The nurses' ball was in full swing at Coleman's night club by the time that Queen Bee Brenda arrived, with her entourage. Sonny still hadn't proposed to her yet…and the times that he mumbled something about them getting hitched after rolling off of her in the sack just didn't count.

Brenda had been waiting her whole life for her prince to come before her on bended knee with a jawbreaker of a ring in his hand to propose for her hand in marriage. And she really had believed for oh like the third time she had dropped back in PC that this time would be the charm with Sonny. But until he was really serious and did the job right, she was so over him. Besides it's not like he was really all that hot anyway, being a short man with a receding hairline who she would see pointing his finger at his reflection in the mirror before mumbling his mantra, you are dead to me.

No Sonny, they're only dead in your deluded mind…there had been a time when he had stood there a man of formidable power and uttered those same words and it had made her so hot…sizzling so much so that if he didn't jump her right then and there, she would burn to a crisp, simply from the timbre of his voice and the piercing nature of his eyes. But the booze and prescription pills hadn't been kind to her one-time prince and his eyes were bloodshot now and the crows feet just grossed her out…hadn't he ever tried out that wonderful invention Botox? She had already slipped some blue pills into his drink that were of that other wondrous invention…

He had caught her doing it once while they dined out on the terrace of his Mediterranean style summer house.

"Hey…what's that?"

She just smiled at him beguilingly.

"They're called Va-Voom my handsome stud…they'll make you feel…more pleasure."

He seemed to buy it and returned to dining on his antipasto. She had breathed some relief at that point because if she had told him the truth that she had spiked his drink with Viagra, he'd probably storm off in a huff and if he didn't look where he was going, he might totter off the terrace into the piranha filled moat below.

But anyway enough about Sonny, this was about Brenda who had spent a morning at the day spa getting pampered, manicured, pedicured and waxed again. She had always worn the hottest outfits and this gorgeous scarlet number split nearly to her hip and with her six inch stilettos, no she couldn't be seen with Sonny tonight. But she gazed around the room and saw the choices of cuisine….Jax…the surfer guy with the amazing endurance and the yen for small feet and pale pink toe polish. Jason, or what she could see of him because that trailer trash troll up Sam was mashing against him again with his stylish hair, James Dean jacket and blank stare…which made every woman in PC want to lift her dress. Dante…she did him already and harbored some secret involving him that was so much so, she didn't even have a clue what it was about…but he was hot in the sack and in the shower and in the changing room at Paula's boutique…except for the time she had caught him with that relentless cougar.

She searched and saw Michael…all that anger…no…he wasn't biologically related to Sonny. …Luke, too edgy and dangerous even for her tastes and though he pined for Laura five days a year he was gone most of the time and…wait was he really canoodling with that old bag Tracy? He needed to be careful she didn't stick arsenic in his food and call it Spanish fly. Alan…now he was not bad…wait a minute, wasn't he supposed to be dead?

But her eyes settled again on the woolly coat, Coleman with his bushy brows and hot mustache and beard. She knew his chest was a shag carpet she could run her nails through as they cavorted together…she sighed eying the pool table which was being wasted for the unofficially official nurses' ball pool tournament.

All this was being done to raise money for some charity…she couldn't remember which one after all she hadn't been around much and the ball had mysteriously gone underground for a while once the undead had taken it over before their annihilation. She put a smile on her face after refreshing her lipstick, scarlet of course to match her dress and her yen for sin…if she had been Eve in the Garden of Eve, Coleman would have been her…apple.

His eyes blinked from behind the bar.

"Brenda…."

She hopped over the bar with ease, amazing considering the tightness of her dress.

"What are you doing doll face?"

She drew a talon over his face, without drawing blood.

"I'm interested in ripping off your clothes and burying myself in you Coleman…all of you…right here, right now…can you dig that?"

Coleman's eyes widened. He liked spontaneity like the rest of his gender but this chick just exuded danger. After all her latest man Sonny was scheduled to pop in later that evening and if he saw the two of them together…not that he was scared of the Mafioso but he had just gotten his only suit dry cleaned.

"Brenda…what's come over you?"

She purred, fluttering her eyelashes.

"Oh Coleman darling, can't you see, I ache for a man like you?"

"But what about…"

She did the trick with the talon thing only it trailed down his throat, tickling the skin over his jugular.

"Oh I'm not bad, I'm just written that way…this time…but being the clueless ingénue just got so old after five minutes…but Coleman I want you…now…."

He hesitated.

"You're not just trying to make him jealous are you?"

She arched a carefully trimmed brow.

"What do you think…and what do you care…after I'm through pleasuring you, none of this will matter…"

Coleman sighed, when she put it that way…what man even one considered to be part beast was immune to that?

Alexis grumbled as he walked into Coleman's club. Simply being seen here might be not be damaging to her criminal defense at her murder trial but it would kill her rep as a dignified and famous attorney. That farce had still been going on despite the fact that she didn't know who she killed or allegedly killed. And it's not like she was going to pull out her handy list of dead bodies to help the prosecution hang her from the public square.

But anyway, Julia had tried to put her foot down and said she had to go to this charity ball and drop a wad of cash to make it look like she was a kind and generous human being rather than a remorseless serial killer. She had been confused when she had sold the Cassadine diamond necklace which was cursed anyway to pay for a ticket because she didn't know or even remember what the charity had been. No one else seemed to know either and as she walked into the club past the shrine of the dead nurses hall of fame which included Jesse, Amy, Diane and some psycho who had slashed up half the doctors during a spree…and a couple who in their photos looked awfully pale to be human and were those urns truly holding their ashes? But then PC had always been schizoid in that it existed amid an uneasy alliance between lightness and darkness, the living and the dead and all those caught in between both world.

But Alexis felt angry as she noshed near the refreshment table. She had checked on her daughters before leaving and none of them were at home…except when she had knocked on Molly's bedroom door, she had heard her youngest princess singing a song. She still had been unnerved about the condition of her dolls and her tendency to talk to someone she called Natasha….which just had to be the most amazing coincidence because no one but Luke ever uttered that hated moniker near her…especially amid the whispers of the deceased in her wake. She had also called Diane and had gotten an irate Max who had just freed himself from being chained with fuzzy cuffs in the basement chamber who told her that Diane had taken off quickly and without any reason why.

How like her so-called best friend and law partner to just bail on her when she needed her…and how like the nurses holding a ball and picking anything but her legal defense as the appropriate charity. She needed funds desperately to avoid the guillotine more than anyone possibly could. Drinking up some scotch with her brie, she glanced over to where Jason and Sam were mauling each other in the corner. Lulu was beaming in front of Johnny Wonderful who Alexis knew as a fact because she had read it in the courthouse bathroom was at least three-timing her. She looked at Lulu who was a babe compared to the woman Johnny Wonderful usually favored. He had even approached her one time asking her to dress up in some stupid costume to come and clean his bedroom. As if she a regally trained attorney and the smartest, most professional woman in PC would ever stoop to wearing such a skimpy dress and do that…when her cad of an ex-husband Ric had asked her to do it, she had turned him down flat.

Now if Jerry…she hyperventilated at the thought of his tongue caressing her earlobe as he pressed his body intimately against her…she nearly had to sit down she was so overcome with dangerous thoughts about a very dangerous man. What if he showed up…how would she…what if they played the right music, the lights reflected off the disco ball just right…would she…could she resist him or would they wind up doing some very dirty dancing across the floor? She closed her eyes, no Alexis, you can't…the paparazzi are everywhere…see that bush wiggling over there, oh wait that was Paula and Patrick…but if they saw her clinched with Jerry in some compromising if very pleasurable position…her life would be ruined and it would be…much shorter.

Robin walked up to her still dressed in her surgical scrubs.

"I came right after I assisted Liz in doing an intricate heart transplant with some pliers and a blow torch."

Alexis nodded, still lost in her throes of a panic attack at the thought of a mob of PC's most vindictive screaming for her execution.

"Alexis…isn't this a wonderful party…all this giving and caring..and the pretty decorations…"

Alexis wondered if she and Robin were in the same party or even the same dimension.

"You know I don't even know what charity this is for…but it must be something really very nice…"

Then the room darkened, to show the glittering embers of the disco ball moving across the ceiling and the entire room fell into a hush.

"This must be the entertainment…," Alexis said, vaguely remembering that part of the program.

Alan Q dressed in a snazzy Jitterbug suit tested the mike…and he was surrounded by some young woman including Brook Lynn in very short skirts…

As the music strummed up, Alexis just watched the stage and decided this would be a very long night.

Kristina and Muffy had been hitting the spiked punch bowl pretty hard and they had been out smoking cigarettes in the alley in back of Coleman's club.

"That party is so…lame…," Muffy said, after taking a drag, "I mean Coleman's hot if you like old hairy men and watching a bunch of nurses sing and dance…isn't my thing."

"Yeah I know…and they won't even tell us what this stupid party is for," Kristina said, "I wish I could just leave."

Muffy jumped off the wall.

"Well I am…I'm going to meet some hot guy at the Water Front and have some steamy sex…but we'll get together and talk about having our own prom on Spoon Island."

Kristina had her doubts about whether or not her cousin Nikolas would go for it but she looked forward to having the prom that the powers that be including her own mother had stolen from them. She watched as Muffy waved goodbye and disappeared into a fog bank that had just appeared in front of them in the alley.

Muffy hummed in between puffs of her cigarette and taking sips from a flask of whisky she pulled out of her purse so lost in her own world that she didn't notice the footsteps of the stalker behind her.

"Damn I left them at home…well Rod had better have some…"

She fumbled more in her purse hoping to find what she was looking for, not seeing the shadow which loomed over her, not hearing the whoosh in the air around her nor the silvery blade that reflected the light of the nearly full moon…until it was too late.

The killer stood over the prone body of what once had been Muffy...and watched the blood pooling around her, cackling to themselves before crouching over to get some what she needed to take with them to add to the growing collection…