Title: Dagger
Author: Kelandris the Mad
Fandom: View Askewniverse, general (post-Dogma)
Pairing: Jay/Silent Bob/Mercy, Jay/Metatron
Rating: PG-13 for language, NC-17 for everything else
Status: New
You must send an email to me and let me know where you 
intend to archive. Private archiving allowed as long as you 
don't intend to publish. Behave.
Email address for feedback: kel@crazysheep.net
Series/Sequel: Sequel to the the Feather series, which includes the 
first Mercy story, "Have Mercy".
Disclaimers: All characters belong to Kevin Smith and the View 
Askewniverse. If I really get into this, I probably will too. 
Or at least go into hock when I walk into a video store, go 
into rut, and buy all the DVDs at once.
Notes: This thing needs to be edited, and it's still uneven as hell, 
and I didn't run it past my beta-tester, so this may not be even 
close to its final form. But my goodness, am I tired of it wandering 
around my brain.
Summary: Jay and Bob meet Mercy again, when her past comes back to 
bite her. It is, sadly, part I of II, but I have no idea when I'll 
get part II written.
Warnings: Some for language. Het sex. Vampire sex. Angel sex. 
Historical references. Pain and near-death experiences. Jay 
torture. Bob torture. It's just a whole lot of no fun until the 
end.

"Dagger"
by Kelandris


*Prologue*

1350
Verona, Italy

Most of the Agriori were dead, the man thought, and still the order 
haunts me. He unlocked the crypt door with an ornate iron key. 
Brushing back a strand of dark hair still too short for the heavy 
braid falling down his back, he picked up the silk-wrapped package by 
the door, grimacing. Once more, he scanned the horizon and the heavy 
gates behind him, looking for anyone who might see him go inside. 
Nothing moved; no heartbeat sounded in the still air.

Stepping quickly inside, he closed the door carefully, the move from 
evening's rose to full dark only partially dimming the glow in his 
purple eyes. One set of crumbling stairs later, he was inside, 
kneeling before a standing tomb. Moving silently, he set the package 
down, reaching inside his leather vest for a tallow candle, setting 
it alight with a whispered word and gesture. Carefully, he unwrapped 
the black silk covering, revealing a book bound in dark leather, and 
a separate silk package. He unwrapped that one as well, laying bare 
the item inside the red binding. His long face fell as he once again 
revealed his downfall, the death of his order, the Merikit dagger.

The man who had been known as Brother Malthus knelt in silence, 
contemplating the blade before him. The long, dark braid, deep with 
peacock highlights, was something as far from the brother's rounded 
bob as it was possible to get. He'd done everything he could to 
disband the Agriori, realizing far too late how ill advised it had 
been to begin the order. What he had been thinking...was too 
horrible to contemplate. Better the order die, and Brother Malthus 
with it, and the blade be buried.

He opened the book beside him, creating the final resting place for 
the blade by magic. Chanting softly in the darkness, he remembered 
the founding of the Agriori Order. Verona, sleepy by nature, even in 
the hands of the Scaliger autocracy, had seemed the perfect place. 
An order of monks serving the Holy See, hiding a school of dark 
magics, one of the only ones of its kind. And beneath that...the 
true purpose of the Agriori, which only he, a brother named Durian, 
and a certain Brother Alchesti had understood: to create a blade to 
split the very foundation of Heaven, a weapon that could kill angels, 
that *would* kill them and thus deprive an uncaring God of the holy 
host. Malthus and Durian both were survivors of the second 
Inquisition. Malthus had not taken kindly to being named a heretic 
by God's holy soldiers in the Church. Durian had been more 
passionate about being tortured and nearly being killed, but that was 
the nature of the halfling man-it was only his demonic blood and 
quick feet that had saved him from the burning. Alchesti was simply 
bitter, having lost his lands and holdings to the Church one too many 
times.

So the three of them had founded the Agriori. Malthus' magic, 
Durian's camouflage, and Alchesti's careful paranoia saw them through 
for many years, as they taught students and sent them out into other 
monasteries and cities around Italy. Malthus had even created the 
Merikit dagger, the angel-killing blade, without a single moral qualm-
-until Durian had died, victim of the third Inquisition. Alchesti 
had died many years before, victim of his own overindulgence, but 
Durian of them all had been fairly innocent--it had not been his 
demonic nature that had caused his arrest, but his involvement with 
the Agriori, considered by the See a heretical order. And watching 
him burn at last, Malthus had scattered the Agriori, intending to 
make a final strike on the Vatican itself--when an old friend had 
changed his mind.

During the Feast of Fools, someone he'd saved from another 
Inquisition surfaced, shaking his head at Malthus' sobriety. Bastien 
pulled him aside into a disreputable tavern, buying him beer and a 
space of silence to reminisce. Hearing of the founding of the 
Agriori, and why, he had stared at him intently over the rim of his 
clay pot of ale.

"Mischa," he said, "you must realize it is only yourself you hurt, 
doing this. The Vatican will go on; Heaven will go on. But you--
only if you die will you be free of it, and knowing you, my dear, you 
will not die. And Heaven will never stop hunting you."

Malthus stared at him, his eyes wide. It felt as if heavy blocks 
were sliding into place inside his head. **When the worst 
happened**, he thought, **I did live through it. And when the worst 
happened again, though I lost friends, though I lost fellow warriors, 
I still live. The Church...** He blinked, stunned, watching Bastien.

"Any organization of power and humanity will always contain weak 
people of small minds," Malthus said slowly.

"Yes, my dear. And you're better off not pandering to their baser 
instincts yourself."

And just that simply, he was free of the desire to hurt as he'd been 
hurt. He was still haunted by the memories, and suspected he would 
always be, but it had happened. It was behind him. The past was 
prologue. And it was never about Heaven, and God, and the deaths of 
angels. He had never wanted that. He had wanted to punish the 
evildoers involved in the Inquisitions, and they were only human, 
after all.

But that left the Merikit dagger. And telling Bastien of this had 
started a twenty-year battle against the order he'd founded, he and 
Bastien running the last of the ranks of Agriori to ground. Cutting 
a wide swatch of destruction, amnesia and in some cases death through 
the magical community he'd founded had gained him no little 
reputation as an evildoer himself. But finally, he thought he'd 
managed to kill the order, root and branch. He was the only one left.

But he was left with the crumbling flanks of the Agriori chapel, and 
a dagger too strong for this world or any other, and little way to 
dismantle them both. He burned many of the texts of the school, 
destroying the main housing for the school near San Zeno, and now 
found himself plotting to conceal the dagger away where it would 
never be found, deep in the heart of the dead earth. 

Malthus thought this crypt was appropriate. One of many behind the 
wrought-iron gates of the Scaligeri Tombs, this one contained ill-
remembered magistrates and officers, all fallen to dust and lichen by 
now. His viridescent eyes glowed with their own radiance as he 
finished the spell, watching the wall fold away and a dark space open 
before him. Placing the dagger and the text neatly inside, he sealed 
the wall and walked out of the tomb.

Once in the clean night air, he inhaled deeply, relishing the 
particular smell of Verona--the lapping waters of the Adige River, 
eggs and ripening cheese and new grass, acid dyes from the tanners' 
baths in the center of town. He unfolded the papers he'd held all 
this time, reading what was written there--papers proclaiming him a 
citizen of Greece, expatriated recently from a small island, from 
which he took his name--Mykonos. Mykonos Athenasius.

Malthus nodded, rolling his new name off his tongue. A short voyage 
to Mykonos, some background work there, and then back to Italy, as he 
loved these rolling hills, these lovely and passionate people. 
Florence, he thought, working his way up into the Lessini mountains. 
Florence. And no more intrigue, no more daggers in the dark, no more 
spellwork for a while. Maybe he'd even keep his hair long.


*********


Present Day
Nogales

In the dim light of a single guttering lantern, two women stood and 
peered at a yellowing map. Both of them were very tall, hunched over 
this small circular area barely big enough for the table and two 
chairs it held. One of the women was pale, with a mass of glossy 
black hair, one silver-white strand streaking back at her left 
temple. Her radiant purple eyes shimmered softly in the shadows. 
She wore a grey silk shirt and dark green silk pants, both hanging 
from her body in overhumid layers. The other woman was wrapped in a 
simple earth-tone sheath, her three-fingered hands moving over the 
map in random, circling patterns. She was completely hairless, her 
skin a dusty yellow, and scaled.

Arizona, even in September, was not where Mercy Wallis wished to be. 
Echidli of the Ten Caves was the only reason she was there, wiping 
sweat off her brow in the shadowed caves below Nogales. She looked 
at the scaled face underneath the lantern, her mood a mix of 
irritation and confusion, and tapped the map again, spread out over 
the rough wooden planks of the table.

"Kida, I didn't ask you what the hot spots were." She grimaced, 
knowing at least one of them better than she wanted. Sunnydale was a 
vile little portion of a crazed state, and she wanted to avoid it for 
a while if she could. "I asked you where the Merikit dagger is 
*now*. I thought you were supposed to know these things?"

It was true--Echidli was one of the best seeresses in the business, 
especially for the truly arcane, and the only reason in Mercy's mind 
to venture south after spring. She brushed limp hair back from her 
forehead, and mopped sweat from her brow; but the snake-woman only 
hissed, spreading clawed fingers over the map.

Mercy sighed. Kida was good, but she also took her time. Carefully 
she pulled out a chair and sat down, remembering the blur of the last 
few weeks with a bemused look. It had been interesting: even as this 
brutal heat was a change from England's perpetual cold grey, so the 
last few months had been a step up for her in frenetic behavior. 
She'd gone to Red Bank, New Jersey, at the behest of an angel, of all 
things, and had saved two modern prophets by the rather more thorough 
extermination of a millenarian cult than she'd intended. That was 
what caused the problem, in truth. When she returned, she was 
looking for a way to die that wouldn't involve her cutting her own 
throat, only because she'd tried that before and all it gave her was 
a sore throat. So she pulled up her backlog of cases, and started 
researching. It took six months to track down all but one of the 
problematic mystical crises, and she had been pushing herself night 
and day. She barely saw a bed but to walk through a room with one, 
barely rested at all, not truly fueling the body that she forced to 
the limits of her endurance and back again. And after all of it, 
there was still one more case to be researched, for which she had to 
return home. At the end of six months, when she arrived back at her 
estate, she found Denny and her personal physician waiting at her 
door. She took three steps forward, and fell down, on the ragged 
edge of complete collapse, as surprised as they were.

Dr. Erebin walked her upstairs carefully, treating her like glass, 
Denny trailing behind him and making snide comments all the way. 
She'd given up at that point, allowing them to tuck her in and take 
over some portion of her life. She had turned the corner, she knew; 
saving enough people from danger (of one kind or another) always had 
that effect on her inevitable slips of conscience. And, once she 
spent a few hours sleeping, she realized how ragged her control truly 
was.

It had taken her more than a month to stop shaking from adrenaline 
overload. Her acetylcholine balance was staggeringly low, and for 
two more weeks her dear doctor had her strapped to an IV unit up in 
her room, alternative whole plasma and saline solution, with Denny 
feeding her what felt like gallons of arsenic tea. And slowly, day 
by day she'd gotten better--smiled more, cried less, made peace with 
herself once again, on top of regaining strength, endurance, and 
stamina.

It wasn't easy. Nothing worthwhile is. But at the end of it, she 
was back on firm footing with the universe. She went to South 
London, driving to a small styling salon, and had a good foot or more 
of her hair removed, leaving it blunt-cut at mid-back. And on a whim 
she'd had her platinum streak renewed; one solid bolt of lightning 
white running from her left temple down to the tips of her hair. And 
she began going out again, traveling with the few friends she allowed 
on the rounds of restaurants and coffeehouses, bars and private homes.

In short, she'd walked through the fires of her own personal hell yet 
again, and managed to walk out the other side. Though tougher, 
sadder, slightly hardened and little wiser, she faced the prospect of 
her life again without wanting to jump out a tall tower. She was 
less burdened by the implications of her existence.

And there was still that one case pending. She remembered the 
morning she'd decided to look into it, wrapping a blanket around her 
thin shoulders for the walk to the library. As Denny hovered 
protectively over her, she read through the case file, and realized 
her past had clouted her over the head yet again. Someone had 
finally gotten around to renovating the Scaligeri Tombs in Verona, 
and due to pure mischance, a certain spell cast 550 years ago had 
finally decayed, leaving a very frightening article in full view of 
the workmen that cracked the wall. Along, of course, with the only 
surviving texts on how to use it. It wasn't as if it were that hard 
to kill angels--not if one had the stomach to rip off a wing or so in 
the pursuit of that death--but the dagger was something different. 
She should know--she'd created the damned thing. Acid-etched, red-
hilted, something so intricately crafted with magic's power that it 
tingled the hand that held it, the Merikit dagger.

The dagger could kill angels at full power, stripping their 
immortality faster than snapping the neck of a goose. The Holy See, 
once word got out, desperately wanted it back. She didn't blame 
them; privately she agreed. Who needed, in this corrupt day and age, 
to start wholesale warfare against practically the only proofs of 
faith left?

But she'd needed expert advice on this one. Which had brought her to 
the series of rough caves right on the border between Nogales, 
Arizona and Nogales, Mexico, talking to a snake in humanoid form with 
the power to see magical objects at any given place and time.

Echidli now stopped the motion of her hands, and Mercy rose, placing 
yet another sweat-soaked strand of hair behind her ears. One of the 
scaled woman's hands was spread out over southern California. The 
other halted near the east coast of America, directly over New Jersey.

"Sss...It hasss been in both these placesss," she said. "I do not 
think...ssss...no, it isss not here now." She removed a hand from 
California, and Mercy breathed a sigh of relief. "Thisss...isss 
itsss passst. Here," she said, tapping New Jersey, "here isss where 
it isss now."

**And what does an angel-killing dagger want in New Jersey?** Mercy 
thought tiredly. **What on earth...**

She stopped, stunned. "Oh, I'm an idiot," she breathed. Of course--
New Jersey was where the angel feather had surfaced, hadn't it? That 
information had raced through the mystical community fast enough. 
And who had summoned her to New Jersey after all but an angel--the 
one directly at God's side, if legend were to be believed?

Which meant, as usual, Silent Bob and Jay were right in the thick of 
things. She had to speak with them.

Echidli's large, amber eyes were on her as Mercy nodded, working all 
this out. The dark-haired woman leaned over, opening a bag at the 
base of the table, unfolding fourteen feet of moon python, cream and 
pink markings delicately shimmering.

"Oh!" Echidli cried, what passed for a smile on her nearly lipless 
face. "I did not expect such beauty!" Slowly she enticed the python 
to her arms, wrapping it around her neck, where it curled up and 
promptly went back to sleep.

Mercy smiled, stroking the back of the woman's hand lightly. "Kida, 
you always earn it," she said softly. Echidli's expression sobered.

"Be cautiousss on thisss, my friend," she said gravely. "Thisss 
bringsss danger to you all. And your time isss short--you mussst 
find the dagger, and who holdsss it, before midnight tonight." And 
with those comforting words, she faded into the shadows, and Mercy 
took her leave.

She all but ran for the airport, gunning her car into overdrive all 
the way back to Tucson. As soon as her private jet refueled, she and 
her pilots climbed aboard. She was cursing herself for not bringing 
her Concorde, but the only airport large enough to take that airplane 
was New York International, and they were having computer problems. 
It was this or nothing. But time was counting down. She watched the 
sun descend in the sky and clenched her hands, worrying.

Finally, she placed a very expensive call to a certain Englishman in 
California, hoping to take her mind off the deadline looming in her 
vision. All this time the dagger had been quietly resting in a 
forgotten tomb, and suddenly now it escapes in time to wreak havoc. 
She supposed all magical items were that way--years of gathering 
quiet dust, then the explosions commenced. She fidgeted, waiting for 
the call to go through.

Finally, she heard the phone lifted from its cradle. The voice that 
answered was young, vivacious, female, and most importantly, not 
English.

"Hi there, House of Gloomy Badness!"

Gloomy...? She blinked.

"Is...Rupert Giles still at this number?"

"Oh, sure! Hold on!" There was a pause, as if the phone handset was 
being microscopically lowered from the speaker's mouth. Then the 
yelling began.

"GILES! It's for you!"

She heard a clatter far away, as if a certain very proper Englishman 
had dropped teacup. She suppressed a sudden grin. She heard him 
walk towards the phone.

"Truly, Buffy, there's no need to yell. Yes, hello?"

"Rupert," she said, sighing with relief. "It's Mercy."

There was a long pause, and then she heard his voice, slightly 
ruffled. "It's all right, Buffy, I'll just take this in the other 
room."

"Ooh, Giles getting a smoochy call! Okay then, I'm outtie! Seeya 
after the slaying!" And there was a click of a door opening, and a 
crash when that same door was slammed. She listened intently as he 
left the living room and walked to some other part of his house, 
closing a door.

"Mercy," he said, his voice wrapping warmth around her like a 
caress. He had always made her name an invocation. She shivered, 
suddenly sharply missing him in the sterile whiteness of the plane.

"How have you been?"

"I..." Had that lump in her throat always been there? She curled 
her legs underneath her, draping an arm over them. "Mostly well, 
Rupert. I'm tracing a certain item at the moment that may be on its 
way to the Americas. One of those world-wrecking items that are so 
very popular in our line of work."

"Oh? Which one?" he asked.

"The Merikit dagger."

It was interesting to listen to him snap from sleepy warm voice to 
full research mode. She heard him rise, fetching a book from a 
shelf, flipping it open.

"I thought it was lost somewhere in Italy."

"Verona, yes. It was hidden there. It was found recently. A source 
told me that it passed through Sunnydale."

"Unfortunately, it didn't stay long enough to wreak havoc for us, so 
I can't help you. I'm terribly sorry, Mercy."

She laughed softly, shaking her head, knowing he wouldn't catch 
that. At that moment, one of her pilots announced they were in the 
flight queue for New Jersey International.

"Thank you, Anders," she said. She heard Rupert laughing in her ear.

"You're going to New Jersey? Whatever for?"

"It's where the blade is now," she said simply. She leaned back, 
cradling the phone. There was a long beat of silence. "I miss you," 
she finally said.

"Dear God, so do I." He sounded frustrated.

"What, your lady fair is so distant, then?"

"My lady fair," he said in an aggrieved tone, "was enspelled, as was 
I. What might have been a fine romance has since evaporated."

"Oh, Rupert, I'm so sorry."

"Furthermore, she was the mother of my Slayer."

"My. Complications abound."

"I am slowly beginning to realize that."

"Hmm," Mercy said thoughtfully. "The course of true love never runs 
smooth, but Sunnydale seems to be the whitewater shoals of romance. 
Perhaps you should move."

"What, and give up life on the Hellmouth?" Then, in a less caustic 
tone, he continued. "Mages go where they're needed. You, of all 
people, know that."

"Intimately," she sighed. "Everywhere to be, to stave off disaster, 
pillage and catastrophe, and very few moments to call our own. And 
all my friends scattered far and wee, to prevent harm from coming to 
too many of them at once."

"Now you're the one sounding bitter about your fate," he said wryly.

"Indeed so. And on that note--"

"Wait," he said. He paused, and she heard the faint sound of his 
heart through the wire--he must have pressed the phone briefly 
against his chest. "Come see me when you're done preserving life as 
we know it."

"I shall do my best, my friend, but our lives are unpredictable. I 
make no plans, but I offer you my strong intent."

"It will have to do. Be safe, my sweet."

"And you." And she was left listening to dialtone, inexplicable 
tears prickling behind her eyes.

*********

When they landed, it was a work of short moment to install her pilots 
in a hotel and rent a car. Then she drove to Silent Bob's. She was 
nearly able to be proud of herself; only three wrong turns, one of 
which led her to a convenience store where, irritated with herself, 
she asked for clearer directions. The man behind the counter, 
devastatingly handsome in that dark, brooding way, gave her faultless 
directions for the next leg of her journey, yet seemed to be laughing 
at her all the same.

Finally, she arrived, and as she predicted, it was full night. She 
was afraid to check her watch for fear Kida's deadline had come and 
gone. She threw the door open while the car was grinding to a halt, 
leaping over the hood and racing up the stairs. Trouble was indeed 
in the air--a strong scent of ozone filled the stairway, which meant 
casting, recently, and lots of it. She decided not to knock. 

Kicking in the door, she found what she had feared--and much farther 
along than she'd hoped. Silent Bob was straining against bonds of 
energy, crackling yellow--he looked as if he would begin spitting 
fire at any moment. The look in his wide eyes was wild, despairing, 
and no longer entirely sane.

She saw why when she heard Jay's tortured gasping. A hand flew to 
her throat involuntarily, as she watched Jay beat weakly against an 
imprisoning column. No air, no escape--a sick lurch in her stomach 
unbalanced her as she recognized a spell she had originally written 
for the Agriori. She'd written nothing on this level of magical 
damage since her brief run as Brother Malthus in Verona, but since 
she'd been an utter fool and buried the spellbook with the dagger, it 
didn't matter.

For a moment, her eyes clenched shut, damning her part in this. The 
nondescript man chanting serenely must have known something of magic, 
or some of the spells in the book would have eaten him alive. The 
one thing she did know, to her sorrow, was that this particular spell 
had no counter but resolution--and the only resolution this man 
probably wanted was for the prophets to summon an angel. Perhaps he 
even had a specific one in mind.

With another sick lurch within, she knew which one she needed to 
summon, as Jay and Bob were past reason, and she highly doubted the 
man at her feet had ever been capable of it. All this flew through 
her brain in the few split seconds it had taken her to walk in the 
door, and now she knelt, throwing all her mental power into subduing 
the man's mind completely, overtaking all but the lips reading the 
spell, and forcing her will upon him. It took a scant twenty seconds 
to complete her working--when he finished the spell, and the bonds 
holding Jay and Bob dissipated, he would forget everything, and walk 
away. She didn't truly care at this point if he walked down the 
stairs and into a bus, as long as he walked away. She also sealed up 
every sense that could possibly register and remember her, then stood 
behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders for the etheric link.

She began chanting in Latin one of the masses to invoke the presence 
of an angel. These weren't well known outside the Vatican, and this 
one was more specific than most, with a named target--the Lesser *Yod 
He Vau He*, the Voice of God, the Metatron.

Jay stared daggers at her, with the energy he had left, as her low 
resonant voice filled the room. Bob--dear gods, Bob was trying 
desperately to believe she knew what she was doing, but she watched 
as his faith in her eroded. At her feet, the man's voice rose, and 
he lifted the dagger, rising, urging it to strike true.

The shimmer that was the invoked angel blurred and shimmered, 
fighting materialization. And when he finally did appear, his wings 
fully extended with the effort, he screamed--whether at seeing her or 
the dagger, she was never sure. But in that moment, the man struck. 
And in that instant, using reserves of speed and agility she had not 
known she possessed, she stepped around the man and into the path of 
the blade.

Screaming, the man buried it to the red hilt in her chest. It 
slammed through flesh and bone and out through her arched back, the 
last quarter-inch slicing through the fabric of Metatron's green 
jacket. Mercy felt the whole of the universe rush through her, 
screeching and clawing at her tattered reserves. It fought for a way 
in, a way through her, looking for a breath of a hint that she was 
immortal. That she was an angel.

She knew there was nothing angelic in her being. And though she had 
lived long, and might--lived she through this--live longer, she knew 
she was very mortal. Someday, she would die. She clung to that as 
others clung to gods or noble codes, reinforcing it in every part of 
her being that wasn't screaming at the profound violation. And 
slowly, slowly, solar winds stopped howling in her ears, the starry 
spaces between stopped dazzling her eyes. And she was left with the 
mere inconvenience of an eight-inch dagger plunged through her body.

Her heart struggled to beat around the spike of dark metal, and she 
watched in mute pain as all light faded from the young man's eyes--
all reason, intellect and magery. She watched him walk out of the 
apartment, starting to stumble lightly, and the moment he left she 
felt his spellwork release. Bob fell forward, the magical bonds 
evaporating, running to Jay's side. Jay fell to his knees, taking in 
huge panicked breaths, filling oxygen-starved lungs.

For her part, she simply collapsed, the angel grabbing her from 
behind and easing her to the ground, setting her carefully on her 
side. His wings flexed in distress, knocking over beer bottles on 
the table, and she smiled softly at the clatter. Warmth trickled 
down her face, tasting of blood and salt. How odd--she was crying. 
She watched as the angel frantically looked around the room, finally 
gesturing to the prophets, locked in a frightened embrace. 

"One of you, get over here! Now!" he cried.

Bob ran to Metatron's side, kneeling. He took in the knife trembling 
in her chest and the red streaks dripping from her eyes, her 
equivalent of tears. A strangled, inchoate noise burst from him. 
Detached, Mercy watched her reflection in his eyes, wondering if she 
always looked so pale.

"Take the knife out," Metatron commanded. A lock of dark hair fell 
across his face and impatiently, he shrugged it away. "Wrap it in 
something and put it on the table."

Bob looked around, his bearded face ashen. Beer bottles, a tilting 
stack of videos, comic books next to the couch, an abandoned plate 
and glass. Nothing to wrap a blade in. Finally he made a small 
exasperated noise and took off his shirt, pulling the knife out with 
it and wrapping it tightly. Mercy screamed, her body arching off the 
floor convulsively. The wound in her chest gouted blood for a 
moment, drenching her clothes, then pulsed out of her sluggishly with 
every contraction of her wounded heart.

(part two coming...)
**************