chapter 19
A curious humming sound came warbling from the churchyard as Alex and Astrid ran out into what had become a reddish night. Alex swept the surroundings of the hill with his eyes and found none of the sights that had been visible before—down the hill stood no Wembley Stadium or modern structures of any kind. Instead, a vista of distant, fiery darkness surrounded them like a curtain, projecting images of cities and ships ablaze.
“They’re using it again,” Alex shouted as he and Astrid rounded the bend. The vampires had set off the same spell they had used in Secheron, allowing them to create a limited, enclosed night. Seeing it working a second time, he had some idea how terrible a world enveloped in it would be. He nearly ran into a parishioner with gray hair and glasses, who was muttering a name, wandering in the darkness. Alex put his wireless into his ear as he ran and tapped it. “Sangster, where are you?”
There was no answer. Alex heard the burst of gunfire and saw the muzzles of Sangster’s and Armstrong’s Berettas lighting up down the hill, next to a wall. That was when he saw the skull faces of vampires in service of the Queen.
Sangster’s voice sounded in Alex’s ear. “Don’t worry about us. Protect the grave.”
Fifty yards away, Sangster was pinned against a low wall by a vampire in red robes. Armstrong was nearby, atop the wall Sangster was against, and she was kicking at a vampire that stood toe to toe with her. Sangster’s foe leapt up on the short wall not far behind Armstrong, and the vampire had Sangster by the neck. For a moment Alex saw Sangster’s legs leave the ground, struggling. Then there was a series of shots and the vampire exploded over the agent. Alex saw Sangster stand up and look back up the path at him. Armstrong flipped over the wall with her opponent and then there was another explosion of dust. “This way!” Sangster shouted to the other parishioners that were wandering still, screaming. He pointed at the false horizon, which hung in the air and blocked the view of the daytime world beyond. “This way to the road! Look! Those burning buildings, that’s fake! It’s just a movie projected on a—a curtain; you can walk right through it!”
Alex’s attention was caught by Astrid, who had stopped at the next wall that led into the heart of the churchyard with Allegra’s grave. She was standing still, shaking her head, a strange, thin silhouette against the distant curtain of red and black. “What is it?” he called, and then he was at her side and saw.
Several images hit Alex at once, and at first he had no idea which to focus on.
There were two vampires, their faces painted like skulls, holding a child of about six or seven, one of the parishioners, by the arms. Their white arms rippled with blue veins and their nails were digging in as they squeezed her tightly by the wrists.
That flooding in your chest. It tells everyone else to be afraid and lose their stuff. It reminds you, if you let it, to slow down. Slow down. Take it in.
The vampires were staring at him, and Astrid and Alex ignored them for a second, daring to look away from the girl. Just a few yards beyond the screaming little girl in the green coat and the matching green hat, something strange was happening at the grave.
There was dirt flying, churning as if being rotor-tilled. At first it looked as though there were a great wheel moving of its own accord, but then Alex heard it breathing, seething and hissing with exertion. It was a creature half submerged in the soft earth, its great legs churning around and around, and each time its legs emerged from the ground, he saw its powerful claws, and saw it toss back a mound of earth. The creature had a bulbous, bald head and white, boiled-egg eyes, its skin a reddish tone made even more devilish by the strange gleam of the curtain of night.
Alex searched his brain. He had seen it before. It was a vampire of some kind, one of the ones he had learned about. It was known to dig up crops and spread plague.
“What is that?” Astrid asked.
“I am blanking on the name,” Alex said, wishing he had Sid with him. Sid would know as surely as Dr. DeKamp would. “But it’s digging up Allegra’s grave. Why would they be doing that?” Alex asked, but then it was obvious. If the Queen was vulnerable to DNA from her most beloved, she would want to get it before they did.
“We need to—” Astrid started to say.
“No closer,” one of the vampires hissed. “I don’t even have to say why.”
Alex didn’t look at the vampire but at the girl, studying her face. She was screaming, and he shut that out. He was checking for pain, and she seemed to be terrified but had some slack. If they were going to pull her apart, they hadn’t started that yet.
“Hey!” Alex shouted to the girl. “Hey! Don’t worry, we’re going to get you out of here.”
“Shut up,” the vampire on the right said, his eyes glistening under the black makeup.
“What’s the point of this?” Alex shouted at him. “You’re keeping me from the grave? And then what? You bite the little girl anyway?”
The vampire, not the sharpest, seemed to consider. “Just stay back.”
Alex held his hands at his sides and glanced at Astrid. They were about twelve feet from the vampires. Beyond lay the grave and the curious digger creature, another fifteen feet back.
“Have to be fast,” Alex whispered.
“Right or left?” she answered.
“I’ll take the right.”
Alex quickly drew his Polibow as he began to run, and he saw the vampire start to pull.
Astrid was in the air, leaping like a gazelle, and she had her staff up, its blade glistening with silver and emerald as she brought it up and back and then down.
The vampires were wide and exposed as they held the girl. Alex hit his vampire square in the forehead and he staggered, brain-dead once more; another bolt in the chest and he was dust. Alex caught the girl just as Astrid landed in the dust cloud that they had created of the two vamps.
Alex looked in the girl’s eyes and then pointed at the road, where Sangster was alternating between ushering more parishioners and fighting vampires who were all over the grounds. “You’re gonna be okay. Just run for the road.”
“But the fires!” the girl cried, looking at the distant curtains and the projection of cities on fire.
“It’s not real.” Alex crouched and talked to her the way he did his littlest sister. He swept his arm across the vista in the distance. “It’s like a TV image on a cloud. When you get to the bottom of the hill, you’ll walk right through it.”
A voice called, “There!” and Alex quickly stood up.
The strange creature’s legs stopped churning, and Alex saw it look up in confusion. Amazing. He could see blood underneath its skin, pumping through it like hydraulic fluid as it stared up at the vampire standing on Allegra Byron’s grave marker. It was a male vampire, solidly built with brown hair, his face painted like one of the Queen’s minions of death.
“You go after the vamp,” Alex told Astrid. “I’ll take the leg-churning thing.”
“Don’t stop!” The vampire pointed down at the ground as he yelled at the creature, whose bug-like eyes blinked. “That’s the coffin; just make sure you don’t tear it up.”
The creature nodded and the legs began to churn once more. Alex had already started running for it.
The creature had broad, humped shoulders and spindly arms, and Alex fired a bolt at it as he got within ten feet. The bolt caught the creature in the shoulder and stuck for a second, hissing before dropping off. It had thick armor all around, probably some kind of augmented, hardened blood, cast with magic in the Scholomance.
Alex leapt on the thing’s shoulders and dirt began immediately smacking him in the face. Down below, through the churning legs and soil, Alex could see dark wood, the sturdy edges of the child’s coffin.
The creature swiped at him with arms that reminded Alex of the near-useless claws on the sides of a Tyrannosaurus rex. He batted them away, holding on to the creature’s head, bringing a glass ball out of his go package and smashing it sideways into the holes that he judged to be ears.
The creature howled as holy water gushed through its ear canals, and it stopped digging, whipping its head. Smoke was hissing out of the wound tracks, and Alex saw its teeth, which parted to let a long tongue dart out. The tongue extended and smacked at his chin and Alex grimaced against waves of static. He grabbed the tongue, felt it pulsing in his fingers. Then he jumped off the creature’s shoulders, and the creature staggered sideways, crawling out of the hole in pain.
It was on him, then, swiping with its claws at Alex’s sides as Alex held the tongue and pumped a bolt into the creature’s mouth. He caught it on the cheek. He needed to hit the soft palate of the top of its mouth, to drive a bolt up into its brain.
He saw a flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye as Astrid’s staff spun and she landed on a vampire, sending him back against the wall.
On the ground outside the grave now, the creature no longer had to fight with its tiny forearms, and Alex saw the hind legs begin to churn the earth around him. One of the huge hind claws caught the edge of his jacket, sending shreds of cloth flying. Alex kicked at the legs and yelped in pain as the hind claw whacked his leg to the side. Forget its legs.
In his peripheral vision, Astrid had the vampire pinned with her staff, and the vampire grabbed Astrid by the front of her jacket and whipped her up, smashing the witch against the wall above him. The vamp dropped around, rising and swiping his long nails at Astrid’s neck. Astrid parried the blow. All this in a moment when Alex was bringing his Polibow up again.
Astrid and the vampire were still going at it around the grave when Alex heard a new sound—horses and wheels coming fast.
The creature’s mouth was snapping and Alex breathed, aiming his weapon for one of the huge eyes. He felt one of the foreclaws dig into his jacket, scratching at his chest, and Alex quickly pumped a bolt into the creature’s eye.
The bolt drove home, deep into the creature’s eye socket and into the brain. The creature began to shake, and Alex brought the Polibow down, point-blank at its chest. He fired, sending a bolt into the heart.
In the explosion of dust and ash, Alex felt the heat soften the fibers in his own jacket and melt part of the bandage around his neck. He closed his eyes during the flash lest it melt the contacts to his corneas. Alex quickly got to his feet, searching for Astrid.
She was holding her own, using her staff against the vampire, but she was evenly matched. Alex brought up his Polibow trying to draw a bead on the vamp, but they kept spinning. He wanted to shout to Astrid to give him room, break off, and let him just shoot the foe.
But suddenly, something grabbed his arm tightly and nearly tore off his hand, and as Alex’s arm whipped wild, the Polibow spun away. He was dragged off his feet, his arm threatening to detach from his shoulder, and as he swung around, nearly sliding under a great wooden wheel, he saw Elle, at the reins of a wagon-like coach with a wide bed and several vampires, commanding one of the Queen’s skeletal horses.
Alex heard a fwoosh sound and looked to see Astrid plunging her staff into her vampire’s chest and sending it into oblivion. But Elle was yelling something, and even as Alex untangled himself from her whip, he saw two more vampires, fast and huge, leaping for the grave.
One of them dropped into the grave and had the coffin up in a second, and the other grabbed it, lifting it like something that weighed nothing at all. He was running with it now, and Alex saw Astrid go after him.
The vampire leapt up onto the carriage with the coffin and dropped it into the back, and Elle snapped the reins again. The carriage was beginning to pull out and Alex ran after it. Elle looked back at him, catching his eyes.
“They’ve got the coffin,” Alex said into his Bluetooth. “I’m going after them.”
“I’m taking care of this one,” Astrid answered, and Alex looked back to see Astrid squaring off with the other vampire, whom Elle had abandoned in order to get away with Allegra’s coffin.
“Sangster, what’s your situation?” Alex screamed as he ran. A thrill of grave fear rushed through him and Alex set it aside. Concentrate on what’s in front of you.
Gotta move fast. Alex ran behind the bumping wooden trailer, which was painted in the reddish-brown colors favored by the Scholomance and the new Queen. There were iron bars across either side of the trailer and the coffin was rattling against them. Alex tried to speed up, judging where he would grab a bar. He would have one chance to get on.
He leapt, hitting the top bar and gripping, and then lost it, falling, before grabbing the next bar down. Immediately his body yanked forward, the toes of his shoes dragging and kicking up grass and stones.
The vampire in the back saw Alex now and came forward, reaching for his hand to pull it free, and Alex heaved his body up, getting a leg over the back. The vampire whipped its head and aimed for Alex’s shoulder with its teeth.
Alex felt the teeth glancing against his jacket as he rolled, smashing against the vampire’s legs. Alex grabbed the vampire by the feet and pushed upward as he tumbled underneath him, and the creature sailed off the back of the trailer and into the grass.
Alex climbed to his feet, fighting to keep his balance as the carriage barreled past the front of the church and headed for the road.
Up ahead, they were about to hit the edge of the artificial night, and Alex wondered what would happen when they did. Elle whipped the reins and the skeletal horse picked up speed, and then as they reached the wall—
The projection wall pushed back to accommodate them. Not bad, Alex thought. Even in this limited demonstration, the spell allowed the Queen’s vampires to carry night with them.
They were on a road now, the carriage careening straight down a street where cars zipped around them. Where were they going?
Alex crawled forward and tried to decide what to do. Throw the coffin off the trailer? It would shatter into a thousand pieces. He might even lose the body, the whole point of the operation. He needed to stop the carriage.
Without a Polibow he couldn’t shoot. He had a long, dagger-like stake, but he wanted something to throw. He seized a glass ball and threw it at the back of Elle’s head. The jolting carriage killed his shot, the ball slamming into the dashboard of the carriage. Holy water splashed up and hissed against Elle’s face and she looked back at him through gritted fangs.
Now the great enclosure of night seemed to stretch out, and Alex saw their path—there was an intersection up ahead, which was in darkness as well, cars suddenly coming into it without lights and swerving. But where were they going?
Alex grabbed the back of the carriage seat, next to Elle, who looked at him and laughed, snapping the reins as they crushed a bicycle, its rider abandoning it as they came near. The skeletal horse clopped over the rear bumper of a small French car and the car swerved off the road, colliding with a mailbox.
“Where are you going?” Alex demanded, holding his stake to the point on Elle’s neck just below her ear. She deftly grabbed his wrist and yanked him halfway over the seat.
“What do you care?” He was reading her lips more than hearing her over the cacophony. “You have two days, Alex, before this is what the world looks like.”
Beyond the intersection, Alex saw the running water of the Thames, about a hundred yards of it within the dark bubble.
“You can’t go to the river,” Alex said. “You can’t cross running water.”
“Why don’t you leave the logistics to the professionals?” Elle grabbed his ear and tried to smash Alex against the seat. He struggled to twist free.
Something flashed on the dashboard, and Alex saw what looked like a radar screen, where a large red dot was coming in fast from the right up ahead. Alex heard a long, bellowing horn.
Elle picked up speed, within an eighth of a mile from the intersection. Alex grabbed Elle by the shoulders, reaching his arm around her body, bringing the stake to her neck. “If you’re this afraid that we’re going to get Allegra’s DNA then you must really be worried about us,” he said.
“We’re taking what’s ours.”
Right then, Alex made a decision. The red dot on the screen and the sounding horn were probably someone Elle was planning to meet. He could keep trading blows with her until they reached whatever reinforcements were flying down the road up ahead, or he could change the game.
“No, you’re not.” Alex dropped back and looked at the coffin. Screw it. They could grab what they needed after.
The horn sounded again, and Alex looked over his shoulder to see an enormous red vehicle like an armored personnel carrier plunge into the intersection, bashing cars out of the way as it slowed.
He looked back at the tiny coffin, all four feet of it, plain and wooden and ancient. “Bye, Elle,” he said, and put his fingers under the box’s end. With one solid heave, he lifted it and kicked.
The coffin of Allegra Byron tumbled like a bowling pin off the end of the trailer.
Alex felt something heavy collide with his shoulders, Elle’s claws grabbing him as she tossed him aside. She was screaming in rage.
The carriage was still moving, out of control and heading into the intersection, as Elle left her seat and pushed past him, reaching out to the wooden casket.
The casket hit the ground and began to roll and shatter, wood splintering. There was no time now. He had to get off and gather it. He looked for a soft landing, found a pickup truck traveling next to them, the driver staring in wonder, and leapt.
Alex hit the metal bed of the pickup truck and felt the driver brake instantly. Alex quickly tucked his shoulders and rolled into the front of the pickup bed. He got to his feet, looking out onto the road and wincing as the coffin continued to pinwheel, its top flying off and its sides exploding. Pieces of it smashed into an oncoming car.
Alex dropped out of the truck to the side of the road, wincing in guilt as he prepared for the grand finale of a tiny mummified body flying through someone’s windshield.
But that didn’t happen at all. The coffin of Lord Byron’s daughter burst open like an old tomato and spat out a flurry of paper, straw, fluttering yellow ribbons, and cobblestones.
Alex got out of the way of another vehicle and stood on the curb in shock, looking back to see Elle, who dropped to her knees in her wild carriage, arms outstretched toward the coffin, her black-painted eyes wide with rage.
The carriage swept into the intersection and smashed into the enormous red vehicle, and the last Alex saw of Elle, her body was catapulted through the air into the open side of the personnel carrier as it zoomed past. She disappeared into it completely, leaving the bones of her horse.
The carrier sped away, and Alex could still hear her screaming as he brought his eyes back to the obliterated, empty coffin.