The Triumph of Death (3 page)

“Nope,” Alex yelled.

“What makes you so sure?”

“I have something that
you
don’t have,” Alex answered, “and it’s going to give me some more time.”

“What’s that?”

Alex brought the Polibow to the vampire’s chest and pulled the trigger, feeling a solid
thump
as the bolt slammed between the creature’s ribs and into his heart.

“Hot air.”

The vampire roared and Alex dropped his Polibow and wrapped his elbows around the straps. He yanked up and away as far as possible, pressing his face against his forearms as a fireball erupted where the creature had been.

Alex saw the orange flash burst against his wind visor and cringed as the helmet heated up immediately. As he closed his eyes the flash blazed brilliantly for a split second. The wave of fire and hot air pushed in all directions, and Alex was yanked sharply upward as the parachute caught the air and rose a full twenty yards.

Alex opened his eyes and yelped; his leather jacket was on fire, and he started patting it down wildly with
his free hand as he spun. For a moment he worried the parachute would catch fire, but like a hot air balloon, it merely expanded and rose with the sudden burst from the vampire.

Alex spun with the straps, hanging on for dear life, his legs churning wildly.

The parachute whipped and lurched as the earth came toward him once more, and Alex hit the soft grass running. Even so, he felt the shock in his knees and ran through it, releasing the straps and tottering forward, flipping end over end until he finally rolled to a stop, singed and bruised but alive.

Near the horizon, a second fireball erupted with a distant
boom
as the plane slammed to the ground, lighting up the clouds with orange and yellow.

Alex sat for a moment and caught his breath. He then fished a cell phone out of his pocket and punched in some numbers. Within half an hour, the air filled with the sound of rotor blades.

Six hours later, he was back at Glenarvon-LaLaurie School on the banks of Lake Geneva as though nothing unusual had occurred.

“You’ve got to tell me everything,” Sid Chamberlain, Alex’s ginger-haired Canadian roommate, said as he walked with Alex to the cafeteria. Alex still felt a twinge of pain in his knees, but all told, the worst he had to deal with were some mild burns on his forearms. Paul Messina, his other roommate, was walking ahead of them, so broad of shoulder that he acted as a human icebreaker, spreading the traffic of students in the halls out around them.

Alex picked up a nervous sort of buzz in the air, most
of it about upcoming travel. As he sped through the busy halls of the school in the morning, his stomach raging with hunger, he could hear people exchanging plans. Two weeks to the fall break, Alex still had not decided if he would be going home.

“I think they just wanted the computer.” Alex answered when Sid asked why the attack on the plane had happened.

“So what about this
creature school
?” Sid’s eyes were on fire with the idea of a deep study of the races of vampires. When he wasn’t working on his own fiction, Sid spent every remaining waking minute studying vampires for Scarlet World, a game that he liked to play. Sid had stacks of characters he had designed based on the reference books he kept.

“Oh, that.” They were turning into the cafeteria now, and Paul led them straight to a table in the back right corner.
There she was.
Minhi Krishnaswami was wearing a sweater jacket and waving to them.

Minhi gave Paul a chaste peck as they took a seat in a clatter of chairs and dropped backpacks. “You’re back!” Minhi called, and Alex wanted to hug her, but he was already engaged in sitting down and had blown the chance. Wasn’t right to want to anyway. She was Paul’s girlfriend and there was nothing else to say.

Minhi placed her palms flat on the table and leaned forward, eyes crinkling with her smile. “So?”

Alex said to everyone, “Did you know that there’s a vampire that’s just a head, but it has bat wings coming out of its ears?”

“Yeah, that’s the chonchon.” Sid nodded. “Did you see one?”

“A dead one.”

“Oh my
God
,” Sid practically panted.

Paul chuckled. “Yes, yes, oh my God.
Did you know,
” he repeated in his London accent, slapping the table and looking at Minhi, “that our man in Switzerland threw himself out of a bloody
plane
last night?”

Minhi’s mouth formed a confused O. “What?”

“In my defense, that was really the strongest option on the table.” Alex looked around. “I’m starving.”

“Here, here,” Paul said, and they stood and headed to the front of the cafeteria. They dropped all talk of planes and bat wings for the duration. These were Alex’s…what were they? Confidants? Friends, but friends that knew his secrets.

Alex had a lot of secrets to keep, but to be fair he’d been playing fast and loose with all of them. In the past three months since he had come to Glenarvon Academy, which had since merged with their sister school,
LaLaurie, Alex had learned to walk a daily tightrope that relied very much on the completely unsupervised discretion of the circle of friends he had entrusted with the details of his second and more unusual life. These three, Paul and Sid and Minhi, knew how much time Alex spent training with the agents of the Polidorium and they took it in stride, as Paul explained it, the way they might accommodate an Olympic speed skater with a demanding coach.

A discreet part of Alex wondered if he had made some mistake sharing so much with them, but he couldn’t have it any other way. He would have liked to have been a loner and kept it all to himself, but he needed the feeling of acceptance and normalcy they brought. He tried not to think of the danger their closeness might invite. Whenever he went down that path in his mind he stopped himself, defiantly refusing to consider it. It was a massive, deliberate hole in his calculations, one he both knew about and could not bear to think about. They kept his secrets and he hoped that he would not get them killed.

At the cafeteria line, Alex doubled up on eggs, toast, and fruit. He thought he was surely eating as much as Paul, who was a full head taller, but discovered on inspection that this was not the case.

“How did you get home?” Minhi whispered as she stood beside him and they slowly moved sideways along the cafeteria line. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Uh, I had a cell in my backpack and called my ‘friends.’ And as for sleep—” He shrugged. “Eh.”

“You can’t manage on no sleep.” Minhi clucked. “Even you.”
Say more things,
he wanted to say. Her accent, with its slight Indian lilt, was endlessly wonderful to listen to.

“I’ll be sure to bring that up at the next meeting,” Alex whispered. The next meeting, in fact, would be at noon, where he would see his handlers—including Sangster, his mentor—for another debriefing. They had conducted a preliminary one during the helicopter ride early in the morning. Truthfully he was used to very little sleep, and anyway, with luck he could catch up on the weekend. Which was five days away and counting.

Trays in hand, they all turned back and headed for their table again. Alex watched as a couple of girls waved at Sid. “Do we get Part Three?” one asked.

Sid nodded. “Friday.” The girls rushed off and Sid shrugged back at Alex.

“Part Three?” Alex repeated.

“‘The Owner of Pier Fifty-seven,’” Sid said. “It’s a three-part story for the lit club. It’s my turn to read this Friday.”

“Have you written it yet?” Paul asked. Sid shrugged again, which probably meant no. In the short time Alex had known him, Sid had progressed from being terrified at the thought of any public performance to becoming a minor celebrity for the short stories that he was reading aloud and also publishing in the weekly school paper. Alex had no idea where Sid found the time to fit them into his class work.

As they drew near their table, Alex’s attention snapped to a girl standing in the cafeteria entrance. The first thing that caught his eye was the strange chaos of her black hair, a boiling storm of oddly placed pigtails and ponytails, her skin white and eyes so light blue they were almost clear. She was standing with her hands in front of her, fingers curled into one another as though she were about to sing, and her pointed chin and slightly nervous look reminded him of a curious bird. She wore long blue tights and a weird blue minidress with wide puffed shoulders that made the whole outfit seem less like a dress than a strange suit of armor.

They reached the table and Alex put down his tray. As he looked back, the girl’s glance swept the room again and then caught his eyes almost accidentally.

Alex’s mouth was hanging open with the unsaid question,
Who…?

Paul followed his eyes. “
She’s
new.”

Minhi was popping a grape into her mouth and said, covering her lips, “Yes she is.” She swallowed and waved as the girl looked back her way, this time registering recognition, her wide smile going all the way to her eyes. “Astrid!”

The new girl was already moving swiftly to the table. She seemed to bounce with her steps and greeted Minhi as though they were old friends, with a kiss on the cheek. Paul rose and silently reminded Alex and Sid that they should, too.

“I hope I’m not intruding.” Astrid’s voice was full and musical, low in her throat, and Alex detected a hint of an accent. Dutch? “Guys, this is Astrid Gretelian,” Minhi said. “She just came to the girls’ floor last night.”

“You’re starting in the middle of the year?” Alex asked before he even knew what he was going to say. He never could get introductions right.

This seemed to catch her by surprise. The girl’s head swiveled back and her eyes gleamed with her smile, her whole body swaying. Then she dramatically nodded her head at him. “Yes, I hope that’s allowed.”

“I think we’ll make an exception in your case.” Paul extended a large hand. “Paul.”

Minhi and Alex exchanged glances. Whatever charm
Paul had, it lacked an off switch.

Alex gave the new girl his own name and Sid waved. “Sid.”

“We only allow him a few syllables a day,” said Paul. They all sat.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Minhi asked the new girl.

Astrid shook her head. “I don’t know if there’s time; I’m supposed to go and meet with Ms….”

“Daughtry?” Alex suggested. That was the girls’ assistant headmistress. If her meeting was anything like the one Alex had on his first day, it would include an uncomfortably frank discussion of any past history and plans for success, or whatever term for not screwing up they would use. But then again, that had been Alex’s experience with the boys’ headmaster, Otranto. Maybe the girls had it easier.

“Yes, yes, exactly.” Astrid looked at Alex. “Three sentences from you and two of them have ended in a question mark.”

“Here, I have…” Minhi looked at the plate of fruit she’d brought to the table. “Do you want my banana?” Astrid took the banana graciously, opening it monkey-style, from the bottom rather than the stem. She nibbled at it, her bony shoulders moving with her jaw.

Minhi turned to the guys. “Astrid is from the
Netherlands. Her parents had to move to Switzerland for work.”

“My mother’s work. She’s doing a lot of traveling right now, so this was the best fit.” Astrid put her hand on Minhi’s shoulder. “So apparently I’m Minhi’s assignment.”

Minhi shook her head. “Hardly. Anyone new needs a sister, so I’m showing her around until she gets settled.”

“A buddy system.” Alex understood that well enough. If Paul and Sid hadn’t taken him under their wings when he’d come in he wouldn’t have lasted two days. Almost didn’t, as it turned out. “Is she your new roommate, too?” he asked. Minhi’s last roommate, Vienna, had left abruptly about a month ago and wasn’t expected back anytime soon. He was shocked to find he had not thought of her in a week or so.

“Nope,” Minhi said. “I’ve still got my own room, thank God.”

“Me too,” Astrid said. “I opted for a single room. It’s…”

“Tiny?” Minhi offered.

“I like to think of it as cozy.” Astrid’s smile emanated seismic waves of warmth. She turned to Paul. “So you’re the boyfriend,” she said, sizing him up.

Paul folded his arms. “Ohh, you’ve talked.”

“And you are the writer.” She looked at Sid.

“She told you that?” Sid smiled as he looked out from beneath the reddish curls that were growing longer recently.

“
She
did, plus about four other girls who tried to give me the entire
dramatis personae
before I went to sleep,” Astrid explained. “You have fans.”

“
Groupies
,” Paul said, clapping Sid’s shoulder.

“And you…are…” Astrid’s eyes narrowed as she took a bite of the banana and swallowed. Finally she shrugged. “Alex.”

“Just Alex.” He repeated the word, echoing her shrug. “I’m working on an ‘Alex the’ but I’m not there yet.” Alex wondered what kind of epithet his friends might have provided if they were alone.
Alex the guy who got us kidnapped? Alex the guy who stole a WaveRunner to get to the Charity Ball?
“Stick around and maybe you can suggest something.”

“I’ll be on the lookout.” Astrid’s English was so perfect that she must have begun speaking it as a child, possibly at home. He didn’t detect any Britishisms. Maybe an American father? Alex pushed the thought away. He had to stop this, analyzing every newcomer as though they were a schematic on one of the Polidorium’s displays.

“So here’s how it will work,” said Paul, drumming the table. “Minhi can help you through the social stuff because we’re hopeless. But you won’t be rid of us. Sid can tutor you in just about anything, and Alex and I will be available for color commentary.”

“At least one of you is dead weight,” Astrid observed wryly. “You can work in shifts.”

Alex laughed. “Well, we won’t keep you prisoner. You may actually make
other
friends. But if Minhi’s got your back, we do, too.”

The bell rang. “Oh!” Astrid looked alarmed, and her whole body carried the change in vibration. She stood. “I was supposed to…”

“Daughtry,” Alex reminded her.

Astrid rose and kissed Minhi on the cheek once more. She bobbed like a bird ahead of them and turned briefly to Alex. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

“For what?”

“For whatever should come after ‘Alex the,’” she said, smiling, before disappearing down the hall.