Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,41

need to get the answers from him.”

“Alex,” Sid said, still at the table. “I know what you’re thinking and it’s crazy. ‘Too dangerous’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

“What?” Paul and Minhi asked at the same time.

Alex looked back at Sid. “He’s the only one who will know how to deal with her.”

Minhi asked, “Who?”

“Icemaker,” said Alex. “I need to talk to Lord Byron.”

CHAPTER 14

They called it Icemaker Station.

Very near the house on the shores of Lake Geneva where he had almost ended Alex Van Helsing’s life, the immortal vampire once known as Lord Byron and code-named Icemaker waited and slept in a chunk of ice. The curse that Byron had taken on himself near the end of his mortal life, the magic that enabled him to use and freeze the liquid in the air around him, had provided a final retreat when the Polidorium had caught up with him and doused him with liquid nitrogen, one of the coldest substances on earth. Byron opted to continue the process and encase himself in a protective chunk of ice, and there he stayed.

His captors didn’t take him very far. The seven-foot-tall, four-foot-wide chunk of ice that held Lord Byron rested in silence in a liquid-helium-cooled refrigerator the size of a small house securely reinforced in a cell built just for him, half a mile below Lausanne, Switzerland. Manned twenty-four hours a day by chemists and security guards, with extra chambers and cells both under construction and ready for future prisoners, Icemaker Station occupied three city blocks’ worth of space below the Olympic Museum, an access point chosen in part for its outward serenity and its complete lack of connection to either the world of anti-vampirism or the world of ultra-low-temperature experimentation. The fact that there were five world-class high magnetic field laboratories around Lake Geneva, providing a rich source of new hires to work on Icemaker Station, was a bonus.

Within seven hours of leaving Vienna Cazorla behind, Alex was getting out of a van at the edge of Lake Geneva at the Olympic Museum, a severe white-stone building set off by a much more inviting park. As Alex ran up the granite steps in a leather jacket that did nothing to stop the leaching cold coming off the lake, he took in a whole garden of sculpture dedicated to the constant search for human physical perfection.

“Every cell in my body is telling me this is a bad idea, so pay close attention.” Sangster was rattling off instructions as they walked. “Do everything the staff tells you. If a rule sounds stupid, do it anyway. Polidorium Incarceration are the most competent jailers on the face of the earth, so respect every word they say.”

“I got it,” Alex said, freezing.

“Astrid?” Sangster said.

She nodded. “Sure.”

Fir trees and rich green shrubbery nestled against the cold and blinding-white concrete museum. Around it, Alex saw huge gray figures that held aloft the Olympic circles and cyclists arrested forever in bronze and, of course, the Olympic torch. When he beheld a gray sculpture of a pistol with its barrel twisted into uselessness by the Olympic Spirit, Alex briefly envisioned the Olympic Spirit as some shot-putting Jolly Green Giant, thundering across the countryside, throwing train cars and spitefully knotting the barrels of perfectly good gun sculptures.

This was the kind of place where, as a young man of certain expectations sent overseas, Alex was supposed to be spending his time. If he were to call his mom right now and tell her that he was visiting Le Parc Olympique, Lausanne, she would think that he had finally become the student she’d always wanted him to be. Extra points maybe if he said he was with the new girl from the Netherlands.

As Alex, Astrid, and Sangster walked swiftly through the glass doors and into the sweeping rotunda of the museum, where twenty-foot-tall wall screens ran constant loops of human victory, his heart sank.

They walked past the screens to a stairwell, to a staff elevator only Sangster could unlock.

“Here we go, then,” Sangster said, and they plunged liked stones into the secret world they had chosen.

The door of the elevator opened, and they stepped into a stark white hallway where a Polidorium security guard examined Sangster’s credentials before they could move on. Sangster was putting away the security card he carried in his wallet when they heard the approach of heavy heels smacking against tile.

All three turned around to see a tall woman with tightly curled short hair, wearing a white coat,