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The outside gardens were suitably designed for such a place as this; the trees were twisted and skeletal, the ground uneven and boggy. Pieces of masonry were half-sunk into the mud, tufts of sickly yellow grass sprang in clumps around them. It was shaded by the high walls, wet and cold and uninviting, the deep darkness a perfect refuge for the undead and ghostly apparitions that shunned the inside dormitories and their central heating.

On a rickety pedestal by a half-dead tree lay a silver basin, its depths littered with bits of twig and leaf, shiny trails from wandering slugs circled its rim. Rap promptly wiped it clean using Anar's robe hem.

"Oi!"

"Stop fussing, dear, you don't even like it very much," Rap said as he admired his reflection in the now spotless shiny surface.

"I don't, I hate it, but if it gets mucky I'll have to go to the laundrette. I don't have a spare."

Rap gave his mammalian friend a look; "you don't have a spare?"

"Naw. This is all I got. It's one of his old ones. They didn't want to spend money on me," Anar mumbled, miserably.

"Who's old one?" Rave asked.

Rap gave him a shoulder nudge.

"What? I'm only askin'."

"Him!" Rap hissed. "You know..."

Rave shook his head. "If I knew, I wouldn't have bleedin' asked, would I?" The penny dropped. "Oh! Anar's dad! Right, yeah. Gotcha. We don't like him, do we?"

"No dear," Rap sighed, "we don't like him."

"He was a demon, too, then?"

Rap saw Anar's look of discomfort, and moved the conversation along, "now, mate, when the moonlight hits the basin, you're going to wash your hands in the bowl. Any residual evil from whatever you got stabbed with will be cleansed by its purity."

"Cleansed how? We didn't bring the Imperial Leather soap with us," Anar asked.

"Anar got stabbed?" Rave was getting cross, "nobody ever tells me anything around here."

Rap whipped round his head to his big, dumb lifemate, "you never listen, that's why!" he turned back to Anar, "so come on, then, what happened in that little room?"

"The lady had a special sort of dagger that could detect dragon magic. It glowed when it pierced my skin, on my palm, see." Turning his hand over, he showed Rap the wound. It was red, and puffy, and sore looking.

Now Rap was cross with the aardvark - he threw up his scaly green hands, "you just let some random College worker stick a knife in you? Maybe Rave does have a point, maybe you are a few wires short of a circuit!"

"She was really excited about it! Said it proved the existence of dragons! Took a picture of it with her camera."

"She did what?"

Anar paused. Now he thought about it, that had been a bad thing. "She... took a photo of the glowing blade handle's runes. She was saying that she couldn't write to journals about dragons, that they wouldn't print anything because it was crazy..."

"Ok, so I been giving this listening thing a go, and I have to say it's overrated," Rave growled. "Is he gonna wash his hands with the moon, or what? I'll remind you I'm cold-blooded and I want to go back inside."

Anar's ears flickered, distractedly, "sure, yeah, will do." He knew now what he wanted to offer up to the Dark Lord. If only to get it far, far away from him.

A long, thin howl announced the light of the white, full moon, and Anar's arm hairs stood on end. Werewolves were alright, on any other day of the month, they just got a bit bitey when the moon was full, that was all. They didn't even go out of their way to turn anyone, they simply found a nice quiet, secluded place to gather and do a bit of howling.

A nice quiet place like the College gardens.

Pale beams bounced off the concave silver dish and he placed his injured hand inside. Rap had been right - he usually was, to be fair - he'd done a really daft thing. Curiosity killed the cat, was the phrase, and curiosity certainly had caused him harm. Had it even been worth it? So he had a bit of dragon magic in him, so what? He couldn't do anything with it, the stuff gave him no advantages at all. The initial excitement had worn off. The funny feeling in his stomach replaced with a sense of dread, that the lizard lady down in the museum was going to write about him, and get him noticed in the one way he didn't want.

"Hullo."

They were greeted by the friendly wolf they'd seen before, who had waved at them. He watched, curiously, as Anar rubbed his hand under the moon, in the metal dish on the crumbling stone pillar.

"What you doing?"

"Anar got stabbed by a magic dagger that proved the existence of dragons," Rave rumbled.

There was a pause.

"What? I said I'd given that listening thing a try!" the big raptor sulked. "I'll go back to not paying attention, shall I?"

"Please do," said Anar, weakly.

The werewolf had approached them fully, now, and was sniffing the air with his long, whiskery muzzle.

Anar's hand was ghostly pale in the moonbeams, and the cut was sizzling.

"Nasty," the wolf commented. "I shan't get any closer, silver isn't quite my thing," he winked, chummily. "So, you're training to be a demon, huh? How's that going?"

"It's a disaster," Anar said flatly. "For many reasons."

"Aww, really? Well, you look the part," he gestured at Anar's extra parts.

"Thank you," Rap said, proudly, "that was my doing."

"When you're finished doing... er... whatever this is, you should come hang out with us. Howling at the moon is pretty fun, you know."

"Are you gonna eat him?" Rave asked, eagerly, "I'll come along if the answer's 'yes'."

The wolf shook his large, fluffy brown head, "don't believe what you read about us; it's good for our image, don't get me wrong, but it's simply not true. The full moon doesn't make us murderous - it's 1995 not the middle ages! We won't eat you; we've got a couple bottles of White Lightning and Timothy's been down the chippy. We're perfectly civilised."

"The full moon doesn't have any magical effects on you?" Rap was almost disappointed.

The brown wolf shrugged, "we just can't change into our human alters until it wanes, that's all. Not many of us bother with that these days, we pass as everyday wolf-folk, only difference is we're bigger, and handling magic comes easy to us."

"But the silver pendant chains...?"

"Stainless steel."

Rap's eyes widened, "clever!"

Anar watched as his hand healed up. Making friends with werewolves did seem like fun. More fun than going back to their room and tackling homework. Or that magical-use form that he still hadn't submitted. Even better, Alexis wouldn't be seen dead outside with a bunch of fleabags!

Their new pal got some funny looks from the rest of the gathered lycanthropes, as the aardvark and reptiles joined them at the outdoor alter area. Big stone slabs, stained some suspicious colours from years of nefarious usage, had been deliberately placed here for the necromancers and wraith-wranglers to use.

"Who's the Alpha, then?" Rave asked, eyeing up who was the biggest or meanest of the furry pack.

"We don't have an Alpha," said a wolf in a Kappa jacket, while munching on a fishcake.

"Why not? Discovery Channel says wolves have an Alpha."

"Hear that, lads? We're doing it wrong, the big gecko says so."

There was laughter.

Rave flushed, "I'm a dinosaur!" his tail whipped in annoyance.

"'Course you are, and I'm a Pound Puppy!"

Anar and Rap suddenly felt like this could go very wrong if Rave wasn't reined in.

Anar dug in his pocket and reluctantly pulled out the half packet of Marlboro that resided there.

Rave's long green, scaly face lit up as he was offered one.

"These lads are sound, Griff, don't be a knob," their new friend begged.

"Demon student, right?" the wolf identified as Griff asked Anar, giving him a disapproving glance.

"Yeah, I'm Anar, and these are my familiars; Rap and Rave."

"What, like the music? That's pretty cool. Did you name them?"

"Yes," Anar smiled. "I did, actually. They're my best mates."

"Poor bugger," Rave mumbled.

"You don't look like your average demon student." Griff nosed him over from top to toe. "Apart from the wings and all that. You don't smell like one, neither. Maybe you are alright, like Will said. You wanna hang out with us, you gotta do some howling."

Anar gave a small laugh, "howling's nothing compared to some of the crazy crap we do in lessons."

"I can imagine! Mumbling them funny words, and sacrificing chickens, and dribbling wax everywhere while putting a ram skull on your head and dancing about!"

"That's just Tuesday, that is," Anar grinned.

"And you're off to Hell for employment after this? Being summoned in pentagrams and doing the bidding of evil sorcerers?"

Anar rubbed his snout, "dunno about that, I might get an office job. I don't like being told what to do at the best of times."

"Yeah, sound. Hell controls world governments and that, right?"

"That's... the Directors' domain." He shuffled his trainers in the dirt. "What are you doing after College? Anything particularly werewolf-y?"

"I was thinking of writing a book on Lost Civilisations. Taking a bunch of explorers into the Brazilian jungle and seeing what we find. We werewolves are pretty good at that kind of thing - getting into the deepest parts of the jungle, surviving for months on grilled bat and river water. Proper survivalists."

Anar chuckled, "that sounds more like Hell to me than Hell itself! Miss me with that outdoors stuff. I'd last about three days before I want to go home. We had the Army come into our High School showing us slides of their missions around the world and I'm telling you, I wanted to have a lie-down after just looking at them!"

Griff grinned, "there's a lot of us in the armed forces. Nothing like a nine-mile hike to start your day. Walkies is in our blood!"

The chill of the evening crept in. A low fog rose up from the deep crypts and subterranean lairs that were hidden around the scenery, with no clear markings to prevent you tumbling arse over tip down steep steps into the pitch black.

Anar wasn't feeling the cold so much after a few swigs of cheap cider from the plastic 2 litre bottle. The wolves hadn't even asked his age. They'd stood around laughing and joking, drinking and scoffing chips, howling until their throats were sore. The drink gave them some spit back.

He lit a cigarette, and beyond the lighter flame something moved in the distance, illuminated for only a moment.

His blood began to bubble.

"Guys?" he gave Rap a poke. "Guys!"

"Yes, mate?"

"I think we should go back in, now. Like now, now."

Rap could see his worried expression. "Everything ok?"

"I... I dunno," he looked around, but the fog was still rising. This was the creepiest place he'd ever been in his life, and he began to shiver. He pulled his cloak around him, sucking on his Marlboro for warmth.

Rap began to fade.

The shapes of the wolves began to fade.

The fog swirled around him, swaddling him, a blanket.

His long ears strained for sound; talking, howling, swearing - anything.

"Guys?!" his cigarette's blue smoke mixed with the white vapours around him, trapped with him. He wanted to move, but he knew of all the trip hazards that lay in his path. Why hadn't Rap reached for him? Rap always led him away from danger! Why couldn't he hear Rave's deep, grumbling voice telling him he was an idiot? Rave always called him an idiot when he was in trouble!

Of all the imagined horrors in all the terrible tomes he had ever had the misfortune to read, there was nothing to compare to the feeling of being truly, awfully alone.

He told himself there was no need to panic. The Hitch Hikers Guide had that printed on its cover in large, friendly letters, didn't it? Don't Panic! Arthur Dent didn't have to put up with supernatural shenanigans though, did he? Anar would choose a Vogon captain's bad poetry over a soul-hungry ghoul any day of the week.

The fog would go down. The moonlight would break through. One of his friends would find him.

A vision of a wrinkled, half-melted emaciated face broke through the thick mist, and he howled a very different kind of howl that had nothing to do with praise of the moon!

He clutched Sharon tight enough that he may have snapped the chain in doing so, and imagined his nice warm, colourfully-decorated room back on the upper floor of the student building.

The knotted Ban The Bomb rug. The lava lamp. The sun catcher. His messy study table. The dribbly black candles that you had to have and no other kind was acceptable, even though they cost a damn packet.

The heat from the radiator hit his back, and he opened his eyes, stifling a sob. He really needed to go pee, now! Whose daft idea was it to go lurk around in the garden after nightfall?! His amulet chain hung from his hand. He stuffed it in his robe pocket, to be added to just about everything else that he owned that didn't have a proper home.

Rap and Rave were still out there!

He exited the bathroom, leaving the towel on the floor from washing his hands, shoving the creaky old metal-lined window open as far as it would go and leaning out.

"Guys?!"

They were with werewolves. They'd be ok. He couldn't go back out there! He couldn't use any more magic! He'd used four shots already. And he was supposed to have only used one!

The grounds of the Infernal half of the building were surrounded by an eerie spectral mist.

What was it going to be like on Hallowe'en?! This was terrifying enough, and it was just an ordinary autumn night. Why couldn't his father have been a politician? A director for an oil company? A mad scientist? Anything but a demon.

He closed the window with a grunt. No sounds of approaching footsteps. No grumbling Rave. No 'cooo-eeee!' from Rap.

He grabbed at various objects off his study desk; what could he use against wraiths? What did he have that could help him? There was nothing in his notes. Did one of Rap's crystals have the ability to drive one away? Who knew? Well, Rap did... He stuffed them all in, regardless.

As much as he'd always avoided conflict, and for all his efforts at keeping his head low and staying out of trouble, he'd already started an official rivalry with Underworld royalty and discovered himself to be part dragon. A quiet life was simply not on the cards, especially not the tarot ones, after what Rap had told him from his wacky selection. There was nothing to be done now but to embrace chaos, to be true to his name - Anarchy - and fight anything that got in his way.