And more. Blasts of icy air seemed to roll with the engines’ roar. Then came trucks, armored personnel carriers, and modified Humvees, followed by more motorcycles, then SUVs, and more bikes. Some of the vehicles had open sides, and there were dark-clad figures riding in them.
This would be one of those things that don’t happen.
Some three hundred meters away, on a tower built for observing fires, the man called Sangster brought a pair of infrared glasses up to his eyes. “I’ve got the caravan. They’re on the road to Secheron,” he said into the mike on his earpiece. Through the binoculars, the shapes on the vehicles on the road shone a brilliant, icy blue. He could make out the cold shapes of trees, a few woodland creatures—and there, an orange-and-red form, hunkered down next to the road.
“Guys, this is Sangster; do we have a second agent by the road?”
After a moment a voice came online. “Negative, we have no other operatives on this task.”
Sangster snarled in disgust. “There’s a human watching.”
The voice crackled on the radio. “Watching? Have they spotted him yet?”
“Doesn’t look like it.” Sangster chewed his lip. “Should I engage?”
“Negative, stay on task.”
“Copy,” Sangster replied, but he was already off task. He moved in closer, trying to get a better look. He put on a pair of modified sunglasses, adjusted them for darkness and magnification, and looked for a clear view of the bystander.
The caravan was still moving, but Sangster adjusted his glasses back at the shape on the side of the road. The person was not a journalist: He didn’t hunker down the way an experienced man would. He or she crouched. Sangster allowed that given the shorter height of the figure, it could be a female.
Flicker of light—a reflector. The figure had a bicycle.
“It’s a kid,” Sangster said, aghast.
“Stay on task.”
The static in Alex’s head pounded now, and he clutched his head and stared, astonished at the size of the caravan. His brain swirled with thoughts of what in the world this could be—UN peacekeepers? A night invasion of Switzerland? What on earth lay on the road around Lake Geneva that would bring such an army? And why no lights?
And as he stayed down behind the bush, daring to stick his head out, Why the freaking cold?
Alex bumped into the bike with his shin as he shifted his weight, barely noticing the flicker of light that shot off the front reflector as the wheel adjusted.
On the caravan, peering out the door of a personnel carrier, a figure, bald and tall in an oxblood red leather jacket, turned his head as the flicker of the bike’s reflector shone next to the road. The bald man frowned and touched a button on an electronic device strapped to his wrist.
Alex watched as the caravan slowed a bit. Out of instinct he began to back up, crablike in his crouch. There was a Humvee opposite him in the road, and suddenly the black tarp that stretched across it shot back.
Two red-clad figures leapt from the vehicle. Alex took just a moment to watch them landing on their feet—just a moment to see they bore no weapons, but that as they opened their mouths to hiss, he saw enormous fangs.
Run. Get out. Run. Alex sprang out of his crouch and into a sprint, leaping over Sid’s bike and hurtling deeper into the woods. He didn’t look to see if they were coming, but somewhere in the cold air he swore he could hear them laughing.
His luck was about to run out. He had twice faced just one such creature and barely survived. This was way beyond hurling clay tiles, sticks, and weather vanes.
He ran, not looking back until a moment when he paused by a tree. Maybe they didn’t see me. Maybe the two in the street just stopped to look around. Or relieve themselves. Or hiss at the moon.
Through the trees he saw the shapes moving, leaping, and not just two.
They were coming for him.
Alex started to run again but suddenly they were there, within fifty yards and closing in. One of them leapt and landed in front of him, slamming to the ground, leaves flying.
The vampire—male, long and slender in his red commando outfit—bent toward Alex and hissed.
At that instant there was a rapid staccato sound that tore through the air. The creature was still hissing as it burst into flame and turned to dust with a sharp, crackling sound.
There was another motorcycle roaring toward Alex, coming in fast from the side. Dirt and moss kicked up as the bike ground to a halt between him and the rest of the vampires.
Sangster—Mr. Sangster, his literature teacher—was still wearing his jeans and sweater, but had added a pair of silver-and-black, many-buttoned goggles, a Bluetooth device at his ear, and an assault rifle to the mix.
Sangster held out his hand. “Get on, Alex,” he said. He turned and shot at two more of the vampires. The gun made a violent, heavy sound, buddabuddabudda. “Get on!”
Alex’s head spun with a thousand questions but none of them would be answered if he died right here. He grabbed Sangster’s hand, swinging himself up onto the back of the bike. Sangster put Alex’s arms around his waist, and they were off like a shot.
“There are more of them coming,” Sangster shouted, tapping at a rearview mirror, and Alex saw with astonishment that it was not an actual mirror but a screen displaying infrared images. In the infrared, he could see the creatures leaping like jaguars behind the bike, each one a brilliant image of icy blue light.
“Put these on.” Sangster fished a second pair of goggles out of a satchel near his thigh. Alex clenched his knees together on the bike and took them. He struggled for a moment to pull the rubber strap over the back of his head, bringing the goggles to rest over his own glasses.
Suddenly, the whole world was in the negative, the trees brilliant white against a gray background. Alex tried to follow the path of the bike, barely able to keep his eyes open as Sangster tore through and over bushes, somehow managing to dodge trees. The double glasses violently wobbled on his ears. “I’m sorry!” he was shouting before he even realized it. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gone out!”
“Don’t worry about that now,” Sangster yelled over the roar. “Hit the button next to your left eyebrow.”
Alex took a moment, his arm jolting. Breathe. He found the button and pressed.
“This way you can hear me,” Sangster said, and Alex heard the voice, gyrating through the bones of his own head, muffled but audible.
“Where are we going?” Alex asked.
He heard Sangster’s voice over the engine’s roar. “Someplace safe.”
CHAPTER 7
Sangster seemed to be aiming for the spaces between the trees as though he were skiing. Alex dared to look again in the infrared. The vampires were still in pursuit.
“They’re coming after us because they want that caravan kept secret,” said Sangster, almost casually considering the danger at hand. “We’re close to HQ. Maybe we can lose them.”
Sangster reached up, tapped a button on his glasses, and now in Alex’s goggle vision—surely also through Sangster’s—a GPS map appeared. The image displayed over the view in front of him, so that the map bounced amid the trees.
“Farmhouse,” Sangster said, swerving hard to avoid a branch. The vampires’ shapes were leaping closer.
“Please repeat your request,” came a singsong sound response.
“FARM-HOUSE.”
The GPS view before Alex’s eyes shifted. First it showed one location, which it indicated with the symbol of a little roofed house, and then the camera rose up into the sky and located the motorcycle moving through the woods. Then the GPS drew a line between the two: their path.
“That’s two miles away.” Sangster adjusted his course, heading north. “But we’re gonna have a problem.”
“What?” Alex asked, incredulous. Vampires chasing us isn’t problem enough?
Sangster was already speaking rapidly into his mike to someone else. “This is Agent Sangster requesting permission to enter Farmh
ouse accompanied by non-cleared human.”
A voice came on the line. “Could you repeat…?”
“I have a kid with me, I need in,” Sangster said, swerving again, barely able to speak with the bounce of the motorcycle.
“Denied.”
“I cannot—”
“If you enter the perimeter of Farmhouse with a non-cleared witness, you will be shot.”
Alex saw Sangster glance up at the trees. For a split second Alex glimpsed metallic gray cameras, recessed against the firs. The cameras swiveled as they passed. “We’re coming up on the perimeter,” Sangster said.
Alex looked ahead and saw a tree line coming up fast, a large clearing in the woods, with a small, dilapidated farmhouse a hundred yards beyond, a distant white image bouncing behind the trees.
They were running out of woods. Alex felt the bike brake hard on its front wheel. He was weightless for a second as the rear of the bike lifted off the forest floor, swinging violently around as Sangster ground the bike to a halt. The motorcycle dropped back down and they were facing the pursuers now. Alex noticed that Sangster was shifting his weight to guard him. Sangster started firing the rifle he carried.
Buddabuddabudda. Alex counted seven, maybe eight vampires ripping through the trees.
“Requesting permission to enter with—”
“Negative, that witness was to be left. Leave him and report; we cannot have—”
“Dammit, he’s a Van Helsing,” Sangster hissed. Alex turned, startled, and looked at him.
Silence on the other end of the line. Sangster tagged one of the vampires in the head, sending it spinning as it burned and dusted. They were landing close, baring their fangs. And now Alex realized he had miscounted—as these eight drew closer, he saw three or four more ice blue cold shapes in the woods.
Suddenly one of the vamps was hit in the head by a round Sangster didn’t fire, a single shot from somewhere at the house.
The radio crackled. “Granted.”
Sangster shouted, “We’re in,” and the bike leapt, spinning once more and hurtling again through the trees and into the clearing with the vampires close behind. Alex felt the bike pick up speed as they moved onto the smooth grass. They were hurtling straight for the tin wall of a small shack next to the house.
Alex winced as a hot electric pulse shot through his headset.
“We’re blowing out electronic communications,” shouted Sangster. “Just in case those guys are miked. We can’t let them report a thing.”
Another shot rang out from somewhere Alex couldn’t see and Sangster said, “This perimeter has to be a dead zone.”
They were ten yards from the wall of the shack.
Five yards and the side of the shack whipped up with a metallic roar, nearly catching the bike’s front wheel. Sangster gunned the engine and Alex held on tight as they drove under the rising wall and began zooming down a long concrete drive.
The bike roared down the grade and commandos ran up, ten or twenty men and women. Alex looked back for a second, and saw the muzzle of a blond woman’s weapon flashing. She left the tunnel, already firing, laying waste to the vampires in the clearing. For a moment she was silhouetted against the floodlights of the farmhouse clearing as Alex and Sangster moved farther and farther below, then Alex turned his head back to the front.
Down, down into the bowels of the earth they sped, past wooden beams and newer, iron girders, down a full half mile at a 30-degree angle until the motorcycle slowed. They reached a vast, concrete expanse lit by high tracks of lighting. It was an enormous bunker under the woods.
Alex felt his eyes grow wide as he took in countless vehicles, Humvees and trucks and even helicopters.
A man in a suit—older, with a slight paunch—was waiting for them when the bike rolled to a stop. As Alex slid off the bike and removed the goggles, the man folded his arms.
“Alexander Van Helsing. Son of Charles and Amanda. Whatever are we going to do with you?”
CHAPTER 8
“How do you know who I am?” said Alex, coming to stand on legs that, he was proud to note, were only slightly shaky. “And what is this?” He looked around at the vehicles, noticing that at the end of the “garage” was a set of metal staircases leading up into doors in the rock wall. He had no way of guessing how much more space there might be on the other side of the doors.
He looked back at the ramp they’d come down as the contingent of commandos returned with the heavy, staccato sound of boots on concrete.
“Did you get them all?” Sangster asked.
“We got those around the perimeter,” replied the woman Alex had seen as they’d come through the door. She strode up and laid down her weapon on a table with a number of other rifles like it. The woman was about half a head shorter than Sangster but all muscle, with shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair and a healthy smattering of freckles. “But you gotta figure one or two made it back to the caravan.”
The older man in the suit frowned. “Either way, the caravan will surely be intrigued that they sent a handful of vampires to kill a human witness and the party never returned.” He was watching Alex now, running his eyes up and down. “Let’s not talk here,” he said, looking around. Besides the commandos, there was a lot of activity in the garage, crews working on vehicles and milling about.
Sangster nodded and they all began to move up a flight of metal stairs to a door. Sangster and the woman kept Alex between them as they came through the door and into a carpeted foyer of the kind you’d find in an office building. They moved swiftly, Alex silently taking it all in as they walked past rooms that even at this late hour were filled with men and women busy at workstations, studying dots on massive maps displayed on glass walls.
They filed into a conference room and Sangster indicated a chair halfway down the length of the table. Alex took it. Sangster sat across, with the woman at Sangster’s right and the older man at the head.
Alex leaned in for a closer look at the long, black table. There were computer screens inlaid in its slick surface. In the center of the table was a sort of crest or shield, a circular symbol that bore a Latin phrase: Talia sunt. Below that a single word:
“‘Polidorium,’” Alex read aloud. He looked up. “Who are you people?”
The older man gestured at the other two. “This is Agent Armstrong,” he said, and the blond, freckled woman nodded, not smiling. “You’ve met Agent Sangster. My name is Carerras.” He turned to Sangster. “Do his parents know he’s here?”
Sangster shook his head. “He must have snuck out; I think he followed me.”
“We have to decide what to tell the Van Helsings.”
“Hang on,” Alex interrupted, infuriated. “Stop. What do you mean, what to tell the Van Helsings—I’m sorry, I—what is this? I mean, those were—those things on the road were…”
“Technically, modified post-initial-failure humans,” said Sangster. “Vampires. What, you’ve never seen them before?”
Alex paused. He came to a decision. “No, actually I’m starting to see them a lot. I saw one in the woods. It attacked me. I killed it.”
“Really? How did you kill it?”
“Luck,” Alex said tiredly. “Luck. Those things aren’t supposed to exist. And then there was another one.”
“Where?”
“The school. It was outside my window, looking in at me. It chased me across the roof.”
Sangster folded his arms. “Hmmm.” Alex’s eyes fell again on the crest on the table and he thought back to the snatches of conversation he’d caught at the gate. “What is the Polidorium?”
“I can’t believe you don’t know,” Sangster said. After a moment, looking at Carerras and Armstrong, Sangster went on, “We are the Polidorium. Founded by Dr. John Polidori in 1821.”
“John Polidori?” Alex asked, thinking of the introduction to Frankenstein and the notes about it. “The guy from the Frankenstein party?”
Armstrong ran her fingers through her hair. Even acros
s the table, Armstrong and Sangster still smelled like gunpowder, and it suddenly made Alex feel like heaving. “We like to think of it as the Polidori party,” said Armstrong.
“So,” said Carerras, pulling out a pouch and a pipe. As he began to prepare his pipe he summed it up. “You don’t know much about vampires, or about us. What can you tell us about you?”
Alex looked up. “What do you mean?”
“How old are you? Where did you live before now? And if you’re not up on us, what do you know about the Van Helsing Foundation?”
Alex spoke slowly, wondering this time if the truth were the right answer. He told it anyway. “I’m fourteen, and my parents and my sisters live in Wyoming right now. The Van Helsing Foundation, that’s a charitable organization my dad runs as chairman.”
“Wait a second.” Armstrong leaned forward, taking Alex’s glasses off his face in a quick swipe. She held them up to the light, studying them.
“Hey, I need those,” Alex protested. She was a blur now. He couldn’t even make out her face, and the sudden blindness made him feel trapped and claustrophobic.
“He doesn’t wear those in class,” Sangster said. “I’ve never seen you wear glasses.”
“I wear contacts,” Alex snapped.
Armstrong was still peering intently at the pair of glasses. “Why aren’t you wearing contacts now?”
“It’s like three A.M.!” he said.
Armstrong pursed her lips, then handed them back. “They’re normal,” she said, satisfied. Alex put the glasses back on, very slowly.
Carerras spoke. “You’re aware, no doubt, of the associations of your family name?”
Alex chewed on this, on the absurdity of all of this, the G.I. Joe figures studying his glasses as though they might be made of kryptonite, a man in a suit a mile underground asking this or any question in the middle of the night. “You mean, ‘vampire hunter’? Like in the movies? There are worse names to have,” Alex said. “But yes, I hear a lot about it. My dad gets annoyed every time someone even mentions that character. It’s like running around with the name Hannibal.”
Alex Van Helsing Page 5