Saturday's Child

Chapter Eleven

…

After Spike's shameless display up on the stage, Angel had had to leave. It was that or follow him and Buffy into Lorne's room and punch the smug little bastard. As good as that would have felt, it would only have ended up with Buffy even deeper under the spell of the younger vampire's undeniable charm. Spike could pull off wounded puppy dog pretty damn well, and giving him a well-deserved beatdown would only have convinced Buffy even more that Angel was in the wrong. For whatever reason, she was blind to what the pest was doing to her, and pushing her to see had, so far, only made things worse.

So instead of putting Spike in his place like he'd wanted, Angel had gone out on a patrol of his city. He'd saved a couple of people, including a small blonde girl with blue eyes. Just like…. He frowned. Buffy's eyes were blue, weren't they? He tried to think back to all of the times they'd gazed into each other's eyes, but he was drawing a blank. Cordelia's warm brown and even Darla's flinty hazel came easier to mind.

Darla... She'd seemed so lost, like during her all-too-brief second chance. He'd been tempted to lie, to tell her there was hope for both of them, but she'd always been one to prefer the cold, hard truth. And besides, baby's soul or not, she was evil. There was no sugar-coating that.

Angel sighed and shook his head to clear it as he approached Caritas. He felt a little guilty about having left. They needed to get this all figured out as soon as possible, and he'd let his emotions send him storming out. Though at least I didn't abandon research to have sex in someone else's bedroom, he thought in annoyed disgust.

"…surveillance cameras set up in the hotel," Gunn was saying as Angel walked in and down the stairs into the main part of the club.

Fred and Wesley seemed to actually be doing research while Gunn was talking to Cordelia and Buffy. Lorne was making phone calls – ordering last minute things for the grand reopening from the sound of it – and Spike was sitting on a blanket on the floor, playing with the baby. Unless she was hiding behind the bar, Darla didn't seem to be there.

"Where's Darla?" he asked, his voice harsher than he'd intended. He'd only been gone for twenty minutes at the most. How had she managed to get past them? "How the hell did you lose a woman who has to be around nine months pregnant?"

The sudden silence had an annoyed feeling to it before Spike broke it. "We didn't bloody lose her, you berk. She's resting her back in the employee room with some blood and a sandwich. May come as a bit of a shock, but carrying about a bowling ball in your middle does a number on the old spinal column."

"Oh, yeah," Cordy said with a sympathetic wince. At Spike's questioning look, she explained, "Demon pregnancy. I went from zero to about to burst overnight." She grimaced at the memory. "At least I didn't actually have to give birth to the things." Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she looked at the baby. "How did you manage that, anyway? Are we talking magical girl parts here, or alien chest burster?"

"Neither, actually. Gathered from the research she was meant to just sort of pass on through. A bit like magical reverse osmosis or somesuch. Had a bit of a visit from Dru instead, who decided it'd be a grand lark to play Dr. Dru's Discount Cesarean Emporium. Came at me with a great bloody knife and cut her right out." He gave a "what can you expect, though?" shrug and turned his attention to Gunn. "What were you just on about with surveillance cameras at the hotel?"

"I think that's how you and the kiddo there got on Wolfram & Hart's radar," Gunn answered. "Cordy's vision showed a bunch of guys at the hotel after Darla and her baby, right? That makes sense with the prophecy, but she saw them capturing Thursday and Spike, too. If they aren't part of this confluence, how does W&H know about them? I'm betting surveillance cameras and listening devices."

"That doesn't explain why they want Spike, though," Cordelia pointed out. "He's a vampire who can't even hurt people. What are they going to do, put him to work in the mailroom? I doubt they have every single room in the hotel bugged, and it's not like anyone talked about him being pregnant again in the lobby."

Angel shifted uncomfortably and glanced at Buffy. Big mistake. She was glaring at him in white-lipped fury. "Hey, it's not like I knew the place was bugged," he protested defensively.

"Bloody hell," Spike swore. "That's where Captain Forehead had his big revelation, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Buffy ground out from between clenched teeth. If slayers had come equipped with heat vision, Angel was pretty sure he'd have turned into a pile of dust just from her glare. "We were in the lobby when he decided that was the perfect time to butt into things that aren't any of his business. Then to go on about how I'm supposedly living my life wrong because I'm not acting like a little girl constantly seeking his approval."

"That's not what I said," Angel argued, stung by her words. Damn it, he cared about her. Of course he was going to worry and speak up when she made really bad decisions. "I just want what's best for you."

"Ugh. Men," Cordy muttered in disgust.

He ignored it. She'd been pissed off at him from the moment Darla had shown up at the hotel in her current condition. It wasn't exactly the first time she'd ever been mad at him. He'd get her a bunch of new clothes once things settled down, and everything would be fine.

"Hey, now," Spike protested before Angel could manage to get a word in. "Don't be dragging an entire gender through the muck just because your boss is a right arse most the time. We'd kick him out if we could, but he knows the secret handshake an' all."

"Says the guy who's pregnant for the second time," Angel muttered.

Spike gave him an infuriating smirk and curled his tongue behind his teeth. "Jealous, are we? Over the fact it isn't you, or that you're not the one what rolled out the dough for this particular bun?"

"Shut up, Spi-"

"Uh-oh," Fred suddenly said, cutting Angel off.

"What is it?" he asked. Uh-oh didn't sound good at all. His mind flashed to the image he'd seen on the ultrasound. His son, innocent and vulnerable. Uh-oh didn't sound like it would be safe for the little guy. "What'd you find out?"

"I've been going over my calculations again now that we've been able to figure out some of the conversions and translations. If my numbers are right, the last piece of this confluence is going to become active in a few hours. And then everything's going to come together tomorrow night."

…

...

Everyone seemed to be talking at once, trying to figure out where everything was going to go down and how they were going to deal with it. Everyone but Buffy. She already knew. She just wasn't particularly happy with that knowledge and really didn't want to get all share-y with it yet.

She wasn't usually all plan girl, but this one was simple, direct, and had bloomed in her mind like one of those giant, stinky flowers. Amorphophallus titanum, titan arum, or corpse flower, her mind supplied, dragging the obscure school knowledge from the vault that held things like that and the Coo-Coo Cola song from Rescue Rangers. God, a soda sounded really good right about now. And she really needed to login to the online blackboard in the next day or so. The online classes good old UCS offered were easier to work around, but she still had to participate in discussions and stuff.

"Oi, Slayer!" Spike's voice finally cut through her fuzzy thoughts. "You alright, love?" he asked, quieter now that he had her attention. "You've been stood about, staring into space for a few minutes now."

"Yeah." She took a shaky breath. "Yeah, I'm fine. And I know what we need to do."

Angel frowned at her. "Buffy, Wes and Fred are still trying to work out the prophecy. Until they do and we know where things are going to happen, we can't really make any concrete plans."

"No." She shook her head. "We have exactly what we need. Your cornflower thing," confluence. She knew it was confluence, but dealing with uncomfortable things with "look at the dumb blonde" humor was too ingrained, "is happening tomorrow night, right? Darla and her baby are part of it, along with whatever is showing up tonight. I'm betting your freaky law firm is part of things, too. We take Darla to the hotel where the cameras can see her, and everyone will come to us."

"You want to use my child as bait?" Angel asked incredulously.

Buffy didn't even look at him. Her eyes were fixed on Spike. "And mine," she said quietly. She wanted the protective instinct to rear up and choke off her words, but no, the damn thing agreed with the plan. Spike and their babies would be safer with the threat dealt with. "We aren't officially part of things, but we've been dragged in. So, to get everything done in one swoop, Spike and Thursday need to be bait, too."