~ helygen ~

Part One

Los Angeles
Monday afternoon, 3 pm
          Angel slept.
'At least', Cordelia thought, 'I guess he's sleeping; this whole being-dead-and-not-breathing thing gets really creepy sometimes.'
          She stood leaning in the doorway to her employer's office and regarded the ensouled vampire, who sat with his legs stretched out under his desk, chin on his chest and his eyes closed, hands loosely clasped across his waist. It was three in the afternoon and by rights he should be safely tucked upstairs in his room, but things were bad and she knew he dare not venture too far from the phone or their offices, the hub of the organisation known as Angel Investigations.
          Cordelia sighed. 'Things' always got bad when Buffy made an appearance. Or - disappearance, as was the case at present. Normally, 'things' went along quite well, thank you, with Angel and his team battling demons and their lawyers and generally putting the world to rights. As long as no-one mentioned the 'B' word, everything was fine, but as soon as Angel heard that name he became prone to serious contemplative over-drive and industrial-strength brooding, especially when something like this happened. He tried to brush it aside and get on with life, especially after their meeting a few weeks ago following her latest resurrection, but he was fooling no-one. They all knew he loved her, and missed her, and longed for the life together that they could never have, and now that she was missing he was more broody than ever. They tried to be supportive ...
          Cordelia sighed again. Who was she kidding? They were supportive, but life had to go on. Wesley's idea of being supportive was making lots of tea and trying to avoid the subject, when he wasn't buried in research. Fred sighed winsomely, caught up in the romance of it all, but wouldn't know where to begin when it came to voicing advice or sympathy. Gunn commiserated silently, and made the most of Fred's company, not wanting to waste a moment in this no-guarantees world. Lorne fretted, and made the occasional wise comment in Angel's hearing, but generally felt as useless as the rest of them did. Cordelia occasionally patted Angel's shoulder, letting him know she was there if he wanted to talk, knowing full well that he wouldn't. And she watched him sleep when and where he could, on the rare occasions that he gave in to the fatigue that had already begun to tell on each of them, all the while knowing that Buffy was no longer in this dimension and all attempts to find her or figure out what had happened three days ago had failed.
          She knew he was dreaming about her. Sometimes the whisper of a smile turned up the corner of his mouth, and sometimes he frowned and kind of growled, but mostly he wore that 'gods I love her so much' expression that he'd worn permanently in Sunnydale but rarely got to use after Graduation Day and his move to LA. Random Sunnydale memories flashed through Cordelia's mind - mostly bad ones - and she frowned, pushing herself off the doorframe to return to her desk. She hadn't made a sound, she was certain, but obviously the air movement reached Angel's hypersensitive senses because in an instant he was sitting bolt upright, gripping the edge of his desk, his face asking a huge horrible unspoken question as his dark eyes searched Cordelia's with an intensity that made the hairs on her neck stand up.
          "It's okay," she smiled, apologetically, flapping a hand at him to calm down, "everything's quiet. Go back to sleep. Sorry I woke you."
          Angel blinked, looking at her as if he wasn't ready to believe her, and let go of the desk but didn't relax. He sighed - completely unnecessarily, since he didn't actually breathe - and twiddled with the claddagh ring that adorned his ring finger.
          "Angel, she'll be okay," Cordelia said softly, moving towards the desk, "we'll..."
          His eyes bore into her again, cutting off her words, and she smiled that big-eyed 'okay-so-you-know-I'm-lying' smile at him and shrugged.
          "Well," she said, head on one side as she met his gaze defiantly, "what do you want me to do? Spend my days howling and sobbing and ruining this silk shirt with my tears? You know that's not going to happen. For starters, the store would never take it back. And also," she added hastily, kicking herself for the materialistic lapse, "excuse me? This is Buffy we're talking about. She always wins through. Heck, she can't even stay dead, she's not about to settle down in some other dimension without a fight!"
          Angel looked at her, almost expressionless for once.
          "How long was I ..?" he asked quietly.
          "About ten minutes," Cordelia supplied. "Big whoop! Let's hope the quiet continues a while, cos if you keep this up, you're not going to be much use if something happens."
          She looked at him meaningfully, concern out-weighing her sarcasm.
          Angel shook his head.
          "I can't go to bed, Cordelia," he said, "I need to be here."
          "Angel you know we'll call you as soon as anything ..!
          "I know that," he said softly. "I just need to be here."
          "I know," Cordelia said quietly, after a beat, "me too."
          They looked at each other for a few moments, understanding passing unspoken between them. Then Cordelia turned on her heels and went back to her desk behind the hotel's reception area.

         Across town, in the Conference Room on the executive's floor at Wolfram & Hart, seven smug faces listened with satisfaction to Lilah Morgan's latest update. Lilah practically glowed with pride as she reminded them of her intricate planning which had culminated with dazzling success in the Slayer's removal to Kravlar, a particularly unpleasant demon dimension whose portals were almost impossible to locate and even more difficult to activate.
          "My contact on the other side," she inflected dramatically, much to the amusement of her audience, "informs me that our subject is not-too-comfortably detained in the Pit of Drath, which is heavily fortified and lies some distance from the portal which took her there. So, even if her friends should locate a portal - which," she continued hastily as the faces around the table grew grim "is extremely unlikely, if not impossible - they would have no idea where to look for her. Even if they found out about the Pit, which again is so unlikely it isn't worth worrying about, they would then have to battle their way in any number of directions in order to ..."
          "'Any number of directions'?" one of the directors repeated.
          "Kravlar's dimensions are not like ours," Lilah explained, trying to mask the feeling of superiority that her extensive research had given her. "Locations shift, as does time, and pinpointing a particular map reference doesn't guarantee it will be there when you reach it." She smiled triumphantly. "That was why I chose Kravlar: it's inhospitable, impenetrable, and damned hard to find!"
          "So how do we keep tabs on her?" Gavin Park smirked. Lilah glared at him, knowing he was looking for any chink in her perfectly masterminded plan which would inch him ahead of her in the kudos stakes.
          "My contact," Lilah stated simply.
          "And if your contact should .. disappear?" Gavin pressed, not without menace.
          "He won't," she countered bluntly, meeting his challenge. She saw the others shift restlessly, obviously unsettled by this possible flaw. She smiled mirthlessly at Gavin. "Obviously, there's a back-up - I don't have just the one contact in Kravlar, there are several working in conjunction with each other. In the highly unlikely event that something should happen to one of them - in their own home world, where they are exalted warriors - then one of the others would pick up the reins. There is nothing to worry about. Everything is tightly controlled."
          Gavin snorted softly, and Lilah resisted the urge to punch him in the mouth.
          "And the portal is permanently sealed?" Leverett Simkins asked. Lilah hadn't had many dealings with him, but his snake-like features filled her with both dread and respect.
          Lilah nodded, smiling proudly.
          "We know that her friends are concentrating on the area where the portal disappeared," she reported, "thinking they can somehow reactivate it. What they don't realise is that if it was still active, it would no longer be there anyway: it would have shifted to another location, because of the dimensional differences in Kravlar. However, as extra insurance, I had the portal destroyed."
          "How do you know?" Simkins asked, his small dark eyes narrowing. "If it had moved from its location, how do you know it was destroyed?"
          "As soon as the slayer arrived in Kravlar, my contact destroyed the portal before it closed," Lilah answered smoothly, her skin crawling under Simkins' serpent-like stare. "It won't open again."
          Simkins nodded, satisfied, but held her in his gaze until she almost squirmed.
          "And the Book of Lar is safe?" Nathan Reid asked, knowing the answer but enjoying the spectacle of Lilah Morgan's discomfort.
          Lilah nodded, glad to be under someone else's scrutiny.
          "The only thing in existence," she explained for the benefit of the others, "which holds the key to entering and travelling though Kravlar's dimensions, is very safe."
          She was not about to divulge its whereabouts, even if some of them already knew - no-one was considered an absolute ally in this war. Especially not Gavin, who, she noticed with satisfaction, frowned with annoyance at her lack of information.
          "And the vampire?" Reid asked, his distaste apparent without naming names.
          "We're throwing everything else at him," Lilah reported, "draining his resources and wasting his time at every given moment. Apparently he's getting pretty close to breaking point."
          Gavin snorted again, and Lilah turned on him.
          "He's using up his strength at a phenomenal pace," she informed him through gritted teeth, "not eating, not sleeping, and therefore not recuperating as quickly as normal. If you can call anything he does 'normal'. His associates are also run ragged, and collectively they are very weak. Add to that the obvious worry and tension over the missing Slayer and their efforts to help her friends find her ..."
          "Very well," Nathan Reid interrupted with a nod. "It seems that our plans are moving along as anticipated.� He either ignored or missed Lilah's jaw-clench at his sudden ownership of her plan. "We'll reconvene on Friday. Perhaps by then we will have news on our other project."
          Gavin smiled, giving nothing away, and nodded once. Lilah looked from one to the other, but her exclusion from that particular subject was obvious. Eyes glaring at her junior colleague, she smiled dutifully at her boss and closed her briefcase.

Sunnydale
          Rupert Giles wearily rubbed his spectacles with a hanky, and looked across at the table opposite the counter in the Magic Box. Willow had dozed off, her face resting at an uncomfortable-looking angle on the open page of the huge book she'd been reading. In the seat next to her, Xander, catching Giles' gaze at her, smiled with tight lips, guarding his friend's exhaustion with fierce protectiveness, as if Giles would even consider disturbing her. The former librarian gave him a tiny nod, reassuring him that Willow's slumber was well deserved. Opposite Xander, her back to Giles, Tara quietly turned a page in another tome, glancing at her lover to assure herself she hadn't woken her, then continued reading, stifling a yawn with her free hand.
          Giles looked at his watch. Three-thirty. Anya would arrive soon with Dawn, and then the peace and quiet would be shattered for another twelve hours or so until sleep claimed them all, if they allowed it. He replaced his glasses and moved noiselessly around the counter, selecting an ancient journal from the top of the pile in the centre of the table, and was about to sit down between Tara and Xander when the phone rang. Willow jerked upright, wincing and confused, quickly looking to each of them as if checking there were still there.
          Giles lifted the telephone receiver before its third ring.
          "Yes?" he said, tension knotting his face. The other three held their breath as they watched, straining to hear the caller even though they knew it was impossible. "Hello, Wesley, how..? Right. No, nothing here, either. Yet," he amended with determination, aware that a defeatist attitude was no good to anyone.
          His young companions watched as his expression changed from weary resignation to curious deliberation as he listened to his former Watcher's Council colleague. Wesley was obviously saying something to give Giles hope. Xander was itching to interrupt, but Anya and Dawn, who burst into the shop talking loudly about some boy band, stole that chalice from him.
          "Shhhhhhhhh!" stopped the two in their tracks, delivered by three annoyed scoobies at the table as back up to Giles who held up his hand, palm facing the intruders, as a signal to shut up.
          Obediently, if slightly miffed, Anya halted and closed her mouth. Dawn, however, almost fell over herself to join Giles, pressing her ear to the receiver to try and hear who was calling. Her face fell when she realised it wasn't Buffy, and she slouched into a vacant chair, close to tears.
          "Yes, yes," Giles said thoughtfully, nodding with enthusiasm, "I think you're right, Wesley, I seem to remember reading something about it, years ago. Good job. I'll see what we can turn up here, and I know someone on the Council who may have more information. I'll call you back. Thank you."
          Slowly replacing the receiver, Giles remained motionless for several seconds, obviously deep in thought, until Xander could stand it no longer.
          "Care to share, G-man?" he prompted with half-hearted sarcasm, knowing the nickname alone would attract enough attention.
          Giles shot him a look, half out of habit, to show his irritation, but it was quickly replaced by a very business-like nod.
          "That was Wesley," he said unnecessarily, cutting off Xander's rejoinder with a raised hand. "He's discovered some ancient texts which refer to a demon dimension that seems to fit the scenario that ..."
          He glanced carefully at Dawn, mindful of her emotional state. She looked at him with huge eyes, still on the verge of tears, but smiling hopefully. Giles' heart ached for her, and he longed to give her a comforting hug and reassure her that they would find her sister. Instead he smiled as encouragingly as he could.
          "It seems this dimension may be the one that .. Buffy has been transported to," he revealed, reluctant to reiterate the unthinkable.
          "Yay! A lead!" Willow cheered, ever the trouper.
          Giles hesitated.
          "No 'yay'?" Willow asked, disappointed.
          "It's a step in the right direction," Giles conceded, "but ..."
          "Can I move now?" Anya interrupted huffily, fidgeting from one foot to the other on the spot she'd halted a few minutes before.
          "Ahn," Xander said quickly, holding out his hand to her, "yes, of course, come join us."
          Huffing, Anya all but stomped down the three steps and sat beside him, folding her arms and pouting. Before she could say anything more, Xander took her hand in his and squeezed it, smiling, and nodded at Giles to continue.
          "It seems that Wesley may have identified the dimension," Giles told them, careful not to build up their hopes too soon, "but there's little else to go on. The texts he's translated tell of a key ..."
          He stopped, aware that that word alone triggered other painful memories for all present, particularly Dawn, who had enough to cope with at the moment.
          "It's okay," she said in a tiny voice, "I'm dealing."
          Giles gently squeezed her shoulder, and noticed the teenager's struggle against nuzzling into the touch, obviously needing to maintain some level of 'cool'. He gave an almost imperceptible second squeeze, and then removed his hand.
          "Apparently there's some kind of ... code, or guide, to this dimension," Giles continued, choosing his words carefully, "without which it can neither be found nor traversed."
          "Travers?" Xander asked, confused. "Where'd he come from?"
          "Traversed," Giles repeated patiently. "Travelled through."
          "With ya!" Xander gave the thumbs up, grinning sheepishly. "Just went to a scary visual place for a moment there. Go on."
          "Thank you," the Watcher said, witheringly, and then stopped.
          "Giles?" Willow prompted, full of expectation.
          "That .. that's about it," Giles admitted with a sigh.
          The others visibly deflated, shoulders sagging and all of them uttering disappointed sighs. Giles felt more responsible than ever for them, and wondered not for the first time, how he was going to lead them out of this.
          "So," Willow said, recovering first and putting on her resolved face, "more research, right? Cos, we have a name to go on, right?"
          Amazed again by her enthusiasm and determination, Giles could have kissed her.
          "We do, we do," he affirmed. "Wesley said the dimension he's identified is called Kravlar. We need to find out all that we can about it, and try and trace the guide that will take us there."
          Animated by this ray of hope, everyone grabbed a new book and began searching for the information that would bring Buffy home.

Part Two

         Rain water dripped down the glistening wall of the cell, briefly pooling in mercurial puddles before seeping into the sand-like texture of the floor. Outside, thunder crashed and lightning flashed almost incessantly, illuminating the deep purple sky and roiling clouds, and creating a strobe-light effect through the high barred window of the cell.
          Out of sight, presumably in other cells on either side of this one, voices howled and screamed and groaned. None of them were identifiably human; most of them most definitely weren't. They uttered words that were meaningless gibberish, but in tones that expressed terror and pleading most eloquently.
          A long way away, something heavy hit a floor - or maybe it was an explosion, it was difficult to tell amid all the different noises - and the sand in the bottom of the cell rippled unnervingly. Occupants of the other cells screamed, almost in unison, as if this new sound heralded another horror on its way to visit them.
          Sitting on the sand in the centre of the cell, Buffy sniffed, pulled her knees up tighter to her chest, and stared out at the storm. She had her back to the cell door - or where it was last time she looked - and her spidey senses were in overdrive, but beyond that she had no idea - well, of anything really. She couldn't tell if it was day or night, as the sky outside was permanently dark purple, and she'd lost her watch soon after arrival. She had no idea how long she'd been in the cell, but it felt like years, especially since sleep was practically impossible. On the few occasions she'd managed to doze off, she'd been woken by new noises, and the confusion on waking to find the window and door in new places gave her a headache. So she sat in the centre, and looked at whatever presented itself to her between naps - window, wall, or door - and tried not to think of home.
          Thoughts of escape wandered into her mind at times, but she had had begun to resign herself to the fact that she had no hope of doing that alone. She had climbed up to look out through the barred window enough times to see that nothing here was permanent: either this prison kept moving, or the landscape outside did. This world was unlike anything she'd experienced before, but she knew enough about demon dimensions to understand that the portal which had transported her here was probably her only hope of getting out again. And the way the cell itself shifted around, Buffy was almost certain that finding said portal would be challenging, assuming she knew where to begin and didn't get killed on the way. She had no weapons, and she'd learned very quickly that the locals were huge, strong, and extremely unfriendly. She comforted herself with the certainty that her friends would be doing everything they could to find her, and she forced herself to sit back and wait.
          'Which is so not easy' she grumbled silently to herself, feeling useless. 'I should at least be helping with the research.'
          A smile smoothed her face momentarily as her thoughts reminded her of Dawn - that was exactly the kind of thing she would say. The smile vanished almost instantly, however, and worry took over again. Was her sister alright? Had she too been dragged into this dimension, or had she escaped? Had Spike managed to grab her in time, and kept her safe? These and a million other questions plagued her constantly, and were far more effective torture than whatever her fellow prisoners were suffering.
          A tear slid down the Slayer's cheeks, and she bowed her head so that her face touched her knees, clenching her legs tighter to her chest as she sat in the sand. Behind her, the cell door creaked open ...
         

Los Angeles
Monday night, approx 10 pm
          Wesley lifted his face from the damp dirt and peered into the darkness, pain shooting down his spine. Stifling a groan, he froze, wondering if something was broken, then carefully levered himself onto his side, teeth gritted in agony, and scanned the area around him. A dark form lay prone against the far wall of the sewer; Wesley guessed from its shape that it was Angel, and thanked the Powers That Be that he hadn't been dusted. He could hear someone sniffling quietly in the shadows, and prayed it was Fred. There was no sign of Gunn. Wesley waited for a few minutes, listening and watching, until he was certain that no-one - or no thing - was there with them.
          "Fred?" he whispered, his throat sore from the stranglehold he'd barely escaped earlier.
          The sniffling stopped, and Wesley could almost hear her terror.
          "Fred, it's Wesley," the former watcher said gently, in as loud a whisper as he dared. "It's alright - they're gone. Are you alright?"
          He knew she was nodding, wide-eyed, beyond his visual perimeter in the shadows to his right, and he smiled thankfully.
          "We need to get out of here," he said, hoping his tone would calm her. "Can you get to Angel?"
          As Wesley carefully raised himself to a sitting position, trying to ignore the white hot pain which ripped through his back and threatened to make him pass out, he saw Fred emerge slowly from the shadows, eyes darting in all directions as she crouched towards Angel. Pausing to get his breath, and fight the blackness that tried to claim his consciousness, Wesley watched as the frightened girl bent down beside the vampire and timidly shook his arm. Fred turned to look at Wesley, her face stricken.
          "He .. he's not dead," Wesley assured her. "No dust."
          Fred nodded once, and turned back to Angel, shaking him more vigorously by the shoulder.
          "Angel?" she whispered, her voice catching. "Angel?"
          The vampire remained motionless. Fred quickly took in his many injuries and realised he probably wouldn't be waking up for some time. Panic washed over her again and she stifled a cry, scrabbling over to Wesley who sat against the other wall, his face white amid the gloom.
          "I can't carry him," Fred hissed, close to hysteria. "Or you," she added, realising that he too was badly injured.
          "Where's .."
          "Don't know," Fred squeaked, eyes widening even further as she tried to deal with yet another fear. She hadn't seen what happened to Gunn: he'd been fighting a long-taloned demon to her left, then something had hit her in the head and she'd blacked out. When she came to, she could only see Angel and Wesley and she'd feared them both dead. Tears tripped from her eyes and she sat down heavily.
          Wesley reached out and touched her arm, waiting for her to look at him.
          "You have to find him," he told her firmly, "or Cordelia or Lorne - we have to get Angel out of here, and I'm in no fit state to help. Get back to the hotel, get help, and then come back for us." He figured she needed clear and simple instructions. "Can you do that, Fred?"
          The girl looked at him, tears streaking her dirty cheeks, and nodded. But she didn't move.
          "Go," Wesley told her, pointing towards the junction in the sewers about 20 yards to their left. "Take the left tunnel, then the next right - then up the ladder half-way down on your right. Remember?"
          "Left, right, right," Fred nodded numbly. "Right."
          "Left, right, ladder," Wesley clarified, afraid she'd take too many turnings and get lost.
          "That's what I said." Fred got to her feet, and looked down at him. "Will you be okay? They took our weapons."
          Wesley nodded, the pain from the movement making him feel sick.
          "We'll be fine," he told her, resolutely. "But hurry."
          At the junction in the sewers, Fred turned to give Wesley a little wave before she disappeared down the next tunnel. From that distance, she couldn't see that he'd passed out.

Sunnydale
          Spike crouched low, one leg stretched out to kick the demon sideways in the knee; it howled, and Spike used the distraction to leap upright, driving his right fist into its eye and bringing his left up to smash into it's open jaw. The thing howled again, before its teeth were slammed shut onto its tongue and it stepped back, flailing in agony and rage. Revelling in its pain, Spike ran at it, pushing it backward with both hands, satisfied when it hit a gravestone with the back of its head on the way down. He leapt on top of the creature, kicking it viciously in the head and any body part his boot made contact with, roaring in triumph as it howled under his assault.
          "Spike!" Willow's cry went unheard as the vampire continued to deliver hard steel-capped boots to the demon's dying form. Spike was lost in his own ferocity, beating the crap out of anything he could to take away the gnawing uselessness he felt away from battle.
          "Spike!"
          This time, the scream caught his attention, and with a final unnecessary kick to the demon's face, Spike looked up in the direction of the witch's voice. Willow was being held by the throat, several inches from the ground, by the dead demon's twin. Or mate. Colleague, maybe?
          "Whatever", Spike shrugged with a grin, "it's gonna be dead in a minute."
          Grabbing the first demon's weapon, appreciating its weight and form even as he brandished it, sword-like, whilst running at the two-some, Spike roared angrily and hoped this one would put up more of a fight. Willow, her voice cut off by the demon's grip, opened her mouth in terrified surprise as she saw him come hurtling towards her. The demon saw her expression and turned to see what had distracted her, just as Spike sliced the sword-thing through its neck and severed its head. It shuddered, then crumpled to the ground, still holding Willow in its grasp. Spike bent over and prised its claws open so that the girl could scramble free, coughing and gasping for air. Annoyed, Spike thrust the blade into the demon's body a few times, and kicked it twice, before turning to check that Willow was okay.
          "Th .. thanks," Willow said, regarding him strangely.
          "What?" Spike demanded, uncomfortable under her scrutiny.
          Willow looked from one demon corpse to the other, then back at Spike who was swinging the new weapon, still clearly agitated even though the danger was over.
          "Nothing," Willow shrugged, not wanting to agitate him further, especially since he was still in full vamp mode and had a lethal looking sword-shaped weapon in his possession.
          The vampire growled, but not at her: he was way too angry to have run out of opponents so soon, he wanted something else to pummel into the ground. He sliced at a nearby tree, the metal ringing slightly on contact as it left a sharp scar in the bark.
          "Come on," Willow said, majorly wigged by his behaviour. "We'd better tell Giles what happened." "You go," Spike said, turning from her. "I'll scout around in case there's more of those buggers lurking about."
          "But .."
          Spike whirled on her, yellow eyes blazing.
          "Go!" the vampire shot at her.
          Willow ran across the grass towards the nearby gate, and headed for Giles' apartment.
         
          "He's gonna get himself killed," she said, having told Giles and the others what had happened in the cemetery.
          Tara gently placed a band-aid over the cut on Willow's forehead, and touched the redhead's cheek with the palm of her hand.
          "Can't have that, can we?" Xander muttered from the couch. Anya nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. "What?" he demanded defensively.
          "He's on our side," Tara pointed out.
          "And you're anti-demon comments are .. racy?" Anya's effrontery melted into confusion.
          "I think you mean 'racist'," Willow supplied, smiling despite the seriousness of the situation.
          "He's angry," Dawn said, startling them all somewhat as they thought she was asleep. She stretched up from the armchair she'd dozed off in, and met their questioning gazes. "What? You never got so mad you wanted to beat up on everyone? Or thing?"
          Her sister's friends considered this.
          "He blames himself," the teenager continued, "and he's angry. He needs to kick a-- erm, a butt. Or something. I know how he feels."
          "You're probably right," Giles nodded, putting down his book. "He has, as you Americans say, 'issues'. But I hardly think getting himself killed is going to help anyone, much less .."
          He wouldn't say her name, but they all nodded in understanding and agreement.
          "You don't blame yourself, do you Dawn?" Tara asked with concern, picking up on the girl's sympathy for Spike.
          "Cos it's not your fault you were in the cemetery when the portal opened," Anya added helpfully. She frowned questioningly at Xander's little groan, then continued supportively, "How could you know it was going to be there?"
          Dawn's face fell as she remembered that particular horror.
          "Well, yeah," she said soberly. "If I'd been doing my homework like I was told .."
          "It's not your fault," Willow and Tara assured her in unison, knowing that the teenager's intentions had been good.
          "No-one is at fault," Giles stated authoritatively, his eyes filled with compassion for his slayer's little sister. "It happened, and we'll get to the bottom of it, and we'll bring her back. If Spike needs to kill a few demons to help him re-focus, then so be it, but we don't have time to go over .."
          The door slammed open, and Spike strode into the apartment, still in full game face and obviously fuming. He went straight to the fridge in the tiny galley kitchen, and helped himself to a plastic bag full of blood, not even bothering to warm it in a mug as he usually did. The others watched in silence. Draining the bag, he threw it forcefully to the floor and was about to kick the fridge when Giles cleared his throat.
          Willow leaned over the counter to see where the bag had landed, then looked at Spike with a grimace.
          "Eeeeeeeew," she said, her nose wrinkled in disgust. "Better clear that before he sees it."
          "What?" Giles demanded, heading for the kitchen.
          Spike held up a hand to stop him, his face morphing back to normal with a resigned sigh.
          "I;ve got it," he said, and sulkily grabbed a cloth from the sink.
          Giles was about to tell him to use the floor cloth from under the sink, but thought better of it. He tried not to shudder as the vampire began to wipe sprayed blood from the floor with the crisp new tea towel his aunt had given him last time he was home.
          "So," Xander said cheerfully, "I take it that Sunnydale is not quite demon free for the night?"
          Everyone glared at him, and he shrugged defensively, mouthing 'What?' at them. Hunkered down on the kitchen floor, Spike growled and fought the urge to punch the cooker.

Los Angeles
Tuesday, 3 am
          Cordelia replaced the telephone receiver, shaking her head as she moved her manicured finger down the list on her pad and commenced dialling again. Fred, talking on the other phone, fought for self-control while she waited for the voice on the other end to tell her that Charles wasn't there, either. They were running out of city hospitals to call, and she was drowning in panic. Gunn had been missing for at least five hours, and it was looking more and more likely that the demons they'd encountered in the sewers had taken him hostage. In the best-case scenario, that is. She didn't want to think about the other kind.
          Both girls looked up as Lorne descended the wide marble stairs into the hotel lobby, and he also shook his head, signalling that Angel was still out cold. Five hours was a long time to be unconscious, especially for a vampire, but they couldn't take him to the hospital with Wesley. They just had to hope that his super-hero healing powers kicked in soon.
          "This is useless," Fred sighed, putting down the phone again. She was now afraid to make another call, fearing yet more negative responses. "We have to do something."
          Cordelia and Lorne looked at her sympathetically. They'd been over this several times since arriving back at the Hyperion, but had not been able to formulate a plan.
          "Honey," Lorne began.
          "No," Fred interrupted, her voice forceful rather than resigned. "We really do. What happens when the next attack comes? Cos it will - I think there's a pattern, and if I'm right it will probably be in about three and a half hours. What if Angel's still .. not awake? Charles is missing, Wesley's in the hospital - what will we do? We can't fight like them. We can't go after them. We need to defend ourselves - make this place into a fortress - and let them come to us."
          Her companions looked at her with renewed respect. They hadn't been able to think that far ahead.
          "But what if we get a call?" Cordelia asked. "You know, a customer? We'd have to go out .."
          "Not on your life, sweet-cheeks," Lorne cut in. "I'm with Fred, we stay home and batten down the hatches. Customers can wait til the gang's all here."
          Fred nodded. Cordelia, slightly wigged by the memory of 'hurricane Buffy' the last time she'd used that old 'hatches' phrase, had to agree. The three of them could help Angel, Gunn and Wesley in fights against demons, but were no match on their own.
          "Okay," she said, "you two make a start, I'll finish with these lists and catch you up." She looked at Fred with a reassuring smile. "Can't give up on him yet," she added.
          Fifteen minutes later, with all the city hospitals scratched off her list, Cordelia headed up to the first floor to help the others shutter the windows and block off the fire escapes. They were almost done on that floor, and it wasn't long before the three of them headed upstairs. Halfway up, Cordelia stopped.
          "Gonna check on Angel," she said, a strange expression on her face.
          "Are you okay?" Fred asked, watching her friend hurry down the stairs.
          "Fine," the brunette answered. "Just checking."
          She didn't mention the odd feeling she'd had as she'd passed the vampire's door, or the sudden imperative to see him that drove her to his room. She could neither explain nor understand it, so she just followed her instincts.
          Tapping lightly on the door, she entered without waiting for an answer. The room was in darkness, save for a small low-wattage lamp in the far corner, which barely cast enough light to see by but allowed her to make out the edge of Angel's bed.
          "Angel?" she said softly. "Are you okay?"
          The vampire made a noise in his throat that was not quite a word, but she took it as a sign that he was conscious. She moved to the bedside and reached for the lamp on the cupboard next to it. Angel winced as the light flashed on, then peered at her. He looked dreadful. Not that he could possibly get any paler, but his skin seemed grey in the half-light and his injuries were still fresh.
          "Bu...?" he winced again, talking obviously causing him pain.
          "No news," Cordelia told him quickly. "Wesley's in hospital, Gunn's missing, Fred thinks we'll get another demon attack in about three hours. That's about it." She looked at him with concern. "Can I get you something?"
          Angel shook his head carefully, then struggled to sit up. His arms barely held his weight, but he managed it despite Cordelia's protestations.
          "Fred?" he asked hoarsely.
          "She's okay. Helping Lorne to..."
          "Demons?"
          "Oh, right," Cordelia realised what he wanted to know. "She said she thinks there's a pattern to the attacks we've been under. If she's right, the next one will be around 6.30. We're securing all the doors and windows, just in case. We don't have a whole lot of .. well, anything really. You guys are out of commission, and the weapons cupboard is half empty. What are you doing?"
          Angel had swung his legs over the edge of the bed as he listened to her, and now sat with his arms braced on either side of his hips, head hung low.
          "Gotta get up," he said with some difficulty, trying to overcome the pain and dizziness which washed over him.
          "I don't think so," Cordelia said flatly, reaching out to place her hand on his shoulder to stop him moving any further. "You .."
          Cordelia gasped as the vision slammed into her mind. A jumble of images - some familiar, some beyond her imagination - flashed before her as the accompanying pain threatened to destroy her skull. She fell to the floor, vaguely aware that Angel threw himself with her to try and soften her fall, then everything went black.

Part Three

Tuesday 8am
          Gavin Park snapped his mobile closed with a satisfied smile, and added a short note to the report on his desk before closing the folder and locking it in the drawer of his desk. He loved keeping tabs on Lilah's projects, especially when information reached him first. And especially when that information could be pivotal to her success - or failure.

Sunnydale
Tuesday, 9 am
          "Dear God," Giles breathed, wondering what on earth was going to go wrong next. He took notes as he listened to Cordelia, who had phoned as usual to bring him up to date on developments in LA. Since the slayer's disappearance, both teams had maintained close contact. Giles had begun to question the decision to tell Angel, since that knowledge had somehow obviously endangered the vampire and his colleagues as well. They were still looking for the link.
          "There's something else," Cordelia added. "I had a vision."
          Giles was now accustomed to this new addition to the former cheerleader's talents, although he'd been sceptical at first. He waited, trusting Cordelia to tell him the relevant facts.
          "Yes, thank you, the blackout-inducing pain has subsided," she said cuttingly.
          "Oh, s-sorry," Giles flustered. "Of course. I didn't think. You're alright?"
          "I'll survive," Cordelia sighed. "But man, they .."
          "Cordelia, the vision?" the Watcher prompted. "I don't mean to be rude, but these are difficult times."
          "They sure are," the girl agreed testily. She paused, obviously composing herself. "But bickering with you isn't going to solve anything," she sighed. "This vision was bad - I mean, it was scary. It's still a bit jumbled, but I got a good look at a particular demon, and Wesley thinks it sounds like the one Dawn described. Huge, ugly, scaly - Angel's working on a sketch - I'll scan it in and send it .."
          "How is he?" Giles interrupted, concern for the vampire compounded by the fact that he was the main protector of the LA team.
          "Improving, but pretty weak. After this morning's little visit, it's a wonder he's still .. well, not breathing obviously .. but he's doing okay. Anyway, this demon I saw - I got some scenery with him, but it's nowhere I wanna go. All purple and dark and don't even start on the weather! Oh, and Buffy."
          "Buffy?" Giles' heart leapt to his throat.
          "She was there," Cordelia told him, "but kind of .. not. It's difficult to explain, I don't get a whole lot of vision. Thank god. I could see her, but kind of like through a veil, a thick cheap veil like they do in Sears, not the gossamer .."
          "Cordelia?"
          "Yes?"
          "You saw Buffy? Is she alright?"
          "I think so," Cordelia answered, struggling to recall details. "She was with the demon, but not outside. It .."
          "With the demon?" Giles could feel his irritation growing: Cordelia had never been as precise a reporter of facts as he would have liked.
          "Yeah, in some kind of room. Brick walls. I think they were bricks."
          "But she's alright?" he pressed, rubbing his forehead and feeling a fine sheen of perspiration at his hairline.
          "Yes, as far as I can tell," came the answer. "I didn't get any scary mojo that she was in immediate danger."
          Relieved, Giles listened to the rest of Cordelia's account without interruption, jotting notes on the pad beside his phone. He then phoned Willow, and asked her to swing by as soon as she could, so that Angel's scanned sketch could be downloaded on the computer and they could start trying to identify the demon. He mentally kicked himself for not thinking of this before: they'd been working on verbal descriptions from Dawn and Spike, recounted immediately after the portal incident and no doubt fuelled with emotions. Each time since then that they'd tried to confirm a physical feature, there had been a slight variation, and the search was becoming more and more frustrating. Using Angel's artistic talents - not to mention his extensive knowledge of demon physiology - would produce a far more accurate description, and something tangible to use as a counter-check.
          He'd barely replaced the receiver after talking to Willow, when the phone rang again.
          "Me again," Cordelia said before he could utter a sound. "I just remembered the other bit of the oh-so-charming vision. A huge bunch of keys, big heavy looking things. In a vault or safe or something like that. But I don't think it was the same place, you know, where Buffy and Demon-zilla are - this was more modern, like in a bank. But there's some connection, I feel they're connected somehow."
          "Have you mentioned this to Wesley?" Giles asked excitedly, then remembered the former Watcher was still in hospital. "Or, or Angel?"
          "No, like I said - I just remembered it. What's with the hyper? Is it a major clue?"
          "It seems to confirm, or, at least, suggest the accuracy of, Wesley's translation of a key or guide to the demon dimension," Giles suggested, hoping he wasn't clutching at straws. "Try to recall more details of the vault - it could be very important. Perhaps you should work on this with Wesley, as soon as he's fit, and Angel. If we can find this key, it should help us locate a portal to bring Buffy home."
          "No pressure, huh?" Cordelia sighed.
          "It's not just about bringing her back," Giles reminded her gently. "The fact that you and the others are under similar attacks there, and your vision is linked to events here, seems to show that some force is working against us all, knowing our connections. If we identify the location of the key - and possibly its keeper - we may learn what this is all about. And with that knowledge, defeat it."
          "You are way too sensible for this time of day," Cordelia stated bluntly. "But I[ll tell the guys what you said."
         

          Buffy stood with her hands on her hips, regarding the giant demon with her head cocked to one side. It knelt before her, clutching what she assumed to be its stomach, making a soft 'har-har-har' noise through its fang-filled lips.
          "Okay," she said, annoyance giving her a sudden confidence, "and you thought that was funny because ..?"
          She didn't expect an answer, or at least any kind of answer that she would understand. Its language was almost completely vowel-based and made no sense to her at all. 'This being a demon dimension and all,' she thought, justifying her lack of communication skills. But its soft laughter was really getting on her nerves.
          They'd been fighting for what seemed like hours - hard hand-to-hand combat, no weapons - and Buffy had at one point wondered if this was the first in a series of 'test the slayer' events they had lined up for her. In which case, she so needed to get out of there. Now she looked at her opponent, driven to his knees by her last solid kick to its mid-section, and wondered what was coming next. She glanced at the door, half-expecting a replacement to burst in, but it was still closed.
          "Har-har-har," the demon said again, but this time there was gurgling in its voice and specks of liquid sputtered from its lips. A large fleck reached Buffy's bare arm and she hastily wiped it away, rubbing her hand on her trousers to get rid of it. The sticky ichor left a burning itching sensation on her arm, but she tried to ignore it.
          Buffy was about to mouth a disgusted 'eeeew' when the demon suddenly keeled over on its side, and a thick grey slime oozed from its mouth into the sand.
          "Okay," Buffy decided, "definitely 'eeeew' and also, 'yay me!'"
          She waited, giving the demon time to recuperate or reanimate or whatever totally unreasonable thing it might do to make life worse than it already was, but it didn't move. And it definitely wasn't breathing.
          "Okay," she said, stepping around it carefully, "demon with a weak stomach - who'd have thought?"
          She tried the door, and was surprised when it began to open without resistance. Knowing that it creaked loudly on its leather-like hinges, she pulled it slowly, inching it gently from its frame until there was a gap wide enough for her to peep through. The corridor was empty - at least the vertical slice that she could see was - and she risked pulling the door a little more. It groaned like a horror-film sound effect, and Buffy froze. With a quick glance at the prone demon behind her to check he was still dead, or at least not a threat, she peeped out at the corridor again. She could see a little further, and it was still empty.
          Deciding on the 'all or nothing' approach, she yanked the door wider - cringing at its loud squeak - then stepped out of the cell. Quickly checking the corridor in both directions, she spotted steps off to her right and ran for them. They led upwards into darkness, but she took them two at a time, slowing only when the lack of light made her hold her hands out in front of her in case she hit something solid.
          Feeling her way as quickly as she could, she finally felt a wall of damp wood before her and moved her hands across its surface in search of a handle. Ripping a nail on a flat metallic bar, she cursed silently and pulled at it, trying to lever it up, down or sideways, but it wouldn't move. In frustration she thumped it with the outside of her balled fist, and the door moved away from her, silently opening a few inches.
          Cold air washed over her and if it hadn't smelled so disgusting she'd have breathed it in thankfully. Aware that the draft could alert a being beyond the foot of the stairs, Buffy pushed at the door and threw herself outside, quickly leaning back against it to push it shut. Rain-filled wind whipped at her, and she shivered, rubbing her bare arms to banish the goose bumps.
          The landscape before her was covered in a dark purple carpet of thick spongy grass, interspersed with jagged grey rocky outcrops. In the distance, steep mountains of black rock rose into the dark sky, which mirrored the shades on the ground. Thunder crashed among the thick dirty clouds, and the lightning was so constant there seemed little need for sun or moon. If there had been any.
          Leaning against the door, Buffy scanned her surroundings, looking for shelter. One of the rocky outcrops looked like it had a cave cut into it, but she was reluctant to try it: who knew what lurked in those shadows? Shivering in the wind and rain, she followed the wall of the building she'd escaped from, easing herself carefully around the corner and along the next wall until she reached the third side. Then she carefully made her way forward until she could check out the fourth side. The surrounding landscape was identical in all directions, and no other buildings were in sight. Realising she would have to choose a cave in one of the rocky outcrops, she simply ran for the nearest one, long strides carrying her the forty yards or so across the very strange grass which seemed to squeak under her weight.
          Not daring to hesitate, she ran into the cave's mouth, stopping abruptly the moment she felt she could not be seen from outside. The inside was damp and so dark she couldn't see beyond her nose, but her spidey senses had stopped tingling so she relaxed and concentrated on getting her breath back. With a sigh, she carefully sat down on the stone floor, grimacing as the cold wet surface created a damp patch that would probably be impossible to wash out, and stared out at the storm. She could see the high stone building from which she'd escaped, but no-one came rushing out to look for her. Smiling in triumph, Buffy wrinkled her nose as the stench from outside the cave crept into her nostrils. Then she passed out.

Part Four

Los Angeles
Tuesday, 4.30 pm
          With the last of his strength, Angel drove the silver-tipped spear into the demon's neck, and collapsed with it as it howled in its death throes. The demon's out-flung arm smashed through the courtyard door as it fell, loosening a partly broken pane which fell on Angel's shoulders in a shower of glass fragments.
          Above them, on the first floor landing, Fred fired a barbed arrow at the last of the horde as it climbed the stairs towards her. It howled as the missile lodged in its eye, and teetered for a moment before falling backwards and rolling down the stairs. It landed, twitching, on top of its dead compatriot, its legs across Angel's torso, the arrow protruding now from the back of its skull.
          Fred surveyed the hotel lobby, crossbow primed and following her scan. Six demon corpses were scattered around the floor, two were in a heap with Angel, and she could see the feet of another protruding from behind the reception desk. All accounted for. Lorne lay unconscious behind her, having received a sickening blow to the head from one of the intruders' mace-like weapons, and Cordelia was somewhere in the office. She knew that, because she was responsible for the corpse whose feet Fred could see, but she didn't know if the seer was safe. Angel had barely been able to stand when the attack began, and she dared not think what state he was in now. With a sob, Fred buckled at the knees and sat down heavily on the top step.
          The phone began to ring again, for the third or fourth time in the last ten minutes; they'd been a little too busy to answer it. Now, still praying for Charles' safe return, Fred ran down the stairs and threw herself at it, hitting herself in the face in her hurry to get the receiver to her ear.          "Yes? Hello?"
         "Who's that?" asked a voice not unlike Wesley's.
         "Me," she said, confused. "Fred. Who's that?"
         There was a pause, and Fred heard a whispered conversation on the other end of the line.
         "Of course," the voice said again. "This is Rupert Giles. In Sunnydale. Is ..?"
         "Oh hi Giles," Fred smiled, relieved that it was a friend, even though they'd never spoken before.
         "Erm .. hello," Giles returned uncomfortably, not at home with such immediate familiarity. "Is Angel there? Or Cordelia? Wesley, perhaps?"
         "Wes is still in the hospital," Fred said sadly. "Cordy is .."
         Hearing the former cheerleader moan, Fred leaned over the counter and saw her friend pushing herself into a sitting position, rubbing her head and closing her eyes in pain.
         "Cordy's here," Fred reported into the phone, "but I'm not sure she can talk right now. Angel's out cold again," she added, tears filling her eyes. "It's just me, I'm afraid."
         "That's .. that's fine," Giles soothed, trying to hide his concern in an effort to keep her calm. "I'm phoning with information. We've identified the demon that activated the portal here, and it confirms that the dimension Buffy has been taken to is Kravlar, as Wesley had suspected. The demon that took her - the one in Cordelia's vision - is its .. king, for want of a better word. We have some more details about the key .."
         Fred grabbed a pen and notepad, and started to write.
         Unnerved by the silence, Cordelia opened her eyes, waited until her head stopped swimming, then carefully got to her feet. Head pounding, she checked Fred with a glance, then entered the lobby. All she could see were demon corpses, each of them oozing slime from various wounds and orifices. Swallowing hard to quell the nausea that washed over her, she gripped the reception counter and turned to Fred. Fred met her eyes, read the question in them, and pointed towards the courtyard door and the first floor landing.
         Hands outstretched like a tightrope walker, trying to maintain her balance, Cordelia made her way across the lobby and up the four steps to the pile of bodies that lay beneath the broken courtyard door. Bending slowly, and mindful of the slivers of glass which coated all three, Cordelia lifted the legs of the uppermost demon and wished she hadn't seen the arrow emerging from the back of its head. She knelt down quickly and gagged. When the feeling had subsided, she grabbed its legs again and pushed them off Angel's back. Then she moved to the vampire's side, knelt beside him and carefully pulled him over so that he was lying on his back, his head cradled by her hand.
         "God!" she gasped, horrified at the gashes that were gouged into his face and chest. One of them was sizzling around the edges, and the cloth of his shirt smouldered around the wounds.
         Fred had finished the call, and now stood below them in the lobby. The two girls exchanged tear-filled looks.
         "I'll check on Lorne," Fred said, heading up the stairs, when the phone rang again. She hesitated, torn between worry over Lorne and the desperate need to hear that Charles was alright.
         "Get it," came a voice from above. "I'm fine."
         "Okay," Fred called, heading back to reception, "but stay there - I'll be with you in a sec."
         "Not in a hurry to move," Lorne told her with a moan.
         Fred lifted the receiver more carefully this time, and froze. Then her face lit up.
         "Charles!" she shrieked. "Are you alright? Where are you?"

6 pm
         Gunn had arrived with half a dozen of his friends an hour later, and now they all sat in the reception area drinking coffee. Gunn's friends had disposed of the demon corpses - no-one wanted details - and helped get Angel upstairs, where Cordelia and Lorne had cleaned him up and dressed his wounds while Gunn had told them all what had happened to him. He'd remembered being dragged from the battle scene in the sewer, and trying to escape the clutches of the demons but they'd caught him and attacked him, knocking him unconscious. The demons had apparently tired of him then, and left him behind. Fortunately for him, it was near his old neighbourhood, and it hadn't been long before Jayce, one of his home-boys, had found him and taken him back to their base. He'd called Fred as soon as he regained consciousness, knowing she'd be worried out of her mind.
         Now, in the hotel reception, Fred sat on his knee and hugged him as if she'd never let go. Gunn had heard about the two attacks at the hotel, and Fred told them all of Giles' call. Lorne had just poured the fresh coffee and for the moment everyone was quiet.
         "So what next, man?" Jayce asked after a while, lifting his chin at Gunn. "You got serious shit going down here."
         "No kidding," Gunn agreed.
         "We could move some of our guys in here," his friend suggested. "You sure as hell need the back-up."
         Gunn nodded, thinking it through.
         "I think we should go to Sunnydale," Cordelia said suddenly.
         Everyone looked at her.
         "I am in no hurry to go back there, believe me," Cordelia told them, "but like Giles said, something's working against us here and there. We're both researching the same thing - or trying to, when we're not fighting for our lives - and we're both finding it harder and harder. Whatever's taken Buffy is doing its damnedest to keep us occupied here, so it knows we're working together anyway. If we're all in one place, we might stand a better chance of fighting this .. whatever it is we're fighting."
         "Makes sense," Jayce conceded.
         "Not sure about leaving the hotel empty," Gunn shook his head. "There's still Wolfram and Hart to think about - they're just waiting for the chance to get in here and lock us out."
         "We can see to that, man," Jayce offered. "We'll keep your place safe til you get back."
         "Well if we're gonna do it, we'd better do it soon," Fred said, "cos the clock's ticking."
         "Soon as it's dark," Gunn agreed, knowing that Angel could not travel during daylight hours.
         While Fred told Jayce her theory about the timings of each attack, and Gunn drew plans of the building with notes of its strengths and vulnerabilities, Cordelia headed to the hospital to collect Wesley, leaving Lorne to pack up supplies and weapons for their trip.
         Upstairs, in a poison-induced coma, Angel dreamt.

         Angel stepped onto the warm sand, luxuriating in the feel of it beneath his bare feet. A gentle breeze tugged at his shirt, and seagulls called to each other far above his head. Narrowing his eyes against the brightness, he stared down the beach towards the sea, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face.
         "I've been here before," he stated.
         "Welcome back," said Buffy, slipping her hand into his.
         Angel felt her presence but couldn't see her. He squeezed her hand, and she reciprocated.
         "Where are you?" he asked, not alarmed. "I can't see you."
         "You'll find me," she said simply.
         "Even if I was blind," he nodded.

         Lilah Morgan felt a trickle of sweat slither down her spine. She was not easily intimidated, but her current visitor scared the shit out of her. Until today, they'd been best pals, working together amicably despite some initial communication problems, toward a mutually beneficial goal. Now he was angry as hell, and holding her responsible. And she had no idea what was going on.
         Lack of knowledge scared her almost as much as Hrahek's temper. If she had all the facts, she could at least explain, perhaps justify, recent developments. But she was in the dark, figuratively and actually, and it was not a happy place to be. The demon couldn't stand daylight, and insisted on switching out all the lights whenever they met. Apparently it was something to do with his species' eyes, and the fact that their world was almost permanently dark, having neither sun nor moon.
          He growled at her now in his native tongue, having tired of struggling to voice his ire in English. Lilah waited until he fell silent, having learned earlier that he did not entertain interruptions.
         "I promise you," she said carefully, hoping her voice didn't sound as shaky as it felt, "I'll find out what happened, and .."
         "I know it happen," Hrahek growled. "You betray. Kenjiin gone." He leaned towards her menacingly. "What now?"
         "I'll get him back," Lilah smiled confidently."And deliver him to you. As promised."
         Hrahek muttered something unintelligible. Lilah shivered, wondering if the demon was telepathic and had seen she was trying to bluff her way out of this.
         "Two of your .. days," he said, obviously still coming to terms with the measurement of time. "I return. Take Kenjiin."
         Lilah nodded, licking her lips in trepidation. But the demon said no more, and disappeared into the dark corridor beyond her office.
         Lilah grabbed her cell-phone.
         "We need to talk," she said through gritted teeth.

Sunnydale
Tuesday, 6.30 pm
         "They're coming here?" Dawn repeated, grinning cheerfully at Giles' news. "Yay! Reinforcements!"
         Spike scowled at her, and the teenager's face fell at the mixed reaction around the table in the Magic Box.
         "Oh yay," Xander had muttered, no enthusiasm intended.
         "Do I know these people?" Anya had asked, and her fiance commenced a non-too-complimentary reminder of her previous dealings with Cordelia, Angel and Wesley. "No I mean the other three," the ex-vengeance demon interrupted, "the ones with strange names."
         "Things must be bad," Willow had commented, while Xander told Anya what little he knew about Angel's new colleagues. "For Cordy to suggest coming back here .." She pulled a wide-eyed face, and Tara took her hand comfortingly.
         "Actually I think her suggestion is a good idea," Giles stated. "Divided, we're weak .. er," he amended, as Spike kicked the table leg. "Weaker. As a combined force, our research will be more effective and with Angel on our side, our battles will be shorter. Spike, if you really must kick something, then please use the training room."
         "Fine," the peroxide blond vampire pouted, and slouched off towards the back of the shop.
         "Oooooh, someone has sire issues," Xander cooed, loving the fact he could tease the vampire without fear of physical retaliation.
         Spike graced him with a two-finger salute, then slammed the training room door closed behind him.
         "Must you goad him?" Giles asked. "He's difficult enough as it is."
         "And I don't see you waving flags," Willow commented with a frown at her friend. "Angel can help."
         "Isn't it a good thing that they're coming?" Dawn asked, confused. "Angel can fight like Spike, and I heard Gunn is good too. And Wesley can help with the research. Together we might be able to get Buffy back sooner."
         "I agree," Giles told her. "We'll make a formidable team."
         "Um .." Tara hesitantly raised a hand, and everyone looked at her. "Um, I was just wondering - where will they all stay?"
         For a moment, several bunking options flashed before everyone's eyes.
         "No room," Xander stated quickly, while Anya was still thinking about it.
         "Well, I have the sofa .." Giles ventured, not sure which of the six he would prefer as a houseguest.
         "They can stay with me," Dawn said brightly. "At my house," she added, in case they thought she'd squeeze six guests into her room.
         "We can move back to our dorm," Willow offered, but on seeing Dawn's wide-eyed reaction at the thought of playing hostess to six adults, she added, "or someone could have our room there."
         "I'm sure we'll think of something, once they get here," Giles nodded. "For the time being, we need to keep looking for information on that guide to Kravlar, and organise tonight's patrol. Dawn - do you have any homework?"
         "Sure," Dawn answered, nodding enthusiastically, "but I can finish it any time."
         "Now would be a good time," Giles suggested.
         "So I can patrol later?" Dawn asked, grinning with hope.
         "No," Giles frowned, wondering where on earth she got that idea from, "so Buffy won't tell me off for letting you slack while she's away."
         Rolling her eyes, Dawn reached for her school bag while the others discussed the evening's plan of action.

Sunnydale
Tuesday night
         As arranged, the Los Angeles convoy went straight to the Magic Box on arrival in Sunnydale shortly after 10 that night. They had travelled in two vehicles - Gunn drove his jeep, with Fred and Wesley as passengers, and Cordelia took Angel-s Plymouth GTX as it was wider than her own car, allowing them to lay Angel more comfortably on the back seat, while Lorne sat beside her.
         Anya heard the jeep roar to a halt outside, and alerted the others. Spike had made himself scarce, muttering something about extra patrol, and Tara had taken Dawn home to get ready for bed, leaving Giles, Willow, Xander and Anya as the welcoming committee. A moment later Cordelia stepped through the door, frowning at the bell which jangled above her head. She was alone, and didn't look happy.
         "Hey," Willow gave a friendly wave, whilst the others greeted her more or less in unison. "Where are the others?"
         Cordelia stepped back across the threshold, and waved for someone to join her. Moments later, she introduced Fred and Gunn to the gang, while Wesley stiffly walked in behind them. Shocked at his injuries, Giles helped his former colleague to a seat, and they all welcomed the younger couple to Sunnydale.
         "Angel?" Giles asked, looking from one to the other of the four arrivees.
         "In the car," Cordelia stated. "You'd better take a look."
         Unable to mask their curiosity, Giles and Xander followed Cordelia outside, closely followed by Willow and Anya. Gunn, Fred and Wesley stayed indoors. Cordelia quickly introduced them to Lorne, who had stayed in the car with Angel.
         "Is he dead?" Anya asked, peering into the back of the car. "He looks dead."
         "Geez!" Xander exclaimed, leaning over her shoulder to look at the still-unconscious vampire. "He looks like death warmed over .. oh wait, he .."
         "Xander," Giles warned. He looked at Cordelia. "How long has he been like this?"
         "About six hours," Cordelia said, worry etched into her face. "Before that it was about five hours, so it;s getting longer each time. We think he;s been poisoned." She gently pulled Angel;s shirt to one side to reveal the festering wounds in his chest. "If we put anything on them, they start to sizzle - it's really icky."
         "Wow," Willow breathed, "deja vu."
         "You know poisons, too?" Anya asked with renewed respect.
         "No," Willow replied. "I mean, well, yeah, kinda .. but deja vu means I've seen this before." She looked at Giles. "Graduation?" she prompted.
         "Similar," he nodded, peering more closely at the wound.
         "That must have been one heck of a ceremony," Lorne commented wryly.
         Three Sunnydale High graduates and their former librarian shared knowing looks. The ex-vengeance demon had the grace to look away.
         "It certainly was," Giles said.
         "So what now?" Cordelia asked. "Do you have a cure?"
         "I'll need a swab," Willow said, wrinkling her nose at the prospect of disturbing such raw wounds. "But I'm sure we'll find something."

         An hour later, Willow and Giles were still at the Magic Box, researching demonic poisons. Willow had identified most of the compounds that made up the poison infecting Angel, and combined with descriptions of the demons that had wielded the toxic weapons, they were close to discovering its cure.
         "You're workin' late," Spike commented, strolling in from the street. "House guests under yer feet already?"
         "Research," witch and watcher replied.
         "If you say so." Spike grabbed a seat, turned it around and sat down, arms across its back.
         "Anything to report?" Giles asked, knowing Spike had been patrolling Sunnydale for hours.
         "Killed me a handful of demons," the vampire said with satisfaction, rolling his shoulders. "They put up a bloody good fight, too - credit to 'em."
         "Um, good," Giles said, a bit distracted by Spike's apparent enjoyment of the kill. "Anything else? Anything unusual?"
         "No portals, if that's what you mean," Spike said flatly. He leaned over to look at the pages in front of Willow. "Who you planning on poisoning? Can I have a go?"
         "Angel," Willow murmured, concentrating on the text she was reading.
         "What? Bloody hell, count me in!" Spike sat up attentively, rubbing his hands.
         "He's been poisoned," Giles explained. "We're looking for a cure."
         Spike snorted in disgust.
         "You two are no fun any more," he sulked.
         He moved back into a slouch, and rested his chin on his arms, watching the others read. Before long, they both found it unsettling, and looked up at him.
         "What?" he asked defensively.
         "Care to help?" Giles asked.
         Spike threw him a look of pure disdain.
         "See," he said, shifting again in the chair to open his arms, "the way I look at it is this. Me and Angel have a history of not getting on. Most recently it has been .. unfriendly, tense almost."
         "Would that be because of you torturing him that time?" Willow asked, remembering Oz's account of the two vampires' competition for the Gem of Amarra. It seemed a long time ago, but was only during their first year in college, about two years earlier.
         "I'm sure he'll have certain grudges," Spike conceded reasonably. "Anyhow, I'm not getting involved in any potions or stuff like that cos if it goes wrong then it's ten-to-one on that muggins here will get the blame."
         "You could take it as an opportunity to make amends," Giles suggested.
         "Oh, please!" Spike shook his head in disbelief. "I think you're forgetting something. I'm a demon. He's a demon. I can hurt demons. It's the only bloody fun I get around here."
         They both looked at him in alarm: they had all come to rely on him being on their side, and no-one had considered that Angel's arrival would change that.
         Spike laughed.
         "God if you could see your faces!" he exclaimed, genuinely amused. Then he sighed, and became serious again. "I won't hurt your precious Angel," he told them. "Not because I don't want to - cos God knows I do, and one day when this bloody chip comes out .."
         "We have your word on that, do we?" Giles asked sarcastically, regarding him with renewed distrust. "Angel.s safe with you around?"
         "Yes you do," Spike replied indignantly. Giles raised his eyebrows. "I promised her," Spike said quietly. "I promised her I'd look out for those she cares about. You know, like the li'l bit. And you lot," he added pointedly. "And since she still carries a torch for the poofter I suppose he's included. So I won't hurt him."
         He pushed himself off the chair and headed for the back of the shop.
         "Spike?" Giles asked, wondering where he was going.
         "Need somethin' to punch," the vampire muttered, kicking the training room door open.

Part Five

Los Angeles
Midnight
         Kenjiin, demon lord of Thwashfor, narrowed his eyes and sniffed the night air. He was not happy on this world, and distrusted most of its inhabitants. He had hoped never to return here, and knew that Hrahek was behind his recent incarceration.
         "I wish to seek my kind," he told his liberator, head raised regally and looking down his long ridged nose at the young Sino-American. "There are some who have chosen to live in this world. Before I leave, I will talk with them."
         It wasn't a request. Kenjiin didn't do requests. Even as a prisoner, he'd made demands. Gavin nodded. He knew how Kenjiin could contact his subjects in this dimension.

         Buffy awoke with a start, and looked around the lounge in confusion. Realising with relief that it had all been a dream, she got up from the sofa and turned off the television, then headed for the kitchen. It was still dark outside, so she flicked the switch beside the door - and found herself in the bathroom. Frowning slightly, she went to the sink and rinsed her face with cool water. On looking at her reflection as she towel-dried her skin, she saw Angel standing behind her, and whirled around to throw her arms around him.
         "Ang-" He wasn't there.
         Turning slowly, she looked back in the mirror, and Angel smiled at her.
         Buffy sighed.
         'This is getting too weird,' she told his reflection, although her lips didn't move. 'Where are you?'
         "I'll find you," he said confidently.
         "I think we covered that part," Buffy 'said'. "If I leave this room, will you be there when I come back?"
         Angel smiled.
         "I'll be wherever you are," he said.
         Buffy nodded, and smiled at him wistfully. He was always just out of reach. She bowed her head to wipe away a tear forming in her eye, and when she looked up at the mirror again, he had gone. Checking the bathroom, she found herself alone.
         Stepping into the hallway, she saw the door to Dawn's room slightly ajar and pushed it gently, allowing light from the ceiling lamp to filter in. Dawn was fast asleep. Taking that as a good sign, Buffy turned - and almost walked into Willow.
         "You need to stay where you are," Willow told her gently, placing a hand on Buffy's shoulder. "We can't find you if you keep moving around."
         Buffy realised they were now in the lounge, and as Willow motioned for her to sit on the sofa, she did so. Her friend smiled, then walked out of the house.
         With a sigh, Buffy leaned her head back against the soft cushions of the sofa, and stared at the television, watching 'Passions' without the sound on.

Sunnydale
Wednesday, 2 am
         Cordelia sat in the armchair in the corner of Buffy's bedroom, and told herself again that this was too weird for words. Buffy's former lover lay thrashing deliriously in the slayer's bed, mumbling about keys again. Earlier his delirium had completely wigged Dawn, who'd been woken by his cries, but Willow had calmed the teen and given Angel some powder to quieten him, and they'd all gone back to sleep.
         'What was the deal with the keys?' Cordelia wondered again, remembering Dawn's almost hysterical reaction. 'Maybe she'd been having nightmares too.'
         She hadn't slept for long. The sofa was very comfortable, and she was so tired she could barely think straight, but she'd woken with the nagging feeling that she should be near Angel, and, hoping another vision wasn't on its way, she'd crept quietly upstairs to maintain her vigil in the armchair. She'd left the door open so the light from the landing corridor softly lit most of the room. Pulling the duvet closer around her, Cordelia closed her eyes. Then she opened them again, holding her breath. Angel was finally silent. Not sure whether to be afraid or relieved, she got up and went to the bedside.
         "Buffy?" Angel whispered.
         "Me," she answered, sitting on the side of the bed and peering at him.
         The vampire looked slowly around the room, confusion growing as he recognised more and more of it, before looking at Cordelia again. He opened his mouth to say something, but Cordelia cut him off.
         "Yes, this is Buffy's room," she told him. "We're in Sunnydale. How do you feel?"
         Angel tried to sit up, but was still too weak.
         "Like I just died," he groaned. He looked at her, startled. "I didn't, did I? Cos this .. I .. er, you ..?"
         "No," Cordelia said, "and I don't wanna hear your version of heaven. You're not dead. Well, no deader than you were yesterday. I'm not either. And you're not dreaming. We're in Sunnydale. Now go back to sleep - you need to rest."
         "Dreams," Angel said, trying hard to remember.
         "That's right," Cordelia nodded. "Sleep tight."
         "No, I dreamt of Buffy," the vampire told her as if it was really important. "I feel like I should know where she is."
         "Don't be so hard on yourself; we're all working hard to find her."
         Angel shook his head.
         "I feel like I know where she is," he clarified. "But I can't remember."
         "We'll talk about it in the morning," Cordelia assured him, assuming he was rambling again, or the poison had given him temporary amnesia. "Go back to sleep."
         Shaking his head, Angel sat up and reached for the phone as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
         "Angel .."
         "I'm calling Wes," he told her, "we need .."
         "Wesley is at Giles' place," she told him. "We're all here. And it's 2 am - can't it wait til morning? He only got out of the hospital last night, and you really need to rest."
         "Cordelia," Angel said with a sigh, "I'm a vampire. If I wait til morning I'll be trapped here, and that will be another day wasted."

         Half an hour later, Cordelia parked the Plymouth outside the Magic Box and helped Angel out of the passenger seat. She was tired and cranky, and he was speechless over her driving of his cherished car. They didn't notice the lights were on until Cordelia took out Buffy's keys to unlock the door. Pushing her behind him, Angel tried the door; it wasn't locked. Opening it slightly, he carefully looked inside, and saw Giles's slumbering form at the table near the counter. Frowning, and signalling for Cordelia to keep quiet, he stepped into the shop.
         The doorbell jangled, making everyone jump. Angel stepped back onto Cordelia's foot, and she yelped. Giles almost leapt out of his chair, and out of sight somewhere, glass shattered.
         "Sorry," Angel said, somewhat abashed. "Didn't know about the bell."
         Giles smiled, sighing to get his breathing back under control, and walked towards them.
         "Is everything alright?" he asked, worried by their late visit. "How are you feeling?"
         "Been better," Angel admitted.
         "He's weak as a kitten," Cordelia grouched, rubbing her shoulder, "but not as light. Or fluffy. Or .."
         "What are you doing here?" Giles asked. "At this time of night?"
         "Might ask you the same," Angel countered.
         "Wesley has my bed," the Watcher told them. "I thought it unfair to give him the sofa, in his condition: he needs to rest." He noticed Cordelia nudging Angel in the ribs, but said nothing. "And I wanted to follow up some notes I'd made earlier. Why are you here, now? Has something happened?"
         "No," Cordelia answered, cutting Angel off. "But Action Guy here can't wait til morning to - what do you want to do, exactly?" She directed the question to Angel.
         Angel sighed, and ran his fingers through his unkempt hair.
         "I don't know," he said. "Just need to be doing something."
         Cordelia rolled her eyes.
         "Will you tell him?" she asked Giles. "He's too weak. He won't sleep, he hasn't fed for days - he-s gonna kill himself."
         Giles and Angel exchanged looks, knowing that worry for the slayer was tearing them both apart. Giles nodded.
         "Why don't you go back to bed, Cordelia?" he suggested. "Or - or - wherever you were sleeping," he added, wondering about the accommodation arrangements at Revello Drive.
         Exasperated, but too tired to argue, Cordelia turned on her heels and left them to it.
         "I must say," Giles said, indicating the table and chairs for Angel to make himself as comfortable as possible, "you do look rather the worse for wear."
         Angel sat down heavily, and scanned the open books on the table.
         "We're sharing dreams, Giles," he confided. "They don't make any sense."
         Immediately interested, Giles sat next to him, and took up his pen and pad.
         "Sharing?" he repeated. "You're sure? You're not just dreaming about her?"
         "No, there's a difference," the vampire answered, and Giles believed him: he'd heard the same from Buffy in the past.
         "Tell me," he said.

Los Angeles
Wednesday 5 am
         Donny Panatello put down the phone and frowned at it. He'd just had a very strange conversation with a deep-voiced foreigner who didn't want to take 'no' for an answer. The guy talked like he was the president or something, demanding to talk to Angel and not happy that he was only going to get Donny at that time of the morning. It took Donny a lot of patience to stay calm and not just put the phone down on the guy, but Jayce had made it clear that they were just house-sitting for Gunn, and they were there to take messages and be polite, so he dutifully wrote down what the guy had said, and marked the message for Jayce to read when he arrived later that morning.

8 am
         Lilah and Gavin faced each other across the boardroom table, hostility almost tangible between them. Lilah suspected her colleague's involvement in the problem she now had just over twenty-four hours to resolve, but couldn't prove anything, and glared at him. Gavin sensed that she suspected him, knew she would find no evidence, and gloated at her.
         Nathan Reid steepled his fingers and looked from one to the other. They both showed such promise, especially Lilah, but he had little time for their constant bickering. He'd called them in to discuss the latest development privately, hoping that between the three of them they could get things back on track without the senior partners learning of it. He needed them both on the same page, but was quickly concluding that that was not going to be easy - they were in such intense competition with each other that they could barely stand being in the same room, much less working together. Things had been much simpler with Lindsey MacDonald - at least he had been a company man, most of the time. He knew these two had their own agendas, and he was still unsure of the extent of their loyalty to the firm. Perhaps the projects they were currently responsible for would prove that, once and for all.
         "When you're ready?" he prompted, smiling mirthlessly at Lilah.
         Lilah composed herself, and lifted her chin. She was not about to show either of them that she was a pushover. With another laser glare at Gavin, she turned to Nathan and told him of her meeting with the demon lord Hrahek.
         "Kenjiin was your bargaining tool?" Nathan asked, to clarify her report.
         "He's to be handed over to Hrahek in return for his 'work' with Angel and the slayer," Lilah nodded.
         "But he is no longer detained?"
         "No." Lilah watched Gavin out of the corner of her eye, but the Sino-American's expression had not changed.
         "And how did Hrahek discover this," Nathan enquired, "before you did?"
         "I wish I knew," Lilah replied meaningfully, looking directly at Gavin. Park's face was a mask. "Hrahek didn't tell me."
         "I'll summon a seer," Nathan decided, getting to his feet, "to locate Kenjiin. It's up to you to arrange his .. return .. to our safekeeping. With emphasis on the safe," he added, leaving Lilah in no doubt that her job was pretty much on the line.
         Gavin allowed himself a small smile, careful to keep it from Reid's notice.
         "Gavin," the older man said from the door, "you will give your full support to this project."
         "Of course," Park agreed, as if there were no question. "Happy to help."
         Fuming, Lilah rose from her seat and followed Reid, not trusting herself any further: she wanted to tear Gavin limb from limb. Gavin Park leaned back in his seat and smiled, almost chuckling to himself as Lilah slammed the door closed behind her. Reaching for his cell phone, he hit speed-dial.
         "Cyril," he said, "do you have news for me?"

         Buffy breathed in deeply and opened her eyes, one of which was centimetres from the sandy floor. Sitting bolt upright, she quickly checked her surroundings and realised she was back in her cell. She assumed it was the same cell - walls, sandy floor, barred window - but without the demon corpse it was difficult to tell if it was the same one she'd escaped from. Or thought she had. She remembered the fight, and the stairs, and the cave outside. Had it been a dream? Then she remembered Angel, and Willow, and decided that that part had been the dream; the rest was way too real to have been imaginary. She checked her nail for evidence.
         "Yep," she said to herself, "still broken. Yay for reality."
         With a sigh, she made herself comfortable on the sand and stared out at the still-raging storm beyond the barred window. Her dreams gave her confidence, trusting the link with Angel - and, it seemed, Willow, although that was probably more to do with the witch's own transcendental talents - as proof that they were doing their best to find her. She just had to sit and wait. And hope that the dream image of Dawn sleeping safely in bed was proof of her younger sister's wellbeing.
         She had no idea how long she had been sitting there, letting her mind wander back to happier times so that she would remain positively focused, but her day-dream was interrupted by a tingling at the back of her neck which she knew to be Slayer's sixth sense. Turning slowly without getting up, she faced the door as it opened and looked up at the huge demon that stood in the frame.
         "Come," it commanded, surprising her with its use of English.
         "I know you," Buffy said, recognising the strange insignia on the pendant which hung from its thick neck. "You're my travel guide."
         Hrahek looked at her quizzically, its black eyes narrowed beneath the horny protrusions that replaced eyebrows in this dimension.
         "You're the one who brought me here," Buffy stated, getting to her feet and dropping immediately into fight mode. "What did you do with my sister?"
         "Sister?" the demon sounded like it had trouble pronouncing the word, never mind understanding it. "We have no time .."
         "Sister," Buffy emphasized, speaking slowly, "the one who was with me. Long dark hair, habit of being in the wrong place at the .."
         "No time," Hrahek repeated, stepping back into the corridor. "Come. Now."
         Realising the demon hadn.t come to fight, Buffy relaxed a little, and let her curiosity take her to the door. As she joined the demon in the corridor, it waved a long clawed hand at the cell and a portal shimmered above the spot where Buffy had been sitting.
         "Kenjiin," Hrahek pointed at the portal. "Enemy. You kill. You go .. home."
         "What?" Buffy demanded. "This is a trade-off? I kill your enemy and you let me go?"
         The demon nodded, obviously impatient for her to get started.
         "I'm not an assassin," the Slayer told him bluntly. "I don't do hit jobs. I kill demons to protect people, not to settle scores." She thought of the Master, and one or two others, and added, "Mostly."
         "Protect people," the demon nodded, his pronunciation almost laughable if he wasn't being so deadly serious. "Not too late."
         "Not too late?" Buffy repeated. "What does that mean?"
         "Kenjiin in your world," Hrahek told her. "He kill friend. Friend? Human. Demon. One man. Not man."
         As the demon struggled with the concept he was trying to describe, Buffy grew cold.
         "Angel?" she whispered, goose bumps creeping over her in a wave of dread.
         Hrahek nodded.
         "More in danger," he added, pointing at the portal. "Come."
         It was the 'more in danger' part that changed Buffy's mind. With Angel gone, Los Angeles would be in peril, and who knew what would be happening in Sunnydale. Fighting back tears, Buffy stepped towards the portal. Hrahek swiftly overtook her, grabbed her wrist, and leapt through it with her in tow.

Wednesday 4 pm
         Dawn ran into the Magic Box, looking over her shoulder in puzzlement at the silenced bell above the door, and stopped at the top of the short flight of steps which led down to the counter area. Giles, Willow and Tara smiled at her from the table, then resumed their work. Willow was keying information into the computer, while Tara and Giles were putting together notes from several scraps of paper.
         "Where is he?" Dawn demanded, disappointment and worry making her frown as she slouched into a seat between Tara and Giles.
         Anya entered the shop, obviously miffed that the teenager had left her behind, and went straight to the till to check the latest readings.
         "Sleeping," Willow said softly, eyes warning both of them to be quiet.
         "Up there," Tara whispered, pointing at the loft gallery, which housed some of Giles' darker collection of books. Angel had gone up there to consult some of the manuscripts, and had fallen asleep in the gloom.
         Eager to see Angel now that he was no longer unconscious or delirious, Dawn made to get up but Giles stayed her with a hand on her arm.
         "You can talk to him soon enough," he said gently, pushing a book and notepad towards her. "But for now he needs to rest. Perhaps you can help us with this?"
         They had put together all Wesley's information on Kravlar, and the scant details they had relating to the missing key to that dimension, and tied it in with their own research into portals. Now they were looking into ways of opening a portal themselves, in case the missing key could not be found.
         "Sure," Dawn said, keen as ever to help with the research.
         "Where�s Xander?" Anya asked, forgetting the 'quiet' rule and giving a puzzled look in answer to their frowns. "He said he'd meet me here."
         "He's with Fred and Gunn," Giles told her, keeping his voice low, "getting weapons. They shouldn't be long."
         "You don't need to whisper," Anya informed them, hissing in her attempt to whisper loudly, "vampires sleep like the dead."
         "They also have great hearing," Angel said sardonically as he climbed down the ladder from the gallery.
         Grinning broadly, Dawn leapt from her chair and threw her arms around him in a tight hug. Smiling, slightly abashed, Angel returned the hug. When he realised Dawn wasn't about to let him go, he prised her away from him by her shoulders and lifted her chin so he could see her face. She was crying, and the miserable look she gave him reminded him so much of Buffy that he pulled her back into his embrace and let her sob quietly against his chest.
         Giles felt a small pang of jealousy, having refrained on so many occasions lately from giving the girl a comforting hug; he felt it would have been inappropriate, unless she'd made the first move as she had with Angel. But he understood - Angel was a link to Buffy, and probably the only other person on the planet who loved the Slayer as much as Dawn did. Giles felt a father's love for the girls, and recognised the difference.
         Tara and Willow watched with empathy, knowing that the teenager had cried herself to sleep every night since Buffy's disappearance but had found it hard to share her feelings with her sister's friends. Anya concentrated on the till readings, wondering why Xander was late, and hoping he hadn't forgotten their dinner-and-movie plan for the evening. Lorne made a great house guest - he was tidy, and a great cook, and she was getting used to his singing all the time - but after less than twenty-four hours as hostess she was in desperate need of one-on-one time with her fiance.
         When the tears had subsided, Dawn pulled out of Angel's arms and wiped her face with her hands. Now clearly embarrassed, she didn't know where to look.
         "It's okay," Angel said softly, steering her back to the table and sitting next to her. "We all feel the same."
         "You look a lot better," Willow smiled. Last night she'd begun to believe the poison was going to kill him, and she'd administered her potion without much hope of success. She'd been delighted to learn of his recovery, when she'd joined Cordelia for breakfast that morning.
         "But still kind of grey," Anya added, her face serious with concern and curiosity. "You looked awful last night, like you were really dead - now you just look not quite dead. I hadn't realised that vampires .."
         "I guess the potions worked," Willow cut in, trying to stop Anya from taking the conversation to a grosser level and hoping to save Angel from embarrassment.
         "Yeah," Angel nodded, glancing curiously at Anya . "Thank you."
         Willow grinned with pride.
         "We're working on that portal spell we discovered," she told him. "I think it will work, but we need some ingredients that aren't easy to come by. Lorne said he knows someone who can get them, but it'll take time."
         Angel nodded, and noticed Giles' hesitance.
         "Giles?" he prompted.
         "It's dangerous," the Watcher said, ignoring Willow's attempt to argue. "We don't have any guarantee that it will open in the right dimension."
         "But it's worth a shot, right?" Dawn asked earnestly. "We have to try something."
         "If we can't find the missing key," Giles conceded.
         Angel suddenly slouched forward, head in his hands. The movement made Dawn jump, and she leaned close to the vampire, hand on his arm. Everyone watched with concern, asking if he was alright.
         "Dizzy," Angel slurred in response to their queries. "Feel weird."
         "Probably the last traces of the poison," Giles said, "and an accumulation of the last few days' activity." Realization dawned. "Angel, when did you last feed?"
         The vampire shook his head slightly.
         Giles went to the phone, and dialled the number for his apartment. Wesley was waiting there for Cordelia and Lorne to pick him up on their way back from collecting ingredients for the portal spell. Speaking quietly, knowing the subject caused Angel an immensurable amount of embarrassment, he asked his colleague to bring all the blood bags from his fridge. No doubt it would cost him - Spike had declared allegiance to his sire, but he was not likely to freely donate his food supply.

         An hour later, they were still waiting for the three to arrive. Xander, Fred and Gunn had turned up shortly after Giles' phone call, carrying a small armoury of assorted weapons between them. Xander's residual memories of his time as a soldier came in handy sometimes, although Giles wasn't altogether comfortable with the young man's skill at breaking, entering and stealing government property. All too aware of Anya's irritable mood, everyone had been thankful when she had insisted on Xander taking her out as arranged, even though her fiance clearly would have preferred to stay and contribute to the evening's plans. As they left, Xander reminded them he had Buffy's pager if they needed to call him in at any time, and was rewarded with a painful thump in the arm from his disgruntled lover.
         Angel had been persuaded to lie down in the training room, before he passed out, and Dawn had been popping in and out intermittently to check on him. Getting more and more agitated as time went on, she became clumsy and inattentive, dropping pencils and books, and repeating questions while the others went over the plan of action. Grabbing her soda can before it spilled over the books beside her, she grinned sheepishly at the adults around her and mouthed the word 'Sorry' for breaking their concentration again.
         "Perhaps you could call Wesley?" Giles suggested, trying not to sound irritated. "Find out what's delaying them."<         
         Eager for something to do, Dawn launched herself towards the counter, dragging her schoolbag with its strap caught around her ankle and emptying its contents across the floor. Embarrassed now, she hurriedly scooped everything back into the bag, and reached for the phone.
          "No answer," she reported, after waiting for several minutes for the call to be picked up. "They must be on their way."
         She went to the shop door to wait. Ten minutes later, they still hadn't arrived and the teenager became restless again.
         "Where are they?" she whined, worried about Angel and now concerned for Cordelia, Lorne and Wesley too.
         Gunn hit speed-dial on his cellphone.
         "Hey, it's me," he said. "Where are you?"
         After a short exchange, he reported that Cordelia and Wesley were at the far perimeter of Wetherly Park waiting for Lorne, who had arranged to meet his contact there. The contact had not so far arrived, but knowing the rarity of the items he would be supplying, they were willing to be patient.
         "Oh," Gunn added, catching Giles' attention, "and Wes says he can't find your .. keys. Damn!" He stood suddenly, and headed for the training room. "Got a message for Angel - almost forgot about it!"
         Opening the training room door, Gunn scanned the room and found the vampire lying on the leather-covered bench in the far corner, away from the window.
         "Angel, man .."
         With a growl, Angel was on his feet before Gunn could say anything more, yellow eyes blazing and teeth bared in full vampire mode.
         "Whoa!" Gunn stepped back quickly, reaching for the door.
         For a moment, Angel simply stood and looked at him. Then, with obvious difficulty, he morphed back to his normal features and sat down heavily.
         "Sorry," he said quietly. "Getting hard to control."
         "Okay," his colleague said uncertainly. "It's okay. I'll make sure you aren't disturbed again."
         "Maybe you should lock the door," Angel suggested. He looked at Gunn with ashamed honesty. "I'm starving, feel like I'm losing control."
         Gunn nodded.
         "Got a message," he said quickly."Kind of cryptic, but I figure you'll know what it means - the guy who left it said you would." Angel looked at him expectantly. "'The heart of the beasts will reveal the way.' That's it. From a guy named Kenny or something. Ken Gee?"
         "Kenjiin?" Angel asked, suddenly alert.
         Gunn took another involuntary step back.
         "Could be," he nodded; "sounded like that I guess. I got the message from Jayce this morning. Sorry for the delay - been kinda busy."
         Angel nodded, deep in thought. He tried to get up, but didn't trust his legs to carry him more than a few steps, and sighed in frustration.
         "I can't think straight," he said, running a hand through his hair. "Need to talk with Giles." Gunn raised his eyebrows. "Tell him to bring a stake," Angel added, knowing the younger man was thinking the same.
         Against Gunn's advice, Giles went unarmed into the training room, followed by Dawn. He was amazed by their total trust in the vampire, and somewhat ashamed that he did not - could not - share their faith in Angel's self-control. He hovered near the door, crossbow at the ready, while vampire and watcher discussed the unusual message. Dawn sat next to Angel, concern creasing her young brow.
         "He gets kinda jittery," Fred explained quietly, noticing the frowns on Willow and Tara's faces. "It's a long story."
         "It's okay," Willow said kindly. "We figured he's had it tough. Bad vampire experience? We've all been there. But Angel's different. I mean, he's .. we've .." Pushing memories of Angelus out of her head, she shrugged. "He's different."
         "Fred's the puzzle master," Gunn said, having talked briefly with Giles before locking the training room door, much to Dawn's chagrin.
         Giles relayed the cryptic message to the girls at the table.
         "It may be connected to current events," he stated, "or it may be completely unrelated. The message was left for Angel by a demon warlord, one of several enemies of the Kravlarian leader, so we can't overlook that link. Of course it could be coincidence, but .."
         " 'Heart of beasts'," Fred murmured, mind whirring.
         "She's on it," Gunn commented with confidence. He turned to Willow and Tara, eager to get their plan properly formulated. "What's next?"
         "Okay," Willow said, "after the circle is formed .."
         At that moment, Dawn ran to the door, having heard Angel's car pull up outside, and met Cordelia, Wesley and Lorne as they entered the shop. Wesley was still limping but his condition had improved greatly, and he no longer appeared to be in so much pain. Lorne carried a large cardboard box, the contents rattling as he descended the steps to the table, and apologised for being late. Cordelia held two plastic carrier bags almost at arm's length, not wanting them to brush against her clothes or her bare legs.
         "Is that ..?" Dawn asked, reaching for the bags.
         "Yes," Cordelia nodded, thankfully handing them over to her. "The bags are damp," she added.
         "Condensation," Giles told her, "from the fridge."
         "Whatever," Cordelia shrugged. "They feel gross on your skin, let me tell you. How's Angel doing?"
         "Bearing up," Giles replied.
         "Dawn," Tara called, halting the girl's tracks on the way to the training room. Everyone exchanged glances, sharing the feeling that Dawn should perhaps not witness the vampire feeding, especially in the feral state he was in. Giles took the bags from her, smiling sympathetically as the girl pouted in frustration.
         "Maybe next time," he said. "But not now."
         "Fine," she said, clearly annoyed. Concern and curiosity were eating at her, but she knew her arguments would fall on deaf ears: everyone had taken over Buffy's long list of the things she wasn't allowed to do, and they were just as firm about it as her sister was.
         "Is," Dawn amended wistfully.
         Giles unlocked the training room, and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Clearing his throat to warn the vampire of his presence, he helped Angel to a sitting position and handed him a blood bag, leaving the others in the bags at his feet. Angel hesitated.
         �I'll leave you to it,� the Watcher said, heading for the door.
         He heard Angel thank him before the unmistakable sound of fangs sinking hungrily into the plastic and gulping at the contents.

Part Six

Los Angeles
Wednesday 10 pm
         Buffy stood in an alleyway opposite the Hyperion Hotel, trying to get her breath back while her foul-smelling demon 'tour guide' covered and uncovered its eyes in an attempt to re-acclimatise to the light. Or twilight, as would more accurately describe the time of day. Twilight in shadow, even. Geez, these guys were sensitive.
         "Kenjiin," the demon had stated, pointing at the hotel, when they had emerged from the portal.
         Buffy assumed that that was the other guy's last known location, and she shuddered at the thought of finding Angel's dust-pile somewhere in the huge art deco building. Fighting back tears again, she took a deep breath and stepped forward. Hrahek grabbed her arm.
         "What?" Buffy asked, eager to find this KenJean and kick his butt to kingdom come.
         "Here," Hrahek said. "I wait. You return. Bring Kenjiin head."
         "Insecure, much?" Buffy questioned, wrinkling her nose. "Isn't it enough that I kill him?"
         Hrahek shook his head, wincing as if he had a bad headache. He clasped a metal band onto Buffy's wrist. It was forged solid: Buffy could not find any opening.
         "What's this?" she demanded angrily, holding her arm in front of the demon's face.
         "I hear," Hrahek told her, but Buffy thought he was being evasive and re-iterating 'here'.
         "Fine," she said testily, "but you're taking it off as soon as KenJean is history."
         She strode across the road in a break in the traffic, and entered the hotel foyer, heart lurching at its silence. Pushing away Angel-memories, she walked purposefully to the counter and struck the bell. It echoed up the stairs.
         "Yo!" a voice called from the office, and a young Afro-American emerged. "Can I help you?"
         "Um," Buffy hesitated, not sure what to say. 'I'm looking for KenJean, big demony guy - what room is he in?' Sure. "Um, Angel Investigations?" she asked, figuring it was better to get reinforcements.
         "They're gone," the young man told her.
         "All of them?" Buffy asked, horrified.
         "All of them," came the answer. "What did you ..?"
         "Can I use your phone please?" the Slayer interrupted, breathing rapidly, and suddenly cold, and longing for home.
         The young man nodded, pointing at the apparatus at the end of the counter, and retreated to the office to give her privacy. Buffy grabbed the receiver, and dialled. There was no answer at home. Trying not to panic, Buffy dialled the Magic Shop number.
         "Dawnie?" She smiled with relief as her little sister squealed into her ear. She'd cover the whole 'what are you doing there at this time of night' issue when she got home. "Yes, yes, I'm fine. I'm in Los Angeles, at the Hyperion. Are you okay?" Close to tears, Buffy listened as her sister babbled excitedly. "Who's there? Dawnie? Who did you say ..?" Buffy's heart leapt as she heard her name, spoken by the one voice she thought never to hear again. "Angel?" she whispered.
         Aware that her spidey senses were tingling, but desperate for confirmation that he was alive, Buffy repeated his name. She heard him ask if she was okay, then everything blurred around her and she passed out.
         Jayce heard a strange whooshing noise, and returned to the counter. The phone hung over the edge, but the blonde had disappeared. Not hearing the voice calling urgently through the earpiece, he replaced the receiver with a shrug and went back to his seat.

         Stunned, Angel held the receiver to his ear even after the line went dead.
         "What?" Dawn squeaked. "What? What did she say? Is she coming here? Angel!"
         Angel put the phone down and turned to face them all.
         "Something's wrong," he said, trying to assimilate what he'd heard. "There was a strange noise, then the phone went dead."
         Dawn burst into tears, and he reflexively drew her to him.
         "Call her back," Giles said urgently, grabbing the phone before Angel could react and punching in the hotel's phone number.
         "Hello?" a male voice answered.
         "Hello," Giles said hurriedly. "Giles here, in Sunnydale. We - we were just talking to someone who called from that number .."
         "Yeah?"
         "A young woman," Giles clarified."Blonde. Quite petite." 'Sorely missed,' he thought to himself, praying she was alright. "We seem to have been cut off. Is she still there?"
         "No, man," Jayce answered, curious. "She just disappeared."
         "What?" Giles asked. "Literally? You saw her disappear?"
         "Man, what are you on?" Jayce groaned, beginning to wonder if Candid Camera were in the area. "She left. In a hurry, too, by the sound of it."
         Gunn took the phone from the Watcher, and identified himself. He quickly ascertained that Jayce had heard the same whooshing noise that Angel had, but hadn't seen Buffy leave. Instructing Jayce to call if Buffy returned, he hung up.
         "The portal," Dawn sniffed, realising what they were saying. "The one that took her last week. It sounded like a waterfall." She looked up at Angel, eyes pleading him not to confirm her suspicion. "Is - is that what you heard?"
         Angel nodded, pulling her back in his embrace as she sobbed harder.
         At that moment, Xander and Anya hurried in, followed by Spike.
         "What's the what?" Xander demanded, frowning at Angel and Dawn before joining the group at the table. "I got your beep."
         "Right in the middle of dessert," Anya added, grumpily, following because he held her tightly by the hand.
         Meanwhile, the blond vampire had hesitated at the door, meeting Angel's eyes with forced bravado. He threw his cigarette out into the street, and sniffed.
         "Angel," he said, warily.
         "Spike," his sire returned without inflection.
         Taking that as a truce, Spike sauntered down the steps.
         "What's up with the li'l bit?" he asked.

         Gavin Park watched as Kenjiin stepped through the portal, which shimmered with small electric flashes, then shrank and disappeared. Kenjiin had rewarded him handsomely, both financially and otherwise, for his assistance, and Gavin knew he had a useful ally in the demon should circumstances call for it in the future. He also knew that Lilah's little project was royally screwed, and that gave him even more satisfaction. Smiling, he patted Cyril on the back and left the messenger to clear up the portal's damp residue, which was dripping from mid-air onto the carpet.
         "Stage two?" Cyril asked, reaching for the stain remover on the bottom shelf of his post trolley.
         "Stage two," Gavin confirmed, heading out the door, and they both smiled at no-one in particular.

         Buffy sighed. Irritated beyond words at the Groundhog Day she was having, and angry that she'd been so close to home and blown it, she raised herself yet again from the floor of her cell and looked around her, brushing off the sand. Same walls, same door, same window. Same storm outside. Same nauseating stench ..
         As if on queue, Hrahek entered from the corridor and regarded her sternly. Buffy returned the glare.
         "Getting a little tired of the repetition around here," she stated testily. "Why'd you bring me back? Scared cos I'd blown your story? And how did you do that, anyway?"
         Taking a few moments to separate and understand her questions, Hrahek frowned.
         "I hear," he told her, grabbing her wrist to indicate the metal bracelet she still wore. "You talk. Others."
         Buffy examined the bracelet again, amazed that it could transmit sound although there were no markings to indicate it was anything other than a solid band of metal.
         "I figured on reinforcements," she told the demon. "I don't know this KenJean guy - I might not be able to fight him alone, and I didn't know where to find him. My friends could have helped. What's wrong with that?"
         "You betray," Hrahek said.
         "Not strong on trust, are you?" Buffy countered. "Why would I betray you if you're my only ticket home?"
         Hrahek growled. This was achieving nothing. He'd had few dealings with humans - Lilah Morgan being the chief representative of that race - and did not trust them, but he knew this one was the Slayer and therefore different from the others of her kind. She killed demons, and Kenjiin was a demon. She would probably succeed where he had failed many times.
         "Come," he said, stepping out into the corridor.
         Buffy stood her ground, reluctant to try out that particular merry-go-round again unless it was a one-way ticket.
         "Listen," she said firmly. "You can beam me back to LA, but you have to let me call my friends because they can help me get this KenJean guy. I have no weapons, no idea what I'm up against - from a human perspective," she added as Hrahek opened his mouth to supply her with details. "I'm trusting you to deliver your end of the bargain, and let me go when this is over. You have to trust me to do things my way. Deal?"
         Confused by her language, which was not as precise or slow as Lilah's, Hrahek paused, filtering out the phrases he recognised and trying to piece them together to make sense. He sensed the girl's honesty, which was an unusual trait as far as he was concerned, and nodded somewhat hesitantly.
         Buffy rolled her eyes impatiently, then joined him in the corridor.
         "Okay," she said. "Do your 'open sesame' thing and let's get going."

Sunnydale
11 pm
         In the Magic Box, several small groups worked in solemn silence.
         Willow, Tara, Giles and Anya mixed ingredients and double-checked pronunciations for the spell they were creating in order to re-activate the portal that had taken Buffy from them.
         Fred, Dawn, and Lorne were using reference books and lexicons to try and work out Kenjiin's message to Angel, and were simultaneously looking for anything remotely referring to Hrahek.
         Cordelia was using the computer's search engine to try and find more information to help them, while Wesley called several Watchers' Council contacts for any details of the missing key to Hrahek's dimension.
         In the training room, Angel put himself through a rigorous workout in an attempt to rebuild his strength and stamina, or at least to focus his mind on something other than Buffy's unknown fate.
         Spike, Xander and Gunn - humans and vampire reluctant to share each other's company but knowing it had to be done - had gone out on patrol, and were expected back shortly before midnight.
         "Oh!" Fred exclaimed suddenly, making everyone around her jump. She scribbled something on the pad before her, read it, then sighed another 'oh' as if she should have seen it before. The others waited. "I think .." Fred hesitated when she realised all eyes were on her, then gave a sheepish smile. " 'Heart of beasts'," she said with a little shrug. "I think we heard the wrong thing. If he said hart ' h-a-r-t ' then we're looking at .."
         "Wolf, ram, and hart," Cordelia finished, with a small shiver, remembering the symbolic link they'd discovered in Pylea.
         Dawn tried to hide a yawn. It was way past her bedtime, but she didn't want to draw attention to that fact. Research could be dull and boring, but it made her feel grown-up and useful, which was a definite improvement on trying to sleep in a creaky, empty house while everyone else was trying to help Buffy.
         "What's the connection?" she asked, puzzled, wondering why Cordelia had named those animals. Then the penny dropped. "Oh, right. Lawyers'r'us."
         "Should have known," Fred said, somewhat embarrassed.
         "You believe Wolfram and Hart hold the key to the Kravlar dimension?" Giles asked, keen to clarify what they were saying.
         "They have extensive vaults," Wesley nodded, "and we know from past experience that they keep rare and valuable documents there." He and Cordelia exchanged looks, remembering the 'shanshu' affair. "It's feasible they have the Kravlar key, although none of my contacts have heard of it being brought into this dimension - it's widely assumed to be lost."
         "Might just as well be," Cordelia sighed.
         "We have the spell," Willow reminded them, holding up a small sprig of herbs and a jar of insect parts. "We don't need the key."
         "The spell will only re-activate the portal," Giles reminded her, worried that the young witch seemed to be placing too much faith in magick. "The key is needed to travel beyond that."
         Willow frowned. She was certain the re-opened portal would take them directly to Buffy, and didn't want to waste time on unnecessary complications. Tara smiled supportively at her.
         "M-maybe we should keep working on both," she suggested shyly. "You know, erm, kind of back up planning."
         "The spell is ready," Willow stated, lifting her chin confidently.
         "So we need to get to LA," Angel said, giving them all a start: no-one had noticed him emerge from the training room.
         "You really need to start whistling," Anya grouched, unknowingly echoing her fiance who had made similar complaints long before they'd met.
         "Wanna hum something, angelcakes?" Lorne invited, a worried look on his face. He had been uncharacteristically quiet for most of the evening, and his colleagues regarded him quizzically.
         "Do I have to?" Angel asked uncomfortably, noticing Dawn's hand-hidden grin.
         "Not gonna push it," Lorne raised his hands. "Lord knows we can do without thatt little diversion .."
         "You have but-face," Dawn prompted, then realised how it sounded. "I mean," she flustered,"you look like you're gonna say 'but'. Don't you?"
         Lorne smiled kindly.
         "I do, sweet pea," he said. He looked at Angel, but said no more.
         "Oh for god's sake!" Cordelia scraped back her chair, and gently shoved Angel towards the training room. "Go and sing something."
         She inclined her head at Lorne for him to follow, and the demon obeyed, talking quietly to the vampire as they closed the door behind them. The others sat at the table for a moment, then all the females tiptoed to the door to listen. Giles and Wesley watched them, shaking their heads in unison.
         "Is he really that bad?" Giles whispered.
         "Oh yes," Wesley answered matter-of-factly. "Quite, quite bad."
         Dawn barely suppressed a giggle, and earned a light slap from Willow as all six females grinned and grimaced at each other, straining to identify the tortured melody on the other side of the door. Suddenly, they all hurried back to the table and had barely composed themselves when Angel and Lorne emerged.
         Angel scowled at them, embarrassment mixed with humiliation and irritation at his unseen performance, and worry at what Lorne had told him.
         "Well?" Wesley prompted, getting down to business.
         "Not much," Lorne replied. "Like I said to Angel, I had a funny feeling about all this. I guess it could be gas, but .."
         "What did you see?" Wesley asked with a sigh.
         "Buffy," Angel stated, and Lorne nodded.
         The others regarded him with both hope and trepidation.
         "What else would I see?" Lorne shrugged, still reeling from the strong and emotional aura he.d picked up from the vampire. "Difficult to see through all those slayer images - but Angel will find what he seeks."
         Everyone waited.
         "Is that it?" Anya asked eventually, wishing she knew what was going on. "He had to 'sing' like that just so you can tell him he'll find her? We already knew that."
         It was obvious to the others that Lorne had told Angel far more, but neither demon nor vampire were going to share the details.
         "It's not important," Angel told them. "We need to get that key from Wolfram and Hart, and .."
         "The spell is ready," Willow repeated. "It will work."
         "I don't doubt it," Angel nodded, "and we'll use it as soon as we have the key. From what we've learned of Kravlar, there's no point opening a portal unless we can get around - we'd be as lost as ... as Buffy is." He looked at his feet, and sighed. As a vampire he didn't actually breathe, but sighing came naturally to him when he was anxious. Forcing himself to focus on the plan that was enfolding in his mind, rather than the disappearance of the love of his life, Angel looked at the others. "Willow, Tara - I need you to come with me. Giles.."
         "To LA?" Willow asked, wide-eyed.
         "Gonna need a few spells," Angel nodded, "and some faces that Wolfram and Hart won't recognise. Giles, Wesley - see if you can locate Kenjiin: I'm assuming he's in LA. He and his forces could provide us with some useful back-up. Lorne, I'll need you with me to talk with Kenjiin if I can't get to him. And Gunn .."
         "Angel," Cordelia said, beginning to feel left out, "I .."
         "I know." Angel held up his hand to silence her. "But I need you here, with Fred, and the others - it's safer."
         Cordelia was about to argue, but thought better of it - she knew she could help Angel in Los Angeles, but she also knew he would worry about her if she were to go with them, and he already had enough of that with Buffy being missing, and with his plan to take the two witches with him. However, she was keen to leave Sunnydale, and her displeasure showed in the annoyed sigh she gave in answer to him.
         "You'd better get going," Wesley advised the vampire. "With the drive back to LA, there won't be many hours of darkness left."
         "Soon as Gunn gets back," Angel nodded. He turned to Willow. "Do you need to get anything for the trip?"
         Using Angel's car, Cordelia took the two young women to Revello Drive, where she kept the engine running while they quickly collected clothes and several Wiccan items. When they returned to the Magic Box, Angel was waiting anxiously at the door. Dawn was with him, and she quickly hugged the two witches goodbye. Angel called to Gunn as he took Cordelia's place behind the wheel, and was about to rev the engine a second time when Cordelia placed her hand on his arm.
         "Calm down," she said gently, "you're making everyone jumpy."
         "Fools rush in," Spike said with a smirk, from the safety of the shop door.
         Cordelia spun around to chastise him, but was interrupted by Gunn and Fred, pushing past the vampire to join them at the car. With a last, lingering kiss, the young lovers parted and Gunn jumped into the passenger seat.
         "Stay in touch, Angel," Wesley called as the car sped off into the night.
         "Hope he remembers to charge his phone," Fred muttered.

Los Angeles
Thursday 3 am
         Lilah Morgan hugged herself and shivered against the cold night breeze. Ten minutes earlier, she had parked her car around the corner, and walked quickly and quietly along the deserted street to stand in the shadows opposite the Wolfram and Hart building. Apart from a few dim internal lights - illuminating the corridors, for the sake of the security staff - the place was in darkness, but Lilah had a hunch that not everyone had gone home for the evening. She wasn't sure what she would do if her suspicions were confirmed, but she'd been unable to sleep and figured that following her hunch would do no harm.
         She hadn't counted on it being so cold, though, and wished she'd worn an extra layer under her light summer coat. Resisting the urge to stamp her feet to get her circulation going, Lilah peered at her watch for the fourth time and shivered again. She was about to turn back when a movement at the far end of the street caught her eye. Pressing herself against the wall, she watched as a female stepped cautiously into the road and waved her arm in the direction of the Wolfram and Hart building. Curious, Lilah looked up at the edifice, but nothing had changed. Wondering what she'd expected to see, she turned back to watch the woman, but the street was empty again.
         And at that moment, Gavin Park silently slipped out of the lobby opposite her, and hurried down the steps in the direction she'd seen the woman a few seconds earlier.
         "Curiouser and curiouser," Lilah muttered, pleased that her hunch had been correct, but now more inquisitive than she had been before. What was Park doing at work at this time of night? It wasn't unusual to be there - she'd done it herself - but she wanted to know what it was he was doing, which didn't involve her. And who was that woman? Had she cast a spell? Or was she just one of LA's crazy residents, enacting something in her own private world?
         Lilah frowned, and headed back to her car.

         Angel waited until Lilah was out of sight, then listened until he could no longer hear her car's engine. Satisfied that she was gone, and that Park was also out of the area, he nodded to Gunn and disappeared into the darkness of the alley in which he'd parked his Plymouth. The alley ran alongside and behind the building next to Wolfram and Hart's block, and would give Angel unseen access to the basement parking lot.
         Gunn was not happy: he didn't like the idea of Angel sneaking into the law firm's building alone, without backup, but his crew hadn't arrived as agreed, and Angel had insisted that he remain with the two young women in case they needed to make a quick getaway. He sighed, and shifted irritably in the driver's seat.
         "It's okay," Willow whispered, leaning over from the rear seat, "I made sure I used the most effective protection spell - he's safe."
         "No guarantees," Gunn said quietly, shaking his head, his eyes roaming the dark windows of the lawyers' building. "They have their own magick. And other things."
         A soft whistle sounded behind them, and Jayce emerged from an alley further down the street, followed by two of his crew. After whispering apologies for being late - an attack on a vampire nest had taken longer than expected - Jayce listened to Gunn's summary of the evening's plan.
         "Theo," Gunn whispered, climbing out of the car, "stay here, be ready to hit the pedal."
         Theo jumped into the driver's seat with a smile at the two girls in the back seat, and Gunn led the other two into the alley. Jayce and Donny would stand guard at the two main entrances - front and rear - to the Wolfram and Hart building, while Gunn would follow Angel in case he needed help.
          In the back of Angel's Plymouth, Tara started to chant under her breath.
         "What's up with her?" Theo hissed at Willow.
         "Insurance," Willow answered, holding Tara's hand and giving it a supportive squeeze.

Part Seven

Sunnydale
Thursday 4 am
         Cordelia knew she was dreaming, and the knowledge gave her little comfort. She watched from a vault doorway as Hrahek and his warriors surrounded Angel, thrusting their vicious swords at the vampire until he fell to his knees. Across the room, beyond the demons, Holland Manners - a former director of Wolfram and Hart, killed during one of Darla and Drusilla's massacres - stood watching, his mild-mannered smile contorted by vampiric features. Cordelia knew that Gunn was somewhere near, but she couldn't see him. She felt frozen to the spot where she stood, unable to move or speak, her eyes riveted on the terrifying scene before her.          Angel had no weapons, and the demon warriors outnumbered him seven to one. They slashed at him individually with their swords, taking it in turns as if performing a ritual, each cut delivered with rhythmic precision. Angel did not fight back - raising his arms against the blades had been futile, so he held them folded across his chest, blood dripping onto his trousers and pooling at his knees.
         "You have no power here," Manners commented, and Cordelia found herself face to face with the former lawyer.
         Unable to speak, despite her efforts, Cordelia looked at him for a moment in total terror. Then she raised her hand, which suddenly held a wooden stake, and drove it into his chest. Barely able to register his surprise, Manners disappeared in a cloud of dust.
         Hrahek and his followers froze, creating a bloody and terrible tableau with Angel at the centre, eyes closed and head bowed as a sword hung over his neck. Another sword had just pierced his side, and Cordelia doubted there was an inch of his skin that had not felt the cruel cut of those blades. With Manners destroyed, and the demons immobilised, Cordelia could at last move in her dream. She grabbed a sword from the nearest demon's hand and hacked at it until it exploded in a dark purple sticky mess. When all seven had been dispatched, she turned to Angel, sword still in her hand, dripping purple-black gore. He was no longer kneeling - he had fallen to the ground, as if only the cyclic ritual of the swords had been holding him upright. Cordelia looked at him, and knew he was dead. No dust, just a battered and bleeding body, but she knew it with absolute certainty. And it filled her with dread.
         Still dreaming, Cordelia stepped out of the vault and emerged onto a deserted street, squinting in the bright sunshine. She raised her hand to shield her eyes, and realised she still held the demon's sword. She brought it close to her face so that she could examine it, and saw that its hilt was crafted into three animals' heads - a ram at the centre, with a hare and a wolf on either side. The metallic heads turned towards her, and opened their mouths in angry silent growls. Screaming, she dropped the sword ...
         ... and sat bolt upright in Buffy's bed, hand over her mouth. She had barely got her breathing under control when Dawn and Fred burst into the room, wide-eyed and obviously spooked by her scream. Cordelia apologised for waking them, and brushed it off as a 'bad hair-day' dream, not wanting to worry them. As soon as they left, she grabbed her cell phone and punched in a short text message, then lay down and listened to the early morning birdsong while she waited for an answer.

Los Angeles
4 am
         Buffy had been puzzled when Hrahek's portal had transported them into a small empty room; it had obviously once been someone's office, as she could make out a name on the glass portion of the door, but it had been stripped of furniture. She had expected to be taken back to the Hyperion, from where she could contact Angel and the others in Sunnydale, and wondered why the demon had brought her here. Deciding there was little point in asking Hrahek - their conversations were difficult as it was, and she became quickly frustrated with her inability to make herself understood - she cautiously stepped into the corridor to look around, and soon discovered she was in the Wolfram and Hart building. Stepping back into the deserted office, with Hrahek as ever less than three steps behind her, she looked at him with a frown. This was something unexpected, and they had to talk.
         "What's this?" she whispered, then remembered she needed to keep things simple. And slow. "Why are we here? We should be in Sunnydale, or back at the hotel. I need to contact my friends. Remember?"
         Hrahek nodded once.
         "Kenjiin here," he said, the concept of whispering obviously alien to him. "Friends here."
         A thrill of excitement and fear washed over the slayer. Her friends were here, with the demon - were they in danger? How would she find them? Did this mean it would all be over soon?
         "How do you know?" she demanded, suddenly wondering how far she could trust the demon. "And where, exactly?"
         The questions were obviously beyond Hrahek's comprehension: he simply looked at her without answering. Buffy suppressed a growl of frustration, shook her head quickly to clear her thoughts, and closed her eyes. She needed to focus, to come up with a plan. And she needed to know if Angel was near, or if the strangely familiar tingling she'd felt since her arrival was only apprehension or wishful thinking. Sensing that the demon was about to say something, she held up her hand to silence him and opened her eyes.
         "Stay here," she said quietly. "Or go home. You'll be in my way. Understand?"
         Hrahek cocked his head to one side and waited.
         "Let me do my job," the Slayer enunciated slowly. "You'll know if I succeed or fail - what you do then is up to you - but you have to let me do it my way. Okay?"
         "I wait," the demon agreed.
         Not for the first time, Buffy wondered why Hrahek couldn't kill Kenjiin himself, but that would have to wait for another time. Right now, satisfied that she would be unhindered by her foul-smelling shadow, she nodded, and slipped out of the room. She gave no thought to where Hrahek would be waiting: she figured the transmitting bracelet she wore would lead him to her. Gripping the sword he had given her before leaving Kravlar, she turned right and followed the corridor towards the elevator.
         Moving purely on instinct, Buffy came to a door marked 'Emergency Exit' and silently pushed through onto a concrete landing labelled '7'. Stone steps wound upwards and downwards, and without hesitation she headed down. She knew from past conversations with Angel and his team that Wolfram and Hart had an extensive underground vault facility, and figured that any demon activity would most likely take place down there, out of sight of the firm's more 'normal' events.
         As she quickly descended the stairs, she thought about Hrahek and the strange deal she'd made with him - another demon's life for her freedom - and tried to find a way out of it. What if Kenjiin was a non-evil demon, like Angel, and several others she'd met since becoming the Slayer? What if Hrahek was the 'bad-guy' in this scenario, and her killing Kenjiin unleashed further evil into this or some other dimension? What if Kenjiin's assassination, at her hands, led to all-out demon war? She was pretty sure something like that had happened in earth history, only with real people getting killed rather than demons, and she didn't want to be responsible for that kind of chaos. She really needed Giles and the scoobies on this, to give her the information needed to make the right decision.
         The emergency stairwell ended at the underground car park, but Buffy knew there had to be another way down to the vaults. Assuming the elevator was for staff only, and presumably accessed with a coded number, she quickly scanned the deserted parking area, then scouted around for a manhole cover to give her access to the sewers: she knew that was how Angel had gained access on several occasions.
         She dropped down into the darkness, and was immediately grabbed from behind - an arm encircled her chest, pinning her arms to her sides, while a rough hand clamped over her mouth. Still gripping Hrahek's sword, she felt the cold metal through her trousers and hoped the tip hadn't marked her boot. Before she could react, her captor spun her around to face him, holding a finger to his lips. It was Jayce, the guy from the hotel.
         Buffy's expression and mannerism were all she needed to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. Jayce cast a furtive glance in each direction of the sewer, and leaned close to her so that his whisper wouldn't carry too far.
         "Waitin' for Gunn and Angel," he told her, clearly agitated. "You Buffy, right?"
         Buffy nodded.
         "Where are they?" she asked, hoping he had directions.
         Jayce shrugged, and pointed upwards.
         "Don' know, man," he said. "Been here forever - they up there in the vault somewhere."
         "How do I get in?"
         "There's a vent just over there," Jayce told her, clearly seeing no point in trying to talk her out of anything. "That's where Gunn went. Don' know what's after that."
         Buffy nodded, and followed his gaze. A vent cover lay against the sewer wall about twenty yards ahead of them.
         "Who else is in there?" she asked.
         "Kenjiin went in with a couple his guys," Jayce shrugged. "Don' know if there was a greeting party."
         Buffy shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold damp sewer. With a nod, she headed for the vent. Crawling through the narrow conduit was difficult enough, but made more so by her efforts to keep the sword from clanging against the sides as she moved. Eventually, she saw dim light ahead of her, and stopped to listen.
         Metal on metal, and grunts and groans, thumps and thuds and gurgling screams - the sound of battle filtered through the caged vent at the end of the conduit, and notched up Buffy's Slayer senses. She heard a gasp that was unmistakably Angel's, and a muttered curse from Gunn. She heard cloth tear under the swish of a blade, and a harsh crunch as someone - or something - was flung against a wall. Confident that the combatants would be too involved in trying to stay alive to notice any noises from the vent, Buffy hurried to the opening and chanced a quick look into the vault beyond.
         Two demons and three uniformed security guards lay dead or unconscious, just inside the door opposite the vent. Gunn was fighting hand to hand with another security guard, dodging the guard's taser gun in between kicks and punches. Angel lay with his back to her, and a third demon was bending over him, a heavy mace-like weapon in one clawed hand.
         In an instant, Buffy hurled herself out of the vent, sending the iron grille flying towards the demon's head. She landed on both feet within inches of Angel's body, swinging the sword towards the demon as she moved.
         "No!" Gunn shouted, wrenching the taser from the security guard and zapping him furiously with it. "Buffy, no!"
         Buffy's sword stopped at the demon's shoulder, and she realised it had done nothing to defend itself. It merely looked at her without curiosity, and bent further over Angel to help him to his feet.
         With the security guard rendered unconscious, Gunn hurried to help them, panting with exertion. Between them, he and the demon raised Angel to his feet, but he was barely conscious.
         "Buffy," Gunn said grimly, acknowledging her presence, and introducing her to the demon. "This is Kenjiin."
         "You're dead," Buffy said apologetically, holding up her bracelet-bound arm and pointing at it. She turned and thrust her sword into the body of a nearby demon. It gurgled, twitched, and sighed before it died. "Bye, KenJean."
         Buffy looked at Kenjiin a moment, hoping it understood, then turned her attention to Angel. He was badly injured, with several gaping wounds that seemed to have opened some not-yet-healed scars. She gently placed her palm on his cheek, and he opened his eyes. Unable to speak, he attempted a smile, and then passed out. Without a word, Kenjiin scooped up the vampire's limp form. Gunn kicked a security guard's body out of the way, and retrieved a long narrow box from under his corpse.
         "Let's go," he suggested, and led the way out of the vault.
         Kenjiin followed, carrying Angel effortlessly, his mace held firmly in his claw, and Buffy brought up the rear, picking up a similar weapon as she stepped over the dead demons. The corridor had only one exit, via a door that led up some stairs to another door; it was obvious that both were normally kept locked, but the security guards had left them open in their haste to deal with the intruders. In less than a minute, they emerged in the car park. Gunn hurried ahead to the still open sewer access, and softly called Jayce up to join them. Not waiting for his friend, Gunn led Kenjiin and Buffy out through the back of the car park and into the alleyway, then to Angel's car. Jayce whistled softly, and Donny joined them from the shadows near the front of the building.
         Willow squeaked with delight when she saw Buffy, and ran to hug her friend. But the reunion was brief, as they made room for Angel in the back of the car, Tara climbing into the passenger seat to make room for Buffy. Theo had started the engine on their approach, and left it running while Gunn hugged his three friends to thank them for their help. With a solemn lift of his chin, Jayce nodded once at Kenjiin and Buffy, then led his crew down the street.
         "We gotta get back to the hotel," Gunn told Kenjiin, who stayed in the shadows of the alley once he'd carefully deposited Angel in the car. The demon nodded, and turned away.
         "He's .." Willow began, but was silenced by Buffy, who held her finger to her lips. "Erm .. quiet," she finished, trusting her friend to explain.
         Back at the Hyperion, Lorne and some of Jayce's crew helped them get Angel out of the car and up to his room. Lorne persuaded Buffy to leave him to see to the vampire's wounds, and she joined her friends in the hotel office where she hurriedly wrote an explanation of her wish for silence whilst verbally explaining her experience in Kravlar and her deal with Hrahek.
         "So," Willow said, picking up the situation with enthusiasm, "with Kenjiin dead, all our worries should be over - right? Cos now you're back, and everyone's where they should be, and we don't need to open any more portals. So everything's back to normal?" She left the word 'please' unspoken, but it was apparent from her tone.
         "I hope so," Buffy sighed, giving Willow the thumbs up for her performance. "I really need a good, hot shower. And bed. I miss my bed. And sunshine. And .."
         "B-buffy?" Tara stammered, looking fearfully above the Slayer's head.
         Before anyone could do or say anything, their ears were filled with a watery rushing noise and a portal opened in the ceiling, sucking a struggling Slayer into it before it snapped shut.
         Willow, Tara and Gunn stared at the dripping point in mid-air where the portal had been, then slumped in their chairs, defeated.

Sunnydale
Thursday 6.30 am
         Cordelia reached for the juice container in the refrigerator door. Tired, bleary eyed and worried, she winced as a pain jolted through her forehead but put it down to lack of sleep. Only as she straightened did she realise her error.
         "Oh, no," she murmured, as her empty glass smashed to the kitchen floor while she tried to reach the breakfast bar. She knocked over a high-seated stool and fell with it, landing awkwardly on the tiles as the brain-burning vision seared into her head. "No!" she sobbed, against the pain and the images before her. "No!"

         Dawn awoke half an hour later, slamming her hand on the cheeping alarm clock and knocking it to the floor. Feeling dreadful, having gone to bed after midnight and being woken by Cordelia's nightmare in the early hours, she wondered how her sister managed so often on so little sleep. Then she remembered that Angel would be back later that day, with the key to the demon dimension they needed to bring Buffy home, and her spirits lifted. As she padded across to the bathroom, she noted that her sister's room was empty and smiled, hoping Cordelia was making waffles for breakfast.
         She heard the phone ringing, and quickly finished brushing her teeth when she realised no-one was going to get it. Frowning, she hurried into Buffy's room to lift the receiver.
         "Hello?" she asked tentatively, wondering who would call so early.
         "Dawn it's me," Giles said, an urgent tone in his voice. "Is .. is Cordelia there? Or Fred, perhaps?"
         "Sure," the teenager nodded, ignoring the urgency as it was so much his way of speaking lately that she'd stopped taking any notice. Moving the receiver away from her mouth, she yelled at the door, "Cordelia! It's for you - wanna pick up?"
         She and Giles waited, but nothing happened.
         "Maybe she fell asleep over breakfast," Dawn said. "She had a bad night - dreams and stuff. I can get Fred .."
         "Uh, yes," Giles agreed. "Perhaps you should. Get one of them to call me back, please. I'm at home," he added.
         "'K," Dawn said, and replaced the receiver.
         "Everything okay?" Fred yawned, emerging from what had been Joyce Summers' room and was now shared by Willow and Tara.
         "Giles called," Dawn answered, heading downstairs. "He wants you or Cordelia to call him back."
         Fred was reaching for the phone in the bedroom when Dawn screamed her name from downstairs. She ran, trying to dispel the imagined horrors she thought were awaiting her, and found Dawn kneeling over Cordelia's body in the kitchen. Fred swallowed, hoping she wasn't going to faint, and knelt beside the panic-stricken teenager to carefully examine her friend.
         "It's okay," she breathed, hand on the teenager's arm. "She's not .." She left the 'd' word unsaid, and gently patted Cordelia's cheek in an effort to rouse her. "Cordy?"
         After a few minutes, Cordelia came round, groaning, and wiping tears from her eyes as she sat upright on the floor. Fred handed her a glass of water and two painkillers, having guessed what had happened.
         "God," Cordelia moaned, stretching her neck muscles in an effort to dissipate the thumping headache which seemed to grip her from the shoulders up, "me and the PTB need to have a serious talk."
         "What - what was it?" Fred asked, almost afraid of the answer with Angel and Gunn being so far away. "What did you see?"
         Cordelia glanced at Dawn, and winced at the pain it caused her.
         "It's kinda jumbled," she told Fred, her eyes revealing the white lie.
         "I'm not a little kid," Dawn reminded them. "I'm the Slayer's sister. And - and I live on the Hellmouth. Don't hide stuff from me, please," she added plaintively.
         "It was just another 'Buffy versus the demon' thing," Cordelia told her. "You don't need the details. Has Angel called?"
         "No," Fred answered in a small voice, worried for Gunn and the others.
         "Giles called," Dawn remembered. "We should call him back."
         Cordelia got to her feet, carefully and slowly, and dialled the Watcher's number while Fred and Dawn began breakfast, ears attuned to the one-sided conversation.

Los Angeles
Thursday 8 am
         Nathan Reid paced back and forth in front of the huge window in his office. Lilah Morgan and Gavin Park watched him impassively from their seats on the other side of his desk, neither of them daring to take their eyes from the Special Representative of the Senior Partners. Both lawyers had arrived half an hour earlier, having been summoned curtly by phone. Lilah was pleased to see that Park looked as weary and wary as she felt, but she was confident that her feelings were better controlled. She was also pleased to note the surprise on Park's face when Reid had informed them that the Kravlar Key had been stolen: obviously Gavin had not known the key was formerly housed in their vaults.
         Both Lilah and Gavin had reported that their security measures were intact, and Reid now paced in silent contemplation of this, leaving the two lawyers to their own thoughts. Park was mystified - he'd increased and double-checked security before leaving the building last night, ensuring that human and non-human protection was in place, and knew it to be in place this morning, barring the four dead security guards downstairs. It seemed they were the only breach in the defences. Lilah wondered why he'd felt it necessary to increase security, and was chagrined to realise that his own project was so heavily secret that she couldn't even guess its nature. Her thoughts returned again to the woman she'd seen in the street just before Gavin's departure last night, but she couldn't voice her suspicions without revealing that she'd been spying on her colleague.
         "I'm awaiting confirmation," Reid said at last, stopping to stare out at the early morning cityscape, "but I think witchcraft may be at work here."
         Lilah gasped, feeling that her thoughts had been invaded.
         "Yes, Lilah?" Reid prompted, whirling around to face her.
         "Just - just surprised," Lilah said, recovering quickly. "Witchcraft is so old hat these days."
         Reid looked at her, his face a mask of anger.
         "It is not to be under-estimated," he warned. Then he sighed, and leaned on his desk towards the two lawyers. "But that's neither here nor there. We need to locate the key, and retrieve it. I trust you two will see to that."
         Lilah did not relish working with Gavin at the best of times. Under the present circumstances, it was the last thing she wanted. She cleared her throat.
         "I don't think we both .."
         "Lilah," Reid said menacingly, "humour me."

         Hrahek knelt before an elaborately carved altar, murmuring guttural prayers to a stone effigy in its centre. Dark stubby candles sputtered and glowed in the dim light, throwing eerie shadows over the demon's features and across the rocky floor. Moisture dripped from the stone-hewn ceiling, sizzling on contact with the altar and evaporating into tiny clouds of steam. Outside, the wind howled and occasionally the candles flickered as if they would be blown out.
         A few feet to the demon's left, Buffy lay on the ground and watched through slit eyes. Her feet were bound together, and her hands tied tightly behind her back. Her ribs ached, her bottom lip was split, and she knew she had at least one black eye, but she was the Slayer and would soon heal. The journey through the portal had once again rendered her unconscious, but she vaguely remembered the demon's rough handling of her and was thankful his anger had not resulted in her death. Yet.
         Hrahek laid his sword across the altar, and bowed his head, silent at last. After a moment, he pushed himself to his feet, turned, and disappeared into the shadows. Buffy's heart raced. It looked like she was in a cave, but in the feeble candlelight it was difficult to tell for sure. Beyond the altar, dark shadows closed in - there could have been walls, or long unlit tunnels, or simply a vast space beyond her immediate field of vision, but all she saw was pitch black nothing. She could hear nothing except the ever-present howling of the wind, and that sound was not very far away. She had no idea where Hrahek had gone, or what he was doing, and she would have little notice when he returned.
         Buffy tried to free her wrists from the rough rope that bound her, but to no avail: she couldn't even loosen the ties. As she struggled, she realised that both her wrists and her ankles were bound to thick metal hoops in the floor. With a sigh, she accepted that she wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon.
         Her thoughts turned to Dawn, and she wondered what would become of her little sister if she couldn't escape. She knew that Giles and Willow and the others - even Spike - would take good care of her, but she worried that dealing with so much death in so short a time would take its toll on the teenager, who was still barely coping after the death of their mom. And Buffy knew how deeply affected they had all been last time she'd died - how would they get through that again? And Angel ..
         Buffy shook her head, trying to push back the tears that threatened to burst from her eyes. A short while ago, taken in by Hrahek's lies, she'd thought he was dead and had been willing to kill anything the demon threw in her path to avenge him. Then she'd learned the truth, and had been so overcome with joy and hope that she realised - again - that she really hated not having him in her life. Dealing with her resurrection had pushed that to one side, even after their very intense meeting that time, but now she knew that Angel was another issue she needed to face, and resolve.
         Angel, and Spike - what was going on there?? - and missing Mom, and making sure Dawn was brought up properly, and getting a paid job, and still being the Slayer even though she'd died .. Buffy had so many things to deal with, on top of the whole 'why-couldn't-I-stay-in-heaven?' thing that gnawed at her constantly. Maybe Hrahek would put an end to it all. If she died here, beyond the reach of her loved ones, maybe she would finally be able to rest in peace.
         Buffy closed her eyes, and waited.

Part Eight

Los Angeles
8 am
         Angel staggered down the stairs into the hotel lobby, closely followed by Willow and Lorne. Gunn was on the phone, and it was obvious from his tone that he was talking to Fred, his voice dipping to an inaudible pitch occasionally as they confirmed their feelings for each other. Tara had just made a fresh pot of coffee, and busied herself with cups and spoons as Angel sat down in the office chair.
         The vampire strummed his fingers on the desk and watched Gunn, tension in his face as he waited for the call to end. Tara offered him coffee, but he declined. Glad of something to do, Willow accepted a cup, and Lorne took his as he hovered in the doorway. Eventually, Gunn realised something was going on, and he hung up.
         Angel grabbed the phone and dialled.
         "Giles," he said, knowing the Watcher would recognise his voice. "How soon can you get here?"
         Brushing aside questions on his welfare, Angel explained his plan - he wanted the portal-opening spell to be performed in the office, and either Giles or Anya were needed since they knew their roles in the spell and they could get to LA quicker than Gunn or Lorne could learn it all. Angel himself would take the fourth role: he was familiar with many spells, could easily master the language, and would be ready by the time the Sunnydale counterpart arrived.
         Willow had wanted to perform the spell as soon as Buffy had disappeared from the office, but Tara and the others had persuaded her to wait until they had the four people necessary to perform it correctly. She had phoned Giles, and although distraught that Buffy had been transported away again before he'd even known she was back in this dimension, he too had talked Willow out of it. The redhead had fidgeted and paced for almost three hours until Lorne had announced that Angel was awake; she'd then raced to his room to put her proposal to him. Tempted as he was, Angel understood the power of such spells, and knew that it was dangerous to attempt it without the proper components. It had to be right - Buffy depended on it.
         Talking now to Giles, Angel struggled to maintain control. The Watcher had told him briefly of Cordelia's vision, and suggested the vampire call the seer for a more detailed account, since Cordelia had been somewhat disorientated when they'd spoken an hour earlier.
         "I believe she's waiting for you to call," Giles added.
         Frowning, Angel agreed, hung up, and dialled the Summers' residence. As always, thoughts of Buffy and happier times wandered into his mind as he automatically keyed in the numbers, and he allowed himself a brief smile. Then Fred's voice brought him back to the present.
         "Hey," he said. "Is Cordy there?"
         "Where the hell have you been?" Cordelia demanded, having all but grabbed the phone from Fred when she realised who was calling. "I sent you a text message, hours ago!"
         "Text message?" Angel repeated, baffled. He was only just getting to grips with the temperamental calling facilities of his cell phone - texting was totally alien to him.
         "Never mind," Cordelia sighed. "Are you okay?"
         She told him of her dream, and was reassured to learn that only the Wolfram and Hart connection had been prophetic. Then she described her vision, trying to ignore the sharp intakes of breath in the kitchen behind her and on the other end of the phone as she reported what she'd seen.
         "Can I do anything here, to help?" Cordelia finished, keenly attuned to Angel's emotions.
         "Stay safe," Angel replied. "Just make sure you're all safe. We'll get the portal open here. Wait! Hang on." Aware that the major fighting and magickal forces were with him in Los Angeles, he suddenly realised how vulnerable he'd left them in Sunnydale. He retrieved an address book from the desk drawer, and leafed through the pages. "Get Wesley to ring this number - reinforcements if you need them - make sure he tells them I ..."
         "Why Wesley?" Cordelia asked, 21st century girl taking umbrage. "I .."
         "They're Stamkesh demons," Angel told her. "They-re - um - kind of - chauvinistic?"
         "You mean they're pigheaded?" Cordelia asked, musing over the porcine image that conjured.
         "No," Angel said patiently, "they don't acknowledge female equality. Or females, period. Just get Wes to call them."

Los Angeles
10 am
         Gavin and Lilah had been bickering for over an hour, and the elderly gypsy who sat in the centre of the vault had had more than she could stand. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes again and tried to shut out the two muted voices behind her. The task should have been simple, completed in minutes, but there were strong forces at work and she was having difficulty in finding what she sought. Add to that the constant interruptions to her concentration ..
         "We're on the same side," Gavin hissed, furious with Lilah for keeping so much information from him.
         "Really?" Lilah arched an eyebrow at him. "Seems to me you have your own side."
         Gavin rolled his eyes. They'd been throwing accusations and counter-accusations at each other all morning, and were still at impasse: Lilah was as reluctant to share her project as he was with his.
         "It is no good," the gypsy cried, sweeping her hand over the diagram before her to clear it of herbs and other items. "I see nothing."
         She raised herself fluidly to her feet, an elegant move for such an ancient body, and looked darkly at the two lawyers.
         "Someone hides the truth," she stated, noticing the discomfort in both young faces. "The artefact is hidden from me, protected."
         "You mean whoever has the Key has performed a spell to hide it?" Lilah asked inquisitively, glad that the gypsy hadn't read her mind.
         The old woman nodded.
         "Powerful forces," she said, obviously impressed by her unknown adversary.
         "Curiouser and curiouser," Lilah murmured. She cocked her head at Gavin. "Pay the lady," she instructed.
         "She hasn't told us anything," Park argued.
         "But we may need her services again," Lilah explained, as if to a particularly dense child.
         Once the woman had left, the two lawyers faced each other.
         "You know it had to be Angel," Park said, maddened by the time wasted with the old hag. "Why bother with all this?"
         "Following a hunch," Lilah replied cryptically, turning on her heel with a smug smile, milking every opportunity to keep Gavin guessing.
         Park watched her leave, shaking his head. Then he reached for his cell phone.
         "Cyril," he said with a smile. "Update me."

         Buffy stepped into the portal, feeling its wet shimmering sides close in on her. For a moment it felt claustrophobic and she started to push against it, but then it enveloped her and she was surprised at how warm and comforting it felt. She felt her feet leave the ground, and relaxed into the floating sensation that overcame her.
         She tried to open her eyes, but when they remained firmly closed she simply accepted it. She felt warm and safe, and although it was strange to be floating, she enjoyed it, like lazing on float-bed in a pool on a hot summer's day.
         Devoid of curiosity, she simply allowed herself to be carried by the portal, neither knowing nor caring where it would take her. She hoped it would take her nowhere, but just continue to carry her floating like this forever. Maybe it would take her back to heaven ..

Los Angeles
Noon
         With a final confident flourish, Willow completed the diagram on the office floor and quickly checked it. Although the room had been cleared of furniture, it still seemed cramped for such a difficult spell, but she was satisfied that she'd done a good job. She and Tara then placed candles and stones at strategic points on and around the chalk markings, following instructions in the huge leather-bound book Giles had brought with him.
         Giles watched the two witches, checking their actions against the book's directions, as he finalised the strategy with Lorne, Gunn and Kenjiin. Once the portal was open, Angel and Gunn would go through with the key, followed by Kenjiin. Willow had prepared a seeking spell, which she would perform through the open portal to locate Buffy. Angel would use that, and the key, to reach the Slayer and bring her back. Once in the Kravlarian dimension, Kenjiin could hold the portal open with his own magicks, hopefully long enough for Angel, Gunn and Buffy to escape. Lorne would take Angel's place in the spell ring as soon as the vampire stepped through the portal; he didn't have to say or do anything, but was needed to maintain the four integral parts of the spell.
         Angel sat in the far office, going over his role in the spell even though he'd memorised it hours ago. He needed to concentrate on it, otherwise his mind would keep reliving the images which had assaulted his senses from Cordelia's vision report. He had to put them aside, or at least believe that he would get there in time to prevent her vision coming true.
          "We're ready," he heard Willow say, and looked up at the redhead, who stood in the doorway between the two offices.
         Angel nodded.
         "Just waiting for the ladies to finish, then we'll get going," he said, inclining his head towards the main body of the hotel.
         Floating near the domed ceiling of the lobby, three female entities chanted softly in lilting voices, not in unison but one after the other as if their three voices were one. Willow had been itching to ask them several questions, recognising their power, but they had been up there all the time she'd been preparing the portal spell.
         "Will they be long?" she asked Angel.
         "No idea," he answered, moving around the desk to view her handiwork on the floor. The others nodded tensely at him.
         "Mmmmmmm, Angel," sighed three breathy voices, as the Transcuding Furies floated down to the lobby floor.
         He smiled at them, and they all but swooned.
         "We are .." one began.
         ".. done," the second finished.
         "Sanctorium sum," the third confirmed.
         "Thankyou, ladies," Angel said. "I owe you."
         "Mmmmmmm," they all sighed.
         "We will.."
         ".. collect.."
         ".. soon."
         The three entities shimmered, then disappeared. Angel found himself under the curious scrutiny of two females, two demons, and two jealous males. Embarrassed, he tried to shrug it off.
         "What ..?" Gunn began, eager to know exactly how Angel would repay the entities for the protective spell they had cast, which would keep the Hyperion safe from demon attacks while they were in Kravlar.
         "Not a chance," Angel shook his head.
         "Come on, guys," Willow said. "Portal time."

Sunnydale
12.30 pm
         Anya slammed the til shut and smiled broadly as she handed the gift-wrapped jar of snakes teeth to her customer.
         "Thankyou for shopping at the Magic Box," she said chirpily. "Please come again. Soon. We're open tomorrow. Have a nice day."
         The customer took her purchase and hurried out, casting backward glances at the unnervingly enthusiastic sales clerk who continued to smile encouragingly at her. As the bell tinkled to signal that they were alone again, Cordelia looked up from the book she was trying to read.
         "You might want to ease up on the customer services," she advised the former demon. "If you're too nice they'll think you're trying to flog them inferior goods. Just check out Sears - they're all over you like a rash in there. So I've heard," she added, not wanting to admit that she'd actually been into one of the department stores.
         Anya pouted. Humans were so fickle, and it was so difficult to please them all, or to find the line between nice and - not nice, or too nice. Things were much simpler when she'd been a vengeance demon - there were no grey areas when it came to visiting plague, pestilence and other horrors on the deserving .. Anya sighed. No point in dreaming of happier days, she was human now, and had to get on with it.
         She smiled at Cordelia.
         "You're a shopping expert," she said. "I can learn a lot from you."
         Seizing the distraction, Cordelia sat upright and pushed the book aside, ignoring Wesley's disapproving frown. She placed herself mentally on Rodeo Drive, and prepared to take Anya on an imaginary trip to the best stores, where the staff treated customers like royalty but without the hard sell.
         "Shouldn't we have heard something by now?" Fred asked, looking again at the clock behind the counter. "How long's it gonna take?"
         "Time moves in different ways, in different dimensions," Wesley reminded her, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. The young Texan nodded, remembering her long imprisonment in Pylea "I'm sure they'll call as soon as .. it's over."
         Fred nodded glumly, and turned her gaze back to the computer screen.
         Wesley was afraid to let himself get too optimistic. Demon dimensions were chaotic and unruly, and they had little idea what Angel and Gunn would be up against, let alone how long it would take them to find Buffy and get her out of there.
         They had received information on Kravlar from several sources, and were building a picture of the hellish place, but had learned little that would help speed up the process of rescuing the Slayer.
         He had as much faith in Willow and her spells as the others did, and accepted Kenjiin's ability to hold the portal open from the other side, but he knew all too well that there were too many unknown factors to rely on their powers completely. That was why he'd suggested that morning that Cordelia and Fred pass the time in trying to help him find - or devise - a way of sealing the portal in place once it had opened. He suspected it was possible, but so far they had not found a way to do it.
         They had several hours before dark, and could leave any vampire or demon activity to Spike and the Stamkesh demons, but Wesley felt a sense of urgency which he was trying to hide from the girls in his company. He and Cordelia had discussed her vision at length that morning, and both had agreed that time was a luxury they couldn't afford - in this dimension or any other. Dawn, Fred and Anya had been spared the finer details, but even they understood that it was a race they might not win.
         Cleaning his spectacle lens with a hanky, Wesley wondered how Dawn was getting on, trying to pay attention in school while her sister was missing on another world. He could only guess at how difficult it was for her to be the Slayer's sibling, and duty-bound to tell no-one what was happening. She had a harder time of it than Buffy, who had always had friends to confide in and share the horrors with; Dawn could not breathe a word to her own friends, but had to pretend she was a normal fifteen-year-old with a normal older sister. He shook his head. Buffy had certainly broken the Slayer mould - she had a sister, friends, lovers, and a social life, all the things denied every other slayer throughout the centuries. 'And no-one deserves it more,' he said to himself, with a sigh.
         "Earth to Wesley." Cordelia's sarcastic tone broke into his thoughts.
         He looked up, realised he was still rubbing the same lens, and replaced his glasses to look at Cordelia, who ticked her gaze across the table at Fred.
         "Think I've found something," Fred announced. "Look at this."

Los Angeles
3 pm
         Hrahek slammed his fist so violently onto Lilah's desk that pens and pencils were flung from their holders, and the phone bounced from its cradle onto the floor. Lilah flinched, and stared at the demon, not daring to retrieve anything.
         She understood the demon's displeasure. Things were not going well for Hrahek, who had originally agreed to attack Angel and the Slayer at their separate locations in return for Kenjiin, whom Wolfram and Hart had imprisoned. Now, Kenjiin had escaped, and was probably helping Angel to look for Buffy. The key to Hrahek's demon domain - deposited decades ago for safekeeping - was missing, and also probably in Angel's hands, and could end up in Kenjiin's possession. Hrahek's mortal enemy seemed to be getting the upper hand.
         He had returned to Lilah, demanding his Key in return for the Slayer, and had been shocked to discover that the girl was not the collateral he had thought her to be - Lilah had no interest in her, and neither did her firm. They didn't care if she languished forever in Kravlar - they had hoped Hrahek or his demons might have killed her in Sunnydale - and they certainly were not going to put extra effort in retrieving the Kravlarian Key in order simply to secure her, alive or dead.
         "We are trying to find the key," Lilah assured the demon. "But not because you have the Slayer. The key is the important thing - as is your custom," she added, not wanting to lose another client so soon after Kenjiin had .. taken his business elsewhere.
         "She is no use to you?" Hrahek pressed.
         "No," Lilah said. "Kill one, another replaces her. Except not in her case. She's jumped the line, one of a kind. Killing her won't make any difference to that." She saw that Hrahek's understanding was floundering. "We have no interest in the Slayer," she said slowly. "Do what you want with her. But we will find your Key."
         With a growl of frustration, Hrahek stormed out of the office, almost pulling the door from its hinges as he went.
         Lilah exhaled slowly. She leaned forward, and flicked the switch on her intercom.
         "Did you get all that?" she asked.
         "I did," Nathan Reid's voice confirmed.
         Lilah smiled, and began to tidy her desk.

Part Nine

         Angel and Gunn scrambled into the cave, both soaked to the skin. They needed somewhere out of the driving wind and rain to consult the key, and make sure they were still headed in the right direction. They had seen the trail of Willow's seeking spell zoom past this opening in the rocks, but had then lost sight of it.
         "Demon dimensions always like this?" Gunn grumbled, wiping excess rain from his face as he peered outside.
         "Pylea wasn't," Angel reminded him, opening the box that held the Kravlarian Key.
         "Well this place ain't on my 'dying-to-see-again' list," Gunn told him, remembering the sunshine and simplicity in Lorne's home world but not particularly keen to go back there.
         "I've seen worse," Angel said quietly.
         Gunn looked at him. He knew from Cordelia that Angel had been returned to hell by Buffy a few years ago, and by all accounts had spent decades there rather than the few months he'd been gone from Sunnydale reality. Gunn also knew that, as Angelus, the vampire had been capable of bringing his own version of hell to countless innocent victims. Not wanting to dwell on that, he peered over Angel's shoulder into the box.
         The Kravlarian Key was made from a rough surfaced metal, fashioned into a nine-inch blade, the top half of which was cross-sectioned with three different lengths of the same metal, like a cross with extra bars. At each point - top, bottom, and six edges - there was a different coloured gem, and at each cross-section intricate sigils had been carved with amazing detail. Lying in the box on a bed of soft material, similar to velvet, it glowed slightly, and three of the gems flashed with tiny sparks.
         "What's it doing?" he asked.
         Angel concentrated. Kenjiin had explained quickly how the key would work, and Angel was not in any particular hurry to test it. He was wary of anything that might bring his demon to the fore, and had a feeling that this key would do that.
         "Listen," he said, turning to Gunn. "You heard what Kenjiin said, right? If I go all demon-y on you, be careful, but .. I .. I think I'll be okay. Like in Pylea, remember?"
         "I remember," Gunn said grimly, hefting the axe he'd brought with him, and pulling a stake from his waistband as he took a few steps back. "But we don't know that, do we?"
         With a resigned sigh, Angel placed his thumb, middle finger and little finger on the three flashing gems. Something akin to electricity surged through him, and he cried out in shock but did not - could not - break his contact with the key. For a brief moment he vamped out, snarling ferally, but just as quickly his features returned to normal. He stumbled backwards into the wall of the cave, cradling the box in one hand while his other hand felt like it was being welded to the key.
         Gunn moved further back, stake and axe at the ready, and watched warily as Angel closed his eyes and slid down the wall. He sat there for several minutes, not moving, but Gunn did not approach him: lack of significant movement in a vampire did not mean he wasn't fully alert, and until he knew what he was dealing with - Angel, or the demon version - Gunn was not about to take any chances.
         At last, the glow from the box dimmed, and Angel lifted his hand from the key, clenching and stretching his fingers. He looked up at Gunn with a solemn expression.
         "That was .." he paused, and rubbed the back of his head. "Painful," he decided.
         Gunn continued to watch him from several feet away, maintaining a fighting stance. He hadn't met Angelus, but he knew the vicious vampire was a devious bastard.
         Angel stood up slowly, closing the box, and regarded Gunn with a mixture of hurt and understanding.
         "It's okay," he said, "nothing's changed."
         "How do I know you ain't Angelus?" Gunn voiced his deepest fear, jutting his chin out in challenge to mask it.
         "You're still alive," Angel pointed out.
         "It could be a trick," Gunn argued. "You might be plannin' to torture me."
         The look of shame on Angel's face made Gunn feel bad, but he had to be sure the vampire could still be trusted - his life depended on it, and so did Buffy's.
         "If you think I'm him," Angel said, holding his arms wide, "stake me."
         Without hesitation, Gunn threw the stake at Angel's chest. It pierced the vampire's skin just above the heart, but Angel had done nothing to stop it.
         "You missed," Angel said, wincing as he pulled the stake out.
         "Figured Angelus woulda caught it," Gunn said. "Had to be sure."
         Angel understood. He knew Gunn wouldn't apologise, no matter how uncomfortable he felt about his actions, but he felt his friend's remorse. However, he wasn't sure that Gunn realised what he could have been up against.
         "Your aim was off," he told his friend. "You'd have let your guard down, and I could have killed you."
         Gunn stared at him, and brought the axe into readiness.
         "Then I guess you still might," he said defiantly. "Bring it on."
         The vampire held wide his arms again, trying to prove he, rather than his demon, was in control. Gunn sighed, and took a leap of faith, recognising the no-win situation they were in.
         "So what did it do?" he asked, nodding at the cross, eager to move on.
         "Not sure," Angel admitted. "I know where to go, but don't ask me how." He massaged his forehead, closing his eyes in a frown. "And if this is anything like the pain Cordy gets from her visions, we need to get her some stronger painkillers."

         Buffy moaned as the tingling sensation swept over her again. It was like a very mild electric shock, not entirely unpleasant, and it was trying to pull her out of the portal. She didn't want to go. Eyes closed, she sighed dreamily and shrugged her shoulders as if that would make the strange prickling go away.
         Lulled into a luxurious sense of peace, she was still aware that she was floating and decided she was still inside the portal, but she was beyond caring: she just wanted to stay like this forever. She shook her hand petulantly, mildly irritated by the tickling little shocks which buzzed in her fingertips.
         Suddenly, she felt Angel's presence. She could smell him, that delicious tangy-sweet-powdery scent that she'd long ago wished she could have bottled. She smiled, and thought she was in heaven - she had always been convinced they would end up there together. She tried to open her eyes, so that she could look upon his beloved face, but they remained firmly shut. She calmly held out her hand, and was aware that tiny sparks surrounded her fingertips.
         "Where are you?" she asked, not alarmed. "I can't see you."
         "I'll find you," Angel's voice assured her. "Even if I was blind .. remember?"
         Deja vu trilled up the back of Buffy's neck and she frowned slightly. Something wasn't quite right. If she was in heaven, or at least on the way there, then Angel should be there with her. Why was he looking for her? Why wasn't he there with her?
         She felt she should be doing something other than just floating in this warm and comforting void, but she couldn't for the life of her think what it was. She sighed, and smiled in the knowledge that Angel would figure it out, and he'd be waiting for her when she finally got to heaven.

Los Angeles
3.30 pm
         Gavin Park smiled at the demon, and reached for his cell phone.
         "Cyril," he said, eyes on his client. "Stage three - make sure our team are there when they step through that portal. No loose ends. Understood?"
         He closed the cell phone, and reached for a remote control module.
         "Would you care to watch?" Gavin asked, indicating an array of small television screens banked together in the centre of his floor-to-ceiling bookcase.
         "Watch?" the demon repeated.
         "When Angel and Kenjiin return through the portal," Gavin nodded, pressing a button on the remote control, "we will retrieve the Key, and kill them both."
         The screens came alive, all but one of them showing empty rooms. The demon moved closer, squinting in the glare of the screen, and looked closely at the central image. He recognised the hotel lobby, and the portal which shimmered behind the wooden counter. He did not recognise any of the humans who sat near it, but they did not concern him.
         Hrahek nodded, and watched, and waited.

Sunnydale
4 pm
         Xander sat behind the driver's wheel of his car, scanning the students who poured through the school doors thirty yards to his right. He knew Dawn would spot him easily, but he liked to give her a cheery 'beep-beep' to let her know he wasn't just there out of duty. He understood more than the others how left out Dawn often felt. She had no special skills or powers to help in the fight against demons, and her over-protective sister didn't even like her getting involved in research. He himself had often felt like an outsider, and even a burden to the Slayer, since he too was just a normal human being. But, hey, having an ex-vengeance demon for a fiancee had certainly upped his points on the Zeppo scoreboard.
         At last he spotted her, amongst the final few who traipsed out into the sunshine, and his face fell. Dawn was dawdling, a scowl on her face as she watched her feet shuffle down the path, bag in one hand and almost scraping the floor.
         Xander hit the horn in two short blasts, and waved cheerfully at her as she looked up. Dawn raised her hand, but did not smile. She looked tired, and miserable.
         "Rough day?" Xander guessed as the teenager dropped into the passenger seat. He started the engine, and manoeuvred into the traffic.
         Dawn pushed out the side of her mouth and sighed.
         "I hate school," she stated.
         Xander nodded.
         "And that makes you different because ..?" he enquired, raising his eyebrows at her.
         "Because I can't tell anyone why I'm not paying attention in class," Dawn sulked, "and I don't get cut any slack cos my sister's in some demon dimension, and I haven't slept properly for a week. I just get extra homework or have to report to the Principal every afternoon. Everyone thinks I'm a freak. Responsibility sucks."
         "Dawnster, you're not a freak," Xander assured her. "I went through the same hell every day, and look at me - I survived." He smiled encouragingly at her, ignoring her withering sideways glance.
         "Any news from LA?" she asked half-heartedly. "I'm figuring 'not', cos - well, cos you don't exactly have 'yay she's back' face."
         Xander frowned, and sighed. Tough audience.
         "No news," he confirmed. "But I'm sure .."
         "Yeah," Dawn said without conviction, and stared out the window.
         Ten minutes later, they reached the Magic Box to find the door locked, and the 'Closed' sign hanging in its little glass window. Xander peered through the shop window, and tapped on it to get Anya's attention. She glanced his way, and waved a hand impatiently as if telling him to go away. When he looked closer, he could see that she stood in a circle with Wesley, Fred, and Cordelia, and there were candles on the floor.
         "What's going on?" Dawn asked anxiously, pressing her nose against the glass and shielding her eyes from the reflection on each side of her face. "What are they doing?"
         "Looks like some kind of spell," Xander answered uneasily. He knew Anya had had plenty of practice in certain magicks over the centuries, but didn't think the others were fully competent in such matters.
         Feeling the sudden absence of his teenage charge, he looked up to see Dawn heading into the alley that would take her to the rear of the store. He followed, and caught up with her as she opened the training room door. Not wanting to insult her, or further damage her bruised ego, he was glad that she made no noise, but tiptoed across the room to the door that led into the shop, and stopped to listen.
         Wesley seemed to be reading the spell out loud. Neither Dawn nor Xander could understand the words, but they could tell it was not being delivered from memory.
         "I think it's something to do with the portal," Dawn whispered. "That word - 'porta' - I heard that a lot when they were practicing the portal spell. And 'manere' means remain, or continue: Tara told me."
         Xander's expression told her he was impressed, and Dawn's spirits lifted a little. Wesley had finished speaking, and all was silent on the other side of the door, so they cautiously entered the shop. The others had broken the circle and Wesley, Fred and Cordelia were now seated around the table, whilst Anya was unlocking the shop door.
         "You almost ruined it!" Anya accused, as Xander went to greet her with a hug.
         "Not really," Wesley allowed. "A small break in your concentration, perhaps, but the spell itself was unaffected."
         "What's happening?" Xander asked them. "What's with the mojo?"
         "Trying to make sure the portal stays open," Fred informed him.
         "Is everything okay?" Dawn asked tremulously, almost afraid of the answer.
         Wesley smiled sympathetically at her, and stood up again.
         "We're in constant touch with Giles and the others in Los Angeles," he told her. "The portal remains open, and Willow's seeking spell appears to have entered the dimension successfully. Fred discovered another spell, which we've performed to insure that the portal will not close prematurely."
         "But they're not back yet?" the girl pressed.
         "No," came four resigned and worried replies.
         "But time moves differently .." Wesley began, hoping to assuage their concerns.
         "We know, Wesley," Cordelia interrupted, her face pale with fatigue. "We know."

Los Angeles
5 pm
         Giles removed his glasses, and rubbed wearily at the bridge of his nose. He looked across at the portal, which hovered behind the hotel's reception desk, and wished he could think of something to do. The waiting was interminable. And the lobby seats were probably the most uncomfortable ever made.
         He stretched to his feet, careful to make no noise lest he disturb the two slumbering witches who had curled themselves, head to head, around the rest of the circular seat. Leaning his head from one shoulder to the other, grimacing at the crunching he felt, Giles pulled his hanky from a pocket in his jacket and rubbed absent-mindedly at a lens. He wandered across the lobby to examine the contents of Angel's armoury, admiring the workmanship that had gone into the double-headed axes and ancient swords that were stored there. He was about to open the cupboard fully, to look more closely at the Chinese stars, certain that they were fifth or sixth century, when Lorne emerged from the rear corridor and raised his eyebrows.
         "Hinge squeaks," the demon warned him in a hushed tone.
         Giles nodded.
         "I've made tea," Lorne said, holding the coffee pot up as proof. "No bone china, I'm afraid, but it's pretty good - one of the more popular English brands, the store keeper told me."
         "Very kind," Giles smiled, suddenly desperate for a cuppa.
         They'd cleared everything from behind the reception counter in order to re-open the portal, and the cups and coffee machine were now in the inner office. Giles followed Lorne in there, and the demon filled two cups with what looked like very strong tea. Adding milk to his taste, Giles sipped at the hot liquid.
         "You drink tea?" he asked Lorne. He knew that few Americans partook of the beverage, wasn't even sure if Spike did, even though the vampire's human counterpart had been English.
         "Only socially," Lorne answered, almost apologetically. "Not good for the skin."
         Curious, and not entirely sure if the demon was serious, Giles was forming another question when something caught his eye. A tiny light, like a glow-worm, flittered across the lobby from the reception desk, and hovered over Willow's head.
         "Willow!" Giles called, heading in her direction.
         As she stirred, and lifted her head from the padded seat, the light spiralled above her, and then seemed to thrust itself into her head. With a startled gasp, Willow sat bolt upright, mouth open in a surprised 'o'. Giles crouched beside her, deeply concerned, and Lorne stood close behind.
         "Are you alright?" the Watcher asked.
         Tara sat up, half asleep, and looked up at them all, puzzled.
         "Buffy," Willow nodded, her face awash with emotions. "She's there, the locator spell found her. But - but - she isn't there. She's not - she's not - she's .."
         Her tear-filled eyes and trembling lip turned Giles cold, and he sank to his knees.
         "Dear God," he murmured.
         Tara drew Willow into a tight embrace, and the redhead clung to her, shoulders shuddering as she sobbed silently into her lover's neck. Lorne patted her gently on the back, and laid his other hand on Giles' shoulder, staring sorrowfully at the ever-shimmering portal.
         He wondered if Angel knew, or would ever know - would the vampire stay in the Kravlar dimension, eternally searching for his lost love, not realising it was futile?
         "Probably," Lorne decided. "We so need to get him out of there."

         Gunn stumbled over a clump of the strange purple grass, and fell to his knees. Exhausted, and not at all happy, he stayed where he was and watched Angel's retreating back for a few moments before hanging his head in an effort to calm his breathing. Harsh black mountains loomed above him to his right, and far off in the distance there was another, higher range. The wind and rain had stung his face until it was numb, and the incessant thunder had given him a headache. He was cold, wet, tired, and hungry, and not entirely confident that they were going to get out of this alive. Once his breathing was back to normal, he looked up again and saw that Angel had come back for him.
         "You okay?" the vampire asked.
         "Sure," Gunn replied, getting to his feet. "But I ain't got no superhero powers, you know?"
         "Sorry," Angel nodded grimly. "I just .."
         "I know," Gunn said, pushing the vampire back in the direction they'd been headed. He knew how he'd feel if it was Fred who'd been imprisoned in this nightmare place. "Let's go."
         Following Angel once more, it dawned on Gunn that they had been travelling in more or less a straight line - they seemed to go around bluffs and rocky clumps, and even mountain ranges, without actually changing direction. Angel had tried to explain the information he'd received from the key, but the closest Gunn got to understanding it all was that somehow Angel knew what to do and where to go, as if some instinct had been instilled into him. He knew better than to try and rationalise it - living amongst and battling demons on a daily basis had taught him to give up that human trait a long time ago - so he simply followed, ready to help Angel in any way he could.
         Angel forged ahead, hardly looking at his surroundings, but simply following his feet. He felt as though he was being drawn forward, as if his body knew where to go even though his mind didn't. And the further they went, the more convinced he felt that Buffy was near. The key had infused him with absolute certainty that he would find her, and take her home, and he followed that conviction unhesitatingly.

         Buffy opened her eyes, and saw Willow walking towards her. Her friend was crying, and did not seem to notice her. Buffy looked down towards her feet, and realised she was still floating, although she could feel the ground through her shoes. Puzzled, she looked up and called Willow's name, although her mouth didn't open.
         Willow stopped and looked at her, eyes red-rimmed and tortured.
         "Where are you?" the redhead asked, her voice catching with a sob.
         "You'll find me," Buffy heard herself answer, and the repetition of this conversation brought memory flashes to her mind's eye. She remembered previous dreams, and wondered absently if this was also a dream.
         Buffy watched as tears slid down Willow's cheeks, and she tried to move towards her friend to hug her, but she was frozen in place. She felt warm and safe, but could not move, and it puzzled her.
         "You have to find me," she said. "I don't think I'm supposed to be here."
         It was the first negative thought she'd had since entering the portal, and she felt something around her change: a slight chill, a mere hint of danger. She looked at Willow again, but the witch was turning away from her.
         "Find me," Buffy called, her voice sounding small and distant.
          Willow walked away, dissolving into the colourless void that surrounded them.

Part Ten

Sunnydale
5.30 pm
         Spike stormed into the Magic Box, slamming the door closed in an obvious attempt to knock the little bell off its bracket. He stomped down the steps and was heading for the training room when he realised the atmosphere was less jolly than it had been the night before. He paused, and regarded the trio who sat glumly at the table. They returned the look solemnly.
         "What?" Spike demanded, reaching for his cigarettes. "Don't tell me you're having a bad day - you haven't got the bloody Stamkesh tribe dossing with you. You have no idea .." He paused to light a cigarette, and looked around as he did so, and realised he wasn't going to get any sympathy. "Where's the li'l bit? She's usually here by now."
         "Xander and Anya have taken her home," Wesley answered. "We thought it best .."
         "Yeah," Spike agreed, "Slayer doesn't like her getting too involved in all the book stuff - What is wrong with you people? You look like someone .."
         He took the cigarette from his mouth, and looked at each of their faces.
         "..died," he finished, never one to be delicate in such matters.
         Wesley cleared his throat.
         "Willow seems to think .." he began, then stopped. No point in beating about the bush - the others knew the situation, and Spike was a demon, after all. "Willow's seeking spell worked, but she says Buffy isn't there. She seems to think she's no longer .."
         Despite himself, Wesley couldn't say it.
         "Spells don't always work the way you think they will," Spike said with a shrug. "She could be wrong. I mean, they brought her back, and - erm - never mind. She could be wrong," he repeated, hoping fervently that that was the case.
         Fred and Cordelia tried to look hopeful, but worrying about Angel and Gunn had taken its toll and they failed miserably.
         "So what you hanging around here for then?" Spike asked insolently. "Shouldn't you be heading back to Tinsel Town, to pacify our hero?"
         "They're not back yet," Wesley stated, his tone clipped in defence of the two girls' feelings. "We're staying here until they return, since Giles, Willow and Tara are there - keeping the balance, you might say."
         Spike raised his eyebrows, but decided against uttering his retort - getting in a fight with these three would be pointless, especially since he couldn't actually hurt them - he'd just end up feeling more wound up than he did already.
         "Well that's just fine," he said instead, "but don't get in me way when we're on patrol."
         He sucked hungrily at his cigarette, and strolled as casually as he could into the training room, closing the door behind him.
         Minutes later, they heard the unmistakable thump-clank-thud of the punching bag being knocked from its hook.

Los Angeles
6 pm
         Willow and Tara stepped close to the portal, hand in hand. Taking a deep breath, Willow squeezed her lover's hand before letting it go.
         "Ready?" she asked, and smiled at Tara's small nod.
         They both turned to face the portal, side by side, and closed their eyes. Then, as one, they recited the seeking spell, waving their hands in unison as they repeated the word 'reperire' and simultaneously sent a tiny spark into the shimmering gateway. They paused, breathed deeply, and opened there eyes on each other's faces, smiling hopefully.
         Giles was deeply impressed. He'd watched the two witches develop their magick skills over the last couple of years, and had at times worried that Willow was using the dark skills too often, but seeing them work in such natural unity was quite breathtaking.
         Having phoned Sunnydale earlier, and discussed Willow's experience regarding the spell she'd performed to locate Buffy, he'd persuaded her to try again; it had been Tara's idea to perform a double spell. They had at first planned to cast a duplicate locator for Buffy, but then decided it would be better to search for both the Slayer and Angel, since the two had a psychic connection - the spell might even enhance their chances of a reunion in the demon dimension.
         "Nice work," Lorne commented appreciatively. "Do you two sing?"
         "God no!" the girls exclaimed in twin horror.
         "Should they?" Giles asked, wondering if the Anagogic demon sensed something.
         "Hell, yeah," Lorne enthused. "If they're that much in tune they could make a fortune on the club circuit."

         As they rounded a small hill, Angel stopped suddenly. He scanned the horizon, and stared for a while towards a cluster of rocks and caves several hundred yards to their left. A small, squat building stood just beyond the rocky outcrop.
         "That's it," he told Gunn, nodding his head once in that direction. "She's in there."
         Gunn nodded.
         "You think it's guarded?" he asked. "Can you tell if we have a fight on our hands?"
         Angel shook his head.
         "You ready?" he asked.
         "Guess so."
         They didn't bother trying to sneak up on the building, but walked straight towards it, accustomed now to the wind and rain and thunder and lightening and the dim eerie light from the sunless sky. When they were less than ten yards from the building, Angel hesitated, and turned to look behind them. Gunn followed his gaze.
         Two tiny bright lights streamed through the air towards them.
         "How'd you know about them?" Gunn hissed. "Man, this psychic business is giving me the creeps."
         "Locator spells," Angel said, watching the sparks approach. He smiled as one hovered over him, and watched the other enter the building through a barred opening in the wall. "Let's go."
         Angel tried the first door he came to, but it did not open. Using Gunn's axe, he hacked at the handle to break the lock, and then kicked the door off its hinges.
         "Not going for the softly, softly approach, then," Gunn commented wryly, following the vampire down dark stone steps, the tiny locator spell giving them scant illumination.
         At the bottom of the steps, they reached a corridor which seemed to run the length of the building. Huge wooden doors lined the corridor, and the dank air was filled with inhuman groans and cries. Gunn shivered.
         Angel scanned each door in turn, waiting for the strange intuition to tell him which one to open. Nothing happened. Frowning, he opened the first door. A tiny, cat-like creature leapt at him, screeching, and drove its six clawed feet into his thigh. Stepping back, Angel grabbed the thing around its middle, tore it from his leg and threw it back into the cell. Gunn slammed the door shut.
         "What happened to your psychic gig?" he asked.
         "Don't know," Angel admitted. "Maybe it doesn't work with people."
         He stopped at the next door and listened. A low keening sound came from the other side, so he moved on. At the fourth door, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Buffy was in the cell beyond: he could feel her.
         He handed Gunn the box and his weapons, then carefully pushed open the huge wooden door, cringing as its hinges creaked. Gunn turned his back to the door, scanning the corridor in case someone - or something - came to challenge them. He heard Angel gasp, and glanced over his shoulder to see the vampire hurrying to the Slayer's body, which lay prone against the far wall of the cell, a tiny locator spark hovering above her.
          "Buffy," Angel said, kneeling beside her, listening desperately for her heartbeat or breathing or some sign that she was alive. Her face was bruised and cut, her hair damp and matted, and she was bound hand and foot, but she was alive - just. He quickly untied her, and scooping the girl into his arms, hurried out of the cell with Gunn at his back.
         They were halfway up the stairs when movement above him made Angel stop in his tracks. With lightening flashing behind them, three huge demons descended the stairs towards them, growling menacingly.
         Gunn turned and leapt down the steps, followed closely by Angel, and ran along the corridor to the far end, hoping there was another door there. There were more steps, leading up into darkness. Gunn knew they couldn't chance there being an unlocked door at the top, and turned resignedly to Angel, who had reached the same conclusion.
         The vampire carefully placed Buffy on the bottom step, leaning her against the wall so that she wouldn't slip or topple over. He placed the box on her lap, and took his axe and sword from Gunn.
         The three demons approached them cautiously, each of them wielding a huge lance. The one in the middle seemed distracted by the locator spells, which still hovered over Buffy and Angel, but the other two continued to growl at the two well-armed intruders.
         "We don't want to fight," Angel said, his tone implying that he was not afraid to do so. "We just came for .."
         He was interrupted by the demons, which pointed at Buffy and began to talk animatedly to themselves. Angel and Gunn exchanged looks, but remained ready for battle. Then the central demon pointed at Angel and said something that had very little consonants in it. Angel shrugged at him, clueless.
         The demon continued speaking and pointed again at Angel, then at Buffy. He made a sign in the air with his a long-taloned finger.
         "Was that a benediction?" Gunn whispered.
         "Hope not," Angel replied.
         "It looked like a cross," Gunn insisted.
         As the demon continued to talk and gesture, Angel looked over his shoulder at Buffy, and realised the demons were agitated not so much by the locator spells but by the box which he'd left on Buffy's lap. With his eyes on the demon spokesman, he carefully placed his sword and axe on the ground, ignoring Gunn's muttered curse.
         He stepped back slowly, so as not to alarm the demons, and reached for the box. They gasped, and seemed to tense, watching him in silent alarm as he opened the box. Knowing that Gunn was fully alert, ready to spring if the demons so much as twitched in their direction, Angel concentrated on the key, and imagined the lobby at the Hyperion. The stylised cross started to glow, and tiny sparks illuminated three different gems. He placed his thumb, middle finger, and little finger on the three gems, and felt the static surge rush through him.
         The three demons growled deeper as Angel's features momentarily transformed into those of the vampire, but they didn't move. Gunn watched them, tension eating into his shoulders, while Angel struggled to remain upright, leaning against the wall and bracing his legs to keep them from buckling under him. He groaned slightly, frowning in obvious pain, then pulled his hand out of the box and shook it, trying to dispel the fierce tingling sensation.
         Behind him, Buffy moaned softly. Angel handed Gunn the box, then turned and gently lifted the unconscious Slayer into his arms once more.
         "Follow me," he said quietly.

         Buffy tingled all over, as if her entire being was humming with mild benevolent electricity. It reminded her a little of the strange sensation she felt whenever Angel was near. She smiled. She knew he was close, she'd felt his presence long before the static buzz had returned.
         She turned her head, curious now about the journey she was making through the portal's void. She had no idea how long she'd been in there, but it didn't worry her: she felt it was where she belonged. She just figured she'd have been there by now.
         Except - Buffy frowned, and shivered a little. She thought there was somewhere else she should be, somewhere else that she belonged. It pulled at her, sending cool ripples through the comforting colourless embrace of the nothingness that enveloped her. There was somewhere else, where she would feel warm and safe and loved, another place, far from heaven. She didn't want to have to choose.
         The tingling subsided, and Buffy felt Angel's presence dissipate. She suddenly felt alone, and didn't like the feeling.
         She moaned softly, and reached out for him into the empty grey void.

Sunnydale
8 pm
         The dining room at 1630 Revello Drive hadn't been so full of people for a long time. Helping herself to a third slice of pizza, Dawn looked around the table and wondered what her school friends would say if they could see her now, and if they knew the backgrounds of the seemingly normal people seated at the table with her.
         Okay, so Xander was pretty normal, and most of her school friends knew him from the arcades and comic shops. And Dawn scored 'cool' points for hanging with him, even though she herself often saw him as her babysitter.
         Some of her friends might remember Cordelia from high school - they had sisters the same age, and Cordy's rep as high school princess was legendary - but they didn't know the woman she had become, or the gift of visions she had inherited.
         Wesley - mild-mannered and hesitant, and so very English - hid his hardened inner core well, and no-one would guess that he'd been a rogue demon hunter, or that he battled demons on a daily basis. Or that he could speak the weirdest foreign languages, and decipher ancient texts so old they made you sneeze. He was a mini-Giles, only more annoying, Dawn decided.
         She looked at Anya, pulling stringy cheese from her mouth with gusto, and wondered how the ex-Vengeance demon viewed the world. Dawn's friends knew her from the Magic Box - as they did Giles - and they thought she was kooky, but in a cool way. They would totally freak if they knew what powers she'd once possessed.
         Dawn glanced at Fred, who was chewing thoughtfully, eyes downcast. She didn't know much about the young Texan woman, other than that she'd spent some time in Lorne's dimension and it hadn't been a pleasant experience. She liked Fred, and knew she was immensely intelligent, but her odd behaviour sometimes creeped her out. She guessed her friends would label the young woman a schizoid.
         And then there was Spike. The vampire slouched at the far end of the table, regarding the feast with distaste as he sipped pig's blood from one of her mother's best china mugs. How weird was that? Her friends didn't even believe that vampires existed - or any of the other beings, alive or dead, that went bump in the night - and if she tried to convince them they'd label her a total mental case.
         Dawn sighed. Her school friends were cool, and funny, and completely on her wave-length, but she knew they thought she was a bit strange, and they also thought she'd inherited that from her always-in-trouble big sister. If only they knew ..
         If only they knew that her sister was the Slayer, a modern day heroine and champion of the world, saving the human population on a daily basis. If only they knew that, less than two years ago, Dawn herself hadn't even existed - she'd been created from some mystical energy, and imprinted on the entire collective memory as the youngest Summers. If only they knew that the Summers blood that coursed through her veins was there because Buffy had made it so, to reinforce their sisterhood when Dawn had been so desperately confused and lost and ..
         "You with us, Dawnster?" Xander's gentle elbow in her side brought the teenager back to the present.
         "Um?" the girl asked, mouth full of pizza.
         Xander smiled, and for a moment Dawn felt the flush of excitement that her long-established crush on him used to induce. But she was over that now: she knew he loved Anya, and would only ever see her as Buffy's little sister.
         "Tomorrow," Xander said. "Heading up to LA for the meet-and-greet."
         Spirits had been lifted by Giles's call an hour earlier, when he'd told them of the successful locator spells. This time, Willow had sensed Buffy's aura, and, although not strong, she was convinced that the Slayer could be saved. It was a mystery why the previous spell had given such devastatingly negative feedback, and they were still worried about Buffy's condition, but everyone believed that Angel would find her and bring her home.
         Dawn's eyebrows shot up. Tomorrow? How had she missed that? Not only an opportunity to skip school, but also a trip to the city, and, more importantly, a reunion with her sister. She nodded, quickly swallowing the cheesy dough.
         "All of us?" she asked, grinning with excitement.
         "Yeah," Xander nodded, pleased to see her so animated. "First thing ..."
         "Ahem." Everyone looked at Spike, whose 'forgetting something?' expression was met with puzzled looks.
         "Oh I see," the vampire said, getting to his feet. "Leave old Spike to mind the store, is that it? While you lot go off on a jolly."
         "No!" Anya cried, horrified at the thought of someone else in charge of her beloved business.
         "Speaking figuratively, love," Spike informed her with disdain. "I ain't no bloody shopkeeper."
         The two demons started bickering about the merits of independent trading, whilst the others watched in fascinated silence for a minute or so. Finally, Cordelia slammed her hand on the table, and everyone looked at her.
         "God!" she said. "I thought this place was weird when I lived here, but now ..." She shook her head, and frowned at Spike. "I can't even start with you," she said, "it's just ... off the chart, you being part of the Scooby gang."
         "Hey!" Xander said, indignantly. "He isn't ..."
         "Whatever," Cordelia said dismissively, hints of her old self coming to the fore. She turned again to Spike, and her tone was hostile. "You wanna come to LA? Do the old friends act with Angel? Be my guest."
         Spike looked at her with renewed respect. He'd always considered her to be a vain shallow airhead, and had wondered how on earth his sire hadn't broken her pretty little neck before now. Obviously, she'd grown up, and learned how to think of others, and he didn't doubt that she would stake him rather than let him upset Angel in any way. Which was another interesting factor ...
         "Angel won't have eyes for anyone but the Slayer," Spike shot back, knowing he'd touch a nerve with that one, and smirking when he saw his words hit home. "He's not gonna notice me."
         Cordelia flushed slightly, and clenched her jaw in an effort to quell the jealous and possessive pangs that the vampire's words had stirred in her. Fortunately the others hadn't noticed, but she glared at Spike as Wesley took control of the conversation.
         "If I may," he said, holding up a hand. "Common sense dictates that we can't all go. Firstly, Spike," he regarded the vampire with curiosity, "it will be broad daylight, which, I believe, still works against you. Secondly, we have Gunn's truck, and Xander's car - just enough room to ..."
         "Forget it," Spike said, losing interest. "Didn't want to go anyway - not over keen on seeing them two all over each other again."
         Only Dawn and Fred smiled at that, both young and naive enough to see only the romance - the others, for different reasons, had several concerns regarding any reunion between the Slayer and her former lover.
         Satisfied that he'd ruffled a few feathers, and shattered the happy holiday mood that had irked him because he was excluded, Spike raised his hand in a half-hearted wave and let himself out. He hoped that Sunnydale was over-run with demons tonight, because he really really needed to hurt something badly.

Los Angeles
10.30 pm
         Jayce drove past the Hyperion, and took the next turning.
         "'Sup?" Donny asked, knowing his friend hadn't simply missed the hotel.
         "Think they got company," Jayce answered thoughtfully. "Gonna sweep by again. Maybe head on in, a different way."
         Donny nodded, instantly alert without changing his body language. Jayce drove around the block and headed back towards the hotel from the opposite direction. Without slowing, he scanned the alleys and parked cars that he passed, and nodded to himself.
         He turned off the road, heading down another street, and pulled in at a 7-11 several blocks down. Behind it, a disused subway entrance provided shelter for the homeless, and access to the sewer systems.
         He used the store's payphone to alert Giles that the hotel seemed to be surrounded by demons, all placed in the shadows near doors or windows on the ground floor. Relieved by Giles' news that the hotel was protected against demon attack, Jayce nevertheless called some of his crew to meet him in the sewer system below the Hyperion, so they could provide reinforcements if the demons managed to get through.
         Following Donny down the slippery subway steps, Jayce glanced uneasily over his shoulder. He was fairly sure they hadn't been followed, but he felt as though they were being watched. In the gloom, he saw Donny lift the manhole cover and drop down into the dark tunnels beneath. By the time he heard Donny's strangled cry, it was too late, and he felt a white-hot pain in his stomach before his feet even hit the ground. A huge scaly-skinned demon grinned wickedly at him as it ulled its wide spade-shaped weapon from Jayce's midsection; Jayce fell backwards on top of Donny, and closed his eyes to block out the view of the weapon coming towards his head.

Part Eleven

         The three Kravlarian demons followed Angel and Gunn in silence. They still had their weapons, but Gunn allowed himself to relax once he'd realised they weren't going to block their way out of the prison, or whatever it was where Buffy had been held. At Angel's instructions, he'd placed the box holding the Kravlar Key on top of Buffy, and the vampire carried both effortlessly but with great care.
         Gunn couldn't help wondering why the demons were following them so placidly, almost reverentially. And he couldn't help imagining that it was all part of a trap, so he held his weapons in readiness. With the ropes that had bound Buffy, he'd slung Angel's axe and sword over his back. Angel was defenceless, and Gunn knew his first priority under attack would be to protect Buffy. He didn't like the odds, but at least he was prepared.
         Angel stumbled slightly, and the box fell to the ground. The demons seemed to hold their breath as Gunn quickly picked it up, while Angel righted himself and shifted Buffy to a more comfortable position. Gunn looked at the Slayer, worried that she was barely breathing, and her skin was a very unnatural shade of grey, but he said nothing: the worry was mirrored, if not magnified, in Angel's face.
         One of the demons pointed to the box, uttered a few words in its unintelligible language, and drew a large circle in the air in front of him. He then held out his hand, head on one side, as if asking for the box to be given to him.
         "Show him the key," Angel instructed.
         "Are you kidding?" Gunn demanded.
          "He knows more about it than we do," Angel pointed out. "It could save us some time." Gunn started to argue, but Angel cut him off. "Don't give it to him, just hold it up - if he means no harm, he'll show us what to do with it."
         "If he means harm," Gunn muttered, "he's dead."
         Reluctantly, he took the key from its box, holding it gingerly by the tip of the blade, and let it dangle in front of him. He handed Angel the box, and turned to the demon, axe at the ready. The key glowed slightly, and three of its gems sparkled in the dim light.
         The demon examined the key, careful not to get too close. Then he slowly stretched out his arm, and with a single claw he pressed the three intricate sigils which decorated each cross-section of the key. All three demons quickly moved to stand beside Gunn, ignoring his battle stance.
         Even amid the wind and rain and thunder, Gunn was almost deafened by the rushing watery sound that formed around them as a portal opened in the air above the spot where the demons had been standing. He turned back to Angel.
         "You really mean for us to go through?" he asked sceptically.
         "I don't think they'll do anything that would jeopardise them getting the key back," Angel answered, although he wasn't completely sure.
         "Is this one of your new psychic things?" Gunn asked. "Or are we clutching at straws here?"
         Angel looked at Buffy, then back at Gunn.
         "Pretty much clutching at straws," he admitted.
         The demons stepped into the portal, and disappeared.
         "Ask me," Gunn said, "we should let them go, and keep on our heading. We could be walking right into a trap."
         As he spoke, both the locator sparks spiralled away from above Angel's head, and disappeared into the portal. Angel stepped through without hesitation. Gunn sighed, and followed them, axe and sword held ready to swipe at the first hint of trouble.

         Buffy sighed, and snuggled her nose into Angel's shoulder. She loved the smell of him, and wanted to breathe in his scent for the rest of eternity. She lifted her arms to clasp her hands behind his neck, and felt his arms under her back and thighs grip her tightly to his body.
         "Hey," he said softly.
         She opened her eyes, and realised that he was carrying her, walking through the colourless mist of the portal.
         "Hey," she said, smiling.
         And then she frowned. Her eyes were open, she could see Angel, feel him holding her in his arms, and she could talk outside her own thoughts. It had been a while since things felt so real.
         "This is different," she commented.
         "Are you okay?" he asked, concern etched across his face.
         "I thought I was ..." Buffy stopped, not sure what she'd thought. Had she been dreaming, or really on the way back to heaven? Why did this feel real, but not real? She looked at him quizzically. "Is this a dream?" she asked.
         Angel considered the question.
         "We're in a portal," he told her. "You've been unconscious for a while - you had me worried. Are you okay?"
         "I will be," she answered confidently, and, deciding it was another lovely Angel-inhabited dream, she closed her eyes again.
         "Buffy." Angel shook her gently. "Stay with me. Look at me. Buffy!"
         She sighed again, and her head lolled back in the crook of his elbow as her arms dropped from around his neck. Terrified, Angel leaned his head close to hers, his senses searching for signs of life. Her heartbeat was faint, but it was enough to give him hope.
         Close to tears, he concentrated on mentally willing himself out of the portal...

         ... and stepped into the office space behind the counter in the Hyperion. Gunn was already there, but there was no sign of the three demons that had accompanied them. While Tara and Lorne looked on with relief, Willow clapped her hands in glee. Then their faces fell when they realised that Buffy was unconscious. Giles stepped forward and placed his hand gently on Buffy's head, his concerned eyes meeting Angel's.
         "Kenjiin?" Angel asked Willow, but she shook her head.
         "What happened?" Giles asked him, as Angel carefully moved around the counter, still carrying Buffy.
         "Don't know," the vampire answered, heading for the stairs. "She was like this when we found her. I don't think she's injured too badly," he added, "I think she's been drugged, or poisoned. There's a strange rash on her arm, like something's burned her. We need to figure out what it is. And we need to get Kenjiin out of the portal."
         Behind him Lorne and the two witches put their heads together, while Giles followed Angel and his Slayer up the stairs. Gunn lifted the phone receiver to call Sunnydale, but the line clicked dead as he put it to his ear. At the same time, the lights went out. The only illumination came from the shimmering portal.
         "Jayce said ..." Giles began. "Damn!"
         He told Angel and Gunn of the call he'd received earlier.
         "We dismissed it," he admitted ruefully, "because of the Sanctorium spell. But, of course, that doesn't protect us against humans."
         "Illuminae!" Willow cried, waving her hand at the chandelier that hung suspended from the huge dome above the lobby, and it lit up brightly. The lights on the landing glowed faintly, but enough to dispel any shadows.
         "Get her upstairs," Giles told Angel as he headed back down to the lobby. "Presumably, whoever it is will be after the key, not Buffy. Willow, Tara - anything you can do?"
         Gunn handed Angel's axe and sword to Lorne, and moved in front of the counter. There were several ways into the hotel, and the lobby was central to all of them. Giles opened the weapons armory, tossed a crossbow and several arrows to Tara, and helped himself to a broadsword and a small dagger.
         "Um .." Tara looked helplessly at Giles, not at all sure about the crossbow. "We.re expecting people? Not demons?"
         "Yes," Giles confirmed, "people who will probably try to kill us in an attempt to get the Kravlarian Key."
         "We can't just hand it over?" Lorne suggested. "You know, since I'm pretty sure none of us will be taking a vacation there any time soon."
         "Got that right," Gunn nodded grimly.
         "Let's just wait and see what they want," Angel suggested, hurrying down the stairs and taking a sword from the armory.
         "And who they are," Giles added.
         "I think I've located Kenjiin," Willow announced from behind the counter. "Shall I bring him through?"
         Angel nodded. With the portal closed, at least one source of danger or distraction would be eliminated. He joined Gunn and Giles in front of the counter, while Willow, Tara and Lorne remained on the other side. Willow was reciting a spell at the portal, which rippled as she finished. Seconds later, Kenjiin stepped through it and it closed behind him with a wet whoosh.
         Before anyone could explain to the demon what was happening, the main door of the hotel burst open, and five demons lurched down the steps towards them all. They were humanoid in appearance, but with pale green skin and dark red eyes, and each of them had long braided red hair, so dark it was almost black.
         "The Sanctorium spell is intact," Willow cried. "They can't hurt us."
         "They come for me," Kenjiin announced. "Not enemies."
         The demon picked up the Kravlarian box from the counter, and walked with it towards Angel. The vampire sighed, and regarded his ally solemnly.
         "They'll hunt you," he warned, "maybe kill you, to get that back."
         Kenjiin nodded once.
         "My world," he said. "Safe."
         "Safer than here," Angel agreed. He placed his hand on the demon's shoulder, and said two words that were not in any human language. Kenjiin repeated both gesture and words, and headed for the rear exit, followed by the five newcomers: the car park was out that way, and access to the sewer system.
         "You think it was them, killed the lights?" Gunn asked, puzzled, as he watched them leave.
         "Nope," Angel said with certainty.
         A small army of black-clad men swarmed into the lobby from the main entrance and the courtyard, all pointing sub-machine guns at them.
         "I think it was these guys," he said.
         Silence fell in the lobby for ten or fifteen seconds, and then Lilah Morgan made her entrance. She walked casually down the steps, glancing up curiously at the unnaturally lit chandelier, and stopped inches from Angel.
         "Let's not fight," she suggested, her eyes roaming from the vampire to his human and non-human colleagues. "Innocent people could get hurt."
         "That's right," Willow said ominously, her eyes dark as she glared at the woman. "They could."
         Lilah recognized the woman who'd performed the spell on the Wolfram and Hart building, and raised her eyebrows, nodding in respect.
         Angel remained impassive, controlling his frustration. Gunshot - even fully automated - could seriously hurt him, but wouldn't kill him. But his four human companions would probably die if Lilah's little army opened fire. He wasn't sure about Lorne, and made a mental note to ask him sometime.
         "What do you want, Lilah?" he asked, feigning weariness.
         "I believe you have something that was mysteriously removed from our possession early this morning," Lilah informed him enigmatically.
         "What? Like your soul?" Gunn muttered.
         "You know what I mean," Lilah told Angel through gritted teeth. "Give it to me, and we'll leave, no harm done."
         "If you mean the Key of Kravlar," Angel said, "it isn't here."
         "I can have this place ripped apart .." the female lawyer threatened.
         "Be my guest," Angel held his arm open invitingly.
         "You'd endanger these people's lives to protect it?"
         "You know me better than that," Angel countered. "It isn't here."
         Lilah opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by her cell phone, beeping in her coat pocket. Scowling with irritation, she flipped it open. Her expression changed to fury as she listened, and she snapped it closed with such force it might have crumbled in her grip. Taking in a deep breath and lifting her chin defiantly, she stared at Angel for a moment, eyes full of hatred.
         "This isn't over," she told him, and turned on her heel, gesturing the soldiers to follow.
         "I really think it is," Angel said quietly to her retreating back.

         In the sewers beneath the Hyperion Hotel, Hrahek and his minions battled against Kenjiin and his five followers. The long narrow box, holding the key for which they fought, lay in a muddy puddle, ignored for now. It glowed slightly, and tiny sparks flickered within three of its gems.
         Kenjiin, though smaller than Hrahek, was a stronger and more experienced warrior, and his followers out-manoeuvred the Kravlarian demons at every turn, but the battle was not simply about supremacy in this dank human-built tunnel - the future of two demon worlds hinged on its outcome.
         And, if Hrahek had his way, this human world would pay for its treachery, too. Furious with the entire Wolfram and Hart organization, he had sworn an oath to destroy them, and the humans they represented, once the matter of the Key was settled. He had left Gavin Park in a battered mess amid his destroyed office, television screens smashed and exploding around him. Had he arrived in time to meet Lilah's exit from the hotel, he would have ripped her apart. Now, he concentrated his fury on his long-time enemy and rival, eager to set his destructive plans in motion.

Sunnydale
Midnight
         Cordelia put the phone down, and stretched her arms over her head. It had been a long day. A long couple of days, actually, and made longer by her not-entirely-voluntary trip to Sunnyhell and the mixed memories that that had awakened.
         Glad that it was finally over, and she'd be returning to Los Angeles in the morning, she snuggled down under the duvet. She could just, barely, catch a scent of Angel on the pillow, and it brought a wistful smile to her lips. He'd sounded worried on the phone, speaking quickly and in short sentences, his mind obviously elsewhere, but at least he was back safely. No doubt all this - this whatever it was - with Buffy would re-awaken Mr. Broody Pants, but she could cope with that. She was thankful that her visions had not come true, and that everyone was safe. Heroes two, visions nil.
         And then it dawned on her.
         "Oh my God!" she breathed, reaching for the phone. Impatient, and almost frantic, she muttered 'come on!' under her breath while listening to it ring out. Finally, the vampire answered. "Angel, you have to get her back in the portal. No, just listen. Angel! Shut up and listen to me!"
         In her last vision, Cordelia had seen Buffy's death. Firstly she had seen her battling with several demons, and suffering injuries but not fatal wounds. Then the Slayer had been pulled from a dense fog, and it was at that point that Cordy had felt her death. They had all assumed that Buffy had battled the demons before Angel and Gunn had found her - hence the injuries - and that taking her out of Kravlar would cancel out the next part of the vision. Now Cordelia doubted that interpretation.
         "What if the fog I saw her in was the portal?" she said. "What if bringing her out of there is what's going to kill her? You said it was like being in a fog - remember? And in my vision, I saw her being pulled from the fog, and then she .."
         "But she didn't," Angel tried to reason with her. "She's still alive, Cordy. We think she's been poisoned .."
         "I'm not getting into the demon dimension time-thing argument with you," Cordelia countered, "but I'm very edgy about this, Angel - I've got a horrible feeling about it. I can't explain it, but it's way creepy and .."
         "Okay," the vampire agreed. "We'll try to re-open the portal. Do you think the cure is in there? Or in Kravlar?"
         "I don't know!" she said, frustrated at the lack of information her visions gave her. "I just know you have to get her back in there, soon, before she ..."
         Cordelia shivered.
         "Just be careful," she pleaded. "And hurry."

Los Angeles
Friday, 1 am
         As Angel stepped into the portal, carrying Buffy, both Willow and Tara sank to the ground. They were exhausted, and Willow's nose was bleeding. Giles and Lorne helped them to their feet, while Gunn brought two chairs from the inner office for them to sit on. Giles handed Willow his hanky, and watched the two girls with concern.
         "It's okay," Willow assured him, and Tara nodded tiredly. "Just a lot going on this last couple of days - kind of takes it out of us."
         "Willow," Giles said softly, "you .."
         "It's okay, Giles," Willow smiled, appreciating his concern. "It's under control; we're just tired is all."
         Giles wasn't in the mood to push the matter, but he worried that neither girl fully understood the powers they were dealing with, or the extent to which those powers could hurt them. Putting it aside for another day, another opportunity to have a quiet talk with them about magic and the responsibilities and possible costs of its practice, he gave them a thankful smile.
         "What now?" Gunn asked, nodding once at the portal, not happy that Angel had insisted on going alone.
         "We wait," Giles said simply.
         The five of them exchanged worried looks. Angel had called them together after Cordelia's call, and after much discussion they had agreed that ignoring Cordy's intuition would be foolish. Angel and Gunn had had to focus on an image of the Hyperion in order to return, and it seemed feasible that without that kind of direction the Slayer could remain permanently in limbo. Buffy had remained unconscious, and was getting paler and weaker while they tried to research what poison she may have ingested, or what spell could have rendered her so ill. It had not taken them long to prepare the spell to re-open the portal, and all they could do now was wait, and hope.
         "And pray," Tara added quietly.

Los Angeles
Friday 9.30 am
         Nathan Reid closed the portfolio on the table before him, and smiled at the six faces seated on either side of him. His smile lingered on Lilah's tense features, and he revelled in the ripple of power that her extreme discomfort gave him.
         "Naturally," he concluded, "we have retained all of Hrahek's deposits in part-payment of our fees and to cover some - security costs, and his portfolios have been transferred to Lord Kenjiin, as is customary in such circumstances. There is still the matter of the Kravlarian Key, but negotiations are already under way. All things considered, this matter has resolved itself satisfactorily."
         Five senior representatives nodded thoughtfully.
         "Thank you, Lilah," Reid prompted. It was not in recognition of work well done: she was being dismissed.
         Lilah forced a smile, and pushed back her seat. As she pulled the door closed behind her, trying to linger without making it obvious, she heard Reid's voice lower conspirationally.
         "Now," he said, "as for our other project .."
         There was a pause, and Lilah almost growled, realizing they were waiting for her to close the door. She pulled it shut with an angry tug, and went in search of some lesser being to take it out on.

         Angel stared at Buffy's face, willing her to open her eyes. He'd been holding her, and talking softly to her, for what seemed like hours as the grey mist of the portal swirled damply around them. He wasn't tired, but aware of the passing of time and Buffy's dangerous condition.
         "Buffy?" he said gently, holding her close to him. "Hey."
         When yet again he received no response, he carefully knelt down, then sat on the ground, and placed Buffy in a sitting position across his legs, holding her against him with her head on his chest. He gently placed his hand on her cheek, and was shocked at how cold she was.
         "Buffy?"
         Buffy opened her eyes, and smiled weakly up at him.
         "Are we there yet?" she asked in a whisper he could barely hear.
         "Where?" he asked curiously.
         "Heaven," she said with a sigh, closing her eyes.
         "Buffy look at me," he urged, his dead heart aching for her. He brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and touched her cheek again. "Buffy!"
         With obvious difficulty, Buffy looked at him, frowning slightly.
         "Listen to me," Angel said urgently. "We're not going to heaven - we're going home. Okay?" She simply looked at him, as if not comprehending. "Home, Buffy - okay? Dawn's waiting for you - they're all waiting for you to go home."
         "Home," Buffy repeated, her eyes searching his. She blinked a few times, and moved her head slightly to focus on his face. "Home?"
         "Come home with me," Angel said. "Please, Buffy. Don't leave me."
         Buffy frowned again, and struggled to get her mind straight
         "I thought .." she faltered. "I thought we'd be in heaven. You and me. Mom is there. I thought we were going there .."
         Angel hugged her close to him, almost wishing it could be so, and kissed the top of her head. Buffy put her arms around him, and held on tightly.
         "This isn't a dream, is it?" she asked in a small voice.
         "No, my love," he said softly. "You're sick, maybe poisoned, and we're in the portal. I need you to stay awake - you have to concentrate on getting out of here. It's not a dream. I'm sorry."
         Buffy sighed again, and, terrified that she'd slipped away once more, Angel moved her away from him so that he could see her face. Tears slid down her cheeks, and she looked at him with such crushing sadness that he felt like weeping too.
         He had seen that look before, when he had stolen her dreams from her in the past. One Christmas a few years ago, when he had tried to kill himself rather than endure the torment and temptation inflicted by the First Evil, Buffy had pleaded with him, begged him to be strong, sobbing in her terror of losing him. The following year, shortly before her Graduation, when he'd told her he would be leaving Sunnydale so that she could have a normal life, he had broken her heart. And later that same year, just after Thanksgiving, when he'd asked the Powers That Be to take back his humanity because he feared he'd cost her her life, he'd hated himself again for causing her so much pain. She would never remember the last incident, as time had been reversed to remove the memory from everyone except Angel, but the look he saw in her eyes now brought it all back to him in vivid detail.
         "I'm sorry," he said again, voice breaking with emotion.
         Buffy stared at his face, his beautiful dark eyes moist with tears, and smiled sadly. She sensed that this reality was only a veil away from the real world, and she so wanted to stay here, in his arms, safe.
         "Angel," she said, swallowing to hold back her tears, "I ..I .."
         "I know," he said softly, leaning forward to touch her face with his own, "I love you, too."
         They both closed their eyes, and held each other for a few long moments. Then Buffy reluctantly lifted her head away from him, and shivered.
         "Take me home?" she asked, knowing finally that heaven had to be only the place of her dreams.
         Angel nodded, and helped her to her feet. He pulled her into a tight embrace, then bent slightly and kissed her, gently at first and then more fervently when her passion instantly mirrored his own. Only Buffy's need for air pulled them apart, and she smiled tenderly at him.
         "I've missed you," she said.
         "Me too," he replied. "Let's go home."

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