A/N – I had a PM that said I never seem to have the nerve to kill off my characters. Sorry guys, I'm not J.K. Rowling. I love them like they were my brothers and sisters…but I think I found a work-around.

The Eye of Leng blazed down on this dimension of walking horrors (known as Broken Vrul in ancient texts seized by the Inquisition and buried in the Catacombs beneath the Vatican) before slowly sinking below the horizon. At the same time, all the power in the house went out. As darkness seemed to fill the open spaces of the house like a living thing, Jackson and Lydia each gave out a low cry as their life forces were drained almost to the dregs by the entity that wore the shape of a goat-headed man, known as Ka-deth…the last of a race of beings who devoured whole worlds in eons past.

The entity could have killed the unconscious werewolves, but win or lose it would likely not come by such rich soul-energy in the future. The Earth-dimension it sought to overcome had precious few of the shape-changing race left within it, and it did not wish to destroy more of them than was absolutely necessary.

But now…it sensed the presence of Others. Its bastard descendant had unexpectedly awakened to his own dormant trans-dimensional ability, further bolstered by the essence of the powerful animal spirit within him. Against all possibility, the whelp had the power the thing itself did not; to leave this accursed prison on a whim. Fortunately, he had not abandoned his friends and escaped... as he well could have. Instead, he brought the analogs of his own Pack from one of the other alternate universes in polar array around Pheer House. It seemed his progeny sought to wage a war. Very well then. If it was war he wanted, then war he shall have.

The entity drew upon vast reserves of power it had not needed for thousands of years. It took hold of the very fabric of reality that made up the house and unleashed the darkest horrors it had gleaned from the minds of mankind since the day the wretched species had learned to fear.

All of the Pack sensed it, and knew that they would be attacked at any moment. Derek sent a quick text to his ghostly ally, asking that she travel with them (invisibly if she had to) in order to keep the Pack as safe as possible. But the revenant of Stella Stilinski could not answer…she was extremely busy.

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The hounds came for her as she traveled towards the swamp. They had been reformed by the goat thing at some cost to its own power, while it considered what to do with the strange interloper. Stella was not afraid of dogs in the slightest; she had once brutalized an untrained and unleashed pit bull that attacked her son when he was very small, doing the same to the dog's owner when he protested. Steven had chided her…about the owner. Stiles had not been seriously injured, but he was terribly upset…and one look at his childlike face let her know that her son had inherited the family temperament. If Stiles had been just a little bit older, the dog might have been dead by the time she arrived.

The two undead mastiffs reached her at the same time, and Stella directed a small portion of her own power at them, filling it with the rage that took her over twenty years of her life to control and channel. The first hound exploded as if it had swallowed a grenade. The second was flattened as if crushed by two enormous invisible stones. Unfortunately, this allowed the rotting form of Annabella Pheer (recently risen from her watery grave) to grab her by the neck with her decomposing hands.

When Stella had destroyed the shade of Kate Argent (better than the strumpet deserved; oblivion was far more merciful than damnation), it had been no contest since they had essentially the same weapon. But where Kate only thought she was fury personified, Stella knew it for a solid fact. Kate was a mere star to Stella's supernova. Annabella Pheer, infected as she was by the essence of the entity, was a much more capable adversary…she just had no means to vent it alive in a world ruled by men where it was unknown for women to be trained in the use of arms. Here in this world, emotions were weapons themselves, and Mistress Pheer tore at Stella's essence with her own inhuman rage. Stella fought back, expending a great deal of her own power to burn off the damage. The two women were very nearly evenly matched…but destroying the dogs had weakened Stella significantly and Annabella had a definite edge. Stella found herself being pulled towards the swamp and struggled to no avail, despite her mounting anger.

"Filthy despicable whore! You would keep me trapped here forever, just like that miserable excuse of a husband! I care not that you once shared my blood…you will die here a second time, a death that will last forever!" the rotting woman screeched.

"You hypocritical bitch! You're aiding the thing that destroyed your life and hurt your own family! My family! I… WILL… NOT… ALLOW IT!" Stella channeled her fury directly into the the dead woman's heart.

Annabella staggered, and had they not been so close to the edge of the quicksand, Stella might just have won free. But with the last dregs of her power, Annabella caused the muds to rise up and wrap themselves around Stella's form, pulling her down and sapping her strength at the same time. Annabella gave a burbling mocking laugh as they both were pulled beneath the surface, her arms locking irrevocably around Stella. Annabella intended to pull Stella into the very deepest reaches of the mud, farther down than she had ever dared to explore…and there she would imprison her in the wet and putrid darkness until this hell was frozen over.

But Stella Stilinsky was extremely resourceful, clever and intelligent even while she raged. She stopped fighting Annabella and instead channeled her remaining power into the dim and fluttering spirits that filled the bog, those Annabella had consumed over the years since her death, aided by the evil of Pheer House.

Three dozen sparks were lit as awareness returned to those who had served as food for Annabella and her hounds. The bog began to churn violently, bubbling like a witch's cauldron, the noisome fumes thankfully lost on the prisoners within.

A chorus of voices spoke into Stella's mind. "What would you have us do?" they asked.

"Give me everything you've got, join your essences to mine and I'll see that you all escape this place!" Stella snarled at them.

Annabella squawked in sudden terror as she too felt her old victims unite and plunge themselves into the heart of Stella's soul.

"NO!" was all she had time to scream.

The bubbling of the bog ceased for a moment…then ripped itself apart in the spectral equivalent of a nuclear explosion. A huge crater, its bottom burned and black, was all that remained of the bog. The lonely decaying figure of Annabella Pheer tottered forlornly in its deepest point, looking up in terror at the ghostly giantess that was once Stella Stilinski. Her eyes were white, and lightning seemed to crackle from them as she gazed down at her would-be destroyer. Stella smiled, and it was fearsome enough to have given Ka-deth pause had it been there to see it. Stella reached down and wrapped her glowing white hand around the zombie who chittered in terror. The smile became a snarl as Stella squeezed, and with a snapping sound that echoed through at least three universes, Annabella Pheer was no more.

Sighing, Stella released the spirits she had so briefly used as sword and armor and returned to her more traditional form…a human sized female of striking beauty, wearing a Christmas-themed apron over her clothes.

"Thank you all. When we are ready to leave, I will call you."

She would have liked to have fought the goat-headed entity with their power, but that was her son's battle and she would not be helping him by fighting it for him. However, no one said she couldn't help his friends. Registering the communication that Derek had sent her through the link she maintained with his cell phone, she began to make her way back towards the house. She was expressly forbidden to show herself to anyone living besides Derek…which was going to limit what she could do for them. 'I guess I'll just have to make it up as I go!' she thought to herself. She stopped abruptly as another spirit suddenly appeared before her.

"You." Stella growled.

"Me. It is a pleasure to meet you, great-granddaughter…although in truth I am no blood relation to you. It would have made me very proud to have you as kin. You are a force to be reckoned with."

"Yes, I am. What do you want? I am in something of a hurry, and I have a bit of planning to do as I go. If you get in my way, I'm afraid I'll be giving you some advice. It's usually the last thing people hear."

"I want to help you. I have served the Dark One long enough, and will not harm any of you, even if it means being trapped here. I also have a way around the problem you currently face. Will you listen?"

"Manfred Pheer, if you mean what you say, I will end your imprisonment. But I will not be taking my eyes off of you for a moment. Keep that firmly in mind. Now, tell me what you will that you think you have that will help."

Stella listened to his words, and was stunned at the sheer brilliance of the plan. In another time and place, she might have hugged him.

"Let's do it! Come on, Great Grandpa! I will formally adopt you if this works!"

After mentally shooting a text to Derek, Stella raced along with Manfred to the house.

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Stiles emerged from the clock in the music room with the Nega-Pack following close behind. When they were all through, the clock shattered. None of them gave it even a passing glance.

Stiles turned to them, these twisted versions of people he had known for so long…but he was pretty twisted himself right at the moment. They all wore ragged clothing, and all were covered with layers of filth and blood. Jackson was sporting what must have been healing claw-marks on his left cheek, and he seemed to be deliberately keeping them from healing as well as they could have. Their eyes were as dead as their spirits.

He spoke to them, directly into their minds, using a fraction of his power to prevent the entity from over-hearing.

"So…basically I brought you all here to die for me. The monster I want to destroy looks like this half of me…only he's all goaty on both sides. I need you to draw it out, get it to attack you with its power…while I search for its physical body. If you distract it long enough, I can kill it before it even realizes what's happening. Anybody that survives can come back with me to a world where I'm still alive! Isn't that great!"

They all nodded eagerly, eyes beginning to glow with the feral light of the wolves within them.

"Awesome! The Goat-Dude is shielding its body somehow, so we better split up. If you see any of the other versions of yourselves, leave them alone. They'll probably think you're a trick anyway. Any questions?"

"Will this thing…kill us painfully?" Jackson asked.

Stiles looked at him. "Absolutely."

"Cool!" he grinned. As far gone as Stiles was, even he was a little disgusted when he noticed that Jackson was actually getting wood over this.

"Masochistic fuck." Scott laughed.

"Scotty, I want my best friend at my side. Let's go, buddy." They left the music room and scattered, taking different doors, stairwells, secret passages and even a dumb-waiter…and the house began to hunt them down one by one.

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Nega-Jackson climbed out of the dumb waiter, still trembling at the tight space, but rather disappointed that the house hadn't tried to kill him in it. He found himself in the kitchen, and looked around before spotting the refrigerator…and the echo of his own childhood phobia came back. He shivered with the delicious horror of it and opened the metal door, staring eagerly into the coffin-like space. He was probably making it too easy for the house, but he would never again have an opportunity to destroy himself in such a wonderful way. He pulled the fridge out and toppled it backward onto the floor. He noticed that the inside walls of the appliance were beginning to grow sharpened spikes. This was too good to be true! Jackson pulled the shreds of clothes from his body and stepped into the fridge naked, hissing in pleasure as the spikes shredded his feet. He quickly sat down and leaned back, the spikes now digging cruelly into backside. He pushed his hands on to two of the larger spikes. The pain was exquisite, but somehow not enough.

"This all you got?" he asked the house, somehow knowing that it could hear him. In response, the metal spikes began to heat up, sizzling and cauterizing his flesh even while they were embedded deep within him. Soon, he was fused to the inside of the fridge, his mind boiling with a psychotic mixture of agony, elation and lust.

"The d-door!" he shouted. With a clang, the tomb sealed itself shut while the glowing inside walls began to slowly press inward. Jackson shrieked in ecstasy as blades, fire and suffocation all fought each other savagely to kill him first.

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Nega-Lydia tried locked door after locked door before she got to the wardrobe room, drawn inside by a fading echo of her old fascination with clothes. The fanged mannequins were no longer being secretive with their movements, but openly approaching her as the door swung shut, locking her in. Their movements were jerky and spastic, their hooked claws swinging wildly through the air while they crowded her against the wall.

Lydia looked at them haughtily.

"Your outfits are all so last year. I suppose this is where I bite the big one. You know, I've always hated dummies."

She changed, and screeching like a wildcat she tore into the crowd of mannequins, not caring that they savagely raked her with fangs and claws…she was doing the same to them. Soon, quite a few of her attackers were headless, which stopped them not at all…and even the heads were still rolling themselves towards her, snapping their jaws at her rabidly. As the mass of bodies piled on top of her, she quieted, remembering the last 'party' she had with her Pack before they murdered Derek Hale in his own home. She shivered at the thought, and as her mind broke under the pressure, she lost herself in the pleasant fantasy that it was happening all over again. She was slowly torn apart in an ecstasy no less intense than Jackson's had been.

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Nega-Allison looked around excitedly at the treasure trove of music boxes she had discovered. She opened one shaped like a pyramid, and a banal tinkling melody enchanted her for a few minutes while the music wormed its way into her brain and took root there, even after she shut the box. Unable to blot it out, she tried to replace it with another melody that came from one shaped like a jeweled crown. It was a pleasant enough tune, but instead of blotting out the first one, the two melodies combined to create a discordant threnody that was sickening in its rapid pace and clashing counterpoints. Her head began to pound even as her heart began to race. A third box was opened, and the torture increased…but now she found herself moving her feet in time to a dance she didn't know…but her body did. She whirled gracefully over to another box, looking oddly like a refrigerator. When opened, it glowed from within while what looked like a burned corpse rotated slowly inside. The tunes meshed again, driving her to greater efforts of dance. She had trouble catching her breath, and the shift came on her which only made her dance that much more gracefully. More and more boxes were opened, and the headache increased until conscious thought was lost. She became nothing but the dance itself, and no one who appreciated that particular form of art could have kept themselves from weeping like children at the sheer beauty of it. In the minutes before her heart finally exploded with the strain, she danced like an angel.

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The twisted doubles of Danny and Ted knew they were breaking the rules by staying together, but if the house killed them, they wanted to die together. Though they were as broken as the rest of their Pack, something of the old feelings they had for each other still survived. None of the other werewolves ever knew (and failed to question, in the unintentional ignorance that often occurs between good friends) exactly what the circumstances were that they had met and become lovers.

Long before Stiles froze to death one winter, before ever finding out that werewolves even existed (around the time that the rest of the Pack were dealing with Peter Hale's vengeance trail against the Argents), Danny had worked up the courage to ask out the only other boy he had met that he found attractive and who he was almost sure might be gay. Ted had reacted pretty strongly, and Danny at first thought he must have been mistaken. He apologized and walked away from Ted, only to be grabbed from behind a second later. Danny panicked, thinking that Ted was more freaked out than he thought and was attacking him in a homophobic rage. He whirled and punched Ted in the jaw. One look at Ted's face told him the truth…Ted was about to confess that he was gay too. And Danny had hit him.

Ted was more surprised than anything (Danny had held back the full force of the punch, unwilling to do more damage than he had to), and Danny looked so stricken that Ted actually laughed even while rubbing his jaw painfully.

"Not a good way to start off a relationship, Dan." Ted said softly.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry I thought you were going to try to beat me up or something…Ted, you can totally hit me back if you want. I deserve it."

"No way. Look…I've never told anyone. I was a little freaked out you knew, but it took me a few seconds for me to be okay with you knowing. I always thought you were cute, and it was really sexy to me that you were out and proud…but my family doesn't know and I never want them to know. If I'm out at school, they'll find out about me. I won't ask you to date a closet case, that's not fair to you at all. But I'm flattered you asked, and if things were different, I would definitely say yes."

But Danny put a lot of pressure on Ted, and they had gone on dates…dates that quickly began to escalate in intensity as their feelings grew stronger at a rapid pace. Danny talked about Ted's situation with his mother, and after having Ted over for dinner a few times, she made the offer that if worse came to worse with his family, he would have a place in the Kean home. She warned her son not to push his first boyfriend before he was ready…perhaps knowing her advice was falling on deaf ears. As the fateful night of the Formal approached, Danny hinted that he really wanted to take Ted with him to the last dance of their Senior year. Ted hesitated to give him a definite answer, and Danny began to pull back and give Ted the cold shoulder, even playing up his relationship with Jackson as being more than it was. He didn't want to hurt Ted's feelings, he just wanted the other boy to realize that he couldn't live his life for other people. When you did that, it was your own happiness that got sacrificed. The plan worked only too well. Ted stopped Danny in the field after practice and told him that if Danny hadn't found another date, Ted would be happy to go with him to the Formal. Then he walked off slowly with his head down…it bothered Danny, but he couldn't put his finger on why. It was only after he heard about what happened that he understood.

Ted had gone home that night and come out to his parents. Half an hour later, his parents and two older brothers had deposited the last of his things on the curb in front of their house where trash was typically placed on garbage day. Anything that could be broken, was. Ted was not as upset as he might have been, he'd been preparing for this his whole life. He called Danny, who arrived with Jackson and a large rental van a short time later. Danny had silent tears coming down his face, more upset than Ted was.

"This is my fault. I pushed you into this. I care about you so much, and I've already hurt you twice. I should just do you a favor and get the hell out of your life-"

Danny found himself roughly shoved against the side of the van, his head smacking into the metal.

"Okay, Dan. I wasn't mad about the punch, and I wasn't mad about what you pulled to get me to go to that dance with you, but now I'm pissed. I didn't come out for you; I came out for me, because I wanted to. I did it so that I could have a real life with someone I care about. But if after all this, I wind up going to that dance Stag, I swear to you I will find a way to make it with Jackson and I will send you a ton of pictures. Each one will be labeled 'This could have been you.' Got it?"

Danny nodded, a little shocked. Jackson poked his head out from inside the back of the van just as Ted let Danny go.

"Everything okay?" he asked, 'clueless' written all over his face.

"Yeah, just slipped." Danny said.

After the Formal, when both boys were struck with a sense of their own mortality at Lydia's attack, Ted resolved to officially tell his parents he forgave them, and that he was open to them contacting him if they ever changed their minds about him in the future. Phone calls were refused, and letters were returned unopened. Ted felt he had no choice but to go see them in person. Danny waited in the car for moral support, but quickly jumped out when Ted's two older brothers came out and began to beat the crap out of him. Danny was an excellent fighter, and he helped Ted quickly turn the tide of battle against them. They left the two boys bleeding and unconscious, and Danny held Ted all night while he had a nervous breakdown in the Kean home. Ted realized he would never, ever be able to go home again. That's rough, no matter how assholish your family is.

After the boys had been accepted into the Pack (sponsored by a newly turned Jackson, who never stopped begging Derek until he finally agreed just to shut him up) their lives were pretty amazing until the winter of Stiles' death. After that everything went straight to hell. The Pack visited Ted's old home one night, at a loss for something to destroy. His family died as they had lived, cursing Ted for being a monster. Unlike the first time, he now agreed with them.

The Pack served as the ultimate dysfunctional family, a concept none of them were strangers to. They remained together no matter how increasingly depraved their crimes became, and their bond grew along with their dementia. No matter what happened, they vowed never to separate…even acquiring piercings that went through flesh and bone (only their werewolf healing factors allowed this to work) and could be interlocked while they slept, clinging to each other like frightened children.

Back in the present, they slipped the hooks of their piercings together, locking them into step as they walked down the hall. They took the stairs up a couple of flights and came upon an enormous master bedroom with a huge four-poster bed. They ignored the closet door across from it and pulled off their clothes as they (with a much practiced maneuver) lay in the middle of the bed where they gave in to their passions. As they both built towards an explosive simultaneous orgasm, tentacles suddenly shot out from beneath the bed entangling Danny and firmly anchoring him to the mattress. More shot out from the canopy and wrapped themselves around Ted, beginning to draw him upwards. Both boys shouted as the tentacles pulled, their flesh straining and tearing as the interlocked hooks ripped their bones apart and opened them up like bags of blood. Mercifully, they entered oblivion before the final separation, and each was secretly pleased that even in the last seconds of their lives they were still together.

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Derek was frantic when the phone finally beeped again, and he sighed with relief at the text message.

I'm, bringing a friend. No matter what happens, play along.

There was an energy in the air, shooting through the ball room doors and pouring into the unconscious bodies of Jackson and Lydia. The two woke up, much to the surprise and delight of the rest of the Pack. Only Derek noticed the sly wink Lydia gave him while pointing to the cell phone still in Derek's hand.

"Okay guys, I've learned a lot in 'Coma Land', and we have to get to the top of the house to the closet in the Master Bedroom. That's the way home. The goat-thing is going to throw everything at us along the way, but Stiles is working on a way to kill it. If Stiles dies, we're screwed. If he wins, the house loses its power and we go home. We have to be out of here before the sun rises again in this world…that's when the demolition is due to start, which means we have only hours to go. Are we ready?"

They all cheered.

"The important thing is not to fear. That is what it thrives on. Easier said than done, but try anyway." Jackson put in.

"He's right. I want everyone shifted and on full alert. Anybody senses anything, warn the rest of the group. If we get hit, we all attack it until its dead. Any questions?" Derek looked around at them.

"Yeah, why aren't we moving already?" asked Scott.

Derek sighed. The old urge to smack the young boy was coming back.

"Let's go." They left the ball room, in search of their way home.

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The entity raged, unable to understand why its power was weakening. It destroyed the analogs its bastard had gathered with only one exception, and their deaths were swift and terrible; yet in none of the cases had the victims generated fear-energy so that it could replenish its power. They died…happy. Whatever passed for their souls evaporated before it could anchor them here, as if they had left them behind in the world they hailed from. The bastard was coming for it, beginning to suspect where it kept its body. The entity had expended the greater portion of its energy, but if it could get to a few of the remaining wolves, it could soon be at full strength again. It was time to use the most devious of all the tricks and traps it had in store…