There's a little monster in everyone.

—Nightwing

Amber raced through the pet shop, chasing kittens, swallowing them whole, and shooting them out. Her thoughts swam in a red river of rage. She kept remembering how the Abyssinian had enjoyed tormenting her. She recalled the little song that Domino had sung about nibbling the heads off of mice, and she understood something that she'd never imagined. For a cat, killing was play.

How many mice had died beneath cats' paws? How old was time? How wide was the world? And in that ageless, vast world, how many mice had died in torment?

"Stop it," Amber shouted through a red haze of rage. "Stop killing us. Stop it now!"

Everything became a blur. Amber chased evil kittens through the pet shop, past aisles brimming with puppy chew toys, around a koi pond where fountains burbled and enormous fish swam lazily beneath the lily pads, and over the tops of lizard cages where iguanas and bearded dragons lazed beneath artificial suns.

In her haste to grab one white kitten, she ripped open a huge bag of fish food. Dried flies and brine shrimp whooshed through her belly and shot out her tail, then sat glittering in the air. A Siamese kitten tried to climb over a bird cage and knocked it to the floor. Amber lunged through displays of dog collars to reach it.

Around the room, Amber chased the kittens, finding them hiding behind cans of dog food, and climbing under counters. She tore the pet shop apart, smashing cages and hurling bags of bird seed, all in her effort to find them.

She saw a huge kitten on a nearby wall, ran to it, and attacked with her claws. The kitten shredded, and Amber saw that it was just a picture. Just a picture.

Behind the picture, the wall was made of cinder blocks. Amber's metal claws had gouged a trail.

She stared at it in shock. Distantly she heard a small voice. "Amber, stop! Stop!"

Numb, she turned and looked down. Ben and Bushmaster were on the floor nearby. Both held their spears and Ben wore his silly little helmet made of walnut shell. Bushmaster stared at her in fear and surprise.

"Stop it," Ben shouted. "The kittens are gone. They've all gone back to their cage."

Amber turned. The terrified kittens were indeed back in their cage, shivering in fear. Amber hadn't meant to hurt them, but she saw cats limping about, one with a torn ear, some with swollen eyes.

Indeed, everywhere that she looked, the animals cowered in terror. A tank full of turtles looked like nothing but turtle shells. Snakes were burrowing holes in the sands of their cages, cockatoos cowered in the shadows.

Amber's heart pounded so hard, it was as if there was a hammer inside, beating to get out. I'm as tall as a human, she thought. Everything is smaller than me. Nothing can hurt me.

For the first time in her life, Amber realized what it was to be free—free from the fear of being eaten, free to move across the world at will.

What a wonderful thing it must be to be human, she thought. Free from all cages. Free to grow old.

Yet she looked down at Ben, and saw how handsome he was. Strong and sleek and precious.

"I wish," she said. "I wish I were a mouse again."

And she shrank. Her metal claws became flesh. The clear plastic lining of her stomach grew fur. In seconds, she was a mouse, wrung out and tired, panting on the floor.

Ben and Bushmaster rushed to her. Amber asked, "Where did everyone else go?"

"They're hiding," Ben said. "They were afraid."

From down here, Amber could understand why. Cans of animal food were strewn all across the floor. Ripped bags and broken bottles littered the aisle.

"This way," Ben said. He led her down the aisle, and around the corner to the fish section. Amber saw the destruction she'd wrought. One fish tank was cracked, water leaking everywhere. Bright parrot fish were flopping about in the white sand.

"I wish that tank were full of water," Amber said. Immediately, water whisked up from the floor, filling the tank. With a thought Amber resealed the tank, as good as new.

The bottom shelves on this aisle were filled with ceramic statues—sunken war ships, full of holes, where guppies and swordtails could dart among the ruins, pirate skulls where eels could live among the eye sockets while bottom-feeders cleaned the teeth. Haunted houses where the souls of dead ghost crabs might linger for decades.

Ben led Amber into the hollow of a treasure chest, where gold coins seemed to spill out of an old wooden box, bound with iron rings. Ben nuzzled the lid open. The pet shop mice huddled inside, trembling.

They looked at Amber, and their fear worsened. "Don't hurt us," one mouse kit cried. "Please!"

Amber realized that she wasn't the mouse that had grown up in their cage anymore. They didn't look at her and see their savior. She was a monster.

"I'm sorry," Amber said. "I won't hurt you. I would never hurt you."

Amber looked up at all of the damage that she had caused, and imagined that she would repair it. She'd restore the ripped bags of animal food, and remove the dent from every can.

"Don't try to fix everything," Ben said, as if reading her mind. "Save your magic."

Something in Ben's tone made her worry. "What do you mean, save my magic?"

"Don't you know?" Ben said. "It runs out!"

"Runs out?"

Ben tried to explain. "Like the food in your feeding cup," Ben said. "Each time you eat a little, the food drops lower, until there is none left at all."

"Oh," Amber said, suddenly understanding. She had felt so powerful and dangerous a moment ago. Now she only felt bewildered.

"And think," Ben said. "You have powerful sorcerers out to get you, but all they've done is send a few cuddly kittens to kill us. Your enemies are just trying to wear you down. I don't think that the real fight has even started."

He gave her a warning look, and Amber realized that he could be right. Perhaps they were still in danger.

"Let's go," Ben told the other mice. "Hop, stop, and look. Hop, stop, and look."

The mice climbed out of the treasure chest, flowing over the gold coins. They followed Ben's lead, timidly making their way across the floor.

The room was filled with shadows. Nothing moved in the shadows, but as Amber neared the end of the aisle, she heard a thumping of feet. Once, twice, three times the sound of footsteps pounded on the plastic hood of a fish tank. She whirled to look behind her, and saw a shadowy form leap across one aisle, to the next.

It happened so fast, she almost thought she imagined it. But then the creature landed among a stack of cans with a clank and disappeared into the shadows.

"What was that?" the mice cried.

But Amber could see nothing. Still, she knew that they were being followed.

At the end of the aisle, they turned and headed warily for the back door. Hop, stop, and look. Hop stop and look. The feeder crickets at the front counter had nearly all gone silent. Only a lone cricket sang in the darkness. A terrarium on the counter had some sickly green vines twisting in it. Amber saw something move inside, and three mice cried out at once.

It was a horned chameleon, as green as the vines it hid among. Only its strange little eye had moved.

Amber took some comfort in knowing that there wasn't much that could hide from twenty-seven frightened mice.

Ben called the mice to a halt and whispered, "Keep low under the lip of the counter here. Follow me in single-file. Try not to be seen. Amber, I'll take the front. You guard the rear."

Ben led them to the store-room door, and crept under it. Inside the back room, he darted behind a stand that held a terrarium, and crept in the narrow space between it and the wall. The space was about half an inch wide—just narrow enough for a mouse to squeeze through.

That gave Amber a sense of comfort. No large animals could follow them.

They crept that way for half the length of the hallway, sneaking beneath a terrarium filled with giant komodo dragons, sleeping beneath their blue lights. Past another tank where giant snakes hissed in their sleep.

Amber heard the thump of feet behind her. She glanced back, and saw a shadow slip under the door and race into the room. Whatever creature was following them, it was much larger than a mouse—both longer and taller.

It ran past the crack that the mice traveled through, and disappeared into the room.

"Good, it has lost our trail," she thought.

She inched forward.

Ben had reached a spot where a huge fish tank pressed solidly against the wall. A bunch of cords ran from wall plugs up into the tank, then disappeared down into a box that burbled and made bubbles in the thick, algae-clouded water.

Ben raced to the nearest electrical cord, set his spear between his teeth, leapt up, and began to climb. When he reached the top of the fish tank, he took his spear in hand and stood guard while the other mice followed.

Amber waited her turn. She fit her paws around the heavy rubber cord and climbed it, as if it were a vine. When she got high enough, she could see into the tank. Huge fish swam inside, ugly fish with fangs as sharp as anything she'd seen on kittens. They swam in their tank, then lunged against the glass, trying to get to her.

She reached the top, and found that most of the tank was open on top. The mice ran across a narrow bridge made of wood.

Amber was halfway across, when she sensed something. There was danger ahead. She couldn't see it, couldn't smell it, couldn't hear it. Yet she felt certain that death waited for her.

"Stop," she called to the mice.

The mice ahead all came to a halt, and looked back at her. A hush fell across the room, and the sense of foreboding deepened.

At the far end of the hallway near the door, something dark and sickening slogged into view. It was like an octopus dragging a giant dead rat. But it peered about, and Amber saw that the rat was alive, horribly alive. The monster was hunting.

It stopped in the middle of the floor, and peered into the shadows with three angry eyes, eyes so full of pain that they seemed like coals. Hiding in the shadows as Amber was, the creature couldn't see her. It was blinded by the lights from the fish tank.

The creature waved its tentacles in a mystic gesture, and the air around the creature darkened, turning to shadows, so that it faded from view, obscured by a mist.

The mist flowed away from her, and lodged into a corner between some bags of birdseed, until it looked like just another shadow.

Every nerve in Amber's brain screamed a warning.

This creature wasn't natural. And it was hunting her.

Silently, she crept forward, following Ben and the other mice. Soon they were hidden behind boxes again, tracing the wall to the door.

Ben darted out, dove beneath the hole in the door, and went outside. As soon as he was out, Bushmaster followed. Up ahead of her in the line, a mouse whispered, "Everybody sneak out, one at a time."

A third mouse scurried to safety, and a fourth, but each time that a mouse ran for cover, less time elapsed, and soon they were pushing and shoving, trying to get through the hole.

Amber stayed hidden, glancing down the hallway.

A shadow separated from the pet foods, and flowed toward the fleeing mice. Within that shadow, Amber discerned movement. Tentacles waved hypnotically. Blue lights flashed in the mist. She heard a deep voice whisper, weaving some fearsome spell.

Suddenly, a huge glob of slobber hurtled out of the mist, thundering toward the fleeing mice. It arced through the air, and at the last instant fanned out into what looked like a huge spider web made of green snot.

It slammed into the mice, pinning them to the ground. They struggled against the ooze, but to no avail. The slightest touch held them.

(Please continue on to Chapter 11: Part 2)