Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,36

a powerful sorceress could bring about. According to the spell Astrid did when she touched the painting, Bruegel was put up to painting it, paid by these black tower people. All of whom may be connected. Do you know what that means?” He rubbed his temple. Something was…something was…

He suddenly felt static. Alex looked around, then shook his head to clear it.

“Tell us,” Sangster said.

“It means that someone has been planning all along to warn us but either can’t or won’t.” He paused. “Wait.” The static was there, hissing, the burbling of the birds seeming to grow and join the sound. “Do you hear that?”

Sangster scanned the room. “Yes.”

A scuttling sound, clacking and scraping, grew in the walls themselves.

Flecks of soot began to fall in the fireplace. “Who knows we’re here?”

Armstrong stood. “We ordered the paella in.”

The static began to roar in Alex’s head and he staggered. Stop. Just listen to it. Don’t let it overwhelm you.

Astrid whispered something and then drew what looked like a shimmering green penlight from her coat. She flicked her hand and the thing telescoped, once and again, until it had grown out to the full glimmering green staff he had seen her wield before.

“What’s that?” Vienna looked up as the sound of clacking and creaking echoed through the walls. The stucco in front of the chimney was cracking, bowing out, as if something were struggling to move down inside of it.

Alex heard a ratcheting sound and saw Sangster drawing a Beretta from a go package. Armstrong had one as well and they were backing up, scanning.

A heavy sound smacked into the glass of the french doors, and Alex saw something strike and glance away. He caught the shape of a bird’s wings as it bounced and disappeared.

Bits of stucco began to crumble and fall from the chimney. Alex scrambled for the go package and grabbed a glass ball and a Polibow. He tried to feel the shape of the thing causing his brain to sizzle with static. “Sangster, I don’t know what it is, but it’s big.”

Smoke and fire burst from the fireplace. Soot exploded into the room and suddenly the whole apartment was a cloud. Alex felt more than saw Astrid step forward next to him, her staff raised.

“Everybody fan out so we don’t shoot one another,” Sangster shouted, a shadow in the plumes of soot, as high-pitched cheeping burbled and Alex saw its form slice past Sangster’s head. He hissed in pain, grabbing his forehead.

Alex barely had time to see another bird, slick and narrow and cigar-shaped, dive out and fly right for his face. He put up his hand, brushing at it. “Gyahh!”

Glass crashed as a bird bashed into a lamp, and now the sound intensified, birds and more birds, three and then six and more, pouring into the room. Something sliced past Alex’s ear and he felt a sharp sting and then blood trickling.

Alex spun and saw the creature, a gray bird that seemed to glow with streams of glistening red that enveloped it, swoop out of sight and then come back. It flew for his head, and he saw its open beak, a perversion of a tiny bird’s. It grabbed his shoulder with its claws and started lapping at the blood on his ear.

He swatted it hard and sent it smacking into an end table, losing his footing. A pair of wineglasses burst as he started to fall, and he landed hard on his elbow, glass crunching through his sleeve.

The birds were everywhere.

“Alex!” Vienna called, and he saw her legs against the wall, and she was dropping to the ground. There was a bird at her neck, tugging at her scarf. “No, no, no!”

Alex scrambled up to the table, threw the glass ball he’d been holding, and watched it sail through the cloud and hit the wall above her, glass tinkling and water spraying.

The bird at Vienna’s neck sizzled and dropped away, snarling with a roar most unbird-like as it turned in the air. Its eyes glowed red as it dove for Alex, tiny talons extended.

“Cleanse thee!” Astrid cried from out of the smoke, and her staff came flying, smacking the bird midflight. As she struck it, the thing burst into flame and flopped over Alex’s head to land on the table.

There was a crackling sound as the butcher paper caught fire.

Alex coughed. “What is this?”

“Bloodwork,” Sangster shouted. Bloodwork. That was vampire magic, altering living and dead things with enchanted blood. The most powerful could make almost anything with