Sangster seemed to be aiming for the spaces between the trees as though he were skiing. Alex dared to look again in the infrared. The vampires were still in pursuit.

“They’re coming after us because they want that caravan kept secret,” said Sangster, almost casually considering the danger at hand. “We’re close to HQ. Maybe we can lose them.”

Sangster reached up, tapped a button on his glasses, and now in Alex’s goggle vision—surely also through Sangster’s—a GPS map appeared. The image displayed over the view in front of him, so that the map bounced amid the trees.

“Farmhouse,” Sangster said, swerving hard to avoid a branch. The vampires’ shapes were leaping closer.

“Please repeat your request,” came a singsong sound response.

“FARM-HOUSE.”

The GPS view before Alex’s eyes shifted. First it showed one location, which it indicated with the symbol of a little roofed house, and then the camera rose up into the sky and located the motorcycle moving through the woods. Then the GPS drew a line between the two: their path.

“That’s two miles away.” Sangster adjusted his course, heading north. “But we’re gonna have a problem.”

“What?” Alex asked, incredulous. Vampires chasing us isn’t problem enough?

Sangster was already speaking rapidly into his mike to someone else. “This is Agent Sangster requesting permission to enter Farmhouse accompanied by non-cleared human.”

A voice came on the line. “Could you repeat…?”

“I have a kid with me, I need in,” Sangster said, swerving again, barely able to speak with the bounce of the motorcycle.

“Denied.”

“I cannot—”

“If you enter the perimeter of Farmhouse with a non-cleared witness, you will be shot.”

Alex saw Sangster glance up at the trees. For a split second Alex glimpsed metallic gray cameras, recessed against the firs. The cameras swiveled as they passed. “We’re coming up on the perimeter,” Sangster said.

Alex looked ahead and saw a tree line coming up fast, a large clearing in the woods, with a small, dilapidated farmhouse a hundred yards beyond, a distant white image bouncing behind the trees.

They were running out of woods. Alex felt the bike brake hard on its front wheel. He was weightless for a second as the rear of the bike lifted off the forest floor, swinging violently around as Sangster ground the bike to a halt. The motorcycle dropped back down and they were facing the pursuers now. Alex noticed that Sangster was shifting his weight to guard him. Sangster started firing the rifle he carried.

Buddabuddabudda. Alex counted seven, maybe eight vampires ripping through the trees.

“Requesting permission to enter with—”

“Negative, that witness was to be left. Leave him and report; we cannot have—”

“Dammit, he’s a Van Helsing,” Sangster hissed. Alex turned, startled, and looked at him.

Silence on the other end of the line. Sangster tagged one of the vampires in the head, sending it spinning as it burned and dusted. They were landing close, baring their fangs. And now Alex realized he had miscounted—as these eight drew closer, he saw three or four more ice blue cold shapes in the woods.

Suddenly one of the vamps was hit in the head by a round Sangster didn’t fire, a single shot from somewhere at the house.

The radio crackled. “Granted.”

Sangster shouted, “We’re in,” and the bike leapt, spinning once more and hurtling again through the trees and into the clearing with the vampires close behind. Alex felt the bike pick up speed as they moved onto the smooth grass. They were hurtling straight for the tin wall of a small shack next to the house.

Alex winced as a hot electric pulse shot through his headset.

“We’re blowing out electronic communications,” shouted Sangster. “Just in case those guys are miked. We can’t let them report a thing.”

Another shot rang out from somewhere Alex couldn’t see and Sangster said, “This perimeter has to be a dead zone.”

They were ten yards from the wall of the shack.

Five yards and the side of the shack whipped up with a metallic roar, nearly catching the bike’s front wheel. Sangster gunned the engine and Alex held on tight as they drove under the rising wall and began zooming down a long concrete drive.

The bike roared down the grade and commandos ran up, ten or twenty men and women. Alex looked back for a second, and saw the muzzle of a blond woman’s weapon flashing. She left the tunnel, already firing, laying waste to the vampires in the clearing. For a moment she was silhouetted against the floodlights of the farmhouse clearing as Alex and Sangster moved farther and farther below, then Alex turned his head back to the front.

Down, down into the bowels of the earth they sped, past wooden beams and newer, iron girders, down a full half mile at a 30-degree angle until the motorcycle slowed. They reached a vast, concrete expanse lit by high tracks of lighting. It was an enormous bunker under the woods.

Alex felt his eyes grow wide as he took in countless vehicles, Humvees and trucks and even helicopters.

A man in a suit—older, with a slight paunch—was waiting for them when the bike rolled to a stop. As Alex slid off the bike and removed the goggles, the man folded his arms.

“Alexander Van Helsing. Son of Charles and Amanda. Whatever are we going to do with you?”