Chapter 5

Let me make a mea culpa now. I fully admit that I can be an annoying git at times. I complain constantly about having to work for a living but still love to put on an act by wearing a three piece suit for my standard working outfit. There is no need to discuss the duster coat and the boots ... this is Texas. Love it or leave it.

I complain and resist anything that smacks of authority and play the big tough loner act, even when it pushes away old friends and prevents me from making new ones. I have to do things my own way ... not the 'right' way or even the BMA way. We don't even need to discuss my phobias about privacy and security.

In short, I'm a slightly undersized pismire badly compensating for my various insecurities by far too often shooting off my own pie hole when smarter folks would shut up and listen more. I'd like to blame this social deficiency on the fact that I don't get laid nearly as much as I'd like to. My critics, and there are many, would say it's those very flaws that actively wreck my attempts at romance. Oddly, I've always heard that women tend to prefer confident and arrogant assholes ... but in that case I ought to be one of the best fucked men in Austin.

Faults aside, and I confess to having many, I'm a very loyal person to my friends. If someone depends upon me then I will do my damned'est to do what is expected and necessary. I'll show up on time when asked, try not to bitch excessively, and cover their ass when necessary. Today, my friends had gone off alone into the dragon's den and now I needed to see if I could get them out again more or less in one piece.

I had a really bad feeling about this, however, and my hopes sunk even more once I could see inside.

The front snack bar area was empty and both side doors were open to the theater above. The sounds were wild and eerie and bright but unsettling colors danced against the walls as if a wild kaleidoscopic show of light and sound was being held inside. I found some cotton balls in a first aid kit underneath the cash register and wadded them into my ears. The noise was just too unsettling and alien and I didn't want to understand anything that it might be saying.

Inside the grand old theater an odyssey of lights was indeed being unfurled near the screen. Not projected, but rather a vortex as links to a thousand different worlds and Planes of Existence vied with each other for a tiny slice of our world. I risked a quick glance at this mega-portal but didn't like at all the sight of all of the things that were looking back at me. I kept my eyes low to the ground and my soul securely locked down tight.

The audience of about five hundred had filled the theater, mostly all seated but tendrils (or tentacles) of energy were touching the enraptured people, ensorcelled to the extent that their minds were no longer their own. In fact as I watched, I could sense that these minds were now being devoured and in some instances a complete body replacement or transformation was occurring as various unknown visitors replaced their captive hosts.

Already it was much too late to save anyone. The two police officers I had spent the afternoon with were now mindless and soulless husks, now occupied by two dissimilar creatures that now started to glare at me balefully.

I had to find Harriet and Henrietta — fast!

Dodging several energy tentacles that were questing for me, I made my way down to the very bottom front of the theater next to the stage and there I found them. Both were alive, and more or less themselves still, but their battle to hold off a horde of probing tendrils was clearly a losing one. Harriet had was holding her sister's hand and was visibly straining to keep up a protective energy shield around them.

I didn't think I'd be able to break through the shield to try and pull them both out but someone somehow my hand passed easily through and I suddenly found myself holding Henrietta's right hand with my left. She opened her eyes and smiled at me and I could clearly hear her voice in my mind.

Then things started to get very strange.

"I knew you would come." She said calmly into my mind and without a trace of the crippled stutter than she normally spoke in.

"Harriet is now going to try and shield all three of us, but she can't hold it for longer than another minute. We have many things to do and we have very little time now, but now we have a chance. Do not try and talk or argue — just listen and try to follow my lead. Relax your guard and let me into your mind for a moment."

I'd like to say that I relaxed, but I keep my thoughts locked up pretty tight. It didn't matter to Henrietta, she surged into my mind like a barbarian horde armed with a battering ram. She popped herself inside and for a very long moment or two made herself quite at home moving the furniture around and knocking down a few side walls until the accommodations suited her.

"Your mind is so narrow and constricted!" She muttered. "It's a wonder you can cast any magic at all! Way too many firewalls and tiny power channels locked behind protective doors ... when will you ever learn that sometimes a good offense is indeed better than a great defense? Now I've got some fighting room ... we're going to need to cast some pretty powerful spells and I need you to actually channel the casting! First, you're going to need your other bracer from your workbench at home ... we're going to need all the juice we can get. Translocate it here and let's get started!"

Translocate it here? That was miles away ... no top Wizard I could think of could do that! Impossible!

"Stopping thinking and do it — yes, you can. You've got nearly unlimited power at the moment with your bracer gorging itself upon the loci here. With my assistance, you'll do fine ... we don't have time to argue!"

So I concentrated. I thought I'd have to focus so hard that I'd probably shit myself, but at just a thought the other bracer appeared right onto my left arm and I was locked and loaded for battle. I surged with such uncontrollable power that I was sure that I would burst into a ball of pure energy, but somehow Henrietta kept me grounded (barely) to reality.

"Good. Now we can begin and not a moment too. Harriet's shield will collapse in a second and then they will attempt to take her, but I'll bring her part of our soul into my body for protection for just a few more moments, but that's all that we will need. We can't shield ourselves, shut down the connection to the other worlds, and destroy the things that have already arrived here, but there is a way to accomplish the last two critical things. We're doomed, but you knew that already. Harriet loved you very much once, but I had to remind her that I knew that we would both die young soon, but maybe saving the world in the process. Still she cries sometimes at night at what could have been. Isn't life ... and death a bitch!"

I was too stunned at this to think let alone speak. Harriet's shield abruptly failed and she let out a loud sudden cry just before a dozen energy tendrils pounced upon her now lifeless frame, which still held her sister's hand tight even in death.