except,

perhaps, at that very moment, for herself. For Joey Lyman, with his sick

hatred

of all women, was her mirror image. To look at him was to see a reverse

reflection of herself. And for showing her that, she wanted to kill him.

She suddenly heard voices.

"Aha, what have we here?"

"What is it?"

"I believe we've hit the jackpot, my dear. I think our friend has just

discovered a dimensional portal."

The voices seemed to be coming from behind the wall. They were talking about

a

doorway, a magical doorway through space and time... and suddenly she

realized

where she was. She had collapsed on the stairs leading down to the dungeons,

just below the landing where the magical doorway connected the castle with

the

house in Mayfair.

"Either way, the answer is through here," she heard a female voice with a

French

accent say, and a moment later an arm came through the wall and took the

torch

down from the iron sconce. An attractive, dark-haired woman in a maroon

velvet

suit stepped through the wall and onto the landing. She took a couple of

steps

down, and then she noticed Terri sprawled upon the stairs. At the same moment

Terri noticed the gun that the woman was holding in her other hand.

For a moment Jacqueline was frozen with shock at the sight of Terri, halfway

through the change. She looked down and saw a grotesque vision, a

raven-haired

woman with fangs protruding from her bloody gums, saliva dripping, fur

sprouting

from her arched back, her fingers hooked like talons, long claws scrabbling

at

the stone, and in the same moment that Jacqueline brought her gun up and

fired,

Terri launched herself backward off the steps and onto the floor of the

corridor

below. She rolled and came up on all fours as Blood fired his pistol, too,

and

then she fled, half running, half loping down the dark corridor.

"Did you hit it?" Blood asked.

"I don't know," said Jacqueline, still stunned by what she'd seen. "Did you?"

"I think I winged it. What in God's name was that creature?"

"A werewolf," Makepeace said from behind them.

"A werewolf." Blood said. "I always thought such creatures didn't exist!"