DISCLAIMER: I own the kiddos. All others are property of Joss Whedon et al.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's already 2:30 AM, and I'm still sickly, so you guys just get a quick, short update because it's been two weeks and I promised I'd update at least once every two weeks. See how hard I'm trying?
SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Seven
"Is he dead?" Claire asked curiously, looking at the half-demon guard Brookie had thrown across the room in her tantrum.
Brookie, completely oblivious to the fact that she'd hurt the man, squatted down next to him and tilted her head to the side. Cautiously, her little eyes wide, she reached out one finger and poked him.
"Squishy man," she pronounced. The little hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and the two year old wrinkled her nose. "Bad squishy man," she pronounced.
Noelle narrowed her eyes at Brookie. "I was supposed to get to kill him," she said. "It was my turn!"
"NO! You killed the one that was giving gooey looks to Uncle Xander," Claire pointed out. "So I think it was my turn."
Brandon shuddered at the thought of the female demon who'd tried to put the moves on Xander.
"Stupid girl," he muttered.
"Brookie girl," Brookie reminded him reproachfully. Without pausing a minute, she continued poking the guard. "Squish-squish-squish," she sang happily.
Noelle turned her attention to Brandon and gave him a steady look. "Can you make me something sharp?" she asked, her little eyes dancing. "In case he wakes up?"
Brandon thought about it for a moment. He took a sip of his juice box and tried not to think about the fact that he was stuck in the back of a truck with three stupid girls, one of whom was Claire, and a squishy demon.
"I have a better idea," Brandon said, giving them his patented boys-have-better-ideas-than-girls look. "How about I make us lots of sharp things and we break out of here?"
Noelle nodded. "Really sharp," she said.
"SHARP!" Claire yelled, just to be yelling something.
The man driving the transportation vehicle looked at his partner uncomfortably. "Did you hear that?" he asked.
"What?" the other guard asked.
"Someone just said 'sharp,'" the driver replied.
The men pulled into the private airport hanger and looked at each other for a moment.
Finally, the driver spoke. "I knew we shouldn't have given them the juice," he said.
Angel looked down at his cell phone and cursed it for its bad reception. He'd been waiting in his car for three minutes, and Dawn still wasn't down yet.
"I'm not going up to the room," he said out loud, simply.
He looked back down at his watch, and thought of the way Cordelia had looked after a vision. For all he knew, Dawn was collapsed on her futon.
Angel took a deep breath. He was going in.
She scrubbed the floor without saying a word. Blood made such an awful mess. Secretly, she despised the job, but what had she expected? She was an intern, and that meant clerical work and cleaning up after ritual sacrifices to interdimensional powers of evil.
The intern looked down and shook her head in disgust. There was so much blood, and the pentagon wasn't even drawn straight. She could have performed a better binding sacrifice herself, and she was just the intern.
She touched the center of the pentagon, marked with the Pac Man like symbol for the Kintroshian Death Goddess, Tyrai. The floor beneath her swirled a bit, and a child's face appeared in the blood. The intern reached out to touch the image, and the small honey-blonde child's solemn face disappeared.
"Evil," she muttered. "It's always conjure this and sacrifice that, but no one ever thinks about the fact that somebody has to clean it up." The least they could have done was tell her what kind of dark magic they were doing, who they were trying to bind to the Ocelot's Amulet, and why in the world the were summoning Tyrai when everyone knew that Kintroshian Goddesses were useless in dimensions they didn't control.
"Sure," she grumbled. "Don't tell the intern anything."
No one ever did.
"Squishy man not sporkie," Brookie said contemplatively, poking the demon again, as if to confirm that he was indeed squishy and not, in fact, somehow a spork. She wrinkled her forehead as if in great concentration, and a moment later, she stood up, climbed on top of the guard's stomach, and started bouncing lightly.
"Boing boing boing," she said.
"Stop boinging him," Claire said bossily, in the way of a true older sister.
Brookie stuck her tongue out at Claire. "My squishy boingy," she said stubbornly.
"If you sit down and drink your juice like a good girl," Brandon said, suddenly inspired. "I'll conjure you up a spork."
Brookie paused mid bounce, and then she beamed at Brandon.
"Love you!" she said brightly.
"Ewwww," Brandon said.
"About those sharp things?" Noelle said, tapping her foot impatiently.
The door to the back of the van opened just as Brandon began the transmogrification spell. He shut his mouth instantly and gave the men an innocent look.
"What are you kids doing?" the driver asked suspiciously, the gun gleaming in his hand.
"Nothing," all four children chorused at once.
Both Wolfram and Hart employees looked down at the half demon guard, lying on the floor.
"Great," one of them muttered. "He was supposed to be the muscle."
Buffy excused herself from the room and picked up the phone, dialing Angel's number by heart. He was supposed to keep Wolfram and Hart under control, and that meant no pre-school kidnapping jobs. That was his big, broody vampire job.
The phone rang and rang with no answer, and Buffy gritted her teeth. She was dealing with irate parents, a walking piece of cryptic-y goodness in the form of a mini-Faith, and she was stuck listening to the message Harmony had recorded on Angel's answering machine.
"This is Angel. I'm off saving the world or drinking blood or losing my soul or listening to sappy music or buying hair gel or…what else do you do?" There was mumbling in the back ground. "Anyway, leave me a message, and I'll try to save your life and/or eternal soul as soon as possible."
BEEP.
Buffy glared at the phone. She hated that stupid beep.
"I'm not waiting," Lindsey said.
Willow shot Xander a look. "Waiting would be good," she said, trying to offer the man a sympathetic look. "Buffy's making a call, and we'll have everything under control."
"My son is missing," Kate said through clenched teeth. "He's been taken for God knows what reason, and you expect us to stand here while 'Miss Buffy' makes a phone call?"
Lindsey looked away. He knew quite well who Buffy was and who she was placing the call to, but he could see that Kate was too upset to care. That, at least, was something he could relate to.
"They'll be flying them out of the hanger in Courtmath," he said, no doubt in his voice. "They have a head start on us. Our best bet will be to catch them when they land in L.A."
"Look," Anya said, temporarily amused, her muscles relaxing now that The Call to nothingness had lessened. "The briskly speaking one is being assertive."
"Bout time somebody is," Spike muttered. The Call had been getting stronger. The only thing that held him now away from the force of its power was Kaya, and he could see that it was wearing the small child out.
"Miss Willow?" Val whispered, still safe in Willow's arms. "I think I saw something. I think I'm supposed to go with you. You're gonna need me."
Faith looked furtively back and forth between Lindsey and Kate and the building where Buffy had gone to make her phone call. Her job was protecting Kaya, but she could see the pain in their faces, and she felt for them, for the other children.
"Take them away," Kaya said, her voice very angry. "Mine!" She stomped her foot. "My Spike! My Anya! My Jenny!"
Xander and Willow looked at each other.
"Did she just say Jenny?" Xander asked.
"That would be an uh-huh," Willow said.
"Was that an uh-huh or an uh-uh?" Xander asked.
"Uh-huh," Willow said, trying to emphasize it.
"This is ridiculous," Kate snapped, her voice catching in her throat. "They have my son, and come hell or high water, I'm getting him back. I never should have brought him here, but his damn father…" Kate trailed off, and after a moment, ice settled over her eyes and she spoke again. "I'm going after my son," she said. "Not in five minutes, not when Buffy gets back. Now."
"You don't have any idea how to start," Xander pointed out.
Lindsey met Kate's eyes. "I do," he said simply.
Kaya listened intently to this exchange, and then she looked up at Val. "Hi you," she said. "Need you. You see. See me? See my pretties?"
"Pretties?!" Spike shrieked, outraged. "I'm not pretty."
"You are rather aesthetically pleasing," Anya said objectively, "for a fully clothed, non-corporeal being bearing no resemblance to any type of currency that consistently trades well against the dollar."
Even as she said it, Anya's eyes were locked on Xander's. Spike grunted. There was no accounting for taste.
"I don't see," Val whispered, her voice soft and scared. "Not anymore."
"You will," Kaya promised. "You see, Tara," she said.
Willow stared at the child. "What did you say?" she asked, her voice low.
"Mine," Kaya said firmly in response.
Faith smiled apologetically at Willow. "That was her first word," she said, by way of apology.
"How come Claire's Daddy and Brandon's Mommy left?" Drew asked curiously. "Is Claire's Daddy going to bite Brandon's Mommy?" Somehow, the question seemed logical in his four year old werewolf mind.
"Angry parents gone," Xander commented, picking up on the baby talk around him. "That bad."
Willow barely heard him. "What did you say?" she asked Kaya again.
"Like Sunny," Kaya said, trying to explain something Willow didn't understand. "Mine."
TBC… Angel in Dawn's dorm room, Lindsey and Kate coming after their children, and the kiddos on an airplane, plus some explanations of the death goddess, the situation with Tara, Sunny, Darla, and Jenny, and what exactly it is that WH is trying to pull…
Oh, and if you'd like to see pics of the kids, there's a link to a site in my profile that has pics of what they all look like, with expanded sections for Brookie and Claire, and more on the way, but first…
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