(The Chaos Chronicles continue)

 

Adam's third day at the Cross Estate, found him waking late in the morning to the warm sun and an empty house. He had grown so used to Thomas' being there constantly, shaping his thoughts and actions, that his absence was abruptly disorienting. A note in Thomas' impeccable hand said that he'd gone into town to see to some business, that Garret and Chad had taken Red over to visit at the Lindsey's. The morning chores were done. The horses would not need anything until they got back.         Adam pulled some bread out of the cupboard and put the kettle on. A dip in the hot tub and he put the clothes on he had worn here, three days ago. They had been washed and dried and folded that second morning. They were still clean and folded in the cubby hole beyond the bed. He hadn't been dressed since lunch the day he'd arrived with the two horses. At the bottom of the clothes pile were his shoes and a small key, tagged as "sword." Adam put this in his pocket and chewed absently on some more bread while the tea brewed.

        Adam wasn't used to spending much energy on assessing himself. He never much liked what he saw when he "went there." What was he doing here? What could he be thinking letting this odd little man lead him around, if not by the nose, then by some other, more responsive portion of his anatomy? This was lunacy. He did not exactly feel ashamed, but he did feel foolish. He should leave, now, while the mesmeric little man was away.

        Adam washed the cup, rinsed the kettle, cleaned up the crumbs and said goodby to Thomas' beautiful home. Down the stairs and out across the sloping garden, Adam made his way to the quadrangle and the barn tack room where his sword had been stored. The more he thought about this, the more he began to surmise that Thomas meant him to leave, that the exquisite little bronze Immortal was simply done with him and that's the way they did things here. They handed you your hat and showed you the door without so much as a fare you well.

        And the more he thought about it, the angrier Adam got. Let Duncan come get this stupid stallion and the likewise dim red gelding. He was done with this place--this place that was done with him. Adam's long legs strode him down the eastern aisleway in such a fuming fit that the entire barn stirred, even though this time of the morning, most of the horses were down in their stalls, taking a nap. The other aisles began to nicker back questions about what was going on, were they in danger, was it supper already?

        "Shut up!" Adam howled. The barn went quiet for a second or two, and then the questions started again, who is that, what did he say, is it supper yet? Adam opened the tack room door and paused. Something made him stop and listen to the barn chatter, circling the quadrangle of the four joined barn buildings. A different call in the far aisle, not louder than the others, but more, more desperate, and completely out of sync with the rest of the equine choir.

        Adam turned down the aisle and exited into the quadrangle's central area, crossing the compound and entering the opposite barn up another ramp. Inside the cool darkness, he listened again. All was quiet. He was imagining things, making up things to excuse his staying here, fantasizing a horse cast in its stall, whom he could rescue and thereby prove himself of some real worth to the Master of this place.

        He crossed to one of the more grumpy broodmares stabled in the fourth wing and leaned his head over the door. "Good morning, old girl," he called cheerily.

        The mare answered with a complex warbling nicker which started up the barn again.

        And again he heard, clearly this time, the keening, pitiful call of distress, down at the far end of the fourth wing. Standing at the door of the dark stall, Adam peered in through the bars of the closed door. He thought he saw two eyes glowing in the dark, but the animal was standing so far back in the shadows that Adam could not make him out. The eye height bespoke a tall horse, sixteen hands at least, and he obviously wasn't cast, but just as obviously, he was in distress. "What is it, Son?" Adam called out gently.

        The horse dove out of the shadows, in monstrous display, rabid eyes, slicked ears, and yards and yards of snapping teeth, slamming against the bars and jumping Adam back across the aisle. The entire barn heard about that one. Adam did not doubt the mares in this wing were reporting on the scrawny two-foot who'd been scared by the mad pony in the last stall. The mare he'd spoken to earlier seemed to be laughing at him.

        "Okay," he walked back to the brood mare, "So what's the story with this one?" Adam pointed his head the direction of the last stall and put his hands by his temples, like the slicked back ears of the wild horse.

        The mare snorted and went through a rather lengthy story, oft interrupted by the mates down the hall who couldn't quite hear. Adam didn't get most of it, but he about fell out when the alpha mare did her impression of the mad beaste, mimicking his clicking teeth and wild eye. Then she bobbed her head and started nipping her own knees and biting her shoulders.

        That he got. "So he's one sick pony, eh, Girl?"

        The mare took a deep breath and blew snot on the wall of her stall in the direction of crazy horse. She obviously did not think much of the recluse in the corner. Adam thanked the mare for her time. It always paid to be respectful to the alphas. They could make or break you with the entire barn. But even her references weren't going to get him anywhere with the bizarre horse in the darkened stall.

        "All right, Ladies," Adam addressed the mares, "We are going to close off this section of the barn and turn down the lights." Of course they had to talk about that as Adam went around draping the windows with horse blankets and turning on the night lights at each end of the aisle. When he was done improving the ambiance, the mares lay back down and nodded off. He closed the giant doors into the adjacent wings and went to the last stall with a bucket of grain in his left hand. He unlatched the heavy bolt and opened the stall door, pushing it sideways to its limits.

        Then he ducked to the side and flattened against the wall as the stallion rushed past him, tearing down the aisle as if he had a demon on his tail. This woke the barn up. Horse loose! or the mare call equivalent went up as, each in turn, the broodmares gave the stallion "what for," with a dash of tongue pie thrown in for good measure.

        Adam stationed himself, seated, on the brick floor, in the way of the stall door, the grain bucket in front of him. He made himself small and still, neither fearful nor fearsome, just benign furniture. The great, blood-red stallion came skittering and dancing back up the aisle, thinking to retreat into the darkness and safety of his stall, but when he saw Adam, he whoofed and snorted, wheeled and bolted back the way he'd come, along the gauntlet of the mercilessly taunting mares, all of them pregnant, and none of them at all interested in anything he had to offer.

        The tall stallion was caught between the mares and Adam, driving him forward and away, and the call of his stall, just beyond the two-foot, cast on the floor. So back and forth, he fretted, neighing and complaining, sweating and twitching and shaking in frustration and fear.

        Adam put a handful of sweet feed in his mouth, reminding himself not to eat it, the molasses was tempting, and the sweet corn, even to him. He let the grain moisten in his mouth and waited.

        The stallion finally stopped, exhausted, midway down the aisle and began biting himself, so hard he drew blood, on his knees and his shoulders. Adam waited a moment and then called out, "No!"

        The deep copper stallion paid him no attention at all, just kept biting. At intervals, Adam told him, "No!" again. Finally, Adam took the grain mush out of his mouth, wadded it into a ball, said, "No!" again, and let fly a direct hit on the stallion's muzzle. This jerked the horse back and he bolted to the far end.

        But he was back again soon enough, slurping his long tongue out along the grain on his muzzle and searching for the missile in the middle of the aisle. He found it, wolfed it up, and stared down the aisleway at the odd two-foot, still cast, chewing on more of the sweet grain.

        Adam assessed the stud. He was gorgeous, an unreal red, not like Red's carrot color, but more like blood, with a definite purple undertone. His limbs were long and clean except for the bite marks. But his sides and flanks were scored and scarred and a bad scar ran across the wide forehead and almost into one of the large dark eyes, now trained upon Adam, measuring the man as the man measured him.

        His hooves were long and ragged and unshod. Adam figured no one could get close enough to him to get four shoes on and live. But mostly Adam saw and smelled the stallion's fear and wondered how such a fine steed could have been so thoroughly ruined, for there was obvious quality here, and intelligence, and--he wouldn't be surprised--a gentleness, somewhere deep under the devastation that was everywhere apparent on every surface of his twitching hide. But the dancing strength and grace drew Adam in. It was shrouded in the ugliness of his anger and his fear, but their was wonder here, and a heart grabbing presence too real to be imagined.

        The stallion reached down slowly towards his knee, testing and watching Adam the whole while.

        "No!" Adam spit out the grain and called out as he made another ball.

        The horse drew up straight again and waited, standing perfectly still. This time, Adam lobbed the grain ball in a slow arc and the horse caught it mid-air and wandered away chewing and thinking while the mares dunned him both sides of the aisle.

        From time to time the stallion would wander back non-chalantly and check to see if Adam were still trained. Another grain ball and he was off again. But each time he left more slowly and returned more closely to the cast down two-foot, until he was eating from the bucket between Adam's long legs and putting up with the gentle fingers playing along the line of the scar upon his forehead. Then the bucket was empty and the mares had stopped complaining about Adam's exceeding bad manners not to feed them as well.

        The stallion nudged the two-foot in the chest and pointedly sniffed at his mouth where Adam's saliva had become linked with the sweet taste of the grain mix. "I have to get up if you want some more," Adam crooned quietly. "Do you think you can be still while I stand?"

        Adam curled his legs underneath him and rose very slowly, getting taller and taller. The stallion backed away, but he didn't turn and he didn't bolt. When Adam was standing, the horse craned his long neck forward and nuzzled the offered hand. Then the stud turned slowly and walked down the aisle, glancing back now and again to see if Adam was following. He was.

        The blood bay led Adam down to the alpha mare. Adam tried to explain how disinterested the mare would be, but he made respectful introductions anyway. The mare charged them both, in a far more vicious display than the stallion had pulled on Adam earlier. They both sucked back against the opposite wall. Then she gave them both the equine "Duuuh" sign with her ears, turned her tail and passed gas for emphasis.

        The stud looked at Adam. Adam looked at the stud. They touched noses, shrugged off the mare's pointed rebuke and continued down the aisle, Adam again following the stallion's lead.

        Adam opened the tack room and the stallion followed him in, pulling down boxes and towels and making a general mess. Adam picked things up as they went along, putting them back, explaining them, reaching for the things which interested the horse. One such was a soft brush on a shelf by the door with the other grooming tools. The stallion picked this up with his teeth and knocked it against Adam's back.

        "Hey," Adam complained. Then he saw what had hit him, talked the horse into letting it go and wiped off the horse spit on his shirt. "Out," he pointed to the door.

        The stallion backed carefully out of the small room and Adam followed. As soon as he cleared the doorway, the stud punched him in the chest with his strong muzzle. "Okay, okay," Adam ran the brush, light as a feather along the broad forehead. The large eyes closed and the blood bay nickered softly, remembering another time.

        Some groom who loved you, no doubt, Adam thought. Some tiny piece of your past that does not make you stamp or scream. He smoothed the broad jaws, moved up carefully behind the ears. Some spot there made the stallion's neck go limp and his head dropped below the level of his knees.

        From time to time, the horse would wake out of his daze and pleasure and move down the aisle towards his stall, then stop again as Adam tended another portion of the deep red coat. Then they were finally at the end stall, and Adam was done grooming every square inch of the stallion. The horse walked into his stall. Adam reached to close the door, but the stallion exited the stall before he could get it closed. Positioning himself behind Adam, the horse pushed him into the stall and then followed after.

        "Sorry, Son," Adam laughed. "I just didn't understand."

        Then the horse's knees buckled and he settled down on his stomach like a deer.

        Adam freaked. Oh, Dear Lord, he thought, I've fed him too much and he's colicking! But no, the stallion was in no distress, just waiting. I guess it's morning nap time, Adam thought. He lowered himself down by the stud and brushed his side. Then the stallion flopped on his side and Adam obliged by brushing his belly while the horse fell fast asleep, nickering softly in his dreams.

---

        Thomas returned to his house in the worst of humors. Cassandra had given him hell at the club. Where had he been? Why hadn't he called her? What was the use of her apprenticeship if the teacher were going to disappear without notice? What the hell did he think he was doing trying to buy Ram?

        And on and on. Most days this would have amused him, would have made him laugh and hug her and make all things right. Not today. There was no making things right with Cass today, when so little was right with himself.

        He trudged up the entry stairs and was not surprised to find that Adam had left. Cross had hoped it would be otherwise, but this was not such a day. He regretted the pale giant would no longer be gracing them with his company, but that was not Thomas' decision to make. Adam would have to find these things himself. Cross could lay out heaven before him, but Adam would have to have the sense and bravery to take that heaven up. Not this day.

        No. Thomas put the groceries down on the table and looked for a note, something. No, this day there would be nothing, nothing at all, not even goodbye. Such was the way with a day like this, Thomas thought, I might as well be done with this now. I cannot take the chance another will be hurt, or God forbid, killed. His main mission in town had been to visit Daniel, the third groom, still in the hospital, his leg shattered and the muscle of his upper arm gone, from an attack by the new stallion.

        He had argued with himself a long time about this, but Daniel's pain decided it. He would put the blood red stone horse down today. This day. This Godforsaken darkest day.

        He heard footsteps chattering up the stairs as he unlocked the desk and retrieved the pistol. It was Chad, tears in his clear blue, baby eyes. "No, Chad," Thomas' leaned back against the groom's tugging grasp. "We talked about this. It has to be done."

        Chad shook his head, but he could not speak clearly. Thomas' pulled the boy to him and kissed the flaxen crown softly. "It will be better for him this way. He cannot live like that, so afraid, so alone."

        "No," Chad struggled out of the black man's grasp. "You have to come and see...you have to..."

        "All right," Thomas put the revolver in his pocket and followed the boy out to the barn.

        Chad led him over to the fourth wing, where they were stabling the battered and insane stallion. The boy put his fingers up to his lips and tip-toed through the end doorway.

        Thomas passed him as soon as he saw the door open in the last stall. The stud was loose! He ran soundlessly down the brick aisle stopping at the open door. The stallion was gone!

        Then a pair of sonorous snores pulled his gaze downward. He could have been no more astonished to see the lion lie down with the lamb. There in the deep bedding lay the stallion, curled around the lanky form of the sleeping pale giant, whose head rested on the broad red barrel of the stud's deep chest. They were both dreaming and smiling in their sleep.

        Thomas put both his hands over his mouth and backed away silently, memorizing the scene to keep with him for eternity. Their pain had led them to each other. He had far under-rated both of them.

        Just when you think you know everything, Thomas thought, wiping his tears away...

        ...you are reminded.

        Ram looked down on the bay city from a cliff vantage north of Stanley Park and considered the tactics of her assault on the Couver Towers, due south of this point. The Healer meant well, Ram thought. Grace saw the suffering and she wanted to alleviate the pain and the agony of living by taking away death. She did not understand what a terrible course this was. Ram waited until the sun was directly overhead. That would blind anyone looking directly up at her. If she flew in low enough, Seacouver International flight controllers would not pick her up either, or if they did, would dismiss her as a large bird. She was not so large in Dæmon as she would have been in Dragor. Grace's apartment was two floors down from Lucille's, Ram could land on the terrace and simply walk in, clear the place, and that would be that.

        A few more minutes, and Duncan would have gotten to the apartment and taken Grace away to safety. Ram blinked up at the sun and flexed the wide, scaled musculature of her shoulders, lifting the wings like a cape. I am sorry, Grace, Ram thought, but this cannot be. The thin argent plates of the scales flashed along her thigh as she gathered into a low crouch and  leaped into a falling glide, straight for the Towers.

        She landed lightly on the terrace ledge and furled her wings close to her back. Looking back over the railing, Ram might have been mistaken for a new gargoyle on the third balcony down from the roof. Her opalescent white scales fit perfectly with the alabaster sides of the the Towers' stone cladding and the pale grey leather of her wings was a fair match for the brushed metal of the building's girders.

        Ram moved her considerable bulk noiselessly across the narrow balcony and opened the glass door. There was no lock. Who would break in thirty stories above the street? They were still here, both Duncan and Grace. She could feel them, and Lucille, whom she could hear.

        "Ramikins just needs to understand you didn't mean to pull one over on her, Grace. I'm sure she will listen to reason. There's no call to get ourselves all in a flap over--"

        "Commence flapping," Ram's deep, roaring voice filled the apartment.

        Grace and Duncan drew their swords. Lucille stepped behind them.

        "Well, that's hardly gracious," Ram commented.

        "It doesn't help that you look like a drain pipe fitting off Notre Dame," Duncan spoke up.

        Ram began laughing and Duncan felt Lucille shudder at his back. "I know you did not mean to do evil, Grace. I know it is not in you," Ram advanced on woman. Grace fell back and retook her stance behind MacLeod.

        "Take these women and leave, Warmeat," the demon commanded, flashing its talons in a fan before its face. "After Grace tells me where every drop of my blood resides."

        "Why?" Grace asked bravely.

        "I am not going to explain this. Suffice it to say you stole something precious from me as I lay sleeping and helpless, suffering in Hell. That is tantamount to rape, Grace. You invaded the sovereignty of my flesh and you did nothing less than ravage me. I will not extract the retribution you deserve because you did this all unknowing and because only a small amount of damage has yet been done. But you will tell me where my blood is, all of it, to the last molecule, the last atom. Do you understand?"

        "But I have developed--" Grace began.

        "Just tell me where," the demon said, the words coming from somewhere deep in its cold throat.

        "Here," Grace indicated the apartment. "It is all here."

        "Then gather it together and place it on this table. The vials, the gloves you used, any vehicles for transfer, droppers, everything. Think of it as if it were contaminated with a deadly virus and you were decontaminating the area. It is that important, Grace." The demon backed up to give Grace room to do as she had been commanded.

        Grace pulled the vials out of the refrigerator, gathered the red containers labeled "biohazard," and laid it all on the oak table in the middle of the room. She added five boxes of slides to the collection. "That is it," she said finally.

        "No, it isn't," the demon shook its ponderous silver mask, "but I am hardly going to destroy Lucille or Anne or Joseph. Or Alexa either, for that matter. "I need a box, Grace. Then I will take my leave and consider this episode resolved."

        "You could save so many who suffer," Grace's supplication was heartbreaking.

        "I know, Grace." The demon packed the collection on the table into a box which Duncan placed in the taloned paws. "But you don't understand what you are doing."

        "Then explain it to me!" Grace yelled back, taking up her sword again.

        "I had considered killing you, Grace," the demon said softly. "Don't remind me how very seriously I considered it. You live by my charity alone. One swipe and your head would be rolling across this charming parquet flooring. Before you could even lift your sword. Before Duncan could intervene."

        Grace retreated. "I never thought of you as a monster until now, Ram! But you are monstrous and cruel and unfeeling!"

        The demon finished packing the box and lifted it up. "Being our children, Dear Grace, what does that make all of you, but monstrous bastards? Ta."

        With that, the demon strolled back to the balcony and launched straight up into the glowing noonday sun.

        Thomas Cross moved Duncan's stallion, Black God, through some simple flexing maneuvers in the outdoor arena. Simple shoulder in , shoulder out, half halt and balancing on the simple snaffle he'd picked out to begin the black bay's first day of training at the Cross Estate. He worked with suppling the near hock, which was stiff and swollen, not unlike almost every dressage horse of note that Cross had ever sat astride. He surmised this was because of how much such horses tended to over-use themselves, or how their riders tended to take their bravery and pain tolerance for granted.

        The stallion was sound, just a bit uneven. Thomas took his time, stretching one side, tightening the other, weaving him round the pen, balancing the stud against his inner thighs, relishing the ripple and surge of the fine horse's grace and strength. God was a fine piece of work, the sort of pony that was a pleasure to mount. Duncan MacLeod had certainly laid a fine array at Thomas' table. He would sometime have to thank the Highlander more formally.

        Thomas thought of Adam then. Of course, the training was irrevocably ruined, seeing that the Master had been conquered, not three days into the course, but perhaps that was as it should be. Thomas only hoped it would not be to Adam's detriment. Maybe Adam was that Holy Grail for which every Horse Master prayed and after which every Horse Master quested, the beaste who could not be tamed, the Glorious Beaste of a Different Order, who mastered the Master. Not that Thomas didn't learn from every creature he trained. Not that he didn't love all of them dearly.

        But this Adam--Thomas grabbed leather, something he almost never did, as the stallion screamed and reared. Easy there, Thomas patted the stud's shoulder. He looked over at the adjacent pasture gate where the blood bay and Adam were standing, watching him ride. Their heads were together, conversing about this or that, the wild stallion nervous, but interested. When God had reared, Adam's stud flinched. Probably thinking he would see me beat this horse, Thomas thought. Well, I don't do that, as I tried to tell you over and over again, both of you. Maybe now you'll believe me.

        "See," Adam said to the stallion, "I told you he was nice."

        The stallion nuzzled Adam's mouth and Adam reached in his pocket for one of the sugar cubes he'd stuffed in prior to their first excursion outside. The horse wouldn't let Adam halter him, so the elder Immortal thought he might bring the treats along to tempt him not to run away, seeing he had only the stud's good will to rely on. Much in the same way Cross let me decide to stay, Adam thought.

        "Well," Adam pulled out the aloe and Vitamin E cream and began to rub it gently into the marks along the stallion's sides, "Do you want in the pasture or not?" He hummed as he worked, stopping as the flesh memory made the stallion squirm. "That bad, bad man," Adam addressed the stallion's fear in angry tones, chasing the pain away. "How could he do such a thing to my pony. Awwww. Poor pony," Adam slipped into his highly practiced art of Sean-talk.

        The stallion pointed with his nose to a scar on his other side. Adam scurried around, "Oh, my goodness. Look at this, oh, poor baby. Oh, dear--" on and on, while he rubbed in the ointment and fussed over the stud. The stallion nodded soberly as Adam tended to each of his old past hurts.

        When Adam was done with a suitable amount of fussing and caressing, he retrieved another sugar cube for himself and for the horse. Then he opened the gate and they ran top speed into the pasture, nearly unseating Thomas in the next door arena as God leaped up in the air, all four hooves off the earth.

        Thomas could see he was not going to be schooling God with Adam and his wild pony wheeling and chasing and romping across the field. He reined the black bay in tighter and tighter circles to his weak side, until the horse settled back in hand, then he dismounted and headed back to the barn. It was a good beginning with the black stud, even counting the misbehavior because of the blood bay's distracting presence. God had proved he could come back in hand with a minimum of reminding. He could show this horse and do well. He might speak with MacLeod about that. Looking back at the pasture, Thomas saw Adam hunkered down, stalking the bay who stood bugling at him, his legs out wide and his ears slicked back in a convincing challenge posture.

        Thomas was worried. He knew Adam could not be killed, but he could be hurt. As he watched, Adam charged the stallion who lifted up in a high rear, forelegs slashing out. Adam ducked under the hooves and fluttered his fingers in the horse's belly, then slipped away to the side as the stallion came down snorting and laughing and snapping his teeth bare inches from Adam's retreating butt. Then off they went across the field, Adam dodging a different direction every time the stallion got up any speed, so that he stayed just ahead of the horse.

        Finally, Adam tripped and went down, as he was bound to do sooner or later. Thomas lurched forward and God nickered questioningly at his side.

        But the ruined stallion, the "man-killer," stopped short of Adam's prostrate form and threw himself down beside him, nuzzling him gently. Adam rolled over on his back and fed him sugar cubes as they caught their breaths.

        Thomas shook his head and led God into the barn.

        An hour later, Thomas returned to the pasture with the alpha mare in tow. "Adam," he called.

        Adam and the blood bay came dancing up to the gate. "Yes?"

        "I don't know what you said to Herself," he indicated the senior mare who was making doe eyes at the stallion and flagging her tail like a hussy. "but whatever it was, she's come into heat and absolutely demanded I bring her out to make the acquaintance of your crazy friend there."

        "If you'll ask your stallion to stand back over there," Thomas said, "I'll let the mare in the pasture and then I suggest you come out here with me."

        When Adam had traded places with the mare and the gate was closed again, the two men leaned on the fence rail and watched the two horses dancing around each other, arguing about this and that.

        "I thought she was in foal," Adam remarked.

        "I did too," Thomas agreed, "but it wouldn't be the first time she's made a fool of me."

        "You don't think he'll hurt her?" Adam asked.

        Just then the mare roared like a bear and the stallion got very small and well-behaved, trotting up quietly and nickering like a baby colt. Then she turned and dashed across the pasture leading him a merry chase.

        "Then again," Adam amended, "do you think she'll hurt him?"

        "I don't think either," Thomas said, "Or I would not have let them in together. Come along, Adam. They need some privacy and we have some stalls to clean. Chad and Gerret are in town visiting Daniel."

        "Daniel?" asked Adam on the third wheelbarrow of sawdust.

        "The third groom," Thomas moved Red sideways and finished cleaning the stall before Adam dumped the new bedding in. "He just got out of the hospital today and the boys are helping him settle into an apartment I rented in town, close to the Rehab Clinic."

        They moved to the next stall and the next, Thomas cleaning and Adam rebedding, each horse with some comment or other about how they were doing it differently than "the boys."

        "Was Daniel hurt," Adam rubbed his hands, they were starting to blister at the bases of the fingers.

        Thomas reached in his back pocket and gave him some gloves. "Your stud tried to kill him."

        Adam started to explain that Thomas' gloves would never fit him, but these were just his size. "The blood bay?"

        "His name is Sangré," Thomas lifted the barrow and trundled it out to the manure pile.

        "You keep calling him my horse," Adam commented when Thomas returned.

        "He is. Just ask him," Thomas replied. "Nobody else can even touch him. He nearly killed Daniel. Shattered his right leg and bit the biceps nearly off of his right arm."

        Adam stared.

        "I came down to his stall this morning to shoot him," Thomas said. "Then I found you lying with him like happy brothers. You saved his life, Adam. He is yours."

        "Thank you," said Adam. He wandered back to the sawdust pile trying to understand what Thomas had said. He didn't feel as if he'd done anything unusual, let alone remarkable, but he evidently had. It was a curious feeling. Doubtless the boy had scared Sangré--he would have to find another name. A small window opened quickly and then shut again, almost before Adam was aware of it, but in that window he saw himself lashing out mindlessly, shattering legs, tearing flesh with his teeth, simply because there was no one to tell him not to be afraid, no one just to lie down with him and brush his belly.

        They were finally to the last stall, Adam's stallion's dark box. It was already cleaned. Thomas had taken advantage of the stallion playing out in the pasture to bed his stall. Adam stood at the door with the extra barrow-full of sawdust. "What do you want me to do with this?" he asked.

        "Might as well dump it in here," Thomas laughed, "especially if you're going to be sleeping here."

        "Well, maybe just a few nights," Adam mused, "until he settles in."

        "You're serious," Thomas said.

        "Of course," Adam replied.

        "It can't be too comfortable," Thomas suggested, a twinkle lighting his amber eyes.

        "Oh, it's okay," Adam shook out the barrow and backed it out of the stall, returning to spread the sawdust out evenly. The next thing he knew, he was face forward on the bedding, the door closing behind him, throwing the stall into soft darkness.

        "Comfy?" Thomas' voice sounded just behind Adam's left ear.

        "Hey!" Adam spit pine chips from his teeth. "Hey," he said again, more softly as warm hands reached up his shirt and played over his chest. "Hey," he whispered as the strong hands turned him over on his back and the lush lips whispered over his own. Adam felt his neck go limp, his mouth slack open, surrendering to the soft tongue, the darkness, the new wood smell, and the scent of the stallion who lived here.

        Thomas' sure touch uncovered him with an economy of motion, a minimum of distraction. Adam was dressed and then he was naked, almost without transition, but lying on a clean wool cooler sheet and not the scratchy sawdust, with Thomas rubbing the aloe, vitamin E cream over his tight chest muscles, the sore swollen nipples, his sensitive arm pits. Adam tried not to moan with the pleasure of Thomas' tending, but he couldn't help himself. Beyond the door, the barn started up a choral rondo of "Is it supper yet?" "What's going on over there?" and the junior choir of the weanlings, "Are we supposed to be talking now?"

        He laughed and then groaned as Thomas moved to his erection and he arched into the caress. The hand moved below across his tender scrotum and behind, entering with one finger and then another. Adam's legs moved apart and up of their own accord and he moved into the intrusion, opening to it, savoring the anticipation, but trying to maintain a modicum of control as the black man moved his chiseled torso above him, pressing Adam's long legs up so his knees rested firmly against his shoulders.

        Adam felt the soft, full lips brush teasingly over his forehead, his nose, his lids and cheeks. Thomas was going to make him wait until he went mad. Adam closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing, but his desire was fast out-pacing his control. Thomas withdrew his fingers. Adam bit off the cry that started somewhere below his cramped diaphragm. "Thomas," he gasped out.

        "Yes?" Thomas said quietly, innocently. "You wanted to say something?" he ran his tongue over Adam's lower lip.

        Adam had a great many somethings he would have liked to say had he the breath to do so just then, but he didn't.

        "Are you sure you want to be here?" Thomas asked lightly.

        "Oh, God, yes," Adam blurted out. "Yes," he added with the next breath.

        "Just checking, Adam," Thomas smiled and mounted him, sheathed himself entirely within the lanky giant, eliciting a shout, partly pain, partly surprise, but mostly sheer pleasure.

        Across the quadrangle, God bugled loudly and set the entire barn off in whinnies and nickers.

        Outside in the pasture, the blood bay answered the call.

        Then the alpha mare shouldered him in the side and told him to shut up.

        "Come in here," he commanded.

        Ram entered slowly and sidled along the wall, slumping down on the couch opposite the desk. She folded her hands and chewed her lip.

        "Well?" Joe leaned over the desk.

        Ram's eyes widened, all innocence and attentiveness, "Well?"

        Joe's eyes narrowed. "Grace was in here weeping most of the evening, Ram. Lucille said things about you that would make a mule-skinner blush, and even Duncan was fit to spit. What have you got to say for yourself?"

        Ram's gaze slipped sideways and her whole body started to fidget. "I didn't hurt anybody," she offered weakly in her own defense.

        "Well, that's your opinion, Ram. Grace is going back to Africa tonight and Cassandra is going with her, and it was all I could do to persuade Lucille to stay. I am very disappointed in you, Ram. I would not have thought you capable of being cruel to someone as kind as Grace, who would never hurt you."

        Ram's lower lip started to quiver. "I am sorry," she offered.

        "At least tell me why you did it," Joe said.

        Ram ducked her head and gathered her hands together in a knot on her lap. "I can't."

        "Well, Ram," Joe reached for his cane and levered up to standing. "Then I guess there is nothing else for us to say, except 'good night.'"

        "I guess not," Ram mumbled, never looking up. "Good night."

        He was almost to the door before she caved, "Joe, I'll tell you, but you won't like it."

        Joe settled down beside her on the couch. "I'm listening."

        "Alexa knew what would happen and she still chose to--to drink my blood. You shot me. It was an accident that you participated in the covenant. I thought there would be time to break this to you more gently. Now there are Lucille and Anne to consider..."

        "To consider what, Ram?" Joe took her hands. They were cold and tremulous.

        "The blood covenant demands renewal," Ram replied, "Every thousand days it must be renewed."

        "You mean that you have to give your blood every three years or so? Or what happens, Ram?"

        "The Hunger is so great," Ram paused, "you would begin to prey upon your kind, to drink their blood instead, but you would only grow more ravenous."

        "If you had remained in Hell?" Joe asked.

        "The night we slept together, when I was Malak," Ram shifted uncomfortably, "I put a thought in your mind, to remember when Alexa's time came, that you would know she, and then you,  needed my blood. And Alexa already knew. I was not going to die. I would have been available in perpetuity to supply both of you as you needed."

        "Oh, that's why you couldn't let Grace use your blood," Joe made the connection, "You would be engendering a race of vampires."

        Ram shivered over her entire frame.

        "Oh, Darlin'," Joe let her hands go and pulled her to him. "I should have known there was a good reason. I am so dense. Of course you wouldn't be cruel. What is the matter with me? How could I have been so stupid?"

        Her face buried in his chest, Ram said softly, his own words back to him, "Because I have nothing to do with your fears."

        "You are right, Darlin'," Joe said sadly, "I am afraid of your  power. I do not fear you will use it against me, but sometimes I fear for others, if I am not there to stop you."

        "Then I had just better stay with you forever," Ram said solemnly and snuggled farther down his chest to play with his belt buckle. "I should probably discover some magical attachment which would keep me by you always. Perhaps this would do..." she said shamelessly, loosening the belt and the zipper and reaching in for just such an attachment.

        Joe threw his head back and laughed until his breath caught suddenly at the completion of the magical connection to which she had alluded. The moist warmth encircled him, her soft tongue played along the exquisite tender spot below the glans, speeding his heart and laying him out limp against the couch back. Finally, he lifted her head up.

        "Is something wrong?" she asked.

        Joe wondered how to put this, all the while wondering how he could still feel shy around this woman. "You don't drink anymore, remember?" he said finally. It was the one thing which Ram had not recovered since returning from Hell.

        Ram's face screwed up. "Sorry, I forgot. Well, there are always alternatives," she added brightly, slipping off her pants and straddling his lap.

        "God bless the alternatives," said Joe and then he was utterly unable to say anything else at all for a very long time.

---

        Adam woke in the stallion's stall, Thomas asleep beside him. He slipped sideways silently and stood up, stretching his back and playing in the clean sawdust with his toes. Padding over to the water bucket, he scooped up a handful to sip and then a larger amount to splash on his face. All this pleasure was surely going to be the death of him. His physiognomy, while enthusiastic about this current turn of events, was still not used to this much satisfaction. Adam couldn't have been any more muddled had he taken to some addictive drug.

        He ran his long wet fingers through his hair and leaned his forehead against the stall's wooden walls, reaching his hands up and grabbing for a reinforcing beam that ringed the stall, seven feet from the floor. Adam leaned his weight against his arms, again stretching his kinked long back, releasing the knots in his shoulders.

        "Don't move," Cross said softly behind him.

        Adam pulled his left hand down from the beam and started to turn towards the head laid against his right side. Catching himself, he turned back and put his left hand on the beam again.

        Adam stood very still and waited. Stillness did not come easily to him, but he was beginning to learn how to be quiet in his mind, in his body. He listened as Cross moved over to the stall door and ran something back and forth across the bars, making them ring. Then he heard Thomas return behind him.

        It was the soft brush that the stallion liked so well, Adam thought, as he felt the bristles strum across his back, turning his flesh into goose bumps. Cross was cleaning it on the bars. Then Adam felt the brush move lightly down the outer margin of his right arm, then his left, then his sides and across his belly. He could see why the stallion liked this so much.

        Cross introduced the brush lightly over his entire body, even over his face, then Thomas retraced with heavier and heavier strokes, scratching all those places unreachable either by sheer anatomical limitations or by the limits of social conventions. It was more than Adam's abilities just to remain still, but he did his best. It amazed him even now that his lust had not only persisted through the long times of his denial and circumstance, but had grown to be such a powerful and driving imperative of his being, totally without limit or control, almost frightening in its sheer sway and force.

        Adam would have been more disturbed were not Thomas there with his control and power, his incredible knowledge and skill, keeping Adam from tearing himself apart in some paroxysm of mad desire. Adam relaxed into Cross' scheme and design, letting the sensations flood over him and carry him away, trusting implicitly that Thomas would hold him together, would return him to himself, unharmed. Adam set aside his will and his concern as Cross pulled him down until his arms were stretched their limits and his long legs spread wide. Adam floated in the strong arms, the tender hands, distantly surprised that the man was already filling him when he had not even felt the entry. Cross wasn't moving at all, just holding him, holding them, together, joined like one being.

        Adam felt a sudden jolt of vertigo, losing for a moment the division between this man and himself. All the edges where they touched seemed to have melted away, as if they were somehow bone to bone, marrow to marrow. It made him more than a little nauseous, a little frightened. He wanted to run, but he could not tell which legs would move if he were to command them to take him out of this place.

        Cross withdrew then and slapped Adam sharply on his back bringing him absolutely and immediately back into focus as if Adam's skin were suddenly replaced over him.

        Adam collapsed on the stall floor, his knees in the sawdust, his long arms by his thighs, his head against the wall. He gulped for more air and tried to have at least one coherent thought. "What happened?" he gasped as his mind and his breath returned.

        "Forgive me, Adam," Cross said slowly, "You are more, and still more, than I have realized. You go almost faster than I can follow, let alone lead. We will come back to this moment again in the future, when both of us are ready for it. Not now."

        Adam knew he'd done something--if not wrong--then too right, something like the stallion, a wonderful thing that he couldn't feel or see or understand. It was most unnerving. He half wondered if Cross were making this up just to humor him. "What would you like to do now?" he asked, knowing that the black man had not finished, nor had he, but it did not seem to matter somehow.

        Cross laughed. "Now we get dressed, and then we go see if Herself has left anything at all of your pony, and then it's time to feed."

        A chorus of happy encouragements to this last went up round the entire quadrangle.

 

Adam and Blood--he had not found a better name in the four weeks since he'd first met the stallion with the deadly reputation-- stopped their wild morning play in the pasture and came over to watch Thomas school Duncan's stallion, Black God, God for short. Adam had explained and explained that the name he called his stallion had nothing at all to do with the fact his host was black, that it was not some homeboy expression, but merely the translation of his official name, Sangre de Cristo. Adam still could not tell whether Cross believed him or not, so he took to calling the blood bay, "Son," or "Pony."         The stud did not much seem to mind anything that Adam called him, except for Cristo, that he would not tolerate. That name had earned the third stable boy, Daniel, a wounding he was still recovering from.

        And it had earned Adam a crushed chest and the rest of one whole afternoon being dead, while the stallion bit holes in his own knees and shoulders, going mad with grief that he'd killed his beloved new master. They'd both recovered from that dreadful incident, neither the worse for it. Adam could even call him Cristo now, but it did set the poor horse's eyes rolling and made him break out in sweat, neck and flank, both Blood and Adam, for that matter.

        This morning, as with every morning the past two weeks, Blood had stopped their play short and led Adam back to stand quietly near the outdoor arena to watch the black stallion work through his dressage lessons under the superb mastery of Thomas Cross. God rounded the far fence and collected into a trot which moved in no direction, not forward, nor backward, exactly in place, in an easy middle cadence, his back suppling into the movement, his haunches well under, working the drive required for so strenuous a maneuver which seemed so effortless when it was done this well.

        Adam watched Blood bob his head with the beat of the piaffe, completely absorbed in the lesson. When Cross began to turn the standing trot in a perfect pirouette to the left, Blood squealed in delight and wheeled round and round, stopping finally so that Adam could pet and praise him to the skies. Cross set his jaw to keep from laughing, admonished God to pay attention to him and not the show outside the ring, and let the stallion breeze out in a long trot to relieve the pressure on his back from the difficult movement.

        "You're going to have to ride him soon," Thomas called as he breezed by Adam and Blood.

        Adam stared at Cross, then he stared at Blood. He had been taking lessons on Red, the gelding he'd brought back from their trek to the Falls looking for his mother. Red knew more about dressage than Adam would probably ever learn, being a former regional champion as it turned out. Red, who went for a visit with Chad and Gerret to the Lindsey's every Saturday morning, so Mary could ride. Three year old Mary rode Red better than Adam, or so the boys would have one believe. Adam contended this was merely because the old gelding was a sucker for a winsome smile and a pretty face.

        The wild stallion was something else entirely. Adam could not yet get a halter anywhere near his head. He didn't need one. The horse went anywhere he asked, still it didn't seem he'd ever be bridling him, and a saddle and girth, running as it did across the scars on his side--. Adam couldn't see they'd be saddling him anytime soon, either. "Well, Son," he said, "what are we going to do?"

        Blood did not always understand the fine points, but he always listened. He nuzzled Adam's cheek solicitously and looked back at the arena. Well, you've already killed me once, Pony, and that didn't slow us down. I suppose--.

        Trying not to think about it too much, Adam vaulted smoothly onto Blood's back, talking all the while, explaining, soothing--begging for him to be brave, for both of them really. Blood shuddered his entire length, nose to tail, but he held still with all the considerable heart that was his birthright.

        Adam leaned forward and wrapped his long arms around the stallion's neck, as he did when he was on the ground. "It's just me, Blood. No danger." He stroked the stallion's shoulders and comisserated about each mark on his side and did all the familiar things that the stallion expected of him. The shaking stopped and Adam praised him as if he were the Messiah returning. "Splendid, splendid Pony," he crooned and he felt the horse stand up tall between his legs.

        With exceeding care, Adam started building a tiny amount of pressure between his legs. Without a bridle, he had no way to take the horse in hand, except for his voice, which he used to the maximum, "Steady, steady," he said firmly, but softly to the stud. He felt the neck flex back to him and the back arch over. "Good, good boy," Adam sang to him. That was enough collection. He nudged his right knee gently into the stallion's side and felt the horse release to the left. "Very, very good," Adam praised.

        Blood was incredibly sensitive and wonderfully able. How could he have stood such a cruel earlier trainer? Why had that not killed him? But of course, Adam thought, it had all but done so. He put up with it because he couldn't control his wildness all by himself and the meanness, the pain, were the only measures at hand to put some order to that feral fire. The stallion had had no one strong enough, concerned enough, to hold him in collection, to take all that power and give it direction. No one brave enough to face the Chaos of your will, Adam thought, not even yourself.

        The internal window opened and Adam saw himself, beaten again and again by the Horsemen's leader, and coming back for more because he needed it, because he desired it.

        Because there was nothing else and no one to teach him better.

        Until now.

        Adam moved the horse into a slow trot along the fence that separated the arena from the pasture, but his mind wasn't on the exercise. His thoughts were entirely occupied by a shaming notion. Even this beaste had known enough to finally fight against such treatment, to see it for the travesty, the very poor substitute for true strength, it was. Yet, Blood still bit himself, still turned to the pain when his daunting wildness overwhelmed him. And Adam had, in the end, turned on his earlier, cruel master. They both bore the scars, inside and out, that their dis-orders had bought them in their search for peace.

        "Steady, steady, steady," Adam slowed the stallion as he reached the end of the arena's fence, slower and slower, until they were still, trotting a perfect rhythm, moving in no direction at all, Blood completely bowed into the maneuver. Adam completely bowed into the moment.

        And across the arena, Thomas Cross halted the stallion and felt as if he were witnessing a miracle.

Drawn from photos by VAVRA

        "You are pensive, Adam," Thomas remarked, watching the giant walk his elongated, pale frame across the flagstones of the airy room as he readied their breakfast.

        "I was restless," Adam set the coffee on and checked the rolls rising in the oven.

        "You did not sleep well, Adam?" Cross rose from the low bed and walked to the hot tub for a soak.

        "I think I dreamed, but I cannot remember it," Adam replied, gathering the mugs and the creamer, the butter and jams and honey. "I only have this feeling that it was important."

        Cross let his trim body give in to the bubbles and the warmth of the tub as Adam finished the preparations and the aroma of fresh bread wafted through the room. Adam brought everything over on a tray which he set on the cobalt tiles of the deep tub side.

        Thomas invited Adam to join him in the tub. Adam sat on the tub bottom, facing away from Cross, between the black man's knees, up to his shoulders in the warm, churning water, while Thomas rubbed his neck.

        "What do you remember?" Cross' strong, wide fingers worked the tight muscles at Adam's temples.

        Adam's long neck arched back and he let his thoughts float with the bubbles against his throat. "I was standing between the day and the night," he began. "Yes, because I saw the full moon rising, cold and white, but I also saw the sun rising, hot and blinding, beneath the same billowing clouds. The sun was on my left hand and the moon was on my right, set in a field of stars across a dark and rocky land."

        "I heard them coming, like a drum, in the distance," he added.

        After a space of silence, Cross asked softly, "Them?"

        "The horses," Adam replied. "Two horses, pounded towards me out of the distance, throwing sparks off the hard land with their stony hooves."

        Thomas smiled, "I like your dream. Is there more?" He moved his hands down over the round of Adam's wide shoulders and worked the muscles there.

        "I think so," Adam replied, "but I can't--"

        "Why were they coming towards you?" Thomas turned the man's thought to a different track, much as he would have flexed a horse into a turn if he were leaning too hard on the bit going straight.

        "Well," Adam thought a moment, "The Fire Horse wanted me to wake, but the Ice Horse wanted me to ware."

        Thomas felt a shiver lift the hairs at his neck. He was not very old in comparison to the man seated between his feet, but he was old enough to hear the patterns only perceived after more than one lifetime's cycle. "The Fire Horse?" he urged Adam on.

        "Yes," Adam remembered more, "One horse was red and gold and white with bright, flashing eyes. His mane blew up from his gild neck like a fluttering cape, like flame. I think he had come straight out of the rising sun. He did seem on fire--or fire, itself. I could feel his heat burning me even though he was not very close went he stopped to look at me." Adam's voice drifted off as he thought about this.

        "And the other horse, the one who came out of the moon, was so cold and still, white as old bones, with dark eyes that drew in the light. That drew me in as if they were wells of impossible depth. His pale mane rustled above him like old, dead leaves in a winter tree. I felt the chill of this horse on my face. It made my teeth bump together and clench."

        "And they spoke to you?" Thomas asked, leaning over Adam's left shoulder.

        "No, not really, Thomas," Adam turned and tilted his head towards the velvet cheek of the Horse Master. "The Fire Horse turned towards the sun and stared his bright eyes into it, never blinking. The Ice Horse stared at me, where I stood in the shadow. He came to me and touched me. I felt his iciness chill me solid, so I could not move at all. I could not speak or feel. The horse still touched me, we were frozen together in a single block of crystalline ice, growing more transparent all the while."

        "And then the Fire Horse turned and bugled, the way Blood does, only deeper, louder. And the ice made a slumping, whining sound, higher and higher, and then there was a crack, more like a shot or an explosion. The ice shattered. The Pale Horse shattered."

        Adam's breath caught and then quickened. "I shattered. I flew apart like a thousand frozen stars. Then the sun melted all the pieces and they rained down like tears on the hard rock of that plain."

        "Is that the end?" Thomas asked, kissing the broad forehead.

        "It seemed the white horse and the gold horse were running across the ground, playing in the rain. I remember wondering who could be watching them, since I was gone." Adam opened his eyes and pulled out of Cross' embrace. "It made me suddenly very afraid. I woke up sweating. I almost thought to wake you, but I didn't. Then I fell asleep again. "This morning when I woke up, I couldn't quite remember. But I remember now. How is that? What did you do?"

        Cross laughed and levered himself up to the tub's side by the breakfast tray. "Oh, Adam," he poured the coffee and pulled off a small piece of steaming bread. "You are capable of doing things on your own. I am not responsible for everything that goes on around here."

        "I just remembered by myself?" Adam pulled up to sit on the other side of the tray. "Why couldn't I before?"

        "Sometimes all you need is permission to be wonderful," Cross poured some honey on a roll. "I give you that permission. It is my only function around here sometimes."

        Adam sipped his coffee. "What does it mean?"

        "I give you permission to know what it means," Cross chuckled.

        "You know you have a decidedly mean streak about you, Thomas," Adam grumbled.

        "There is not a mean streak in this entire splendid black body," Thomas declared, then, a little sadly, he put his short arms out in front of him and said, "It's so small, there isn't room."

        "I'd give you mine, if that were possible, Thomas," Adam said.

        "You do, every day since you arrived, Adam, and I cannot begin to tell you what a fine gift that is," Thomas put his roll down and leaned over the tray. "So what does it mean? Your dream?"

        "I honestly do not know, Thomas, permission or no."

        Cross smiled, "All right, who were the horses?"

        "Who?"

        "Who, Adam."

        "Who?"

        "Has that pesky owl flown back in under the eaves again," Cross laughed.

        "Yes," Adam said suddenly, "I was the moon horse and Duncan was the sun horse."

        Thomas Cross' expression never changed. He hardly ever trained horses for himself and he had long ago learned the art of letting go and the idea that every beginning held the seeds of its own death. He chided himself for the brief spasm Adam's words engendered and set his own concerns aside. He would have to meet this MacLeod again soon. They would speak of many things together. He was looking forward to it.

        "Oh, I am sorry," Adam said, reaching for Cross.

        "There is nothing to be sorry about, Adam," Thomas took his hand and laid it over his heart. "It amazes me you would even think so. You please me Adam, in many, many ways," he added slipping back into the tub and pulling Adam in after him.

        Adam's entire long torso flushed rose at the compliment and the attention.

        And the breakfast went cold waiting for them to be done claiming this important moment between them, made all the more important by the sheer virtue of the fact that they both knew it could not last.

            

        Adam Piersen rode Blood back from the paddock to his stall. The alpha mare called them both as they entered the far aisleway and the stallion skittered sideways, dumping his lean, tall rider hard on the bricks. Ooomph, Adam rubbed his hip, nothing broken, only smashed. He shook his head and scolded the bold mare, who leaned out over her stall half-door and laughed at them both.

        Adam quieted the stallion and assured him the accident was not his fault. He pulled open the stall door and the horse walked in and drank his water, waiting to be brushed. When that was done, Adam hugged the big bay and assured him he'd return, then he closed the stall door, went over to give the alpha mare--probably pregnant by Blood, but too soon to tell--a sugar cube. "Watch over him, First Mare. I will be in town for the afternoon."

        Adam walked to the end of the aisle and glanced out at the arena. Thomas was still working Duncan's black horse there, but he was starting to run through the flexing, cool-down drill, and would be riding across the pasture within the next ten minutes or so.

        Adam walked round the quadrangle to Red's stall and visited with the gelding whose right tendon was sore and was on light work for the week. He knelt down and fussed over the injured limb, but Red was only interested in the sugar cubes and the fact his hay rack was empty. Adam rectified the two deficits and the gelding was more than happy to overlook his sore leg. Then Adam cleaned the black stallion's stall and refilled his water, refreshed his hay, so Thomas would have a clean stall to bring the stud back to.

        And so that Adam wouldn't feel quite so guilty, though why he should at all was a mystery. He felt like an errant child running away from home, but all he had planned was to borrow the old truck and go into town for the afternoon. It wasn't as if he were a prisoner here, after all, and Thomas had never said or indicated in any way that he couldn't leave at any time. Still, whenever Adam suggested they go into town for dinner or some entertainment, or the times he asked to go with Thomas to his work in town-- whatever that was, Adam still wasn't sure--Cross would seem to acquiesce, but something would come up or they would become entangled in a romantic interlude and time would just go rushing by and then the horses would need fed, or it was simply too late to leave today, maybe tomorrow.

        He had been at the Cross Estate for nearly two months now and had not been off the grounds once, for any number of reasons. There wasn't anything to confront Thomas about, and Adam did not feel confined here. He was just sure if he asked, that something would block his way. Not that he would mind this, but today Adam had decided to go into Couver and buy a gift for the Master of the Cross Estates. The stable boys had let slip that Daniel was going to return two days from now for Thomas' birthday.

        Adam had never really bought a true gift before. He had gotten flowers and jewelry and--well, just stuff for folks at the appropriate occasions--but he'd never really gotten anyone something that mattered to him. He had thought about this for many days now. Cross spent so much time pleasing him and Adam had thus far really not returned the favor. He wanted very much to show the man how grateful he was, how much he felt about his time here, and their time together, how much affection had grown in his heart for this excellent friend, this surpassing Master of Horses.

        It had taken him a while to decide on what gift. He would not have thought gifting to be such a difficult business, but there were concerns about too much, too little, just the right sentiment without overstatement, without a reciprocal demanding. In the end he decided good gifting was not unlike a more formal version of good sex, and just as difficult to accomplish. All the same rules applied, it seemed. He was forced to admit he knew very little about Cross, what the black man desired--save obedience and elegance--or what Adam himself desired to give to him of his own which would originate outside the order of their pairing.

        Adam had finally come up with the perfect gift. There was a small poster shop on River Street, three blocks from Joe's bar, where he'd often stopped on his way to Joe's from his old apartment, up on Rye. There was a print they'd put in the window in April. A print of a painting of a photograph by the man who had done the cover for the Horse Whisperer novel and the photographic tour of Africa called Unicorns-- something--all with a white unicorn photographed against the African wilderness. This painting was of a photograph of a Bask stallion, very similar to God, decked in gold and held by a half-naked black man. The entire picture was sensual and calm and so like Cross it might have been him.

        Adam could not of course afford the original painting with the cash he still had on him, but the print was well within his means. He had more money, but his checks were missing, and he wasn't up to going home or to the bank and risk running into anyone he knew just now, though he couldn't think why that would be.

        Adam walked out of the barn. Cross and the black stallion were far off across the pasture, just disappearing over a low rise. Adam slipped into the truck, pulled the keys out of the ash tray, started the engine, and headed for town.
 
 

Drawn from photo by VAVRA

        The road took Adam by the turnoff to Anne's place, the house that Duncan had refurbished. He remembered the day he and Duncan had painted the exterior. He vaguely remembered an argument they'd had about the difference between honor and stupid self destructiveness. Chivalry, that had been the subject. The Highlander refusing to finish a woman Immortal who'd been after the Scot for years. Duncan had ended the discussion by painting Adam's nose. Adam laughed aloud by himself in the truck cab.

        The next bend in the road stopped his laughter. The top of the long hill that had claimed his mother's life, or so he had thought at the time. Adam tried to reclaim his feelings from that time, but they were oddly disjointed, vague and numb. He did not really remember how he felt. Adam wondered now if he'd felt anything at all, whether he'd just floated through that tragedy, miserable but unaware.

        Adam geared down the truck and exited onto the south loop. He did not remember the city being so noisy and smelly and generally irritating. The car horns made him jump and it was all he was worth to find his way around the construction and south towards the lesser districts of the metropolis. By the time he reached River Road and found a place to park the old truck, Adam was nervous and strained. All these people talking too loudly and too fast, all the disorder and ugliness, and the pervasive urine, garbage, seaweed stink of the place made it hard to concentrate.

        He had never realized the town was so incredibly unpleasant. Well, he'd get the print and go straight home. How could he have stood living in this aggravating mire of disgruntled folk and garrish surroundings? Adam's long legs got him across the street and down the sidewalk to the shop. The print was no longer in the window.

        "Hey!" a two-foot alpha mare shouldered him into the window, "People walkin' here!"

        Adam started to apologize. He ducked his head and reached out to pet her, but she was already gone. Two young studs strutted into his path before he could reach the shop door. They were arching and blowing, stomping and weaving, scared to death, but posturing for each other's benefits, there being no available mares nearby. Adam looked down so as not to incite them or confront them and moved quietly to pass them. An arm shot out in front of his chest. Easy, Son, he thought, wondering who could have ruined such a young horse so thoroughly.

        "I know you," said the bay to his gray two-foot friend, more than to Adam. Then the young man turned his head on an unimpressive neck towards Adam and snorted, "You're that fag from the trial!"

        Adam wondered why he couldn't think of some quick remark to set this pony out of his mind and away from his path. Something to hurt him, to cut him. The words did not come. He did not have the will to find them. "Just let me pass," he said simply.

        But the obstreporous young stallion was too bold for common sense to prevail and Adam slapped him sharply on the flank to move him. The gesture caught the boy by surprise and he was out of Adam's way, sputtering on the sidewalk, as Adam disappeared through the door into the shop.

        "Did you see that? Did you see what he did to me--" the boy complained to his friend, reaching into his pocket for the knife there. He lunged towards the shop door.

        For which impertinence, the young man lost the use of his right wrist for the next six weeks while it healed in a fiberglass cast from a very nasty comminuted fracture that required surgical reduction. A large man had approached from the alley just as Adam entered the shop and put an end to any of the young man's further plans.

        Adam heard the scuffle behind him as the door closed and the brass bell chinked, but he put it down to the general noise of this nasty place, no different from the worried murmurs that echoed through the shop. It was even more crowded and stirred in here than it had been on the street. Young mares in heat, flagging for this or that young male, flirting or chirping or giggling, mares with their colts at side, herding and calling and fussing. Old stallions moving outside the herd, stiff and out of sorts, posturing every time someone came too near. And they all smelled of nervousness from being so close to each other. They reeked of fear. They stumbled uncentered, off-balance, except for the few herd wards who circled at the periphery without really knowing their purpose, just watching, waiting, but for what?

        Adam set his frame to move them away from him, the same way he pushed horses he was working in the round corral, angling just behind their weak side and coming up steadily, strongly. The herd parted before him and he made his way towards the prints, stacked in labeled rows against the back wall, as deep as he could go, with the herd closing again at his back. No wonder they feared, he mused, when they were always in danger of getting trampled.

        "Excuse me," he addressed the senior mare here, a plump grey--well, blue-grey--short two-foot with the temperament of a carrion eater. "I am looking for a particular print--"

        She pointed towards the stacks behind her with the butt of her ballpoint, looking over the top of her glasses.

        "--of a horse," Adam finished, patting her round, soft shoulder reassuringly.

        The mare screeched and shied away from him. Easy girl, he thought, what's frightened you? He looked behind him, but could see nothing strange--perhaps the light flashing through the high window had set her off. You could never tell with old mares. They lived in their own worlds, their own rich memories. Ah, well, Adam bent to his task finding the horse subjects and thumbing through the listings. There, the Reined Horse series. He went over to the main table and sorted down to the series and, yes, one left, a little tattered on one corner, but that wouldn't show once he got it framed. It was every bit as beautiful as he recalled and just seeing the likeness recreated Cross' abiding strength around him in the midst of this harried herd.

        "There that's him!" the blue-grey senior mare bugled. "That's the one!"

        Adam saw her coming towards him, two large stallions in tow, and he glanced around behind him, looking for who they could be after. There was only the table and the back wall. "Can I help you?" he offered, holding the print down by his side.

        The near stud struck out and Adam dodged, vaulting the table, which only ended him trapped against the back wall. Both the men were in a rage, white-ringed eyes, nostrils flared, whinnying some nonsense, something or other about perverts and trials and whatever--it made no sense that they would accuse him of moving on such a senior mare, not even in heat, while at the same time accusing him of mounting only stallions. Ridiculous.

        The print dropped at his side as the men reached him and he went down beneath their merciless hooves. The last thing he thought was, "They have dropped me and defeated me. Are they so deranged that they don't know that is the end of the challenge?"

        Perhaps that was so, for here another joined the fray, laid hard hands upon him and shook him disrespectfully. "Adam?"

        He opened his eyes and the light from the high window blinded him. He thought he saw the Sun Horse from his dream. Then the man moved in front of the glare and he recognized the Highlander. "What?" he answered through his swollen and split lip. "This," Adam held up the poster, still sealed in plastic, splattered with blood from his busted beak.

        Duncan reached in his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills and threw them at the men. "My friend is leaving now, or we will wait until the police arrive and press charges."

        The men moved aside and Duncan helped Adam to his feet, picked up the poster and started for the door.

        Around them the herd came to attention. Above the ringing in his head, Adam could hear the barn chorus of, "What's going on over there?" and "Is it supper yet?" and the little ones with their "Are we supposed to be talking now?"

        Of course, he knew that wasn't what they were saying, but it amounted to the same thing nonetheless.
 

        "Did I beat you, even once, Adam," Cross' voice whispered itself, a sultry breeze against his lips.

        "No," Adam said, surprised at the question.

        "Did I chain you here? Or lock you in? Or even command you to stay?"

        "No," Adam answered again.

        "But you knew I did not want you to leave just yet, Adam?"

        "Yes, I knew,"Adam looked up at him and leaned his back against the warm, muscled thighs. He was seated on the weathered lower porch, Cross standing behind him, leaned over, whispering near his mouth as if it were his ear, so that he almost tasted each wise word, partly bitter, partly sweet. Adam  could not think of what to say to him. He had been so utterly stupid. "I am sorry," he said, "so sorry. I did not understand."

        "And you understand now, Adam?"

        "Not really," Adam admitted, "just that I was not ready to leave this place. Something has happened to me here. It has made everything else different."

        Adam felt Thomas' laughter, like bubbles on his teeth. Then he reached upward for the soft lips, the wellspring of Thomas' rich words and warm laughter, the answer to his emptiness.

        "Adam?"

        Adam made himself be still. He did not want to dishonor the Horse Master, by his own embarrassment that someone had joined them on the porch. The voice bespoke a man, a friend. Duncan? Oh, damn, Adam thought, he would come to the Estate just at this compromising moment. Adam felt the blush and heat rising up his neck and face. Cross would not be pleased at his performance.

        "Adam?"

        He felt Duncan's broad cool palms against his upper arms, the strong fingers curling behind.

        "Adam?"

        Adam couldn't begin to think how to explain this to the brawny Scot, when he did not understand it himself. Why didn't Thomas speak up?

        "Adam! Wake up!"

        Adam came bolt upright. "Wha--?"

        "Easy, easy," Duncan said quietly. "You're in my loft, Adam. You've had a concussion. I'm sorry, but I needed to wake you up--to make sure you were all right. You started bleeding again."

        Adam tried to sort through his thoughts, to orient. He was lying naked under the cool, clean sheets of Duncan's broad bed, pillows propped up behind him against the enormous tapestry of the battlefield and the rearing, wild warhorses. Duncan walked over to the bathroom while Adam finished waking. It was late afternoon by the red glow, nearly sundown. The light was a pleasant reminder of evenings at the barn, talking to Blood and Red, walking with Thomas...

        Adam looked down. He had bled from his nose over his entire front it seemed. Duncan returned and handed him a warm washcloth, lifting off the covers his nosebleed had doused. The action was unintendedly stark and almost frightening. Adam continued to clean off the blood and strove not to follow his sudden compulsion to cover himself. Duncan meant nothing by this, he chided himself. He is only changing the bedding for God's sake!

        Duncan threw him a robe while he dug through the cupboard for clean sheets and comforter. These he also threw at Adam's general direction and then Duncan strode off to the kitchen for an ice pack and some lemonade.

        Adam made himself fold the robe and set it aside. Then he remade the bed one-handed, holding his nose with the other.

        Duncan busied himself in the kitchen section of the loft until Adam was done. He didn't really do this as a conscious answer to Adam's uneasiness, simply as a natural consequence of his internal sentinel, the consequence and partner to his long years as a warrior, that sigil of patterns and waves and harmonies. He set everything on a tray and returned to the bed. "Here," he handed off the ice pack and a new washcloth, then the lemonade.

        "You'd think such a big, strong nose would be harder to break," Duncan said lightly.

        "You'd thing," Adam agreed, taking a sip.

        "Hurt?" Duncan asked, grimacing. "It looks awful."

        "Oh, thangs," Adam readjusted the pack.

        "I have missed you, Adam," Duncan moved back, farther and farther on the bed, measuring Adam's nervousness. Without really thinking about it, when he reached the foot of the bed, he got up and walked over to the window. "How are the horses?"

        "Find," Adam answered, "Jusd find."

        "And how have you been? Before today, I mean," Duncan looked out the window and ran his hand along the casement.

        "Oh," Adam put the glass down. "I'm bedder ad ridink now. I have a dew horse I've bend training."

        "Really? That's wonderful," Duncan smiled. "Cross tells me my stallion is doing well and should qualify up to First Level next month when he goes to his first trials. He seems to think we can make some money breeding him if he can take him up some levels with the scores he thinks he can do."

        "He is good," Adam agreed. "Very gradesful and strong. Dot as dice as mind though," he added.

        Duncan couldn't hold it in any longer. He burst out laughing.

        "Whad, whad?" Adam asked.

        "I'm sorry, Adam. You just sound so funny, like a punchy prize fighter. Why don't we wait until your beak is back on straight?"

        "Sub friend you are," Adam complained.

        "Well, I saved your grits, not once, but twice, today," Duncan said in his own defense. "I'd say that was pretty friendly."

        "Thang you so buch," Adam grumbled. His grits felt anything but saved and more like--what was it Lucille said? Oh, yes--more like his grits had hit the griddle.

        And his grits were still griddled a half hour later, when Adam emerged from the bathroom, clean and fresh, his nose finally healed and more or less straight down the center of his face again. He had wrapped the robe a little too tightly around him, but otherwise his earlier discomfort was not apparent. Joining Duncan for a light evening snack at the kitchen table, he asked, "Where are my clothes?"

        "Soaking in a cold tub downstairs. They're bloody and torn, Adam. I think we moved the rest of your stuff over to Lucille's, but she isn't answering my calls today. Grace left with Cassandra and I think Lucille is spending the day in a memorial pout. I could go out and buy you some. I don't know how you've made your one outfit there last two months," Duncan passed the mustard.

        Adam was not inclined to explain the phenomenon. He rode in a pair of Chad's jeans. Otherwise he usually didn't dress at the Cross Estate. Hardly any laundry. "If I could borrow a sweat suit, Duncan. I'll return it in the morning. My keys?"

        Duncan dug in his pocket, "Here," he threw the old truck's keys on the table. "I take it you mean to drive back tonight?"

        "Yes, I thought--" Adam began.

        "I'll drive you," Duncan stated. "I haven't seen my stallion since we left the Falls."

        Oh, that would never do, Adam thought. The feeling was very strong, the reason indistinct. "No, no, Duncan. We'd be playing shuttle with getting the truck back and--"

        "Adam?" Duncan sat back in his chair, crossed his arms and measured the Elder Immortal.

        Adam looked up from the sandwich he was building, "Yes?"

        "Are you all right, Adam?"

        He clinked the knife around in the nearly empty mustard jar. "Sure," he answered, "the nose is all healed. I'm not sore. Oh, damnation! I was buying a print for--!"

        Duncan reached behind him and drew the print down from the island counter. "This?"

        Adam's face lit up like sunrise. "Oh, you got it! Oh, thank you, Duncan!" with a rush of totally uncharacteristic exuberance, Adam leaned over the table and hugged the Highlander. Duncan froze, not quite certain about this very acute change in his friend.

        Adam drew back immediately. "I didn't hurt you?" he asked.

        "No," Duncan replied, "No, Adam, not at all. It's just--You haven't fallen asleep near any large pods lately have you?"

        Adam giggled like a child, "Oh, my. Pods. That's rich, Duncan. Very funny," he said as if encouraging a too stern horse. "Pods," he chuckled and laid his hand lightly on the Scot's.

        "You are acting very strangely, Adam," Duncan said. "You got attacked twice this afternoon and never made a move to defend yourself. You're--I don't know--all light and dreamy, you act as if I might be a danger to you. You have asked not one single time after your brother or your mother. Have you just left us for good and all?"

        Adam's sere features collapsed and his eyes bled tears down the high angles of his cheeks.

        "Oh, Adam!" Duncan dove for him and wrapped him in strong arms and all his concern. "What is the matter, Adam? What has happened to you?"

        Adam relaxed into the haven of the Highlander's strength and stopped crying. "I did not mean to disappoint you so, Duncan."

        "It doesn't matter, Adam, Jesus! What has that man done to you?"

        Adam could hear Duncan's heart speed with the building rage. "Nothing," Adam jolted back and fairly shouted the answer. "Nothing, Duncan. I, I just came back too soon. The Horse Master was right. I was not ready. I should not be here, any more than I would let Blood loose on the highway. Too much noise and danger, too much cruelty here, too much dreadful carrion stench, too much dying everywhere, too much--" his voice echoed round the loft, floor to ceiling.

        Duncan was reminded of the first time he'd left the monastery after being cloistered for a decade. He began to understand. He remembered the noise was the worst. Duncan knew he did not have Adam's sensitivities. This must be agony for him.

        "I can't stand you yet!" Adam said.

        Perhaps he did not understand at that. Duncan released his friend. "I meant no disrespect, Adam," he tried not to sound either too chilly or too involved. "Here," take the T-bird." He handed over a second set of keys. "And I'll drive the truck up tomorrow." He walked towards the lift.

        "No," Adam said, almost frantically, "You promised you wouldn't come out there, that you wouldn't interfere!"

        "God damn it, Adam!" Duncan had taken just about all he could manage with grace. "I said I'd give you space and time. I didn't say Bora Bora and I didn't say forever!"

        Adam looked transparently stricken.

        "All right, all right," Duncan put his palms up in surrender. "I will call Cross in the morning and make other arrangements for the stallion to be boarded and trained some other place where I can at least have visitation rights, and someone else can bring the T back and pick up the truck. You might as well know now, I am taking Sean with me to spend some time with the Villancourts. You are welcome, but I would not presume on your privacy."

        Adam's mouth opened. He wanted to say something, there just weren't any words. It was too late already, and he wasn't even ready yet. What was he going to say? Wait for me?

        Duncan shook his head and punched the lift, "Take anything you need. I'll send you some money if you're short, and I'll see to it that Cross is reimbursed for his valuable time with the stallion. You'll have to make your own arrangements about the time for--your new horse, Blood is it?, and Red. I don't know what your relationship, arrangement, is--that is your business, Adam, as you have so clearly stated before. We won't be leaving for three weeks. You can reach me here or through Joe."

        Adam could hardly follow. It felt as if he were trying to remember the important points of someone else's past, not his. He could not call up the faces, except as cold imagery without feeling. He heard the lift clang level with this floor. Now, he told himself, ready or no, it is now and no other time, for the rest of the world. Now. He took one deep breath, "Duncan, please."

        The Highlander turned back at the sound and Adam saw him standing in the lengthening shadows, a mountain of dark planes and shaded edges, the last light of day sparking in the gold brown smoke of the sad eyes.

        But all that registered in Adam's frantic thoughts was, "Here is the Sun Horse come to shatter me and rain me in tears upon some desolate plain."

        Adam slipped out of the chair and folded his long legs beneath him on the floor, indicating Duncan should join him. He didn't know why exactly, maybe that it would make them equally disadvantaged, maybe because it was not so far to fall. "Duncan," Adam began. "You are right. I am floating out in the ether somewhere and I cannot seem to touch down, or make any sense of it, or--" Adam swallowed his fear and pressed on, "I cannot explain what has happened between the Horse Master and myself," he shook his head, "I'm trying to go back to the old way," Adam said to himself. "No, that will not do. I can't keep--" This was so hard for him that he had begun to pant with the exertion. He thought of Blood and it all became clear. "I told you I had a new horse?"

        Duncan nodded as if he were placating a madman.

        "He is tall and powerful, but he is so wild, he is only destructive and harmful, to others, to himself. He had to live in this totally dark stall away from all the other horses. When there was no one around to hurt him, he hurt himself. He was so awful they were going to shoot him, to put him out of his--and their--misery. But he wanted to be hurt, Duncan. He had to be," Adam could feel his eyes filling up again and it made him angry with himself, but there was no help for it. "Because that was the only control he knew, the meanness, the cruelty, because he did not have anyone to show him his strength and how to order his wildness. So he sought people out that would be cruel to him, because he thought they were stronger than he was, that they could hold his wildness in check for him..."

        "It didn't matter what that cost him, because it kept him alive, kept him from tearing himself apart on his own teeth. Because he didn't have anyone to show him how to use his strength, how to direct it, how not to be afraid," somewhere in the narrative, he'd stopped talking about the horse, "that is what the Horse Master is doing for me, but..." Adam waited for the answer to come into focus.

        "I am losing all my old tricks, finding where I am, what I am, taking off my armor," he shook his head and his graceful hands wandered aimlessly in front of him, gathering the night air. "I don't know, maybe I did fall asleep by a large pod. I just--I can't shut down any more, he won't let me. I can't go away in my head any more and throw up witty lies and cruel remarks. I can't pretend not to care any more."

        Duncan caught one of his hands out of the air and held it gently. "Go on."

        "I don't have any protection any more. I suppose I will get some, or learn something that will help, but being at the Estate protected me. I guess that's why I didn't feel this before now. I don't think I understood how very careful Thomas has been with me, until I came to the city," Adam paused.

        "Let me take you back, Adam," Duncan leaned forward.

        "No," Adam said, "I shouldn't have seen you again, now, while I am like this, but I--. If you leave--"

        "We will wait for you, Adam," Duncan spoke to his fears. "to Bora Bora and forever, if that's what you need. I am sorry, I got so short with you, but you hurt me."

        "But that is why I cannot stand you, Duncan," Adam blurted. It was true enough, but it came out all wrong.

        Duncan gave him his hand back. "I am sorry, Adam. I don't understand this. I am not able to help you and this is just too painful to stay and hear you say things like that. I am bound to throttle you and that would not make either of us feel any better."

        "Wait!" Adam cried out.

        The tone of desperation held Duncan more surely than the long fingers suddenly wrapped around his upper arms.

        "Please," he said more softly, "I only meant," what the hell did he mean? It made sense a moment before. "I searched you out because of your strength, because I knew you could defeat me and I thought I wanted to die. Then when you didn't kill me," Adam's head slumped over on his long neck, then he snapped back up to look Duncan fully, bravely in the face, "I never could understand why you even put up with me, I was of no use to you at all, all I could give you was a sort of sloppy loyalty, and I could hardly stand to do that. But it never seemed to matter with you. You looked at me, Duncan, as if--as if you saw someone else, not me. I thought at first I must remind you of someone, but no, you saw me in a way that I never saw myself. I thought you were stupid. I thought you were blind--No, wait, hear me out,"

        "Please," Adam tried to calm his voice a bit. He knew he must sound mad as a spring hare. "It took me so long to understand that you loved me and that I loved you, and I am not even certain now what that means really--some of it I do, not all though. But--" Adam lifted his hands off the Scot. "But now when we are together, we fight, we spit, we get jealous, we yell and threaten and--we hurt. I hurt. A lot. I am afraid of what my wildness is doing to you, what it will do to you when I go out of control."

        "Forgive me, Duncan," Adam breathed slowly, reaching for the stillness he had learned, "I am more afraid of what you do to me, of how you are changing me, of how hard I have to hold back, freezing what I feel, holding myself away from you and from life and from love. But you have caught me in a moment when I cannot hold myself apart from the pain, the lovely agony you are to me."

        "I am sorry, so sorry, Duncan," the damnable tears came back again, but Adam didn't heed them. It wasn't as if they would make him seem more foolish than he already was, and every bit of it the truth. "As improper and impossible as it may be," Adam murmured, "Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, I love you."

        The night and the silence wove in around them, seated on the floor.

        "You're going to make me ask this, aren't you?" Duncan's voice always regained the soft burr of his homeland when he was uncertain.

        Adam, seated quietly, savored the relief of at least having been truthful--if ridiculous. "Ask what, Duncan?"

        Duncan studied him closely, then he just smiled and rose. "Wait," he said and went padding barefoot into the kitchen where he rustled in the dark through several drawers until he found whatever he was looking for. Adam watched him return, a shadow in a sea of shadows in the still night.

        "Come here, Adam," he said, standing at the window by the kitchen table.

        Adam joined him, wondering but waiting.

        Duncan lit a match and then a candle. He blew out the match and placed the candle on the window ledge. "Do you know what this means?" he asked.

        "That someone out there is lost in the night?" Adam asked.

        Duncan nodded, "And--?"

        Adam thought a moment, he could not follow, "And this is so--" Adam understood, but the understanding took his voice. He put his long fingers over his heart, asking.

        Duncan took Adam's hand and placed it over his own heart, "Here, for you, Adam, always a candle in the window, so you may know your way home."

        Adam nodded and smiled, but he couldn't trust his voice. I can always return, he thought. What a loving gesture. How very touching and sublime. No one had ever said goodby to him more tenderly. He was just sorry he couldn't reciprocate more graciously. "Thank you, Duncan. I will always treasure this. Always."

        "Just give me a minute to get dressed," Adam added, "I'll send the T back tomorrow." He headed for the bureau and some sweats to wear for the drive.

        "I must be slipping," Duncan said sighing, still by the window.

        "Slipping?" Adam threw the robe on the bed and dug through the drawers for something to wear.

        Adam heard Duncan rustling around by the table. He found a pair of pants--too ratty, and another--too new.

        "And here I thought I'd spoken with the gift of Irish Angels and would sweep you away with pure Glamorye," Duncan went on.

        These, thought Adam. Damn, he'd already cut them off for shorts. Maybe the bottom drawer.

        "It would seem a more direct approach is called for."

        Adam heard Duncan right behind him. He stood up and began to turn, but Duncan's strong arms came round him on both sides and pinned him against the chest of drawers. "If you are finished with games, Old Man, then so am I."

        Adam closed his eyes as Duncan's lips brushed his shoulder and the Scot moved forward so that the length of their bodies touched. Adam's robe was behind him on the bed and Duncan's clothes were somewhere on the floor by the window where he'd dropped them. There was nothing left between them but their skin and the long, tempestuous courting of their complicated friendship, which seemed so simple now.

        "All right, Adam," Duncan's breath brushed his ear, "I am asking. Will you lie with me?"

      &nbs