Wesley

  They continued at pace, and Sam kept up well enough despite her injuries. The house appeared to have increasing difficulty matching their movements. New rooms took longer to appear, and they sometimes adjoined at odd angles. The layouts became increasingly bizarre, with furniture jutting halfway out of the floor, and oil lamps sputtering chaotically on the walls.

  Until at last they came to a grand foyer; a high-ceilinged room with a double vaulted staircase curving along the edges to terminate somewhere behind them, a floor of polished marble, and a large crystal chandelier hanging down from a metal cable.

  Brilliant sunbeams fell in through the tall windows that lined the far end of the foyer, and beyond them could be spied not the usual black void, but a view of a daytime forest.

  They had finally, finally reached an exit.

  But Wesley felt no relief, because he saw instantly that the house had placed one last obstacle between them and freedom. And a large one, at that.

  A twelve-foot giant blocked the way between them and the front door. It was prodigiously fat, with a brownish green hide, and most of its face was taken up by one giant eye that was larger than a dinner plate; all white except a tiny black pupil at its center.

  The cyclops sharpened long, top-and-bottom tusks off each other like a man scraping his cutlery together in anticipation of a fine meal, and it drummed its hands off its belly with a loud, clownish laugh that echoed through the hall.

  "Man, why can't shit ever be easy?" Sam grumbled in almost a whimper, though she wasted no time in limping toward the beast.

  Wesley could not claim any such bravery. He scampered over and hid behind the staircase banister on the right-hand side, with Mongrel and Number One mirroring him on the left. Only the woman and the troll made any show of advancing at the enemy, though even Nug hung back a bit.

  Sam was halfway across the foyer when she suddenly halted mid-step for no apparent reason. Then Wesley noticed the second creature now clambering down the side of the far wall, appearing from behind a tall velvet window curtain. It was reptilian in nature, large as a man and adhering to the wall with wide, sticky pads at the ends of its toes. The face was small and pinched and scaly, dominated by a pair of globular yellow eyes that jutted from the sides of its head.

  Its intense, fiery stare was focused intently on Sam Darling.

  Nug, having also taken notice of the creature, gestured urgently toward it. "Be mindful of that thing!" he shouted. "Its gaze appears to have a hypnotic or paralytic effect. A basilisk, perhaps. We—"

  Whatever he had been about to say was drowned beneath a high-pitched buzz. The cyclops had thrown its single eye wide, and the white of it was glowing brighter and brighter until all at once a white-hot bar of energy was expelled straight at the ground.

  The foot-thick beam struck a defenseless Sam Darling square in the chest, immediately stripping away layers of clothing and makeshift bandaging with blackened scraps whirling through the air. The fell energies bore down on her hard, forcing her torso back even as her feet remained fixed to the floor.

  She should have been knocked flat on her back. Instead, she tilted further and further back until it looked like her spine was about to snap. Stiff legs bent by slow degrees, and she went up on her tiptoes as her head came inches off the floor. Streams of burning energy flowed over her torso and escaped in streams around her shoulders and beneath the armpits.

  She kept that extreme arch for a long moment, frozen in place like some crazy interpretive dance performer. She teetered on one foot; came back down again. Then, with the same excruciating slowness by which she had tilted back, she began to straighten out again.

  Wesley had little confidence that he could accurately read the basilisk's face, but it seemed to him that the expression it made at that moment was one of shock and dismay. It opened its googly eyes wider, as though to stare at its prey even harder.

  Sam got upright, and painstakingly put up a hand to block part of the beam coming down on her. One foot quested forward, then the next. She stumbled, nearly fell, somehow got an elbow under her to keep from flopping on her face.

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  "Number One, you get that lizard fucker, double time," Mongrel said, and thrust his sword into the hands of the old chimp. "I'm not sure how long the kid can hold out like that, but it doesn't look pleasant."

  "I will try something as well," Nug said, then continued with: "Power Word [Blink]."

  A thick, leathery lid fell over the cyclopean eye while energy was still flowing from the huge sphere. The eyelid swelled like a balloon. It was lit up from within, a network of veins showing through translucent tissue, and it grew bigger and brighter until…

  The giant's head exploded in a fiery conflagration that threw off big meaty chunks and bits of bone and teeth that plinked sharply off the floor and the windows. The skill appeared to affect the basilisk as well. Having momentarily lost track of its prey, it blinked repeatedly while scanning the foyer. Sam staggered free of its influence just long enough to roll out of the way of the headless cyclops, who was falling with all the grace of a cut log. It hit the floor with such force that the shock of it sent Wesley on his ass, and knocked paintings off walls that went bouncing and sliding down the stairs, and had streams of plaster dust raining from the high ceiling.

  Sam came up clumsily on one knee, having avoided being pancaked by inches. The basilisk found her again and had her frozen before she could even try to stand; but just a moment later, an ape came leaping off the chandelier, and slammed into the reptilian creature behind the point of a blade, impaling its midsection. The basilisk's eyes spun around madly for a moment, and it let out a thin shriek. Then its toe pads began to release their grip on the wall one by one. It slipped off. Monster and chimp went tumbling together to the floor. Number One landed on top, and rolled free of the thing safely with his master's bloodied blade in one fist.

  Both monsters incapacitated, no one was eager to stick around a moment longer. Number One was first to the gilded double doors; he blew them open by casting a skill and placing a palm flat against the wood. The open portal showed an uninspired forest view that nonetheless looked to Wesley like the gates of heaven.

  Nug was second, having scooped a half-conscious Darling off the ground and thrown her over one brawny shoulder like a sack of rice. He leapt through without looking back, throwing up leaves and fallen sticks as he skidded to a stop outside.

  Wesley ran beside Mongrel, his teeth gritted with the jolt of pain that each step sent up his dangling left arm. The chimp waited in the doorway for his master, and the three of them went through together.

  Wesley fell to his knees the second he got out of that damned mansion, all the borrowed adrenaline strength going out of him at once. Using the elbow of his one somewhat functional arm, he crawled as far from the place as he could before exhaustion took him, and he flopped limply onto his back.

  Being able to feel plant matter crunch beneath him, to look up at the pale sun, to hear the random chatter of birds—it was all so glorious. He lay there laughing to himself with simple joy, but then the laughter turned to weeping, and he curled up in a ball and sobbed so hard his stomach cramped and snot was bubbling out of his nose.

  He was only vaguely aware of the commotion that went on around him. The other chimps came running from the edge of the clearing and helped Nug put Sam gently on the ground. Wesley had dirt and leaves kicked onto him by careless feet as folk ran to and fro, but he could only produce a weak groan in protest.

  The troll reverted to his regular simple-minded self, and was soon moaning and wailing and mumbling to himself as he wandered off with his hands over his ears.

  Suddenly afraid that some evil or another might decide to chase them out of the semblance, Wesley worked his way into a seated position with great difficulty by leveraging his elbow against a nearby tree trunk. He glared at the building that towered over them, but it remained still and quiet.

  Aside from its odd location in the middle of a forest clearing, there was nothing obviously anomalous about the Monster Mansion from the outside. It looked just like a typical large estate; four stories high, whitewashed walls, many glass windows glinting in the sunlight.

  Maybe two minutes later the building began to collapse and fall in on itself, disintegrating like cotton candy in water. It sank down until only a sad heap remained, which opened into a mouth that spat out the things it did not want to keep. The rear half of a dead mule. Some chewed-up saddlebags. Price's longsword, left naked without a scabbard. Number One's bow case along with the bow itself, which had been snapped in half. Some random bits and bobs that were too covered in thick mucus to immediately place.

  And lastly, the rugged revolver that had once belonged to Sheriff Tawney came spinning out of the large orifice, before the last of the building seeped into the cracks of the broken ground and disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a large square of upturned earth.

  [Monster Mansion ends.]

  Once his legs were solid enough to hold him, Wesley got to his feet. He went and knelt by Price's sword. She'd loved the thing, but it didn't look all that special. Just steel and leather and a simple crossguard, no embellishments. He worked it into the crook of his arm, went and sat down again. The cold metal weighed on him. Its edge scraped roughly against the side of his neck. Somehow, that felt right.

  "What the hell are we supposed to do now?" Mongrel asked, turning on the spot to glare off into the woods, one direction pretty much indistinguishable from another. "You know, since our guide so kindly decided to fuck off and abandon us here."

  No one had an answer for him. Eventually he let out a big sigh and crouched back down beside Sam, scratching angrily at his nose.