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Rose woke in stages, and it wasn't entirely unpleasant, at first. She was laying somewhere comfortable, that was a start. And someone was bathing her, that gave her a pampered, cared for feeling until it occurred to her that something about it didn't feel quite right. It was like the difference between taking care with something because you care about it, or taking care because you had to. This had the latter feel, rather than the former, which certainly would have been the case if it had been Spike ministering to her. Which in itself was silly. Why would Spike be bathing her without waking her up first? It was a struggle, her eyelids felt so heavy, but she finally managed to open them.

The first thing she saw was a ceiling, which seemed in her semi-comatose state to be miles away. Best start small and look at things closer to her. Whoever had been cleaning her up had stopped. Who had been cleaning her up? She lifted her head, with difficulty, it seemed that her whole body was coming to a little bit at a time. There were three women of varying ages, and that was nearly all that she had to go on to tell them apart. There was a great similarity of feature, and their clothes were similarly nondescript. Rose did a full body blush when she realized that she was laying there naked. She tried sitting up, but that was still beyond her capabilities. She groped with a clumsy hand at the covering she was atop of, trying to pull it over her, but one of the women firmly and dispassionately pushed her hand away. Then, they started dressing her. If that was what you wanted to call it.

The actual body covering didn't cover much. Less even, than the bikini that Spike had talked her into. She would have protested, but it was better than being completely bare, although not by much, and her own clothes were nowhere she could see them. Several necklaces were draped around her neck. Bangles of gold on her wrists and ankles, even a gem-encrusted gold belt, although the point of that escaped her. There wasn't anything for the belt to hold up. Ornate earrings, and even gold chains woven through her hair. Rose felt like she must be carrying an extra twenty pounds of weight just from the adornments.

Her mouth was so dry that she couldn't even manage to force out a croak, but with gestures, managed to convey the fact that she was thirsty. One of the women brought a cup and held it to her lips, and Rose, hating being treated like a baby by anyone, except maybe Spike, accepted the treatment because she just wasn't able to do it for herself. The water was lukewarm, and had an odd taste to it, but it was wet, and it wasn't actually vile, so she gulped it down eagerly.

Now she could talk. "Who are you? What are you doing with me? Why am I here?" All the standard questions to which, in all honesty, she really didn't expect answers. At least not straight answers. She did expect some sort of reply, though, and wasn't sure whether to be put out or merely puzzled when she received none.

The women helped her to her feet, and half-carried her along halls and corridors that seemed perhaps even more intricate and vast than they were due to her fuddled wits. At last, she was ushered into what seemed to be some sort of throne room, and it seemed that her attendants were leading her right to the throne itself. Did these silent people think she was some sort of god? If she was going to be some sort of prisoner, at least that would be the lesser of the possible evils.

Rose realized that her theory was far short of the mark when the collar was fastened around her neck and locked. Definitely not a god. But what? Honored prisoner? Houri? She was racking her brains for other potential situations, sitting on the hard, cold stone floor, leaning against the side of the throne when M'rek entered, with Kraj, his ever present shadow.

Rose just stared in wordless horror as M'rek ascended to his throne. "At last you are arrived, my pet," he murmured, reaching down to stroke her hair.

A pet? Why did that send cold shudders down her spine in ways that simply being a prisoner (something with which she had had some little experience) never had?

&&&&&&&&&

Spike strode out of Angel's office and straight back to the lab. He was rattled, no arguing that, but he wasn't just wandering about looking for something or someone to hack apart without an idea where to start.

Fred was busy with the psychics, and he gave her some space, trying to be inconspicuous, or at least, as inconspicuous as you can be when you're carrying a five-foot long sword, but he kept his ears open, just in case one of the psychics said something that could be of use to him. Then he saw Knox, getting ready to file away the intruder's clothing.

"Wait," he ordered. "Did you check the soles of their shoes?"

"No identifying marks that would tie them to any specific location," Knox replied nervously, eyeing the claymore. It really wasn't an inconspicuous weapon.

"What about dirt, anything he might of stepped in?" Spike suggested. "Or were you science geeks so busy checking fabric weaves and how the seams were sewn that it never occurred to you?" Spike had actually listened to Fred's explanations.

Knox' eyes dropped in confused embarrassment. So obvious, how could they have missed it? "Yeah, maybe I ought to check that out," he mumbled.

"How about now?" Spike asked, propping his chin on the hilt of the sword.

"Well, I do have other things to do," Knox hedged, backing up a few steps.

"Not as important as this," Spike assured him. And Knox suddenly found the point of the claymore touching the underside of his chin.

"I see your.., um.., point." Knox swallowed, and winced as his adam's apple touched the tip of the blade drawing forth a crimson droplet of blood.

&&&&&

"As soon as the portents made clear that you were with young, plans have been made to bring you into my possession," M'rek explained, forgetting or just not mentioning that initially his plans had been to have her killed.

This wasn't entirely news to Rose, and although she had felt ill at ease with the canine-like demons, they had always been friendly enough, and she really hadn't thought that they might be the ones after her. But Spike would rescue her, in that she had absolute faith. Spike would find her and rescue her. That helped quell the tremors, a bit. And since there was nothing she could do to get herself out of the situation, she decided to try to make it a little more bearable. "May I please have my clothes?" she asked plaintively.

M'rek sniffed in disdain. "You are adorned in a king's ransom, and yet you would favor the peasant garb you were accustomed to?" he asked. "Make no mistake, Rose, you belong to me. You will wear what I wish you to wear, eat what and when I wish you to eat. Speak or be silent at my will." He tugged at the chain, Rose having moved as far away from him as its length would allow. "Come closer," he ordered, and when she failed to comply immediately, he gave it a sharp pull which dragged her half the distance to him, leaving her knees skinned and oozing blood.

"Disobedience has its price as you can see," M'rek cautioned her. "Now, come near to me, Rose. Sit beside my throne. Obey me and you shall be treated as my most pampered pet. Continue in your insubordination, and you will not live to see your young mature."

Rose got to her feet a bit unsteadily, despite the fact that the effects of whatever they had used to put her to sleep had worn off. This shakiness was entirely due to fear, for herself and her babies. She closed the distance between herself and M'rek's throne under her own power.

M'rek beckoned to Kraj, who shuffled forward and laid a large, overstuffed cushion at his feet. "Sit, Rose," he directed her. And Rose obediently sat. "Much better," M'rek remarked. "And I see that you know how to hold your tongue, a valuable trait in a female, and most especially for you. If you should feel the desire to chatter, remember that you will not die from having your tongue removed like all the other lesser creatures that serve me."

Rose fought back a sniffle and dragged the back of her wrist across her eyes. She was determined that she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, even though she was scared, alone, and her abused knees throbbed with pain. "What do you intend to do to my babies?" she asked.

"Your young shall be raised in my service, trained to obey me, even as you are now being trained, save that they will know nothing else." M'rek was in a good mood due to Rose's capture, and so was allowing her more leeway than he might under other circumstances. "I may even allow them to keep their tongues."

"Why are you doing this?" Rose had a good idea why, she'd seen enough of the prophecy before she'd been barred from it, but she wanted to hear it from him.

"Vampires, while coming from the lesser races, do have their uses," M'rek replied off-handedly. "And, more to the point, they provide balance in the universe. Good and evil are equally matched. This is as it should be. But a new race of creatures of the night all possessed of souls would bring about chaos."

"You don't think it just might make things better?" Rose ventured timidly. "Balance is for walking a tightrope, not for the forces of good and evil. Sooner or later, one or the other must win out."

M'rek bellowed with laughter, genuinely amused. "What a droll concept, my pet," he remarked. "And how unusual to find a female who at least attempts to understand subjects of such import. But that is none of your concern now, Rose. All that you have to think of now, is taking care of yourself and your young. And the best way you can do that is to remember that you no longer have any will but mine." He exerted upward pressure on the chain until Rose was lifted up to face him. "Let me hear you say it," he ordered.

"I have no will but yours," Rose gasped, and despite her resolve, a tear trickled down her cheek.

"Poor, little, helpless thing," M'rek said sympathetically. "Kraj, send for a veterinarian to tend to her knees."

&&&&&&&

"There is something here," Knox said, squinting into the microscope. "I've never seen anything like it before, it might be key in finding out where they come from." He turned and starting tapping at the keys of a computer keyboard. A display of the molecular components of the substance sprang to life on the screen. "Now," Knox muttered, half to himself. "We just run this through Wolfram and Hart's database and see if anyone has entered it in before." He looked at Spike nervously, even though Spike had stood patiently by while he worked. He still had the sword, and Knox started breaking out in a sweat again just looking at it. "You do realize that if this isn't in the database, there's nothing else I can do, don't you?"

Spike caressed the hilt of his sword. "Then you'd bloody well better hope it's in that database, hadn't you, Poindexter?" he asked in the mildest of tones.

Knox watched the computer screen with his fingers surreptitiously crossed. Soul or not, evidently you still didn't mess around with a vampire. He hadn't been around them much, but he really didn't see that much difference between Spike and Angel than the rest of the vampires on the staff. He felt a rivulet of moisture trickle down the length of his spine, perspiration from being scared shitless. He heaved a sigh of relief when the computer search hit pay-dirt. "We have a hit," he informed Spike. He started jotting down information. "Here's the dimension where that substance originates. Do you want me to ask Fred to tell Angel about it, or are you going to do it yourself?"

"Neither one," Spike replied, snatching the paper from his hand. He reached across Knox and started tapping at the computer keys himself, deleting everything that had just been entered. "You just keep your gob shut, science-boy. At least until tomorrow."

"Wait a minute," Knox began to protest. The sword swung threateningly in his direction again. "Tomorrow it is," he gulped.

&&&&&&&

"Sorry, Angel, but the psychics came up with zilch," Fred said. "They said our corpses had some kind of magical barrier around them that prevented them from being read. They can undo it, but it will take a couple of days."

"You did get them started on it though, didn't you?" Angel asked. He hated this, being all keyed up and pissed off and no one to hit.

"Yeah," Fred agreed. "Do you know what Spike is up to?"

"The last I saw of Spike, he was marching out of here with a claymore and an attitude," Angel replied wearily. "He wasn't too keen on listening to anything I had to say at the time. I expect that he'll be back when he realizes that he doesn't have a clue where to start."

"I wonder," Fred mused. "While I was busy with the psychics, Spike was in the lab talking to my assistant. He spent quite a while there. It looked like he was having Knox analyze something from the attackers clothing, which is kind of stupid, because we already went over them with a fine-toothed comb."

That brought Angel up short. He'd expected that Spike would stalk around breathing fire and brimstone for a while, then come back here and be a royal pain in the ass until they had some notion of where to find Rose. Spike actually thinking and maybe coming up with a plan gave him a full out case of the wiggins. "Is Knox still here?" he asked.

"He was when I left the lab," Fred replied. "Do you want to talk to him?"

"Yes, I do," Angel said grimly. "I want to know everything he and Spike talked about, even if it was just the weather."

&&&&&&&&

"The joints are not badly damaged," the veterinarian informed M'rek while he smeared a soothing ointment on them. "But I see that your new pet is with young. Would you like me to examine her?"

"Yes," M'rek agreed. "A sound notion. I acquired her because of her pregnancy, and I would be most displeased if something were to go wrong."

"Of course, I have no knowledge of this particular breed," the vet remarked. "Have you any idea of their gestation period and how far along she is?"

"Rose?" Just her name. She hadn't yet spoken in front of the vet, but now, apparently, she was being ordered to do so.

"Nine months for gestation," she said quietly. "And I'm about half-way along."

The vet rocked back on his haunches in shock. "She speaks?"

"At the moment, it amuses me that she should do so," M'rek replied. "And, as you can see, the ability has its uses."

"Indeed," the vet muttered, still in a daze. "And do you have any idea of how many young you carry?"

"Two," Rose replied, trying to keep her voice from squeaking, she was that near to tears. "The doctor couldn't tell yet, but Spike and Angel said they heard two heartbeats."

The veterinarian looked inquiringly at M'rek, who explained to him. "Vampires," he commented. "She had been in association with them. And they do have excellent hearing."

"I see," murmured the vet, who really didn't see at all. "Well, she certainly seems to be healthy enough for littering. Would your Lordship like me to monitor her on a regular basis throughout her gestation?"

"Yes," M'rek replied in musing tones. "I believe that I would." He looked down at Rose dotingly. "I do believe in taking good care of my pets."