Alex Van Helsing (3 page)

Alex rolled out of his bed, his arms and legs coiled and tense as he stared with blurry, nearly useless vision at the window. The shape that hung there was whitish, ghostly, and seemed to be swaying with its own weight, its arms splayed out like a spider. But more than this, it was upside down.

Alex grabbed his glasses, which he kept just under his bed next to his shoes. As he brought them to his face he saw the shape more clearly—a hood hanging down, arms holding tight to the edges of the window.

He could see her eyes. It was the girl from the woods. No, that wasn’t possible. Another one, this one with yellow hair. She was watching him.

Alex glanced at Merrill & Merrill, who were still sleeping. He bolted for the door.

Barefoot, Alex ran rapidly down the hall, following instinct to find his way to a staircase that led up six or seven steps to a door outside. He knew that the moment he opened the door he would be breaking all kinds of rules.

So be it.

Alex threw the door open into the night, his own breath visible as cold air struck him. He stepped out onto a kind of battlements, a long walkway with a high stone side that circled the roof of the building.

Across the grounds, the moon shimmered on the surface of the lake. Alex had gotten lucky about one thing in his housing assignment—his house, Aubrey House, had a great view.

He hurried back along the battlements as fast as he could, the stones leeching warmth from his bare feet. He reached the edge of the battlements and leaned over, peering toward the sheer wall where his own window stood.

She was still there. She hung like a lizard, upside down, scuttling slowly from window to window. He watched as her bone white fingers found purchase between stones and on the edges of metal windowsills. She was staring
through each window, cocking her head, which caused her hood to sway back and forth. If she had breathed, she would be leaving patches of fog on the glass. There was something crablike about the way she clung to the wall and moved jerkily along the stones. The static in Alex’s mind was vibrating feverishly.

Just then, Alex scuffed his foot against a stone on the roof and gasped before he could stop himself. Suddenly the upside-down creature moved like nothing he had ever seen.

She flipped over, scuttling along the wall, her head whipping around, and he watched her white eyes sweep directly toward him.

She opened her mouth—
fangs
again, like the one in the woods—and hissed angrily. Then before he had a chance to blink, she leapt for him.

Alex reared back as she hit the top of the battlements, her leg muscles coiling under tight leggings. Her claw-like hands grabbed him by the throat and her white hood fell back, revealing spiky yellow hair and a youthful face. Her mouth was open wide, fangs bared in front of a grayish, bloodless tongue. She lifted him off the stones and smacked him against the battlements.

Do something.
That was what he had learned in his self-defense classes.
Move. Never freeze. Answer the
questions. What’s going on? She’s choking me. What do you have? I have nothing.

What do you have?

I have myself.

Alex brought the palm of his hand up and smacked hard against her neck, right under her jaw. She lost her grip for a second and he twisted against the battlements, bringing his hands together and whipping them against her side.

She growled in anger and spun him around, and Alex put his hands on her shoulder blades, pushing. She was impossibly strong. His fingers latched on to her white tunic and dug in, and then she brought up her legs and kicked him.

The force hit Alex in the chest like a train, and he felt himself flying through the air.

Alex’s hands went up to his glasses as he landed on the long, clay tiles of the roof, high above the battlements.

The roof was steep but not impossible. Alex found a foothold exactly as he would have done on a rock face in Wyoming, and waited. Below, she was a bobcat now, and she wanted him for dinner.

Alex scanned the roof. He got up and started running for the highest point, where he saw a weather vane clattering in the wind and lit by moonlight against the clouds.

The creature—all right, the
vampire
, one of those things that
do not happen
, according to his father—hit the roof and started bounding toward him. Alex looked down, running his fingers along the roof tiles. They were heavy and solid, about two feet long and made of red clay. He reached for the edge of one tile and yanked it, feeling the tar adhesive stick. It wouldn’t come loose. She was coming fast.

Alex yanked again and the tile came free as she leapt. He slashed out with it, smacking her across the side of the head. The tile was heavy and rough on the edges, and pain shot through his hands as it ground into his fingers.

Still holding the tile, Alex ran for the weather vane as the vampire rolled down the side of the roof, howling in anger. He hit the vane, hanging on to the wooden housing where the iron device was bolted into the roof. There was nowhere else to go.

Down the roof the creature righted herself and began bounding again. Alex dropped the tile and began yanking on the weather vane back and forth, grabbing one arm of the vane right next to the
N
.

He pulled with all his weight, bracing himself with his feet. The vane tore free, wood and bolts flying, but as it came loose he lost his balance and began to fall.

He was sliding down the tiles. He looked to the side
and saw her coming fast.

All right. He had done this before at Jackson Hole, sliding backward on his shoulders, out of control.
What do you do?

Alex yanked his shoulders forward and to the side and spun, painfully digging his heels and the weather vane into the tiles until he scraped to a stop. His bare feet sang with pain.

Then she was on him. The vampire growled and Alex whipped the weather vane over, smashing hard against her shoulder and neck.

This time she was hurt—the creature yelped and fell back.

Alex watched her crouch there for a moment, black blood streaming where he’d slashed her.

She spat, “You do this a lot?”

Then she snarled, coiled her legs, and leapt away. After a bound or two down the roof, she disappeared into the night, headed for darkness.

Alex was breathing hard, near hyperventilating.

What. Is going. On.

After a few minutes he started to move again, gingerly making his way down the roof until he found a low spot where he could drop down to the battlements. It was only when he felt the cold of the stones that he
remembered he was still barefoot. His feet were filthy and covered in minor cuts, but all told he was fine.

For now.

He paused for a moment, listening. Could it be possible that the ruckus hadn’t been heard through the thickness of the roof? But even after a few moments, no one appeared, no alarms sounded. Alex rested on the battlements, staring out at the lake.

What was he supposed to do? Who was he supposed to tell about this? Mrs. Hostache? That would surely go well. His father?

His father would think he was insane, that Alex had started building an elaborate fantasy life based on his own name. Wasn’t that why he’d been sent away?
Was
he losing it?

No, no. He wasn’t insane. He couldn’t be.

He should get back inside, but for now he rested, his breath still ragged. Walking slowly along the battlements, he felt like a sentry—a sentry against invading armies and an apparently unlimited supply of hood-wearing tiger women.

Down below, he heard a garage door open.

Off to the left came the creak of wood and metal, very slowly, as if whoever was moving didn’t want to be heard. Alex couldn’t see the garage door, but he knew where
it was, had seen it on the day he moved in. Presently he spied a figure emerging from the darkness, moving through the trees. It was a man, tall and clad in black, headed for a narrow, little-used gate in the stone wall that surrounded the school. A stray beam of light from a lamp on the grounds flashed briefly across him, and Alex recognized the man instantly. It was Mr. Sangster.

As the teacher approached the gate, Alex realized someone else was standing in the darkness on the other side. He strained to hear, moving along the battlements until he was directly over the garage and across from Mr. Sangster. Alex dared to lean over the stone.

Twenty yards away he heard Sangster say something: “What have you got for me?”

“It’s Icemaker,” came a second voice, female. The dark silhouette through the gate was a woman. Then Alex made out a second word: “Byron.”

Byron?
What in the world?

Alex tried to lean forward some more, straining to hear. “Icemaker,” he heard again.

He caught snatches and it was impossible to make sense of it:

The woman was talking. “We think…the
Wayfarer
.”

“…sure?”

“Have you…entrance of the Scholomance?”

“Not yet,” Mr. Sangster said. Alex tried to remember the key words.
Wayfarer
.
Skolomanse?

“…Step it up,” said the woman. “…catastrophe…. In Parma.”

Parma. That was a city in Italy. Alex had been there with his family.

She went on but most of it remained lost in the distance. “…hasn’t come out of hiding in years.”

Alex heard Sangster’s response clearly. “He’s up to something. And he’s coming here.”

Alex felt a piece of the rock under his elbow give and fall, skittering like gravel down the wall. Sangster looked up sharply and Alex dived. He crouched low and hurried for the entrance back into the hallway. Within seconds, he was in the quaint surroundings of the house.

All the way back to his room, Alex rewound what he had heard below.

Icemaker. Coming here. Catastrophe.
And in the middle of it: Sangster.

What. Is going. On.

Friday arrived with a tension in the air that Alex could feel in every step. When he rose, the Merrills were already up and gone. There were no threats. But as he moved through the hall, Alex saw every eye glance toward him, saw whispers between the boys at breakfast.
Secheron
.

In the refectory, Paul and Sid motioned him toward them. Alex slid into one of the squat wooden chairs and put his tray on the table.

“Don’t look now, mate,” said Paul, “but you’re being watched.”

Alex took a sip of his orange juice and glanced up. Merrill & Merrill were standing at the far side of the room, waiting for him to make eye contact.

Alex managed a smirk. “They do that at night, too.”

“People are nervous,” said Sid, who was sketching yet another Scarlet World character. This one wore a doublet and had the bearing of a nobleman.

“Who?” Alex asked.

“Everyone.” Alex saw that Sid had given the doublet-wearing vampire a title: The Poet. Sid continued, “People are dropping things more this morning. Two people dropped their trays. Forks are clattering. Everyone’s nervous.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, distracted.

“You’re nervous,” Paul said, not asking.

“I just got here,” Alex said. “This feels so out of control.” He was envisioning another meeting between his father and a disgusted headmaster. Then again, if Alex didn’t fight back, he could be in real danger. He could see that in Bill’s eyes. And the whole school was interested—that would be highly motivating for a crowd-pleaser like Bill. Motivation could really bring out the psycho in a guy. But Bill was asking for trouble. If only he knew.

“How are you getting to Secheron?” Paul asked.

Alex was now watching another table, where several boys were whispering, glancing toward him. “Is there a bus?”

“There’s a bus, but it’s more fun if you go by bike.”

“I don’t have a bike.” Alex frowned, picking at his eggs. His stomach felt tight and solid. He felt his chest tighten, a sudden rush of nervousness that spread out through his body and tingled at his limbs. He swallowed, washing the feeling down for a moment with orange juice.

“I have an old bike locked up next to the one I got for my birthday,” Sid said. “It’s not small or anything; I just wanted one with better shocks.”

“There, you can take Sid’s,” said Paul. “You’ll love the ride.”

Well, that settled that. Alex looked back at the door. The Merrills were gone. “What about the rest of the school—do they want me to get creamed?”

Paul chewed on a piece of toast. He shrugged. “We don’t.”

“There’s ice cream,” offered Sid.

After breakfast the tension only grew. Incessant murmurs seemed to throb through some invisible Glenarvon network,
Fight this afternoon fight this afternoon Secheron fight fight.
Alex was envisioning the Merrills pounding his head into the pavement when Mr. Sangster entered the room.

The teacher whom Alex had seen sneak out shortly before two
A.M.
on Thursday strode into the class wearing a black sweater and dark blue jeans, and for the first
time Alex truly studied the man. For one thing, and you wouldn’t notice it when he was wearing a jacket, Mr. Sangster was insanely fit. Not built like Arnold Schwarzenegger or anything, but fit as an Olympic swimmer, utterly without fat and narrow at the hips, with well-developed, cordlike arms and chest. Alex watched Mr. Sangster begin to speak while he mentally replayed the bizarre conversation of the night before. Who
was
that at the gate? A girlfriend?
They meet at the gate and speak nonsense?

Someone handed Bill Merrill a note and Bill took the paper, unfolded it, and read. He smirked, looking back at Alex. The rush of adrenaline shot through Alex again.

“What’s that?” Mr. Sangster asked, interrupting his description of the state of science at the time
Frankenstein
was written. The teacher looked at Bill, and Bill shrugged. Mr. Sangster stepped over and snapped up the note. He peered at it as he walked to the front of the class, then laid it on his desk.

Mr. Sangster leaned on the desk for a moment, touching his lip with his thumb. He scanned the room, locked eyes on Alex for a second, and moved on. “No notes,” he said.

Class went by in a flash—the minutes warping by as Alex tried to concentrate, flying forward, relentlessly
carrying him toward Secheron.

He rose as class ended, having absorbed nothing. He made his way to the front, daring to peek at the note still on Mr. Sangster’s desk as the teacher erased the writings on the board that Alex had not bothered to copy down.

On the paper was a picture of Alex—he could tell by the crazy, black locks of hair—and a puddle of something that could have been blood, could have been urine, encircling him as he kneeled in the street.

“What’s going on?” asked Mr. Sangster, not looking away from the board.

“Nothing.”

Mr. Sangster turned, raised an eyebrow. “It’s never nothing, Van Helsing,” he said.

It occurred to Alex that Mr. Sangster could stop the whole thing. He might even know the whole plan about the fight already. He had to—every boy in the school was planning to caravan to Secheron after classes were out; by now every teacher had to know. Mr. Sangster could stop it.

But if he wouldn’t stop it on his own, Alex would have to ask. And he was being given a chance to do that now.

Mr. Sangster was loading books into an attaché. “I trust the family has taught you to take care of yourself,” he said.

Alex stared. “I’m sorry?”

Mr. Sangster looked up and studied Alex for a long moment. He seemed to be trying to suss out whether Alex were telling the truth about something, as if Alex had been asked a question. What did he mean, the family taught him?

“Use what you’ve learned,” Mr. Sangster said. Then he snapped shut his case and walked out, slapping the note against Alex’s chest as he went.

The end of the day roared toward him and arrived, and Paul and Sid were there outside the school, leading him to the bike rack.

There were dozens of students on the move, many of them headed for the bus, some on bikes. Alex had no idea where Bill was.

Alex, Paul, and Sid rode in silence down the paved road to Secheron village. Alex wobbled as he rode, his legs made of jelly. He could not have described the bike if he had wanted to. He was remembering something almost exactly like this that had happened before, and he ached to stop it.

Secheron’s town square was a picture of Swiss loveliness, with a grand clock rising above an old church, bookstores, and the ice-cream shop open and inviting to the crowd that had already gathered. As Alex parked
Sid’s old bike next to some twenty others at the bike rack, he realized the square had formed into a boxing ring. He also noticed that there was an emergency clinic across the square.
Convenient.

The boys of Glenarvon were bouncing with excitement and Alex could see heads turning in the crowd toward him. Incongruously, tourists still moved about the square. Beyond the gathered boys, three uniformed school girls—there were girls in Switzerland!—sat at an iron table outside the ice-cream parlor working on homework. All of this Alex took in until he permitted himself to move his eyes to the ring, the clearing in the square. Bill Merrill waited, wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of fingerless leather weight gloves. The absurdity of the gloves and the ugliness of the protection they gave, the extra damage Bill’s knuckles could do wrapped in leather, filled Alex with more disgust than fear. At his side, Paul and Sid tensed up. “Easy,” muttered Paul.

Somewhere through the dread he felt, Alex found the strength to move, stepping forward, the boys parting for him.
Fight. Fight. Fight!
The chant began, the boys winding themselves up, visibly churning their fists, and Alex realized how much they were all animals. It didn’t matter whether he was new or not, or whether they liked him or not. They wanted a fight. “You ready?” Bill said, and
he stepped forward, bouncing. Alex couldn’t will his legs to move, and he saw Paul edging toward the inside of the circle.
No, I’m not ready. This is crazy. You just want me out of your room? Is that all? You’re gonna get us kicked out of school!

Then Alex saw Steven Merrill sucker-punch Paul in the side of the head, taking the big boy down, jumping on top of him. And while Alex was watching Steven and Paul, Bill attacked.

All chants, all bouncing spectators disappeared as Bill’s gloved right fist smacked hard against the side of Alex’s head. Alex spun, buckling, and they were alone, as if in darkness and lit only by a spotlight that shone on just the two of them. Alex reeled with pain and tried to swing, but Bill was coming forward, throwing him to the ground. Alex felt his shoulders take the brunt of the fall, and his sides were shooting with pain as he realized Bill was landing blow after blow.

For a moment he allowed his hesitation to remain. He wasn’t going to do this again. Surely he could figure a way forward in which he didn’t have to give this boy what he deserved.

And then he balled up his fists.
Let’s go
.

Bill gave a sharp scream and Alex realized he had closed his eyes. He opened them and saw that someone
had Bill by the ear, green nails drawing blood as they yanked against the lobe and cartilage. Alex’s eyes focused and refocused, his contacts swimming. He scrambled up and saw the new attacker dragging Bill back.

The attacker was a girl, about Alex’s age and height, with olive skin and shoulder-length brown hair. Vaguely Alex realized she was one of the girls from the ice-cream parlor. As Bill staggered back, stunned, she let him go and dropped back. Alex could barely take in how she pivoted on her front foot and spun, driving her other foot hard into Bill’s chest. Bill sprawled back and flopped into some of the spectators.

Paul was up on his feet now, behind the girl. He had scratches on his face and neck, and Steven was staggering, clutching a bloodied nose. Bill stared in wonder, clutching his bleeding ear.

“What is
this
?” Bill screamed. “Your girlfriend is fighting for you?”

Alex’s heart was pounding.
I don’t know her,
he wanted to say, as if that would make a difference.

“Get out of here,” the girl snarled at Bill as if she were addressing a dog. “Get on out.”

Bill seemed to size up the situation. The energy of the crowd had flowed out with the burst of violence and now his moment was gone. Bill nodded sarcastically, point
ing at Alex as he backed away, as if to say something meaningful but not finding sufficiently nasty words.

And like that, with a ghostly passing, the lusty energy and the crowd dispersed.

Alex was still breathing hard, staring at Bill and Steven as they got on their bikes and pedaled away. He felt his fists relaxing. Nothing he had predicted had happened. He had looked down the chessboard, made his decision, and then someone had come and kicked the board off the table. He turned to see the girl, who stood like a character in a Japanese cartoon, her arms folded.

“Idiots,” she said.

He searched for words. “Who are you?”

The girl looked at Alex, and Paul and Sid, who had gathered to gawk.

“Minnie, with an
h
,” she said with a sudden brightness. She waved her hand. “Want some ice cream?”

As Minnie-with-an-h found a table where they could sit, Alex watched her—the way she marched up to the counter and grabbed a handful of menus with cheery but aggressive confidence, the way she immediately started grilling the three of them.

“So is this something you have planned for every Friday, or was it just a limited engagement?” she asked
after they ordered sundaes.

“Whuh? Oh,” Alex said.

“Our friend Alex here is a pain in the behind to the wrong people,” Paul said. “I’m Paul—this is Sid. You said your name was Minnie?”

“M-i-n-h-i. Minhi. So that’s Hindu, rather than Mouse.” Minhi spoke in perfect idiomatic American English, and yet underneath lay the subtlest hint of an Indian accent that Alex found entrancing. At that moment he would have been glad to ask her to read from the phone book. “Are you from Secheron?” he asked.

Minhi shook her head. “Is anyone? I’m actually from Mumbai. I’m a student at LaLaurie School,” she said, tilting her head in the general direction of Lake Geneva. “It’s a girls’ school across the lake from you guys. So were those like the school bullies or something?”

Alex grimaced at the word
bullies
; it sounded like something out of a film they made you watch in the cafeteria. “Actually, they’re my roommates.”

The sundaes came, and they tore into them greedily.

Alex continued, “In all fairness, I did ask to be transferred to another room.”

“They make his life hell—and this is just a week in,” Paul added. “Tell her.”

“Tell me what?”

“I…” Alex shook his head, embarrassed. “You know, broken alarm clocks, tripping, leaving some…really unpleasant stuff in my bed.”

“Eww,” said Minhi. “So you can’t move out?”

“Apparently it’s
complicated
,” Alex said, thinking of Otranto.

Minhi had laid her bag on the table and Sid spied something. “Are those manga?”

“Yeah.” She grew a little red at the temples. “Yeah, I read about three a week.”

“What are you on right now?” He was visibly aching to see the books, which Minhi ably recognized. She handed them over.

“Mostly shojo,” she said.

Alex nodded. “Shojo, that would be girl comics, right?”

She raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

He smiled. “I mean the lead is a spunky, spiky-haired girl with big eyes. Also there are a lot of hearts. Sometimes everyone has magical powers.”

“Way to diss my manga,” she said, squinting at him.

“I’m not dissing; I have four sisters, so I’ve read like a million of them.”

“I didn’t know that about you,” said Paul.

Alex shrugged. He was feeling better. Maybe it would
work out. He hadn’t been creamed—and he hadn’t done anything crazy, after all.