He understood very well. At the blackest times, ridiculousness was a lifeline, but twenty years later, he was still too heartsore to find relief in banter. ‘People who disappear in Hungary don’t think it’s a game. Does this talk of vampires keep your heart light?’
‘No,’ she said with grim sincerity. ‘Vampires are only darkness.’
‘You don’t need to come with us for the next bit,’ Alex said. ‘We’ll get what we need from the van and meet you later.’
Kurt took out his phone and made a call as they walked to the parked van. ‘Harper? How is she? What? But why? All right, all right.’ A moment later Kurt spoke in a tiny sing-song voice. ‘Gretel! Little Gretchen! Why do you cry for Harper? Can’t you sleep, bubba?’
‘What’s she doing awake?’ Alex demanded, nipping across to walk with Kurt.
‘Pappa and Dadda are coming home soon!’ Kurt held the phone out to Alex, who made kissy noises through the speaker. ‘Pappa loves you! And Dadda loves you! Oh, Harper, hello again. We have one more song tonight and we’re done. Sing Gretchen her lullaby; that always works.’
Laszlo ambled along behind the group, alert to the chill of the night, the scent of loam from the nearby garden centre and the faint odour of ammonia given off by the water treatment plant on the edge of the Chamber Forest. A flurry of alarmed squawking rose up from the forest to the north and fell suddenly silent.
Even the birds weren’t happy with these strange activities.
Sal was reading from the notebook he carried everywhere, its pages well worn and cover marked with water stains and smudges of ink. His lips moved and he muttered to himself a line Laszlo recognised as Marcus Aurelius. A man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.
‘I want my djembe,’ Yuka said, ignoring the young fathers chatting with their infant. Laszlo had the impression Yuka was agitated by the call. In fact, everyone seemed uncomfortable while Alex and Kurt talked to their babysitter.
Sal shoved the book back in his pocket. ‘Not the den-den? You can use the handle as a stake.’
‘Better sound from the djembe,’ Yuka said as they closed in on the van. ‘Better not to get close enough for staking.’
‘Sleepytimes now, älskling,’ Kurt was cooing into the phone. ‘There’s our good gi-aaah!’
Kurt shrieked and disappeared up, up so fast, up. Alex, almost as fast, leapt to wrap his arms around Kurt’s legs.
‘No!’
Sal leapt to hang on to Alex’s legs and all three were lifted high into the air, while the thing above them made an unholy screech and beat its giant wings, wafting down a musky animal stink.
Steve, instead of joining the kite-tail of people, whipped his guitar into position and began to play. Yuka took a more direct approach: she leapt and clambered up the ladder of bodies to the beast, to stab the stick into one of the great taloned feet that gripped Kurt’s shoulders. She drew blood and the flying creature screeched in rage.
Laszlo stared in shock and wonder at the thing he could barely comprehend. A griffmadár, its shaggy body and hindquarters that of a lion, the forequarters and head of the royal turul, the mythological falcon. Its giant wings beat, its talons dug deeper into Kurt’s shoulders. Kurt screamed and twisted, trying to free himself. Blood from the talons in his flesh, and from Yuka’s drum stick in the beast’s foot, dripped onto Alex’s face below.
‘Cicci!’ Alex shouted, desperately hanging on.
Steve was crying out for everyone to let go. The griffmadár was rising so high that a fall would be damaging, and soon fatal. Besides, the weight of all of them on Kurt’s body was making the claws tear deep furrows into his flesh.
The beast screamed again, rolled in the air and shook Sal off easily. Yuka clung so tight, with her drum stick buried in the thing’s leg, that it took longer but she was thrown free soon after. Alex hung on tight for three turns before he was thrown clear.
The monster’s triumphant screams mingled with Kurt’s yells of pain as the griffmadár flew away into the night, in the direction of Erdõdülõ. Those it had shaken free lunged towards the van.
Alex shoved Laszlo out of his way and opened the back of the van to rummage among the contents.
Laszlo was struck with awe and horror. ‘What was that?’
Nobody answered.
‘How the hell did that get past the wards?’ Sal snarled.
Yuka, muttering curses in her native Japanese, climbed past Alex into the van to find her djembe.
Steve had retrieved Kurt’s phone, which had smashed against the road. ‘We warded against evil, not griffins,’ he said.
‘Aren’t… aren’t griffmadár evil?’ Laszlo stammered.
‘Depends on the griffin. Seems this one’s made a deal with Prince Vladimir.’ Steve held his own phone to his ear and turned away from Laszlo to speak urgently into it. ‘Harper, it’s gone to hell. Get Gretel out of there. Not in the morning. Now. Go to London, then home if you don’t hear from me again.’
Before Laszlo could ask any more questions he didn’t really want answered, Alex shoved a violin into his hands.
‘Can you play?’ Alex’s eyes were feverish bright with fury and fear. ‘I saw you eyeing this off when we played at Dürer-kert.’
Laszlo twitched. The pub show he’d organised on Tuesday seemed suddenly of an alien world. ‘I used to.’
‘Good enough.’ Alex thrust the venerable instrument into his hands.
‘I don’t know your songs.’
‘The violin does.’
Laszlo’s confusion doubled and doubled again. Sal was in the driver’s seat; Steve and Yuka were in the rear. Alex impatiently dragged Laszlo by the arm to the front door, and Laszlo resisted. Alex was paying him to organise gigs, be a local guide and interpreter, and tolerate the crazy. He suspected he wasn’t being paid enough.
‘What are we doing?’
‘We’re getting my Kurt back and putting down that nest of leeches for good.’
‘We are going to fight a griffin?’
‘We’re fighting vampires,’ Alex corrected, his grin savage. ‘Are you in or out?’
Laszlo held the violin and his heart pounded harder than ever.
Vampires, in his city. And a violin, a reminder of his sins. Rising out of his panic and terror was, strangely enough, a surge of hope.
‘In. What do I have to do?’
‘Draw the bow across the strings. The violin will do the rest.
