Induce

"Sara," Gabriel choked. His eyes were soft and brown and hazy with pain.

Sara gasped in horror at what she had done. She withdrew the Witchblade, but as the mettle passed through Gabriel's body a second time the boy shuddered and blood started streaming out of his mouth. He pitched forward and Sara caught him, for what good it would do. She had just impaled him, the blade entered the chest in the spot below where the right and left ribs meet straight through out his back.

His blood was everywhere.

He was going to die.

* * *

"Hey Orlinsky!" Jake yelled across the bar. "I've been lookin' all over for you."
"It's my lunch break," Orlinsky said, clearly annoyed. "So if this has anything to do with work, let it be for another twenty minuets, will ya?" As he spoke he continued to shovel soggy French fries into his mouth. He clearly was not going to be interrupted for anything.

Jake laughed as he slid into the stool next to the veteran detective, "Yeah, work. I actually needed to ask you about the Prosporo McQueen case."

"Who?" Orlinsky asked casually, but Jake noticed he'd put down a fry that was half way to his mouth.

"This guy named McQueen. Pimp, total asshole, everyone and their mother wanted him offed."

"What do I know about it?" Orlinsky asked. He'd picked up the greasy salami sandwich that shared the plate with his fries, but he didn't start to lift it to his mouth.

"Gee, I don't know," Jake said gamely. "Why don't you tell me?"

"Get out of here rookie," Orlinsky said. "You're starting to annoy me."

"I'm serious here, Orlinsky," Jake said, loosing his cocky attitude. "Remember, your talking to a cop. What do you know about the Prospero McQueen murder?"

Orlinsky laughed, though not convincingly. "Don't try to intimidate me, McCarty. You don't have the balls to carry out your pathetic threats."

"Maybe not the balls," Jake said, letting a smile creep onto his face. "But I got the badge." Jake reached into his leather jacket and pulled out his FBI badge and tossed it on the bar as casually as if they were playing poker and he'd just upped the antae on a bet.

"What's that?" Orlinsky asked, he put his sandwich down without taking a bite.

"Proof that I'm an FBI agent," Jake said. "Detective Orlinsky, you're under arrest on charges of Murder and conspiracy."

"What the . . ." Orlinsky said, moving to get up.

Before he was off the stool Jake had a handcuff on his left arm and was twisting it behind his back. The detective was smart enough to know that resisting arrest only made things worse, so he didn't struggle as Jake lead him out of the bar and recited "You have the right to remain silent . . ."

* * *

"Oh God Gabriel!" Sara said, lowering her friend to the floor, her mind overrun with guilt, fear, and panic. "Don't . . . don't be afraid . . . it's, it's gonna," her throat started to constrict and tears were running down her cheeks. She didn't really believe what she was going to say next. "It'll be ok."

"God, Sara . . ." Conchobar's hoarse voice said from somewhere behind and above her as his hand appeared on her shoulder.

"If I were you," Ian Nottingham's thick smooth voice said from somewhere in front of and above her. "I would call an Ambulance."

Sara looked up and saw Ian, dressed all in black, hovering in front of her. She couldn't help but think he looked like Death.

"Who are . . ." Conchobar started to ask.

"This boy is bleeding to death, rather rapidly I might ad," Ian snapped. "You can either watch him die or try to save him."

"Baby," Sara said lifting one of her hands, which were both covered with blood, up to squeeze the hand he'd placed on her shoulder, "Call nine-one-one."

"Aye," her husband said softly, squeezing her hand back as he looked around the cluttered storeroom. "Ah, a phone?"

"Here," Sara said, reaching into the pocket of her leather jacket and pulling out her cell-phone. Conchobar took it and, wandered away from the scene as he dialed. Sara turned to back to Gabriel, who was also staring at Nottingham as if he were Death. There was blood. So much blood. The Witchblade had made a very clean cut through an area that was not terribly vital, that is to say she cleanly missed the heart and the lungs. He could get better, she believed that, if she could only stop the blood.

"Maddie!" Sara yelled with a harsh edge to her voice. The girl looked up from her terrified sobbing very cautiously. What she saw obviously horrified her, because she started sucking air in short gasps and was visibly trembling. "Get a grip on yourself," Sara ordered harshly. "Gabriel's dying I need your help!"

The girl put her hand over her mouth, as if to hold back her sobs, and nodded.

"I need towels, lots of them. We have to stop the bleeding."

The girl nodded again, here brown eyes were wide open and unfocused. Sara recognized that the girl was probably in shock, severely traumatized. But she seemed to be aware enough to climb to her feet and wonder off towards the bathrooms. Whether or not she would have the presence of mind to wander back with towels was another question. "Conchobar," Sara said. "Follow her, make sure she's ok. Bring back towels."

Her husband nodded, and continued talking to the operator as he followed Maddies somewhat dazed steps, "Ah, ah, yeah. . . . no I'm no' exactly sure it was all kinda quick . . . Tha's right, I said impaled, like, in one side an out the other. . . . No, we took it out, 's tha' bad? . . . yeah, he's still alive . . ."

"Death is a loving mistress, she caresses us all before finally pulling us into her eternal embrace," Nottingham mused. "It is only those who resist the seduction, who fear her power, who feel pain."

Sara ignored Nottingham's ramblings. "Don't worry, Sweetie," Sara cooed, leaning over Gabriel and looking him in the eyes. He stared back up at her. Every breath was a battle, trickles of blood streamed out of his mouth. He was in too much pain to speak, but he didn't have to. His eyes said everything: he was in pain, he was afraid, and most of all, he was sorry. "Everything's gonna be alright." she said, petting his face. "I'm not gonna let you die."

* * *

Danny knocked on the door to room 17. He could feel several sets of eyes boring into the back of his head. He was most uncomfortable about the eyes of the neighbors. This place was known to be a, as Vicky Po would put it, spank-me-by-the-hour motel. He was a man, alone, who'd just gotten out of a very nice car calling on a single girl who's entire wardrobe could be described in one word: skanky. The obvious conclusions would be drawn, and Danny couldn't keep his cheeks from burning as he thought about that.

The second set of eyes may or may not have been there, he didn't know. But the very possibility made his palms sweat. They were the eyes of the white bulls. Corrupt cops who'd been watching Charlene to see if she leaked what she knew. People ready to kill her just to erase her secrets, people willing to kill him too, because she might have told him. Those eyes, which were probably imaginary, frightened him.

The last two sets of eyes, however, made him feel safe enough to go on. These were the eyes of two FBI agents, Ford and Deeter, who had driven him in an unmarked black suddan to this little lovely hotel and were, quite literally, watching his back. At least, he thought, if the white bulls got him, the Feds would get them. It wasn't a terribly comforting thought.

The door didn't open, but a voice came from the other side of the door as, Danny imagined, a cautious eye peeked through the peep-hole.

"Go away detective," Charlene said. "I told you all I'm gonna."

"Come on sweetie," Danny said rather loudly, hoping the neighbors would interpret his words differently than she would. "I'm not gonna hurt you, and you'll be well rewarded for what you do."

"They'll kill me."

"I told you, you won't get hurt."

"You can't protect me."

"I've got friends, they've got resources. Come on, I swear, it'll be worth your time."
There was a pause and then a click and a thud as the bolt was undone. The door opened a crack, still the chain was done and the girl's body was safely behind the wall to the left of the door. He could only see the right side of her face.

"You said you'd only come to me if you could protect me," she whispered.

"I can," he said softly. "The black car, about ten feet away, there are two FBI agents in there. They'll take us to their headquarters where we've got the guy who shot your pimp in custody. You testify against him and you'll be ushered into the witness protection program. Got it?"

"I, ah . . ."

"Just come with me," Danny insisted. "Pretend I'm just another loser hiring you for a ride in the car."

"I'm not sure."

"Charlene," Danny said, his voice soft but determined. "If I were going to kill you I'd have done it by now. I'm here to help, but you have to trust me."

The girl took a deep, shaky breath, "Alright. I just need . . ."

"Nothing, you need nothing," Danny insisted. "Agents will come by later and clean up the room. We have to make this look like an ordinary pick up, ok."

Charlene nodded and closed the door. For a horrible second Danny thought she'd changed her mind. But then the door opened again and the girl steeped out and walked confidently over to the car with Danny right beside her. And he opened the door and ushered her in before slipping in himself.

As agent Deeter speed away and Agent Forbs carefully explained to Charlene what they were going to do and her part in it, Danny realized that no one was watching him. He leaned back and sighed in relief.

* * *

"Gabriel Bowman's problem, Sara, is that he's a lover, not a fighter," Ian said as he hovered over her. She ignored him. With Conchobar guiding her, Maddie had brought back an armful of towels, which Sara was now trying to use to stop the blood that seemed to be pouring out of her best friend. Maddie had curled into a corner and was rocking back and forth, whimpering. Conchobar was waiting outside for the ambulance, when he'd left he'd given Ian a vicious look but the circumstances allowed little more.

"Come on, Sweetie," Sara begged, looking into Gabriel's eyes intently. She was terrified that if she looked away, even for a second, when she looked back his eyes would be lifeless and dull. "Just keep breathing, that's all you gotta do. Just breath."

"If he were a fighter," Ian said, accenting his monologue with the subtle ring of a sword being unsheathed. "He would have had weapons. He would have had tactics. He would have had a means to fight back."

"Focus on me, Gabriel," Sara said. "Listen to my voice, you're going to be alright."

"Irons took over and the boy offered no resistance, just as he offered no resistance as you slid the Witchblade through his chest."

"Hold on, sweetie," Sara said, drawing her hand compassionately across his face before raising her head and turning her attention to Ian, who stood over her examining a rappier critically. "Nottingham what the hell are you . . ."

"I'm protecting you Sara. And because I can not bear to see you suffer any more than you already have, I am protecting him."

"By pulling out a sword?" Sara demanded. "You expect us to be attacked by buccaneers?"

Ian smiled and almost laughed, "No Sara, I'm protecting you from suspicion."

Nottingham picked up one of Sara's discarded towels that was soaked in blood and wrapped it around the swords blade. He then extended the hilt to Sara. "Draw the blade," he said.

"What?"

"They are going to want to know what injured him, and unlike your previous fights with villains and cutthroats, you will not be able to shrug your shoulders and claim ignorance. This blade is the same size, approximately, as the Witchblade, and now it is covered in his blood."

"And my fingerprints!"

"Sara, someone had to draw the blade from him after he fell on it."

Sara stared at it and swallowed hard. It seemed so petty, so awful, to worry about proving herself guiltless, to construct a lie, and explain away Gabriel's injuries as he was bleeding to death on the floor in front of her. Sara hesitated.

"Sara for your own protection," Ian insisted.

"Sara . . ." Gabriel's weak breath choked out.

Sara gasped, the rest of the world stopped as she leaned forward to listen to him whisper. "I'm right here, Hon, I'm right here."

"Take the sword," he whispered. His voice was a web of pain, each word he managed to say obviously took great deal of effort, more blood flowed out of the corners of his mouth. "You need to save yourself."

"Oh Gabriel," Sara sobbed, to wrapped in her own grief and fear to pay much attention to what he actually had said.

"Grant the dying man his last request," Ian said, kneeling down so that, if Sara were to look at him, they would be eye to eye. "Save yourself."

Sara took a second and glanced at the dark man, and then, with spiteful determination, she grabbed the hilt of the saber and with one smooth movement pulled it away from Ian, through the blood soaked towel and tossed it across the room, where it landed with a klang.

"Thanks," Gabriel said so softly that Sara almost didn't hear him. The light behind his eyes seemed to be fading, his breath seemed to be weakening, and his will to live, now that he knew Sara would be all right, was ebbing away. "You're needed."

"I'm," Sara choked. "I'm needed? Gabriel I need . . ."

And that's when two very strong arms pulled her away from her closest friend an placed her in the arms of her husband. The paramedics had arrived. Two men and a woman descended on the dying boy and the room seemed suddenly full of medical jargon.

"You," Sara muttered softly as Conchobar wrapped his arms around her. She didn't turn to look at him, she just continued to stare at Gabriel as the paramedics surrounded him. "Gabriel, I need you."

"'S all right," Conchobar whispered as he held her close to him. "Th' doctors'll take care of 'im."

"He's gonna die," Sara muttered, burring her head in her husbands chest.

"No," Conchobar said. "It'll be ok."

"Excuse me," one of the Medics said. He was a large black man with big trustworthy hands. His white shirt, stained red with Gabriel's blood, had the name Leonard embroidered over the right breast pocket. "What happened to the instrument that impaled him?"
"Ah . . ." Conchobar stuttered, "We . . . well . . ."

Sara pushed herself away from her husband and wiped the tears off her cheeks with bloody hands. She was a police detective and she knew how to act at a crime scene. "Here," She said, her voice thin and stretched. "I, think I, ah, I threw it over here."

She stumbled away from her husband, leading the medic over to the sword Ian had so cleverly prepared. "He was," she started to say, then her voice caught. She hoped it sounded like grief, not like she was trying to construct a believable story of how an intelligent human being could impale himself.

"Showin' us this sword," Conchobar said, quickly guessing at the lie that had been staged. "And I'm not exactly sure how, but he tripped and it . . . ah . . ." Conchobar motioned with his hands, giving the general impression of a long sharp thing going through his body.

"Why did you pull it out?"

"I wasn't thinking," Sara said quickly. Conchobar didn't know that her bloody fingerprints were all over the hilt. "I guess I thought, you know, if we got it out quick enough it wouldn't have happened or something."

"Now, are you his family?"

"Ah," Conchobar said, "No."

"I'm detective Sara Pezzini," Sara said, pulling out her badge. "I'm a friend of Gabriel's."

"Alright, Detective," Leonard said, sounding a little less coddling and a little more professional. "Here's the situation, the kid's alive but loosing blood fast. He just passed out."

"God," Sara said, taking a shaky breath.

"Keep your cool, detective," Leonard said, holding his hands out as if to show that he was defenseless against any onslaught that Sara could throw at him. "The damage is minimal considering the type of injury. As far as we can tell nothing vital was punctured, but we have to get him to the hospital stat."

"Yeah," Sara said, nodding, trying not to cry.

"We're gonna cart him over to St. John's. If you want to ride along detective, you're welcome."

"Really," Sara asked, a little stunned. "Can I?"

"Yeah," Leonard said, smiling. "That way if he wakes up he can see your pretty face instead of this ugly mug." Behind him, the other two paramedics already had him on a cart and were starting to carry it to the ambulance.

"I gotta stay with him, baby," Sara said, turning around and grabbing her husbands hands. "I know if I leave him, he's gonna die."

"Sara," Conchobar said, his brow furrowed with worry. "You're not a doctor. You can't save him."

"I can't let him die," she said with conviction before kissing him on the cheek and then turning and following Leonard out of Gabriel's blood stained apartment and into the ambulance.

* * *

"That's him," Charlene said, hugging herself tightly so that her trembling would be a little less pronounced.

Danny put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Now you're sure. Absolutely sure."

The girl nodded. "He shot Prospero. He said he didn't want to pay, said he wasn't 'no 5-0 slave.' I guess he was thinkin' if the PD really wanted to stop him they could arrest him legally, but he wasn't gonna go bankrupt to fill some corrupt cop's wallet. And then he shot him."

"Ok, Charlene," Danny said, taking a deep breath. "That's just great."

"He can't see me, can he?"

"No."

"What if he knows it's me anyways? What if he figures it out."
"Charlene," Jake said seriously. "We're the Fed's. We can protect you."

"I don't get why the FBI cares so much about Prosporo. He was just an ordinary Pimp."

"We think dirty cops, like Detective Orlinsky over there, who've been killing pimps and drug dealers for . . ." Jake started. He didn't finish though, because the girls eyes suddenly went wide, as if she'd just had an epiphany.

"You don't know any more about this, do you?" Danny asked.

"This is about the white bulls, isn't it?" Charlene asked.

"How'd you know that?" Jake asked suspiciously.

"You think they just took their bribes in cash, do you?" she asked, as if she were surprised by their naivete. "We girls had'ta sleep with them all the time. An' some of them talk."

"Why doesn't that surprise me," Danny sighed.

"The stuff Bruno said about what they did . . ."

"Wait, wait," Jake said, holding his hands up. "Captain Bruno Dante?"

The girl nodded, but her eyes were worried. Her expression was that of a very little girl, and it seemed to say 'did I do something wrong.'

Jake took a deep breath, "Charlene, are you willing to testify in court about what Captain Dante did and said as well as what Orlinsky did to your pimp? And identify any of the other dirty cops that you've . . . um . . . known?"

Charlene shook her head emphatically, "They'll kill me."

"No they won't," Danny said, looking the girl straight in the eyes. "These men have been living as if the law doesn't apply to them. It does. From this moment on they will not be able to get away with anything, especially murder."

"Really?" the girl sounded hopeful. Danny imagined the past few weeks must have been a nightmare of looking over her shoulder and panicking every time she saw a blue uniform or heard a siren.

"You bet," Jake said in his cavalier surfer dude way. "That's what we do."

* * *

Leonard the paramedic was focusing on Gabriel's vital signs. The little monitors inside the ambulance showed a heart rate that seemed hopelessly week and his breathing was so shallow it was practically invisible. Sara couldn't help but think that Leonard was paying so much attention to them because he expected them to stop at any minuet and he wanted to be ready.

"Can I hold his hand?" Sara asked softly.

"Uh," Leonard said, glancing away from the monitors for a fraction of a second. "Yeah, just don't disturb the IV."

Sara reached out and took the boy's left hand. It was caked with blood, just like hers. He had, Sara noticed, long fingers, neatly trimmed nails with the remnants of black nail polish a couple weeks old. She stroked the smooth back of his hand and contemplated the scar on the back of his other hand. It was still there. Kenneth Irons was still in him.

Her mind drifted back to what Ian had told her; that Gabriel had been victimized, had been used, because he did not have a weapon to fight Irons with. She looked down at his face and wondered what kind of weapon could he use. Sara knew Irons well enough to know that, even if she killed him, and not with the Witchblade but with her gun, he would find a way to stay inside of Gabriel. He was that damn tenacious. No, this was a problem for another world, another plain. It was a battle, but not of flesh and blood but of essence. Gabriel's essence was being trapped, tortured, maybe eventually destroyed by the essence of Kenneth Irons. But what type of weapon, Sara wonder, could an essence wield? When the answered dawned on her it seemed painfully obvious: the Witchblade. It kept Irons alive, it kept her alive, maybe it could keep him alive as well. She knew that he wasn't supposed to wield it, men could not wield it, but maybe, if she was holding his hand, if she was with him, maybe they could fight together, maybe it wouldn't kill him. But, she mused as she slipped the bracelet off of her hand, he was practically dead anyways, and it was better to go down fighting than to be subject to the evil whims of Kenneth Irons. As she slipped the Witchblade on to her friend's wrist, she hoped he felt the same way.

TO BE CONTINUED . . . (don't forget to review!!!)