Page 100 of Once a Villain
“See me like what?” Nick said. He was responding to Aaron’s comment, slightly delayed.
Alive.Neither Joan nor Aaron wanted to say it. Nick was clearly too confused to process it. He was still trying to focus on their surroundings, trying to bear his own weight. He’d realized that they were in danger and was anticipating having to fight.
Cassius had mentioned an external entrance that humans used. Joan spotted a cord hanging from the ceiling, and the outline of a door up there. She pointed at it, and Aaron nodded.
“Go,” Aaron said. “I can hold him.”
Nick seemed to be regaining his strength, though. When Joan released him, he stayed upright, hardly leaning on Aaron at all.
Joan ran over and pulled the cord. A ladder came down, and she peered up. A square hole above showed the clouded sky. “I think this goes up to the roof.”
“Wait,” Aaron said. “Let me check it out first.” While Joan had been working on the door, he’d gotten Nick out of the invisible maze of the stasis. Nick was recovering fast—but he still seemed dazed as he stared at the stag heads and time-suspended animals around them.
Aaron climbed quickly. He was gone for a minute, and then his head reappeared, looking down at them. “I’m on the roof,” he confirmed. “Wecanget out this way—there’s a ladder down to the street.”
“Do you think you can make it up?” Joan asked Nick.
Nick focused on her. He was still clearly confused, but he’d heard the urgency in her voice. He nodded.
He was wobbly as he put his foot on the bottom rung, but he steadied as he climbed, one foot after the other, glancing back down at Joan every now and then.
He was about halfway up when Joan heard footsteps and the trundle of a trolley.
From the roof, Aaron cursed. “Is that the cleaner?”
“I’ll delay them!” Joan said. To Nick, she added, “Keep going—I’m right behind you!”
Cassius had said that the lions had been frozen alive, andperhaps the bears too. Joan hoped he’d been telling the truth. She ran back to the stasis and quickly unmade as much as she could of it—lions, bears, the saber-toothed tiger, the mammoth. She backed up as suspended sand fell away. This close, the animals were huge—the lions’ fangs were dagger sharp.
She was still backing up when the first lion began to stir, breath inflating its chest. She didn’t wait for it to wake properly. She sprinted back to the ladder and was halfway up when the cleaner opened the door.
Joan shouted, “The stasis failed! Get help! The animals are on the loose!”
The shout attracted the attention of the lion. It shook its head and roared. Beside it, a bear blinked, confused, as if coming out of hibernation.
The cleaner had a direct line of sight. “Oh God!” she shouted. The door slammed shut again, and Joan heard the thump of the trolley as she shoved it out of the way, and then her running steps in the corridor.
Joan scrambled up the ladder, not looking back. Nick was recovering fast, and she was sure the animals would too. Above her, Nick had reached the roof, and he leaned down now to help her, his gaze sharper than it had been since he’d woken. He took her hand and tugged her up onto the roof.
“What the hell is going on?” he said.
“I’ll explain later,” Joan promised.
She yanked the door shut behind her, bringing the pull cord with it so that no one would be able to follow them up. Then she tied the cord to a vent on the roof to make a crude lock. Aaronhurried over. He’d been lying flat at the edge of the roof, scouting the route out. Now his eyes roved over Joan, checking that she was all right. Joan swallowed. She wanted so much to touch him. “Aaron—”
“Later,” he said a little hoarsely. Joan hesitated, and then nodded. He was right, she knew. This wasn’t the time. “Cassius was right,” Aaron whispered. “The trophy room seems to be an attraction. There are people lining up at the front of the house. Humans, I assume.”
That made sense. Monsters wouldn’t need to line up—they could just travel to a quieter time.
“Anattraction?” Nick’s forehead creased.
Aaron dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “The important thing is that there’s a ladder atthisside of the house—” He pointed. “It leads to an alley.”
Joan peered down. The alley below was empty. The ladder was telescopic, tucked against the brick wall. It seemed to be electric. Joan looked around for a button, trying to figure out how to extend it to the ground. Finding nothing, she pushed hard at the top rung. To her relief, that seemed to activate a mechanism, and the ladder slid down with a whirring grind.
Aaron went first again, and then Nick, who winced in pain as he climbed. In the bright morning light, Joan could see pink blotches on his bare arms and legs that hadn’t been evident in the trophy room. Fresh bruises that would have been purpling by now if he hadn’t been suspended by the stasis. They looked fist- and boot-sized. Joan suspected they’d all come from the fight in the arena before he’d fallen.
She hated seeing him in pain like this, and at the same time she was relieved that he washere. She couldn’t understand it. How had he avoided the metal spikes when he’d fallen? How had he survived the fall?
