Free Vampire Beach Hunted by Alex Duval Page B

I’ve never seen him around here before.’ Again his gaze went to Zach. ‘I think they’ve had him for a while. He doesn’t look too good. But he managed to pass me a key to the handcuffs they used.’
    ‘How did he get that?’ Zach asked.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ Van Dyke answered. ‘I’m not sure about anything. We didn’t have the chance to talk much. Anyway, they were going to do some experiments on me – something where they had to take me outside the main location. They put the cuffs on and put me back in the van. They weren’t paying as much attention to me, because they were sure I was restrained and the van was moving. So I used the key to get the cuffs off, yanked open the door and jumped.’
    ‘Obviously, we don’t have any time to waste,’ Zach announced. ‘One of us is still being held captive. We don’t know how long he can survive, so we have to rescue him. We have to find the place where Van Dyke was held and shut it down before it’s too late.’
    ‘So you think you were held in a warehouse . . .’ Zach recapped, as Brad slipped out of the room.
    ‘The place was big, that’s for sure,’ Van Dyke answered. ‘And my cell felt like a warehouse, cold and damp. Definitely not heated like a building that was used by a lot of people. At least, not that part of it.’
    ‘Did you see anything that made you think you were being held by vampire hunters like Tamburo?’ Jason asked. ‘Any ritualistic objects? Anything with the phases of the moon as symbols?’
    Van Dyke shook his head. ‘All the equipment these guys had was really hi-tech,’ he said, pacing back and forth across the living room. His wounds had visibly improved and he was clearly eager to go out and kick some ass. ‘The stuff could have come out of your dad’s labs, Sienna. It was that cutting edge. Some of the tech guys were even wearing what looked like hazmat suits. This wasn’t some rinky-dink operation.’
    Brad hurried back into the living room. ‘I snagged this from the study,’ he said, spreading a detailed map of Malibu out on the coffee table. ‘I thought it could help. Let’s go over everything you remember about your escape. You said you jumped out of the van. Can you show us where on the map?’
    Van Dyke sat on the floor and leant over the coffee table. ‘I hit the ground hard and rolled. I was going to try to stand up and start running, but I picked up momentum. It turned out there was a hill at the side of the road. A steep, scrubby hill. And I was going down it whether I wanted to or not. When I finally stopped, I got up and ran.’
    ‘I’m thinking the school must have been closer than your house and that’s why you went there,’ Brad suggested.
    ‘Yeah,’ Van Dyke agreed.
    ‘Any idea how far you ran?’ Jason asked.
    ‘It felt like a marathon. But maybe a mile. At least a mile,’ Van Dyke answered.
    Van Dyke studied the map. ‘Here’s the school.’ He tapped the map. ‘And I think this has got to be the hill.’ He tapped it again. ‘So this has to be where I jumped out of the van.’ He pointed to a road.
    ‘Now we just need to work back from there,’ Sienna said. ‘How long do you think you rode in the van before the heroic leap?’
    ‘I probably had a brain biopsy before this all happened,’ Van Dyke reminded everyone.
    ‘Best guess,’ Erin urged.
    ‘Twenty minutes,’ Van Dyke told them.
    ‘And how fast do you think the van was going?’ Jason asked.
    ‘This is starting to feel like one of those word problems from the third grade. I never liked those,’ Van Dyke complained. ‘When I jumped out, it felt as though we were going about forty. Let’s say we were going around forty the whole time. I don’t remember speeding up or slowing down a whole lot.’
    ‘Twenty minutes, forty miles an hour,’ Brad muttered. Then he drew a large circle around the place Van Dyke estimated he’d rolled down the hill. ‘This is the area we’re looking at,’ he told the group. ‘We’re