She seemed to be able to see what was happening in the living room, even though she had her eyes closed. Snowy and Gene were each battling a demon, the second demon having appeared shortly after the first one had revealed itself. Snowy and Gene were doing fairly well. They would be dead in an instant if Sheila were to stop helping them, feeding them the magical energy that transformed them into superhuman (in Gene’s case; super-whatever in Snowy’s) swordfighters.
Whoops! Another demon. Better do a Linda and split off … Snowy. Yeah, split off Snowy into twins. Wait. Was that demon another demon, or a doppelganger? If it was, it was a good one, so no matter.
By the way, where was Linda? Still hiding behind the settee; good. She was out of this, no magic at all. What about the others? The one with the beard was fighting. The small guy, the librarian, was — in the library! That guy really liked books! But there were others. A guy and a black girl? Sheila couldn’t get a fix on them.
A fourth demon? Good Lord. Well, now she’d have to split Gene off, too.
They approached the house, firing continuously at unnamed and unnameable things which attacked from every quarter. A troublesome phenomenon was developing off to the left: thin, glowing tentacles like animated garden hoses snaking through the grass, trying for encirclement. Incarnadine tried bearing to the right, but two filaments met in front of him and completed the circle. Sheets of flame rose to form a dome of fire around the brothers. Incarnadine halted. He shouted a six-syllable word twice, the first time in a normal pitch, the second in falsetto. The dome broke apart, boiling away into pink smoke.
“Nice work!” Trent called. “Hey, I think it’s going to be all ri —”
Trent leaped over the rapidly widening crack in the earth that had opened at his feet. Smoke and fire issued from deep within the chasm. The crack branched off and clove the earth near Incarnadine, who leaped to the right, then did a hop, skip, and jump over a series of smaller lateral fissures that gaped in front of him.
Then the earth settled down, and the brothers continued their advance.
Streamers of scintillation had begun forming in the air around the house. They did not look particularly dangerous to Incarnadine, and he decided they were probably by-products rather than defensive phenomena, but he kept glancing at them occasionally as he walked and fired, mindful that they could develop into something.
As he swung his sword again and again. Gene wondered why his castle-bred skills were still with him, here, on Earth. He was thankful that they were. He would have been reduced to cold cuts otherwise.
Gene parried a wicked crosswise cut, sparks shooting off his blade. He riposted with a lunge, then feinted to the demon’s right side. He whirled, did a backflip, landed on his haunches, and slashed at the demon’s legs, cutting them neatly in two at the knee joints. The body toppled over an upturned chair.
Gene lurched to his feet in time to beat off a lunge by another demon. He backtracked, steadied his footing, then parried three quick cuts, riposting to his opponent’s head. He feinted to the thorax, then quickly jabbed at the eyes again. The demon backed off.
Snowy’s sword was like the blade of a whirling fan. He was up against two opponents and holding his own.
He was thinking of how hungry he was.
“Somethin’s happening out there!” Deena said, peeking out the dormer window.
They had found a relatively demon-free spare bedroom. Barnaby rose and looked out the window. It was hard to describe what was going on. There were two arenas of special interest: one, what was happening out in the field in back of the house; two, what was gathering around the house itself. The latter involved sparkling auroral displays that fluttered like sheets hung out to dry in a high wind. As he and Deena watched, the phenomenon grew more intense, partially blocking their view of the strange battle that raged in the backyard.
Barnaby sank to the bed. “I can’t watch anymore. Is the door locked?”
“Yeah. No, let me check it.”
Deena returned. “Yeah, it’s locked. I — what the hell are you doin’?”
“I’m tired,” Barnaby said as he turned down the bedding. “I’m going to try to get some shut-eye.”
“You gonna what? You’re crazy!”
Barnaby crawled between the covers. “What else is there to do? We can’t get out of here. We might as well die in bed as anywhere else. Besides, if I’m dreaming all this, maybe I’ll wake up.”
“Well, move over.”
Deena climbed in with him. They looked at each other, then pulled the covers over their heads.
“Singularity vortex!” Trent yelled over the noise of battle.
“Yeah!” Incarnadine agreed. That was what the sparkling streamers that had enveloped the house were beginning ominously to look like. The flux of magical energies in and around the house and its environs were starting to warp the fabric of normal spacetime. If the process continued, the house would drop right out of the continuum, possibly taking the portal along with it. Incarnadine wasn’t sure exactly what would happen to the portal, but it would be nothing good; of that he was certain.
“We have to get in there,” Incarnadine shouted, unsure of being heard. A six-legged, three-horned quasi-rhinoceros charged at him. He sprayed it with green fire; the thing fissioned into six smaller animals. He laid down a blanket of fire over these. Result: three dozen reduced-scale replicas, all maniacally bent on goring him in the ankles. They continued to replicate and reduce in size, Zeno’s paradox coming into play. They would keep halving the distance to their target, but never reach it. Incarnadine stepped out of their path.
There was less and less to do. Another antique aircraft circled overhead, but was not quite so magically well constituted as its predecessors; its motor sputtered, then died, and the craft fell out of the night, crashing into the formal garden on the house’s east side.
More monsters, these looking a bit threadbare: another reject from a Japanese sci fi flick; a dozen more hackneyed horrors from central casting; something that looked from the waist up like Lon Chaney’s werewolf, but was web-toed and scaly in the other direction. It blew up very nicely. A second anomaly shambled toward them, looking for all the world like a gorilla wearing a vintage deep-sea diving helmet. Whatever movie it was from, it didn’t get very far.
There came a lull in the action.
With a weary sigh, Trent sank to one knee. “Man, I’m bushed.” He chuckled. “Getting old.”
“I think we’ve just about broken their back.”
Trent surveyed the field of battle, now empty. “No, they have something left.”
“I’d be willing to bet not. That last salvo had spell exhaustion written all over it.”
“Maybe so. We’d best make a run for the house now before that vortex —” Trent reconsidered. “Hell, maybe we don’t want to get to the house. I’m not sure I can deal with any continuum disturbances.”
“I’m fairly sure I can,” Incarnadine said. “Let’s move.”
Trent got up. “Whatever you say. You seem to be running the show now.”
“I still need your help. Got your second wind?”
“I’m on my fifth, I think. I’ve lost count. You know, that inductance gimmick really —”
The earth began to shake, and thunder rolled across the meadow.