The more Sarah thought about it, the more she realized she felt comfortable, and in fact, it felt PROPER for Cody to call her Mistress. The Castle had chosen her to become the mistress of the castle hadn't it?
Yes, it was proper for Cody to call her mistress. She shouldn't have corrected him, he was The Gorgon after all.
The werewolf turned to look at herself, her furry breasts and body looking back at her. Unlike werewolves elsewhere, she could only shift between a humanoid and a true wolf shape, rather than a human looking appearance and a beast or hybrid. This was a point of pride for the pack of the castle, that they didn't need to hide their forms as the humans they used to be, unlike other werewolves who had become addicted to staying in human form to the point where they might as well have not been werewolves at all.
Still, as the witch of the castle, she should have a few pieces of finery. The irony was that the castle had expected a trick or treater in a witch costume first, but the castle was not utterly inflexible.
Sarah walked into the witch's room, her room, her naked body shining against the moonlight, she took out a purple cloak and put it around her shoulder along with a few pieces of jewelry that could stay with her even while in full wolf shape. 'Much better.' She thought.
"Castle, show me a list of all those that need replacing." The castle obliged... Sarah's eyes widened... it was a long list... they would need a lot more innocent victims, er, lucky subjects to refill the castle.
Even the Castle's gargoyles had been sold off. They were like in the cartoons where they were flesh during the night, and they were made of the same stone as the rest of the castle. And that was just the tip of the ice-berg of how many monsters would need replacing.
That many missing people reports might cause problems, not that it would matter once the night was over, the police would never get a report, and relatives would forget them... well, maybe not ALL of them. A good number of missing persons reports was GOOD for a proper haunted castle, creating that sense of unknown fear, dancing that line between 'is it dangerous?' and 'here there be dragons.'
Nate, The Werewolf, growled and in full wolf form rubbed his side against her legs. Sarah, The Witch-Wolf, scratched him behind the ear.
Cody for his part... felt bad for asking a favor of the castle's mistress, but he wanted to add Calandra to the Castle's ranks. Not that he cared much for his life from before, the more he thought about it, his pet snakes, his other friends, his family, the more they felt like strangers. Even the name Cody felt like scar tissue, he was The Gorgon after all.
Still... Calandra felt the urge to tell her parents she was going out with minimal explanation, and remembered how Cody and friends were going to the old castle, and quickly made her way there, it becoming an overwhelming need the closer she got.
The Haunted Castle knew that originally there were no male gorgons, that they were a set of three sisters who appearance was VERY DIFFERENT from what people thought of now when they thought of Medusa and her two sisters. Medusa herself having been a mortal once cursed by the gods before Perseus put her out of her misery. But the Haunted Castle was mature enough to know myths and legends, along with human objects of fear, changed as well.
The worst part was the premise that humans more and more feared their OWN kind far more than they feared the things in the dark and the unknown, they thought humanity was so invincible that only itself could possibly end it.
The Haunted Castle WAS annoyed that the Gorgon wanted to make Cody's girlfriend another Gorgon. One of the Castle's points of pride was that he had contained an DIVERSE as well as large collection of horrors. But the night was immortal, and at least there was as much time as the Castle needed for more.
Across time and space, there is a family, it seems no matter the universe, they are destine to go on a vacation, and once on that vacation, be transformed. In some realities they went to TF Park USA and had their DNA scrambled, in others they went down a cursed roadway that turned them into pool toys, others they simply moved to a town full of werebeasts. They were often not even exactly the same family, but the name, Anderson, remained. It was their fate. It was always a couple and their two children, sometimes it was two boys, other times a boy and a girl.
In this case, it was the parents: cubby John and beautiful Sharon, both middle age, and their children, Derrick 15, and Julie 14.
The Castle itself sensed these humans in particular were fated to be changed into something else than human, that it could sense them so far away was proof of that. So, with its growing power of two cursed dolls, two werewolves (one with the magics of a witch), and one male gorgon, it lured them closer.
The children were not happy about having to travel on Halloween night, and actually had their costumes on as their parents had promised to stop at a few houses on the way to their new house. They would never reach it, but they would arrive soon at their new home.
After taking one too many wrong turns, the family saw several (outdated) signs advertising the 'haunted castle' and the children grew excited.