The Times, They Are a-Changin'

by Kimberly T

NOW FINISHED! #12 thru 15 in the saga; Goliath and Elisa are getting married! And there are even more changes in store for our intrepid gargoyles, and their allies!

3. Part 3: PAAAARRR-TEEEEE!

LIFE GOES ON

THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'… PART 3: PAAARRR-TEEEEE!

By Kimberly T. (e-mail: kimbertow at yahoo dot com)

Author's notes: In addition to the usual disclaimer about Disney owning the gargoyles, Paramount owns everything pertaining to Star Trek, and the songs mentioned herein belong to the named artists and their respective record labels. And Christine Morgan, another author who never fails to inspire me, owns both Billy the stripper and the legendary Bakerotique. Also, since this particular chapter has such a strong 'R' rating (definitely not recommended for younger viewers! If you haven't at least had Sex Education in school yet, stop reading this right now!) it's become Part 3 of 4; the wedding we've all been waiting for will be in the next and final chapter. Really, I promise this time!

(And just so everyone knows: I personally never have more than a couple drinks per year, but this chapter is all about partying, and most adult Americans can't seem to comprehend the idea of a great party without large quantities of booze. The only two of the many, many drinks I mention or describe in this story that I myself have actually tasted are Pina Coladas and the nonalcoholic Black Cow. But there's a website out there that describes, in detail, how to make every alcoholic AND nonalcoholic drink mentioned herein and about four thousand more: the Webtender, at http/ www dot webtender dot com If you're planning to throw a party and want to serve something more creative than cases of soda or a keg of beer, I heartily recommend it! They have recipes for party-sized-punchbowl drinks, too.)

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Early Friday afternoon, at the JFK Airport. TWA Flight 607 from Dallas-Fort Worth had taxied up to the terminal fifteen minutes ago, and three family members stood waiting in the terminal for a fourth member to emerge.

Beth Maza bounced out of the passageway and into her parents' and elder sister's arms, laden down with carry-on bags and chattering nonstop with excitement. "Hi everyone, great to see you again so soon, would you believe I actually got propositioned on the flight! But don't worry Dad, I turned him down, even if he was awfully cute. So let's go, gotta lot to get done still, huh? What time's the party start?"

"Party?" Elisa said, once she could get a word in edgewise. "The wedding's tomorrow, sis…"

"No, the bachelorette party!" And as soon as she said that, Beth clapped a hand over her mouth and looked chagrined. "Oh, darnit, I forgot…"

"Somebody needs to remember to engage her brain before opening her mouth," Diane Maza said with a sternly raised eyebrow at Beth, before turning to Elisa with an apologetic smile. "You know every wedding should have a bridal shower, dear; we've arranged to have a little party for you tonight, just for us ladies. Since Beth is the Maid of Honor, traditionally she'd be hosting it, but since she could only arrive today I've been organizing it instead."

"So that's why you said I needed to come by again tonight, hm?" Elisa asked with her typical half-smile. "Not for a final fitting for the wedding dress."

"Not for yours, dear, though Beth's is another matter. But we'll get that done this afternoon, before the party," as Diane gave her youngest daughter another pointed look.

Beth looked like she was dying to say something more, but kept quiet as they made their way through the terminal. But at the nearest restroom, she grabbed her mother's elbow before saying aloud that she needed to make a pit stop, as the airplane's restroom had always been occupied. Diane took the hint and followed her daughter inside the restroom, and once they were away from Elisa and her father Beth whispered urgently, "Mom, we really gotta talk. I don't know if you know this, but…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

At virtually the same time but several miles away, Jason Canmore was discovering that his future prospects were actually much brighter than he'd first thought when he'd gotten off the bus from Riker's Island.

Two hours ago he'd been released from prison, all charges against him mysteriously dropped, thanks to an even more mysterious deal struck by his sister Robyn. But though he once again had his freedom, he had very little else to call his own besides the wheelchair the prison officials had let him keep. No money, no home, no family he could contact after Robyn had disappeared so mysteriously and Jon had placed himself out of reach, and no friends besides Elisa Maza.

Now he still had no home, no available family and only one friend… but he had money again. Between Queens Plaza and the Queens Men's Shelter lay a section of Queens' business district, with a branch of the Bank of America. On an impulse, since he had little better to do at the moment, Jason had wheeled himself in there and asked to speak with a Customer Service representative about opening an account.

He'd shaven and cleaned up as best he could before leaving Riker's, but he knew all too well that his shabby clothes and the decrepit secondhand wheelchair he was using did not make for a good first impression. He'd had to wait for over half an hour to even speak with a representative, and even then he might not have done so except he'd deliberately parked himself in front of the office door to prevent the man from leaving for lunch. And even then, it had taken every last ounce of the Canmore charm he'd inherited from his grandfather to get the man to grant him access to a phone with an outside line, so he could check the Swiss bank accounts the Canmores had established over the centuries and see how much was left in them.

He hadn't expected to find much at all, as the Hunters had invested well over three million dollars in that hovership he and his siblings had brought to New York. (What had happened to that, anyway? When he and Elisa had arrived at the ruined cathedral, he'd seen with his own eyes that the hovership had somehow been crashed into the side of the cathedral. Had Demona gotten off a lucky shot at the airfoils with armor-piercing weapons, or had somebody just forgotten how to steer the ruddy thing! He'd never had time to ask before being shot, and afterwards, by the time he'd woken up in the hospital… the hovership had disappeared, vanished into thin air. Somebody had taken it away, but who? Elisa didn't think it was the NYPD…) And he was sure that what money was left over after buying the airship and upgrading their other weapons had surely been drained away by Jon, in financing, outfitting and advertising for his Quarrymen. Except he hadn't; Jason had been astonished to discover that the accounts were virtually untouched. Which meant that Jon had found himself a very wealthy backer in his obsessive campaign against the gargoyles; disturbing news indeed… Jason had mulled that thought over for a bit before setting it aside for the moment, to concentrate on more immediate matters.

Rather than wait for Jon to access the accounts after all, he decided it would be best to withdraw some funds for his own use immediately. He took only one-third of the total; Robyn might well need her share in the near future, wherever she was now, and even if he and Jon had gone their separate ways, he couldn't deny his little brother his share. But still, announcing that he wanted to open an account at the Bank of America and deposit $650,000 immediately had caused a remarkable change in the Customer Service representative; the sodding pillock had gone from sneering to smarmy in 0.5 seconds. And in short order Jason had checking and savings accounts at the bank, designer cheques on order, a bundle of cash and a series of traveler's cheques to tide him over until the regulars arrived, an offer of a company car to drive him to the nearest luxury hotel and very nearly an offer to date the pillock's oldest daughter.

Now, after checking into one of the wheelchair-friendly rooms at the nearest Hilton, Jason contemplated his next move. He supposed it would be to contact some rather unsavory people and see about establishing a new identity for himself; the Canmores had long made it a policy to never use their true names in areas where the Demon was suspected to be hiding. The Demon knew the Canmore name all too well, and past Hunters had learned to their regret that if She heard a Canmore was in the area, that Canmore was apt to find himself under attack before he had a chance to discover the Demon's latest hideout.

Once he'd established a second identity, he'd transfer the bulk of the money into new bank accounts and see about finding a job, and a wheelchair-friendly apartment to live in; perhaps Elisa could help with that. He eyed the phone, thinking of calling her again to let her know the good news… Och, better wait until after he'd gotten the new identity firmly in place. Elisa would definitely be of no help in that; as a police officer, she'd be duty-bound to turn in any ID forgers she came across, and she likely wouldn't understand the need for a false name in the first place.

He picked up the phone and placed a long-distance call to Florida, where resided the forger who had given the Canmore siblings their new identities of Jason Conover, Robyn Correy and Jon Carter when they'd first come to the U.S. in search of the Demon. While waiting to be connected, he idly wondered what to pick for a new last name. Campbell, perhaps? Or Cameron? Cochrane, Cunningham? Something properly Scottish, this time; he was tired of always worrying about his childhood accent showing through. Ah well, something would be suitable. And once he had the new papers and a place to live, it would be time for an ex-Hunter to start working on saving the gargoyles…

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Unfortunately, another Canmore sibling was at that very moment looking into another way to destroy most of Manhattan's population of gargoyles, once and for all.

Jon Castaway looked at the two… beings sitting across from him in his office, and tried hard to keep the mingled unease and contempt he was feeling from showing on his face. He and his ancestors had called the gargoyles monsters as often as they'd called them demons given fleshly form. He still thought of the gargoyles as demons, but now he was realizing a new definition for the word 'monster'.

Either unaware or uncaring of the Quarrymen leader's feelings, both Jackal and Hyena were wearing wide grins as they rather uncouthly counted out the money that had just been handed to them. "…Ninety-nine five, one hundred thousand," Jackal finished aloud, the gleam from his cybernetic eye being matched by the gleam in his remaining living one.

"Mmmm, verrry nice," Hyena purred, picking up a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills and rubbing them against her face as though they were fine velvet. The effect was even more disturbing when considering that the cheekbones those bills were being brushed against were plated over in the same gold-burnished metal that covered nearly every inch of her body from the chin on down.

At first Castaway had found it hard to believe what his sources had told him; that these people had been turned into cyborgs, not as the only way to save what was left of their lives after disastrous injuries, but by choice. They had chosen to reject the perfectly healthy forms God had given to them, traded them in for weapon-enhanced limbs and more as if they were dealing in used car parts. And according to his source, even before their cyborgization these two had a reputation for bloodthirstiness that was only outmatched by their greed. Under other circumstances, Jon would have preferred not to be in the same city with such creatures, let alone the same room.

But after that rogue squad of Quarrymen had tarnished his organization's image by attacking that group of college students, it had soon become obvious that the 'People for Interspecies Tolerance' was not going to simply fade and wither away like so many ridiculously idealistic youth organizations did. Word had come to him from one of his college student recruits, that the P.I.T.'s organizers now had corporate funding, similar to his own. And not from Xanatos Enterprises, which he'd halfway been expecting and preparing to counter with a smear campaign, but from Cyberbiotics Corporation! Already, those misguided fools were preparing a massive publicity campaign to trumpet the gargoyles' supposed 'good' side to the ignorant masses, much like Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebbels had propagandized for the Nazis in World War II.

Castaway had suggested to the Quarrymen's own leading financial backer, Oliver Grimm, that even if they couldn't launch a financial assault against Xanatos Enterprises, they should try to remove the P.I.T.'s funding by launching a financial assault on Cyberbiotics. Grimm was looking into it, but Castaway worried that whatever he had planned would take too long to put into effect. No, they needed decisive action now, before those winged monsters gained even more followers amidst the milling sheep of humanity; cutting out the cancer before it could spread further, by striking at the source.

The Quarrymen had launched an assault on the Aerie Building before, sending two helicopters full of their best hand-picked warriors to attack the building one morning and destroy the gargoyles sleeping there during a critical two-hour window when the castle's defenses were down. That assault had failed for reasons they still didn't comprehend, costing them not only both helicopters but twelve of the sixteen men, vanished without a trace. The remaining four men had found themselves waking up on benches in Central Park, stripped to their underwear and with no memory of the assault or what had happened afterwards, or even of anything at all after going to bed the night before… and had been so unnerved as a result that all four had summarily turned in their memberships.

Castaway had tried to obtain justice for his missing Quarrymen, filing charges of kidnapping against Xanatos and his corporation. But he'd been frustrated by those bloody rule-minded police, when they had pointedly asked him if (a) he had any proof at all that Xanatos' people were holding them, and (b) what exactly had those men been doing, allegedly heading for the top of that building in the first place, without filing the proper flight plans with the proper authorities? Surely he was aware that landing a helicopter on private property without prior permission was considered trespassing… was he sure that was their destination? In the end, he hadn't even been able to convince them to obtain a search warrant to see if his helicopters were actually up there.

Castaway wasn't about to risk any more of his people in another assault on the castle, not until he understood the nature of Xanatos' new mysterious weaponry and had some idea of how to counteract it. But he had no qualms at all about sending hired mercenaries up there, particularly these two, the more-or-less human equivalent of rabid dogs. Although it had galled him to no end that, considering that these two had a history of enmity with the gargoyles, they had still demanded an obscene amount of money for their work.

Now that they had half of their payment in hand, the two cyborgs turned back to him with gleaming predatory smiles… literally, as somewhere along the way Jackal had even gotten his teeth modified, replacing ordinary bicuspids with gleaming carnivorous fangs. Castaway kept his face expressionless as he asked, "Are you clear on your instructions?"

"They're not exactly hard to follow," Jackal drawled with an amused smirk. "Get to the castle on top of the Aerie Building after daylight, and smash the gargoyles while they're stoned." The smirk widened into a grin again. "We get the remainder of our payment when we come back with proof of at least three dead, with an extra twenty-five thousand bonus for every gargoyle head we bring back after that."

Castaway kept his face expressionless. "And…?"

Hyena answered him, her face drawn in a pout as she sighed, "And we have to avoid hurting any humans in the process. No harming innocent bystanders, yada yada yada…"

"That is correct. Avoid harming any innocent bystanders." Then Castaway let himself smile a cold, cold smile. "Of course, considering that David Xanatos is the one who brought those gargoyles to his home in the first place, he himself can hardly be termed innocent…"

The twins' sulky pouts became homicidal grins again.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

The late afternoon sun was peeking through the clouds on the horizon when an old but reliable Chevrolet sedan backed carefully into in the driveway of the suburban house that had been the Maza family home for decades. Beth Maza hopped out of the driver's seat and fumbled with the garage door, grumbling about her 'stick-in-the-mud' parents who had never bothered to upgrade to an automatic garage door opener. Once the garage door was open, the reason was obvious; the garage was so full of tools and boxes and whatnot that there wasn't enough room to park a car inside. But Beth was able to back the car halfway in, enough that the neighbors couldn't see one of the back passenger doors open, at the same time as the front passenger door. Dana Labyrinth got out of the front seat and pretended to fumble for a few moments with the bags she'd brought, blocking more of the view as Maggie Reed-Maza, keeping her felinoid head low and her wings tightly furled, scrambled out of the back seat and headed for the door to the house in the back of the crowded garage.

By the time Beth had re-parked the car, closed the garage and gone into the house, Maggie and Dana were already inside and being warmly greeted by Diane Maza, who showed them where to put the bags and boxes they'd brought with them. Dana signed a question to Diane, and Maggie interpreted for her, "Is Peter here?"

Diane gave a wry grin as she replied, "No, dears, he's gone off to spend the evening with some old friends of his, other retired police officers and firefighters. He said that, despite over twenty years on the force, he's 'not brave enough to face a house full of ladies' all by himself."

All three of the younger ladies giggled or snickered, before Beth asked her mother hopefully, "So, did you work everything out now?"

Diane smiled indulgently as she nodded. "Yes, we managed to coordinate everything nicely after all. She'll come to the house with a large van about an hour after sunset, after we've all had time to chat with Elisa, have a bite to eat and play a few of the traditional games."

"Yes!" Beth crowed, bouncing a little in sheer excitement. "That's when we'll start to really have fun…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

"…Glad I could help, lass," 'Professor Lennox MacDuff' said as he politely but ushered a female student of his out of his office. "I'll see ye in class next week."

But the female student balked slightly at the door, looking concernedly over her shoulder at her instructor in Medieval History. "Professor, this is kind of a personal question, but are you feeling okay? You… well, you seemed sort of 'out of it' in class on Wednesday and this morning."

"Och, 'tis nothing, lass… 'tis, ah, 'tis the cold medications I've been taking. 'Tis the 'flu season' now, ye know; have ye gone to Student Medical fer yer vaccinations?"

The student cringed and replied that she hadn't; she really hated needles. To which her professor scowled and said, "Lass, 'tis people like ye, people who won't have themselves or their children vaccinated 'gainst diseases, who'll be contributing to the rise of the next great plague to sweep th' country! If ye fear a wee small needle, how much more should ye be fearin' havin' yer pretty face scarred an' forever ruined by th' Pox, or yer limbs paralyzed by Polio! If ye'd seen what I've seen, back in… Och, never mind, lass," as he shook his head, half in anger at himself for getting carried away like that. "Sorry to frighten ye," which he had; the poor student was nearly cringing against the far wall, her face gone paste-pale. "'Tis been a long week, an' I'm due for a rest. I'll see ye in class next week…"

The student scurried out, wondering if Student Medical was still open, and after a few minutes more 'Professor MacDuff' locked the door of his office and headed for the street, muttering under his breath, "Bloody blue bitch, ye'll get me tossed into gaol if ye keep this up… Well, whatever ye're up to, tonight I aim to outdo ye!"

And not ten minutes later, a woman came striding up to his office door. She had brown hair kept in a tidy bun, piercing blue eyes in an oval-shaped face, and was dressed in a modest yet stylish pantsuit… all of which somehow seemed at odds with her figure; easily over six feet tall, with utterly Amazonesque proportions from her broad shoulders on down. She was toting a briefcase the size of some travelers' suitcases, but judging by the ease with which she carried it might have been no more to her than a fashionable lady's purse. The briefcase went down with a heavy thump in front of the door labeled "Prof. L. MacDuff," and she knocked on the solid oaken door hard enough to rattle it slightly. When no response came, she knocked again, and bellowed in a voice like a drill instructor straight out of Camp Pendleton, "Professor, if you're in there, open up! I am not one of your students!"

After waiting for a brief while longer, she scowled and grabbed her briefcase, and pulled a short stack of 'Post-It' notes out of it. After scribbling a few phrases on one of the sheets and slapping it onto the door's nameplate, she grabbed her briefcase again and marched off, muttering to herself; "All right, time to break out the NVG's and the sniper-scope…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

"I'll see you all later; have a good time, father!" Angela called gaily over her shoulder as she leaped off the battlements of the castle, a few minutes after sunset, to head for the Maza family home.

"Be careful and steer clear of Quarrymen!" Broadway called after her anxiously, before turning back to the others in the clan. Most of whom were currently surrounding Goliath, tugging on his hands and wingtips like overeager hatchlings to get him moving towards the roof entrance and cajoling, "Come on, Goliath, it'll be great! You'll have a blast!"

But Goliath balked again, digging his heel spurs into the cobblestones as he protested, "If this party is to be so wonderful, why are you only now telling me about it?"

"Because surprising the groom is another tradition," Xanatos said firmly as he pointedly held the door open for them all. "Just be grateful that we decided against the traditional method of surprising; kidnapping the groom to take him to the party site." Xanatos had considered it, but had finally decided that he didn't really need the expense of replacing all the Steel Clan robots Goliath would probably trash while resisting his kidnapping.

"Ye're the one who said yerself that the mating ceremony would combine human and gargoyle customs," Hudson said with a grin, from where he was standing next to his good friend Jeffrey Robbins. "And as I understand it, this sort of party is a right proper wedding custom…"

"It's a time-honored tradition, Big Guy," Matt Bluestone chimed in from behind Goliath, as he good-naturedly tried to shove the gargoyle nearly twice his size further towards the door. "And since you're getting married to a human, you just gotta have a human-style bachelor party…"

"Aye, an' get properly soused on yer last night of freedom!" MacBeth added, as he circled around behind the gargoyle and gestured for Matt to stand aside, while he fished a ballpoint pen out of his pocket. "So get moving, ye great lummox, fer there's a grand time a'waitin' ta be had!" And with that, he jabbed the point of the pen right above the base of Goliath's tail.

Goliath actually yelped as he abruptly sprang forward, nearly knocking over two members of his clan, then spun around fast to give MacBeth a killer glare while he rubbed at the sore spot. But the immortal Scot was utterly unfazed by his glare, and brandished the pen with a grin to wordlessly suggest that the clan leader could expect more of the same if he didn't cooperate. Grumbling, Goliath headed for the stairs (reflecting that only a man who'd once allied himself with a medieval clan of gargoyles would know just where to poke one and make it count), and the rest began cheering as they followed him inside.

Just then, two more winged shapes came gliding in out of the gloom. "Hey hey, don't start the party without us!" Talon good-naturedly protested as he and Claw landed on the roof together.

"Hey, Talon! Claw! Glad you decided to come after all!" Brooklyn said, with his beak split in a wide grin of delight and surprise. The surprise was understandable; when he'd spoken to them privately last Wednesday, both the mutates had flat-out refused to come to the party, as it was being held in the home of the man who had been responsible for turning them into mutates in the first place.

"Yeah, well, both Maggie and Dana said we should go," Talon explained as they joined the others in trooping downstairs. "Seeing as how we didn't have a bachelor party before our own wedding, though our ladies had their bridal shower. And as they're going to Elisa's party tonight, they insisted we have some fun for ourselves."

"Now, that's an understanding partner!" Matt commented from the back of the party, as Xanatos led the way to his private lounge. (Xanatos overheard that and thought to himself, but carefully did NOT say aloud, that that also meant the ladies could thoroughly enjoy themselves at the party, without feeling guilty over their poor husbands sitting at home alone.)

"Aye, ye must ha' married a pair o' angels," MacBeth agreed, just as he accidentally stepped on Lexington's tail. Lexington yelped, spun around as he jerked his tail out from under and glared at MacBeth for a few moments as he massaged the trod-on spot, muttering under his breath about humans having no respect for valuable appendages. "Och, sorry, lad; I didna mean to…"

"Seems like somebody started partying a little early," Matt commented as he significantly raised his eyebrows at MacBeth.

"Och, no, this be th' blue bitch's doing," MacBeth muttered quietly. "But I tell ye that once the drinkin' starts, I intend to make up fer it an' more!"

Lexington overheard that, and stiffened slightly before dropping back and gesturing for the two gentlemen to hang back with him. Fortunately, Jeffrey Robbins and Broadway (the only two males present who did not know Demona was back in town) were at the head of the party and oblivious to the goings-on at the back, and so it was only a few moments before they were out of hearing range as Lexington asked quietly, "You're saying that you're feeling tipsy… because of Demona?"

MacBeth nodded. "Aye, an' I know it's her, because the feeling comes and goes as I go about the town and the university. Downtown I'm sober as a judge, but here I'm feelin' it a bit, on campus I'm havin' to watch how I walk an' by the time I get uptown I'm three sheets t' the wind, an' all without tasting a drop! For some reason, th' bitch must be drunk as a lord and his entire court. An' she's been that way since late Monday…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Ohhhh, yes, Demona was indeed drunk. So very, very drunk that, as she blearily raised her head and reached for another bottle, she noticed absently that her skin was blue again instead of pink. Alcohol had so numbed her senses that she'd barely noticed the normally bone-wracking pain of her transformation at sunset. She tried to contemplate that for a moment, then gave up and took another swig of bourbon. She was too drunk to string more than two thoughts together… but then, that was the whole idea.

She was drinking because thinking hurt too much. Thinking meant remembering her encounter with the students at Columbia University on Sunday night, and her meeting with the P.I.T. on Monday afternoon. It meant realizing that there really were humans who wanted to help and befriend gargoyles, not because they wanted to strike a deal for protection at night or wanted an army of winged soldiers for conquering their enemies, but just because they thought it was the right thing to do. It meant realizing that she'd been wrong to try to wipe out the entire race for all these long centuries… Realizing that Goliath was right after all. And worst of all, realizing that her entire life had been a colossal waste. Realizing that not just Humanity, but all of Gargoyle-kind would have been better off if she'd died in the massacre, or better yet, never been hatched.

She couldn't kill herself; she'd tried that before, from time to time over the centuries, and finally given it up. So instead, she got very, very drunk.

If not for the same spell that gave her immortality working overtime at cleaning the toxic levels of booze out of her system, she would have been dead of sheer alcohol poisoning by Tuesday morning. But Demona never let herself get completely sober; every time she grew sober enough to stand up unaided, she drank herself to the point of unconsciousness again. Her wine cellar had been empty since Thursday morning, but she'd called a nearby liquor store and paid a positively obscene amount of money for the store owner to deliver case after case of liquor in various varieties to her door, with no questions asked. Now the bottles littered the floors of nearly every room in her small mansion, and the intercom on the wall of her living room buzzed for her attention and squawked a query; another deliveryman had arrived at the entrance with more.

Demona fumbled and stumbled her way over to the intercom panel, and finally managed to hit the switch and tell the man at the deliveries door, "Jus' leave 'em there. I'll p(hic) 'em up later." Later, she'd let herself sober up just enough to go downstairs and carry the case of liquor inside. Then she'd drink herself into oblivion once more.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Xanatos' private lounge was a decorator's paean to the American ideals of masculinity: walls paneled in dark walnut, and decorated on one side with various stuffed animal heads and paintings of hunting scenes, and on the opposite side with paintings and sketches of nude ladies in various poses. A well-used dartboard hung between a stuffed moose head and a stuffed bear head on one wall, not far from the cue rack for the pool table to one side of the room. The room also boasted a large card table with a ready supply of poker chips and cards, surrounded by comfortable chairs that looked sturdy enough to suit even Goliath's butt. More of those sturdy chairs were facing the massive entertainment center that took up the entire third wall of the room, complete with multiple CD and video racks, six-foot speakers and the largest TV screen any of them had ever seen. The fourth wall of the room was taken up by a fully stocked bar with row after row of bottles of all kinds, and Owen Burnett stood behind the bar, patiently waiting to serve them.

MacBeth blinked at one of the ladies portrayed on the wall and asked, "Gustave Courbet?"

"His 'Standing Female Nude'," Xanatos confirmed with a smile. "The original, of course."

"Thought I recognized her," MacBeth commented as he nodded and turned away. "Such a sweet lass she was, too… We met in this little café in Paris, back in… 1848, wasn't it?…"

Their brief exchange went unnoticed by the rest of the crowd, as Matt, Talon and the Trio all converged on the bar with cheers and whoops of enthusiasm. Hudson was guiding his friend around and describing the room for him, and he reached the bar just in time to hear Lexington say excitedly, "I'll have a Screaming Orgasm!"

"Ye'll have what?" as Hudson frowned horrendously at the youngster.

"It's the name of a drink, Hudson," Jeffrey chuckled. "People think it's funny to give bizarre names to mixed drinks. If I remember right, a Screaming Orgasm has… vodka, Amaretto…"

"And Bailey's Irish Cream," Owen finished for him, as he expertly mixed the drink. He was hampered only slightly by having only one useable hand for the task, as the bar was equipped with an automated cork-puller and even a labor-saving device designed to pry off or unscrew the small caps of other bottles; clearly, the bar had been designed or later modified with his handicap in mind. Once he had served Lexington his requested drink in a cocktail glass, he asked, "And what will you have, sirs?"

"Oh, how about…" the middle-aged Vietnam veteran grinned with the mischief of his misspent youth as he decided aloud, "Tie Me to the Bedpost!"

"Malibu rum, Melon liqueur, lemon vodka and sweet-n-sour shaken with ice," Owen said aloud for Hudson's sake as he began putting the drink together.

Hudson scowled and shook his head. "Bah, I'll have none of that fancy modern stuff; give me a good solid ale! Or mead, if ye have that!"

Owen efficiently produced brands of both for Hudson's perusal, adding that both had been imported from an Edinburgh brewery. Hudson judiciously sampled both and decided he'd have a large tankard of ale, and shouted for Goliath (who had been trying to unobtrusively edge back out the door), "Hoy, lad, get yer tail over here an' have a drink! They've got mead that should be to yer liking, at least!"

Goliath sighed resignedly, but headed for the bar and in short order had a mug of the amber-colored liquid in one hand and was sipping it appreciatively. Meanwhile, Talon took his Rum-n-Coke in hand, turned to Claw and asked, "What about you, what're you having?"

Claw had been hanging back a little uncertainly, and now he signed to his fellow mutate that he didn't know of any good drinks, he'd never been a serious drinker and had hardly ever gone to any bars before his transformation, and would his friend recommend something easy for him to handle?

Talon grinned, showing all his teeth. "Why, sure I will! Owen, how about fixing my friend here an Easy Does It?" Then he casually leaned against the bar as he chatted, blocking Claw's view of what Owen was using to mix his drink: equal parts of Kahlua, Bailey's Irish Cream and Everclear…

Brooklyn was already a quarter of the way through his Long Island Iced Tea, having discovered a taste for them at the Halloween party a few weeks back. Lexington, who had once spent a few hours exploring the famous 'Webtender' website for interesting-sounding drinks, recommended Broadway try a Banana Boat…complete with banana. Matt smacked his lips appreciatively after taking another sip of his Sex on the Beach, and told Owen approvingly, "Perfect. I gotta admit, you got a real talent for mixing drinks. Did you used to work in a bar or something?"

Owen studiously focused on mixing the melon liqueur, banana liqueur, Blue Curacao, pineapple juice and other ingredients for Broadway's Banana Boat, seeming not to hear Matt's casual question. But then he said, very softly, "Once. Some time ago." Then he went back to mixing the drink, and said no more.

"Hey, check these out," Brooklyn said as he poked at a silver tray at one end of the bar, covered with little gel cubes in every color of the rainbow, that jiggled when he nudged the tray. "Are these what I think they are?"

"Jell-O Shots!" Talon said with a grin as he came over, neatly speared a red one with a talon and popped it into his mouth. "(slurp) Ahhh, Cherry, my favorite." And made with enough vodka to give each little cube a real kick, too.

The barstools were also sturdy enough to seat the gargoyles, and Goliath sat down on one as he drank his mead. It was a fine brew, he had to admit that, as sweet and at least as potent as the best mead ever brewed back in Castle Wyvern in days of old. So far, this bachelor party seemed all right, but he wondered what sort of party awaited his beloved Elisa.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Elisa parked her Fairlane on the street in front of her parents' house and looked upwards, half out of habit now after dealing with gargoyles for the last few years, and noticed the winged shape slowly spiraling downwards in the evening gloom. Angela waved to her as she spiraled down for a landing in the back yard, but rather than draw attention to her by waving back Elisa just nodded in her general direction before going up to the front door.

Her mother gave her a big hug of welcome before ushering her into the living room, where Beth, Dana and Maggie were all waiting for her with big smiles. Moments later Angela joined them, gave Elisa a hug and added her brightly-wrapped gift to the small pile already sitting on the coffee table, next to the brightly decorated cake, pile of paper plates and trays of hors d'ouevres. "So, Sis; nervous about tomorrow night?" Beth asked with a smirk, as their mother brought a bowl of punch out from the kitchen.

"The butterflies in my stomach are spawning new generations," Elisa admitted wryly, before adding hastily, "But no, I haven't changed my mind!"

As she'd been facing partially away from Dana, the deaf woman quickly glanced at Maggie for clarification of the words she hadn't been able to lip-read. When Maggie gave her the sign version of Elisa's words, Dana grinned and gave her a big thumbs-up of encouragement.

Angela accepted a glass of punch from Diane as she said to Elisa with a grin, "You do realize that by marrying my father, you're becoming my stepmother, right? So should I call you 'Mom' after tomorrow night?"

Elisa emphatically shook her head as she said, "Don't you dare! I'm way too young to be a stepmother to a gargoyle that's actually older than I am!" Then she gave her mother a mischievous look as she added, "You can call my mom 'Grandma', though; she's got to get used to that title soon enough anyway…"

Diane just rolled her eyes at first, then pretended to glare at Beth and Elisa together as she demanded, "Well, why not! Between you two and your brother's antics, I've already got enough grey hairs for it!" But somehow, both sisters utterly failed to look suitably repentant.

But Dana had a question for Angela, which Maggie willingly relayed for her as she was curious herself: "You're actually older than Elisa? I would have thought you were a little younger, myself, but I never thought about gargoyle aging rates… If it's not too personal a question, exactly how old are you?"

"In calendar years, or growing years?" Angela returned with a wry smile. "In growing years, I'm thirty-eight years old now; I'll be thirty-nine in the spring. But in calendar years, as near as I can tell, I'm either nine hundred twenty-eight or nine hundred thirty years old…"

"Whaat?"

"It's because she hatched and grew up on Avalon, where time runs so much slower than in our world," Elisa explained hastily to all the open-mouthed ladies present. "A entire day here is only an hour of Avalon's time. But why the two-year disparity in calendar years?"

Angela shrugged. "Our guardians told us that when we all first hatched, we kept them so busy they actually lost track of the days for a little while; it's easy to do so, when Avalon is eternally summer and there are no changing seasons to remind you of time passing. So Princess and the Magus always disagreed on exactly which full moon we hatched under, and a moon's cycle on Avalon is nearly two full years in the outer world. But it's the growing years that are more important, anyway."

The ladies all drank the punch and munched on the munchies while chatting for a while; after Angela explained a little bit more about growing up on Avalon, they all caught Beth up on events in the month since her last visit. They also talked about how life in the Labyrinth had improved since Xanatos had begun helping out, how Maggie's pregnancy was progressing (Everyone worriedly observed but didn't say aloud that she really was growing fast, for someone less than three months along), and other pertinent topics. Elisa found herself relaxing and enjoying the girl-talk, though she was secretly a little disappointed that the party was so… quiet.

When another policewoman had gotten married a few years ago, Elisa had been there for the bachelorette party, which had been considerably more lively; they'd held the party in the back room of a local bar, and everyone had chipped in to hire a Chippendale dancer to do a strip-tease for the blushing bride-to-be. Maria Chavez had even done a karaoke number or two, proving that when she let her hair down and relaxed, the precinct captain could darn near out-sass and out-sultry the Pointer Sisters. But with this party being hosted by her mother, karaoke, rounds of drinks and a Chippendale man were utterly out of the question… Not that Elisa was one of those "party-hearty" types that spent every Friday night getting half-plastered and squealing after half-naked guys, oh no! But she had to confess that, after hearing Beth say "bachelorette party", she'd sort-of been hoping… Still, it was good to just get together and do girl-talk for a while; she really didn't have much opportunity for it in her chosen life. But she couldn't help wondering if the guys were doing anything a little more risqué with Goliath tonight. If they were, she was sure her partner was in on it; Matt had been acting a little secretive and a little more antsy than usual lately…

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

"The name of the game, gentlemen and gentlegargs," Matt said with a grin as he reached into a bag he'd brought with him with one hand, while juggling a pair of dice in his other hand, "is 'Dear Betty'. Anyone here ever heard of it before?" he asked as everyone sat down at the cards table with their drinks in hand, and at least another two of the same lined up in front of each of them.

"Ohhh, yesss," Jeffrey said with a slow smile, while Xanatos smirked and Talon showed all his teeth again in a truly wicked grin. "I haven't played that since 'Nam, but I think I remember how it goes… You have the required hat?"

"You bet," as Matt pulled out of the bag a large baseball cap, with a huge set of foam boobs on top of the brim. "Everyone, this is Betty." Then he swiftly reached over and plunked the head down on top of Goliath's head before he could dodge, and said brightly, "Say hello to Betty, everyone!"

Matt, Talon, Jeffrey, Xanatos and MacBeth all chorused brightly, with wide grins on their faces, "Hi, Betty!" but the Trio were too busy gaping and choking on their drinks to join in. Even Hudson sniggered into his fist; he hadn't seen their clan leader looking so ridiculous since he'd been hit in the face with that cream pie a few months back. Goliath scowled and reached up to jerk the offending hat off his head, but Matt dared to stop him with a hand on his wrist, wagging an admonitory finger in his face. "Ah-ah-ah! Tradition is, the first Betty is always the groom. You can't take it off until somebody else becomes Betty…"

If looks could kill, the one Goliath gave Matt would have had the man laid out and ready for embalming as he growled, "And how soon will that be?"

"That's what the dice will decide." And with that, Matt explained the rules:

Everyone rolls the dice in order, starting clockwise from the first Betty. If the dice come up:

1. "Seven to the left"- if you roll a 7, the person to the left of you will drink one drink.

2. "Eleven to the right"- if you roll 11, the person to the right of you will drink one drink.

3. Four and two: touch your nose. The last person to touch his nose must drink three drinks.

4. One and two: Social event - Everybody has a drink, while the dice roller makes a toast. Any toast is allowable, but it must not have been given before in the game; if it has, the toaster must take another three drinks.

5. "Doubles you give"- if you roll doubles you are allowed to give out the total number of drinks. If you roll double sixes that's 12 drinks given out to anyone on the table; either spread out amidst the players or even all to one person.

6. Any three: "Betty" drinks one drink. And if "Betty" doesn't see the roll and does not drink, the player rolling can give Betty another three drinks for not paying attention.

7. If "Betty" rolls a three, he can give "Betty" to whomever he wishes.

The first person who rolls any of the aforementioned rules will get to roll the dice again until they roll something other than that, then pass the dice to the left. The person to the left will roll in the same way. If anyone drops out they must drink five drinks before leaving the table.

"Sounds like an interesting game," Brooklyn said with a grin. "When does it end?"

Talon grinned with all his teeth again. "When everybody has either left the table, or passed out right on it. C'mon, 'Betty', roll the dice…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the Maza home, after everyone had chatted for a while, Diane started the first of the traditional bridal shower games, a game of "Touchy-Feely." She passed around pads of paper and pencils for everyone, then sent around the room ten brown lunch-sack-sized paper bags, each with the top folded over and stapled shut, and each with an ordinary around-the-house object inside. Everyone had to guess what objects were inside the bags, and write their guesses down on the paper provided.

Maggie won that contest, by correctly identifying eight out of ten of the bagged items: a wind-up kitchen timer, a pair of children's scissors, a salad fork, a pack of playing cards, a nutcracker, an oven mitt, a washcloth and a bottle of shampoo. Her party prize for guessing the most correctly was a small sachet of potpourri, and she sniffed it appreciatively; vanilla, her favorite.

The next game was a memory game; Diane brought out a large tray from the kitchen, covered with a towel, and whipped the towel off to reveal a clutter of common kitchen items. After thirty seconds, she covered the tray again, and everyone had to write down from memory as many of the objects as they could recall being on that tray. Elisa's detective career and observation training served her well, and she won that contest by correctly remembering fourteen of the fifteen items (she only missed the tea strainer); her prize was a cake of scented soap. (She also sniffed her gift appreciatively; not because she was especially fond of gardenias, but because she was wondering how Goliath would like the scent on her skin after a shower. He couldn't stand it if she wore a lot of perfume, because his sensitive nose would be bombarded by the odor, but just a hint of a different scent combined with her own definitely got him intrigued.)

Then Diane, with a wicked grin, brought out four rolls of toilet paper. Elisa groaned and rolled her eyes; "Aw, Mom, not that game!"

"Yeah, that game!" Beth grinned even more wickedly than their mother. "The TP Wedding Gown contest! And I hereby nominate my sister for the model for my team!"

Dana found herself volunteered to be the model on the other team, and the two ladies stood still and tried to keep sickly smiles on their faces as the other ladies, giggling all the while, draped them with swaths of toilet paper to make 'wedding gowns.' After ten minutes, they called "Time!" and the two 'dresses' were judged; Diane and Maggie won the prize for the attire they'd created for Dana, though Beth and Angela's creation was given points as well. The winning team members each got a scented candle, and so did both models for being such good sports. (And Beth insisted on taking pictures of both the reluctant models in their TP regalia, for posterity and future blackmail possibilities.)

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, the party was in full swing; "Betty" had been passed from Goliath to Xanatos to MacBeth, who was currently wearing his booby-topped chapeau with a curious drunken dignity while waiting for his turn to roll. Matt had just rolled a one and two, and proposed the following toast: "To the way a genuine smile from a beautiful woman can brighten your whole day." Everyone said, "Hear, hear!" as they downed their drinks.

At the first opportunity Goliath had drunken his way out of the game, hoping to escape the indignities of the party, but Jeffrey followed him out and challenged him to, of all things, a game of chess. Owen had supplied the chessboard and pieces upon request, but the chess game was not going well, at least from Goliath's point of view. As he couldn't leave the game until after passing "Betty" to another player, and as every player who rolled doubles seemed determined to give the guest of honor most of the drinks available, he'd just about polished off the bar's entire supply of mead before having an opportunity to drink his way out. In order to do so he had, at Brooklyn's insistence that he owed it to patriotism for his adopted city, switched to drinks named after the local area.

He'd tried a Long Island Iced Tea, a Manhattan and a New York Lemonade, but found that he rather preferred the taste of a Manhattan Sweet. But even a gargoyle's revved-up metabolism can only take so much; by the time he'd determined which drink was his favorite, all the alcohol he'd imbibed had Goliath in a state far from sober. Which was probably contributing to his present sorry state, which was having the bejesus whupped out of him by a blind man. Jeffrey had sensibly switched to low-buzz beer and minimal-alcohol drinks as soon as the drinking game had started, so he still had full possession of all his faculties, which included his ability to track the locations of all the chess pieces in his head. So far he'd taken four pawns, a bishop and a knight from Goliath, who had only taken a single pawn and a rook in return.

For music, Xanatos proved to all that he had both a theater-quality sound system, and a perverse sense of humor; the giant stereo speakers were playing a preset mix of songs that Bluestone had immediately dubbed "The Gargoyles' Top 40". So far they had heard "Turn to Stone" by ELO, "In the Heat of the Night" by Bryan Adams, "Fly Like an Eagle" by the Steve Miller Band, "Loves Me Like a Rock" by Paul Simon, and "The Night Time is the Right Time" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and now Bob Seger was howling out "Like a Rock."

After ensuring everyone had drinks in hand, Owen quietly slipped out for a moment. When he came back in, he was wheeling in front of him a long table covered with a veritable feast of junk food. Five giant pizzas from Pizza Hut; two Meat-Lover's, a Cheese Lover's, a Hawaiian Delight and a Super Supreme. A massive six-foot-long hoagie from Subway. Six family-sized buckets of KFC chicken; two each of Original Recipe, Hot-n-Spicy, and Honey BBQ. A bag of Ruffles chips the size of a pillowcase leaning against a bag of Doritos just as big, and both surrounded by no less than ten different tubs of dip. All in all, it was a glorious smorgasbord of artery-clogging delights, and even Goliath eyed it appreciatively. Matt Bluestone let out a long, low whistle of appreciation as he set down the dice, Talon and Claw both started drooling in anticipation, and Brooklyn and Lexington greedily rubbed their hands and made appreciative rumbles as they made ready to dive in.

Broadway took one look… and burst into tears.

"Huh!" those closest to him turned to look at him in alarm and dismay, and Brooklyn went over to him to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. "C'mon, bro', what's wrong?" Brooklyn asked concernedly, while thinking, It can't be the booze; he can't have had more than five drinks so far and even Lex can drink more than that before he gets loopy…

"I can't take it anymore!" Broadway sobbed into the clenched fists he was holding over his eyes, trying to block out the sight of the feast. "I just can't take it anymore!"

"Can't take what, bro'? C'mon, here, have a seat…" as Brooklyn guided him back over to a chair. "That's it, just sit down…" Broadway sat down in the chair while half of the men in the room gathered uncomfortably around him, and the other half tried really hard to find something else to focus on. With his hand still resting comfortingly on his rookery brother's shoulder, Brooklyn said with uncharacteristic softness, "You want to talk about it?"

"It's this diet!" Broadway finally confessed, glancing miserably upwards before turning his face down again. "I'm so hungry all the time, and my wings always hurt from gliding so much, and I'm going to die before I lose any weight!"

"So why're ye needing ta lose weight so badly?" MacBeth asked, suppressing a hiccup. With the honesty born of the six single-malt whiskeys he'd already downed he added, "Mind ye, it couldn't hurt ta lose a bit; I've seen bloody elephants in (hic) Africa with less on their bones. But ye're a helluva fighter even so, an' me home's got the scorch marks ta prove it! Or it did, afore I had 'em fixed…"

Ignoring most of MacBeth's ramblings, Goliath frowned as he said, "He is right, Broadway; while we would all support you in losing weight if you so desire, it should not be so exhausting and painful as it obviously is for you. What has caused you to decide to diet so drastically?"

Hudson came over and clapped a comforting hand on Broadway's other shoulder, while he said almost grimly, "Not what, Goliath; who."

"It's Angela," Broadway confessed miserably, staring down at his toe-talons. "She told me we can't have our mating ceremony until after I lose weight…"

Brooklyn's hand slowly dropped to his side.

"She wants to make sure I'll catch her in our breeding flight," Broadway continued on, oblivious of Brooklyn's reaction. "So I gotta lose at least eighty pounds before then, but I've been checking the scale every night and so far I've only lost four pounds, and I'm just going to die of starvation or my wings will fall right off before I lose the rest…"

"Now, that's just not right," Matt said with slightly blurred certainty, as he waggled a finger at Broadway in a scolding manner. "Here you're not even married yet, and she's already tryin' to change you!"

"Aye, 'tisn't right," MacBeth agreed, throwing a comradely arm around Bluestone's shoulder. "Th' woman's not supposed ta be naggin' ye until after ye're wed!"

"Yeah!" Talon agreed emphatically, while Claw nodded vigorously. That prompted MacBeth to throw his other arm around Claw's shoulder, so the males could present a united front against the female threat.

Even Jeffrey said mildly from where he was nursing his drink, "I still don't know all that much about your traditional culture, Broadway. But I have to say that, with humans, the rule is that if you really love somebody then you accept them the way they are, personality quirks and 'spare tires' and all…"

Goliath frowned, but said nothing. But Matt, MacBeth, Talon, and all the booze they'd been drinking already somehow came to the mutual conclusion that they had to save Broadway from a fate worse than death: becoming a henpecked husband. "Y'gotta stand up for yourself," Matt insisted. "If you let her boss you around now, there'll be no end to it later!"

"Aye, lad, show her who wears th' trousers in th' family!" MacBeth chimed in. Then he blinked, as he realized aloud, "But ye're not wearin' trousers… well, show her who wears th' loincloth!"

And somehow it all evolved into most of the males present, including Brooklyn, chanting, "Go, go, go for it!" as Broadway nearly dived face-first into the buffet.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the Maza home, Elisa and Dan had just finished divesting themselves of the last of the toilet-paper gowns when a horn honked outside the house. Beth instantly jumped to her feet and raced to the front window, and looked out to say excitedly, "She's here! And check out her costume; it's totally authentic!"

"Who's here?" as Elisa hurried to stand beside her sister, while shaking off a strand of TP that persisted in wrapping around her ankle. She looked out the window and saw a van… and an alien.

A humanoid female in a vaguely militaristic-looking uniform, a blue-skinned face framed by a mane of pure white hair and topped by a pair of three-inch-high blue antennae. Memories of old Star Trek reruns brought the required data to the forefront of Elisa's mind within moments: an Andorian. The Andorian female reached back into the van she'd just gotten out of and pulled out a series of bags, including three garment bags, then looked up as she started towards the house, saw the Maza sisters at the window and waved. Then she started walking up the sidewalk with such an astonishingly sexy swagger, the stride of a woman who knew damn well she could either seduce or kick the collective asses of any five men on the street, that Elisa knew without a doubt she was looking at Fox Xanatos in disguise.

Beth opened the door even before Fox could ring the doorbell, saying with a grin, "Hi! Did you bring everything?"

"Got it all right here," Fox-the-Andorian said with a grin as she held up the bags.

"Wonderful! Bring them in, I can't wait to show Elisa!" Angela called out happily from where she was sitting with Maggie, out of sight of both the door and the front window.

But Fox paused before entering, as Diane Maza came into view. Her entire demeanor shifted with lightning speed from saucy to subdued, and she asked quietly, "May I?"

Elisa glanced from Fox to her mother and understood instantly why Fox hadn't been there at the beginning of the party; because Diane originally hadn't invited her. The Maza family had more than one reason to hold a grudge against the Xanatos family, and though their work on finding a cure for the mutates and on improving life in the Labyrinth had gone a long way towards improving relations, they weren't yet on the Maza's Christmas-card list, and they knew it. But Diane just nodded and put a polite smile on her face, and gestured for Fox to come inside.

Once Fox was in the living room, her saucy grin returned as she handed one of her three garment bags to Dana, one to Angela and one to Elisa. Elisa looked at her bag with confusion, but Angela and Dana both received theirs with wide grins and noises of delighted anticipation. Dana and Maggie immediately retired to Derek's old bedroom, while Angela (who apparently didn't have quite as highly developed a sense of modesty) began stripping out of her usual tunic right there in the living room.

Elisa turned her back to give Angela a little privacy whether she wanted it or not, while she took a look at the contents of the garment bag she'd been handed. Inside she found a uniform from Star Trek: the Next Generation, with the bright red sections and pips on the collar to indicate, if the remembered correctly, a lieutenant in Security. "It seemed appropriate for you," Fox told her with a shrug and a grin. "Go ahead, put it on!"

Beth had already headed into the master bedroom with her mother, presumably to put on a costume as well, so Elisa ducked into her and Beth's old bedroom to change. The uniform turned out to be a perfect fit for her; not really surprising, considered Fox had already guessed her size correctly when getting her a new T-shirt and jeans in the aftermath of her and Goliath's first-date-turned-disaster. She put it on and came back out, though she couldn't help looking wistfully back at where her gun and holster were neatly folded under her clothing. If they were about to do what she thought they were about to do, Elisa felt more than a little naked and vulnerable without a weapon handy…

But Fox seem to have anticipated that, as well; when Elisa came back out in her costume the former mercenary pulled a pair of prop phasers out of another bag. Handing one to Elisa, she told her with a grin, "These were just made by the weapons guys down in R those boys really love a challenge. These 'phasers' are really Tasers; see the dart tips poking out here? Standard fifteen-foot range, and delivering a 50,000-volt jolt for exactly 10 seconds; enough to take the fight out of your standard troublemaker in a hurry. This is the safety; flick it off, then aim and press the button here, and the bad guy goes sleepy-bye."

Elisa gave a lopsided smile as she accepted her phaser-Taser, saying, "You do realize that projectile Tasers are illegal in New York?"

"Ah, but not for a police officer in performance of her duties," Fox corrected with a grin, as she holstered her own weapon on her Andorian military uniform. "And if trouble does happen, you can just call me your backup, hm?"

"But I hope we won't be needing those; I'd really like to enjoy the rest of the night," Angela said wistfully as she came over, wearing her new outfit. She was wearing a full-skirted and backless evening gown of black satin, the hem reaching clear to the floor to cover her huge and high-arched feet and the neckline plunging well into her cleavage, guaranteed to distract the average male from noticing anything to do with feet. She carefully wrapped her tail around the calf of her left leg to keep it hidden from view as well, then lightly pirouetted, the skirt gracefully swirling out as she turned, while she asked Elisa, "What do you think?"

"I think if the Trio saw you right now, their tongues would all roll out like red carpets," Elisa said frankly. "But for a disguise…"

"Oh, that's only part of it," Fox assured her, as she reached into another bag and pulled out something in deep purple velvet. "Now come the gloves…"

The gloves were the long and elegant sort, coming up well past Angela's elbows and perfectly matching the color of Angela's wings, which she then caped in front of her to resemble a velvet cloak of deep violet. Angela held up her hands and wiggled her gloved fingers; the pinky finger of each glove was filled with some sort of shaped padding, to make it appear she had the usual full human complement of digits. Fox then produced a thin and short gold chain with a pair of large clasps on either end, which she carefully slipped over the bases of Angela's wing-talons as they clasped together above her cleavage. "Just an elegant little reminder to help her keep her wings caped, as well as make her wing-talons look like a custom-made cloak clasp," she explained to Elisa, "but easy enough to break in an emergency. And once we put on the pancake makeup and the headband to cover your ridges," as she pulled those out next, "Our lady gargoyle will be able to give Elvira a run for her money. Every guy we see will think you're a Goth Girl in full vampiric regalia, and just begging you to nibble on his neck!" Angela grinned wickedly in agreement, showing she certainly had the fangs for it if they did.

As Fox and Angela headed for the bathroom to apply the white pancake makeup, Beth came out of the master bedroom, wearing an outfit she must have brought with her from Arizona; a flowing black robe decorated with crescent moons, stars and various astrological signs embroidered in gold and silver thread. She wore a silver headband with a silver crescent moon centered high on her forehead, and wielded a stick about eighteen inches long and wrapped in silvery tape along its length. She commanded in an imperious voice, "Kneel, ye mundane peasants, to the High Priestess-Mage of Blessed Luna!"

Elisa couldn't help herself; she snickered aloud as she said, "Sorry, Sis; I've heard better imperious tones." And since she hadn't kneeled to Lord Oberon, no way she was going to do it for her bratty little sister.

"Oh, yeah? Well, I'll just have to zap you with my trusty wand!" Beth retorted as she aimed her wand at Elisa's midsection. And to Elisa's surprise, a red beam of light shot out of the tip and hit her square in the stomach. Beth laughed at the look on her sister's face, and explained, "It's actually a laser pointer; I borrowed it from a teacher's assistant," as she thumbed the hidden switch in the base to turn it off.

Elisa grinned as she meaningfully tapped the phaser at her waist. "Better watch it, Pest; this is set on 'Stun'."

But before she could actually explain that it really was set on Stun, Maggie and Dana came out of the bedroom. Maggie was wearing the gorgeous sapphire-blue gown she'd been given for her birthday, but Dana was dressed in an utterly fantastic outfit; a skintight suit covered in thousands of fine feathers in red, gold and white, making a beautiful fiery pattern covering her from head to toe and extending out to the wings that extended from each arm. Plumes of feathers dyed in those same colors extended up from the feathered hood on her head to make a five-inch-high crest, that waved gracefully as Dana danced her way across the room to them.

Angela came out of the bathroom in a few moments, her skin tone now lightened to the palest of cream, with just enough of the true lavender showing through to make her look even spookier, while still the sexiest of vamps. Elisa had to admit that if Elvira saw her now, she'd probably turn green with envy. Fox followed her out with a smug grin of satisfaction, that increased as she saw Dana preening in her new finery. "A top-of-the-line Firebird outfit, originally destined for the Metropolitan Ballet," Fox explained with a conspiratorial wink as she gave Maggie's wings the same elegant gold-chain reminder to keep them caped about her shoulders, then whipped out a camera. She insisted on taking several pictures of Elisa, Angela, Maggie, Dana and Beth separately and together, promising that she'd see the film developed in Xanatos Enterprise's own photo lab and send copies to everybody.

Just as Elisa was taking a picture of Fox as she stood with the group of costumed ladies, Diane stepped out of the master bedroom clad in the traditional clothing she'd worn while in Nigeria the year before: a brightly patterned buba (loose flowing blouse) and iro (wrap-skirt), with a brilliantly contrasting iborun scarf draped down on side of the outfit. Her hands were still busy with arranging the gele, the scarf-turban that could be folded and knotted in a variety of ways. Since Diane was evidently going for the most dramatic look, she chose a complicated, double-knotted affair that both increased her height by a good six inches and billowed out to one side even farther. (Elisa privately thought it looked like her mother had grown a second brain or something, but knew better than to say so.) "Here, Elisa, let me have that while you stand with them," she directed as she held her hand out for the camera. "Just a few more photos, then we'll all head out together, hm?"

Fox looked a little startled, but smiled and nodded as she said aloud, "The more the merrier!" Maggie and Dana both blinked a few times, but smiled and said nothing. But Beth looked like she'd just been sucker-punched; her eyes bugged out as her mouth fell open, and she squeaked, "Mom! …Mom, you know where we're going, right?"

"Of course I do, dear, but let's not ruin the surprise for Elisa," Diane said calmly as she proceeded to take a few more photos of the group, even while Beth struggled to get her jaw back into place. Elisa looked at her sister, then at her mother, added two and two together and came up with oh my God…

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Half an hour later, Elisa found herself blindfolded in the back of Fox's van, with her sister Beth sitting on one side and Angela on the other. Everyone was giggling like mad over a dirty joke that Elisa thought Dana had just told, with Maggie acting as her interpreter; it was amazing how creative one could be in sign language. After the giggling died down a bit, Elisa quietly asked her sister, "Let me guess: Mom and Fox originally planned separate parties?"

Beth whispered back, "You guessed it. Traditionally the maid of honor is the one that throws the party, but since I was only arriving today they both assumed they'd have to take care of it themselves. Fox called me on Monday to let me know what she was planning and find out if she needed to get me a costume as well, but Mom only let me know about her party in a phone call last night, and by the time I got the message it was too late to call her back. So as soon as you left the house to go back to your place I called the castle, and Mom and Fox managed to reach a compromise while I went to get Maggie and Dana."

"I'm so glad they were able to compromise and throw both parties," Angela whispered, almost wriggling in her seat with excitement. "After the dress fittings on Wednesday I talked to Maggie and Dana, and they've really been looking forward to this, or at least Dana has; Maggie's a little shy. Oh, this evening has already been so much fun, but from what I've been told, it's barely begun!"

"I just hope Mom's coming doesn't throw a damper on the whole second half," Beth whispered very, very quietly to her sister; Elisa would have bet her badge that just then she was glancing nervously at their mother to be sure she didn't overhear. "But she was giggling just now at Dana's joke, so maybe it'll all be okay…"

Moments later, the van pulled over and came to a stop, and Fox called out gaily from the driver's seat, "We're here! But Elisa, you can't take off the blindfold till we're out of the van!"

With ill grace, Elisa let herself be pulled out of the van still blindfolded. Only when she sensed all the ladies giggling around her on the sidewalk did somebody finally remove the blindfold to she could see where they'd taken her. Blinking a few times as her eyes adjusted to the light again, Elisa looked up at the marquee overhead, and smiled lopsidedly as her suspicions were confirmed.

"Let's head on in; I've got us a table reserved right next to the stage!" Fox announced as she led the ladies into HunkaMania, one of the better-known strip-joints in Manhattan; famous in the entire tri-state area for their all-male revue. Not to mention their barely-clad male waiters, and the masseurs…

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, the smorgasbord of junk food that had been brought in earlier was almost completely devoured. The five giant pizzas were down to scattered crusts, the buckets of chicken were now surrounded by a graveyard of tiny gnawed bones, the bags of chips were flattened and empty and even the six-foot hoagie had lost most of its length; and from the way Broadway was devouring the section he'd just ripped off for himself, Xanatos estimated that the rest would be gone within the next twenty minutes.

But Broadway was the only one still paying any attention to the food, and even the drinking game had been basically abandoned; halfway through that gloriously gluttonous feeding frenzy, Xanatos had turned on the giant-screen TV and started playing the first of the movies he'd selected for tonight. The first one was entitled Call of the Wild, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the Klondike Gold Rush or a dog named Buck. Oh, yes, it was definitely that sort of movie, and the antics of the lady and gentleman currently on the screen had both Claw and Lexington utterly riveted to the screen, their eyes bugged out and their mouths open… and their hands crossed over their crotches, in an attempt to conceal their current 'pre-dick-aments'. Lexington muttered in tones of awe, "Did you see…? I didn't know human females could do that…"

"Evidently they can, because she's sure as hell doing it," Brooklyn returned in an equally quiet mutter. Xanatos noted idly that the red-skinned gargoyle was definitely in a more composed state than his rookery brother, though he too was watching the screen avidly.

Goliath had been placed front and center in the seat of honor, with Hudson to his left and Matt to his right. They too were watching the goings-on on screen, but their interest seemed flavored with a note of amusement. When the characters on the screen began howling like crazed wolves while 'in congress', the clan leader muttered wryly in an aside to his mentor, "And the humans of the castle used to complain about the noise we made…"

"And about our mating flights upsetting their 'Christian moralities'," Hudson snorted. "Going on and on about how only beasts mated in public and such, and never mind that we all ruddy well knew how the villagers themselves used to celebrate Lughnasa… I always said we were better off, humans and gargoyles alike, afore those priests came to our land waving their crosses and spouting rhetoric."

Just as the film was reaching its climax, so to speak, Lexington jumped out of his seat and ran for the bathroom. Only a minute or two later, the final bellow from one of the characters on the screen was matched by the roar echoing from behind the closed door, and all the other males present traded knowing smiles. When the smaller green gargoyle emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, hanging his head and blushing dark olive, he had to endure some good-natured teasing about getting too involved in his viewing.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

"…And put them all on my tab!" Fox directed the waiter who had come to their table, dressed in nothing more than a bow-tied-collar and a black pair of skin-tight short-shorts. The waiter smiled and nodded, and proceeded to ask the other ladies, in a low husky voice that sent tingles even up Elisa's spine, what their pleasures would be tonight.

Elisa asked for her usual favorite, a strawberry margarita. Beth glanced uncertainly across the table at their mother for a moment, then shrugged and said in a what-the-hell, you-can-only-die-once tone of voice, "I'll have a Sex On the Beach!" Then despite her earlier bravado, she involuntarily flinched as she glanced again at her mother. But Diane only blinked a few times, and said nothing.

Maggie consulted with Dana in sign language for a moment, then told the waiter, "My friend here would like a Mai Tai, please. But I'm afraid I can't have anything alcoholic tonight; can you recommend a few drinks without alcohol in them?"

"Of course," the waiter almost purred, producing a list of drinks from… well, there must have been a pocket on those shorts somewhere, though Elisa would have sworn they were too tight for it. He gave the list to Maggie, then recommended his own personal favorite from the list, 'Safe Sex On the Beach.' Maggie ducked her head and stifled a giggle as she agreed to start with that one.

Diane ordered next, asking for a Pina Colada. Then it was Angela's turn, and she asked politely, "May I have a Long Island Iced Tea, please?" When both Fox and Elisa gave her startled looks, Angela explained, "Brooklyn had a few of those at the Halloween party, and he said they tasted pretty good…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, the first film had ended and Xanatos had just finished loading in the next one. The title (Midnight Obsessions) had just finished flashing on the screen when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and turned around to see Claw listing back and forth ever-so-slightly. The mute mutate signed something to him, and when Xanatos apologetically told him he hadn't the faintest idea what he'd just said, summarily grabbed him by the shoulder to drag him over to where Talon was sitting.

"Hey, don't block the screen!" Talon complained at first, then looked at what Claw was signing to him. "You need me to tell him… what! Are you serious? Well, yeah, but… okay, okay, I'll tell him!" Then Talon turned to Xanatos and said with a shrug, "Claw says he forgives you for hiring Sevarius and having him mutated, because if he hadn't become a mutate and come to live in the Labyrinth then he'd never have met Dana, and he wouldn't be married and having wild sex now like we just saw on the screen. …Hey, pal, you signed it, I just relayed it!"

"Oh, uh, well… thank you," a wide-eyed Xanatos said to the tiger-striped mutate, who gave him a think-nothing-of-it sort of wave before staggering off to the bar to get another drink.

Talon drained his current glass with a long swallow, gave a tremendous belch and said off-handedly, "What the hell, I sorta forgive you too. Gotta admit, it's cool to be able to fly under my own power 'steada needing a plane… 'Course, if my kid doesn't turn out perfect then I'm gonna haveta gut you like a fish an' leave you hanging from a lamppost in Central Park."

"Of course," Xanatos said faintly, then stood well back as Talon got up to get another drink for himself. And after both mutates had gotten their refills, the billionaire went up to the bar for his own drink and told Owen, "This time, make it a double."

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Once everyone had their drinks in hand, Fox told the waiter to bring another round of exactly the same out for them all, then pulled a small paper bag out of the shopping bag she'd brought in with her and announced that they were about to play a popular bachelorette party game: "I never." The rules were simple: everyone would take turns reaching into the sack, pulling out one of the tiny slips of paper inside and reading it aloud, a sentence beginning with "I never…" And anyone who had actually done that fiendish act must take a sip of their drinks.

The first few phrases pulled out of the sack were fairly innocuous, which made them all the more insidious. Fox started it by reading aloud, "I never… kissed a male over thirty years old." Then she raised her glass and took a drink, as her own husband was over thirty. So did Diane, since her husband Peter was well past that age, and so did Elisa, knowing that Goliath was actually over twice that age 'in growing years', let alone calendar years. And so did Angela, considering that every member of the Trio, despite their occasionally teenager-ish antics, was well over thirty years of age as well.

Elisa was next, and read aloud, "I never… lied about my weight." Then she shrugged and took a sip of her margarita, knowing all too well that the stated weight on her driver's license was about five pounds shy of the truth. Virtually everyone shrugged and followed suit; the only ones not to take sips were Dana and Angela.

Beth read the next one: "I never… lied about my age." This time, every woman at the table traded resigned glances and took a drink, except Angela.

Dana got the next one, and frowned as she read the paper she'd pulled out. Then she shrugged, and instead of handing the paper to Maggie to read she said aloud, in her strange-sounding voice, "I never went skin-nee-dip-ping," before taking a drink. So did Fox, and so did Angela, after Fox explained to her just what skinny-dipping was; Angela actually seemed a little surprised that anyone would deliberately wear clothing to go swimming. Beth took a drink too, blushing under her mother's eagle eye. Elisa eyed her sister, betting it had happened some time ago in Arizona, where the climate was more suitable for skinny-dipping, and privately resolved to worm the details out of her later. Then she took a drink herself, remembering all the times she'd shed her clothes and gone swimming in whatever lake or stream was handy in order to get clean again, while on the World Tour courtesy of Avalon. Of course, she'd only done it during the day, when Goliath was sleeping in stone and couldn't see her, but still…

Then came Maggie's turn, and when she read the slip of paper she'd pulled out she flinched back and whimpered, "Oh, dear… can I try again?"

"Sorry, dear, you have to read what you've pulled out," Fox said with a wicked grin. "But remember, you only have to take a drink if you actually did it…"

Maggie took a deep breath, then said all at once in a rush, "Ineverperformedfellatioforaguy." Then she quickly took a drink, slammed her glass down and tried to hide behind it.

"Oh, God," Elisa and Beth mumbled together, looking across the table at their mother. Then they traded resigned glances between themselves, and took fast sips of their drinks. And then they both chorused in horror, "Mom!"

Diane set down the glass she'd just taken a drink from and said serenely to her daughters, "Your father and I have been married over thirty years, dears. A lot can happen in thirty years' time…"

Angela eyed the way everyone at the table except her was drinking (even Dana, after she leaned over and read the paper clenched in Maggie's fist), then admitted aloud, "I didn't understand what she said; what's a 'flay-sho'?"

Diane leaned closer to her and whispered an explanation of what fellatio was. Angela blushed deep purple, then quickly took a drink. And when she set the glass back down and noticed Elisa's disbelieving stare, she protested, "But it shouldn't really count, because it wasn't really me…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Half an hour later, the drinking game was finished when the bag was emptied of all its slips of paper. By that time, both Elisa and Beth were feeling a little drunk, and more than a little shell-shocked. Not only had they, in the course of owning up to having committed various "I never's", forever shattered any virginal illusions their mother might have still had about her two little girls, but they themselves had learned a LOT more about their mother's past and current sex life than they'd ever, ever wanted to know. Beth leaned over in her seat to whisper to Elisa after the game was finished, swaying a bit more than necessary from the two drinks she'd finished off during the game, "All I can say is, thank God Dad ain't here, huh?"

"Amen to that," Elisa whispered back, but a trifle preoccupied; she was eyeing Angela with a touch of concern. The gargess had finished off two Long Island Iced Teas during the course of the drinking game, due to her habit of taking generous swallows instead of shallow sips, and was already halfway through her first New York Lemonade. Goliath had mentioned to her once that the average gargoyle's high metabolism allowed him to handle more alcohol than the average human, but if she'd been a human Angela would have been feelin' no pain by now. But she didn't appear to be affected yet by all the alcohol she'd consumed… not that Elisa really had any clue as to what a drunken gargoyle was like, either…

Just then their regular waiter came over to the table, followed by another scantily-clad waiter, both carrying large silver trays. At Fox's nod, they set the two trays down on the table in front of Elisa, saying in chorus, "Your refreshments, ladies!" Then they began taking orders for more drinks.

Elisa curiously eyed the large bakery box and stack of napkins on one tray, and the pile of small golden boxes on the other, while Fox said with a wicked grin, "I know you had cake and munchies at the house, but I figured that by now somebody might be getting hungry again. Go ahead, Elisa, open 'em up and pass them around!"

Elisa shrugged and opened the large bakery box first, then gasped and slapped the cover back down to shoot Fox a killer glare. Fox only grinned even more wickedly, saying, "Bet you didn't know there's a place called the Bakerotique that makes special Twinkies, hmmm?"

"Let me see!" Beth shoved her sister's hands out of the way so she could open the box again, looked inside and squealed. "Ohmigod, they're all shaped like--and ohmigod, one of 'em's purple!"

"Reserved for the bride-to-be, of course," Fox explained. "But feel free to try some of the other colors…" She thought to herself that it had cost substantially more than usual to have two dozen of the Bakerotique's special Twinkies made up in not just cream-yellow and chocolate brown, but dyed with food-coloring to nearly every color of the rainbow, with no questions asked. But it was worth it just to see the ladies' reactions as Elisa resignedly and rather gingerly began taking the baked goods out of the box, placing them on napkins and passing them around. She couldn't resist saying as Elisa cringed again, "By the way, despite the different colors, they all have the same cream filling…"

Each one of the pile of small golden boxes contained a small assortment of fine chocolates… again, all cast in a certain distinctive shape. Each lady present got a box, the bride-to-be got two, and Fox set one aside to take back to the castle for Anne Marsden, who was minding Alexander along with her own child while Fox partied.

Then it was time to open the presents they'd all brought to the party. Elisa looked over the stack of bridal shower gifts they gleefully piled in front of her, then decided it would be politic to open her mother's gift to her first. Going with the 'sweet scents' favors theme of the bridal shower held at the house, it was an assortment of scented body oils and perfumes in small vials; some were musk scents, and some were floral. Diane smiled at her and said, "I've no doubt that you'll find a few in that assortment that will please you," and Elisa agreed with a wide smile.

Beth clamored for her gift to be opened next, and to Elisa's utter lack of surprise, her irrepressible sister had gotten her some risqué lingerie; one sleek satin number in the same bold red color as her bomber jacket, and a concoction of black lace that Elisa privately thought to herself wouldn't last more than a single night with Goliath. Oh, he'd try hard to be careful with it, he was nearly always as careful with her clothing as he was with her skin, but the lace was almost guaranteed to snag on his sharp talons. But the red satin… she could almost hear that sexy low growl in her ears as she rubbed the sleek material between her fingers, and had to work hard to keep from blushing as she thanked her sister for the gift.

Angela's gift to her was both romantic and somewhat practical: a picnic basket she'd found somewhere, painstakingly repaired till it was good as new and decorated with brightly colored ribbons threaded in amidst the woven reeds. She'd filled it with a short stack of paper plates and cups, some mostly-matching silverware, a bottle of fine wine from Xanatos' well-stocked wine cellar and a picnic blanket that she had not only found and cleaned up, but painstakingly embroidered with Goliath and Elisa's names, and the date for their wedding tomorrow. "You'll probably want to wait for warmer weather to use it," Angela acknowledged with a wry smile, "but I thought you'd find a moonlight picnic romantic…"

"You thought right," Elisa said with a grateful smile. "Thank you, Angela; now I've got another good reason to wish it was summer again already!"

Dana and Maggie had gone in together on their gift for Elisa, probably with a little financial assistance from either Fox or Diane (unless they'd scrounged and turned in for money a LOT of soda cans); a Polaroid camera and two packs of film. "So you can take pictures of your fellow without worrying about a developer asking questions," Maggie explained with a smile. "We use one for special occasions down in the Labyrinth."

"I've been wanting to get one for us to use in the castle, too," Angela put in a bit wistfully. "It's not as personal as doing portraits or sketches, but it's so much faster, and you don't have to get them to hold still for a long time…"

"Well, why didn't you say so earlier?" Fox said in mild surprise. "We can pick one up later, so you can use it at Thanksgiving if you like. But for now… come on, Elisa, quit stalling…" as she gestured to the larger of the last two gifts on the table, with a gift tag that had a quick sketch of a fox's head in the 'From' section.

Elisa gave her a raised eyebrow as she retorted, "Considering your idea of munchies for this party, I'm afraid to open it with company present!"

Fox raised a shocked hand to her bosom as she gasped. "Elisa, you wound me! I'm just shattered!" But the effect was somewhat spoiled by both her Andorian disguise, and the wicked grin she utterly failed to smother.

The box was actually fairly heavy when she hefted it experimentally, so she doubted it was simply some utterly scandalous lingerie. She cautiously unwrapped it and pried the lid off, and blinked at what she found inside. A stack of bedsheet sets! She began lifting them out, as there was more than one packaged set inside. Some sets were of satin, in red, sapphire blue, and black, but they were interspersed with ordinary ones of percale cotton in the usual pastel colors. Well, the satin was a little risqué but not so much she was apt to die from embarrassment, and all in all it was actually a very thoughtful gift; Goliath had already inadvertently ruined a set of sheets by poking holes in them with his talons. "Thank you, Fox!" Elisa said, just before she pulled out the sixth set, another one of cotton percale… then sucked in a breath, and hurriedly put it back in the box. Because underneath the sixth set was, instead of a seventh set of sheets, a book bound in leather with gold letters imprinted in the cover: The New Joy of Sex--Deluxe Expanded Edition. She shot Fox a dirty look, but when the hostess smirked back she couldn't quite repress a smirk of her own. It was too bad that the book likely wouldn't have a section on lovemaking with gargoyles, but Goliath could probably write that section himself if he was ever so inclined…

That left only one box, a flat one wrapped in silver paper that didn't have a gift tag on it. Elisa unwrapped it and lifted the lid, gaped open-mouthed at what was revealed, then shot another killer glare at Fox. "You…!"

But Fox just shook her head, her own eyes wide. "That's not from me, Elisa. But I'd like to know where whoever it's from found it!"

Elisa plucked the item out of the box, and held up the LARGEST pair of steel handcuffs anyone had ever seen (and thoughtfully lined with velvet, too!) while glaring at everybody and saying, "All right, who's this from?" But everybody else was too busy either gaping like idiots or laughing hysterically to answer her…

Just then, the comedienne who'd been on stage entertaining the crowd with ribald jokes and commentary about her own sex life and the joys of living in New York took her final bow and walked off stage, as the club's emcee came on. "Let's have another round of applause for Doris, folks!" And once the applause started to die down, she continued with a grin, "And now, what you've all been waiting for, the evening's main entertainment; HunkaMania's all-male revue! And to begin our show, put your hands together for Billy!"

Amid an even greater round of applause, whistles and cheers, the emcee left the darkened stage. A wide screen lit up, showing a panoramic blue sky, fields of wheat, and a barn silo in the background. A golden spotlight illuminated a hunky guy with sun-bleached blond hair and a white, even, All-American smile that belonged on a Colgate commercial. The hunk was wearing a red flannel shirt, jeans so snug he must have been sewn into them, and cowboy boots. He had a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth like a cigarette.

Billy started strutting his stuff to Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," flashing his brilliant grin at the audience. He wiggled out of his shirt, whirled it overhead, and flung it offstage. Next he ripped off the jeans, the seams somehow parting right down the sides, revealing a pair of stars-and-stripes briefs.

Women in the audience were cheering and clapping, and many were waving bills in the air. "What are they doing?" Angela asked.

"Watch!" Fox said. Billy stripped off the briefs, eliciting a sudden startled gasp from Maggie, but modesty was barely preserved by a peach-colored thong. He sprang from the stage and gyrated between the tables, close to the women with the money. Eager hands reached to stuff the bills into the thin elastic bands.

Dana was grinning from ear to ear as she pulled off one of her shoes, dug into its toe area and pulled out a worn and crumpled dollar bill. But Fox held up a hand to forestall her, as she dug into a pocket on her Andorian costume and pulled out a huge wad of one-dollar bills. She threw them on the table with a wide grin, saying, "Here's enough for everybody, on me!"

Dana grinned even wider as she signed a quick thank-you to Fox, stuffed her dollar bill back into her shoe, grabbed one from the table and stood up waving it in the air. Billy grinned wide at the table of costumed ladies and danced their way, and soon Dana was placing the dollar bill flat against Billy's well-muscled chest and sliding it slowly down to tuck into his waistband. Then she sat back down in her chair smiling like the cat that had stolen the cream as Billy began dancing away again, while Maggie just gaped at her open-mouthed.

"I want to try that!" Angela announced, as she grabbed a dollar bill from the table and began waving it in the air. Either not hearing or utterly ignoring Elisa's frantic hisses about avoiding attracting attention to herself, she faced Billy with a wide, fang-showing smile as he smoothly gyrated his way to her side. He didn't even blink at the fangs, but swung one of those snake-hips towards her invitingly. She stuffed the dollar bill into his G-string, then quickly and daringly squeezed his left buttock before collapsing back into her chair, screaming with giggles. Billy quickly danced away and waggled his finger at her to indicate groping like that was a no-no, but he was still grinning.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, the bachelor party was still going strong; Deep Space 69 was showing on-screen, though not everyone was watching the porn movies quite so avidly anymore. That was because Brooklyn had challenged Matt Bluestone to a game of darts, which they were playing whenever the action on-screen slowed down, Jeffrey had persuaded Goliath to try another game of chess (after offering to spot him two pawns and a rook) and Claw had passed out facedown on top of the pool table.

The darts game was not going all that well, because after imbibing so many mixed drinks between them, both Matt and Brooklyn were having just a leetle trouble with hand-eye coordination. After five rounds of darts, they had managed to hit the board seven times between them, while the wall around the board was riddled with pockmarks, the moose head hanging on the wall to the left of the board had a dart tip still embedded in an antler and the bear's head hanging on the other side had a ragged ear from a direct hit.

Now that all the food was gone, Broadway was watching the screen just as avidly as his rookery brother Lexington, with one hand occupied in holding another fruity drink while the other was trying to cover the bulge in his loincloth. The man disguised as an alien on-screen was currently making the woman he'd captured demonstrate her amazing mouth capacity, as well as her apparent total lack of a gag reflex, and Broadway groaned aloud as he dropped his mixed drink and covered his crotch with both hands. Lexington murmured sympathetically, "Yeah, don't you wish that would happen to you?"

"Ohhh, you can't imagine how good it really is until you've actually done it!" Broadway groaned back, as the tent under his hands grew even more. "When Angela did that to me… God, sometimes I can still feel her lips and tongue on…"

Lexington dropped his fresh Vulcan Mind Meld in shock, as he stared at his rookery brother and blurted out, "Angela's given you a blow job!"

And of course, that pronouncement dropped right into one of the lulls in noise, and instantly everyone went dead silent. Everyone except Goliath, that is; a low growl rumbled forth from his massive chest as he turned around in his seat to stare at Broadway. Then he got out of his seat and began advancing towards him, swaying slightly but as inexorable as an avalanche, as he growled, "What have you been doing with my daughter!"

"I-it wasn't really her, I mean it wasn't really me, it wasn't really either of us!" Broadway babbled as he fell out of his seat and scrambled to all fours, half-crawling backwards away from the approaching behemoth. "W-we couldn't control ourselves, it was Coldstone and his mate that… Don't kill me!"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Far, far below the ensuing ruckus, deep in the bowels of the Aerie Building, two members of the former Pack were settling in to wait. "Not only will this be the easiest money we've made all year," Hyena gloated as she rubbed her hands together, "But the most fun, to boot!"

"I'm not so sure about the easiest," Jackal grumbled, examining his cybernetic claws, some of which were looking somewhat damaged. "I've dulled all my claws digging us through the basement walls into this building; it's going to take hours to sharpen them to where they'll be useful again!"

"Well, mine are still plenty sharp," as Hyena flashed her own claws, gleaming in the dim light provided by Jackal's shoulder-mounted lights. "And you'll have plenty of time to work on yours, since we've got hours to wait until morning." She almost affectionately patted the platform they were sitting on, which was the ceiling of an elevator cab. "And once it's dawn, we just ride this up to the castle along with the first passenger…"

"Break out as soon as we reach the top, and make our way to the roof," Jackal finished with a grin. "They won't be expecting a sudden attack from within the castle, and by the time Security musters a response we'll be on the rooftop already, collecting stone gargoyle heads…"

"With just a short detour or two along the way," Hyena purred sweetly, flashing her claws again. "The Quarryman boss did say that Xanatos himself is fair game. And wouldn't it just be an awful shame if his loving wifey, that bitch who betrayed us, happens to get in the way…" After contemplating that thought for a few moments, Hyena looked longingly up the incredibly long elevator shaft and muttered half to herself, "Hell with it, let's get up there and start cutting now! Bleeding flesh is a lot more fun to rip apart than stone…"

Jackal cocked the eyebrow of his living eye at her as he chided, "Patience, dear sister. We spent nearly all our cash on repairs for your systems after I broke you out of prison, while everyone was recovering from that incredibly fortuitous Big Sleep last summer. Let's not waste more of the money we'll be getting from this caper on repairs from the damage those gargoyles would inflict upon us, when they're wide awake and ready for battle. I, for one, have a long vacation and another sensory upgrade planned for my share…."

Their plans might have changed slightly had they known that the gargoyles in the castle were, at the moment, definitely not battle-ready. It had only taken four people to hold Goliath back from beating Broadway to a pulp while he explained about what had happened when Coldstone and Coldfire had possessed his and Angela's bodies, instead of the normal five or six. (It might have taken fewer than that, except those trying to wrestle Goliath to a standstill apparently had trouble figuring out which limbs were his and which were the other helpers'; at least, that was what Talon had said afterwards, while trying to explain why he'd nearly tied Hudson's tail into a knot.) But as the parties above and below were oblivious to each other, the cyborgs waited impatiently while the gargoyles and guests rocked on…

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the nightclub, a variety of strippers had strutted their stuff on-stage and amidst the audience, and the pile of dollar bills on the table at the bachelorette party had grown considerably smaller. Even Diane had tipped a dancer (utterly ignoring the horrified gasps from her daughters), an athletically inclined black man named Rodney who had danced vigorously to the Axel F theme from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. After she'd calmly explained to a dumfounded Beth and Elisa, "Just because I'm on a strict diet, doesn't mean I can't occasionally peruse the menu…" the two sisters had started grabbing bills for tipping as well.

Angela had decided some time ago that if she was dressed up to be a vampire, then she should drink like one too, and had therefore switched from New York Lemonades to Bloody Mary's. After she'd imbibed a couple of those, Fox had suggested she switch to Bloody Bulls, which had beef bouillon mixed in with the tomato juice, and these proved to be a real hit with the somewhat carnivorous lady; she'd already ordered and drained four of them, while giggling and waving bills at the strippers. Elisa knew that the tomato-juice-based drinks actually had less alcohol than the ones the gargess had been imbibing earlier, but she had no doubt at all that Angela, while not utterly plastered yet, was far, far away from sober.

Up until that point Maggie, the only wholly sober person in the group and definitely the most shy of them all, had steadfastly refused to touch a dollar. But now the emcee announced, "Ladies, put your hands together for… Felix!" The panoramic screen behind the stage flickered on again, to show a panoramic, larger-than-life view of a typical New York alley with a fence at the far end, with silhouettes of cats showing here and there against the midnight-blue sky. And as the pulsing, saucy beat of The Stray Cats' "Stray Cat Strut" came out of the hidden speakers, a character who could have come straight out of the musical "Cats" came sauntering onstage.

Elisa had gone to see "Cats" once, out of loyalty to felines in general and her pet Cagney in particular, and she was pretty sure that Felix's costume was loosely based on Munkustrap, the tabby-striped tomcat who had narrated/sang so much of the musical. Not that this fellow's costume was at all loose, oh no; it clung to his sleek body like it really was his own fur as he sauntered and leaped and spun across the stage. And when his dancing brought him close to the bachelorette party's table and his eyes lit upon Maggie staring back at him, they could see his eyes light up even through the feline mask coving the upper part of his face as he danced a little closer, to the very edge of the stage. Close enough that, even through the cheers and whistles from the appreciative audience, they could hear him give her a low, suggestive growl.

Beth, Fox, Dana and Angela all immediately began pushing dollar bills from the vanishing pile towards Maggie, chorusing gleefully, "Dare you! Dare you!" as Felix danced back across the stage, spinning and leaping and spreading a little of his rampant sexiness to all the ladies present. Then he began skinning himself, his costume coming off in sections; first the furry gloves and then the sleeves and leggings, until he was in a tight fur leotard that still clearly delineated his pecs, abs and the well-proportioned bulge at his crotch. Then he ripped even that off, to dance clad only in his cat-faced mask and a tabby-striped thong, that still had the tail attached in the back!

By now his athletic and sensuous dancing had at least half of the audience on their feet, and a forest of dollar bills waving in the air. He leaped off the stage and into their midst, accepting dollar bills in his G-string with a Cheshire Cat's grin, but unmistakably dancing his way towards the party's table. By now Elisa was chanting along with the others, "Dare you! Dare you!" and even Diane was nudging a dollar bill towards her daughter-in-law, saying, "Go on, dear, you know you want to, just this once!"

Unable to stand it any longer, Maggie grabbed a fistful of dollars and jumped to her feet, waving one of them in the air. For an instant Felix seemed to falter as he saw Maggie standing up and the slight but unmistakable bulge indicating pregnancy, but moments later he was dancing even more wildly in their direction.

He swayed and gyrated around Maggie, giving her that same sultry growl, and she playfully growled right back as she teasingly slid dollar bill after dollar bill down his front, sides and back to tuck them into the waistband of his thong. Then he leaned in close to whisper quickly to her, as his tail somehow flicked around her hips; after a startled moment, Elisa concluded that it must have a flexible artificial 'skeleton' and servomotors inside, like the tail on her deluxe gargoyle costume. Then he leaped and danced away, to accept tips from other ladies, while Maggie sat slowly down in her seat.

Diane noticed the stunned look on Maggie's face, and smiled at her reassuringly. "Don't worry, dear; we'll never breathe a word of this to Derek… We ladies have to have some secrets!"

"I-it's not that," Maggie said in a low voice, still a little dazed. "F-Felix, he…"

"I heard him whisper something to you," Beth said eagerly, giving her a sisterly nudge. "Come on, what'd he say?"

"He said… 'Congratulations; he's a lucky tom.' And then he… caressed me with his tail…"

"Yeah, I noticed that," Elisa said with a lascivious waggle of her eyebrows. "He must have a pretty sophisticated servo setup inside that tail, to control it like that."

Maggie stared at her. "Elisa, I used to have a tail, and I know how they work and how they feel. That wasn't being operated by any machine… and it felt warm…"

As that information sank in, every set of eyes at the table turned as one to look for Felix, but by then he'd already danced his way out of the room.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, Goliath had settled down again to continue losing at chess with Jeffrey and everyone else had settled own as well, to drink or chuck darts or watch the movie. Lexington had taken Brooklyn's place at the darts game, while Brooklyn went back to the bar for another drink. And another, and another, until he spun around to face the others, went too far and stumbled against the bar to sprawl across the floor. Still lying there, he lifted his head to blearily glare in Goliath's direction and point a talon at him as he said hoarsely, "Thish ish all your brother's fault!"

Goliath blinked at him as he said very intelligently, "Huh?"

"Your r(hic)ery brother, Col'shtone! 'S all hiz fault, hiz 'n' Coldbyre! Or Bonfire, or whatever her name is. When he an' she got to playing around in Broadface 'n' Angie's bodies, they musta bonded them t'gether!"

"Nooo, they didn't," Lexington said unsteadily as he turned away from the darts game to correct his rookery brother. "If they had, we woulda smelled the difference in 'em. 'Cause the nose always knows," he added sagely as he laid a finger alongside his nose, but forgot he was holding a dart at the time and almost poked his eye out with it.

"But they musta, 'cause 'fore that Angela was lookin' at me for her mate, I know she was!" Brooklyn insisted, as he unsteadily got to his feet and began stalking/staggering in Broadway's direction. "I don't gotta lose any weight to catch her; I could fly her with one wing tied down! An' I'm the sec(hic) second-in-command, an' I'm smarter than you, an'… an' I even got a bigger dick! See?" as he ripped his belt off and let his loincloth drop, to let it all hang out.

Xanatos let loose a long, silent whistle. Matt's eyes bugged out for a moment, before he looked away with an almost sullen expression. MacBeth noticed his red-haired companion's current state and laid an unsteady yet sympathetic hand on his shoulder, to say with blurred sympathy, "I know how y'feel, lad; th' clan back at Moray went about naked durin' their Breeding Moon. An' all of us men in th' castle got so horrible envious of 'em that we stayed indoors at night till t'was over, an' made bloody sure all th' ladies did too. Y' just have to remember, 'tis how ye use it that matters…"

Oblivious to the humans' discussion, Brooklyn finally stood in front of Broadway in all his drunken crimson glory and demanded, "Whaddayou got that I ain't got!"

Broadway belched right in his face, and said with supreme confidence, "I can cook."

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the nightclub, the ladies had all settled back to normal (or what passed for normal, in their various stages of drunkenness), and another stripper was onstage and strutting his stuff to the throbbing beat of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love".

Maggie had, in the course of the night, had a Safe Sex on the Beach, a Kiddie Cocktail, an Alice Cocktail and a Rose de Mai Cocktail, a Lassie-Sweet, a Cool Cow, Black Cow and Brown Cow and an Orange Flamingo, and was finally, after repeated playful needling by Dana and Beth, agreeing to try a Pussyfoot. Elisa herself had tried a few of those nonalcoholic drinks, in between a variety of margaritas and daiquiris, and so had her mother; it was surprising how many different nonalcoholic concoctions were available in a really high-quality bar with good bartenders. Angela had tried a Virgin Mary, but had immediately gone back to her Bloody Bulls.

Over the course of the night, various scantily-clad masseurs had come around to their table, offering to give the ladies back rubs for nominal fees, all of which went on Fox's bar tab. Fox had been the first to indulge, almost purring with sensuous delight as a fellow named Alberto went to work on her back and shoulders. Beth had gone for the sensuous treat next, and was followed eventually by her mother, but in a low-voiced conversation at the party's start everyone had agreed that Maggie and Angela would have to refuse all such offers; anyone laying hands on their backs would realize in short order that those "cloaks" the ladies were wearing were living wings. Dana had reluctantly decided she would refuse the treat as well, as a massage would be likely muss and ruin the beautifully feathered back and shoulders of her costume.

Elisa had finally loosened up enough to allow herself to indulge in a massage, and had to admit that it felt awfully good as a hunky guy named Andrew worked on her back and shoulders. Andrew was built like a cross between a bear and a bodybuilder, big and burly and hairy as can be, but his hands were gentle and soothing, pressing just hard enough to work out kinks that Elisa hadn't even known were there. His eyes twinkled behind his wire-rimmed glasses as he heard Elisa unconsciously groaning with satisfaction, and even more when he caught her involuntary whimper of protest as he finished up and backed away.

And just then Angela piped up wistfully, "I really want one of those… It felt so good, the last time my back was rubbed..."

Ooohh, yeah, Elisa could just bet it had felt good, considering that one of a gargoyle's major erogenous zones was around the wing-joints! Her eyes snapped open and every muscle that had just been gloriously loosened instantly tensed up again, as exactly what she'd feared would happen, happened: Andrew was heading for Angela's chair with a slow smile showing through his beard, saying, "More than happy to oblige you, dear lady…"

Despite her own somewhat drunken state, Fox was also instantly on the alert, eyes wide as Elisa could see her frantically sorting through options in her mind, in the same way Elisa herself was. What to do? They'd never thought of an excuse for her not to have one that would sound reasonable to normal people, and if they just flat-out refused to let Angela be massaged, the gargess was probably just drunk enough to forget herself and throw a tantrum about it. And even if they got the masseur to back off there was a real good chance that someone would notice Angela's eyes glowing red in anger; no mere costume could do that…

Then the quick thinking and killer reflexes that had made Fox the leader of the Pack came into play; she shoved her chair back and got to her feet just as Andrew went past her, saying loudly, "Who's gotta go with me to the bathroom?" And without waiting for an answer, she turned and purposefully stumbled right into Andrew's path, and managed to catch him off-balance and drag him down with her to the ground. He tried to graciously free himself from the tangle, but Fox gave a girlish giggle as she managed to squirm on top of him, still making it seem like the drunken fumblings of a hopelessly plastered female. "Oooh, you're so big and manly!" she cooed down into his face, as he was clearly trying to think of a way to foist her off without offending the very well-paying customer. "Ever been kissed by an Andorian warrior? We're a (hic) very passionate people, y'know…"

"(Ahem) Does somebody here need a hand up again?" a waiter said politely, as he appeared as if by magic next to the Fox-Andrew tangle; no doubt all the waiters stayed on alert to step in as needed and keep anyone from getting too rowdy, without drawing the official attention of the bouncers. Giggling all the while, Fox let herself be helped back to her feet and pointed in the direction of the restrooms, and by the time Andrew got to his feet as well Elisa had already leaned across the table and hissed to Angela that she'd better change her mind about that massage, if she wanted this party to continue. The killer glare in her stepmother-to-be's eyes sobered Angela up enough to remember herself and her situation, and she just gave Andrew a smile and a wave-off when he approached her again.

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, the partygoers had persuaded Brooklyn to sit down and quit making a fool of himself, so they could finish watching Deep Space 69. The flick had just finished screening when Xanatos tried to rouse Claw, still passed out on top of the pool table, with a few light taps to his shoulder. Unfortunately, his attempt backfired when, without fully waking up, Claw rolled over enough to reach out with one massive clawed hand and scoop Xanatos off his feet, and cuddled the startled billionaire to his furry chest like an oversized teddy bear as what was unmistakably a rough purring issued forth. Matt and Talon saw it first, and just about fell out of their chairs laughing. Once the others found out what was so funny, Brooklyn forgot all about sulking and really did fall out of his chair laughing, and even Goliath fell to chuckling evilly at the billionaire's plight. "Oh God, why didn't I bring the camera?" Talon wheezed and sputtered, tears of laughter streaming out of his eyes.

Owen efficiently came over with a vial of smelling salts, and uncapped it roughly a foot away from Claw's muzzle. That was close enough for working on a mutate; he jerked and snorted himself awake, while Xanatos swiftly extricated himself from Claw's grasp and tried fruitlessly to straighten his rumpled clothing. "(Ahem) Now that I have everybody's attention… It's time for the highlight of tonight's entertainment!"

"You mean that wasn't it?" Brooklyn gasped, still holding his sides in pain from laughing so hard. "Oh man, Elisa's going to just kick herself when she finds out what she missed…"

Xanatos gave him an extremely dirty look before turning towards the paneled wall decorated with hunting scenes and trophies. He reached up and into the bear's gaping jaws… and the gargoyles heard a faint -click- and whirring of nearly silent gears, as a portion of the wall revealed itself to be a hidden door. The section of paneling swung inwards, to reveal another room with a darkened interior. (A hidden room in Xanatos' own private den? Goliath snorted as he shook his head, thinking that the depths of the man's deviousness were truly beyond comprehension.) Oblivious to the clan leader's thoughts, Xanatos gave one of his famous smirks as he said, "This way, gentlemen and gentlegargs…"

The room was dimly lit by human standards, though the gargoyles thought it was just fine, and its furniture consisted mostly of a sturdy oak table and a row of equally sturdy yet comfortable chairs, all with holes conveniently cut in the back for those with tails. A large circular platform covered with an even larger dropcloth (a bed? It appeared to have pillows on it, under the dropcloth) was at one end of the room; at the other end, which all the chairs had been turned to face, the wall was completely covered by a set of large velvet curtains.

MacBeth noticed the lack of a bar in the second room and glanced wistfully back towards the room they'd come from, wondering if he had time enough to get another drink or two before the action started; another problem with that blasted spell that linked him to Demona is that the healing factor built into it made it hard to maintain a proper drunken state. He noticed absently that the wall between the rooms had a series of teeny-weeny windows set in pairs, probably corresponding to the eyes of a few of the stuffed animal heads mounted as trophies, before focusing his attention on what Owen was bringing in.

The majordomo was pushing before him a small cart stocked with suitable libations from the bar, and a series of slim leather wallets piled on a tray. He began efficiently distributing both drinks and wallets to all the guests, and Broadway curiously opened up the wallet handed to him to pull out a few twenty-dollar bills. "What's this for?"

"You'll find out soon," Matt said with a leering grin, rubbing his hands briskly in anticipation. He and Xanatos together prodded Goliath into taking the center seat of the chairs facing the curtains.

"Hey, must be some pretty hot ladies waiting in the wings, to merit twenties instead of ones," Talon whispered eagerly to a still somewhat unsteady Claw as they took their seats. Then again, he reflected wryly to himself, it might just be that Xanatos never carried anything smaller than twenties in his own wallet…

Once everyone was seated, Xanatos announced, "And now, may I present: Sugar and Spice!"

The velvet curtains began to slowly draw back, while hidden speakers began to drive out a pulsing, jazzy beat that the human and former-human members of the audience tentatively recognized the Eurhythmic's 'Sweet Dreams', though it was actually an extended remix version of it. And the curtains swept back as hidden spotlights came on, revealing… a pair of figures, both wrapped completely in gargoyle wings. Goliath gasped aloud in shock, while the Trio hooted and cheered in anticipation.

Annie Lennox's voice came through the hidden speakers, and as she sang throatily,

"Sweet Dreams are made of these…" The figure on the left unwrapped golden-tan wings to reveal a buxom golden gargess with a long, flowing silver-white mane. She was clad in what appeared to be a harem girl's outfit; a sapphire blue and extremely scant bikini top layered over by gauzy blue veils and equally gauzy pantaloons over an equally scanty bikini bottom. She was adorned with a silver coin belt, silver anklets and armbands, a large jewel flashed at where a human's navel would be, and even her claws and toe-talons were dipped in silver. She gave the breathless audience a slow, sweet smile.

"Who am I to disagree…" The second pair of wings, dark brown in color, opened to reveal an equally buxom chocolate-colored gargess. Her mane was a riot of black satin curls cascading down around her shoulders, her harem outfit was done in a vivid crimson topped with golden jewelry, and her smile was even more wicked.

"Travel the world and the seven seas," Annie Lennox sang as the gargesses began to move in perfect rhythm, hips and tails swaying sensuously as they began to dance. "Everybody's looking for something…"

"Some of them want to use you," as 'Sugar' removed a blue layer of veil with a flick of her wrist, and tossed it into the audience, to float gently down onto Goliath's head and drape over the point of his left ear. The lavender giant was still sitting there in his chair, looking as stunned as if he'd been whopped upside the head with a two-by-four, and both Matt and Xanatos had to fight hard to keep from snickering at his expression.

"Some of them want to get used by you," as 'Spice' removed one of her scarlet veils and targeted Goliath with it as well. It ended up draped over his right wing-talon, which clenched on it seemingly of its own volition.

"Some of them want to abuse you," as the dancers swayed and gyrated, every movement screaming of their raw sensuality; their hands moved over their bodies, making gestures of offering before they spun away tauntingly. "Some of them want to be abused…"

By the time some part of Goliath's brain realized that the two gargesses in front of him were actually humans clad in the super-deluxe-edition, roboticized costumes Xanatos had created for last Halloween, the rest of him was too far gone to care. Nor was he the only one affected; even those who had known all along were being drawn into the ladies' spell, an enchantment woven of throbbing rhythms, swaying limbs, cast-off veils and pure, primeval sexuality. Virtually every eye in the room was mesmerized, staring at the dancers as if they'd forgotten how to blink, tails were twitching wildly and thumping against the floor, and gaping mouths began to drool slightly with sheer, raw lust. And by the time Sugar and Spice had cast off all their veils and were down to their jewelry and bikini tops and bottoms, more than one set of trousers or loincloth began to indicate a developing 'pre-dick-ament'.

Then the two dancers simultaneously leaped from the stage, to land right at Goliath's feet. On his right, Matt hissed to him, "Get out the tips!" while illustrating by holding up one of the twenty-dollar bills from the wallet he'd been given, and waving it invitingly towards the ladies.

But the dancers ignored Matt for the moment, focusing all their attention and considerable charms on the guest of honor. Spice circled behind Goliath's chair and leaned over him, draping his head with her breasts and playing with his pointed ears, while Sugar straddled his legs with hers, wrapped her tail around his ankles and leaned forward invitingly, her bosom only inches from his face. They might have been wearing costumes, but they looked like real gargoyle skins, and Sugar's tail around his ankles and what Spice was doing behind him sure felt real, and even Goliath's tail twitched uncontrollably as his own loincloth began to swell.

"The tips!" Matt hissed again, and this time Goliath got the clue. He'd utterly forgotten the wallet he'd been at first holding loosely in one hand, then squeezing tightly as the dancing went on, but now he managed to fumble it open and produced a thoroughly crumpled bill. Sugar grinned, showing expertly-done fangs, and leaned in even closer as she took a deep breath, making her already impressive bosom swell even further; Goliath swallowed hard as he took the hint, and quickly stuffed the bill down her cleavage.

Sugar smiled wider, and showed her approval by leaning forward a little further to rub her breasts against Goliath's chest while growling softly in his ear. Then in a flash she backed away to circle behind him, while Spice came around to the front. She sat directly on Goliath's lap and wriggled delightfully on the swell in his loincloth, while running her talons tantalizingly down one of his swelling biceps (and interestingly, both areas swelled even larger), and wordlessly coaxed him into sliding another of those bills into the strings of her bikini bottoms.

After a few more rounds of tag-teaming Goliath, and coaxing him out of two more of his bills, the dancers split up and began working the crowd. Sugar went right and graced Matt with an eye-popping view of her cleavage, inviting him to stuff one of his twenties down it and to boldly cop a feel along the way. Spice went left, draping herself supine over Brooklyn's knees and smiling up into his wide eyes and gaping beak, as his tail drummed wildly against the floor behind his chair. Then she sat up to lap-dance on his loincloth until he adorned her G-string with a twenty, and thanked him with a kiss to the side of his beak (at which his tail thwacked against his chair so hard it cracked the wood) before leaping off to begin stalking her next victim.

Each male in the audience received favorable treatment, and dispensed their treats in return. Xanatos smiled proudly as he saw how Sugar had Lexington limp in his chair (except for one crucial portion of his anatomy) and whimpering helplessly as she sauntered away with a flick of her tail and most of his bills, while Spice had Hudson grinning from ear to ear and stuffing bills down her cleavage while she sat in his lap, purring and combing her talons through his beard. And while Jeffrey had been somewhat left out of the fun of watching the porno flicks, here the dancers let him freely grope as he stuffed bills here and there, only playfully slapping his hand away when he got just a little too enthusiastic about ensuring the bills were firmly in place. Xanatos reflected that this party was worth every dollar he'd spent on it and more, and it wasn't quite over yet…

By the time Sugar and Spice had both completed their circuits of the room and leaped back onto the stage, their blue and red string bikinis were stuffed with greens, and everybody in the audience had flat wallets and foolish grins on their faces. The music reached a crescendo as the curtains began to draw closed again, and the dancers spun behind the velvet as it swept across the stage… only to stop before completely closing. And barely a second after they'd stopped, golden and chocolate-brown hands flashed into the gap, holding red and blue bikini tops. They dangled them meaningfully for a moment before tossing them out into the crowd, as every male throat erupted in howls, whistles and roars of appreciation. The red bikini top landed on Claw's right arm as he gaped at it disbelievingly, while the blue one landed squarely on Jeffrey's head, to be gently taken off and sniffed at in wonder. Then came the bikini bottoms; the red one hooked on the tip of Brooklyn's beak as he howled at the ceiling, and Broadway moved with surprising speed for his bulk to deftly snag the blue one out of the air before Talon could grab it.

Then the curtains swung back open, and the ladies were dancing again! They used their wings like the exotic dancers of old used to use giant ostrich-feather fans in their act, folding them across their bodies to artfully conceal and reveal; teasing and tantalizing the audience anew. And just as the music reached a fever pitch, the two stopped and stood to face the audience while wrapped in their wings, then opened their wings wide… just as the lights cut out, plunging the stage into darkness.

There was a moment of silence, followed by thunderous applause, cheers, roars and whistles. Owen turned on the main lights as the curtains swept across the stage again, and Talon asked for Claw as the mute mutate held up the red bikini top, "Can he keep that?" Jeffrey was already quietly stuffing his trophy into a pocket, while Lexington warned Broadway that if Angela caught him with that blue bikini bottom, his life wouldn't be worth gravel… Goliath was already tucking his red and blue veil trophies into his belt pouch; then he paused as he thought of Elisa's possible reaction if she found them on him, and finally sighed gustily and left them draped across his chair.

Xanatos urged everybody to go back out into the main room again, to continue the party. "More food and drink is on the way, and I've been saving the best films for last as well; prepare yourselves for Black Velvet Magic and Sex Trek III: The Search for Ultima!"

Cheering, the crowd of males surged out of the room, but when Brooklyn got close to the door, his own trophy clutched tight in one taloned hand, Owen discreetly drew him to one side. Brooklyn looked at him questioningly, but Owen said nothing until the rest of the party had gone out; then he said only, "One of the ladies wanted to talk to you specifically," before slipping out and closing the door behind him.

To him? Specifically? Brooklyn's throat suddenly went dry as he slowly turned around, to find the two ladies, with light satin robes thrown over their gargoyle costumes, stepping out from behind the curtain and smiling at him. He swallowed hard, then managed to say, "Um… Hi." He suddenly remembered the red bikini bottom clutched in his hand, and hurriedly held it out as he stammered, "You, uh, want this back?"

"No, you can keep it," 'Sugar' said with a smile. "Mr. X is letting us keep the real costumes, along with our tips and all the money he paid up front."

"But we're here for more than just the money we made tonight," 'Spice' said as she came even closer to him, with a small smile that seemed much more sincere than the high-kilowattage sexy smile she'd worn during her dancing… which somehow affected him even more strongly. "You see, this isn't the first time some of us at the club have encountered gargoyles..."

"It isn't?" Brooklyn gaped at them both.

"Uh-unh." Sugar reached his side and took one of his hands in hers as she said, "Just two months ago, you and the green gargoyle, Lexington, saved Linda Lee and her boyfriend from being mugged over on 32nd Avenue. Linda wanted to thank you both, but Jerry was such a coward that he turned and ran off with her before she had a chance to say anything."

"And in late March of last year," Spice said, her face and voice serious as she took his other hand in hers, then began running one of her talon-gloved hands up his arm, "you personally saved another woman from being… gang-raped in an alley off of 84th Street. Do you remember her; a black woman wearing a blue pantsuit?"

Brooklyn honestly didn't remember the incident at all; there had been so many crimes averted over the last couple of years, sometimes as many as four in a single patrol, that they all tended to blur together after a while. But he took a wild guess and said tentatively, "That was you?"

"Mm-hmm… But I'm ashamed to admit that, back then, I didn't know that you folks aren't monsters; that's why I screamed and ran instead of thanking you. Because you saved my life, Brooklyn; those gangstas were going to kill me after they'd… had their fun with me; I could see it in their eyes."

"Uh, well… I'm just glad I could help, really."

"You folks really are heroes in a crazy way, doing all that you do for us without even getting paid for it," Sugar said with a smile. "But we thought that maybe, just this once, you'd like to have a reward for all your hard work."

And while still running one hand sensuously up and down Brooklyn's arm, Spice put her other hand on Brooklyn's belt and tugged gently as she said with a smile, "A special, personal reward…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back in the other room, the next film was showing on the screen and everybody had settled down with more pizza and drinks in their hands; all thoroughly engrossed in the current antics on-screen, none of the clan had yet to notice Brooklyn's absence. But suddenly Jeffrey, who had been about to call it a night and ask Owen to show him to the elevator, gave a start and jerked his head off to the left. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Owen said blandly.

"I thought I heard… a roaring noise of some sort. It was faint, muffled, but it wasn't coming from the theater speakers; I could have sworn it was coming from over there," as he pointed straight at the wall of trophies.

Owen assured him that he'd heard nothing, but suggested that perhaps there was a problem with the plumbing in the main castle, and if any of the clan heard it again he'd have it checked out in the morning. And as he ushered Jeffrey out of the room and to the elevators, letting the Aerie Building night security people know via intercom that a guest was coming down and would need a taxi ride to get home, he made a note to himself to let Xanatos know that the soundproofing in the private room evidently wasn't quite as thorough as he'd thought.

On the way back to the party, he thought that it wouldn't hurt to make a quick check on Alexander. Although he had every faith in Anne Marsden's ability to deal with the babe in everyday situations; the woman was a marvel with children, and once she'd come to accept the existence of magic, dealt with it and the children's emerging powers as matter-of-factly as anyone in the castle. She really was a treasure, virtually a Godsend… but then, Owen thought privately as a tiny, painfully wry smile tugged unseen at the corner of his mouth, that was to be expected…

But as Owen reached the level of the nursery, he frowned imperceptibly as he heard the sound of a child crying hysterically. But the sound wasn't coming from Alexander's nursery; he followed it to the kitchen, even as the cries faded to soft sobs and hiccups, to find Anne sitting on a stool with her daughter Bethany, rubbing her back to comfort the crying child, while waiting for a small saucepan of milk to heat up. Anne heard him and turned around in dismay, saying, "Oh, dear, could you hear her clear down at the party? I'm so sorry, Owen, but Bethany's having nightmares tonight…"

But Bethany saw Owen, and reached her arms out for him as she began screaming again, "Bad men, Unca Owen! Bad robots! They're mean and shiny and they want to make everybody dead! Bad robots…"

"Bethany, sweetie, shhh, shhh… We're safe here in the castle, honey. Nobody's going to make anybody dead tonight; you're safe here," Anne said soothingly as she tried again to quiet her daughter. "I'm sorry, Owen; she doesn't have nightmares very often, but when she does, they're doozies."

But Owen pulled over another stool, and sat down next to mother and child with a serious frown on his face. "Here, let me have her for a moment." Anne hesitantly handed her over, and once Bethany was sniffling and hiccuping in Owen's lap, he stroked her light blond hair softly with his flesh hand as he whispered, "Dear child… Bethany, tell me everything. Tell me about the bad robots. Where do they come from? And what do they look like?"

Bethany grabbed his tie hard enough to almost strangle him as she babbled earnestly, "They come up from the gwound, an' they're all shiny an' gold an' they got sharp claws an' their arms and legs go all funny an' they're really nasty stinky mean!"

"I see," Owen said softly. "These robots… was one of them a girl robot?"

Bethany nodded emphatically, and said, "But really ugly 'cause she so mean!"

Anne looked at the two of them incredulously. "Owen…!"

Owen's face was grave as he turned to face her. "Anne, do you remember what we told you when you first came here, about how Bethany's power of True Sight is occasionally accompanied by the power of prophecy?"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the club, the party had slowed down and become subdued for a short while, as the ladies all realized how close they'd come to having their cover blown. Then another stripper had come on and utterly wowed the crowd with his routine; Lucas had on a tearaway version of the absolute sexiest werewolf costume anyone had ever seen, a lupine version of the "Cats" musical's Rum-Tum-Tugga. He prowled across the stage to the howling rhythms of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf," his smoldering looks and sinuous movements portraying such raw animal passion that over half the women in the audience came down with flushed faces and heaving bosoms. Including every member of Elisa's party; he somehow managed to make eye contact with every one of them, and silently promise each woman that if she dared to face him alone, she'd have a wild night that she'd relive forever in her wildest, darkest dreams. Even Fox, who had been having a lot of fun teasing and tipping strippers but not apparently been affected by any of them., seemed mesmerized by Lucas' dancing, and when Lucas stripped down to a black leather thong (though without a tail attached), she joined Angela in giving a low growl of appreciation and anticipation, while waving a fistful of bills in the air.

After Lucas had finished his dancing (and collecting so many tips in his thong that they could hardly see his hips anymore) and prowled away, Fox decided that she really did need a bathroom break. Shortly after she'd left, Beth got to her feet, deciding aloud, "I'm for the ladies' too; be back in a few…" Her mother got up to accompany her, but the two of them hadn't gotten more than halfway across the room when all Hell broke loose.

Shots rang out from the entrance to the nightclub, and everyone whipped around to see two men come charging in, past the falling body of the bouncer they'd just shot. The man in the lead was waving a gun around and shouting, "Marge! Marge, you whore, I know you're in here! Show yourself, bitch!" The other man accompanying the shooter carried no visible weapons and did not shout, but the look on his face was one of pure, evil pleasure.

Screams erupted all over the nightclub, as people leaped out of their seats and began stampeding, some nearly crawling over each other to get away from the duo and to the fire exits. The rush of bodies blocked and nearly toppled over Elisa, as she jumped to her feet to confront the duo… and paused in dismay. What the hell was she supposed to do, shout "Freeze! Starfleet Security"! She was too far away to use the Taser on either of the men, which meant she had to get closer to them, going against the crowd… without drawing attention to herself, or the man with the gun would have the drop on her.

Maggie, who had never been a fighter either before or after her mutation and was certainly in no condition to fight at the moment, was scooting under the table and forcibly dragging Dana down under with her. But Angela leaped to her feet, snapped the gold chain binding her wing-talons with a convulsive jerk and ripped her concealing gloves off, as she roared a warrior's challenge across the room. Which was exactly the wrong thing to do, because it attracted the men's attention as the gargess flared her wings and leaped for them… jostled her left wing against an overhead lighting fixture and fell miserably short, the booze in her system affecting both her balance and her judgment. The only thing that saved her from being instantly killed was that the abruptness of her falling flat on her face caused the first bullet fired at her to miss her by a good two feet overhead. But Elisa knew, even as she fought against the panicking crowd to get within Taser range, that the second bullet probably wouldn't miss…

Shooter's first shot might have missed Angela as much from the jolt of surprise at her appearance as from her abrupt fall out of line of fire. And when she fell so abruptly, Shooter evidently thought he'd gotten her after all, because he spent only a second or so staring at her incredulously before turning away and shouting again to the room at large, "Marge! You whoring bitch, you show yourself and get what you deserve!"

But Shooter's Evil Buddy kept an eye on Angela, and when she began struggling to her feet again he snarled something to his pal, words that Elisa couldn't hear but which evidently amounted to something like "The monster's still moving; finish her off." Because Shooter turned and saw her, and took deadly aim…

But he was nearly knocked off his feet by the flying object that hit him in the back, a silver serving tray that had been flung like a discus by Fox. She had emerged from the bathroom just as the chaos had started, and was also fighting to get close enough to use her Taser, but was more than willing to use whatever weapon came to hand in the meantime.

Shooter spun around again to confront whoever had hit him, only to have an open champagne bottle come flying at him from the side, striking a glancing blow and spewing its foamy contents all over him and his buddy. Diane followed suit with the ice bucket that the bottle had been in, missing Shooter as he dodged it but scoring a direct hit on his buddy and throwing him off-balance. Meanwhile, from behind the table she and her mother had overturned for a measure of protection, Beth shouted, "Hey, asshole, over here!" as she thumbed the hidden switch on her wand. And when Shooter looked in their direction, the laser point shot out and scored a direct hit in his eyes.

There's a reason why laser pointers over a certain level of light intensity have been taken off the market and banned from public use; Shooter screamed and jerked away, temporarily blinded, and fired wildly in their direction. A sudden high-pitched scream from the crowd said he'd hit somebody, but Elisa could only pray that the wound wasn't fatal as she continued fighting to get within range.

But Fox's athletic vault over another overturned table while the shooter was blinded had already put her in range, and she aimed her own Taser and fired. Both darts hit Shooter in the torso, and he jerked and screamed like a girl as his body was flooded with 50,000 volts of electricity, before slumping to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

But that's when Evil Buddy scowled at Fox and whipped out a gun of his own; evidently, he'd been happy to let his pal (clearly drunk, and probably incited to attack by repeated needling and plying of beers) do most of the damage while he just sat back and enjoyed the fun, but he was prepared to deal with people who tried to spoil his party. And Fox's Taser would have to be reloaded with a fresh cartridge before it could be used again; she was effectively weaponless… but not helpless, as she flipped back over the overturned table to dodge the first shot fired at her.

And the first shot was the only one Evil Buddy got, because that's when Elisa finally made her way into firing range and fired her Taser at him. E.B. didn't make a sound as he was hit and flooded with 50,000 volts, but his spasmodic jerks before falling to the floor and twitching uncontrollably were still vindictively satisfying to watch.

The room was still rapidly emptying of ladies who either didn't believe the fighting was over or who had just decided that their own evening's fun was definitely finis. Fox, Angela, Beth and Diane all gathered together next to the out-of-commission would-be felons and Dana and Maggie came crawling out from under their table to rejoin the party, while Elisa was trying to find something to secure their hands and feet with and privately grumbling that Starfleet really should issue handcuffs to their security personnel.

While still a little groggy and heartily ashamed of her poor performance as a warrior, Angela was still strong enough to grab the silver serving tray that had been used as a discus, rip it in half and twist the pieces into rough metallic strips that she then wrapped around the wrists of both men before the stun effects wore off. The improvised cuffs had plenty of sharp edges that dug cruelly into the men's flesh here at a few points, but as Fox said with vicious satisfaction, "If they start struggling and slash their own wrists open, then that's just too damn bad for them."

Diane said pointedly as she glanced at Angela, Maggie and Dana, "I really don't think that some of us should be here when the police arrive…"

Fox agreed utterly, as she fished out her van keys and tossed them to Maggie. "Maggie, you'll have to drive; you're the only one stone sober and we don't have time to call Aerie Security to drop off a driver for us like I'd planned. Just take the van straight to the Labyrinth, and Angela, you'd better go with them and stay there until you're sober enough to fly home."

Elisa nodded in agreement as well, as she said decisively, "Fox, give Beth your Taser, so we can wipe your prints off it; we can say she fired it, and I don't think anyone will question it in all the confusion we've had in here." They could say Beth had brought the Tasers up from Arizona, where they were legal, and with any luck, Elisa's badge and her family's long history with the force would keep the policemen sure to be arriving soon from booking them for illegal arms use. "The rest of us should be able to leave after paying the tab and giving our statements, and we'll take a cab back to Mom's place and call the castle and the Labyrinth from there. But for now, get going; this party's definitely over…"

Fox grinned wickedly as she winked at Elisa and said, "Yeah, but wasn't it a blast while it lasted?"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Back at the castle, Owen was at his office desk, pulling up files on his computer, while Anne sat nearby with Bethany in her lap. After a moment, he turned the monitor to face them and asked seriously, "Bethany, are these the 'bad robots' from your dream?"

On the screen were side-by-side pictures of Jackal and Hyena, taken by the lab technicians shortly after their "upgrade" to cyborgs. Bethany shuddered and hid her face in her mother's nightshirt, but nodded violently. Anne stared at the screen in shock and revulsion as she said, "Who--what--are those!"

" 'What' might indeed be the correct interrogative now," Owen murmured. "These were ordinary humans, who once spent some time pretending to be heroes for a popular television show. This is what they looked like when they starred in 'The Pack'," as he pulled up two more pictures, press releases from Pack Media studios back in 1994.

Anne gave a start of recognition. "Hyena and Jackal! I remember it now; when that show came on, the older kids at Wee Folks Daycare would glue themselves to the screen to watch it; we couldn't pry them away if we waved candy bars under their noses! And they always got so rambunctious after watching the Pack defeat the Evil Ninjas, or whatever the enemy was that week, it would take over an hour to settle them down again…"

Owen nodded. "Unfortunately, the heroic image they projected on the show was a complete sham. These two in particular were, to put it bluntly, bloodthirsty killers who agreed to star in a television show only because it paid more money and more consistently than their more usual line of work, that of mercenaries or assassins for hire."

Anne looked sick. "Bloodthirsty killers for hire? Dear God, and some of the children utterly idolized them… How on earth could Mrs. Xanatos have worked with them for so long?"

Owen decided that just right then was not the right time to let the Xanatos family's well-meaning but somewhat naïve nanny know about her employers' own less-than-savory pasts. Instead, he continued, "When the Pack was disbanded, these two turned to a life of crime, but were apprehended with the help of the gargoyles and put into prison. They broke out once, but another encounter with the gargoyles resulted in their defeat once more. But eventually they were approached by… someone called Coyote, who offered them a chance to become fighters capable of taking on the gargoyles and winning, instead of always being defeated by them. They accepted his offer…"

"And paid for it with what was left of their humanity, by turning halfway into machines," Anne finished for him grimly. "Killing machines…"

"The correct term for their new condition is 'cyborg'," Owen informed her. "And these two have become more cybernetic than organic; every limb has been replaced as well as a few sensory organs, and only their brains and a few internal organs are still human. And they have an undeniable grudge against the clan." He shut down the files, and turned to Bethany again. "Bethany, you said that in your dream, these bad robots came up out of the ground. How did they do that?"

Bethany fretfully clutched her mother's nightshirt again, but replied, "They dug up like Georgey Gopher inna cartoon, an' when they came outta the floor they was laughing really nasty bullies!"

Anne looked horrified as she stared at the floor. "They're coming up through the castle floor!"

"Not necessarily," Owen said almost absently. "Prophetic dreams are not always exact, and they often deal in metaphors, images that Bethany's mind can more easily understand. She has seen this… Georgey Gopher surface from below in that manner in cartoons, so that image may be what her power has seized up on a way to portray these two felons… coming up from below." He drummed his fingers on the desktop for a moment in thought, then got out of his chair. "Follow me to the main security room."

Five minutes later, mother and child were sitting next to Owen in a room crammed with TV monitors and control panels, the heart of the castle's security and defensive/offensive systems, as he cautioned Anne to hold onto Bethany tightly, "…and don't let her touch anything, or touch anything yourself."

Anne gave him a raised eyebrow, more than a little miffed by his attitude. "I'm long past my own 'Curious George, poke-and-pickup-and-taste everything in sight' stage, Mr. Burnett…"

Owen paused for a moment in his scanning of monitors. "Of course you are; my apologies." He resumed his scanning, then said almost off-handedly, "But do realize that though this particular mortal guise is scarcely two decades old, Puck has seen countless generations of humans make foolish mistakes, often from tampering with forces beyond their control when they really should have known better."

Anne gave him a startled glance as she murmured half to herself, " 'This particular mortal guise'…? How many other identities have you had over the centuries?"

"More than I can easily remember… and this is neither the time nor place to be discussing them. The lowest levels of the castle appear to be clear… Nor does the arboretum show any signs of disturbance. But if Jackal and Hyena were approaching from outside the castle, Bethany's dream would likely have portrayed them flying in for the attack, much like the gargoyles do. The threat must come from within…"

"And you won't be able to use Puck's powers until they attack and Alexander is actually in danger, and by then it might be too late," Anne said grimly.

"Particularly since a Fey's magic has no direct effect against cold iron, and the cyborgs have a fair amount of that metal incorporated into the steel alloys that make up most of their bodies. As Puck, I could use magic against them indirectly, by animating the walls and furniture and such, but…"

"But basically, the defense is up to us mere mortals," Anne said with grim humor. "Shall we go warn the gargoyles, so they're prepared for battle?"

Even a normally emotionless exterior can show occasional cracks; Owen briefly rolled his eyes before shaking his head emphatically. "Not until we have a better idea of our opponents' plans and how to defeat them. I regret to inform you that every last man and gargoyle at the party is currently hopelessly drunk, including our employer. If we go in there and announce a threat to the castle, without a clear idea of what quarter the threat is coming from and any firm plan for them to follow… the resultant chaos could do more damage than even Hyena and Jackal are capable of."

Anne winced. "Ouch. Got it… So it's really down to just us hired help, huh?"

Owen nodded. "Precisely. I'll check with Building Security in the lobby, and see if they've noticed anything at all out of the ordinary in the last few hours…"

While he called the lobby, Anne took a firmer grip on her squirming daughter, who had a child's usual short attention span and was getting bored just sitting there and looking at TV's that weren't showing cartoons or anything interesting. Bethany squirmed harder and protested, "Want to get down!"

"No, sweetie, this isn't a room to exploring in. No, you can't get down… Down…" Anne repeated to herself, then looked sharply at Owen. "Owen, do you remember that action movie where somebody sneaked up a building's elevator shaft to get the drop on the people holding hostages upstairs?"

"Not specifically, but the concept is familiar," Owen said with what might possibly have been a trace of excitement in his voice as he set down the lobby phone and turned back to the monitors. It took only a moment to access the small security cameras that were installed in each of the building's elevator cabs. They all showed nothing, so he then activated the audio pickups for each elevator cab. At first their ears were assaulted with the soft but sprightly and almost sickeningly sweet musak that was virtually required for elevators in large office buildings. Then Owen found and turned on the preset filters, designed specifically to filter out their elevator music in surveillance situations, and the sound of violins and tinkling piano keys faded abruptly to silence.

For the next minute or so, they heard nothing. Then they heard, ever-so-faintly, a human voice; a female… Owen turned the audio gain up to maximum and they heard the voice say peevishly, "…going to go stark raving bonkers in another five seconds! Come on, it'll just take one swipe of my claws, and they'll probably thank me for doing it before we kill 'em!"

"And don't you suppose that their security personnel just might have alarms inside the elevator cabs, and would notice damage being done to the sound system inside their elevator?" another voice, a male, asked sardonically. "Patience, dear sister; according to our timetable, dawn should be in only another four hours. In the meantime, just think of it as theme music for smashing statues by…"

"Oh, shit," Anne swore softly with her eyes wide with horror, forgetting for the moment her daughter's tender ears. "They're really there… on top of the elevator cab…"

"In Shaft #5, the express to the castle," Owen noted grimly. "But waiting for dawn to launch their assault, which gives us a little time to prepare a defense, or counterattack…"

After a moment of taut silence, Anne gave a nasty smile. "Tell me, just how tough are those cyborg bodies? Do you think they'd survive, oh, a series of boulders being dropped down the shaft on top of them? It'll probably cost a bundle to pay for a new elevator cab, but I'm sure Mr. Xanatos can afford it."

Owen blinked, momentarily surprised by this sudden exposure of Anne's darker side. Then he remembered that Hyena and Jackal's assault on the castle would threaten her daughter, and the prophecy of their assault had already given little Bethany nightmares, and there was no creature on Earth more dangerous than a mother defending her young. Though that rule might be applied to anyone sworn to defend a child, Owen thought as he responded, "Mr. Xanatos is rather accustomed to paying for battle damage to the castle and building. Now, for suitable 'boulders'…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Daniel Breckenridge, the man at the main security desk in the lobby that night, was suspiciously eyeing the monitors available to him while trying simultaneously to keep an eye on the glass doors leading to the street. Up until five minutes ago, he'd thought that it was going to be just another dull night on watch; the only incident to liven up an otherwise strictly routine shift was helping that nice blind guy get to his cab. From what he'd been told by the guy on watch before him, who had logged in Mr. Robbins as well as Detective Bluestone and a guy named Lennox MacDuff, there seemed to be some sort of party going on up in the castle, but down here in the lobby it had been deadly dull as per usual.

Then five minutes ago, Mr. Burnett had called out of the blue and asked him if he'd seen anything out of the ordinary so far that night, anything at all. After being answered in the negative, Mr. Burnett had told him to alert the castle immediately if anything did occur, whether it looked suspicious or not. After several months of dull routine night after night, the prospect of being involved in a serious Security Incident thrilled Breckenridge as much as it worried him, and he scanned his monitors and the street outside with such intense concentration that he nearly jumped out of his skin when the phone rang again.

Blushing at his being caught out like that, even if no one was there to see it, he answered the phone in his best professional tone: "Building Security, Breckenridge here."

Mr. Burnett was on the line again. "Breckenridge, immediately make up an "Out of Order" placard and affix it to the doors of Elevator #5. And run whatever tape you have handy across the doors for good measure, so no one can ignore the signs and try to access it regardless."

"Yes, sir. Shall I call Maintenance for you, sir?"

"No, not yet. We'll call you back when it's safe to do so."

Breckenridge blinked. When it was safe to do so? He just had to ask, "Sir, how exactly is the elevator out of order?"

Everyone knew that Owen Burnett was the original Ice Man, with both his face and his emotions as frozen as the North Pole. So Breckenridge was really startled when he caught what seemed like a note of mischief in Mr. Burnett's voice as he replied before hanging up, "It isn't yet, but it will be soon…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

One floor down from the main security room, Anne looked with wide eyes at the two Steel Clan robots standing in their alcoves, and clutched her daughter just a little tighter. "Owen, I don't mean to doubt your abilities, but are you sure this is the best way? I've just seen too many movies where robots like these go haywire, and end up wreaking havoc on the people they're programmed to protect."

Owen didn't bother to look up from the programming console he was working at as he replied with just a touch of frost in his voice, "We are not in a large-budget Hollywood movie, Ms. Marsden. We have used these robots several times, in defense of this castle and in… other demonstrations of Xanatos Enterprise's robotics expertise, and while they have not always performed up to full expectations, they have never gone against their programming."

"Sorry; I didn't mean for you to take it personally," Anne said with a trace of embarrassment. Seeking to change the subject a little, she looked over the robots again and said, "I can see a real resemblance to Goliath in their forms. I'll bet he was really flattered to have robots that were designed to defend the castle for him while he's asleep actually modeled after him, wasn't he?"

Owen paused briefly again. "Actually, he has expressed something of an unfavorable opinion about them…"

"Really? …Oh, I'll bet he was just a little insecure, worried that the robots might actually replace him in protecting the castle full-time." Anne gave a ladylike snort and shook her head as she went on, "Men and their fragile egos… as if any sort of robot could ever really beat a gargoyle in his element."

A corner of Owen's mouth twitched in the effort of holding back a smile. "The likelihood of that happening has been disproven more than once over the last few years."

Then he made a final entry, and the two robots clicked and whirred to life in their alcoves. "Ooohh!" Bethany squealed, her eyes wide as saucers, as her mother reflexively held her just a little tighter.

The robots marched out of their alcoves and proceeded out of the room, and Anne hurriedly backed out of their way, then joined Owen in following the robots down another level, to the castle's lowest dungeons. There they found some largish blocks of concrete, stacked against the far wall of the room halfway to the ceiling, and a few large steel bins filled with gravel and stone dust. Anne asked, "Is this where you keep spare building materials?"

"After the gargoyles returned to the castle, yes," Owen told her. "As the Aerie Building is bordered by streets on all sides, soon after their return we began receiving complaints about the stone shards and gravel being shed by the gargoyles damaging cars and tearing holes in awnings when it rained down from such a great height. Fortunately, no living person was injured before we installed the retractable steel-mesh nets around the base of the castle. They're automatically extended every evening, to catch the shed stone that falls from the battlements, and after they're retracted the gravel is brought here, along with the gravel and dust that the gargoyles themselves sweep from the battlements every fourth night. We've been informed that much of the original mortar used to build Castle Wyvern was actually made using imported lime and stone dust from gargoyle leavings, and they encouraged us to use their more recent skin-sheddings for the same purpose when repairs to the stonework are needed. Fox had the idea of also using the larger bits of gravel in a more modern concrete mix, which can be used in areas where the look of true carved stone isn't an aesthetic concern. For tonight, though, I believe these will suffice as our opening barrage of 'boulders'." As Owen was speaking, the Steel Clan robots were picking up blocks of concrete and carrying them out of the room, and over to the elevator doors on that level.

After watching the robots make about three trips back and forth, Anne suddenly clapped a hand to her mouth, trying to suppress the giggles that threatened to burst forth. When Owen gave her a raised eyebrow of inquiry, she explained, "I remember reading somewhere… back in the old days before indoor plumbing, people would sometimes get rid of unwanted visitors by dumping their chamberpots out of an upstairs window on top of them. Would you consider this the gargoyle equivalent of chamberpots?"

Owen's mouth twitched again. "The thought had indeed occurred to me…"

After the last of the concrete blocks had been piled into position by the doors, Owen said it was time for Anne to take her daughter back to the nursery; "At the moment, you are the last bastion of defense for both Bethany and Alexander." Anne agreed soberly, and took a deep breath before asking about obtaining a personal weapon. He gave her a laser rifle from the armory and brief instructions in its use, and took a matching one for himself. Then he told her how to initiate the nursery lockdown procedures from inside. "If all goes well, I'll knock on the steel doors before removing the lockdown, so you can be assured that it's me and not one of the cyborgs." And once they had decided (with Owen's mouth ever-so-slightly twitching again) that the recognition knock would be to the rhythm of "Pop Goes the Weasel", Anne hurried to the stairs to go up to the nursery.

Once Anne had gone and there was no one left to witness except the robots, Owen let himself smile a truly Puckish, wicked grin as he rubbed his flesh hand over his stone fist in anticipation. "Well, boys, now it's our turn to have some fun tonight!" He shut off the lights in the hallway, then commanded, "Steel #1, open the elevator doors…"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

"How much longer?" Hyena whined peevishly, tired of amusing herself by carving obscene phrases into the walls of the elevator shaft.

Jackal didn't even try to suppress his sigh this time, as he checked his built-in chronometer. "Another three and a half hours to dawn. Why didn't you bring a magazine to read or something? You knew we were going to be in for a long wait…"

But Hyena abruptly waved him to silence, as she swiveled her head to glare upwards. After a second she hissed, "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Jackal asked, staring upwards with his cybernetic eye. He set it on maximum zoom and infrared detection, but couldn't see anything with either that or his living eye… wait. Had that dark grayish square way up near the top been there before? He thought it was at about the level of the castle…

Jackal had had one of his eyes done, but Hyena had opted for a cybernetically enhanced ear instead. She extended it out as far as it would go straight upwards, straining. "I could have sworn I heard a scraping sound, coming from far up the shaft…"

Then they both did hear something, quite audible: a series of rumbling, crashing sounds, echoing their way down the shaft to them. And now Jackal's cybernetic eye detected several dark blobs tumbling down the shaft towards them, some of the objects glancing off the walls as they cascaded down… The twins traded a single horrified look as they screamed together, "INCOMING!"

oo00oo00oo oo00oo00oo

Breckenridge had made up an "Out of Order" placard as requested and taped it to the doors of Elevator #5, and had just finished running masking tape across the doorway five times for good measure. He was walking back to his desk when he began to hear a rumbling noise, growing louder…

He turned around and started walking back, then just about jumped out of his socks, as the rumbling became a CRASHING, loud enough to wake the dead; like the building had just had an avalanche indoors! He thought for a split-second he'd heard somebody screaming as well, but after the crashing noises finally subsided and he cautiously pressed an ear to the taped-over elevator doors, he heard only a few faint residual groans, the sort of distressed-metal sounds he heard when he saw kids playing on the rusty old, soon-to-fall-apart swing set in his neighborhood's playground; the rest was silence.

Breckenridge stepped back from the doors and walked back to his desk, shaking his head. "Man, and I thought my frat house back in college got rowdy sometimes. They must be having one helluva party up there…"

NEXT: THE WEDDING! (really!)