Alex Van Helsing (9 page)

“Minhi!”

Minhi’s eyes flickered open and she felt her stomach heave; the room was moving. She was resting on a floor, an iron floor, and there were bars against her shoulders. She realized she was in a
cage
. She rose, putting her hands on the bars, looked out, and screamed. The room wasn’t moving; she was swinging.

Her scream echoed through the vast, torchlit hall where hundreds of vampires were gathered. Only a few bothered to look up. “Minhi!” came the voice again. It was Paul, in the next cage over. They were suspended some twenty feet off the ground.

Below them, the tall head vampire was pacing on a
raised stage between the cages and the gathered audience.

“What’s going on?” she said to Paul.

“I have no idea,” Paul said, rubbing the back of his head. “I think they knocked us out. Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” she said, “but this can’t be happening.” Looking out across the hall, she saw banners that flowed from ceiling to floor, bearing a crest and the word
Scholomance
. Between a couple of the banners was a huge clock, the face of which seemed to be made of bone. It was a few minutes to midnight.

“No, now listen,” Paul said. “It is happening. It is. But we’re alive. All right? That’s a good sign.”

“What makes you think it’s a good sign?”

“Because,” Paul said, “if they wanted to kill us they would have done it already. So probably this is about money.”

“Money?” Minhi demanded. “They’re monsters.”

“Even monsters need money,” Paul observed.

They sat quietly for a few moments, cross-legged in their own cages. After a while Paul folded his arms and sighed. “I must tell you: This was not my plan for a first date.”

“There was a plan?”

The Icemaker began to speak.

“Vampires!” The ice-hoofed vampire strode onto the stage, his lip curled in a sneer. “Since time immemorial, we have been the uncrowned masters of the earth. Is it not so?” He looked around. Near the stage, the leading vampires from the school nodded, rapt in attention.

Minhi listened in silence, taking in every word. This was insane. This was a dream. A floating vampire with long hair and glowing eyes, around whom the air froze as he moved, was speaking to a roomful of more vampires who worshipped him. The world had gone mad.

Minhi saw the vampire’s white eyes fall on her and Paul. There was cold even in his gaze. “Look there. Cattle. As insignificant as the humans we bring in from the forgotten corners of the cities on which to feed. But these cattle are special. They will be our sacrifice.”

Icemaker returned his eyes to the crowd. “I cannot lead the Scholomance into greatness alone. There is one whose deviancy and deviousness dwarfed my own, and who I must have as my queen. But we will need to make a great sacrifice to raise her—for she was a human, unjustly punished in life, now lost to death.

“There is a demon that can help us raise my new queen,” Icemaker said, “but for hundreds of years I have sought the secret of this demon without success. Until this.”

Minhi watched as Icemaker produced a leather scroll wrapped around an iron scepter. The tip of the scepter was a foxlike head, with human eyes and long, pointed ears.

“Without this scroll we did not know the words or the sacrifice that would move the demon,” Icemaker continued. “For years it was hidden from us by a small man, a pitiful mortal. But now we are ready. To spill the blood we must spill, to say the words we must say, and afterward, to receive the new power that will change this world forever.” He put the scroll down.

“The demon’s name is
Nemesis
,” said the vampire, “and the queen she will raise is…Claire.”

Even with the aid of the in-helmet GPS, it took another quarter hour for Alex and Sangster to reach the Villa Diodati, which stood on the south-southwest shore of the lake. It was a vast, stucco-covered manor, perfectly square, threatened on all sides by trees that seemed to Alex to be attempting to pull the place into the ground. Alex followed Sangster to the sloping bank on the eastern side, where the balustrades of the balcony, like large teeth, made the house look thirsty.

They stopped their bikes in the vineyards before the house and stood in silence for a moment, surrounded by the sounds of the lapping waves of the lake and the chirps of frogs and night birds.

“Why are we here?” Alex asked. A dull, muted static was beginning to throb in his head, though, and he thought he knew the answer.

Sangster took off his helmet, laid it on his handlebars, and brought a smaller headset out of his shirt pocket and up to his ear. Then he pulled a leather pack out of the saddlebags and threw it over his shoulder. “In truth,” he said, “there is no reason the Scholomance should be at Lake Geneva at all. Bram Stoker said it was in Eastern Europe and we killed decades looking there.”

Alex shook his head slowly in wonder. “How can you treat a novel as though it were a history book?”

Sangster said, “We weren’t making plans based on
The Shining
, Alex. Remember: We know that the events of Stoker’s
Dracula
actually happened, with a few embellishments. Our organization has a memory that goes back to Van Helsing before Bram Stoker even wrote his book. Besides, Stoker admitted all this while he was still alive.”

“Really? When?”

“In his introduction to the 1901 Icelandic edition,” Sangster said. “Will there be anything else?”

“Just that I’d love to see you go toe to toe with Sid.” Alex looked around. “It’s strange. I’m feeling something like that thing, that static I feel when they’re near,” he
said. “But it’s distant.”

Sangster nodded. “This confirms my suspicions. There is evil in this place.”

“So why? Why Lake Geneva?”

Sangster rolled his neck, considering. “The lake has always attracted people interested in vampires and the supernatural. Besides the Diodati party, Yeats was here; Milton was here; Coleridge was here. The villa itself is very impressive; you’ll find art of all kinds, paintings of great literature, lots of myths. But so far, there is no entrance to the Scholomance to be found. And we have ways of finding secret entrances. You see this vineyard?” Sangster was walking toward the shore, then looked back at the trees. “A year ago we tried looking in and all around it, hoping something would open up.”

“Open up? You mean like, ‘Open Sesame,’ and the ground rolls away?”

“The clan lords and others on their level are able to hide behind powerful energy fields. With the right tools we can drop these fields, but you have to find them. And all around here—the house itself, the vineyards, all around the statue—we tried. Nothing.”

“But the entrance is here after all?”

“Well, we didn’t look in the water,” Sangster said. Now he spoke into his headset. “Armstrong, you on?”

“Copy.”

“What are you seeing?”

“Wind twenty knots, southeast.”

“Pockets?”

“Wind is bouncing off the house, bouncing off the trees—I have your position, there is nothing in front of you. Wait—”

“What?”

“There’s a bounce of wind, a dip, about fifteen meters north of your position.”

“All right, stand by.” Sangster took a few long steps. He reached into his pack and produced a long mesh strap of glass balls about the size of his fist. They clinked as he strung them over his shoulder.

Sangster slipped one of the glass balls out of the strap and tossed it to Alex. Alex caught it, feeling its weight—the ball was about half again as heavy as a baseball. “What’s this?”

“Holy water.”

Sangster crouched, removing a leather roll from his pack, which he lay open to reveal more tools. He drew out what appeared to be a stake with an ornate handle and handed it to Alex. “Keep this with you. Remember—with a vampire you need to hit the heart to kill. Best shot is right between the ribs—here,” and he tapped Alex to
the left of his sternum. “Okay?”

Alex noticed a two-foot-long contraption of wood and metal. The device was fully enclosed in dark material, with a silver trigger and a large housing in the front that appeared to contain the works of the weapon. “That looks like a—crossbow.”

“It’s a Polibow,” Sangster said, nodding. “It doesn’t get damaged as easily as a crossbow, but it’s as quiet. You have a cartridge that fits in the top, loaded with silver shaft s threaded with wood. Twelve of them.”

“Silver,” Alex repeated. In old movies, silver was for werewolves and the Lone Ranger, who when you got down to it could probably hunt werewolves really well. “And are your bullets silver, too?”

“Silver and
wood.
Our bullets are pressed hawthorn wood with a silver jacket.”

“Isn’t all that a lot more expensive than lead?”

“Much, but lead doesn’t kill vampires,” Sangster said, stopping in his crouch. “Only wood and silver do. Silver is actually more an allergen; wood alone will kill. When it comes to wood, hawthorn is best.”

“Why’s that?”

Sangster tapped his own forehead. “The crown of thorns was made from it. Your stake is made of hawthorn. Holy stuff burns the bejesus out of them. But to
kill, you gotta get ’em in the heart.”

“Anything else?” Alex wanted to know. It would be useful to have information
before
he needed it for once.

Sangster thought through a list he seemed to keep in his head as he continued rummaging in his pack. “Direct sunlight will burn up the younger ones.”

“But not the older ones?” Alex asked.

“On a cloudy day you might find them in the market,” said Sangster. “Shopping for shoppers.”

Sangster seemed to find what he was looking for—a folding device that looked like a pocketknife. He closed up and stuffed the roll in his pack, then drew from his own shoulder holster a pistol with a silencer on the end. He unfolded the pocketknife-like device and it came apart into two large pieces. One unfolded further into the shape of a rifle stock, which Sangster now snapped into the back of the pistol. The other device slotted into the top of the gun, and by the glint of glass on the end Alex could see it was a gun sight. Now Sangster brought the gun up to his shoulder.

“We’re gonna do some skeet shooting. Gimme a good throw—put ’er right over there,” he said, indicating the general direction of the water.

“Over the water?” Alex hefted the ball, gauging how he would throw it.

“Yep. Not too far, about twenty meters.”

Alex drew back and threw, letting the ball arc high, then down about twenty meters out. Sangster moved smoothly, and there was a
shoomp
sound, followed by a tinkling as the ball exploded.

Sangster frowned. “No.”

“Wind can do all kinds of crazy things,” Armstrong said from the radio. “Try twenty yards farther up—that would be a beeline from the front entrance to the house.”

“Good,” Sangster agreed, nodding to Alex. They moved farther up. “Pull.”

Alex grinned at the idea that he was lunging a clay pigeon and threw, watching the glass ball arc high and glimmering. Another explosion. Nothing.

Sangster stopped. For a moment he slouched, and Alex feared that they had reached the end of it. The lead would not pan out.

Feeling sour and defeated, Alex stuck his hands in his pockets and scanned back south along the beach.

The static was still there, like a distant hiss, a TV left on in a room far away. He looked down the beach, watching the slowly churning surf, the sand and grass. About thirty meters away stood a statue of an angel, its arms spread wide.

“Whoa,” said Alex. When his eyes scanned across the
angel, the hiss seemed to spike, as if someone in that faraway room had turned up the volume.

Alex ran down the beach, listening. For a couple moments there was almost nothing there again. The whole static thing was such a strange phenomenon that he barely knew how to feel it. But he kept running toward the statue.

He looked back to see Sangster following and heard the teacher say, “What about fifty meters south?”

Alex stopped before the angel guarding the lake. An inscription on the base of the statue read,
BEHOLD IT, HEAVEN! HAVE I NOT HAD TO WRESTLE WITH MY LOT
? The static was whispering louder now, as Alex looked at the angel. Then he turned toward the water, and the static sang.

Sangster caught up, reading the inscription aloud.
“Behold it, Heaven,”
he said. “These are Byron’s verses.
Pull
.”

Alex drew back once more and threw, high and out, and as the ball tumbled toward the moon-specked waves, it seemed to freeze in place. Sangster drew a bead as it fell, and time stretched out. Alex swore he could feel the bullet find its place. The ball exploded, glass tinkling in all directions over the lake, and the holy water inside sprayed out.

There was a pop, a sizzle on the waves, or rather over
them, a momentary shimmer that spread out in a web about four meters wide. Then all was normal.

“Again,” Sangster said.

Another ball. Contact. The cloud of holy water burst over the waves, and now the air shrieked and spat with electric protest, and then it sizzled and churned away. Alex gasped at what remained.

There in the lake was a slope, dark walls shimmering in the gloom. Water lapped lightly over the lip of the entrance, held in place by some power Alex could only imagine.

Alex said urgently, “Can we—should we go in, can we go?”

Sangster nodded toward the entrance, and now the air began to shimmer again, closing up as before. After a moment the reflection of the moon lay across the water as if nothing had disturbed it.

“You won’t get through now,” Sangster said.

Alex turned back to look at the angel, and behind it, the Villa Diodati. Nearby he could hear Sangster speaking into his headset. “Polidorium, we have located the Scholomance.”

“Hey! Hey, Alex!”

Alex forced his eyes open. It was Sunday morning. It couldn’t be more than two, three hours later. “Huh?”

“Come on, get up,” came Sid’s voice. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Alex rubbed his face. “I mean seriously, you have to be kidding.”

As he sat up, Alex looked across the room to see Sid going through the motions of combing his hair at the mirror of the small bathroom. “How long have you been up?”

Sid looked at Alex through the mirror as he wet his comb. “Not long; I overslept, too,” Sid replied.

“No news this morning?” Alex asked, trying to think of what would be the thing to say if he had no information at all.

“You mean about Paul?” Sid came out of the bathroom. “No. Nothing.”

In one of the lounges Alex and Sid passed, a TV was again playing news, where the lead story was that LaLaurie School for Girls had been the site of a terrorist attack that culminated in the abduction of two students. In the background behind the reporter, Alex could see workmen struggling to remove chunks of ice on the lawn—chunks that, the reporter was saying, no one could explain.

Alex and Sid continued in silence to breakfast. The tension in the school was terrible, much worse than it had been on the day of the Secheron fight. The absence of Paul seemed to give off waves around his usual seat. They sat in silence for a while before Alex got up to go into the kitchen to get some more orange juice. “Hey, killer,” Alex heard as he walked by the Merrills’ table. Bill and Steven were smirking at him.

“What did you say?”

“I called you a killer,” said Bill. “That’s it, isn’t it? I thought you were some kind of deviant at your old
school, but now that you’ve gotten Paul killed, it seems to me you’re probably one of those people who bad things just…happen around.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Alex angrily. “No one even knows where Paul is.”

“
Do
you make bad things happen around you?”

Alex felt his fist ball up, a rush of blood to his face, waves of adrenaline flooding up in his chest. He was seeing Paul dragged away by his ankle, Minhi and Paul screaming. He felt himself start to growl as he drew back his hand.

Sid clapped him on the shoulder, suddenly there. “Hey,” Sid said. The smaller boy seemed at once pleading and demanding. “Not now. Come on.”

“No, I think he had an answer for us,” Steven said unexpectedly, stepping forward. “What was it, Van Helsing?”

Alex found himself chest to chest with Steven when Sangster’s voice rang out, bringing them out of their faceoff. “Alex! Sid!” Sangster cried. “Come here.”

The teacher was standing at the door of the refectory. With a final scowl at the Merrills, Alex strode over to Sangster, Sid following closely.

“How are you two holding up?” he asked. “Besides this insane need to keep fighting with the Merrills.”

“I didn’t…,” Alex began, but Sid cut him off.

“We’re just waiting for more news,” Sid said.

Sangster nodded, and glancing from Sid to Alex, said, “Look, I know this may be an awkward time, but can you two do some research for me? For class.”

Alex looked at Sid.

“Sure,” said Sid, “anything to take my mind off this.”

“I want to know about Lord Byron and magic,” Sangster said. “I’m going to the library to pull whatever I can. Would you mind helping?”

Sid and Alex nodded and they were off.

The three of them went to the library where Sangster had set up at a long table in the back. Sangster’s chair had several yellow legal pads and a stack of books laid before it. Sangster pulled a legal pad toward him, scrawled a library code on a slip of paper, and handed it to Sid. “Sid, I missed this one, could you go find it?”

Sid nodded, taking off for the stacks.

“It’s taking some doing.” Sangster looked at Alex. “But I’m on the move tonight.”

“What do you mean ‘it’s taking some doing’?” Alex asked. “We found the entrance.”

“Oh, they’re happy about the entrance,” Sangster said. “What they’re not happy about is spending men and material on chasing after two hostages. They’re afraid if
we do something big and bold, we might lose access to the Scholomance.”

Alex was disgusted. “What are you saying, that they’d sacrifice my friends because saving them would be inconvenient?”

“Alex,” Sangster said, scowling. “We’re not a bunch of Republic serial villains. To answer your question, yes, they
would
sacrifice the innocent if it would save
more lives
. If accessing the Scholomance
later
, with a bigger plan, when we know more, will save more lives, then they won’t move right now. But beyond that, doesn’t this spell
trap
to you? Just two hostages, taken right in front of me, a known agent to them, and you, a guy who they’re just waiting to see hit the stage?”

Alex had to blanch at the idea that the vampire world was buzzing about getting him “onstage,” as though he were a new Jonas Brother. “But you are going,” he said. It was not a question.

“Yeah, I’m going,” Sangster said. “I argued for hours. I’m not giving up on a student. They’ll allow a one-man insertion. One try. That’s it.”

“Let me ask you something,” Alex said. “You really think they’re still alive?”

“I think so,” Sangster said.

“Why do you think so?” Alex asked. His fear about
Paul and Minhi had been haunting him.

“Because you don’t take two hostages right in front of witnesses just to kill them immediately afterward.” Sangster scrawled another number on a slip and handed it to Alex. “So…at worst, it’s probably a trap. But Icemaker is still up to something, and I need to figure out what that is. Here—I need some stuff on the whole Icemaker circle, Mary Shelley, Polidori, everyone. Go find this.”

Alex turned around, looking at the slip of paper. The book was
The Monsters
, call letters 823 HOO. Alex scanned the vast bookshelves as he walked past them until he found the row marked 810–830.

It took Alex no time to locate the book Sangster had sent for—it was a new book on the Romantics and clearly had just been acquired and library-bound. When Alex found it, he pulled it down, stuck it under his arm, and scanned nearby to see if anything else might prove useful. He liked to stumble across information this way—visually scanning nearby books beat out online key word searches any day. His search paid off: He found another volume—
Polidori and the Vampires
—that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Then he heard a creak. A book fell from a top shelf.

Alex looked up and then straight ahead at the sound
of a sharp laugh. Through the stacks, for just a moment, he saw the face of Steven Merrill. And then something heavy struck him across the forehead. As it tumbled down—it appeared to be a copy of
Childe Harold
—Alex was stunned. He tried to stand up straight, grab the bookshelf, but it was falling, books pouring in a wave off the shelf. Alex started to stumble and trip toward the aisle.

Slow motion now, the fourteen-foot-tall shelf began to crash down against the next one, domino reaching for domino, with Alex underneath. Suddenly, he felt something grab him across the waist and push him hard. Alex tumbled out into the aisle and fell spread-eagle on the floor. Safe.

The library shook and thundered, shelving units slamming down, heavy wooden sounds followed by thousands upon thousands of smaller falling-books sounds.

And then all was quiet. Alex staggered to his feet, looking back for who had hit him. There was Sangster, halfway buried under the shelves, trying to pry himself free.

Sangster cursed, then looked at Alex. “Help me with this,” he rasped.

Now Sid came running up, followed by more students and the librarian. They all worked to lift the shelf off
Sangster’s legs until finally there was enough give that the librarian, who was a strapping Viking of a woman, was able to grab Sangster by his shoulders and help him wriggle free.

Everyone let the shelves settle back. “Don’t get up.” The librarian held out her hand. “Can you feel your legs?”

Sangster was touching them. “Yes, yes, but…” He indicated his right leg, gritting his teeth. “I think this one is broken.”

“You!” the librarian looked at Alex. “Go to the front and call an ambulance.”

Alex was scanning the library for the Merrills, but they were nowhere in sight. As he ran to the front for the phone, he was cursing them, plotting indescribable revenge. If Sangster was hurt—if Sangster couldn’t do the mission tonight, and the Polidorium was unwilling to do it without Sangster—where did that leave Paul and Minhi’s chances for survival?