular shield. The coat. The UV pistol that Jake had already produced — one of the weapons he'd confirmed as effective against vampire physiology, the Lycan research that Tanis himself had apparently contributed to.
Tanis's instincts correctly assessed the situation.
"I have value," he said, before Jake had said anything. "Whatever you're here for, I have value. I'm the most comprehensively informed vampire historian alive. I know things that both Viktor and Lucian would kill to have. Please keep that in mind before you do anything irreversible."
"I know what you are," Jake said. "I'm not here for Viktor or Lucian." He raised the UV pistol and aimed it at Tanis's feet. "I'm here for one specific piece of information."
"Then — whatever it is, I'll tell you. I'm very cooperative. I've always been cooperative. Three hundred years of exile and I've never caused anyone—"
"Alexander Corvinus," Jake said.
Tanis stopped talking.
He looked at Jake with the specific expression of someone who had been prepared to be cooperative about most things and had just encountered the one thing that made cooperation complicated.
"That's—" he started.
Jake fired.
The UV round hit the floor two inches from Tanis's right foot, the burst of ultraviolet light producing the immediate, involuntary biological response that the franchise had established as vampire physiology's specific vulnerability to that wavelength — the skin at the contact point reacting before the nervous system had fully processed the input.
Tanis made a sound and moved his foot.
"That's the demonstration," Jake said. "Now tell me where Corvinus is."
Tanis looked at his foot. At the mark on the floor. At Jake.
"He's not someone you can simply approach," Tanis said. "He's ancient. Older than anything you have a framework for. He has resources and—"
"I'm not asking for commentary," Jake said. "I'm asking for a location."
Tanis weighed his options with the visible efficiency of someone who had three centuries of practice at weighing his options and had developed a strong sense of which outcomes were preferable to which others.
"If I tell you," he said carefully, "I want something in return."
"What?" Jake said.
"Get me out of here," Tanis said. "The Lycans' protection arrangement ends when their usefulness ends. I've known for decades that the moment Lucian achieves his objective, my continued existence stops being in his interest." He looked at Jake with the resigned assessment of someone stating a practical reality. "I've lived three hundred years in exile. I'm not particularly interested in the three hundred and first year being the last one."
Jake looked at him.
"I can transit you to a different world entirely," Jake said. "Not this one. A world where neither the vampire community nor the Lycan community exists, where three hundred years of accumulated knowledge would be genuinely useful to a research operation that could use it."
Tanis's expression went through several things.
"A different world," he said.
"Yes," Jake said.
"You can do that."
"Yes," Jake said.
Tanis looked at the monastery around him — the three hundred years of accumulated opulence in exile, the space that had been home because there had been nothing else available to be home.
"Alexander Corvinus," he said. "He moves. He has resources and he uses them to stay ahead of anyone who might seek him out. But he has a pattern." He gave the specific information — locations, contact protocols, the observable signatures that Corvinus's presence left in the systems that had replaced the pre-digital tracking methods he'd originally used. "He surfaces approximately every decade. He's been in Budapest for the past six months. The address changes but the pattern of the neighborhood is consistent."
Jake committed the information.
"Get your things," he said.
Tanis looked at him. "You're serious."
"Yes," Jake said. "You have approximately ten minutes before the third perimeter guard decides the other two not coming back means it should go find out why. I'd rather be gone by then."
Tanis moved faster than Jake would have expected from someone who had been describing himself as cooperative — the specific urgency of someone who had been waiting for exactly this kind of exit for three hundred years and was not going to miss it because he was slow.
He came back in four minutes with a case that was considerably smaller than three hundred years of accumulated existence suggested it should be.
"I've been ready for this," Tanis said, which explained the case's size.
Jake walked him to the aircraft.
The third perimeter guard watched them from the treeline with the specific expression of something that had decided the situation was above its pay grade.
Jake didn't look back at it.
The aircraft lifted off into the Russian winter sky, and below them the monastery sat in the snow looking exactly as it had for three centuries, and the two people who had been in it when Jake arrived were now elsewhere, and the Lycan perimeter guard was going to have a very interesting report to file with whoever it filed reports with.
"The Dark Council's base," Tanis said, from the passenger seat, with the tone of someone who had asked a question but phrased it as a statement.
"To start," Jake said. "Birkin is going to want to speak with you about vampire cellular architecture. Your knowledge of it is more comprehensive than anything in our current research portfolio."
Tanis absorbed this. "Birkin."
"One of my research scientists," Jake said. "He's been working on a specific biological integration problem. Your three hundred years of historical knowledge about vampire genetics may be more useful to him than anything else we've accessed."
Tanis looked at the clouds outside the window.
"I'm a historian," he said. "Not a biologist."
"You know the history of how the biology developed," Jake said. "That's different from and complementary to knowing the biology itself. Both are useful."
Tanis was quiet for a moment.
"This organization you represent," he said. "The Dark Council."
"Yes," Jake said.
"How long has it existed?"
"It's young," Jake said. "Relative to your frame of reference, very young."
"And yet you travel between realities," Tanis said. "You have weapons that don't belong to any world I'm aware of. You know the history of a world that exists as — what? A story somewhere?"
"A film," Jake said. "In the world I come from, your world exists as a film."
Tanis processed this with the philosophical adaptability of something that had been adjusting its worldview for three centuries and had gotten good at the adjustment.
"That's deeply strange," he said.
"Yes," Jake said. "It is."
The aircraft moved east.
Below them, Europe passed in the specific winter gray of the franchise's perpetual atmosphere, and Jake thought about Budapest, and Alexander Corvinus, and the Corvinus strain as a biological integration layer, and whether three centuries of Tanis's accumulated knowledge would give Birkin's research the foundation it had been missing.
The Red Queen's voice came through the cockpit system.
"Selene has been at the coven for four hours," she said. "Viktor is fully emerged and has called a tribunal. The deathcult has been mobilized. The timeline you gave Lucian is accurate — the sewer base is going to be hit within the next twelve hours."
"Good," Jake said. "He has what he needs to respond to that."
"And the Corvinus objective?"
"Budapest," Jake said. "After I've settled Tanis."
"I'll start preparing the approach protocols," she said.
Jake flew east through the winter sky, and beside him Andreas Tanis sat with his small case of three hundred years and looked at the clouds with the expression of someone who had expected to spend the rest of their very long life in a monastery and was updating that expectation in real time.
It was, for Tanis, the first genuinely new thing to happen in a very long time.
The clouds continued past the windows, and the aircraft moved through them, and somewhere below, the events of Underworld were unfolding toward the conclusions that the franchise had established — and somewhere in those conclusions, a vampire Death Dealer was going to discover that the foundation of six centuries of purpose had been built on a lie, and was going to have to decide what to build on the rubble of it.
Jake thought about the card he'd given her.
When tonight was finished, she'd said.
He'd be in Budapest by then.
She'd find him when she was ready.
[Reader Event Active]
500 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter
10 Reviews = +1 Extra Chapter
Thanks for reading!
20+advance chapters on P1treon Soulforger