Strange things tended to happen in Gravity Falls, but Henry loved the town all the more for it. He'd come to Gravity Falls expecting weird, after all, and that weirdness had led him to Mabel, the love of his life and now his wife, which more than made up for the gnomes occasionally rooting through the trash or the way town water turned glittery on Thursdays.

Of course, he'd never been expecting the town to get this weird.

Admittedly, this weirdness was the work of people—people in long, hooded cloaks, waving around great flaming boughs of some kind of herb that gave off an odd-smelling smoke. That in itself wasn't too far outside of usual for the town, so no one had really paid them any mind until they'd broken in the window to the town hall and lit the place on fire with one of their flaming branches.

That had gotten the police on the scene, and the hooded people had offered no resistance as the police began cuffing them.

That was when the first demon had shown up, too.

Turned out the weird plants were Yggdrasil, which Henry vaguely remembered from the demonology class he'd taken in college to meet a requirement. No one was really sure exactly what it did to demons yet, but hell if it didn't pull them in like moths to a lightbulb, then make them even more violent and powerful.

Henry had been in town, walking back from buying groceries when the first flickers of fire started licking at the town hall, and he'd stopped to watch until something purplish, with twisting horns and whipping tails had popped into midair amidst the smoke, and immediately chomped down on the shoulder of the nearest police officer.

He dropped the grocery bag in shock, silently cursing everything as raw egg splattered the sidewalk and he ran to detour a bit further from the town hall through an alley and call Mabel.

"What's up, buttercup?" she asked cheerily.

"Listen, Mabel, there's some stuff going on in town, there's a demon here and—" Henry tripped over a bag of trash lying at the foot of a Dumpster. He could hear Mabel's cry of alarm coming from the phone.

"I'm fine, I just tripped. Listen, I'm on my way home, can you get the car ready? I want to get out of town as soon as we can."

"Yeah, I can do that," Mabel said. "But—you're sure it's a demon?"

"At least one," Henry said. "I should be home in just a couple minutes, if you can—"

This time, he tripped harder. The phone flew out of his hands, and he saw it shatter against the pavement.

"Shit," he hissed. He could already feel the all-too-familiar sensations from his left leg that meant the bone was broken. He turned to see what has caused him to trip in the first place, and the blood very nearly froze in his veins.

The alley was crawling with neon orange vines, blinking with hundreds of glowing red eyes, and studded with gnashing, shallow teeth. They'd grown up around his ankle, and he could feel them scratching their way up his leg, slowly but surely. Outside of the alley, the fire had spread to another building and turned bright pink, and at least a half-dozen demons peppered the square, tearing the buildings apart, terrifying the people unable to get away.

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

Henry turned to his phone again, hoping the damage wouldn't be as bad as he'd thought, but no, the screen had shattered, wires and circuit boards hanging out the back. And until he let her know otherwise, Mabel would be waiting for him back at the Shack, waiting as the demons drew closer and closer to the outskirts of town as they exhausted the possibilities for havoc at its center.

Henry had managed to keep the vines from growing any further than his waist, holding them back with the scissors from the Swiss Army knife off his keychain, but they were only getting stronger.

The smoke in the air had grown even stronger, and Henry was pretty sure the fire had spread to another building. Whether it was the wind carrying embers or the work of the demons, however, he was less certain about.

Gravity Falls was used to unicorns and Manotaurs, merfolk and fairies, but not demons. Even if the town had been summoning demons daily, Henry doubted that they would have been ready for this many. He'd managed to flip over and twist around a bit, to see the town square, and had already seen maybe a half-dozen demons pass by. None of them had seemed to notice him, thankfully enough. No, their attention was drawn to more mobile and interesting prey. They went after dogs whose leashes had been dropped in panic and the people left behind in the initial chaos and the bright pink truck driving straight through the city center—

A familiar truck. Mabel's truck.

As it turned out, his wife was definitely not one to sit around and wait. Instead, she plowed straight through a hoard of snake-dogs one of the demons had brought in its wake and threw open the door to scream his name, not sparing a second look at a glowing rainbow cloud blinking thousands of eyes hanging just above her.

"HENRY, YOU DORK, WHERE ARE YOU?" she yelled, and goddammit he loved his wife but now was not the time or place to be drawing that much attention.

"Mabel! I'm here!" he called back, trying to be loud enough for her to hear without alerting any of the demons present. The situation made him nervous, though, and his voice was far too quiet. He cleared his throat to try again, only to watch as a demon that looked like a lime green ball of legs wearing high heels crashed into his wife.

And when Mabel started bleeding, Henry noticed that the high heels were actually knives, now dripping with entirely too much of the love of his life's blood.

The demon flicked out what looked like a scorpion tail but seemed to function like a tongue, licked up some of Mabel's blood, and began spinning into her, whirring a flurry of blades into – and through - her stomach. Mabel was being torn apart, and he could do nothing to stop it.

Well, not nothing.

"HEY!" he screamed, hoping to get the demon's attention. It seemed to work, and the demon stopped halfway through dragging its blades through his wife.

Unfortunately, it's attention was now on Henry. It began to float towards him, and now he could see what distance had obscured: the unblinking eyes on the tip of every heel, pitch black but undeniably watching him.

Or it was for a moment at least. The air in the town seemed to shift, feeling even more sinister than it had before. The leg-demon froze in its tracks before disappearing in a puff of yellow powder that smelled like dirty feet.

The immediate threat gone, Henry twisted himself to see what he could of Mabel. The vines had grown further up his body while he'd been preoccupied, and his arms were now out of his control too.

Mabel was barely conscious, her head lolling a bit as her chest struggled to move with every breath. The blood was still pulsing from her wounds, and Henry was seeing parts of his wife he'd never wanted to see—exposed muscle, guts, bone.

In an instant, it struck Henry that Mabel was going to die.

While his brain was still trying to process the information, though, the situation in front of him was already changing, as a figure that looked almost human entered his field of view.

Key word being almost.

The new figure could have been a human wearing a suit, except that it was a uniform black darker than Henry had ever seen from head to toe, with lines of glowing gold so bright they hurt to look at cracking through the blackness. It was floating a good foot off the ground, and had wings coming off its lower back, and its top hat was floating, too, so really 'almost human' wasn't accurate for more than the shape.

No, the figure in front of him, drifting ever-closer to Mabel as she bled out, was Alcor the Dreambender, Lord of Nightmares, Devourer of Souls, Scourge of Worshippers, and a hundred other titles the news used whenever he was summoned and slaughtered a few dozen people – after tricking them out of their souls. Cruel, merciless, torture-loving, one of the most powerful demons and always getting stronger, and he seemed to be drawn to Mabel, of all people.

For an instant Henry wished she would bleed out before he could reach her, to be spared his brand of cruelty at least. But no, he scooped her head and shoulders up almost gently, and her eyes flickered open.

Alcor was talking to Mabel now. His voice was soft, and Henry couldn't make out the words, but he knew it. Henry tried to cry out, to break Mabel's concentration, but the vines had gotten to his face, his mouth, and the noise he could make was too muffled to do her any good.

The demon offered Mabel a hand wreathed in blue flames.

And Mabel shook it.

Henry had been expecting torture. A long, slow, bloody death – well, more so than bleeding out from a marred abdomen would have been in the first place. He'd thought he would have to watch as the demon swallowed Mabel's soul – or Mabel herself – greedily before turning to look for more prey.

Alcor did pull Mabel's soul from her body – or at least, Henry assumed it was her soul: a bright pink ball of energy, its glow dimming a bit as it was pulled free of its host. The demon raised it to his lips, and Henry felt tears leaking through his eyes as he couldn't help but watch what he was sure would be his wife's last moments.

But instead of swallowing the soul, the demon gave it a gentle kiss, and then tucked it back into Mabel's body. The glow got exponentially brighter, as Mabel's wounds started to glow with magic –

And then she was gone. Only Alcor was left, sitting amidst the wreckage of the other demons.

The demon turned his head, and Henry could feel Alcor's eyes on him, their gaze burning. He expected to be next, to be tortured, torn apart.

Instead, the vines around his body disappeared in a puff of smoke. Alcor looked rather pointedly towards the Shack, and then vanished himself.

There was no time for guesses or playing around. That look towards the Shack had to be a clue, or as much of one as he would get from a demon. He needed to find Mabel, to make sure she was safe, and that would be the best place to look.

He drew himself up on shaking limbs, clinging to the wall of the alley for support. His broken left leg would have collapsed under him, if he hadn't had practice walking with a broken shin before. Thank God it wasn't his driving leg – Mabel's truck was still here, and it was his best bet of getting back to the Shack.

Henry staggered his way out into the into the town center, barely noticing that the demons had all scattered, most of the weirdness they had brought gone with them, and that the fires had gone out. His focus was entirely on the door handle of the truck, pulling it open, turning the keys, and getting the car driving.

He cut a sharp U-turn, smashing into a mailbox as he drove without the focus or patience for his normal precision and care. The truck was a brick anyway, and Mabel wouldn't care about a few scratches in the paint.

The roads, or what was left of them, were hell. Potholes had deepened to pits, the shoulder of the road seemed to be struggling to lift its new arm from beneath the ground, and in some places the road wasn't even visible under the debris the demons had left - if it was even still there. Henry plowed through it all as best as he could, steering around the very worst and thanking God all the while that Mabel had chosen such a sturdy truck to bedazzle. He had to get home, to get back to her, and there was no way the type of 'practical' 4-door he'd practically begged her to get would be able to carve its way through this mess.

As it was, the truck was having trouble, but it managed to struggle its way up the road to the Shack. Henry shifted it into park a bit closer to the Shack than he should have, but couldn't bring himself to care, or even to pull the keys from the ignition. He threw open the door of the truck and stumbled out, almost faceplanting on the loose gravel of the parking lot.

He couldn't move fast enough, each step was too small, each foot closer he was to the front door didn't go by fast enough. After what felt like ages, he finally pushed the front door—thankfully unlocked—open and rushed inside.

The gift shop was empty of people, customers and employees alike. Henry staggered through it and pushed past the Employees Only door, into the living room. Stan was passed out on the recliner, the Black-and-White Period Piece Old Lady Boring Movie channel flickering from the TV. Henry could worry about telling Stan later, and instead made for the stairs.

He checked every room. Stan's bedroom, empty. Ford's bedroom, empty. Closets, bathrooms, all empty.

The last place he checked was the attic. The open room at the top of the stairs was empty, and that left only the attic bedroom, which was Mabel's (and now his, he had to start remembering).

He pushed open the door to find Mabel on the bed, eyes closed and a blissful smile on her face. He crept closer, and saw that the wounds from her abdomen were gone. Waited a few seconds, and – there! – she was breathing, slowly but surely. Asleep. Safe. Alive.

With his immediate concerns for Mabel's safety now resolved, Henry finally realized the pain coming from his broken leg, and sunk to the ground hard and fast to take his weight off of it. He felt tears at the corners of his eyes, and he couldn't even pick one cause for them; worry for Mabel, relief she was safe, both could have been the reason (or it could have been the pain in his leg, but Henry didn't care so much about that now).

Still, even though Mabel looked fine, there was no telling what Alcor had done to her, what kind of deal he'd coerced her into (-as she lay bleeding out on the pavement while Henry was helpless to do more but watch-).

Demons didn't make deals unless they got something from them, and anything a demon could get from this kind of deal was bound to be nasty. Mabel may have escaped the immediate danger, but there was no telling what they'd have to worry about from now on.

Henry wasn't exactly an expert in demons, much less in trying to protect his wife from them. No, that was the specialty of another person he knew . . .

Henry scrabbled with the landline on the table near the door, practically an antique but something Ford had insisted on keeping (said he didn't trust cell phones, and after what had happened today, Henry would never again make fun of him for ensuring they had a backup phone around). He punched in the number from memory, and listened nervously to the phone on the other end ring until it was finally picked up.

"Wendy!" Henry said. "How soon can you get to Gravity Falls?"