 |
 |
 |
The first night of the first day of the trial, Jonathan Milton, DA up-and-coming, assessed the damage alone in his office by the light of his green glass desk lamp. He couldn't fool himself about this, unless something very different was done, this trial was over tomorrow. Ironically, he had more than he could use against MacLeod, but nothing which would nail him, just circumstance and innuendo. Were he a defense lawyer still, Milton would have given his eye teeth for the two witnesses who'd testified today. But his canines were in no jeopardy. Barrister Milton had bigger plans than the burned-out hayseed across the aisle.
Plans in which Duncan MacLeod and his two very rich children figured most prominently. They owned the entire block across from the Couver Towers, for God Sake. Even with the high rise office structure removed, it still was the sweetest bit of real estate in the city, and all of it bequeathed to the two little brats in a trust run by their parents. Otherwise, who would care about them? Just another story about neglected children.Milton had seen the perversion aspect to the hearing as more or less frosting, something to appeal to the salacious interests of the conservative righteous portion of the voting public. And it was, he had to admit, a hell of a story. A gorgeous, Fabio-type, hunk, and his gay lover raising the son he'd sired on his best friend's wife. Add in the poor little rich kid cousin and her very butch mom, the latter getting married to the gay hunk, so they could manage the trust in perpetuity. The kids being babysat by Seacouver's most rumored-about "companion," of no visible means of support at its most famous "wrong part of town" blues bar.
Movie of the Week, at the very least, Milton mused.
So why am I going down the toilet in only one day of testimony, and not by the best witnesses? Milton toyed with a small file, a police report and a stunning Boris Vallejo reproduction, he'd clipped from a collection he had at home. Mama Milton hadn't raised a quitter. He lifted the phone and cradled it on his shoulder, punching in the numbers by memory.
It was time for a leak. It was time for a visual that would grip Seacouver by the short hairs.
It was time to fight dirty.
The Family, the basic virtues, decency itself was at stake.
Not to mention the next step in Jonathan Milton's brilliant destiny.
Judge Stoner threw the newspaper, "rag" would be the more correct term, on the floor in the middle of the court. He loved to throw things he found despicable, like the trial summaries the day before, just because lawyers were so damn awed by the written word, the very paper, that they sometimes forgot the living, breathing Law.
Stoner considered it his prime mission in life to remind them.
"What, Honored Gentlemen, is this?"
Jack knew that tone. He dived for the newspaper with much more agility than one might have expected for one of his bulk and demeanor.
Milton waited. Stoner tossed another of the offending copies of newsprint.
And the DA sent one of his minion over to pick it up off the floor.
Stoner saw Jack try to shield the thing from the Scot, but Duncan MacLeod grabbed it from his legal counsel finally and looked as if he were going to roar. Dr. Lindsey just shook her head, laid her tiny hand on his broad forearm, and the Highlander reined in like a well-trained warhorse.
The newspaper was nearly filled, margin-to-margin, with a poor resolution knock-off of a painting, Vallejo, Stoner thought. It depicted a pale, naked blond man with his hands stretched sideways, bound by his neck and wrists to a tree. It looked like a demented crucifixion of sorts. The blond head was thrown back in agony. But if you looked closer, the tree looked more like a larger humanoid creature holding the man's hands and possibly sodomizing him into the bargain. Then the back-thrown head might be taken as an aspect of ecstasy. Of course, the genitals had been shaded out. For whose sensibilities, given the over-all prurient nature of the picture, Stoner wondered.
The bottom of the cover page read: Federal Custody Hearing Coverup--Sex Slaves in Seacouver?
After giving them all a moment to get up to speed, Stoner took off his glasses, banged the gavel down, and said simply, "My chambers, now! We stand in recess."
Duncan MacLeod stood, as much to keep from exploding as out of respect. More than once he had regretted not taking the lot of them out of the country, lock, stock, and barrel. No more so than at this moment. This was just not to be believed! If they thought he would put up with any more of this, then....
Anne knew Mac was close to the brink. She had insisted that Mary would not lead the life of a refugee, a fugitive, had insisted that the law would be just. She looked again at her imprisoned rainbow and felt she'd never been so wrong in all her life, short as it was in comparison to all her close friends now, except Lucille.
Duncan stopped pacing and sat down beside her. "Adam must be wondering what the delay is. I am going to take this out to him and discuss some things." He grabbed the paper and stormed out.
Anne watched the chamber doors as if they might speak to her, as if they might tell her why or even just how they'd gotten into such a complicated mess. It's the money, she thought. Duncan was right. We should have turned the land over to the city. They wouldn't have cared about the children then.
And that thought made her so sad she could only hold her rainbow to her heart and wait for that ominous door to open again.
Duncan was so angry he could hardly speak. He wanted to hit something very badly, wanted to tear off this very expensive suit and howl like an animal. He wanted something, anything really, to die under his hands. This cackling excuse for a researcher PhD, bent over double on the bench in the court hallway would make an acceptable candidate.
Except Adam had to testify next, and for all the bother they'd gone to getting him into a suit, it wouldn't pay to muss him up now. Pity. Duncan threw himself down on the bench in a disgusted state of murderous interuptus and waited for the gales of hilarity to stop erupting from his slim friend, the Eldest Immortal, and his alleged lover, Dr. Adam Piersen.
"Oh, my," Adam finally had enough of his breath back to speak. "Dear me," another paroxysm, more of a giggle, this time.
"It's not funny, Adam. Pull yourself together!"
"Oh, if you can't see the humor, Duncan, then--"
"If you can't see the danger, Adam," Duncan barked back. And what were they going to do if the judge should suddenly decide to visit the dojo and come across the six armed Watchers and the blond young man who was chained to the fourth floor wall? He didn't have to have Adam's active imagination to form a very disturbing image.
"Well," Adam sighed, "Yes, I can see...but how on earth--?"
Duncan shook his head and indicated he should follow down the hallway to the office they used for pre-trial meetings with Jack.
"That man who broke into the dojo last month," Duncan explained as soon as the door was closed.. "It has to be him. I can't think of anyone else who knows."
Adam nodded. "I told you to kill him."
"Do you have any idea just how irritating you can be at times?" Duncan snorted.
Adam just smiled, "And you haven't even heard me testify yet."
"Oh, don't you even. Adam, you promised to behave!" Duncan grabbed his friend by both shoulders.
"Not now, Darling. You have to get back to the courtroom," Adam warbled.
"And it wouldn't do for me to be coming in disheveled," he added as Duncan exited, mumbling Gaelic epithets, some of them Adam had never heard before.
Something about a goat and the full moon, was all Professor Piersen could make out.
MacLeod made his way quietly up the aisleway to the defendants' table just as the bailiff called the court back in session.
He sat down and leaned towards Anne who wrote on one of the ubiquitous yellow pads, "They've added a man to the witness list. It seems he's the one behind that horrible story."
Duncan nodded that he understood and tried to keep the worry out of his face.
The court called Adam Piersen to the stand and MacLeod felt as if he were in the front car of a roller coaster, just as it topped out of the climb and hovered that second before descent.
"Dr. Piersen," Milton was already starting his questions.
Duncan tried to pay closer attention.
"Yes?" Piersen let his stage baritone out in a clear, almost interested tone.
"Are you gay?" Milton did not want to waste time. They would be bringing Halston from the county jail and he wanted time to go over the testimony with the junkie.
"You," Adam leaned forward over his beautiful artisan's hands and Milton backed off, "do not particularly appeal to me, if that is what you are asking. You are far too short and your eyes are set too close together for my tastes."
Milton objected.
"It's only my opinion," Adam apologized. "I meant no disrespect."
Duncan closed his dark eyes.
"Dr. Piersen?" Stoner leaned towards the tall man in the box. "Another day, I might appreciate your wit, but this morning, all I want are answers, quick, clean, truthful...you understand?"
"I do indeed, Your Honor," Adam replied as if someone should have merely told him this to begin with. "Yes," he said.
"Yes what?" Milton asked.
"Yes, the answer to your question, Counselor."
"Answer my question!"
Duncan put his index fingers against his temples and pressed in hard.
"--is 'yes,' Counselor," Adam smiled as if he were conversing with a cretin. "I could say it more slowly if you like." It honestly sounded as if he were trying to be helpful.
Milton looked at the judge.
So did Adam.
Stoner looked over the top of his glasses at the charming, if maddeningly bright, professor.
Adam acquiesced with the most becoming smile as he turned back towards the DA, "Yes, I am gay."
"And is Duncan MacLeod your lover?"
"Sadly," Adam sighed convincingly, "No."
Milton's hand shot behind him and one of his assistant's handed him a deposition copy. "Did you or did you not testify in deposition that you were fired from your research position because you confessed to being in a homosexual relationship with Duncan MacLeod?"
"Yes," Adam smiled again.
"Explain that," Milton demanded.
"I lied to my employer," Adam said simply. Then seeing Milton was less than enlightened, he added, "I was in a relationship with another employee and I did not see the use of getting us both sacked, so I implicated Mr. MacLeod, since I was living with him, taking care of my brother."
"You are saying you have never had sex with Duncan MacLeod?"
Adam sighed again, "No, nor do I think that likely to happen in future."
"Why?" Milton was so flustered he did the one really stupid thing a lawyer may do: to ask a question for which you do not already know the answer.
"I am not his preferred gender as it turns out," Adam's face radiated a sincere and resigned sorrow, "He's married, you know. And I am not of a mind to change my gender even if he weren't. In any case," at this point, Adam looked the DA up and down, "I am far too tall to make a convincing woman."
Duncan pushed back in his chair and slapped his hand over his mouth. Anne ducked her head and Jack swiveled his chair all the way around, facing the back of the empty court.
Adam was the picture of quiet composure.
Milton went apoplectic and tried to cover with pouring himself a glass of water. He managed to spill a good portion.
Stoner took the pause to ask, "You have seen the Couver Courier this morning?"
Adam turned slowly to look at him and the defense table went suddenly sober, to a man. "Yes, Your Honor, I have."
"What can you tell us about that story?" Stoner continued.
"I wonder where they got the illustration," Adam began, "I can only think it is the same place they got the story, a fantasy tale."
"You do not think it has anything to do with this Mr. Malak, with Duncan MacLeod's cousin?"
Adam was pure poetry and ease. He never reacted, never faltered. "I find it in the poorest of taste to turn the tragedy of a beloved family member, who is in a vegetative coma from a brain tumor, as grist for someone's perverted schemings."
"Mr. Malak is in a coma?" Stoner asked.
Adam's decorum was seamless, "I am not a physician, Your Honor, but this is what I've been told. I only know that he hasn't responded to anything in this world for the past six months."
"And you cared for the children in the same room as this vegetable?" Milton wrested the floor back to himself, none-too-skillfully.
Adam sited on the DA, "The man is ill, Mr. Milton. He is not produce. Excuse me," he said when he saw Milton readying to object. "the answer to your question is 'yes.' Before we had put the current arrangement completely in place, we did care for Sean and Mary while we cared for Mr. Malak."
"I see," said Milton, as if he understood, when he was so far from his plan of attack, he would never find his way back. "Are you now in a homosexual relationship with Joseph Dawson?"
The patrician nostrils flared slightly. "Hardly," he answered. "Joe Dawson isn't gay."
There followed a flurry of objections by both sides and Stoner let the answer stand. He even made both tables stipulate to Piersen's expertise in matters homosexual.
Milton retreated. He needed to work on Halston's testimony anyway, he reasoned.
Jack took a long time to get up and start his cross. "Dr. Piersen, were Mary and Sean traumatized by seeing this very ill cousin?"
"I am no expert," Adam began, "I know that Mary enjoyed helping us tend to Malak."
"Did she ever see him naked?" Jack's question surprised everyone except Milton, being one of the ones he'd forgotten to ask.
"Never," Adam said without hesitation. "We were always most careful in that regard."
"And Duncan MacLeod was not concerned that you were caring for his son?"
Adam's voice cracked the tiniest bit and his jaw set tightly, "I would never, in any way, harm either my brother or his dear cousin, Mary."
"Dr. Piersen, forgive me for this next question," Jack telegraphed the obnoxious question that he'd promised to ask if Milton hadn't by the time they got to the cross. "You spent a great deal of time alone with this cousin of Duncan MacLeod's, who is by all accounts also a stunning young man."
Adam sat very still and brave, as if waiting to be flogged.
"You bathed and dressed him. Was there anything else you did with him?" Jack decided against the more explicit version of this question.
"You are asking, correct me if I am wrong, Counselor, if I had sex with a man in coma," Adam paused just long enough to make the entire court come to attention. "The answer is 'no.' And I do."
Jack's face lifted in confusion, "And you do what, Dr. Piersen?"
"I do forgive you for asking the question, Counselor."
"Counselor?" Stoner asked the DA, when Jack had retired his side.
"Do you have AIDS?" Milton asked.
"No," Adam replied dismissively.
"Do you love Duncan MacLeod?"
Nobody saw this question coming. Everyone at the defense table was obviously caught flat-footed.
Adam crossed his very long legs and folded his graceful hands. He addressed his answer, not to the weasely little DA before him, but to the ramrod stiff Scot at the far table. "Duncan MacLeod is, without qualification, the finest man I know. Though we are not lovers and, alas, will never be lovers,"
Stoner watched the slender young man draw up into a tall and formal posture as he proclaimed, clearly and loudly and proudly, "I do love Duncan MacLeod."
God Damn, thought Stoner, how is it you have such brave, true friends, Duncan MacLeod, that they will file before me and offer their necks, one-by-one, and make it seem as if that were the highest honor ever bestowed upon them?
Who the hell are you?
"Jack," Anne grabbed the lawyer's sleeve, "What is this about? You said the children wouldn't have to testify. Why does he want to see Mary?"
"It isn't testimony, Anne. He will see her in chambers. We can be present. We've got this new witness to talk about, Anne. Just be sure your mother brings the children by lunchtime," Jack was uncharacteristically curt.
"Bastard!" Anne whispered.
All three men, the trio of Jack, Mac, and Adam, dropped their jaws. Dr. Lindsey simply did not curse. Ever.
Duncan escorted her to the door and out into the hallway.
"Talk about your lioness and her young," Jack muttered as he indicated Adam should be seated.
Adam melted into a chair in the empty meeting room, or pre-war room, or whatever this was.
"You did well, Dr. Piersen," Jack never looked up as he shuffled through his papers, uncapped his pen, and opened the day's damnable Courier.
Adam made a noise like a strangled pig. "I think I hit just the right note of queer intellectual in an impossible, one-sided romance." There was less acid in Jack's car battery.
"Look, Adam," Jack snapped back, "Suborning perjury is an actionable offense and I could lose my butt over this."
"Ah, but not in exactly the same fashion as I have," Adam snarled.
"True, but I thought that's what we'd decided, 'the best course to take, all things considered,'" Jack threw Adam's words back at him. "That was an inspired bit at the last though. How ever did you think of it?"
"I didn't. It wasn't part of the script. That part was true," Adam changed the subject, "How much trouble are we in?"
"That depends," Jack answered trying to finish the article. "If we can keep them out of the dojo, we have a chance, otherwise....." Jack tried to make it sound as if he knew something about Malak and the dojo, but he was only fishing. They'd yet to tell him anything was amiss there.
"But this isn't a criminal case," Adam argued. "They have no grounds to search a private dwelling where the children haven't even been in over three months."
Jack didn't even want to know if Adam had ever been a lawyer, though he knew, with an Immortal, anything was possible. Being a Watcher had been Jack's main joy in life outside the law. This hearing had come just in time to allow him to keep orbiting around the people of this fabulous race. He'd have done it pro bono, but MacLeod was richer than God. Jack sincerely hoped they'd have the network up and running again by the time the hearing was over.
Jack acknowledge MacLeod's return. "You two are going to have to tell me everything you know about David Halston."
"Designer, isn't he?" Adam suggested.
"Makes those pleated baggy linen trousers," Mac agreed.
Jack groaned.
"We've never heard of him, Jack," Duncan said so convincingly that it made Adam cringe inwardly to know his friend, whom he trusted with his darkest secret, could lie so easily, so well.
Court was again in session. A man in an orange jumpsuit and hand manacles took the witness stand and declared himself to be, "David Halston."
The unsavory individual testifying could hardly be understood. He had trouble understanding the questions, let alone answering them. Jack visibly relaxed.
After the third time through the same question, with no success, Stoner called them to the bench for a sidebar.
"All right, Counselor," the judge addressed the DA, "I am about to dismiss this witness. Do you have any reason why I should not?"
"Your Honor," Milton handed over the police report, "This is the report which the witness gave police the night he was picked up, two blocks from the building in question belonging to Mr. MacLeod."
Stoner indicated they should step back while he put on his glasses and read the report. He shook his head as he finished and motioned them forward. "Do you know about this, Counselor?" he addressed Feldon.
"No, Your Honor," Jack answered.
"Which would lead a suspicious person to wonder who leaked these ramblings to the Courier," Stoner stared straight at the DA. "That will be all, Gentlemen."
"You are excused, Mr. Halston. Bailiff?"
Mr. Halston was removed from the courtroom.
Milton was all but devastated. Somebody had gotten to Halston and given him a whopping dose of his favorite recreational drug, right under their noses, inside the jail! And he couldn't object on the off-chance that Judge Stoner allowed the police report, which was also given under the influence, though not quite as much influence.
Everyone rose as Stoner adjourned them for lunch.
Jack spoke sideways quietly to Duncan. "If you believe in Guardian Angels, MacLeod, then you have a hell of a one sitting on your shoulder. That man could have gotten you walked out of here in manacles, if Stoner had believed even half of what he had to say in that report."
As the courtroom emptied, Jack asked, "If you're keeping something from me about your cousin at the dojo, you better tell me, MacLeod."
Duncan looked at Adam. Adam looked at Duncan. They both stared innocently at Jack.
"All right, 'gentlemen,'" he muttered. "Then let it be on your heads. I can't help you if Stoner has second thoughts about this."
"Hello, Mary," Judge Stoner had not taken off his robes, but he seemed otherwise grandfatherly as he called to her to come sit nearby him on the couch in judges' chambers.
All the adults involved, the codefendants, the DA, Jack were crowded against the far wall and given instructions to be still while Stoner held audience with the little girl. Mrs. Lindsey, Anne's mom, stayed outside the court with Adam, seeing to Sean's care and entertainment.
Mary was obviously trying to be brave, but she couldn't move any farther from her mother than an adult's arm length.
"Mary, why don't you pick someone to come over here with you?" Stoner was a great many things, including one sly old fox.
The red-gold mane tossed over her tiny shoulders as she twirled around and measured the adults before her.
Ah, the fairer sex, Stoner thought. Even at this age, she knows how to judge a champion.
He wasn't surprised to hear her say, "Unca Dunk?" and reach up her hands to him to be picked up.
Stoner watched the warrior Scot melt into the loveliest, lovingest, warm fuzzy moment he'd witnessed in a long time. The large frame bent itself down to her and lifted Mary up as if she were the wealth of the whole world. MacLeod brought her over and sat down with her in his lap.
"I am pleased to meet you, Mary," Stoner extended his hand.
Mary twisted around and looked up into the Scot's smoky eyes.
Well, after all, Stoner thought, we have not been properly introduced and even at three and a half, Mary is a Lady, born and bred...by the look on Unca Dunk's face, a Princess to boot.
"Mary, this is Judge Stoner," Duncan spoke softly, the celtic burr insinuating itself melodiously. "He wants to speak with you. Remember when we talked about the really real and make-believe?"
"Yes," Mary nodded enthusiastically.
"If he asks you a question, Mary, you tell him the really real, okay?"
"'kay," Mary turned back and looked at the Judge.
"Mary?" Judge Stoner asked. "You are worried when your mother comes here?"
The little lip pouted forward, but Mary only sniffed as Duncan hugged her. "Huhuh," she murmured in the affirmative.
"I thought I could make you not worry," Judge Stoner continued.
"How?" Mary asked with far too much skepticism for one so young.
This has been hard on her, Stoner thought. Her mother was right to worry. "Here," Stoner reached into the voluminous sleeve of his black robes and drew out a rolled up piece of paper. This he offered to Mary, who wouldn't take it, and then to Duncan, who did.
The Scot slipped off the red ribbon and gave it to Mary. Then he unrolled the paper and showed it to her. The words were worked carefully in many colors of crayons with a big gold seal attached to the corner and embossed with the court stamp, all very official looking, if your legal standard were Law 'R Us.
Mary lifted the corner up towards Duncan, obviously commanding he read to her.
She trusts him and knows him so well, Stoner mused, she doesn't even have to ask out loud. Mary just expects him to provide what she needs when she needs it, like air being there to breathe, without question. I pity the poor man who has to live up to that when she's grown. But Stoner had his own daughter. He knew how these things were.
If this were a neglected child, Stoner judged, then he was Queen of the May.
Duncan complied, also without thinking, "Judge Stoner says," he read, pointing to the crayon words, "That Mary's Mom goes home to Mary every day." The last two words were underlined in red and the whole thing was signed in a flowery hand.
Mary looked up at Duncan and he nodded.
Do they read each others minds? Stoner wondered. He would not have been surprised. They were obviously that close this, step-father and daughter, closer than most biological parents and children. MacLeod has spoiled this child rotten...and God Bless him for it. Stoner was pleasantly surprised when Mary slipped off MacLeod's lap and came to stand by his knee, which she patted imperiously.
Stoner picked up the child. God, she was so tiny. He set her on his black-draped lap and tried not to beam or visibly lose his objective composure. He was hardly successful.
Mary's hug met the last of his jurist's reserve, such as it was. She said simply, graciously, "Thank you, Jujster."
"You are welcome, Mary MacLeod," Stoner answered. "Very welcome, indeed."
"Okay," Stoner lifted Mary down, "Mary can you take your parents out into the courtroom while I speak with these men?"
"Lawyahrs?" Mary asked, but her baby lips made it sound like, "Liars."
Stoner and Anne and Duncan all chuckled at the three-year old's apt, if unintended, commentary. The Liars were not amused.
"Oh, Honey," Anne crouched down and hugged Mary as soon as they were outside chambers. "You were so good."
Mary looked the picture of three year old dignity as she held up her crayon proclamation and hummed. She showed it to Unca Dunk, even though he'd seen it already, and to Momma and to the sheriff with the kind eyes who stood beside the bench, tidying up the papers at the transcription and exhibit desks.
Anne slumped into Duncan's strong arms and watched their brave little girl enjoying her reprieve from dread. She looked up at Mac to say something and found his mouth bent down so close, she thought it would be wasteful to use her lips for only speaking the obvious.
The doors opened behind them and Jack rushed out.
"Mac!" Jack grabbed the Highlander's elbow and dragged him rudely away from the Missus.
"Jack? What is it?" Duncan could see the lawyer was afraid. He could smell it.
"I hope you weren't blowing smoke up my ass, MacLeod. I surely hope," though it was clear Jack thought otherwise.
"What, Jack, what?"
"They're going over to the dojo!" Jack wheezed.
Duncan tensed. "When?"
"Now!"
Duncan motioned Anne over, "Take Mary to Adam. He will know what to do next. Anne," he paused, leaned forward to finish the kiss which had been so rudely interrupted. He couldn't say "goodbye," couldn't say anything really, except, "Anne, I'm going with these men. Everything will be all right. I'll contact you as soon as we get there," all the while he knew she would be long-gone with Adam and the children. "I love you," he said.
Anne nodded silently. "You know the number on my pager. I'll wait for you to call."
Duncan swept her up in his arms and leaned close to her ear, "You get out of here," he whispered. "I will be all right if I know you're safe."
Duncan MacLeod tried to think of a way out of this, some plan to ameliorate this wretched outcome.
But there was none.
He rode silently in the passenger seat of Jack Feldon's old sedan. They were sandwiched fore and aft with police vehicles, the DA's idea. Duncan knew he'd be making the return trip in one of the black and whites, probably in cuffs. Damnation! Everything was going so well.
"What the hell happened, Jack?" he asked aloud.
Jack clicked his signal as the convoy turned left, moving ever closer to Cambie Street, and the dojo, and the fourth floor...
Ever closer to Hell Itself.
"It was going too well," Jack sighed. "Judge Stoner dressed Milton down, but good. And then he said he'd lay this Courier story to rest by seeing for himself, and then he would personally write Milton's public apology in time for the evening news. "What are we going to find at the dojo, Duncan?"
"What did Halston report to the police?" Duncan wished his family well on their hasty journey, wondering when he would be seeing them again, wondering how big the children would be by the time he got out of prison.
Jack shook his head, "He said you had this blond bit of gorgeous fag-bait chained to the wall on the fourth floor, buck-naked and stoned out of his mind. He said the man had been beaten and whipped and was moaning continuously and struggling against his fetters so badly that his wrists were bleeding, and his neck, where he had a slave collar welded on. The man is clearly delusional."
"No," said MacLeod.
"Oh, holy shit, Mac!" Jack whistled. "I can take a quick right and lose them at the underpass."
Duncan started laughing, "No, Jack. We need to play this out for as long as we can. They need time to get away."
"Anne? The children?" Jack asked, "They're running away?"
"As we speak, Jack, but you didn't hear that. You are completely in the dark. You understand, Jack?"
"Yeah, Mac. I understand. I can't represent you if I am in jail too."
"No, Jack. I'll plead guilty, there will be no trial, only sentencing, but you're invited to attend if you like."
"Mac," Jack moaned. "Jesus, Mac. What is going on? How did this happen?"
"If the dojo were located across the state, there wouldn't be time to explain, Jack," Duncan replied, all the while wondering how he could keep them from releasing Malak. If the iron came off...God help them all.
The three cars, two police, one civilian, pulled into the alley. There was a Cadillac parked there, but no other vehicles. Maybe the Watchers are car-pooling, Duncan thought. He walked silently up to the side door and reached in his pocket for his keys.
It was then that he felt the buzz, the signature aura of another Immortal, only this case, it was Immortals, plural, two, maybe more. Damn! Duncan wondered if he'd ever see his family again. He was going, unarmed, into an ambush. For the first time in this dismal trek from the courthouse, MacLeod was grateful for the four officers and four other assorted witnesses...but if six armed Watchers couldn't stop these trespassing Immortals, then what good these eight?
Duncan pretended to fumble with the digital lock on the lift, but he could only stall so long. They all bundled into the elevator, Duncan sucked up against the wall by the floor buttons. This is it, he thought, and keyed the four. It was the longest ascent, or rather, descent, of his four centuries. No one spoke, each with his own ideas about what was awaiting them on the fourth floor, and none of them more horrible than the truth.
The stepson of the Highlands settled automatically into battle readiness. He shouldn't have let Anne talk him out of running before, but that was really beside the point now. Two, three, and God help me this day, he prayed...never thinking how easily he'd fallen into his stepmother's religious thinking these past three months with hell looming so large before them all.
Judge Stoner was the first out of the lift, "Oh, Sweet Jesus!" Duncan heard him exclaim.
Facing the back of the elevator, Duncan tried to read the reaction in their faces, a mixture of stark horror and garden variety disgust. He braced for the worst and turned.
Then he forcibly closed his numb jaw and assumed an entirely false posture of ease. "It is always a little difficult to get used to seeing him like that," Duncan began, calmly. Malak was lying, blind eyes open, pale, gaunt flesh dressed in a soft white jersey shirt, propped on his side, drooling, though his lips were dry and parched. Above the bed by the window, where Malak lay as in former times, his chains had been swagged to the ceiling and each held a fern, looking for all the world as if they were artfully rusted, and not blooded. The manacles were gone and there was no mark of them on either his wrists or neck.
Stoner stared sadly at the man who must at one time have been very handsome, now reduced to mindless, drooling idiocy. Mr. Malak's fair face was as marked by his malady as if he'd been badly burned in a fire, the blind, frosted eyes, and the ashen pallor overlying the gaunt cheek completely undid what used to be a beautiful face.
The Judge turned to Duncan MacLeod and extended his hand, "I know that we cannot undo the trouble we have caused you, but please accept my abject apology. I am sorry for this intrusion into your privacy and this tragedy. This hearing is now adjourned and Milton will be on the t.v. to more formally apologize to you and your family and your fine friends who have stood by you in this travesty."
"Do you need someone to stay and--" Stoner began.
"No, thank you," Duncan answered, "His nurse must be upstairs getting lunch. I will see to him now."
"I--" Judge Stoner shook his head and reached his hand out to the court transcriptionist, the eighth member of their party. She handed him a piece of paper. "Your application for adoption of Mary is complete, Mr. MacLeod. Please tell her I wished her all the best, though she surely has that already."
Placing the document in MacLeod's hand, Judge Stoner herded his entourage into the lift and said they'd let themselves out. Jack didn't even ask to remain behind. He knew better than to push this extraordinary turn of affairs. He joined the rest in the lift.
Duncan stood there alone, dumfounded. He searched for the steel shackles and found them on the opposite side of the room, stuffed in the back of an old trunk. No telling when this stroke of luck would desert him. Malak was soon clad again. They would not have to worry about his monstrous ability to change into...
Behind him, Duncan heard the lift engage. He pulled up the covers to hide the neck and wrist restraints and prayed Malak would not become active for a while longer. Dear Lord, what now?
Another Immortal, coming up the lift! Duncan reached above the bed, pulled down one of the chains, threw the fern to the floor and clicked the link to Malak's near wrist. Then he searched the room for a weapon. Another length of chain would have to do. They kept this floor nearly empty. Just easier that way.
Positioning himself lateral to the lift door, Duncan wound the chain once around his fist to brace his knuckles and let the rest dangle to the floor, ready to lift and spin. All that was missing was a leather jacket and someone in the background singing, "When you're a Jet--."
The Highlander's wide shoulders settled and bunched, waiting. He heard the cage door open and began the chain swinging a rapid arc over his head.
"Lord Have Mercy," a familiar voice yelled, "and me without my Harley!"
"Adam!" Duncan dropped the chain. He rushed forward to hug the lanky bastard and then stopped cold. "What are you doing here? Where are Anne and the children? God Damn It, Old Man, what have you done?"
Anne with Sean in her arms and Mary hanging onto the hem of her suit coat stepped into the room. Her dark blue eyes were shining with unshed tears. "We are your family, Duncan. We could not desert you. No matter what. We had to come, to be here, to--" she looked at Adam, trying to remember the battle term for such, then, "We had to stand your Shield, Duncan. We could do no less."
Mary scampered over to the brawny Scot and lifted her arms to be held. Duncan scooped her up. "Come here, you two," he said with false sternness to both the woman and the man who had acted so foolishly on his behalf. When they were settled in the shelter of his other arm, Mary spoke up.
"Jujster says bye-bye, good luck."
"Speaking of Good Luck," Adam squirmed out of the group hug and wandered over to Malak. "What gives here? Who cleaned up the room and," he looked up at the remaining fern swag. "Camouflaged, and knocked out Cuz here?"
"He could be active again any time," Duncan warned Anne, walking them to the lift, just as the door clanged shut and it ascended away from them up to the fifth floor. He watched the lift go up, "I think we're about to have an answer to that question."
Adam's attention refocused and his eyes went wide, his hand reached behind him, under his coat. "How many?"
"Two, I think," Duncan answered as he pulled Anne back from the lift and set Mary down, sending them to the corner farthest away from the elevator and the demon in the bed.
Adam stepped up beside him as Duncan retrieved the chain.
"Well, at least they tidied up," Adam commented cooly, but his eyes were already dilated preliminary to that strange state of mind known variously as "battle rage," and "berserk," and in more modern times as, "buck fever."
The past few days had been so full of Chaos, in every way, the two men might have expected anything as the lift returned to the fourth floor.
Anything but this....
Out of the lift, like the three witches in a Shakespeare piece, strode a trio of Powers, lambent and strong.
Sweet Lucille was nearly unrecognizable as the instigator of this conspiracy, the axis of this unbelievable alliance.
She stood there like the Mother of the Earth, planted squarely between the two women who were respectively, the Madonna and the Magdelene of the Immortals:
Each known in the wide world by their one name only.
Grace and Cassandra.
"Grace!" Duncan called and, dropping the chain, put both his hands out to take hers in greeting.
"Cassandra," Adam said with far less enthusiasm as he began backing away, his long, bronze alloy sword at the ready.
"It's been such a long time," Duncan lifted one of his hands up to her cheek. "You look well. It's so good to see you."
"It's been a while," Adam kept peddling backward the whole while, stalked by the woman from his errant past with the Horsemen. "You seemed to be faring well. What are you doing here?"
Cassandra's enormous eyes blinked once like a lazy adder on a warm rock. Adam half-expected the petal tongue to be forthcoming to taste the air, but it didn't.
"I am not armed, you unmitigated jerk!" Cassandra growled like a lioness. "And if you think I came for you, you think far too much of your own worth. I would not come back to this godforsaken backwater burg for the likes of your old mangy hide."
Adam was amazed how even the briefest time with Lucille changed a person's vocabulary forever.
"Then whose old mangy hide?" Adam never loosened his grip on the magnificent golden sword.
"Actually," Cassandra turned slowly, smoothly, as if she were gliding on ball bearings and unfurled the long fingers of her right hand towards the sleeping figure on the bed.
"What business do you have with a mortal?" Adam asked.
Cassandra's head swiveled back towards him and she cast the soft velvet of her violet and brown gaze upon him. "We know what she is. We know where she has gone. We also know whence cometh your own sorry self, Methos."
How did she always make his name sound like a snake with severe asthma, or a cat with a serious hairball. "Then can we assume you are responsible for this cleaning and the calm on this floor?"
"You are too tedious to bear," Cassandra pronounced and turned her back on him to return to Duncan and Grace at the lift.
"Cassandra," Duncan interrupted his conversation to welcome her. "You do indeed get more beautiful every time we meet."
Across the room, Adam pantomimed putting his finger down his mouth.
"You will have to excuse Adam, ladies," Duncan put one arm around each inviting waist. "He has had a difficult time in court today, testifying as the expert on homosexuality in our custody hearing."
"One sashay too many round the barn?" Cassandra's biting remark hit home all the way across the large, nearly empty room.
Grace gave them both reproving looks for their ill manners. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Dr. Piersen."
"Now that you've heard such wonderful things about me, no doubt," Adam resheathed his sword and went to complete the chaining on Malak and to do the hourly assessment.
"As a matter of fact, may I call you Adam? I have heard many wonderful things about you, Adam. I was hoping we might discuss some of those things on this next watch with your difficult patient there," Grace epitomized her name in every line, every word, every motion.
Adam immediately apologized for his rude remark and was rewarded with her light and lovely laughter. He had heard wonderful things about Grace also. If Malak's current state of blessed repose were any indication, her medical skills were as splendid as her gracious, graceful self. Adam retightened his tie, the same one they'd practically had to strangle him with when he refused to wear it, and straightened his collar.
That was Grace's power, the beauty and peace of stately order and luminous clarity. Cassandra's power was nearly opposite, being all mystery and darkness, terror and disorder.
Duncan opened the door for Cassandra, a courtesy that both surprised and delighted her. He entered the lift behind her and they disappeared upstairs to the fifth floor where Sweet Lucille set the table and drew the bath, fed the baby and played with Mary.
Lucille, the third power, was the pulse of life itself, in all its pleasures of the mind and the flesh, neither Chaos, nor Order, but some finite plane exactly between, where babies cooed and lovers moaned and all things important were revealed.
"How have you done this?" Adam held the large basin of warm water while Grace finished washing Malak. "We have tried just about everything to knock him out, but can't seem to effect more than an hour's worth of quiet. Never even enough time to get him out of the city safely."
Grace's hands twisted the washcloth and the water dropped like a musical rain into the basin. She washed the unconscious face with a tenderness that made Adam ache. He was almost embarrassed to be so physically moved by such a simple, charitable act of caring. It wasn't as if Adam himself didn't wash Malak every day. But Grace made the chore seem like a holy ritual or a devout meditation. Of all the things Duncan had told him about the kind and brilliant research physician working in Africa somewhere, the one thing he hadn't told Adam was how incredibly sensuous Grace's quiet precision could be.
Grace smile sweetly, "Your trials, although unsuccessful, with the sedatives were the very thing which led me to use stimulants. We have injected a number of such in various combinations to achieve this." She laid her palm over Malak's blank face. "Oh, his poor eyes," she commented with such sympathy that Adam felt his heart rise in his throat. "We were sorry not to tape them closed, but Cassandra reasoned, rightly, he would present a more stark and terrible effect with that blind gaze."
Adam could hardly hear her words, she said them so pleasantly. He had grown used to the gruff banter between himself and Duncan, and even Dr. Lindsey, which covered their darker feelings about Malak's fate, a sort of constant howling in the halls of Hell. Grace's gentleness was such a contrast Adam hardly knew how to respond. All his sarcasm was suddenly useless and silly.
"Brilliant," he commented stupidly. "We never would have thought of that. We were so intent on slowing him down, we didn't consider waking him up."
Grace laughed softly, "I had the advantage of coming into the case so late that all the alternatives had been exhausted. It was very little brilliance on my part and more a great deal of diligence on yours."
Adam felt himself softening like slumping tallow. In a day full of the most terrible denigrations of his character, the compliment was so unexpected as to be almost painful.
"You are too kind," Adam found himself frantically trying to remember the courtly virtues, of which he usually made the most caustic derision. Then he became aware that he'd been just standing there silently, holding the water basin, while she waited patiently for him to come to his senses and discover she had finished.
Adam walked across the room to the small sink in the opposite wall. "I don't know what you've heard about me," he began on his return, dragging over the trunk where they kept the various restraints, so he could have something to sit on. "But you are practically legend among both the Watchers and the Immortals."
Grace, seated in the only real chair still in one piece on this floor, stared at him and worked to keep her smile from splitting her face along the indentations of two most delightful dimples. "In comparison to yourself, Methos, I am far from legendary."
Adam's head bowed over and he shook his head, "Please, I am going to have all I can do to live with my reputation as Adam Piersen after today. I--"
Grace leaned forward over her lap and touched his leg.
The sensation was entirely distracting, electric and soothing, all at once.
"It is an unusual sacrifice you made today, Adam, but it was nobly done, nonetheless, and those who know you will honor you for it. What matters those who don't?" She tipped her head and caught his eyes with her own.
Adam found himself willingly and completely mesmerized. It was a moment before he could think clearly, then it occurred to him that, like Cassandra, Grace had not come here for any matter concerning his "mangy old hide," and that it was only the good doctor's charm and graciousness made it seem so. "Why are you here?" he asked, trying not to make the question seem prying or rude.
Grace pulled the stethoscope out of the deep pocket in her white sweater and proceeded to listen to Malak's heart and lungs. "I cannot explain to you, nor would I need to," she paused and concentrated on Malak's pulse. "How very persuasive your friend, Lucy, can be. She has been after me to come try my hand at your considerable and complicated difficulties here. She knows how interested I have become in our origins and physiology of late. Lucille simply worked her sweet seductions on me until I could no longer refuse."
She meant intellectually, of course, Adam reminded himself, but something about his fatigue, and the melody of her voice, and the particular words she had chosen made his long legs seem all but insubstantial.
Adam was glad when Grace asked him to sit with Malak while she went upstairs to get some food for the patient. He was not certain his knees felt strong enough at that moment to actually allow him to stand, let alone walk.
The Three Powers conspired together, assorted around Duncan's loft apartment like three distinct and rare specimens of exotic flora or fauna or both.
Duncan and his wife, Anne, had spirited themselves and the children off after supper. Lucille had called ahead for them, made arrangements for Grandma Lindsey to watch the children, and then called the concierge at the Couver Towers to set up her penthouse for a party of two. It was time they consummated their marriage, Lucille reasoned, and no time like the present, even for Immortals... especially for "mixed" Immortal couples.
With Adam taking the first watch on the fourth floor, the Three appropriated the airy loft for their own. Grace helped with the supper dishes and Cassandra wandered hither and yon, trying to look like she was tidying up, but obviously "casing the joint."
Which is just what Lucille said as she watched the tall woman squirreling around the apartment, checking behind the bookshelves, kicking the floor, crawling under the bed.
"We aren't here to rob the place, Cassandra," Lucille commented. "I should think that would be more Amanda's habit."
Cassandra dropped to hands and knees and ran her long nails along one of the floor boards. "Ah, ha!" she said and lifted a tiny trapdoor twelve inches square. "Well, well, well," she said obviously satisfied with herself.
"Cass," Grace scolded. "We are here as guests, not spies. Put that," she pointed at the small carved wooden box in the witch's sensitive hands, "back where you got it."
"Cass!" Lucille threw the dishrag at Cassandra, who was now seated at the table, running the sides, the bottom, the top of the box, reading its mysterious lock.
The witch was so deep in thought she didn't even flinch when the damp towel connected with the back of her long dark hair. She soon had the small box open. One by one, she lifted out the contents: a roll of peppermints, two vials of medications, one with a dropper, and one in a lotion base that smelled like almonds, with a trace of myrrh, and a stack of handwritten pages. Cassandra put the rest back in the box and began reading the pages.
The other two Powers gave up on reforming their incorrigible Sister Power and returned to the dishes and their own conversation.
"Tell me what you know about Dr. Piersen," Grace asked lightly.
Lucille smiled, "I wondered when you would be asking."
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, Grace," Lucille sited on her through a crystal goblet. "I can see you are smitten."
"I wouldn't say--" Grace's smile dimpled her cheeks where a subtle flush rose up from the jawline.
"Well, I would, but then I haven't your refinement, Lady Grace. You could do a great deal worse than our long, lean Mr. Adam, and that is the truth."
Cassandra made a smirking, choking sound from her place at the table.
"I will tell you the truth, Grace," Lucille set the goblet on the rinse rack. "Both Cass and I have been with Adam intimately, but Cass' is rather a different experience than my own. You should speak with her also."
"He seems such a gentle soul," Grace commented.
Cassandra glanced over her shoulder, "The perfect gentleman," she said with a scathing, bitter snarl.
"Don't push her, Grace," Lucille let out the water and sponged down the suds. "I myself find Adam respectful and gentle beyond measure, but not particularly responsive. It is most difficult to please him, which is not a difficulty I usually encounter."
Grace pretended not to understand, but she likewise requested no clarification.
They joined Cass at the table. "When we have a better idea about duration with these medications, then we can make some plans to move the patient to a more secure setting," Grace began. "How is the real estate search, Luz?"
"I have a line on a country place north of here. I'll be driving up tomorrow to look," Lucille tried to read upside down as Cass continued with the pages."How is your planning coming along, Cass?"
Cassandra slipped quickly to the next page and put her hand up, palm forward, while she read avidly the treasure that Duncan hid beneath the secret place in the floor. Then she got to the last page and turned it over twice. "Pancakes?" she said. Then she pushed back in her chair, the sheaf of pages over her heart and laughed like a madwoman, as if some dunjon at her soul's pit had suddenly been opened.
"Did you have a question, Luz?" Cassandra's face was smooth as windless waters.
Luz thought Cass just needed time to give over this treasure and the reason why it had made her laugh so wildly. Luz had heard her do that only once before, when the word had come through the Watcher's Network that Adam Piersen had been killed on MacLeod's barge in Paris. But the witch had not been forthcoming then, either. Best not to push. "I was asking about your plans. What have you decided?"
Cassandra's nervous fingers moved to her hair, winding and curling a lock near her right ear which was much-frayed, doubtless from years of the same habit. "The drugs are working," she proffered the answer as if it were a shield.
Grace put her soft touch to its purpose as she reached for the witch's busy hand and held it in her own, stroking it slowly, staring at it as if it were an avatar for the witch herself. "We cannot know what we ask of you, Cassandra. We cannot know what it will cost you and we will not judge you whatever you decide," Grace's sweet face lifted from Cassandra's hand to the dark, hard shadows of her face, the luminous moon's eyes, the lush lips, somehow cold as stone. "If we can understand what Malak faces in this strange delirium, then perhaps we can reverse it."
"Well," Cass would not be swayed even by this lovely lady. She re-appropriated her hand and folded them before her on the table, over the papers. "It is Hell, Grace. Pure and simple, Hell. What more do you need to know? Why do you think my going there is going to help in any way, except to get me 'prisoned there with this monster?"
Luz rose from the table and moved smoothly behind the witch. She bent forward and wove her arms around the wide, pale shoulders, and leaned her head down near Cassandra's right ear. "You will try this for us because you know we would try to come for you if you were in Hell, Cass. We would come to your rescue even if it were dangerous, even if it were hopeless."
Cass twisted her head around, reached her left hand up and holding Luz' gold-red crown, crushed her soft peach lips beneath a ferocious kiss.
Grace reached for the papers to busy her mind with something else. She was no part of this, nor would she be. Cassandra was a strange friend, but no more than, and early on nothing more than an interesting oddity for her research, because of the shape-changing. "I should probably leave," she said quietly and started to rise. "I will keep the watch with Adam."
"I would not advise that course," Cass said too emphatically and grabbed back the pages. She reached behind her and patted Luz' hand. "I will try it in the morning when the drugs are worn off, but I do not promise anything."
"That's all we're asking, Cass," Luz sat down again, reaching over to touch Grace, by way of apology for shutting her out with the unexpected display, and to include her again in their very strange commitment of Power.
"Why would you not advise?" Grace asked.
It was clear by her attention that Luz also awaited an answer to that.
"Oh, all right," Cassandra grumbled, "but only because you think you know this excuse for an overgrown Eton schoolboy with his angel's innocent face and the shy, kind eyes, the tender artisan's hands, the utterly..."
The tenor of Cass' tirade took itself a far different course than any of the three expected.
Cass halted abruptly and began again, "He is charming, in part, I admit, but you haven't seen him storming over the hill on a wild, white horse, frenzied dark curls halfway down his back, the sun shining on his fatal bronze blade and off the pict blue barbarian's mark on his face, howling at the top of his lungs!"
"No," both women sighed regretfully, in unison.
Cassandra glared at them both.
"Well, you certainly succumbed at some point in time," Grace offered.
"Right," Cass sneered, "Though I had no say in the matter because he owned me at the time."
Luz and Grace stared at the witch.
"Yes, well save your judgments on me, Dear and Gentle Ladies. You are no different than I am, even if you don't call yourself 'Slave.' You have been no less slave than I, believe me. You, Sweet Lucille and your many--how did that go?--ah, yes: Gentlemen Callers. And you, Gentle Grace, chained to a madman an abusive fiend, for long, dire ages because you were the Good Wife."
Luz pale hand slipped into Grace's as Cass continued her venomous report.
"This nice man, this Adam, has murdered and sacked and raped with no more thought than the knacker for the steer. He was my master for a time, until he gave me to be used by his master to save his own fair skin. And until that moment, though I was his slave, my life his whim, up to that terrible moment, I thought I loved him. In my slavery I was no more, nor no less than any woman born......"
"Nothing," Cassandra finished and crushed the sheaf of papers in her fists.
They were very quiet around the table, each of them waiting for Cass to come back from the rage, even Cass herself waited.
"I am so sorry, Cass," Grace said finally.
The witch looked at Lucille, "She doesn't get it, does she? She thinks I am not talking about her."
"Easy, Cass," Luz smoothed out the witch's fists. "You don't need to hurt us, just because you're afraid. We already hurt quite enough, thank you very much. You must have loved being a slave."
Cassandra rose like the coming edge of a very bad storm, all lightning and crackle. "What did you say?"
"You seem so very proud of it. And the station suits you," Lucille continued quietly, refusing to acknowledge the very angry woman above her.
"Suits me?" Cass shrieked.
"Oh, do sit down, Casster," Luz wouldn't be frightened.
Grace was shaking. She had never seen Cassandra in her Power and it was breathtaking and fearsome.
"Of course," Lucille explained, "You must have run poor Adam ragged. I cannot imagine having you for a slave. All the attention you would demand. You are certainly no easy keeper, nor are you in the least biddable. He must have had to beat you all the time."
Grace could not believe what she heard, but instead of inciting more rage from the witch, Luz was actually calming her with the seemingly cold, unfeeling words.
"He never beat me," Cass said, insulted.
"Because you were so well-behaved?"
"He threatened to kill me again and again if I did not do as he said."
Grace might have thought the witch was beginning to whine, had she not known this was impossible.
"And how many times did he have to kill you before you learned obedience?" Luz was unmerciful.
"Wasn't once enough?" Cass asked.
"For you?" Luz started laughing. "And are we talking about some other Cassandra whom I have yet to meet?"
"He did hit me once, very hard," Cass remembered.
"And why was that?" Luz' plowing was nothing if not straight and ahead.
Cass looked down. Was she pouting?
"CassandraBeth?" never a good sign when Luz started elongating your name.
"I tried to kill him with his own knife," Cass said at last.
"The fiend!" Luz spit like a cat. "I'll kill him for you now, Cass. Bridie, witness my vow. His stones will be stew by sunup!"
This fairly laid them out for many minutes, before Cass came to her senses, "He raped me, dammit!"
"Well," said Grace sadly, "we all know what that is even if we don't call ourselves raped."
"He hurt you, Cass?" this question was asked quite differently than the others.
"I was afraid, but no, he didn't."
"Did you want him not to take you?" Luz asked a question which would, in a man's mouth, be blasphemy.
"I don't know," Cass answered so softly, she could hardly be heard.
"He didn't enjoy it, did he?" Luz asked, then she added, "he didn't even finish, did he?"
Cass' very large eyes rounded even wider, "No," she exhaled the word slowly. "Later, it was better. I think he was just expected to take me and so he did. Sometimes he would just hold me or pleasure me and then pretend to the other Horsemen that we were shagging till dawn. After a while it was better, I was better at..."
"He is so difficult," Lucille agreed, "that he would give any woman fits trying to find what pleases him. I would hate him for that if he were my only experience with men. It would make me feel that I was less than a woman somehow. I know why you want to kill him. He is so, so distant sometimes you just want to wring his lovely long neck."
Grace's voice floated hollow and spare into the conversation, "You are not talking about rape. You are not talking about some masculine ego puffed up with centuries of conquest, who beats you to death whenever he judges you have made his impotence worse, who has you because you are such a tasteful object and despises you because you are not enough of a whore to inspire him, enough of a victim to enhance--"
Luz and Cass heard the gentle woman's words and between them knew no other upon the earth had ever heard them, not even Grace herself. As one they rose and sheltered Grace from yet another ravage in the gale of her unbidden revelation.
When that storm had passed, Luz cut them each a piece of cake and put the coffee on. "Oh, Adam, Adam, you are a mystery," she mused. "Why don't we move to the couch. I promise I won't do anything scandalous, Dear Grace. Cassie? You look like the canary that ate the whole damned cat! What is it?"
Cassandra lounged on the couch arm, the pages in her hand, the aforementioned wide smile on her full lips. "I have here in my hand," she waved the pages, "the answer to our mysterious Adam, written, I might add, in his own mother's hand."
"It will be a few minutes for the coffee, Ladies," Luz said, "Do we want to wait for the cake?"
No, they didn't, nor did they want to wait to hear about Cass' mystery letter.
They would soon regret they had not waited on both counts.
"Our Adam is the problem, Luz, not us," Cass began, "And, believe me, Grace, this one's not for you."
Grace picked at her cake with her fork. Lucille picked her piece up in her hands and started on the frosting edge.
"First, is he gay?" Luz had long suspected this was the case, "then tell us what that letter is?"
"If it were only that simple," Cassandra was enjoying drawing this out. "Pick another alternative, Luz. You are the expert here."
Lucille's cake came whistling by Cass' ear. "Slave," she yelled.
"Whore!" Cass called back laughing, much in the same way black men may call each other "nigger."
"Children!" Grace carved off a small piece of cake with her fork and picked it up with her hand.
"Mother!" both women called mischievously to Grace, who had the good sense to duck as Cass tossed her piece.
Grace divided her small piece in two, one portion for each hand, and, like a marbles' champion, knuckled the cake pieces both directions at once, a dead-on hit right in the middle of each forehead.
Luz wiped her forehead, laughing at the frosting on Cass', "And we were wondering how such a gentle soul as Grace could have survived all these centuries."
"I believe the question was in your court, Lucille," Grace commented blandly, and went back to eating her cake like a civilized person.
Luz got up to clean the wayward cake and get them more with the coffee. "All right, I confess to a certain avocation in these areas. Let's see: transvestitism? No. Bestiality? No. Pederasty? No, definitely not. Which leaves extraterrestrials and Harley bikers with black leather jackets and silk underwear..."
"Well his friend, MacLeod certainly knows how to use a chain," Grace commented and reached for the cream to gentle her coffee.
"Oh, those still waters," Luz said. "I'm growing very fond of you, Dear Grace."
"You're getting warmer," Cass replied.
"You bet your patoot I am. I love it when I talk dirty," Luz fanned her face with her hand and finished pouring. "Oh," she said, "Damnation, of course. Oh, I can't believe I didn't see that! Well, paint me yellow and call me a banana."
"Might I ask what you're talking about?" Grace asked.
"It's just an expression, Grace. It really doesn't mean anything except that I'm too stupid to live."
"That is not what I am asking," Grace explained.
"Maybe we should talk about this later," Cassandra started to fold up the pages, sorry she'd started this at all.
"When the Virgin Mother Grace is not at hand?" Grace said quietly.
"No, of course I didn't mean...." Luz hardly ever stammered. "It's just, well it would be hard to explain all the ins and outs of the 'rough trade,' if you have never been exposed to the idea."
"Ins and outs?" Cass critiqued.
"Well, you know what I mean," Luz shot back at the witch.
Grace sighed, "Is he a sadist or a masochist?"
Neither women responded. They were both too shocked.
"A masochist, I would guess. Poor Adam," Grace's voice softened over with abject compassion, "it cannot be easy for him to find someone, anyone, who would even understand, let alone be able to fulfill, such a rare sexual preference."
Cass and Luz just continued to stare at one another.
"Maybe you could just give me the letter, Cassandra, and let me read it if this embarrasses you too much," Grace lifted her palm like a dancer portraying supplication. The simple gesture made Luz want to dive for a camera. Grace was always doing that, some spare movement or another that just took your breath away. Not sensual or sexual, just incredibly satisfying to the eye....well, grace-filled, graceful.
"No," Cass whined, "let me. I found it."
"Stole it," Luz corrected, though she hadn't suggested Cass put it back for a very long while now.
Cass described the letter, that it was from Ram, Adam's mother, the previous incarnation of the demented patient on the fourth floor, known as Malak, and the last of her/his race, the forebears of the Immortals. Evidently, Ram, foreseeing her death, had written an explicit and detailed--well, instructions-- for Duncan MacLeod to use should the occasion arise. She had included in the carved box a medicine to drug Adam to a hypersuggestable state which would also blind him and a lotion with lubricating and anesthetic properties.
"I don't understand," Luz shook her head. "Why would a mother entrust anyone with that kind of information about her own son?"
"That part I don't get either," Cassandra agreed. "Nor do I understand what topical anesthetic is doing in a s/m kit."
"Oh, that part I do understand," Luz chuckled. "Some pains are just apt to be too distracting from the main course."
Cassandra thought for a long moment. "Oh," she said finally. "What a clever idea."
"But why tell Duncan?" Grace asked. "I know they are friends, but..."
"Grace?" Cassandra asked.
"I was just readiing," Grace lifted her eyes from the pages in her lap.
Cassandra's hands were empty, though she never felt the papers leave. Hell of a trick.
"You must read this, Luz. It is beautiful. Really," Grace flipped through the pages and pulled one on top. "If this is any reflection of the person we have come to save, then our journey is well-taken. See here where she speaks to Duncan's fears and step-by-step takes him through his own feelings in the transaction, not just the actions, but their reasons and their meanings...and here, where she goes through the liturgy of the mesmerism and its tone and how to use Adam's desires to fulfill his desires... and here, where she explains why this is so important to him and how Duncan may reconcile his own perceptions with the greater truth...She knows these men, both of them more intimately than they know themselves... and she is so, so gentle with Duncan, knowing how this must confuse and disgust him, and still leading him as he is to lead Adam..." Grace was clearly amazed. "She took the only warrior at hand and molded him into a savior both for her son's sanity and these two men's love for one another... to give Adam an answer to his profound loneliness."
"I wasn't lying, Grace. Ram was the most wonderful person I have ever met." Luz sniffed. "I mean neither of you any disrespect."
"None taken," Grace said. "But there is one flaw here."
"Flaw?" Cassandra asked.
"Yes," Grace continued, "she knew Duncan MacLeod well enough to offer him a way out of actually completing a physical union with Adam, which would only work if MacLeod lied to Adam after he sobered up again. He may not have lied directly, but he would have to imply it in some way, or all this rest would be of no use whatsoever."
"Why is that a flaw?" Cass asked.
Luz nodded, "Because sooner or later, Adam will find out. And then the manure is going to fly."
"There is also the minor problem that the trick could not be repeated," Grace sighed, "And one night, while enough to prove acceptance, is not enough for a lifetime of deprivation."
"But perhaps we could just give the letter to the house expert here," Cassandra suggested, "and schedule Adam in as a regular client."
"No," said Grace before Luz could wind up and retort, "Lucille is not given to this sort of thing."
"Really," Cassandra smirked, "Who is?"
A perfect two-beat pause and then Cassandra glanced up from her coffee to see four eyes looking directly at her. "Yes?' she asked, then she understood why they were staring. "On my life!"
"No," Cassandra added, then, "No. No. No. No."
"Never, ever, ever..." and on and on the witch went pacing round the loft with the pages in her hands, reading them and spouting the negative in all the languages she knew.
Luz watched Cass for a while and then tired of it and took up her conversation again with Grace, "She will calm down, by morning at least," Luz said knowingly. "Cass will just have to get used to the fact that she really likes your idea, she will have to come up with a good reason why this is so. Now if she just stays out of wolf-form, we're home free."
Grace smiled, "What I do not understand, though, is why I would have appealed to Adam at all, and I am sure I did. He was fairly flustered the whole while we were together. So mannerly and attentive. I can't imagine why."
"Oh, I can," Luz said. "Probably the same reason why he has been with me from time to time, though I surely suffer in comparison. You are everything he wants to want: gentleness and clarity and order, all those things that a son of Ram can never have."
When it was clear Grace did not understand, Luz explained, "Malak's full elder name is Malak Setan'm, Satan, otherwise known as--"
"Chaos," Grace finished, "Adam is a son of Chaos. I understand."
"On a less metaphysical plane," Luz went on, "Duncan was taken back in his mind through his Quickening with Cronos....Ram took Duncan into a vision where he became Cronos on the day that the Horseman met Adam, then Methos...."
Cassandra stopped her prowling and growling and pricked her ears, "Say that again."
Luz repeated about the vision.
"Ram took him dream-dancing?" Cass asked.
"I suppose you could call it that," Luz liked the sound of the term.
"And--?" Grace prompted.
"Well," Lucille wondered if she were betraying Mac, but she knew she could trust to Grace's discretion and Cassandra's love. "Cronos tied Adam up and raped him. Duncan went through that experience from Cronos' point of view and that affected him profoundly. So, you see, the letter, the tryst, or whatever you want to call it, was as much a healing for Mac as it was for Adam."
"Ram took him in dream?" Cass asked again.
"Yes, Cass," Luz repeated. "Yes, she took him into a vision that was as real to him as anything upon the solid earth....so he said. I guess the letter thing was another kind of dream-dancing."
"No," Cassandra answered. "Nothing like."
"Maybe not, Cass," Luz said, "I don't know."
"I do," said Cassandra.
"If you say so, Cass," Luz conceded. Sometimes she didn't understand the witch at all, but this was obviously important to her. The dream-dance thingee, though, and not that Adam was raped. Go figure.
Luz had no more time to wonder about Cass' reaction. She heard the lift engage and saw a sword in Grace's hand and Cassandra's as well. An Immortal approaching.
"Adam," Lucille drawled, "Sweet Cheeks! Is the shift over all ready?"
"Cassandra!," the slim, overgrown excuse for an Eton schoolboy yelled, before the lift was up even with the loft floor. "What did you say to me this morning?" he asked, throwing back the cage door and rolling into the loft on his long limbs.
"That you were an unmitigated..."
"After that."
"You're too tedious to..."
"In between," Adam gestured with his hands, making a sandwich in the air before him.
"Oh," Cassandra looked sideways at her Sister Powers.
"Cassandra!" Adam's baritone bottomed out. "What did you say about Malak?"
"We know what she is. We know where she has gone. We also know whence cometh your own sorry self, Methos," Cass recited.
"Cass!" Luz sputtered. "You didn't!"
"She did indeed, Sweets. What did she mean?" Adam stalked towards Lucille.
Grace could see it was no good to continue the ever-raveling charade. "Dr. Piersen, Malak and your mother, Ram, are evidently the same person."
"My mother is dead," Adam's voice settled a bit as he addressed gentle Grace.
"No, Adam," Grace gathered his large hands into her own. "She may as well be, but we may be able to change that, to bring her back."
"I can't keep doing this," Adam said to no one at all. He collapsed on the couch and tried to remember where he'd put his wits.
And he couldn't quite decide what hurt the most--losing his mother, getting her back, or losing his favorite teacher.
If any of them, or himself either, had ever existed at all.
Adam barely acknowledged the cake, the coffee, the hug, that Lucille provided before she herded the Powers to the lift and down to tend the demon.
It might have been ten minutes or many hours later, when the Pale Rider finally understood what hurt him the most about all of this. Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod, or more correctly, the Highland bastard, had lied to him. And who else? Did the Watcher Dawson know? These three witches certainly did. Cassandra, for God's Sake! Lucille!
Oh, and of course, that's why the Lady Grace was so kind to him! Adam rose and put his great length of leg to good use, stalking the loft for some other evidence of perfidy. You sorry shit, what was this all about? Just stringing me along so I could waltz up in front of the world and take the heat for the question of "gender preference."
Here, Adam, Old Man, Adam's long arms lifted and gestured in an hilarious pantomime of Duncan. Sit the baby, clean the barge, tend this comatose carcass...Oh, and if it wouldn't be too much of a bother, mind dropping trou' at court tomorrow?
And you won't really have to lean over too far from your current position.
Adam had never been quite so furious, and he'd had more than ample reason in his long life. But, then, he had never let himself be quite so open before, and the wounding went clear to the bone. It did not help at all that he'd that very day proclaimed his love for this man,
