Kitty & Cadaver. Narrelle M Harris

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 to me, burning brook

      Come to me, stones on fire

      Come to me, burning air

      Come to me, flames

      Come to me, molten earth

      I beg thee return to heart and sun

      I beg thee be quenched, now my work is done.

      Naturally, they searched for Alex. They found him huddled and bleeding under tin from the fallen roof, his throat torn. Sal cradled the dying man in his arms.

      ‘Kurt.’ Alex was sobbing. ‘They killed my Kurt.’ He turned blazing eyes on them. ‘You killed my darling. He’s dead. You burned him.’

      ‘He wasn’t Kurt any more,’ Steve said, as gently as he could.

      Alex, on the cusp of human and monster, sobbed again. ‘I’m not Alex any more. Soon. Oh my god, oh my god. Steve. Steve?’

      Steve’s hands trembled. ‘Okay. Shh, Alex. I’ll do it.’

      Not-Alex glared at him again. ‘Yes. You’re good at it. Watching the people you love die.’

      ‘Don’t,’ Steve begged.

      ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ muttered the human part of their friend.

      Sal stroked Alex’s hair. ‘It’s all right, Steve. I’ll do it.’

      Steve tried to protest, but he gave in when Sal insisted. Anyone could see that Steve didn’t have the heart to insist.

      ‘You don’t have to stay,’ Sal said.

      ‘Oh go on,’ Not-Alex jeered. ‘Watch. It’ll be educational.’ Then he looked horrified and cried tears of blood.

      Steve gave Sal all the garlic remaining in his pockets. Yuka, too. Laszlo didn’t have any garlic – he’d thought the whole thing nonsense.

      ‘Laszlo,’ Alex rasped.

      ‘I’ll take care of them,’ Lazlo found himself promising.

      Alex laughed. ‘Good. They need a roadie.’

      Sal took out a bowie knife and held it to Alex’s throat. ‘Wait outside.’

      ‘Save me,’ Alex whispered to Sal as the others left them among the ashes.

      ‘Of course. You saved me, didn’t you?’

      When Sal joined the others outside, he looked like his soul had gone with Alex’s into the beyond.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Melbourne, Australia, 2014

      The smell of funeral flowers was cloying. Two weeks ago, Kitty Carrasco had finally convinced Grandpa to let her hang all the arrangements from Grandma’s funeral in the laundry to dry, but now the living room was full of lilies, carnations and roses again.

      Orphaned twice in her 21 years, it felt like the grieving would never be over. She didn’t recall her parents at all, and her grandparents had raised her with a stern, puritanical kind