36
She had been so tired before, but now that she had the opportunity to lay down for a while, Rose found herself to be wide awake. She had a churning sensation in her stomach that had nothing to do with nausea. It was more like.., anticipation. She punched the pillow and rolled over, trying to get some rest.
&&&&&&&
Wesley was bent over the desk, scribbling furiously, speaking as he wrote. "And lo, many shall be dismayed by the coming of the new race. They shall seize..? destroy..?" He stopped in mid-sentence, not entirely sure of the reading. Find out what was going to be seized or destroyed first. ".., the vessel, that the new race may be prevented from fulfilling their destiny." A block of ice formed in the Watcher's stomach. He gathered up the translations and thrust them into the hands of the first person he met. "Get these to Angel immediately," he ordered. Then he took off in the opposite direction. He only hoped he wasn't too late.
&&&&&&&&&&&
Wesley had been in such a rush that he hadn't realized that the person he'd designated as an errand runner was Fred, although he could hardly have made a better choice. Fred knew him well enough to take the urgency in his voice and manner at face value. She did as requested, and headed straight for Angel's office. It didn't keep her from reading as she walked, though. But the more she read, the faster she moved. By the time she'd finished reading, she was flat-out running down the halls.
Fred raced past a stunned Harmony and straight into the office. "Angel," she panted, waving the papers at him. "Rose is in danger. I think Wes is on his way there now." She leaned against the desk, trying to catch her breath.
Angel snatched the papers out of her hands, scanned them quickly and started swearing. He reached for the phone and froze a second, gripped by a moment of indecision. Then, he solved the dilemma. "Gunn? I need you to get Spike and meet me at his and Rose's apartment. No time for questions now, just do it." He hung up, grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, conveniently forgetting Fred.
Fred, however, did not forget him, and tagged along behind, winded though she was, sometimes grabbing the tail of his coat to keep from losing him.
&&&&&&&&
Wesley pounded on the door to the flat impatiently. Pray God he wasn't too late, he thought. An answer was so long coming that he was considering breaking the door down when it opened, and there stood Rose, a little rumpled, but alive and well for all that.
"Wesley?" Rose's voice was an equal mixture of drowsiness and bafflement. "What are you doing here?"
"No time to explain," the Watcher said urgently. "We have to get you away from here, Rose. Now."
She heard the tension in his voice without understanding why, and so made no protest when he grabbed her wrist and started off down the hall. They were almost to the exit when two large, grimly-determined looking men entered. Even dressed in ordinary street clothes, there was something about their bearing that screamed military training. As one, the pair of researchers turned and headed back for the apartment. The men followed.
Wesley put his arm around Rose's waist and half-dragged her along at top speed. The door to the apartment still stood ajar, so there was nothing to impede their progress. Once inside, Wes slammed the door shut and threw the bolts into place.
Rose was already struggling with a heavy chair, trying to drag it across the carpeting. Wesley decided that now was probably not the time to lecture her on overexerting herself while pregnant. They got the lion's share of the furniture pushed against the door while a rhythmic pounding shook the walls. Their instincts hadn't failed them. The men were trying to break in.
"Emergency exit?" Wesley inquired. Their makeshift barricade wouldn't hold up for long.
"Follow me," Rose whispered.
&&&&&&&&
Gunn winced as Spike wove in and out of traffic at speeds no human would have the reflexes to accomplish. He'd done his share of crazy driving, but this.., If Spike didn't have an accident, he would. "We've got to get there in one piece to help Rose, Spike," he reminded the vampire.
"Then shut yer gob and let me concentrate on driving," Spike warned. In less than half the time it should have taken, they had reached the apartment building. Spike drove around behind the structure into an alley that had little more than enough room to accommodate the car. Coming the other way were three oversized males whose bearing suggested they were looking for a fight. They were headed for a set of steps that led below the level of the alley.
"Emergency exit for our flat," Spike observed softly. "And I don't recall inviting them to tea." The buildings on either side of the alley left it fairly comfortably in the shade. "Let's check their invitations, shall we?"
Gunn was already removing his jacket and tie. "Let's bring it."
Spike stopped the car at an angle, using it to serve as a barricade between the approaching trio and Rose. Made it easier for both of them to get out of the car too. "I think you blokes must be lost," he said conversationally, perching on the hood. "Because I can guarantee you there isn't anything here you want badly enough to go through me for."
The car was set too closely to the buildings to go around, so Gunn went over the back end. "And you sure as hell don't wanna be messin' with a brutha," he added, slipping into street lingo.
The three measured their numbers and size against their two challengers and broke into evil grins. They kept coming.
&&&&&&&&
"This way," Angel directed. He and Fred had had a spirited discussion about her participation in things in the car. Actually, Fred had sweetly agreed with everything he'd said, then done it her way anyway. Angel was beginning to think he ought to throw in the towel when it came to arguing with women.
Their entry into the apartment's hallway was greeted by a loud crack as the front door to Spike and Rose's place shattered into splinters.
Angel was down the hall so fast he almost appeared to be flying. Fred didn't even try to keep up, but instead scanned the nearly barren hallway for something she could use as a weapon.
Angel grabbed the invaders by the shoulders and threw them away from the gaping maw that stood where there used to be a door. Time for finesse later. The first priority was to keep them away from Rose. They didn't take long to recover, however, and they both jumped him.
&&&&&&&
Wesley wrinkled his nose as they went through the kitchen. "What on earth were you cooking, Rose?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted, wrestling with the seldom used lock on the back door. "But whatever it was went poof when I finished..," It suddenly dawned on her. "Macbeth. That wasn't a real spell, was it? I mean, it was just something that sounded good, right?"
"You were reciting the three witches spell while you were cooking?" Wes asked incredulously. "What exactly was it that you said when your cooking.., 'went poof'?"
"'Open locks, whoever knocks'," Rose replied in a small voice. The sluggish mechanism turned in her hands. "Oh my, what did I do?"
"I think you may have guided those hostile hulks outside to your location," he informed her, as she opened the door. "Try not to cast any more.., oh hell."
&&&&&&&
"It seems to me that these guys have a little hearing problem," Gunn remarked to Spike. "Either that, or they just ain't too bright."
"I'm voting not too bright," Spike commented. "Look at the expression around the eyes. Reminds you a little of Angel, doesn't it?"
Gunn laughed despite himself. "We do seem to have a little problem here," he observed. "There's three of them. No way to divide them up evenly."
"Oh I'm sure we can work something out," Spike drawled lazily. At least it sounded that way. His nerves were wound up tighter than a bowstring. "Shall we?"
"I still haven't seen their invitations," Gunn replied. "I think they're trying to gatecrash."
&&&&&&&&
Angel was pummeling on adversary from the front while the second had an arm wrapped around his windpipe. Lucky for him he didn't need it. But it was a little distracting.
Fred came up from behind with a fire extinguisher in her hands. She meant to hit the guy on the back of the head, but she just couldn't reach that far, and it thudded against his shoulder. It did serve to get his attention, though. He turned to look at Fred. She pulled the pin and let him have it with the CO2.
Angel's man was down and unconscious when he got the leisure to check on Fred. These two may have looked human, but they had a lot more fight in them than humans had. Probably from another dimension. As he turned, he saw the second attacker on his knees, white from the contents of the fire extinguisher which Fred brought down on his head with a clang. Two down.
"C'mon, let's check inside," he suggested. Since the front door was a total loss anyway, he finished the job of destruction and pushed his way inside.
&&&&&&&
Rose looked at Wesley in desperation. There were three more men coming down the alley towards them. They couldn't go back the way they had come, and they couldn't go forward. Then, a car came screeching to a halt at an angle in the alley, and Spike and Gunn emerged.
"Looks like the cavalry has arrived," Wes remarked with satisfaction. "Why don't you wait here, Rose?" He shucked his jacket and went up the steps two at a time.
"Glad you could join us, Watcher," Spike remarked. "Is Rose all right?"
"Fine for the moment," he replied. "But there are two more of them trying to break down the front door."
"The boss man probably has that situation in hand," Gunn said. "I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of waiting."
The two opposing sides met each other in a rush. Rose started feeling dizzy just watching, then realized it was because she was holding her breath. If asked, she would have said that of course she didn't want any harm to come to Wesley or Gunn. But at the moment, she only had eyes for Spike. She wished there was some way that she could help him. A smile crept across her face. Maybe she could. She ducked back into the kitchen.
&&&&&&&&
"Rose?" Angel called out, wading through the displaced furniture. "Rose? Wesley? Is anybody here?"
"In the kitchen," Rose called out. "Wesley is in the alley with Spike and Charles. There are three more of them." Angel walked into the kitchen to see Rose pulling out drawers until she came to the one she wanted. She pulled out a butcher knife and headed for the exit.
"Wait just a minute." Angel relieved her of the weapon. "You stay here with Fred, got it?" Fred had just managed to clamber in over the decayed barricade.
"But..," Rose began.
"Stay here," he ordered. "Fred, make sure she doesn't go anywhere." He looked back at Rose. "Thanks for the knife."
&&&&&&&
Wes, Gunn and Spike were having a hard time of it. The vampire could hold his own, but he kept getting distracted by the fact that his allies were outmatched. He swung a punch at one that took his hand through a freak shaft of sunlight that had somehow managed to penetrate the alley's gloom.
"Sodding hell," he swore, shaking his hand in pain, trying futilely to cool the burning sensation. "Where in the hell is the damn back-up?"
"Right here," Angel replied, vaulting up over the railing surrounding the basement entrance. "You mean you haven't taken these guys down yet?" He flipped the kitchen knife in his hand, testing the heft. It wasn't really meant for throwing, it was balanced all wrong. But you could get around that if you were good enough and had the reflexes for it. With a negligent-seeming toss, he sent it straight into one attackers eye.
"Shit!" Gunn rubbed his ear. The knife had whistled by closely enough to draw a drop of blood. "Watch what you're doing with that thing, man."
"Sorry," Angel apologized, stepping into the fray. With the odds shifted in their favor, the rest of the fight was over fairly quickly.
Almost as the last man went down, two things happened almost simultaneously. One, was Angel pulling out his cell phone and calling for a pick up on the bodies, dead and alive. The other was Rose, shooting like a guided missile from the lower level and straight into Spike's arms.
Spike grunted slightly as she made contact with him. She had a little velocity behind her, and he would admit, under pressure, that he was feeling a bit battered at the moment. "Steady on, babe," he cautioned, while hugging her fiercely despite the aches and pains. "I'm all in one piece, and I'd kind of like to keep it that way." He held her away from him. "What about you?"
"They never got near me," she replied. She belatedly realized that she really should be seeing if any of her other defenders needing tending to. But the worst damage seemed to have been taken from Wesley, who had an eye purpling up and a split lip. And who also was already being attended to by a solicitous Fred.
Angel surveyed the chaos with a sinking feeling. Aside from the fact that Spike and Rose's apartment was currently uninhabitable, this invasion was certain to be only the first one. Rose couldn't be here where they knew where to find her. He slumped against the side of the car, face in his hands. "Why me?" he moaned.
"What in hell's your problem?" Spike demanded, still holding Rose as if he needed constant reassurance that she was still there.
"Go start packing," his grandsire said resignedly. "Whatever you can carry right now. Later, we'll probably have to get it all out of here. After this, you'll almost certainly be evicted."
"What are you chuntering on about?" Spike still hadn't made the connection.
"You have no front door," Angel pointed out. "And someone wants Rose. Someone who has operatives like these guys." He waved his hand at the fallen foemen who were being loaded into vans for transport to the law firm. Fast efficient service. "Do you think that someone is going to stop just because we took out the hired help?"
"Oh piss," Spike said disgustedly. "Not again. I cannot do this again. We'll get a hotel room."
Angel shook his head. "Too exposed and you'd be putting innocent civilians in danger. We'll do it my way." He sighed. "But I sure as hell wish my way didn't mean having you under the same roof with me. Again."
"You and me both," Spike agreed morosely. "Bugger."