The Triumph of Death

by Jason Henderson

  “Alex,” Astrid said, trying to pull her own hands free, “don’t tempt them.”

  “Oh, I’d love to,” Elle said. “You know that. But Lord Byron has always known that the way to deal with the Polidorium is to make them suffer. You get to watch as your world plunges into darkness.” She leaned in close. “So it’s not up to me. But death does come next. And you won’t be first.”

  “Make them suffer, the way Byron made Polidori suffer by stealing away his foster daughter?” Alex asked. He was moving his fingers, but not enough. The ice was curdled through the strands of his sweater cuffs and wouldn’t allow him to move. Keep working on it.

  Elle shrugged. “If you say so. I don’t get caught up in ancient history.”

  He kept moving his fingers in the ice, feeling his blood begin to flow. “What are you gonna do when we’re gone? I thought I’m basically your whole purpose for being right now. Aren’t I your assignment?”

  “Get over yourself, Al; I’ve had hundreds of assignments.”

  “And yet you’ll never be a clan lord. Must be awful, at your age.”

  “Clan lord? What, you’ve been studying up? You don’t know how we’re organized. It takes longer than—”

  “Well, I mean, shouldn’t you want advancement? What was your first assignment? Watching someone like me, I’ll bet. You strike me as basically a good, loyal follower, but not much more.”

  Elle was looking through the window and held up a hand. A small group of vampires, all in red robes, was approaching the platform, and among them the Queen, on horseback.

  Alex watched her. “Why were you so upset about the empty coffin?”

  “What?” Elle looked back at him. “The Queen wanted it intact.”

  “Oh, so you knew it would be empty.”

  “No…” Elle shook her head. “You want to know my next assignment? I have to find that damn corpse.”

  She doesn’t know that Allegra was taken alive by the vampires. Alex laughed, then. “Good luck. It’s dust.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said it’s dust. Allegra Byron was taken by vampires. She probably became a vampire and was most likely killed a hundred years ago, probably by my people, and it was a dot on the register of vamps killed. The Queen will never get that daughter back, and you know what? They’re both lucky that way.”

  “Taken by…what?” Elle seemed staggered by this, and Alex didn’t waste too long staring at her face. Instead, he spat.

  Elle cursed and wiped the spittle off her face, and as she did so, the other vampire came forward, putting a clawed hand on Alex’s throat. “Settle down,” the vampire ordered Alex.

  Alex brought one leg up and kicked the second vampire in his knee. The vampire fell and smacked into the wall next to him. As Elle began to reach out, Alex twisted his leg again, pushing his weight on the vampire’s neck. There was a heavy crack as the vampire’s neck broke and he fell against Alex, shaking and disabled.

  The vampire began to moan, and Elle was yelling, “Shut up!” as she looked out the window. Finally she went over to Alex’s go package and drew out his Polibow. Alex prayed the bolt wouldn’t go straight through the vampire, and it didn’t when Elle shot; the bolt went in the vampire’s back and he exploded.

  Alex felt fire and heat push up around his sleeve and he yanked, feeling his skin scrape as he pulled his hands free of the ice.

  “What’s the matter, Elle, something not seem right?” he asked as he dove for his go package, feeling inside. He grabbed his dagger and rolled out of the way as she shot at him with the Polibow. “You wanted that body to be in that graveyard pretty desperately. Because when it wasn’t you howled like a wounded animal. I think that’s when you realized something you’ve been told wasn’t true. I saw you, and when that casket flew open, something stopped being real for you.” He had the go package slung over his shoulder and reached in, pulling out the jar. “But this is real, isn’t it? This is her hair. This is the last of her human life, and I’ll bet all memory of that has been ground right out of her.”

  “Shut up!”

  “And you know what? If she didn’t die, then Elle, I’m truly, truly sorry for what I’m going to have to do.” Alex kicked the Polibow out of her hands as she shook her head, distracted. Elle was not herself now; she was troubled and had been since she had seen that coffin fly apart in the streets of London.

  He fired it once and watched as the bolt sailed straight through Elle’s shoulder, pinning her to the wall. She started twisting it, and Alex reached for Astrid’s bag. He needed to get her hands free; he needed a spell to melt her bonds. She had said she had one. Find the right spell. Find the right freaking jelly bean. He emerged with one of the spell cartridges that Astrid had made and held it up. “This one?” he asked.

  Astrid shook her head. “No!”

  Elle tried to yank the bolt free, but her flesh was sizzling against it. “Don’t move,” Alex said to the vampire, “or the next one goes in your heart.” He turned back to Astrid. “This one?”

  Astrid nodded, and he ran over to her and held it near her hands. “Fire,” she whispered, and as Alex pulled his hand away she turned her head, and the spell erupted, freeing her hands in a melting blur.

  Alex ran to the window. The Queen was talking now, at a dais in front of the satellite dish tower. She was raising her arms, chanting.

  Alex gave the Polibow to Astrid. “Would you watch her?”

  “I don’t get it. Why don’t we just—”

  “Because we might need her.” He was digging through his go package to find the vial gun. He brought it out, found one of the half-full vials, and then started to open the jar.

  Suddenly Elle kicked out, smashing the Polibow out of Astrid’s hands and screaming as she pried herself off the bolt.

  Astrid screamed, forcing her hands to move as she bent down to rummage through her bag. She emerged with a six-inch green baton that she flicked, and it telescoped instantly into staff-length. She brought the staff to Elle’s neck. “Now can we kill her?”

  “No, we really might need her.” Alex slid the lock of hair into one of the vials and clicked it into the vial gun. “We have to get closer.”

  They moved out of the box with Alex’s Polibow firmly to Elle’s back and into the open air. As they held Elle at the top of a stairway that ran down to the platform, Alex took a moment to admire the island, an eighth of a mile of ice and snow.

  “It’s a vampire wonderland,” he said as Astrid forced Elle down the stairs. They reached a plateau, behind a large crowd of vampires, who ignored them. The Queen was chanting still, her hands raised as she read from the text laid before her. The vampires were chanting in response, Now is the time.

  Over the platform, from the satellite dish, darkness was spreading out and seemed to be pulsing in waves. Soon it would be done, and every street throughout the world would be madness.

  “That’s enough,” Alex muttered as they drew close. Alex held up the vial gun, aiming for the Queen.

  “It’s not that easy,” Elle hissed, spinning. Alex heard the Polibow go off, missing Elle, because Elle was a blur now, her arm swiping and smashing against Alex’s, sending the vial gun flying.

  All eyes turned, and a few of the vampires spotted them. Alex heard the chanting dissipate throughout the island.

  He watched the vial gun with the sample of Allegra’s hair and holy water clatter to the ice and slide against the platform where the Queen stood. It burst, spilling.

  Icemaker turned then, registering mild surprise, and his first move was to throw a bolt of ice and bury the weapon.

  Next he beckoned to Astrid and Alex, and Alex felt Elle grab him by the shoulder and drag him forward, shoving him roughly until he was brought to them. He felt Astrid pushed next to him and they stood, defiant.

  Elle forced Alex to his knees, and he was staring now at the feet of the unholy couple, the skeletal feet of the Queen and the icy hoof of Byron.

  “My Lord.” Elle ba
red her fangs. “It is time to be done with them.”

  “I love how you get all formal around him,” Alex said. He was looking at the mound of ice where the weapon was buried. All that work by Polidori, all that work by some unseen force to lead them to the lock of hair, gone in a moment.

  Oh, well. “It doesn’t matter; I don’t need it,” Alex said. He had a dagger in his hand and a ball of holy water.

  “Why’s that?” Elle asked.

  “Because whether you want to admit it or not, whether they ever saw fit to tell you or not, you are Allegra Byron,” said Alex, suddenly rising and slicing at her forehead with the dagger. “And I’m taking some of your freakishly spiky hair.”

  A few strands fell into his hands, and as she was staring, dumbfounded, he slapped the strands of hair into his palm with the ball of water, and then smashed the glass ball against the heart of the Queen, feeling her rib cage crack as he pushed with all his might.

  The Queen staggered, reaching out her hand to Elle, who was on the ground, trying to decide what to do. Icemaker was the first to regain his composure, and Alex felt a blast of cold slam into his chest and drive him back, sprawling across the ice, toppling handfuls of vampires. He heard Astrid, fighting already, and the Queen was screaming.

  For a moment, Alex watched the Queen, Claire Clairmont, who had lived her whole life dedicated to finding power because what she had really wanted was to find a lost daughter, seem to grapple with all that she had learned in a few short moments. And then as she clutched at the holy water and the hair of the former Allegra Byron, she burst from the inside, and rained down on them all.

  Elle ran toward the Queen, calling out, and flew to the blubbery, bony mass that remained of Claire. She threw herself at the feet of Lord Byron, her father.

  “How much do you remember?” Alex yelled out. “Do you remember Polidori? There’s no record of you before about sixteen, so do you remember that human life? Did you know that these were your parents? Because I’ll tell you one thing.” Alex pointed at Lord Byron. “He did.”

  And Byron, true to form, took one look at his child, shot out a blast of ice, lifted off the platform, and fled into the winds.

  Moments later, one of the vampires leaning over Alex exploded as Astrid’s staff went through him, and Alex got to his feet. They stood back to back as the vampires surrounded them.

  “Ooookay.” Alex drove the silver-and-wooden dagger into the heart of one and turned, keeping his back to Astrid’s. Far behind them, Elle was sobbing alone on the stage. Sociopaths or not, they could be felled by betrayal.

  “Okay,” Astrid echoed as she swiped with the staff, impaling a vampire. Fwoosh and fwoosh and fwoosh, and still they came. They were awash in a sea of skull-faced ghouls.

  Not good. “I…,” Alex said, feeling her bony shoulders against his. A vampire nearly caught his hand and he yanked free. “Okay.”

  “Yep.” She made a fireball and pushed through a bunch of them, and still they came.

  Something whistled in the air, high and growing. Not far away there was an explosion of ice and holy water, with shimmering streaks of silver flying out, and Alex watched twenty of the vampires burst into flame and explode, setting off several more until the explosion dissipated.

  “Alex,” Astrid called.

  The sound of rotor blades filled the air over his shoulder, and Alex turned with Astrid. Now he saw them, a streak of smoke as a missile emerged from the wing of a gunship helicopter. The missile struck the crowd, and Alex saw more vampires explode.

  Four gunships, all told, and one of them swooped low. Alex saw the insignia of the Polidorium on the outside.

  “Well, they could have been faster.” Astrid fought on, but already the crowd was running for the ocean.

  “Yeah, but I’ll take it.” Alex saw Armstrong, her leg still bandaged, and Sangster hanging out of the side of one of the gunships, firing away with machine guns. He watched all four mighty steel machines as they swooped like birds of prey, and the panicking, abandoned followers of the Queen began to run and die in disarray.

  Alex and Astrid tore and shot and kicked as the gunships swept around them, scattering fire and ashes over the Brough of Birsay.

  CHAPTER 27

  The following morning, winter came to Lake Geneva with a sudden and unstopping sprinkling of snow, bringing an end to the strangest autumn of Alex Van Helsing’s life. Alex was silent all during the ride with Sangster into the clearing in the woods and down into the recesses of the farmhouse.

  Astrid had disappeared when they landed at the airstrip, off to the Orchard. He hadn’t had the nerve to ask her when or if he would see her again.

  It wasn’t until Sangster had parked the van and they were walking through the hangar that he spoke.

  “It eats you alive, doesn’t it?” Alex said, stopping next to a Humvee, putting his hand on the hood just below a TALIA SUNT decal.

  Sangster paused and looked back. “What?”

  Alex was looking at the staircase that led up to the metal door, beyond which lay the secret world of the Polidorium. It was cold in the hangar and his words seemed to echo. For a moment he toyed with the clasp on his watch, which had a little silver cross, so that if he had no other weapons he could at least slap a vampire across the face and cause it pain. “There’s nothing in the world I can imagine that is more horrible than vampirism, to see a person perverted and changed and made evil, and still have their brains and pieces of their personality.”

  “Yeah,” Sangster agreed, but he seemed a little suspicious. “Yeah, that’s fair. It’s horrible.”

  “It was a trauma so great that Allegra Byron completely forgot her childhood when she became Elle.”

  “About that.” Sangster looked genuinely puzzled. “How did you know that Elle was Allegra?”

  Alex thought for a moment. “Actually, it was something that Ultravox said to me last month.”

  “Last month? You knew last month?” Sangster looked shocked.

  “No, no,” Alex said. “But Ultravox, when he wasn’t busy telling his own lies, said something amazing that I remembered when Elle was at the graveyard in London. Ultravox told me that it takes extraordinary effort not to believe that which is of great comfort.”

  Sangster shook his head. “I’m not following you.”

  Alex said, “Elle was obsessed with reviving Claire. It was her personal mission to serve under the new Queen.”

  “That didn’t make her the daughter, though,” Sangster countered.

  “No! In fact, when she went to the graveyard, Elle was completely thrown by the missing corpse of Allegra. She screamed like crazy, but she should have been thrilled. The weapon we were looking for wasn’t there. After all, Allegra was Claire’s daughter. Claire was going to gain power over the dead on the earth; she could find the body anytime. But Elle took it personally. She needed that body to be there,” Alex said. “Because when it wasn’t, Elle realized the truth.”

  “Allegra Byron,” Sangster mused. “A little girl, extremely gifted and literate, a five-year-old who wrote letters to her father, begging him to come visit at the convent where he’d stuck her, utterly forgetting her mother.”

  “Allegra was dedicated to her father, and he neglected her,” Alex said. “So then she’s rescued by Dr. Polidori. Snuck out of the country. Lives a quiet seaside cottage life in Scotland, until one day, the vampires come.”

  “And they turn her,” Sangster said.

  “Yes,” Alex said. “At the age of sixteen, the vampires steal her away from Dr. Polidori. And who did those vampires work for?”

  “Byron,” Sangster said.

  “Her father, who had ignored her, now a vampire, sends his minions to kidnap her and turn her into a vampire. So much trauma. A vicious death. The empathic centers of her brain fried. After ten years of a quiet life, she’s then destroyed. I think there’s no way she could consciously accept that Byron was her father then. And it’s not like Byron took her in as a daughter. He denied
her again, maybe never even saw or spoke to her. You know, if he had let her die, he might have stopped us from having a weapon against the Triumph. But of course he was too arrogant for that; he probably enjoyed denying her and keeping her alive. And she finally accepted that she was not Allegra. She had to.”

  Sangster shook his head again and let out a breath.

  Alex continued. “Even though she disappeared, if I ever see her again I’m gonna ask her if Byron ever even spoke to her. But anyway: She became Elle, she served the Scholomance. She built up a story she could believe, that this was her life. Killing and maiming for a greater cause. But then Byron returns to all the vampires and tells the story of the Queen. And Elle wants beyond anything else to see this Queen.”

  Alex thought again of Ultravox’s words. “What was of great comfort to Elle was to forget her childhood and remember only this vampire life, this mission, her place in the Scholomance, and now her service to the Queen. And of course it’s a Queen who desperately wants to find her daughter. As tempting as it would have been to think of herself as Allegra, the truth about what happened to Allegra was too horrible to remember, even for her. And she guarded herself against the truth, the way everyone does.”

  Alex was picturing the coffin flying apart in the road. “It was the coffin. Elle needed to prove that everything she’d been told was true. That there was a dead little girl named Allegra who Claire would have gone back for if she could have found her. Elle wanted to prove to herself that her most awful, buried memories could not possibly be real. That the life she had built was real. And when the coffin shattered, so did her illusions about her life.”

  “But she held on,” Sangster said. “You said at the Brough of Birsay she still kept on as usual.”

  “Nah, you should have seen her,” Alex said. “She was losing it. She was fighting not to accept it all.” He thought of Icemaker, lifting into the air with a snarl. “Because who would? In the end, he left again. And you know what’s worse?”

  “What?”