Tanith flipped to the ground as Vex and Saracen burst into some kind of conference room. She darted in after them, turned as they slammed the double doors shut. She pressed her hand to the wood, but the vampire collided with the doors from the other side, throwing them open, knocking Tanith to the ground. The vampire dived for her, but a blast of energy sent it spinning away.

Tanith scrambled up, lunged out into the corridor, tried shutting the doors to lock Vex and Saracen in there with the vampire, but Vex got his hand in the gap.

“Ow,” he growled, opening the doors wide enough so that he and Saracen could slip out.

“Oh, good,” Tanith said. “You made it...”

The doors closed and she pressed her hand to the wood and a sheen spread. The vampire hit the doors from the other side, but they didn’t even rattle.

“What do you know?” she said. “We actually make a good team.”

Saracen went low and Vex went high, and they brought her down and pinned her to the ground. She tried to push them off, but Vex grabbed her wrist and twisted. She struggled until she felt the cold steel of a handcuff and heard it click behind her. Immediately her strength faded and her magic dimmed. Vex pulled her right arm back, cuffing it to the left. Saracen took her sword away before he stood, and Vex took hold of her arm and helped her to her feet.

“Tanith Low,” he said, “you’re under arrest.”

“You’re really putting a dampener on the high spirits here, Dexter.”

“Sorry about that.” With Tanith between them, they walked back the way they’d come. The alarms, she realised, had been shut off. There were no sounds of fighting. She didn’t care about that. The only thing she cared about was that Sanguine had managed to get away with the God-Killer. The only thing that mattered was destroying those weapons.

“If you’re lucky,” said Vex, “they’ll agree to let you serve your time in Ireland. I know Ghastly wants to do everything he can to help you.”

“I’m beyond help,” she said. “The sooner he accepts that, the better off he’ll be.”

“You found her,” Graves said, walking towards them with a squad of Cleavers behind him. “Excellent.”

Two Cleavers came forward, gripped her arms and moved her away from Vex.

“She needs medical attention,” Saracen said. “And we’d like to request at this point that she be allowed to serve her sentence in an Irish gaol, where our doctors can work at separating her from the Remnant.”

“She’s an English sorcerer arrested on English soil,” Graves said. “She’ll spend the rest of her life rotting in an English cell, thank you very much. And speaking of rotting in cells...”

The Cleavers seized Vex and Saracen.

Saracen twisted, tried to pull away. “What the hell are you doing?”