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Chapter
12: Elucidation
A
throbbing pain from the left side of her head had awoken Sara that afternoon.
She kept her eyes closed fearing if she opened them, her headache would get
worse. As she rolled over in bed, she felt someone sit down at the edge. Her
eyes shot open to find Darren staring down at her, holding a warm towel. He
placed it on the top of her head and smiled.
“Afternoon,”
he said, his sweet Australian accent shining though as he gently dabbed her
forehead with the warm cloth.
“What
happened?” Sara groaned as she settled onto her back.
“You
took one hell of a beating this morning,” Darren answered. He grabbed a bag of
ice from a basin beside the bed and eased it onto her bruised right hand.
Sara
watched him and noticed that the Witchblade was gone. She would have flown out
of bed it Darren hadn’t held her down. “Whoa, stay still,” he said. “You
shouldn’t be moving around too much.”
“But…”
Sara began, only to have Darren’s finger placed upon her lips.
“You’re
looking for this, aren’t you?” he asked, pulling the Witchblade out of his
pocket and placing it back onto her wrist.
Sara
merely stared at him with wide, mortified eyes, but soon those scared feelings
washed away when she remembered the morning’s events. The memory of Anastasia
trying to kill her replayed in her mind as if it was happening at that moment.
She continued to stare at Darren with a questionable expression on her face.
“I
know what you’re thinking,” he said. “And I think I can explain.”
“I’m
all ears,” Sara retorted without meaning to mock him.
Darren
let the comment slide as he continued. “First off, I’m sorry about kicking
you out like I did. I now understand why you kept the second roadie’s death
from me. Second, about today and all the odd things that happened, well, I
really don’t know where to start.”
“How
about the beginning?” she asked, her voice a little more forgiving.
“After
you left, I got really depressed and started drinking. Anastasia dropped in, and
she had this really sinister look in her eyes. She really freaked me out. She
said something about you not loving me and that she had always loved me. Then
she took my hand and we connected somehow. She showed me all this weird stuff
that was in my dream just a few weeks ago, but the detail was incredible. I saw
you and her at the Roman Coliseum as gladiators. You had her down on her knees
and she yelled something about avenging her death in a later life. Then you
sliced off her head with that,” Darren said, pointing to the bracelet on
Sara’s wrist. “When I reached the arena, you called it the Witchblade, and
you gave it to me for some reason.”
Sara
looked away, remembering her own strange dream. Darren noticed the somber look
in her eyes and asked, “What is the Witchblade?”
“The
Witchblade,” Sara began, “is a weapon of incredible power. It chooses its
wielder, not the other way around. Legend has it only women of unmatched strength of mind, body, and will have
ever successfully worn it. Joan of Arc was one of it’s wielders as was
Achillia the gladiatrix, as am I. You, who were formally known as Sebastian in
Achillia’s time, were the only man the Witchblade had ever chosen as a
wielder, and that was only because Achillia had mastered its powers and allowed
it. She and Sebastian were secret lovers, and the way she had secured that love
was by having Sebastian wear the weapon during gladiatorial battles.”
“So,
you’re telling me that our love goes back thousands of years, that we were
meant to be, and that finding each other was inevitable?” Darren questioned.
Sara nodded. “That’s why you asked all those questions.”
“Yeah,
I just wanted to see if you would believe me if I told you,” she said. “Do
you believe me?”
“If
I told you I didn’t, I’d be a hypocrite,” he answered.
“How?”
“Because
then I’d be denying all the feelings I had when I first saw you.”
Sara
smiled. She knew deep in her heart that he was being truthful. Darren gazed into
her deep green eyes, a grin coming across his lush pink lips. He leaned in and
kissed her softly. “Would you believe me if I told you I loved you?” he
whispered into her ear as he hovered above her body.
“Yes,”
Sara whispered back. Their arms wrapped around each other as Darren initiated
another kiss. Just as things were beginning to get heavy between them, Sara’s
cell phone began to ring. She groaned, rolling over to the nightstand and
picking it up.
“McCarty!”
she yelled at her partner.
“Pez!
Where the hell have you been? I’ve tried to get a hold of you for the last
eight hours, but your boyfriend kept telling me that you were asleep. What the
hell have you two been up to?” Jake yelled back.
“That’s
my business, not yours,” Sara retorted, ready to hang up on him.
“Dante’s
pissed at you for not being in the office. He’s ready to skin your hide if
you’re not here in the next hour,” he warned.
“Tell
him to screw himself. If he really wants to fire me, then so be it. I don’t
give a shit,” she answered.
“I’ll
just tell him you’re sick,” Jake offered.
“You
go do that,” Sara replied as she hung up and turned off her phone. She turned
to Darren and asked, “Now, where were we?”
He
wrapped his arms around her once more and said, “Right here,” as he kissed
her.
*~*~*
Darren
was the first to wake up the next morning with Sara’s warm body nestled up
against his beneath the sheets of their bed. He held her in his arms and watched
her as she slept. A growing peace consumed him as he continued to gaze at the
woman beside him. She was everything he had imagined her to be, down to the last
curve of her body. She was perfect and would remain that way until the day she
died. He couldn’t help but place a gentle kiss on her bare shoulder.
“I
could stay awake just to hear you breathing. Watch you smile while you are
sleeping, while you're far away and dreaming. I could spend my life in this
sweet surrender. I could stay lost in this moment forever. Well, every moment
spent with you is a moment I treasure,” Darren softly sang as he buried his
face into the luscious locks of her hair.
Sara
could feel Darren’s lips upon her skin and hear his soft singing from behind
her. She turned around to face him with a warm smile across her face.
“Morning, love,” he whispered as their eyes connected.
“Morning,”
Sara yawned, stretching out her arms above his head then wrapping them around
his neck.
“How
do you feel today?” Darren asked.
“I’m
doing better,” she replied. “I don’t hurt anymore.”
“That’s
good,” he said, his hand tenderly moving across her cheek as a smile appeared
across his lips. “You look much better. You’re not as pale as you were
yesterday. I wonder if I had anything to do that,” he joked.
“You
probably did, I just didn’t know it,” Sara answered as she smiled.
“I’m
just glad to see that you’re doing so well. I thought I was going to lose you
by the looks of the cuts all over your body. But you take a licking and keep on
ticking,” Darren cracked another joke. Sara couldn’t help but laugh at this
one. “So, are you hungry? I’d think you would be because you lost so much
energy. Want me to order something from room service?”
“Yeah,”
she replied. “A big, juicy steak with a baked potato and all the trimmings.
Oh, and don’t forget the A1 sauce.”
“It’s
six in the morning! I was thinking something more along the lines of an omelet
or pancakes,” he said, picking up the phone.
“Okay,
then I’ll have a cheese omelet, two pancakes, three strips of bacon, and two
sausage links with a really big glass of orange juice.”
*~*~*
With
her appetite satisfied and every cut bandaged, Sara was dressed back into her
now three day old clothes and headed home. She desperately needed to shower and
change before she went back to work. Hopefully
Dante had believed the sick story that Jake made up, but she’d still have to
explain things to both of them in a way that could be accepted.
‘There’s
already been enough strange shit that’s happened in the last few months,’
she thought. “Maybe I can get away with one more… Nah.’
Sara
began to figure out how to make her story believable. ‘Okay, this is what
happened. I had this feeling that something bad was going to happen to Darren,
so I went to his hotel room to check it out. Lo and behold, there was his
assistant with a huge bronze dagger trying to kill us because she had some
ancient grudge against us,’ was the first idea. ‘Hell no!’
‘Okay,
how about this? I had a hunch that Darren was Anastasia’s planned target and
that all these roadies were a way of trying to tell the cops about her
intentions after he was dead. So I went over to his hotel room, and lo and
behold, she was there with a huge sword ready to chop his head off. I started to
stop her, but she ran off before I even had time to pull out my gun. But how did
I end up with all these cuts and scratches?’ Another plan gone awry. Sara
stepped into the shower and kept thinking.
‘How
about I had that same hunch that Darren was Anastasia’s next victim, and when
I went over to the hotel, I found her trying to kill Darren. I picked up the
only object I could find, which was a golf club, and started to fight with her.
She cut me a few times with her sword, but then I hid behind a chair and pulled
my gun, and she was off like lightening. Perfect.’ Sara smiled, the plan
devised in her head. She didn’t have to worry about if Darren would go with it
or not. She knew he had to or there would be some more explaining to do on his
behalf.
After
putting on some fresh clothes and grabbing a coffee, Sara was back at work in no
time, as if nothing had happened in the last two days. She found Jake in her
office, pouring over the documents on Anastasia Rossini, Ryan Walters, and
Leonard Smith. As he looked up and saw her in the doorway, he said, “Lucy, you
gots some ‘splaining to do.”
“No
shit,” Sara replied as she sat down in her chair and put her feet up. “Where
do you want me to start?”
“How
about the part where you rushed out of here the other day?” Jake answered as
he folded his arms over his chest and patiently waited for Sara’s response.
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