Danger Zone
By Divamercury
Read and review! Hope you enjoy, and thanks to Pixie-Dust for help with the last chapter and chapters to come! ;)
~DM
Chapter 22
Almost as soon as I had told it to find Ian, the Witchblade was drawn to a door on my immediate right. I had to be careful not to slam into the wall in front of me because my arm froze as if it was stuck outside the door and the rest of my body kept going. I had reached the end of the hall. Once I regained my equilibrium, I noticed that the door was open and I stared inside. All that appeared to be in it was a chair, and chained to that chair was Ian.
Well, it's about time,' I told my counterpart. Warn me next time you put on the emergency brake.' The Witchblade just buzzed in response, probably meaning something to the effect of "I'm not making any promises."
I stepped in slowly and looked around. It looked like the room was empty except for Ian, but I knew better than that. I'd taken two steps inside when bullets came at me from everywhere but the Witchblade blocked them all. Ian's head snapped up at the sounds.
"Sara!" he called.
"Be right with you!" I shouted with a grin and sprang into the room. The hidden cops continued to fire at me and I did a few fancy moves–including some I was unaware that I was capable of–to dodge them. A swarm of the cops came out of hiding and faced me. I fought them off pretty well, trying to ignore the fact that the room that I was in was the room from my dream.
* * *
Sara had finally found me. I breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that the fools guarding me wouldn't harm her. One of the aforementioned fools drew his gun and leveled it at me while Sara was temporarily distracted.
"Do you have anything that you want to say before I kill you?" he sneered, loud enough for me to hear him over the gunfire and the bullets ricocheting off the Witchblade.
"As a matter of fact, yes. I'm going to get out of this chair and then you're going to die."
"Right. When pigs fly," the cop said.
Suddenly Sara kicked one of the clods in a rather sensitive area and he flew across the room, landing between my would-be executioner and myself.
"Well, he's close enough," I said with a grin. I concentrated all of my energy into my arms and pulled with all my strength. The metal loops binding the chains to the chair shattered and I flew across the room at my attacker, disarming him and snapping his neck all in a matter of seconds.
Sara made her way over to me and broke the chains that still hung off of me with the Witchblade's sword. Then our attention flew to the door, through which a large group of Associates burst and fanned out across the room, which kept the cops busy.
I pulled Sara aside and behind a large stack of boxes, the only things in the room beside my chair and some scattered weapons. As soon as we were separated from the group, Sara threw her arms around me, keeping the blade away from me. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised but slowly returned the gesture.
"I believe someone's glad to see me," I said with a grin. Her grip tightened and she buried her face in my shoulder.
"You can say that again," she said, her voice muffled. She pulled back a little and stared me straight in the eye. "I was afraid I wouldn't make it here in time. That the next time I saw you you'd be floating facedown somewhere. Ian, I–"
Something suddenly didn't feel right. I looked behind me and saw a sniper leveling his weapon at us.
"Down!" I shouted, and we dove to the floor as the bullet lodged in the wall right behind us.
"Guess now isn't the time, huh?" Sara asked.
"Not the best one, no. We'll continue this later, but nowwe should get out of here."
"I can't! Not yet. I haven't found Dante yet and I'm not leaving until he's toast."
I sighed. "Well, I'll take the top floor and try to put the snipers out of commission so you won't have as much trouble. Justbe careful, Sara. You're really out in the open down here."
"I'll do what I can. Oh, by the way, I think this is yours," she said, taking off something strapped to her back. It was my sword.
"Might come in handy," she said with a wink. "No one'll miss it; it was just lying around."
We smiled and separated. I unsheathed my sword and took the stairs two at a time to reach the top floor. I was able to sneak up on several, breaking a neck here and there and slashing a few through the abdomen. I kept one eye out for trouble on the ground level while taking care of my business.
* * *
"Dante!" I called. "Where are you, you bastard? Are you really this cowardly, because it's hard to believe that someone as manly as yourself could be afraid of me," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Come on out here and face me!" I drew my gun, withdrawing the Witchblade for the time being and scanning the perimeter, still dodging the occasional ricocheting bullet.
Danny chose that moment to blink in. Well, it's not like he had anything to worry about. The bullets would go straight through him. Unfortunately I didn't get that luxury.
"It's not that I'm not glad to see you, Danny, but you've kind of caught me at a bad time," I said.
"Yeah, no kidding. So tall, dark, and dangerous is out?"
"Yep," I said, grinning. "Took me long enough, though."
"Don't kick yourself about it, Pez."
"Why not? It's my fault he got into this mess to begin with!"
"Not necessarily."
"Wha?" I asked, confused.
"Look, I don't want to do any wedge-driving here, especially when you two are getting along so well nowadays, but–"
"Danny, just spit it out. You undead types are so long-winded."
He smiled at that. "Pez, do you really think that Dante could have captured Ian if Ian hadn't wanted him to?"
That caught me off guard. I hadn't thought about that.
"Now that you mention it, it does seem kind of far-fetched. You're saying he let Dante get him?"
"Well, that was his plan. Not how it happened, but that was the plan."
"What the hell? As usual, Danny, your visit is raising as many questions as it's answering, if not more."
"They caught Ian off guard. He got knocked unconscious. He would have let them subdue him somehow–rope, chain, whatever–but he wasn't planning on one of Gabe's artifacts falling on his head."
"Remind me to maim Gabe," I muttered.
Danny chuckled. "I make no promises," he said, and blinked out.
* * *
"Bruno? It's Kenneth. How are things going on your side of town?" I asked, amused at his previous problems with carrying out this mission.
"Damn it, Irons, what is it with you and your timing? The bitch just showed up and she's annihilating my men! And if that wasn't bad enough, your experiment is helping her!" His voice was hard to understand because of all the gunfire in the background.
"You mean Ian? I thought you had him restrained!" I said angrily.
"He shattered the chains! I saw it with my own eyes! And then Petzini came up with some weird metal glove thing on her arm and started blocking bullets and they teamed up!"
"Well, they are warriors. What did you expect, Bruno?"
"I expected two corpses on the floor of this warehouse!"
"Oh. Well, you should have enlightened me on that. I would have been more than glad to correct your misguided beliefs."
"Bullshit, Irons. Now do you actually want something or do you just think it will be funny if I get killed while I'm talking to you on this damned cell phone?"
"Change of plans. Do whatever you have to do to get Ian and Ms. Pezzini restrained and bring them to my home."
"I thought you wanted her dead."
"I do. I just thought it would be better if I killed her myself. I doubt that you could handle it."
He mumbled incomprehensibly under his breath and finally said, "Fine. Just give me a little time. The bitch brought friends with her." He hung up on me.
I stared at my phone and leered at no one in particular. Within a few hours the Witchblade and Ian would be mine again, with Sara Pezzini safely out of the picture and buried six feet under the ground somewhere.
