Voice of the Undead (4 page)

“Only in Anzio,” Sangster said, looking at the diagram.

“It's Italian?” Alex asked. Anzio was a coastal city where an enormous military cemetery stood. He had been there with his family.

“No, it's—Sangster is talking about the Polidorium's creature school in Anzio,” Armstrong told him. “Anyway: the worm is called a Glimmerhook. This is a very unusual thing for the Scholomance to haul out and throw at you. They would have had to procure it from one of the heavy-duty blood-wielding clans, the kind that can make enhanced creatures using blood. They come in an egglike, ah, grenade—so there are usually a handful of them, like you said. There're only one or two clan lords who can make them, so it would be an expensive get.”

Alex remembered the worms crawling into his jacket. “What does it do?”

“Just two things,” Armstrong said. “It sucks your blood and expands to carry back however much it can take, and oh, it poisons and kills you.”

“Poisons? It bit one guy, Steven Merrill. He was in my room.”

“Did you find him being bitten? How much blood—”

“I was there when it jumped on him and I pulled it off almost immediately,” Alex answered. “Steven collapsed a few minutes later. He's in the hospital.”

“How's he doing?” Armstrong asked.

“We won't know until tomorrow,” Sangster said, shaking his head. “What will the effect of the worm look like?”

“Something like malaria,” Armstrong said. “A blood disease. It'll try to kill his white blood cells. It sounds like the bite was very brief. With any luck they'll treat him at the hospital and he'll pull through.”

“You think so?” Alex asked.

Armstrong paused. “I guess I kind of hope so, Alex.”

“So they hit him with an expensive and exotic weapon,” Sangster said. “Doesn't that seem a little overboard for a retaliation?”

“What are you thinking?” Armstrong asked, searching Sangster's face. Alex watched her eyes dart; she had this way of scanning you like a map.

“I don't know. Tell me about the escalation you're seeing,” Sangster replied. “It's a stretch, but maybe it's connected.”

Armstrong turned her attention back to the keyboard and tapped some more. Information began to scroll down the wall, codes Alex could not read except that each was appended with a date and time down to the thousandth of a second. “When it comes to Scholomance activity, there absolutely has been an escalation,” she said. “Just a week ago, Chatterbox looked pretty normal.”

Alex raised a hand. “Chatterbox?”

Armstrong nodded. “This is something new we've been working on. It's still in its early stages—we have the main architect coming in to do some tweaks. Okay, actually, it's way beyond me, but it is very cool.”

Now the screen began to arrange itself into a dynamic map of information—circles connected by dotted lines. As Armstrong swiped her hand, the map swiveled on its axis, showing more and more circles. She swiped her hand again and it stretched out chronologically; swiped again, and Alex saw topics laid out in idea groups
and
time.

“All of the information you see here,” Armstrong said, “is compiled by computer, with human agents tweaking as they go. It's sweeping up emails, phone calls, texts, whatever we've managed to pick up. It's not easy because vampires tend to use phones and email addresses the way most criminals do—they keep them for a short time and toss them. Forums and chat rooms pop up and come down, and we at the Polidorium dedicate a lot of time to trolling all of these. Chatterbox looks for patterns.”

As admirable as this was, Alex felt a little queasy. This was a scary tool.

Armstrong continued, “Anyway, Chatterbox as of last week was showing no particular focus for the Scholomance here. As of
yesterday
there was more chatter about Mira, which is their code for Lake Geneva.”

“Why now?” he asked.

Armstrong tapped another key, and the line of communications grew into a map, with small red blips where different messages had appeared. As she trailed a finger over the tabletop, he saw each blip explode with information and keywords,
Mira
,
Polidorium
, and a plethora of other targeted phrases.

“Maybe they wanted you out of the way,” Armstrong said, “because someone is coming to the Scholomance.”

“Another clan lord?” Sangster asked.

Armstrong shook her head. “None of the clans have been chattering the way you'd expect if a lord was on the move—the way we knew Icemaker was coming. No, it's someone called by this other code word,
Ultravox
.” She indicated the idea map, and swished her hand to now show ideas mapped in time and tagged geographically—circles moving up and down a map of Europe, building toward Switzerland. The keyword
Ultravox
glowed again and again.

“Who is Ultravox?” Alex asked.

Sangster said, “Well, for one thing it's the name of a New Wave band.”

“What's New Wave?”

Armstrong pursed her lips, a kind of choked smile.

Sangster continued, “But it means the Voice, the Super Voice, I guess.”

“Do you have any data on a vampire called the Voice?” Alex asked hopefully.

“We're looking,” Armstrong said.

Carreras cleared his throat. “It is time we consider the wisdom of returning Van Helsing to the school. For his own safety.”

All were silent.

“Whoa, whoa,” said Alex. “And then what? What does that mean? Without a school to go to, I got no reason to be here.”

He realized he was bringing to the surface a matter that had not really been discussed. Alex was being trained and allowed to work for the Polidorium because they believed he had something to offer. But would he be working with the Polidorium if he was no longer attending school nearby? Did they value him enough—and that was the way he was thinking of it, as though he were a really great car—to find some excuse to keep him around if he wasn't in school here? The answer had to be absolutely not. No organization was going to just take in a fourteen-year-old. If the school was gone, or he was gone from the school, he was as good as gone to the Polidorium.

“You're not my parents,” Alex said when he finally decided on his line of reasoning. “I'll decide if I'm at that school.”

Sangster clawed at his own forehead. “If the Scholomance is serious, serious enough to try to get rid of Alex, then he's important to our mission.”

Armstrong turned to Carreras. “As much as I hate to say it, I agree. Look, they're already gonna try to kill him every chance they get, so that's nothing new.”

“Yeah,” said Alex brightly. “That's nothing new.”

Armstrong seemed to think of a new angle. “Could this be about Montrose?”

“What's Montrose?” Alex asked.

“That would be the man behind Chatterbox,” Sangster said. “And I have no idea if it's related or not.”

Carreras nodded and finally said, “We need to find out what this Voice is up to. Alex stays with the school—wherever the school is.”

Alex opened his hands,
Whaa?
“I just said it's my decision. . . .”

“Very good, sir,” Sangster said.

The supplies Sangster and Alex had to get were actually bigger than the van: a trailer full to the brim of cots and bedding, which they loaded from the dock of a store warehouse in Secheron with the help of various workmen brought in at Otranto's behest.

When they left the warehouse, Alex saw that they were headed out of town. “This isn't the way back to Village Hall,” he observed as Sangster drove.

“We're not going back to Village Hall,” said the instructor.

“Where are we going?”

“Someplace safe.”

Twenty minutes later the van fell in line behind the caravan of buses pulling down a long, manicured drive that Alex recognized. He read the stone sign as they passed it on the driveway.

“LaLaurie School for Girls,” he said thoughtfully. “Of course.”

“Our sister school. It's temporary,” Sangster said, “just long enough to see what kind of damage the fire caused and get us back open. But this was the only place available.”

Sangster drove around the buses and parked in the circular drive at the front of the mansionlike building. Alex blinked in wonder at a strange vision. A line of ten or so old-fashioned oil lanterns threaded out the entrance, held aloft by women and girls in uniform coming down the wide front steps. The light from the lamps danced across the courtyard and his heart leapt at the warmth of the gesture.

As Alex got out of the van, he paused.

Standing on the steps before him, holding up a lantern like a beacon at sea, was Minhi Krishnaswami.

“Welcome,” she said.

Chapter 4

Javi and the other RAs were drafted into the service of handing out bedrolls and pillows, and the boys all fell into line. Alex, Sid, and Paul took the bedding that was offered and walked, dazed and exhausted, following like ants into the gymnasium of LaLaurie.

They trudged in silence up into the building. Alex had thought previously that LaLaurie was like “Glen-arvon with more flowers,” and now, as his shoes echoed on the tile floor and he and Paul caught sight of one or two girls looking past doors that led up into stairwells and private rooms, LaLaurie reminded him of “Glenarvon except not on fire.”

“We are in foreign territory now, mate,” said Paul.

“Did you get to talk to Minhi?” Alex asked.

“Just for a moment,” Paul responded. “She had to get the hot chocolate.” Minhi had led the first group inside while Alex and his friends got into line.

Minhi was their friend already. She had come into their lives like one of the manga characters she loved, bending back Bill Merrill's ear to stop a fight that Alex actually would have won anyway. She had defused a violent situation and introduced herself as “Minnie-with-an-h,” and they had instantly liked her. Besides all that, she had loaned Sid a stack of books. And then she and Paul had been kidnapped by vampires. The time in captivity had brought her close to Paul, and over the past month the gang—Paul, Sid, Minhi, and Alex, the four who shared the truth—had gathered together whenever they could find an excuse to meet up in town.

The three boys reached the entrance to the gymnasium and Paul let out a slow whistle. “Behold,” he said, “the Kingdom of Cots.”

The gymnasium had become a kind of hostel, with cots stretching in long rows. Some boys were already asleep, while others were gathering in groups around the cots. Alex saw sooty faces looking back at him all along the way. He was momentarily plagued by guilt at not seeing the loathed Merrill brothers. They were a couple of jerks, but no one deserved what Steven had gotten, and Alex especially didn't like being the reason for it. “It looks like
Gone with the Wind
in here,” Alex said, thinking of the makeshift hospitals that had been set up during the American Civil War. He had seen that movie with his mother, who had a weakness for old movies, and he had been struck by the images of public halls being converted this way, with cots and sheets and, in that case and thankfully not this one, doctors with hacksaws.

“Guys!” Minhi beckoned them from a table along the wall, where she was briefly visible through a clustered crowd of boys. Alex saw the steam rising off the Styrofoam cups they held, and he realized she was giving away hot chocolate.

He, Paul, and Sid picked up their step. When they got there, Minhi poured cups and handed one immediately to each of them.

“Thank you,” Sid said.

“Absolutely,” Minhi said. She reached out and hugged Paul, pecking him on the cheek.

Alex took the kiss Minhi gave Paul in stride. No big deal. Precisely why he wasn't bothered by it. Not at all.

A girl next to Minhi cleared her throat, and Alex turned to the sound of papers rustling. The girl stood up from her place behind the table and said, “Please take one.”

“What's all this?” Alex asked as he took the paper. The girl looked up with a tired but patient look. She wore a green, shimmery scarf, tied in a jaunty fashion around her neck. Her hair was brown and chin length, stiff and well arranged.

“This is everything you're going to need to know for the next few days at least,” she said with an accent that reminded Alex of a Pedro Almodovar movie, husky and full of strange, slushy s's and y's that sounded like j's:
Thish izh everything jor going to need
. As she spoke, the scarf danced briefly. She swept her arm toward the Kingdom of Cots. “This is where you'll sleep. There's a map on the sheet, and hours when you'll have access to the showers in the back of the gym. We didn't have much time but there are some . . . rules and instructions on what to do about classes.” She smiled very slightly, more with her eyes than her mouth.

Sid was looking at the paper. “Yeah, how are we gonna do classes? And where are the instructors sleeping? And—”

“Ah—right now the paper is all we have. If the answer's not there it's because no one's told us yet.” Alex noticed that she sounded both compassionate and weary, as though she'd already said this too many times.

“Vienna, these are my friends,” Minhi interjected. “This is Alex Van Helsing, Sid Chamberlain, and this is Paul Messina.”

“Oh,
this
is Paul,” Vienna said, and she flicked her eyes up and down. “
Eso es
.”

“Vienna?” Alex asked.

“This is Vienna Cazorla,” said Minhi. “She's my roommate.”

“Cazorla,” Vienna corrected, hitting the middle
z
with a
th
sound,
Cathorla
. She smiled briefly again, an entrancing and instantly vanishing phenomenon.

Alex tried to think of something good and came up with, “Cazorla, that's Spanish, right?”

She nodded. The eyes again. Wow.

“But yet your first name is Vienna, that's . . . unusual, isn't it?”

“It is a strange world.” Vienna shrugged. Then she remembered her list and looked down, checking off the three boys' names. She flipped through it for a moment and glanced up, gazing past them. “Is there no one else?”

“We're the last,” Alex said. He started to say something profoundly stupid like
we always save the best for last
and by the grace of God he somehow did not.

“What about . . .” Vienna bit her lip, searching her list.

For a moment Minhi and Vienna turned to each other, and Vienna looked back. “Do you know Steven Merrill?”

Alex felt the blood drain from his face. A jumble of responses flooded into his mind, and he stammered, “You . . . you're looking for Steven?”
The silent terror of Glenarvon? The one who got bitten by a vicious Glimmerhook?

“I don't see either of them,” Vienna said to Minhi. By which she meant the Merrills.

Paul was looking at Minhi, with a sort of
Wha—?
look.

“They haven't come in,” said Minhi. “Vienna and Steven are . . .”

“Old friends,” Vienna said. “From primary school.”

“Oh,” Alex said, trying to take in the strange revelation that the Merrills could have friends. He had thought their amusements ran more to the torturing puppies variety. But the arm-swinging joie de vivre had gone out of Vienna.

“Steven's been injured,” Alex said finally. “His brother is with him at the hospital.”

Vienna's eyes grew wide and she brought her hand to her lips. She flipped the sheets, clearing her throat again. “I'll make a note of it.” Abruptly she smiled awkwardly at Minhi and scurried away, disappearing out of the gymnasium entirely.

Paul watched her go. He said to Minhi, “A friend of
yours
is a friend of
theirs
?”

“Do you really want to get into this now?” Minhi asked.