Read Online Alex Van Helsing by Jason Henderson - Free Book Online

protested. She was a blur now. He couldn’t even make out her face, and the sudden blindness made him feel trapped and claustrophobic.
    “He doesn’t wear those in class,” Sangster said. “I’ve never seen you wear glasses.”
    “I wear contacts ,” Alex snapped.
    Armstrong was still peering intently at the pair of glasses. “Why aren’t you wearing contacts now?”
    “It’s like three A.M. !” he said.
    Armstrong pursed her lips, then handed them back. “They’re normal,” she said, satisfied. Alex put the glasses back on, very slowly.
    Carerras spoke. “You’re aware, no doubt, of the associations of your family name?”
    Alex chewed on this, on the absurdity of all of this, the G.I. Joe figures studying his glasses as though they might be made of kryptonite, a man in a suit a mile underground asking this or any question in the middle of the night. “You mean, ‘vampire hunter’? Like in the movies? There are worse names to have,” Alex said. “But yes, I hear a lot about it. My dad gets annoyed every time someone even mentions that character. It’s like running around with the name Hannibal.”
    Sangster shook his head in something like wonder and addressed the others. “I did some research when I saw his name on my roster of students. He climbs mountains. He rescues hikers. He’s been taught to survive on little or no rest or food. He can drive a combine and ride a motorbike, and he once survived a snakebite by applying a tourniquet to his own leg, nearly causing him to lose a foot.” Alex felt a tinge of pride and fear as his literature teacher recited a litany of things that, over the years, Alex had indeed been taught to do. His father had encouraged all of his children in these things. Well, notthe tourniquet. “And yet not a single thing does he know about the one thing he should know most: vampires. He hasn’t been trained to fight them. As far as I can tell he knows nothing of the business.”
    Carerras asked, “Have any of the Van Helsings been active?”
    “Charles is inactive. We all know about Amanda,” Sangster said, “and—”
    “What does that mean?” demanded Alex.
    Sangster said evenly, “All it means is that without your mother, your father would probably still be on the payroll.”
    “This is crazy,” Alex said, rising and shaking his head.
    “Can you give us a minute or two?” Sangster looked at the others.
    A moment later Sangster and Alex were alone in the conference room and Sangster was pressing buttons on an invisible keyboard in the table. As a projection screen dropped down from the ceiling, he spoke into the table-top. “Gimme a club soda.” He turned to Alex. “You want a Dr Pepper?”
    “What are you trying to say about my mother?” Alex said, frowning.
    Sangster had an open expression that Alex took tobe one of peacemaking. “Do you want something to drink?” he asked again.
    “Whatever.”
    Sangster made the order and turned his attention to the keyboard. He hit a button and a jagged, infrared image filled the screen on the wall: a man leaping toward a camera on a balcony somewhere as a politician’s motorcade rolled in the streets below. The attacker’s nails were sharp and his teeth—fangs—were bared.
    “We kill vampires, Alex.” Sangster hit the button again and now showed another infrared image, a different vampire leaping onto a car in the motorcade, ripping back the windshield like paper. “Guys like us, some of us hunt terrorists; some of us fight wars. The Polidorium was founded to hunt vampires.”
    “Just vampires?”
    “Eh,” Sangster said noncommittally. He tapped the invisible keyboard and now brought up an image of a young Italian man in a painting. “This is Polidori.”
    Alex tried to remember details of the lecture on Frankenstein . That all seemed like a year ago. “We talked about him in class. Mary Shelley makes him sound like an idiot. You said that guy seemed like a loser.”
    “Here is what you must know if