chapter 8
Back in his room, Alex could barely contain his need to get back to the Polidorium, and he paced the floor until it was time. Paul and Sid were still awake when he snuck out to, as Paul put it, “go protect us all from art history.”
The woods across from Glenarvon-LaLaurie were pitch black at 11:45 P.M. Alex stood in darkness and watched the condensation of his breath cross the thin crescent moon in the sky beyond the trees. He lit up his watch to check the time. Astrid wasn’t there.
Alex wasn’t going to wait for her. Possibly she had gotten caught trying to sneak out or disappeared into whatever cave she had emerged from that morning, but as he stood next to his bike, he tried to make any sense out of Sangster’s curious deference to her. That deference was because she claimed to represent an organization Alex did not know existed.
“Hexen,” Alex muttered aloud, shaking his head.
“That’s right,” said Astrid as she stepped out of the shadows, her pale face barely visible in the darkness. “What about Hexen?”
“Just that I’ve never heard of it until today.”
“Alex, I really don’t want to keep you in the dark.” Astrid looked genuine and sweet in the speckled moonlight, and he distrusted her even more. The sunnier she acted, the more clouded his vision of her became. She must be keeping secrets under that pout-like smile. “What do you want to know?”
Alex wanted to say Everything, but that would have sounded desperate. He didn’t know if he wanted to know everything anyway. He wanted to know everything so he could dismiss it again and go back to a world of him and the Polidorium and no weird, sudden Hexen girl, and while they were at it, no upset Minhi. Not that that was even his problem. It was Paul’s problem, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Whatever’s necessary, I guess, but right now we don’t have time.”
“I’m very sorry to keep you waiting. I had to make sure everyone in the girls’ dorm was asleep. So do you want me to follow you?”
“Why don’t you ride with me this time?” Alex asked Astrid. She had her own helmet but he held an extra Polidorium helmet forward. “Take this one so we can hear one another.”
Astrid put on the helmet as he got on the Ninja. Alex indicated the seat behind him as he slid on his goggles and the helmet and tapped a button on the side. Inside his goggles, the trees lit up bright white against the dark spaces of the infrared. Alex started the Ninja, and spoke into a mike inside the helmet.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she replied. “You Polidori really are about the technology. Aren’t you going to use headlights?”
“Just put your arms around my…”
But she already had, her bony arms folding around him and clasping together at his stomach. Even through the jackets, she felt warm. He throttled the Ninja and took off into the woods.
With Astrid behind him, Alex threaded the motorcycle through the forest, picking up speed as he went. Unnaturally white trees zipped past on either side.
He became aware of the vibration in Astrid’s helmet before he heard her erupt in laughter. “You really know these woods!”
“Believe me, if I were starting from anywhere else but the school I’d need the GPS.” The bike jolted as it went over some fallen branches. “But by now I have this route down. Should be just a few minutes.”
After a while he saw a clearing of darkness beyond the trees, and then the glowing image of a building.
They broke through the tree line and the farmhouse came into view, a small, unassuming shack with a battered sheet-metal garage door to the side. The moment they passed into the clearing, as the wheels began to churn over soft earth, Alex saw tiny red lights shining, cameras perched overhead in the trees beyond the clearing, watching their progress.
Astrid gasped, the sound echoing in his ear as he gunned the engine and headed straight for the sheet-metal door. As he drew within a few yards, it swung up fast, and he zipped inside.
Track lights came on as they moved on to a concrete drive at a thirty-degree grade, and now more obvious cameras swung toward him.
They passed wooden beams and swiftly responding gun emplacements that swiveled and idled, vibrating on their struts as the Ninja moved past. Down, down, half a mile, until they emerged into a giant concrete hangar, moving past trucks with helicopters on the backs of them and all manner of vehicles.
“This,” said Alex, “is the farmhouse.”
He came to a stop next to a bike he recognized as Sangster’s black Triumph Speed Triple with the Polidorium emblem on the back of the seat.
Astrid looked around as she took off her helmet. For once, she seemed impressed. Alex led her up the metal stairs at the back and through a door. They stepped into the carpeted corridor, past offices of agents working at computer screens and drawing on enormous glass maps. “I had no idea.”
Alex shrugged and turned the boardroom door handle. “Well, we gotta work somewhere.”
Inside, Alex found Sangster and Armstrong bent over an enormous table with the Polidorium legend Talia sunt set into the shiny black surface. They were looking at a wall screen, and Sangster invited Alex and Astrid to sit.
“Minhi was right,” Sangster said. “It is The Triumph of Death.”
Alex smiled slightly. He had called Sangster about Minhi’s suggestion as soon as he’d had a chance. “Fantastic. She showed us the painting in a book, too.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about the painter. Pieter Bruegel.” Sangster indicated the screen. Projected on the wall Alex saw two images: a picture of a painter, bearded with a floppy sort of hood, like a medieval worker might wear, and some key biographical data. The second image was the painting itself.
“Bruegel was Flemish,” Sangster reported. “He painted The Triumph of Death sometime around 1562. We don’t have an exact date.”
Alex looked at the individual parts of the painting and focused in on the image of what looked like a satellite dish. He remembered it had sent a message. “And it’s amazing. Could the Queen be using this as a, I don’t know, a screenplay for what she was doing this afternoon?”
“More like the opposite, but we’ll get to that,” Sangster said.
Armstrong tapped a key in an invisible keyboard in the tabletop and brought up the coded message that had been beamed into the van. “Bruegel was the key to deciphering the coded message that Claire sent. We were pretty sure that because Claire was a member of Hexen, that she would use the Hexen language.”
“She hasn’t been one of us for a very long time,” Astrid said. “I just want to make that clear.”
“Noted,” Armstrong said, nodding. “Anyway, this coded message she sent was in gibberish, just symbols. But all codes have a key, a way to start mapping one alphabet against another. Like I said, we knew that the Hexen language—or Dulle Grit, as you called it, a language developed in secret by the founders of Hexen deriving from a form of Druidic—was likely to be the language that we would be translating into. The keyword we used to decode the message was Bruegel. That got us to this.”
The image changed to show a new stream of letters, and this time Astrid’s eyes lit up with recognition. “That’s Hexen.”
Armstrong nodded. “Right, so that’s the Hexen version…and this is the English.” She pressed a button.
This time the words shifted and glowed there. Alex read them with a sinking feeling.
WHAT IS LOST WILL BE FOUND.
YOU HAVE SEVEN DAYS UNTIL SUNSET.
“Seven days until sunset?” Alex asked.
“Here’s what we think,” said Sangster. “The Queen has gotten hold of a very powerful spell that can plunge the world into darkness, which she demonstrated amply this afternoon in Secheron. She’s threatening to use it in a big way, even taunting us by showing us the picture.”
Astrid seemed surprised. “You’ve heard of this spell?”
Sangster nodded. “Polidori left copious notes on the various magicks that the vampires picked up and trafficked in while he was alive. This one is called a lot of things, such as Obscura Notte, Dimmer Switch. And of course, the Triumph of Death.”
“This would be completely forbidden. We’re not supposed to do stuff like that.” Astrid shook her head emphatically. “She’s going to need a week just to build up the reserve energy to do it.”
“You said ‘forbidden’?” Alex was trying to get a feel for how the witches were organized. He wished his mom had been more forthcoming about her powers. He wanted to ask Astrid if his mother had been a member of Hexen, but set it aside. There were more pressing issues. “So, what, you have laws?”
“Of course. Magic is about the use of the spirit. It takes energy,” Astrid said. “It’s one thing if you’re helping, if you’re in spirit with the earth, if you’re going with the natural flow of things. Those spells increase everyone’s energy. The world welcomes it. But conflict is harder. Huge spells that torment and cause pain to masses of people are costly to us. Pain leaves an ugly mark on the world. It’s not what magic is for. A spell like this is nothing but torment. It takes something out of everybody. But we suspected that Claire would want to do something like this.”
Alex studied the painting. “So the painting is a sort of model for the Triumph.”
Sangster shook his head. “Like I said, it goes the other way. We think the painting is a sort of report of the spell. A warning. Except that Bruegel was painting in the sixteenth century, long before there was a Polidorium, so he didn’t do it for us. But there were other organizations back then. Polidori made reference to an Order that we know Bruegel dealt with. We think the painting is a message left for us if we ever had to deal with the Triumph. But I was gonna say, there’s a problem.”
“What?” Alex asked, turning toward Sangster.
Sangster brought up the database that Alex had seen numerous times, a huge index with a search bar.
Armstrong typed in “Dimmer Switch” and the entry came up, followed by its various other names. Alex saw “Triumph of Death” among them. Next, where he should have seen an article, Alex saw three words.
File not found.
“Where’s the file? What happened?” Alex asked.
“It was deleted,” Sangster said, “by a virus that shot through our systems. We think the way it worked is through a wireless connection coming from one of our mobile data devices. You get one guess when.”
“This morning,” Alex said. “They used the device they stole from the plane.”
Astrid had a quizzical look, and Alex quickly told her about the vampires that had hijacked his plane and taken the study computer.
“What about backups?” Alex asked.
“All erased. We do have notes on Bruegel and his painting, but not much of that.”
“So the Scholomance is using a spell that Polidori left us instructions on how to deal with, but they erased what we have. Where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us with seven days to figure it out all over again.” Sangster turned to Astrid. “What about Hexen? Do they have anything on this?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Most of the information on Claire was handed over by Brelaz during the Summit.”
“The Summit?” Alex could hear the capital letter. “Who the heck is Brelaz?”
“Madame Brelaz was a Portuguese agent of Hexen and a friend of Polidori,” Sangster explained. “She helped Polidori go underground. At that time, early in Polidori’s secret life, they were sharing a lot of information, and there was some hope on Hexen’s part that a new, heavily scientific arm of Hexen might be created.”
“But Polidori turned his back on the use of magic,” Astrid said. “And there hasn’t been much cooperation between Hexen and the Polidorium since the mid-1800s.”
“Why is there always something else that I don’t know?” Alex asked.
“That’s what makes life magical,” Astrid said brightly.
Alex stared at Astrid and shook his head, turning his attention back to the message. “‘WHAT IS LOST WILL BE FOUND.’ What’s that a reference to?”
“We’re not sure. Icemaker, maybe,” Sangster guessed.
“Who?” Astrid asked.
“It’s what we call Byron,” Alex explained.
“So where is Byron, currently?” Astrid continued.
Everyone was silent for a moment. Alex hadn’t been told where Byron was, either, though he figured he had some right to know. After all, it had been Alex who had managed to clap his hand down on the liquid nitrogen system that had frozen and encased the vampire in ice.
“We’re keeping him safe,” Sangster said.
Armstrong added, “And we’re absolutely not handing him over to Claire.”
Astrid laughed, that same eruption she had let out on the motorcycle. “No, no! I agree.”
“Well, I’m glad you agree,” Alex said before he could stop himself. Couldn’t she be less positive? Please? And did she have to act like she was on an even level with Sangster and Armstrong? Alex had been here for months and he didn’t dare do that.
“Wait!” Astrid said, looking back at the painting. “Of course.”
“What?” Alex asked.
“The spell, the Dimmer Switch as you call it, is literally the Triumph of Death. It will allow Claire to control the dead. Even those in the earth.”
“And she could find anyone dead.” Sangster nodded, following. “She casts the spell and it’s not just that she can scare everybody and let vampires run around all day. She might be able to raise the dead as well and command an army of death.”
“Zombies,” Alex said. “The Scholomance had a few zombie guards in their main tunnel.”
“These would be summoned dead, new zombies. It’s not a skill everyone has. Dracula can do it, but everyone else would need a big spell like this.”
“We don’t know the extent of the necromantic powers that could be bestowed once she unleashes the spell,” Astrid said.
Alex drummed his fingers. “Okay. Big spell, big power, and she leaves a hint. Why? Why is she giving us a chance to stop it?” Alex asked.
Sangster paused. “We don’t know.”
Alex sat back. “So…where do we start?”
“Look for a heavy convergence of ley lines,” Astrid said.
“What?” Alex looked at her. “What lines?”
“Ley lines,” Astrid repeated. “Think of them as longitude and latitude for the magical realm. But there are more of them in some places, and those places make good spots for setting off major spells. We’re talking about Stonehenge, Rome, New Orleans.”
Alex brightened. “Hey, maybe we get to go to New Orleans.”
“Let’s back up a moment,” said Armstrong. “It’s now midnight on the night after a plane you were riding was hijacked, resulting in the loss of a computer that has now put the Polidorium at risk.”
Alex felt the blood prickle in his cheeks. “I…you know that’s not my fault.”
“I’m just saying that this is serious, Alex. This is a major threat. We haven’t made assignments for this project.”
“What about Hexen?” Sangster changed the subject, looking at Astrid. “You said you were here to look into Claire.”
“Yes.”
“So now you’ve looked. Can I assume that your organization is going to continue working on this?”
“I think you can assume that.”
“And can I assume that a more experienced operative will be representing Hexen going forward?”
Astrid looked as if she’d been struck. “No. This is my project.”
“Is it possible you could set up a meeting—”
Alex looked at Sangster in shock. Sangster, who had personally guided Alex for the past several months, was clearly suggesting that Astrid and Alex were too young and inexperienced for this. He wasn’t even sure he liked Astrid, but this was not like Sangster.
“Absolutely not,” Astrid protested. “Hexen has made its decision.”
“And I’m supposed to just take your word for that?”
“No, of course not.” Astrid smiled in a pouting way as though assuaging a child. She reached into her pocket, and for a split second Alex thought she was going to draw a weapon. But instead she brought out a piece of jewelry, a silver chain flashing in the air. She slapped her fist down on the table and opened it, revealing the object that lay there.
Alex had no frame of reference for this, but Sangster slowly leaned forward. In the center of the table was a cameo, a delicately curved portrait on a pendant.
“May I…?” he asked, and reached out his hand.
“Of course.”
Sangster picked up the pendant and looked at it, holding it up to the light. “This is the Brelaz cameo.”
Astrid nodded. “Given in friendship by Dr. John Polidori to Madame Brelaz in 1819. Do you know what it means?”
Alex shook his head.
Sangster said, “It gives its bearer the full weight of Hexen authority and the right to speak for the organization should the two ever cross again.”
Armstrong let out a slow whistle. “That has not been seen in…what…”
“Seventy-five years?” Sangster estimated. He slid it back and raised his hands. “Okay, okay, I surrender. Your papers appear to be in order. Hexen doesn’t call and doesn’t write for nearly a century, and now we get you.”
“For now,” Astrid said. “For Claire.”
“Because you guys think of Claire as your problem,” Armstrong said.
“We think she’s everybody’s problem.”
“Any other orders in there we should know about?”
“There is something else.” Astrid gestured toward Alex with her head. “With all gentle kindness, I’m not here to work with you. I’m supposed to work with him.”
Alex wasn’t sure she was pointing at him at first. That seemed absurd. Hey, I was just starting to hate you.
Sangster cocked his head and looked at the two of them. Alex opened his hands as if to say, Don’t look at me. “What does that mean exactly?”
“That’s enough for now,” Astrid said. “But if I’m working with the Polidorium, I’m working with Van Helsing.”
Sangster breathed slowly. “Well, we were gonna bring Alex anyway. He’s not bad at all this.”
“Thanks,” said Alex.
“But he has a terrible reputation.” Sangster smiled.
“So.” Alex leaned back. “I gotta ask again. Now that I’m the number-one-requested single, where do we start?”
Sangster shrugged. “We start with the painting, The Triumph of Death. We know it’s a key, but thanks to the computer virus, we don’t have the Polidorium’s notes on it, so we need to look at it more closely.”
“Where is this painting?” Astrid asked.
Sangster scrolled through the data under the painting. “It’s now in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.” He leaned back and expertly flipped a pen between his fingers as he looked at Alex and Astrid. “Want to go on a field trip?”