Vienna stood straighter and turned to him, leaning in closer. “We both know I was not the one you wanted to be going with.”
The sound of cheeping chimney swifts above them grew and dropped rhythmically. Alex wondered how birds could comfortably live among the smoke. He shook his head. There wasn’t time for this. They would be living among darkness and vampires soon. He looked back to Sangster. “We have six days. And now we’re wondering about, what—”
Sangster summed it up. “A running conspiracy to alter a sixteenth-century Flemish painting in order to record clues about stopping the catastrophe the painting represents.”
Alex shook his head in frustration. “But where does that leave us? Bruegel the painter is not connected to us. But the custodian, who is also not connected to us, is guiding us to clues about a catastrophe that a powerful sorceress could bring about. According to the spell Astrid did when she touched the painting, Bruegel was put up to painting it, paid by these black tower people. All of whom may be connected. Do you know what that means?” He rubbed his temple. Something was…something was…
He suddenly felt static. Alex looked around, then shook his head to clear it.
“Tell us,” Sangster said.
“It means that someone has been planning all along to warn us but either can’t or won’t.” He paused. “Wait.” The static was there, hissing, the burbling of the birds seeming to grow and join the sound. “Do you hear that?”
Sangster scanned the room. “Yes.”
A scuttling sound, clacking and scraping, grew in the walls themselves.
Flecks of soot began to fall in the fireplace. “Who knows we’re here?”
Armstrong stood. “We ordered the paella in.”
The static began to roar in Alex’s head and he staggered. Stop. Just listen to it. Don’t let it overwhelm you.
Astrid whispered something and then drew what looked like a shimmering green penlight from her coat. She flicked her hand and the thing telescoped, once and again, until it had grown out to the full glimmering green staff he had seen her wield before.
“What’s that?” Vienna looked up as the sound of clacking and creaking echoed through the walls. The stucco in front of the chimney was cracking, bowing out, as if something were struggling to move down inside of it.
Alex heard a ratcheting sound and saw Sangster drawing a Beretta from a go package. Armstrong had one as well and they were backing up, scanning.
A heavy sound smacked into the glass of the french doors, and Alex saw something strike and glance away. He caught the shape of a bird’s wings as it bounced and disappeared.
Bits of stucco began to crumble and fall from the chimney. Alex scrambled for the go package and grabbed a glass ball and a Polibow. He tried to feel the shape of the thing causing his brain to sizzle with static. “Sangster, I don’t know what it is, but it’s big.”
Smoke and fire burst from the fireplace. Soot exploded into the room and suddenly the whole apartment was a cloud. Alex felt more than saw Astrid step forward next to him, her staff raised.
“Everybody fan out so we don’t shoot one another,” Sangster shouted, a shadow in the plumes of soot, as high-pitched cheeping burbled and Alex saw its form slice past Sangster’s head. He hissed in pain, grabbing his forehead.
Alex barely had time to see another bird, slick and narrow and cigar-shaped, dive out and fly right for his face. He put up his hand, brushing at it. “Gyahh!”
Glass crashed as a bird bashed into a lamp, and now the sound intensified, birds and more birds, three and then six and more, pouring into the room. Something sliced past Alex’s ear and he felt a sharp sting and then blood trickling.
Alex spun and saw the creature, a gray bird that seemed to glow with streams of glistening red that enveloped it, swoop out of sight and then come back. It flew for his head, and he saw its open beak, a perversion of a tiny bird’s. It grabbed his shoulder with its claws and started lapping at the blood on his ear.
He swatted it hard and sent it smacking into an end table, losing his footing. A pair of wineglasses burst as he started to fall, and he landed hard on his elbow, glass crunching through his sleeve.
The birds were everywhere.
“Alex!” Vienna called, and he saw her legs against the wall, and she was dropping to the ground. There was a bird at her neck, tugging at her scarf. “No, no, no!”
Alex scrambled up to the table, threw the glass ball he’d been holding, and watched it sail through the cloud and hit the wall above her, glass tinkling and water spraying.
The bird at Vienna’s neck sizzled and dropped away, snarling with a roar most unbird-like as it turned in the air. Its eyes glowed red as it dove for Alex, tiny talons extended.
“Cleanse thee!” Astrid cried from out of the smoke, and her staff came flying, smacking the bird midflight. As she struck it, the thing burst into flame and flopped over Alex’s head to land on the table.
There was a crackling sound as the butcher paper caught fire.
Alex coughed. “What is this?”
“Bloodwork,” Sangster shouted. Bloodwork. That was vampire magic, altering living and dead things with enchanted blood. The most powerful could make almost anything with it.
A muffled chorus of cheeping grew, and there was a burst of glass as the french doors gave way, and now a stream of chimney swifts swarmed in. “Hit the deck!” Armstrong ordered. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Alex lay on the floor and watched maybe twenty birds swarm, zipping through the room, in and out of the smoke. He could hear the birds bashing into cases.
A gun flash drew Alex’s eye and he saw Armstrong, a shadow in the soot, on her stomach, shooting several birds at the doorway, the brief light of her gun followed by the bursts of the creatures. They fell like little firebombs onto the floor. “They’re blocking the door!” Armstrong called.
“Astrid, how many of those magic, uh, cleanse shots do you carry?”
“It’s not a shot; I have to hit them to cleanse them.” Astrid cried out a few feet away as one bird cheeped madly and yanked at one of the ponytails on her head.
Alex coughed and blinked for an instant, seeing bright streaks of light against his eyelids. He opened his eyes, wincing with pain. His contacts were beginning to swim with the soot. The smoke had grown even darker, impenetrable.
Wait, go back, he told himself. He held his eyes closed and forced away the sounds of grunting and cursing and the bashing of glass and wood, filling his mind with static. With his eyes open, the static was just static, but closed, he could see it take shape, and he watched twenty streaks of red light zip across the black underside of his eyelids.
“Stop shooting, you’re going to hit someone!” He held out his hand, groping in the darkness. “Astrid, take my hand.”
Alex heard her crawl beside him and then she had his hand. Astrid’s was cold and small, and the static seemed to dissipate as she drew near. But the streaks were still there.
“I have to keep my eyes closed.” He grabbed her whole arm. “We’re getting up.”
They rose and Alex got behind her, his chest against the bird-like bones of Astrid’s back, holding her hand and her staff. “Okay, move with me.”
“What?”
“Just…trust me, and cleanse.” Soot slid down Alex’s cheek as he put his face next to her. “Move with me.”
Alex brought Astrid’s arm up and felt her body uncoiling as she stretched, but she was stiff. “Let me lead.” He saw a streak coming in fast. She seemed to relax and he began to spin, her leg following his.
“Here!” They swept their arms together, and Alex heard her utter the word cleanse as the staff touched the arc of light just as it reached them.
“Cleanse,” they said together, another step, their arms coming up, a streak coming in fast against his closed eyes. Another burst of flame. “Cleanse,” and another, and another, and another.
He could hear in the background holy water bursting in the fireplace a
s Sangster destroyed a handful of the creatures, and Armstrong was at the door, shooting at those that were swirling around there. Alex and Astrid concentrated on the streaks, Astrid swinging her staff as he guided her.
Finally they were still and there was a tiny cheep. Vienna gasped somewhere, and Alex saw a bird streaking, and he and Astrid swept toward it. Burst.
In the inky smoke, Sangster clapped out the fire on the table, and Alex felt everyone start to relax. Armstrong threw open the door and smoke began to pour out.
“Come on!” she coughed.
He opened his eyes and stopped, suddenly collapsing into a coughing fit. Astrid dropped next to him and grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
They ran down the stairs as the sound of fire engines filled the air.
On the front stoop of the building, Vienna hugged Alex as Sangster spoke rapidly into a Bluetooth device. Astrid stood by herself, watching them.
“Clearly the Queen’s people are watching us,” Sangster said as he got off the phone. “We need to get out of the street.”
Vienna watched in horror as firemen arrived and ran in and out of her building, and all the residents of the lower floors gathered and watched. “I need to go up there.”
Alex shook his head. “Don’t. Not yet. It’s not a fire anymore—it’s just a lot of smoke. We have to think of what you’re going to say.”
“Oh, who cares what I say?” Vienna said. “It’s what I know. My father will come back tonight, and he’ll see that it’s true.”
“What?”
“That no matter how much you people have helped me, I’m cursed.”
“You’re not cursed. Well, you might be cursed with the wrong friends.” Alex sighed, looking at Sangster and Astrid. “The Scholomance tried to kill us. Why didn’t they just come in themselves?”
“It was dusk,” Sangster said. “Most likely this was safer. Blood-magic-augmented birds. So we know the Scholomance is onto us, in Madrid looking for clues about the Triumph.”
“Just like the guy at the Prado was onto us.” Alex turned back to Vienna. “Listen, I think they wanted us, and when we’re gone they won’t be interested in you.” He said this more because he desperately hoped it was true, not because he had any actual idea.
Alex paused, stood back, and looked around him, silently watching the firemen gathering and scratching their heads. The square near Vienna’s building was crowded, and the coffee and pastry vendors casually moved their stands closer to the building, scavenging for more customers.
What am I doing? Alex found himself asking this again as he had done in the past. Was this his life now? Completely truant from school, off the grid as far as his parents were concerned, and doing life-or-death research in Spain? Getting his friends nearly killed—was there any friend he was going to have whom he wasn’t going to put in danger?
He shook his head, bringing himself back to the present. No, no. Get in the game. “The Scholomance knew we were at the Prado. They’re not stupid; they knew that we’d be looking into The Triumph of Death. But the rest—the altered colors on the lady’s dress in the painting, does the Scholomance know about that?”
“I’m still going with no. The custodian and the color alterers are on our side, in a funny way. There’s no reason to think the vampires would be clued into that.”
“Assuming you’re right,” Alex said, “there could be more.”
“More Scholomance vampires?” Sangster said. “You bet.”
“No, more Strangers,” Alex said. “This morning a man broke into the Prado just to point us in the right way to this painting. There is a conspiracy that the Polidorium has completely overlooked, that started at least as far back as Bruegel’s visit to this…castle of black towers. And that conspiracy knows what you people—what we—are doing.” He pointed at Sangster and Armstrong. “The Scholomance is following us, and there’s a conspiracy that knows what’s going on better than we do. But they don’t get involved.”
“Maybe they’re a rogue element inside the Polidorium,” Astrid said.
Sangster shook his head. “I can totally accept the theory of a rogue element that split off to place clues—but a rogue element that told Bruegel what to paint? That would predate the Polidorium by two hundred years.”
Alex peered down the mental chessboard. The game was all off-kilter now. There were three players. “The vampires put a virus in the Polidorium database to throw us off the trail. And someone else is trying to get us back on track. That supports the theory that they’re friends, at least. Whoever this conspiracy of Strangers is, they’re on our side, not the Queen’s. But they are not talking, and they sure weren’t about to help us survive that attack.”
Armstrong gave it a shot. “Maybe it’s dangerous for them.”
“I don’t accept that,” Alex said. “The Triumph of Death is dangerous for everybody.”
“So they want to help but don’t want to force us to the conclusions.” Sangster shifted his weight.
Alex was looking at his watch. “The Dimmer Switch curse, the Triumph of Death, is a tool for sorcerers. And it’s being used by Claire Clairmont to fulfill a destiny. And we don’t know what’s going through her mind.” He shook his head in frustration. “I’m sick of being in the dark.”
“We’re all working on it, Alex,” Sangster said evenly.
“Well, you have your experts; I have a few of my own,” Alex said. He knew exactly who would be able to work through this stuff. He should have included them from the start. “I’m going back to school. There are some people I’d like to talk to.”
CHAPTER 13
It was four o’clock in the morning by the time Alex stashed the Ninja motorcycle in the woods across from Glenarvon-LaLaurie. A bitter cold wind off Lake Geneva shot through him as he jogged out of the woods and across the street into the courtyard of the school, and as the front of the building came into view he saw a light on. In the second-floor drawing room that served as a small study, he could see silhouettes moving around. The hulking shadow of Paul turned to the window, and Alex waved quickly as he headed up the steps and inside.
“Oh, look, he’s not dead yet,” said Paul when Alex opened the door to the study hall.
Alex grimaced, letting his go package slide off his arm and to the floor next to the door. He froze for a second, looking at Paul, Sid, and Minhi. They were all wearing jeans and sweatshirts, whatever they could throw on after he’d texted them in the middle of the night from the airplane. Paul was standing next to the window as if on guard while Sid fiddled with the old-fashioned fireplace, trying to get the wad of kindling started. Minhi was sitting at a heavy wooden cherry-red table with a stack of books opened and splayed out. She was picking up a large green thermos, but as he entered she put it down and rose, coming to hug him.
Sid stood up, brushing soot off his hands. “You are toast,” he said after shaking Alex’s hand. “I mean toast. Otranto is going to run you up a flagpole if you’re not back today.”
Alex raised his hands. “I’ve been gone a day and a half. Hang on, I’m just gonna shut the door.” Alex looked out into the hall, which was empty. The only people awake in the building were likely to be kitchen staff getting ready for the morning. He closed the door and then turned back to them. “Did he call my parents?”
“Of course not,” Paul said, leaning on the table. “Sid and I covered for you. We said you were sick in bed. But he’s suspicious; he said he’d better see you come down today.”
Minhi pointed at Paul and Sid as she scolded Alex. “You do realize that they’re lying for you without even knowing why. They could get in serious trouble.”
Alex nodded. Okay, that was true. “I totally did not ask anyone to do that,” he said, but he knew that was not the way to treat a friend.
Minhi shook her head. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “You completely disappeared; we might have thought you were dead.”
“Madrid,” Alex said.
“You were in Spain?” Sid s
at down and threw his sneakered feet up on the table. “For a day?”
Paul snickered. “You get any paella?”
“Yeah, Vienna ordered some in.”
“You saw Vienna?” Minhi asked. Her mind seemed to trip through several options and suddenly she brought her hand to her throat and said, “Does she still have the…”
“Yeah, but she says it’s not holding her head on anymore.”
“You ask her to prove it or did you just take her word for it?” Paul asked.
“Totally learned my lesson on this.” Alex held up his hands.
“Wait, wait, back up,” Sid said, with a delirious sort of smile on his face. “Why were you in Spain eating paella with Vienna?”
“Right,” Alex said, suddenly trying to decide where to start.
“Why don’t you start with, ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here,’” said Minhi.
“Seriously?” Alex squinted.
Sid nodded. “Yeah, actually that would be very cool.”
Alex smiled. “Okay, let me start with this: I’m really sorry, guys. I shouldn’t have disappeared. There’s something terrible going on. We’re not really sure how to stop it. And I seem to be in a life now where the Polidorium snaps its fingers and I cross continents for them.”
“So, what is it, Alex?” Minhi asked, her tone softening slightly. She had leaned back on the table next to Paul.
“Actually it is what you said: the Triumph of Death. Apparently the painting is an illustration of what the world will be like after Queen Claire sets off a curse. She will plunge the world into darkness, and the vampires will be free to run wild.”
Paul exhaled. “So…how long do you have?”
“Till Monday, it looks like.”
“Are you mad?” Paul said. “The world goes dark in less than a week?”
“Should we call home?” Minhi asked. “My mother could warn the government in Mumbai.”
“My dad might get home,” Sid said, his eyes darting. “He’s off consulting on something in Italy, I think. But he could get back to Canada. Everyone would need to get home.”
Alex Van Helsing: The Triumph of Death Page 10
