Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,58
was an intersection up ahead, which was in darkness as well, cars suddenly coming into it without lights and swerving. But where were they going?
Alex grabbed the back of the carriage seat, next to Elle, who looked at him and laughed, snapping the reins as they crushed a bicycle, its rider abandoning it as they came near. The skeletal horse clopped over the rear bumper of a small French car and the car swerved off the road, colliding with a mailbox.
“Where are you going?” Alex demanded, holding his stake to the point on Elle’s neck just below her ear. She deftly grabbed his wrist and yanked him halfway over the seat.
“What do you care?” He was reading her lips more than hearing her over the cacophony. “You have two days, Alex, before this is what the world looks like.”
Beyond the intersection, Alex saw the running water of the Thames, about a hundred yards of it within the dark bubble.
“You can’t go to the river,” Alex said. “You can’t cross running water.”
“Why don’t you leave the logistics to the professionals?” Elle grabbed his ear and tried to smash Alex against the seat. He struggled to twist free.
Something flashed on the dashboard, and Alex saw what looked like a radar screen, where a large red dot was coming in fast from the right up ahead. Alex heard a long, bellowing horn.
Elle picked up speed, within an eighth of a mile from the intersection. Alex grabbed Elle by the shoulders, reaching his arm around her body, bringing the stake to her neck. “If you’re this afraid that we’re going to get Allegra’s DNA then you must really be worried about us,” he said.
“We’re taking what’s ours.”
Right then, Alex made a decision. The red dot on the screen and the sounding horn were probably someone Elle was planning to meet. He could keep trading blows with her until they reached whatever reinforcements were flying down the road up ahead, or he could change the game.
“No, you’re not.” Alex dropped back and looked at the coffin. Screw it. They could grab what they needed after.
The horn sounded again, and Alex looked over his shoulder to see an enormous red vehicle like an armored personnel carrier plunge into the intersection, bashing cars out of the way as it slowed.
He looked back at the tiny coffin, all four feet of it, plain and wooden and ancient. “Bye, Elle,” he said, and put his fingers under the box’s end. With one solid heave, he lifted it and kicked.
The coffin of Allegra Byron tumbled like a bowling pin off the end of the trailer.
Alex felt something heavy collide with his shoulders, Elle’s claws grabbing him as she tossed him aside. She was screaming in rage.
The carriage was still moving, out of control and heading into the intersection, as Elle left her seat and pushed past him, reaching out to the wooden casket.
The casket hit the ground and began to roll and shatter, wood splintering. There was no time now. He had to get off and gather it. He looked for a soft landing, found a pickup truck traveling next to them, the driver staring in wonder, and leapt.
Alex hit the metal bed of the pickup truck and felt the driver brake instantly. Alex quickly tucked his shoulders and rolled into the front of the pickup bed. He got to his feet, looking out onto the road and wincing as the coffin continued to pinwheel, its top flying off and its sides exploding. Pieces of it smashed into an oncoming car.
Alex dropped out of the truck to the side of the road, wincing in guilt as he prepared for the grand finale of a tiny mummified body flying through someone’s windshield.
But that didn’t happen at all. The coffin of Lord Byron’s daughter burst open like an old tomato and spat out a flurry of paper, straw, fluttering yellow ribbons, and cobblestones.
Alex got out of the way of another vehicle and stood on the curb in shock, looking back to see Elle, who dropped to her knees in her wild carriage, arms outstretched toward the coffin, her black-painted eyes wide with rage.
The carriage swept into the intersection and smashed into the enormous red vehicle, and the last Alex saw of Elle, her body was catapulted through the air into the open side of the personnel carrier as it zoomed past. She disappeared into it completely, leaving the bones of her horse.
The carrier sped away, and Alex could still hear her screaming