Saracen hesitated. “Plus Springheeled Jack, Black Annis, some unknown girl and... Dusk.”

Wilhelm gaped. “The vampire? She has a vampire? So that’s Springheeled Jack and Black Annis and a vampire against... what? Us? That’s it. I quit. I’m out.”

“You’re not quitting,” said Aurora.

“Two monsters, a vampire, a hitman and a ninja, plus whatever this mystery woman is. You know what this means? We’re going to die. We are going. To die.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“You know what’s dramatic? Being horribly killed by any one of the people I just mentioned. That is drama. This? This is just me quietly freaking out.” Wilhelm swung around to Vex. “Please,” he said, “tell me we’re not continuing with this.”

“We’re continuing with this,” Vex said, and Wilhelm moaned. “And we don’t have an awful lot of time. I think we can safely assume that Tanith was the brunette Johann Starke was talking about. She tried to get the dagger, saw the amount of security and probably decided to go for an easier one first. But she didn’t get it – we did. We have the bow, Johann still has the dagger and that leaves two more weapons. We have to get to them before she does.”

“So where to next?” Gracious asked.

“A man named Crab,” said Vex. “Tanith will leave the sword till last – that’s the trickiest one. Crab has the spear – that’ll be the easiest.”

“If it’s so easy, she probably has it already.”

“If she already had it, she’d have used it to get the bow and the dagger – but using any one of the God-Killer weapons would risk alerting the owners of the others. No, she’s left the spear to just before the end. A nice easy job to let her get her breath back before the big one.”

“Let me guess,” said Frightening, “that was our plan as well, yes?”

“Yes,” Vex admitted. “This whole thing was meant to be quick and quiet. Get in, take the weapons, get out. Tanith and her little band of merry psychopaths have made a mess of that. The least we can do is return the favour.”

17