chapter 15
“Tell me again why the guy who uses water as his main source of power is in a water tank?” Alex whispered to Sangster and Kristatos.
“He uses ice as his power,” Kristatos corrected him.
“Yeah, so shouldn’t he be in, like, a dry sauna?”
“You don’t need to whisper.” The scientist looked at the vampire floating against the glass, watching them. “He can’t hear us. But to answer your question, it’s actually safer this way. By encasing him in a full tank, any freezing he does is likely to surround him with ice and overwhelm him.”
“Likely?”
Kristatos breathed deeply and crossed her arms. “Well—”
“Look, we tried the sauna in the fifties, okay?” Sangster cut in.
“Okay, okay.” Alex looked at his hands and thumbed the microphone. It was now or never. If he waited any longer, he was going to lose his nerve. The last time he had been this close to the vampire, Icemaker had been holding him aloft and starting to cut Alex’s throat.
Click. “Hi, Byron.”
In the water tank, the vampire looked startled for a brief moment, then recovered. He flapped his arms, floating back and searching the wall with what appeared to be an amused curiosity. Then Byron spotted the black apparatus and pilot’s mask and floated toward it. He smiled a cruel, thin smile and made no attempt to respond.
Alex continued. “Long t—”
“Careful,” Sangster whispered, and Alex keyed the mike off.
“What?”
“Byron has no idea how long he’s been frozen; it’s better not to reference time.”
“Do you want to do this?”
“No. I’m actually sort of enjoying it like it is,” Sangster replied.
Click. “I’d like to say I’m sorry to wake you.”
“He can talk,” Kristatos said. “If he puts on the mask.”
Alex nodded, wondering how strange his voice must sound coming from a speaker under the water. He looked at Byron. “If you want to answer—”
“Van Helsing.” The voice came reedy and wet, burbling out of Byron’s mouth as he held the mask to his face. He had figured it out instantly, and sounded bored already. Alex shuddered, feeling as though his name had just been spoken by an evil wave.
Don’t you want to ask where you are? Alex thought, but he was looking in Byron’s red eyes and realized that even if Byron did, he wouldn’t ask outright. That would show vulnerability. Byron was determined to show that they had him exactly where he wanted them.
Byron drew back at once and tucked his head, preparing to ram the wall. Sangster quickly snatched the mike.
“There is a flowing stream of holy water on the other side of that glass. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Byron stopped himself, floating there, and came back to the mike. “Clever,” he uttered. He slipped the straps of the mask over his head so that it rested on his nose and mouth, leaving his hands free.
Sangster gave the mike back to Alex. Why is he letting me do this? Alex thought, not for the first time. He was always amazed that Sangster seemed eager to step out of the way.
Alex clicked on the mike again. “We want to ask you some questions.”
There was another click. “Why should I answer your questions?” came the ghostly water-voice.
“Better accommodations,” Sangster muttered.
“If you answer our questions, we might be able to move you into a better place.” Alex spoke the words calmly, but he wasn’t sure if they came across that way. He wasn’t sure if it was true, and a bald lie could be difficult to mask.
Byron pursed his lips, swaying his head back and forth as if to say, All right. “What is it you want to know, little Van Helsing?”
“What do you know about the Dimmer Switch?”
Byron narrowed his eyes, studying Alex. “I’m not aware of anything called Dimmer Switch.”
“You might know it as Obscura Notte,” Alex said helpfully.
“Oh.” Byron clapped his hands slowly, his arms sliding in the water. The gesture made his body bob in the milky substance. “Of course.”
“Yes?”
“I first learned about Obscura Notte in 1935,” he said.
Alex’s ears pricked up and he leaned forward.
“Obscura Notte was the finest nightclub in all of Italy.” Byron laughed, creating a weird, gurgling sound in the mike.
“Hit it,” Sangster said, and Kristatos stepped on a button near the wall. There was a coarse, sizzling sound as electricity shot through the water. Alex saw a million tiny particles of silver light up in the fluid, and Byron’s body jolted uncontrollably. He raged at the glass as the shock died down.
Byron recovered as soon as the jolt passed, but it had made the point.
“I’m interested in real answers,” Alex said dully. “Do you know anything about it or not?”
“The Triumph of Death.” Byron was already composed, and when he clicked in, his gurgling voice sounded serene. “Why do you want to know?”
Alex looked at Sangster, who whispered, “Tell him it’s a random vampire.”
“There’s a threat,” Alex reported. “Some vampire is going to set it off. We want to know how to stop it.”
“Old or new?” came the answer.
“What?”
“Is this an old vampire or a new vampire?”
Alex thought. “We don’t know.”
“Don’t know or won’t say?”
“We don’t know.”
“Well, then you’re in trouble, because you need to know more.” Byron sounded amused, mocking.
“Why?”
“Well, after all, the spell is called the Triumph of Death. The end of light, of living, of love. Only love can conquer death.”
Alex frowned. “Come on. You conquered death. You’re alive.”
“We are death. There’s a difference.” Then Byron brought up his hand and a chunk of ice appeared in it, ready to shoot forward. But before it did, the ice went wild, shooting out in spirals around him. It encased his hand and he had to stop and pry the block off himself.
Now Alex understood how surrounding the Icemaker in water would foil him. There was too much water to control. Alex threw Kristatos an appreciative glance and she smiled slightly.
“Are you done?” Alex said into the mike. “So, go back—what do you mean, ‘Only love can conquer death’?”
“Don’t listen to me. I’m a poet.”
“I thought vampires don’t feel love.”
“It’s complicated.”
“So if we know the person casting this spell, we can maybe…stop them from casting it?”
“Well, how well do you know them?” Byron asked.
Alex stared calmly.
“Good lord, you’re thick,” Byron said. “Your father and I spent three days chasing one another through the sewers of Paris. Talking to you, I get the impression you’d have been looking for me in the wrong city to begin with. What I’m saying is, if you were the one casting the spell, I would be able to stop you. Do you know why?”
“Change the subject,” Sangster interrupted.
“You stop it by using the one whom the caster loves. So what I’m saying is that if it were you, I could absolutely stop it.”
“Why’s that, Byron?”
Byron put his hand flat on the glass, bringing his face forward. “Because I know you have a father who loves you. And a mother who loves you. And at least three of your four sisters love you. Don’t they, Alex? What do you think I could do to use them against you?”
Alex found himself stepping forward, pointing at Byron. “What I think is that you’re going to stay in this bath and shrivel up like a raisin while the world turns without you, you miserable excuse for a poet.” He jabbed his finger against the glass.
As his fingertip touched the glass Byron’s eyes flashed, and Alex almost heard the word contact.
He felt a burst of static and something was suddenly wrong with his finger; it was hard and brittle, and he started to scream and found that the static was screaming inside him already. Byron had his palm against the glass, and Alex could see a stream, a crack, a frozen trickle that went straight through the glass and hissed in the holy water in between. Something pulled at his head, as if the blood in his head and the water in the blood were a magnet and he was diving against his will. Alex’s forehead smashed against the Plexiglas and he saw stars, blinding cold shooting through his brain. Byron had him.
In the distance, Sangster was yelling, pounding the electricity, and through a blue haze Alex saw Byron, laughing silently in the water, a whipping tentacle of ice a foot wide forming from Byron’s hand, through cracked glass and hissing holy water, to Alex’s forehead.
Ask the questions, Alex thought thickly, his vision a wild blur of spotted white.
I’m freezing…glass breaking…
What do you have?
Nothing.
Alex’s vision swooped wild and he was looking at the ceiling, aware that glass chunks and ice were flying. He heard popping sounds, gunfire; Sangster must be shooting. Water was rushing over him and stalks of ice were flying through the room. He heard a woman scream and saw a pair of legs fall across his body. There seemed to be tentacles of ice flying in all directions as the water came over him. He tried to move but his neck was stiff, and the water came up over his nose.
Alex tried to blow air out of his nose, but the water came anyway and his sinuses screamed with pain. His vision snapped to for a moment, and he saw a blast of ice tear the door off its hinges, and he heard growling. He smelled burning flesh where bits of silver in the water sparked against Byron’s chest.
Alex caught a glimpse of Astrid, swinging her green staff against Byron’s neck, and Byron turned, punching her with a column of ice that sent her into a cement wall.
Suddenly Alex was being yanked up, and he thought Sangster and then was aware that a powerful claw had him by the chest, gripping his shirt, which was caked in ice.
Alex saw the vampire’s fangs and felt blood gush from his neck.
Then, all went black.