She crouched perfectly still, staring down at the hard cracked earth, remembering nothing yet somehow knowing all. Far above and beyond her, horrific otherworldly screams vied with bellows of warlike rage. She was bruised and defeated―still whole, but laid low as in some cataclysmic struggle. And she was naked. The garments of which she had been stripped in battle were straggling across the wind-blown earth in the periphery of her vision, a ruin of sundered white cloth. All that shielded her bared flesh from the roaring creatures wheeling high above her was a great feathered canopy, a canopy fused in bone to her shoulder-blades.

She raised her head, folding the dense appendages close over her exposed back and buttocks, and gazed across the vast fire-scorched plain. Far off she could see other crumpled forms, wings struggling feebly in final attempts to ward off their standing attackers. Further beyond, the glowering red sun was split by the horizon as it sank for the final time on Earth. The turbulent sky was darkening into brooding umber, though she could still pick out the dread sight of further great-winged monsters circling the carnage and roaring out their victory. Hope was dead. All left for the survivors was their dark fate.

This was not the foretold end. This was not what the Scriptures had promised. To be left crushed and deserted on this desolate dried-up field…

She heard it first, a base animal snorting that resonated all about her. Then the shadow fell across her face, all but casting her into night. Slightly turning her head she saw them, a pair of great cloven hooves, one grinding into the dust. She knew with the same surety by which she understood all else that it was Him. And among the horror was a faint, sinful glimmer of pride that he had come for her in person. She looked up and up―she could do no other―taking in his brute form. All his beautiful angelic disguise was dispelled in this, his moment of lustful, vainglorious conquest.

Her conqueror. Giant above her, towering nine feet, less a minotaur in aspect, more a terrifying cross-bred fusion of man and bull. The bulging haunches, the massively muscled chest, the rope-like sinews on his neck―all straining beneath a hide like thick dark-red leather. Great black horns curled outwards from his forehead and his eyes burned out of his cruel, swarthy face as if fuelled from some interior furnace.

Her conqueror―but not utterly if she resisted him. He could overwhelm her physically, but inside herself she must not succumb to him, to the mastery of his hellish presence. To the focal point of her rising, fascinated horror―the great phallus which rose from his loins like a sabre. Her eyes fixated on its mighty, thick-veined curve as it swayed in front of her face, more terrible and awe-inspiring than any weapon he might have used to subdue her in the air. His balls hung down between his massive thighs like huge granite eggs. She could almost smell the sulphurous brew within them.

He threw back his head and uttered a long, guttural roar, his forked, serpentine tongue thrashing the air. Then with the same whip-like motion, the long thick muscle lashed downwards, its twin tendrils lighting on her sternum. She gasped sharply and held back the air in her lungs, as his tongue slithered upwards between her breasts over the extended curve of her neck to her chin’s tip. It flickered briefly, sickeningly at her lips, before retracting like reverse-lightening all the way inside his mouth.

Then he reached out a mighty taloned hand and drew her tiny face up and towards him, her hair fluttering in the hot breeze as he guided her. Resistance crumbled within. She could not hold back, could not even require him to force her.

But she spirited up the last of her fading courage and sealed her mouth tight against his intrusion. She remained resolute though trembling, as the obscenely glistening head of his great shaft smeared its vile mucus on her lips.

“WORSHIP ME.” His words were a long distorted growl, torn from his throat. It reverberated around her and she shuddered. She shut her eyes and braced her whole being against him. But her nipples were beaded hard in the blasphemy of his presence. There was a betraying, melting sensation in her loins―unsought and inevitable. He was waiting, she knew, waiting for her to submit. Waiting for her lips to part through her own volition, so he could impale her near to her throat and pump his boiling, demonic seed into her stomach as though she welcomed it. She must not let him, she must not allow him that satisfaction. Take her body though he might, she must steel her soul against His…

“WORRSHHHIIP MEEEEE!!!”

~~~~

“And then?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it? Gabby, you can’t pull ‘and then I woke up’ on me now. Not after the erectile demon and all the post-apocalyptic foreplay. There’s nothing else?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Dora. I can see you’d like to hear about me being ravished by Beelzebub. You’re quite the sick puppy, you know that?”

“But he wanted you to submit all of your own accord. That’s so frickin’ sexy!”

“Sexy? It was a nightmare. I couldn’t get to sleep again after.”

“I’ll bet you couldn’t. Give me that kinda nightmare, I wouldn’t bother dating anymore.”

Gabrielle’s reaction was a comedy of open-mouthed outrage. “Oh - oh - right, so I’ve just described your perfect guy―strong and silent type, horns, crappy attitude, with a penchant for world domination and damning all mankind.”

“Horns I could cope with, the third one in particular.” Pandora grinned, swilling the dregs of her rosé before draining the glass. “Seems a reasonable trade-off for the hooves and the tail.”

“No tail,” Gabrielle corrected, sipping from her own glass. “He was a kind of composite of various Devil mythologies.”

“If you say so.” Pandora rolled her eyes, refilled her glass and reclined back into the beanbag.

“He was,” Gabrielle insisted. “The satyr was a creature from Greek myth, but in the Christian tradition it became viewed as demonic, what with it having a perpetual erection and all. So the whole Fallen Angel idea got combined with the horny goat. Only in my dream he was a bit more… bullish than goaty.”

“So in other words,” Pandora said knowingly, “you took all your favorite bits and made the whole thing over with a few hot touches of your own. You created your perfect demon.”She chuckled at the exasperated look on her friend’s face. “And cast yourself in the role of glamorous overthrown angel, made to submit to his every bestial desire. Yum.”

“That’s the other odd thing.” Gabrielle frowned. “Traditionally angels are seen as either male or androgynous. It’s only in Nativity plays that they’re feminized. If you read Paradise Lost, you’ll…”

“Never going to happen,” Pandora assured her. “Look, Gabby, stop being an English teacher. Get your head out of your books. When you woke up, did you touch yourself?”

“What?”

“Don’t get defensive with me, Miss Deangelo. When you were lying there with your head full of your big scary demon, did - you - masturbate?”

“Dora!”

“Did you?”

“Well―alright, yes.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What was the orgasm like? I can tell by your face right now you had one.”

“It was… It was…” Pandora was nodding salacious encouragement, but though the word ‘spectacular’ occurred to Gabrielle, she refused to provide her friend with that much satisfaction. “It was good,” she finished lamely, but there was a tremor in her voice and her nipples hardened as she said it.

“Ha!” Pandora took delight in her victory. “That dream means one thing―you need to get laid. Properly. By someone who knows what he’s doing.” She talked right over the semi-scandalized Gabriella’s attempts to protest, waving a pontificating finger. “And you told meabout the dream because you wanted somebody to say as much.”

“But Dora, I…”

“Look at you―you’re one of the most attractive women I know and you sit in, night after night in sweats and a baggy sweater, watching Bridget Jones and eating ice-cream―that Cookies ’n’ Cream was delicious by the way, I’m not saying it wasn’t―when you should be out meeting guys. Come on, Gab, you’re gorgeous. Trim and smooth and long-legged…Christ, if I was a guy I’d do you in a heartbeat.” That one caused Gabrielle to grin and blush. “How long’s it been?” Pandora persisted. “Three months? Come on, is Simon really worth that much mourning?”

“Well it’s… he’s… I’d been with him over a year.” Gabrielle sensed the lack of conviction in her own reaction. Her resistance was giving way much as it had done in the dream.

“And you want to tell me exactly what was so great?” Pandora was pursuing relentlessly now, her tone good-humored yet quietly scathing. “All those wonderful romantic gestures he never quite got around to making? The football games he shared with you? His scintillating wit?’ This time Gabrielle laughed aloud. She couldn’t help herself. ‘Oh yes, and remind me what the sex was like.”

Gabrielle gave a rueful grimace. “Okay, okay, I know I told you. It wasn’t great. Not that I’ve got much to compare it with.”

“That’s what comes of being a good girl and going to church all these years,” Pandora chided.

“Unfair!” Gabrielle’s protest was stronger this time. “You know my faith’s important to me. And St Ambrose is very progressive. It’s not like they sent me on those summer camps where we all sit around with hot boys and talk about our chastity. I’ve been unlucky with the guys I’ve met, that’s all.”

“Then it’s time to set that right. When your freaky nightmares promise better sex than you’ve had in real life, action needs to be taken.”

The truth of Pandora’s words weighed on Gabrielle, but it wasn’t as easy as her friend made out. Her relationship with Simon hadn’t been incendiary, that was for sure, but she had felt comfortable in it. She’d tried to make it work. So his assertion three months prior that “the chemistry isn’t there for me”, after all his hang-ups and guilt over sex―that had been crushing. Maybe Pandora was right. Maybe that was what you got for dating a guy from church.

“I simply don’t know if I’m ready to go looking for another relationship yet,” she moaned.

“Hello? Did I even mention the R-word? I’m talking about short-term, high-intensity fun-for-fun’s-sake.”

Gabrielle stared at her fellow-teacher helplessly. It was easy for her to speak, Miss Fox (what fun the male students had with that surname), perched there on Gabrielle’s soft furnishings like a cute, buxom pixie, a satin sheen to her dark hair. Out every Saturday night, a whirlwind of flirtation and tease and wit. Sex on toast, though admittedly choosy about who she let spread her. Gabrielle disapproved of her some and envied her more. “Look,” she said, a touch despairingly, “I’m no good at finding that sort of fun.”

“That’s why you’ve got me,” Pandora chirped, her eyes sparkling among the T-lights of the English teacher’s bed-sitting-room. “It’s time for you to be reintroduced to society, my girl, and I know just the event.”

“You do?” Gabrielle was wary of Pandora’s zealous tone. Her friend had clearly been waiting to spring this all evening.

“Oh God yes. I’ve told you about my cousin Stella? The one who married Mackenzie Hartland the venture capitalist and moved from San Fran to Santa Barbara? Well their annual Halloween party is coming up. And guess who’s been invited a second year running. And,guess who’s been granted a second ticket for her hot friend who’s in need of a fabulous night out.”

Gabrielle stared for a moment and knocked back a particularly large gulp of wine. “Select,” Pandora confided, like the room might be bugged. “Lavish.” She curled her tongue around the word with relish and followed up with a gleeful alliteration for her English-graduate friend. “And lascivious.”

“Yeah,” a concerned Gabrielle said, her heart-rate stepping up. “A swingers party, the way you told it last year.”

“Not officially.” Pandora grinned. “But it has acquired quite a reputation. I went as a cute little vampire and before the night was out, Van Helsing impaled me in the…”

“Thank you, Dora, you’ve told me that story!” Gabrielle quelled the confession, but laughed in her outrage all the same. “You seriously don’t expect me to go.”

“I totally expect it, and I’m going to slap you around your pretty head if you don’t. Do you know how exclusive these tickets are, how much persuading I had to do to get you in? You need to go out and live some. God and the church aren’t going to be pissed if you have one night’s fun.”

“It’s not that,” Gabrielle protested. Part of her wanted to be convinced. “It’s―well―I’m not exactly brimming with self-confidence right now. After the Simon thing.”

“Unreal,” Pandora said, shaking her head. “You’re a fucking goddess, Gabby, with a major self-image problem, that’s all. We’ve got three weeks till Halloween. You, girl, are my project.” She gazed over Gabrielle appraisingly. The riveting blue of those unaccountably uncertain eyes, not quite obscured by her tousled, dirty-blonde hair. The limber, pilates-toned body, not quite concealed by her sloppy casual-wear. So pretty, yet so vulnerable right now, so unconvinced of her own sex-appeal.

“Oh my God, yes.” Inspiration flashed so strikingly across Pandora’s face, that Gabrielle leaned in to listen. “Your dream! It’s so perfect.” She met her friend’s bemused stare squarely. “An angel―a sexy-ass angel surrounded by the Creatures of the Night. You willrock the joint.”

Gabrielle struggled for speech. She was flattered and felt a rush of affection for her clearly deranged friend. She could even sense crazy, scary, guilty excitement bubbling up in her stomach. But this was all total madness. “I - I can’t - I wouldn’t even know how to start with a costume.”

“Gabby, I’m an Art and Design teacher,” Pandora spelt out patiently. “And there are places called shops.” She took Gabrielle by the hands and beamed at her. “You shall go to the ball. And once you get there, balling is optional.”

“Pandora…” Gabrielle blushed to her roots and glared back in mock-fury.

“Honestly.” Pandora’s eyes rolled white. “You regale me with stories of foot-long demon-cock, and then you get all coy about a sexy party. What am I going to do with you?”

~~~~~

What indeed? Getting Gabrielle to the party would not be the problem; their girly tête-a-tête had clearly got the blonde hooked. Bypassing the usual Gabby-reaction once they’d arrived, that was the challenge; making sure she didn’t revert to her default polite-but-reserved routine once interested males came sniffing.

Five years together on the staff of San Francisco’s Willowfield High, five years’ worth of weekends on the town had established the pattern all too well, Pandora thought wryly. Gabrielle’s faltering confidence always masqueraded as stand-offishness. What a waste of that pretty body and that sexy imagination, the one that rose to the surface once a few drinks had gone south on girls’ nights in. And, it transpired, in her nocturnal imaginings too, when that clearly freaky subconscious got a chance to take over. God, Gabby needed unharnessing from her inhibitions. Then maybe she could experience one truly hot night. Maybe she’d acquire a taste for them.

Pandora probably would have refrained from what she did, had it not been for that one tequila-soaked evening. She stumbled into her apartment at the end of it, the idea burning wicked in her mind. It was an outrageous liberty to take with hers and Gabrielle’s friendship, she knew, but in her inebriate state it seemed too inspired a notion to ignore. She picked up the phone and made two calls.

The first was to her cousin Stella, who on that Friday night was as alcoholically merry as Pandora. “He’d fit in perfectly at the party―suave, successful and hot as hell,” Pandora insisted. “He’s outgoing, daring―you’d love him, although hands off. I’m kind of trying to set him up with someone else.”

Stella’s tipsiness certainly played a role in her agreeing to provide another ticket. Pandora signed off the conversation with a thrill of success and made her second call.

She and Lucius Dammrich had been friends since childhood, the Foxes and the Dammrichs living as close neighbors. Lucius had grown up and done well in real estate and with women. A charming, devil-may-care hunk of masculinity, that was her guy-pal. Pandora figured she’d managed to stay such good friends with him because she firmly refused to go there. She’d chide him laughingly over his indiscretions and tell him frequently to stop being such a damned dog.

The morning after her call, no doubt, she’d have hung-over reservations about her actions and their possible consequences, but that night he struck her as Gabrielle’s Mr Right-now. Precisely what the girl needed. Besides, he was clever and well-read. He would get her. Who knew? Gabby might be the one to reform him…

Ha! Get real, girl. That’s not going to happen. But at least he could work some Halloween magic and give the sexually reticent blonde a holiday to remember. He answered his cellphone and after the de rigeur drunken banter―some months had passed since last they spoke―Pandora cheerfully moved to engage him in her plot.

“You’ll love this party, I know you. It’ll be swarming with hot women―but look, there’s one I want you to pay special attention to. No, you’ll like her. Really like her. And she’s a challenge. I know you love that. You want me to email a photo? I’ll do it right now. Look, Lucius, you owe me! We had a weekend lined up, and you swanned off to San Diego to hook up with some little fuck-buddy of yours, remember? This will not be a chore, trust me. But I want you to be nice to her. And don’t tell her we had this conversation. Costume? Well yeah, I did have something in mind for you. I thought if I gave you a theme, you could use your imagination and run with it. Let me explain…”

* * * *

Over three weeks Gabrielle allowed herself to be swept along by Pandora’s boundless enthusiasm. It was easy to go with that flow once she got past her initial reservations, in fact it was a source of stomach-tightening excitement. Letting herself be costumed for a party of dubious reputation felt deliciously transgressive, to the extent that it caused her qualms during her regular act of Sunday worship. She tried to brush off her doubts. It was nothing more, she told herself firmly, than an anthropological excursion involving a bit of dress-up. And yet every suggested piece of couture seemed to shock her more than the one before.

“I could never wear that!” her refrain went, yet most every time she knew she wanted to. Wanted the nerve to carry off something that outrageous in public. And she never shied from trying it on―no silky, lacy, clingy excuse for an outfit remained unmodeled. Pandora stood beside her at the full-length mirror each time, admiring how the scanty scraps barely succeeded in covering her svelte, gracefully curved body. Her well-intentioned friend, she was perfectly aware, had more in mind than a voyeuristic stroll amongst Santa Barbara’s wealthy at play. She was being kitted out, she knew, in preparation for a raunchy escapade all her own.

This was never more apparent, the experience never more innately erotic, than the day Pandora took her for a final fitting at Victoria’s Secret. There were three of them in the changing area, Pandora sitting in as Gabrielle hesitantly stripped for the assistant and had her bust-line and hips measured for the designated costume.

“What, that one? Are you kidding?”

Yet the ensemble was so dainty, so exquisitely sexy, that she knew she was going to wear it to the party. It was a thrilling, scary thought. The tape-measure was stretched taut across her naked breasts, squeezing cold on her nipples, and a knowing smile hovered on Pandora’s lips.

“What was her dumb-ass ex thinking?” the dark-haired Fox mused aloud. “Doesn’t she look fabulous?” The pretty young assistant could only agree. Fitting complete, adjustments to the garment began.

There were other appointments, the afternoon at the hairdresser’s being key. “Can’t I wear a wig for the evening?” Gabrielle inquired, but Pandora would not hear of it.

“Properly or not at all, girlfriend,” Gabrielle was told, prior to their joint salon visit. So an ash-blonde rinse it was.

She met the same insistence over her first ever bikini wax. There was an undeniable naughty thrill―Pandora squeezing her hand every time a strip was torn away by the beautician from her delicately virginal pubic zone and laughing with her in the heat of the ensuing rush. Remembering the reason for the treatment made her moist, regardless of the pain and the attendant’s proximity. She wondered what was overcoming her and if the beautician caught a scent of her arousal.

At home Pandora surrounded herself with her craftwork and devised some touches of her own. Together she and Gabrielle upped their gym sessions, each one helping tighten and tone. The end of October loomed. It was all Gabrielle could do to keep her concentration when teaching class.

English literature had always absorbed her, but now her focus was shot. And discussing Milton’s angelic and diabolical imagery from Paradise Lost with her seniors―that had never been quite the same since dream-night. The bizarre nightmare kept burning in the forefront of her mind, due at least partially to Pandora’s costume inspiration. At night her sleep was troubled. And during the day she fixated ever more on the forthcoming party. It felt like a particularly naughty date with destiny and the thought made her shudder.

Pandora drove them down to Santa Barbara the day before the grand event. Stella and her husband had arranged for the girls to stay in a guest bedroom to avoid any rush and let them relax into the festive occasion. Just a party, Gabrielle repeated to herself, but as the car wound its path into Santa Barbara Heights, she could not shake the sense that she was embarking on some great illicit adventure. She gasped at the immense wrought-iron gates outside Hartland Lodge and at the high spiked fencing which seemed to surround the house’s acres. There would be no easy gate-crashing at this party. Pandora having been granted the security code, the gates swung apart and they rolled up the curving gravel drive between immaculately clipped lawns interspersed with a variety of topiary creatures. “She really didmarry money,” Gabrielle said in awe.

“They have a maze out back,” Pandora informed her. “For real.”

The Lodge itself did not disappoint. It was a two-level brownstone manor with a quartet of great white Corinthian columns propping up the porch and elaborate keystone arches spanning each of the massive windows. “Straight out of The Great Gatsby,” Gabrielle marveled. “Maybe that’s what gave them the idea for the decadent parties.”

They were greeted immediately, as they crunched to a halt, by Stella Hartland, an elegant, dark-haired woman in her late thirties. “Delighted,” the hostess said coolly, on Pandora’s introduction. The polite reserve of the welcome made Gabrielle feel something of an interloper.

“It’s okay,” Pandora would reassure her later, “they normally only invite people they know. These events are a well-kept secret. She’ll be fine once she gets to know you.”

Mac Hartland, Gabrielle observed, was much more profuse in his greeting. A handsome and robust forty-something with silvering hair, he seemed delighted by the arrival of his cousin-by-marriage and her attractive friend for the forthcoming frivolities. Ostentatiously he ushered them inside his luxurious abode, then plied them with drinks, as Gabrielle absorbed the Neo-classical design with its intricate friezes and its cherub-laden ceiling murals. An angel, it occurred to her, might grace this place better than the ghouls and witches.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” she trilled excitedly to Pandora that night, while they sipped champagne in their room at their two-girl pyjama party. “I was expecting something―well―tacky. I can’t imagine what tomorrow night’ll be like!”

“I know you can’t,” Pandora said with cheerful wickedness. “Gabby girl, this will be one Halloween you’ll never forget.”

There was something in her tone and in the way she eyed Gabrielle over her champagne flute that alerted the English grad to danger. “Dora, you are telling me everything here, right? You’ve got me spooked already and it’s still October 30th.”

Pandora’s innocence seemed rather too assumed. “Absolutely, Gab, I don’t know what you’re thinking. You’re going to one totally insane party, that’s all. Hang on, gotta take a call.” Gabrielle eyed Pandora’s retreat to the ensuite bathroom and wondered who was on the other end of that vibrating iPhone. She knew her friend too well and wondered what schemes might be afoot.

Suspicion had settled to the back of Gabrielle’s mind by the time she and Pandora were breakfasting with the Hartlands next morning. Their hostess had thawed somewhat in her attitude toward the newcomer, while not entirely shedding her upwardly-mobile hauteur.

After breakfast Pandora provided her with a guided tour of the Lodge’s extensive grounds, including a brief interlude in the outskirts of the maze. Its thick yew-tree hedges towered above them imposingly. Even at noon it succeeded in blotting out much of the daylight. “Damn…This is ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’,” Gabrielle commented, “or something from ‘Harry Potter’.” The hedging seemed to lower down upon her a touch grimly. “Halloween night this place is going to be seriously spooky.” She shivered right to her toes.

Pandora smirked. “Halloween night, there’s going to be all kinds of fun and games going in here. None of it spooky, believe me. You want to keep away from the maze, Gab, if you want to hold onto your halo.”

Gabrielle smiled weakly at her friend’s innuendo. A figurative shadow had fallen across her, to match that cast by the hedge. It was a sensation she couldn’t shake. “Let’s go,” she told her friend hastily. “Time to see the town.”

The whole afternoon was taken up with light lunching and window-shopping along the palm-lined streets of Santa Barbara, while the house’s elaborated party preparations were carried out. At six the pair returned to the house, to find huge jack-o-lanterns already strewn across the porch, ready to be lit. Inside, the hallway and adjacent rooms were strewn with Stella’s tasteful Halloween decorations―further pumpkins and Fall flowers, carefully placed broomsticks and black-gauze webs with jewel-eyed hand-crafted spiders. Thick church candles were set in sturdy holders about the walls. Whatever the party’s reputation, Gabrielle could not fault her hostess on creating ambience. Having soaked it all in, she and Pandora retired to their suite to prepare―for what her friend was referring to as ‘a grand entrance’.

“We start from the bottom up,” Pandora said in a sprightly tone. She slapped her lissome friend jauntily on the ass as she said it. “Hit the shower, girl.”

It was a regimen on which Pandora had insisted. Having soaped and rinsed before surrendering the shower stall to her friend, Gabrielle moisturized every inch of her skin’s surface. She applied a clear lacquer to her nails and sat robed at the armoire, curling her eye-lashes. It provided a curious erotic charge, knowing that her partner in this enterprise was sponging down her saucy body next door, as though they were co-adventurers about to embark on some sexy mission. It’s a fancy-dress party, that’s all, she told herself with ever-waning conviction.

She was still preening her lashes when Pandora burst into the room from the shower, chattering and butt naked, her breasts bouncing freely on her neat, curvy frame. Even now Gabrielle was embarrassed by and envious of how freely the girl could put herself on display. Exactly how would Gabrielle cope in front of a houseful of strangers?

“Go on, Gabby, put the costume on,” Pandora said eagerly, jumping on to the bed and perching her nude self cross-legged. Gabrielle glanced at her meaningfully in the mirror. “I won’t peek,” the dark-haired girl lied, dropping her eyes, but stealing covert glances throughout. She watched in admiration as her friend arose and slid the robe from off her slim shoulders, letting it puddle around her feet. Gabrielle’s smooth, limber body had a rich honey tone to it. Some six inches taller than Pandora, she had the graceful curves of a gymnast and rose-nippled breasts like swollen teardrops. And she doesn’t think the guys are interested? God, if I could sprout a length for a day…

Pandora observed, quietly avid, as Gabrielle padded across to the chair where lay her costume.

The English teacher hesitated, before tentatively picking up the first item. She stepped her feet nervously inside the pantyhose as a bather into ice-cold shallows. Pandora watched as the white fishnets glided up over Gabrielle’s taut calves and thighs, then expanded around the firm ovals of her ass. The remaining pubic strip, dyed cheekily the same ash-blonde as her shoulder-length locks, peeked through the netting. Damn, a thorough job had been done in primping―‘pimping’? ―this girl out.

Now Gabrielle was climbing inside the teddy, the sequined ivory one which followed the plunging line of her hips to where it fastened cunningly, secretly, at her crotch. The teddy with the corseted bra, which thrust her bosom upwards, resulting in an expanse of deliciously soft cleavage.

She slid her feet inside the white-leather pumps Pandora had helped her pick out and donned the sheer white peignoir robe, which flowed nearly the length of her body, emphasizing rather than disguising her contours. God, Pandora thought, eyes feasting discretely on the result, if you’re not speared on some devil’s big dick before the evening’s out, then I’ve failed in my work. Tonight’s the night, girl.

“This does not constitute ‘dressed’,” Gabrielle moaned, staring at herself in the mirror.

“I know. It’s fun, isn’t it? Give me a moment and I’ll finish you.” Pandora bounced jauntily off the bed to slip into her own costume, the one Gabrielle had monikered Little Red Riding Slut. “I want to pick me up a wolf this year.”

The brunette had positively salivated on assembling her outfit. The lacy white bra with its matching panties raised and squeezed, accentuating the fullness of the petite girl’s tits. Atop this went a transparent white blouse and micro-skirt in red, flesh peeping out between the hem of the latter and the tops of her black, lace-up, thigh-high boots; the heels propped her up a few additional inches. The red gabardine cape and hood, tied around her neck with satin ribbon, was the only real concession to tradition. “There. Think I’ll make it into the woods and back intact? Don’t answer that. Here, let me fix you.”

She helped blow-dry and brush Gabrielle’s hair, then used the tongs to tease out loose curls. Mascara was applied―“to make the most of those angelic baby-blues”―along with a touch of pale-pink lipstick. Pandora perfected her own look―hair bobbed around her shoulders, crimson lipstick matching the cape. Then to her friend she added the results of her own late-night labors, wings and a halo. The wings were gauze stretched over wire, adorned with myriad crepe feathers and the whole thing tied at her shoulders with white-satin ribbons, the halo a disc of silver-white silk clipped into her hair so that it stood up behind as in a medieval artwork.

“Perfect.” Pandora surveyed her work, an adorable picture of eroticized innocence. “They won’t be able to get enough of you, girl.” Gabrielle looked terrified. Somehow it increased the effect. “Check us out, Gab,” Pandora said as they stared at their joint, impressively sexy reflection in the mirror. “Naughty and nice. Maybe you can keep Little Red on the path of virtue.”

Gabrielle knew that Pandora was endeavoring to lead her off that particular thoroughfare. She was also aware of her own pangs of erotic excitement. But she resolved, suddenly, not to stray. There was fun to be had, music and dancing and a whole new social mileau through which to wander. She could flirt with it all and then float with her angel wings high above it―not succumbing to the world, the flesh and the… Well anyway, it would take more than a suggestive costume and her friend’s best efforts to lure her away from the practice and beliefs of a lifetime.

“Come on,” Pandora said with a sparkle-eyed smile. “Our public awaits.”

Away from the safety of their room, however, Gabrielle’s anxieties rioted within her. The music from the downstairs ballroom thrummed along with her drumming heartbeat. On nearing the grand mahogany stairway to the lower floor she heard the babble of party-going voices and the inadequacy of what she was wearing made her tremble. Angel? She was about to parade herself at something akin to an up-market bordello. But her progress with Pandora was inexorable. She was gliding down the sweeping stairs into the Manor’s candle-lit entrance hall, crowded as it was with guests.

And what guests they were. An attractive professional crowd, certainly, but transformed into a ghoulishly sexy carnival. The women were felines in curve-clinging cat suits and whiskers, corpse brides with tracts of flesh showing between what patches of material clung miraculously to their bodies and sultry vampires in velvet or latex, luring unsuspecting males with red-painted talons and extravagant cleavage. The men meanwhile had decked themselves as cinematic blood-suckers and serial killers, as well as ghost pirates, ghouls and at least one shambling, Romero-style zombie. A trim red-haired girl appeared to have arrived in nothing more than a few scraps of mummifying white linen, which looked likely to unravel at any moment; her muscular boyfriend wore the elaborate golden collar and skirt of a young Pharaoh. The two were laughing and stroking each other’s exposed areas like they might fuck at the merest prompting on the nearest available surface. It seemed, thought an awestruck Gabrielle, to encapsulate the mood of the whole unfolding party.

She stared at the outrageous, dazzling scene and wondered who else among the negligibly-clad felt as exposed as she did. None, she suspected, either guests or staff. On reaching the bottom of the stairs she and Pandora were immediately plied with glasses of smoking punch by a voluptuous and smiling young witch, whose ample bosom threatened to burst out of her front-fastened corset. About the hall other such comely serving-witches were carrying similar trays of drinks, as were stripped-to-the-waist tight-breeched satyrs with bulging crotches. All seemed perfectly comfortable regarding their state of semi-undress.

“Remind you of your dream?” Pandora inquired playfully, pointing to one of the satyrs.

“Nothing like.” The male serving-staff were certainly eye-candy, but they didn’t approach the raw, scary sexuality of her night-demon. There was enough in this very real setting, however, to unnerve her, not least the pairs of eyes―largely but not exclusively male―which had fixed on her as she descended. She accepted the proffered drink and downed half of it at a shot. The fiercely alcoholic beverage nearly choked her as it hit the back of her throat. When she recovered she saw a druid ogling her like she was next on the altar and knocked back the rest.

Pandora was guiding her through the fantastical mob, all but dragging her into the great ballroom with its thumping dance music and swirl of dry-ice fog. The period grandeur of the room was steeped in fluorescent lighting, throwing both their costumes, but especially Gabrielle’s, into luminous relief. In the central dance area a glowing phantasmagoria of Halloween characters was writhing sensually together around a grotesque Tim Burtonesque tree. Among them Gabrielle spotted their host and hostess for the weekend. Mac was made over impressively as Nosferatu, from Murnau’s classic silent movie, complete with convincing bald wig and curling talons, while Stella played the young, ringletted, nightdress-clad wife the vampire had so terrifyingly menaced.

“They don’t do things by halves, do they?” Pandora grinned, snatching two glasses of champagne from a passing tray and handing one to her friend. Gabrielle continued to stare with trepid wonder at the mass of exhibitionism and flirtation going on around her. She found herself emptying this glass even more quickly than the first.

“There goes one sexy angel,” the ghost of a blood-spattered Spartan warrior commented, as they progressed. Gabrielle quailed at the lasciviousness in his tone. By putting herself on display like this, she could hardly expect less, could she?

“Not the most original come-on you’re likely to have all evening,” her friend assured her. Pandora was looking freely about, absorbing all the attention that was thrown their way. “I imagine it’ll get much better.” There it was again, the brunette’s casually knowing tone. Exactly what did that imply?

“Dora…” But before she could call Red Riding Hood on her meaning, her distracted friend was shoving her champagne flute into Gabrielle’s grasp.

“Hey Gab, give me a moment. I think I’ve spotted my wolfman.”

With those words Pandora was gone, sucked by instinct into the dance-floor throng, leaving Gabrielle abandoned. The ash-blonde angel sipped further champagne for the sheer protection of the glass before her lips.

The fear she had experienced on so many nights out with her friend was upon her again, only magnified among this extravagantly sexy whirl of half-naked humanity. Part of her wanted to embrace the madness, but that familiar panic was taking over. There were no corners in this room to which she could safely escape; even the shadows might contain creatures with wicked designs upon a pretty angel. As for the ultra-violet, it made her shine like a beacon―not to ward off evil, but to damn well attract it. Her hair, she realized, was a dazzling shock in the darkness. Her fishnets were a strikingly defined criss-cross from hip to ankle and as for her teddy, it was a plunging white arrow-head, pointing dramatically to her crotch.

The sudden influx of alcohol was taking startling effect. Gabrielle had turned to avoid the overtures of a psychotic blood-stained clown and now the floor was lurching beneath her. Why hadn’t she hunted out the dining-room buffet before entering here and downing more glassfuls? Everything was moving into a slow spin. The leering faces and hot bodies were merging into an orgy of flesh and she was a part of it, or in danger of becoming so, eyed brazenly each way she looked by men and women alike. They wanted to draw her in, absorb her in their fleshly pursuits, make her one of them.

She was suffocating, she had to get out. But when she turned to look for the entrance, her way was blocked by the green-hued Living Dead from the hallway. He was grinning at her drunkenly―or was that part of his zombie routine?―explaining how it wasn’t her brains he wanted to eat. Of all the prospective seducers, she did not want to be monopolized by this guy. She tried to move past him politely, but he took her arm and attempted to draw her towards the dance area, muttering something about showing her his Thriller moves.

“Please, I really need to take some air.” But he was having none of it, still dragging her insistently to the heart of the room.

Then someone massive was at her shoulder, looming over the undead shambler, so that it backed away. “She’s with me,” a voice said. It positively rumbled with authority.

Before Gabrielle could even look at him, the imposing stranger placed a hand lightly on the small of her back and guided her away. Somehow it required only the merest pressure on her body to direct and move her. Without another word he turned her about and propelled her all the way through the ballroom, out into the hallway. The other guests parted easily to facilitate their progress. She was breathing relief, strangely secure in the gentlemanly presence of her mystery savior. Only when they had negotiated the chattering groups in the lobby and come to rest in the light of bracketed candles on the other side, only when she went to thank him for his act of rescue, did her eyes take him in properly.

The sight made her gasp.

TO BE CONTINUED