He hides himself amid the smoke from her torch and follows.

At the bottom of the winding staircase, there is another set of doors. She presses an ear to them before opening them, but can't make out any sound, so in the end she steels herself and opens the door.

She finds herself looking into a room with an improbable number of weapons mounted on the walls, considering the location. The box in the middle of the room is already open. There's a vampire beside it, already twirling an axe between his fingers.

"And here I thought this room didn't come with board," says the vampire, grinning.

The wisp of smoke that is currently Tas ripples with silent laughter.

She's so tired of having to die.

She throws her torch at him; she figures if she gets within striking distance then he'll be within striking distance of her, and he's much faster. She misses, predictably, but it gives her enough time to take an axe from the wall. It's far too heavy, and the weight of it sits in her hands wrong. She's not going to be able to use it effectively. She's going to die. She should actually probably skip to the slitting her own throat part of this plan right now, just in case the vampire doesn't mean to let her stay dead.

The vampire lunges at her before she can decide to do that.

As the vampire moves, the smoke from her torch billows and expands and blurs into the shape of a man, who materializes in front of her just in time to meet the lunging vampire with a solid punch that breaks his jaw and knocks him flat on his back.

"D'you want your powers back now?" her rescuer(?) inquires.

"What are you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you and so I see no reason to tell you."

She should really kill herself, she should really kill herself, it's evil but it's the only way to - she doesn't even know what's happening at this point -

"I - suppose you're no more interested in explaining what you're doing here."

"Oh, I'm here out of spite. I was annoyed enough about them trying to make me kill you that I decided to save your life."

"Ah. Naturally."

She's pretty sure the vampire - the other vampire - could get up now, but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to try.

"But now that I'm here I'm reminded of how much I hate trying to talk to someone who thinks I'm fundamentally untrustworthy, so I might just give you your powers back and go."