He pulls his hand away and leans back against the wall. 

       What's the justification for that one?

We'll go faster if he doesn't have to carry her. 

        Seems like a bad tradeoff for a dangerous, insane vampire with mind-control powers. 

Maybe. There was nothing out in the field today, so we're probably during one of the years where there isn't anything out regularly, but still, every day we're out here we're running a lot of risks.

        Hundred miles, you said. We must've covered at least eight.

Yeah.

       Your telepathy range is what, exactly?

A lot more than that, yeah. I can talk to everyone here. The thing is, we didn't yet know that it couldn't be spoofed. They'd have to be insane to act on anything sent to them from near Angband by someone claiming to be their relative from the future. I did tell the person who could do the most with it everything he could possibly use, right away. But I don't think he believed me - maybe once more of it comes true - and he's sure not going to send a rescue mission. He didn't answer at all, actually. That's policy, not to answer under circumstances like these.

       Why didn't you mention this earlier?

Because I don't want the enemy to know it and he can scrape it right out of your head.

       But not out of yours?

I might be able to kill myself fast enough. 

        Okay.

I know it's far from it. 

         Ryan is humming to himself and thinking about a girl he dated in college.

Alex closes his eyes.

Drusilla wakes up a few hours later.

" - oh. Ohhh, my head is ringing. This place smells of death."

Ryan is pointedly not making eye contact. Alex keeps half-sleeping.

"I don't like it here, Spike. I don't like it."

"I know, baby. We're gonna make it out. Get some rest."

He starts singing in a language no one speaks. 

Drusilla quiets and listens.

They wait.

Eventually he announces "okay, sun's down."

"Let's head out, pet."

And they walk.

Elsewhere - elsewhen? else-something, Michael pings Karen. 

You should know that there was an incident at the Bureau about ten minutes ago. Alex is missing, as are a staff member, Spike, and Drusilla. We're assuming they did it, but we don't know how.

Missing how?

Fell through the floor and vanished. They have magic sensors and are checking to see if they know more than that. Likely a portal of some kind.

Can me and Wishbone come over?

Yeah.

She grabs Wishbone and tells Azalea she's taking the car and drives to Michael's.

We don't know anything else about the portal?

Nope! In particular we have no guesses on the very important question 'who did it' but also nothing on 'where did it take them' or 'are they still there'.

This is a bad bad week and I want it to stop.

Be there in ten.

He's pacing when they arrive, pacing and singing little verses that sound sharp and dangerous.

Karen immediately heads for the library and starts pulling books out of the English section that she thinks she vaguely remembers might have ever mentioned portals at some point.

"OK, I'm gonna page through these - Wishbone, point to the ones you want in anything you can read - "

When she has piles for both of them she starts scanning for anything useful.

Portals between dimensions happen sometimes. Usually because of the actions of people on one or both sides but they have also ever happened just completely at random as far as anyone knows.

Lovely. She keeps paging through things.

Oooh, ooh, here it is, I thought I remembered this one. OK. It's a retrieval spell, used to return someone who's been magically separated from someone who cares about them. You need at least one anchor, though it's safer with more than one; I'd expect both you and Karen to work fine in this case. We'll also need some materials, but I bet the local magic shop has them. They were pretty well-stocked, last I checked up on them.

It's, ah, a very powerful spell. Pretty serious chance of cosmic backlash, using this one, but this is the tool for the job if you want to pull him back without doing the whole dramatic open-another-portal-and-follow-him-through deal, which in my experience is much more likely to give you lethal results.

He bounces this to Karen. Yeah, we're not doing that. Let's go to the magic shop now.

Onward!

You want us both there? I dunno if it'll actually help, but - I guess if we all go we can split up and get the stuff faster -