"Beastboy!" Starfire shrieked, flying to the side of her injured friend and Raven levitated close on her heels. The green one sat up shakily, trying to keep his balance as he regained his senses. He was trembling badly, more from the insane amount of adrenalin that had been dumped into his system than anything else, but the blood loss wasn't helping either. Starfire touched down beside him and gestured for the bleeding hand he was cradling.

"Wha…" he started, trying to form a coherent sentence through the daze, "What was that?"

"As I was trying to say before, it's a field of negative energy," Raven said, floating a few feet away, "You're lucky."

"Lucky?" Beastboy squeaked incredulously, eyeing his injuries. They weren't electrical burns as one would have expected but actual open wounds; as though someone had taken a knife a stabbed wildly. Even his glove was shredded.

"Yes," Raven quipped, "You could have lost much more than just a little blood. I said not to touch it."

"I was curious."

"Curiosity killed the beast."

"That's curiosity killed the cat," Beastboy corrected as he braced himself against Starfire and stood.

"Still a beast," Raven retorted and turned away.

"Is it just me, or is she crabbier than usual?" Beastboy pouted as he watched her retreat back to their friends.

"She is merely concerned for you," Starfire soothed her companion's bruised feelings along with his torn flesh.

"Concerned for me? Why?"

"You are her friend, why not?" Beastboy silently conceded this point and the two of them started back after their friend. Cyborg had just finished fishing out a first-aid kit from the back of the T-car when they approached. He turned and eyed Beastboy with worry before handing the box off to Starfire who promptly set to work.

"You okay B.B.?" asked Cyborg

"Yeah, I'll live," Beastboy replied, then flashed an impish grin to further defuse the tension. It worked, and Cyborg sighed and relaxed.

"They are just flesh wounds," Starfire confirmed.

"Okay, Raven," Robin said, trying to get back to business, "You know what it is, do you know how to stop it?"

"Cyborg's guess was right on. Whatever is causing this is probably inside. We have to find a way in that doesn't involve physical contact," she said, studying the outside layer.

"So…" Beastboy interjected, flexing his newly bandaged hand to make sure everything was still in proper working order, "what exactly is a… whatcha call it?"

"Negative energy field."

"Yeah, that."

Raven took a deep breath. "It's a little complicated to explain entirely so, in a nut shell, negative energy is a very dangerous type of energy that originates from the Negative material plane, one of the inner planes which are manifestations of the basic building blocks of the universe. It fuels and heals undead creatures and hurts living ones."

Robin and Beastboy exchanged a quizzical glance then looked back at Raven.

"Undead?" Robin asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Like zombies?" Beastboy added, then held out his arms and started walking stiffly towards Cyborg moaning, "Brraaaaiiinss! Braaaaaaaiinss!"

Raven shot a glare at the goofball that went either unseen or completely ignored then said,

"Among other things, yes."

Beastboy continued to stagger towards the large Titan making a mockery of him self. Cyborg chuckled and rapped on his steel plated head with his knuckles.

"Go ahead and try it, you won't get very far." The changeling stopped and started to laugh.

"Yeah, right!" he jibed, "Even if I got past that thick skull of yours, I could never find a brain!"

"Why you little!" Cyborg took a mock swing at the howling boy who easily danced back out of the way. Robin ignored his teammates' shenanigans and focused back on the topic.

"So how do we get through with out getting toasted?" Robin asked.

"If we can't go through it, let's just go under it," Beastboy suggested and morph himself into a gopher to emphasize the point. Raven shook her head at the suggestion.

"It's too risky. Negative energy can just pass right through inanimate material. What we see as a dome might actually be a globe."

"Okay, any other suggestions?" Robin questioned, turning to the rest of the Titans. Raven paused and considered it for a second before giving a tentative answer.

"I… might be able to channel a positive energy field to cancel part of it out… but it'll be small, and I won't be able to hold it for long."

"How long is long?"

"Twenty seconds… maybe thirty?"

"It should be enough, we'll try it. Titans, get ready. Raven, go." Raven nodded her consent then drifted close to the swirling crackling dome and touched down. The angry buzzing seemed to move close and intensify in her presence and she wondered briefly just what sort of effect her demon blood had on the strange field, but she quickly shoved all her frivolous thoughts aside. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on quelling her emotions. It was difficult, standing this close to so much negative energy; it seemed to draw on her emotions, amplifying the strong destructive ones like hate, sorrow and fear. But one familiar, lulling chant banished these things away.

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

All things fell aside, leaving nothing but a blank slate on which to draw her power. Again she concentrated, searching her mind for the right key to draw on. She found it, a warm, glowing, pulsing energy that began to fill her when she called on it. Again she spoke her words, this time as a focus to cast this spell.

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos!"

And suddenly the energy became visible, radiating outward from her, and parting the angry negative energy with a nearly explosive force.

"Titans! GO!" Robin's constant catch phrase sounded and in the Teen Titans darted, through a gate of death. Safe on the other side of the violent sphere, Beastboy paused to catch his wind and take a look around. What he saw made him want to run screaming back out to the other side. All he could do to keep the contents of his lunch in his stomach was swallow hard and pray. The others saw it too. They stared in shock and disgust at the gruesome scene before them. Starfire gasped and took a couple steps backward, bumping right into Raven who had just stepped through her own portal. Starfire shrieked in surprise, then blushed realizing her mistake. The dark girl shrugged it off then peered around her comrades to see what everyone was gawking at.

Lying on the ground were the things that beast boy had not been able to make out through the cloudy mask earlier: the bodies of dead people. Most of them seemed to have had their soft tissue ripped away. Many had shattered bones leaving parts of them scatters a few feet away from the actual corpse they belonged to. The entire scene was bloody and disturbing. Raven stooped and examined a body near to her, looking at what was left of its tattered clothes. In the bloody soaked pile of rags she found something she had been dreading, a badge. She felt a knot form in her stomach.

"These were police officers," she announced grimly, "They must have been caught in the field when it was first expanding. They never had a chance."

"The field did this?" Beastboy asked in an awed voice, then looked at his injured hand,

"She was right, I was lucky."

"There's nothing we can do for them now," Robin said putting on a stoic face, "We need to stop what's causing this before it happens to anyone else."

"Yeah, let's go kick this guys butt, whoever he is!" Cyborg chimed his opinion loudly.

"Yes and let's let him know we're coming," Raven remarked off handedly as she drifted passed him. Cyborg sulked then stalked forward.

"We're wasting time, let's go!" As one the Titans surged forward and began to advance on the abandoned warehouse. Its windows had been boarded up, but the five teens could see a strange red-violet light bobbing and swirling through the many cracks. As they neared they could hear the sound of several voices chanting softly and steadily in what sounded like Latin. Robin motioned the other Titans close to him then begun laying out a battle plan.

"Cyborg, Beastboy, take the back entrance," he whispered, "If there isn't one, make one." Beastboy and Cyborg grinned at each other. "Star, Raven," Robin continued, "You're with me. We take these guys quickly and by sur-" Robin was cut off by a sudden booming voice that rumbled the streets and shook a few boards loose from the windows.

"Alath, Malduah, MALKAT!"

"Look out!" Raven cried, spinning away from group and scanning all about, trying to discern the magical vibrations that came flowing out of the warehouse. Too soon it preformed its dire purpose. As soon as the waves touched the butchered corpses, they sparked with negative energy. The crackling died away, and the dead came to life. Or rather unlife. The bones clattered to their feet or those who were missing legs hobbled and lopped awkwardly or just dragged themselves across the pavement, all moving towards the startled Titans. The most disturbing thing was the sound. There was no unearthly voices cackling or moaning for brains, only the sound of bones scraping against the blood slicked ground.

Starfire yelped suddenly as a wet claw grabbed for her. She spun instinctively and hurled a sphere of energy at the grasping offender, shattering it and sending a hail of blood and bone fragments flying over the team. The sudden action shocked them all out of their daze and they each started their familiar attack routine. Raven levitated into the air and began to pick up and hurl the skeletons away, sending them crashing into walls and the pavement. Beastboy morphed into a crocodile, snapping at the jostling bones. Those that didn't just shatter were easily shaken apart in his powerful jaws. Cyborg and Starfire launched a series of energy blasts taking out more than their fair share of the undead, and Robin quickly dispatched the rest of them with his bo staff.

Inside, the voices had risen above the clamor and gained a fevered pitch. Something about it sounded strange. The voices trembled and one of the chanters stuttered half way through. These people were scared.

"Let's take 'em now! There's no more time!" Robin commanded and the Titans charged forward. Not even the chaos out side could have prepared them for what was in here. Cyborg charged his cannon and blasted the doors away. When the dust cleared enough to see, they were met with an even more terrifying sight than the one outside. In the center of the empty warehouse, a large circle had been drawn with several runes etched around it. This is what was giving off the strange unearthly glow. A chanter stood before each rune, and as their voices gained in fervor, so did the intensity of the glow. About six more of the figures stood off to one side, watching the procession, and everyone of the people in this room where shrouded in the same black white and red hooded robes. But they were not the ones the Titans noticed.

Standing coiled around the ceremony was a monstrosity that could only have come from the Abyss its self. The creature's lower half looked to be nearly thirty feet in length and resembled a centipede. Its black shelled plating continued upwards onto a massive dark skinned humanoid torso but this was the only thing resembling a human. Two pairs of arms extended from the upper body; one was proportionate to the rest of the body and ended in wicked looking hooks, but the other pair were even more massive than the chest. Four fingered hands were at the end of these and each finger turned into a scythe like claw half way down. From its shoulders stretched a thick, spined, serpentine neck and topping it was a smooth black skull with an unsung lower jaw full of jagged saber sized teeth that jutted out. It leered at the intruders and its deformed mouth twisted into what could only be guessed as a smirk.

"Xazanae!" Raven whispered hoarsely. The Demon's grin broadened.

One of the chanters broke off and stumbled backward when he saw the Teen Titans enter the room. He looked scared shitless and with good reason. The creature's head snapped around and four cold dead eyes focused on him.

"Finish it!" its voice sounded like cracking thunder and sizzling acid at once.

"But… But master they'll-" his please were cut off when the thing slammed his colossal hand down onto the stuttering man. Grunting in annoyance, it scooped up the new corpse and hurled it at the teens. They ducked out of the way of the grisly thing, but the creature hardly cared.

"Ariel, finish it," he said turning to one of the figures standing to the side. It nodded and took its place where the first had been standing.

"Stop!" Robin commanded, "Enough! We're not going to let you hurt any more people!" he sprinted forward, slammed his staff into the ground and vaulted into the air, aiming a flying kick at the new chanter. The others flinched and stumbled over their versed as they watched the enraged boy sail at them but this one did not falter in the slightest. Not even when her (and the voice was female) master's claw swept down inches away from her as he went to bat the troublesome child aside. Robin went tumbling head over heels nearly into the concrete wall but Starfire was there to catch him.

"Are you damaged?" Star asked with concern.

"No, I'm okay."

"This thing is evil," she said forbiddingly, "it must be stopped."

"Agreed," Robin replied in an equally grim tone. Starfire touched Robin to the ground then went shooting forward, firing blasts of green energy at the towering monster. It shrugged off the blasts with a growl and casually swatted at Star as though she were just a somewhat annoying fly.

"Ariel, dispatch them first," the monster instructed. She nodded again and stepped back out of the circle, motioning for one of her fellows to take her place.

Beastboy had a different strategy in mind. He morphed a triceratops and bugled threateningly before charging the ensemble and Cyborg followed close behind, shooting warning shots over head. Though his movement was hampered by his injured forelimb, he was still able to maneuver as well as he had planned. When the monster slammed its hand down to smash the disrupter, Beastboy pulled short and skirted around the slower moving limb and side swiped the chanting circle. Two of the occultists screamed and broke away to run but quickly returned when they remembered that they could suffer far worse at the hands of the mighty demon. By now Ariel had started her own chant, summoning magical energy to her finger tips.

It was a simple but destructive spell and Raven recognized it immediately. She also saw whom she was aiming for.

"Beastboy, Cy, duck!" she cried then started into her own mantra. She didn't have enough time to counter it but she could get the spell casters attention. Beastboy and Cyborg heard their friends warning in time to dodge out of the way of a line of fire. The changeling smarted at his singed clothes but the two seemed mostly unharmed.

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!"

An empty oil drum levitated into the air then hurtled at the other spell caster. She yelped and barely tumbled out of the way then scrambled determinedly to her feet. Ariel glared at Raven… and so did the demon known as Xazanae. His eyes flared to life with glittering malice, it had been a long time since something had stirred his ire this badly. His maniacal grin dissolved into a sneer and he hissed with wrath.

"You… insolent, disgraceful, HALFBREED!" he roared the last word, shaking the complex much more violently than he had before. A glob of acidic spittle flew at Raven and hit the concrete behind her, where it began to sizzle. He lifted a blade tipped hand and pointed it at her, growling out his incantation.

"Alath…Malduah…"

Suddenly, all hell broke loose.

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Wow, over 7 reviews in one day. That's better than when I was writing the Alex Chronicles, which is really funny 'cause the AC I planned out thoroughly, even with the help of another author and this thing I'm just pulling out of my ass from random half coherent ideas. Glad you like it but I have no idea why…

Anyway, I would have had this up sooner but ff.net was being a bitch to me. So with out further ado, let's get on with the rest of it.