I was a little surprised when the demon I stabbed exploded like a water balloon, drenching me in black, tar-like blood.

"What the… what the FUCK?" I could feel it dribbling down the back of my neck, oozing and cold and kinda like mayonnaise, actually. It was splattered across my face and chest and weighing down my hair, and shit, was it even in my ears?

I could taste it in my mouth, too-like rotten meat and sour milk and, obscenely, strawberries-and I spat to try and get rid of the taste. It stuck to my tongue, heavy and disgusting. I did my best not to heave right there on the cement floor.

"Come on," I said out loud, scrubbing at my mouth with the back of one hand. "Nobody told me they were gonna fucking explode."

And the night was just starting, too.

Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea.

It all started with the sword.

See, Dad left his sword to me, and even as a little kid, I was fascinated with it.

"Mom, can I look at Dad's sword?"

"No, Dante," Mom said, calmly, reaching down to smooth back my bird's-fluff-white tangle of hair. "Maybe when you're older."

This seemed really unfair to me. "But I'm already seven. How much older?"

Mom smiled, even though I'd been pestering her for an hour by now and she had to be at wit's end. "Maybe when you're a big boy."

"I am a big boy. I'm the tallest kid in my class."

Vergil shoved me. "That's 'cause you got held back a year, dumb-head."

I shoved him back. "Shut up, jerk-face!" Jerk-face was the worst insult I knew. I looked back up at Mom, giving her my biggest, most pleading eyes.

She patted me again. "Maybe when you're a big boy of fifteen or so."

"FIFTEEN?" When you're seven, fifteen is about as far away as dead. "Aw, Moooom…"

I was a really obnoxious kid.

But anyway, time passed, and eventually my fifteenth birthday loomed into sight.

It was hot, the last month of summer vacation. I was about to embark on the terror called "high school", but right now there was only one thought in my mind.

"Moooom…." My voice cracked right in the middle of the word. It was embarrassing.

Mom looked up from the sink full of dishes. "No, you can't have any more cake, Dante. You ate half of it already. You'll be sick if you eat any more."

I didn't point out that Vergil had totally eaten more than me. "That's not what I was gonna ask!" Tempting though the thought of more birthday cake was, I had better things in mind. "Remember when I was a little kid, and I was always bothering you about Dad's sword, and-"

"And I told you to wait until you were a big boy?" Mom's mouth was twisted to the side in a quirky smile, but her eyes looked far away, sad. "I remember."

"Well?" I crossed my arms and looked at her, as if to say "I am now too cool to whine, but I expect you to remember our sacred pact of yesteryear."

Mom wiped her hands on a dishtowel, sighing. "I swear, you get more like your father every day."

I could tell by her tone that victory was mine.

"All right! Sword time!"

Touching the thing was weird. The hilt was black and made of something that wasn't metal and wasn't bone, and it thrummed in my hands, like a tuning fork.

I gave the sword an experimental swish. It cut through the air with that really impressive whoosh sound. I swung it the other way, and it was like second nature, as if I'd been born to hold it in my hands. My arms and shoulders just seemed to know what to do, as if the memory was flowing right through me, in my blood.

Maybe it was.

"Dante! Hey, Dante!"

I looked up. Over the fence the face of my friend Pedro grinned at me. "Happy birthday, man, and what the hell is that?"

I struck a casual pose, with the sword resting on one shoulder as if it were no big deal. "What, this? It was my Dad's."

Pedro kept on grinning. "Seriously? Your old man a collector or something?"

"Yeah, or something," I replied.

"Bet you could kill, like, demons with that thing."

"You could," I boasted, proudly. "This sword has slain so many demons, it's not even funny. Demon moms probably tell their hordes of babies to be good, or The Sword will get them."

"Since they're demons," said another voice, "aren't they probably telling their baby hordes to be bad?"

I looked over, and there was Sheila, walking toward the fence from the other side. She, Pedro, and I had played together as little kids, and I seemed to recall her as being a lot more… icky when we were eight.

She had curly, cinnamon-brown hair and long, sun-tanned legs. Her tank top was about the size of a postage stamp. She was definitely not icky anymore.

"Um," I said. "Sheila. Hey." Mr. Smooth, that's me.

My only consolation was that Pedro got just as stupid whenever she was around, so at least I wasn't the only one who looked bad. Sheila smiled.

"Happy birthday, Dante. Now, what were you saying about your sword?"

"Sword? OH. My SWORD." I'd totally forgotten I was even holding it. I took it off my shoulder and did the whoosh-thing again. It suddenly didn't seem as cool a whoosh as it had before.

Pedro rolled his eyes. "Whatever, man," he said. "It's just an antique. It's not that cool." (For some reason, Pedro had this problem with being civil whenever Sheila was around.)

"Fuck you," I replied. (For that matter, so did I.)

Pedro's expression darkened, but Sheila giggled. Whenever the testosterone level went up, Sheila fairly glowed. "Boys, don't fight," she said, in a sing-song kind of voice. "Dante, your sword is really awesome. Bet you can do all sorts of kung-fu with it, right?"

"I can," I said, even though I couldn't. Sheila giggled more.

Pedro narrowed his eyes. "Yeah? Bet you can. Bet you could even clean out the Hope place down on Meredith Street with that thing."

I stared at him, feeling oddly betrayed. "The HOPE HOUSE?"

"Ooooh," Sheila said. "Dante, show us!"

I glanced back at the house. Mom would kill me if I ran off with the sword. She'd resurrect me and kill me again if she found out I'd run off with it to the Hope Mansion, the most awful haunted house on earth, ever. If I wanted to make it to birthday sixteen, I'd stay as far away from the place as possible.

"C'mon, man," said Pedro. "You're not scared, right?"

Betrayal of betrayals. The teenage gauntlet had been thrown down. I knew it, he knew it, Sheila knew it. I made a halfhearted attempt to evade. "My mom will KILL me, guys--"

Pedro started making chicken noises.

I gritted my teeth. "I'll get my bike," I said.

No one knew why Hope Mansion was haunted. There were the regular stories-- murder, people locked in the basement and tortured, mad scientist doing human experiments-- but the truth was, none of us kids knew for sure. It had sat at the end of Meredith Street, abandoned and condemned, for as long as anyone could remember. And even though they called it "haunted", some part of me knew the things inside that house weren't ghosts.

The back of my brain tingled as we pulled up to the wrought-iron gate, our bike tires skidding in the gravel of the drive. Even though it was still light out, it seemed darker here, as if the house itself were sucking in light. The heat was oppressive, and the mostly-dead weeping willows in the yard sagged under the humid weight. A scraggly crow perched on the fence, cawed raggedly, and then fell right over dead as we watched.

I looked at Pedro. "You want me to go in there."

"Yup."

"You want me to go into Hope Mansion--" I emphasized the name, in case he'd forgotten the particular house of evil we were talking about-- "and walk around with my sword, and wait for something to jump out and kill me."

Pedro gave a shrug, although he refused to look me in the eye. "You're not really scared of a few ghosts, are you?"

"Yeah, ghosts can't really hurt you, right?" said Sheila. She sounded scared.

I didn't know how to explain about the feeling in the back of my brain. To me the house felt like a massive hole, sucking at the world, trying to pull everything in. It glowed at the edges like the sun during an eclipse. At the corners of the windows dark shapes hovered, and I knew without knowing how I knew that those things weren't human, had never been human. And they certainly weren't dead.

"Look, guys," I started.

Pedro made as if to turn his bike around. "Let's go, Sheila. Dante's all talk, looks like."

Sheila started to turn around, too. She wouldn't look at me.

"Wait, wait!" I grabbed at Pedro's handlebars.

Sheila looked up. Her chocolate-brown eyes were wide and full of hope, as if I were the most amazing guy in the world, as if she thought I could do anything.

I gritted my teeth and gave Pedro my absolute dirtiest look. "Watch my bike, asshole."

I got up and strode over to the fence. One leap, a grab, and a hoist, and I dropped down to the other side.

The house seemed almost to writhe in my vision, as if it were guffawing at my stupidity.

I started walking toward it, wondering if girls were always going to get me into this much trouble.

If just looking at the house was bad, standing on its rotting front porch was a hundred times worse.

Despite the August heat, it seemed almost cold here, as if the house were emitting it in waves. I half-expected to be able to see my breath in the air, but apparently it wasn't that kind of cold. My skin felt tingly and itchy. So did the back of my brain.

I was tempted to knock on the heavy, termite-chewed door, but a part of me was kinda scared something would open it. Instead I grabbed the handle and pushed.

The door swung open easily, without even a creak of the hinges. As ominous beginnings go, it was sort of disappointing.

Inside, the air was heavy with the smell of dust and rot. Stepping over the threshold had sent chills up my spine and a weird electric tingling into my brain, as if I'd just stepped over one of those invisible dog-fences. It put me on edge, and that, in turn, pissed me off.

"Okay, house," I called into the musty darkness. "Here I am, sword and all! Come and get me!" I held the sword up, in case something decided to take me at my word.

Nothing did.

"Well, jeez," I muttered, out loud. "Some welcome."

I started down the main hall.

It took me maybe five minutes before I realized there was something really, really wrong.

I'd been walking and walking, but the hallway wasn't ending. It was like an endless stretch of rotted wood and peeling wallpaper, punctuated by the occasional turn. But the hallway only turned one way, and so far all the turns had been left. I hadn't passed the original foyer yet, so I couldn't be going in a circle, could I?

Just to be sure, I sliced a large X into the wall when I came to the next turn, then pressed on.

Five minutes later, I was staring at it again.

"Oh, come on! What, are you gonna just hallway me to death? Sure, the wallpaper's bad, but I've seen way worse."

From around the corner, just out of sight, there was a dry, scrabbling sound. Maybe it's rats I thought to myself. Yeah, right. And maybe I'm a fucking idiot for coming in here.

"Okay," I said, "here's the deal! You knock this shit with the never-ending hallway off, or I start tearing down walls." As I said this, I deliberately rounded the next corner.

The hall ended, and before me was a door.

"That's more like it." I pulled the door open and went in.

This time I knew immediately that something was wrong, but only because the "something" was currently latched onto my face. And it was biting.

"GYAAAH!" I tore it off and threw it to the floor, hard. It lay there in a lump of slimy grey flesh and bony appendages that ended in grasping little claws. It had a round, lamprey-like mouth full of teeth, and was about the size of a small dog.

"Crap, you're ugly," I said.

As if in response to my voice, its legs (I couldn't tell quite how many it had; the number seemed to keep changing as it moved) started to wriggle, and then it was skittering back toward me. With a horrible screeching sound, it leapt for my face.

I had my sword up before I even realized it. The thing practically skewered itself.

Then, it exploded.

Every room I went into had more of the repulsive demons, and to make matters worse, they kept getting bigger. This didn't really make them any harder to kill, since they seemed fairly stupid. Unfortunately, it did mean that when I killed them, they exploded more. I was literally drenched in demon-goop, and by now I was really regretting wearing a white t-shirt.

I came to yet another door. "Dammit," I muttered, "if one more demon explodes on me, I am gonna just-"

But I didn't get to finish the thought. The door swung open before I could even touch it, and inside the next room there were three things: a desk, a chair…

And a very naked woman.

She smiled as she motioned me inside. "Hello there," she said, in a voice sweeter than honey. "Won't you come inside?" She giggled, as if she'd just made some sort of joke.

"No thanks," I said, doing my best to concentrate on something other than her ta-tas. This was a lot harder than it sounds. I mean, they were really nice ta-tas.

She laughed again, and the sound made the back of my brain throb in spite of its sweetness. "You're so cute. What's your name?"

I pointed my sword at her and did my best "I ain't buyin' it" face. "Sorry, babe, I didn't stop by for chit-chat." Internally I thought, Damn, that sounded really good! Am I cut out for this badass anti-hero business or what?

Another titter. "What did you stop by for, then?"

"Uh..." I wasn't really sure what to say to that. 'To eradicate your evil' seemed too overdone, and besides, it seemed kind of silly to just go and say that to a naked chick. A really hot naked chick. A really hot, blonde naked chick with an amazing set of-

WHOAKAY, Dante, get it back under control. I glared at the woman. "Just what the hell are you, and what are you doing in this house?"

She threw back her head and laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Until I could hear the sound bouncing off the walls, echoing, reverberating in my skull. I clutched at my head, surprised to find that it hurt. I ground my teeth, determined to stay upright even though there was black at the edge of my vision already. "Shut… the hell… UP!"

My body moved like it was a dream, like I didn't even need to tell it to. A jump, a twist, a swing…

The noise stopped. The woman's head hit the floor with a dull thud.

I stared down at it, horrified.

She stared back up at me, mouth twisted up into a rictus smile. "You're going to regret that, boy!" she hissed, in a voice that was no longer sweet, or human.

Centipedes, some as long as my forearm, began to pour out of her headless body's neck.

Jesus Christ. Pedro was gonna owe me his lunch money for the rest of his life, after this.

I kicked open the front door and stumbled out into the humid August night.

"Holy shit," said Pedro, when I lurched into view. "Holy shit, holy shit."

I ignored him and hopped over the gate.

"What the hell are you covered in?" Pedro's voice quavered, sounding somewhere between fear and nausea.

I looked down at myself, as if just noticing the gunk. "Well, the black stuff is from the grey squishy whatchamacallits. There were a lot of those. They exploded."

"Ex…exploded?"

"And the greenish, snotlike substance is from the giant centipedes," I went on. Something wriggled at the back of my neck. I grabbed it firmly and threw it to the ground. It was about six inches long, and squelched when I stepped on it. "Oops. Missed one."

Pedro looked sick.

I advanced on him, snarling. "Let me tell you all about the tentacle monster, Pedro. It's a total riot."

Pedro was on his bike and pedaling before I could even get there. "IhearmyMomcallingseeyouinschoolnextweekbye!"

I let him go. It wasn't worth chasing him, not even to kick the shit out of him. Jesus Christ, I was tired.

Sheila was long gone. I sighed and walked over to my bike. "Girls suck," I muttered to myself, climbing on.

I wasn't even halfway down the drive when the mansion collapsed in on itself, like a house of cards.

I kept pedaling. Happy Birthday, Dante I thought to myself.

Mom is going to KILL me.