A Cleaver ran at her and she swung. The sword was clumsy and awkward and the Cleaver managed to dodge all but the tip. But this was a God-Killer weapon – whatever it cut, it killed. The tip sliced through the Cleaver’s coat and inflicted what would have been a nick with any other blade. But here, that nick became a swathe, and sheared his body in two.

“Wow,” Tanith said.

She swung again, killing three people in one go. This time, it was almost like their torsos parted before the blade even touched them. Now that was sharp.

She saw the Monster Hunters move through the crowd of rage-zombies like a lawnmower moves through grass, cutting down everything in front of them. They fought as a partnership, watching the other’s back. Sometimes Bane would finish off O’Callahan’s opponent and sometimes O’Callahan would finish off Bane’s. Saracen and Aurora were fighting alongside Graves’s men, and Graves himself was being protected by Frightening. What a team.

Tanith’s team, or what remained of it, wasn’t doing so well. The vampire was killing everyone around it, Wilhelm was still shrieking about one teeny-tiny severed finger and Black Annis was lying dead on the floor. Her blue skin had remained unbreakable, but the business end of a scythe had found its way into her huge gaping mouth, the curving blade piercing her brain from beneath. Poor dead Annis. Tanith doubted anyone would mourn her passing. Tanith certainly wouldn’t.

She ran up a wall, across the ceiling and out of the door. She flipped to the ground and kept going, pulling her phone from her pocket and dialling.

“I have it,” she said. “Now would be a good time to come rescue me.”

Sanguine said, “Activate your GPS and I’ll ride in on a white horse.”

“My hero,” she said, and hung up. A few moments later, fresh alarms began to wail as the Sanctuary’s defence systems picked up someone burrowing through the ground. After another few moments, she frowned. It shouldn’t be taking this long. She checked her phone, made sure the GPS was sending out its signal, and then Sanguine erupted from the floor in front of her in a spray of rock and dirt, out of control and cursing as he bounced off a wall and stumbled to his knees.

“That,” Tanith said, “was not as cool an entrance as you might think.”

“They put something down there,” he said, anger biting at his words as he stood. “I got close and all of a sudden I’m being chased. Something nipping at my heels. Something else coming to cut me off. Didn’t see what they were, but they’re big, and fast, and able to do what I can do.”

“Can we get out?”

“I could make it, maybe, keep ahead of them, but two of us? No.”

She chewed her lip. “Damn.”