"Mother of God!" Lucca stared at the wave of Stacyx flooding the cemetery, the color draining from his face.
"Open fire!" Hondo yelled and brought up his M-16.
Harry whipped his wand in front of him, casting an Ear Protection Charm just as rifle fire exploded around him. Five Stacyx dropped to the ground dead. Relief flashed through him, glad to know Muggle weapons could kill these creatures.
He and Dean felled two more Stacyx with Stunning Spells. Buffy unslung her crossbow and launched an arrow into the chest of another.
Hondo and Street yanked out empty magazines from the M-16s and rammed in fresh ones. The continuous sharp cracks of Muggle rifles merged into one horrendous roar. Harry and Dean added their own spells to the storm of lethal lead.
But no more Stacyx fell. The breath caught in Harry's throat when he noticed shimmering transparent circles in front of the creatures.
"They have their shields up! Fall back! Fall back!"
Hondo's SWAT team sprinted through the cemetery. Some took up positions behind monuments and tombstones, firing to cover retreating teammates. Buffy fired her crossbow at a high angle, trying to get arrows over the Stacyx's shields. One pierced the shoulder of a Stacyx toward the rear. The others alertly erected shields over their heads, defeating Buffy's next shot.
Harry and others jogged backwards, firing spell after spell. The Stacyx's shields held.
Several mind blasts flew from the Stacyx horde. Two angel monuments exploded into dust. Dennis ducked as another blast missed him by inches.
Another monument exploded just as Street ran past it. He grimaced and stumbled as marble shrapnel pelted him. His M-16 flew out of his hands as he fell to the ground.
"Street!" Deacon picked up the SWAT officer and dragged him away from the approaching Stacyx. Blood covered half of Street's face. His eyes were half closed.
Harry sucked on his lip as Hermione unleashed a spell and Hondo and Lucca kept firing. Carrying a wounded man would only slow them down.
"Dennis! Levitation Spell on Street!"
The young man nodded.
"Cover him!" Harry yelled. The air came alive with streaks of blue and red and yellow as he, Hermione and Dean cast one spell after another. The other SWAT officers kept up a steady stream of fire, while Buffy launched arrow after arrow.
The Stacyx walked through the dazzling display of light and the curtain of lead. Harry's entire body tensed. Could anything get through those shields?
Dennis cast a levitation spell on Street, freeing him from Deacon's grip.
"Hermione! Find us another portal!" Harry ordered as they tore through the cemetery. The gurgling cries of the Stacyx horde spread through the cool night air as they kept after them.
Harry glanced over his shoulder. Hondo and Deacon twisted around, their M-16s crackling.
The Stacyx kept coming, their long gait pulling them closer to Harry and the others.
Teeth clenched, Harry whirled around and halted. The SWAT officers raced by, followed by Dean.
"Harry, what are you doing?"
"Keep going!"
Lips curled, Dean ran off.
The Stacyx bore down on him.
Harry waited . . . waited.
Now!
"Chasmus!" He swept his wand in front of him.
The ground shook. Harry barely kept his balance. A loud tearing sound filled the air. He stumbled back as the ground between him and the Stacyx split open. Tombstones and monuments tumbled into the abyss he created.
So did several Stacyx.
Harry turned and ran after his friends.
"Harry! Over here!" Dean waved to him from the other side of a wrought iron fence.
Using a Bouncing Charm, Harry easily cleared the fence. He landed on a sidewalk where the others had gathered, Street hovering a couple feet off the ground thanks to Dennis' spell.
"I detected another portal," Hermione told him. "Just down the street."
"Great. But how long are we supposed to keep running from those things?" McKay jerked his head in the Stacyx's direction.
"And what about Street?" Lucca glanced at his floating teammate. "We gotta get him to a hospital."
"The first thing we have to do is not get killed by them." Buffy pointed back to the graveyard.
The Stacyx leaped over the chasm Harry created, clearing it with ease.
"Move!"
They darted across the street. Harry aimed his wand at a couple parked cars and flung them into the cemetery. He only managed to knock down one Stacyx.
Fire seared his lungs. Every breath hurt. Harry's legs turned to solid led. He glanced at the others. Dean's face was strained as he tried to keep up. Hermione huffed and puffed. Even the SWAT guys had to will themselves to keep running.
"Here they come!" Buffy's blond hair whipped around as she checked behind them.
Harry turned. The Stacyx jumped over the cemetery fence and continued their pursuit. There had to be over three dozen chasing them.
He cast more spells, chopping down lightpoles. They fell into the street, severed wires throwing out sparks.
The Stacyx jumped over them. One wasn't so lucky. It stepped on an exposed wire, convulsed and crumpled to the ground.
"In there!" Hermione pointed her wand at a darkened one-story house.
"Openum!" Harry shouted.
The front door flew open. The group rushed inside. Deacon pulled out a torch and shined its beam over the darkened living room.
"The portal's this way!"
Wand extended, Hermione led them through the living room and to a bathroom in the back of the house. They found a portal hovering near the shower stall.
While Harry and Hondo covered the door, Hermione and Deacon went through first, followed by Dennis levitating the injured Street.
Sweat drenched Harry forehead. His mouth went dry as his eyes locked on the open front door. A sound like several distant bass drums reached his ears.
Stacyx footfalls.
How many of them are there?
"Everyone's through, Harry! C-"
Dean's words were lost in the crash of shattering glass. A Stacyx burst through the front window. Two others followed it inside. More stormed through the door.
The crack of Hondo's M-16 rang through the entire house. A Stacyx twisted and fell. Harry knocked down another with a Stunning Spell before the others erected psychokinetic shields. With great swipes they knocked aside furniture and tables and stomped toward him and Hondo.
Harry glanced at the ceiling and raised his wand. "Collapsus!"
The roof caved in. Huge chunks of debris dropped onto the Stacyx.
Through the door, he saw more gathering outside.
"Let's go!" Harry slapped Hondo on the shoulder.
The SWAT leader slapped a fresh magazine into his M-16 and followed him into the portal.
They had emerged inside a plainly furnished house that could definitely use a good cleaning. Loud gasps filled the air as everyone sucked down huge gulps of oxygen.
"Where the hell are we?" Buffy looked around, her smooth face crinkling in disgust at the dreary condition of the home.
"Another TV show." Dean breathed deep. "Don't know which one."
"TV show?" Buffy turned to him.
Dean gave her a brief rundown of the Stacyx and their predicament.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "And I thought my life couldn't get any weirder."
"Well we can't stay here." Hondo stepped over to an old couch, his eyes on the portal next to the fireplace. "Harry brought down half the house on the Stacyx, but that won't stop them for long. They'll be through that portal soon enough."
"But we can't keep running forever," said Dennis. "I mean, we have to stand and fight them eventually."
"How?" Hermione threw out her arms. "They completely outnumber us."
Suddenly a dark-haired boy rushed into the living room, his bulging eyes locked on them. He looked away and spoke to . . . no one.
"Wait a minute. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the guys from SWAT are in my house? This has got to be the coolest dream I've ever had."
Buffy drew her head back. "Oh my God. Is this Malcolm in the Middle?"
The door opened and a tall slender, unsmiling woman tromped through. She gasped when she saw Harry and the others. Impossible as it seemed, the scowl on her face grew more pronounced. She aimed her burning eyes at the boy.
"Why is there a SWAT team in our living room? Malcolm, what the hell did you blow up this time?"
Malcolm turned away from his mother and again spoke to no one. "Wait a minute. If this is a dream, why am I about to get grounded? Man, I don't believe it. I'm having a dream with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in it, and it's gonna totally suck."
The woman stormed over to them. "So what's it going to cost this time . . ."
"Oh shut up!" Hermione snapped. "We don't have time for this."
The woman's jaw hung open in shock. Hermione ignored her and turned back to the others.
"As I was saying, how can we fight them when they outnumber us?"
"This is how." Dean motioned to Buffy and the SWAT team.
Hermione furrowed her brow, as did Harry.
"We already have Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the guys from SWAT fighting with us. We just need to get to another action show or movie and get more heroes. Something like Justice League or Stargate SG-1 or The Matrix. Then we can -"
"Look out!" Hermione screamed.
Malcolm's mother let out a shriek.
A Stacyx emerged from the portal.
Buffy did a running jump onto the sofa, flew through the air and hit the creature with a flying kick to the mid-section. It tumbled back into the portal.
"GO!!"
Harry led them outside to a weed infested yard. They ran two blocks before Hermione located another portal. Harry and Dean cast spells to move parked cars into the middle of the street. The improvised barrier did little slow the Stacyx as they hurdled or ran over the vehicles.
The group sprinted through the parking lot of a large store and dashed through the sliding doors. A grossly overweight man with glasses and unkempt black hair stood in front of them.
"Hello, welcome to -"
Hermione and Hondo pushed him to the floor.
"Hey," he said in a meek voice. "Don't make me call security on you."
Harry cast a spell to knock down the shelves, creating a domino effect. That's when he glimpsed the Stacyx entering the store. The fat man screamed like a girl and scrambled back on his bum.
"In here!" Hermione waved them to a supply room.
They bolted through the portal.
The brilliant white light gave way to an empty classroom. Harry led them to the door and threw it open.
A clean brightly light hallway greeted him. He glanced around and saw a couple dozen well-dressed teenagers, most of whom looked like they stepped off the cover of some Muggle fashion magazine. Across from him a dark-haired girl with puffy red eyes and tear streaks on her face was talking rapidly to a very attractive blond.
"Dillon's still drinking, and Dad doesn't want me to see him anymore. But I love him so much. Oh Kelly, my whole world is falling apart."
Dean groaned. Harry turned to see his friend stare at him, shaking his head.
"Oh, Brenda." The blond, Kelly, hugged the other girl.
"Next show," Dean grumbled and strode into the hallway.
"Oh Kelly," Brenda sniffled. "What am I going to do?"
"For starters, get yourself a fellow who isn't a complete head case."
The two girls gaped at Dean as he passed by, then backed up against their lockers when the SWAT team exited the classroom.
"No help then, I take it?" Harry nodded back to the girls.
Dean snorted. "Beverly Hills 90210. Bunch of spoiled, whiny American teenagers. Utterly useless."
By the time they reached the front entrance to the school, screams echoed throughout the hallways.
"I think our friends are here," said Buffy.
They hurried through the parking lot, several students backing away in fright, their eyes locked on the rifles of the SWAT team and Street floating next to Dennis.
Hermione led them to a restaurant three blocks away called THE PEACH PIT. They rounded the corner into an alley, where another portal hovered. Harry hurried toward it, hoping to find help on the other side.
It sure would be nice to have those Winchester guys with us again.
They appeared in the hallway of another Muggle school. Harry rolled his eyes. How many shows take place in schools?
A lanky boy with red hair, glasses and a stupid look on his face stood in the middle of the hallway.
"Flippin' sweat. What is that thing?"
"Oh, not Napoleon Dynamite." Dean's face contorted in annoyance. "This is even more useless than 90210."
Without further word, Hermione had her wand out, searching for the next portal.
"Dude, maybe we can jump our bikes through that thing."
Harry ignored Napoleon and hurried down the hallway.
They found the next portal in the middle of a cow pasture. In the distance Stacyx poured out of the school and charged after them. Harry swallowed. There had to be fifty of those things coming their way.
Harry and Hondo covered the others as they went through the portal, then followed.
"Okay, this is weird," Harry heard a woman's voice.
"Yes," said another voice, much younger. A teenage girl. "Very weird."
Harry gazed around his new surroundings. The group stood in a small dinner. The large windows showed a quaint little town outside. Two dark-haired women, a mother and daughter by the look of them, sat at a table in the middle of the diner.
"So, Rory. Scale of one to ten, how weird is this?"
"Scale of one to ten?" the younger girl, Rory replied.
"One to ten."
"About a twenty."
"That's not on the scale."
"I know."
"Then why did you say twenty?"
"You think one to ten can cover a bunch of people suddenly appearing out of nowhere?"
"Argh!" Dean bared his teeth. "Gilmore Girls? You have got to be kidding me?"
"So along with traveling through TV shows," Buffy began. "Do these Stacyx also zap you with some kind of bad luck mojo?"
"We have to move on." Harry felt anger lines creased his face as he pushed open the glass door.
"You ladies better eat up and get the hell out of here," Lucca warned them. "There's gonna be some nasty creature coming through that portal in another minute."
Harry and the group made it across the street when the first Stacyx emerged from the portal. Rory and her mother screamed and took off out the back door.
Running the whole way, Hermione found the next portal inside the bathroom of a hardware store two blocks away.
They entered a cartoon world. Harry scanned the circular corridor around him. Large windows showed a dark starry sky that went on forever.
We're on a space station.
The animation also looked different, nothing like the Care Bears or South Park. Dean had showed him cartoons like this back at Hogwarts. Stuff from Japan. What was the term?
Oh yeah. Anime.
"All right, this is promising." Dean moved down the corridor, followed by the others. Harry, Hondo and Buffy constantly peered over their shoulders at the portal. The Stacyx would probably come through any moment.
"Yes, finally!"
Harry watched as Dean clapped and took off toward two men, one lean with fluffy dark green hair, the other brutish with a thick black beard and no mustache.
"Dean, what is it?" Harry called after him.
Dean spun around, smiling, fists raised in the air. "We're in Cowboy Bebop! That's Spike Spiegel and Jet Black! Bounty hunters!"
"Two of them." Buffy stood arms akimbo. "Yeah, that'll really help us."
"It's a start. And these two know how to kick some ass."
The two anime characters looked to one another, then to Dean.
"What do you think his problem is, Spike?" asked the bigger guy, Jet.
Spike shrugged. "Drugs. Some sort of psychosis. Probably a combination of both."
"Hey, guys." Dean bounded up to the pair. "Dean Thomas. What I'm about to say is gonna sound weird, but just bear with me. I'm a wizard, so are my friends. And we teamed up with a bunch of television characters to fight creatures called the Stacyx. And we'd like your help."
A queer look came over Jet's face. He turned to Spike. "Is this nutjob serious?"
Harry heard a gurgling hiss behind him. He swung around.
Ten Stacyx jumped out of the portal.
Spike frowned. "Yup. He's serious," he said nonchalantly.
In a flash Spike drew his handgun and opened fire. Two Stacyx fell to the floor dead.
The SWAT team dropped to one knee and fired. Jet Black yanked out his pistol and added to the lead maelstrom.
Two more Stacyx collapsed before they erected their shields.
Hermione severed a hanging light fixture above the Stacyx. They created shields over their heads just in time. Harry cast a Flare Charm in front of the creatures. They winced at the brilliant glowing ball of light.
"That won't slow them down long. Let's get to the next portal."
Hermione held out her wand and hurried down the corridor. Spike and Jet got off a few more futile rounds before following.
"We better wind up on a show with a lot more good guys soon," Deacon said. "We're getting damn low on ammunition."
They pounded down a metal staircase. Harry stood off to the side until everyone passed, then collapsed it just as the Stacyx appeared above him. He raced down the next flight to catch up to everyone.
"Some R-and-R this turned out to be," Jet grumbled to Spike.
"Hey, it could be worse."
"How?"
Spike shrugged. "Don't know. But it could."
Hermione hit the landing and darted for a sliding door. The group emerged into another corridor.
"This way! Hurry!"
Something crashed behind them. Harry whirled around and saw part of the ceiling collapse. He flashed back to his harrowing experience in Carrie.
But instead of flaming debris, Stacyx dropped through the hole.
"I hope the next portal's damn close." Buffy triggered her crossbow. The arrow caught one Stacyx in the eye before it could form a shield.
Spike, Jet, Lucca and Deacon fired on the run. They managed to wound a couple Stacyx before their shields went up.
Hermione blew apart a door with a Redactor Curse. They stared inside at a small room with a bed, a desk and a flatscreen TV. The portal hung next to the bed.
"Let's go," Harry stepped into the room.
"Where?" Jet scrunched his face.
"In there!" Harry stabbed a finger toward the portal.
"Like hell. I'm not going into that thing."
Hisses from the Stacyx carried through the air.
"Well, you can stay here with those things," said Spike. "I'll take my chances with . . . whatever that is." He nodded to the portal.
Buffy slapped them both on the shoulder. "Don't worry. You get used to it after a while."
Harry waved everyone through, casting a Web Spell over the open door before leaping into the portal.
He landed on a stage. A thin girl with long blond hair gaped at the group, along with her companion, another, shorter blond. A large sparkling sign hung overhead that read HANNAH MONTANA.
Harry's neck muscles tightened. Hope melted inside him.
"Dean?"
As he feared, his friend shook his head. "No help here, Harry. Onto the next show."
They darted across the stage, the two blonds staring at them in amazement.
"Wha-What?" the taller one gaped as Buffy and McKay streaked by her. "What the hootenanny is goin' on here?"
Dean skidded to a halt next to them. "Hannah. Lilly. If I were you I'd . . ."
A Stacyx exited the portal. Followed by another, and another . . .
Hannah and Lilly screamed.
"Go! Go!" Dean pushed them forward as mind blasts shot through the air. Chunks of wood from the walls exploded around them. Hondo, Deacon and Spike returned fire with their guns.
Harry scowled as he looked back to see Hannah Montana and Lilly join the mad dash to the next portal. Neither of them looked like they'd be useful in a fight. He needed fighters, not people to baby-sit.
They found the next portal in the basement of this auditorium. Harry collapsed the ceiling above the stairs. Hermione then cast a spell and coated the floor with ice.
"Let's go!" Hermione grabbed Harry's arm and ran into the portal.
"Hassan! Open the roof and ready the missile for launch. We'll hold off the Americans."
Harry gazed around him. They had come out in what appeared to be a rather large aeroplane hangar. Stacks of crates stretched from one end of the hangar to the other. In the center was a flatbed truck with a huge missile pointed toward the roof high above them. The deep report of gunfire saturated the air.
Harry looked toward the front of the hangar. About twenty olive-skinned, dark-haired men stood near windows and doors firing AK-47s. Four other men laid on the ground in pools of blood.
"What's going on?" A trembling Lilly clutched Hannah, who was also trembling.
Buffy cringed. "I got a feeling these aren't good guys."
"Then we better find a way out before -"
"Intruders!" Another harsh voice cut off Harry.
Several of the men up front spun around, their eyes fixed on Harry and his group. Four brought up their rifles and fired.
"Take cover!" Hondo yelled.
Bullets slapped against wooden crates. Hondo dragged Hannah Montana and Lilly behind a stack of crates. Something warbled over Harry's head. He peeked out from behind his crates as McKay fired nearby. One of the "bad guys" spun and fell to the ground dead.
Even with an Ear Protection Charm, the constant roar of gunfire became unbearable. Bad guys maneuvered between crates, popping up and firing. Spike shot one through the head, then ducked as a spray of bullets cut into the crates he hid behind. Hermione hit two men with disarming charms before she had to duck from a hail of bullets.
"Damn!" Lucca cursed. "I'm down to my last clip!"
"Same here!" hollered Deacon.
Some of the bad guys moved forward while others provided covering fire. Dean got one with a Petrifying Spell before he had to duck.
Harry raised his wand, ready to knock over the stacks of crates the bad guys used for cover.
A blur of movement out the corner of his eye caught his attention.
Harry looked behind him. His insides froze.
The Stacyx rushed out of the portal.
NEXT: The Stacyx, terrorists, Harry & Company, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, SWAT, Cowboy Bebop, Hannah Montana and another surprise crossover in a pitched battle you never thought you'd see.
