chapter 9
The Zimeysa Station reminded Alex of the train station in Munich, Germany, where he and his father had once spent the night. That had been awful: The whole family had been vacationing in March, and it was very cold; and on this day Alex and his father had missed the last train out of Munich, which they were supposed to catch in order to meet up with Mom and the girls, who had moved on to a villa south of Rome. He and his dad had gone to visit the concentration camps in Dachau, a bus trip, and the Dachau bus had been late getting back.
Missing the train meant that they had to cool their heels till early in the morning, which meant walking. They visited a local university and watched some TV in the student union, moved on to watch the last round of the Glockenspiel in a square called Marienplatz, and then settled in at the station itself. Alex and his father had huddled together against a brick wall next to a closed postcard-and-soda kiosk, Dad’s jacket thrown over them. The gaping maws at either end of the station, where trains entered and departed, let the air in, and no amount of heat lamps stopped the sensation that they were on the streets. Sleeping on tile, backs against the bare wall, the cold leached into Alex’s entire body. It made socks and underwear, layers of shirts, gloves, all seem to disappear. They shivered together until seven in the morning, heading to Rome with the first train. Alex had been eight years old.
It had not occurred to him until he was ten that Dad was not without means and probably could have found them a hotel room if he had so desired. Alex actually asked his father about this—catching him as he was heading out to teach at Boston University, where they had been at that time. Dad had mumbled something about how fun it had been to relive his misspent youth, which was a terrible excuse for misspending Alex’s youth as well, but then Dad had been out the door.
Of course now Alex knew that just as likely, Dad had spent many of his train-station-huddling days in the employ of the Polidorium, a fact he had decidedly failed to mention.
At any rate, even in October, the Zimeysa Station was frozen stone cold, and as Alex walked up and down the platforms, he was glad that whatever else may occur, he would not be sleeping here. He’d been trained to survive in Wyoming blizzards, but anyone who felt like doing that by choice had to be crazy.
Oh, what he could have done then with what he had now—even without his backpack, his go package, Alex’s pockets were lined with useful accoutrements: Besides wooden stakes, hydraulic-powered Polibows, and grappling guns, he had nifty stuff like space blankets that folded into the size of a deck of cards and small canisters of styrene that could be lit to provide warmth. And his dad probably had as well. Madman.
Nothing, not a whisper, not a bleat of static, no reverberations in his head, nothing. The only static Alex heard as he walked along the trains came off the occasional announcements, as a chipper female voice announced in French and lovely British English each arrival and departure and change of track.
Alex stopped at a magazine rack underneath an enormous white clock at the end of the station, pretending to scan the covers. He turned around to look down the six tracks. He glanced up to a spiderweb of stairs at the far end of the terminal, which allowed passengers to travel up over the tracks and down to the central platforms. At the top of the stairs, on a sort of marble terrace, Alex saw Sangster sitting at a small table with Armstrong, sipping a coffee and reading a book. Alex went to the right and started walking down the line again, down one platform, up the next, and down. Nothing through the whole sweep, and the trains emptied out. In came the next batch.
Sangster spoke through the Bluetooth in Alex’s ear. “Eastbound trains on tracks two, three, and six,” he said. Alex nodded. Sangster was saying that those trains were likely to stop at Geneva next.
Alex headed for track 2. People were striding across the platforms and he bumped into a woman by mistake. He kept moving. He lingered for a moment next to the first entrance to the train, where a station official eyed him for a moment and then ignored him, taking him for just another confused kid looking for his train. Alex could count on the man to not only ask him no questions, but to be silently hoping Alex wouldn’t ask for any help, either.
Alex climbed up the stairs at the end and headed down to the center platforms, passing Sangster and Armstrong as he went. Sangster didn’t even glance up at him from his coffee and his copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. As Alex began to walk along track 3 on his left, he tried to reach out, cut away all noise and distraction. Nothing. Past the first ticket master and the next. Nothing.
Then he felt a whisper, a jagged hiss in his mind. Alex looked up the platform as various patrons of the station moved back and forth. “I felt something,” he said, and Armstrong responded. “Where?” he heard her say in his ear.
There was a pale man in a coat at the end of the platform, just under the terrace where Sangster and Armstrong sat. He was holding a cell phone, and now took it away from his ear, staring at its screen.
Make that very pale. The static hissed, but the guy was fifty feet away and so close to Armstrong and Sangster that they could spill their coffee on him.
Sangster spoke sharply. “Turn around and walk, Alex, that guy is taking your picture.”
Alex swiveled and started moving, scanning the trains. “How do you know?”
“He keeps sweeping the area with his phone.”
“Maybe it’s him I sensed,” Alex whispered.
“Just look for the train.”
Alex reached the end of the station, the end where he’d begun, and turned to begin the walk down the next couple of trains.
The clock chimed and the chipper voice bellowed across the cold station: “Attention: tracks two, four, and six departing immediately.”
Alex started moving faster, reaching the end of train 5. “Anything?” Sangster said in his ear, from where he sat with his coffee, far behind him.
“Is the photographer still there?”
“He’s moved on; I lost him in the crowd.”
There was a loud cry and at the end of the station, a pair of double doors opened. A soccer team poured in, shouting as they ran, all bare legs and green shorts, down the platform. Alex headed to the entrance to train 6’s last car, trying to listen, and was nearly knocked over by two Italian soccer players, both leaping up onto the train. He pushed back, shoving through the crowd.
A teenage girl in a long coat was hanging on to one of the soccer players. She laughed as she plowed into Alex, and Alex slipped around her. The crowd had grown larger. An older athlete, also in a soccer uniform but with a wool scarf over his shoulders, was shouting to the others in Italian, “Buona, ragazzi! Just a few minutes!”
Something hissed and buzzed in Alex’s ear, in his mind but as if outside of him. He spun around as students and soccer players smashed past.
A porter was opening up a cargo panel and unloading an enormous stack of boxes onto a rolling cart. Alex tried to make eye contact with Sangster and Armstrong, but they were blocked behind the boxes and the train.
The static increased and Alex turned to face the entrance of the station, approaching train 6’s entrance. The train official at the bottom of the steps did not notice him. The hissing was growing.
“Number six,” Alex said, “it’s number six.”
Alex peered up at the windows into the train, at sleepy faces either dozing or gazing out the window. There was a man with blond hair and a leather baseball cap glancing past him, and Alex found himself staring into the man’s eyes before he realized the hissing in his mind had forced him to stop.
The blond man stared back, and something like recognition came over him. He nodded, and Alex looked in the direction of his nod.
The porter slammed shut the panel on the side of the train and now he was approaching Alex at lightning speed. Alex felt something grab his collar. He opened his mouth, and a hand was placed over it. The ticket master moved away, looking elsewhere, and Alex tried to cry out as the porter dragged him onto the train, metal stairs smacking into the back of Alex’s legs as he kicked.
He watched the eyes of the porter, milky and mottled and almost translucent like all the vampires’. As the porter’s hand came free, Alex spoke.
“Guys!” and that was it, because the vampire porter smashed him in the side of the head and the Bluetooth went clattering onto the deck.
They were in the little entryway to the train car and no one else was coming; Alex could see that. The train lurched and began to move, and unless someone chose this moment to open the door from the passenger compartment, the porter was free to do what he did next.
He hissed like a cobra and went for Alex’s throat.
Alex felt time freeze as he took in his tiny surroundings, the closed collapsing door of the train, the sliding door into the passenger section, the other sliding door into the narrow space between the two cars. They were in an area about the size of a closet.
As the vampire lunged, Alex braced himself against the wall and kicked, hard, connecting with the vampire’s chest and sending him back. He winced in pain; kicking a vampire always felt like kicking a sack of sand. He reached into his jacket and drew his Polibow, whipping it up and aiming at the porter. He was three inches away when he fired, and the vampire burst into flame, singeing Alex’s eyebrows before he fell to dust.
Alex registered and ignored the acrid smell of burnt hair filling the compartment. He looked down to find that the Bluetooth had been destroyed, too, reduced to a lump of plastic under the vampire’s ashes.
We’re moving. Sangster must know he was on the train. Alex looked out the window and watched the station wall slide past as the train began to pick up speed, heading toward the lake.
Fine. It was time to visit the blond man.
Alex pushed the sliding door open and stepped into the train car, scanning the passengers. Of those facing toward him he felt and observed nothing of interest. Those facing away were quiet, reading, talking on cell phones. Half of them were working on laptops, the train merely an extension of their offices.
Now Alex saw someone rise and head for the door at the end—the blond man, ponytail draped over a brown leather jacket, a brown leather cap on his head. He didn’t look back as he grabbed the door and went through. Alex hurried after him.
Out the door and Alex found himself stepping into the flimsy, enclosed connector between cars. He looked through the glass and saw the blond man—the blond vampire—moving all the way into the next car.
His brain started to hiss as he raced along. He stepped through, and this time the car was different, and the winds in his brain began to howl.
For a brief moment Alex took the final car in—richer, full of high leather seats and proper curtains, a first-class accommodation to be sure. That was all he had time to observe before turning his attention to the gang of vampires that now looked up at him from their card tables.
Directly in front of Alex were two vampires, large and muscular men wearing tailored suits. One had a goatee, the other appeared not to have shaved—a couple of stylish vampire thugs.
Farther back, the blond man had stopped at a table and now turned toward him, as if amused. Seated at that table was a vampire who was looking down. He was pale white but not built for speed the way every other vampire Alex had observed was. This vampire had salt-and-pepper hair that curled over his forehead, and a trimmed beard that clung to a roundish face. He wore off-white pants and a white cotton peasant shirt, flowing and comfortable. Alex couldn’t see the vampire’s feet, but he felt certain the man would be wearing leather loafers, no socks.
All of this in less than a second, and then one of the thugs at the front snarled. Alex raised his Polibow and shot, killing him instantly, and the other was upon him, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him back against the wall.
Alex struggled against the vampire’s strength, kicking, and the Polibow fell from his hands.
Answer the questions. What’s going on?
One of them has me.
What do you have?
I dropped my weapon.
What else do you have?
Alex flicked his arm, bringing his metal watch to the end of his wrist. It was made of silver and he had carved a cross into the clasp. He smacked the guard in the face, holding it there. The guard’s skin sizzled and he loosened his grip.
Alex took the opportunity to twist free and became aware of the blond man grabbing a long cane and walking toward him. The blond vampire whipped the cane up and hammered it against Alex’s chest, below his neck, driving Alex back. Alex grabbed the cane and twisted, unable to move the vampire but able to swerve out of the way. He reached into his coat for a stake but now the guard had him again, and was grabbing his collar and slamming him back against the seat. A puff of ash flew through the air, the remains of the guard Alex had killed. The living guard held Alex down and now opened his mouth, glistening fangs showing as his head whipped back and prepared to come forward to take out his throat.
“No, no, no,” said a soft, mellifluous voice. “That’s enough.”
The blond man with the cane froze, as did the guard.
Alex struggled to move, and the guard let him slip slightly.
The vampire in the peasant shirt was moving down the train, almost gliding, his—yep—leather loafers barely touching the floor. He stopped at the seat where Alex was pinned. Alex wondered if he could reach his stake. It was long and wooden and laced with silver, and it would do all the damage in the world. The guard had now let go of him, but Alex suspected a sudden move would be unwise.
The peasant shirt man folded his hands before his paunch, looking like a vampiric Buddha. “You must be Alex Van Helsing.”
His voice was smooth, low enough to reverberate in Alex’s chest, but with a strange high tenor hidden in it.
Alex found himself saying, “Yes.”
“We’re going to walk now, Alex. And you’re going to do something for me.”
Alex felt the guard completely relax his grasp and move away, and Alex sat forward. He needed to kill this man now. He needed to reach for his stake and try.
“We’re going to walk,” the man said again, “and you’re going to do something for me.”
Alex was rising and thinking he needed to reach for—something, there was something, or maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe what he was going to do now was walk.
“Let’s walk.”
They began to move down the car, toward the back, past the man’s card table. Alex was trying to think of what it was he was going to do, just now, and in the distance he heard the vampire in the peasant shirt say to the others, “One of us will be right back.”