Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,12
The scooter didn’t have its headlights on. It wobbled across the street and Alex winced as it sideswiped a curb next to a flower shop and toppled over. It wasn’t a fatal fall.
“Blues? You think the Scholomance is behind—what exactly is this?”
“This is nothing we’ve ever seen before,” Sangster said.
“When did it happen?” Alex asked.
“About forty-five minutes ago a cloud, heavy, like a storm cloud, started gathering over Secheron near the marina. Except that it kept growing and expanding.” He gestured out the window. “It’s not just blocking the sun from above—it’s as though the whole town has been encased in nightfall. That perimeter we drove through is the edge of it.”
“It’s magical,” Alex said. “Like the entrance to the Scholomance.” The vampire organization was hidden behind various doors, which boasted similar permeable curtains. “Wait—how do you know we’ll be able to drive back out now that we’re in?”
“We don’t know anything right now,” Armstrong answered. “But we saw some cars speeding out of the city, so it doesn’t look like it’s that kind of seal.”
Alex heard the crash of glass as one of the shop windows disintegrated. He didn’t see anything that had been thrown, but then he saw someone running out with a cash register.
“Are these people crazy? Are they under some kind of spell?”
Sangster jogged his head back and forth as if he were tossing the idea around. “We can’t tell. What do you feel?”
“What?”
“What do you feel?” Sangster repeated the question, and Alex shrank back physically, feeling cornered. The strange skills he possessed were not something for which he had a rule book.
Alex opened his hands. “Why would I feel anything? I can sense vampires, but—”
“Can you sense any right now?”
“I don’t know!”
“Think,” Sangster ordered. “We know you can sense when they’re near or when there’s some sort of dark evil at work. What do you feel now?”
Alex shook his head. “Nothing specific.” He wanted to come up with more, but he couldn’t report what he didn’t understand. “I was…when we got here I felt sick, a little. Is that helpful?”
“Maybe.” Sangster tapped his own forehead. “We gotta get this thing squared away if it’s gonna be useful in the field, Alex.”
“Yeah, I’m working on that.” Alex looked at them both.
Sangster handed Armstrong an automatic weapon about the size of a briefcase.
“This looks like more than just darkness,” Alex said, indicating the running crowds. “People don’t instantly run through the streets and start attacking people because it’s dark outside. So maybe it’s something like a—”
“A gas, a nerve agent.” Armstrong looked at Sangster. “Get masks.”
Sangster pulled out three lightweight rubber masks and passed them around, and Alex copied the others as they put them over their heads. Like the agents, Alex let his lie on his forehead. He took off his school jacket and pulled on the one Sangster handed him, and felt heavy plates of composite plastic inside the lining thump against his chest. There was a patch on the shoulder that read TALIA SUNT.
“If it’s magic, though, there’s no guarantee these will stop it,” Sangster said.
“If it’s a magic fear-maker or whatever,” Alex countered, “wouldn’t we be feeling it already?”
Armstrong shook her head, pointing at the ceiling and walls of the van. “This van is a rolling fortress against that kind of thing. Silver lining in the body, hawthorn wood threaded throughout, holy water injected into a filament mesh layer. Plus a few favors we don’t discuss. We are protected.”
“So I guess just staying in the van isn’t gonna happen.”
Sangster handed him a go package to throw over his shoulders. Alex felt the whole thing over before putting it on, making sure the easy-access pockets were unsecured and filled. “Alex, we’re the first to respond. There won’t be any more agents for at least another fifteen minutes, so we need to be careful. I need you here, though. I’m hoping your skills will give us some kind of edge.”
“My skills that we don’t really know anything about.”
“No time like the present.”
They were moving through the Secheron town square now, a usually pleasant place where people were now running in every direction. Two men were fighting on top of an overturned metal café table. Alex heard more sirens and saw police vans pulling into the square. Police officers in full riot gear leapt instantly from the sides.
“I never knew Secheron had a SWAT team.”
Sangster nodded. “I see four cops in gear and I’m betting that’s all they have.”