Thick black attenuated tentacles, as big around as my leg, slump in a tangle onto what was left of the stage, their far ends stretching away into the spiraling smoke. They all flex at once, pulling a pulsing, undulating knot the size of my motorhome through so that the back of the auditorium becomes a snake den. Smooth black headless serpents twist and snarl as the smoke from the summoning fades. It gets lost in the smoke from the fires wafting up from the hole in the floor and other scattered places in the sanctuary. There’s no body to the thing. There’s nowhere I can see that these ropes of nightmare even connect, but as I watch they entangle, pulling on each other, wriggling into a massive shape that seems demonic as the suggestion of a torso is made manifest along with the skeletal frames of bat-like wings but demons don’t have four legs.

In short, what was initially Lovecraft’s description of somebody’s cable drawer is now a dragon made of slick black spaghetti.

I look at the preacher who brought it here. He’s slapping out flames on his pants but pauses to look up. The look of utter rapture on his face freezes when he does and collapses into confusion, then horror and disappointment. Something’s gone wrong.

For a moment I wonder if he was expecting something more like Ewan McGregor in his Jedi robes carrying a lamb but from the look on his face I get the impression that he’d ordered something much, much worse from the menu and now the waiter's brought him the wrong damn thing.

This thing snatches him up and tears him in half across his middle. Then it pulls him apart, not bothering to use its hands. Tentacles worm out from every which way to pull and tug like the man’s made of taffy. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen and I know I'll see it again and again for a long time, every time I close my eyes.

Gunfire blasts away at it as every Exploder left opens up, but while I can see furrows dig into the thing’s flesh, it’s made of a mass of tubular terror noodles. There’s just not much surface area on each where a bullet can find purchase. Most of the rounds are deflected, leaving not so much as a scratch. Besides, when it moves, I can see straight through the chaotic mess as gaps appear as its weight shifts. They're not going to kill it that way.

Movement to my right.

A cadre of Epsilon’s Knights are charging, all of them fully armored, the vanguard leveling huge spears.

The thing pounces, then slithers through them, flinging the spearmen into walls, crushing the rest like beer cans in its jaws, its claws, and whatever reaches out grasping from its body. It tears one, a swordsman, into confetti much like it did the priest, never mind that most of him is plated steel.

I’m closer now and I can see that bits of the man, his armor, even his weapon disappear as it dismantles and shreds him. I think maybe it’s how it eats.

Then it leaps up onto the right side of the balcony, then back down, then it’s behind me, then over on my left. Everywhere it goes the gunfire is silenced.

A knight pulls himself out of the hole in the floor, his armor glowing with heat. In his hand is a sword bigger than he is.

The thing coils and launches itself at him.

He swings his sword to meet it and I see it bite into its chest, severing some of the dark tentacles.

The dragon screams and dips its head down, the Knight disappearing into its mouth. The man’s pulled up its throat into its belly and it’s like seeing hints of what goes on inside a wood chipper.

One guy is plinking away at the monster from up above me. Just the one. All other gunfire has ceased.

Behind the noise of the popgun, I hear a rumbling.

“Amir?” I say. “What am I hearing?”

He whispers, “It’s the Wild Specters. They’re here.”

I hear car doors slam and then realize that, no, it’s van doors. From the lobby. The Epsilons are bugging out. The bikers must be here for Otter and whoever he brought with them for their arms deal only I’m pretty sure the Exploders have killed them all and now I hear gunfire from that direction as the Specters cut off the Epsilons’ escape.

The wire dragon leaps over me onto the balcony to kill that last guy shooting at him, only this time there’s an explosion as he sets himself off. The dragon screams again.

At the rear of the stage, a door opens, and out steps a natty little man in a three-piece suit with a by-God RPG right out of the movies. He aims it.

The dragon leaps back down at the little man who fires.

The shot’s a good one, streaking right at its center of mass, but the tentacles pull aside and the grenade smokes right through.

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Movement to my left.

Tyler, hair flying out behind her, has leaped off the balcony, napalm sword blazing, jellied flame arcing away from her as she raises it up over her head.

The grenade hits the ceiling where I can’t see. There’s a horrific explosion, much more than what I was expecting, and the whole building seems to lurch and shudder.

The dragon’s attention is on the latest man who shot at it. Tentacles punch through his body to tear him right down the middle as Tyler’s burning blade cuts deep into its neck.

A ragged roar escapes the monster’s throat and it tosses its head, the ends of severed tentacles falling away, and Agent Tyler flung away to fall somewhere in the seats above me.

She could be hurt. She could be dead. My friend.

I know this thing will kill everybody here.

I know that because the aethings are so black it's like they’ve never seen light.

It’ll kill Tyler and me and Monica. Rigby and the kids in the basement. The Epsilons and the Wild Specters in their firefight outside. Amir, Candace, Stacy, and Whately out in my RV.

Motorhome.

Whatever.

And then it’s going to go pull apart Willamette until the US Army drops a nuke on it or something.

What’s kept me watching and not doing anything so far hasn’t been just the terror and the wonder at what I was seeing. It’s a scene from The Matix that’s been running in the back of my mind. That part where Carrie-Anne Moss invites one of the evil agents to “Dodge this.” He can’t. Even he’s not quick enough. She's too close when she pulls the trigger. There’s no chance he can dodge it.

Me? I’m all about chances.

If there’s any chance at all I can survive something I can work with that and make it work out for me. Sometimes there aren’t any.

When I brace myself and stand, it’s with the full knowledge that there’s a firefight going on close behind me and that I’m wearing a sheriff’s office bulletproof vest. I know there’s no light aethings for me to push for a happy result. I know it’s going to hurt but I made a choice a long time ago about who I was. Who I am. I don’t just fight the fights I can win. I fight when I have to. When it’s right.

So I know it’s going to hurt.

I’m not disappointed.

I get pushed to the right then the left and then the middle. It’s like I’m being hit with a bat over and over. I use that to add to my momentum as I hurry toward the monster.

The man it's just killed detonates and that gives the dragon a big burning punch in the belly that lifts it half a foot off the floor. It roars so loud my hearing cuts off, my earbuds doing overtime.

My arm burns and my leg wants to buckle but fuck that. I have an idea, dammit, and pain’s going to be the least of the price. Pain's just pain. It isn't will.

When the dragon’s done complaining it sees me, standing on the other side of the burning hole. I’m right on its edge. Whatever’s down there is doing a wonderful job of imitating Hell. The heat is ferocious.

The dragon is smoking and limps as it coils. I know it’s preparing to pounce.

I raise my slingshot and bounce a little rubber ball off its nose. “You a Tommy Lee Jones fan?” I ask it. I toss my slingshot away. “Because eat me.”

The dragon leaps and as it does I pull my luck. I tug so hard I hear a kind of click in my skull and half my vision blurs. Something hits my leg and knocks it out from under me. I land splayed on my back. I think my leg might be on fire.

In the next moment, I’m covered in heavy grasping coils, lifted, and I scream as they begin to pull. But I’m pulling too, motherfucker, and the floor tilts under us as it breaks and we start to slide into the fire below.

The dragon lets me go and starts grabbing at whatever but just about everything it catches pulls away in its hand and it starts to slide faster.

I’m fine.

My hand’s impaled on a huge upturned splinter on the edge of the crack. It hurts but I hold on and keep hauling on my luck.

There’s another explosion somewhere in the building and the whole thing seems to stumble.

I hear panicked voices in my ears but I’m focused on bringing the full weight of the malocchio to bear. I pull and pull.

Something happens in my leg.

I look down and blood is fountaining up from my thigh.

So. Not on fire then. Shot. That’s probably my femoral artery.

I scream as the dragon wraps a tentacle around that same leg to halt its slide into the conflagration below.

Fuck it. I pull harder and there’s a white flash as I overdo it, that photo-negative aething effect that I’ve only ever seen when I push too hard.

Little lights appear in my vision and at first, I think I’m passing out. I’m not. It’s aethings. Positive ones. I stop pulling and start pushing for all I’m worth.

There’s a groaning overhead. The ceiling, ablaze this whole time from the backdraft, cracks. A support beam slips free of its supports to burst through the plaster. It’s a fat wooden behemoth that weighs a ton if it’s an ounce and it’s right above me. White flakes and flaming debris shower down.

The pressure on my leg grows and I wonder if the damn thing’s going to pull it off. I get my other hand on the splinter and hold on, screaming and screaming.

The beam slides free and falls. The blunt end takes the dragon in the face, pushing it off me, carrying it down into the fire below. The impact is horrendous, the noise loud enough to trigger my earbuds. The broken piece of floor I’m on jumps like a trampoline that does awful things to my hand.

Something on fire lands next to my face. I snatch it up, thinking it might set my hair ablaze. It burns my hand. It’s a burning splinter of wood. I almost throw it away but look down at my leg and jam it into the wound instead before I can give it any more thought.

I think I’ve hurt my throat. I can’t hear my screaming anymore though I’m still doing it. All I can hear is a harsh wheezing and the flames around me and below.

The floor gives out to topple into the fire and I’m left hanging by my hand. I’m able to get my other hand back onto the bloody splinter again and, for the second time that day, I’m left dangling in a church.

Below me, through gouts of smoke, I can see the black tentacles of the monster, amorphous now, trapped and flailing under the beam as it burns. I think it’s dying.

Something grabs my good wrist. I fight for a moment, but it’s no use. Whatever’s got me it’s too strong and I can’t break free. I try anyway,

I’m pulled up and my other hand comes off the splinter. The relief is minor but at this moment I’ll take it.

“I’ve got him,” says Tyler. “I’ve got him.” She’s cradling me in her arms. “What did you do?" she says. "What did you do? You're a mess.”

“I don’t think I’ll come back here next Sunday,” I croak. “These just aren’t my kind of people.”

I can’t tell if Tyler is laughing or crying.