By the broken-hearted dragon, the phase drone paused.

Tasìa floated ethereally; now just one tentacle held on to her. As if deliberately to protect itself from her potential defensive measures, it held her at a distance. Her head bumped against the ceiling. It's surface felt rubbery as she smacked it.

Apparently, she could not pass through even while ethereal without the drone's direction.

The flexible surface reminded her of the wall that the phase cat leaped through.

She wanted to test its properties further, but the gun still clung to her hand. When Tasìa attempted to holster it, the gun refused to depart from her grip.

She glared at the necro-mechanical drone beast. The instant withering that occurred when its energy was interrupted convinced her the biologicals that comprised its tentacles were no longer living.

Necro-mechanical.

Well, shit on it, then! When it gives me my first opening, I'm blowing that fucker away!

Below her, the phase drone examined the dragon statue. She never could ascertain what the phase drones used for eyes.

It moved its lobster-like carapace from side to side in half ellipses around the altar. Evidently, the spooks who deployed it were curious about the layout of the altar

Have the spooks not ever been in the mansion before? Or, perhaps, the damaged condition sweet Annebél left the dragonheart in was a just-now-discovered variable for them to ponder?

Its inspection ceased. The phase drone became solid, but her ethereal condition remained the same.

Tasìa cursed as she reflexively positioned the gun for a quick reload but realized the gesture was at least temporarily futile.

Two tentacles reached into the space between the two larger statues where an old Victorian-fashioned funerary box lay. The pincher grips attached to the tentacles pulled it up, then out, and finally forward for several feet.

Hinged supports mounted on the wall kept the box from falling when the tentacles released it from their grip.

Stripped of all the wooden panels except for the pretty Union Jack emblazoned backboard, a rotor mechanism, and a plugboard for a cipher machine were revealed.

What the Hell? Some acien régime spook set-up inside of a blasphemous altar supposedly in honor of a Venerated Saint? What old world madness is this?

Tasìa spied on the drone-beasts activity as two long, silver needles protruded from the chitinous pincher tips curved above the keys of the cypher device. They were not sharp, but, instead, ball-pointed, like a pen.

It typed out the letters:

FirstBeast_EAC

Quite curious. The initials of the British spymaster whose public guise was that of an infamous, occult magician. He was also the hidden patriarch of an American political dynasty, as well.

The Beast was once commonly assumed to be a nick given for his notoriety in occult circles. It was revealed that this was instead his position and administrative title as a fixer in the occulted British spy organization.

How their minds would have been blown back then if they knew the truth.

Whoever decided that code was likely a spook-culture enthusiast. Not to mention, a contracted party to that culture's more contemporaneous rendition.

The next set of words the phase drone typed:

Routine sequence shut down.

Instantly, the pumps stopped for the feeder tubes that still leaked cocaine and aquamarine tinted water out of the dragonheart that pumped the mixture into the methylogenic chamber below them.

The phase drone put the funerary box back in place as it was set. It backed away from the altar.

With its surface coloration softening into shell-pink, the necro-mechanical beast shifted back into phase space. Now that the two of them were resonate-flow copacetic, it plunged her down beneath the floor, not stopping for the basement level that she expected to be their destination.

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A dozen more yards of concrete, stone, and soil shifted through her eyes; they passed through a tight set of wooden crossbeams that held up a crawl space before reaching a subbasement just below it.

The phase drone spun her around. She faced the floor as she was held just a few feet above the brown, shag carpet.

Shag? Just how old was this place?

The phase drone dropped her. When Tasìa became material, she switched in her last .357 moon clip, twisted around, and managed to get one good round into its carapace before it dematerialized.

It did not stay that way for long.

With sparks bursting in a blue frenzy out of its sides, the phase drone shot back up through the ceiling as she dropped down and busted her ass.

She had no time to gripe about her painfully sore butt cheeks. An explosion occurred in the crossbeams. Wood and plaster, thick epidermis, long muscular strands of meat, chitinous shell, metallic components, and blue salty ooze rained down on her as she struggled out from the impact zone.

Despite her desire to yell out expletives, it was a good time for Tasìa to keep her mouth shut. Her nose hairs singed at the vaporous chemicals smoldering in the surrounding air.

There was a pugnacious odor that overwhelmed the surroundings, calamari fried in blue quartz oil - Tasìa gasped as she just had a revelation of what the liquid substance was composed of.

Big mistake! The charred metals and electronic parts let loose a sulfurous smoke that ripped through her lungs.

If only I could cough them up I would feel so much better!

It left her coughing at a moment when a soft pounding shuffling sound coming from above told Tasìa that she needed to keep moving.

She glanced up at the hole left in the ceiling from the explosion. A cockroach invasion was headed her way.

Tasìa still possessed a few moon clips of the white phosphorus-tipped rounds. She unloaded the teflonrazors - overkill for fucking bugs.

As she attempted to reload two white phosphorus moon clips into the Magellani double-chambered .22 revolver, her lungs seized up.

Tasìa could not breathe. Her weakened limbs became too strained for her. She dropped the revolver. She tried to force her lungs back into active capacity. They would not bulge, the side of her head started to throb mercilessly with the loss of blood to her brain.

Above her, pretty green lights flickered and swirled like lightning bugs. These were far more organized than the playful summer souls her grandmother once told her were faerie mounts.

More and more of them joined the swirling insect maelstrom just a dozen feet above her. From a mere dozen or two, the glowing green lights became more than a hundred.

They were not fireflies though. Her hypnagogic state was abruptly interrupted.

Flying cockroaches! Glowing tails, the most deadly kind!

Tasìa tried to call upon the Modality but her incapacitated lungs prevented it.

Fucking ... I need an owner's manual for this body!

Fear prompted her. She could not get the Modality in gear, however, unassisted adrenaline now rushed through her heart. Her legs quivered, but she regained the power in her grip.

Tasìa grabbed the Magellani revolver, and she lifted her torso up with her left hand.

With amazing but unassisted mental clarity arising from her dire circumstances, she focused her aim to the best of her ability and shot six rounds into the swirling mass. They caught fire, and more than a dozen of their bodies hit the floor.

One dropped into her hair and the charred body slid across her neck on its descent down to the floor. Tasìa wished she could scream the heebee jeebies away, but the sound would not come out of her mouth

Losing her oxygen reserves, her entire respiratory system from nasal cavities to her lungs felt like they were on fire. Her eyes stung badly but she needed to keep them focused.

Only intelligent application of the remaining shots could save her now. This breed of cockroach could eat the flesh off of a water buffalo.

She figured out the spot that she needed to shoot at. It was mid-diameter to the left of her where two oscillating streams of flying cockroaches intersected like helixes that complemented one another.

She shot the rest of her chambered rounds in quick secession into the mass of the twin swarms as they made contact at that intersection.

Each set of flying cockroaches lit on fire as they passed through. Soon the entire assembly of the maelstrom was set ablaze.

She backed up as they dropped. Tasìa found a stool to hang onto, and she stood up.

What was this place?

She realized it was a private bar, liquor sat on the counter-top.

A one-hundred-year-old vinyl record in its sleeve stared at her. It was on the end of a brass-colored rack.

Its title written in English caught her attention:

Music for the Pussy Eating Afficianado - The Best of Moog Jazz, 1966.

Her laughter came out as a painful dry heave. She was still dying from asphyxiation.

Here, I am dying and laughing at a dirty joke.

A long curved sofa surrounded a cute little dance floor in the corner to the right of her. A strobe light was set up, and a disco ball hung overhead. A gigantic stereo system comprised of century-old tech was niched in the wall nearby the dance floor.

Finally, her eyes set on what she needed.

Her hand reached for a previously opened bottle of vodka, three-quarters full; she twisted the cap off and quaffed down the entire contents.

Overwhelmed by the massive amount of liquor pushing down the build up of phlegm in her esophagus noxiously into her stomach, her lungs cleared up. Feeling exhausted beyond measure, she sat down.

Tasìa leaned forward and bent over and she wretched the phlegmy contents of her stomach back out of her mouth.

Wiping her lips with her sleeve, she sighed and looked around. How much fun it would be to take this place over, bring Beauregard and her friends here, and shake her ass off to those old records?

Tasìa sighed once more.

She wouldn't be able to rest for long. Annebél should be back soon, and Tasìa couldn't let her fight the phase beasts roaming out in the estate by herself - near helpless without Tasìa's munitions skills to take down the lightning-fast phase-beasts.