Doctor Strangehold stepped out of the shop. He looked up into the sky. A line of ectoplasm led from the shop to the collector’s creator. He smiled. His idea was working.

He wondered how long it would take before the other magician realized that he was being drained by his own creation.

Strangehold decided that it wouldn’t take long. The first symptom would be

something like low blood sugar. Eventually other symptoms would emerge. If the magician was attuned to his own body, he would realize what was going on and terminate the line from his end.

That was how long he had to find his enemy.

Once engaged, whomever had the better control of their ectoplasm would be the victor in any battle.

Strangehold thought he could win. He had fought other magicians, and monsters for a long time. He should have some tricks the other hadn’t seen before. Still, the sasquatch mask gave him pause. He couldn’t allow the thing to get close enough to grab him. That would be the end of the fight.

He walked after the line, watching as it kept moving. The other magician must be heading for a lair, possibly his real home. He might not have noticed the drain on his resources yet.

If he had, he might be preparing a trap of his own to deal with his enemy.

The doctor followed the line across town. He wondered where he was going. It looked to be the same apartment building as his victim. Why? What could possibly be there for the murderer to come back for? Had he left something on the scene the police and their consultant had missed?

Maybe the victim and his murderer were closer than they had thought.

Strangehold didn’t like the fact that he had missed something crucial at the scene. It meant he was losing his touch. He couldn’t have that.

He might have to go back to school to study his forensics again if he was losing his touch that much.

He wondered if his murderer had noticed the drain and was setting a trap for him. That would mean the killer was waiting in the building so he could get the drop and then rip the doctor apart.

It wouldn’t be the first time he had walked into a trap to find out what was really going on.

He wondered how he should approach this. He expected his enemy to think he would just blunder into whatever trap was set for him and have to give up his ectoplasm to replace what he had taken.

He decided not to call Burly. He didn’t want the sergeant in his way if a full blown duel broke out. It would be tough enough to explain how he had dealt with a practitioner on his own. He could not see the detective getting on a stand and saying they had killed a magician and not be laughed out of court.

The method used was already hard to swallow in his opinion.

The line cut through Crenshaw’s building and went out the other side. That relieved Strangehold. That meant they hadn’t missed something in the apartment building when he did his scans earlier.

Where was it taking him?

The line extended toward the edge of the city. He frowned. There were some places out there that had become new force lines because of the construction of more houses. Some of that was good. Some was bad.

What did he do about it?

He decided to press on. It was too late to go back and get his car. He wondered if the other magician regularly used their ectoplasm to travel. Was that another mask he hadn’t seen yet?

He decided it was something to look for when they met. He didn’t want to be on guard against a giant ape, only to deal with a giant bird.

He wondered where the other magician had learned to shape ectoplasm. He had learned from an old man who had taught him some basic medium type tricks. Then he had expanded his knowledge, bit by bit. His slowed aging had come out of those experiments.

The same thing might have happened to this magician and this was how he was learning to be immortal like the doctor.

Taking from other people was just faster than growing it from your natural

surroundings.

And it killed people if you weren’t careful.

He followed the line across town from Crenshaw’s building. He resorted to using his extra arms to hitch on passing cars and trucks moving in the direction he wanted to go. He frowned at not going back to grab his car.

He found himself walking in a new neighborhood on the edge of Middleton. The glowing line pointed him to one small house in particular. Then it snapped.

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He was glad that he hadn’t brought Burly along. If he got into a duel now, protecting the detective would put him at a disadvantage with an enemy who had an unknown capability with his spell work. Being alone meant he only had to worry about what would happen to his grandchildren when he was gone.

He decided that he should knock on the door and see who answered it.

The other magician probably already knew he was close. Discovering the line meant he knew about the drain. That meant he knew he had left a trail across the city. That meant he knew Strangehold was coming.

So there was no need to beat around the bush.

The doctor decided there was one thing he could do before he went into the lion’s den. He could let Burly know about the address and that he should look at the owner.

He pulled some of his ectoplasm from his inner reserve and shaped it into a bird. He nodded at the way it acted like a bird when he held it with his two hands. He imprinted a message on it. He threw it up in the air and it took flight back toward the center of Middleton.

His messenger would wait for Burly at the police station and tell him about the

address. The rest would be up to him about how he wanted to handle things.

This case would never get to court because of the means used. No jury in the world would believe anything short of a trained bear would do what had been done to Crenshaw.

And any expert worth their salt would be able to prove a bear couldn’t do what had been done.

Strangehold walked up to the door. He noted the brick fronting, white trimmed

windows to show the front room, and the white door glimmering under the starlight. A carport protected a car with shadows as he drew closer.

Two doors and possibly a third behind the house meant he could only see his enemy from the front and left side. The murderer could slip out the back easily with his command of ectoplasmic masks.

Strangehold thought his presence would be met with violence. The man hadn’t missed a beat when Crenshaw had come to the door. He wouldn’t with someone on his doorstep.

A bell button glowed in the door frame, but the doctor knocked. He wanted to show that he wasn’t afraid of the owner.

The problem was he was afraid of the owner, and what the owner could do to him if he wasn’t careful.

He knocked again when his first knock wasn’t answered. He wondered what the other magician was thinking. He listened for movement.

He heard steps. They sounded confident to him. The owner wasn’t afraid of someone showing up in the middle of the night.

He wouldn’t be either if he had a seven hundred pound sasquatch to wear to a fight.

The door opened. The owner of the house glared at the doctor. He frowned back. He stepped back from the threshold.

“Miss Raye,” said Strangehold. He had not expected to find Crenshaw’s coworker at the house.

She raised a hand. Wax bubbled from her fingertips down the length of her arm. He stepped back again as the change worked its way down her body in the blink of an eye.

Strangehold stepped back again, letting his extra arms pop out to defend him. He had not expected his search to lead to Crenshaw’s coworker, but he knew he was about to get killed if he didn’t do something.

He cursed himself since she was the obvious suspect. He should have known that she would be the mastermind. He had simply thought the method was more something you would see in a man.

A giant hand came at him. He used his tentacles to grab it and throw the giant mask into the yard. He couldn’t let her grab him. That would be the end.

He needed to run her energy out. That was all he had to do. She couldn’t keep the mask up for long. He could just sit back and let her power run out while his remained active at its normal range.

His tentacles barely drew anything off his own reserves.

There was a small chance that she could overextend her ability and it could wind up hurting her. He couldn’t worry about that while she was trying to rip his head off.

That was something to worry about if he survived this encounter.

Strangehold used his tentacles to move away from the giant he was facing. They acted as grapnels, grabbing on to part of the house, or the surrounding greenery and pulling him out of reach. He concentrated on dancing around his enemy so she couldn’t grab him.

He knew of one way to stop the fight, but he had to get close. He didn’t know if he wanted to chance that when his initial tactic was wearing her down. He had no idea if he could execute his tactic before she ripped his arm off. Did he want to risk it?

If she escaped, she could go back to farming ectoplasm from people, maybe hunt Burly down because he knew too much. He couldn’t let that happen.

He fired a spread of ectoplasmic buckshot to punch holes in the mask. He frowned as the wounds healed up in no time. She had a bigger reserve than he had thought.

He needed to press her harder. How did he do that? He frowned. He had to grab some part of the mask with his bare hand. That was the only way things would work out for him.

She leaped at him. He caught her in his tentacles and held her off. She grabbed one of his limbs and pulled him off his feet. He saw the other hand coming around in a clawing motion.

He held out his hands and caught the massive wrist behind the giant hand and claws. The sasquatch bore down, trying to reach his face. He grimaced at what he was going to do.

He commanded her ectoplasm to move to him.

The mask shrank as he compelled the substance it was made of to move to his reserve. The face the mask sat on showed dismay through the disguise. Apparently she had never considered that to be a legitimate move.

Maybe she hadn’t learned that ectoplasm shaping was vulnerable to external forces.

She pulled her arm out of his grip, replacing the hair and muscle with a shake. She swung the other arm in a counterswipe. His tentacles tried to trap that arm for him to grab, but the momentum from the swing sent him to the ground.

He held his tentacles up to defend himself as he tried to blink the stars out of his eyes.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” said Raye. Her voice caused her mask to shake. “But I’m not letting you hold me back. I have an ability, and I am going to use it to control this city.”

She stalked forward to finish him off with a kick, or stomp. Her mind made the

ectoplasm heavy. That made it perfect for imitating the monster she wanted.

Exterminating a rival was not that big a deal compared to her goals.

Strangehold looked up at her. Determination had taken over from the earlier stunning. He clapped his hands together. Dozens of tentacle arms sprouted from his back. They wrapped around his victim and lifted her off the ground. He ripped the mask from her body before slinging her against the wall of her house.

“I protect this city from monsters,” said Strangehold. “It doesn’t matter if they

are human, or not.”

He got to his feet, dusting off his jacket and pants. He added the mask’s ectoplasm to his own. He walked forward.

“It doesn’t matter why you decided to endanger people to farm their lives, or why you killed your pawn,” said Strangehold. “All that matters is stopping your threat to anybody else.”

His tentacles struck out.