Voice of the Undead Read Online Free PDF

Ronnie said.
    â€œOkay,” Alex answered, looking out the window again. “Anyway. We’re off to—” Alex looked at Paul, who was talking to Sid, and raised his voice. “Where are we going?”
    â€œVillage Hall,” Paul said.
    Alex nodded and spoke to Ronnie. “Uh, Village Hall. In a place nearby called Secheron. I heard them saying we have to sit there while Otranto figures out where we can go for a few days. Or weeks. I don’t know,” he said again.
    The only place that could hold them was the main room of the Secheron Village Hall, which would suffice for a few hours. The hall was big enough to hold two thousand citizens, with long rows of tables and metal chairs. The students filed in according to their houses and classes, and the administrators went about the business of keeping them occupied, with drinks and snacks being prepared in an industrial kitchen in the building.
    While Otranto conferred with several of the other instructors, Sangster tapped Alex to go with him to pick up extra supplies from one of the few late-night grocery stores in town—an American-style superstore of the kind that was slowly infiltrating Europe. That errand was their way to escape and figure out what on earth was going on.
    Into the woods the Glenarvon van shot with Sangster at the wheel, heading toward Polidorium HQ. Alex was astonished that the instructor was able to find a path through the trees big enough for the van, but within ten minutes they were into the clearing he had come to know well, through the false door of the farmhouse, and down into the bowels of the earth.
    Sangster brought the van to a stop in what amounted to a vast garage, big enough to house Humvees and cars and motorcycles and trucks with helicopters on their trailers. They bounded up the metal stairs at the back of the garage as Sangster gestured to a large clock on the wall. “We have an hour; that’ll leave half an hour to get the supplies.”
    Through the doors at the top of the stairs lay a world of carpeting and glass walls. Alex heard the familiar clamor of agents moving from room to room, some listening to radio chatter, some drawing lines on enormous glass maps. Alex and Sangster moved past the commotion to a conference room, where two people waited impatiently.
    At the head of a long, shiny black table sat Director Carreras, whose balding head and heavy-set frame fit his suit perfectly and made him look like the senior partner of a law firm. As they entered, Alex caught the eye of Agent Anne Armstrong, who was pacing near the projection screen at the front. She wore standard Polidorium togs, black pants and shirt, with shoulder holster. At least once in the month he’d been around, Alex had seen her in a U.S. Air Force uniform, and she had informed him she was actually a captain on detached assignment from that service. That was the way it worked, apparently. Some of these people were on loan.
    â€œCan anyone tell me what is going on?” Sangster asked as Carreras bade them sit, and Armstrong’s look indicated she had hoped to ask the same thing.
    â€œWe think it’s retaliation against Van Helsing,” said Carreras in a smooth British accent. “For the attack on the Scholomance last month.”
    For a moment Alex allowed it all to come back—the journey under the lake to reclaim his friends. But that adventure hadn’t ended with a daring escape, the way he had expected it to when they managed to bash their way out alive.
    No, the adventure had ended, truly ended, with Alex alone, a heavy vampiric hand wrapped around his throat. For a moment Alex saw again the flicker of red light, felt the nail of the vampire called Icemaker digging into him. Icemaker had been trying to raise a long-dead woman who would be the new queen of the vampires, and at that moment, with everything in his plan falling apart, she needed more blood. Alex was their last chance and he had almost