Alex Van Helsing Voice of the Undead - By Jason Henderson Page 0,9

“Does all this have to do with the thing you haven’t told Dad?” Alex winced at her straightforwardness. Ronnie never minced words.

What she meant was this: When Alex had arrived at Glenarvon Academy on Lake Geneva, he had learned a number of things he had not known before.

First, whereas Alex believed he had been going insane at Frayling Prep in the United States where he had gotten involved in a fight that left the other boy seriously injured, at Lake Geneva he had learned that he wasn’t going crazy at all. Instead, he was beginning to be visited by a sense for evil, a static that grew and warned him of supernatural danger. The boy he’d fought had turned out to be particularly, supernaturally, dangerous.

Second, following the trail of this static had led Alex to discover that his father, a rather boring but renowned philanthropist and university lecturer on history and mythology, had fudged the truth during Alex’s entire childhood. He had always insisted that the supernatural—vampires, zombies, the whole B-movie greatest-hits scene—were not real, were “not how things happened.” Fudged as in lied. There were such things, and in Geneva, they had sought Alex out.

Third, his father should have definitely known better, because Dr. Van Helsing had actually been an agent for the organization that now called Alex one of its off-the-books fellows: the Polidorium. Apparently Dad had not known his old colleagues—and old enemies—were at Lake Geneva. But the memory of the vampires ran deep, and they had a special hatred—and a strange modicum of respect—for Alex’s family.

Alex hadn’t told his father about any of this. In the month since he’d made these discoveries, he had found a certain sense of belonging and peace in his new role. The Polidorium blanched at his youth but were training him because they seemed to believe his latent skill for finding and fighting the vampires could be a benefit to them, and therefore to their clients, which apparently extended to every government on the planet.

But he had told Ronnie.

“I think it’s connected,” Alex said now, and he looked around to make sure no one was listening. No one was—an evacuation after a fire had a way of putting everyone in an overexcited but unfocused state. As Alex ran his eyes up and down the bus—and out the window at the bus next to them—he saw dullness and confusion. He could have walked up and down the aisle stealing everyone’s wallets and he doubted anyone would notice.

“People are going to know it started by my room,” he said. Whispering, Alex gave Ronnie a brief run-down of the whole business of the evening. “I don’t know what the school is going to do, but I’m gonna try to ride it out. I really need to stay.”

“Ride it out?” Ronnie asked. “Okay. So you’re going to tell Dad that you burned down your school, but assuming you don’t get kicked out, ‘don’t worry about it because I like Switzerland so much’?”

He chuckled. “How did you so perfectly predict my line of argument?”

“We all live sprawled across one another,” Ronnie grumbled. “Even in a house this big, even across the Atlantic.” She seemed to consider the chessboard that lay before Alex. “It will work for now, but you have to cut them in soon.”

“Why would you say that?”

“The best time to tell the truth is always soon,” Ronnie said.

“Okay,” Alex answered, looking out the window again. “Anyway. We’re off to—” Alex looked at Paul, who was talking to Sid, and raised his voice. “Where are we going?”

“Village Hall,” Paul said.

Alex nodded and spoke to Ronnie. “Uh, Village Hall. In a place nearby called Secheron. I heard them saying we have to sit there while Otranto figures out where we can go for a few days. Or weeks. I don’t know,” he said again.

The only place that could hold them was the main room of the Secheron Village Hall, which would suffice for a few hours. The hall was big enough to hold two thousand citizens, with long rows of tables and metal chairs. The students filed in according to their houses and classes, and the administrators went about the business of keeping them occupied, with drinks and snacks being prepared in an industrial kitchen in the building.

While Otranto conferred with several of the other instructors, Sangster tapped Alex to go with him to pick up extra supplies from one of the few late-night grocery stores in town—an American-style superstore of the kind that was slowly