Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,76

at the graveyard in London. Ultravox told me that it takes extraordinary effort not to believe that which is of great comfort.”

Sangster shook his head. “I’m not following you.”

Alex said, “Elle was obsessed with reviving Claire. It was her personal mission to serve under the new Queen.”

“That didn’t make her the daughter, though,” Sangster countered.

“No! In fact, when she went to the graveyard, Elle was completely thrown by the missing corpse of Allegra. She screamed like crazy, but she should have been thrilled. The weapon we were looking for wasn’t there. After all, Allegra was Claire’s daughter. Claire was going to gain power over the dead on the earth; she could find the body anytime. But Elle took it personally. She needed that body to be there,” Alex said. “Because when it wasn’t, Elle realized the truth.”

“Allegra Byron,” Sangster mused. “A little girl, extremely gifted and literate, a five-year-old who wrote letters to her father, begging him to come visit at the convent where he’d stuck her, utterly forgetting her mother.”

“Allegra was dedicated to her father, and he neglected her,” Alex said. “So then she’s rescued by Dr. Polidori. Snuck out of the country. Lives a quiet seaside cottage life in Scotland, until one day, the vampires come.”

“And they turn her,” Sangster said.

“Yes,” Alex said. “At the age of sixteen, the vampires steal her away from Dr. Polidori. And who did those vampires work for?”

“Byron,” Sangster said.

“Her father, who had ignored her, now a vampire, sends his minions to kidnap her and turn her into a vampire. So much trauma. A vicious death. The empathic centers of her brain fried. After ten years of a quiet life, she’s then destroyed. I think there’s no way she could consciously accept that Byron was her father then. And it’s not like Byron took her in as a daughter. He denied her again, maybe never even saw or spoke to her. You know, if he had let her die, he might have stopped us from having a weapon against the Triumph. But of course he was too arrogant for that; he probably enjoyed denying her and keeping her alive. And she finally accepted that she was not Allegra. She had to.”

Sangster shook his head again and let out a breath.

Alex continued. “Even though she disappeared, if I ever see her again I’m gonna ask her if Byron ever even spoke to her. But anyway: She became Elle, she served the Scholomance. She built up a story she could believe, that this was her life. Killing and maiming for a greater cause. But then Byron returns to all the vampires and tells the story of the Queen. And Elle wants beyond anything else to see this Queen.”

Alex thought again of Ultravox’s words. “What was of great comfort to Elle was to forget her childhood and remember only this vampire life, this mission, her place in the Scholomance, and now her service to the Queen. And of course it’s a Queen who desperately wants to find her daughter. As tempting as it would have been to think of herself as Allegra, the truth about what happened to Allegra was too horrible to remember, even for her. And she guarded herself against the truth, the way everyone does.”

Alex was picturing the coffin flying apart in the road. “It was the coffin. Elle needed to prove that everything she’d been told was true. That there was a dead little girl named Allegra who Claire would have gone back for if she could have found her. Elle wanted to prove to herself that her most awful, buried memories could not possibly be real. That the life she had built was real. And when the coffin shattered, so did her illusions about her life.”

“But she held on,” Sangster said. “You said at the Brough of Birsay she still kept on as usual.”

“Nah, you should have seen her,” Alex said. “She was losing it. She was fighting not to accept it all.” He thought of Icemaker, lifting into the air with a snarl. “Because who would? In the end, he left again. And you know what’s worse?”

“What?”

Alex sighed. “I took her mother away again.”

Sangster said, “You can’t think of it that way.”

“Because they’re sociopaths, right? It was still a cruel thing I did.”

“I don’t accept that,” Sangster said. “It was a necessary thing. You didn’t torture anyone. You didn’t kidnap anyone. You killed a vampire to stop a terrible thing.”

“Vampirism twists and distorts. But, Sangster, we twist and distort ourselves