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"Mother, Mother," Adam screeched and came bolting down the St. Charles Cathedral aisleway amid a shower of sparks and tinkling glass shards and a wave of sheer power which emanated from the Nave behind him and threw him forward on all fours. The next wave threw him down on his face where he could only wait for his back to stop burning from the myriad cuts and the intense heat passing over him on its way to the slender woman dying between the marble font and the adjacent pew.Oh, Dear Lord, he thought as he lay there waiting for this thing to stop. What have I done? It would be like a Quickening the Danaan had said. This was like no Quickening Adam had ever experienced or witnessed. It was why they were forbidden Holy Ground, the Danaan had said, because it was a focus of Great Power. The healing would be like a Quickening, she, the nameless Danaan, had said, because of Ram's terrible loss, she would draw the Great Power to herself and be healed thereby.
Adam ground his fists into the aisle carpeting. Nothing had been said about this! She was bleeding profusely, both wrists and her side! She was convulsing and going into shock! While the building came down around their ears, she was, she was...
Dying, Adam groaned aloud, unheard above the explosions that shook the cathedral. The Danae had discovered the treachery of the false journal and repaid him in kind. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have done this? What terrible wickedness sat at the center of his soul and laughed even now that Adam, Eldest Immortal, was matricide and fool.
Then it was over, more suddenly than it had begun. The stillness was stifling and airless as a tomb. Adam scrambled forward, even before he was fully upright, and stumbled down by Ram's bloody corpse. With all the care that was in him, he lifted her into his lap and braced his back against the marble column of the font. Digging a kerchief out of his burned coat, he reached his long arm up and soaked it in the holy water above him, brought it back down, and began cleaning her face.
Ram's face. No scar. The old beak, the twin to his, jutting wanly from the slack face. Oh, Mother, Mother, Adam howled to himself as he rocked. How could he lose her now? How could he have just learned to love her and have her no more? How? Who would he tell about Sean's many little mysteries? Who would understand about the colic and the teething? Who could laugh with him about the messy business on the barge? Who else could even speak his language? Who else would love him now?
Who, now that it was just too late for everything?
"I felt much the same way when I held you dead in my arms," the warm voice spoke, in English, the language of his heart.
If the heavy marble font had not prevented it, Adam might have jolted backwards. "Mother!"
And behind him, sheltered below a pew and under the Highlander, Joseph Dawson screamed out, "No!" in a long and anguished song of blackness and despair.
"Help me up, Adam," Ram commanded.
Adam obeyed. He didn't even bother trying to tell her about blood loss and shock precautions. He just scooped up more holy water in his large hands and offered her a sooty drink. Which she accepted, if not graciously, then gratefully.
While Ram steadied herself over the font, Adam lifted the pew from the Highlander and the Watcher. Duncan was singed but otherwise all right. Dawson was another story entirely. While physically unharmed, he was so obviously beside himself with losing Set that it was almost embarrassing to even look at him. Duncan shrugged at Adam and then turned to pick Dawson up and prop him on an upright pew nearby. Joe's blubbering honed its edge to such a stream of epithets as would deconsecrate this very ground had Ram's "healing" not done so already.
When Dawson's rage slowed, Ram approached stiffly, her hand wrapped around a folded piece of paper. "I think this is yours, Watcher Dawson," she said.
Joe would not look at her, but he took the paper. He unfolded it slowly, saw the hearts and threw it down as if it were molten lead. "Why don't you just go away?" he murmured in his misery.
Ram took the words stoically, as if she fully expected this reaction. She bent forward slowly and retrieved the paper. "You may change your mind in the future, Joe. Just ask. Anytime. I will give it over then."
"We need to get out of here," Adam reminded them of the obvious.
Duncan nodded, settling into the pew beside Dawson. "You take Ram out to the T-bird and I'll come along in a little while with Joe." He patted the desolate man on his shoulder and then gave up on appearances and just gathered the Watcher in to the broad barrel of his chest, and let him sob out his great grief.
Father Delaney passed the odd motorcade on his way back from the florist with two large arrangements for the Easter Sunday altar crowded in the back seat of the rectory Lincoln. Still two hours until the afternoon Mass and the ashes, he was wondering what he could have forgotten. Some little something to make the Good Friday midnight transition from Lent into Spring just perfect. Every year it was something, as if God Himself were dunning him. But no, the good father thought, this year will be perfect, and God forgive me my pride.
Still, the odd line of black limousines, trailed by a vintage black T-bird seemed so out of place in the sunny noon-time traffic. He'd expected a hearse, but there was none. Ah, well, mirrored glasswork in the car windows, doubtless bullet-proof, some dignitaries visiting Couver for the holidays.
Pulling into the alleyway behind St. Chuck's, Father Delaney wrestled his ample bulk out of the front seat and struggled with the two enormous arrangements, putting the rectory keys into his teeth and one flower pot under each arm. When he got to the back door, he found he'd left it ajar, again. He was so distractible around the Easter days. Ah, well, who would steal from God's House? Entering the backroom storage area and finding nothing amiss, the good father breathed more easily and thanked the Lord yet another time for watching over him and his absent-minded ways.
But, just to be sure, he passed through the vestibule and entered the Cathedral.
Both pots fell to the floor and broke.
God would have no need to forgive him his pride this year either.
Adam looked out the dark windows of the limo assessing the situation in his mind. They had been ushered into this elegant, if ominous, conveyance the moment they stepped from the ruined church. Duncan and Joe had been taken to a limo farther back in the line when they emerged a bit later. Duncan had reluctantly given up, first his katana, and then the keys to his "T." Someone else was driving the Thunderbird at the end of this somber parade headed, only God knew where.
In the meantime, Adam and Dr. Mark Palmer and Lt. Crane, were seated facing forward. Ram and the Danaan with whom Adam had made the deal sat facing backwards. The woman held a basin full of warm water while Ram washed and changed, as oblivious to her nakedness as the three men seated opposite her pretended to be.
The woman handed Ram a T-shirt and jeans. "You seem to favor this garb," the Danaan said meanly.
"Perfect," Ram slithered into the jeans and pulled on the T-shirt.
Then the woman handed her a pair of Nike's, black with white appointments.
Ram clapped her delight, "Oh, marvelous!" She put down the shoes and leaned towards the woman, kissing her cheek. "I do love you," she said.
The woman drew herself up stiffly, "That will not make any difference in my decision, Setan'm."
"I know," Ram replied happily and bent forward to slip on the shoes. "I did not mean it to."
"Just so you understand," the woman emphasized.
"Oh, I do," Ram finished tying the tennies. "It's just that in times like these, it is the small kindness that touches the heart most deeply."
The woman cleared her throat and emptied the basin in the bar sink. "Can I get you gentlemen something?"
Ram looked up and stared at the woman.
The men all said some form or another of "no thank you."
"Perhaps you could tell me what happened?" Ram suggested to the woman, as she dug a Coke out of the small bar frig.
"I think the boy there could tell you all that you require," the woman answered icily.
"Adam," Ram patted his knee. "Tell me everything. The short version," she added, knowing her son's propensity for the long explanation.
Dr. Piersen turned an ugly shade of green and started choking.
"And you, sitting over there grinning, you bastard," she looked straight at Mark, the Bear. "What have you to add?"
Dr. Palmer just shook his head and indicated Adam.
"I made a bargain to bring you back," Adam stammered out the beginning of an explanation, trying not to wither under the full force of his mother's rapt attentions.
"What could you have had to bargain with, Adam?" Ram asked.
Adam swallowed, "Your journals."
Ram turned her head sideways and sited on him. "Yes?"
"In particular," Adam held himself steady, so the Danaan could not tell he was lying. "The journal with the story about Malak and the Sothern Drift Campaign."
"The Tragedy of the Lord Victorious?" Ram stared at him.
"Is that what it means?" Adam said. He'd finally just left the title as impossible to translate and gone on to the story.
"Stop it!" the Danaan suddenly roared. "Cease this instant, Setan'm! Stop! Do you hear me?"
"What?" Ram asked. "Stop what?"
"Damnation, Setan'm! We should never have put the two of you together in the same car! You already have him believing it was all a lie! But you will not get away with it! The instructions to the Passage have already been transmitted and are known by the entire Host. You will not stop us with so meager a showing of your powers!"
Ignoring the woman, Ram looked straight at Adam, "What about the book, Adam?"
"There was a second part, after the story, your instructions on how to pass beyond Last Gate without dying," Adam thought she might impale him with her stare alone. He felt it all the way to the back of his skull. She was not pleased. At all.
Ram closed her silver eyes for a moment as the car slowed and turned from its easterly direction towards the north. "You believe this then?" she asked the women in the black suit.
"This son of mine has skillfully made you a forgery, Madam," Ram continued. "There was nothing in that journal after the story but blank pages."
The woman looked Ram up and down and then sighed, "And how was that, since none of the other journals had any blank pages, Ram--that's what they call you isn't it?"
"Nevertheless, given the subject, Madam, you can understand why I never completed it."
"Perhaps," the woman was clearly unconvinced, "Then perhaps you will tell us where you disappeared to for that century we spoke of at your earlier trial?"
"No." Ram's reply was sudden, adamant, and unequivocal.
"Well, we know now, don't we?" the woman smiled. It was not a pleasant expression for the Danaan.
Ram closed her eyes in defeat and leaned back in her seat. "I take it you intend to test this path?"
"No," the woman answered, "We intend to implement it, the entire Host, before you can engineer a plan to prevent us."
Ram's eyes squinted tighter together. "When?" she whispered.
"This very day," came the answer.
Adam answered the pain in his mother's face. "Ram, is there anything--"
Her eyes shot open so fast, their light drove him backwards. "Yes," she hissed, "you can bloody well shut the fuck up and let me think!"
With that Ram leaned back, crossed her arms, and closed her eyes again, leaving the rest of them to close their mouths.
Duncan glanced for the fifth time out the back tinted window of the stretch. He'd just gotten the T fixed from the last time it had come in contact with the Danae. He did not relish the bitches driving the thing, but they'd promised it was only so Duncan and his clan could have something to drive home in which sounded hopeful.
"Oh, God," Dawson moaned as another wave of memory skewered him.
Duncan had given up any semblance of comforting him. Nothing helped. He shrugged to the others in the limo, Brandy and Mike. "He just needs time," Duncan said.
"Fuck you!" Joe growled from someplace deep in his hands. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his coat. "What I need is a drink!"
He leaned forward, slapped open the limo bar and grabbed a fistful of airline-size whiskeys. He then opened the five of them and tossed them down, one at a time, in quick succession. "Ah," he said finally. "Yes," he added. Then he just sat there, waiting.
"Oh, Jesus, Duncan," Dawson broke down again, "All my life in six short months. That's all we had! I'll never see her again, Buddy. Everything gone, gone...gone forever...and ever...and ever..."
The first wave of booze hit, mercifully for them all, and the Watcher drifted away somewhere with only a few sobs now and then to remind them he was still conscious.
Duncan loved the mortal dearly, but he was beginning to tire of what he almost felt was an artificial, if not a totally reprehensible, bit of grieving on Joe's part. After all, Ram was still alive. Ram was restored to her former power and health. Was Joe so blind after all that he could only love this woman with half her brain gone and death nipping at her heels? Did she have to be crippled to suit him?
The Highlander tried to be charitable. Set was dead. Set would never be alive again. It was a metaphysical conundrum, but it irked him nonetheless. But he had more important things to consider than his mortal friend's emotional and sobriety lapses.
Somehow, Duncan needed to figure out what the hell was going on and then what they could do to get out with the least amount of damage done...to either side. They were being kidnapped.
But the Danae were bringing his car along so they'd have a ride home from the party.
Something Adam had done had killed Set.
But Ram seemed, while a little frazzled, completely recovered.
Duncan didn't know where they were going, except east.
Sean and Lucille were back at Joe's probably worried about them. Couldn't be helped. At least they were safe. So the first priority was to pay attention and the second, was to catch these bitches letting their guard down and improvise from there. It wasn't exactly a plan, but it was a beginning.
Joe roused, reached for the bar, and found Duncan's strong arm suddenly in the way.
"Move it or I'll chew it off!" Joe threatened.
"You've turned into a really mean drunk there, Buddy," Duncan said lightly.
Mike laughed and Brandy hit him.
"Don't you just," Joe belched, "And don't you forget it, Budddeeee!" He reached again for the bar.
"Bar's closed," Duncan said.
"The hell! What makes that yer bizness?"
Duncan turned his head away for a moment so he could breath. "I don't think any of us is going to enjoy getting spewed on, Joe. Slow down a bit, will you."
"I've barfed on better men than you, Buddy," Joe retorted.
"I am sure you have," Duncan said kindly.
"Move yer friggin' arm, Scot," Joe yelled.
"No," said Duncan evenly.
The whiskey and his rage elevated Joe's cursing to a truly Zen-like quality as he exploded with:
"You motherless son-of-a-bitch!"
And despite any of their best efforts to the contrary, the entire limo detonated in raucous laughter as it turned north, making its way to the Couver Uptown districts.
The limos and T-bird convoy descended into the first sub-level parking beneath the monolith that had forced Lucille out of her paned glass penthouse apartment across the street. The passengers disembarked and regrouped. The drivers left without a word, and the woman who had come with Ram's group.
"You okay?" Duncan asked Adam, who really didn't look well. No one answered. The MacLeod clan chieftan he might have been took a silent inventory. Brandy and Mike were steady. They were good for each other. They would get through this all right. Joe. Well he was more or less sedated, but Duncan was already tired of carrying his weight and no way was he going to be walking in the next half-day or so. Adam looked green around the gills, but Ram was ready for war. Dr. Palmer was strangely quiet, but didn't seem to be otherwise any different than his usually certain self. Lt. Crane was just as uncertain, but this was par for his course.
Two black-suited women met them at the elevator and ushered them in wordlessly. Up they went to the tenth floor and got out in a sunny lobby filled with plants and sectional furniture. One of the women indicated they should be seated. Why not?
Ram left in the company of the two while the rest of their little troop lounged in the ferns and watched the various secretarys and office personnel scurry about, boxing up records, working at computer stations, answering large banks of phones and screens.
Duncan looked over through the glass walls and watched Ram standing before an executive at a large desk. They did not seem to be talking, just looking at one another across the desk. This went on for about ten minutes, then Ram turned, and her "escorts" pulled up on either side and walked her out of the office.
Duncan hauled Joe up off the couch and woke him up enough to get him to stand on his own.
"He's drunk," Ram said as she approached.
"Oh, and aren't we the clever one, though,"
Ram ducked her head, "Sorry, Duncan. I wasn't paying attention." Without looking at Joe, she reached out, touched her fingers lightly on his sweaty forehead. "We need to go up to the thirtieth floor now," she said. "He'll be a little disconnected now," she indicated Joe, "but he should be ambulatory at least."
They waited at the elevators for a while. Though there were five general and two service lifts, all of them were occupied, going down. Then one of them returned and they were up further inside the monolith. "A little like an 'Up into the Dark Tower' video game, isn't it?" Ram laughed.
"Wait a minute," Duncan looked around again, "Brandy and Mike didn't get on."
"I guess that would make me not the only clever one around here, eh, Duncan?"
The two women accompanying them just stared at each other and moved away from them...as far as they could in the confines of the elevator.
They got off on the thirtieth floor. Another indoor jungle of exotic foliage and expensive furniture and people bustling around, busy, busy.
And another executive to be stared at, Duncan noticed. "Adam, do you know what's going on here?" He knew it wasn't a high percentage trying to get the tall son of Chaos to talk when he was in one of these moods, but he had nothing else to do while they waited.
Unexpectedly, Adam answered, "I--what is the technical term?--fucked up, royally."
Mark, the Bear, started laughing silently, but so violently he looked like his great frame would shake apart.
"Oh, shut up," Adam grumbled to the Bear. "As I recall this was partly your idea."
"Oh, no, Adam my man, I only told you how you might contact these biddies. I never said what for or why for," the Bear answered in his own defense.
Two of the busy office staff stopped in front of Lt. Crane, they talked too quietly to hear, and then Crane got up and left with them.
"Hey," Duncan called after him, "shouldn't we try to stay together?"
"I'll be all right, Mr. MacLeod," Crane answered. "Catch you later."
"What is going on here?" Duncan looked at Adam.
"I really don't know, but Ram is terribly upset about it, whatever it is," Adam answered.
"Mark?" Duncan turned towards the Bear.
"Hey, guys, just paint me yellow and call me a banana," the Bear quoted one of Sweet Lucille's most inscrutable sayings.
"Right," MacLeod sighed. They would just have to see what happened.
And here came Ram back, seemingly unperturbed by whatever was going on, no matter what Adam had said.
"One more stop," Ram said, checking on Joe, who was in a state of semi-somnambulance. "And then we'll have you out of here."
Duncan did not like the way she said "you." Why not "we?"
This time they waited even longer as the elevators were tied up taking people down. When they finally got one coming back up, it was to take it to the top of the new 'scraper, an unfinished room, an enormous, empty hall with a wall down the middle and glass walls all the way around....a fantastic view of the entire Seacouver metropolis. As they got off, Ram turned and hugged the Bear. Mark and the two women then got back on the elevator and the doors closed.
They were scattering the hostages, Duncan thought, so we cannot make an escape without losing part of our group. Somehow they know I will not allow that to happen and they are using it against me.
A door opened in the wall across from the lift just as the elevator doors opened behind them.
"Reach in and push the 'hold' button, please," the woman who had accompanied Ram and Adam in the limo came through the doorway in the wall.
Duncan locked the elevator.
"If you will accompany me into the next room," the woman indicated the doorway.
Duncan and Adam and Joe went through the door. It closed behind them. Duncan turned and burst back through the door, "Ram!"
"It is okay, Duncan," Ram stood between the woman and the Highlander. "I am not leaving. I will come in and join you after I have spoken to Bõedvir. It will only be a few minutes. Please."
Duncan went back through the door and closed it.
Ram was as good as her word. In three minutes she came through the door, closed it behind her, and joined them at the great mahogany conference table, which, with its chairs, was the only furnishing on the entire top floor.
She placed a watch on the table.
"That's Mark's watch!" Duncan said accusingly.
"Which he lent to me so that we would know when to leave," Ram replied. "We are to sit here for fifteen minutes and then you are to leave by the elevator that is held on this floor. It will take you straight down to the first sub-basement and," she reached into her back pocket and handed Duncan's keys back to him, "you are to get in your car and drive to Joe's or wherever, just so no one goes to Lucille's until dawn tomorrow."
Ram pushed back in her chair and closed her eyes.
"Wait a minute!" Adam jostled her. "That's it?"
"Yes," Ram stared at her son. "What else would you like?"
"It sounded like you were in deep trouble with these people," Adam prompted.
"I am," she said.
"Aren't they going to, um, retaliate, Ram?" Duncan asked.
Joe began to snore. From the look on his face, whatever Ram had done to him must be pretty wonderful.
"They have retaliated, Duncan," Ram answered.
"He means like with a trial, sentencing, you know?" Adam was getting ever more angry and less flustered with each passing minute.
"Well, I apologize it wasn't anything more dramatic, but that's what we've been doing here all this afternoon, " Ram answered.
"What?" Duncan put his hand on her forearm.
"One trial," Ram began, "Two appeals. Both lost," she added.
Adam stared aghast, "What did they sentence you to?"
"Life," Ram laughed. "That I shall not by omission or commission allow my life to be ended, ever."
Duncan's warm brown eyes narrowed. "Ram, what is going on?"
Ram folded her arms before her on the massive table and laid her head down on her arms, sighing. "Well, Duncan, this son of mine here has convinced the Danae that I found a way through the Gate to another world, dimension, whatever, that there is a passage to the place where our forebears went." She looked up. "You know, like that fable I told you the night Sean was conceived. Like that. Only, like that tale, this path Adam has written into one of my journals will likewise lead to death. The Danaan people will all be dead by tomorrow."
"And good riddance," Adam spat out.
Ram breathed out slowly, "Well, maybe it is only because you don't know them, Adam, but the world will suffer their loss, even as I will." She rose out of her chair and went to lean against the cold glass where her exhalations painted frost clouds on the pane. "I could not convince them otherwise, though I tried every argument I could think of and some I only made up on the spur of the moment when I got desperate. But they wouldn't believe me. They didn't want to believe me. I think they are tired of the world, that they are just using Adam's lie to leave their lives behind because I could not make them happy in the world. Because I failed them as I had failed all who came before."
Then she laughed, but it was a truly horrible sound she made. "Once upon a time," she began, "I was a Lord Victorious," as if she were speaking her own eulogy.
Then Mark's watch began buzzing. Their waiting time was up.
Ram turned towards them and walked over to wake Joe, kissing him on his left temple. "Time to go," she said.
"Hold a moment," Duncan complained. "We can't leave until we know everyone is safe."
"All the mortals, all the Immortals, are safe," Ram said.
"But what about Mark, and Crane, and Mike and Brandy?" Adam asked.
"Marak and Kyrin and Makar and Barad'n will go with the other Danae. They will be dead by dawn as I have said."
"No!" Adam howled.
Ram blinked, "I thought you said 'good riddance' to them?"
"We have to stop them!" Duncan shouted. "Something, there has to be something we can do."
"If there was, I would have done it," Ram replied sadly.
"I could offer my head," Adam said bravely.
"I did," Ram said in a way that made it impossible to tell if she were joking, "they didn't want it."
"Damn you to hell eternal," Adam cursed.
"Yeah," Ram smiled grimly, "that's pretty much what they said at sentencing."
"What?" Duncan stared. "You're going to hell?"
"You know," Ram said airily, "I'd really like to stay and chat, fellows, but I have to get below ground in," she picked up the watch, "seven and a half minutes...and I can't use the elevator...so if it's all the same to you...it's been..." she nodded her head and laughed more normally, "It really has been."
With that she was out the door and racing for the stairwell entrance.
"Go to the elevator and get out of here!" she yelled back at them, just before the spring-loaded door banged shut.
"Adam?" Duncan stepped out of the elevator, putting his hand on the doors to keep them from closing. "Can you---?"
"Yes, Duncan, I can get us out of here," Adam draped his long arm around Joe's shoulders. "If you give me your keys."
Duncan slapped his forehead with his palm and handed them over.
"Take care, Friend," Adam admonished as the doors closed.
Duncan wondered what he was heading into as he dashed through the stairway door. It was so unlike him to be this rash.
Well, not quite this rash, anyway.
Running down a mountain was a tedious, energy-demanding task, and this cliff-side of one-hundred flights was just exactly that. Despite the fact he was in excellent condition, Duncan was breathing heavily half-way down the well, and he still hadn't caught up with Ram. Nor did he really know what he was likely to find should he catch her. What else for Chaos, in any case?
MacLeod had found a rhthym of three strides, grab the bannister and reverse course one-hundred- eighty degrees, then down the next flight and repeat. It was fun, like flying, totally enjoyable except for the constant knowledge that one single mis-step and he would crack his skull, or some other portion of his anatomy that was equally dear to him. What would he find at the end of this mad dash? What was happening that Ram had to literally "go to ground?" What had she said? Below ground, she said she had to get below ground in what would be--Duncan turned his wrist upward and glanced at his watch--right about now.
The explosion blew him back up the entire flight behind him and plastered him violently against the wall. Great gouts of flame, blue and white, an ice fire, came rushing up the stairwell with a deafening roar like a jet engine readying for take-off. He felt the after shocks in his back as the steel girders themselves shook with the blast and a curtain of electrical discharges crackled up the passageway, charging the very air with their spark and sizzle.
Even at a distance from the source, Duncan felt as drained and enervated as if he'd taken a head. It was several minutes before he could stand and continue down the stairs. He wondered if he were even now too late, if Ram had been blown to kingdom come, or damned to hell eternal, as she had reported the sentencing result.
Down and down, Duncan finally found her, crumpled in the corner of the third floor landing. "Ram?" he called gently and began to lift her up.
"Don't," she rasped. "Get away! I don't know when the next one will hit! You'll be hurt!"
"Yeah, right," Duncan paid no attention, just picked her up like a child who didn't think it was bedtime yet. He started down the stairs again. "Where we headed?" he asked.
Ram looked up at him slowly. "Straight to hell, Duncan, straight to hell."
"And that would be--?"
"Third sub-basement," she answered and snuggled her cheek into his chest.
To Duncan's credit, he nearly made it.
MacLeod came back to life in a convulsive, gagging fit of flailing arms and incoherent curses. The extensive musculature of his chest dragged at the air in great, noisy gulps until his head cleared and he could take his bearings.
They had made it down to an unfinished portion of the monolith's deep foundation, the roots of the dark tower where it stood upon the bedrock of Seacouver's elder isle. A forest of bare girders and naked wires, capped pipes and dim lights gave this level the look of a trolls' mine shaft, a deep, dark hall where magic metals were wrested from the living rock.
Ram!
Duncan scrambled up, grabbing the steel beam by which he had fallen and caught sight of her body, still, but breathing in the center of the cold metal hall. He could dimly remember her fighting out of his arms and diving towards this point just before...
...he died. This last Quickening had killed him. Yes, Duncan decided, that's what these two events had been, much more intense, more the quality of what had happened in the cathedral, more violent, and with no heads taken. He tried to remember what Ram had told him, what Adam had told him, about the curious power transfer that the Danae called "Diminishment," but this seemed different. For one thing, Ram seemed to be drawing, not losing, power, though she was obviously the worse for it.
...and he, himself, dead of it. Once already.
"Duncan!" Ram levered up to kneeling. "Duncan," she called out again, trying to stand.
"I'm all right," he answered her, approaching out of the girder shadow.
"No, don't come closer," Ram warned.
"What is happening, Ram?" Duncan lowered himself down to the cold cement floor.
"They are dying," Ram said, pushing off her heels and leaning on her arm to face him. "One by one, as they pass through Last Gate, they are dying." The last word echoed around and around the empty garage.
"So these are Quickenings?" Duncan asked.
Ram chuckled. "Very like and then some," she said finally. "It will be a long night," she said weakly.
"How many?"
"What? Oh, how many Danae?"
"Yes, Ram," Duncan repeated, "How many will die?"
"All of them except for me," Ram folded her legs and leaned forward, stretching her back.
"Oh," she said, "You mean how many Danae are there? You saw them today. How many would you estimate?"
"All the office staff we saw?" Duncan thought there must have been hundreds, maybe a thousand, minimum. "A thousand?" he guessed.
"Eight hundred and thirty-two," Ram corrected him.
"Oh, God!" Duncan exclaimed.
"Yes," Ram sighed. "There weren't very many of us left. We were nearly gone already, even without Adam's treacherous interventions. Even so, we were very influential. The world will be less for our leaving."
"You can't do it," Duncan sputtered, "Not eight hundred times. Not if it's anything like these first two."
"Whether I can or no," Ram smirked, "there really is no choice, Duncan. Were I you, I would wait until the next death and then leave this place. Come back for what's left of me in the morning."
"No!" Duncan protested.
"There's nothing you can do, Duncan. It's pointless for you to wait and watch."
"I am your Shield Brother."
"No, you can't be," she replied cryptically. "The King is dead," Ram explained, "I am the King once again...and the monarch may not form any particular affiliations except as Liege Lord."
"Oh, Bull Shit!"
"Now that's a charming bit of vernacular, Brother," Ram laughed.
"Is Malak going to die too?" Duncan asked, thinking Adam would want to know this.
"Malak?" Ram roared hysterically, "Malak? Oh, pullleaase! Malak? Oh, dear...Duncan, you are a prize! And they say there is no humor in hell." Her laughter rolled around the vast darkness of the subterranean hall. She collapsed onto her back and grabbed her stomach in glee. Then all was silent.
"Get behind the beam, Duncan!" she called to him, "Now!"
Duncan knew her well enough to obey without thinking.
Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod did what he could...which was nothing at all. He huddled against the steel girder, sheltered in the thick iron wings of this enormous H-shaped support. With one of the many nails scattered over the floor Duncan kept the count as he had kept the watch, shaken and chilled to the marrow, sick to his soul and tired beyond believing. Another scratch in the new rust on the beam behind him. He tallied them up again, four more to go and this terrible thing would be over. His hands were burned and blistered, as was his face, from looking out too soon a few deaths earlier. His dark hair was singed, crinkled and yellow from the heat of the blast. The fiery wind had been hot and fetid like the breath of hell itself.
Given Duncan's natural bent towards guardianship, this waiting had been a torment almost beyond bearing. To be rendered so helpless was difficult for him. To watch a friend suffer was intolerable, a very real torture and agony which he felt might break him except his guilt out-paced the very real pain he had suffered.
Ram was very strong. Duncan had always known this, he had just not had it so vividly demonstrated before now. He almost wished she had been weaker, almost wished she could truly have succumbed. He understood early on in this dreadful course, the meaning of her sentence: that she live. It had not seemed a punishment at all when Ram first said it.
The first hours were awful. Wave after wave of unstoppable energy, battering her in violent convulsions and bone-breaking storms. By the second hour, Duncan had grown accustomed to her screaming. He was convinced he would never stop hearing that awful, roaring, rage-filled screech, in a volume to shatter crystal and deafen dogs. Duncan thought he had never heard anything so terrible in his entire four centuries.
But he was woefully wrong, for somewhere in the third hour, Ram began to weep, and Duncan thought he would die from that sound alone. As it was, he did die, rushing forward to comfort her, to comfort himself, because he could not stand to watch her crying alone, sobbing the names of her beloved dead.
And he had died three more times getting back to this sheltering girder. Ten more deaths after that before his shaky hand could reach up and scratch the tally in the beam. A curious insight afflicted Duncan then, that his own pain was almost welcome to him, if only that it brought him temporarily away from Ram's unanswerable agonies. He thought it was something he might like to discuss with Adam, if they had not vowed to never speak of such things again.
The hours dragged on. Duncan's incredible physiology healed and recovered, losing its injuries and pain, leaving him only the leaden weight of absolute exhaustion. Ram had long since stopped weeping, but the retching and groaning were no improvement, the whimpering, even worse.
But that had been hours ago, before the "Quickenings" had started to kill her. The cycles of dying and reawakening were somehow worse than what had gone before, as if that were possible. Then they had started to come so quickly, they hit before she awakened, so Ram emerged into convulsions and immolation.
And all Duncan could pray for was that she would never awaken again. But Ram was far too strong to violate the heinous sentence. She lived. She had vowed to do so.
One more flash and explosion and Duncan peaked around the beam. Almost over, he thought.
Ram lay, as she had for the past several hours, still as death. Her muscles had finally convulsed themselves useless and melted her, paralyzed, to the oil-smeared cement. Only her diaphragm and her eyelids still moved of their own volition, though the power transfer of the dying Danae still worked a ghastly reanimation which intermittently battered the wrecked flesh against the obstinate garage floor.
Her head was still turned towards him, the pale, blind eyes open. This meant she was dead. Awake, she closed her eyes against the pain. At this point along the horrendous course, that was the only difference between life and death aside from the odd, gasping breath.
The eyes closed and Duncan ducked back behind the steel pillar. Eight hundred and thirty one souls, Duncan recounted. And one last, lonely straggler, yet to take the path. There was enough of a pause that Duncan began to hear Ram breathing, deeper, stronger....maybe he had miscounted and...
Her breath caught and the entire garage lit up like the proverbial Fourth. Countless secondary spark clusters showered down from the ceiling and bright blue charges danced along all the surfaces of the many support beams, Duncan's included. It blazoned his scratches like neon.
As MacLeod jerked back from the heated beam, he heard a load, metallic groan that set his teeth together. Across the garage, one of the girders screamed and buckled ominously. Then the entire level was thrown into absolute darkness. Blacker than the backside of hell, Duncan was reminded of a Lucille-ism.
Then the blue emergency lights blinked back on, and it was simply and blessedly...
...over.
Duncan did what he had longed to do the whole damnable night. He went to Ram's side. She was dead again. Eyes open, unblinking. He knelt down beside her and surveyed the damage. She was a mess. No surprise that, but still he was sickened. Multiple fractures, shoulders, legs, doubtless a few ribs, if not all of them. And the stench, Dear God! Burned hair and flesh, feces and urine and vomit...Duncan tried Sean Byrnes' strategy of perspective, perspective, but even on the worst battle field, he'd never come across a soldier this badly done.
"Kinda makes you wonder what's left," a smoky voice drifted by Duncan's right ear.
"Joe?" he turned to see the Watcher standing over him, leaning on his cane and looking like something the cat wouldn't even drag in. Then again, Duncan thought, I probably look worse.
"Hi, buddy," Joe's gentle voice was a comfort, "Hard night?"
Duncan sat down on the cold cement and roared. "Jesus, Joe," he gasped when he could breathe again, "Oh, god. You were here? All night?" And he thought himself alone in this grizzly vigil.
"Yeah," Joe said, "Adam was here too, but I sent him up for the car two flashes back."
"Why?" Duncan stood up. Dear Lord, Joe had been standing on his prosthetics all night long. Lucille had an expression....yes..., "You must be in a world of hurt, Buddy. Standing all night like that."
"Me?" Joe looked down at Ram's carcass. "I don't think I even know that world, Mac."
"Actually, the hang-over's worse than the legs, and they ain't good. I'll be glad to get closer to an Aspirin and a hot bath, and that's God's Own Truth," Joe added.
"Why?" Duncan asked again.
"Just because I was an asshole at the Cathedral," Joe shrugged. "Doesn't mean I'm a total idiot, Mac. Just because I owed it to her, Mac, even if..." he shook his head. "Oh, hell, it was just the right thing and you know me, dollar short, day late...but always there at last."
"And thank God for that, Buddy," Duncan hugged him very carefully. They all hurt. Too bad Lucille's jacuzzi was out of commission for the move.
The T-bird rumbled down the ramp, jolting over the debris and bouncing its beams like a strobe over the scene that could best be described as two old sailors and the wreck of the Ram. Adam emerged, fresh as a prototypic daisy.
"All right, gentlemen," Adam said cheerily.
Duncan and Joe exchanged looks which spoke silently their murderous intentions for this all-too-perky Elder Immortal.
"Joe," Adam opened the passenger door, "rustle your stumps in here, Old Man, and take a load off."
Dawson made it all the way around the T-bird on his rage alone, dragging the cane behind him. "My what?" he growled as Adam closed the door.
"Duncan, get in," Adam indicated the back seat.
Duncan did not move. "We've got to," he reached for Ram.
"I know," Adam nodded. "Get in and I'll hand her in to you. You're injured, Duncan. Five Quickenings, or the equivalent. It's amazing you're still alive. Just get in the car."
"But if you touch her," Duncan started, but he did not know how to explain, "her muscles...she looks intact, but..."
"Yeah, I know," Adam grimaced, "Paté."
Duncan gagged.
"Get in the car, Duncan."
This time, Duncan did not argue.
Adam unlocked the T's boot and retrieved Duncan's katana, and then a stadium blanket in the MacLeod tartan colors, and two towels. Thank heavens, Duncan went packed for anything. The katana he gave to the Highlander. One of the towels he took over to a service sink and soaked under the tap. After, carefully removing Ram's torn and fouled clothing, he cleaned her up with the wet and then the dry towel, then wrapped her in the blanket and lifted her onto Duncan's lap.
She still stank, but it was quite an improvement.
They pulled out of the pit, climbed two more levels and exited the dark monolith into the sunny morning of Not-So-Good-Thursday, emerging from the ashes of Wednesday, as it were.
"I have a question," Duncan began, trying not to notice that Ram's eyes were closed and had been through most of Adam's ministrations. That couldn't have been a wonderful collection of sensations.
"Yes?" Adam turned south. There was almost no traffic this early.
"Who stuffed the sunshine up your butt this morn?"
"Nice talk, Lord MacLeod," Adam laughed, "Is that the proper example one wants to set for the common folk?"
"This isn't like you," Duncan commented, "It's scary to see you so, so able."
"When I was a child..." Adam began.
"Oh, never mind!"
"Well, I have a question," Joe interjected. When no one answered, he continued. "Adam said, that you said..."
"Yes?" Duncan replied.
"Oh, Mac, tell me I didn't say I'd barfed on better men than you."
"I wish I could, Joe."
Ram made a jerky, coughing sound.
Duncan couldn't be sure, but he thought Ram was laughing.
Adam had the presence of mind to pick up the cellular and call the base camp that they were coming in with wounded. Lucille met them at the dojo, arms full of Sean and bandages and bath things and food and her exceeding talents at all things tender.
Anne was out of town visiting her mother with Mary. There would be time later to come up with some explanation that made sense.
Up the lift and they assorted themselves around the loft. Adam booted up the computer and went diving into the Watchers Network and a handful of egg sandwich.
Duncan laid Ram down on the bed. The stink was formidable, but they couldn't move her any more until she'd had time to rebuild her flesh more completely.
So, Lucille left Sean with his brother and bullied Joe into Mac's bathroom for the Sweet Lucille bubbles and stuff special. Joe hardly argued at all.
Duncan couldn't wait to get Ram's stench off himself. He grabbed a pair of sweat pants and some towels and shuffled over to the lift to go wash up in the second floor gym showers.
"Well, Sean," Adam adjusted his brother on his lap and offered him a bite of sandwich. Sean tried, but four teeth were no match for the chunks. Adam glanced down from the various error messages on the monitor, assessed the problem, and then put his hand out for Sean to spit it.
The baby obliged.
Adam flipped the reject into the trash basket. "And Dr. Piersen takes two points....and the crowd goes wild," he bent over Sean and made "crowd goes wild" noises. Sean giggled wildly and grabbed Adam's nose. "All right, all right, you savage child, we'll fix the sandwich," Adam looked over at the counter where the blender sat. He gauged the distance and Sean's patience.
Too long. Adam took a bite off the sandwich and chewed it up, spit it out in his hand and offered it to Sean, who proceeded to "snarf it up like a hog." It seemed they'd all be leaving English behind soon and start speaking unadulterated Sweet Lucille, her vocabulary was so filled with apt terminologies.
Adam.
He'd been up too long. When you started hearing your name floating in the air, that was surely a sign of...well, something awful. He couldn't remember. And this damn computer! Ten ways into HQ and none of them worked. What gives?
"Dadahm," Sean chirped demandingly.
Adam chewed up some more sandwich and began wondering where Lucille would have put the formula.
Adam.
And then maybe a nap wouldn't entirely be out of order. But he felt strangely elated. What was that PC word of late? Yes, empowered, he felt entirely empowered.
Well, then, dear boy, empower your head out of your ass and get over here.
Adam gathered his brother under his arm and dashed for the bed. "Mother?"
I need propped up a little and then I need something to drink. Please.
"Oh, yes, Mother. Of course."
And not to be churlish, Dear Son, but if you could call me Ram, then I promise not to call you Lad.
"Point taken, Ram. Come on, Sean, let's get your mother attended to."
Adam carefully lifted her and stuffed pillows behind her back. She still couldn't move anything, except to breathe, but now her eyes were open on purpose. And after the sips of ice salty lemonade were down her parched throat, the grey eyes closed in sleep and not in pain.
"And why," he whispered to his baby brother, "do you suppose Mama is not fried? When you or I would be extra crispy after a night like that?"
Sean didn't have an answer, but then again, neither did Adam, though there was a nagging little suspicion just beyond the bounds of his consciousness that supposed otherwise.