*******THE END******

Lorne raised his glass and examined it quizzically.  Had someone slipped something into his Seabreeze?   A Mickey, as they used to say.  He glanced around at his friends.  No one looked guilty, or least guilty of doing something to him.  In fact, they looked equally quizzical.  Or equally quizzicalled. 

He walked to the cauldron that moments ago had been spewing gray vapors like Vesuvius readying itself to erupt right out of the floor.  He thumped its side with one finger.  It was some sort of hard black plastic, or polyethylene or something.  A few very small, melting shards of dry ice floated on the water�s surface like white turds. 

Fragments of the lyrics of an old song surfaced like flotsam in Lorne�s head: �This is the craziest party that could ever be, don't turn on the lights 'cause I don't wanna see. Mama told me not to come, she said, That ain't the way to have fun, son.�   Not that Lorne�s mama would be telling him anything.  She was done in by the three sisters a couple of years ago.  Tragic.  She should have stayed in Pylea. 

Lorin felt a little bit sorry for Wesley.  He�d been knocked out twice tonight, first by Lorin and then by the tentacled octopussy thing.  How many times can a guy get knocked out before he sustains brain damage?  Or maybe a few screws had been knocked loose inside his noggin a long time ago.  That, actually, would explain a lot.  He did, after all, try to blast Dorothy and the Scarecrow into oblivion.  The guy deserved to be knocked out a few times. 

The ghosts of partiers long past were slowly drifting away, going to wherever they were supposed to be before the demon trapped them here.  There were windows now where just a few moments ago there was nothing but solid walls.  It was still night out there, but the storm was gone and a nearly full moon shined like a beacon, it�s cool, bluish light spilling across the ballroom floor.

The sisters had completed their chant. The beast was floating above them. A slide of hand and the book was returned to a small charm around her neck. She stood there watching as it thrashed it�s tentacles.  One them came dangerously close. It slammed down thudding beside her leg. Uncharacteristically frightened by the scene she screamed and jumped back watching helplessly as Spike went on the attack. His immediate danger only adding to her present fearful state. Wes made a move with the transducer frying the demon.

As the spell broke and she came back to her sense embarrassed by her damsel in distress behavior that had made her unable to assist in the final fray. She shot a glance over at Spike then away not wanting to speak about it. The beast fell at their feet. Dean attempted to take a final strike at it, but the thing up and disappeared. Kat stepped forward brushing her hair behind her ear, �I think it�s gone.� It wasn�t dead, but it was no longer in the building. The sense of fear and darkness had completely dissipated. It was reflected in more than her emotions, but in those of everyone in the room. Feelings were mixed. Some people were relieved. Others like the brunette slayer were angry at this creature�s manipulation.

One spirit was lingering. She stood with Lorin placing a hand on his cheek. There was a remorseful look in her eyes. She could sense the emotions brewing and felt for them. Kat walked over wrapping her arms around Spike. Why did all the parties they get invited to seem to end like this?

Dean had been rockin that clarinet like he�d played it all his life.  At least until the spell was broken.  After the electricity hit the Thesulac demon all Dean could manage was a few pathetic squeaks and squawks out of the thing.  The entire band stopped playing, even though the other people were real musicians.  And the vocalist, whose snout had elongated into something wolf-like, and her hair had become wiry and thicker, was back to normal, except for that bemused look on her face, like she�d just awoken from a bad dream. 

The Thesulac demon squatted on the floor like a giant, dead octopus.  Except an octopus with sort of a human torso, arms, and head.  A few stray bolts of electricity still played along some of the tentacles.  Was it dead?  Dean didn�t know.  But he wanted to make sure it didn�t get back up again.  Monsters have a habit of doing that.  Just when you think they�re dead and you�ve won, they rise up again and bite you in the rear end.  Tossing the clarinet aside, Dean looked around for a weapon.  His gaze fixated on the microphone stand.  The girl, who earlier Dean had thought was kinda hot, was still holding on to it, had it tilted towards her.  Dean took it from her hands, �Mind if I borrow this?�  He unhooked the microphone and handed it to her, then kicked the circular support disc off the bottom.  The shaft of the stand was solid steel, not aluminum.  Just what he needed.  Dean now had a makeshift spear. 

He jumped down from the stage and ran towards the demon.  Hopping up onto one of the tentacles, Dean ran along it towards the thing�s torso, which was about five times as large as his own, person-sized torso.  The tentacle under his feet was squishy and a little slippery, but he managed to keep his footing.  He quickly ascended to where the tentacles connected to the body like a creepy skirt.  Dean maneuvered around to where he was essentially standing on the thing�s lap.  Its eyes were closed and its head hung down so its chin was resting on its chest.  Dean raised the microphone stand in both hands and just as he was ready to thrust it into one of the demon�s eye sockets, the Thesulac awoke� and vanished. 

Dean fell backwards and onto the floor.  Uninjured, he got to his feet.  �Dammit!  Where the hell did it go?�

     He wasn�t sure how the Thesulac had been made corporeal, but here it was in its full, horrific gigantism.  In all of his studies of demonology, first at the Watcher�s Council, then with Angel Investigations, and finally at Wolfram and Hart, Wesley had never read or heard of a Thesulac demon of these proportions.  The one they had dispatched at the Hyperion Hotel more than a decade ago had been the size of a human.  This creature was enormous, and it was wreaking havoc with its innumerable monstrous tentacles.  Wesley had to dodge to his left, and then to his right to avoid being entangled by one of those things, which he imagined would grab him and squeeze like a giant boa constrictor.

     Meanwhile, the fog had thickened considerably, and had grown deeper � it came up to mid-calf now � and it was moving about the room in waves, as if there was a tidal pull guiding it hither and thither.  When the swells broke on an object or person, a foamy effervescence would blossom and temporarily engulf that object, only to retreat again into the sea of gray. 

     But Wesley still had the hyper transducer firmly in his grasp, and it was charged up. So he pointed it at the source of the tentacles, the body of the creature, which was suspended above them near the ceiling.  The demon was laughing.  Wesley addressed him, �Laugh at this Mr. Chuckles.� He pulled the trigger and a lightning storm of blue electricity sizzled upward and into creature.  Electricity danced outward along the tentacles, causing them to spasm and convulse.  The Thesulac screamed, a pained and outraged sound.  It was apparently simultaneously surprised and furious that Wesley was able to affect it at all.  But with its motor functions severely impaired, gravity was taking a toll.  The Thesulac began to fall in slow motion towards the floor, its tentacles randomly lashing out as the electricity fried whatever nerves controlled them.  People and spirits scattered from the center of the ballroom, hoping to avoid being squashed flat when the thing finally made landfall.

     One of those tentacles whipped around and hit Wesley square on, easily tossing him and the hyper transducer forcefully into the wall.  Wesley was out cold or worse, and the hyper transducer had been reduced to metallic rubble and electronic parts scattered about on the floor.

Spike was at the bar, downing shots of Irish whiskey. Lilian had pretty good whiskey here.  Vintage liquor, just like most everything here was vintage or old.  But old in a good way.  Two things started happening that Spike found disturbing.  First, that witch�s cauldron started to pour vapors that were flooding across the floor.  Then the Thesulac took shape above everyone�s heads.  And the octopussy demon was gynormous, whale-sized, or maybe giant squid sized, with python tentacles snaking all over the place trying to grab ghosties and people alike. 

Of course everyone was in panic mode.  And for Spike, it was time to act.  He catapulted out of his seat towards the far wall.  He�d noticed the Gish family coat of arms earlier, or mostly he noticed it was flanked by two crossed, decorative swords. A tentacle tried to intercept him, but he ducked and rolled, came up on his feet just below the mounted swords.  He grabbed one in each hand and started whipping the swords in circles, moving in on those twining snake tentacles.  He chopped one and then another off.  But weird thing, when the severed pieces fell to the ground they just exploded into smoke.  Or vapor, just adding to the fog that was already ankle deep in the ballroom, fog that was roiling with dips and swells like an angry sea.  Spike wouldn�t be deterred, though, he kept on slicing and dicing. 

Seeing that the witches were another problem � they were still hovered over that cauldron, chanting and waving their arms as more and more of the vapor-fog churned out and onto the floor.  Spike snuck up on them and with a single one-handed swing, took all three of their heads off.  But just like the tentacles, they fell back into the fog and became one with it.  Meanwhile, even more of the gray stuff was pouring out of the cauldron.  People were screaming.  Ghosties too.  One of the tentacles grabbed Spike and lifted him off the ground.  He dropped one of the swords but used the other to hack, slice, and saw through the tentacle that was squeezing him.  It was rubbery and slimy and cold, and once again when Spike cut through it, the severed piece just dropped and turned to fog.  Spike fell with it, but when he came down, he just kept falling.  Right through the floor, enveloped in the fog, into a bottomless pit.     

The Thesulac was pissed.  But at the same time he was feasting, gorging on the fear and paranoia in the room, and not only from the dead ones cowering in the corner, the ones he�d been feasting off of for decades, but also these live fools who thought they would come here for a party, to mock All Hallows Eve. How dare they. 

He had grown ever stronger over the years.  Yes, he knew of his brother at the Hyperion Hotel and how he had been cruelly electrocuted to death by the vampire with a soul.  But that Thesulac only had one victim for years.  Judy.  And she was old, feeble.  That Thesulac had been small and weak.  This Thesulac, in the mansion of Lilian Gish, had dozens of victims, and he had grown fat over the years.  Fat and strong and big.  He was now a part of every wood fiber, every termite-infested board, every pipe and wire and floor tile in the mansion.  He would not be rooted out by mere electricity.  Or that ridiculous Ghostbuster weapon. 

The Thesulac became corporeal in a sense � and without the need for one of the living ones to read a pathetic spell.  He projected himself above them, monstrous, huge, his hundreds of tentacles, each 50 feet long, lunging, grasping the live and dead alike.  And as they screamed, he absorbed their fear and loathing, drank it in like fine wine.  And he laughed and laughed.   

Sam had asked her about the Thesulac demon. It was suddenly apparent to her that Lilian and Azrael weren�t in the room. The conversation about the demon was being held upstairs. She had been absent mindedly ease dropping again. She tried to control the ability. It was antisocial, awkward, and rude to listen to other people without permission. Thankfully Angel came forward with further explanation on how to defeat the creature.  The conversation escalating as the pair entered the room. Lilian/Fred could use a translator with all the technical jargon. The point was they had an implement to destroy the beast. Problem was making him corporeal.

�Will and I can do it. We don�t need an orb,� she reached up placing her finger tips around a small silver charm. A token she has picked up years ago on another adventure, a book full of the strongest magics hidden locked within a charm. There would have to be an incantation within it to do the job. Eyes lowered whispering softly the trinket transformed into an old leather bound book. She began thumbing through the pages. There was a growl in the shadows. �Will this one,� she stepped over to her sister tilting the book so the red head could read the passage. Waiting for her to agree upon it before they started reading the text aloud. Their voices filling the room.