Blood & Steel: Chapter 1 – Nightmares Pt. 2
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN WITCHBLADE (hey, if I did, it'd still be on the air, dammit!) OR HIGHLANDER!
"No one knows where my story begins
Bohemienne
I was born on a road that bends
Bohemienne, bohemienne
Come tomorrow, I'll wander again
Bohemienne, bohemienne
Here's my fate in the lines of my hands"
- "Bohemienne" from Notre Dame de Paris
Saoirse pressed a hand against her heart, willing it to slow. She briefly shut her eyes against the sunlight streaming through her windows, cursing herself for inviting the nightmare with a mid afternoon nap. She briefly had to remind herself where she was; for a minute, she'd thought that she was back in Ireland, in her mother's stronghold.
Instead, she was in a two-story apartment on the Seine, in Paris, and she was a member of the Watchers, an organization dedicated to recording the lives of Immortals. And she was there to translate documents relating to the existence of Niamh, supposedly the oldest female Immortal currently alive.
'Adam would be laughing his ass off at the Watchers for this one,' she thought, smiling wryly as she climbed out of bed, pulling on a loose pair of low-slung jeans and a thick sweater against the chill that had crept in overnight. She tried to ignore the nearly transparent male figure floating close to her armoire, attempting to sneak a peek into her underwear drawer. 'Pervert,' she thought, slamming the drawer shut just as he leaned down to peer in. Being a ghost, he wasn't hurt, but she could feel him aim a glare at her back.
She descended the winding staircase down to her living room, which also served as her working area, mentally going over the list of projects she still had to complete for the Watchers, ignoring the various ghosts that drifted around her apartment. The desk and most of the floor in front of her was littered with ancient manuscripts and texts, notepads covered in her native language, a primitive form of Gaelic, strewn around, over, and underneath them.
She was rubbing her forehead, thinking where best to start, when her doorbell chimed. The door to her apartment was secluded, away from everything else in its own little hall.
"Adam?" she asked, peering through the peephole and opening the door to her friend.
His smile was classic Adam, a little cocky, very confident, as was his haircut, the same Brutus style she'd known on him forever. He was dressed in jeans, a thick sweater against the chill Paris had in the fall, and a heavy jacket. He was leaning against her doorjamb, as cocky as the oldest living Immortal man was allowed to be.
"Hello, Niamh," he said, drawing out the name.
She simply rolled her eyes, and slammed the door shut.
The doorbell chimed again.
'Persistent, isn't he?' she thought.
She opened the door slowly, sparks shooting from her brown eyes. "I ought to take your head right now for calling me that, Adam," she mumbled, opening the door wide enough for him to come in.
He sighed, his face losing his grin, and went in, silently shutting the door behind him.
Saoirse led him into her work space, not watching him to see if he stepped on any of the prized manuscripts that were strewn all over the floor. "What do you want, Adam?" she asked, sitting at her desk, which, like the floor, was covered in work.
"There's a buzz among the Watchers," he began.
"There's always a buzz among the Watchers, Adam. If it's not you, then it's some rumor about me. Or, Goddess forbid, about the McLeods," she replied, waving the news away as she turned to start sorting her work.
"It's not just you or me this time, Saoirse. It's something bigger. Someone's been killing Watchers, looking for information about a certain Immortal female." Adam said, his brown eyes studying the woman who was as legendary as he was. He perched on the edge of her desk, waiting for her to take in the information he'd just spoken.
"I really wish Amanda would keep a low profile for once." Saoirse said, idly eyeing some of the translations she had been working on the night before.
"They aren't looking for Amanda. They, who ever they are, are looking for information on Niamh."
"They're looking for information on me?" That got her attention away from what she'd been hired by the Watchers to do, and on to the case at hand.
"It would seem so. Everyone who's even so much as looked at the file on you is scared all to hell." Adam replied, watching her carefully.
Saoirse stood and began to pace, trying to make sense of what she'd heard. "It was bound to happen, Adam." He opened his mouth, but she kept talking. "After all, the second oldest living Immortal. Who wouldn't want that prize?" She was pacing more quickly, her mind working. "I mean, I've been hunted before. I can handle this." She looked right at him, and for just an instant, Adam saw a bit of fear in her eyes. He reached out, grabbing her by the shoulder and halting her.
"Niamh." That name, that one word, had the ability to halt her in her tracks. "From what the Watchers are telling me, this is an Immortal who came into being a little over a hundred years ago."
'It can't be,' she thought. 'It's not possible.' She echoed that same thought out loud. "There had to have been Immortals around that time that came into their Immortality." Adam just shook his head, and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a slightly grainy color image. He set it on the desk, open and unfolded, waiting for Saoirse to pick it up.
She looked at it, almost fearfully, and reached for it.
"Where was this taken?" she asked quietly, smoothing the creases out of the picture.
"Outside a Watcher's home, right before the woman and her family were killed." Adam replied. "We're lucky she was cautious enough to keep a security camera running at all times."
The face was hauntingly familiar. Blond hair, an obsessively trimmed blond mustache (almost unidentifiable in the picture, it was so faint), and the walk of a would-be member of London's upper echelons. The attempt at appearing up-to-date with the clothes and the hairstyle were easily recognizable.
"Darius Krawler." She whispered the name, as if in fear. The eyes she turned to Adam were haunted. "He's looking for me? But why?"
"None of his victims have lived to tell why he's searching for you," he replied. She collapsed into the chair, her hands and shoulders shaking slightly. Adam knelt in front of her, taking her hands, which had become like ice, in his. "He's also hunting down Immortals. He's breaking the rules of the Game, the way he's taking their heads. He's breaking the most holy rule."
"He's killing on Holy Ground." She blinked a couple of times, and seemed to snap out of her reverie. Her brown eyes, usually sparkling with some unknown joke, now seemed determined. "Where is he?"
"He's in New York City." She stood quickly, almost throwing Adam off balance in the process. She was climbing the stairs to her bedroom when Adam stopped her. "You can't just rush off, Saoirse. The Society will need a reason."
"Tell them there's been a death in the family." She paused, thinking. "Just don't let them know that if I don't go, there will be more deaths in our family." She continued, reaching the landing before he spoke again.
"There's something else!" Adam almost yelled up the stairs. "I take it you remember the Witchblade?"
Saoirse closed her eyes, gripping the banister –
There was so much pain, she realized, as the blade entered her heart. She looked up at the Wielder's face, who was trying to put on a show of not caring about the young woman she was killing. All for her mother's benefit.
Searing pain, and awakening again.
Hearing the bracelet hiss every time she came near it, as if it condemned her for something that she had no control over.
"Yes, I remember." She turned her eyes haughty. "What about it?"
"Immortals who know about it in New York City have told me that the new Wielder is on the case. If you want anything done, you'll have to deal with her."
'And the mythical weapon that made you what you are today,' her mind graciously filled in for her.
"Then I'll deal with all of them at the same time. The Witchblade made me Immortal, Adam. It does not control me," she replied. Saoirse continued on to her bedroom, with every intention of packing. "Please call the airport and make arrangements for the first flight out of Paris, to New York City," she asked, raising her voice to make it carry the distance down to Adam.
"Where will you stay?" he asked, coming up the stairs.
"I'll think of something." She had no idea what she was going to do, but she hadn't lived for over four thousand years by depending on other people to get her through. "It looks like, after so long, I'm reentering the Game," she murmured. The ghosts around her moved out of her path, as if afraid of being contaminated by her.
Saoirse didn't hear Adam come up behind her, invading the sacrosanct area of her bedroom and dressing area.
"Why does it have to be you that goes off to New York?" he demanded from the doorway.
She started slightly, then turned to look at him. "It has to be me. He won't accept anyone else," she replied, turning back to her packing.
"What makes you think that?"
"He's wanted my head since he made me watch him kill his first Immortal." She sighed, her packing slowing. "I thought he died that night, Adam. I wanted him to be dead, to not be able to absorb the Quickening. I showed him what he could be by killing in front of him." She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the feeling of betrayal to her kind to fade away again.
"I remember that. It was the only time you broke your promise to not participate in the Game ever again." Adam said softly.
"And I only helped his lunacy when I told him about the Immortals – and the Watchers." Saoirse glanced at him. "I made him, even if it was indirectly. It's time I finished what I started."