As Jake's feet disappeared from view, Sara raised her arm, fist up. The Witchblade shifted on her wrist, tendrils of metal streaming out from the dainty bracelet until gleaming silver covered her from elbow to fingertips.

"How festive. Just imagine what that would look like with tinsel hanging from it," The possessed man curled a lip and raised both hands in response, their position mockingly similar.

He turned his palms toward each other and an orb the color of old bones appeared between them. The sphere grew larger and deepened in hue, until it touched the edges of his palms, but gave off no more light. He flung his arms forward, sending the ball of sullen yellow straight at the detective's chest.

At a thought from Sara a blade shot forward from the Gauntlet. She slashed the incoming orb, expecting it to dissipate or be knocked aside. Instead, it shattered like glass, releasing the yellowish smoke from inside. The cloud settled over her face and, although she tried not to, Sara breathed some of it in.

Her throat burned like acid, the choking coughs as she tried to expel it from her lungs shook her whole body and brought tears to her eyes. Sara had a horrified second to realize this had to be what had happened to Jake before the next spasm drove all thought away on a white burst of pain.

She was so cold. The shivering started, and Sara knew that she was infected.

"It is written that the net is spread in vain before the eyes of them that have wings, but I have not found it to be so." The demon gestured behind him to the angel. "He was caught nearly as easily as you and your partner were."

The Witchblade was burning as sharply as her chest, heat radiating upward. She knew the spreading warmth was burning away the infection. Sara played for time, trying to pull herself together for an attack. "What's," She had to pause, cough, and try again, "What's with him anyway?"

"He came to save you all, but Angels are not what they used to be." He tutted with disapproval, "I should be insulted."

"But you're not," Sara wheezed, a quiet outrage building in her soul. An Angel, a real, honest to God Angel had thought this city worth protecting. Worth dying for. To hear that sacrifice belittled infuriated her.

The creature gave a dismissive flap of his hands. "He was new to his wings. I am certain that all he saw was that I was running, so he gave chase. I could never have suckered Gabriel or Michael down into unhallowed ground with that trick."

"Unhallowed?" Sara found she could straighten without her chest muscles spasming. If she could just keep him talking…

"Oh I'm sorry, word to big for you?" Condescension dripped from every word. "Means unholy."

"I got that part. Word-a-Day calendar," Sara grinned depreciatingly. Anything to keep this bastard distracted while she regained her strength. "What I meant was; how is this ground unholy? It's under a frigging park."

"It is a park now, but before that it was a place of public executions. During the War for Independence it was the locus of many atrocities, committed by both sides. Oh, and we must not forget how it all began. Once this was a mass burial site, for those taken by the great Yellow Fever epidemic of 1692. So many souls unshriven, dumped in the ground without blessing or regard by those were yet healthy enough to do so, which made them doubly mine."

During his little soliloquy, Sara edged forward, gathering herself. When she was close enough, she sprang forward, Blade aimed at the demon's heart. He danced aside, her weapon catching the edge of his ragged shirt, and nothing more.

"Still some fight in you I see. Excellent." The demon raised his hands, fingers lengthening and thickening into curved talons. "We can have some fun before you die."

"I'm not going to die," Sara croaked; voice still raw. "Asshole."

"You have breathed Death itself. The outcome is inevitable."

Sara didn't bother to reply. Let him think she was weaker than she was. She faked a stumble, shaking her head as if to clear her vision. Arrogantly convinced of his power, the demon lunged, just like she had expected. The Blade swung out in a glittering arc, opening his arm from wrist to elbow.

The demon fell back, yellow ichor oozing from his wound. "You little bitch."

Sara just smiled at the insult, which drove the creature into a fury. His talons lengthened into something more like knives. He charged, claws leading, wound forgotten. The brunette parried his first swing, expecting to slice through the talons as easily as she had his arm, but with a teeth-jarring screech reminiscent of metal on stone, she found herself wrong.

Suddenly she was faced with two sets of very long, very sharp claws and only one weapon of her own to block with. Reduced to defensive parries, Sara continued to fall back. He was pushing her away from the ladder, and she knew it, but there was nothing for it. Every dodge took her farther away from the only exit.

Something bumped against her calves and she fell backward with a curse. Instead of cold stone, she landed on something slightly softer and warmer. "Oh my God," Sara gasped as she struggled to get up. She had fallen across the poor, dead Angel.

Certain that she was committing sacrilege; Sara pushed off the muscular chest and managed to stand. She didn't get very far. A plait of brown had separated from its weave around the Angel's ankle and twined around her own.

"Oh look, the captain likes you," The demon chuckled mockingly, standing just out of reach and back in control of himself.

"Capt-" The Witchblade cut her off mid-question, showing a man standing on the deck of some old wooden ship.

The vision expanded to show the captain directing his crew as they packed the cargo holds with prisoners. Sara could see a few blondes and a grey bearded sailor. She looked down at the bonds again and felt her stomach lurch. This wasn't just hair, somehow their souls were trapped inside as well.

"He's the one that made this all possible. He stuffed his holds with slaves, exposing them to the most horrible conditions, without a thought for anything save profit. On his last trip, one of the Darkies was a shaman." The demon paused as if savoring a particularly pleasant memory.

"I never would have had a chance at a soul that pure, but after he watched his people die around him from neglect and the Fever, he was ripe for the picking. I promised him the power to take vengeance, and he accepted. Using his shell as a conduit, I spread the fever that had killed so many of his tribe." He smiled, showing teeth serrated like a shark's.

"Now I'm going to do it again. Only this time, I will not need mosquitoes. My current host was one of several exposed to an illicit testing of the airborne version of the virus. I made him the same offer as the shaman, and he accepted. If I had not been interrupted by that celestial pest, I would have fulfilled my part of the bargain and gone on to infect half the city already."

"Break the circle," the voice was so soft Sara almost didn't hear it under the demon's bragging.

She looked down and saw the faintest gleam of blue from under the filmy yellow that clouded the Angel's eyes. He wasn't dead! Hope filled her chest and drove away the strange lethargy she hadn't even realized she was feeling. Sara dipped her knees and hacked at the odd symbols carved in the floor.

The demon screeched in denial, the tone damn near high enough to break glass, but he was too late. The circle was broken. Totally grossed out by the human hair shackling her boot, Sara took a swing at that too. It parted with a very human scream, but that didn't stop her from sawing at the rest of the Angel's bonds.

Freed to act, Sara had expected the Angel to pull a flaming sword from somewhere and attack. Instead he swiped a hand over his mouth, making his palm red with the blood he had coughed up. He moved forward with deliberate grace, his good wing folded behind him and the broken one hissing over stone.

The demon backed away from that red hand, as if it were the flaming sword Sara had envisioned, his claws coming up in a defensive position. With startling speed, the Angel darted past the upraised talons and laid his palm over the demon's heart.

"Father, heal this man, and grant him Your forgiveness, for he has been led astray." The Angel's voice held the ring of far off trumpets. White light spread from his hand over the possessed man, covering the two completely in a celestial glow.

When the light faded, Sara was staring at a completely different tableau. There was no trace of the demon. The homeless man stood there, tears of joy or loss, she wasn't sure which, streaming down his face.

"The sickness has left you, you will live. Go with God," The Angel said as he stepped back, "Remember the lessons you have learned this day."

The homeless man nodded and stumbled toward the ladder while Sara stared at them both in disbelief. He damn near killed an Angel, had been a willing vessel of Evil, and he was getting off? She moved to intercept him, with every intention of arresting the man.

"Let him go, Sara Pezzini."

"But…"

"He stumbled upon the Path." The Angel shrugged his good shoulder, "Who has not? Extend to him the same chance you would wish for yourself, were you picking yourself up from a painful fall."

"But,"

"Justice untempered by Mercy is Tyranny. Do not forget that," the Angel looked at her sadly. "Others have paid the price for your love of Justice before all else. Have you even spared a thought for your ailing partner?"

Sara flinched under the rebuke.

"As the demon has fled his host, so too must I depart." The Angel tugged a primary from his broken wing, the feather edged with blood. "Lay this over your partner's lips, and he will be healed."

"What about you?" Sara asked, eying the broken wing and bloody chest.

The Angel did not answer. He closed his eyes and was surrounded by the same light as before. When it faded there was a young man in a tattered angel costume. The chicken feathers didn't even come close to the gleaming white of the feather still in her hand.

"What happened?" The blonde looked around in confusion.

"What do you remember?"

"I was coming home from doing our church's nativity play. There was a man, he was sick? Hurt? Anyway, there was blood everywhere. I stopped to help him, praying that I wasn't too late, and then nothing." He raised confused blue eyes to hers, "What happened to him?"

"You were in time," Sara curved a lip at the understatement. "Wait right here for a minute, I need to check on my partner."

Sara rushed up the ladder, hoping she would be in time. She found Jake halfway up the steps, passed out at the pink bunny-slippered feet of what had to be the property manager. She turned him over, wincing at the thin trickle of blood coming from his mouth. She laid the feather over his lips without a thought for what the woman would think of it.

The feather melted like frost and Jake opened his eyes. They were bright blue again, no trace of yellow anywhere.

"Oh thank God," Sara whispered, realizing with a start how long it had been since she had uttered that sentence and really meant it.