A Tale Of Two Blades Chapter 30, a tv x-overs fanfic

Author's Note: Italics signify thought, emphasis or vision.

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New York, NY
Monday, August 13, 2001
early afternoon

Christian and Lilianna were running rooftops to their next "appointment" when Christian suddenly stopped short. They had already taken out three of the men they considered the biggest threats. Two in their own homes and one on a job they had interrupted which Lilianna had finished for him since that target had been even more evil than theirs. Christian had been suitably impressed with the lack of hesitancy she showed in picking up the dead man's weapon and putting a bullet right between the extra target's eyes, blowing the back of his head off.

Lilianna stopped too and looked at him, waiting for an explanation. But the Witchblades activated into full armor a moment later, making an explanation unnecessary. Something was happening nearby that the Blades wanted them to stop. They leapt down from the roof to the alleyway five stories below.

At first there was nothing out of the ordinary, but then a man appeared, dragging a young girl with him, a hand clamped over her mouth to stifle her screams of terror. Knowledge and hate flowed from Lilianna to Christian. She knew this man. When she was fourteen, she had killed him in Paris. Her first hit after receiving the Witchblade. He was a serial rapist who had always managed to evade capture, until he had been mysteriously gunned down visiting the Eiffel Tower. 17 lives destroyed and 12 taken in a span of twenty years. Lilianna couldn't change what he had already done in the past five years, but the next fifteen years would be free of his evil.

He didn't see them until it was much too late to try to get away. Christian grabbed him by the neck, the metal of the Witchblade gauntlet digging into tender flesh. The man was either too surprised or too scared to make a noise when he was lifted five inches off the ground. Lilianna gently extracted the little girl from his hold, lifting the child into gentle arms already casting a healing spell so the girl's trust in people would not be permanently destroyed.

Lilianna could feel Christian's tension radiating from four feet away. His first instinct, as well as that of the Blade, was to kill the man in his grasp, but the fact that the child was watching him with wide eyes was stopping him.

"Knock him out," Lilianna said softly.

Christian swiftly complied, propping the unconscious man against the alley wall. Lilianna smiled gently at the girl in her arms, whose lips quivered but curled upward in response. She handed the child to Christian who also smiled reassuringly at the girl. Lilianna took hold of the man's collar and dragged him five feet further into the alley where there was a ladder leading to the roof and a length of pipe on the ground. Propping the man she really wanted to kill again but who deserved far worse than death against the ladder, she picked up the pipe and, with the added strength of the Witchblade, twisted the metal around the man, attaching him to the ladder.

"What the..."

It was impossible to tell how long he had been in the opening of the alleyway, but the newcomer had to have seen something for the note of disbelief to be so obvious in his voice. When they turned to look at the man, Christian eyes widened, and Lilianna's filled with tears.

The new man continued staring at her in shock, his appearance rumpled as if he had been running. Lilianna's eyes traveled over dark hair and eyes, moving familiarly over handsome features that had not yet been worn down with the pain of losing wife and child. She moved swiftly to his side and gently moved him further into the alleyway.

"How far behind you are they, Jarod?" she asked gently.

Her uncle's eyes widened, but he answered hoarsely, "Not far. How do you..."

"There's no time," Lilianna interrupted. "Is it Elaine, Sydney and Broots?"

Jarod nodded.

"Anyone else? Willie? Raines? Lyle?"

Looking dazed, the man she had last seen bursting into dust on the tip of the Witchblade shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so."

"Good," she muttered. "Oh God, if only we had more time..."

But time wasn't exactly a barrier to the sentience of the Witchblade, and tendrils from the gauntleted hand she still had on Jarod's arm wrapped around him, showing him what had been for her, what might still be for him. When the Witchblade let him go seconds later, he wrapped her in his arms and Lilianna let her tears fall.

Jarod pulled back and studied her face, softly confirming, "Lilianna."

She nodded and hiccupped a sob, "We don't have time; you have to go."

Christian took a step closer and Lilianna quickly introduced the two men.

"Do you still have the card Mara gave you?" Christian asked his wife.

Understanding dawned on Lilianna and she pulled the business card for Angel Investigations out, handing it to Jarod. "Could you meet us here in a month?"

Jarod glanced at the card and slid it into a pocket. "Nothing will stop me. Bring your mother, too?"

Lilianna nodded and Christian pointed to the ladder their unconscious victim was slumped against.

"There's an open window on the second story you can get into. The building has an exit on the opposite side where you can disappear into the crowds. We'll tell your pursuers you kept running down the alley."

Jarod nodded, and after giving his niece a quick squeeze, did as Christian had suggested. Not wanting anyone to be able to use the girl Christian still held to find out where Jarod had gone, Lilianna used more of Mara's knowledge to cast a spell of forgetting. Less than a minute later, three people ran into the alley. Christian sucked in a shocked breath when the woman leading the charge came into view. His sister did look exactly like their mother. But unlike Lilianna, he couldn't share who he was with his family member. Not yet.

Quickly taking in the unusual scene before her, the woman known as Miss Parker to most stepped up to Lilianna and Christian. "I don't know what's going on here and I don't really care, but have either of you seen this man?"

She held up a picture of Jarod, and the couple spared a glance at each other.

"He kept going," Christian replied gruffly, jerking a thumb further down the alley.

Miss Parker sighed and holstered her weapon. The two men with her were staring at the man attached to the ladder. None of the three of them were staring too oddly at Lilianna or Christian, so Lilianna knew the Witchblade was cloaking itself from them.

"What's with him?" Miss Parker asked, indicating the rapist.

Christian's head was bent, but Lilianna could tell he was staring at his sister. So close and yet so far, Lilianna couldn't help but think. She took the girl from Christian's arms and handed her to a startled Miss Parker.

"He tried to kidnap this girl. We stopped him. He's wanted by the FBI. If you call the police I'm sure they'll take him and the girl off your hands, Miss Parker."

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Miss Parker turned and handed the child to Broots, who instinctively smiled and made reassuring noises. He was a good father. Sydney smiled fondly down at the little girl, who for her part seemed to be doing rather well considering she was being handed around like a sack of potatoes.

"Wait a minute, I didn't tell you my name..." Miss Parker spun around but the man and woman who had handed her the child were gone.

The Voices in her head started murmuring to her but Miss Parker ignored them after figuring out part of what they had said.

"What is it, Parker?" Sydney asked.

Miss Parker continued to stare down the alley for a minute. "I think my mother was wrong about the Inner Voice, Syd. I think it can be wrong, too."

"Why, what did it tell you?"

"Something about that man being my brother."

Sydney took on a bemused expression. "That wasn't Lyle or Ethan."

"No," Miss Parker sighed. "It cannot be possible that my mother had another son no one knew about, can it?"

"I don't know, Parker. I'm beginning to think that nothing is impossible where the Centre is concerned."

Elaine Elizabeth Parker took out her cell phone and placed a call to the police, not knowing that the second of her three brothers stood on a nearby rooftop, watching her. His wife, Jarod's niece, was standing with him, her arms wrapped around his waist.

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100 miles outside
Mexico City, Mexico
Monday, August 13, 2001
afternoon

Susanna watched idly through the sight on the high-powered sniper rifle her contact from the Order of Taraka had given her yesterday. She momentarily considered picking off the estate's guards one by one just to enjoy the mayhem that would result, but thought better of it. Her target's car wouldn't pull into the gate if anything appeared to be amiss.

On her right wrist, the Witchblade was burning her. She pulled her attention away from the scene in front of her and glared at the bracelet. Concentrating, she was able to get it to stop hurting her long enough to realize it was warning her about events in New York. Susanna paled.

Her mother knew more than she had when Susanna had left the city, and Ian and Lilianna were in imminent danger from her father. The Blade wanted to be there, to be able to help the True Wielders. Susanna was of a like mind, but she had a job to finish.

If you stop fighting me, she thought, knowing the Witchblade would pick up on it, we can get this done sooner and head back there.

The metal of the Witchblade bracelet tightened on her wrist momentarily, punishing her for her insolence, before it eased. The Blade would not be patient, but it would wait until her assignment was done.

False Wielder! The Voices hissed before falling silent.

Susanna sighed. She was a false Wielder, despite the fact that she was just as much Sara's daughter as Lilianna. And the Witchblade liked to remind her of that fact anytime it was unhappy with her, which had seemed to be more and more often lately. Susanna nearly cursed when her cell phone began vibrating in her pocket. She had been expecting this call half an hour ago, and she wasn't looking forward to it.

"Doe," she answered softly when she had lifted the device to her ear.

"Report," a male voice on the other end commanded.

"Malcolm," Susanna sighed, glad it was him and not one of the higher ups. "No, the job isn't finished yet."

"We are aware of that, Doe. The question is why."

"Because I was given shoddy intel. The guy had his son in the car with him this morning."

There was a heavy silence on the other end of the line.

"The Order knew when they recruited me what my conditions were. I am ruthless, and I am one of the best at what we do, but I do not kill innocent children."

Malcolm grunted his assent.

"About half an hour ago I went down and did my own reconnaissance. The target will be back from dropping off the kid soon. I will complete my assignment as soon as possible."

"Very well."

Malcolm disconnected their call and Susanna slipped her headset back into her pocket. She stiffened when one of the estate's guards headed into the tree line in her general direction, but she relaxed again when she realized he was just relieving himself. Forty minutes and no big distractions later, Susanna's ears picked up the sound of the approaching luxury vehicle.

Susanna pulled out the small transmitter she had prepared the night before and waited for the car to be in good firing range. It had been ridiculously easy to break into the estate garage without detection and plant the bomb on the target's car. Just inside the gate was the perfect spot. It was where she had planned to blow it up this morning, but the seven year old who had climbed into the vehicle had stopped her.

The Witchblade had abandoned Sara in Susanna's timeline when Sara had tried to kill Susanna, then an innocent child. That, added to her own fascination with children due to her "cousins" at Manticore, had led her to the one main rule she never went against when it came to assassinations. She didn't kill innocents under a certain age. She didn't like killing innocent adults either, but if it were the only way to get to the "bad guy," she would do it.

Like now. Not all of the underlings of the drug lord and flesh peddler she was about to kill were evil, but they would be taken care of in order to get to the target. It was part of the job, and she had long since accepted it. Susanna had been going after self-appointed hits since she was thirteen, and she had been a member of the Order of Taraka, an elite assassin's guild, even before coming to this timeline at the age of eighteen.

Luckily, they had again recruited her in this time stream and she'd had to dip into Vorschlag funds only occasionally to keep herself fed, clothed, sheltered and armed. She had taken only tiny amounts here and there as Ian had taught her when she was young. Even he would dismiss the amounts as the inevitable losses in the running of such a big company. Of course, now that he and Lilianna were trying to break free, she didn't think he'd care either way if she wiped Vorschlag clean. But despite the things he had done to others, Susanna had nothing against her father, and she wouldn't do something like that to him. Money and his little games of power were all he had.

The target's car reached just inside the gate and Susanna pressed the button on the transmitter. Only a few seconds later, an explosion roared, and the car was momentarily lifted off the ground. A body on fire, there was no way to tell if it was the target or someone else, stumbled from the backseat, an inhuman sound coming from his throat for only the length of time it took Susanna to lift the rifle and aim it. The driver had survived as well, and Susanna meticulously picked him off, as well as the four guards closest to the car.

By the time the remaining men figured out which direction the shots had originated from, Susanna was long gone.