Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson
Alex Van Helsing
The Triumph of Death
Jason Henderson
Dedication
For In Churl Yo, my friend
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Alex Van Helsing leapt from the plane without another thought,…
Chapter 2
Six hours later, he was back at Glenarvon-LaLaurie School on…
Chapter 3
At 11:55 on the dot, Alex’s phone buzzed on the…
Chapter 4
As though going through an invisible tunnel, the van pierced…
Chapter 5
“Everyone, get away!” Sangster waved his arms as they moved…
Chapter 6
The avenue was awash in radio chatter as Sangster and…
Chapter 7
Alex rode to Glenarvon-LaLaurie on the back of Astrid’s motorcycle,…
Chapter 8
Back in his room, Alex could barely contain his need…
Chapter 9
“I actually prefer to fly, Alex.” Armstrong turned a fresh,…
Chapter 10
The Prado Museum in Madrid, a vast, light gray palace…
Chapter 11
“They will allow us one hour with the painting,” Sangster…
Chapter 12
“At this time of day, there is nobody out.” Vienna…
Chapter 13
It was four o’clock in the morning by the time…
Chapter 14
They called it Icemaker Station.
Chapter 15
“Tell me again why the guy who uses water as…
Chapter 16
For a moment all Alex heard were voices and the…
Chapter 17
Alex awoke with a start, looking into a cloudless sky,…
Chapter 18
Alex and Astrid’s trip back to the Polidorium took no…
Chapter 19
A curious humming sound came warbling from the churchyard as…
Chapter 20
The coffin is empty. Alex ran into the street, daylight…
Chapter 21
“Alex, we’re out of time.” Director Carreras, a paunchy, middle-aged…
Chapter 22
It was a cold, gray dawn, and the helicopter bearing…
Chapter 23
The emergency hut on the Brough of Birsay was a…
Chapter 24
The Pictish stones of the Brough of Birsay stood guard…
Chapter 25
“All that is left of Allegra is this.” Alex gestured…
Chapter 26
“Wake up, hon, or you’ll miss it.”
Chapter 27
The following morning, winter came to Lake Geneva with a…
Chapter 28
Paul, Sid, and Minhi didn’t notice Alex at first when…
Back Ads
About the Author
Other Books by Jason Henderson
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1
Alex Van Helsing leapt from the plane without another thought, and in the corner of his eye he saw the black shape of the aircraft zip away, leaving him to plummet to earth or find a better option. As the ground roared toward him, Alex scanned the sky for vampires.
This was not how the end of the weekend was supposed to go. He should be doing flash cards right now. He should be trying to recognize the obscure names of monsters rather than diving after them.
“What is a stikini?” the computer voice had asked on the monitor earlier that evening. The word floated in silver on the screen, and Alex sat forward in the window seat, staring at the letters and searching his brain. Beside him in the aisle seat, a broadly built Swedish agent named Hansen crossed his arms and threw a glance to see if maybe Alex had the answer. There was no one else who might know it; they were the last two agents on the flight.
Hansen and Alex were flying back from Anzio, Italy, where Alex and several other agents of the Polidorium—a secret organization funded by the black budgets of more than a dozen nations—had been studying at what everyone called Creature School. The school’s actual name was P6 Identification Readiness Training, or PIRT, but Alex had tried using that acronym once and everyone had laughed at him. The purpose of Creature School was to familiarize the agents with the entities they might meet in the field. There were vampires out there, but those intelligent, dangerous beings were extremely varied, and Alex was only familiar with the most common kind. And of course there were plenty of other things to worry about.
Like everything else about Alex’s time in the Polidorium, Creature School felt like a dream. His mentor in the Polidorium, Agent Sangster, had come to Alex just a few days before with news that he had pulled a few strings and gotten Alex a spot.
Alex’s parents had given Sangster permission to create excuses for getting Alex out of classes at his boarding school whenever it made sense—as long as Alex kept up his grades. This time the cover story was a soup kitchen dedication ceremony in a poor village in Romania, where Alex would supposedly be representing his own family’s Van Helsing Foundation.
With time off from school procured, Alex flew out on a Friday morning from a military strip near Geneva, Switzerland, not far from his school, and by that afternoon he was walking through a secret lab hidden in the cliffs of the Italian shore.
Sangster himself hadn’t come—the agent was also Alex’s literature teacher and still had classes to teach. Besides, Sangster had already been through the training, so it