chapter 16
For a moment all Alex heard were voices and the slush of water rushing around his ears as he lay on the floor.
Forget Icemaker—
Kristatos?
Dead—
“Alex?” He heard Sangster call his name.
He blinked, light blazing into his eyes, and the shapes of Sangster and Astrid were washed out and filtered by light. There were red lamps flashing, and he had the delirious feeling he was in a nightclub.
What’s happening?
“You’re on the ground. Get up.”
His hands slipped under him and he tried to grip the tiles with his fingers, and his fingers were sausages, bags of peanut butter. He saw the flickering of light as his eyes blinked rapidly, and he was unable to stop them.
“…pressure on it!” Sangster shouted, and then he saw Astrid move over him, clamping her hand down on his throat. Something that looked black gushed toward her.
He was being carried, then he felt himself slamming down onto something like a bed.
“Out of the way. Where is the infirmary?” he heard Sangster call. A shadow of a scientist shouted something. There was blood on the walls, and Alex held his eyes open long enough to see a gash in the ceiling tiles, dripping with water, where something had punched clear through and kept going.
They turned a corner and the lights kept flickering.
“I’m sorry!” he rasped. “I’m sorry I went out!”
“Don’t worry about that now,” came Astrid’s voice. She brought her other hand to his forehead and leaned in close. “I’m here because of you. Don’t leave.”
Something squishy and oily crossing his forehead and dissolving under Astrid’s thumb. A flare, a burst of phosphorous. Unknown, ancient words. Then, darkness washed over him.
In the distance he heard voices:
Astrid’s voice. I have to take him.
Sangster: Absolutely not—
He has been bitten very badly. I can help him. We can help him.
He belongs with us.
You don’t know the first thing about who he belongs with! You have to trust me. There is no time. The poison will start to work the curse, and you know as well as I do that he will not survive it, and we will not allow this Van Helsing—this Van Helsing—to die without doing everything in our power.
Where?
The Orchard.
A voice next to his ear. Alex. Hold my hand. Mother Gretel, we are coming to you.
Darkness stayed. Within it he listened to the hissing of the oil on his forehead. He began hallucinating.
He was falling now, the ground opening up, and he was falling down a tree, sunlight streaming through shadow leaves.
Alex!
Something caustic struck the air under his nose and ignited his sinuses, and his eyes shot open.
Suddenly awake, Alex screamed in pain, trying to reach for his neck as he looked up to see Astrid. He couldn’t move his arms.
He was outside, in an orchard of red and yellow fruit trees, below a canopy of brightly colored leaves and a cloudless sky. He was lying in a clearing on a tilted wooden table of some kind, and when he tried to move his arms again he saw that they were bound by a rope-like, shimmering green light.
Astrid touched his arm. “It’s for your own good.”
“Tell him not to struggle,” came an older female voice, and Alex’s eyes darted to the edge of the clearing, where a woman with white hair was searching through a brown wooden bureau that had leaves growing out of it. “Tell him it’ll only make the poison move faster.”
Alex studied the bureau and the leaves some more and looked at Astrid. “Where am I?”
“Alex, listen to me,” Astrid said. “You’ve been bitten very badly. Are you listening?”
Alex blinked. “Yes.”
“You were bitten fifteen minutes ago. We got here as fast as we could.”
“Where’s here?” Alex tried to wrestle against the magical cords and suddenly felt achingly weak.
“You’re in the Orchard.”
“The Orchard?”
Leaves whipped up and the woman who had been at the bureau now stood at his side, across from Astrid. “You’re in the home of Hexen.” The woman appeared old, at first, deep creases around her eyes and mouth, and then when her face moved, the lines seemed to smooth away. She seemed to move in a slow blur.
Ignore that. What’s going on?
“Icemaker bit me on the neck.” Alex’s mind raced. “Am I bleeding out?”
Astrid shook her head. “No, no, no, you really haven’t lost too much—he missed the artery, but the poison will start working on you, and you’re as good as dead if we don’t do what we have to do.”
“That doesn’t sound good at all.” Alex looked down, amazed at the blood that had spilled across his shirt.
The old woman passed a hand over his shirt and the color changed, the blood smoothing away with her touch. “These details will not burden you.”
She moved to the side and turned to another table that he hadn’t noticed before, with a silver tray lying in the center of it. Next to this was a set of small clay pots. Black powder lay in the center of the silver tray, and when she waved a hand, the powder ignited. A black tendril of smoke began to rise and fill the clearing.
“Venus or Mars?” The woman turned to Astrid. “Love or war, which will heal him best now?”
“I don’t know. Why would you ask me?”
“You’re supposed to know him by now.”
“To have protected him, is that what you mean?” Astrid shot back, her face red. “I know.”
Alex felt something sharp race up and down the back of his neck, as though he’d been spattered with fire, and he gasped.
Astrid was at his ear again, whispering. Mother Gretel, you protect us, Astrid said. You take away the pain. She looked back at the old woman. “The poison is moving fast, Mother Laura.” Her eyes raced. “War, it has to be.”
The woman called Mother Laura clucked her tongue and started moving items from the buckets. “We need euphorbium, bdellium, root of hellebore…got a lodestone here, good.” She looked at Astrid. “Go get me a vial of blood of cat, would you?”
Astrid disappeared to the bureau and shot back with a vial of dark liquid that Mother Laura threw into the silver tray. The smoke had changed now, billowing red.
Astrid turned back to Alex. “This is called ‘suffumigation of Mars’; it will envelop you in healing mist.”
“But it lacks the blood that we need—the blood that matters,” said Mother Laura.
The stinging feeling in Alex’s neck was making his body shake. He was beginning to hurt more. He was having trouble following what the witches were saying.
Alex looked at Astrid and suddenly she seemed to burble, her skin becoming translucent, and Alex saw blood flowing through her veins beneath her skin.
“I’m seeing blood.” Alex blinked. “I see your blood.”
“That’s the poison working in you.” Astrid’s eyes darted as she studied Alex. “It’s making you see as a vampire sees.”
“Get it out!” he tried to roar, but his voice was hoarse and sounded distant to himself.
“We need the blood of one who loves him,” Mother Laura said. “Even for war, we need love.”
Astrid looked at her. She shook her head. “What, me?”
Mother Laura actually smirked. “Oh, please, child, I don’t mean you.” She turned to Alex, who by now was having a hard time focusing on her, the pain in his muscles screaming, and the woman was flickering into a creature whose blood he could practically taste. “Alex,” Mother Laura said, “you are in the Orchard of Hexen. All who pass through here carry a little of it with them. And they will hear you and come if you call to them.”
Alex couldn’t make her words string together into any kind of thought at all. He arched his back and screamed.
Somewhere, someone heard him.
Alex’s eyes were flickering with pain and darkness as he saw a curtain in the air open up between two fruit trees.
He caught the silhouette of a woman in a leather coat and a floppy brown hat, pulling off a pair of long gloves with a familiar deftness.
“What is it you want me to do?” came the voice of Amanda Van Helsing, his mother, as he lost consciousness.