Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,14

the woman in the blue coat, would normally have looked like a flash of white in the darkness, skin all alabaster save for sparkling eyes. But this one wore heavy black splotches of paint around his eyes and over his nose. He looked like a skeleton.

“They’re painted like skeletons.” Alex scanned the others he could see. “Why?”

“It’s odd. I don’t remember them painting that way.” Sangster’s voice on the radio had a strange detachment that only he seemed to be capable of in times like this. Sangster was filing it away in the way he was teaching Alex to do. Pay attention. That was the rule that applied over all others.

Alex heard a splash as one of the pedestrians fell off the pier into the water. There had to be a hundred people running pell-mell between the three agents and the invaders. He couldn’t get a good count of the vampires because they were still bunched up at the back where they climbed onto the pier next to the restaurant, and much of the activity there was obscured by guardrails.

Sangster ran to the end of the pier and leaned over, aiming for the ladder of white latticework that was attached. He began to shoot in rounds of three.

Alex reached the edge of the humans and faced an advancing group of vampires, all with their faces painted. “There’s too many.”

“Pick one,” Armstrong said.

Alex chose a vampire that was thirty yards away and closing in. He pulled the trigger on his Polibow and saw the bolt sizzle and smoke as it struck the vampire in the chest, missing the heart. He fired again, this bolt finding its mark, and the creature exploded.

He aimed at another target that had slowed up as he shot the first. Alex watched the vampire come close to the first and fired, and got lucky. As the first went up he caught the second and they exploded together.

Armstrong was clear of pedestrians now and let loose with rounds from her machine gun.

Then there was an all-new sound, something strange howling from the edge of the pier.

Alex and the two agents stopped, huddling together. In the distance behind them, over the din of screams, they could hear heavy engines, likely Polidorium vehicles moving down the long avenue toward the pier.

But out on the pier there was a loud, echoing, popping sound, like something solid and slightly wet smacking into place, pieces clunking together.

The sound of an engine, heavy and churning, came across the waves. Below the machine-like sound, Alex detected an undercurrent of deep growling, one powered by angry spirits and growing louder.

“Behind the restaurant!” Sangster called Alex’s attention to the activity at the far end of the pier. Alex could barely understand what he was seeing emerge from the water, but it was coming fast.

Like grasping fingers, long cords of bone-like white material scuttled out from around the restaurant in jointed, moving sticks. As vampires with skull faces continued to advance, all but ignoring the three agents gathered on the pier, Alex saw the strange bone sticks stack themselves deliberately into shape.

As they found available space on the boards, the bone sticks formed wheels the size of men, then a long, flat chassis, and finally a great coach. In front of the coach, a small set of bones flipped and rolled into place and grew into something that resembled a pair of skeletal horses.

“What the—?” Alex whispered in shock.

A new scream cut him off. A vampire emerged on the roof of the restaurant. Alex recognized the shrieking voice instantly, and as he looked up, he saw the female vampire with blazing yellow hair, her eyes and nose painted over with black. “Now!” she cried, and leapt into the driver’s seat of the coach.

“That’s Elle,” said Alex. Sangster nodded. The vampire called Elle, who looked about sixteen but was possibly hundreds of years old, was well known to the Polidorium. At least by name and reputation: They didn’t have much on her background, but Elle seemed to occupy a place of some trust in the Scholomance. She had also been a thorn in Alex’s side, assigned to keep tabs on him. Elle whipped the reins and the carriage began to move, great skeletal horse hooves clapping on the boards as they went.

The vampires now formed up around her as the carriage picked up speed.

Sangster whipped his arm over his head. “Fall back.”

They broke and ran for their van as Armstrong shouted into the radio, “Farmhouse, they’ve got a…” She