Chapter 8 -- Breach of Trust

Cailean crouched on Sara's fire-escape, watching her sleep. It was an oppressively hot night, and dark, the moon concealed by a thick blanket of clouds. Lights from adjoining windows and nearby street-lamps seemed unable to penetrate the darkness, or perhaps this was merely a trick of Cailean's imagination, reflecting her own dark mood.

Although they had met only twice before in this life, and briefly, Sara was her friend, and more. In every life before, Cailean had been the Wielder's teacher and mentor as well as her friend, recognizing that the Witchblade was beyond her power and directing the Wielder in its direction, helping her learn all that she needed to know about it. In this life, her role had been perverted by Irons, just as Ian's usual role of Guardian had been. Cailean stared at her reflection in the window, sickened by the mockery she had become of what she should have been.

"Just another Pretender..." she whispered to the image staring back at her. It hardly seemed fair, after all the pain she had gone through as a child to avoid donning the Witchblade, but her master had commanded and she would obey, though not for reasons that he would be pleased with. Shaking her head, she slid the window open with shaking hands and slid inside.

"What are you doing?" Danny demanded.

She spun around, dropping into a defensive crouch. She relaxed her body when she saw Danny, but her mind raced. She had not expected to have to contend with Sara's guardian angel tonight. "Hello, Detective Woo..." she whispered, not wanting to wake Sara.

"What are you doing?" he asked, lowering his own voice for the same reason.

"Ian could not come tonight. Irons had other work for him." It happened to be true. Irons had assigned Ian another task so that he could not protect Sara tonight. She smiled at Danny. "I guess Ian is not the only one who likes to watch her sleep."

If it had been possible for a ghost to blush, Danny would have been bright red at the implication. "Just looking in on her."

"Likewise..." Cailean told him. "It's good to know that she has two such guardians as you and Ian..." she muttered, staring across the room to Sara. "She's lovely when she sleeps."

"I know..." Danny muttered, relaxing.

"Peaceful, not like her waking self. No pain, no regret." Lucky Sara.

Danny smiled fondly at his partner. "Yeah." He nodded. "Why did you come here tonight?"

"As I said, Ian could not come..." she told him calmly. "He asked me to look in on her."

"Nottingham hardly ever actually comes in."

"But he has had more first-hand experiences with our Lady. To see her this closely in an unguarded moment is a rare honor for me." She moved closer to the bed, picking up a pillow and turning it over in her hands. "She is as beautiful as Ian has told me. I can see now why he feels as he does towards her."

"And how exactly is that?" Danny asked quietly, staring at Sara.

"Don't you know?" Cailean asked, smiling at him. "How would any man feel towards such a woman?"

"Guess you've got a point there..." Danny nodded slowly.

"All is not what it seems."

"I've noticed that, Cailean. But what does it have to do with Sara?"

"At present, everything." Cailean turned the pillow over in her hand once more, regarding Danny thoughtfully. "You must love her very much to remain in the world like this when you could cross and find peace."

"She's my partner. Partners protect each other, help each other out. Besides, peace is over-rated."

"Only if you have it." In a lightening-quick move, Cailean jumped onto the bed, kneeling on Sara's arms and pressing the pillow into her face.

"What the hell are you doing?" Danny demanded. "Get off her! Leave her alone!"

"I truly wish I could..." Cailean said softly, holding the pillow with one hand and reaching into her shirt pocket with the other.

 She pulled out a small syringe, uncapping it with her teeth, undeterred by Sara's struggles. The Witchblade refused to activate, as Cailean had guessed that it would.

"You were her friend!" Danny hissed. "In so many lives! What happened?" he demanded.

Cailean easily found a vein and emptied the syringe into it. "Ken Irons happened. But don't worry. I plan to make him pay."

"Cailean, don't do this to her..." Danny begged.

"I have to. If I don't bring the Witchblade back, he'll kill me and Ian. My brother deserves to be free of that monster, so I am going to bring the Witchblade to him and use it to buy our freedom."

Danny shook his head. "Cailean, no. He'll never let either of you be free. He'll take the Witchblade and kill you. He'll kill Nottingham..."

Cailean bowed her head. "I know. That's why I must kill him. That's why I need the Witchblade." She kept the pillow over Sara's face, not depressing it hard enough to interfere with her breathing, preferring to let the poison work its way painlessly through her system.

"Cailean, you can't do this..." Danny whispered frantically. "It's not who you are."

"It's who I was made..." Cailean told him, her tears soaking the pillow over Sara's face.

Sara's struggles were easing, her breath rattling in her chest. Abruptly, she went limp under Cailean.

"Sara, no!" Danny shouted, grabbing her hand. "How could you do this to her?" Danny demanded of Cailean, tears in his eyes.

"I did it to save her life..." Cailean told him, rolling off of Sara. She picked up her right hand and easily removed the Witchblade, slipping it into her pocket.

Danny stared at her with wide eyes as she produced another syringe and again injected Sara. "Nothing is what it seems..." Danny muttered, shaking his head in amazement. "That was a bluff?"

Swallowing hard and fighting back the tears that threatened, she nodded. "Amobarbital, enough to slow her pulse and respiration to a nearly imperceptible level. I needed the Witchblade to believe that I truly intended to kill her. I am sorry."

Cailean felt for a pulse, then walked around the bed and picked up the phone, calling 911. She hung up as soon as a dispatcher answered. As expected, he tried to call back, to confirm the emergency. Cailean picked up the phone and immediately dropped it back into the receiver, taking it off the hook before it could ring again.

"Stay with her, Detective Woo. Watch over her."

"Always..." Danny assured her, caressing Sara's cold forehead. "Will she be okay? I can still touch her."

Cailean nodded. "She lingers near death, but the injection I gave her will work shortly. The paramedics will help more. She'll be herself again by lunchtime tomorrow."

As Danny leaned over Sara, muttering words of comfort and encouragement in her ear, Cailean moved around the apartment, pulling drawers and emptying their contents over the floor, making it look like a robbery. She was unwilling that anyone, even for a short time, would consider the possibility that Sara was some kind of drug-addict, or had attempted to take her own life.

"You just think of everything, don't you?" Danny asked, looking up as she turned to leave, heading this time for the front door.

"Always. I am... very sorry for what I had to do. But our freedom, Ian's freedom, is worth more to me than anything."

Danny nodded slowly. "Good luck on that."

She nodded. "Thank you and I'm sorry." With this, Cailean left the bedroom.

Danny leaned over Sara, whispering reassuringly in her ear. She was still in pretty bad shape, but he could no longer touch her, which at least meant that she was going to be okay. Strangely, the knowledge that he could no longer touch her was bitter-sweet for him. The paramedics and the cops arrived at the same time and it did not take them long to find Sara, or the vial of barbiturates that Cailean had obviously left behind for them. Sighing, he moved back to let the paramedics work. As one of the paramedics injected Sara with epinephrine, Danny saw Jake running into the room.

"Sara?" he yelled when an unfamiliar cop stopped him at the door. "Man, she's my partner! Let me see her!" he shouted, trying to get around the officer.

Roused by the commotion Jake was making, Sara returned to consciousness with a gasp. "Danny?" she called, looking around for him. "Danny?" She looked around frantically for Danny, but he was nowhere to be found. She rubbed her head and realized why. Her right wrist was bare. "Oh, God! Danny... Danny!"

"She's delirious..." one of the medics announced. "Detective, can you hear me?"

"Sara?" Having finally made it past the cop at the door, Jake moved swiftly to Sara's side. "Hey, partner. Are you okay? What happened?"

"She was asking for someone called Danny..." one of the medics told Jake.

Jake looked at Sara in surprise. "You're okay, partner. You won't be joining Danny any time soon."

Sara knew that he was trying to make her feel better, so she ignored him. "What are you doing here?"

"Someone called me when the 911 went in."

"Oh..." Sara nodded weakly and rested her head against the pillow, trying to remember what had happened. Someone had come at her and put a pillow over her face. "He injected me with something!" Sara gasped, remembering the burning in her arm that had soon turned into a comfortable warmth. "Oh, God..." she muttered. There was no doubt in her mind who had arranged the attack. It could only have been Irons.

"Sodium Amytal. Barbiturates..." the medic told her. "Probably to keep you from fighting or trying to leave while they searched the place."

"Did he hurt you, Sara?" Jake asked. If he ever got his hands on the perp, there was an engraved bullet with the jerk's name on it. He moved back to allow the medics to move her onto a stretcher, following as they rolled her outside.

She shook her head slowly. "No, I'm fine."

She rubbed her bare right wrist, wishing for the Witchblade back if only so she could see Danny. She could sense that he was there, watching over her, but not being able to see him made her feel very lonely.

"Sara, you think you're up to working with a sketch-artist?" Jake asked, following her down to the ambulance.

"Not your case, Rookie..." Sara sighed, closing her eyes.

"Making it my case..." Jake informed her flatly, climbing into the ambulance after her. "Come on, Pez."

"Put a pillow over my face..." Sara told Jake. "Didn't get so much as a glance at him." She shook her head. "Sorry."

Logic told her that, if Irons had been behind the attack, then he probably would have sent Nottingham to do it, but she could not believe really that he would have done something like that to her. She knew that she was probably allowing herself to be influenced in that belief by the visions that she had so recently had of him, but she did not care. Gabriel himself had pointed it out only today. The Witchblade gave her those visions for a reason. She was unwilling to even entertain the notion that Nottingham had been involved until she had conclusive proof.

"Don't worry, Sara..." Jake told her with a smile and a ferocious glint in his eye. "We'll catch this jerk."

Danny looked up at his tone of voice, not liking it. What should have sounded reassuring sounded more like a threat. Jake seemed less worried about Sara than angry over the attack. Of course, Danny had no doubt that Jake would do his best to protect Sara, but he was still worried by the way he was fingering the bullet in his shirt pocket.