Firstly, thanks for the reviews for the last chapter - they always make my day. Secondly, I'll be honest here, I've done some homework, but I'm still playing it kinda fast and loose with some of the more technical details on Mummies, techincal magic, horror movies and, well, Star Wars - I guess you could say this is my disclaimer for the use of heavy creative license, I hope it doesn't detract from your enjoyment g. (And if anything is glaringly stupid and wrong, please feel free to point it out to me :)


"Did you hear that?" Zeke cocked his head to one side.

Owen looked around. He couldn't hear anything except Hard Day's Night and many half-drunk school children singing along. After talking to Zeke and Ptah he had changed the music and now The Beatles were playing out of the speakers. Everyone seemed to prefer it.

"No," Ptah said after listening for a moment.

"Thought I heard a scream." Zeke shrugged, his tongue hanging out as he grinned. "Probably just wishful thinking."

"Tonight should be all about screaming." A beautiful blonde girl said as she overheard. She was standing next to him, putting food on a paper plate. "For a Halloween party in a haunted house, it's not exactly scary is it? Someone's even taken all the fake cobwebs down."

She looked up frowning. "Someone's even taken all the real cobwebs down." Shrugging, she grinned at him.

He panted harder and then had to swallow to avoid drooling. "I'm Zeke." He held his paw out to shake.

"Fen," she introduced herself. After shaking his paw she looked down at it, noticing the hair and the long black claws.

He pulled it away self-consciously.

She smiled at him again. "So are you from Bou Academy? Gotta say I'm surprised you pulled this party off. What with you all being posh geeks, no offence, but you guys did well."

"Uh, thanks."

"And, dude, your costume is awesome," she continued. "I know everyone is giving you guys a hard time for dressing up, but, man, at least you went all out, you know? So did you hire it? It looks so real."

"Yeah," Zeke replied, noncommittally. Chatting up humans was hard enough without having to pretend he was in costume.

Then she did the worst thing possible.

"It feels real too." She ruffled the hair on his head, which actually felt really nice, and then ran her palm around to his cheek. "Did you glue a real dog skin on?" she chuckled.

"Don't…" he warned, but it was too late.

As she pulled his whiskers playfully, pain flared in his cheek and he instinctively twisted his head and snapped.

Fen pulled her hand back fast, staring at him in shock. "What the hell, dude?"

"I'm sorry," Zeke said quickly, but in his agitated state it came out as a growl.

Fen stepped back, her eyes going wide. "You're real?"

"This dork bothering you?"

Zeke's eyes snapped from Fen's shocked face to the athletic-looking boy that thought he was coming to her rescue.

"No." Again it came out as a growl. The wannabe Alpha-male waves coming off of this kid was making his lip curl and he took a step back.

"Get out of character and answer me. I said, are you bothering her, dickhead!"

"Charlie, don't!" Fen sounded scared.

Charlie didn't listen to her and pushed Zeke's chest. Zeke looked down, smelling the hormone-y oils left on his shirt by the action. When he looked back up, he was snarling.

"Oh you wanna start something, geek?" Charlie taunted him.

Zeke did, and so he started it…


The yowling, growling and howling was intense. Too much so for any sane human to endure up close. Clothes and flesh were ripped apart with superhuman strength and the blood flew in big, gushing spurts that nearly blinded all vision. The screams of the humans were passionate and painful to hear and only grew louder as it went on.

"Why are we watching this again?" Willow asked from behind her cushion.

"Because its fright night." Xander wasn't hiding behind a cushion, but every time he started to raise his beer bottle to his lips, he pulled it away in a flinch at what was happening on screen.

"Don't we get enough of this, oh I don't know, every night?" Willow squeaked, peeking out and then hiding again immediately.

"Yeah, but neither of us have been much with the patrolling recently. I thought this might keep us in the game." A leg was ripped off and thrown across the screen. "Okay, too gamey!"

Xander pressed the mute button and the TV went blissfully silent.

Willow lowered her cushion and let out a noisy breath.

They shared an embarrassed smile at being so freaked by the film.

"If Buffy was here to see us now," Willow grinned.

"She'd be just as freaked as we are," Xander quipped.

They both watched the on-screen action again. Xander didn't put the sound back on, but that didn't stop it from being terrifying. They sat in silence, still cringing at the muted anguished screams of the villagers and recoiling from the bloodcurdling violence. When there was a loud knock at the front door

Willow squealed and pulled the cushion to her face again and Xander spilled cold beer all over his thigh.

"Who is it?" Willow's voice came muffled from behind the peach coloured cushion.

"Strangely enough, I can't tell from here." Xander wiped at his bare leg.

"Well, find out, but don't open the door!"

Xander rolled his eye. "It's probably just trick or treaters."

"All the way out here?"

Xander shrugged, squatting down to retrieve a big meat hook from beneath the couch.

"Is that a weapon?"

"No, it's my costume." Xander picked the bowl of candy off of the coffee table. It was only half full now. "I'm the naked pirate."

"Oh. That's different." Willow watched him go to the door over the top of her cushion.

Xander pulled open the front door, holding the hook above his head. "Ahoy, me matey, and who do you be?"

The person on the threshold blinked once at the hook and then again at Xander's boxers.

"Naked pirate. I get it."

"Oz!" Xander greeted him cheerfully and stepped aside to let him enter. "To what do we owe this late night pleasure?"

"Well, I'm all out of candy and I figured Giles would have some." Oz took the bowl as he came into the house. "Not too late for a drop by, is it?"

"No, come on in. Take off your clothes. Pull up some of the couch. Join in the scariest movie you have ever seen in your life."

Oz raised an eyebrow at him.

"Underwear is mandatory." Xander explained.

"Well I am wearing underwear."

"Oz, hey!" Willow greeted as he came into the living room. "What are you doing here?"

"Ralf had a date with a skunk while we were out this afternoon."

"Oh, poor Ralf." Willow looked concerned.

"Oh, don't worry, he's fine. I just needed to seek out some better smelling company for a while." Oz looked around the living room, noting that no one else was around, and then his gaze settled on Willow's semi-nakedness. "If you don't mind, that is?"

"Of course we don't." Willow dropped her cushion and got up from the couch. "I'll get you a beer. Do you wanna a beer?"

"A beer would be nice." Oz watched her walk to the kitchen.

"Get me one too!"

"Am I interrupting something?"

"What, me and Willow?" Xander laughed. "Just because two friends have an underwear party… By the way, I wasn't kidding."

"About what?"

"Underwear party!" Xander said exasperatedly. "Why does no one get the oh-so-simple concept?"

"Because it's odd."

"You're a guy! You know about watching TV in your boxers."

"When I'm alone."

"This was supposed to be my night alone," Xander explained. "And do you know how often that happens around here? This is the first night since we moved in I've had the big television more or less to myself. It was my night, you know?"

Oz nodded whether he did or not.

"And then Willow came down, but she understands, she's a good friend. So she got in her underwear-like jammies. Now you're here, which is great, don't get me wrong, always happy to hang with the Oz, but if you stay fully dressed, I'm just an idiot in my underwear… on my night! You get me?"

"I do, but… won't Willow mind."

"Nah, she's seen you in your boxers before. She's seen you naked before…" Oz raised his eyebrow again. "One can only assume," Xander added, grinning.

Oz still looked dubious so Xander sat himself down in the middle of the couch. "There ya go, one on one side of me and one on the other. You won't even be able to see each other."

"Okay," Oz shrugged and pulled his sweater over his head. He was bare-chested beneath.

"Already feels better, right?" Xander encouraged him and then had a thought. "Actually, before you go any further, could you run upstairs and see if there's any pizza left."

Oz just stared at him.

"One of the new slayers, Vi, used our underywearness against us earlier and took two large pizzas upstairs. She's in my room watching TV. Whatever you can claim back, half is yours." He promised.

"Okay, that sounds fair," Oz went up the front stairs.

Willow came back through from the kitchen carrying three bottles of beer in one hand and a plate of beef jerky and cheese wedges in the other.

"Did Oz go?" she sounded upset. "I got his favourite snacks."

"Nope," Xander said delightedly. "He's gone on a salvage mission."

"Huh?"

"I sent him to grab whatever pizza Vi hasn't managed to scarf yet."

"Oh, good idea." Willow, giggling, set the plate and bottles on the coffee table before plonking down next to Xander again.

Oz came back down the stairs carrying one large pizza box. "Well, she didn't give them up without a fight, but I managed to snatch the six slices that were left. So I get three of them?"

Willow stared at Xander, her mouth quirked in disapproval.

"I kinda promised." Xander admitted sheepishly.

Willow looked at Oz to argue that she had never agreed to that, but he was taking his pants off. Her eyes went wide and she averted them quickly, keeping her mouth firmly shut to quash the smile she could feel coming.

Down to his boxers, Oz dropped into the space on the other side of Xander, not seeming to notice Willow's reaction.

"So what are we watching?" he asked as he ripped a slice of pizza off and settled back.

"This." Xander un-muted the television and immediately the screams came back.

Xander and Willow both flinched back as the onscreen werewolf accidentally ripped apart a human male as she tried to mate with him.

"Okay, see, now that would never happen," Oz said casually, pointing his slice at the screen.

Xander and Willow shared another embarrassed look, still wincing from the screams.


Fen screamed when the shirt ripped clean off of Charlie as the boy turned to run; trying to get away from being boxed around the ears with the pads of Zeke's large paws. She was too traumatized to realise that even though the attack looked ferocious no blood had actually been drawn… yet.

Enjoying himself far too much, Zeke let Charlie take a few steps away before he dropped to all fours, opened his grinning jaws wide, pounced and clamped down hard on his ass. Now Charlie was screaming too. Zeke started to playfully shake him from side to side.

"No, Zeke, no," Owen called out when he realised what was happening. "Oh, this will never do. Ptah, make him stop, please."

"The boy started it. And besides, Zeke is doing no more than teaching him some manners."

"Fow a liffle resvect fuh uffer bengs feevings!" Zeke said with his mouthful of ass.

"He's just advising the youth to show considerations for the feelings of others," Ptah translated.

"S…s…sorry," Charlie could barely keep his feet under him as he was jarred from side to side.

"Hello Mr Les-Sages. What are you doing here?" Distracted, Owen turned around to see the Woodman's youngest son staring at him in mild terror. "You're not going to tell on us are you? Only… only my mom knows I'm here, she said it was, like, okay, so even if you tell her…"

"I'm not going to tell on you, Bradley." Owen promised, turning back to the spectacle of Zeke and Charlie. If he did he would have to explain what he was doing here to catch them all.

"Thank you, sir." Bradley stayed beside him. "Uh, is that your dog?"

Owen grabbed the boy by the shoulder, his grip tight and his voice serious, "Whatever you do, don't call him a dog to his face."

"Why not?"

"Hey mutt, get offa him." Aaron Pritchard, having heard his friends' screams had dashed over to see what the hell was going on. He hadn't expected this. "Hey," he yelled again, aiming a kick at Zeke that missed by a mile. "You hear me dog?"

"You are about to find out," Owen said to Bradley, wincing from what he knew was to come.

Fen screamed again as Zeke turned from Charlie in a flash and suddenly had the front of Aaron's pants in his strong jaws.

"What hid you hall me, 'itch?"

Aaron didn't answer, he didn't scream, he didn't even dare move. He stood on tiptoes with his arms out to the sides for balance and breathed funny. Zeke growled around his manhood and gave a minute shake of his head. Aaron's eyes rolled back in his head.

"No!"

Seeing Charlie about to grab hold of Zeke's wagging tail to pull him off, Ptah leapt forward. Any provocation now and Zeke would bite down. He landed on the youth and they both fell to the ground. Not realising the Mummy had probably just saved his and his buddy's life – certainly his buddy's genitalia – Charlie started laying punches on Ptah's bandaged face.

"Fight. Fight. Fight." The chant was started up by those closest to the action, but it didn't take long to spread throughout the ballroom.

Victor looked up as he heard the commotion. He couldn't see what was happening, but a crowd had formed, and he instantly looked around for his friend in concern. Seeing him safe and unmolested where he had left him, Victor sighed with relief and went back to studying the contraption on the stage.

"So it was with this machinery that you were able to lift the cloak placed on this house?" he asked, twirling a few dials experimentally and looking at the digital displays with healthy sceptical ludditism and also a hint of envy.

"Yes sir, please don't touch that, sir."

When the short and stocky boy from Boudenver Academy tried to politely nudge him away from the highly expensive equipment, Victor gave him a sharp clip around the ear to get him away.

"Ow, hey!" The boy shot backwards to stand with his fellow prestigious men. "You can't hit me."

"Oh stop your whining, child. I barely touched you. Now tell me, if I attached electrodes into the bass ports here," he pointed to them. "Reconfigured the density of the energy flow and set the dial at, say, twenty-five, twenty six, do you think it would change a person's size, make them shorter?"

"In theory, I guess," said tall and lanky number one.

"Great, let us try it then." Victor took what looked like very long, thin jump-leads from his pocket before taking off his jacket and handing it to one of the boys.

The Boudenver students shrugged and smiled at each other, not as irritable now that actual experimentation was on the table.

Victor rolled up his sleeves, also smiling, which wasn't something that happened often when he was outside of his lab.

"Probably best to do a trial run first." He fit one end of the jump-leads into the bass ports and, looking around brightly, held the other end up. "Who would like to volunteer?"

The boys all tried to back away with strained, nervous smiles. Victor followed them, his smile getting bigger and more maniacal with every step.

Igor folded his winnings, pushed them into one of the pockets on the side of his scrubs and reached for his new lady-friend's hand. She'd been his lucky charm while playing cards and now he was going to see if she could sing too.

"What's going on?" she wondered as they entered the ballroom and saw the hubbub.

Catching glimpses through the crowd, he hurriedly tugged her onwards, not wanting her running and screaming before they'd gotten to spend more time together.

"Probably jutht a Halloween thkit. We'll be able to thee better from the thtage."

Completely ignoring whatever the hell Victor was doing, he gestured for his lady to take a seat at the grand piano and then slipped in next to her.

"Uh, can you play with your… uh, disability?" she asked timidly.

"You mean thith one?" Iggy held up his hands to show off his extra digits. For a split second he shot a dark look Victor's way, but then gave the girl a big, bright smile. "Oh, hell yeth."

Cracking all thirteen knuckles first, he brought his hands skilfully down onto the keys and began to play a fast, plinky-plink tune reminiscent of saloon brawls and damsels tied to train tracks.

The music floated across the ballroom.

"Now what the heck are they playing?" Craig asked as they came running into the big room.

"I don't think it's them," Andrew panted. "It's probably the ghost. He wants us, me, to do something."

"Like what? Do you see anyone?"

Andrew could see lots of people, but none were his friends. "I don't know what it is yet. We have to figure that out."

"Someone's having a scrap," Craig noticed the throng of kids was more concentrated in one area. He grabbed Andrew's upper arm. "Bet its Kennedy, come on. So what does the music have to do with us figuring out what he wants?"

"Well, it's like movie music, it has moods." Andrew nodded earnestly when Craig looked back at him dubiously. "Like in the Return of the Jedi when Luke does that thing and the ship is under attack and the music gets faster, and you know they're getting close."

"So you think the faster the music is going, the closer we are to the danger, or figuring out what the ghost wants, or probably both?"

They were pushing through the outskirts of the throng now, a few people pushed back, but they took no notice as they tried to get a front row seat.

"Yes."

"Only, mate, I can't help noticing the music is getting faster..."

"…And faster!" Andrew agreed, nervously looking over his shoulder.

"Which, if your theory is right, can only mean one thing…" Craig said as he broke through the final line of spectators and saw what was creating the fuss. "…MONSTERS!"

The kids had been in a state of disbelieving shock. Their brains unable to fully comprehend what they were seeing, they had rationalised it in a way that allowed them to think this was all part of the spooky entertainment.

As Craig instinctively shouted the truth at the top of his lungs and Zeke's head twisted around revealing snarling lips and dripping fangs, leaving Aaron free to topple to the green tiled floor in a dead faint, the spell broke around them, and now everyone was screaming.

"No, no, no!" Owen yelled, flapping his arms around as if that would calm everyone down.

"Fen!" Spotting Dawn's blonde friend, Andrew darted forward and grabbed her, pulling her to the side out of the way of the suddenly stampeding teenagers.

Craig seemed oblivious to the eruption of chaos he had caused, dazed into immobility by a mixture of fear and fascination.

Suddenly there was a ripping sound, barely heard over the screaming and Zeke's growling as he chased after anything that moved, and Ptah landed one last sloppy punch at Charlie's face to make him let go and then scrambled up and away.

"What did you do?" he squealed, turning this way and that in a panic. "What did you do? I'll give you a thousand lashes of the stick, I'll cut off your nose, I'll have you embalmed while you still breathe…"

The threats went on as Charlie, his nose bloody and his lips swollen, lay on the floor next to a still motionless Aaron and tried to stifle his sobs. Craig's lips twitched in a smile, which disappeared immediately when the bandaged head turned his way.

"What…?" Ptah gave a battle cry and came straight for him. "…the heck?"

Spinning around, Craig ran for his life. Ptah ran after him, arms outstretched, desperate to get away from the hostile youths.

"Craig!" Andrew yelled, but his boyfriend was too freaked to hear anything but the rush of blood in his ears. "Are you okay?" he asked Fen.

She shook her head. "What the hell was that?"

"A Halloween prank?" Andrew offered, shrugging like he didn't know the truth.

Fen gave him a withering look – which dutifully withered his expression of cluelessness –and hurried over to tend to Charlie and to check on Aaron, to make sure he was just in a faint and hadn't actually died from shock.

"It's… I can't tell you." Andrew started backing away, now he really had to find one of the others.

"There's… monsters," Fen said the word like it was hard to spit out. "running around the house; I think you could at least give me a clue."

"There's this ghost and the monsters are all signs, so if the music gets faster again I suggest you get under the table." He said quickly.

"Okay, thanks," Fen nodded, but then… "Wait, what?" She looked up, but Andrew had gone.

Craig ran across the ballroom and out into the foyer. He wanted to scream, and it wasn't any desire to be macho that stopped him, he just didn't want to waste breath that would be better conserved for running.

Other people ran with them, but most peeled away to find hiding places, Craig stayed single-minded, one thought: Run like hell. He didn't even hear Kennedy and Dawn calling to him, asking what was wrong, as he shot through the foyer at a breakneck speed, jumped down the front steps and kept running into the night.

Ptah, only a stride or two behind all the way, suddenly tripped over his own flapping bandages and dived unintentionally to the shiny floor.

"What is that?" Kennedy forgot they were searching for Rona – she wasn't entirely sobered up yet – and walked closer to prod the tattered being with her toe.

"Did someone actually come in costume?" Dawn gave a little laugh as she walked to the very back of the entrance hall, the only place they hadn't looked yet. "Are you helping me or not?"

"Ow, ow, what did he do to me," The shrouded figure muttered to itself. "I'm blind. They've made me blind!"

Kennedy squatted down with drunken inquisitiveness and pushed the bandages covering the kid's eyes up to his forehead. Okay, the dry, shrivelled, slightly yellowed face revealed definitely belonged to no kid, she fell back on her ass.

"Thank you, thank you!" The thing got to his knees in front of her and the bandages fell forward once more. "Ah, I am blind. I am blind again! What is this curse?"

Kennedy jumped to her feet and obliged him by pulling his bandages away from his eyes again. This time she kept hold of them though, and used them to twist his head to one side.

"Okay, let's start with: What are you? And then we'll move onto: What are you doing running around this house?"

"I was invited, which is more than you can say."

Dawn looked back irritably over her shoulder to see Kennedy still messing about with the boy in the mummy costume. There was only one door back here, in shadows because the staircase arced above it; she sighed unhappily when she realised she was going to have to check this room alone.

She was just inching the door open…

"Dawn?"

Jumping slightly at the unexpected sound of her name, she slammed the door shut again, turning to lean on it indifferently. Then, when she saw who it was, she tensed even more. "Sethos."

"I didn't know you were here," the Egyptian boy said softly.

"Well, I am," Dawn brightly stated the obvious.

"I was just about to leave, but…"

"Okay, well, don't let me keep you." She gave him a big, fake smile.

Her rudeness worked and he lost the soft tone as he said, "Right." And walked off.

Dawn's smile slowly dropped away and she sighed again as she watched him walk across the foyer. Every time he was nice to her, she was a bitch to him. It wasn't deliberate, he just kept catching her at times when his niceness was inconvenient, like when she was on a first date with the hottest guy in the world, or, like now, when she was snooping into dark corners for her missing friend.

Shaking her head, she turned back to the closed door and tried to get up the nerve to open it for a second time. She totally missed Sethos dropping reverently to his knees as he passed Kennedy and bandage-boy.

"Sire!" Sethos breathed, overcome with sudden emotion. "Lord of the Sun and the Sand." He bowed his head low to the ground, and kept it there. "Why do you appear to me? Can I be of service to you?"

"Actually, yes." Ptah winced at the tight hold on his bandages.

"What can I do for you, my Lord?" Sethos asked, wondering when he had fallen asleep. Dreams were the usual conduit for these kinds of visitations.

Ptah rolled his eyes and pointed at Kennedy over his shoulder.

"Oh, of course." He bobbed up and down a few times, not really sure if he was supposed to stop bowing or not, but he decided to take a chance. "Let go of him, please."

"No," said Kennedy and her other arm snaked out and grabbed hold of the back of his t-shirt. "Now, why don't you tell me why a nice boy like you is calling a demon-thing like this 'sire'?"

"He's not a demon-thing!" Sethos was shocked to the bone, even more so that the girl – the surprisingly strong girl – was still a human and not a pillar of salt.

"I tried telling her that," Ptah said.

"He's a God of the Nile!"

"I tried telling her that too," Ptah tried to nod, it didn't work so well.

"And what would a crusty old Nile God be doing at a high school party?" Kennedy asked reasonably.

Sethos opened his mouth to speak, but realised he didn't have an answer. He looked at Ptah with polite enquiry.

"Exactly, you stink of foul play," Kennedy gave Ptah a little shake.

"Actually no, that's just embalming fluid," he mumbled, embarrassed. "The drier I get, the more noticeable it becomes. If someone could just get me a glass of water."

Kennedy ignored him. "And you stink of hapless lackey." She gave Sethos a similar shake.

"I am no one's lackey," he said sullenly, fruitlessly trying to pull away from her grip.

"Oh really? You were bowing a few minutes ago."

I was showing respect. Let me go!"

"Showing respect to a demon? That spells out lackey," Kennedy gave him a sarcastic toothy smile. She was actually having fun for the first time in ages.

"He is not a demon!" Sethos started struggling furiously, not understanding why he couldn't easily break her hold on him. She had him tight by the scruff of his t-shirt, but he was taller than her! "And by manhandling us in this way, you are disrespecting both me and my religion."

Kennedy rolled her eyes, "I'm sure we'll both live."

"This getting absurd," Ptah threw his arms in the air. "Olwyn! Olwyn, can you come out here."

It was unlikely Owen could hear him over the racket in the other room. Zeke was still growling up a storm, the screaming could raise the roof, and through it all Iggy still played a rousing piano accompaniment in d-minor.

"There are more of you?" Kennedy dug her fingers into his hairless scalp as she shook him again.

"If someone doesn't get me a glass of water, bits are going to start dropping off." Ptah said, wincing at her roughness. "Olwyn!"

"Ew."

"Exactly," he agreed.

Across the room a familiar scream cut through all the rest and Kennedy spun around to see Dawn dragged through an open door into the dark.

"Damn!"

Did she leave her demons to go rescue Dawn or would the younger girl take care of herself? Half her problem was solved when the boy she was holding suddenly started acting like a pissed off cat: twisting in her grip, hissing, swiping his hands around in an effort to make her let go. It only took a moment of this before his t-shirt tore and Kennedy was left holding it as the kid raced towards the door Dawn had disappeared through.

"What the hell?" she demanded of Ptah, but he merely shrugged in confusion.

On the other side of the doorway Dawn was dragged deeper into the dark space and pushed against a wall. She tripped on several pairs of empty shoes, only staying on her feet because of the super-strong pale hand holding the front of her shirt.

"Thank you, my dear," the man said in a soft, Slavic accent. She whimpered. "I have been trapped in this broom closet all evening. No handle on the inside," he sighed. "And I am almost dying from hunger. You, it would seem, are my saviour."

"A…and that's a good thing, right? 'C…'cause now you can go get some food." Dawn pushed back against the wall in fear. "So you're not going to hurt me?"

He'd been in this small, smelly cupboard ever since leaving the passages between the walls, and by the time he had realised the door to the foyer didn't open from the inside the door back into the walls had closed and the lever, not used in so many years, refused to be pulled. It had not been an interesting or enjoyable two hours, and when the screaming had started outside, he had been jealous as well as bored to dust.

By the time this skinny girl had opened the door and poked her head in, he was past pissed off and in no way inclined to play by Olwyn's rules. He'd missed out on a feast of stag and otter blood tonight, and while he was indeed grateful to be released, he was also hungry. Human blood would just have to do.

"That is not quite what I meant." The Count smiled and morphed.

Suddenly Dawn could see his eyes a whole let better, mostly because they'd gone all yellow and glowy, and she decided screaming again would be a good idea about now.

Then there was a third person in the little closet, one whose features it was hard to make out because of the dark, and because they were blurry – and that wasn't her eyes playing tricks, they really were blurry, changing. Dawn hit her third screaming wind, reaching new pitches that nearly deafened all in the closet as the new figure, hissing and spitting, went for the Count.

Dawn tried to get out of the closet while the two tussled with each other, but the loose shoes scattering the floor made her stumble with every step. She fell to her knees, one arm becoming trapped in old leather riding boot and suddenly there was a noise higher than the hissing; a squeaking noise. Thinking 'rat!' she launched herself back up, the boot coming with her, and something flew at her, leathery wings brushing her face over and over.

Screaming again, had she even stopped? She lurched out of the door back into the light and through her tangled hair could see the flying rat, make that BAT! and tried to run away from it, one hand and one boot waving in the air above her. The bat stayed with her, seemingly trying to bite her as it flapped around her head like a giant mammalian mosquito. She heard Kennedy call to her, but she wasn't about to stop when a bat was trying to suck her blood and it chased her all the way out the front door and beyond.

"Da…?" Kennedy began again, but gave it up when she realised Dawn was already too far away to hear her. "Did your lackey just turn into a bat?"

Ptah looked just as puzzled. "I do not know why or how he could."

Before she could question him further, before she could blink again in fact, the chaos in the house abruptly centralized in the foyer. A fresh score of teenagers came racing out of the ballroom; Alison, Miranda and Cici at the back.

"Kennedy!" Miranda yelled as they spotted her, and it was possibly the first time they had ever been truly pleased to see her.

"What's going on? What are you running from?" she demanded, letting go of Ptah in her urgency.

"That!" Cici yelled as a brown wolf, inexplicably wearing slacks and a pin stripe shirt, appeared at high, over-excited, speed.

"You're Slayers!" Kennedy yelled, not giving a crap about secret identities right now. "Why are you running away?"

"Because I left my tranq. gun in my other pants!" Alison squealed as all three ran through the front door and disappeared.

Zeke had skidded to a halt when he saw Ptah, who was holding his bandages up so he could see. His flanks were heaving from running about and his tongue lolled between his sharp teeth, drool dripping on the floor.

Kennedy watched him and the Mummy man warily, not sure whether making sudden movements would be a good thing – she didn't have any weapons either – but as it happened, the sudden movement came from the dark closet.

Kennedy's eyes went wide and she took an unintentional step back as the black panther bounded into the light. Zeke howled, the cat roared, fur puffed up, hackles rose and then all out bedlam took over as both creatures gave into their age-old instincts.

The large foyer rapidly felt way too small as the two tore about, yelping, screeching, baying, hissing, pouncing, diving, scrabbling, at one point ricocheting off the wall and generally scaring the crap out of Kennedy and Ptah who were caught in the middle of the demonic maelstrom. Literally, when the two creatures stopped haring about to catch their breath, both growling ferociously as they stared each other down.

Realising a pounce from either one of them was going to see her in the crossfire, and not even wanting to imagine how much would be left of her if they both pounced together, Kennedy decided to obey the first rule of Slaying and ran like hell out the open door.

Ptah, having had the exact same thought, ran only a second later, and not a second too soon, He didn't turn to look as the two came crashing together, he didn't need to, he could hear exactly how it was going. In his hurry, his bandages slipped back over his eyes and he ran with his arms outstretched so he wouldn't bump into anything. Excellent idea in theory, but he had forgotten about the front steps. As he made a painful dive onto the gravel drive, the black panther leapt over his fallen body, his friend followed.

"Zeke! Help me up!"

Ptah raised the bandages from his eyes to see them racing away towards the woods, emitting a cacophony of animalistic yips and yowls, and sighed heavily. Zeke wouldn't be back for a while.

Tbc...