Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,47

to burble, her skin becoming translucent, and Alex saw blood flowing through her veins beneath her skin.

“I’m seeing blood.” Alex blinked. “I see your blood.”

“That’s the poison working in you.” Astrid’s eyes darted as she studied Alex. “It’s making you see as a vampire sees.”

“Get it out!” he tried to roar, but his voice was hoarse and sounded distant to himself.

“We need the blood of one who loves him,” Mother Laura said. “Even for war, we need love.”

Astrid looked at her. She shook her head. “What, me?”

Mother Laura actually smirked. “Oh, please, child, I don’t mean you.” She turned to Alex, who by now was having a hard time focusing on her, the pain in his muscles screaming, and the woman was flickering into a creature whose blood he could practically taste. “Alex,” Mother Laura said, “you are in the Orchard of Hexen. All who pass through here carry a little of it with them. And they will hear you and come if you call to them.”

Alex couldn’t make her words string together into any kind of thought at all. He arched his back and screamed.

Somewhere, someone heard him.

Alex’s eyes were flickering with pain and darkness as he saw a curtain in the air open up between two fruit trees.

He caught the silhouette of a woman in a leather coat and a floppy brown hat, pulling off a pair of long gloves with a familiar deftness.

“What is it you want me to do?” came the voice of Amanda Van Helsing, his mother, as he lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 17

Alex awoke with a start, looking into a cloudless sky, with a light breeze fluttering across a thin, green wool blanket draped over his body. He found he was able to move, and he sat up and felt the cot he was lying on sag under his body. He was still in the Orchard he had been in earlier, but the wooden table and the bureau were nowhere to be seen.

Without a watch, without a clock, without a phone, he felt thoroughly disoriented. How long had he been asleep? Hours? Days?

Alex pulled the blanket off his legs. He was wearing a pair of plain black trousers and a cream-colored shirt, and a pair of light slip-on shoes lay at the edge of the cot.

There was a full-length mirror on wooden feet next to the cot, with a small table and washbasin. As he looked in the mirror, Alex saw his neck was covered in a bandage, but as he touched it he found that the wound underneath felt superficial. For a moment he picked at the adhesive edges and began to peel it back, then thought better of it.

He scanned the clearing. “Hello?”

Alex stood up, studying the trees. He was looking deep into the Orchard, trying to find any other people, but he could see no one. He began to walk, moving past the bed and mirror and stepping between two trees.

Suddenly he was standing in a train station and nearly run over by a baggage cart. He spun around and looked at the glass-and-metal station door he’d stepped through and saw the Orchard beyond, and ripped the door back open before he even knew what he was doing.

He was back in the Orchard.

Alex put out his arms, then, feeling for some kind of balance or edge of reality. He felt dizzy and wondered if he’d been given hallucinatory pain medication.

He was injured; he remembered that. And he had been taken…here? He went back to the cot and then looked down at the unfamiliar black pants he was wearing.

“We burned your clothes,” Astrid said, and Alex suddenly turned to see her emerging from between two trees about twenty feet away. “One of the weavers had a set that she’d made for a son of one of the cooks. I hope they fit.”

“Where did you come from?” He stared at Astrid and shook his head. “I don’t understand this orchard,” he said. Then he gestured at the multicolored fruits on one of the trees. “And what’s this fruit?”

“Knowledge.” Astrid laughed. “It’s how we store knowledge.”

“Um,” he ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. How long was I asleep?”

“About a day,” she said. “It’s Thursday.”

He felt the electric jolt of the lateness of the hour. “Thursday, God, we’re losing time. Where is everyone—I thought I saw…” He wasn’t sure how pathetic this would sound. “I could swear I saw my mother.”

Astrid nodded brightly. “Yes! She’s still here. Come on, we’re having a meeting, and we