Alex Van Helsing Voice of the Undead - By Jason Henderson Page 0,4

Helsing was not used to being surprised.

No time for that now—he’d come this far and wasn’t about to get busted yet. Dusty, jittery, and still ink-stained on the neck, he locked the bike at the rack and headed into the shadows of the hulking, forbidding castle that was Glenarvon’s main house, Aubrey House, where he shared a room on the third floor. He hustled through the side entrance and bounded up the dim stairs, taking the steps two at a time.

As he came out the door into the third-floor hallway, Alex heard voices coming from the lounge and hesitated before moving past the door. He saw a room full of boys, all classes, gathered on couches and dragged-in extra chairs. Javi Arroyo, a senior and the RA for Aubrey House, had his back to the door as he fiddled with the DVD player next to the giant TV in the lounge.

“So I know everyone was hoping for Doctor Zhivago,” Arroyo was saying as he plugged in an A/V wire, “but all we have is this thing about guys in metal suits.” Arroyo turned around, holding up a copy of Iron Man 2. The crowd let it be known that they were duly appreciative not to be watching a three-hour movie about the Russian Revolution.

Alex hovered by the door until he saw Sid and Paul. Paul had commandeered a couch with Sid and had a giant bowl of popcorn. He was wearing a sweatsuit and sneakers, while Sid was still in his school uniform, his tie loosened. Alex remembered that Sid had been doing Academic Decathlon that afternoon. He caught their eyes and Sid made a gesture with open hands that somehow perfectly conveyed that Alex was cutting it a little close.

“Unfortunately it’s dubbed in French,” Javi said loudly, and the group groaned. Europe—you take what you can get.

Alex shrugged at his roommates and felt the jitteriness wearing off. He moved past the door and down the hall to his room. There, Alex threw his jacket and shirt on his bed and splashed at the sink in the tiny, white-plaster bathroom, scrubbing away at the ink on his neck. The room filled with steam from the hot water.

The vampires had tried to kill him. He’d lost his radio; he needed to call Sangster and do a debrief or an after-action or whatever the heck they would call it. He needed to talk.

A slight movement caught Alex’s eye in the mirror, barely visible through the fog on the glass. Alex turned off the water and swiped at the condensation. He saw the silver gray of his jacket glinting in the dim light. Nothing. Satisfied with the now-nearly-invisible ink stain, he yanked a towel off the rack and patted his neck.

His jacket moved.

Alex turned, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, brushing his head against a baseball cap of Sid’s that hung from the upper bunk next to the bathroom door. Across slick, tan-colored floor tiles strewn with the shoes, underwear, socks, wadded-up jeans, and sundry detritus of three fourteen-year-old boys stood Alex’s bunk. And on it, his jacket sleeve was moving.

Worms.

Elle had thrown those things on him and he thought he had gotten them all, but now he realized one of the critters must have made it into his jacket somehow. He padded in bare feet across the room, grabbed a hockey stick from under the bookshelf next to the window, and turned to face the jacket.

Alex reached out with the hockey stick and touched the jacket sleeve. He saw it creep on the bed, wrinkling and bowing a bit. Alex put the stick against the collar of the jacket and dragged it onto the tiles.

The sleeve danced and wriggled. The bulb in the center where the creature lay began to move faster. Alex looked around to see if there was anything better he could use, past Sid’s model kits and stacks of books. He could look through the go package, which lay on the floor.

No, that was ridiculous. He’d seen these things. They were worms. Be a man, for Pete’s sake.

The sleeve danced again and Alex smacked it hard with the hockey stick. Whunk. The bulge in the jacket seemed to undulate and for a moment lay still. He whacked it again.

“That’s more like it,” Alex said.

The sleeve split and bloomed like a rose, cotton flying as the worm shot into the air. Alex was barely able to follow it as it zinged, spinning. It didn’t look like a worm anymore: