Inferno
By Divamercury
Are you guys intrigued yet? Here's Chapter 8!
Chapter 8
I vaguely felt someone shaking me gently. "Sara? Sara? I need you to wake up." Ian's voice cut through the haze surrounding my senses.
"Wha?" I asked groggily.
"Your friend refuses to believe you are ill. He seems to think you're dead. Please set him straight," he said.
I groaned. "Well, at least he cares. Give me the phone."
Ian handed it over and I put it to my ear.
"Gabriel?" I asked, trying not to sound as sick as I felt.
"Chief? That you?"
"No, it's Richard Nixon. Yes, it's me, damn it. I'm not in the mood to play right now, because I feel lousy, so please listen. Ian is telling the truth. Please start trusting him, because I'll be relying on him for a while. I thought you would be worried so I had him call you. Now relax."
"I was. I was sitting here on the edge of my seat waiting for my phone to ring. Do you want me to come over and see you?" he asked.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Umm6:00 AM."
"Well, if you want to come by, that's fine by me."
"Great. I'm headed out the door. Bye, Chief," he said.
"See ya, Gabe." I pressed the END button and handed my phone to Ian, who put it on my night table.
"How are you feeling?" he asked me, coming to sit beside me again.
"Lousy. But about an iota better than I was earlier. Maybe I'll get over this without a hitch."
No such luck.
Suddenly I lost control of my right arm. It thrashed around for a few seconds and then all of a sudden the Witchblade appeared in its true form: the gauntlet. I tried to retract it but to no avail. Then my arm stopped whipping around and lay still on my pillow.
"Well, this was really strange," I said, trying to hide the mild hysteria in my voice. "I can't control the Witchblade."
Ian was silent. I reached with my left hand for the phone and called sick into the office. They accepted my story and I hung up. Ian just stared at me.
"I can't very well show up at the office running 102 and having a gauntlet running up my arm," I said. Then there was a knock on my door.
"It's probably Gabe," I said. Ian crossed the room quickly and let him in. I had been debating over whether I should hide the Witchblade in its true form from Gabriel or let him know. I decided to let him see it because I figured that it was about time for him to know the truth.
"Hey, Chief, how ya doing?" he asked.
"Pretty lousy. I don't know what's wrong with me."
Gabe scanned me with his eyes and then stopped on the Witchblade. His eyes widened.
"What the hell is that?" he asked nervously.
"This is the Witchblade in its actual form," I said. "It's a gauntlet that disguises itself as a bracelet, which is the only form in which you have seen it. It gives me all those things that you mentioned before: speed, clairvoyance, intuition, strength, visions of past Wielder's lives, all sorts of things."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Believe me, I would have. But I was paranoid about it. I didn't want anyone to know. You, Ian, and my friend Ciara are the only ones that know. Well, Kenneth Irons knows, too, but I don't consider him a friend."
* * *
She considered me a friend? I was amazed. It had always seemed as if she had hated me, as if she couldn't trust me. I listened to her finish.
"I wonder" she said. "I wonder if this illness has something to do with the Witchblade."
"It wouldn't be making you sick, would it, Chief?" Gabriel asked.
"It never has done anything like that before," she said. " I don't believe it's the Blade itself but more like something that's reacting to it." These were her last words of lucidity before she abruptly fell into delirium once again.
Gabriel jumped at her sudden change in consciousness. He sprang up from where he was sitting near her and stood by me.
"What's going on? What's happening to her?" he asked.
"This is how she's been all day. Normal one moment, delirious the next. In the blink of an eye she changes," I said.
"I don't like this. Something is really wrong and for some reason I find it hard to believe that it's happened by chance."
I agreed with him. I had been wondering all night about what could have possibly caused this to happen to Sara, whom I had believed indestructible.
"We should retrace Sara's steps for the past few days to see if we can isolate what caused this," Gabriel said. I nodded. Even though that involved contact with Jake McCartey, something I desperately tried to keep at a minimum, but it couldn't be helped, because the mystery had to be solved.
Suddenly some of Sara's shouts began to make tangible sense. It was as if she was reliving her life in her confusion.
"Gallo, stop! Don't kill him! Danny!" she screamed. "Ciara, get out of the way!" After a few more shouts of this nature, she calmed down and ceased her screaming, merely saying things in her feverish state.
"Jake, you idiot! Did you actually think you could take on Nottingham? Be glad that you were lucky; he didn't have to let you off with what you gotDante, you're such a creep. Joe Siri is worth about a thousand of you. You belong where your name implies, buddy."
We exchanged looks. It seemed that Sara's true feelings showed through in her delirium. She continued telling people exactly how she felt about them, and Gabriel smirked at some of her comments. I went to the door.
"I am going to go and see if I can find information on what is causing this. Will you stay with her?" I asked. He nodded.
"No problem, Not–Ian. I'll make sure that she's okay."
"Thank you. I shan't be long," I said, and then turned to leave Sara's apartment.
"Hey, wait! Call me if you find anything. I'll have Sara's cell. You know the number, of course," Gabriel called. I nodded. "I'll let you know if she gets worse," he said. After this I finally left to begin my odyssey, hoping to find out what was happening to my lady and how to stop it.
