The Triumph of Death

by Jason Henderson

  “There is a flowing stream of holy water on the other side of that glass. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Byron stopped himself, floating there, and came back to the mike. “Clever,” he uttered. He slipped the straps of the mask over his head so that it rested on his nose and mouth, leaving his hands free.

  Sangster gave the mike back to Alex. Why is he letting me do this? Alex thought, not for the first time. He was always amazed that Sangster seemed eager to step out of the way.

  Alex clicked on the mike again. “We want to ask you some questions.”

  There was another click. “Why should I answer your questions?” came the ghostly water-voice.

  “Better accommodations,” Sangster muttered.

  “If you answer our questions, we might be able to move you into a better place.” Alex spoke the words calmly, but he wasn’t sure if they came across that way. He wasn’t sure if it was true, and a bald lie could be difficult to mask.

  Byron pursed his lips, swaying his head back and forth as if to say, All right. “What is it you want to know, little Van Helsing?”

  “What do you know about the Dimmer Switch?”

  Byron narrowed his eyes, studying Alex. “I’m not aware of anything called Dimmer Switch.”

  “You might know it as Obscura Notte,” Alex said helpfully.

  “Oh.” Byron clapped his hands slowly, his arms sliding in the water. The gesture made his body bob in the milky substance. “Of course.”

  “Yes?”

  “I first learned about Obscura Notte in 1935,” he said.

  Alex’s ears pricked up and he leaned forward.

  “Obscura Notte was the finest nightclub in all of Italy.” Byron laughed, creating a weird, gurgling sound in the mike.

  “Hit it,” Sangster said, and Kristatos stepped on a button near the wall. There was a coarse, sizzling sound as electricity shot through the water. Alex saw a million tiny particles of silver light up in the fluid, and Byron’s body jolted uncontrollably. He raged at the glass as the shock died down.

  Byron recovered as soon as the jolt passed, but it had made the point.

  “I’m interested in real answers,” Alex said dully. “Do you know anything about it or not?”

  “The Triumph of Death.” Byron was already composed, and when he clicked in, his gurgling voice sounded serene. “Why do you want to know?”

  Alex looked at Sangster, who whispered, “Tell him it’s a random vampire.”

  “There’s a threat,” Alex reported. “Some vampire is going to set it off. We want to know how to stop it.”

  “Old or new?” came the answer.

  “What?”

  “Is this an old vampire or a new vampire?”

  Alex thought. “We don’t know.”

  “Don’t know or won’t say?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Well, then you’re in trouble, because you need to know more.” Byron sounded amused, mocking.

  “Why?”

  “Well, after all, the spell is called the Triumph of Death. The end of light, of living, of love. Only love can conquer death.”

  Alex frowned. “Come on. You conquered death. You’re alive.”

  “We are death. There’s a difference.” Then Byron brought up his hand and a chunk of ice appeared in it, ready to shoot forward. But before it did, the ice went wild, shooting out in spirals around him. It encased his hand and he had to stop and pry the block off himself.

  Now Alex understood how surrounding the Icemaker in water would foil him. There was too much water to control. Alex threw Kristatos an appreciative glance and she smiled slightly.

  “Are you done?” Alex said into the mike. “So, go back—what do you mean, ‘Only love can conquer death’?”

  “Don’t listen to me. I’m a poet.”

  “I thought vampires don’t feel love.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “So if we know the person casting this spell, we can maybe…stop them from casting it?”

  “Well, how well do you know them?” Byron asked.

  Alex stared calmly.

  “Good lord, you’re thick,” Byron said. “Your father and I spent three days chasing one another through the sewers of Paris. Talking to you, I get the impression you’d have been looking for me in the wrong city to begin with. What I’m saying is, if you were the one casting the spell, I would be able to stop you. Do you know why?”

  “Change the subject,” Sangster interrupted.

  “You stop it by using the one whom the caster loves. So what I’m saying is that if it were you, I could absolutely stop it.”

  “Why’s that, Byron?”

  Byron put his hand flat on the glass, bringing his face forward. “Because I know you have a father who loves you. And a mother who loves you. And at least three of your four sisters love you. Don’t they, Alex? What do you think I could do to use them against you?”

  Alex found himself stepping forward, pointing at Byron. “What I think is that you’re going to stay in this bath and shrivel up like a raisin while the world turns without you, you miserable excuse for a poet.” He jabbed his finger against the glass.

  As his fingertip touched the glass Byron’s eyes flashed, and Alex almost heard the word contact.

  He felt a burst of static and something was suddenly wrong with his finger; it was hard and brittle, and he started to scream and found that the static was screaming inside him already. Byron had his palm against the glass, and Alex could see a stream, a crack, a frozen trickle that went straight through the glass and hissed in the holy water in between. Something pulled at his head, as if the blood in his head and the water in the blood were a magnet and he was diving against his will. Alex’s forehead smashed against the Plexiglas and he saw stars, blinding cold shooting through his brain. Byron had him.

  In the distance, Sangster was yelling, pounding the electricity, and through a blue haze Alex saw Byron, laughing silently in the water, a whipping tentacle of ice a foot wide forming from Byron’s hand, through cracked glass and hissing holy water, to Alex’s forehead.

  Ask the questions, Alex thought thickly, his vision a wild blur of spotted white.

  I’m freezing…glass breaking…

  What do you have?

  Nothing.

  Alex’s vision swooped wild and he was looking at the ceiling, aware that glass chunks and ice were flying. He heard popping sounds, gunfire; Sangster must be shooting. Water was rushing over him and stalks of ice were flying through the room. He heard a woman scream and saw a pair of legs fall across his body. There seemed to be tentacles of ice flying in all directions as the water came over him. He tried to move but his neck was stiff, and the water came up over his nose.

  Alex tried to blow air out of his nose, but the water came anyway and his sinuses screamed with pain. His vision snapped to for a moment, and he saw a blast of ice tear the door off its hinges, and he heard growling. He smelled burning flesh where bits of silver in the water sparked against Byron’s chest.

  Alex caught a glimpse of Astrid, swinging her green staff against Byron’s neck, and Byron turned, punching her with a column of ice that sent her into a cement wall.

  Suddenly Alex was being yanked up, and he thought Sangster and then was aware that a powerful claw had him by the chest, gripping his shirt, which was caked in ice.

  Alex saw the vampire’s fangs and felt blood gush from his neck.

  Then, all went black.

  CHAPTER 16

  For a moment all Alex heard were voices and the slush of water rushing around his ears as he lay on the floor.

  Forget Icemaker—

  Kristatos?

  Dead—

  “Alex?” He heard Sangster call his name.

  He blinked, light blazing into his eyes, and the shapes of Sangster and Astrid were washed out and filtered by light. There were red lamps flashing, and he had the delirious feeling he was in a nightclub.

  What’s happening?r />
  “You’re on the ground. Get up.”

  His hands slipped under him and he tried to grip the tiles with his fingers, and his fingers were sausages, bags of peanut butter. He saw the flickering of light as his eyes blinked rapidly, and he was unable to stop them.

  “…pressure on it!” Sangster shouted, and then he saw Astrid move over him, clamping her hand down on his throat. Something that looked black gushed toward her.

  He was being carried, then he felt himself slamming down onto something like a bed.

  “Out of the way. Where is the infirmary?” he heard Sangster call. A shadow of a scientist shouted something. There was blood on the walls, and Alex held his eyes open long enough to see a gash in the ceiling tiles, dripping with water, where something had punched clear through and kept going.

  They turned a corner and the lights kept flickering.

  “I’m sorry!” he rasped. “I’m sorry I went out!”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” came Astrid’s voice. She brought her other hand to his forehead and leaned in close. “I’m here because of you. Don’t leave.”

  Something squishy and oily crossing his forehead and dissolving under Astrid’s thumb. A flare, a burst of phosphorous. Unknown, ancient words. Then, darkness washed over him.

  In the distance he heard voices:

  Astrid’s voice. I have to take him.

  Sangster: Absolutely not—

  He has been bitten very badly. I can help him. We can help him.

  He belongs with us.

  You don’t know the first thing about who he belongs with! You have to trust me. There is no time. The poison will start to work the curse, and you know as well as I do that he will not survive it, and we will not allow this Van Helsing—this Van Helsing—to die without doing everything in our power.

  Where?

  The Orchard.

  A voice next to his ear. Alex. Hold my hand. Mother Gretel, we are coming to you.

  Darkness stayed. Within it he listened to the hissing of the oil on his forehead. He began hallucinating.

  He was falling now, the ground opening up, and he was falling down a tree, sunlight streaming through shadow leaves.

  Alex!

  Something caustic struck the air under his nose and ignited his sinuses, and his eyes shot open.

  Suddenly awake, Alex screamed in pain, trying to reach for his neck as he looked up to see Astrid. He couldn’t move his arms.

  He was outside, in an orchard of red and yellow fruit trees, below a canopy of brightly colored leaves and a cloudless sky. He was lying in a clearing on a tilted wooden table of some kind, and when he tried to move his arms again he saw that they were bound by a rope-like, shimmering green light.

  Astrid touched his arm. “It’s for your own good.”

  “Tell him not to struggle,” came an older female voice, and Alex’s eyes darted to the edge of the clearing, where a woman with white hair was searching through a brown wooden bureau that had leaves growing out of it. “Tell him it’ll only make the poison move faster.”

  Alex studied the bureau and the leaves some more and looked at Astrid. “Where am I?”

  “Alex, listen to me,” Astrid said. “You’ve been bitten very badly. Are you listening?”

  Alex blinked. “Yes.”

  “You were bitten fifteen minutes ago. We got here as fast as we could.”

  “Where’s here?” Alex tried to wrestle against the magical cords and suddenly felt achingly weak.

  “You’re in the Orchard.”

  “The Orchard?”

  Leaves whipped up and the woman who had been at the bureau now stood at his side, across from Astrid. “You’re in the home of Hexen.” The woman appeared old, at first, deep creases around her eyes and mouth, and then when her face moved, the lines seemed to smooth away. She seemed to move in a slow blur.

  Ignore that. What’s going on?

  “Icemaker bit me on the neck.” Alex’s mind raced. “Am I bleeding out?”

  Astrid shook her head. “No, no, no, you really haven’t lost too much—he missed the artery, but the poison will start working on you, and you’re as good as dead if we don’t do what we have to do.”

  “That doesn’t sound good at all.” Alex looked down, amazed at the blood that had spilled across his shirt.

  The old woman passed a hand over his shirt and the color changed, the blood smoothing away with her touch. “These details will not burden you.”

  She moved to the side and turned to another table that he hadn’t noticed before, with a silver tray lying in the center of it. Next to this was a set of small clay pots. Black powder lay in the center of the silver tray, and when she waved a hand, the powder ignited. A black tendril of smoke began to rise and fill the clearing.

  “Venus or Mars?” The woman turned to Astrid. “Love or war, which will heal him best now?”

  “I don’t know. Why would you ask me?”

  “You’re supposed to know him by now.”

  “To have protected him, is that what you mean?” Astrid shot back, her face red. “I know.”

  Alex felt something sharp race up and down the back of his neck, as though he’d been spattered with fire, and he gasped.

  Astrid was at his ear again, whispering. Mother Gretel, you protect us, Astrid said. You take away the pain. She looked back at the old woman. “The poison is moving fast, Mother Laura.” Her eyes raced. “War, it has to be.”

  The woman called Mother Laura clucked her tongue and started moving items from the buckets. “We need euphorbium, bdellium, root of hellebore…got a lodestone here, good.” She looked at Astrid. “Go get me a vial of blood of cat, would you?”

  Astrid disappeared to the bureau and shot back with a vial of dark liquid that Mother Laura threw into the silver tray. The smoke had changed now, billowing red.

  Astrid turned back to Alex. “This is called ‘suffumigation of Mars’; it will envelop you in healing mist.”

  “But it lacks the blood that we need—the blood that matters,” said Mother Laura.

  The stinging feeling in Alex’s neck was making his body shake. He was beginning to hurt more. He was having trouble following what the witches were saying.

  Alex looked at Astrid and suddenly she seemed to burble, her skin becoming translucent, and Alex saw blood flowing through her veins beneath her skin.

  “I’m seeing blood.” Alex blinked. “I see your blood.”

  “That’s the poison working in you.” Astrid’s eyes darted as she studied Alex. “It’s making you see as a vampire sees.”

  “Get it out!” he tried to roar, but his voice was hoarse and sounded distant to himself.

  “We need the blood of one who loves him,” Mother Laura said. “Even for war, we need love.”

  Astrid looked at her. She shook her head. “What, me?”

  Mother Laura actually smirked. “Oh, please, child, I don’t mean you.” She turned to Alex, who by now was having a hard time focusing on her, the pain in his muscles screaming, and the woman was flickering into a creature whose blood he could practically taste. “Alex,” Mother Laura said, “you are in the Orchard of Hexen. All who pass through here carry a little of it with them. And they will hear you and come if you call to them.”

  Alex couldn’t make her words string together into any kind of thought at all. He arched his back and screamed.

  Somewhere, someone heard him.

  Alex’s eyes were flickering with pain and darkness as he saw a curtain in the air open up between two fruit trees.

  He caught the silhouette of a woman in a leather coat and a floppy brown hat, pulling off a pair of long gloves with a familiar deftness.

  “What is it you want me to do?” came the voice of Amanda Van Helsing, his mother, as he lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER 17

  Alex awoke with a start, looking into a cloudless sky, with a light breeze fluttering across a thin, green wool blanket draped over his body. He found he was able to move, and
he sat up and felt the cot he was lying on sag under his body. He was still in the Orchard he had been in earlier, but the wooden table and the bureau were nowhere to be seen.

  Without a watch, without a clock, without a phone, he felt thoroughly disoriented. How long had he been asleep? Hours? Days?

  Alex pulled the blanket off his legs. He was wearing a pair of plain black trousers and a cream-colored shirt, and a pair of light slip-on shoes lay at the edge of the cot.

  There was a full-length mirror on wooden feet next to the cot, with a small table and washbasin. As he looked in the mirror, Alex saw his neck was covered in a bandage, but as he touched it he found that the wound underneath felt superficial. For a moment he picked at the adhesive edges and began to peel it back, then thought better of it.

  He scanned the clearing. “Hello?”

  Alex stood up, studying the trees. He was looking deep into the Orchard, trying to find any other people, but he could see no one. He began to walk, moving past the bed and mirror and stepping between two trees.

  Suddenly he was standing in a train station and nearly run over by a baggage cart. He spun around and looked at the glass-and-metal station door he’d stepped through and saw the Orchard beyond, and ripped the door back open before he even knew what he was doing.

  He was back in the Orchard.

  Alex put out his arms, then, feeling for some kind of balance or edge of reality. He felt dizzy and wondered if he’d been given hallucinatory pain medication.

  He was injured; he remembered that. And he had been taken…here? He went back to the cot and then looked down at the unfamiliar black pants he was wearing.

  “We burned your clothes,” Astrid said, and Alex suddenly turned to see her emerging from between two trees about twenty feet away. “One of the weavers had a set that she’d made for a son of one of the cooks. I hope they fit.”

  “Where did you come from?” He stared at Astrid and shook his head. “I don’t understand this orchard,” he said. Then he gestured at the multicolored fruits on one of the trees. “And what’s this fruit?”

  “Knowledge.” Astrid laughed. “It’s how we store knowledge.”

  “Um,” he ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. How long was I asleep?”