This is just the prolog. More should be up by next week. The more reviews I get the more motivated I'll be to finish faster, Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

All the characters are not mine they belong to Top Cow and TNT respectively. Please do not copy or reprint this story without my permission . . . yadda yadda yadda . . . you know the drill.

Prolog:

Gabriel watched, horrified, as Sara, impaled by her own weapon, begged for help.

"Gabriel," she gasped, "Help me."

Gabriel heard his own voice, somehow perverted, answer her coldly "Sara, Please."

"Oh, God . . ." Sara moaned.

Finally she realized it wasn't him speaking. Finally she saw how desperate her situation was. Finally she's be able to start fighting it. He didn't know whether or not to be comforted by that thought. But comfort could come later; right now he was as entranced by the dram going on before him as he was enraged and distraught over his sudden, inexplicable, possession by the ghost in the machine who happened to be Kenneth Irons when he was at home.

"Oh, no," Irons said with horrible relish.

"What did you do with Gabriel?"

"He's in here somewhere," Irons said casually.

'I'm sorry Sara,' he tried with all his heart to say. But all his heart wasn't enough and as Gabriel watched the horrible play between two arch rivals. It reminded him, somewhat, of watching a drive in movie. The picture was far away, the color was crappy, the sound was bad and everything was, in general, fuzzy. But that agony didn't last long, Irons reached for the gauntlet that was pinning Sara to the wall and pulled it out. Sara gasped. Irons screamed. And Gabriel felt powers much greater than him wash over his consciousness and soul. Then there was only cold and light.

A warm hand touched his face and Gabriel opened his eyes. "Gabriel," Sara said, drawing him back to reality. He saw everything clearly and when Sara spoke her voice, though soft and kind, was not muffled by distance. "Hi."

"Um," he said. It was a wonderful sensation, speaking and having the words you wanted to say come out of your mouth. "Hi."

She smiled, and reached out to help him up. He was confused, the last he knew she'd been impaled, but she seemed fine. And Kenneth Irons had been there, but now he wasn't. Nothing made sense but those memories were to horrifying to have been made up. "Ah, did what I think, um, just happen . . . just happen?"

She offered him a noncommittal look, "Depends on what you think just happened."

That was a fairly good answer, far better than, 'you were possessed by an evil multi-millionaire and stood by laughing as I bled to death.' Gabriel nodded and accepted it.

"I think I don't feel so good."

Her smile just kept getting bigger. She was glad to be alive, glad he was alive. "Yeah, there's been a virus going around. You should probably get some rest."

The way she said that, Gabriel could tell it was a joke. He really didn't want to know why it was funny. "Yeah, sure."

"Yeah," she said softly, choking back a joys sob.

Gabriel started to get up but felt a wave of dizziness and thought better of it for a moment. Then he felt Sara's arm on his and realized that she was going to lift him up if he couldn't do it himself. "I'm glad you made it back," he said. He didn't want there to be a world without Sara. That was truly the stuff of nightmares.

"Yeah," She said, "Me too." Then she lifted him to his feet and they walked out of the back room. But before they left Gabriel reached up to turn out the light, hyper-energy efficiency being an unfortunate side affect of having been raised in the 80's. And as he reached for the chain he saw it: a scar, two circles overlapping. There was a moment of terror as Gabriel realized that that scar belonged to Kenneth Irons, which meant that there must have been some of Irons left in him. And as in old legends, speaking of the devil made him appear. Gabriel was suddenly shoved back into the drive in movie theater and watched, with horror, as Irons used his body to follow Sara.

'No,' Gabriel would have moaned if he could have spoken. 'God, no.'

But God didn't move to save him.