A Louis XIV chair plummeted into the warehouse to shatter on the floor.

She kept the Talas portal in place, of course; she didn’t want to interrupt the mission. The mission was important. The mission was her gateway to rebirth in a new world, a world carpeted with Joey’s flesh.

One of the fakey plastic hazmat Mummenschanz puppets aimed his popgun at Mollie. She moved the sun portal again to intercept the dart and sent the projectile right back at the shooter, like she’d done with the Taser-happy frog cop in Paris. In seconds he slumped over, the electric-blue feather of a tranquilizer dart protruding from his cheap-ass Halloween costume. Fucking assholes. She’d fucking teach them not to attack her. She opened a portal under the Winnebago and dropped it on the shooter. Then—

Something slammed into her ribs. Mollie tried to turn, but something clamped on her shoulder like a vise made of needles. She screamed.

Joey’s zombie hound wrenched its head back and forth, giving off a burbling growl as it tore a chunk out of Mollie’s arm. She screamed again. She opened a portal underneath herself, dropping through the floor to escape zombie Fido.

A trio of eyeball crabs scuttled through the Talas portal. Joey kicked one aside; it ruptured, splashing her with black ichor.

“Where’d you go?” she screamed. “Come back here, you fat greasy shitstain, so that I can tear you apart!”

Mollie crept up behind Joey, beside the broken chair. Blood streaming down her arm, she picked up Ffodor’s femur. (Suppressing another giggle as she did: Ffodor. Femur. Alliteration. Alligator. Antidisestablishmentarianism.) She wound back for a blow that would open the little cunt’s skull.

“I FUCKING TOLD YOU NOT TO SMEAR YOUR FILTH ON ME! I TOLD YOU!”

Billy Ray tackled her hard enough to steal her breath and send them both skidding and rolling across the hard concrete floor. She dropped Ffodor’s femur. A rabbit punch snapped her head back. Ray wound up for a more powerful blow, one with his shoulder behind it. Mollie threw up a portal shield to intercept his fist, but his reflexes were too fast. He threw wide before she could chop his hand off at the wrist. Fine. She dropped him through a wide floor portal twinned to one in the ceiling; the SCARE agent fell from ceiling to floor over and over again, faster and faster, until he was a blur.

All these motherfuckers did was try to distract her while she held the connection to Talas. It’d be easier to hold the line once they were all buried in the maggot queen’s stomach.

Mollie turned just in time to see Joey’s zombie mutt crouching for a lunge at her throat. She moved the portal in the ceiling. Billy Ray pancaked the zombie pooch when he hit the warehouse floor at terminal velocity, about 120 miles per hour.

Joey screamed with inchoate rage.