Vivian ran out of the room, and I was there waiting for her, on Waffles’s back with Gretchen and Dichall.
She stopped when she saw her dog. “Waffles?”
I waved to get her attention and activated my veilring. “Vivian! Down here! We need to get out of here, now! Follow us!”
“Vivian, come back!!” The sounds of Magnitrude creaking the bed as she got out of it came from the room. Gombree stepped out, closed the door on Magnitrude, and leaned against it.
“Let’s go!” Waffles yapped and ran out of the room, starting to spiral down the tower.
Vivian couldn’t understand his words, but she understood well enough to follow. Behind us, Magnitrude’s screams rose in pitch and fury. She was no longer trying to sound like a human and the wail of frustration made my fur stand on end. Now that Vivian had seen her, she wasn’t bothering with glamour anymore.
A monster was chasing us, and she wasn’t hiding what she was.
Waffles ran like he’d eaten espresso beans for breakfast, and if it were just a straight shot to the woods he could have easily outrun Magnitrude. But a straight shot it was not. Vivian was the slowest among us, and Waffles had to help shepherd her out of the building. Waffles was faster than Magnitrude, but Vivian, a young, terrified girl in a bigger body than she was used to, definitely was not.
We made the most of our head start, running down the corkscrew through rooms until we ran into a maid. She looked human aside from having an eagle’s beak in place of a nose and mouth. She saw the Pomeranian running at her and gasped, freezing in the doorway and blocking our exit in a doorway with her girth, wide skirts, and basket of dirty laundry.
Waffles snarled and barked, showing his teeth and advancing as menacingly as a Pomeranian could.
The maid screamed, threw her basket of clothing in the air and stepped aside.
Waffles ran through the clothing that was falling like rain around us. I glanced back and saw Vivian and Gombree stepping over the clothes, close behind. Magnitrude was out of the room, but we could not see yet. But with the shape of the hallways, we wouldn’t until she was very, very close. I could tell by the proximity of the wailing that Magnitrude was gaining on us, removing the slight lead we’d had near the top. I shouted back. “Gombree, stop her!”
“How?!”
“Close a door on her!”
Magnitrude’s voice boomed, echoing off of the stone walls of the tower. “Gombree, grab her, you worm!”
We passed through the doorway of a heavy, wooden door, and Gombree turned and slammed it shut. “Stop calling me worm!” He latched it shut.
Boom. A sound like a truck hitting a wall. The door shook. Magnitrude was trying to break it from the other side, with a strength I would never have expected.
Boom.
We didn’t wait around to see her break through. Gombree screamed and we all kept running down.
We heard, but didn’t see, the door finally smashed to splinters up above, just as we neared the exit of the tower, following the hallway that twisted into normal gravity. Waffles knew the fastest way to the woods and sprinted through the snow.
I looked back and saw Magnitrude emerge from the tower, her boneless arms bloodied and her face a mask of fury. She spotted us.
Waffles was very fast, and we would have been in the clear, but Magnitrude leap forward, as her body transformed into a smear of gray fur.
“Faster! She’s turned into a wolf!”
The commotion had brought villagers out from their homes out into the street. Waffles tried to make turns to lose the wolf on our tail, but each turn delayed our exit into the geopattern. We wouldn’t be safe until we had Vivian back in the Mundane World.
Up ahead was a woman who looked like an ogre, two metres tall, wearing overalls and green lipstick. She held an enormous, sharp rake.
Waffles turned to avoid the creature, but Dichall yanked on Waffles’s fur. “Stop!”
Waffles didn’t stop. “What?!”
“Stop, blast you!”
Dichall, what are you doing?!
