He was carried helplessly forward, as though caught in a current. He threw his arms out behind him, but they felt like they were weightless, and did nothing to arrest his momentum. From somewhere above him, he heard Jamie scream his name, scream for him to look out, but it was too late.

The huge blade of Dracula’s sword slid into Frankenstein’s stomach as though his flesh was as insubstantial as smoke, and exited through his back with a gout of blood that splashed across the tiled floor of the church.

For a long moment, nobody moved.

Dracula was gripping the hilt of the sword, Frankenstein was staring down at the blade, and everyone else was motionless inside the silent church. The monster felt no pain, just a sensation of awful wrongness. His mind remained clear, remarkably so, and he saw there was still a chance to do something.

He reached out, took hold of the huge broadsword’s cross guard, and pulled himself forward, the blade sliding deeper into him. A frown crossed Dracula’s face, and the first vampire growled as he tried unsuccessfully to pull the sword free; the huge punch had clearly weakened him, and Frankenstein was holding on with all his remaining strength. He hauled himself along the blade, feeling it slice through his insides, inching closer and closer to Dracula, who was staring at him with blazing incredulity; the vampire pulled at the sword again, clearly unwilling to let it go, but he held firm, his mind full of the prospect of vengeance.

Frankenstein dragged himself forward a final time as the pain finally arrived, a torrent of agony that ripped through him as blood spilled out of his stomach in a dark river. He reached out, momentarily blinded by pain, and his huge grey-green hand found the first vampire’s face; he ground his thumb into the vampire’s eye, as hard as his suddenly failing strength would allow. Dracula screamed and released the hilt; he leapt back, thrashing and clutching at his head like he was surrounded by a swarm of bees.

With the vampire’s grip on the sword gone, Frankenstein toppled backwards. The pain pounded through him, turning everything red, and the sword blade snapped beneath him as he crashed down on to the tiled floor, and lay still.

Jamie watched the monster fall, his heart frozen in his chest, a silent scream splitting his head.

Dracula let go of his face, spat blood on to the floor, and growled. The first vampire’s left eye was almost closed, but his mouth curled into a smile of cruel satisfaction as he looked at the prone monster, and it was this smile that caused Jamie to temporarily lose his mind.

He threw himself across the church, a rage more powerful than anything he had ever known flooding through him. He tore into Dracula, punching and kicking and clawing, wanting to rip the ancient vampire’s life from his body with his bare hands. The first vampire reeled, caught off guard by the ferocity of Jamie’s onslaught, and was driven backwards, his arms raised to defend himself from the blizzard of blows.

Somewhere in the distance, Larissa screamed for Jamie to move, to give her a clear shot, but he could not have stopped himself even if he wanted to; he pounded at Dracula, hammering him with blows that would have knocked down walls, his rational side entirely gone, his vampire side baying for blood. His gloved knuckles laid the first vampire’s cheek open to the bone, spraying blood into the cool, still air of the church, and Dracula screeched with pain. Jamie didn’t let up, his arms and legs little more than black blurs as he drove the hateful old vampire along the central aisle of the church, his eyes glowing the colour of lava.

Dracula leapt back, creating separation, then surged forward, his face burning with outraged fury.

“Enough!” he bellowed, and swung a fist in a wide arc. It hit the side of Jamie’s head with a noise like a clap of thunder and sent him flying across the church. He thudded painfully into the stone wall, slid down to the floor, and leapt back to his feet as a thick growl rose from his throat, the anger in his head so hot and sharp that it was physically painful.

At the centre of the cavernous space, Dracula drew himself up to his full height. His face was a bloody mess, and his left eye was swollen shut, but the right one roiled with black fire, and he stared at Jamie with monstrous hatred. At the other end of the central aisle, Valentin got to his feet, his mouth pouring with blood but twisted into a gruesome smile. Jamie flew across to him as Larissa and Angela dropped down to join them, and what was left of the strike team advanced on Dracula together. The first vampire backed into the wide space before the chancel, and spread his arms wide, inviting them forward with a smile on his face.

The four squad mates moved in a blur of black and red. Larissa fired her T-Bone, sending its stake rocketing towards Dracula’s heart, Jamie dropped to one knee and emptied his MP7 at the snarling vampire, as Angela and Valentin leapt towards him, their arms outstretched, their hands curled into claws.

Dracula reacted with terrifying, impossible speed. He slid out of the way of Larissa’s T-Bone stake, spun up and over Jamie’s stream of bullets, grabbed Angela out of the air by her throat and threw her like a javelin; she flew across the wide space, her arms spinning as she futilely tried to arrest her momentum, and collided with Larissa, sending both of them head first into the wall. A pair of loud cracks echoed through the church, and they fell still, their eyes rolled back in their heads.

Jamie hurled himself at their enemy, his stake in his hand. Dracula spun back round, searching out the next attack, then doubled over as Valentin landed a crunching kick to his stomach. Jamie soared above him, his searching fingers passing through the space where the first vampire’s throat had been barely a millisecond earlier.

Dracula exploded upwards like a shark from the depths, and slammed a fist into his stomach as he rocketed overhead; Jamie convulsed in mid-air, his equilibrium disappearing along with all the air in his lungs, and he curled into a foetal ball as he tumbled to the floor. He rolled over to see two of the oldest vampires in the world staring at each other, growls rising from their throats, the thrill of violence in their eyes.

Jamie got to his feet, took a staggering step, and collapsed back to the floor. His chest was constricted, and he was unable to drag air into his lungs. He tried to calm down, to breathe normally, and surveyed the church. Alan Foster was unconscious at the base of the far wall near the door, Angela and Larissa were lying slumped on the other side, although both appeared to be stirring, and in the centre of the huge space was the motionless shape of Frankenstein, the long hilt of the broadsword rising out of his gut; Jamie dragged his eyes away from the dreadful sight in time to see Valentin launch himself at Dracula.

The ancient vampires attacked each other with blows that shook the Basilica, swooping and darting back and forth almost too quickly for his eyes to follow. Punches and kicks connected with deafening impacts, but neither gave so much as an inch; they were fuelled by over five hundred years of history, five centuries of anger and betrayal, and blows that would have killed a normal man were dismissed as though they were nothing more than mosquito bites.

Dracula leapt forward, grabbing for Valentin’s neck, but the youngest Rusmanov slipped beneath his former master’s outstretched hands and hammered an elbow into his throat. The first vampire was driven backwards, but surged forward again immediately, ducking a punch that would have decapitated him and unleashing a kick like a piledriver into Valentin’s side. The two vampires backed away from each other, growling like animals, then leapt forward again, a hurricane of crunching violence.