"George, that man there just went into the fireplace and he didn't come back

out!"

George glanced at the fireplace. The back wall had swung closed. He looked

from

the fireplace to her, then he beckoned to the bartender. "I say, old boy,

give

me whatever it is she's having."

Terri collapsed on the stairway, unable to run any farther. She sobbed for

breath, trying desperately to fill her burning lungs. She had passed the

limit

of her endurance, and she almost wept with relief when she realized that she

wasn't being pursued. She put her head down on the step before her, feeling

the

damp coolness of the stone, swallowing hard and trying to regulate her

breathing. She was on the verge of passing out. She had to make the change.

It

was the only chance she had. Once the transformation was complete, she would

get

her strength back.

And then what? Escape into the night? Could there ever be any escape from

him!

Her one chance had been that mage he had imprisoned, the one with that

strange

gem embedded in his chest, but now that chance was gone. She understood now

that

he had been chained up in the dungeon in order to weaken him, bring him to

the

very point of death, where he could no longer offer any resistance, and

then...

She trembled violently and groaned with pain as the change began. Perhaps

escape

would be impossible, after all, she thought. Perhaps she'd never get away.

Perhaps she'd finally met the one man who would be her master, the one man

she

had never thought she'd meet, the one man she'd always sought with a perverse

and desperate longing, hating all other men because she found them wanting.

Weak. Contemptible.

She had always taken a grim satisfaction in destroying them, telling herself

that she had brought them to their just desserts. The bastards deserved it

for

seeing her as nothing but the object of their desires, a possession to be

fought

for and won, then displayed as a badge of their own worth. They deserved it

for

trying to manipulate and use her, and men, through their own weakness

allowing

her to turn it all around on them. And so she had grown bitter and cynical

and

hard. And maybe it was only fitting that she had ended up like this, she

thought, because it was only now that she realized why she hated Joey Lymon

with

a loathing greater than she had ever felt before for anyone or anything