The Triumph of Death

by Jason Henderson

  Sangster countered, “And it also means her daughter is the best weapon against her.”

  “So we can stop Claire by using someone who Claire loves—we can make a weapon, maybe. Maybe with DNA,” Alex said excitedly. “From the bones of Allegra.”

  “You mean a weapon like this?” Armstrong set down something on the table that looked like a starter gun with a large section of its barrel hollowed out. She held up a glass vial next to the weapon. “You’re right, Alex, the weapon will be DNA, shot straight into the heart of Claire. To do that, this is what we would use: It’s a vial gun—you load it with vials that hold a compartment of holy water and a compartment of whatever you want to mix the water with.” She tilted it sideways. “There’s a hammer in here that breaks the vials, mixing them and then pressurizing the mixture for firing.”

  Alex nodded.

  “We would like to see this body of Allegra as well,” Mother Laura said, nodding to Astrid. “We might learn things from it.”

  “Okay, so you have your reasons, and we have something to shoot—we just need to find Allegra,” Alex said. “And we have—ugh—three days. Where was the body sent?”

  “To the churchyard of Byron’s school in England, a place called Harrow,” Sangster said.

  Alex had heard of Harrow. That was a boys’ school in England, one of the very best. He didn’t know much else.

  Sangster nodded. “And there’s another word for Harrow.”

  “Let me guess,” Alex said. “The one thing the painting points to: a hoe.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Alex and Astrid’s trip back to the Polidorium took no time. One minute, they were saying good-bye to Amanda and hurrying back to the Orchard, and the next minute, they stepped through a pair of trees and emerged near the public library in Secheron village.

  “It’s useful to have a drop-off point here,” Astrid said.

  “Conveniently near school but not so close as to be suspicious. It’s like a bus stop. When you brought me to the Orchard before, did we come through here?” He was so out of it when his blood was draining away after Icemaker’s attack that he had no memory of the trip.

  “No,” Astrid said. “I used a more powerful and tiring spell, a direct jump to the Orchard. It takes a lot out of you. This is easier.”

  Astrid summoned her motorcycle near their drop-off point and they rode from the village back to the farmhouse. Alex felt a throb of guilt as they headed into the woods, leaving the road that he would have used on a normal day to go back to school. He needed to call Paul, Sid, and Minhi. But there wasn’t time. From conference table to conference table, from the world of magic to the world of spies, the trip took twenty-six minutes.

  It was then another three hours flying from the airfield near the farmhouse before they reached the final resting place of Allegra Byron. With a cold gray wind sweeping off the Thames, Alex rested his hand on a low stone wall and took in the trees that curled over the graveyard like arthritic fingers.

  In the months that Alex had been chasing vampires, he had rarely had occasion to visit that eternal vestige of vampire films and books—the churchyard. Now, as he, Sangster, Armstrong, and Astrid got out of the Polidorium van, he found himself in the kind of churchyard seen in movies—tombstones hundreds of years old and creeping with moss, scattered shade from London ash trees, and a massive, crawling, weeping elm that threatened to swallow the graveyard whole. Alex shivered and brought his jacket closer against the wind that snapped over the crumbling walls around St. Mary’s Churchyard at Harrow in northwest London. Not counting wherever the Orchard was, this was the fourth country he had visited in under a week.

  His mother had left the Orchard the same way Alex and Astrid had, and he assumed she had stepped out in either Wyoming or a broom closet in the Pentagon in the 1940s; at this point, he had no way of knowing. But it was no wonder to him that Hexen didn’t let the Polidorium come visit. That place could have dangerous uses.

  “Over here,” Sangster called. Alex followed Sangster’s voice and found the agent standing next to a low-slung tombstone erected against a wall. Astrid and Armstrong followed, and Alex dropped down to read the inscription on the stone:

  In memory of Allegra, daughter of G. G., Lord Byron, who died at Bagna Cavallo in Italy, April 20, 1822, Aged Five Years and Three Months. “I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.”

  —2 Samuel, xii, 23.

  Alex sighed.

  “That was put up in 1980 by the Byron Society,” Sangster said.

  “Nineteen eighty? So what was here before?” Alex asked.

  Astrid cut in. “Nothing. There was no marker for Allegra’s grave because Lord Byron refused to pay for one, and Claire had no money. Claire complained about this, though she never visited the grave.”

  Alex rubbed his forehead, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “What we’re gonna do. I mean, you’re talking about desecrating a grave here.”

  As if reminded by Sangster, Armstrong began unfolding a tripod of sorts that she drew from a bag. Within moments, she was clicking buttons and aiming a camera that hung from the bottom of the tripod at the grass.

  Sangster sighed. “We worked all morning, we pulled every string, and we have the permits to exhume this body and take a sample for study purposes.”

  “But that’s not what we’re doing,” Alex whispered, suddenly hoping no officials from the nearby church were listening. In the distance he heard singing, Anglican hymns at a late-morning service. “We’re talking about using the body of a woman’s dead child against her. This is just…it’s too much.”

  “We followed the clues, Alex. This is where they lead. If you can think of a better way to stop the Triumph I’d love to hear it, but we are absolutely, genuinely running out of time.”

  Alex stamped his feet lightly, pulling his coat closer against the biting wind. Allegra Byron, five years old, had been kept from an obsessed mother and left by an uncaring father to die in a convent. And now they were going to use that tragedy, take a scrape of tissue, and build a weapon. He wished he could stop and bring Paul, Sid, and Minhi here. Something told him they wouldn’t like this plan, either. It was darker than they would associate with him. It was darker than he liked to associate with himself.

  But the alternative was worse: a world plunged into darkness. They would take a scrape of the dead in order to stave off death. It was necessary, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

  “How are we going to do it?” Alex asked.

  Armstrong was peering into a small device with what looked like a GPS screen on it. “I see the coffin. We’re looking at a depth of about seven feet, no surprise. The dense shadow inside, I’m assuming that’s the body, which would have been wrapped head to toe in bandages.”

  “Okay, let us know when you’re near.” Sangster turned to answer Alex. “We’ll do it the way we always do. We’re bringing in a backhoe and we’re tearing the place up.”

  “A backhoe?” Alex was incredulous. “Isn’t that a little…”

  “Low tech?” Sangster said.

  “Yeah, I mean, everything else we do is on hyperdrive; even our motorcycle rearview mirrors are special.”

  “Hm.” Sangster squinted. “You know, a few years ago I had my wisdom teeth extracted? So, the dentist has all kinds of crazy stuff. Lasers for oral surgery, and a million kinds of anesthetic. Music piping into your headset, and a chair that should have been designed by NASA. But you wanna know what it takes to actually take out the tooth?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “A hammer and a chisel,” Sangster said. “Some things just don’t change very fast. Anyway, it’s not like we can beam the body out.”

  Alex nodded and began to wander away, looking up at the church, with its spire threatening to slice through the gray blanket of sky. He couldn’t stay here for this. “Astrid, you want to have a look at the church with me?”

  She bobbed her head yes, and they
followed a mossy path up to the entrance of the church. A pair of red doors set inside a stone archway flapped open as parishioners began to stream out.

  Alex thrust his hands into his coat pockets as he and Astrid stepped into the church itself, taking in the long central nave and transepts, with columns from front to back. The parishioners were chattering all around Alex and Astrid in accents that reminded Alex of Paul, who seemed even farther away than he was.

  As they walked along the back of the last pew, Alex slid his hand along the soft, carved wood and whispered, “I wanted to ask you a question.”

  “Oh?” Astrid shrugged, following him. She had been curiously quiet lately, since his bite. The chatty front she put up had slid away, or at least seemed to be put away, waiting for a safer, happier time to come out.

  “Whose idea was it to not tell me that you were a friend of my mother’s?” Quickly, flatly; he wanted to get the words out.

  “Alex…”

  “When we met, you said you were here because of Claire. Because Hexen wanted to keep track of one of their fallen witches.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But don’t you think you could have told me from the start, ‘Hey, Alex, get this, I know your mom, she’s my mentor! She thought I’d be perfect for this gig!’”

  “It wasn’t like that….”

  “Wasn’t it? You saved my life; that was the first thing you did. I thought maybe you were being nice. But you’re on an assignment, and your assignment was to spy on me.” He looked up at the ceiling, finding carvings so intricate he could barely comprehend them.

  “Not to spy on you,” she corrected. “To partner with you. And anyway, isn’t it enough that I did save your life?”

  “For my mom and her pals, no less, which is all kinds of troubling,” Alex said. “I mean, when you think of it this way, why not tell the truth up front? Because you wanted to get close to me. Isn’t that it? You wanted me to like you, to feel like I was, I was…special, that we were on this adventure. Together.”

  “You are special.”

  “Not. Like. That,” Alex spat. Some parishioners looked at him. He lowered his voice. “Do you know what I was before I came to Switzerland, to Glenarvon? I was a stupid kid. I hiked and climbed mountains and my dad told me that the world was one way and all these other things were not a part of it. And then I come here, and suddenly, you know what I am? Special. Very special. I’m a tool, Astrid. A pawn. And you dragged me away from my friends, who like me for being…something else. Something not so special.”

  “I don’t think you could avoid being special.”

  “Ugh, that’s…” Alex blinked, trying not to look in her eyes. He stood up straight then, and after a moment spoke again. “Look, Astrid. I get that this is your job, even more than the Polidorium is mine. I think maybe that shows me a way that—don’t take this the wrong way—that I don’t want to go. Sangster calls the shots and I don’t—so we’re here, and we’re gonna desecrate a grave, and then we’re gonna stop the bad guys. And after that, I don’t think your assignment of spying on me is gonna be very interesting, because I can’t do this anymore. I’m out.”

  He turned around, about to walk dramatically away, but suddenly the church and the lamps and the light outside all went out at once.

  CHAPTER 19

  A curious humming sound came warbling from the churchyard as Alex and Astrid ran out into what had become a reddish night. Alex swept the surroundings of the hill with his eyes and found none of the sights that had been visible before—down the hill stood no Wembley Stadium or modern structures of any kind. Instead, a vista of distant, fiery darkness surrounded them like a curtain, projecting images of cities and ships ablaze.

  “They’re using it again,” Alex shouted as he and Astrid rounded the bend. The vampires had set off the same spell they had used in Secheron, allowing them to create a limited, enclosed night. Seeing it working a second time, he had some idea how terrible a world enveloped in it would be. He nearly ran into a parishioner with gray hair and glasses, who was muttering a name, wandering in the darkness. Alex put his wireless into his ear as he ran and tapped it. “Sangster, where are you?”

  There was no answer. Alex heard the burst of gunfire and saw the muzzles of Sangster’s and Armstrong’s Berettas lighting up down the hill, next to a wall. That was when he saw the skull faces of vampires in service of the Queen.

  Sangster’s voice sounded in Alex’s ear. “Don’t worry about us. Protect the grave.”

  Fifty yards away, Sangster was pinned against a low wall by a vampire in red robes. Armstrong was nearby, atop the wall Sangster was against, and she was kicking at a vampire that stood toe to toe with her. Sangster’s foe leapt up on the short wall not far behind Armstrong, and the vampire had Sangster by the neck. For a moment Alex saw Sangster’s legs leave the ground, struggling. Then there was a series of shots and the vampire exploded over the agent. Alex saw Sangster stand up and look back up the path at him. Armstrong flipped over the wall with her opponent and then there was another explosion of dust. “This way!” Sangster shouted to the other parishioners that were wandering still, screaming. He pointed at the false horizon, which hung in the air and blocked the view of the daytime world beyond. “This way to the road! Look! Those burning buildings, that’s fake! It’s just a movie projected on a—a curtain; you can walk right through it!”

  Alex’s attention was caught by Astrid, who had stopped at the next wall that led into the heart of the churchyard with Allegra’s grave. She was standing still, shaking her head, a strange, thin silhouette against the distant curtain of red and black. “What is it?” he called, and then he was at her side and saw.

  Several images hit Alex at once, and at first he had no idea which to focus on.

  There were two vampires, their faces painted like skulls, holding a child of about six or seven, one of the parishioners, by the arms. Their white arms rippled with blue veins and their nails were digging in as they squeezed her tightly by the wrists.

  That flooding in your chest. It tells everyone else to be afraid and lose their stuff. It reminds you, if you let it, to slow down. Slow down. Take it in.

  The vampires were staring at him, and Astrid and Alex ignored them for a second, daring to look away from the girl. Just a few yards beyond the screaming little girl in the green coat and the matching green hat, something strange was happening at the grave.

  There was dirt flying, churning as if being rotor-tilled. At first it looked as though there were a great wheel moving of its own accord, but then Alex heard it breathing, seething and hissing with exertion. It was a creature half submerged in the soft earth, its great legs churning around and around, and each time its legs emerged from the ground, he saw its powerful claws, and saw it toss back a mound of earth. The creature had a bulbous, bald head and white, boiled-egg eyes, its skin a reddish tone made even more devilish by the strange gleam of the curtain of night.

  Alex searched his brain. He had seen it before. It was a vampire of some kind, one of the ones he had learned about. It was known to dig up crops and spread plague.

  “What is that?” Astrid asked.

  “I am blanking on the name,” Alex said, wishing he had Sid with him. Sid would know as surely as Dr. DeKamp would. “But it’s digging up Allegra’s grave. Why would they be doing that?” Alex asked, but then it was obvious. If the Queen was vulnerable to DNA from her most beloved, she would want to get it before they did.

  “We need to—” Astrid started to say.

  “No closer,” one of the vampires hissed. “I don’t even have to say why.”

  Alex didn’t look at the vampire but at the girl, studying her face. She was screaming, and he shut that out. He was checking for pain, and she seemed to be terrified but had some slack. If they were going to pull her apart, they hadn’t started that yet.

  “Hey!” Alex shouted to the girl. “Hey! Don’t worry, we’re going to get you out of here.”

  “Shut up,” t
he vampire on the right said, his eyes glistening under the black makeup.

  “What’s the point of this?” Alex shouted at him. “You’re keeping me from the grave? And then what? You bite the little girl anyway?”

  The vampire, not the sharpest, seemed to consider. “Just stay back.”

  Alex held his hands at his sides and glanced at Astrid. They were about twelve feet from the vampires. Beyond lay the grave and the curious digger creature, another fifteen feet back.

  “Have to be fast,” Alex whispered.

  “Right or left?” she answered.

  “I’ll take the right.”

  Alex quickly drew his Polibow as he began to run, and he saw the vampire start to pull.

  Astrid was in the air, leaping like a gazelle, and she had her staff up, its blade glistening with silver and emerald as she brought it up and back and then down.

  The vampires were wide and exposed as they held the girl. Alex hit his vampire square in the forehead and he staggered, brain-dead once more; another bolt in the chest and he was dust. Alex caught the girl just as Astrid landed in the dust cloud that they had created of the two vamps.

  Alex looked in the girl’s eyes and then pointed at the road, where Sangster was alternating between ushering more parishioners and fighting vampires who were all over the grounds. “You’re gonna be okay. Just run for the road.”

  “But the fires!” the girl cried, looking at the distant curtains and the projection of cities on fire.

  “It’s not real.” Alex crouched and talked to her the way he did his littlest sister. He swept his arm across the vista in the distance. “It’s like a TV image on a cloud. When you get to the bottom of the hill, you’ll walk right through it.”

  A voice called, “There!” and Alex quickly stood up.

  The strange creature’s legs stopped churning, and Alex saw it look up in confusion. Amazing. He could see blood underneath its skin, pumping through it like hydraulic fluid as it stared up at the vampire standing on Allegra Byron’s grave marker. It was a male vampire, solidly built with brown hair, his face painted like one of the Queen’s minions of death.