Angel viewers may get the heebie-jeebies merely watching the horrifying high jinks of the title vampire's old flame, Darla. However, it's playing the born-again party ghoul that freaks out Julie Benz. In fact, the Nov. 28 episode alone forced her to conquer not one, but two of her greatest fears: blood... and singing.

"Anytime we have fake blood on the set," she tells TV Guide Online, "I'm ready to hurl."

So when Darla's transformation back into a creature of the night called for her to lap a little O-negative off the chest of Juliet Landau — aka Drusilla, the battiest of Angel's exes — Benz turned positively green. "I had my eyes closed so I wouldn't have to look at it," confesses the actress, who first sunk her teeth into her role in the pilot for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the series that sired Angel. "I'm a wimp."

Despite her insistence that she's lily-livered, Benz also didn't choke when producers informed her that Darla would be crooning a torch song at the karaoke bar where Angel occasionally massacres a Barry Manilow tune. "David Boreanaz has the easy job — he can sound bad!" she notes. "But trying to sound good is hard, at least for me.

"I'm not a singer," she continues. "So when we shot the scene, my hands were sweating — I was petrified. They loved it, though."

After enduring such traumas, Benz deserved a break, yet was delivered another Angel script guaranteed to make her shudder right along with the audience: In next week's installment — airing on Dec. 19 at 9 pm/ET on the WB — Darla and Dru paint the town... well, red.

"We go shopping," she deadpans, then cracks up. "No, we wreak havoc. We're very hungry. I don't think there's anything scarier than two vampire women on the loose."

— Charlie Mason