Chapter 8: Recalcitrant
Nat looked at Gabriel with something akin to terror, but not totally unrelated to rage in her eyes. She licked her lips and when she spoke to him her voice was trembling.
"Why did you tell her that?" she practically screamed.
Gabriel looked back at her, too tired and annoyed to be bewildered, "You kidnaped me," he said flatly, without tone or expression in his voice.
"She could come and kill us!"
"She won't kill me," he said calmly from the floor were he was sitting as she paced in front of him, pounding the cordless phone into the palm of her right hand with her left. The gun, a small revolver, was sticking out of the back pocket of her jeans looking very silly and somehow fake. Ordinarily Gabriel would have been amused, but now he was just too weary. So he sat on the floor and massaged his hand. She had violently woken him about ten minutes before from his much needed sleep, persuaded him to crawl out of the safety of his cage by promising him a phone call with Sara, and when he nervously complied she stuck a cordless phone in his hand and a gun to his head and ordered him to dial. And he had. And then, without warning, she had kicked the phone out of his hand. Not that Gabriel blamed her, nor had her reaction surprised him, but his hand still hurt. His fingers, which had been red from the cold, started to look to like they might begin swelling, and if he tried to move them a sort of dragging pain convinced him to stop.
"You don't care about us at all?"
Gabriel looked up at her. "You kidnaped me," he said again.
"Well what if I killed you?" the girl said, pulling the gun out of her pocket.
"Then I promise that Sara will kill you."
The girl chewed on her lower lip for a moment and then, leaning over so that her breasts were right at his eye level asked, "Well, then, what if I kissed you?"
Gabriel averted his eyes upward, so he could see her face, and stared at her blankly. As she knelt down so that their faces were inches apart and slid the gun across the floor until it collided with a huge spool of telephone wire, one thought filled his mind, she's psychotic.
"What are you doing?" Gabriel asked trying to keep his voice calm. Her sudden closeness to him was creating the effect the gun had not, he suddenly found his heart racing: he had no idea what would happen next and he couldn't help but dread the worse.
"Isn't it obvious?" Nat said, her voice suddenly raspy and lustful. She wrapped her left arm around his neck, pulling their heads closer together. Gabriel, sitting awkwardly on the cold cement floor, didn't have the leverage to pull away. Her other hand she placed on his chest, "your heart's racing," she muttered. He could smell cinnamon flavored Tic-Tac's on her breath.
"Get away," Gabriel said. His voice didn't sound convincing, even to him. She had kidnaped him, kept him in a cage, left food out of his reach, and had, seconds ago threatened to kill him. But as she pressed her body against his he was suddenly warmer than he had been in days and after so many abuses he could feel himself get drunk on her gentle caresses.
"You don't like it?" she whispered her right hand sinking lower and lower on his torso. "It doesn't feel good?"
"Just get off," he told her, forcing out every word by sheer will.
"Come on," she insisted. Their lips were so close that every time either of them spoke hers brushed his in a sort of precursor to a kiss. Gabriel knew that the easiest thing in the world at that point would be to just go with the flow, lean forward ever so slightly, and let her do everything else. He was warm, she was gentle, it was nice. He felt himself leaning forward, and he felt as much as heard, Nat giggle. Her hand had reached it's destination and his head was starting to swim. This felt like a dream.
He closed his eyes, hoping that it would give him a way to focus, a means of gaining perspective, of gathering will power. But as soon as he was enveloped in darkness and he couldn't see Nat's face above him his mind raced to every girl he had ever been attracted to; Phillis his best friend in highschool, Laura Croft, Yeoman Jancie Rand, Princess Leia, Mama Michelle Philips, and more. With his eyes closed the girl could be anyone Gabriel had ever fantasized about. With his eyes closed he had no way to convince himself that what was happening was sick and wrong and even evil. His sudden fear of his own weakness channeled itself into anger and strength, his eyes snapped open, and with teeth clenched he managed to say "Get off," in a hard authoritative voice.
She pulled away, slightly, surprised by his determination.
"Get off!" he said again, louder.
His tone of voice must have surprised Nat. She pulled herself away from him ever so slightly and confusion fogged her eyes, "What?"
This slight break in the tension was exactly what Gabriel needed, he was able to draw himself together, grabbed her arms and pushed her away from him. She stared at him with utter shock in her eyes, she seemed to have no idea why he would reject her advances. She couldn't seem to understand that, at any time in any situation, a man would choose not to have sex with her. "You a homo?" she asked, her mind was obviously searching for reasons why any man wouldn't sleep with her.
"Isn't that big thug your boyfriend?" Gabriel accused, ignoring her question.
"He'll never know," she said, creeping forward, assuming that his problem must have been a logical fear of Toph.
"Stay away," Gabriel warned, his arms outstretched, an almost violent gleam in his eye. "Do you have any idea how crazy and sick you are?"
She looked at him with a sort of childish pout, "Don't you like me?"
"NO!" Gabriel said emphatically.
"Not a little?"
"No."
"Not at all?"
"No."
She started blinking furiously, obviously trying not to cry and smear her gaudy makeup. Gabriel was a compassionate young man, and she was a sad, pathetic, person. Under normal circumstances he would try and comfort her, find some small virtue, and assure her she had worth. But not now. Now he was just disgusted.
"You know what?" he said, rolling onto his hands and knees. "I'm going back to that cage."
"What?" her voice trembled, she was about to cry.
"I'd rather be locked in there than out here with you," he said harshly, not caring enough to spare Nat any pain. He crawled to the cage and swung the door shut, not bothering to do the lock. He scooted to the very back of the small space, closed his eyes, and took some very deep breaths. That had been close, he had been tempted, and he was deeply, deeply afraid. Not of them, his captors, but of himself.
* * *
Sara took the subway to the ferry, the ferry across the river, and a cab to the warehouse. It was a large, well kept place, not the run down junkhouse she had expected. It was surrounded by high fences and small black, boxy security cameras. But, much to Sara's relief, there didn't seem to be a guard, only an electronic box that scanned key-cards and would open the gated door automatically. Sara didn't have a key-card, but she did have an able body and a lot of determination. She found a place where the cameras seemed to be slightly less populated than any other and made quick work of the twelve foot fence. Once on the other side, she found the first warehouse door unlocked, apparently the phone company had entirely too much confidence in a lousy twelve foot fence.
The inside of the warehouse was vast and cool. The only light was from the series of foggy glass windows on the ceilings and a series of foggy barred windows streaming down the north and south walls. The place was huge and open, with thin cement pillars holding up the ceilings and hundreds of thousands of miles of telephone wire making the fast space seem, somehow, claustrophobic. Gabriel could be anywhere and it could take her the better part of an hour, poking her head into every nook and cranny to find him. Sara stood still for a second and listened, maybe she would be able to hear something, voices, footsteps, breathing . . . anything. But with the constant drone of the warehouse venting system, and the odd echos which distorted the sounds in the warehouse, Sara was given no hints. So, she decided to jump up on one of the huge spools of telephone wire and take a look around, maybe call out Gabriel's name. But as she reached the nearest spool, one that seemed fairly easy to climb, there was a bright flash as the Witchblade decided to come out of it's dormancy.
Sara gasped for breath. She hadn't expected for the Witchblade to give her a vision, she had stopped expecting it. And when she saw what it had to show her, she wondered why she had wanted her visions back in the first place. Gabriel was shivering, curling himself up in the very back of a small cage. He wasn't shivering from the cold, though his hands and feet were red and his nose seemed to be running. He was shivering from fear. Sara, in the real world, reached out to help him but that very motion seemed to trigger something. She watched the scene rewind, she saw Gabriel clime into the cage she saw him crawl away from a girl, she saw him push the girl away, she saw him with the girl on his lap her hands down his pants, she saw them kiss, she saw them talk intimately, she saw the girl mount him, she saw them arguing as the girl stood over him, she saw the girl kick the phone out of his hand. Sara exhaled, almost violently, and took a step back; she was trembling too. She blinked, trying to understand what she had been shown, trying to understand why she had seen it. She backed up against another spool and sank to the ground. She had wanted the Witchblade's guidance so much that she hadn't even considered the possibility that it might guide her to someplace she didn't want to go. "Everything is connected," she muttered to herself, it was sort of a mantra of hope. For some inexplicable reason she believed that, if everything was connected, everything would be Ok. With her eyes closed she could see again the image of Gabriel trembling in his cage, everything had to be Ok.
Sara quickly decided on a course of action, she would stay low, hiding, and scope out the situation. She would ensure he was safe and then she would get the bastards who had kidnaped him (hopefully she would be able to do that without him seeing it) then she would let him out of that horrible little cage and then they would leave. That was a good plan, Sara thought. Simple, flexible, direct, and practically foolproof. And it would have worked, if the only people she had been dealing with were fools.
* * *
Gabriel watched Nat the way a trapped mouse watches a cat. He wanted to run, but he couldn't; he wanted to fight, but he couldn't; he wanted it all to be over, but it wasn't. And his resolve was weakening; he was starting to wonder if Sara would be able to find him, if his clues were to vague, if this warehouse was too well hidden. It occurred to him that, for all he knew, he was in Canada, or Alaska, or Hong Kong. He saw no reason to hope for rescue, he saw no reason to hope for anything beyond death.
He could starve himself, Gabriel thought. The next time they left a bag of fast food on top of his cage he would just leave it. After he didn't eat for a while they would stop feeding him and then he would die. That seemed like a messy, painful plan. He'd have to come up with another one. What if, the next time the oafish Toph started threatening him he fought back. He bet he could get his neck snapped fairly easily, a quick swift death. Or he could be beaten to a pulp and left to lie in agony. Perhaps that wasn't such a good idea either. Then it struck him, planing to die was never a good idea. He blinked and shook his head, a process that hurt far too much. Was he insane, trying to think of ways to die? He realized that, although she had a gun, Nat would not be able to harm him if he attacked her; she wasn't the kind of girl who would act for himself. And his cage was unlocked. He had closed himself in it to get away from her, she hadn't bothered to put on the lock. Obviously anyone who would put himself into a cage of his own free will was not going to try and get out of it. He buried his face in his hands, "Oh God, I'm going insane."
"What?" Nat asked, innocently.
Gabriel looked up at her and made a decision. "I'm leaving."
"What?"
He leaned forward and scooted himself to the front of the cage, undid the latch, and crawled out. "I'm leaving," he said.
"You can't," Nat said, scampering to her gun, which lay forgotten on the floor. She swung around and aimed it directly at Gabriel, who was struggling to his feet. "I'll shoot you."
Gabriel stared at her, his eyes asked, somewhat doubtfully, 'will you?'. Her eyes answered him 'no.'
Gabriel nodded, pushed himself off the cage, almost collapsed, didn't , and started hobbling towards the door. Every time he put any weight on his foot his face contorted into a grimace of pain, but that didn't slow him down. Neither did Nat's insistent demands, "Stop, Stop!" What did stop him was the appearance of Toph at the door.
"What the hell?" the larger man said. Gabriel's mouth suddenly became very dry.
The much larger man looked at him, his upper lip twitching furiously. Gabriel met his gaze with a bravado he didn't feel. "That's it, I'm done."
"You think you're leaving?"
"Hey look," Gabriel said casually, as if he were Toph's supervisor at work and confronting him about some minor flub in his department. "I'm done being the victim. Whatever sick game you're playing with Sara, you can play alone."
* * *
Sara watched, wide eyed, encouraged and terrified, as her best friend stood on his own two feet, one of which was a grayish purple and visibly swollen. His face was set with determination, but fear, or maybe it was just pain, was making the muscles around his eyes twitch in just the smallest sign of weakness. Sara felt that dagger in her gut again, she wanted to jump out and slay the bastard who'd done this to her friend. She sucked in a lungful of the warehouse's cold, dry air and prepared to lunge herself out into the fray, but before she could do so, Danny appeared in front of her.
"Don't," was all he said. He was whispering, despite the fact she was the only one who could hear him.
Still, Sara took her cues from him, "Don't," she demanded harshly under her breath. "Don't what, save him?"
"If you go out there now Gabriel will never be able to get back what they took from him."
"What did they take?" Sara asked, sure whatever it was she would be able to find it and give it back to her friend.
"His dignity," Danny said simply, "His humanity."
Sara looked at her dead friend, slack jawed, then she turned to looked at her living friend. As she stared at the younger man, she stored up all the pain and fear and hopelessness she had felt in the last few days and chaneled it into righteous anger and strength. She willed Gabriel to do the same.
"I could kill you," Toph said, making it quite clear that this was not an idle threat.
"So what?" Gabriel replied cooly. "Right now that doesn't even matter to me."
"Oh, Gabriel," Sara moaned softly.
"You don't care?" Toph asked viciously. He grabbed Gabriel's filthy wifebeater and drew the younger man close to him, tearing the thin fabric and causing the trembling around the edges of Gabriel's eyes moved to his lips. Gabriel quickly grabbed the Toph's wrist, mostly to keep himself on his feet, otherwise if his shirt ripped, which it was about to, he would have fallen. But Gabriel didn't say anything, he held his icy silence.
With a violent jerk and grunt, Toph threw Gabriel away. The young man couldn't hold on, he half flew, half stumbled across the floor and crashed into a cement pillar. He didn't move to get up, he didn't move at all.
Sara was so shocked by the brutality of the act that, for a moment, she was frozen. She was drawn back into reality by Danny's voice, which was colder and harder than she could ever remember it being before.
"Go."
She needed no other encouragement.
With a battle cry that came from deep within, she jumped over the spool of telephone wire she'd been hiding behind, her Witchblade drawn, her eyes slightly wild.
Nat screamed, as did Toph. They both backed away from Sara like scared children.
"I don't know what was going through your head when you took him but I promise you that was the biggest mistake you've ever made."
The pair were to frightened to run. Nat was a ghastly reddish color and choking out sobs, Toph was pale, and there was a look of utter horror in his eyes. And they had every reason to fear her, for all they knew, Sara thought, she was their death.
Toph seemed to muster up some sort of courage, "Hand me the gun," he whispered to Nat, who just started sobbing louder in a more annoying, higher pitch.
"Shut up," Toph yelled to Nat. "Where's the gun?"
"A gun's not gonna help you," Sara's voice was husky and, in a way, primal. She felt possessed by the Witchblade, all of its millennia of power was flowing through her. She had no idea how terrifying she looked, how wild, how deadly.
"I dropped it," Nat choked out, pointing to the revolver, which was about half way between Sara and Toph.
Sara suddenly felt like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. As she glanced at the gun she wanted to ask Toph if he felt lucky, and then call him a punk. Sara smirked to herself and Toph's eyes doubled in size. She assumed that he was too scared to run and get it, she was wrong.
Toph dived for the small revolver, sliding across the floor and reaching it while Sara only took one step forward. He leveled the gun and squeezed off a shot. She took another step. Toph stared at her, horrified. He didn't know how he could have missed. He didn't realize that the bullet had ricocheted harmlessly off of the Witchblade, as did the five other shots he managed to get off. He did realize he was in trouble.
Nat, on the other hand, had realized that after the first shot at point blank range had not affected Sara in the least. The young girl had run, and Sara, who had been concentrating on Toph, let her go and forgot about her. That is until her shrill voice echoed through the warehouse, "Cops! Toph, God, it's the Cops!"
"Fuck the cops we've got a God Damn psycho with a knife here!" Toph yelled back.
But Sara could not be so casual about the young girls' screams. Cops, plural, more than one, Jake brought friends. This thing had been White Bulls from beginning to end. The Witchblade suddenly seized her, she saw events unfold from above, as if she were a guardian angel hovering over the scene. She saw Dante storming in, with Orlinsky, Burgess, and Jake on his tail. She saw herself run away. She saw Orlinsky draw his gun and with two quick shots kill Nat and Toph. She saw Dante yell something and then an bang and she saw her body hit the floor. Jake looked like he wanted to run to her, but he held back, he kept with the pack. She saw Dante put the gun he had used to shoot her in Toph's hands. She saw Jake walk over to Gabriel, crumpled on the floor, she saw Burgess walk over and stand next to him. Then she saw Burgess lift his gun and shoot her young, helpless, innocent, and longsuffering friend.
"No!" Sara screamed, and that reality shattered. Nat was still running back into the warehouse, her lower lip trembling; Toph was still staring up at her, his eyes wide with a rage that could not transcend his fear; and Gabriel was still lying unconscious, but alive. Very quickly, Sara had to make a choice. If she was going to protect Gabriel, she would have to stay, but if she stayed she might get shot, like in her vision. Suddenly she felt the safe, protective, presence of Danny to her right, without even glancing to see if the ghost was really there, or if she was just dreaming him she asked, "What do I do?"
"You can't protect him if you don't protect yourself," her former partner said.
"Danny?" Sara asked again, this time more fervently.
"Run."
To be continued . . .
Hey friendly reader! Sorry this took so long but with Finales and Christmas and whatnot I bearly had time to write. The next chapter shouldn't take nearly as long. Thanks for your patience.
