Alex Van Helsing Voice of the Undead - By Jason Henderson Page 0,51
of mystery.”
“Vienna,” Alex said seriously. “Please.” He knew exactly what he was going to see. He wasn’t sure if the marks—fang marks, delivering the poison—would be new or old, but he knew they would be there.
The smile drained from her face. “Alex, please, I can’t. Don’t ask me.”
“Please don’t say that,” Alex said. Opening the door, he led her outside where he was able to raise his voice. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think you’re not a . . . a bad person, but I need you to do this.”
She started walking away. “Leave me alone.”
“Vienna, if you’re in some kind of trouble, I can help. I can help you.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Take off your scarf!”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Vienna was running now, and Alex chased after her. She ran across the lawn and picked up speed, and he followed. She ran until she had stopped in the woods, her back turned to him. He saw her head wobbling, as if she was crying.
Alex stopped behind her, panting for breath. “I just need to know if you’re one of them.”
“I can’t. It’s not time, maybe someday it will be time, but it’s not time.”
He came around in front of her. “Just this once.”
“Alex!” She seemed so vulnerable, and he kept his hands down.
He wasn’t about to take the scarf from her by force. “Look, I can’t make you,” Alex said. “I won’t make you. But I need you to show me. I need you to take off the scarf.”
“It’s not time.”
“I saved your life!” he said. “I thought Elle was going to kill you.”
“And what?” she said. “I owe you?”
This caught him like a slap in the face and he felt instantly ashamed. “They’re good people,” Alex said, looking down. “Sid and Paul and Minhi. I’m worried and I think this is the answer. Please.”
Vienna put her hands to her eyes. After a long moment, she sighed and reached down. In one deft flick she pulled the scarf loose. It flowed like a streamer to the earth, green and shimmering.
And then her head fell off.
Chapter 21
His first reaction was to scream, and that was something Alex Van Helsing didn’t actually do very much. He had been grabbed at in the dark by zombies and nearly eaten by giant dogs from hell, but screaming was not a part of the sequence. It was always, What’s next, what do you have? But when Vienna’s head popped off her body like the heaviest part of a china doll whose neck had gotten frayed, he actually did yelp and stagger back.
And then it kicked in, the same leveling in his blood, the same words his father had taught him when he found himself on a cliff and the branch he’d grabbed was starting to pull loose, when the rock he was on started to crumble, when he was faced with a test question he never prepared for. Breathe. That sudden rush of blood is your trigger to listen and look and breathe. The world will want you to be pulled along. You must breathe, and ask the questions.
What is happening?
The girl lay on the forest floor as though she had been knocked out, one arm underneath her and the other stretched out. As though she had simply dropped asleep.
Vienna’s head, as cleanly excised as a pat of butter, had rolled to a stop against a tree. There was zero gore. Instead, an inch below Vienna’s jaw, where the neck both began and ended, there shimmered a green field, almost like a violin bow resin.
On the body, the solid edge of Vienna’s neck was the same, neatly ending in another shimmering green field. Alex gingerly reached out and took Vienna’s wrist, feeling for a pulse.
Jiminy Cricket. The girl’s heart was beating. Okay. What is happening?
What is happening is that this is magic.
Magic. Just one more thing that wasn’t supposed to be, except now he knew that vampires used it all the time. They used it to hide the vast Scholomance under the lake, and used it to concoct worms of blood. His mother used magic, and there were others like her, apparently.
And Vienna, it appeared, used it to keep her head from rolling away from her body.
Alex reached over and delicately closed Vienna’s staring eyes. That was tough. The urge to lose it began again for a second. Think. You didn’t do this.