A tall, older woman with bright green eyes brought a large tea kettle over to a large gray table, setting it down in front of Spike. Buffy was sitting next to him, Shavie, Grady and Gabriella filled out the rest of the table. Buffy smiled sadly at the woman.

“Thank you, Rhoda…you didn’t have to….”

“Hush now, Aunt Buffy,” Rhoda said, her wrinkled face smiling sadly, “You need to relax. Calm your mind…it will help us to focus on finding Brayden.”

Buffy nodded, and Spike wrapped his arm around her.

“What do we know, Rhodes?”

“Well,” Rhoda said, sitting down next to the blonde vampire, “I’ve pinpointed the dimension she’s in…her power has weakened substantially.”

Buffy’s face paled.

“Is she alright?”

“I assume so,” Rhoda continued, “She’s been jumping through dimensions for hours, probably conjuring things up…Natalia has probably simply fallen asleep.”

“When are we going in there? We need to get Brayden back and get rid of her for good,” Grady said, his eyes burning in rage.

Reaching across the table, Buffy slapped Grady’s face, her eyes reflecting the same rage his showed.

“Don’t you ever say that about her. Natalia is misguided but she’s still…she’s your sister.”

“Whom I’ve never met, and never care to,” Grady said, through gritted teeth.

“You don’t…you don’t know what she went through.”

Grady let out a mirthless laugh.

“I will when she kills Brayden.”

“Grady, that’s enough,” Spike said, his voice ringing out and silencing the group. “You’re not too old for me to take over my knee, you know.”

“Please, stop,” Buffy said, tears streaming down her face, “Bickering is not going to solve anything. Rhoda, please…just give us something else to talk about.”

Rhoda nodded.

“As I said, I’ve pinpointed the dimension she’s in, but getting there is the problem.”

Spike raised a scarred eyebrow.

“Why’s that?”

“It’d take all of my energy to send someone into that dimension…I’m not as spry as I used to be, Uncle Spike.”

“You’re still a young bird, poppet.”

“I’m sixty-nine years old, Uncle Spike. Hardly a young bird at all. At any rate, neither you nor Aunt Buffy will be able to go.”

“Why….”

“A dimension’s separation would kill the two of you. Claim can’t withstand it…you both’d be dead before one of you even arrived in her dimension. I have to open the portal soon before her defenses are up…we’re running out of time.”

“Open it,” Buffy said, her stoic nature taking over her emotions for the moment.

Rhoda commenced in chanting and sprinkling herbs around the room, and, in a few moments, a glowing fire red portal opened up in the kitchen. She sat down, shakily, in a chair, her breath ragged and eyes dimmed. After placing a glowing crystal on the table, she sighed.

“Whoever goes…break this when you have Brayden and you’ll return here…oh…oh, I’m sorry, I have to…my head…,” Rhoda said, trailing off as she nearly swooned in her seat.

Buffy placed a steaming mug of tea before Rhoda and got a cool compress from the freezer to press against her head.

“So,” Spike said, cautiously, “Who’re we sending?”

“I’ll go,” Shavie offered, her purple eyes full of unshed tears. “If I don’t return, it won’t be a loss for you…you’ve lost too much already.”

Buffy laid a comforting hand on Shavie.

“Shavie, if you didn’t come back…we would lose you. You’re like another daughter to Spike and I…don’t talk like that, please.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Buffy.”

“I’ll go, Mom,” Gabriella said, her eyes brimming with determination.

“Gabby,” Buffy said, her eyes widening. “You can’t. If anyone could handle it, it would be Shavie. She’s at least trained as a Slayer…you’re not as strong as she is…you….”

Rhoda cleared her throat.

“It’s not important now.”

Buffy turned her attention to her niece.

“What? Why?”

Rhoda pointed at where the portal had been, where the crystal had been resting, and where Grady had been standing.

“Your son already made that decision for you.”

--

Grady’s body was wracked with pain as he was catapulted through a dimensional vortex. He landed with a thud on what felt like concrete. Looking up, he saw he had landed on a walkway of what appeared to be a castle nearly identical to the one his parents had shown him pictures of. He calmed himself for a moment, focusing his trained senses on his surroundings. Picking up the faint wail of an infant, he ran up the stairs and into a tall and somewhat ominous-looking tower. He hoped what awaited him wasn’t so terrifying as he assumed it would be.

--


“This is just great, Spike,” Buffy said, throwing a pillow at him as they stood in front of the guest room bed Rhoda had made up for them.

Spike threw his hands in the air.

“Me? What’s this got to do with me, pet?”

“Your impulsivity! It transferred into our kids!”

“You’ve got to be bloody kidding me!”

“What? Why is it so crazy to assume that it’s your fault?!”

“Because, love, you’re just as bloody impulsive as I am!”

“That’s not true! I’m very stable.”

“Yeah. You’re just as flighty as you were when you were in your forties, pet.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re no different than you were in your forties.”

“Oh, so after menopause I stayed the same pain in the ass that I’ve always been? Is that what you’re saying?”

“You haven’t even hit menopause yet, may I remind you of the two-month old we have! And gods help me when that bloody boat comes in!”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that as soon as you hit that dreadful peak, please stake me so I can have at least two minutes of peace before I continue in the eternity of nagging I’m sure to endure.”

Buffy scowled at him for a moment before he pulled her into his arms. She laid her head on his chest and sighed.

“Thank you.”

“For what, love?”

“Helping me forget for a few minutes.”

“It’s my job, love.”

“I know…I’m just so worried about Brayden…and Grady too, now. Oh, I wish he wasn’t so impulsive. Loves someone so much he rushes into things without thinking.”

“Reminds me of another person I knew, love.”

“Me?”

Spike shook his head as he hugged his mate tightly.

“The Whelp. Always thinking with his heart, not his head. You learned that lesson from him, yeah? Taught it to our kids…they’re better for it.”

“Evan isn’t…and Natalia has gone mad and she’s going to kill Brayden and Grady, I just know it.”

“Have a little faith, love,” he said, scooping her up and laying her down in the guest bed. “She’ll realize everything…I know she will.”

“And what if she doesn’t? We’ll have lost four children then. How will we ever get through that? How will Gabriella cope? And Chloe? She…she loves her little brother so much and I….”

Buffy broke down, sobbing, and all Spike could do was sit and hold her, wishing to the gods that there was something they could do.

--

Chloe sat in her bedroom, her stuffed white rabbit clutched closely to her chest. This was unacceptable, she thought.

Brayden is supposta be here with me…I wanna play. This is not fun.

Chloe concentrated for a moment and picked up Brayden’s life force. Her powers were strong, if not stronger than Brayden’s, but she had been born with a much more advanced mind than others who had her gift, and she concealed her abilities shortly into her first year of life. With Kira sitting on the other side of her room, asleep, Chloe focused her mind on Brayden and popped out of existence in her room. She jaunted into Natalia’s chosen dimension without a glitch, and padded her way up to the room in which she knew her eldest sister and youngest brother were staying.

--

Natalia woke suddenly when she sensed an intruder in her castle. Brayden was wailing in his crib, so she filled a bottle of milk for him and heated it up with a flick of her wrist. She scooped him up and fed him, bouncing his little body in her arms, while simultaneously checking out all of the windows in the room. She calmed her mind and focused her energy on finding the intruder.

“There’s no need for that, I’m right here,” Grady said, trying desperately to appear menacing.

Natalia opened her eyes and scowled at him.

“I assume you’re another sibling of mine…you look just like Mummy…what’s your name, poppet?”

“Grady.”

“And why are you here, Grady? I can sense you hate me…but why? You don’t even know me. Or what our Mummy has done…what she will do to him,” she said, motioning to the bundle in her arms.

“Please, just give him back. I won’t do anything…we won’t do anything to catch you or make your life miserable…just, please…give him back. It’s killing Mom and Dad.”

“I hope it does. Then they can go into eternity together, alone, just like they always wanted.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They never told you?”

“About what happens if they die? Sure they did.”

“You never thought it was exactly what they wanted? To be left alone, just the two of them, for eternity? It’d be Mummy’s heaven, that’s for certain.”

“They love us. They love you, God knows why.”

Natalia faltered at his words, but quickly regained her composure.

“What they say and what they do are two entirely different things.”

“I’m sorry that you watched Evan die, but it was an accident…a goddamn dragon killed him! There was nothing anyone could have done!”

“That’s a lie!”

Natalia set Brayden back in his crib as her eyes began to fade into an intense purple. The smell of burning violets began to waft through the air as her body slowly began to turn into an amethyst flame.

“You are no brother I know, so I shall have no problem in ridding the world of your filth!”

As she began to center her power, a tiny voice shook her core.

“Umm,” Chloe said, her voice not wavering for a moment, “Are you guyses done fightin’ now, because I wanna take Brayden home. It’s past our bedtimes and if we don’t get to bedtimes on times, we don’t get stories and it’s not fair.”

Natalia tried to build her rage again and heaved a ball of fire at Grady. With a point of her pinky finger, Chloe stopped the flaming ball in midair and turned it into hundreds of bubbles. Brayden giggled in his crib as they floated around him. They swirled and mixed, causing larger bubbles to form, and enveloped Brayden, Chloe, Grady, and Natalia. Chloe yawned and nodded her head, and the bubbles popped, sending the group back into Rhoda’s kitchen, where a very taken aback Gabriella was caught sneaking a hunk of cake from the refrigerator.

“Mom! Dad,” she screamed, as the group before her tried to get their bearings.

When Natalia attempted to do anything, Chloe would scowl at her and wag a finger, binding her powers for the moment. Though she was too strong to be bound for much longer than a quarter of an hour, Chloe could still manage to keep her eldest sister’s powers at bay for a brief period of time. Spike and Buffy ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, fully expecting to be greeted with some misfortune. When they saw Natalia and Brayden, they stopped dead in their tracks. Chloe smiled up at Spike and pulled on the edge of his nightshirt.

“Daddy? Can I have a glass of chocolate milk? I’m thirsty."