Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,56

projection of cities on fire.

“It’s not real.” Alex crouched and talked to her the way he did his littlest sister. He swept his arm across the vista in the distance. “It’s like a TV image on a cloud. When you get to the bottom of the hill, you’ll walk right through it.”

A voice called, “There!” and Alex quickly stood up.

The strange creature’s legs stopped churning, and Alex saw it look up in confusion. Amazing. He could see blood underneath its skin, pumping through it like hydraulic fluid as it stared up at the vampire standing on Allegra Byron’s grave marker. It was a male vampire, solidly built with brown hair, his face painted like one of the Queen’s minions of death.

“You go after the vamp,” Alex told Astrid. “I’ll take the leg-churning thing.”

“Don’t stop!” The vampire pointed down at the ground as he yelled at the creature, whose bug-like eyes blinked. “That’s the coffin; just make sure you don’t tear it up.”

The creature nodded and the legs began to churn once more. Alex had already started running for it.

The creature had broad, humped shoulders and spindly arms, and Alex fired a bolt at it as he got within ten feet. The bolt caught the creature in the shoulder and stuck for a second, hissing before dropping off. It had thick armor all around, probably some kind of augmented, hardened blood, cast with magic in the Scholomance.

Alex leapt on the thing’s shoulders and dirt began immediately smacking him in the face. Down below, through the churning legs and soil, Alex could see dark wood, the sturdy edges of the child’s coffin.

The creature swiped at him with arms that reminded Alex of the near-useless claws on the sides of a Tyrannosaurus rex. He batted them away, holding on to the creature’s head, bringing a glass ball out of his go package and smashing it sideways into the holes that he judged to be ears.

The creature howled as holy water gushed through its ear canals, and it stopped digging, whipping its head. Smoke was hissing out of the wound tracks, and Alex saw its teeth, which parted to let a long tongue dart out. The tongue extended and smacked at his chin and Alex grimaced against waves of static. He grabbed the tongue, felt it pulsing in his fingers. Then he jumped off the creature’s shoulders, and the creature staggered sideways, crawling out of the hole in pain.

It was on him, then, swiping with its claws at Alex’s sides as Alex held the tongue and pumped a bolt into the creature’s mouth. He caught it on the cheek. He needed to hit the soft palate of the top of its mouth, to drive a bolt up into its brain.

He saw a flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye as Astrid’s staff spun and she landed on a vampire, sending him back against the wall.

On the ground outside the grave now, the creature no longer had to fight with its tiny forearms, and Alex saw the hind legs begin to churn the earth around him. One of the huge hind claws caught the edge of his jacket, sending shreds of cloth flying. Alex kicked at the legs and yelped in pain as the hind claw whacked his leg to the side. Forget its legs.

In his peripheral vision, Astrid had the vampire pinned with her staff, and the vampire grabbed Astrid by the front of her jacket and whipped her up, smashing the witch against the wall above him. The vamp dropped around, rising and swiping his long nails at Astrid’s neck. Astrid parried the blow. All this in a moment when Alex was bringing his Polibow up again.

Astrid and the vampire were still going at it around the grave when Alex heard a new sound—horses and wheels coming fast.

The creature’s mouth was snapping and Alex breathed, aiming his weapon for one of the huge eyes. He felt one of the foreclaws dig into his jacket, scratching at his chest, and Alex quickly pumped a bolt into the creature’s eye.

The bolt drove home, deep into the creature’s eye socket and into the brain. The creature began to shake, and Alex brought the Polibow down, point-blank at its chest. He fired, sending a bolt into the heart.

In the explosion of dust and ash, Alex felt the heat soften the fibers in his own jacket and melt part of the bandage around his neck. He closed his eyes during the flash lest it melt