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. Fi
nally 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.
CHAPTER 3
At 11:55 on the dot, Alex’s phone buzzed on the way out of his Algebra class, jolting his body to readiness just as he was feeling the doldrums of almost no sleep. He was fishing it out of his jacket as Minhi tugged at his sleeve.
BACK GATE, read the text. It was time to meet Sangster. He looked up at Minhi. “Hmm?”
“What are your plans this afternoon?” Minhi asked.
Paul and Sid had pulled up ahead, and Alex was about to call to them and ask. “I don’t know, what are we doing?”
“Just…” Minhi looked ahead. “I wanted to ask you…”
Alex held up a hand as his phone buzzed again. Okay, okay. He looked at her. “I’m sorry, what?”
Minhi shrugged. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Okay.” Alex nodded. “Guys! I’ll catch you later.” He shot down the hall, leaving the three of them behind. For a moment he caught a glimpse of Astrid moving into the library. They apparently shared no classes; he hadn’t seen her all morning.
As he passed the library, the cavernous, dark space yawned at him, with its ladders and catwalks and shadows. The girl had been swallowed up completely by it, as he reckoned anyone could be. He hit the side door and was outside, cold air snapping at his chin and ears.
The black Polidorium van that pulled up by the back gate barely slowed as the side door slid open. For a moment Alex’s body tensed at the thought that it could be a decoy, a stolen van full of Scholomance vampires out to capture him—it wouldn’t be the first time—but instantly he saw the extended hand of Mr. Sangster.
“Let’s go, Alex.” Sangster grabbed his hand and yanked him inside. By the time Alex had sat down across from his literature teacher, the van was moving and picking up speed, heading down the road to town.
Wearing chinos and a black sweater and jacket, the man who sat across from Alex was many things, and a teacher was only one of them. An expert in vampire activity and a well-placed ground leader for the organization, Sangster had been Alex’s entre into the Polidorium, and had taken him under his wing the moment Alex had arrived at Glenarvon Academy. When Alex got to Switzerland, he had known nothing of the secret world that the Polidorium inhabited. He had learned a lot of things in a very short amount of time, including that his own father had been preparing him all his life, without his knowledge, to work with the Polidorium.
Dad had taught Alex how to survive on little sleep and food, how to control the panic that hit people in tense situations, how to fight and ski and (illegally) drive, and even, if necessary, jump out of a plane. But Dad had denied completely the existence of vampires and never let on that soon Alex would be involved in fighting them. It had happened sooner than intended. Dad, it turned out, had actually been an agent for the Polidorium. He had spent his life fighting vampires because it was the calling of his family, the Van Helsings, who had helped found the Polidorium in its early days. And then Dad had met Mom and retired, and lied for all fourteen years Alex and his sisters had been alive.
Only recently had Dad told Alex the truth and laid the burden of deciding what to do next at his feet. “We’re part of a war,” Dad had told him. It was a war with the vampires on one side and the Polidorium and the dwindling numbers of the Van Helsing family on the other. “Whether you want to join it now is up to you.”
“Are we going to the farmhouse?” Alex asked. Sangster was flipping through a manila folder as the van rocked, and Alex clicked a safety belt over his shoulder.
“There’s been a change of plans.” Sangster looked back at the driver and passenger seat in front. He gestured. “Armstrong?”
Alex didn’t know the driver, but he saw Anne Armstrong, a woman with short blond hair and freckles, climb out of the passenger seat, bobbing slightly as the van moved. She dropped into a seat next to Sangster.
“We read your debrief from this morning,” Armstrong said in her usual business-like American accent. “You’re sure they left the computer on the plane?”
Alex nodded. “The computer they dropped, yeah.” The van swerved around a corner and Alex was momentarily blinded by a streak of sunlight that glinted through the windows. “But the vampire had a connection of some sort—”
“A dongle?” Armstrong asked.
“Yeah, he clicked it in and I would think he downloaded everything on there. But I don’t get it; wasn’t that just a training device?”
Sangster shook his head. “It should have been. It should have been a tablet that was practically empty except for run-of-the-mill low-security info.”
“Yeah, I don’t think the Scholomance needs to know how many different kinds of vampires there are on the planet. Maybe they want to know what we know.”
“First,” said Sangster, “they probably have a decent feel for that. And second, this was a fairly complicated op considering they could have stolen one of those training tablets from any number of places, including half a dozen vans scooting around Europe.”
“Was it a terminal? Maybe hooked into the Polidorium network?” Alex asked.
“Absolutely,” Armstrong said, catching the implication. The vampires could have used the computer to introduce a virus into the system, one the Polidorium had not been alerted to yet.
Alex shrugged, opening his hands. “Sooo…”
“So all this is fascinating, but we already know that they were acting on big plans,” Sangster said.
Alex pursed his lips. “Well, maybe. How do you know?”
Sangster looked over his shoulder as they made another turn, and Alex gasped. Up ahead, the sunlight struck the concrete of the road and made shadows in the trees, and then the road and the scenery around it all…ended. At once.
They were rolling toward a suspended wall of blackness, a liquid barrier that rippled over the road.
“What is that?” Alex asked.
“That is the town of Secheron,” said Sangster. “And it is dark at noon.”
CHAPTER 4
As though going through an invisible tunnel, the van pierced an inky curtain of darkness and entered nighttime on the other side. Alex felt a wave of instinctual revulsion course through his body. Within moments they rolled on to the long, cozy main street that carried traffic into the town square and beyond, and the streets were filling up with people. Alex tried to take in everyone, shopkeepers and
shoppers milling about nervously, eyeing the sky and one another, a pair of men fighting on the sidewalk outside a bar. He saw someone about to throw a chair through a window. The village of Secheron, which Alex associated with tourists, bookshops, and bars on piers at the fairly swank marina, was going insane. It looked like—
“It’s a war zone.” Sangster pulled a black hard-sided suitcase out from under his seat. He undid the buckles, the metal clasps clacking loudly. Outside, police sirens blared and darts of red and yellow light flickered through the windows.
“Whoa!” Alex said, scanning the horizon and momentarily confused. “What are those? Buildings?”
Sangster looked out. In the distance, there appeared to be flickering fires coming from cities that were near total destruction. Sangster tapped the window. “Huh.” He shook his head.
“What?” Alex asked.
“That’s due west. You know what’s there? Water. The lake. What you’re seeing is an illusion.” They appeared to be encircled by distant cities on fire. “And this illusion is surrounding us.”
“Like one of those three-hundred-and-sixty-degree movies at Disney World,” Alex said. “Amazing.”
“In as much as it’s big enough to encase this whole town, you bet it’s amazing.” Sangster sounded slightly alarmed.
“Driver, gimme the screen back here,” Armstrong called, and after a moment one of the windows darkened and filled with an image in gray and green, with splotches of orange.
“What’s that?” Alex asked. They passed a police car parked at the side of the street where a Swiss policeman was getting out, running to one of the shops.
Armstrong put a wireless mobile piece in her ear and swiped a hand over the image. “This is the village, satellite photography. The orangeish images you see are people.” She indicated the clusters of orange blobs on streets that Alex could identify by a faint blue map grid. “They’re gathering in the streets and the square; I see a lot of them at the marina. I don’t see any blues.”
The Triumph of Death Page 3
