The Triumph of Death (20 page)

“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.

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?”

Alex sighed. “I took her mother away again.”

Sangster said, “You can’t think of it that way.”

“Because they’re sociopaths, right? It was still a cruel thing I did.”

“I don’t accept that,” Sangster said. “It was a necessary thing. You didn’t torture anyone. You didn’t kidnap anyone. You killed a vampire to stop a terrible thing.”

“Vampirism twists and distorts. But, Sangster, we twist and distort ourselves in response. John Polidori was willing to risk his only loved one—this adopted child—to fight vampires. And look at you.”

Sangster had gotten quiet, but now he gave that half-smile of his. “What about me?”

“I mean, you can’t get
away
from the Polidorium. And you know, between you and me, being an English teacher: not so bad.”

“Why, thank you.”

Alex nodded. “I know
one
person who walked away from this life, and that was my father. He quit. So what I
want to know is: Is this my life now? I got bit and would have died if Hexen hadn’t whisked me away. The doctor, Kristatos, she showed up at work one day and now she’s dead—because of me. Is that a picture of my life; are these visions of my life?”

“Well, think of it this way,” said Sangster. “If you hadn’t been on the ball, the world would have ended in darkness. So maybe it
is
a picture of your life, and maybe that picture is also not so bad.”

Alex shook his head. “I just feel…like there’s always another door to go through. Like we’re always being played. Someone went to the trouble to tamper with a painting that led us to Harrow, and finally to hidden DNA in
Scotland
.”

“Blacktowers,” Sangster said. “Well, we’re gonna try to find out more about them.”

“Oh, sure,” Alex said. “And you know what, there will probably be a secret group behind them, too.”

“Oh, for the love of—” said Sangster, running a hand through his hair. “Look, Alex…”

“And you know, I wanted to go to that formal last month, I mean, that’s just an example.”

“Oh, my God, you’re killing me. Time out.” Sangster jabbed his hands together. “Now you’ve done your monologue, so just hang on. First of all, I didn’t stop you
from going to the ball, the vampires did that, and you still made it, so give it a rest. But second of all, here’s what I know.”

Sangster put his hands on Alex’s shoulders and hunched forward, like a coach talking through a football player’s face guard.

“You. Are. Special. You’re off the charts. We don’t even have a word for what you can do. The Polidorium was founded by a doctor who wanted to save the world and who held his organization together with both hands until he died. You’re not like that. You can sense evil. You have reflexes and adaptive ability that we can’t even begin to understand. You inherited it from your mother, a witch, and your father, who passed you genes that go back to Abraham Van Helsing and farther back than that. Hexen, an organization that’s so secretive that we wondered if they’d all been destroyed, came out of hiding for you. For
you
!”

Sangster let go, straightening up. He smoothed down his jacket and continued. “You know what I think? I think it’s possible that this Blacktowers group has secrets for you, and if you want, we can try to learn those secrets. And I have a feeling you’ll learn even more about yourself, but it’ll still come down to the same thing: You. Are. Special.” Sangster shook his head.

“I got bit, too,” Sangster went on. “And I kept some of the curse and it makes me a little faster and a little quicker to heal. And it’s nothing—
nothing
compared to you. Now, I’m not even gonna call you a whiner because I know better; I think you’re a gentle and kind young man, and your questions are good. You can mourn not having a normal life. But don’t for an instant regret the life you have. We don’t need you,” he said flatly. “The
world
needs you.”

They stood there for a moment. Sangster patted Alex on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go give Carreras his debrief, tell ’em all how you saved the planet. And then you gotta get to class.”

“Talk about a monologue,” Alex said as they walked. “You should give speeches for a living.”

“I’m a teacher; I already do.”

“Too early for class, though,” said Alex. It was seven in the morning. “I’m hoping to make it back by breakfast time.”

“Great, see? You get to have a normal life,” said Sangster as they hurried up the stairs.

Paul, Sid, and Minhi didn’t notice Alex at first when he wandered into the cafeteria and hung near the entrance. He took a moment to watch them, and saw that Sid was making them laugh with some extended story where he needed to pantomime being hung upside down. Minhi and Paul were holding hands, and Alex searched himself for the jealousy that so recently had tinged his soul whenever he saw them, and couldn’t find it. For a moment he touched his neck, feeling the tenderness of the injury there, already almost healed.

Astrid came around beside him and leaned back against the door frame, holding a stack of books.

Alex turned toward her and smiled. “Astrid.” He felt
his chest brim with something like shock and relief at once. “I thought you went back to the Orchard.”

“You went back to the farmhouse,” she said with a laugh. “We both have these places. We work there; we don’t have to live there.”

“Thank God for that,” Alex said, watching her bright eyes shine. For a moment it was strange seeing her without an army of vampires trying to tear them both limb from limb. He wondered if her expandable staff was hidden in the pack she had slung over her shoulder. He found himself looking down and said, “I was afraid you weren’t coming back.” It sounded like a weak thing to say, but he said it just the same.

“Really?”

“Yeah, you know, weird stuff happens around here,” Alex said. “Icemaker’s still out there. And you never know when the chess team might suddenly all get cursed and turned into…giant…spiders….”

“A giant spider curse?”

“Right, and I’m just guessing but I’m pretty sure we’d have to go to Egypt for that, and I hate to fly alone. Plus there’s
Elle—
”

Astrid took his hand and patted it with her other hand. They both looked at each other and Astrid leaned over and kissed Alex on the cheek.

Alex smiled and looked down for a moment, then turned back to watch his friends, still clowning at breakfast.

“What are you looking at?” Astrid asked.

“I think I’m looking at the rest of my life,” he said. Astrid threw a glance around the cafeteria and tilted her head, as if considering.

“For now,” Alex clarified.

Astrid smiled, and together the pair walked to the breakfast table and began the day. There may well have been evil things watching, but for the moment they lay only in wait.