Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,60

and turned back. “What?”

“Well, like I said, the coffin was empty. But I got a letter here that fell out of it. No DNA, but we got the ribbons and stones that weighed it all down, and we got a letter.” He waved it idiotically, standing next to the open van door as the engine idled. “It’s from Polidori.”

“So open it,” Astrid said.

Alex looked at Sangster. “Maybe we should take it to the lab first.”

Sangster shook his head. “What does it say?”

Alex tore into the old paper, feeling it splinter in his hands.

There was a battered and stained sheet of paper within. He sighed at the few words written there. “The coarsest sensations of men.” Alex paused, then shook his head. “Everybody get that? No body, but we got ‘the coarsest sensations of men.’ Why? Because nothing can ever be easy.”

Sangster turned around and ran his hands along the roof of the van, as if answers would be found in the steel. “The coarsest sensations…?”

“The coarsest sensations of men.”

“Right,” Sangster said, pressing his forehead against the van.

“It sounds like a pirate thing.”

Sangster swore and smacked the van with his fist.

“What?” Alex said.

“It’s a line from Frankenstein.”

CHAPTER 21

“Alex, we’re out of time.” Director Carreras, a paunchy, middle-aged man with a Spanish name and a British accent, spoke the words flatly, as if to end an argument they had barely begun.

Alex realized the moment he, Sangster, and Astrid slunk into the Polidorium headquarters below the woods surrounding Lake Geneva that the game was considered over. There were twice as many agents as usual in the halls, and when Sangster had driven their van in from the airstrip, they had been slowed by heavy traffic moving down through the tunnels. There were rocket launchers being prepared. He saw agents practicing formations and assaults in fake urban landscapes in the far corners of the cavern.

And then Sangster had been texted and ordered immediately to a briefing room, and Alex and Astrid were sent to see the principal. Or in this case, the director. Armstrong was with him, a pair of crutches leaning against the wall behind her. She looked sour.

“What do you mean, ‘out of time’?” Alex said. “We have two more days. Two days to make a weapon that can stop the Queen.”

“With what? The DNA is gone,” Carreras said. “The one shot was to find DNA from Claire and Byron’s daughter, and we’ve missed it.”

“Well, don’t you think that’s a little strange?” Alex said. He waved the envelope. “This is a letter. From Polidori, from your founder. It’s a clue. Sangster said it has something to do with Frankenstein.”

Carreras sighed. He had been the one to give Sangster permission to bring Alex into the Polidorium in the first place. He even seemed to know Alex’s dad, and Alex was aware that he truly owed every part of his adventures with the group to him. But the director had run out of patience. “A clue, if it’s real, left nearly two hundred years ago. Agent Van Helsing, we have preparations to make. We’ve run out of time to chase a cure. I’ve already assigned Agent Sangster to more pressing matters. This mission is done.”

“Sir, Astrid and I are still on the search.”

“That is not the plan.”

“So what—” He looked around the boardroom at Armstrong, then at Astrid, who sat silently. “What is your plan?”

Carreras tapped a keyboard and brought up a map onscreen—Europe, then it toggled and unfolded to show the western hemisphere. Little gray lights blinked all across the map. “We have to prepare for the next phase.”

“Next phase?” That didn’t sound good.

“Everyone has a job, Alex,” Carreras said. “Agent Sangster is assigned to France, where the Polidorium will rally with the French secret police. All of the high-ranking agents are being field-promoted to Special Agents in Charge and are now receiving their orders. Transports are leaving on the hour. These gray lights you see? Those are Polidorium stations. In ten minutes I have a conference call with the defense authorities of every nation. U.N. peacekeeping forces are being shifted and reassigned.”

Alex looked at the map. Switzerland. France. Germany. The U.K. The U.S. Russia. He shook his head. “This is giving up.”

Carreras looked at Alex. “No. This is defense. The Scholomance is not negotiating, Alex. They’re not asking for a ransom. They’re going to plunge the world into darkness, and we have to be ready for a new…normal.”

“And what is the new normal?”

“There will be armies of vampires in the streets,” Armstrong