Hi, all! Annabelle Hawthorne here with the next to last chapter of Dead and Horny 3: Enter the dollhouse edition

Without further adieu, let us start flipping to random pages in the

Monster Manual

The group ran toward the elevator, but didn't make it very far before they were intercepted by a small mob of red goblin-like figures. Dana punted one like a football, sending its broken body into the nearest building, then drew her swords and killed three more.

They only vaguely resembled Tink, and were clearly a nasty looking variant. The air filled with shrieks and bloody mist as the two groups engaged in brief combat. Dana and Lily took the bulk of them with Tasia, now in full werewolf form, protecting Ingrid from harm. The mage was in poor shape. Dana felt a little bad about how messed up Ingrid was, especially because her trip was wasted. The others could have escaped this place on their own.

Well, then again, Ingrid had spotted that blasted painting they were after. Dana was actually relieved that the outsider was trapped inside of it. That would make the damned thing far easier to transfer and dispose of. Eulalie supposedly had a location all primed to be swiss-cheesed by the rats, but they hadn't quite figured out the best way to lure the creature there.

Dana beheaded one of the goblins as it tried to bite down on Lily's tail. A glob of blood hit her in the face. It smelled like barbecue sauce.

Dana paused to lick the blade of her sword and shuddered. The taste was, frankly, quite exquisite. She snatched up the nearest goblin and bit down on its neck, spraying blood everywhere. The remaining goblins were undeterred by this macabre scene, and continued attacking until every single one of them lay dead on the ground.

Dana had a quick bite while the others mused over the corpses.

"Why did they attack us like that?" Ingrid asked from the safety of Tasia's arms. "I figured they'd try and get free."

Lily sniffed the air and scowled. Wading amongst the dead, she put her hand on one of the goblins, who let out a squeal, but didn't move.

"This one is just paralyzed," Lily said, then gave the creature a poke. It snapped its teeth at her, blood bubbling from its lips. "Hold on a second. That can't be right." Lily knelt and sniffed the creature, then crouch-walked amongst the others, sniffing the air.

"Is this super important?" Tasia asked.

"Yes," Lily replied, then looked at Dana. "You're gonna get a tummy ache."

Dana shrugged, and shoved as much goblin down her throat as she could before stabbing it through the head.

"No souls," Lily said.

"Do these things even have souls?" Ingrid asked.

"Everything that lives has some version of one. Maybe it's a sentient thing, or maybe just the hint of an idea. Mages might refer to it as lifeforce at its basic level." Lily gave one of the corpses a kick. "These things? Nothing."

"Roll that one over," Ingrid said, pointing at one of the goblins. Tasia obliged, tenderly shifting the dead creature with her foot. "They're identical."

"What now?" Dana moved next to the corpse and studied it. A cursory glance revealed that the goblins weren't all identical. However, almost all of them had at least one double.

"It's like they came from a template," she said, wiping blood off her chin. "These three look the same, but they're male. Those two females are copies of each other."

"Soulless copies?" Lily lifted her head and scowled. "We've got company."

Dana turned to see a tiger prowling toward them. The creature roared and leapt, only to be skewered by Lily's tail in mid-air. It fell dead and stared up at Dana as the light in its eyes went out. She saw a human intelligence there, then looked up at Lily.

"Did that one have a soul?" she asked.

Lily sniffed. "Nope. Certainly doesn't fit the theme."

"It was a weretiger from India," Ingrid said. "It has five claws, like a human hand."

The discussion was interrupted by the howling of wolves. The group ran for the elevator, pausing only occasionally to fight their way through a random assortment of creatures or change directions to avoid the melees that had erupted throughout the storage facility. A pair of skunk apes were spotted fighting each other over the corpse of a rather grisly looking lizard, and a small dragon was stomping its way through buildings, its tongue tasting the air.

Based on what Dana could see, these creatures were keen on freeing each other from captivity, then indulging in killing sprees. If these beings were all soulless copies, did that explain their behavior? Why not run for escape like they were?

The group paused to wait as an alligator-thing dragged a golem down the next corridor, then made a run for the elevator. As they got close to the elevator doors, a pair of golems moved to intercept the group. Dana threw herself forward, kicking one golem so hard that it shot toward the elevator doors and crashed against them.

The doors unfolded to reveal the biggest spider Dana had ever seen. It snatched the golem in its jaws and withdrew into the elevator, using its legs to push the now broken doors back into place.

Dana beheaded the remaining golem and stared at the doors. "What are the odds that Shelob in there will let us go because we're friends with Eulalie?"

The elevator doors thumped and chunks of golem were thrown back into the lobby. The large spider emerged from the elevator shaft, its mandibles clicking hungrily.

Dana and Lily ran toward it together. The massive arachnid was fast, but Dana was faster. A quick swipe of her swords took off three legs, and Lily finished the job by spearing the creature through its brain. They shoved its corpse to the side and pulled open the elevator door to reveal that the car was now missing. Looking up the shaft, they saw that leaving this way would mean carrying the others.

"I could take Ingrid," Lily said. "You could get your girlfriend."

"It would still take a while," Dana replied. "This can't be the only way out. It's an elevator up to a lab, and not even a particularly big one. What if the power goes out?" Logically, this made sense. They were also deep in someone's underground lair, so the rules didn't always apply.

Lily shrugged. "Hey, I'm all for looking for another way out. Which way should we go from here?"

Tasia took a deep whiff, her eyes going wide. She backed away from the elevator, growling with her whole chest.

"Yeah, I don't like--" Lily went flying across the room, a dark figure perched on her back. Dana caught the scent just a fraction of a second later and threw herself to the side as a similar figure tried to tackle her.

Lily shrank down to the size of a child and popped free, rocketing up into the sky. The alabaster figure leapt in the air and grabbed the succubus by the tail, then slammed her back into the ground.

Dana's eyes went wide as she turned back toward the door. Another figure dropped into view, all eight legs unfolding as the naked Arachne stepped through the elevator door.

"They killed our pet," she said, her unblinking eyes going to the corpse of the massive spider.

"This one is fast," said the Arachne nearest Dana.

"This one was not." The third Arachne snapped Lily's neck and the succubus went limp. Dana knew the demon was faking, but wasn't about to spoil her surprise.

All three Arachne were identical in appearance and vaguely similar to Eulalie. Their black abdomens were marked with red spots. The one holding Lily started folding her into a cocoon.

"We can discuss our prey after we catch them," the first one said.

 Dana cast a glance in Tasia's direction. The werewolf was growling and had set Ingrid on the ground.

"Any chance you've got a fire wand?" Dana asked the mage.

Ingrid didn't even have a chance to reply as the nearest Arachne leapt. Tasia moved to intercept, but the Arachne slid past her defenses and slammed her into the ground. She opened her mouth to bite the werewolf, but dropped Tasia and jumped into the air as Dana's blades hissed through the space where she had been standing.

"Take Ingrid and go," Dana said. "I've got these guys."

"You can't take all three by yourself," Ingrid coughed. She gave her coat a poke. "Hey, are you gonna weigh in anytime soon?"

Dana saw Lily's tail twitch from her partial cocoon. "I'm not alone," she said, her eyes shifting between the two Arachne closing in. "And I'm the only one fast enough to block their--"

There was a blur of motion, followed by several metallic clangs as Dana whirled her swords. She couldn't track the Arachne visually, but she could execute a series of movements that maximized her range. The impacts on her sword were occasionally awarded with blue blood on the floor, and the Arachne disengaged.

"This one is dangerous," one said.

"This one isn't prey," the other replied. "She is already dead."

The third Arachne leaned over Lily to finish her cocoon just as the succubus burst into flame. The Arachne screamed and tried to move away, but her own cocoon now stuck to her like napalm.

"GO!" Dana yelled, raising her blades and throwing herself forward. Power flowed through her limbs as she brought the swords down so hard that they rang out upon contact with the Arachne.

The woman hissed and briefly glanced at the pair of legs now lying on the floor. Her hand darted forward twice, leaving two fist-sized holes in Dana's chest.

"You missed," Dana said, then thrust forward with her blades. One glanced off the black shell that formed on the Arachne's skin while the other slid into her stomach and emerged from the other side.

The Arachne grabbed onto Dana's wrist and held her in place while raining blows down on the zombie. The first one broke Dana's collar bone while the next cracked her skull. Her thoughts went all wobbly for a moment, but her sword training had her on auto pilot. The twin blades flashed three times, pushing her attacker back without harming them.

Dana shook her head as her brain tried to restore its original configuration.

The second Arachne was now busy trying to save the third, but could only stand by helplessly as Lily's fiery form expanded. An Arachne's primary weakness was fire, which burned the fine hairs all across their body that allowed them to have their supernatural reflexes.

In response, the second Arachne's pores had opened wide, expanding into a hard, chitinous armor that allowed her some protection. She took a few wild stabs at Lily, who sneered openly and stabbed back with her tail.

"Piss off, Charlotte!" Lily hugged the burning Arachne as they tumbled around on the ground. Dana's mind processed all of this in the same moment that a fist punched a hole in her gut.

The Arachne yanked Dana in and sank her teeth into the zombie's neck. Venom flooded Dana's system, making her limbs go numb. However, biting a zombie had quite the downside, as the Arachne was now gagging and retching, holding her throat as dark veins formed all along her skin.

Dana stumbled forward, the swords falling out of her hands as her nervous system rebelled. She felt her heartbeat slow and the world around her came into focus.

The second Arachne, realizing its sibling wasn't saveable, was turning toward Dana to finish the fight.

Time slowed as Dana's mind ramped up. The Arachne was crouching now, the armor on its fingertips having transformed into claws that would tear her apart. The zombie's eyes flitted down to where the swords had fallen. If she could just move her body, it would be simple enough to retrieve the nearest blade.

The Arachne was airborne now, her face a mask of anger in mid-leap. Dana stared hard at her limp arm, an anger of her own forming deep in her gut. Just recently, she had been able to move that hand while it wasn't attached. Her nervous system controlled her body, it was true, but it had become auxiliary to something else that defied the natural order.

Dana snarled, which came out as a stereotypical zombie moan instead. Focusing on the mechanics of how her body worked, she demanded various muscles flex, all across her body. For a brief moment, it felt like her consciousness expanded, allowing her loopy steps to turn into a crouch. Her arm and hand worked together, extending fingers toward the hilt of the blade.

Without feeling anything below her neck, Dana snatched up her blade and swung it upwards. It caught halfway through the Arachne's bulbous abdomen, and both of them fell down as they collided.

The Arachne cried out in pain, then climbed to all eights as it tried to wrestle the blade out of its belly. Dana flopped over like a contortionist and crab-walked backwards to grab the other sword. As if controlling someone else's body, she raised her blade and realized she hadn't picked up her sword at all.

It was one of the severed legs. Dana had misjudged the distance to them in her current state, and she was actually another three feet away. Sensing an opportunity, she raised the leg to her mouth and bit down, her mouth flooding with the sweet, delicious taste of buttery crab legs.

"Mmph," she groaned, using the exoskeleton like a straw to suck out the marrow. The other leg was nearby, and she picked that up just as the Arachne yanked the sword free of its stomach and hissed at her.

Sensation was beginning to return to Dana's body, and she managed to scoot over to where her other sword was. Lacking the coordination to stand, she held the blade in one hand while using the other to hold the other leg to her mouth and inhale its contents.

The standoff was momentarily abated when the Arachne with dark lines down its body let out a scream and fell on her back, her body twitching out of control. Both Dana and her attacker watched as the poisoned Arachne spewed webbing in all directions as she wailed in agony.

It occurred to Dana in the moment that a zombified-Arachne was actually an incredibly bad thing to unleash on the world. Unable to properly fight for herself, she called out to Lily.

"I could use your help over here!" she shouted.

There was a scream, followed by a flaming projectile thrown at the armored Arachne. It took the brunt of the attack, then threw the sword at Lily as the demon dropped down from above. Her wings had become flames, and she punched the Arachne so hard in the face that a large portion of its shell burst.

"Not that one, Silksong! The other one!" Dana pointed at the Arachne writhing on the ground.

"Don't steal my lines," was all Lily said as she leapt onto the dying Arachne and attacked. The creature shrieked and bolted, leaving one of its legs behind in Lily's smoldering hands.

"Shit, shit, shit," Dana muttered as she took a few lurching steps toward the armored Arachne. Its focus was solely on Lily until Dana was close enough to attack, at which point its torn visage turned toward her.

The Arachne struck, but the protective armor on its arms made it slow enough that Dana caught the attack with her arm. She pinned the hand in place and allowed the Arachne to yank her forward.

"How do you like it?" she yelled, slamming her palm into the Arachne's nose. Briefly stunned, the Arachne slumped. Dana wrapped her legs around the creature's chest and gripped its head with both hands.

With a scream, she twisted and yanked. Something vital snapped in the Arachne's neck, causing the creature to go completely limp. Panting for air that was useless to her lungs, Dana lay against the newly dead creature, inhaling its scent.

It smelled amazing. Off in the distance, Dana heard the howling of wolves, the roar of something that could have been a dragon, and a voice that could have been Lily's. None of it mattered, though, for the bouquet of the meal that had just dropped into her lap was all that mattered.

Dana stuffed her face, eagerly consuming what she could of both the human and the arachnid portion. Shame and maybe a bit of guilt was something she would deal with later.

During her meal, the Arachne's limbs started to reanimate. A single sword thrust through the head solved that issue. Grinning like a child that had found a cookie jar, Dana ate her fill. Renewed power surged through her body and her senses sharpened like a knife on a whetstone.

Taking a deep breath, Dana licked her lips and gazed up at the darkened ceiling above. With a tentative sniff, she picked up Lily's scent, as well as Tasia's. Ingrid's was far more distant. The woman smelled of peaches, cream, and ash.

However, there were far more interesting smells nearby, scents that she didn't recognize. Despite eating her fill, that gnawing void deep in Dana's gut rumbled. It wasn't just that these smells made her hungry. Somehow, she also knew that these things were prey. Soulless creatures, which meant all of the calories and none of the guilt.

Something dark uncoiled within Dana, and she turned her attention to a roar in the distance. Was that a dragon she had just heard? What did dragon taste like?

Picking up her swords, Dana let out a primal scream and sprinted into the warehouse to seek out new prey.

Tasia dashed through the warehouse, her heart pounding in her chest as she used her nose to avoid trouble.

In her arms, Ingrid groaned. The werewolf slid to a halt at the edge of one of the underground structures and peered around the corner to see some sort of large dog casually dismembering what was most likely a skunk ape. Tasia racked her brain and finally recognized the creature as a Fu Dog.

"Why did we stop?" Ingrid asked.

The Fu Dog growled and turned toward Tasia. She could sense the creature's rage, and took a step back around the corner. Sinking into a crouch, Tasia set Ingrid down and threw herself into the Fu Dog just as it turned the corner, its maw covered in blood. They tore at each other, and Tasia was dismayed to discover that the creature was actually made of stone beneath its furry exterior.

This sucks, this sucks, this sucks she thought as the creature smashed her through the nearest wall and into a room full of Christmas ornaments. Many of these shattered upon impact, releasing a sparkly mist. Tasia kicked the dog off of her and heard a loud crunch as the beast landed.

Growling, the Fu Dog rose to reveal that it had crushed a short creature wearing a red and green skirt. From the mist came a bunch of short humanoids wielding tinsel and candy canes. They either threw themselves at the Fu Dog or started smashing more ornaments. Realizing it was better to run, Tasia stepped outside to grab Ingrid and flee.

Sprinting away from the short structure, she heard the Fu Dog howl as the Christmas elves broke into a chorus of *Jingle Bells.* She couldn't help but notice how they all screamed SLEIGH just as the Fu dog howled in agony.

Just how many creatures did this place contain? Tasia fell to all fours, but used one arm to cradle Ingrid like a child as she sprinted.

"I...hate...this!" Ingrid groaned.

Tasia ran this way for several minutes, as both the scents and sounds of various creatures battling behind her faded. Eventually, she found herself in a nest of structures that were intact, and slowed to a halt.

With a sigh, she took stock of their current situation and sniffed. It took her a good minute, but she finally detected a shift in the air. Following the current, she ended up at an exterior wall. Up above was an air vent, which was currently pumping in cool air.

Tasia set Ingrid down and peered into the vent. It seemed plenty large enough for the others to pass through, and she caught just a hint of car exhaust through it. It was very likely that this was providing fresh air for the storage facility.

Tasia grabbed onto the grate and yanked, ripping it free. She set it on the ground and moved to pick up Ingrid, who was now pointing back the way they had come.

Turning, Ingrid saw five figures slowly moving toward them. Walking on all fours and covered in midnight fur was a pack of werewolves.

"Friends of yours?" Ingrid asked with a laugh. Tasia promptly grabbed the mage and stuffed her into the vent. "Hey!"

"GO!" Tasia growled, then placed her back against the wall. She wouldn't be able to fit through the vent in this form, and neither would the werewolves coming near. If Ingrid could at least crawl through, then maybe she could get out. After that, well...Tasia didn't know what might happen.

"Tasia!" Ingrid tried to turn around inside the vent, but it was too small to do so. Clearly frustrated, she crawled forward, swearing loudly as she did so.

Tasia let her gaze sweep over the werewolves, her eyes settling on the one in the lead. They smelled wrong to her, mostly because their scents were the exact same. It wasn't like they were siblings. They were copies.

Clones. The right word finally came to the front of her mind. The Collector was making soulless clones down here in her basement. But to what end?

Her gaze shifted to each werewolf as they spread out and formed a semi-circle around her. Each one was growling, their eyes locked on her hunched form. The odds certainly weren't in her favor.

Tasia touched the patch of dark fur on her arms and summoned her family's blade just as the first werewolf leapt at her. She slipped to the side and brought her sword down with enough force that it clanged off of the bones in the werewolf's forearm. The creature howled as she barreled into it, her jaws clamping down on his throat.

Her sword swiped up in time to lop the fingers off of her next attacker, and she paused to properly maul the one in her mouth. Twirling like a sadistic ballerina, she launched her victim into the nearest werewolf and then did a standing leap, gripping the hilt of her sword in both claws as she brought it down.

The dark blade hissed with magic and boiling blood as she split this wolf in two. A third wolf tried to surprise her, but she flicked the contents of her blade into its eyes, temporarily blinding it. She managed to take off an arm before the rest of the pack surrounded her.

Any sort of grace or strategy was lost in a flurry of claws and teeth as they fought. Blood decorated the wall and floor as Tasia battled the pack. What felt like minutes was likely only a few seconds, and her salvation arrived when a minotaur with a red stripe through its fur barreled into the group and carried off two werewolves.

Scrambling to her feet, Tasia picked up her sword and sprinted away from a second minotaur who attempted to gore her. It ended up smashing into one of the werewolves. The two minotaurs were now engaged with the werewolves, who had turned on them.

Momentarily forgotten, Tasia fought the urge to join the fight and slunk away instead. Moving toward the vent, she threw herself into the gap and grunted as her bones cracked and popped. As she shrank into her human form, she heard Ingrid cry out somewhere up ahead.

"I'm coming!" she shouted, but her words were lost in the sound of gunfire. About halfway into the vent, something grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her free. She smashed into the concrete so hard that the wind was knocked from her body.

Struggling to transform, she felt something stab her in the calf and drag her across the ground. Growling, she rolled over and found herself staring up at a winged amalgamation of things with a snake for a tail. The snake had sunk its fangs into her leg and was yanking her closer to the main body where a goat's head regarded her from the middle of its back.

Tasia summoned her sword and beheaded the snake just as the goat bleated out a massive ball of fire. She only partially avoided the blast, the air now stinking of burning hair. Gasping for air, she braced herself against the wall and tried to transform back into the wolf.

Luckily, the lion's head of the chimera was busy ravaging one of the minotaurs. Of the other minotaur and the werewolves, there was no sign. The air was filled with the random shrieks and howls of all sorts of mythical beings. In the distance, a golem could be seen trying to wrestle what looked like a simian with hooks for feet and iron fangs.

Severing the snake's head did cause the lion to whip around as it let go of the minotaur. The chimera growled and took a step forward as the goat bleated maniacally. Fur had sprouted along Tasia's skin, but there was definitely a refractory period for transformations this close to each other.

A white figure landed on the chimera's back and latched onto the goat's head. It was one of the Arachne, its white skin now criss-crossed with black lines.

"Fuck me!" Lily shouted as she came around the corner, her entire body on fire. Tasia ducked away from the heat of the flames as the succubus collided with the Arachne, knocking it down. "Kill the chimera before it turns!"

"Turns into what?" Tasia demanded as the chimera began to stumble. The goat's head coughed and sent out a weak jet of flame before abruptly dying. Uncertain what Lily had meant, she pivoted on one heel and stabbed her sword into the chimera's collar.

The lion snarled and smacked her with a claw that tore open her back. Cursing, Tasia had to dig deep to transform back into the werewolf as blood flowed down her spine. Growling, she slashed open the lion's face with her claw and then jammed her sword down its throat.

Coughing up fire, the chimera jerked and stumbled, then went limp, the light fading from its eyes. Tasia pulled her sword free and turned toward Lily. The succubus was being dragged across the ground by the Arachne, who was currently on fire.

"Turn around!" Lily shouted, pointing at the chimera.

Tasia looked back and saw that the goat's head had reanimated and was currently gnawing on the main body. The rest of the body was already twitching, and the lion's head was twitching as it attempted to stand.

Oh. She understood what was going on now. The Arachne was also a zombie, which explained why it had resorted to punching Lily instead of literally any other strategy. However, what was really unnerving was just how fast the chimera had turned.

Tasia skewered the goat through its brain just as the lion awakened. It let out a raspy growl, as if uncertain how to use its vocal cords, and then Tasia beheaded it. The lion gnashed its teeth, its tongue lolling on the floor as the werewolf stomped on its skull and howled.

"Tasia!" Lily's voice was desperate. Tasia looked to see that the succubus had been pinned to the ground. The Arachne locked eyes with Tasia and hissed, then launched toward her.

The sword came up, but not fast enough to block. Tasia took the hit and felt her ribs break, then fell backward in time to avoid the set of fangs that tried to latch down on her neck. The Arachne, still burning, spat out a mouthful of fur and tried to bite her again.

A tail wrapped around the Arachne's neck and yanked her back. The zombie pulled hard enough that Lily was yanked through the air, and then all three of them collided. Tasia put the Arachne in a head lock and twisted, her muscles bulging with effort as something inside of the zombie finally snapped.

The Arachne's lower half went out of control, as if controlled by a different brain, but the upper half went limp. Both Lily and Tasia held on for dear life as the arachnid portion sprinted at the nearest wall and climbed it in a blind frenzy.

Lily dipped between the Arachne and the wall, then transformed into Sofia, allowing her to shove all of them free. Tasia fell from twenty feet up and had the wind knocked out of her when they landed. Her blade was too far away to be of any help, so she kept yanking until her own joints popped.

With a wet squelch, she pulled off the Arachne's head. Its body took off in a random direction, stumbling blindly.

"Fuck me, that was harder than it should have been." Lily was back in her human form, rubbing at her back. She used her tail to pick up Tasia's blade, then tossed it toward the werewolf.

Tasia dropped the head and stomped on it, then picked up the sword. It turned into a band of dark fur on her forearm. Tasia pointed the way the Arachne had gone and lifted an eyebrow.

"If you're asking me if we need to go after that, I honestly don't know." Lily sighed. "Where's Ingrid?"

Tasia pointed in the direction of the vent. As she did so, in the stillness of the moment, she realized that she heard two things echoing down those long corridors.

The first was gunfire. The second was screams of terror.

Ingrid grunted as she pulled herself through the air vent using mostly her elbows and feet to shove herself forward. The metallic vent was not a whole lot bigger than she was, and her coat kept catching on random seams in the metal.

It also didn't help that Jenny was back in her baby carrier, pressed tightly against her chest. Occasionally, she could hear the doll grumbling as Ingrid was forced to place weight on the possessed toy.

"You know, if you weren't so tired, you could expedite my passage," Ingrid grumbled, sweat pouring down her face. Despite the cool breeze blowing on her, she felt like she was burning up.

A mental image of Jenny yawning forced its way into Ingrid's head, causing her to shudder.

Up ahead, the ductwork turned, and Ingrid was disappointed to see that it didn't give her a way to turn around. It's not that she wanted to go back, but she hated the idea of eventually reaching a point of no return and being forced to wiggle backward.

Behind her, she could hear howling and what may have been screams receding into the distance. Every minute or so, she would stop and listen for the sounds of pursuit. She wanted to call out and hear a familiar voice, but also dreaded the soft thumping of one of those creatures hunting for her in the ducts.

And so, she continued. Eventually, the tunnel met up with another, and she sat at the junction for a few moments to figure out which direction the air was coming from. When she figured it out, she crawled toward the source of fresh air, secretly hoping it wouldn't involve a massive fan.

The mage was pleasantly surprised to learn that the source of flowing air was, in fact, a set of painted runes at the end of the tunnel. They glowed a bright green color, and she paused to inspect them.

The runes really were a work of art, one she wished to study later. She paused to fumble out her phone, then snapped a picture of them. It was advanced work for sure. There was an opening perpendicular to the fan that included another vent, which overlooked a small room. Grinning, Ingrid crawled up to it and gave the grill a shove.

"Oh, fuck me," she muttered, realizing it was properly bolted to the wall. Grunting, she rolled on her back and searched through her pockets until she found her handgun. She pulled out the magazine and emptied the chamber before flipping it over and using it like a hammer.

"C'mon, c'mon," she grunted, aiming for the corners. The wand that had been attached was making it awkward to use, but a few good whacks caused the metal itself to bend. Once she had enough of the vent exposed, she groaned and shook her head in disgust.

"I'm an idiot," she muttered, then flipped the gun over and cast the shield spell. The metal of the ductwork flexed as the spell emerged, forming a bubble of magical pressure against the grate. It blew off and clattered against the opposite wall of the room.

Ingrid squirmed out the opening and saw that it was an eight-foot drop to the floor. Laughing at her shitty luck, she braced her legs against the shaft and wiggled herself forward.

"Come out to the coast," she said, her torso now dangling from the vent. She used her feet as a wedge to slow her descent. "We'll get together, have a few--"

Gravity won, and she fell. The hem of her coat caught on a sharp edge, causing her to flip over in mid-air. The coat was pulled free, and she promptly dropped onto her butt, the coat flipping over to cover her head.

"Ow," she groaned, rubbing at her ass. The extra padding she had back there had done nothing to salvage her body, or her ego. Shoving her coat off of her head, she struggled to stand.

The room she was in was empty. There was a large red sigil on the ceiling which wasn't currently powered. Ingrid cocked her head to one side and tried to decipher it.

"Destruction rune," she said, her hands shaking with exhaustion and relief. The trigger mechanism wasn't decipherable to her, so she paused to snap a picture of this one as well.

She had her phone out like a tourist when a man with a shotgun burst through the door to her room.

"Contact!" he yelled. Ingrid threw herself to the side and fumbled in her coat for her pistol. She managed to raise it up in time just as the man took aim and fired again. The buckshot that made it through the magical shield bounced off her coat, and Ingrid screamed. Pain filled her head as she dug deep to power the magical barrier.

Her heart jackhammered in her chest, then somehow doubled its tempo when another man came in to support the first. This one was wearing a hat with the letters SOS embroidered along the bill.

Seeing her only chance at survival, Ingrid grabbed the flap of her coat and yanked it open to reveal the doll.

"Jenny!" she screamed. "The SoS are here! Take the wheel!"

The light in the room flickered, and the men shooting Ingrid stepped further into the room. As the temperature dropped, Ingrid felt her mind slip, almost like she was falling asleep. Pressure built inside of her sinuses as she felt something malevolent try to move in.

Taking a deep breath, Ingrid let go, allowing Jenny to take control of her body. The last thing she saw as her world went dark was the man in front of her being lifted into the air as his legs were forcibly folded up into his own ass. As Jenny turned the man inside out, spraying his guts across the room, Ingrid heard the doll laugh.

It's just like balling a pair of socks, the spirit declared, and the world went black.

Lily jammed herself into the airvent, her legs kicking as she shrunk down to the size of a child.

"Go get your girlfriend," she shouted back at Tasia. "She's on a feeding frenzy."

The werewolf grunted an acknowledgement, and Lily heard her go running off. The succubus shook her head.

"Silly dog," she muttered. "Stupid zombie."

"Hey. At least they make it work." Mike was crawling backward in front of Lily.

"You call what they have 'making it work'?" Lily raised an eyebrow.

"I mean...at least one of them isn't just a mental manifestation of the other." He put his chin in his hands and smiled playfully. "I feel like I'm at a slumber party."

"Hardly," she replied, fighting a grin. "Also, you're blocking my view."

Mike casually flipped around so that he was facing away from her. He wiggled his ass. "Now I'm blocking your view, but you like it."

Lily laughed. "Perhaps. Can't wait to get my hands on you when I get home."

"The real me." For a moment, Mike sounded sad. "I know this isn't the time or place--"

"It never is," Lily grumbled.

"But what am I, exactly? I mean, yes, I know I'm a piece of Mike's soul floating around in your demonic essence, but am I actually alive? Self aware? Am I just a piece of you coded differently that has become its own thing, sort of like an Agent Smith in the Matrix affair, or am I really just a weird subconscious manifestation of your desires?"

The succubus sighed. "Either way, you're an asshole. You were right when you said this wasn't the time for this."

"True, but it's taken your mind off of your hands."

"Huh?" Lily looked down and saw that her palms were currently charred. "What the hell?"

"This ducting has been enchanted or something. Some sort of demon-proofing."

"Why the fuck would someone demon proof the ductwork?" Lily asked.

"To keep demons out," Mike replied. "Or in. It would actually work if you were still a full demon, which actually circles back to my main point that--"

"Fine, fine, I get it." Now that Lily was aware of what was happening to her hands, she was forced to grit her teeth. Up ahead, she heard screaming, but it sounded male. "Sounds like our girl is giving them hell."

"Ooh, she's our girl now. I like it when you claim other women." Mike looked back over his shoulder and grinned. His smile faltered as his gaze went past her. "We've got company."

"What?" Lily turned back to see that a trio of green-skinned creatures wearing miner's garb were frantically crawling toward her, panting excitedly through sharpened teeth.

"Are those gnomes?" Mike asked.

"Kind of." Lily tried to crawl faster. There was an intersection ahead. She sprouted her tail and whipped it back at her pursuers. "I believe those are tommyknockers."

"Ah." Mike winced when Lily's tail slashed one across the face. "They seem friendly."

"There's no reason for them not to be, actually." Lily adjusted her body, making her forearms shorter along with her legs. If anybody saw her now, she looked very much like a cross between a burlesque dancer and a dachshund in her attempts to crawl even faster. The tommyknockers, though, were built for navigating caves and subterranean spaces. She needed to get them out into the open.

Mike vanished as Lily came to the intersection. She cocked her head in an attempt to figure out where the gunfire was coming from, but with the banging of her pursuers right behind her, it was too hard to tell.

Her tail got yanked from behind, and Lily rolled over just as the tommyknockers tried to crawl on top of her. Biting and punching, she managed to squirm away, but not before seeing at least five more of the goblinoids had joined the chase.

Lily got lost in the ducts. The tommyknockers were relentless, consistently biting at her ankles of all things. Frustrated and more than a little pissed, she finally found herself looking down into the center of a room with soft red lights. She punched at the grate until it burst, then fell into the middle of a room full of bookshelves.

Snarling, she pointed her tail upward and skewered the first tommyknocker that fell through. The little creature's look of glee turned to shock and surprise as her tail stabbed up through its guts and popped out the back. The next tommyknocker managed to avoid her tail, but caught a roundhouse kick to the jaw.

They kept coming. Lily took a step back and whipped her tail to yank it free, then formed the tip into a scythe. Based on what she could tell, an entire tribe of these fuckers had come after her. Though their eyes glinted with life, every single one was completely devoid of a soul.

"Riddle me this," asked Mike from nearby. He was holding a magnifying glass and studying the tommyknocker she had killed. "Why do none of these things have souls in them?"

"You tell me," she snarled, forming her fingers into knives and slashing at a pair of tommyknockers who came at her with clubs. "Be something other than the prettiest face in the room!"

Mike shrugged. "Well, let's look at the facts. We have a bunch of cryptids who are carbon-copies of each other. That would indicate cloning, right? But why would clones lack a soul? They're still living creatures."

"So maybe clone isn't the right word." Lily yanked a tommyknocker's club out of its hand and promptly caved its skull in. Three more dropped down from the ceiling to replace it. "This place is weird, but doesn't scream Kamino to me."

"Fuck," Mike groaned. "I love your nerdy references."

"Focus, Romeo." Lily picked up a tommyknocker and headbutted it with her horns. Surprisingly, the little fucker's head was somehow harder than her own, so she swung the creature like a club and used him to beat his closest friend to death.

"Okay, so not clones, which means they aren't test tube babies. Even if they were, it would suggest accelerated growth." Mike tapped on his chin and stepped to the side as Lily threw a tommyknocker away from her and punched another one. He looked up at the ceiling. "Shit, how many of them are there?"

"These fuckers are like ants!" Lily had lost count, and bodies were already piling up around the edges of the room. They weren't too hard to kill, but they would definitely overwhelm her if she allowed them to properly group up on her. The odd, red lighting in the room made the scene look far grislier than it actually was.

"Oh, I think I know!" Mike snapped his fingers and pointed to a dead tommyknocker's face. "These guys are literal copies! Somewhere out there is this tommyknocker! You can copy the body, but the soul is unique. Look at me. I'm like the branch of a tree that has been grafted onto something else. These guys? Poor, soulless bastards. It explains the murderous behavior."

"So why the fuck are there so many?" Lily demanded as she choked the life out of one while stomping her heel through another.

Mike shivered. "Parts? Food? Who knows. You'll have to ask the Collector."

"I'm gonna...punch! That bitch in the...mouth!" Lily punctuated her words with actual blows. A tommyknocker had found a metal colander and was wearing it as a helmet.

"But think about that first room we were in," he continued. "It's way easier to store and ship these guys through the mail, right? Trap them inside a cute little statue, or--"

"Thanks for the exposition, I think the audience gets it now!" Lily flared her wings and delivered a flying knee to the last tommyknocker, then looked up. The vent up above had finally emptied out, leaving her surrounded by corpses. She grunted and sat on one of the piles. "Fuck me, I'm tired."

"What a meta comment," Mike muttered, then let his attention wander to the shelves. "Oh. This is weird."

"Hmm?" Lily stood to see what he was looking at and frowned. In the fight, she hadn't noticed that the shelves were actually covered by protective glass. The room they were in was perfectly square, and save for the door, all available wall space was lined with what looked like bulletproof glass that protected the shelves behind them. Lily leaned forward in disbelief, entirely uncertain that she was seeing this properly.

"They're Funko Pops," Mike said. "This room is wall to wall Funko Pops."

Lily didn't even reply. As far as she could tell, every single one was different. Many of them were special Comic-con exclusives. "Who the hell is Freddy Funko?" she asked.

"For once, I have no answer." Mike tapped the glass. "Hey, this one is from A Clockwork Orange."

"You know...it occurs to me that everything in this place has a monster hidden inside of it." Lily tried to find a common theme in the collectibles, but couldn't. "What do you think these ones have?"

"Not sure," Mike replied, then looked up. "But we've got bulletproof glass, red light, and what looks to be a top of the line fire-suppression system. Whatever it is, they must be super rare or whatever."

"Fire suppression?" Lily smirked. "Sounds like fire would be a big problem in here."

"Yeah. It really does." Mike smirked back. "Would be a shame if a big ol' fire broke out. Cause once those Pops melted--"

"Whatever was inside will jump straight into the fire." Lily giggled and summoned a handful of flames.

"We need to disable the suppression first." Mike pointed up above. "Top of the line sensors."

Lily looked around the room, but couldn't find anything to turn them off. Eventually, her search led her to the door. When she pushed it open, she realized that the entry was actually a vault door that led to someone's bedroom.

Laughing maniacally, she propped the door open with a couple of tommyknocker bodies, then had Mike help her identify the security system that controlled the climate in the room. Within minutes, they not only pulled power from the system, but Lily found the tanks of Argon that were intended to pump into the room.

"Shit," she muttered. "Now I really want to know what's inside those Funkos."

"We could snap the head off of one," Mike replied. "See what pops out."

Lily shook her head. "We don't have time for that," she replied. "Let's get this over with and then go find Ingrid. We're clearly back in the main house."

"You're the boss," he said as they went back into the room. The bulletproof glass was difficult to get through, but Lily managed to rip one off. She yanked free some shelving and snapped it over her knee, then repeated the process until she had a stack of wood in the middle of the room.

A little bit of hellfire was all it took to ignite the pile. Then she and Mike emptied the shelves of Funko Pops, throwing all of them into the flames. The two of them laughed like a pair of idiots as the Funkos burned. By the time the last shelf was empty, the succubus strolled out of the vault into the smoke filled bedroom and waited.

A minute passed, and then another. From here, she could see a metallic Stan Lee Funko melting, the plastic turning black. What she did not see was monsters magically appearing only to burn alive. She exchanged a look with Mike, who was now watching the flames thoughtfully.

"Huh. I was half expecting baby dragons or something." He shrugged. "Oh well. Should we go find Ingrid?"

Lily nodded, and headed for the bedroom door. When she pulled it open, she immediately heard the sound of distant screams, followed by more gunfire. The bedroom clearly had a sound-dampening spell on it.

"Sounds like our girl is busy." Lily jogged out into the hallway.

"Might not be Ingrid," Mike replied as the two of them turned the corner and came to a halt.

They both stared down a hallway decorated with gore and bodies. Long portions of the walls and floor had fingernail lines. At the end of the hallway, someone had stacked some corpses together and written Life Really Socks above them. At the bottom of the pile was a bloody hat with the letters SOS.

Lily exchanged a look with Mike, then looked back toward the bedroom. "We should go find our creepy doll before this place burns down," she muttered.

"I hope the next hallway isn't as bad as this one," he replied.

Somehow, the next hallway was much worse.

Aurora stood outside the Kensington estate, hoping that the mercenaries still trickling in couldn't see the sweat that was pooling all along her neckline and under her arms. The first few groups of mercs had been borderline friendly compared to those who walked in now.

She was also running low on accessories to hand out. Not that it would matter, really. Tagging them all as potential SoS members was little more than a shot in the dark intended to highly motivate the troubled spirit Ingrid was carrying around. Based on the distant gunfire, either the team was under a full-blown assault from the whole team, or Jenny was burning their world to the ground.

The late-comers almost sounded angry to be there, and more than a few ignored Aurora on the way in. With the obvious showdown going on behind her, it was only a matter of time before someone caught on that she might be part of it.

Still, she maintained the facade, made eye contact with killers, shook their hands in greeting, then handed them an accessory that was likely to become a funeral shroud.

Civilians milled around Kensington Palace Road, completely oblivious to the carnage that was happening nearby. Aurora wondered just how many spells had been laid on the estate to keep it so private. Next door, an armed guard patrolled the perimeter, completely oblivious to the small army that was flowing into the manor.

When a man in a trenchcoat and a hat came running up, the mercenaries nearby tensed. The runner came to a halt in front of Aurora and made a show of exposing his hands to the nervous men nearby.

"New orders," he said, lifting his cap to reveal his face. It was Ulysses. "The boss needs you across town."

"The boss?" Aurora raised an eyebrow and stepped closer to Ulysses and lowered her voice. "What's going on?" she asked.

"Collector is almost back," he wheezed. "Tried to call, but your phone wasn't working. She's about fifteen minutes out."

"But..." Aurora looked at her watch. "The timing is wrong." They should easily have another hour.

"I think she's properly motivated," he replied breathlessly. "Also, she was fifteen minutes out almost ten minutes ago."

She jabbed him in the chest with her fist. "Asshole. You should have started with that." Aurora turned to the last group of men and cleared her throat. "It looks like I've been pulled away. If you wouldn't mind, please let anyone new know that they need to wear these identifying garments to avoid hostilities from the local team." There was an explosion in the house, which made Aurora flinch. "As you can hear, it's a mess in there."

One man grunted and left without grabbing an armband. Another slid one on, then picked up a hat. "My kid will like it," he said, jamming it into his belt. Aurora didn't stay and argue. Instead, she allowed Ulysses to lead her away, and the two walked onto the main road and wrapped arms around each other as if they were on a date.

"We need to get out of here," Ulysses muttered. "That witch will be back soon, and I imagine she will be quite angry. The truck is parked just around the corner."

"What about the others?" Aurora actually turned to look back. "They still need our help back there."

Ulysses gripped her arm and continued guiding her away from the compound. "We've already done everything we can," he said. "You and I are no better than those people with guns, except they actually have guns."

Aurora made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. "I hate this," she said.

"I know." Ulysses sighed. "But you have to remember that they have their job and we have ours."

"But who will help them when they're in over their heads?" Aurora asked. She looked to Ulysses and felt the blood drain from her face as she caught sight of a woman rocketing through the air on a broom. Nobody else on the ground seemed to notice her.

"What is it?" Ulysses whispered.

"She's here," Aurora whispered back. Theoretically, the witch had more important things to do than to chase them down, and that was assuming she noticed their involvement.

"Where?" Ulysses turned to look, and she grabbed him by the collar and kissed him. He immediately softened in her arms, then stumbled back a little, caught off guard. In this manner, they bumped into a woman trying to pass by in a wheelchair.

"Sorry!" Aurora called, but the woman ignored them, her gloved hands awkwardly working the tires. Aurora locked eyes with Ulysses and shook her head. "Don't look up," she said. "It's some sort of perception filter. She'll notice us."

"Right." He cleared his throat and led her through the security gate and to the box truck that had been parked a block away. Once the others made it out of Kensington, the truck was to be their escape route.

Ulysses opened up the back and passed through the portal inside, which took them to a room with two exits. He took off his coat and gestured to one of them.

"This is my stop," he said. "Thanks for saving me from a witch."

"Same to you," she replied, then walked through the other. Two airlocks later, and she was in the Library. The rats seemed busier than usual as she walked back to the main console and flopped down in her seat. Taking a deep breath, she remembered that she was still dressed for cool weather.

Aurora took a moment to take off her extra layers, then sat back down at the console. A rat was waiting for her with a cup of tea.

"Thank you." She smiled at the rat, who was wearing a small vest with a tiny top hat. "Where's Eulalie?"

The rat took off its hat and pulled out a folded note, which it handed to Aurora. She unfolded the note, her eyes going wide.

"SHE WHAT?!?"

Ingrid was somewhere cold and dark. If she were to put money on it, she would place herself on the border of life or death. Perhaps if she walked far enough in the right direction, she would cross over.

That would require legs. Though Ingrid was a locked down soul, she didn't seem to have a body. The whole process would have been more unnerving if she hadn't been in so much pain before coming here.

Distantly, she could hear screaming and gunfire. Jenny's joy somehow radiated to this dark place. If the spirit was successful in dealing with the mercenaries, they had a chance to survive. Otherwise, Ingrid would just slip into that cold void and experience...

Well, whatever happens next. On the plus side, it wasn't like she was leaving much behind. There really wasn't any unfinished business that would keep her trapped.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light. Ingrid squinted her eyes against it, but her eyelids refused to move. Forced to stare directly into the light, it occurred to her that there was a chance that Jenny had failed.

With a relieved sigh, she tried to walk into the light, leaving behind only regrets.

Somebody screamed, and then she heard a wet squelching sound. Blood sprayed everywhere, and then Jenny cackled.

"And that's how you successfully remove a skeleton from the rest of its body, kids!" she said in both Ingrid's voice and her own. Ingrid's body was somehow clinging to a wall as she held out a bloody, man-sized skeleton and wiggled it up and down to make its jaw clack. Somebody screamed and Jenny gave chase. "This is educational!" she shouted.

Stunned, Ingrid's eyes adjusted to the light and she realized that she had never been in a dark void. Instead, she was just inside Jenny's doll, tucked away inside a baby carrier on her body's chest. The coat's magical protections had blocked all sound, apparently.

At some point, Jenny ditched the skeleton and dropped to the ground to run like a dog before tackling a man. He screamed hysterically as she picked up a piece of broken glass, but the coat shifted and mercifully blocked Ingrid's view.

The next time it opened, Ingrid stared at the ceiling as Jenny spider walked exorcist-style after three men while cackling maniacally. They shot at her, but their guns kept being diverted. The coat closed once more as Jenny leapt onto them, and Ingrid was forced to wonder what had happened.

For a long time, Ingrid felt like she was hovering on the edge of consciousness. With no way of knowing how much time had passed, it was hard to tell if it had been a minute or an hour. Would Jenny give Ingrid her body back when she was done with her rampage? Or perhaps the spirit would decide to keep Ingrid's body. After all, it had been freely given, even if the circumstances had been dire.

The silence was shattered by a heavy pressure, and then Ingrid felt something squirming up against her soul.

"BITCH!" Jenny screamed. "WITCH! BITCH!"

"What happened?" Ingrid asked, then was blinded by a burst of light. She was staring at the ceiling, and a matronly woman was looking down on her from above, shaking her head in disgust.

"As far as malevolent spirits go, I will admit that I'm impressed. There have been rumors trickling through the community of a ghost with the morals of a serial killer, but it seems there's more depth there than I could have imagined." She pulled the doll out of the baby carrier and stared at it, then turned the doll upside down, giving Ingrid a good look at her body.

Ingrid swallowed the lump in her phantom throat. Her body was staring blankly at the ceiling, and was covered in so much blood, it made her think of the prom scene from Carrie.  Her face was crusted with what looked like salt.

Was her body...dead?

Beside her, Jenny raged at the witch, but said nothing of use.

"Okay, let's see...ah. This was your primary vessel up until recently, and it seems like the original occupant of this body is inhabiting it. Clever usage of a spirit, if I'm being honest. For the same reason demons prefer to employ possession, allowing an entity to possess you turbo-charges their ability. You have to be very careful doing that, possession can stress your organs. Not that you'll be needing them for long." The witch flipped them over again and stared directly into the doll's eyes.

She flicked the doll in the forehead and Ingrid felt the world violently lurch. Suddenly, she was back in her own body, and her back arched as she inhaled deeply.

"There you are." The witch wrapped a ribbon around Jenny, and her angry voice became muffled, then vanished. "I certainly have some questions, and I haven't forgotten that you destroyed my basilisk eggs. Unless somebody has a basilisk tucked away, you are directly responsible for their extinction."

"Gah," was all Ingrid could say. It felt like her mouth was packed with cotton.

"The reproductions I keep stored for display are incapable of breeding, you see." The witch gestured at a nearby chair, and it crawled over to her, stepping over a severed leg. She sat and shook her head in disgust. "You look like you're from the Order. Has that miserable organization caught on to me?"

"In...dependent...contractor," Ingrid replied. Staring at the witch, she had a spark of recognition. "You're...auction..."

"Yes, I was there. I can only assume you've come for your friend, who was being stored in a painting." The Collector leaned back in her seat and pulled out a wand. "So I have a very important question for you, and I want you to answer honestly. But to be up front, I do plan on killing you. It would seem I've wasted two of my demons on you, and I don't take that lightly. You've also violated the integrity of my auction, destroyed a part of my priceless collection, and damaged my reputation amongst the mercenary community. It's already so hard to find good help, but they definitely won't come if they think I have enemies that will just churn them up in a meat grinder."

"Ffffu..." Ingrid chuckled weakly. Yep. Her ribs were definitely broken. A lung may have been punctured. Jenny had not been kind to her body.

"Oh, for heaven's sake." The Collector bit her own finger and drew a bloody sigil in mid-air, then waved it away from her. The sigil floated toward Ingrid, then shot toward her at velocity. When it struck her in the chest, Ingrid let out a gasp of pain, then screamed as her bones shifted back into place. "I do hate mumblers," the witch muttered.

Ingrid's chest was on fire for several seconds, and then she gasped for air, her ribs and lung now fixed. The witch poked her foot with her wand.

"Where were we? Oh, right. I was reminding you why you had to die." The Collector, clearly lost in thought, stared at Ingrid for an uncomfortable length of time. "Oh, right! Were you the one who destroyed my collection?"

"Your..." Though Ingrid's mouth tasted of blood, it still felt painfully dry. "The monsters in your basement?" she asked.

"Hmm? Oh, those. That was quite frustrating, actually, but they are just cheap reproductions. I use them as display pieces and spare parts. Loan them out to friends for parties and such. The originals are kept someplace else. This place is more of a weekend getaway, actually. It's much closer to the auction. In regards to my question, I'm referring to my personal collection, the one I felt someone burning in my vault." The Collector's eyes went dark. "Some of those were relatively one of a kind. It will take me months to find their replacements, if at all. When I felt their destruction, I wasted valuable magic trying to get back even faster and even lost one of my favorite hats over the Atlantic. It was a gift from a woman I know. She usually knits them only for orphans."

Ingrid's lips quivered, and then she laughed. Caught in hysterics, she couldn't stop herself, even when the Collector's eyes filled with murderous intent.

"Not me," she finally managed to say. "I was...just along...for the ride!"

The Collector sighed in frustration and picked at her chin. "Well, damn. That means the perpetrator is still on the loose." She stood and picked up Jenny, then placed the doll on Ingrid's chest. "Now that I'm here, I can feel them wreaking havoc down in my basement. One of them must have done it, but who? Bah, I'll figure it out later."

Ingrid couldn't stop laughing as the Collector dragged her by the foot. The woman was quite strong, and pulled Ingrid down a long corridor, then took a left through a shattered doorway into a room filled with debris that smelled of gunsmoke.

It was the front room. Up on the wall was the covered painting, and Ingrid stopped laughing as a brutal round of nausea hit her.

"Not funny now, is it?" The Collector brought Ingrid to the center of the room and let go of her foot. "It was a real pain in the ass getting that thing inside the painting. I got lost twice trying to bring it here."

Ingrid grunted, but realized she couldn't move.

"It's just a mild paralytic," the Collector told her. "It'll wear off soon enough."

"You paralyzed me?"

"It was either that or kill you right away." The Collector clucked her tongue as she walked over to the nearest doorway and tapped it with her wand. The shattered door reassembled itself, and she pulled out a piece of chalk. "But I had questions, and am curious what'll happen once I stick you inside the painting with the Outsider."

"What?" Ingrid's heart skipped a beat as she remembered what had happened to the guy at the auction.

"Oh, yes. Based on my knowledge, you can't really be harmed inside of the painting, but an Outsider does break all the conventional rules. Consider it payback for the basilisk eggs." The Collector pushed the chalk to the door and let go as it hovered in place, then started drawing runes.

"That's..." Ingrid could only watch in horror as the chalk broke in two to expedite the process. "Wait, this is the good way to kill me?"

The Collector shrugged. "Not really. I was lying. I can do that, you know. When I find out who destroyed my Funkos, I'm going to do the same thing to them. That way, you'll have some company. Speaking of which. I need to rearrange some things."

The witch raised her hands and clapped them hard. A shockwave rippled outward, and the house trembled. She whistled a small tune as she moved to the nearest doorway and pushed it open to reveal the interior of the basement storage facility.

"I'll be right back," she said, then vanished through the doorway.

Ingrid struggled to sit up, but couldn't. She was able to flex her hands, but her arms were too weak.

"C'mon, c'mon," she muttered, trying to ignore the pain from her broken wrist. The house creaked around them, and Ingrid thought she heard movement on the stairs up above. "Hello?" she called.

There was no answer. A few minutes passed before the Collector returned, grunting with exertion. She was clutching Tasia by the foot, the werewolf bound with rope and unconscious.

"You have no idea how upset I am right now," she declared as she moved Tasia a few feet away from Ingrid. "If she's here, it means you have destroyed a priceless artifact. If I hadn't learned its secrets already, I'd peel off her skin and use it as a rug!"

"As opposed to feeding her to your Outsider?" Ingrid shouted.

"Hmm? Oh, I won't do that. I'm thinking of a forced breeding program. The replicas I have here are sterile, it's the price for creating life from nothing. Children with DNA from a werewolf able to control her abilities would command a high price on the market, especially if they're capable of turning. Lycanthropy is a misunderstood science, you see." She turned back to the door and pulled it shut. "Now, where were we? Ah, yes."

The Collector pulled a marble out of her pocket and threw it across the room just as Lily burst through the door, flames licking up from her horns. The marble struck her and exploded into a cloud of what must have been holy water.

As the succubus stumbled and fell to the ground, the Collector pulled a hanky out of her pocket and gave it a shake. It expanded into a full-sized blanket with a demon trap embroidered on the material. She laid it on top of Lily, who screamed as the flames on her body went out.

"The succubus, too." The Collector clucked her tongue. "It would seem that you all are far more resourceful than you let on. Does that mean I'll find the zombie wandering my halls, too?"

Ingrid didn't reply. The witch left Lily trapped beneath the fabric and then cocked her head to one side as if listening to something. Finally, she nodded and clapped her hands together, and the house reorganized itself.

"Don't feel bad," she said as she walked toward the door she had brought Ingrid through earlier. "I have centuries of experience hunting creatures from across the globe, and dealing with demons from Hell. You can't expect me not to be prepared." The Collector stepped through the door and vanished. Moments later, she burst back through the door, running for her life.

Dana stepped through the doorway a second later and threw one of her swords. It pierced the Collector through the spine so hard that it drove her into the closest wall.

The zombie was a mess. Her labcoat was torn, and adorned with blood. Her blue eyes were glowing from within as she studied the room, her eyes settling on Tasia.

She knelt by the werewolf and took her pulse, then looked up at the Collector. The woman had sagged against the wall without another sound.

"Be careful," Ingrid cautioned. "She's dangerous."

"So am I." Dana walked over toward the witch and stopped halfway there, her nostrils flaring. "You aren't dead. I can't smell your blood."

The Collector chuckled. "It would seem my trap has failed. You, my dear, are going to be the prize of my collection." She grunted and stepped back from the wall, ripping herself free. Turning around revealed a crystal ball in one hand that pulsed with malevolent light. "Was really hoping you'd come to finish me off."

"You aren't alive?" Dana sniffed the air again and frowned. "But you aren't dead, either."

The witch grunted and shoved the blade out of her body, where it clattered on the floor. "A long time ago, I designed this as a safety precaution. You youngsters today like to call it working remotely. My real body is wearing pajamas somewhere else. This vessel?" The Collector shoved a hand into her wound and yanked out a bunch of grey matter which looked like stuffing. "It is quite durable."

The zombie moved so fast that Ingrid briefly wondered if she had disappeared. However, there was a loud crash against one of the walls and the zombie floated back out into the middle of the room, flailing her limbs as she hovered in place.

"You possess great speed and strength," the Collector said as she appraised the zombie from below. "But those things require being able to push off of something. Maybe if you had wings. Can you have wings? We can test that later." She crossed her arms and surveyed the group. "If my senses are correct, that's all of you."

Lily shrieked from beneath her blanket, unable to escape. Ingrid could move her arms again, but her legs were still numb as she pushed herself up and tried to crawl toward the succubus.

In the distance, a bell tolled. The Collector clapped her hands once more and turned toward the door with the chalk sigils. It was now glowing an ominous yellow color around the seams.

"Perfect timing," she declared as she walked over toward Ingrid and pulled Jenny out of the baby carrier. "This one requires further study," she declared as she set the doll nearby and then grabbed Ingrid's foot and dragged her toward the door. "I'm afraid the others have too much value to me. You'll have to face an eternity of madness without your friends."

Ingrid frantically grabbed at her pockets, hoping to find something that would help her. Any weapons she had been carrying were gone, and one pocket clearly contained a skull she hadn't put there. What the hell had Jenny done with all her stuff?

The door clicked open, and the sense of nausea permeated the room. The Collector stumbled and coughed into one hand.

"Yeah, that's awful," she said. "It was bad enough when I captured it that I almost aspirated on my own vomit at home. This was even after fasting for a day. I never would have gotten it in the painting if it hadn't been so sleepy."

"You talk too much," Ingrid growled, pulling out what she thought was a gun. It turned out to be a shoe.

The Collector shrugged, almost to the open door. The smell of rotting meat and ozone permeated the area. "I'm entitled to do so," she said. "I'm an intellectual. It's one of my many flawwwww..."

Now by the door, the witch had stopped, her mouth hanging open. She let go of Ingrid and grasped her throat in each hand as her body lifted into the air, her legs kicking wildly. Her clutching fingers spasmed and turned into fists by her face.

From above, a dark figure descended on a line made of silk. It was Eulalie, her eyes glittering with anger as her body hit the ground.

"Your trap failed," she declared, then let go of a line that Ingrid couldn't see and kicked the Collector through the doorway and slammed the door shut. Somewhere, a bell tolled, and the sigils on the door vanished.

"Eulalie!" Ingrid stared up at the Arachne. "You're here!"

The Arachne nodded. "When you still weren't out and she started flying faster on my monitors, I came anyway." She walked over toward Lily and yanked the blanket off of her, then helped the succubus up. "It was worth the risk."

"But...how?" Ingrid said, looking toward the door.

"A few loops of thread," Eulalie replied. "I knew she was going back toward the door at some point and she kept monologuing, so I had plenty of time. I just needed to disable her ability to cast spells with both verbal and somatic components." The Arachne ignored a pointed look from Lily and ripped the ribbons off of Jenny. "I'm guessing I didn't actually kill her, though."

"You would be correct," a man's voice said from the landing up above. They all looked up to see a mercenary crawling down the stairs on his stomach. His legs hung loosely behind him. "Don't mind me. I'm just borrowing this body for a moment. I can't believe it, a living, breathing Arachne."

"Careful," Ingrid muttered, realizing that Dana was still floating in the air. The Collector's spell hadn't worn off.

Eulalie was already moving toward the dead man, but immediately backed away when she noticed the grenade in his hand, the pin already pulled. "A dead man's switch?"

"Literally." The corpse chuckled, which made a horrifying wet sound. "I'm afraid my backup body's connection vanished the moment it went inside the painting, which gave me a chance to find a different vessel. It's hard possessing a body like this."

"Then why do so?" Lily asked.

"That's a good question, actually." The mercenary lolled its head in Eulalie's direction, then let out a sigh. "It really just boils down to the fact that I have to know when to cut my losses. You, my dear, are a magnificent specimen."

"So you stuck around to flirt a little?" Lily shook her head. "That's pathetic."

The corpse looked at Lily. "Actually, I stuck around because I'm a sore loser." With that, the corpse stood up and yanked the curtain covering the painting down and the whole world tilted to one side.

Ingrid, her eyes already closed, heard Lily scream.

One more chapter of Dead and Horny to go, monster family!

~Annabelle Hawthorne