102

"Hey, Angelcakes, could I grab a minute?" Lorne entered Angel's office and made himself at home, which on this occasion, like many others, included a trip to the bar.

"Is it important, Lorne?" Angel asked. "Because I'm up to my ass in work right now."

"Would Rose and the little bundles of joy be considered important?" Lorne paused just long enough to let it sink in, which was, incidentally long enough to toss back a shot of painkiller. "I just did a reading on Spike, voluntary, I might add, that is, the blossom volunteered him, and I had to do some shuckin' and jivin' as usual."

"Why did Rose want Spike to get a reading?" Angel was curious, true, but he was also postponing the bad news he just knew was coming.

Well, I can't read the lady when she's busy baking, so she talked the Spikester into it to see if the kids were doing okay," Lorne explained. "And they are, I'm happy to report, and I told them. There was also something a little weird, but it wasn't anything bad, so I guess that can wait."

"But there's a bad, isn't there?" Angel asked with a sigh. There almost invariably seemed to be.

"You mean like seeing our Rose in next to nothing with a collar and chain? Or the bleached blonde one fighting someone or something I couldn't see with a hellacious big sword?" Lorne shook his head. "The bad guys are going to find a way through security, big guy, and that's the only way I can read this one."

Part of Angel's brain was still back a few pages. He was thinking about the earlier part of Lorne's speech and the idea came that it could give them a timeline of sorts. "You said she was in next to nothing, so am I right in assuming you could see her stomach?"

"That and a whole lot more," Lorne agreed. "Basically, a few strategically place bits of material and enough jewelry to stock a small store."

"How far along did she look?" Angel plowed on, refusing to be sidetracked.

Lorne finally got it, and frowned, concentrating on the memory, which was even now trying to evaporate. "Just barely bulging," he replied at last. "So I guess that means it's going to happen soon."

"Too soon," Angel remarked. "I'm going to have to find a way to beef up security around Rose. Without disturbing her if I can, but it's got to be done."

&&&&&&&

Rose was working away, humming a tune, just generally happy to be out of the vaults and not needing a bodyguard anymore. While she realized the necessity, and like Spike, would go to any lengths to protect their children, she still hated it. Her stomach gave a protesting rumble, and she was surprised when she checked the time and found that it was past time to break for lunch. She started to pick up her lunch sack, then glanced at her hands. The books she'd been handling had slipped through the cleaning crew's cracks, as it were, and her hands were filthy. Better go and wash them first.

She was just exiting the restroom when she met Kraj in the hall. "Oh, hello, it's nice to see you again," she fibbed. The servile canine and his master still made her nervous, but manners first.

"Lovely lady," Kraj lied even more glibly. "How fortuitous that we meet. I was just leaving, would you be so good as to walk along with me?"

Rose didn't really want to, but could think of no polite way out of it. "Why not?" she replied. "I'm supposed to do some walking during my lunch break, I guess that I'll just do it first today."

"Why is it required that you walk?" Kraj asked politely.

"The doctor wants me to get the exercise," Rose answered. "Since I work sitting down at a desk. I need to get up and about now and then. For my babies."

"A good mother puts the needs of her litter first," Kraj agreed, once more forgetting social contexts.

Rose fought down a frown. "Kraj, we don't refer to human babies as litters," she pointed out gently. "Not even when there's more than one, which there usually isn't."

Kraj hung his head in apparent shame. "My most profound apologies again, Rose," he muttered. "And lucky indeed am I that Lord M'rek was not here to witness me make another such unfortunate mistake."

"I'm used to dealing with people from other dimensions," Rose said. "So I'm used to the cultural differences. Most people aren't. Even some that should know better."

"You refer to your mate?" Kraj wondered that a female would dare to criticize her mate.

"Amongst others," she responded. But she had a smile when she said it, just from thinking about Spike. "But I guess that his impetuosity is part of his charm, so I'll just have to take the good with the bad. And there's more good than bad anyway."

"I understand few of the customs here, despite my studies," Kraj commented. "Perhaps you will enlighten me."

"I'll do what I can," Rose promised, now resigned to accompanying him all the way to the portal room.

&&&&&&&&&

"Sorry, Spike," Fred said. "But I've got a big fat goose egg as far as analyzing their clothing. It could come from any number of dimensions, just like they do."

Spike smacked his fist into the wall in frustration, then pulled it back, swearing like a sailor. "There's got to be some way to find out where these bastards come from," he muttered. "I know the ones they're still insisting on keeping alive in holding won't be any help, they've got those pathetic sods on I.V.'s just to keep them alive. But these two are pretty fresh. Can't you figure out what they had for breakfast or something? Might give us a clue as to where they came from."

Fred waved a hand at the cadaver. "Be my guest," she offered. "And if you can figure out which one of those bizarre organs is the stomach, let me know, will you? Because their internal arrangements are so radically different from a human's that I haven't got a clue where to begin."

Spike started swearing again, colorfully, inventively, fluently and at length.

&&&&&&&&

Angel had done a great deal of soul-searching, and wasn't it just convenient that he had one to search, and finally decided that he had no choice but to let Rose in on things. It was just getting too awkward, and she was bound to notice that he'd put guards on her sooner or later. Better to tell her in advance than to let her find out on her own and then come to him demanding an explanation. And he'd best tell her in person, too, he thought, so he headed to her office.

When Angel got to Rose's office, she wasn't in, but the lunch sack sitting on her desk suggested that she wouldn't be away long, so he waited, prowling the room like a caged animal. Five minutes crept by, and then ten. When a quarter of an hour had marched slowly by, he figured he'd better try another angle. He went to Wesley's office.

"Wes? Have you got Rose doing anything special that would take her out of her office?" he asked.

"No, I haven't," Wesley replied, feeling a stab of panic. He pushed it down. He didn't yet have enough information to feel the need to panic. He glanced at the time. "I would have thought she'd be on her lunch break about now."

"Her lunch was sitting on her desk," Angel informed him. "But no sign of Rose, and I waited in her office a good fifteen minutes. I can't imagine her being away from her office for that long."

"She is supposed to be doing some walking during her lunch hour," Wesley remarked. "Maybe she wasn't that hungry and decided to get in her exercise first, to work up an appetite."

"Maybe." Angel sounded dubious. "Why don't we go check her office again, just in case that's what it is?" Neither of them commented on why he should feel it necessary for the Watcher to accompany him just to check and see if Rose was in her office.

But Rose's office was still empty, her lunch still untouched. Angel looked at the time. "I can't imagine that she'd spend more than half of her break walking," he remarked. He sounded calm enough, but there was a worried look around his eyes.

"There are still other possibilities," Wes said soothingly, even though he was starting to feel his nerve endings tense. "Lorne and Fred have been taking turns checking on her at noon to make sure she's eating properly. If one of them didn't like the look of what she brought, they may have spirited her away for something a little more nutritious."

Angel pulled out his cell phone. "I'll call Lorne," he said. "You call Fred. If neither of them knows where Rose is, then we start to worry." Actually, he had skipped a step or two. He was already worried, and from the look on Wes' face, so was he.

Wes was still talking when Angel flipped his phone off. Lorne hadn't seen Rose since she'd been in his office with Spike the day before. He looked at the Watcher, and Wesley shook his head.

"Just a moment, Fred," he said. "Spike is there in the lab with Fred. Do you want her to tell him?"

Angel shook his head. "Just tell her that I want her and Spike to meet me in my office. I'll get hold of Lorne again and have him meet us there."

Wesley passed on Angel's instructions quickly, and then called Gunn as well, anticipating the next move. As the two of them went to meet the others, he said quietly. "It's happened, hasn't it? Someone has managed to kidnap Rose."

&&&&&&&

Kraj kept up the flow of talk all the way to the portal room, deftly filling in the empty spaces when it seemed that Rose had nothing to say. As they neared the door, he touched a small signaling device hidden in his robes that would not only open the portal, but would alert the warriors he had waiting to deal with the portal's guards. That done, he found the other item he had hidden, pulled it out and dropped it.

"Oh, you dropped something." Rose noticed it immediately, and habit led her to bend down to pick it up. When she touched the object, she crumpled, and only Kraj's reflexes, and the fact that he had been prepared for it, kept her from hitting the floor. He retrieved the sleeping crystal, taking care not to touch it with his bare hands, then shifting the recumbent form of Rose in his arms, he carried her past the already unconscious guards in the chamber and took his prize home to his Lord.

&&&&&&&

Everyone gathered in Angel's office, with the exception of Spike, had at least some idea of what was going on. No one had had the heart, or the nerve to tell him. Angel could tell that no one had told him because when he and Wes, the last arrivals, got there, Spike was sitting more or less still. Fidgety, but not unduly so. If someone had so much as hinted to him what was going on, he'd be climbing the walls.

"Is this gonna take long?" Spike grumbled. "Because some of us have work to do, and I think I have an idea..,"

They never found out what his idea was, because one look at Angel's face caused him to check out everyone else's visage, and Spike's features began to take on the expression of a hunted animal, that has nowhere to go. He stood and got right up in Angel's face.

"What in the bloody hell is going on?" The words were defiant enough, but Spike's voice was barely above a whisper. It was as if he had figured it out, but didn't want to admit to it, didn't want to hear the words, and maybe that way they wouldn't be true.

"Why don't you sit back down, Spike?" Angel suggested, stalling for time as much as anything. But he did think that it would be better if Spike wasn't on his feet.

Spike ignored the question, and looked around the room again at all assembled. "Here we are," he remarked, his voice taking on tones of hysteria. "All the happy little band. Except for Rose. Where's Rose, Angel?"

Outwardly, Angel kept his calm, but inwardly, he cringed. "We don't know where she is, Spike," he said gently, perhaps more so than he ever had to his high-strung grandchilde.

"But somebody knows where she is," Spike said frantically. "She works for you, Watcher, you must know where she is."

Wesley shook his head, unable to speak. Spike's pain was so overwhelming, so raw, that it seemed that everyone in the room could feel it.

"Fred, you're her friend." Spike turned to the scientist, tones pleading and wheedling, begging her to tell him what he wanted to hear. "You've got to know where she is."

"Spike, you've been with me half the morning," Fred pointed out softly. "If I knew where Rose was, you would too."

Suddenly, Spike rounded on Lorne, and grabbed his lapels and lifted him up on tiptoe. "You saw something yesterday, didn't you?" he accused. "Something besides the fact that the kids are alive and well. You knew this was going to happen. So why didn't you tell me?" He let Lorne go so abruptly that the demon had trouble keeping his balance, then slid down into a chair, face in his hands. "Why didn't someone tell me?"

The discomfort level in the room was maxed out, so they dealt with it by not dealing with it for the moment. Angel turned to Wesley. "Have you found anything in that prophecy that suggests where Rose's attackers might come from?"

"Not yet," Wesley replied. "There are some very obscure, almost allegorical passages that we're still trying to decipher."

"Get on it," Angel ordered. "Gunn, I need you to double check all the background checks on new clients, we've had quite a few lately. Someone must have slipped through the cracks. See if you can find out who it is."

"Will do," Gunn replied.

"Fred, I know that you've done everything that science offers to find out about those guys," Angel said. "Time to try something new. Get some of the psychics up there and see if one of them can find what science missed."

Fred said nothing, but nodded, and laid a gentle hand on Spike's bowed head for a moment in sympathy before she too, left.

"Lorne," Angel hesitated for a moment, but the Pylean was ahead of him.

"Business as usual," Lorne replied. He was starting to feel dizzy from the emotional aftershocks that Spike was radiating even without singing. "I'll start turning over rocks and see if anything crawls out from underneath one."

That left Angel alone with Spike, who hadn't moved a muscle since he'd collapsed into the chair.

"Spike?" When he got no reaction, Angel knelt in front of the chair and pulled Spike's hands away from his face. "Spike, this isn't going to help Rose. I know it's hard..,"

Spike stood so abruptly that he knocked both the chair and Angel over. "You don't know jack shit," he snarled. "How in the hell could you know?" There were tell-tale streaks on his face that suggested that he'd been crying, but he seemed oblivious to the fact. He stood in front of the weapons display on the wall and scrutinized each item, but none of them was quite what he wanted. "Where's the rest?"

"Spike, we have to find her first," Angel pointed out, getting to his feet. That, it turned out, was a bad move. Spike slammed into him and sent him sailing across his own desk.

"Where are the rest of your little toys?" Spike asked again, coming around the desk. "I know you have more than this."

Angel gave up. Spike wasn't ready to listen. Maybe running through the halls of Wolfram and Hart, armed to the teeth and suddenly realizing that he had no one to take it out on would bring a modicum of sanity back to him. He pointed wordlessly to the cabinet which housed the rest of his collection.

Spike yanked the doors of the cabinet off the hinges, and perused the contents, and finally found what he wanted and pulled it out.

"Spike, that's a claymore," Angel said. "It's nearly as big as you are."

"It's a sodding big sword," Spike agreed. He took a few practice passes with it. "This will do." He walked out of the office with the sword resting on his shoulder.