Alex Van Helsing: Voice Of The Undead Part 8

For a brief moment Alex took the final car in-richer, full of high leather seats and proper curtains, a first-cla.s.s accommodation to be sure. That was all he had time to observe before turning his attention to the gang of vampires that now looked up at him from their card tables.

Directly in front of Alex were two vampires, large and muscular men wearing tailored suits. One had a goatee, the other appeared not to have shaved-a couple of stylish vampire thugs.

Farther back, the blond man had stopped at a table and now turned toward him, as if amused. Seated at that table was a vampire who was looking down. He was pale white but not built for speed the way every other vampire Alex had observed was. This vampire had salt-and-pepper hair that curled over his forehead, and a trimmed beard that clung to a roundish face. He wore off-white pants and a white cotton peasant s.h.i.+rt, flowing and comfortable. Alex couldn't see the vampire's feet, but he felt certain the man would be wearing leather loafers, no socks.

All of this in less than a second, and then one of the thugs at the front snarled. Alex raised his Polibow and shot, killing him instantly, and the other was upon him, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him back against the wall.

Alex struggled against the vampire's strength, kicking, and the Polibow fell from his hands.

Answer the questions. What's going on?

One of them has me.

What do you have?

I dropped my weapon.

What else do you have?

Alex flicked his arm, bringing his metal watch to the end of his wrist. It was made of silver and he had carved a cross into the clasp. He smacked the guard in the face, holding it there. The guard's skin sizzled and he loosened his grip.

Alex took the opportunity to twist free and became aware of the blond man grabbing a long cane and walking toward him. The blond vampire whipped the cane up and hammered it against Alex's chest, below his neck, driving Alex back. Alex grabbed the cane and twisted, unable to move the vampire but able to swerve out of the way. He reached into his coat for a stake but now the guard had him again, and was grabbing his collar and slamming him back against the seat. A puff of ash flew through the air, the remains of the guard Alex had killed. The living guard held Alex down and now opened his mouth, glistening fangs showing as his head whipped back and prepared to come forward to take out his throat.

"No, no, no," said a soft, mellifluous voice. "That's enough."

The blond man with the cane froze, as did the guard.

Alex struggled to move, and the guard let him slip slightly.

The vampire in the peasant s.h.i.+rt was moving down the train, almost gliding, his-yep-leather loafers barely touching the floor. He stopped at the seat where Alex was pinned. Alex wondered if he could reach his stake. It was long and wooden and laced with silver, and it would do all the damage in the world. The guard had now let go of him, but Alex suspected a sudden move would be unwise.

The peasant s.h.i.+rt man folded his hands before his paunch, looking like a vampiric Buddha. "You must be Alex Van Helsing."

His voice was smooth, low enough to reverberate in Alex's chest, but with a strange high tenor hidden in it.

Alex found himself saying, "Yes."

"We're going to walk now, Alex. And you're going to do something for me."

Alex felt the guard completely relax his grasp and move away, and Alex sat forward. He needed to kill this man now. He needed to reach for his stake and try.

"We're going to walk," the man said again, "and you're going to do something for me."

Alex was rising and thinking he needed to reach for-something, there was something, or maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe what he was going to do now was walk.

"Let's walk."

They began to move down the car, toward the back, past the man's card table. Alex was trying to think of what it was he was going to do, just now, and in the distance he heard the vampire in the peasant s.h.i.+rt say to the others, "One of us will be right back."

Chapter 10.

The train track spewed from the back of the train, red-brown and blurred, as Alex and the gray-bearded vampire stood outside in the cold and the wind. They were up against an iron railing and Alex was listening to the man talk and watching the long line of iron, watching the white gravel of the train track that melted with speed into a milky gray railroad, the dark, gray-blue evening sky stretching all around them, blanketing behind trees and ugly buildings, the view behind the view, the view no one looks at on a train.

"The truth, Alex, and we both know it, is that this is as good as it gets," said the man. His voice was audible over the wind, close behind Alex, mixing with the wind. He didn't need to shout; Alex was listening. "Relax."

Alex put his hands on the rails, watching the liquid stream of iron and gravel, listening to the liquid words.

"Your father is very proud of you, Alex, because of what you have become. Everyone who has ever known you, all those people who secretly doubted you would amount to anything, because we all know that secretly they doubted you, whatever they may have said, now even they have heard of your skills and are proud of you. Everyone is satisfied. Your mother-whose talents were so great that she could move your father to turn his back on his life-even she is amazed. All of us on the brighter side, we too are amazed. You have surprised us all. This truly is as good as it's ever going to get."

Alex nodded. All of this made sense. He understood that people generally lied when they pretended to be proud of you, but he had been doing amazing things lately. "But I thought they didn't know-"

"Of course they know," the man said. "Of course your father knows. Do you think the greatest enemy of the brighter side is stupid? We don't think that, even though it would be of great comfort to us. And, Alex, it takes extraordinary effort not to believe that which is of great comfort."

The man leaned closer, and Alex could hear all the crosscurrents of high and low in his voice. "Let me tell you what comforts you must not believe, Alex. You're not going to get much farther. Your friends, whatever friends you have made, will not survive being close to you. Your family will not remain proud, because of the damage you will cause. And in the end you will not be able to overcome the inherent flaws; your intellect will sadly not reach above the rather rudimentary heights it has attained now. You also, despite what you believe, will not be very tall."

Alex felt a stab of sadness at that last one, but it was just one more thing. All of this truth was exactly as he had expected.

The vampire clicked his tongue. "But look-you were able to stop a great clan lord and command the respect of a very stubborn organization. You have attained achievements most men your age could only dream of. It truly does not get any better than this."

He pointed. "The iron there is extremely spiky and hard. If you were to leap upon it, in all likelihood you would, almost instantly, be able to seal your life, seal it, here, at its best point, when you have all those things that, really, you know you only barely deserve-friends, respect, and accomplishment. And it's so easy-to step. Isn't it?"

Alex was watching the iron line and listening, and all of this made sense. There was something in the back of his mind that he had intended to do, but what the man had said made sense.

The man was talking again, like a refrain in a song, and it was true. Alex lifted his foot and hung it over the side, how easy it was. Like being in the snow, letting it close in and envelop you.

This feeling had happened once before.

Alex had been in the snow for too long the last time he had felt it, after rescuing a man on the mountain who had taken a wrong turn; Alex was a hero and then suddenly he himself had gotten lost when the rescue helicopter set off half the mountain in an avalanche. Alex had hunkered against a tree as the snow came down around him like a wave. And for what seemed like hours he had waited, so easy to go to sleep, to let the snow overtake him; he was a hero and it would never- Alex.

He could sleep, he could step, and it would never- Alex!

It would never be better, never to disappoint, never to overlook or outgrow, let go, step- Beyond the droning of the voice, beyond the flowing of the rails, there was a rattling sound, a whooping sound. Something deep within him reached out for this new sound, just as he had when he had been lost in the snow. He had seen hands furiously digging toward him, digging like the coming noise, moving snow out of the way, a voice calling to him- Alex!!

And now there was a helicopter swooping into view from over the trees, coming into view the way a pair of hands had come into view, hands reaching through the snow for him, his sister's gloves- Take my hand!

Rattling, whooping sound of a helicopter, diving closer, thirty yards above, and Alex was reaching into his pocket. His foot still hung over the edge, and he wrapped his fingers around the handle of the palm-size grappling gun in his jacket and raised it- Take my hand, Alex!

And fired it.

The hook looped around the skids of the chopper and Alex felt himself yank free, his shoulder twisting and screaming in pain, yes, Wake up, take my hand, come on.

He was swinging wildly in the air and then there were people dragging him up into the chopper, and he could barely hear Sangster and Armstrong. Alex lay on the floor of the chopper and watched the train disappear into a tunnel, as the vampire in the peasant s.h.i.+rt turned slowly and stepped inside.

Chapter 11.

"I would have done anything he told me," said Alex, putting down his pen and bringing everyone's work to a halt. It was the next day, Tuesday. The first Pumpkin Show was that evening, and the ball in three days' time. He, Paul, Minhi, and Sid sat at an enormous round table in the New Aubrey House study, working on homework and stories for the Pumpkin Show.

Sid was writing furiously, a stack of books in front of him, opened and laid across one another as he consulted each and scribbled away on long yellow legal pads. "The Skein says you should use recurrent phrases to drive the reader along," he said as he wrote. "The Skein says if you introduce a gun on the first page you have to use it before the end."

Paul asked, "Does The Skein recommend you measure twice and cut once?"

Minhi offered, "Does The Skein recommend you not let anyone else get any work done?"

But for Sid, the ideas were flowing. Alex himself hadn't managed to get anything down. He turned instead to studying, and finally he had spoken up, haunted by the events of the night before.

Minhi laid down her own book and sighed, as though relieved that he wanted to talk about it. Alex had given them a brief run-down and then asked them to drop it. But now he found he just couldn't not talk. That was unusual for him. It was true, though: He would have done anything the vampire-Ultravox, of course-had suggested.

"You say that now," Minhi observed, "but you didn't, did you?"

Ultravox and his retinue had disappeared, either in the tunnel or somewhere along the track. The only positive side to Alex's excursion had been that Alex had seen him, and even now his description was being studied by the guys with the computers. But it was a good bet that Ultravox was at this point safely inside the protective walls of the Scholomance.

"Do you think it's true?" Paul asked, getting back to something that was bugging Alex even more than the fact that he had been about to throw himself off a moving train. "That your dad knows everything you've been up to?"

"Obviously it's not a perfect secret," Alex said. "It's hardly a secret at all. There are Polidorium people who know, there're all of you-"

"Like we're gonna be calling your mom and dad," Sid said, and snorted.

"There's my sister, and of course there's the fact that my dad isn't an idiot. He was a part of the organization."

"May I . . . ," Vienna spoke, as if unsure whether to go on.

"What's that?" Alex said.

"This is none of my business," she demurred.

"Seriously, that never stops these guys." Alex smiled. "Hey, you're the one who got sideswiped by Punk Elle. Go ahead, tell me what you're thinking."

"This man, Ultravox, he told you things in order to get you to do what he wanted," Vienna said. "My father is a negotiator and I know what such a man is like. That treaty he's working on? I've seen him talk people into supporting it even though they were dead set against it. Changing people's minds is not about bending them to your will. It's about getting them to bend their own will. What I mean is, the fact that what Ultravox said made you want to do things does not make what he said true. It just makes it something you could believe. In fact, the best lies always sound like truth. So-you really can't count on any of it being true."

Alex looked at Sid and Paul with a pursed frown. Not bad.

"Mate," said Paul, "you would do well to talk to your parents."

"Really talk to them," emphasized Minhi.

"I will," Alex said.

"Really?" she said, laughing.

"I think so."

"Hang on," Sid said, thinking of something else. Alex watched the boy seem to scan invisible letters hanging before him in the air. As if possessed, Sid opened up The Skein, ran a finger down a page, and then shut it again. Sid wrote down a few words and said, "Okay."

Paul asked, "Okay, so you're with us again?"

"Yeah," Sid said. "I think I'm good to go with the first story."

"Already?" Alex asked. "That's amazing."

"I wouldn't say amazing." Sid sat back, looking pleased. "For years I've been doing character descriptions. Now that I've learned to put a story around them, it's-well, I think I followed the advice pretty well."

"I'm not surprised-he could tell a vampire story in his sleep," Minhi said.

"Oh, my story isn't about vampires," said Sid, shaking his head. "Sorry to disappoint."

Minhi looked shocked. "Why not? That's like your subject."

"I think maybe it's too close," Sid said. "Anyway . . . I'm not sure I'm looking forward to the reading part."

"When's the first Pumpkin Show again?" Alex asked.

"Tonight," Minhi said. "It's not too late to sign up."

Chapter 12.

On the way to the first Pumpkin Show, the gang pa.s.sed Sangster in the lobby. He was standing near a ladder chatting with a couple of other teachers who were watching a pair of older boys hang a chandelier. They were surrounded by wires and cables and for a moment Alex had the vision of the boys on the ladder being eaten alive by the wiring, sucked up through the ceiling. He needed to stop listening to Sid.

Alex dropped back from his friends as Sangster glanced at Alex and excused himself. It was obvious to Alex that Sangster had been waiting for him. "Let's walk," Sangster said.

They went down the hall, past rooms that were still full of cobwebs and sheets and even, strangely, a pair of genuine giant-wheeled bicycles like the one that Alex and his mom had seen Paul Newman ride in Butch Ca.s.sidy and the Sundance Kid. They exited out the side, and as they began to walk the long way, hugging the mossy wall of the grounds, he could see that Sangster had something serious to tell him.

"What?" Alex asked.

"Armstrong pa.s.sed along some more Chatterbox intel on Scholomance," Sangster answered. "A reprimand went through for your friend Elle. She's angry as h.e.l.l, because a project she was working on is being canceled. Project Claire, it's called."