Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,15

took a moment to look at Sangster and then went ahead choosing whatever seemed to come to mind. “They’re using some kind of system of vampire magic to power a mock horse-drawn carriage. I think it’s made of bone.”

“Copy that,” came the disconnected voice.

“It might be the same bone spell that they use to reinforce the roof of the Scholomance,” Sangster mused as they ran. Alex had seen the vast latticework that stretched for miles inside the organization, creating the structure of its highest ceilings, allowing them to have a sort of cavern that encased a whole city.

“And why does this matter?” Alex asked. He wasn’t being sarcastic. If Sangster was bothering to say it, he had a reason.

“Bone work of that sort is not a specialty of the Scholomance; it would have to be brought in by someone new,” Sangster said as he ran. They reached the van and hunkered behind it and Sangster rapped on the door four times, hard and fast. “It’s very rare. Extremely dark power.”

Alex glanced around the van, parked in the cobblestone street like a sitting duck. The carriage was moving at a steady clip now, with the vampires no longer charging on their own but formed up around it. The army of skulls seemed to be jogging beside the carriage, reminding him of the parade of a circus.

The van door didn’t open. Alex looked at Sangster and ran to the front of the van.

The window of the driver’s side was tinted. “Hey!” he yelled.

A hand, red with blood, slapped against the glass, and Alex saw it, darkened and clouded behind the tinting. He made out the slumping form of the driver and shrank back as a skull-faced vampire thrust its face against the glass.

Alex shrieked even as he brought up the Polibow, pumping a bolt through the window. The window shattered and the creature exploded, fire filling the inside of the van.

Alex staggered back.

Armstrong looked at the smoke pouring out of the van window and opened her hands as if to say, What’d you have to go and do that for?

“The—there was a vampire in there.”

“How?” screamed Armstrong. “Those doors are protected.”

“We left the door cracked so we could fall back into it,” Sangster said.

“Okay, okay, new plan,” Alex said.

“We are way outnumbered,” Sangster said. The sound of the carriage and the incessant, unholy whine of its magic engine came fast with the advance of bone hooves and vampire boots. “Come on, keep moving.”

They waited a moment as the army advanced, and Alex watched Elle at the reins, whipping long tendrils of leather, a wild look in her blackened eyes.

As soon as the procession passed, the three followed. There was nothing else they could do until reinforcements arrived.

Halfway up the avenue there was a crowd of people, bunched up near cars that had run into one another and stalled.

When the carriage arrived at the throng of people, they heard the ratcheting sound again. Behind the carriage, more bone rods shot out, latching onto one another and building until it formed a sort of trailer, with white bars.

From the shelter of a shop entrance Alex asked, “What’s that?”

“It looks like a cage,” Sangster said.

The vampires moved out, this time grabbing people. A man in a leather coat screamed as one of the skull-faced vampires picked him up by the shoulders and threw him. He landed in the cage, rolling across the bumpy floor. They were gathering up captives.

No, no, this is not gonna happen.

Alex heard Sangster yell, “Wait!” but he was already moving.

The darkened street was bedlam, lit up by the glow of lampposts and the glistening bone of the carriage. Alex scanned the street as he ran. He looked up at Elle, who had stopped to yell instructions to the vampires.

Find somewhere high.

Not far from her was the second-story window of a shop, and it had a small balcony with flowerpots. At the edge of that building Alex saw a stalled car that had rammed into a drainage pipe.

Heavy static throbbed in his brain as he cut around the vampires who were grabbing people.

“Alex, get back and wait for backup!” Sangster called.

“I’m going after Elle!” Alex shouted. There was a chance that without their leader in the operation, they might slow down in confusion. It would buy the agents time. Alex leapt onto the hood of the car, which was parked under the store’s balcony, and then grabbed a drainpipe at the corner of the building, yanking at it to see if it