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ERIK

A scream shattered the silence around him.

Erik sighed. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to touch the food after all… Oh well. We’ll deal with this later.

Curiosity aroused, he left the kitchens, heading in the direction of the noise. It didn’t sound like your usual ghostly-specter-in-the-haunted-mansion kind of scream, more like a man who was very startled or in pain.

It could be a trap… or it could be that a fellow human being was trapped with him in this strange castle. If it was, they could figure out the kitchen mystery together. He drew one of his knives to be safe.

He stopped in front of a pair of heavy-looking closed doors at the end of the hallway. A cobra-shaped brass knocker glowered at him on the one to the right. Every last shred of reason told him not to open that door–it was probably locked, anyway–and get out of there before he regretted it.

Well, the door wasn’t locked.

The instant he stepped foot inside, something long flashed below his line of sight. Years of experience moved his body before his mind could; he dodged with a quick step and slashed downward.

There–he backed out of the room, staring down at the beheaded snake lying halfway across the threshold. That was close.

What was going on in this room? Whispers of movement alerted him to the presence of more than one person-sized being inside, but the dim torches in the hallway illuminated nothing but the slim, arrowlike shapes rustling through the blood-red carpet.

Multitudes of black diamond eyes glimmered out at him from the shadows. Erik pulled out another knife.