as I do that he will not survive it, and we will not allow this Van Helsing—this Van Helsing—to die without doing everything in our power.
Where?
The Orchard.
A voice next to his ear. Alex. Hold my hand. Mother Gretel, we are coming to you.
Darkness stayed. Within it he listened to the hissing of the oil on his forehead. He began hallucinating.
He was falling now, the ground opening up, and he was falling down a tree, sunlight streaming through shadow leaves.
Alex!
Something caustic struck the air under his nose and ignited his sinuses, and his eyes shot open.
Suddenly awake, Alex screamed in pain, trying to reach for his neck as he looked up to see Astrid. He couldn’t move his arms.
He was outside, in an orchard of red and yellow fruit trees, below a canopy of brightly colored leaves and a cloudless sky. He was lying in a clearing on a tilted wooden table of some kind, and when he tried to move his arms again he saw that they were bound by a rope-like, shimmering green light.
Astrid touched his arm. “It’s for your own good.”
“Tell him not to struggle,” came an older female voice, and Alex’s eyes darted to the edge of the clearing, where a woman with white hair was searching through a brown wooden bureau that had leaves growing out of it. “Tell him it’ll only make the poison move faster.”
Alex studied the bureau and the leaves some more and looked at Astrid. “Where am I?”
“Alex, listen to me,” Astrid said. “You’ve been bitten very badly. Are you listening?”
Alex blinked. “Yes.”
“You were bitten fifteen minutes ago. We got here as fast as we could.”
“Where’s here?” Alex tried to wrestle against the magical cords and suddenly felt achingly weak.
“You’re in the Orchard.”
“The Orchard?”
Leaves whipped up and the woman who had been at the bureau now stood at his side, across from Astrid. “You’re in the home of Hexen.” The woman appeared old, at first, deep creases around her eyes and mouth, and then when her face moved, the lines seemed to smooth away. She seemed to move in a slow blur.
Ignore that. What’s going on?
“Icemaker bit me on the neck.” Alex’s mind raced. “Am I bleeding out?”
Astrid shook her head. “No, no, no, you really haven’t lost too much—he missed the artery, but the poison will start working on you, and you’re as good as dead if we don’t do what we have to do.”
“That doesn’t sound good at all.” Alex looked down, amazed at the blood that had spilled across his shirt.
The old woman passed a hand over his shirt and the color changed, the blood smoothing away with her touch. “These details will not burden you.”
She moved to the side and turned to another table that he hadn’t noticed before, with a silver tray lying in the center of it. Next to this was a set of small clay pots. Black powder lay in the center of the silver tray, and when she waved a hand, the powder ignited. A black tendril of smoke began to rise and fill the clearing.
“Venus or Mars?” The woman turned to Astrid. “Love or war, which will heal him best now?”
“I don’t know. Why would you ask me?”
“You’re supposed to know him by now.”
“To have protected him, is that what you mean?” Astrid shot back, her face red. “I know.”
Alex felt something sharp race up and down the back of his neck, as though he’d been spattered with fire, and he gasped.
Astrid was at his ear again, whispering. Mother Gretel, you protect us, Astrid said. You take away the pain. She looked back at the old woman. “The poison is moving fast, Mother Laura.” Her eyes raced. “War, it has to be.”
The woman called Mother Laura clucked her tongue and started moving items from the buckets. “We need euphorbium, bdellium, root of hellebore…got a lodestone here, good.” She looked at Astrid. “Go get me a vial of blood of cat, would you?”
Astrid disappeared to the bureau and shot back with a vial of dark liquid that Mother Laura threw into the silver tray. The smoke had changed now, billowing red.
Astrid turned back to Alex. “This is called ‘suffumigation of Mars’; it will envelop you in healing mist.”
“But it lacks the blood that we need—the blood that matters,” said Mother Laura.
The stinging feeling in Alex’s neck was making his body shake. He was beginning to hurt more. He was having trouble following what the witches were saying.
Alex looked at Astrid and suddenly she seemed