"What medicine?" Angel asked again, when Wil didn't answer.

"Drink your blood," Wil replied, still smiling. The blonde followed his own advice, sipping warm blood absently whilst staring over Angel's shoulder.

"Wil," Angel muttered, also drinking his blood. The vampire in question simply finished his meal and washed out his mug. Angel was just cleaning his own cup when Wil left the kitchen without a word. Angel quickly dried his mug and chased Wil, who was already most of the way up the stairs.

"In a hurry?" Wil asked, as Angel caught up to him on the landing. The younger vampire continued on towards his and Angel's apartment, feeling just a bit mischievous.

"I want to know what you were talking about," Angel pressed as he walked into their living room. The dark vampire wanted Wil to talk, to tell him what it was that made him less evil, that... well, actually, Angel just wanted to be difficult and pull Wil's chain a bit, but he wasn't about to tell *Wil* that. No, he wanted to see Wil get frustrated.

Wil closed the door, flicking the lock into place. "Medicine?" He murmured. "Oh, that."

"Well?" Angel said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Wil slowly approached Angel, blue eyes wide and shining. The older vampire wasn't expecting Wil to embrace him, to rest his head against Angel's shoulder and sigh so sweetly. "You."

Angel frowned. "Me?" He murmured, confused. Wil pulled back a bit, tilting his head up to look at Angel. Then soft lips brushed Angel's jaw, his cheek and finally his mouth. Those icy eyes slid shut as Angel automatically deepened the kiss, searching for the core of Wil's being that must be hidden somewhere in that sinful mouth.

When Angel pulled back, breaking the kiss, Wil moaned with loss. "Explain," Angel demanded.

Wil, eyes still closed, sighed again. "You're my medicine," He whispered. "You make me good." Angel's arms came up to grasp Wil, holding him in place.

"Your soul--"

"Tells me not to hurt people," Wil interrupted harshly. "But that alone doesn't make me not evil, just not a murderer." The dark vampire found himself held more tightly as Wil's face contorted with the effort of intense thought. "You... you make me want to be good. What we've got, this whatever-it-is that makes us whole when we're together, *that* makes me want to be good."

Angel wanted to say something, to ask for more, an explanation. However, the vampire found his voice paralyzed as Wil struggled to continue.

"I need you, Sire and lover; I need your voice in my ears and in my soul, your hands on my body. When you cover me, push me down and use your body to hold back the world, I feel whole and safe and loved. You..." Wil paused briefly, wondering why this was so hard, how a lighthearted comment had led so quickly to this painful admission. "You're this light, this very-there perfect *thing* that's good, so damned good and... when you're with me I can think that maybe, in some tiny way, The Powers think I've got a shot at making it right. They let me be with you, and you're--"

"I'm just me," Angel said, not sure where the floor was for the tumult of feelings that swamped him. He pushed Wil backwards towards the bed, where they would both be more comfortable if they fell, which was a distinct possibility. He wasn't good, wasn't anything worthy of such words. But Wil had said them, had pulled some of his precious prose from deep inside, and those words were... nothing like what Angel had been expecting, had never thought that they even existed, but...

"Yeah, you're you," Wil agreed, eyes still shut. "And that's just it. *You* are... everything. You were my beginning, my first-last breath, my alpha and omega moment in one embrace. The first thing I saw on my first night, the last thing I want to see at my last dawn. My end, whatever lies in between."

"Wil..." Angel groaned, broken by his childe's admission. He couldn't bear this, to be this part of Wil's life. It was too much, to be that important.

The blonde vampire shuddered, sinking down onto the soft bed, bringing Angel with him. "You hold my soul, keep it safe and loved, hidden in your heart. I... when you touch me I can feel it, feel what you are, all through my body. That's the medicine, Angel. Even the slightest caress, every meaningless glance... like a balm, soothing away the sin, the hatred, the violence. Making me good like I never was before."

"I--" Wil stopped Angel's words with his mouth, kissing him with ferocious tenderness. Slender hands pulled at Angel's clothes, desperately searching for familiar yet always-exciting skin. Angel's mind struggled briefly before agreeing with his body that this was a good thing, to let Wil's sudden passion overtake them. Soon strong, broad hands joined Wil's in shedding silken armor, wanting nothing more than to seek out the more honest, naked truth of flesh that was hidden beneath those hated layers. Artifice in the form of cotton and leather was ripped away, split by greedy, truth-seeking fingers as desperately-wanting lips and tongues begged and pleaded, for what, they did not know.

"Pure," Wil whispered as Angel pulled them tight together, meshing ropy muscles, steely bone and liquid-smooth skin, making one tangled creature who was reaching for surrender. "You..."

"Shh," Angel hissed, letting their bodies slide together in a sinuous grip-and-pull of friction.

"Mine," Wil continued, clinging even more tightly to Angel. He could feel it, his soul, just there in Angel's heart, tendrils of its purity reaching out for him. Pleasure, the tantalizing pressure of Angel's cock against his own, just made everything that much more clear. This was not their reward for serving The Powers, not an indulgence granted to them by their supreme masters. No, this was part of their penance, their ever-striving work towards redemption. Each time they came together a flake of their past was chipped away. Each innocent touch, every shattering climax, all reached and taken and given in equal measure to both Sire and childe, wiped away a trace of the sin that had been their former lives. This was his medicine. "Love you," Wil gasped, panting as Angel's soul called for him to find its mate.

Angel ground his hips into Wil's, driving them closer and farther until neither could speak. Every word that fell from Wil's lips was like a brand on his flesh, burning into him. He twisted them more, until each man weighted the other down onto the bed. He felt weightless; the ethereal strength of his childe's love lifted him into the heavens even as it made his body shake and tense up. The feel of Wil's fangs scraping against his neck made Angel's jaw drop and he quickly turned to give back such an ecstatic sensation, wanting nothing more than to sense his childe tumbling into oblivion. Ivory split silk as Sire and childe joined yet again, feeding and fed, giving only to be taken.

The orgasm that swept through Wil's body seemed to flow right into Angel's, carrying both vampires into rapture even as their minds and souls sighed in completion. Only when the last drops of seed had been spilled did time begin again, and both Wil and Angel promptly passed out.

...

Cordelia sat bolt upright in the bed, thrown into consciousness by some strange-- "The cubs!" She yelled, punching Gunn in the arm. "Get up, they're in trouble!"

Gunn blinked groggily as his wife darted out of bed, pulling on a robe as she headed out the door. Once what she'd said had sunk in, he followed suit, running down the hall towards the cubs.

"Mommy!" Thalia cried as Cordelia entered the room. She found all five cubs huddled in one bed, piled on top of each other. There wasn't a dry eye amongst them. As soon as she neared the bed, they all launched themselves at her. Gunn got there just in time to catch Fran and Mischa, while Cordelia got the others. They settled back on the bed and tried to get the cubs calmed down enough to tell them what had happened.

"It's ok, Mommy's here," Cordelia murmured soothingly as Julian cried into her shoulder. Thalia and Rhiannon huddled in her other arm, grasping her robe tightly. "Was it a bad dream?"

Fran nodded, smearing tears all over Gunn's arm. "Bad dream."

"Who had the bad dream?" Gunn asked his son. "Did you have it?"

"I did," Mischa whispered.

"Did it scare you, when Mischa told you about it?" Cordelia asked Thalia. To her surprise, the little girl shook her head.

"I had it too," Thalia replied.

"We all had it," Julian told his parents with a wail. The cubs began to cry harder, obviously remembering the dream all over again.

"Tell me about it," Cordelia asked gently. "Then it won't be so scary."

Rhiannon caught her breath first and began. "It was Aunt Buffy," She choked out.

"Did something happen to Aunt Buffy?" Cordelia inquired.

"She was scared," Mischa continued.

"Then she was bleeding," Thalia said.

"So was Aunt Dawn!" Julian insisted. "Both of them. There was this man. Like Jelly."

Gunn frowned. "Like Angel? How?"

"Vampire," Mischa answered. "But mean. And our Aunties died!"

"But not forever," Fran whispered. "They don't die forever, right?"

"They got killed!" Rhiannon screamed. "And there was blood!"

"It hurt them lots!" Julian said. "They were in this dark place and alone and then they were dead!"

"For a while," Fran murmured, huddling in his father's arms. The children fell silent and Cordelia and Gunn continued to hold them until they fell asleep again. As Cordelia had predicted, telling the adults about what they'd seen had made it less scary. Once all five were peacefully resting, Gunn and Cordelia tucked them back into their beds and retreated.

"They all had the same dream," Gunn said worriedly.

"Do you really think so?" Cordelia asked. "It could have been just one of them, and it scared the others."

Gunn shook his head. "No, they were... all reliving it like they'd all seen it together."

"Yeah," Cordelia admitted. "And it was a doozy. Sounded kind of like one of my..." Her voice dropped off as something very awful occurred to her.

"What?" Gunn asked. "Like what?"

"Oh gods," The seer whispered as she slid to the floor, hands clutched together. "No!" This was not happening. Her children had *not* inherited her visions! The werewolf closed her eyes tightly and banged her head against the wall. How could they have not thought of this? Had her babies, her precious cubs, gotten some sort of... sensitivity from her? The thought that maybe this horrible thing had come from her, passed through the walls of her womb along with all the life she'd given them, was horrifying. No, she couldn't have possibly given her babies her visions, not even a tiny bit of them.

Or had she? Glimpses of her cubs' past came back to her. There had been incidents... like when the cubs had reacted badly to the witch, or when later that night they'd all had...nightmares and had needed comforting. The cubs had always been good at knowing how things would turn out, although that didn't mean they were always happy about the outcome. More than once they'd seemed to work together to get their adult caretakers to do something. Had that been because of some dream they had? Were there many other times they'd dreamed the same thing? Were they all bad, or was it just the awfulness of this one that had gotten their parents' attentions?

Gunn crouched down next to Cordelia. "You're scaring me here, Delia," He began quietly. "What is it?"

Cordelia looked up at Gunn. "Charles? Am I a bad mother?"

Gunn's face screwed up with confusion. "Huh? A bad mother? NO! You're the best mother in the world. Where did *that* come from?" He wasn't following Cordelia at all. Maybe the stress of seeing her babies all upset had gotten to her.

"They all had the same dream," She commented. "The exact same dream. At the same time." /No, not a dream. Dreams were pretty things, dogs and cats and flowers and chasing cotton-candy clouds. Dreams were sex and love and seeing how perfectly beautiful your cubs would be when they were all grown up. Dreams... Dreams were what the cubs had been when they were still nothing more or less than a swelling in her middle. What her precious babies had suffered was a nightmare. Dark, ugly, scary. Nightmares. Prophetic nightmares./

"Yeah," He said slowly.

"Charles?" She began again. He was going to hate her, despise her. How could he not? She'd cursed their babies. It would have been more humane of her to just kill them when they were born than to subject them to such a fate. Oh, if she was right she knew that the nighttime visions didn't physically hurt her cubs, but the images... She could only bear them because of many years of experience, and they still got to her. But her cubs were babies, just little kids. They didn't understand death and suffering. Still, they'd seen it--and not just anyone's future harm, but that of friends. Of Buffy and Dawn. /Oh gods, how do we tell them? 'Hey, Buffy, got some news. The cubs had this dream where you and Dawn die.' That would go over *so* well./

"Hmm?" He murmured, reaching for his wife. She let him hold her close, needing the security of his strength.

"What if I gave our babies my visions?"

*****
Part 4:

"So let me get this straight," Lorne muttered, staring up at the ceiling. "You want me to read the cubs." Why did shit happen to him? Was it happiness? Hmm? The green demon silently questioned whatever deities resided in ceiling plaster. /Buffy. That's it, you're making me pay for finding someone who loves me. Well, I think it sucks!/

Cordelia pursed her lips and nodded. "They had a prophetic dream, Lorne. I..." She couldn't continue, obviously distressed by the very idea of her children having inherited her... talents.

The green demon nodded. "Alright, let's go," He said, waving his hand towards the club. Inside were the other occupants of the hotel, entertaining five obviously recovered children. They didn't look like people who had suffered horrible nightmares, but as Lorne had seen before, children could be very resilient creatures.

"They've got to sing," Xander stated. "Thalia? Siobhan? What do you want to sing tonight?" He crouched down next to the children, who were not looking all that enthused about the attention they were getting.

The two girls looked at each other, frowning. "Don't wanna sing," Thalia stated firmly, lower lip sticking out. "Wanna play with Play-doh."

"Please?" Wesley asked quietly. "We love to hear you sing." He aimed that comment at Fran, who usually agreed to whatever Wesley wanted.

"I don't want to sing," Julian said very clearly. "And neither does Mischa."

"Or me," Fran whispered, studiously applying Play-doh to a chair leg and not looking up at Wesley. Fred reached down to remove the stuff, only to get one of Fran's now-patented looks. She retracted her hand and left the boy to his art. If Fran wanted to make a sculpture of... a spear of broccoli out of a chair leg, so be it.

"Why not?" Gunn asked his children. "You love to sing!" More than a hint of frustration colored his voice. He was nearly to the 'upset daddy' stage.

Oz scratched the goatee he was thinking of growing. "But not around Lorne." The alpha wolf thought that there was something to that...

Light bulbs, both dim and bright, flickered on. "They know that Lorne can read them?" Buffy murmured. "How?"

"Er, by watching?" Willow guessed. "Kids aren't dumb, you know." Hells, she didn't really like being read by Lorne, but she put up with it because he always saw things that needed to be seen. And Buffy bought her drinks afterwards. The last time she'd gone up on stage, t had been to some horrible cover of La Vida Loca, a la the latest mumba-reggae band.

Dawn snarled at her currently-ex-girlfriend. "No, adults are." She watched the children as they slowly left their toys on the floor and looked up at the adults. Images from the various remakes of 'Village of the Damned' kept flashing in her mind as the five eerily similar cubs moved as one. She loved the kids, but they freaked her out occasionally. Now was one of those times.

"You want to read us," Mischa said to Lorne. "Because of our dreams." He frowned, squishing blue Play-doh between his fingers. All of a sudden, the stuff became very fascinating for the cub.

"Why?" Julian asked. "We told you what it was." He handed Mischa a small portion of orange dough, which his twin twisted and molded around some of the blue he already had.

Wil flinched and leaned on Angel. "We just want to know what to do to prevent what you saw."

"Be nice," Thalia stated, wadding up some pink Play-doh in her hair.

"Be nice?" Buffy echoed. "What does that mean?" The Slayer began to pick dough out of the girl's now-matted locks.

"Be nice," The cub repeated. "And nothing bad will happen."

"Don't beat people up," Siobhan added. "Leave them alone."

"And smile," Fran finished. "You win more flies with honey than with vinegar." Satisfied that his broccoli sculpture was done, the cub sat back and watched Mischa as his older brother finished a rather striking model of the sculpture that sat outside the library.

Cordelia growled. She hated it when her kids were smart-asses, which was most of the time. "Ok, game's over. You. Will. Sing. Right now, in fact, so clear your throats and let's have a round of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' before all five of you find yourselves in time out," She said firmly. Perhaps it was past time for her to start getting the kids to behave. They'd be enrolled in school in the fall, and if they continued as they were, they'd all get kicked right back out.

The various adults glanced between Cordelia and the cubs. No one wanted to step into the middle of *that* battle... "Ok," Mischa said, shrugging. "Fine." The cubs put on their most beatific smiles and gathered together.

Lorne smiled and took a seat next to his wife. "Whenever you want to start, kiddies," He said cheerfully.

A pregnant pause filled the room. Not a sound echoed anywhere.

"Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts!"

Buffy managed to catch Lorne before he slid out of his chair, although he did knock his head on the table.

...

"Why does this seem very, very bad?" Xander asked Oz as they watched Buffy try to revive Lorne. "As in, apocalypses are just Sunday strolls with ice cream cones bad?" Lorne fainting struck Xander as an incredibly awful event, on a par with global chocolate shortages and the time that Siobhan had mistaken his ball gag for a play toy.

"You're overreacting," Oz replied. "I've seen no frogs." Actually, he wasn't sure Xander was overreacting, but he felt like he needed to be a calming influence. There would be time to get extremely worried later.

"Frogs?" Gunn echoed, glaring at Julian, who was helping Fran plaster the entire club with Play-doh. Maybe they should've stuck to Lincoln Logs, or maybe computer games. What had been Cordelia's objections to those distractions? Play-doh was so messy, and the club was going to open soon.

"Sure sign of the end of the world," Fred stated. "You remember this, Gunn. Frogs, locusts, Liberace memorial tours..."

"Liberace? Where?" Lorne whispered, gratefully accepting Buffy and Angel's help in getting to his feet. "I didn't see any Liberaces around here." Other than himself, of course. Lorne was single-handedly keeping the memory of that ostentatious dresser alive and well.

"What did you see?" Angel asked Lorne, ignoring all the chatter around him. This was important, significant enough that Angel was on the verge of yelling, just to shut everyone but Lorne up. Wil stood close by and Angel could sense a similar tension rising from him.

"Nothing good, and lots of bad," Lorne replied warily. "Something very bad is going to happen. I can't make out exactly what it is, though, but I do get the impression that your best plan of action is avoidance."

"Avoidance?" Wil murmured. "What do you mean?"

Lorne sighed. "Like the kids said, be nice and leave people alone. I didn't see Buffy and Dawn, like the cubs saw, though. Just a general sense of unease."

"Kinda hard to do that when your job involves bothering people and being mean to them," Dawn commented. "Unless I missed the memo changing us from Investigations and Ass-Kicking to flower arranging and wedding planning."

"Why would we get a warning to not do our jobs?" Fred inquired. "I mean, that's not right. We get visions telling us what to *do*." Well, sometimes they just consulted, but most of the time... they'd started stocking floor-standing vats of various soaps to get all the gunk out of their clothes.

"No, *we* get visions telling Angel and Wil what do to," Xander said, gesturing towards Cordelia and himself. "Who knows that they're getting," He continued, looking at the cubs.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cordelia asked, her voice dangerously calm.

Xander swallowed. "It just means that we don't know what they're getting, or why. These dreams might just be... suggestions, you know? Hints instead of directions. Or maybe they're for someone else, not for Angel and Wil."

"Then who would they be for?" Gunn inquired. "'Cause they didn't come with instructions, you know." He thought they were doing pretty good with the kids, but this was a curve ball he hadn't anticipated.

"The children, or the dreams?" Wesly murmured. "My limited experience suggests that neither do."

"Well, Buffy and Dawn were in the dream, so maybe it's for them," Fred suggested. "They're the ones dying in it."

Angel sank down in a seat, followed shortly by Wil. "This is a mess," Angel muttered. "A prophetic dream, a bad but vague reading by Lorne, and..."

"And none of us can separate what was in the dream, what Lorne sort-of-saw, and the fact that the cubs are involved," Wil finished. "Maybe we should take a step back and do what the vision and Lorne's reading said--be careful and not piss anyone off."

"Not work?" Angel inquired sharply.

"No, work. Just be careful. Watch for things," Wil countered. "And try not to kill each other in the process." Angel nodded in understanding. It wouldn't be easy, but it was worth a shot.

...

"Hey, Dawn?" Xander said tentatively, leaning into the apartment. "Willow asked me to tell you that she got a client. Something about vampire pimps running a crack house and selling foam noodles..."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Srome rudhls. It's a street drug for demons." She rolled off the bed, grabbing a hand axe as she rifled through her closet for a jacket. "You feel like roughing up some lousy pushers, ogling the prostitutes, and grabbing some cheap Chinese take-out on the way home?"

Xander grinned. "You said the magic word. Let's go!" They were nearly to the lobby when Xander stopped. "What about Willow?" It was just the two of them, and neither knew much about the situation. "She's got the details. I don't."

"Willow!" Dawn bellowed up the stairs. "We're going on that job. Get your ass down here." Xander winced. That had been rather... rude. Relationship troubles made anyone act poorly, but Dawn resembled the 14 year-old she'd been when she'd first come into the world.

Willow appeared a few minutes later, taking her sweet time. "It's just a reconnaissance trip, Dawn. No reason to get all upset."

"Some of us want to get our work done," Dawn snapped. "So let's get going. I'm hungry."

The drive over was tense, most uncomfortably so. Xander stared out the window, avoiding both of his friends. He sort of wished they'd just get back together for good or meet other people, because this weird semi-relationship was just plain stupid. When they were together, they were good and then... someone farted the wrong way and there was a big argument and everyone suffered. The cubs even asked their adult caretakers if it was a good Willow-Dawn day or a bad one. When kids started making wagers about your personal life, it was time to do something about it. Xander, though, wasn't going to be the one to stand in front of the firing squad and tell them to get their collective acts together.

"So, is this just another crack house-prostitution ring complaint?" Dawn asked Willow.

The redhead flipped through her electronic file. "Pretty much. Neighbors noticed a few Orker demons hanging around, acting funny, 'like constipated cows', one said. Sounds like srome rudhls," Willow replied. "We can probably convince them to go away."

"Great," Dawn murmured. "Mu shu or kung pao, Xander?"

Xander glanced up from the backseat. "Mu shu every time," He replied softly. "And what are vampires doing running prostitution rings and crack houses?"

Dawn shrugged. "Making a buck, what else? Besides, the whores are walking blood banks and the drugs bring in money, more prostitutes, and protection."

"Sounds nummy," Xander muttered.

Dawn pulled into a truly wretched neighborhood, parking near the highway. "It's the green place over there," She said, pointing with her hand axe. The threesome stepped out of the car and approached the ramshackle house.

They didn't have to wait long to be noticed. A small band of vampires, minions all, came out of the shadows, wielding chains and guns. "Guns, Dawn? They're carrying guns?"

"Duck when they shoot," She suggested.

The fighting was intense but brief; Willow, Xander and Dawn staked vampires until the only ones left ran away. Xander climbed the stairs of the house, but Dawn pulled him back. As he watched, she pulled out a grenade. The pin fell with a clatter as she chucked the weapon into the house's open door. A few seconds later, an explosion rocked the crumbling edifice. Dawn walked away with nary a backward glance, leaving Xander and Willow to follow behind.

*****