Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,4
he didn’t drop the steward.
“No, no.” The vampire shook his head. His hair was sizzling, his flesh seeming to boil for a moment. He stuck a claw to the steward’s neck, a long thumbnail digging in just below the crook of the thin man’s jaw. The steward’s eyes widened with terror behind his glasses. “We regret that there has been some turbulence, but if you’ll just comply with the requests of the flight personnel you should soon be on your way.” The pilot had an accent. Central American, Alex guessed, so that all his yous and yours came out ju and jorr.
Alex’s static was roaring in his mind, and he realized the other vampire in the cockpit could be on him in a second, so he slammed back against the wall, his hand on the go package. He could reach for the Polibow. Could he hit the vampire and not the steward? Would the bolt hit faster than the vampire could move out of the way, or tear out the steward’s throat?
“What do you want?” Alex asked.
“That’s the spirit,” the vampire said, flicking his head toward the computer in the bulkhead. “I need you to remove that tablet computer.”
Alex moved a few inches along the wall until he was across from his seat and the bulkhead, so he could see the screen. It was still displaying the spinning image of the stikini.
The computer was a Polidorium tablet set into a wall cradle; it would pop in and out as needed. Except that Alex had no idea how to pop the tablet out.
“It’s a terminal, a practice computer. It doesn’t have anything on it,” Alex said.
“Are you planning on just making things up or are you going to remove it for me?” the vampire growled, drawing a speck of blood from the steward’s neck.
Alex had no idea what was on the computer. As far as he was concerned it contained nothing but the training program. But it didn’t matter now anyway.
“Okay.” He edged toward the computer and stared at it.
“Hurry!” hissed the vampire.
“Okay!”
Alex studied the screen, which was embedded in a plastic frame in the bulkhead. He saw no obvious levers or buttons for dislodging it. “I may need a knife.”
“You will not need a knife, I know that much,” the vampire answered.
“If you know so much, why don’t you get it?”
“Please!” the steward cried.
“Okay,” Alex snapped. He tapped at the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. The words END SESSION? appeared. YES NO.
Yes.
“Ticktock!”
The steward howled again as the vampire dragged him forward so that Alex could see the thin trickle of blood trailing down his neck.
Alex turned back to the screen. The smell of bananas suddenly came to his nose, drifting strangely in and away. A bizarre, momentary olfactory hallucination. Stress and hunger. Alex shook his head to refocus.
A menu system appeared before him below the Polidorium logo.
He saw a button. EJECT DEVICE.
Alex tapped the button and the device popped forward and out, the ten-inch Plexiglas tablet going dark as it came away from its cradle in the wall. He caught it and stood, turning to the vampire and the steward.
The steward looked glassy-eyed and afraid.
The banana smell came to Alex again.
“Give it here!” the vampire demanded, holding out his free hand. “Bjurman! We can go!”
The second vampire emerged instantly from the cockpit.
Alex felt his eyes tracking the trickle of the steward’s blood. It was blackish and strange, and the smell of bananas was stronger.
Alex still held the device and looked at the steward. “So where are you from?”
“Please…”
They were wearing pilots’ uniforms. Alex had seen the pilots when he’d boarded, and though he hadn’t gotten a good look at them, they hadn’t been vampires then. So they had stolen the uniforms and taken the pilots’ places during the layover. But they needed someone to hold hostage aboard a plane of agents. Even a steward couldn’t be trusted to be compliant.
“What’s your name?” Alex asked the steward.
“Give me the device!” ordered the pilot.
“I…,” said the steward.
Bananas. That meant something. Then he thought, Filipino. A Filipino illusion, and a very unusual one.
“What’s two plus two?”
“Please…”
“You can’t do math, can you? Just a couple lines of dialogue, that’s all you can handle.” Alex drew the Polibow from his belt and pointed it at all of them, backing toward the bulkhead. “Get back in the cockpit and fly the plane.”
“Hand it over,” said the vampire, “or this man dies.”
“I don’t think so.” Alex fired the Polibow.
The Aswang vampires of the Philippines could replace people