Sacrificial Lamb

The old man serenely regarded the two sullen little faces glaring at him. They were still unable to read anyone's mind, even though they were free of the effects of the sedative. They suspected that something was up with that. Like they had been deliberately blocked somehow. While they had to admit that it made sense from their captor's point of view, they couldn't call for help or give them some idea of where they were (although they weren't sure that telepathy would work across dimensions), they still didn't have to like it, and they didn't.

"She looks just like her mother," Richard observed softly as he stood gazing at Ariel. He'd been summoned when Lindsey had called to report his success. Besides, he was curious to see Rose's children.

"Their auras, Richard," the elder re-directed his attention. "Tell me of their auras."

Richard blinked, then squinted. He had an expression of extreme concentration on his face.

"It's hard to say," he muttered. "They're.., they're almost iridescent, and they just seem to shimmer in and out of sight. Almost like they're a color the human eye can't register."

"And Spike is their father?" the old man wondered aloud. "Truly amazing."

The twins were, as aforementioned, groggy and cranky. They were also getting tired of being discussed like they couldn't hear what was going on. Alaric was visibly sulking, and Ariel looked ready to cry. In short, for once they completely fit the picture their seven-year-old features presented.

And they were hating every minute of it.

The creepy old man was still staring at them. "If I hadn't believed it before," he murmured. "I would now, he's a miniature version of Spike."

Alaric and Ariel exchanged worried glances. That was the second time he'd mentioned their father by name, as if they were acquaintances. And they didn't think he was anyone their dad had met since acquiring a soul.

"They're not particularly bright though, are they?" the old man went on. "Are they capable of speech?"

Lindsey walked back in as Alaric demonstrated at length that he was capable of speech. Courtesy of Spike.

&&&&&&&&

"If Lindsey took your kids, then what are we all doing in my apartment?" Angel asked. Corinna had disappeared into the bathroom the moment they had arrived, and was still there. Small wonder, the entire gang was here. The trio in the elevator had just been the advance guard.

"He has my kids," Spike replied. "But you're the one he has the ongoing feud with. He'll call here."

"It does seem likely," Wesley agreed. "Given your history with Lindsey."

"And if he's done any research," Fred put in. "And the smart money says he probably has, then he'll know you care about the kids just as much as any of us."

Oz had been hanging on the outer perimeter of things, so to speak. He looked and acted like he was trying to keep a very low profile. Angel noticed.

"You're not feeling guilty about this, are you, Oz?" he queried. He'd been filled in on the entire story on the way up to the penthouse. "Lindsey had this all planned out. No one's blaming you for it."

"Speak for y..," Spike started, but was abruptly cut off by a very sharp elbow to the ribs.

"Of course we don't blame you, Oz," Rose assured him. She was wide-eyed and fidgety. Oz decided that jab in the ribs she'd given Spike must have been a reflex action, honed over the years. "You've been taking care of the children for years, and quite well. We didn't think..," Rose's voice broke. Consoling Oz was one thing, but she was worried to death about her children.

Spike cuddled Rose close and murmured soothing words to her. And, occasionally, sparing a glare at Angel just because he was there.

"So now what?" Gunn asked. "We just sit here and wait for..," He was interrupted by the ringing of the phone.

&&&&&&&&

Corinna had made a beeline to the bathroom the moment they reached the penthouse, and everyone was so distracted that they didn't notice that she didn't have to ask where it was even though she'd never, to the best of anyone's knowledge been to Angel's place before.

She was pale and starting to shake. She looked in the mirror and saw that her amber eyes were beginning to revert to glossy black. Dark hair started sprouting from her arms. She realized she'd pushed her time limits badly. She drew in a deep, calming breath, and slowly released it, chanting softly in a long-forgotten language.

When Corinna stopped chanting and opened her eyes, she was once again the beautiful woman that Angel had been dancing with less than an hour ago.

&&&&&

Everyone had jumped at the first ring even though they were expecting it. By the second ring, they were beginning to recover, but still not sure they could deal. The third ring..,

A slender, feminine hand picked up the phone. "Mr. Angel's residence," Corinna said in perfect secretary mode. "Who may I say is calling?" Upon receiving an answer, she merely nodded at Angel to let him know it was the call he'd been waiting for.

His face looking like it had been carved out of granite, Angel took the phone.

&&&&&&&

Ariel was not happy. And it wasn't like she'd been anything like approaching happy anyway. But now..,

She had made what she considered to be an extremely reasonable request, an opportunity to wash up and some clean clothes.

What she had gotten was a washcloth and a bowl of water to wash with behind a hastily rigged curtain. As for clothes, well, that was another problem.

She was wearing one of Richard's dress shirts (she'd flatly refused a t-shirt). And while the shirt covered more than adequately, she still felt a certain lack.

"I don't know what to tell you, princess," Lindsey said, not unsympathetically. "Even if they did fit, I don't suppose a pair of Richard's boxers..,"

"Eww, gross." Ariel shuddered.

"Give me your stuff," Lindsey directed. "I'll see if Richard has a washer and dryer."

Ariel remembered she was a hostage, and technically, she shouldn't be speaking to Lindsey at all just in time to refrain from giving him detailed directions for laundering her clothes.

&&&&&&&

Angel sat down with a thump while the voice at the other end of the line continued to issue instructions. Finally, it was his turn, and he could barely force the words out.

"I'll need some time to discuss it with them," he said placatingly. "After all, it really isn't my decision to make." A pause during which it seemed that everyone present developed a bad nail-biting problem. "I see. The courier will be here. Of course we're going to want proof that the kids are all right." He looked up and nodded at Spike, who half-carried Rose to the phone.

The phone held between them, Spike and Rose listened intently for a few moments. Spike's features were torn between the deep affection he had for the woman in his arms and the possessors of the voices carrying over the phone, and impotent rage that once again, his nearest and dearest were being threatened and he could do nothing about it.

"Are you all right, darlings?" Rose's voice was nowhere near steady. "We miss you so much." Then, she did break down completely, and even though he held and comforted her, Spike didn't look as if he were in much better shape. An angry grimace, followed by him handing to phone back to Angel indicated that the children were no longer on the line.

But Angel was off the line almost immediately as well. Before he could say anything, there was a knock at the door which caused everyone, except Rose and Spike, locked in their mutual misery, to jump.

Gunn was closest to the door, and he flung it open eagerly. He was hoping there was someone he could hit on the other side. That might make him feel better.

At first though, he didn't see anyone. Until he looked down. There stood a little, blue-gray figure, holding a small parcel.

"I needing to be seeing boss vampire," it said.

&&&&&&&

Richard watched Lindsey return with Ariel's laundered garments and was moved to comment on it to his mentor. "It would seem that Mr. McDonald is a trifle attached to our hostages," he remarked. "It could be a problem."

The old man shrugged indifferently. "For now, it serves a purpose," he replied. "That is my, and should be your criteria in hirelings. Keep them around as long as they are useful. Do not dispose of them prematurely, but neither keep them about after they have ceased to be useful."

Richard listened to, and absorbed the information most carefully. "The parties concerned are almost certainly going to try to rescue the brats rather than accede to our demands."

"Naturally," the ancient agreed. "But they won't even know where to start looking."

"My residence is a matter of record," Richard pointed out. "Any good hacker could dig up my address."

"My boy," the old man admonished gently. "You put too much faith in gadgetry." The oldster waved his hand and mumbled something under his breath. "Now, every record of your residence says that you live about a half a mile away from where you actually do."

"They have magic at their disposal too," Richard reminded him. He wasn't sure he actually believed all the mumbo-jumbo, even though he had seen some pretty unlikely things. Of course, he didn't think it particularly politic, or safe, to say so.

"I doubt that they'll think to question it, Richard," the old man remarked. "They are more likely to believe that the deception is more mundanely based."

"True enough," Richard conceded. "What do we do with Lindsey when we're done with him?"

The old man's eyebrows waggled. "Why, what do you want to do with him, my boy?"

For most of his life, Richard had been a fairly mild-mannered person. But that was largely because things usually went his way. They hadn't been going his way lately, and more primal emotions were coming to the fore.

"If there were only some way to feed him to the Hramaas," Richard mused. "Not exactly the most nourishing fare, perhaps..,"

"And Lindsey knows about Hramass," the master pointed out. "He won't allow himself to be decoyed into its jaws."

"Pity," Richard sighed ruefully. He brightened. "Maybe we could give him to the vampire, Angel. If Lindsey wants a showdown with him so badly, let's give him what he wants." He chuckled. "My money will be on the vampire mopping the floor with him."

Ariel emerged from her makeshift dressing room and shared a long look with her twin and once again, felt frustrated beyond measure that they couldn't mind talk.

Alaric, knowing his sister better than anyone on the face of the earth, gained more from that look than some people would from a lengthy conversation. Lindsey was a bad man. They wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Lindsey. But what the other two were planning (and he fully agreed with Richard that Uncle Angel would give Lindsey an ass-kicking), was even worse, to the twin's minds. Double-crossing your allies. Their mistake was that they'd failed to take into consideration that the twins had a vampire's hearing. Either that, or they felt the kids would not care what happened to Lindsey, and simply weren't concerned as to whether or not Alaric and Ariel heard them.

The twins stood close to each other, held hands and looked from Richard and the old man to Lindsey and back again.

&&&&&&&

"They want Rose." Angel had wanted, even planned, to soften the blow, at least a little bit, but he couldn't think of how to put it.

"With, I am assuming, absolutely no assurances that we'll get the children back safe and sound," Wesley commented tactlessly. He mindlessly reached over and scritched the Q'xlzr's head between its ears.

The Q'xlzr, which had been almost as nervy as Rose upon discovering what had happened settled down with a stifled purr. Not only had it been upset, by the abduction of the twins, but it had also been a bit fearful of being tarred with the same brush as the people who it was currently associating with, and never mind it was under the auspices of the boss vampire and had kept him informed every step of the way.

"They can't have her," said Spike firmly, hugging Rose so tight that she squeaked. "Sorry, pet. We had enough trouble getting her back the first time."

"But what about the kids, Spike?" Fred asked. "We've got to get them back."

And the arguments started. A verbal free-for-all in which everyone not only felt free, but actually obliged to put their two cents' worth in. It was bedlam.

&&&&&&

"They're planning on killing you," Alaric said, very, very quietly. Lindsey had to strain to hear.

"Is that so?" Lindsey may have sounded like he didn't believe, either that, or he didn't care, but he did take the precaution of keeping his tones well-modulated.

"We heard them," Ariel murmured. "You're a bad man, but so..," She indicated the room's other occupants with a haughty tilt of her head so that her chin was pointing towards them. ".., are they."

"And fair's fair, is that it?" Lindsey queried, still keeping it down. "Not to worry, guys. I was kind of expecting something like this. I've got it pretty much covered."

"We weren't worried about you," Alaric said scornfully. His expression was a bit more ambiguous. If pressed, by the right people, he might be moved to admit that he found Lindsey a likable scoundrel. But still a scoundrel.

"Did they say how they planned to do it?" Lindsey was kind of interested in the proposed method. It would make it easier to dodge.

"They're going to give you to Uncle Angel," Ariel informed him smugly. She was wearing her father's smirk again.

Alaric wore the selfsame expression. "You are so going to get your ass kicked."

And dire though the situation seemed, Lindsey laughed aloud as Ariel elbowed her brother in the ribs.

&&&&&&

"What's in the package the Q'xlzr brought?" Gunn asked.

"Directions to a meeting point, a copy of the spell," Angel answered. "And this." 'This' was a more casual version of the dress Rose had worn at the fund-raiser. But still in the same tacky orange.

"If we could just do the sealing spell first," Wesley muttered. "Then it would mitigate the danger to Rose, not to mention a large portion of the populace. But I still haven't found out what language that final phrase is in."

Rose, calmer now, but with swollen eyes, was perusing the summoning spell again. She seemed to be puzzling over a particular phrase. "Wesley, right off the top of your head, what does this mean?" And she finished by uttering a word in a language that most of them had never heard.

"Opening, or maybe even more precisely, mouth," Wesley replied without looking up from his own research. "But we need to work on this spell, Rose. We already know what that one does. It opens..,"

"A new hellmouth," Rose finished. "There was something bothering me about that, and I think that's what it was."

"Another hellmouth?" Spike looked aghast. "Bugger that. Isn't L.A. bad enough without opening a hellmouth under it?"

"I think I can speak for everyone who's been to one that it's something we definitely don't want," Angel remarked. His gaze seemed to go automatically to those in the room who had been.

"You've seen one hellmouth, you've seen them all," Oz quipped. "If it's all the same to you, I'll pass."

"And that just makes it all the more urgent that we crack the sealing spell," Wesley pointed out. "If we do that, then no matter what they do, they'll be unable to summon the Hramaas."

Corinna had been keeping a low profile, but had her ears wide open the whole while. She wandered behind the Watcher and looked over his shoulder. "I know it," she said softly. She looked around the room and wondered how they would take the rest of her news. "Like the summoning spell, though, it requires a sacrifice. A willing sacrifice."

Rose and Spike gazed into each other's eyes for long moments, each knowing that with them, it was an all or nothing deal. They turned to the rest of the group and in perfect unison said, "We'll do it."

"Like hell you will," Angel exploded. "Your kids need you." He stopped and swallowed. "I'll do it."

"And leave us without our champion?" Wesley inquired. He raised Fred's hand to his lips and kissed it. "Besides, you might not be able to read it accurately. I'll do it."

"Maybe you'd better leave it to a bachelor," Gunn suggested. "I'll do it."

"I'd have died years ago if you guys hadn't rescued me from Pylea," Fred said. "Everything after that could be considered a gift." She looked at Wes. "A wonderful, wonderful gift. I'll do it."

"That spell probably needs to be sung, just like the other one," Lorne pointed out. He grinned crookedly. "I've never had much of a shot at the hero gig before. I'll do it."

Corinna marveled that they were all willing to sacrifice themselves. So much so that they were arguing about it. She looked at the spell where it lay forgotten in the heat of the ongoing mayhem, then at the arguing people again. Arguing not because they wanted to die, but because they wanted others to live. It was an impressive display. She considered a few things, then quietly purloined the spell, hiding it in an otherwise empty handbag, (she'd had no idea what women put in them, she merely knew that they carried them). She walked up to Angel and tugged gently at his sleeve until she got his attention.

"I'm leaving." Stated flatly, it gave him no hint whatever of why she was leaving. But seeing the look of consternation on his face, she added softly, "It looks like we picked the wrong night."

"I guess so," he agreed. What they were doing was important, very, very important, but still, it had been rude of him to forget about her so completely. "Do you need me to arrange some transportation for you?" he asked. "I'm sure you must have expected me to make sure that you got home."

"I'm just fine," she assured him. She looked up for a moment into his lovely, brown eyes, and something in them touched her enough that she stood on tip-toe to kiss him. "I had a lovely time tonight, Angel. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Corinna." For no reason he could put his finger on, the leave-taking seemed rather final to Angel.

She slipped away and into the elevator, taking what listening to the arguments had told her was the only existing copy of the sealing spell.

She hoped the arguments would carry on a while longer. Long enough for her to get where she was going before they realized that the spell was missing.