Alex Van Helsing Voice of the Undead - By Jason Henderson Page 0,38

off their guard duty, hurtling through the door into Steven’s room.

Alex heard a burst of reinforced glass and they looked to see Steven’s window busted out, cheap aluminum blinds swinging in the wind.

“Come on,” Alex said. They raced for the stairs.

Less than a minute to reach the lobby, and another few seconds to the front entrance.

But they were too late. In the front bay, an ambulance was already pulling away, a plain white van that roared and sped into the distance. In its back window Alex saw Bill, staring.

“Just get back here” was all Sangster had to say on the phone as they pedaled furiously from the village. Alex could barely look at the others, until finally he burst out with, “Is this my fault?”

“What?” Minhi asked, next to him.

“I can’t—Steven was injured because of me—Minhi, the Scholomance just took the Merrill brothers. Not just Steven but both of them.”

“That was not the same as when Paul and I were taken,” Minhi said. He looked at her face and saw that she wasn’t trying to go easy on him. She shook her head defiantly. “You saw Bill. He was helping them.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because,” Sid said darkly, “he was headed that way. Don’t you think?”

“You think just because he was a jerk he was waiting for the right moment to become a vampire?” Alex spat out the words, distraught. “It can’t work that way. We all know jerks, Sid. I know how to deal with the Merrills; I have a sister just like them back home. A twin.”

Sid had no response to that.

Vienna pulled ahead of them. “All of you, stop. You don’t know them.”

“You tell us, then,” Alex said. “From what we know of the vampires, they offer a—it’s a powerful life, or afterlife. But it lacks all the things that make us what we are. Elle told us the process, whatever it is, burns out whatever empathy, whatever love you have left. So you tell us: Do you think that’s something the Merrills would sign up for?”

“Years ago I would have said no,” said Vienna. “But they’ve changed.”

Alex swore inwardly. So much to clean up; there was a dead doctor back there and they were racing away without talking to a soul.

When they reached LaLaurie, it was getting dark. Alex saw Sangster waiting on the front steps as they chained up their bikes and he immediately broke ahead of his friends. “You’ve got to do whatever you can,” he said to Sangster, approaching the steps at a trot.

“Alex—”

“We found our way into the Scholomance once before, we can step it up again,” Alex said. “There’s no way they know what they’re getting into. We can do it tonight.”

“Alex!” Sangster said again.

“What?” Alex shot back, and then he heard a second voice.

“Alex.”

Alex turned around. Waiting patiently in the foyer next to a framed LaLaurie crest were two Americans: the woman blond and trim in a cashmere wrap, the man goateed, with dark wavy hair and a midnight blue topcoat.

“Mom? Dad?”

Chapter 14

They weren’t the only parents. As Alex accompanied them to a place where they could talk in private, he noticed other adults throughout the school. It had been bound to happen. The parents were descending on LaLaurie and the Kingdom of Cots, and they wanted answers.

As he walked up the stairs Alex turned to them and said, “I’d show you my room, but—”

“No, no, apparently it burned up,” said his mother. “We were talking to your Mr. Sangster about it.”

Silence after that until Alex found a chemistry lab upstairs and shut the door. Like all such spaces it looked like a junior mad scientist’s lab, Bunsen burners and microscopes under leatherette coverlets. The room was lined with glass windows, half of which were open even in the fall, ready to vent noxious fumes. Outside, he could see the tree-lined parking lot and many rented vehicles. He dragged a couple of chairs from behind the first row of black countertops.

The three of them stared at the chairs.

“Oh, Alex,” Mom said, and then she hugged him again. She held him out, surveying him. “My God, you look gaunt.”

“He always looks gaunt,” said Dad.

“Sorry, I guess,” said Alex. He ran his fingers through his hair. Where to start? There wasn’t time for this now. “Look, I—I wish I could spend more time, but there’s an emergency.”

“I should say so,” Mom said. “Alex, what are you thinking? Your school is destroyed, you’re at an entirely new place, and you can’t see fit