Wesley

  All around him, tall barriers emerged from the earth. Walls, he realized. Taller and taller they grew, enclosing him from the others, until it were as though he stood inside a narrow labyrinth. Then a ceiling slotted into place overhead, and he was left in utter darkness.

  The rumbling stopped. All grew still.

  "Well, that was dramatic," a husky voice said beside him, the suddenness of it making him jump. It was Magpie.

  A spark appeared in the air, grew larger and brighter until it was a fist-sized sphere of pure light. It hovered above Magpie's outstretched hand, the woman idly examining their surroundings in the new light of her bobbing construct.

  They were in a long hallway that appeared for all intents and purposes to be part of the interior of a regular—if slightly fancy—building. Sections of the wall came away with sliding panels, which then flipped to reveal lit oil lamps and paintings with gilded frames. A section of the floor a ways ahead depressed, and a rolled-up carpet was spat out, unfurling toward them like a long red tongue, and Wesley was forced to step over the thing as it rolled past, the last of it flapping into place at the end of the hall behind them where it came to an intersection.

  "Guess I don't need this after all," Magpie said, and closed her hand on the floating light she had created to extinguish it.

  Wesley looked around, but saw no evidence of anyone else in the group. They'd gotten separated. Normally, he might have been loath to spend any amount of time alone with the aging Artisan, but in this case, he found her presence a great relief. Regardless of any personality quirks, she was extremely powerful. As long as he stayed close to her, he'd be safe from… whatever this place would try to do to him. He had no illusions at all that it might be harmless.

  "Can you believe the nerve of that brat?" Magpie growled, clogs swishing on the carpeted floor as she paced the same ten feet back and forth, rubbing at her scalp with the fingertips of both hands.

  Wesley didn't know if that was meant to be a rhetorical question. He chose not to answer.

  "He thinks he can take a shit on my lawn and just run away?" the woman continued, working herself up more with every word spoken. Then she suddenly stopped pacing. "No. I think he needs to be taught a little lesson about the importance of respecting one's betters."

  With that, she pointed two fingers straight up.

  "Bang, bang, bang, bang."

  A hole was blown into the ceiling wide as three men side-by-side, then that of the next storey revealed, then the next, and the next, until at last a circle of noontime sky became visible way up there.

  "An exit!" Wesley cried with a surge of hope so powerful it made him weak at the knees. "But it's so high up. Do you have some way of getting us out of here?"

  If Magpie heard him, she made no show of it. Instead she brought her heels together with a sharp click of wood, and her feet alighted off the floor until she was hovering several feet up.

  "Hey!" Wesley cried, his hope quickly evaporating to leave only a clawing dread behind. "You're not leaving me here, are you?"

  Magpie finally turned her gaze on him, eyebrows drawn together in vague puzzlement, as though she had not registered his existence until now. "Why? You expect me to carry you?"

  "Well, um… Maybe?"

  "Forget it, kid. A little hardship might be good for you—character-building, you know?"

  "But what if this place is dangerous?"

  Magpie laughed as she hovered in place. "Oh, it's definitely dangerous. But if you can't figure out a way to survive something like this, maybe you don't deserve to live."

  Wesley paled, gone numb. "What…?"

  "Oh, fine." She rolled her eyes. "I'm not heartless. Here you go, kid." With that, she reached into a black void that opened up beside her, dug around inside while contorting her face. She produced a pistol—the one she had taken from the sheriff of Talltop—and tossed it at Wesley with the carelessness of someone throwing a piece of litter in the general direction of a trash can.

  Wesley caught the thing against his chest, stumbled a step back. It was heavy. And big. He clutched it awkwardly in both hands, careful so he didn't accidentally shoot himself in the foot with it.

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  "Good luck," Magpie said with a wink. "For what it's worth, I'm rooting for you. If you survive, I might even give you a little smooch as a reward."

  Before Wesley could offer any further objections, Magpie jetted straight up; almost instantly out of reach. Whatever propulsion was carrying her blasted across the hallway, knocking Wesley back and sending debris from the broken ceiling flying everywhere.

  He hurried up to his feet and scampered back to the hole above, hoping in vain for some glimpse of his only hope, but all he saw was empty sky. She was gone, well and truly.

  "Shit," Wesley muttered. "Shit, shit, shit."

  He wondered if he could reach the ledge up to the second floor if he Dashed. It wasn't too high up. If he was able to scale up to the top that way, one floor at a time, he might just reach the outside. Of course, that meant he'd need to find a way off the roof. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all…

  The house solved that dilemma for him when the ascending holes began to close up all on their own, little bits of wood extending from the ragged ends to find each other and knit back together, looking more like flesh mending itself than anything else.

  Wesley stood staring at his one clear chance at escape dwindled. He was caught in a debate with himself whether to try that method anyway, and by the time he had settled that the ceiling was all fixed again, no trace left that it had ever been broken, and he found himself boxed in once more, only this time he was completely alone.

  "Damn that woman," he whimpered. "Why couldn't she have just taken me with her…?" He couldn't believe that she would do something so cruel. What was he supposed to do now?

  He stood there for a few moments feeling sorry for himself before he was forced to admit to himself that Magpie was gone, and he had to at least try to find his own way out. There was a window on his right. He went over and peeked through it, but all he saw on the other side was perfect blackness.

  Should I try to bust the glass?

  Then again, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what was through there. He'd come back to it if he got desperate enough.

  The hallway was lined with several doors on the left-hand side. He tried them all. Some were locked, while the others simply opened into more wall, leading nowhere.

  "Great. That's just fantastic."

  Wesley started when he heard some sort of noise behind him. He spun around, the heavy revolver gripped in both his shaky hands. He strained his ears and held his breath as he tried to figure out what he had heard.

  The noise repeated. A soft, repetitive scraping, and something like… panting, or growling.

  Something alive.

  Something not human.

  Something coming his way.

  Wesley thumbed clumsily at the hammer of the gun. It was stiff, hard to operate. His sweaty digit kept slipping off the end, hurting as he scraped off the sharp metal. After a few tries, and with a strangled noise halfway between a grunt and a sob, he finally managed to cock it back.

  A faint shadow crept in from around the corner of the hallway, some twenty feet off. The shadow grew longer, and longer, and Wesley knew he should probably be running, but he could not convince his feet to move.

  Going by the shape of it, the thing definitely wasn't human.

  At last it crept into view, moving on all fours. It was a great big ugly creature, twice the size of a man and covered in dirty white fur. It had long claws, and red eyes, and a wolf's muzzle drawn back in a gummy, long-toothed snarl, viscous saliva dripping from its chops.

  Not quite a man. Not quite a wolf.

  That was a werewolf. It had to be.

  While Wesley was busy pondering on how to classify the creature, it had turned its blood-red eyes on him, and its great jaws opened wide, its wet tongue lolling hungrily.

  The werewolf could not have been clearer if it had spoken the One Tongue. It intended to make a meal of him.

  The creature launched into motion, frighteningly quick. It clawed off the floor and the walls, bumbling about in its excitement to reach him and rip him to bloody ribbons.

  Though he had never fired or even held a gun before, Wesley's finger clamped down on the trigger on sheer reflex. It had seemed a formidable weapon in the hands of the sheriff. It would serve him half as well, then maybe…

  The gun did not fire. No matter how hard he squeezed the trigger, it would not budge a hair. It was like there was something caught in the mechanism. Had he done something wrong? He'd cocked back the hammer, like you were supposed to…

  There was no time. He tossed the gun aside, fumbled for his sword instead. His feet had finally found some life, and he shuffled feebly back as the werewolf bore down on him, growing more huge the closer it got. He fumbled with the scabbard, blade catching on it. Damn thing!

  His heel caught on a fold in the carpet, and he fell on his butt. He let out a wordless cry of terror as the huge beast leapt for him, claws first.

  Out of all the ways a man could die, this had to be near the bottom of the list. He hadn't thought it was possible to top his first death in terms of ignominy, but this was definitely in the running.

  The door on his right burst open, pieces of the wall behind it splintering and flying all over. Someone bulled right on through it, bore into the werewolf and knocked it clean out of its killing leap, sending them both into the other wall.

  Though human and beast became a confusing tangle of working limbs as they struggled for supremacy, Wesley recognized Sam Darling by her coppery hair. The werewolf opened its jaws to bite her throat out, and she brought their heads together instead, knocking in several teeth off her brow bone.

  "Don't worry!" she shouted over the beast's blood-curdling howls. "I've got this guy! You'll be all right!"

  Wesley blinked, dumbstruck, as he watched the muscled young woman battle a creature twice her size.

  He watched with a morbid fascination, unsure if he was supposed to help out or not.