 |
 |
 |
Adam Piersen rolled over carefully and then jerked back nearly off the wide bed as two old baby eyes flashed an inch from his face. "Good morning, Sean," Adam mumbled happily and gathered the infant, almost fifteen months now, to his heart, where he held every jolly burble and giggle as if it were a sacred text to be memorized and set in stone."All right then, little brother," Adam set him on the pillows and rubbed his eyes, "What shall we do for breakfast?"
Sean was immediately unhappy about the increasing distance between his doting big brother and himself. He let his displeasure be known in tones that would crack granite. Adam scooped him up and took him into the lovely bath of this "guest house," which Dr. Lindsey had built behind the house which Duncan MacLeod had refurbished for her.
Adam and Sean strolled into the pale marble bathroom, chatting about the bright fall leaves and little sister Mary, and what was Unka Dunk doing staying in bed so late at the "big house."
Adam started the bath and Sean began a lengthy baby soliloquouy on the blessings of bubbles and bath toys--the otherwise elegant bath was strewn with them. Adam set the child on the thick bath mat and adjusted the temperature of the water. Ironic, really, Adam thought, that Anne should win the Highlander back from him just by giving him away.
Manipulative bitch.
So Dadahm and Sean had returned to bachelorhood, or motherhood, or boyz in the hood in the back house. It was even more ironic that Adam should have tolerated getting dumped without taking it personally. Actually, Duncan wasn't much in evidence at either house being busy in town with this and that and the other business thing. Which was probably what eased the cooling down in Adam's relationship with the Scot. The fact that Anne wasn't getting any either somehow made it all less painful.
Adam slipped into the sunken tub and caught Sean, mid-dive, crawling at top speed after him. "Easy there, little lord," he admonished the baby as he reached out to dump a proper assortment of gaudy plastic animaloids into the drink. With the infant on his lap, they washed and played and tried not to get too much soap in their eyes.
Ram had never returned, nor did it seem likely she would any time in the future. That did not bother Adam either. Maybe, as with all things, there was a time for Chaos, but Adam's heart had all it could manage just now with his love for Sean and the other love for the dark and brooding Highlander. He tried to memorize these times, these wish-filled, wonder-filled, peace-filled times, knowing full well they were as transitory as morning fog.
"When we are done," Adam dunked a red and black zebra, "We will pick up your sister and then it's off to town for school at Uncle Joe's."
"Ja, Ja," Sean agreed, smiling, always smiling.
"Right," Adam crooned, retrieving the zebra from behind his back and stalking it, underwater, back around front to jump up suddenly in the maneuver known as "surprise toes attack."
Sean laughed so hard he started to hiccup and Adam lifted him to his shoulder. He patted the tiny back until the spasms had passed. "Sorry, Brother," he said, "that old red horse needs a proper trainer."
Which aside reminded him of Cross. He might have time, after he brought the children back, to drive around to the Estates. Adam had meant to before, but he had settled so fast into being swaddled in Sean's wonderful world of Baby again, that other plans had simply evaporated in the continuous demands of being the Good Mother.
This weekend the entire MacLeod "clan" had planned a picnic in the field east of this house where Adam had found the perfect spot on one of his nature walks with the children. Anne had gradually come to trust him to occasionally take care of her daughter. She would never be entirely comfortable with the situation as it was. Sooner or later, Adam would have to leave this place, the ache in his heart for Duncan, or the pain in other portions of his anatomy where Anne was concerned, would make it so.
But sitting on the floor of this beautiful bath, the pale marble and deep grey rugs, the stained glass window with its beveled rainbows and prisms, the warm moist air, and his beloved sibling set like a cherub in the soft pink towels, Adam was now, and forever, blessed.
"I think the thrill is definitely gone," Thomas Cross, Master of Cross Estate, commented.
The blond man never even turned away from the bank of monitors and computers, his muscled, trim back bowed deeply over two keyboards, one in his lap and the other on the desk counter before him. He made no reply to Thomas' exasperation.
"Say something," Thomas tried to keep his voice steady and commanding.
"How about 'and the horse you rode in on'?" Malak pushed up in his chair, released his tight muscles and then bent over again, continuing his furious tapping on first one board and then the other. He peered at the screens as if they were ancient scrying crystals, full of mystery and portent.
"Nice talk for an angel," Thomas grunted and wandered around the subterranean cavern which housed what he had always called his "war room." He had meant it in the business sense. Now, it seemed it was going to live up to its moniker in the actual sense. Though Malak would still not enlighten him on the exact nature of their danger, it was clear the ancient general and all around handy drake thought they were now, or were soon about to be, under assault from some quarter yet to be revealed.
"At least you could take a bath and change those jeans," Cross suggested. Malak was getting a bit ripe. He'd hardly been out of this cave in the past week. "Malak!"
A pale hand lifted from the keys, in a gesture of "Shut up, please," and Thomas sat down at another console across the room.
He intercepted the LAN line capture, rerouted the incoming signal and started sending all the incoming data to one of the daily archive caches. Then he typed, "Enough already" on his keyboard and forwarded the missive to all the in-house consoles.
Malak sighed. He lifted the board off his lap and the wrinkled jeans that were beginning to make their own knees, even when his legs were straight. He folded his fingers together, inverted his palms and stretched his arms high over his head. "Was there something you wanted, Master?"
"Take a break, Malak," Thomas stood and walked up behind his shirtless blond friend. His experienced strong fingers found the worst knot in both trapezius muscles and began their deft invitations to surrender. "I have made you the most sumptuous repast for the meeting tonight. I have a rack of lamb that will make you weep. Gerret and Chad are finished doing the chores and they've taken Dan down to town to get his cast off. Finally. The doctor says he will take the plate out later this year, but he's pleased with the healing."
"Pity," Malak observed between purrs as Thomas' massage began to render him slumped as warm wax. "We shall be all alone with nothing to do."
Thomas cuffed the back of his head. "Do you practice, or does tormenting me just come natural to you?"
"I thought torment and restraint were your stock in trade, Master Xavier," Malak stretched his neck to one side and then the other. "I suppose I could get washed up and changed for dinner. Wouldn't want to disappoint the lamb."
"And I suppose you could begin with telling me what is bothering you so this past fortnight, Malak."
"I could," Malak agreed.
"And?"
"And maybe I will," Malak answered, "but not today."
"Well, at least you could tell me what you're doing with my computer system, Malak."
"I could."
Thomas could see this was getting him nowhere so he tried a more direct approach. "Are we all going to die?"
"What?" Malak whirled around to face him. "What makes you ask that? Not one of our troop is going to die! Why do you think I have been working so hard at this?"
"Maybe if you told me anything, I might be able to think--. But all I know is you are worried, something is not going well, and you are sending and receiving all kinds of data in a language I have never seen before, except in the journal translations and some of the old writings Adam studies," Thomas replied. "What would I think, but that our lives are in danger."
"Oh, Thomas," the beautiful face opened in a blazing transparency of remorse, "I am sorry. What a fool I am! I thought to spare you, and here I have only worried you all the more."
"Yes you have," Thomas agreed solemnly, "And I think you have a lot of feather-smoothing to do before we have to get ready for the meeting and supper. About three hours' worth of smoothing," he added.
"Smoothing, eh?" Malak's open innocence dove beneath a shiny veneer of pure rascal. "I don't know, Thomas," the blond man stood slowly above his more diminutive host. "You are such a bumpy fellow," his pale long fingers wandered over this and that bump, engendering other bumpiness during the course of their explorations. "I shall surely never be done with the smoothing in such a short time."
"Well," Thomas sighed philosophically, "as with any endeavor, we can only be expected to try our best."
"Indeed," Malak agreed warmly, drawing the black man in close to his heart, where Thomas had always lived since that day so long ago when Malak had found him laboring in the field and borne him away on the back of his destrier.
"And you won't miss playing with the computers?" Master Cross sighed as they found their way to the floor of the war room.
In the middle of a warm, soft kiss, Malak stopped and drew back, siting on Thomas' carved mahogany features, "Oh, I must be slipping," he commented.
The gold-brown eyes of the smaller man shone with their incomprehension and passion's general dishevelment of the mind.
"What fertile ground for the apt retort," Malak crooned. "No, I won't miss the computers. One hard drive being much like another. Or, wait until you get a load of my 258 RAM. Or--"
"Oh, shut up," Cross moaned and pulled the blond man down on top of him, fumbling with the buttons on his jeans.
"Need an eject button," Malak murmured, though his voice was too thick with smoky pleasure to be either effective or even coherent.
But then, Malak was not the sort to let the last word go to anyone else.
Sean in the curve of one long arm and Mary skipping along, pulling the other, Adam approached the door of the old deli which had gone bankrupt, been bought by the bar owner next door, and turned into the children's private nursery. Mary knocked on the door and warbled with great glee when Unka Jowa himself opened the door and greeted them.
"Good morning, Joe," Adam said more soberly.
"Sounds like it," Joseph Dawson, reinstated Chief of the Northwest Territories Watchers, took baby Sean from Adam. "Herself has already called me this morning and my ear's still burning. You have a fight with Missus MacLeod, Buddy?"
Adam's shoulders slumped, "More of a minor disagreement, one of those all noise, no fury skirmishes."
Lucille rolled into the room, a sensuous wave of white linen suit, that on her lush frame, might as well have been lingerie, it was so enticing.
Lucille took Sean and went to warm his bottle, cooing and discussing events and occasions in the lovely language that was all her own. You could always tell someone who knew Lucille. Her phrasings found their way into even the most respectable of her acquaintances. If you heard, "Well, paint me yellow all over and call me a banana," you might not follow the meaning, but you knew the source, the ever- wonderful Sweet Lucille, a Power of the first degree.
"Your Dadahm there," she prattled on to the baby, swaying softly round the room as he drank. "Has stuck both his brogans, lovely little toes and all, up to knees down that gullet of his."
Adam looked at Joe. One of his eyebrows went up, the other curved down over his eye. "And what," he asked, "am I supposed to have done?"
Joe shook his head. "Anne said you were disrespectful to the Social Worker yesterday. She says you're deliberately trying to get them back into court on custody again. She said--well, like that."
"When have I ever been disrespectful?" Adam drew himself up to his full height.
"Oh, pullease!" Joe relinquished his cane to Mary who proceeded to walk it around the room.
"Well, you know how it is with some folk, Joe," Adam explained, "They don't understand the value of wit--"
"You acted like a sarcastic little shit," Joe commented.
"--the subtle turn of phrase,"
"You plowed off on some colateral irony, like 'why do civil servants always wear such sensible shoes?'" Joe filled in.
"--the rational perspective one attains after--"
"You said," Joe said, "that being gay made you a better mother than she could ever hope to be."
"I never!"
"No, Darlin'," Lucille brought Sean back to his brother for burping. Even the cleaner could no longer get out that distinctive baby smell Adam's coat had acquired from Sean's many assaults. "No, Darlin', but--"
"But nothing," Adam sputtered. Sean jerked and Adam lowered his voice and relaxed his long frame. "That old biddy as much as accused me of being a child molester because of my perceived gender preference and I simply--"
"You said she was a dyke," Joe interrupted.
"No," Adam snorted, "I just told her that if she could identify exactly which gender she was, then I could tell if I preferred her or not, though I assured the old bat that she was easily in my age range, and that in no way was I attracted to anyone younger than fifty."
"Oh, Adam," Lucille bit her full lower lip, "You didn't."
"Yeah," Adam laid Sean down in his crib for a post-meal snooze. "And the two of you would not think it so very amusing to be suddenly identified as Seacouver's Poster Boy for the Gay Nation. I can hardly go anywhere in town without getting either spat upon or hit upon."
Lucille and Joe stopped laughing.
Mary dragged a small burlap bag full of drawing supplies over to the table and started upacking the crayons, more or less dismissing them from what was clearly her realm. Lucille brought over the paper and the picture books and nodded to the men to leave. Mary was right. This was too much ire so early in the morning.
"Come on, Poster Boy," Joe indicated the door that opened into a hallway to the bar, "I'll buy you a drink."
Adam draped on one of the bar stools. The bar was empty this time of day. It didn't open until noon. The only lighting came from the blue neon beneath the bar and the back lights behind the mirrored shelves. The timelessness, neither day nor night, neither past nor future, was very comforting to the Eldest Immortal who sometimes felt time in all its leaden weight as no other could.
This was one of those sometimes.
"Things not going well between you and Mac?" Joe opened the bourbon and the conversation simultaneously.
Adam toasted the silver-haired Power, his former father-in-law. Then he threw the hot liquid down his throat and waited for Joe to pour another. Joe's look prompted him to say, "I don't have to be sober again until five this evening when I take the children home. I estimate if I can get drunk really soon, I'll have just about enough time."
"Really not going well," Joe murmured and poured another round for both of them, though no amount of liquor was going to make him drunk or even a little tipsy--one of the disadvantages of being a Power, the dragon version of AA. Raised hell with recidivism.
"What the hell business," Adam was more angry about all of this than even he would admit. "is this of yours, Joe?"
"None at all," Joe said all smoky tones and friendly agreement. "Just two of my friends and at least one in a world of hurt."
"It shows that blatantly?" Adam put an empty glass down on the bartop again.
"Like a skunk in a flock of swans," Joe picked the odd Lucille phrase.
Adam stared, determined not to laugh about this. "You know I'm leaving sooner or later."
"I pretty much figured that was coming, Adam."
"I'm too old to take much more of this when I--" Adam lost his gloomy train of thought.
"What exactly is wrong do you think?" Joe poured another round.
Adam unconsciously "reached" for his brother's strong aura, felt it in the direction of the nursery door, and brought his consciousness back to middle-aged Watcher who was, with Thomas Cross, about to bring the Network back on line.
"It's getting sooner all the time," Adam said.
"Excuse me?"
"The leaving. The sooner or later--" Adam shrugged. "I don't know what's wrong."
Joe grinned and poured. "I do."
"Thank you, oh wise sage, but just pour. No lectures, Joe."
"You're the customer, Buddy," Joe's eyebrows went up and then down, saying silently, "Well, you had your chance for the easy way. You are on your own now."
"Adam?" Joe asked, two more drinks down the hatch later, "Could you set the tables for lunch? I've got to get down to the warehouse and do some inventories and the new girl has a cold."
"I wish you'd asked three drinks back," Adam sighed, "but, yes, I'll get it done, if neatness isn't going to be counted."
When Joe was gone, Adam started with the chairs, upended on each table. His coordination being a little drifted by the brew, this became something of a Herculean endeavor, forests of poking, unmanagable chair legs that simply refused to settle correctly on the floor. The second time he tripped over a fallen chair and went sprawling his length on the floor, Adam loosed the rage of his many weeks' exhile and beat the floor with his fists. All the while he howled and cursed and said all manner of truly despiccable things about every MacLeod who ever walked the earth and one particular MacLeod couple of his latest acquaintance who could--
"Well," a warm low tone sounded by his ear. "I dinnay mind yer barbed commentary on my own foul self, but do try to be respectful of my bride, or I'll have to thrash ye where he lay."
Adam smashed his forehead into the floor, "I didn't know you were there, Duncan. I am sorry."
Strong hands helped him up to a chair where Adam sat and felt stupid while Duncan finished his chores for him. The silence and the darkness made Adam nervous, but the bourbon made him sleepy. By the time Duncan finished, Adam was snoring, his head buried in his crossed arms on the adjacent table.
Duncan MacLeod, Keeper of the Chaos Kids, as he had begun to think of himself, smiled on the lanky man and set the table around him, candles and pancakes, syrup and juice, biscuits and jam. And grits. Lucille had insisted. "Wake up, Adam," he called softly, mussing the short brown hair.
Adam came back to consciousness slowly, led by his ample and sensitive beak. "Breakfast," he said as his grey-green eyes blinked into focus. "And candles? What is this about?"
Duncan buttered and syruped a pancake stack for him and placed the plate in front of Adam. "It's about time we talked," he replied.
"I don't," Adam lifted a fork and picked at the stack, "have anything I want to say."
"Adam?"
"Yes?"
"You don't do 'petulant' at all well, you know," Duncan handed him a napkin and lit the candles.
Adam filled his mouth with a forkful of buttered grits and watched the Highlander light the candles as if they were votive offerings in a church.
"If there were a single window in this place, I'd put them there. But there isn't," Duncan said quietly.
Adam swallowed, "Oh, the candle in the window thing. But why two?"
"Because in some ways we are both lost, Adam." Duncan returned to eating and let the thought hang in the air between them for the Eldest Immortal to either pick up or ignore as he chose.
Adam let it hang there for a very long time, but he finally surrendered--after his own fashion. A twinkle sparkled the pale eyes and he leaned towards Duncan, "Why don't we both run away."
"That isn't the problem," Duncan replied. "We did that, those first days we were together. We stole those days out of our lives and let everything else take a holiday. We can't mean anything to each other if we can't bring ourselves into the everyday things for which we are both responsible."
Adam rolled his eyes, "You make it sound so romantic, Darling."
"It isn't," Duncan shook his head. "It isn't supposed to be."
"Then to hell with 'it'," Adam snorted. He started building a second stack of pancakes.
"You go run off and join the circus if you have to, Adam," Duncan said, all dark tones and rolling moors. "I cannot come with you if you do."
"This gets less and less appealing all the time, Duncan," Adam said around a mouthful of biscuit and jelly.
"I think that reception they threw for us here was what did it," Duncan observed as he stood to clear the dishes.
"Did what?" Adam snatched for the last biscuit.
"Our love was still too new and too fragile to be made so official," Duncan began. "We each made our own excuses to ourselves, to each other, and we took one giant step back. You did so as much as I did, even though I know you thought I just abandoned you in favor of Anne," Duncan paused, "which is also true. It seemed so simple at the time, Adam--well, if not simple, then--then at least it felt right."
"Regrets?" Adam sneered, "Is that what this is all about?"
Duncan slammed the plates down. "No. Yes. Adam, help me," the plaintive notes were compelling, "I don't know what to do."
Which was almost the last thing that Adam wanted to hear, because it was the one thing he could not refuse. It was put up or shutup time, as Lucille would say, though that wouldn't be the exact wording. He took a deep breath and set himself aside. It was his turn to be the Daddy. Duncan was exhausted and frightened and at his wits' end with this and Adam would have to drive for a while now.
Or he would have to run away now. There were no other answers.
Strange as it seemed to him at the time, Adam did not think of his desire, his love, for the Scot, but rather his even more primal feelings for the Scot's son, his brother, Sean. As it had on the barge, that day the Immortals had come to kill the infant, his name on Sean's baby lips called Adam out of himself, a deeper, older Adam, the bedrock Adam that frightened even him with the intensity of his devotion.
"It's going to be all right," Adam heard himself saying, with such certainty and hope, that even he believed. "I will make this work, Duncan, in whatever fashion will be most comfortable for you and for the children, and..." He heard himself say the next part, but even he could not believe, "And for Anne, too, of course."
Adam wound his yard-worth of arms around the Highlander's broad shoulders and rested his cheek against the dark hair. "And I even promise to be civil when next the Social Worker person comes by for tea."
"Dr. Lindsey?" the receptionist peeked her head around the door to the pathologist's office.
Anne looked up from a mountain of paperwork littered in seemingly random piles across the top of her desk. "Look, Barb," her voice hit its most irritating stridency, "when I said no calls, I meant--"
"But there's a gentleman here," Barb whined, "He says it's an emergency."
"Barb," Anne growled, "I'm a pathologist. My patients are all dead. They don't have emergencies."
"But it's about your husband, Mr.--"
"Let him in!" Anne jumped up and started round her desk.
Adam walked in, scrubbed to the nines, in a suit, a slightly sheepish grin on his charming school boy features.
Anne looked at him with a toxic glare, "That will be all, Barb. No more calls. Turn the phone over to the answering machine and go home early."
Barb bobbed her assent and exited quickly, closing the door behind her.
Anne leaned back, half-sitting, on the front edge of her desk. She pointed towards a chair and suggested he sit. Then she crossed her arms and waited.
Adam Piersen settled uncomfortably into the armchair and tried not to slouch. "It really isn't an emergency, Dr. Lindsey, but it is important, and it does concern your husband."
Anne smiled like a viper at the last two words. "At least we are in agreement on one thing, Dr. Piersen. So, when are you leaving?"
Adam tilted his head. "This doesn't need to be so unpleasant, Mrs. MacLeod. I am not leaving."
"That's a shame," Anne chewed on the inside of her lip and wandered back around her desk to sit down and sort through the stick-it notes plastered over her computer monitor screen. "So, what did you come to see me about then?"
"It is not as if Duncan were a prize for which we were both competing, Anne," Adam folded his hands and set them on top of his bony knees, trying to be still and calm.
Anne tore two of the notes up and planted the remainders on the appropriate piles. She looked up slowly, measuring her words, "I can see where you would think that, Adam, but you are wrong." Anne took a deep breath and her icy tones softened, "I am not sure I am the one to enlighten you, Adam, but I expect I am the only one who would dare to..." she paused and watched Adam's reaction.
"Go on," Adam said, shifting in the chair and refolding his large hands.
Anne licked her lips and thought a moment, finding a way to begin. "I do not doubt that Mac loves you, nor do I doubt you love him. I am sure I never was quite so charmed as when you came to ask for his hand..."
"But--" Adam prompted.
"But I can offer him something that you cannot, that you will never be able to offer him," Anne steadied her voice, "I am sorry, Adam, but you will have to leave, or you will end up tearing him apart."
Adam's pale eyes narrowed either side of his prominent beak. "I don't know what you mean," he said finally.
"You are a freak, Adam," Anne blurted.
"Excuse me!" Adam stood up reflexively.
Anne shook her head and her fingers played nervously over the top of her desk. "I do appreciate that your 'outing' happened because of the custody trial. I am sorry about that, truly sorry. But the entire city knows you're gay. For good or for bad, there it is."
"There what is?" Adam walked to the desk and leaned over her atop the pillars of his very long arms.
"I do not really care, one way or the other. I have no particular prejudice about--about such things," Anne looked up at him and held his gaze as steadily as any warrior would have done. "But I am not the issue here. Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod is."
"You are saying what, exactly, Anne?"
"If Duncan becomes a couple with you, he becomes a freak as well. He simply cannot tolerate that, Adam. The idea is killing him," Anne said, placing her small hands over his.
Adam drew back, "You wish."
Anne sighed, "Duncan had a very normal life--for four hundred years ago, I suppose. He had a loving father and mother. He was groomed to be Chieftan of the MacLeods. His clan loved him. That's simplistic of course--there was the incident with the woman who died and his friend whom he killed, but his life was, was--normal. Then he was killed, but he couldn't die, and his whole life came apart. Everything that meant anything to him was ripped away and he was found to be a monster," Anne glanced away from Adam. "A freak, Adam."
She continued more softly, "Everything he does, the gentleness and chivalry, how very careful he always is to do the right thing, to live the right way--all of this is his heroic attempt to become normal again, to take back the life that was torn from him. Sean was part of that, I am, and Mary is. We are the family, the clan of his heart. We are the normal life for which he has labored so long. He has that now, with us, but he longs for you, he agonizes over betraying you."
"If this goes on much longer, it will destroy him," Anne finished.
Adam found he'd wandered back to the chair. He let his long frame fold up again and collapse on the leather. He hated how right she was, how cold and calm. "And being with me would make him back into a monster and lose him everything he has gained," Adam summarized. "Well, don't I feel special, though."
"You can't stay," Anne said, her eyes glazing with tears, "You are killing him."
"Well," Adam unfolded his hands and stared at the palms, "That may very well be so, but I am still not leaving."
"How can you say you love him and be so cruel?" Anne nearly shrieked as she rose over her desk as if she would launch over it in his direction.
"If he is a monster, Anne, then he is, and my staying or leaving has nothing to do with it!"
"Oh, you are so, so--" Anne sputtered, her fury strangling her.
"I am. Every bit of it," Adam nodded. "I am sure this matters little to you, but it is no picnic to be me in this situation either," he paused, "And how are you holding up in a marriage that is more or less a matter of appearances? Surely you are not the sort of woman to play 'beard' to a man you love but who doesn't love you?"
Anne collapsed back down in her chair, sobbing.
One for the home team, Adam thought, even as he hated himself for thinking it. He made himself get up and walk over and wind a hug around Anne's shuddering shoulders. He waited for her to stop crying. Women's tears, they always made his skin crawl.
When the storm eased, Adam handed her a box of Kleenex and sat down on her desk top, quietly waiting for whatever came next.
"I hate it when you're right," Anne said, sniffing. "So what are we going to do?"
"I think we both give the good Lord MacLeod plenty of room to make his own decision about this and that we agree between ourselves to honor that decision when it comes," Adam let the words settle over them, "And we both agree to be, if not friendly, then at least civil to one another, because if nothing else--"
"Yes?" Anne asked when it seemed Adam would not finish the thought.
"We both have the same sublime taste in our matters of the heart," Adam answered, "Because we both love Duncan enough to do the right thing by him, even if it kills either or both of us."
Anne held out her hand to him, "I hope when I am your age, Adam, I get to be so wise."
Adam took her hand in his, sealing the bargain. He couldn't help thinking with Anne's comment that he should be so wise as he sounded, or at least be able to act with such wisdom, no matter his age.
"Well," Thomas Cross stood up in the airy living room of his Falling Waters, Frank Lloyd Wright reproduction. The evening painted them lovely landscapes on every side through the windowed walls and shimmered blues and indigos and violets over the beam ceilings as the Facets gathered for their very first official meeting. "I think we should begin with introductions. You may use any names you wish. Club rules apply." By which he meant anonymity would be strictly observed, referring to his special Code at the private Drieg Tower club in town.
Judge Stoner stood and introduced himself with his own name, explained a bit about himself, his retirement, his time on the Federal Court Bench. He ended with a half-hearted complaint, "If I had known I would be spending the last fifty days becoming a sniper, a swordsmen, and infantry, I might have thought twice about dragging this old carcass into this dragon contract," Stoner waited while the other Facets grumbled in agreement, "but, truth to tell, gentlemen, and most lovely ladies," he acknowledged the two women in their group, "I have never felt so fit or full of it in all my days."
Molly was too shy to speak, so Margaret introduced them both. The two women had moved in together in the days after the Crystal Covenant had been enacted. "Well, Molly won't say so, but she has won the marksman badge the last four weeks running, even using that big gun with the awful kick, so I would not take her silence as meekness, gentlemen. I am in charge of the tactical maps and I have printed out all the pertinent forestry and elevation materials you will need for this weekend's excursion to the river. We have all practiced there now, four weekends running. So the maps are more for precision and communications purposes. Your positions at the field's periphery are all marked and you have probably committed them to memory already, but review them again."
Dragon stood up next, "You all know me. I'm still Dragon," he bowed to Malak, "If that isn't presumptuous, Sir."
Malak smiled and drew their attention to him like the first star of evening. "I am honored by your choice," his broad baritone filled the room and brushed up against their ears like comfort and hearth.
Dragon continued, "I have been working hours each day with every one of you and I am proud to report you are all becoming quite competent with the middle-weight swords. And, as each of you has asked me in turn, I now ask our General," he bowed again to Malak, "Are we going up against Immortals, Sir?"
"Thank you for your enticing introduction, Dragon," Malak smiled again, warming the room, "but I believe I would be out of turn," he glanced toward a slender young man seated by the window, staring solemnly out at the setting sun.
Stoner leaned over and nudged the man, nearly sending him through the window.
"What?" the man asked as he settled back down on the couch.
"We had called the meeting and were getting through the introductions," Grant said laying out the cheese and crackers and fruit, while Master Cross saw to the main course. Grant was such a given in the scheme of Cross' designs, no one had even thought the tall, pale taciturn Drieg bouncer and concierge would be introducing himself.
"Oh," said the young man, barely twenty and timid as a mouse he was. "I am Stanley. Stan would be okay. I don't know what we are doing, but I have been practicing every day. And I told my Master to go take a hike..." he added, grinning broadly.
Cross' bartender, Allen, was last, "I'm Allen," he paused.
"Hello, Allen," they all answered in a cheery joke. Allen was a reformed alcoholic, a common professional hazard, it seemed.
"Yeah, right," Allen ducked his very red face beneath equally red curls. "I intend to take the medal this weekend's excursion, and if I don't, then beer's on me after the game."
Which was met with enthusiastic cheers.
"Well, Facets," Cross announced, "Dinner is served. Buffet-style I'm afraid. As a bachelor I don't find much use for a large dining table. You'll have to use your laps."
No one needed any further encouragement to descend on the long kitchen counter where Cross had set a feast worthy of their tiny army-in-the-making: two racks of lamb and all the trimmings. While the hourde gathered the repast, Grant poured the wine, first for Cross, then for Malak, then for the rest. Grant was one of those quiet perfect people that everyone loved to hate.
When they were all settled again, Cross built a plate for Malak and one for himself. "Here is your pascal lamb, sire," he joked.
Malak's face paled as the jest went round the room, embellished by Stoner who was the scholar among them. "Father, here is the wood, here is the fire, but where is the lamb?" he quoted Isaac.
Malak set the plate back down on the counter. "This is your army, Thomas," he said in low tones. "It would be more appropriate if you were to give them the plans for tomorrow. I will be out on the deck getting some air."
Thomas stared at the beautiful man grown a ghastly shade beneath the bright halo of his gold curls. Clearly something had gone wrong. "Yes, I will brief them, Malak," he said, wanting to ask what ailed the Father of All Horses, but knowing better.
So Thomas told them the plans for the morning. They would assemble here at what Allen grumbled was "O'Dark Hundred" and each would make their way on foot by predetermined routes to their places around a field three miles west of here which bordered on the river. There each would take their place and wait, armed with rifles, handguns, and swords. This time the ammunition would be live and Thomas let Grant go over all the safety measures, check licenses, and so forth.
"And yes, we are practicing to kill Immortals, Facets," Thomas answered their suspicions. "We have a pack of them headed this way in the next several weeks and we must be prepared to take them out, precisely, completely. If anyone has a problem with that, then he, or she should see me now and we will talk about an alternative service you may render to--"
No one had a problem. Good. There were few enough of them as it was. Thomas finished up with questions and then waited for Stoner to speak.
"All right," Stoner began, "We are getting ready to kill Immortals. Few months ago, I wouldn't have believed such existed, but I have seen enough to know I was blind before. Perhaps you could tell us why these fellows are coming here and who they are coming for? And while you are at it, you might tell me why I have this nagging suspicion that this all has something to do with that MacLeod custody hearing I sat on a while back."
"Duncan MacLeod is an Immortal," Thomas waited for them to react, but none did, so he continued, "A unique Immortal by all accounts."
"Out of all the other Immortals," Thomas continued, "He alone has sired a son, Sean."
Their faces were blank. He wasn't making sense to them. "There is a rumor that this son will be The One, because he is the first such in all the history of the Immortals and is more powerful thereby. And this band of Immortals has gotten together to kill him before he reaches maturity because they see him as a common threat to The Game itself. They tried to murder him before in Paris, but Adam Piersen, a Watcher, who is also a close friend of MacLeod's--"
There was a low murmur. Oh, Thomas thought, so they know about this. "Adam saved Sean's life that time, and it has taken them until now to reorganize and find the child's whereabouts. The custody hearing informed them all too thoroughly, I am afraid."
"No," Stoner said in even tones. "That is not the way to begin, Mr. Cross."
"Pardon?" Cross asked.
"With a lie," Stoner surveyed the group. "If you cannot trust us with the truth, then we are no worth to you at all."
"Lie?" Cross stood firm.
"I have diligently read all the Watcher material you sent us," Stoner began, "and if Adam saved Sean's life, then Adam is Immortal. We can assume he is the Immortal that he was supposed to be researching for the Watchers--"
He had everyone's attention, waiting.
"Could not these Immortals be coming after the Oldest Immortal, just as well as the child?" Stoner continued. "Or, alternatively, might they be coming after the One Immortal who is invisible to the others?"
Cross bowed towards the Judge. "Yes, you are right, Stoner," he said, "It is wrong to begin with a lie, several lies. I am an Immortal, though other Immortals cannot sense me as they do each other. Adam is an Immortal also, who has been hiding in the Watchers' network. Whether he is the mythical Methos, whom he has been researching, is hardly likely, but it is possible. Still, the Immortals we will be going up against are coming for the child. And they will keep coming for this child until they kill him, or until we take them out."
He waited for their reaction.
Little Molly swallowed hard, "Then we will take them out," she said. "We will."
They all turned towards her, amazed to hear her speak at all, but the few words she said had all the weight and portent of prophecy.
Well, hell yes, then.
They would just have to take them out.
Thomas saw to the dessert and last minute details and then left the group to join Malak, still out on the deck in the dark night.
"Father?" he called.
"Horse," Malak chuckled in embarrassment. "Sorry, I meant to come back in as soon as I stopped--"
"What?"
"--shaking, trying not to weep, other general ways to make myself a fool before the troops. But it didn't stop. It hasn't still. I am sorry."
Thomas heard no fear in this surprising proclamation, only great sadness. "What is wrong, Malak? What happened?"
Malak laughed softly, "Oh, it is too stupid to tell, Horse. Entirely too stupid."
"What is?" Thomas asked. "Something about the lamb?"
Malak slumped forward over his arms which were propped against the deck railing. "Yes," he murmurred.
"But what could possibly--?" Thomas thought about the lamb and what he'd said about it being a pascal lamb and what Stoner had said referring to Abraham and his son Isaac and how the son had asked where the sacrificial--"
Thomas put his hands on Malak's shoulders. "You said no one would die in this."
"No I didn't say that exactly, Horse."
"You said," Thomas started to correct him, then remembered, "You said none of the troops would die. You are not properly one of the troops!"
Malak turned slowly around and took Thomas' dark hands in his own pale fingers. "No, Horse, I am not one of the troops."
"It's tomorrow, isn't it?" Thomas asked as he followed Malak to the corner bench which looked out over the Cross Estate gardens.
"Yes, Horse."
"You are going to die tomorrow!" Cross found his fear had stifled his voice to a bare whisper.
"Yes, Horse. I am," Malak drifted downward in a graceful descent to the bench. "I don't want this to frighten you. And I want you to be assured that I am not afraid." He pulled Cross down into his lap as he had a very long time ago when Cross was still a child.
"But how do you know this? Why is this happening? Why can't you just go away until it is over?" Cross knew he was babbling, but it was all he had left to keep his sudden grief at bay.
"Shhh," Malak rocked him. "I will tell you the story if you promise to listen quietly and not to rail against the inevitable. It only wastes your energies, and you will need them all tomorrow.
When I was still a boy...
Oh, don't look at me like that, yes, I was at one time a child...just before dirt was invented, as I recall.
Where was I? Ah, yes...when I was not quite a man, but almost, not quite two decades since my hatching, I had what the prophets came later to call a "revelation, " a vision. The Hand of God Himself reached out and slugged me, but a good one. I am sure I wailed and wet myself and didn't stop shaking for a week, but I am not likely to admit it at this far distant time, and there are none left to tell on me, in any case.
You have met my kyr, the woman, you call Ram. She has the gift of "near-seeing." She is very aware of all that happens in the present, the inward workings of the mind in the moment. She is so very good at this, in fact, that she can extrapolate what any given person will do in any given moment beyond the present. She is very good at guessing the future.
I drift, forgive me. I am myself gifted with "far-seeing." I am stupid and blind to those things which are right in front of me, in the present, but I am quite skilled at seeing those things which will come to be in the future. So it was with this vision of mine, my first.
You would think that something so important, something that would shape the entirety of my life thereafter, would be something I remembered in exact detail, but I do not. I suppose this is partly because it was so unexpected, but more I think it is because of The Woman. So, if I am unclear in other particulars about this vision, it is only because I saw Her and all else, my own self included, became suddenly unimportant.
Oh, stop huffing, Horse. I will get to the point. It happened like this:
I was returning from my lessons at the mews, on my way back to my cell by the bell fountain and its constantly changing songs. The day was warm and I sat down by the fountain to scoop up a drink. Something my brother Marak had told me came back to me then. I know now it had to do with him having sex with one of the other angels.
I am not sure I remember exactly what I thought at the time about what he'd been saying. I just knew it disturbed me greatly, both that I did not understand, and that what I did understand upset me by the way it made me feel. We had fought about it, in fact. I had won, of course. Still, I was uneasy in my heart, restless in my flesh. Just plain hormonal, I suppose, but it struck me at the time as if I were ill, or even dying in some way which I could not ken, and which I was powerless to prevent.
And as I sat there, staring at the pool beneath the fountain, with my senses reeling in a wave of baby passion, I departed the earth completely, struck by God, as surely as if the heavens had opened up and taken me away.
I was seated by a river at the edge of a field. It was the middle of the day, but the sun filtered through a great canopy of trees which grew at the river's edge. The grass was soft and smelled like fertile earth and fall coming and...
There was such a peace and calm there, such tranquil joy. Well, anyway, that was the first time I met Her. Tiny hands on my shoulders made me turn and look up at Her, straight into the leaf-webbed sunlight. I heard Her laughing at me softly as I blinked in the glare. You understand, I could not see Her, except as a shadow in all that liquid light...
But even before I actually saw Her, I loved Her.
And I have never stopped loving Her, with all my heart, to this very day.
Her eyes were blue as the noon summer sky, as luminous as the sun itself. She was--She was just so lovely, Horse...so very lovely. Everything about Her was exquisite, every angle, every curve, long brown hair teased all through with palest gold, porcelain translucence on every surface, a pink in Her lips that one only sees at the moment the sunset begins...just lovely.
And when She spoke to me, I thought my heart would pound its way out of my breast, it was beating so hard. I couldn't speak. I could hardly breathe. She just floated down beside me and took my hands in Hers and held them gently until they stopped shaking. She had caught me and held me and owned me in that brief instant...forever.
Thomas Cross waited for Malak to continue, but his teacher was lost in a happy memory, silent and blissful, so he climbed out of the angel's lap and wandered away to see to his guests. Malak would return from the ether and then Cross would ask his many questions, all of which had yet to be answered.
Individualy, he gave each Facet a final encouraging word, an unspoken sign that tomorrow would be not just another practice. He suspected they knew this already. Grant took supper out to the barn where the grooms were having an overabundance of beer and good cheer, and then, after offering to clean up, was sent home by his master, to rest for tomorrow.
Cross started in with the dishes, humming and trying to sort out anything that might be helpful in what the Father of All Horses had told him. He had visions. He fell in love with a vision. Not much to go on, though clearly it meant everything to Malak. Well, in due time, enlightenment--Malak's own saying.
"Can I help you with that?" Malak's voice at the doorway coincided with the last of the pans settling into the rinse water.
"I'm all done," Thomas wiped his hands on a towel and brought the coffee over to the couch with two mugs. "You have to know that was the world's poorest excuse for an explanation that ever was."
Malak smiled good-naturedly and settled down beside him on the couch. "Perhaps it would be better if you ask the questions. I told you I was only good at the long view."
"Well," Cross poured the coffee and then sipped. "Do you fancy a last night shag, then?"
"That's your question?" Malak laughed.
"One of them," Cross said, "the most important one I can think of right off."
"It would be an honor, most assuredly, and a pleasure, most undoubtedly," Malak picked up the second coffee. "Is there a next question?"
"Well, all right," Cross ordered his perplexities. "What has this woman to do with tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow She will die," Malak said solemnly, "or I will save Her and I will die."
"She is an Immortal?"
"No, Thomas. She is something entirely different from anything you know."
Thomas felt the more answers forthcoming, the farther he went from any understanding at all. "I know! I have meant to ask you about this for a few weeks now. I just never remember when we are together. You go out at night and ride to that field by moonlight with Duncan MacLeod. Every night for the past two weeks. You go careening across that field--it's a wonder you haven't broken Monstro's or God's legs--in the dark, playing at some Cossack game, wild as children."
"And the question?" Malak sipped, ran his tongue over his palate and got up to rummage through the bar cabinet.
"You interrupted," Cross complained, holding up his mug just in case Malak came across a suitable flavoring. "I told Gerret to go trim that big black horse's dreadlocks and you nearly took his head off. What was all that about?"
Malak found a respectable brandy and brought it back with him, giving Cross' coffee a bountiful dollop. "I will tell you what I told him, Horse. On those black strands rests the fate of the entire world."
"Well, yes, I know that's what you said, but what does it mean?"
"What it means," Malak answered. "Exactly," he added, as if that were any help at all.
Thomas thought he might give this up and proceed to the answer of the first question, the only one he had understood so far. "Father, tell me something I can understand, like if you know what will happen, then why don't you just change it?"
"And that is an excellent question, Horse," Malak toasted him. "I will try to answer it, though I fear it will make no more sense than all the rest."
Thomas waited patiently.
"I have been changing it for several thousand years, in fact, particle by particle. There was a time when She would die tomorrow and nothing would amend that. There is a chance now. That is the most change I have ever accomplished. I just pray it is successful."
Thomas hoped it was not. He did not know this woman. She meant nothing to him against the life of the Father of All Horses.
"Were you lovers?" Thomas asked.
"She was not born yet," Malak answered.
"But you have met her since then?"
"Yes, Horse," Malak replied, "I greeted her once, briefly."
"And?" Thomas thought this the stupidest romance tale ever.
"Nothing else, Horse," Malak replied.
"That's it?"
"That's what, Horse?" Malak poured them both some more coffee and brandy.
"Do you mean--?" Cross sputtered and spit, "Do you actually mean to sit there and tell me we are all going out to fight tomorrow and perhaps have you die for a woman you greeted briefly, once, that you dreamed about five thousand years ago?"
"Yes," Malak answered as if he could not catch the reason for such a question.
"Forget it!" Cross rose and began to walk to the stairs. "I will not endanger the Facets on such a fool's errand!"
Thomas was tasting the floor boards before he could take another step. Malak twisted his arm high behind his back, a knee digging into the smaller man's shoulders. "Perhaps I have not made the importance of this mission clear enough to you, Horse!"
"Perhaps not," Thomas muttered, face down on the floor. Father had never, never hurt him before. It both frightened and sobered him.
Malak let him up and apologized. "This Woman is my Fate, Thomas. She will bear my child, the beginnings of a new race of my kind. She is why I was born, why I will die, why I have lived my life as I have lived it between the first and the last. She is the turning of the stars and the world beneath them. Everything, Thomas. She is everything!"
"Then why," Thomas wailed, "don't you just keep her out of that field tomorrow?"
Malak helped him up. "It just doesn't work that way, Horse."
"Well, God Damn It! Explain to me how it works!"
"If you will calm down," Malak said evenly, "I will give you an example."
Cross returned to the couch and calmed down as well as he was able.
"It was my kyr's fate to be raped and impregnated by Cronos," Malak began.
"The Horseman?"
"Yes, the Horseman," Malak replied. "And that son would be the one to end my days forever, to kill me once and for all time. I thought to escape this fate by remaining in male form from the time Cronos was born until the time he died. But I miscalculated the time of his death and he was still alive when Ram joined the Watchers, so she simply was never where he was, and I thought that would confound the Fates."
"And it did," Cross observed.
"No, it didn't," Malak corrected him, "because part of Cronos lived on in the man who had taken his head, and that man got Ram with the child who will one day kill me."
"And if I kill that child for you," Cross suggested.
Malak shook his golden head. "The only way to change the future is by the barest degrees and the bravest sacrifices, and even then there is little chance for success. But tomorrow will be different, Horse. I want you to know this, to know that no matter how it may seem, no matter how the battle goes..."
"Yes?"
"If She lives, then I am victorious, then against all odds, I have cheated Destiny Itself."
Adam Piersen slouched against the kitchen door frame as Anne Lindsey, usual competent pathologist, and current frazzled Mom, darted around the kitchen, pulling this or that from the cupboards, muttering to herself. The morning was not nearly so chill as the Missus. It would be a fine day for a picnic, if they ever got out of the house.
"Yes," he said, "I packed the formula and juice for Sean in the ice chest. Yes, I got the extra blankets in case it turns cold. Yes, and yes, and yes. Will you please just relax, Anne? This is supposed to be for fun," Adam suggested.
"I'll fun you!" Anne growled.
Adam sank back against the door and put both his palms up in surrender. "Really, Anne, we are only a little behind time and it's not as if we are on a schedule. Mac is playing with the children in the garden and they won't mind the delay. Everything we need is packed. I swear," he crossed his heart with his elegant fingers.
Anne darted down the hallway and threw open the closet door.
"What are you looking for?" Adam wandered cautiously through the kitchen and stood at the head of the hall.
"Well surely not you," Anne dug into the back of the closet.
Adam was beyond taking affront at such comments on his recent notoriety. He laughed. "Admittedly, Dr. Lindsey, but what--?"
"You packed them!" she hissed, accusingly. "The Swords!"
Adam started backing up again, a maneuver at which he was getting all-too-practiced. "Duncan told me too, Anne. I swear it. I told him he was just being paranoid, but--"
"You said he was in the garden?" Anne breezed by him.
Adam caught up to her and held the door open as she stormed out. "Your turn, Buddy," he muttered, trying to feel even a little guilty that the GoodWoman MacLeod was headed off to chew someone else's butt for a change.
"Horse?" a warm voice brushed the black man's ear and he snuggled more deeply into the soft swaddling of bedding and beloved arms.
"Horse, wake up," the voice called again, "It is morning. We have to go."
Thomas Cross blinked his golden eyes open, "But it's still dark," he complained.
"No, Horse," Malak said, kissing him softly on his temple, "I closed the curtains, so the light wouldn't give you a headache. It is time to go, really. Breakfast is ready," he added.
Thomas sat up enthusiastically and smelled the familiar aroma, "Pancakes! You made me those pancakes! The faces!" he sounded like a small child who had just discovered ice cream.
"Yes, Horse," Malak laughed, "I remembered how much you liked them."
Then the small child disappeared and the Master of the Cross Estates emerged. "I am going to miss you, Father of All Horses," he said, trying to make his voice sound steady and accepting.
"As I will surely miss you, Little Horse," Malak replied, pushing up and getting off the bed. He was already dressed, jeans and T-shirt, hardly the gear one expected for the last battle of the Greatest Knight ever. "You have done me so proud, Horse, I shall never want for a memorial."
Cross didn't exactly know how to respond to such a statement. He just shrugged and rubbed his eyes and went to eat in silence, readying himself for his first real battle in many an age.
Grant entered the apartment as easily and silently as the dawn. The apartment was rented to an M. Calahan, but Grant knew it to be the abode of the Facet, Margaret. He was short three in his gathering of the troops. Timid young Stanley and Hello Allen and the Judge were already up and fitted out and away an hour before the appointed time. Grant had seen them off and then gone looking for the remainders at the rental of this M. Calahan.
"Ahem!" Grant coughed loudly as he entered the bedroom, purposefuly kicking over a chair near the door. Then he merely exited the bedroom and went to sit by the front door.
"God Damn it!" Margaret was first through the bedroom door, zipping her slacks and hopping on one foot while she worked getting her other shoe on and maintaining forward motion at the same time. "Alarm wouldn't go off," she puffed, as she hit the front door, shod.
Grant said nothing, but he held out his hand with her car keys in it, and his other hand with a thermos of hot coffee.
"Oh, you are a dear, Grant!" Margaret leaned over and kissed him full on the mouth.
Grant, the model of discretion and reserve, reacted not at all, if you didn't count the barest curve of a grin at the left margin of his hard mouth.
"Molly, front and center, girl!" Margaret called.
Molly came next, all in black, nearly invisible between her garb and her diminutive nature and frame. She carried the briefcases with the armaments, rifles, scopes, handguns. Molly said nothing, just nodded apologetically and dashed out the door after Margaret.
One, two--Grant held the door open and waited for the last missing contingent--and, three. Dragon burst into the living room, armful of swords, still without his shirt and shoes.
Grant exchanged the swords for his missing apparel which Grant had gathered together from the various places across the living room where they'd fallen, like a hunter's trail, the night before.
"Oh, thanks, Grant," Dragon finished dressing with all due haste. "You know how it is. Last night before the big battle. Te Moratori and all that. I'm sure you could tell some great old war stories yourself," he grinned lasciviously.
"Oh, no sir," Grant said slowly, precisely, "I would not presume."
"I won't have them playing so close to the river," Anne proclaimed in tones of sacred edict.
Duncan started to argue, but Adam ran interference, " I'll go take them out to pick flowers in the field. Would that be all right?"
"Of course," Anne agreed, "that's a good idea." She shot a look at Duncan that might have meant "Why can't you be more like your friend?" But of course, it couldn't mean that.
Dadahm picked up his brother and his cousin, one for each long arm and strode off, away into the gently sloping, sunny field, away from the hazards of forest and brook--far away from the impending tiff at the T-bird, the second round of the impropriety of coming armed to a picnic and how dangerous it was to be playing at soldier with those sharp edges so perilously close with the children at hand.
Duncan took a deep breath and tried to remember whose idea this was to have a family picnic and whether he would be justified in throttling the bounder senseless. Anne was not in her element here, and an out-of-her-element Annie was a dire beastie indeed. As he unpacked the picnic fare from the T, he also wondered when he had become odd man out, how Anne and Adam had come to some unspoken agreement between them that they would agree with each other on just about everything. No one took his side anymore.
Even the sword thing--Adam hadn't been any help at all talking Anne into letting them bring their weapons with them. The argument had finally deteriorated to the point where Duncan had had to invoke the ancient celtic chieftan law: "Because I said so, damn it!"
But the day was mild and sunny, and this little glen was entirely charming, and Anne would settle down eventually. Duncan sighed. If he were here by himself, he would be happy as one of Lucille's "hogs in the hollow." Why did things always get so complicated when you took just one step away from loneliness?
For no reason at all, Duncan grabbed up his wife and hugged her warmly. Anne glanced up at him, stunned, and then she smiled and the ice and grit simply fell away.
"I'll go get the children," he muttered, rubbing noses.
"Adam will take good care of them," Anne whispered across his lower lip.
Dear, Lord. Was that a compliment about Adam out of Anne's mouth? What was the world coming to? "It is a bit early for lunch," Duncan agreed.
"Just a bit," Anne murmured, untucking his shirt in the back, working around to the front.
He jumped when she hit a ticklish spot at his sides. "Anne," he wasn't really complaining, "Out here in the open? Really?"
"I don't see anybody," Anne punctuated her observation with a long, slow exploration of his upper lip and the territory under that soft, lush cover.
And things might have been very different this late summer morning, but in the next instant, a shout from Adam sent Duncan diving under the seat of the T for his katana. Good, Adam's long blade was gone. He had taken it with him.
Another shout and Duncan took off running at top speed towards the middle of the field.
The battle was set.
"I know there is some reason why we are riding all this way so early in the morning," Cross commented idly as he reined in the old red gelding. Malak had refused to let him bring God. "Is there?" he asked when it became clear Malak was not going to add to the conversation voluntarily.
"Because this is how it happened," Malak said cryptically. "We came to the field astride, arriving just as the battle began. Up there," he pointed to a spot that overlooked the field, the highest point of the rise above the river. Malak dismounted and removed Monstro's saddle and bridle.
"What are you doing?" Cross asked, fingering the gun in his pocket, checking that the safety was still on.
"Sometimes they stopped him by grabbing his reins or the saddle. Sometimes they stopped him by shooting him. We will give them no way, nor no reason to stop him this time," Malak answered as he remounted with a glorious vault.
As tall as the Belgian was, Malak's Friesen stallion was eighteen, almost nineteen hands of black muscle, a ton if he was an ounce. Cross was amazed Malak could mount him without a ladder. Monstro's whithers sat nearly a foot above Malak's head.
Cross' heart began to thud and quicken in his chest. "I feel them," he said.
"Yes," Malak nudged his mount towards the rise and the field which lay beyond. "Just don't let the blood lust take your wits and you will do fine, Horse. You have my every confidence."
Cross urged Red forward after the stallion. "They are ringing the field and moving in towards the center," he reported as he drew even with Malak on the rise. His eyes reported back the accuracy of his other sense.
"We have arrived, as we always do," Malak said. "And you say--"
"That's Duncan MacLeod and Adam Piersen in the center of the field with their swords drawn," Cross said.
"And then I say, 'but they are quick enough to make it away with the children to the river and the car," Malak said.
"Yes, but, but--. Oh, Dear Lord!" Cross exclaimed.
"They have crossed signals and left Mary in the center of the field, Duncan thinking that Adam has her. She's sitting there all alone, crying, as the Immortals close the ring towards the center of the field, confusing each other's buzz for hers, thinking she is the child they seek," Malak lifted his right leg up and wound Monstro's thick, long mane around and around his ankle.
"And this, Horse, is the place where I say, 'Goodbye, Little Horse, you have been a great blessing to me.' And so I do say, Horse," Malak bent forward and spoke with the stallion. "When it happens, Horse," Malak sighed, "look the other way."
Before Cross could give voice to his great grief, Malak was gone, charging down the ridge and onto the field, pounding the distance beneath the ponderous hooves of the great stallion.
On the far side of the field, Duncan joined Adam and discovering their tragic error, charged back into the field, leaving Adam to protect Anne, who had collapsed, and his son, Sean.
The Immortals, nearly a score of them, halted their advance toward the child in the center of the field as the ground began to shake beneath them with the approach of the charger and the blond man astride him.
The Facets dug in and waited as they had been told to do. They had let the Immortals by them going into the field, but the murderers would not be making it through the perimeter on the return trip.
It seemed that the whole moment froze and focused on the charging steed and the crying child, coming together at the center of the universe in some mad purpose that none of them understood.
Cross knew that Malak meant to pick up the child and bear her off the field, but he had no saddle and even with that, the horse was too tall to reach down to the ground at full gallop. Monstro was taller than Malak was long. It was impossible.
And at the center, Mary stopped sobbing at the sound of her lost father's voice, telling her simply to stand and reach up, that a friend was coming to give her a fun ride.
Around the circle, friend and foe watched the child stand. They might have leveled their weapons, but the horse was nearly upon her already and a much easier target, even if the rider did somehow manage the impossible rescue.
Five strides from Mary, Malak threw himself off the left side of the stallion, hanging from his ankle wound in the horse's thick mane. He was just low enough to catch up the giggling child and reach above him to place her behind the whithers and struggle back up himself, whispering to her to wrap her hands in the mane and hold on tight--and all of this at a dead run, confounding their ability to get off a good shot. He assured her Monstro would take her to her mother and all she had to do was ride like Uncle Cross had taught her all those Saturday lessons.
"Yes!" Cross cheered from his vantage. Malak had done it! They would win this day after all!
But it was not to be. Three more strides, and Monstro stumbled, throwing Malak to the ground with Mary in his arms.
There was one more instant of hesitation, a tiny piece of time which Cross would remember forever. It did seem that Mary was in Malak's arms, but Thomas could see this was not so. Mary was riding away unnoticed on Monstro's back, straight to the arms of her family and safety, out of the deadly ring.
Alone, at the center of the field, Malak stood, drawing their attention, while his own attention was entirely devoted to the small child on the great stallion's back. Cross knew well enough how very beautiful his master was, but in that moment, Malak was transformed, beatified by his all-consuming love for the woman that the child would become now, the woman he would never know.
Then the instant was done, and in the next, the Immortals descended on the angel. It was not the first time Cross had regretted disobeying Malak's orders, but it would surely be the last.
They were still "deafened" by their combined auras, or Malak emanated a power they took to be the signature of an Immortal. In any case, they did not even bother with their guns. Twenty swords of every size and description slithered from their scabbards and flashed around the ever-shrinking ring. Malak was unarmed. He merely stood erect at the center and waited.
The Immortals had not seen him fight barehanded before, but that was a deficit of experience that Malak soon rectified. The first hapless soul attacked, had his blow slapped aside, was disarmed and skewered before another breath was taken.
They took no chances after that, falling on Malak in one inexorable wave of fury, literally tearing him apart with their swords and their malice.
Cross was grateful he could not see what they were doing. He would have been more grateful still if he could have been deaf to Malak's awful screams. They seemed to rise above the field and shatter the very sky itself. And they seemed to go on forever, but in truth it was not long before the Immortals ring widened away from the carnage and one of their number raised his sword to take the angel's head.
And the silence tore Cross deeper than the screaming had.
A column of fire shot up from the carcass, roaring like a blast furnace, scattering the Immortals back in terror. Not one of them wanted any part of this demon's quickening. Away they ran.
Straight into Duncan MacLeod and Adam Piersen.
Anne huddled near the car with Sean and Mary in her trembling arms watching the two warriors coming into their own, standing shield to one another, superb in every measure as they closed with the four Immortals who had run for the river. Her love for them both lifted out of her on a wave of sadness and of joy. They were born for this and they were magnificent at it. She would never be part of this, but that in no way diminished her profound appreciation and awe.
Straight into Molly and Margaret on the eastern rim, where quiet little Molly put a bullet through their brain, exactly between the surprise of their wide eyes. And Margaret finished them off with a forehand slice that would have put such spin on a tennis court as to make return impossible.
Straight into Grant and Dragon at the southwest corner where the implaccable Grant stilled their hearts with his Magnum and the lust-crazed Dragon hacked off their heads with an abandon that was obscene.
Straight into Hello Allen at the northwest path into the forest. Hello Allen, Goodby Immortal, quick and neat and deadly, like a double scotch, tidy.
Straight into Thomas Cross and Red, trampling them to dust and giving them back the agony they had given his master and then some.
Cross was on his knees, recovering from three quickenings, and still hacking away at their corpses when Grant came up quietly to tell him that the battle was over.
That they had won.