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and while he was gloating, she flung her arm at the giant vase. It flew at him with shocking speed and hit him square in the face. The instant it connected, Tessa ran, launching herself over him. Her heels clipped the ceiling, but she cleared Bluebeard with ease and hit the hardwood a half-dozen feet behind him. Tessa tucked and rolled and stood up right in front of the wall-mounted swords. Tessa yanked one sword off the wall and as she did the other clattered to the floor. She grasped the sword with both hands and looked at Bluebeard as he turned around to face her. She felt good.
    “Yeah, well, now stupid baby lamb has a sword, Beard-o,” Tessa said, grinning.
    Bluebeard growled at her and picked pieces of shiny green vase out of his face.
    “That was 14 th Century Ming, you brat.”
    “So sue me,” Tessa said, shrugging. “But I don’t think you’re going to have the chance being all weaponless as you seem to be, what do you think of that?” But her witty repartee didn’t seem to phase him, and she was instead rewarded only with another creepy wide-mouthed grin.
    “I’m not worried,” he said, reaching out his right hand and shouting, “La Colombe Noire!”
    As soon as the words left his lips, there was a crackle of bluish-black light and a pinch of static. A massive double-headed battle axe that looked as much like a sharp, black bird as it did an axe appeared out of thin air and snapped into his outstretched hand. “You’ll see I’m covered in any situation, Scion,” he said, pointing the massive axe at her.
    “Balls,” Tessa said under her breath, as he came at her with the axe.
     
    Tessa, having never used a sword before in her life, felt certain she was no match for Bluebeard’s axe. The man looked like a freaking pro and a half. So instead of standing her ground, Tessa kicked down the door nearest to her and dove through it. She slammed it shut behind her just as he turned to follow her, but she’d broken the lock mechanism when she kicked it in, so she leaned against it to keep it shut. While her back was flush against the door, she felt the jolt of what must be the axe biting into the wood on the other side. She couldn’t stay there long or she’d end up with the blade buried in her back. Tessa reached out in the dark and felt a chair, which she dragged over by its leg and wedged between the door and a big wardrobe nearby. Tessa could hear bits of wood splintering off into the hallway as she skittered back from the door. She stood blindly and groped around the room for a light switch in the dark. After a moment of panic, she found it and snapped it on.
    The moment she did she wished she could take it back.
    All around her hung the bodies of headless young women. At least a dozen women and girls hung from the ceiling like gruesome party decorations. “Oh my God,” Tessa breathed, staggering backward. Bluebeard peered through the face-sized Shining -style hole he’d managed to chop into the door.
    “Scion, meet my brides, er, former brides. Former brides, meet The Last Scion. I’m sure you’ll all get along famously. Especially when I add your head to the pile. In fact, Scion, you can be the jewel of my collection.”
    Tessa plunged deeper into the room, away from the door and the bodies. She crashed into a window draped with a heavy, dark velvet curtain. Throwing the curtain back, Tessa yanked the window open, tearing it from the frame in her rush to escape. She heard the door to the room break. He would be through it in a moment. She slid out the window and edged herself around the gable toward the heavily steeped roof. In order to climb, she would have to lose the sword. She dropped it and clambered up the roof unsure if he would follow her or not (she guessed he probably would). At the top, she slid down the other side, catching her feet on the edge a moment before she went shooting off into oblivion. A matching gable met her on this side of the house and she wrenched open the window