Free Alex Van Helsing by Jason Henderson

“So who is this Icemaker?”
    “Polidori knew him as, believe it or not, Lord Byron,” Sangster said. The sketch morphed into an older image: The eyes and face remained, but now the hair was longer and the man’s clothes were in the ruffled, nineteenth-century style. “The poet…and the first vampire Polidori ever faced. That last summer when the whole group of friends was together, the Haunted Summer, is the summer that Byron began to consort with vampires. Byron was an arrogant man, attractive to every woman he met and able to best any man in any contest, but he was plagued by self-consciousness, about his club foot, his height, his reputation as a writer. Vampirism attracts people who want to become something greater than themselves. It took years before Byron became a full vampire, but Polidori saw it coming. Obviously this isn’t the kind of thing I would ever teach in class.”
    Too bad for Sid, Alex thought. Sangster went on.
    “Today Icemaker controls thousands of vampire soldiers. He’s very secretive, even for a clan lord. But know this: He is extraordinarily dangerous. When he needs blood, he doesn’t just come in and kill a few, he kills hundreds. He’ll attack, freeze the town, then reduce it to shards.”
    “Do you know why he’s here?” Alex asked.
    “Nope. We got word that he destroyed one of our ships, the Wayfarer , which had a cargo of relics and other holdings on its way to a warehouse in the States. Then suddenly we started tracking him here. Something got his attention and drove him back to Lake Geneva.”
    “Where would they be going? Where would they put all of those vehicles?”
    “In a place we can’t find,” Sangster said. “A place even better hidden than this: a place called the Scholomance.”
    Alex nodded. He had heard that word. “That’s a hideout?”
    “It’s a school, more a university, like an MIT for vampires.”
    “And it’s around here?”
    “We think so,” Sangster said. He tapped another key and Alex nearly choked on his drink.
    There, in a blurry photograph, was a shot of his own father, that skinny, seldom-exercised man, here twentyyears younger, fitter, and hunkered down behind a crumbled wall as he talked on a radio. “Where was this taken?”
    Sangster looked up. “Hmmm…I’d say Prague.”
    “ When was this taken?”
    “I would figure not long before you were born.” Sangster looked at Alex searchingly. He smiled and then said, “Come on , Alex.”
    “What?”
    “One more time: It’s really your position that you have never heard of the Polidorium or the work it does? And that your knowledge of the Van Helsing Foundation is restricted to its charitable activities?”
    “Yes! Everything you said.” Alex couldn’t take his eyes off the picture. Incredible. Dad was an honest-to-God, hunkering-down-behind-crumbling-buildings-and-shooting-things spy. “Doesn’t happen,” Alex muttered.
    “What?”
    “All my life my dad brushes off anything that he thinks sounds like nonsense with ‘that doesn’t happen.’ But it turns out that everything that doesn’t happen actually does.”
    “Probably not everything,” Sangster said. “Anyway, we can’t keep you from talking. Even if we tried, drugs wear off. I have no idea what we’re going to do with you.”
    “Can I learn this stuff?” Alex said, stepping closer to the screen.
    “Maybe you should ask your dad that,” Sangster said, studying Alex.
    “I don’t get it. Why would he send me here? If he didn’t want me involved with this.”
    “He didn’t send you here ,” Sangster responded, “he sent you to one of the most prestigious private schools in the world.” The teacher/agent bit his lip. “I don’t think he knows the Polidorium has a location at Lake Geneva. It’s top secret, and it’s only been here since we started focusing our search for the Scholomance. We don’t share that kind of information with former agents.”
    “If you tell him, he’ll drag me out of