hemmed them in with the wards,’ Alex explained. ‘They know they can’t escape.’
‘It is why they sent the griffin,’ Yuka said, as though that were obvious. ‘There is no escape. Only revenge.’
‘But surely we should… sneak up?’ Laszlo said.
‘Bit late for stealth anyway. They know we’re coming,’ Steve said.
‘Just because they lure you, you don’t have to follow.’
‘They’ve got Kurt,’ Alex said. And that was that.
The band known as Rome’s Burning piled out of the van in front of the factory where the vampires had been trapped by the series of spells in crossroads all around the district. They took up their instruments. Laszlo tucked the violin under his chin and listened to the music building up around him, wondering when he should play, and what he would play when the time came, and whether he really believed what was happening.
The melody that wove around the five of them as they spread out along the street softened their footfalls and made the trees rustle as they passed.
They were greeted by Vladimir, Prince of Vampires, at the threshold of the abandoned factory he had made into a home. He held Kurt by a fistful of bloodied shirt. The metallic smell of too much blood loss was noticeable.
‘You don’t give up, do you, Torni?’
‘No,’ Alex said in almost his old, flippant voice. ‘Not when you go around eating people and recruiting the occasional unwilling survivor into your pack.’
‘Not a pack. My House. And I warned you what would happen if you interfered.’
‘Interfering’s what we do. Still, let Kurt go and we’ll parlay.’
Vladimir’s answer was to tear Kurt’s shirt to better reveal the ugly bite in Kurt’s throat. Human blood mingled with a darker substance oozed from it. Laszlo heard the moment when Alex’s breath stopped.
‘Your beloved Kurt belongs to my House now.’ Vladimir laughed, the blood between his teeth, as Kurt convulsed at his feet. ‘Burn my House,’ he said, ‘and you burn your beloved.’
‘Let him go.’
‘And we shall parlay?’
‘And I won’t burn you all to cinders.’
‘You will never take us all.’
Kurt shuddered one last time. Then he rose smoothly to his feet and even Laszlo, who hardly knew the man, knew that this was no longer Kurt.
‘Alex. Sötnos,’ said the monster with Kurt’s face. ‘You look good enough to eat.’
Alex’s face drained of colour. His mouth made the shape, Kurt, but he had no voice. He grit his teeth and raised his arm as a signal.
‘No quarter,’ he snarled, and plucked the strings of his guitar for the opening notes. The destruction began.
Come to me sun
I beg of thee a whisper of your breath
Come to me sun
I beg of thee a tongue of flame
To ignite the world where I name
Laszlo drew his bow across the strings and played the tune without knowing how he knew it.
Rome’s Burning advanced on the factory and lived up to their name. The door frame ignited. Vladimir fled, leaving Kurt to his own devices. Kurt swiftly disappeared inside the building.
The band sang an inferno and the front wall burned so brightly Laszlo thought their instruments would ignite from the heat. Instead, the wall caved in.
Shrieking, the griffin rose from the fire and flew into the night, a great egg in its talons. Later, the survivors would conclude the griffin had abducted Kurt in return for its offspring. At this point, however, the griffin wasn’t important.
Wooden features and plaster burst into flames all around them. Even bricks burned.
Vampires began to flee the burning building, like cockroaches when the light flicks on, but they didn’t get far. Sal was singing something counter to the main melody (green and growing things, defend the earth) and trees responded to his call.
From every thick-trunked tree to every sapling, roots and branches curled and whipped and became spears, staking the mostly newly made vampires who couldn’t avoid the writhing mass of weapons. Stabbed with wood through the heart, they dissolved into ash.
Alex stormed through the front of the building and his band followed without hesitation, Laszlo with them.
Within, glass shattered; floorboards cracked. Monsters, trapped between flame and wood, screamed as they died. The air burned with no fuel but the song that made it.
Even water burns
Even the sky
Let the flames scorch the earth and purify
Where I guide.
Alex choked short and Laszlo saw Kurt loom out of the smoke, snatch Alex by the throat and disappear. He cried out a warning and the others drew closer together, still singing. In turns, they took cloves of garlic from pockets and strewed them about the room.
‘Don’t stop playing!’ Steve shouted.
Laszlo didn’t; he couldn’t. It felt much more like the violin was playing him – drawing on his long-abandoned skills and guiding his fingers through music he’d never known.
In that Erdõdülõ vampire nest, Laszlo’s bow slid across the strings, eliciting notes sweet and pure and relentless, which scorched the air. The firestorm never touched him or his fellow musicians. Flames licked the walls, ate the ceiling, melted the glass. Transformed the vampires into pillars of blue fire.
Prince Vladimir was cornered in the factory’s former workroom, stripped of its equipment, leaving only the pitted concrete floor and windows that had cracked in the heat. One or two feathers and a gaping hole in the ceiling showed that this was where the griffin’s egg had been held and liberated.
Vladimir laughed. ‘I took your House from you. Kurt Stefan is mine. Alex Torni is mine. Kill me if you like. I still win.’
Rome’s Burning sang. The dozens of branches and roots of a single tree burst through the shattered panes and speared Vladimir’s body through. He laughed even as he choked; even as his heart was pierced, even as he burned.
The band turned from the vampire prince as he was reduced to ash, and moved through the factory to finish the job. The stench of old blood, of burned metal and brick, of flesh, was everywhere.
When nothing else moved in the ember-filled darkness, Rome’s Burning sang the fire into submission.
Come to me, firestorm
Come
