“True.” Paul leaned back, the back of the wooden chair creaking with his weight. He kept the magazine open but looked at Alex. “So how on earth did you wind up rooming with Merrill and Merrill?”
Alex shook his head. “Luck of the draw.”
Sid was working on one of his characters, a young punk vampire with stylish black clothes and haunted, puppy-dog eyes. “What are you going to do about Secheron…are you going to go?” Sid didn’t look up from his drawing as he spoke. The very idea of the fight seemed to make him nervous.
“Am I going to go? That makes it sound like a sock hop.” Alex felt an overwhelming rush of sadness and dull defeat, as though he were caught in a river that ran from his old school all the way here. “I can’t not go,” he said finally. “I can’t. That would be …”
“Wussy,” Paul said.
“So I gotta. I’m going to show up and see what happens.”
“Can you fight?” Paul leaned forward.
“Not really,” Alex lied. “Can you?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said the giant boy. “I’m the size of a house, nobody ever tries.”
Alex exhaled. “How hard can it be?”
“That’s a good point,” said Paul as he turned to Sid. “After all, why should the Merrills know how to fight either?”
Alex had to admit this might be true; the Merrills’ bullying might be an elaborate front for cowardice. But somehow, given the penchant for violence they’d shown so far, he doubted that.
“They’re mean,” said Sid, as if reading Alex’s mind. “They’ll be able to hurt you whether they know any insane techniques or not.”
Alex thumbed his book’s pages like a flipbook and slapped the cover closed. “Gee, fellas, this has been swell.”
Paul laughed. “‘Swell’ and ‘sock hop’ in two minutes. Is that how all Americans talk, like an old movie?”
Sid looked up. “Maybe he’s an alien who learned to be a kid by watching old movies.”
“If I were an alien, maybe I’d know how to fight,” said Alex.
“If you were an alien,” countered Paul, “you wouldn’t tell us if you did know how to fight—otherwise you wouldn’t go to Secheron.”
Alex sat back. “You guys wanta come?”
Sid and Paul consulted each other silently. Finally Paul said, “Friday at Secheron, a fight and some ice cream? We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
When Alex returned to the room for curfew it was ten o’clock and both Merrills were in bed awake, watching him from the bunk bed they shared—Steven above and Bill below. In the darkened room, lit only by streams of moonlight through the window, they watched Alex in silence as he removed the stacks of DVDs and books that they had placed on his bed once more. Their eyes followed him as he went in the bathroom and shut the door, and returned and crawled into bed. After a while, Alex felt the tension slip away. He lay awake until he was sure they were sleeping soundly, and then drifted into sleep himself.
At half past one Alex awoke with a start. He could still see the lingering vestiges of a dream of his own father, shaking his head sadly as he came out of the meeting that formally ended Alex’s career at his old school. Alex lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
It had been warm and sunny outside in the dream. He had been crying, honestly crying, wanting to feel his father’s hand on his shoulder. And then he was freezing—and it was the freezing that brought him awake.
The Merrills were accustomed to Switzerland in the fall and had probably set the AC on blast just to spite him, for now he lay awake and saw his own breath in the moonlit room. He had one blanket, and as he looked over he saw that the Merrills had bundled up just for the occasion. This was just petty. He wondered what they might have done with the extra blankets in the closet, and the various options made him shudder.
And then he felt it—that static, that jagged shock to the back of his eyes, a tinny and unintelligible voice calling out.
That feeling, more than the slight scratching sound at the window, caused him to dart his eyes across the room.
There in the window, forty feet off the ground, someone was watching him.
CHAPTER 4
Alex rolled out of his bed, his arms and legs coiled and tense as he stared with blurry, nearly useless vision at the window. The shape that hung there was whitish, ghostly, and seemed to be swaying with its own weight, its arms splayed out like a spider. But more than this, it was upside down.
Alex grabbed his glasses, which he kept just under his bed next to his shoes. As he brought them to his face he saw the shape more clearly—a hood hanging down, arms holding tight to the edges of the window.
He could see her eyes. It was the girl from the woods. No, that wasn’t possible. Another one, this one with yellow hair. She was watching him.
Alex glanced at Merrill & Merrill, who were still sleeping. He bolted for the door.
Barefoot, Alex ran rapidly down the hall, following instinct to find his way to a staircase that led up six or seven steps to a door outside. He knew that the moment he opened the door he would be breaking all kinds of rules.
So be it.
Alex threw the door open into the night, his own breath visible as cold air struck him. He stepped out onto a kind of battlements, a long walkway with a high stone side that circled the roof of the building.
Across the grounds, the moon shimmered on the surface of the lake. Alex had gotten lucky about one thing in his housing assignment—his house, Aubrey House, had a great view.
He hurried back along the battlements as fast as he could, the stones leeching warmth from his bare feet. He reached the edge of the battlements and leaned over, peering toward the sheer wall where his own window stood.
She was still there. She hung like a lizard, upside down, scuttling slowly from window to window. He watched as her bone white fingers found purchase between stones and on the edges of metal windowsills. She was staring through each window, cocking her head, which caused her hood to sway back and forth. If she had breathed, she would be leaving patches of fog on the glass. There was something crablike about the way she clung to the wall and moved jerkily along the stones. The static in Alex’s mind was vibrating feverishly.
Just then, Alex scuffed his foot against a stone on the roof and gasped before he could stop himself. Suddenly the upside-down creature moved like nothing he had ever seen.
She flipped over, scuttling along the wall, her head whipping around, and he watched her white eyes sweep directly toward him.
She opened her mouth—fangs again, like the one in the woods—and hissed angrily. Then before he had a chance to blink, she leapt for him.
Alex reared back as she hit the top of the battlements, her leg muscles coiling under tight leggings. Her claw-like hands grabbed him by the throat and her white hood fell back, revealing spiky yellow hair and a youthful face. Her mouth was open wide, fangs bared in front of a grayish, bloodless tongue. She lifted him off the stones and smacked him against the battlements.
Do something. That was what he had learned in his self-defense classes. Move. Never freeze. Answer the questions. What’s going on? She’s choking me. What do you have? I have nothing.
What do you have?
I have myself.
Alex brought the palm of his hand up and smacked hard against her neck, right under her jaw. She lost her grip for a second and he twisted against the battlements, bringing his hands together and whipping them against her side.
She growled in anger and spun him around, and Alex put his hands on her shoulder blades, pushing. She was impossibly strong. His fingers latched on to her white tunic and dug in, and then she brought up her legs and kicked him.
The force hit Alex in the chest like a train, and he felt himself flying through the air.
Alex’s hands went up to his glasses as he landed on the long, clay tiles of the roof, high above the battlements.
The roof was steep but not impossible. Alex found a foothold exactly as he would have done on a
rock face in Wyoming, and waited. Below, she was a bobcat now, and she wanted him for dinner.
Alex scanned the roof. He got up and started running for the highest point, where he saw a weather vane clattering in the wind and lit by moonlight against the clouds.
The creature—all right, the vampire, one of those things that do not happen, according to his father—hit the roof and started bounding toward him. Alex looked down, running his fingers along the roof tiles. They were heavy and solid, about two feet long and made of red clay. He reached for the edge of one tile and yanked it, feeling the tar adhesive stick. It wouldn’t come loose. She was coming fast.
Alex yanked again and the tile came free as she leapt. He slashed out with it, smacking her across the side of the head. The tile was heavy and rough on the edges, and pain shot through his hands as it ground into his fingers.
Still holding the tile, Alex ran for the weather vane as the vampire rolled down the side of the roof, howling in anger. He hit the vane, hanging on to the wooden housing where the iron device was bolted into the roof. There was nowhere else to go.
Down the roof the creature righted herself and began bounding again. Alex dropped the tile and began yanking on the weather vane back and forth, grabbing one arm of the vane right next to the N.
He pulled with all his weight, bracing himself with his feet. The vane tore free, wood and bolts flying, but as it came loose he lost his balance and began to fall.
He was sliding down the tiles. He looked to the side and saw her coming fast.
All right. He had done this before at Jackson Hole, sliding backward on his shoulders, out of control. What do you do?
Alex yanked his shoulders forward and to the side and spun, painfully digging his heels and the weather vane into the tiles until he scraped to a stop. His bare feet sang with pain.
Then she was on him. The vampire growled and Alex whipped the weather vane over, smashing hard against her shoulder and neck.
This time she was hurt—the creature yelped and fell back.
Alex watched her crouch there for a moment, black blood streaming where he’d slashed her.
She spat, “You do this a lot?”
Then she snarled, coiled her legs, and leapt away. After a bound or two down the roof, she disappeared into the night, headed for darkness.
Alex was breathing hard, near hyperventilating.
What. Is going. On.
After a few minutes he started to move again, gingerly making his way down the roof until he found a low spot where he could drop down to the battlements. It was only when he felt the cold of the stones that he remembered he was still barefoot. His feet were filthy and covered in minor cuts, but all told he was fine.
For now.
He paused for a moment, listening. Could it be possible that the ruckus hadn’t been heard through the thickness of the roof? But even after a few moments, no one appeared, no alarms sounded. Alex rested on the battlements, staring out at the lake.
What was he supposed to do? Who was he supposed to tell about this? Mrs. Hostache? That would surely go well. His father?
His father would think he was insane, that Alex had started building an elaborate fantasy life based on his own name. Wasn’t that why he’d been sent away? Was he losing it?
No, no. He wasn’t insane. He couldn’t be.
He should get back inside, but for now he rested, his breath still ragged. Walking slowly along the battlements, he felt like a sentry—a sentry against invading armies and an apparently unlimited supply of hood-wearing tiger women.
Down below, he heard a garage door open.
Off to the left came the creak of wood and metal, very slowly, as if whoever was moving didn’t want to be heard. Alex couldn’t see the garage door, but he knew where it was, had seen it on the day he moved in. Presently he spied a figure emerging from the darkness, moving through the trees. It was a man, tall and clad in black, headed for a narrow, little-used gate in the stone wall that surrounded the school. A stray beam of light from a lamp on the grounds flashed briefly across him, and Alex recognized the man instantly. It was Mr. Sangster.
As the teacher approached the gate, Alex realized someone else was standing in the darkness on the other side. He strained to hear, moving along the battlements until he was directly over the garage and across from Mr. Sangster. Alex dared to lean over the stone.
Twenty yards away he heard Sangster say something: “What have you got for me?”
“It’s Icemaker,” came a second voice, female. The dark silhouette through the gate was a woman. Then Alex made out a second word: “Byron.”
Byron? What in the world?
Alex tried to lean forward some more, straining to hear. “Icemaker,” he heard again.
He caught snatches and it was impossible to make sense of it:
The woman was talking. “We think…the Wayfarer.”
“…sure?”
“Have you…entrance of the Scholomance?”
“Not yet,” Mr. Sangster said. Alex tried to remember the key words. Wayfarer. Skolomanse?
“…Step it up,” said the woman. “…catastrophe…. In Parma.”
Parma. That was a city in Italy. Alex had been there with his family.
She went on but most of it remained lost in the distance. “…hasn’t come out of hiding in years.”
Alex heard Sangster’s response clearly. “He’s up to something. And he’s coming here.”
Alex felt a piece of the rock under his elbow give and fall, skittering like gravel down the wall. Sangster looked up sharply and Alex dived. He crouched low and hurried for the entrance back into the hallway. Within seconds, he was in the quaint surroundings of the house.
All the way back to his room, Alex rewound what he had heard below.
Icemaker. Coming here. Catastrophe. And in the middle of it: Sangster.
What. Is going. On.
CHAPTER 5
Friday arrived with a tension in the air that Alex could feel in every step. When he rose, the Merrills were already up and gone. There were no threats. But as he moved through the hall, Alex saw every eye glance toward him, saw whispers between the boys at breakfast. Secheron.
In the refectory, Paul and Sid motioned him toward them. Alex slid into one of the squat wooden chairs and put his tray on the table.
“Don’t look now, mate,” said Paul, “but you’re being watched.”
Alex took a sip of his orange juice and glanced up. Merrill & Merrill were standing at the far side of the room, waiting for him to make eye contact.
Alex managed a smirk. “They do that at night, too.”
“People are nervous,” said Sid, who was sketching yet another Scarlet World character. This one wore a doublet and had the bearing of a nobleman.
“Who?” Alex asked.
“Everyone.” Alex saw that Sid had given the doublet-wearing vampire a title: The Poet. Sid continued, “People are dropping things more this morning. Two people dropped their trays. Forks are clattering. Everyone’s nervous.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, distracted.
“You’re nervous,” Paul said, not asking.
“I just got here,” Alex said. “This feels so out of control.” He was envisioning another meeting between his father and a disgusted headmaster. Then again, if Alex didn’t fight back, he could be in real danger. He could see that in Bill’s eyes. And the whole school was interested—that would be highly motivating for a crowd-pleaser like Bill. Motivation could really bring out the psycho in a guy. But Bill was asking for trouble. If only he knew.
“How are you getting to Secheron?” Paul asked.
Alex was now watching another table, where several boys were whispering, glancing toward him. “Is there a bus?”
“There’s a bus, but it’s more fun if you go by bike.”
“I don’t have a bike.” Alex frowned, picking at his eggs. His stomach felt tight and solid. He felt his chest tighten, a sudden rush of nervousness that spread out thro
ugh his body and tingled at his limbs. He swallowed, washing the feeling down for a moment with orange juice.
“I have an old bike locked up next to the one I got for my birthday,” Sid said. “It’s not small or anything; I just wanted one with better shocks.”
“There, you can take Sid’s,” said Paul. “You’ll love the ride.”
Well, that settled that. Alex looked back at the door. The Merrills were gone. “What about the rest of the school—do they want me to get creamed?”
Paul chewed on a piece of toast. He shrugged. “We don’t.”
“There’s ice cream,” offered Sid.
After breakfast the tension only grew. Incessant murmurs seemed to throb through some invisible Glenarvon network, Fight this afternoon fight this afternoon Secheron fight fight. Alex was envisioning the Merrills pounding his head into the pavement when Mr. Sangster entered the room.
The teacher whom Alex had seen sneak out shortly before two A.M. on Thursday strode into the class wearing a black sweater and dark blue jeans, and for the first time Alex truly studied the man. For one thing, and you wouldn’t notice it when he was wearing a jacket, Mr. Sangster was insanely fit. Not built like Arnold Schwarzenegger or anything, but fit as an Olympic swimmer, utterly without fat and narrow at the hips, with well-developed, cordlike arms and chest. Alex watched Mr. Sangster begin to speak while he mentally replayed the bizarre conversation of the night before. Who was that at the gate? A girlfriend? They meet at the gate and speak nonsense?
Someone handed Bill Merrill a note and Bill took the paper, unfolded it, and read. He smirked, looking back at Alex. The rush of adrenaline shot through Alex again.
“What’s that?” Mr. Sangster asked, interrupting his description of the state of science at the time Frankenstein was written. The teacher looked at Bill, and Bill shrugged. Mr. Sangster stepped over and snapped up the note. He peered at it as he walked to the front of the class, then laid it on his desk.
Mr. Sangster leaned on the desk for a moment, touching his lip with his thumb. He scanned the room, locked eyes on Alex for a second, and moved on. “No notes,” he said.
Alex Van Helsing Page 3