Adam Piersen sat in the Fort Bragg bus terminal and waited for his next connection southward to San Francisco and a real airport. He felt sore and stiff and sad, but mostly he just felt cold, with all the other emotions veiled beyond the proverbial dark glass. God help him when he began to see clearly.

        He rearranged his long limbs on the uncomfortable wooden bench. It would be a two hour wait. Nothing to distract him. This would be easier with more time between him and the large, dark chasm he had made so suddenly in his life this night. At least he'd run into Sean and Mary and Kyle. Adam was glad to have met Mary again. Of course the charming little girl had been usurped by the woman, and the woman was most definitely no child. Still, there were enough reminders--a way of grinning, the set of her shoulders--  to satisfy the sentimental in him, and an impressive persona to tempt him to a reacquaintance.

        God, but she was stunning, Adam thought, and that almost the least of her charisms. She had a manner which was so powerful as to seem inhuman. Mary had immediately understood the situation, the reason for his leaving, had arranged for the bus and plane tickets, had settled Sean down and comforted Kyle's building anxieties that they were all going to jail.

        Adam wished there had been more time just to speak with her, she was so fascinating. He was almost a little fearful that his baby brother, Sean, had gotten in way over his head, but she clearly loved him, and he was absolutely devoted to her.

        Adam pulled up the collar of his navy coat and dug his long hands into his pockets. The right hand's fingers bumped against a thick envelope which he proceeded to pull out and inspect. His name was scrawled hurriedly across the front and the envelope was tucked, not sealed.

        Inside was a tiny book and a letter from Mary.
 

Dear Uncle Adam,

        I am so sorry not to have had more time to speak with you. I have missed you so. I cannot tell you how many times riding Red that I discussed the tall giant who used to own him. May he run with the herds of Heaven. I thought I just had a child's crush on you, but I see now my tastes were more mature than I judged them to be. You are such a dear and I do hope that you will be at the wedding. Sean so wants you to stand for him as best man, though probably not in the ancient sense, where you would have to fight the other members of the wedding party.

        I can see you have reached the front of the line, so I will close now.

        The book is my favorite. I read it when I need to laugh, though Sean thinks it is sick and does not see the humor at all. I know this is such a hard time for you, Adam, and I hope this gift is not in the poorest taste. But it always reminded me of you, of your sense of humor--and because every time I got to the Neville line, I thought of you. I don't know why.

        Much love,

        Mary (almost) MacLeod
 

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        Oh, Dear Lord, Adam thought, when he had finally stopped laughing and choking. A woman after my own heart. Oh, Sean, what a life you have in store for you. Then he assumed his favorite Neville pose and floated through the two hour wait on the hilarious dead children and the stark tenderness of his incredible niece.

 

---

        Duncan MacLeod rose before the sun, though he had not properly been to sleep yet. Lying on the floor of the tower room had not been conducive to rest, but everywhere else was haunted by Adam's presence, was cursed by Adam's absence. He thought the tower room was different because the fireplace wove a smoky cover so he couldn't smell the Old Man here. It was tolerable, just.

        Descending back into the heart of the cliff, Duncan cleared his thoughts and concentrated only on his mission, to get suitably cleaned and dressed and off to Overlook to meet with Mary. He had decided that calling, as she had suggested, was too rude to consider. Entering the bedroom was like running a gauntlet, every familiar sight and touch and smell bringing the Old Man back to him, and making him want to weep. That he would not do, had not done, would never do. That's what had happened to Lot's Wife, he was sure. She had looked back onto the devastation of her home and begun to weep. If he were to begin he would also end a single, solid tear.

        An hour later, he was at last returned to the tower room in a pale shirt with a matching sweater draped over his shoulders, honey beige woolen slacks, a camel's hair long coat draped over his arm with the katana hidden in its folds. He dashed off a note for the still-sleeping house, trusting to Sean's sense of graciousness to see to their breakfast and amusement until he should return.

        Overlook was one of the smallest, most northern of the thousands of California tourist sea towns up and down the Pacific rim. Far enough north to be unseasonable three-quarters of the year, which just fine with the full-time residents, and close enough to San Francisco to make life interesting. Well, three hours from Frisco wasn't exactly close, but it was perfect for long, romantic weekends. Duncan thought of the place as Carmel by the North Sea. No Pebble Beach here, but it still sported a surfeit of boutiques and eateries and splendid hotels, with even a Blues Festival next week. Which was why Mayor Dawson had come down for a visit. He never let politics interfere with his music, though all of his closest and best advisers--the Missus included--had lectured him time and again how continuing to sing with his band in bars just wasn't proper. Of course, in the beginning, when he ran for City Council, no mention was made of his lowly status as barkeep and blues singer. It hardly mattered given the other candidates, a gay art dealer and a suicidal gay DA had hogged all the negative publicity.

        And after they watched him work at the job for a while, everyone knew it didn't matter.

        Now that he'd been mayor over a decade, his avocation was the pride of Seacouver and woe to the next mayor if he couldn't hold a tune.

        Duncan had never put a wedding together before. He hoped Mary had a clue. Sean hadn't actually set the date, or if he had, Duncan was sure he hadn't imparted that information. Well, he'd know soon enough. Overlook appeared as he rounded the last cutback. It was a lovely little seacoast village, Duncan could never understand why he spent so little time here. Maybe it was just a little too lovely.

        Bypassing the tourist district, he took the sea loop around to the promontory where Mary's hotel looked over the windward breakers. He parked the fifth generation T-bird replica in the underground lot and keyed in the charge on the slate set in the dashboard. He thought for a moment, then keyed in a tip for the garage personnel. Hardly anyone tipped anymore. They'd be days trying to figure out the over- pay. Adam had been a really bad influence. Duncan had come to enjoy doing any number of tiny, seemingly inconsequential things which wreaked havoc with the general order. Adam had taught him how to play at Chaos.

        Duncan shook out of his reverie, grabbed his coat and departed the car. He headed for the main lobby where he left a note for Mary when she awoke and went to sit in the quaint little tea parlor with the view of the chill, rocky shore.

        The maitre d' eyed him sadly up and down and sighed as he led Duncan to the table by the window. Duncan knew better than to look at the man until he was seated and the man was walking away. He was suddenly reminded why he so seldom came into town. Three hours was not nearly far enough away from San Francisco. Overlook was wall to wall in light-footed leprechauns. Oh, well, Duncan thought, each to his own. He immediately regretted his choice of apparel. He hadn't really gauged the "butch" factor, or its lack thereof. Duncan suddenly felt self-conscious and pulled the cashmere sweater off his shoulders. He started to fold it, then wadded it up and tucked it under his coat on the adjacent chair.

        "Excuse me, Mr. MacLeod?"

        Duncan turned his attention from the window back to a slender waiter, standing with his hands folded nervously. "Yes?"

        "Well," the young man ducked his head and chewed on his bottom lip. "I, well, we would all like to express our sincere condolences on, on--" he swallowed. "We're so sorry Adam left you," he blurted.

        It hadn't been twenty-four hours, Duncan thought. Was he on some "guess who's just come available?" list of the Overlook social register, or what? "That's kind of you to be concerned," he mumbled, trying not to spit he was so angry. "Thank you."

        Two more of the staff stopped by his table in the next ten minutes, bringing him little notions, flowers, a poem, along with his cafe laté. Then the room filled with the patrons of the waking resort and they were occupied elsewhere.

        Well, if he thought he'd be staying in this neck of the woods--.

        Duncan's thoughts drifted away from the sideways glances and whispers--why hadn't he just called?--back to Seacouver and the day the photos had been stolen by Milton, the morning he and Adam had been plastered all over Couver's answer to the Old National Enquirer.

---

        Duncan wandered down River Street and fell in at the door marked simply "Joe's." The red neon stayed lit day and night, like a harbor light. Duncan did indeed feel like some old trashed out barge come finally to port.

        "Joe?" Duncan slid onto a barstool and rested his elbows on the old wooden bar, worn smooth by many such elbows as his.

        Joe Dawson turned, "Oh, Mac. Boy, have you been the topic of conversation. I'm real sorry about what happened. Lucille has spent the whole day gulping and sobbing in the nursery," he tilted his grey head towards a door in the dark corner which led to the adjacent storefront, done over in a nursery for Sean and Mary--only Sean, now that they were forbidden to see Mary any more.

        Duncan started to rise, but Joe caught his elbow. "Best leave her alone for now, Buddy. She's not in the consolable mode yet."

        "She surely can't think this was her fault," Duncan said. "It's not like she asked Milton's thugs to ransack her apartment."

        Joe nodded and closed his eyes, "Still, if she hadn't asked you guys to pose--"

        "No," Duncan shook his head, "that was fun. And I'm sure my ancestors are still rolling around in their graves about using the MacLeod plaid that way." The Highlander laughed. There hadn't been much to laugh about all day.

        "Really," Joe agreed. "Buddy?"

        "Yes?"

        "There's someone who's been waiting here to see you since noon," Joe pointed with his chin towards a booth along the far, darkened wall. "He's pretty drunk. I'd say he's had a rougher day than you, if you can believe that."

        "Who?" Duncan peered across the room, but all he could make out was a slumped shadow facing the back wall.

        "Dr. Palmer," Joe replied.

        "Oh, damn!" Duncan exclaimed, "That puts me inside the legal distance of his restraining order!" He rose to leave, but Joe caught his elbow again.

        "I think it's all right if he is the transgressor, Buddy. He really needs to see you, Mac. Just don't break his nose again and I think things should be all right."

        "What does he want?" Duncan asked.

        "Let him tell you, Mac." Joe shrugged and returned to cleaning the back bar.

        Duncan picked up two beers and strolled over cautiously towards the Bear shadow in the corner.

        "Good afternoon, Mark," he set the beers down on the table and slid into the booth facing the man--or rather looking at the crown of his head. Mark was bent down over his arms, sobbing. "Mark? Good God, Mark! What has happened?"

        The Bear slowly lifted his muzzle up and blinked blindly across the table, "Duncan?"

        "What happened?" Duncan asked again, tentatively reaching his hand out to rest on the behemoth's elbow.

        "She left me," he answered in a lowing moan that sounded for all the world like a lost bear cub.

        "Anne?" Duncan asked.

        "Gone, left, on a plane to England, took Mary, says I can't see her any more. Ever," Mark spied the beer out of the corner of his blood shot eyes and picked it up in his large paw and tossed it down his huge gullet in one swallow. He belched and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Gone."

        "I'm so sorry, Mark. Why?"

        Mark shrugged his big shoulders and harumphed. "Who can say? It was over those pictures of you and Adam. Great pics, by the way. Who took them?"

        "Lucille," Duncan took a sip of his beer then handed his glass over to the Bear whose dark brown eyes were so obviously thirsty.

        "She went critical mass when she saw them and demanded I do something. I said I wasn't sure about what and when she stopped sputtering and howling, she said wasn't I scandalized," Mark finished Duncan's beer and looked longingly back at the bar.

        "When you finish telling me what happened," Duncan bargained.

        "I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. You guys looked great. If I was going to be scandalized it would be because this great gut of mine would have to go before I even considered getting pictures taken. You know," he leaned over the table and Duncan nearly became inebriated on his exhalations alone. Joe wasn't kidding. The Bear was drunk. "You know she hit me with that rag. Well, then, well I got mad and yelled at her and Mary started to cry. Oh, brother! It was awful. And I still couldn't see what the big deal was. They were tasteful photos, no genitalia, I mean what was so bad?"

        Duncan could not believe Mark could be so dense, even this drunk. "You don't know?"

        "Well, that's what she asked me when things calmed down a little bit and Mary got finished 'mussing me up.' I told her I really didn't know. She explained about your relationship with Adam and I said, 'So?' and she said something about an abomination and unnatural acts and on like that."

        "I told her she must be mistaken," Mark continued. "I told her the Danaans are all mostly men, except for the King's Consort and that we all had similar relationships, that actually the male-female unions were out of the norm. I said there couldn't be anything wrong with what she was calling homosexuality, if all of God's Beloved Angels were--by her definition--gay."

        Duncan knew this. He just hadn't really thought about it in these exact terms.

        "Then she proclaimed that she--for one--was heterosexual and proud of it. And I said I wouldn't hold it against her, but it was a little peculiar--" Mark sighed.

        "You didn't," Duncan tried not to laugh.

        "Well I was mad, damn it! And you know how shrill Annie can get. I don't remember a lot of what happened after that, Duncan--lots of name calling--I'm sure pervert and child molester came up more than once, unfit parent more than that. She's gone. I'll be seeing her lawyer at the end of the week to get the terms worked out. Gone," Mark looked again, wistfully at the bar, but Joe was already on his way over with refills and condolences.

        "Pretty bad?" Joe handed the Bear a brew.

        "More than you can imagine, Joe," Mark slugged back the drink, "More than I can say," he hit his large head down on the table with a loud bang, "More than I can stand."

---

     Duncan returned to the present as he felt her come into the room, not an aura like an Immortal, but a more essential vibration wherein the background noise ceased as if the patrons and the staff had stilled their motion and held their breaths. He saw her reflection in the glass, surprised he still expected the sweet little four year old child. As Duncan turned around to face her approach, he could see the days of Little Mary were long gone, for here came a blood-maned, bronze-eyed woman who was so beautiful and so self-possessed she stopped the ordinary world around all of them and opened a window on Destiny Itself.

        If Sean reminded Duncan of royalty, then here was the Queen of the World Herself. He stood as she reached him and extended his hand to her. Mary reached out an elegant ivory hand, much like her Uncle Adam's, and set it lightly in Duncan's palm. Then she tucked her right knee behind her left and floated to the floor in a deep, fluid curtsey, ending the motion with her forehead bent down onto her left knee. The room drew breath. Duncan leaned forward and begged her to rise.

        "Not until you forgive me, Mr. MacLeod." Her voice was as superbly graceful as everything else about her.

        "'Duncan' please, Miss Palmer," Duncan whispered, "And there is nothing to forgive, but I do with all my heart."

        She rose as effortlessly as she had descended and fixed her gold-brown eyes on his.

        Then because it seemed to be expected, Duncan turned and addressed the clientele and the staff, "Gentlefolk, this is Mary Palmer, soon to be Mary MacLeod, my son, Sean's, intended."

        Which announcement brought a round of applause from one and all. Duncan pulled out her chair and Mary sat down. "Enjoy your breakfast," Duncan said by way of telling them to turn their attentions elsewhere. It was not very effective.

        "So much for a quiet, low-profile meeting," Duncan commented as he signaled their waiter to bring them some menus.

        "I believe I suggested calling, Mr. MacLeod," Mary reached over and held his hands lightly as if they were old friends. In a way they were, with a long gap in between then and now. "I am glad you came. There are many things I need to tell you and it will just be easier without Sean bouncing around the periphery," she smiled as she said this last and her obviously fine features burnished over pure gold with her affection.

        The thin waiter who had expressed the staff's sympathy about Duncan's recent loss took their order and couldn't help patting Duncan's shoulder consolingly as he left. The Highlander held still against his impulse to deck the man.

        Mary watched all of this with a certain equanimity and detachment. She seemed far older than the four years she had on Sean chronologically. "Where should I begin?" she asked softly.

        "At the beginning always works for me," Duncan answered, thinking that would not be his answer if Adam asked this question. He'd tried that once, the tell-me-everything-about-you discussion early in their relationship. Duncan had fallen asleep around 1000 BC, and he'd never asked again.

        Mary sat in splendid stillness, waiting for him to come back from his reminiscence.

        "Mary?" Duncan asked, when she did not speak.

        "I forgot how handsome you are," Mary said dreamily, "You are very much like your son. Up until now, I have only been seeing his similarities to Uncle Adam." She broke her stare and gazed out the window at the roiling sea. "I have corresponded with Sean by slate--well, in the beginning it was one of those big desk models my mom had in her office or in S'ter's office at the convent."

        "Convent?" Duncan asked.

        "Oh, yes," Mary sighed, "You see before you the fine product of a European convent school education. Mom sent me off to boarding school. Thank the Dear Lord my dad got me in the summers or I might have gone insane with loneliness."

        "I am sorry, Mary," Duncan lifted one of his hands out from under hers and laid it on top, like a sandwich.

        "It was certainly a rude awakening from Lucille's happy nursery school," Mary laughed.

        "She sent you to board when you were four?"

        "No, she waited until I was five and the custody arrangements were all settled," Mary paused and looked back at him. "There was no Judge Stoner to draw me pictures that time around. It was awful. I don't think I stopped crying for a week." then she started laughing in earnest, pointing at the sign above the arched entry to this room. "I had just started to learn reading," she explained, "and Mom would take me for breakfast at the tea room across from the courthouse. I would always break down and bawl whenever we sat down to eat there. Finally, Mom asked me why I did that there and nowhere else and I pointed to the sign."

        Duncan looked at the sign. He didn't get it.

        "I thought it said 'tear room,'" Mary finished. "I thought it was a place you went to weep."

        Duncan laughed sadly, "Oh, Mary. I have missed you, and I am so sorry our family didn't stay together, really and truly sorry."

        "I got over it," Mary said dismissively as breakfast arrived.

        When the waiter had left again--with another sympathetic pat--Duncan asked Mary how she had found Sean, since everyone had been so careful to keep them from each other and they were, most of the year, a half a world apart.

        Mary chewed thoughtfully, then answered, "My father has explained this to me. I will try to explain it to you because I think it is important that you know this, so that you can judge whether I am suitable for your son. It may not seem like an answer to your question, but it is if you let me tell it to you completely and in my own way." She set down her fork and wiped her full lips, then folded her napkin and began.

        Duncan sat quietly, trying to listen, trying to understand, trying to believe her fantastic explanation of her bond to his son.

        "You know, or you probably suspect that I am not human, Duncan. That is so. I am not. I am not Immortal, either, though I think Sean sees me as such. Father says that I am a dragon incomplete. He says it in another language, but that is what he means. Except for what happened when I was three, I have never been in any other form than this one. I am not even certain that is possible. Father says that each dragon is a union of two facets, the masculine side and the feminine. His own other self is dead with the other Danaans who passed through Last Gate. He has become a dragon incomplete. He has waited all this time to be born in a child of mine, to become complete again, and alive again, in the true sense.

        "He says I was born incomplete, a half-dragon, if you will. He thinks that Sean is my other half, merely existing upon the earth in a separate form, and that is why I know where he is and how he is and what he thinks, how I am bound to him, and have been since birth. Though we wrote to each other nearly every day, I really never saw him until five years ago when he was visiting in Seacouver and I was getting ready to leave for Africa with my dad. I just knew that he would be in Stanley Park by the duck pond. I got in the car and drove as fast as I could. And there he was, talking to the ducks. We just sat there and said absolutely nothing, because there was nothing to say, because we already knew that we would finally meet and that it would be just as it was, as if we had never been apart.

        "I do love Sean, but I want you to know that I am crippled in this. I am not sure it would be wise for us to wed," Mary folded her hands on the table and her knuckles went white, as if that were possible against their pale ivory and peach tones.

        "It sounds," Duncan spoke up when it seemed Mary was done, "as if you are already much closer than most marriages."

        Mary took a slow breath, "My father left last year and Malak returned."

        This sent Duncan sorting through something he had not considered for over two decades: the corporate tenancy of the Danaan known to them as "Ram." There was Ram and there was her alter ego, Malak, as with most dragons. And then there was Marak's, Mark Palmer's, soul, the single portion of him left when all the other Danae had been killed by Adam's counterfeit instructions for passing through time, or space, or--this last had never made sense to Duncan entirely. The part he did understand was that Ram and Malak had been sent into an insanity which they called, "Hell," and into which he had gone himself to win them back. Marak had come back with them. It just had never occurred to Duncan that there was another "Ram" equivalent to go with the Bear and which the Bear had left behind when the remaining Danae had relinquished their lives and escaped Hell by surrendering to death.

        In any case, Duncan thought, the net effect is that we have one body, a shape-changer, which contains the personalities of Ram, Sean's mother, and Malak, Adam's teacher, and Marak, Mary's father. Which led him naturally to a question he had wished to ask for as long as he had known Ram. "Where do Ram and Marak go, or stay, when Malak is in control?"

        Mary's face opened in surprise at the question, or the fact that Duncan had asked it. He couldn't be sure. "I don't know, Duncan. I really don't know. Marak, my father, would always refer to them as sleeping, as if their absences of control were like long naps or comas. Evidently they exist in a slow dreaming sleep where time passes more quickly for them than when they are awake."

        Duncan nodded, "Ram and Malak are dragon royals, and your father is a bear, but what are you, Mary?"

        Mary seemed to be pleased with his understanding, but more with his utter ease discussing this. "I do not know. Let me see, what do they call that? Ascendancy, yes, I have yet to achieve my ascendance."

        Duncan pushed his plate away. "If you were worried about your heritage, then do not be, Mary. You are the same as Sean's mother, as my mother. I would not call that inhuman, but you know how you feel about that and I am certainly not going to argue the point. You said that Malak had returned. You must miss your father. I am sorry for that. Have you met Malak then? Do you know--"

        "His story?" Mary interrupted. "Yes, he has been courting me for the past year. He is like my father, only smaller, more slender, and blond beyond belief. He is very kind to me, Duncan, very attentive, but he is a little intense. I know he saved my life, first when he went to hell for me, and then a year later, when the band of Immortals cut him down in the field, defending me. I know he did so at great suffering and sacrifice, both in those moments and all his life. I know he thinks he will marry me and I will bear his children, and in one of those children, my father will be reborn, as Sean Byrnes is reborn in Sean." She paused, clearly aware of the weight of being Malak's fate or obsession.

        Duncan watched her shoulders square and her will come forth blazing.

        "Mr. MacLeod," she had a lovely, clear alto, verging on a throaty tenor as it lowered with her increased attempt at composure. "I have done something for which I am not proud, and for which I have no reasonable explanation. Last month, after putting Malak off for half a year, I agreed to marry him."

        Duncan stared, but he kept quiet as she struggled to explain.

        "I am not by nature, a cruel person," Mary paused again, "well, my humor is a bit sadistic, but I have never knowingly hurt someone before. I lied to Malak just to make him feel more secure, falsely so, to make him back away, he was getting so intense about all of this. I ran away on the pretext of interviewing at UC Davis and taking a month-long summer course. Then I came here to marry Sean. By the time Malak discovers my treachery, Sean and I will be wed and it will be too late." Mary shook her deep auburn tresses and they fluttered over the beige suit dress shoulders. "How could I be so awful? What has Malak ever done to me that I should treat him so badly?"

        "It is not your fault that you do not love him, Mary," Duncan replied. "It would be more cruel to pretend that you did," he felt a sudden pang closer to home, "much more cruel, believe me."

        "When I am Mrs. MacLeod," she said, "then Malak will have to give up this plan of his and maybe he will send my father back to me."

        Duncan did not add that it was just as likely Ram would take the wheel, as it were. "I will be glad to run interference with Malak if it comes to that, Mary."

        "I am just concerned about the Facets and the Powers," Mary finished. "He has never threatened them directly, but it is always there, that their lives depend on him, on his blood."

        Duncan shook his head. She had a point about the thousand days' renewal required by the strange blood covenant by which Ram had changed some of the mortals into Immortals of a kind. Anne, Mary's mother, was one. So was Joe Dawson. So was Lucille. So was Alexa, Adam's last wife. And Dragon, who had bought Joe's Bar, and Grant, Thomas Cross' spouse, and--there were a few more Facets he could not quite remember. "You can stop worrying about them, Mary," Duncan said quietly, nodding to the waiter that they were ready for more coffee. The tea room was nearly empty now.

        "How?" Mary whispered.

        "You," he smiled and wrapped her slender hands in his own. "If what your father says is true, then you can sustain them yourself, Mary."

        "Of course," she sighed with great relief, "Why didn't I see that?"

        "Oh, I don't know, Mary," Duncan unconsciously fell into his Adam imitation, "It's not as if this were a complicated matter, God knows. A bit of apotheosis, transmigration of souls, corporate manifestations of multiple personalities, the elixir of life everlasting. Simplicity itself."

        They were both laughing hysterically when the waiter returned, still with no check. He informed MacLeod that breakfast was the least they could do for him in this troubling time. Duncan nodded, trying to appear grateful. He watched the young man walk back towards the front door and the sign over the archway.

        "You must miss him very much," Mary said softly.

        A sudden, battering wave of despair threatened near Duncan's heart.

        "Yes," Mary felt his unspoken spasm of grief, "We should leave now before we both make full use of this tear room."

---

           Adam slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and strode out of Union Station, blinking in the sunny San Francisco morning. He had cancelled his plane ticket as soon as he arrived and emailed Sean to tell him he was just getting ready to fly to Mexico City and that they could reach him via his email tomorrow, or any day thereafter.

         Only a little lie, hardly a prevarication of any magnitude in the blinding light from  the revealed falsehoods of late. A little lie, he told himself, to help me hide close enough to go back for the wedding in time.

        Adam looked at all the people milling about this section of town. He was back in the world and it made him a little anxious, more so than he had expected it would. Living in The Fortress had dulled all his skills, and he would have to reclaim them quickly or he would be going to his own funeral instead of  Sean's wedding.

        Well, what to do, what to do. He glanced left down Market and let the bells decide. His lanky limbs got him to the cable car just in time to help turn.

        That's what he would do. He would do all the Duncan MacLeod things by day and all the Methos things by night, and then, by the time the wedding called him away from this place, he would know for certain which was who and what was no longer divisible from his persona.

       At California, he left the trolley and strolled over to a tiny park where he folded his long legs down to sit on his duffel bag and stare at the spire of Old St. Mary's Cathedral. In any town he knew, Adam had found a place which spoke to him directly. In this town it was this church, this big brown brick building which had partly survived the fire and the rest been rebuilt. It's appeal had nothing to do with that however. For Adam, his touchstone of this city was the inscription below the clock, set in the tower spire. It always made him laugh.

        He tried to let it make him laugh now, but it didn't. He tried to remember how hilarious it had struck him the first and fifth and twentieth time, but that didn't help either. It just wasn't all that funny now. Adam levered up, grabbed the duffel and strolled back to catch the next cable car up the hill. He glanced back once over his shoulder and read the inscription again, but it just wasn't funny any more.

        The sign proclaimed, "Son, observe the time and fly from evil."

        Adam did neither, the rest of the day. He played at being Duncan MacLeod, at trying to see the world through the Highlander's young eyes. He played and he waited for the night and the evil, the part of him he had consigned to the past, that portion of him that was truly and only him, Methos.

        But in the light, he was still Adam, whatever portion of that odd duck which had quacked along in MacLeod's wake these past two decades--such a short time, to make such a big difference. Then again, it was a longer time than he'd ever spent with any of his sixty-nine wives--and the first time he'd ever actually raised a child into the bargain. Adam wondered if Sean would miss him. Maybe even Duncan would miss him after he stopped being so outraged and ashamed. More likely the Scot would forget the entire mess, or put it off as a tiny detour of a long road.

        Adam felt an elbow in his ribs, "Hey, mister! I said everybody off. Nobody stays on the car while we're turning it."

        Adam apologized and disembarked. He was at the top of Powell, looking out over north Frisco. He couldn't bear to watch them turn the car around just so it could return to the bottom again, the metaphor was too apt. So he set off for the most cliché thing a tourist may do when he visits the Pacific Gate:  he strolled down to Fishermen's Wharf.

        Past the Cannery, he crossed the light traffic--tours to Alcatraz would have already taken most of the tourists away from this area until after lunch--Adam took a right, away from Ghirardelli's and around the docks to the Safeway in one of the little outdoor mall/shopping centers. There he purchased two beers and the best sourdough round that could be bought in the whole district. He passed on the seafood section--where was the adventure buying inspected, plastic wrapped, iced crab, anyway?

        Adam took the plastic, compound, recycled bag--you never got a chance to choose paper any more. The trees were going. What next? He'd watched the rivers and the forests of the fragile Sahara turn into the backside of the moon. He knew the answer. He just didn't know what he'd be doing when the whole world started starving and fighting again. Well, not today.

        He wandered along the docks past scores of stores that hadn't been here his last visit, or rather, his last visit alone. Adam had always meant to take Duncan on a tour of this city, but the few times they had managed a getaway, they hadn't made it out of the hotel room so much. Ah, here was the place! He stopped under a rough awning along the line of open-air pier booths where all manner of crustaceans gasped their last, just waiting for the steam and the end of the world.

        Nope, Adam thought to himself, metaphor or not, Little Crabs, you are mine! He picked out three and ordered their execution with a simple flick of his wrist and twenty--no, it was up to thirty now. Sheesh!

        With his crabs and his sourdough and his beer acquisitions completed, Adam rolled onto a longer pier and sat his long frame down on a "pier stump." He was sure they called these things something special, but he couldn't remember. Now, all that was needed to make this meal perfect--. Yes, there, and there, and there, oh, yes, tiny shiny heads with coal dark eyes and whiskers like cats.

        Adam shredded some of the sourdough and tossed it--when no one was looking--into the water. A few of the sea children came round to inspect the fare, turned up their charming noses, and drifted back away from the pier again. Adam took out the first crab. A few more perfectly round heads peaked above the surface expectantly. He checked again and tossed the crab bits to the great good cheer of all his sea bourne guests.

        Duncan would do something lyrical like this, Adam thought. Something a little silly, but incredibly heartwarming for no apparent reason. Sitting on the pier stump and sharing his brunch with the seals, Adam dismissed the moment, even as he created it.

        It never occurred to him that Duncan had never done this, that this was his own warm hearted ritual whenever he was in this town alone over the years before he even met the Highlander.

        And he'd been here many times, even if he hadn't ever felt quite this alone before.

        When brunch was done, Adam took his leave from the lion troop. After some aimless wandering, he bumped into just the perfectly tasteless candidate for his next amusement.

        With a crooked smile on his lips and another twenty lighter, Adam Piersen strode into the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Wax Museum where he spent the next hour trying to act interested in the many trivial wonders...

        when he was, himself, the most unbelievable item in the entire place.

---

        Duncan shifted his shoulders and flexed his broad hands, changing their position on the wheel of the T-bird. Their departure from Overlook had been quiet, both he and Mary lost in their separate thoughts. The ocean's roaring background noise was their only conversation as the T rolled northward along the ocean highway, beginning their ninety mile trek home.

        Mary fell asleep and Duncan was left to his own resources, trying not to think about how ragged and unfinished he felt with the Old Man gone. Joe Dawson had left a message at Mary's hotel. The Watchers had him in their sites until he boarded the cable car on Powell. Then they'd lost him. When the car reached the top, Adam was not in it. Backtracking, they could not find him at all. And they hadn't spied him again, nor did they expect to.

        Adam would be found in his own sweet time, Duncan thought. He just hoped the Old Man would take care of himself. Which reminded the Highlander that the same went for him. He should take this by degrees, just let it come, bit-by-bit, until he had the whole of his grieving set out before him. He just couldn't manage it all at once or it would undo him, as it had those first hours after Adam had gone.

        Duncan reasoned he had to delay dealing with this until Sean's marriage was settled. He would be no use whatsoever to his son, were he to indulge his sadness now. After the wedding, he could disappear someplace and not come back until he was himself again--whoever and whatever that was. It surprised him how distant he felt from his former self, how uncertain he was about where Adam stopped and he began. Duncan felt the Old Man's departure less as a disconnection, and more as an avulsion. He wondered if Joe had felt this way the morning he woke to find his legs gone.

        "Mr. MacLeod?" Mary's sleepy tones jolted Duncan back to the present.

        "Yes, Ms. Palmer," he geared the T down to accommodate a sudden rise in the road.

        She laughed graciously. "We can't proceed this way," she said. It seemed a simple comment, but Duncan could not decipher it.

        "As far as I know," Duncan said. "This is the only way home."

        "But if we keep going this way," Mary said, again simply and obscurely, "we will never get home."
 
 

 

        As they approached the top of the rise, Mary pointed to a small rest area set at the edge of the sea cliff. "Please," she asked, "Over there."

        Duncan pulled the T over and shut it down. They got out and braced against the sea wind. Mary glided over to a rough wooden bench and sat down, inviting Duncan to join her. He did so, putting down his trepidation to his very bad preceding day and his sleepless preceding night.

        Mary just sat there, breathing in the seawind, her auburn mane flying behind her like red wings. It was so easy to see the dragon there even without the claws and scales.

        When several minutes passed and she was still staring silently out to sea like a sailor's widow, Duncan asked, "Mary?"

        "I lied," Mary began.

        Ah, Duncan thought, a common problem with us all of late.

        "My father has told me nothing about this," she said. Then she wound her pale long fingers into the red curls and stretched her back, making a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. "My father thinks I am absolutely innocent of any of this. He has told me only that he would be away on an extended trip and that a friend of his was coming to call and to see to my guardianship and that I should be kind to him because when I was little, he saved my life."

        "He thinks you don't remember Malak?" Duncan asked.

        "He is right. I don't," Mary replied. "Or, at least, I didn't--."

        "Then how do you remember now, Mary?"

        Mary turned her bright face towards the sea wind, "When we were in Africa--we go every other summer--well, our second to the last visit, Father contracted malaria. He recovered in a few days, but he was so bled out that he did succumb to a series of fevers, and--"

        Duncan reached over and took her left hand, squeezing lightly, waiting for her to find her own way in this.

        "And while he was delirious," Mary swallowed and a tiny wave ran down the length of her fair neck. "I met Ram."

        "He transformed?" Duncan asked.

        "No, Duncan, just the voice, when he was rendered senseless by the fevers. At first I thought it was just another sort of delirium, but little-by-little I came to believe what Ram told me. Then Father recovered and we returned to Seacouver. I don't remember exactly--I think he fell asleep watching a game or something on the vision. Anyway, I called Ram again, and like magic she returned and we had another talk," Mary breathed raggedly, "and another and another. Every time my dad slept, I called Ram back to continue my education."

        "Then the summer was over and you had to return to England and Anne," Duncan finished for her.

        Mary laughed, "Well that would be true, except I haven't been in anyone's custody since I reached eighteen and came into my inheritance, or--how does Mom put it? Yes, when I became a wealthy little shit. After that I chose to live with my dad. I think Anne was relieved to have me out of her life."

        Duncan had a hard time reconciling Mary's version of Anne with the fiercely devoted mother he had known before. He wondered what had happened. "She does love you, Mary," he said.

        "I know that," Mary agreed, "She just, well, it's like the baby lion thing."

        "The what?"

        "They're so lovable when they're cubs," Mary sighed, "but then they grow and you can't help but be afraid. That's why I wanted to live with Dad. He wasn't afraid of me."

        Duncan believed that. Anne could never tolerate Chaos.

        "In any case, four years ago," Mary continued, "I began my instruction with Ram. She told me about the Danae and the Immortals and about Malak and Marak and Micah and their brothers. She told me about herself. And then we began to talk about me. That's when I learned about Malak and his obsession, fate, however you want to think about it. She told me what would happen, and the things I might try to avoid coming into that destiny."

        Duncan watched the struggle cloud over her features as Mary decided just how much to tell and how much to keep in darkness. He said nothing. This was her decision to make. He was nearly a stranger to her. She would have no reason to trust him.

        "It is the most fantastic thing you can imagine," Mary said finally, "I do not understand it fully, though, God knows, I have asked Ram often enough to explain it, and she has just as often tried. Somehow I am supposed to be some sort of Super Mother to an entire new race of Danae."

        "I can see where that would be daunting," Duncan said softly.

        "I suppose I could deal with that part of it," Mary shook her head and her curls flew up behind her in an orange halo. "It's the dying after they are born part that doesn't thrill me."

        "Oh, Mary," Duncan draped an arm gently over her shoulders. She was trembling.

        "Ram tried to soften it. She said things like I wouldn't really be dead, that I would live on in a different way, but it all came down to the fact that I, me," she poked her long fingers into her sternum for emphasis, "What I am, that would cease. If that isn't death, then I don't know what is."

        "I'm really in a difficult situation here," Mary continued, "If I marry Sean, then my father will  never return, the Danae will never return, and I have no idea what will happen to Malak. Ram said she thought he was going to die before I was thirty, whatever happened, and that's only four years away. I will be hurting people I care for deeply," she paused, collecting her emotions, "Am I only being selfish?"

        Duncan shook his head, "No, you are being both sensible and honest, neither of which can be called a fault."

        "There is one other thing which keeps waking me up in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking," Mary backed away from Duncan and fixed him in the acute focus of her golden brown eyes. "Do you trust Ram?" she asked him.

        Duncan thought a moment, pressed his lips together in a smirk Adam had left him, and shook his head slowly. "Not a bit," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if all this weren't entirely made up to manipulate you in some way on her brother's behalf." He didn't really have another way to refer to Ram's other, masculine, self.

        "You can understand my dilemma," Mary said. She leaned against the Highlander's broad chest and surrendered to a fine round of soft sobbing.

        Duncan's arms had nowhere else to go but round his soon-to-be daughter. There was really no answer to Chaos except surrender...

        If it wasn't tears.

        Mary even wept gracefully, no gulps or snorts, no sniffing, just a low, rolling sound like the sea below them. It set Duncan to wondering if the ocean were merely the sum of all the tears of the earth. Three-quarters of the globe's surface, Duncan thought, that would be about right.

        Mary was done as abruptly as she had started. "Much better," she said, taking his offered hankerchief and blotting her face. "Now I can go on with some chance of getting there," she took a deep breath and pushed up to sitting. "All right then," she said lightly, giving him back the hankie. "Your turn." She shifted around on the bench to sit sideways facing him and wrapped her arms as far around his shoulders as they would go.

        "My turn?" Duncan was beginning to think this niece of his had either been talking to Ram too much or had actually inherited the woman's innate tendency to the obscure.

        "Go on," she said encouragingly, burying her forehead into his deltoid, "I won't tell anybody."

        Duncan twisted his head around to look at her. "What are you talking about?"

        Her right hand slipped down from his shoulder and came to rest over his heart.

        Duncan lost sight of the sea and the clouds as his vision filled with an image of Methos curled up in the deep window of their bedroom at the Fortress, his long arms wrapped around his lanky legs, gazing out at the new morning. He was wearing nothing but the sun rays and an air of blissful contentment. Duncan felt his heart welling up in his throat, felt his whole torso shake with the pain of his loss. In that moment he thought he might have flown entirely apart were it not for the tiny woman beside him with the slender hands that gripped like steel.

        Very slowly, he came closer and closer to the mirror in his mind, reached out and touched the dear flesh which he had known better than his own. "I am sorry," he said soundlessly to the wight at the window, "for you and for me, for what might have been between us."

        "But I will never be sorry for what we were together, more than either of us alone, and that is a gladness and a blessing I will own to my grave."
 

---

        "It's all right," Adam mumbled and jerked awake suddenly. It was already getting dark, nearly time to go and he had slept the late afternoon away, lolled back on a park bench near the college. He found himself just at the edge of dreaming--something. His arms were wrapped around the duffel as if he held someone--and, yes, that had been part of the dream. Someone he couldn't see. Someone standing in the dark and weeping, talking, saying something--something. He couldn't remember the words, but he could hear their melody still, not sad as might be expected from the weeping, but somehow triumphant, victorious. Maybe it was Duncan, he thought.

        Maybe he is coming through this as he does through all his battles. Adam hoped so.

        Well, he thought as he stood and stretched, and stretched some more, I could just stroll south of here, find some gentler indulgences on Castro, or Mission, or--. No, Adam started down Powell, this night he was going all the way down, all the way down to Folsum, and then all the way down to the sea. He was headed for a meeting with his more familiar self, keeping an appointment that was long overdue. SOMA, they called it, for South of the Market Area. It was the site of an historical stand by the darker portion of the gay community in San Fran. Around the turn of the Millennium, the area had been strictly industrial by day and recreational by night, under ordinance against using the buildings for dwellings.

        After a bend in the law, allowing people to own live-in businesses, the area began to remodel into Generation X condos and lofts. And the night denizens pitched the fit of the new century, finally taking back their turf with a combination of remarkable court battles and ingenious guerilla tactics.

        Methos knew this because he had followed the entire incident with great interest. Not only were there others in the world like himself--after meeting the owner of The Drieg, in Couver, he could hardly be ignorant of that--but because here were such folk standing up in court, proclaiming their right to be what they were. Of course, he did not share this with Duncan, or with Thomas Cross, either. As far as they knew Adam was "cured." As far as Methos was concerned: none of their business.

        He'd corresponded by slate with many of the more militant members of the Soma scene. Halfway down Powell, the revelation struck.

        He'd been no different than Duncan, pretending to be something he was not. Adam began laughing, but it was an eery sound and doors opened and closed up and down the block. Course, he mused, in his case, it was a step up in sexual preference, and in the Highlander's case, a step down, but who could say which was the more difficult manifestation.

        Adam made a jog in his path, reaching into his pocket for his hotel reservation at the Arms. He could leave off his bag and clean up the crab and bus smell. Across Post Street from the hotel he could see two vaguely familiar faces talking together briefly and then wandering back to there posts, one disappeared into the bar and the other sat down in the lobby and worked on a slate in his lap.

       Damnation! Watchers! They'd sent them after him. Then again, Adam thought, they wouldn't be waiting for me at my hotel, if they knew where I was. I must have been evading them all unknowing all day. Because I was not myself, Adam thought, because they were not smart enough to track my being Duncan, the Boy Scout, and so they couldn't guess my doings. Well, so much for a bath, he sighed, but they will never guess my destination. Tonight I am become another, even more obscure, the one I was before all the others...

        Methos.

        Death Incarnate? No, too pretentious. Dead Man Riding? Hmm? Maybe.

        The pale horseman took himself down the road to Folsom and then down Folsom to Main, a backtrack to Howard and he was there. An elder industrial building, remarkable only for its grim constancy, loomed above him where the stars might have been. He was sure of the address, but it took two full tours round what had been the old Folger building before he found the small placard which bore a rough painting of a dungeon door and the name, "All Night News."

        Methos felt the old familiar edginess begin somewhere deep in his gut. Seeing the sign in the real world, and not just an image on his slate, made him at once excited and terrified.  Maybe he should rethink this.

        "You are?" asked a solemn, young man in black pants and a leather harness with studs across his chest.

        In deep shit, Adam could not help but think, but he said aloud, "Matthew," saying his nick first, then "Double zed," saying his designation on the slate channel.

        "Were we expecting you?" the man made no move to invite him through the door, just visible beyond the shadowy recess.

        "I always try to be unexpected," Adam made a half-hearted try at his old cynical wit. It needed work. He'd gotten out of practice.

        "Wait here," was all the man said and disappeared in the dark throat of the News.

        Adam waited for what seemed an inordinately long time, wondering again if he should just go back to the hotel, surrender to the Watchers and get a bath and some supper. And then what? He had to make a new life. He had to summon his own demon to carry him into the new world, now that his old world was dead. He had no more use for this Adam. He needed to find his way back to Methos.

        "Sir?" another man had been waiting by him in the darkness while Adam struggled with himself.

        "Yes?" Adam answered stupidly.

        "Please, come in," this second man said graciously. "You are most welcome, Matthew," he said Adam's name carefully, as if to remind himself this was the name for tonight.

        Methos picked up his duffel, left Adam behind, and followed the man into the News, his heart pounding so hard, he wondered it did not echo down the stone-lined walls of the long descent to the basement of the building. The landing opened into a small anteroom, crowned, like a monastery with a groined vault, set upon ornate marble pilasters. All the lighting was indirect so as not to interfere with the ambience of subterranean cavern, but the room did not seem dark. To the right was something like a bar in deep wood, but there was no liquor or mirror, only a room beyond hung with suits and coats. It was the News equivalent of a coat check, Methos surmised. A third man leaned forward on the bar, writing on a slate with his finger and keying in records' templates.

        Methos' guide walked over, said Matthew double zed and some other things which Methos could not hear. The "coatcheck girl" nodded his head and keyed in all the particulars. By the way they were both looking at him, appraising him, Methos felt like a rube at a "guess your weight, win a tie" booth.

        "You may store your things here," his escort came back and held out his hands.

        Oh, well, Methos thought, if they were going to rob me, they would have done so by now and not gone to all this bother. He handed over the duffel and his navy coat. The weight of his sword made him hesitate.

        His escort took the navy coat from him, felt the weight also, nodded his head and said, "This will go into a locked vault, Matthew. We can see it is special to you. We will set it to your membership number. I hope you remember what that is--" he paused and waited for Methos to nod. "Good, no one here knows it, but you, and it would be two weeks to clear the paperwork to open the vault if you cannot do so."

        "And the duffel?" his escort asked, "Also in your vault?"

        Methos nodded again. He noticed they handled his things with a great deal more care than he did himself. It was both reassuring and bothersome. The escort, also in leather harness with studs and black pants--the staff uniform evidently--returned to Methos, waiting.

        Methos handed him his tattered leather wallet and again agreed with putting it into the vault. This took longer than all the rest. He had to enumerate all the contents of his wallet and sign for them on the slate form. They counted out the cash, but otherwise, they would not touch any of the other identification. Done, finally, Methos wondered why his escort was just standing before him, his hands out.

        Methos wondered what this was all about, then he noticed his escort was barefoot. He leaned forward and unlaced his hiking boots and pulled them off, then his socks, and he handed these over. They found a niche along the back wall of the enormous "closet."

        And his escort returned to wait again.

        Oh, Methos understood. It was funny how this never used to bother him. He pulled his sweater up over his head and then the T-shirt. The escort waited. And why was this bothering him now? Methos wondered. Where the hell did he think he was, anyway. Off with the trousers, and after an extended pause, off with his jockeys--he never wore boxers anymore, not since Duncan had gotten him these, well some very like, not this exact pair, for riding. They often joked about how romantic that first gift had been.

        They were very good, he noted. The moment he was naked, they stopped looking at him. He became completely clothed in their indifference. That's why it never used to bother him, he thought, servants don't stare, or if they do, it matters no more than your favorite dog watching you bathe.

        A murmured conversation passed between the two staff persons, then CoatCheck nodded and picked up a headset, spoke a few words which Methos could not hear. Then his escort returned to him, and looking nowhere but straight into his eyes said, "You know Strike?"

        Methos did indeed. He'd corresponded by slate with this man. It was how he had discovered the News in the first place. Strike had been in the forefront of the SOMA movement a decade earlier.

        "This," his escort turned toward an archway beyond the coatcheck, "is Strike."

        Out of the arch strode a mesomorphic young man with short, dark curls and skin that was paler than Methos' own, which meant he was more or less transparent. The effect of his cut, hard muscles and the thin, wan skin made Strike look as if he had been crafted out of a fine smoky quartz and his features only interesting flaws in the general perfection, a matrix of fine veining.

        "Matthew," Methos introduced himself. "It is good to finally meet you. I am impressed." He extended his hand. Their indifference deserted him and he could feel their shock strip him back to nakedness again. He'd overstepped some unspoken rule or ritual.

        Strike, dressed also in the black pants and leather, simply turned on his heels silently and walked back towards the arch. Methos followed him into the utter blackness beyond.

---

        Methos leaned back in the sunken tub and luxuriated in the heat and the bubbles and Strike's soft tenor instructions about what one did and did not do when one visited the News. Being overly and overtly familiar with your Master for the evening was definitely in the "Do Not" category. At least not when there were other people around.

        Strike had explained he would loosen the rules in Matthew's case, he being such a special and unexpected visitor after all these years as an absent member. He had led Matthew to this wonderful balneary, brought towels and sponges, drinks and snacks. When Matt made it clear he would wash himself, Strike settled against a wall at the large bath's edge and proceeded with a short course in News' decorum, while Matt splashed like a child in the bubbles and paid absolutely no attention.

        Methos was paying attention, though, if not to the words exactly, then to their assurance and loft, the music of their expression, just as he drank in the very pleasing form of this man. Strike was built, like himself, in the body type of a gymnast or swimmer, all the muscles very long and serviceable. His hands would have been very nice except the knuckles where broken, at least two on each hand, and this had enlarged them, so Strike's hands looked like those of an artisan who had been forced into some labor intensive, blue-collar occupation. He was dressed in the black harness and very tight, shiny black pants that seemed to be the staff uniform here. His one singularity was the finely made blued-steel chain wrapped round and round his left forearm. It was a small chain, not quite a centimeter in width, attached to itself by two dragonhead clasps. Fascinating.

        Strike continued on in the slightly bored, practiced tones of one who is very good at what he does and knows it all too well.

        "I am sorry to have erred in greeting you," Adam apologized half-heartedly, more because he was growing bored with the lecture.

        Strike handed him a towel and made no other reply. Still, it was clear that "sorry" was not an acceptable response in this place. It was too evident that Strike was already not pleased with Methos' performance, and less-pleased with each passing moment.

        "Why don't you just tell me what you want me to do," Methos suggested helpfully.

        Strike's calm demeanor crinkled up in an unbidden smile and he shook his head. He reached out for the towel, "I can see why you are here," he said and turned to clean the room and set the linen in the hamper.

        Methos couldn't help asking, "And why is that?"

        "You are too insensitive to be a slave, far too insensitive to be a master, and way too intelligent not to know that." It was the only explanation he was to get, it seemed. They walked out of the bath and down one of the many winding hallways into a sitting room, something like an informal office set with soft, simple furnishings, a desk and a slate and several exquisite prints along one wall. A tiny rock garden and water fall at the back wall washed the room with a shimmering array of reflections and a calm, white noise of water rush and gurgle. Strike sat down at the desk and indicated Matthew should sit on one of the couches.

        "I rarely bring clients to my office," Strike began, not unlike a principal with an errant student. "But in your case, because of our very long virtual friendship, I choose to do so. Matthew double zed, you are so unsure about this that you are making it most difficult for me to determine how best to proceed, so I need to have you tell me exactly what you expect, what you will require, in so far as you are able."

        "I don't expect that will be very far, though," he added.

        Methos was insulted and confused. He stared at the odd chain on Strike's forearm, "I expect you to know," he retorted too sharply. "I surrender to your judgment," he ammended by way of apology.

        Strike tipped his head down and fixed Matthew with a long, appraising stare. "Do you know what you are saying?"

        Methos snorted, "Stop this charade! You care nothing about me and I care nothing about you. This is a business arrangement. Do your job and leave the insight and whatever else out of this!"

        Strike pressed his pink lips together and his nostrils flared, but he was otherwise composed. He said nothing, just rose, clicked his fingers at Matthew and stalked out of the room.

        Methos hurried to catch up, knowing he'd probably just been more absolutely stupid than he had been for many a century.

        He was still thinking this, and then some, as Strike instructed him on the sheepskin wrist restraints and the soft small bean bags which he was to hold in his hands and squeeze regularly, so they wouldn't go numb. Strike ordered him to stand in the center of the dark room, midway between the mirrored back wall and the thick door, now closed. Except for the mirror, the walls were uneven natural stone, eery and earthy and smelling slightly of mold, like a damp basement, or a dungeon in the nightmare sense. It was much too clean for a real dungeon, Methos thought, as he raised his hands in front of him and let Strike apply the cuffs.

        Strike attached the cuffs to a chain in the ceiling and tightened the chain just to the point where Matt would feel a quarter of his weight on his wrists. He checked the pulse at both wrists, the slack in the cuffs, the capillary recovery in the nailbeds. He told Matt to squeeze the hand pillows and then he stepped back, surveying his client top to toe.

        The terror Methos had felt, waiting at the front door, returned, building in prickles and jabs, shadowed over and augmented by sudden flesh memories of his time with Kronos and the Horsemen. Those memories he kept at bay in the light came back to him in a scudding rush, taking his attention entirely.

        Methos never noticed Strike unclipping and unwinding the double serpanthead chain from his left forearm. He was unaware of Strike moving in closer, lifting both hands to Methos' chest.

        In the next instant, Methos' attention shot back and focused entirely on the two points of brilliant, flashing agony where the dragonhead's teeth tore at his nipples. He opened his mouth in a hideous screeching moan which wound up and up and then descended into an ear-shattering roar of angry desperation.

        Strike's face went suddenly bloodless and he staggered back, his eyes white-ringed, his mouth dropped completely open, his palms up in front of him like a supplicant. If there was a wild animal in all the world that made such a sound as this man before him, this Matthew double zed, then he had never heard it.

        Methos' vision cleared just enough to site on the frightened Strike. He slowed down his thrashing, balled up his fists, and from their position, high above his head, he tossed the bean bags at the crystal man. Two direct hits. All the while he roared and howled his displeasure as his whole long frame tried to escape the unbelievable torment at his chest.

        Methos' screams began to take coherent form in an elder language where jackals mated with mastodon feces and produced mothers for vermin like Strike. Through the red haze of pain, Methos could see Strike looking, not at him, but past him, behind him. There was someone else here.

        "Off!" Methos screeched. "Now!" he howled.

        Strike shook his head as the second man came over to comfort him.

        "You sorry, prickless sons of--" another erupting wail somewhat obscured the rest of the geneology.

        "I told you he was difficult," the second man was saying.

        "May you sit down in a pool of crocodiles and stand up sopranos!" Methos choked out, punctuated with his oft-repeated and ever-more-angry order to remove the clips.

        "But he was staring at the clips since we came through the first arch," Strike was explaining, "I'm sure he knew what they were. He even looked at them when I asked what he wanted. I swear."

        "He was staring because of the dragons and because he didn't know what they were," the second man said, "I believe--"

        The second man turned as he was rudely interrupted by yet another of Methos' screeches and Methos recognized his old friend, the owner of the Drieg in Couver. Thank God! Someone who understood.

        "Oh, shut up, will you?" Thomas Cross admonished the writhing client. "Be still for Heaven's Sake!"

        "Off," Methos growled, "Take them off! Now! God Damn you, Thomas!"

        "I'm sure he does, um, Matthew, but not for this. Stop that! You've completely unnerved my best student. Get a grip!"

        Methos simply howled more loudly and thrashed hard against the restraints.

        Thomas walked up to him and slapped him across the face. "That will be quite enough!"

        Methos moved quickly, but not quickly enough to bite Thomas' nimble hand, so he spit, full force, into Thomas' face instead. Methos could hear Strike gasp at the affront.

        Thomas backed away from him and went over to the wall, crossing his arms and shaking his head sadly. "You would think I'd never taught you anything."
 
 

        But Methos did not hear him, he was so occupied with his own suffering.

        Strike produced a warm wet towel for Cross' face and then a dry one. "I swear I sprung both the hinges on those clips, they can't be hurting him that much. They're the ones I use on my most sensitive customers. They never--"

        Cross raised his hand. "It isn't you," he said.

        Methos wound down into helpless pleading and then to soundless sobbing. Cross moved back to stand in front of him, lifted his chin up and stroked his neck. "Are you a little more composed now?" he asked.

        "Off. Now," he hissed through the rigor of his jaw.

        "Well, I have to warn you," Thomas began. He motioned to Strike, who retrieved a jar from the ice bucket on the equipment ledge at the wall where the whip collection hung. "Those clips have made you numb. Taking them off isn't going to be--pleasant."

        "Off," Methos rasped.

        "All right," Thomas reached back and dipped a small amount of ointment out of the chill jar which Strike brought to him. "You want this slow or fast?" he asked.

        "Off! Now!" Methos replied in a haunted, hoarse whisper.

        "As you please," Thomas replied, wrapping his right index finger into the loop of chain which hung between the clips. In one motion, he tugged rapidly, and they were off...

        And if Strike thought Matt made unearthly sounds before, he was sadly mistaken.

        Methos did not believe he could hurt this much. The sharp, jagged, white hot agony shot through his chest and up his back to pulse at the base of his brain. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, nothing else existed but the pain and his ability to perceive it, which was undiminished and ongoing. Though he felt his senses leaving him, his consciousness held firm and stubborn and true.

        There was an icy balm against his right nipple, soothing the fire there, almost too much relief to bear. Then Thomas' soft lips and cool tongue found his left nipple and the sensation was almost worse than the pain, it was so wonderful. Methos heard his raging howls rise in volume and pitch, catching and gasping with the hunger in his lungs and his loins. His body bent to Cross' ministrations, arching his back, bobbing his erection, driving him into mindlessness and the singular madness of the flesh.

        Methos came so violently, he threatened to disjoint his shoulders, then he hung slack and boneless in the soft cuffs as Strike bustled around cleaning and blotting, checking circulation and tone, and apologizing time and again to Master Cross for the thousand dollar silk trousers which had been so thoroughly ruined.

        Cross merely slipped out of them and tossed them in the trash bin beneath the equipment ledge.

        When Strike went to loosen the chain and let Matt down, Cross stopped him.

        Strike tipped his head questioningly.

        "We have not even started," Cross said.

---

        "All right, Adam," Thomas Cross dismissed Strike to the corner, out of range, with an approving smile for his student's re-ordering of the room. He lifted a warm washcloth to Adam's face and then a cool one, and then sips of lightly salted lemonade ice slush.

        Adam woke up dreaming he was still standing outside the door of the All Night News wondering where Methos had gotten off to. The shaved ice lemon was delightful.

        "That's enough, Adam," Thomas warned, "I know your propensity to spewing and I've already donated a thousand dollar pair of pants to this endeavor. I'd hate to have to pay for these new ones I borrowed from Strike."

        "Where?" Adam said, licking away the fuzzy thickness of his tongue against his dry palate. He pulled against the restraints and worked his fingers around the bean bags in his palms. "Thomas?"

        "Well," Thomas snorted, "at least you know who I am. I suppose we will have to take that for a start in the right direction."

        "What direction?" Adam began to wake more fully. It seemed he was hanging from his wrists in the middle of a dark, dank room, and he had that unimistakeable warmth and sleepy happiness of satiation. It made no sense at all.

        Thomas' golden eyes rolled. "Earth to Adam," he said. "Attend us, won't you? You have paid dearly for our services," Thomas grabbed Adam's ears and adjusted his gaze downward, where Cross stood, two hands shorter than the gauze brained white man in the restraints. "You have paid more than coin to be here, Adam. Don't waste all of that now."

        Adam's pale eyes, grey in the low light, focused slowly on the ebon man before him. "What is going on here?" he asked as soberly as he was able.

        "Oh, Adam," Thomas sighed and slapped the cool cloth across Adam's face. "Snap out of it! Now!"

        Adam did as he was told, taking in the room, Thomas, the wall across from him with the whips hanging like a demented toolman's garage pegboard, the wall to his left, with the door, the wall to his right, with the--.

        "Ah," Cross remarked watching the site line of the grey eyes. "I see you've noted a unique feature of this room. And do you also remember now where this is and who you are?"

        Not Methos after all, Adam thought. Duncan has ruined me for good and all. I will never be Methos again. Only Adam, only Dahm, only, only, only. "Yes, Thomas. I know who I am, but don't ask me what I am. I could not answer that. I would not begin to know, or even imagine."

        "Oh, that is much better," Thomas picked up a small piece of what looked to be rabbit fur. "And did you also have an opinion on that wall to your right?"

        "It seems to be dark glass," Adam leaned his head forward and peeked around his right bicep. "A window," his eyes rounded, "a mirror. A two-way mirror!"

        "You are waking up," Thomas congratulated him. "Yes, that is a mirror from our side and a window into this room from a viewing room next door."

        "Viewing?" Adam swallowed hard as the situation rewove itself more blatantly.

        Thomas smiled, bright white teeth in a face dark as this dungeon. "And I would wager you are wondering just who could be in that room watching."

        "Who?" Adam whispered, shifting nervously on his bare feet.

        "Oh, I am not at liberty to say," Thomas mused as he wandered back and forth before the man hanging in the cuffs. "But I could hypothesize. It is already apparent whoever is there, that they know your name is not Matthew," he paused.

        Adam chewed on his lower lip. Thomas was saying the watcher was no stranger. That was not good.

        "I can tell you there is someone, or--let's see, the room will hold up to ten and still afford a reasonable view," Thomas continued. "Perhaps the half-dozen foot-sore Watchers who have been beating the entire city for you all day, and have now come to receive their recompense."

        Not good. Definitely not.

        "Perhaps Mr. MacLeod came after you," Thomas licked his lips as if the words were delicious. "And he's decided to take an apprenticeship for your benefit."

        Adam squirmed beneath the stroking touch of the rabbit skin, tracing its way over his own skin. Duncan would not come here, he told himself. Duncan is not there beyond the glass. He repeated the thought as if it were an incantation or a solemn plea.

        "Or maybe that exuberant brother of yours--"

        "No!" the moan escaped Adam's lips before he could think to be quiet. Sean was not there. Sean was not there. Sean was NOT there.

        "He is no longer a child, Adam," Thomas traded the rabbit for a rough piece of burlap or sacking, "Perhaps he has come here, worried about your welfare, and decided to stay and find out how it is you spend your leisure, or what little tricks he might take home to his new wife-to-be."

        Not there. Not there. Not there.

        "I'm sure Alexa will be coming for the wedding, perhaps she decided to spend the day in--"

        "Stop!" Adam wailed. He felt the abrasion of the words more acutely than the stiff brush which had replaced the burlap.

        "Well," Thomas walked over to the whip wall and took down a limber doeskin flail, "whoever is behind that glass, I made them promise not to hiss or boo, or in any way denigrate what has been--up to now--possibly the worst excuse for a sorry, lazy, uncooperative--"

        "I get the point," Adam grumbled. "I am just--I don't know, confused, I suppose. I can't seem to--" he just could not describe what had happened to him, nor could he even understand it properly, beyond the fact that he was so very different than he had ever been before. It was as if he'd lost the edge, the place where his skin stopped and the rest of the world began and that place, farther north of here, where the rest of him even now remained.

        Adam simply refused to believe that either Duncan or Sean were behind the glass. They were not there. Not there.

        The tails of the doeskin slithered over him, back, belly, and thigh. Adam could feel their presence along the fuzzy margins of his being. Then with a woosh and a slap, the light sting of the flail started to bring the division into focus. Adam held perfectly still and let Thomas repaint him out of the ether and into a more solid element.

        Adam knew it was his responsibility to hold his attention fixed on all the portions of this exercise, but he could not help being distracted--not by the pain, escalating from the slap of the flail to the thud of the cowhide quirt, to the multi-tongued sharp chorus of the cat and its cousin with the tiny brass balls woven into each strand--but by the single idea that Duncan and Sean were indeed behind that shiny surface in the wall to his right.

        At first this only distressed him in the way of all humiliations, the unexpected nakedness in the face of the ones who mattered in your life, the deterioration of any and every artifice, any claim to worthiness, any pretense to self-importance. Adam was convinced he might honestly die, or really want to do so, if he thought they were truly there beyond the mirror.

        But as Thomas cut his flesh into being, like a gnomish little tailor fitting a suit, Adam began to be consumed by the idea that he and Duncan and Sean were all one body and that the division of the glass was not a division at all, that the glass did not stand between them, nor the mirror of it, but only his own image in that glass. Adam tried to see that image for what it was, even as he tried to excuse this vile habit, or necessity, or whatever, that drove him to such heinous extremes.

        Somewhere in his ruminations, Adam had lost the intricate pattern and progression of Thomas' patient and practiced craftsmanship. He could hear the black man pulling breath, exhausting himself on Adam's own stubbornness and insensitivity. He heard the nasty whining snap as the cat's metal teeth chewed his back and thighs, but he could not feel them. All the old scarring of the many divers woundings over and over again so insulated him from the world that they had taken him far from feeling anything.

        Which made no sense, of course. How had the clips so undone him? It was such a curious, almost silly question, but it became, in this instant, The Question. Thomas stopped. Adam experienced the absence of sensation as if it were a palpable silence, a Great Silence. Into that silence emerged his stupid question, rising before his eyes like a flaming augury or a luminous scrying stone. It formed itself in whys and wheres and hows, in countless writhing tendrils which reached towards him teasing and demanding.

        Be there behind the mirror, Adam thought. See me as I am. It is all that I am, pathetic as it is. Love me anyway.

        But they did.

        And they knew more about him than he cared to admit.

        They were not in the mirror. His own image was there. He was there. All that he was.

        Hideous.

        Adam could not ask them to do something he could not do himself, something entirely impossible. This thing could not be loved. He could not do so. No one could.

        And that was where the real pain lived, that was an agony that none of this could touch.

        Adam underestimated Thomas Cross' ability. In the next instant, the HorseMaster shook out his old black buggy whip, drew it up high over his head, and let it fly, sizzling and whistling, across Adam's back, cutting him from left shoulder to right hip, laying bare the bone in three places.

        Adam hung from his wrists, stunned. Then the monster inside him began to wail for his unloved and unloveable self, for the unbearable agonies of its long existance, for its immutable and essential ugliness.

        He could not say when Thomas had taken him down, or when the warm blankets coddled him, and the gentle rocking began.

        All that Adam knew was a sad tenderness, a softness at his center for this poor beaste, this sorry, ragged thing which, blind and deaf, scarred and bent, had still endured. Despite everything, every tragic thing about it, this monstrosity had gone forward through age after age. Adam felt his heart swell for its simple, mindless courage.

        He found a reason to love the thing, to embrace it with all the same feelings as when he held Sean, as when he held Duncan.

        Adam did not need to open his eyes to know that the dark shiny surface of the mirror, the artificial division between himself and the poor beaste, was gone.

---

        "Ninth, Grant, ninth," Thomas Cross shifted Adam's weight and leaned forward to navigate over his driver's--and spouse's--right shoulder.

        "If you wish to drive, Sir," the implaccable Grant replied evenly, "Then I will be more than happy to see to our guest there. The road is not ninth south of Market."

        "I seem to recall," Cross thought a minute, "Lavinia, or something like."

        "It's Larkin, Sir, and it's one way, the other way," Grant replied. "Why don't you just sit back and tend to Dr. Piersen and let me do my job. You must be exhausted, Tom," he added solicitously.

        "The card says near Union Station, but we're going the wrong way," Thomas Cross persisted.

        Adam stirred in his sleep. "Postenjonez, postenjonez, postenjonez," he murmurred.

        Grant slowed down, turned off the key and stepped out of the large dark sedan. He then strolled to the front of the car and leaned back to sit, arms crossed, against the left quarter panel and hood.

        "Grant?" Thomas opened the back door and peeked out. "Is something wrong?"

        The tall, thickly built, granite mountain of a man tipped his chin up and stared at the stars and the black, black night.

        Cross slipped sideways from under Adam's long torso and rolled up his coat to make a pillow for the sleeping Immortal. He stepped out of the car and cautiously approached Grant. The tall, taciturn facet was not prone to pouting. It was sort of charming, Thomas thought, but he knew better than to remark on it. He simply leaned back against the car, folded his own arms and gazed up at the selfsame stars, the same velvet night.

        "Lovely evening," Thomas said casually.

        "Oh, yes," Grant's eyes never shifted from the heavens, "Has there ever been such a night as this?"

        Grant so seldom indulged in sarcasm, that Thomas could not be sure he was doing so now. "I thought, I think it is," he added tentatively. Cross tried another tack, "You know what I do for a living, Grant. You are the CEO of my various renovation companies, after all, and the concierge of The Drieg."

        "Knowing and watching are not the same things, Sir," Grant replied and the air rushed out of his wide nostrils in a sighing snort.

        Oh, dear, Thomas thought, he is really upset about this. He did not think it prudent to remind his gigantic friend that it had been Grant's own idea to sit beyond the two-way mirror for Adam's session, because he had feared for Thomas' safety, even with Strike right there in the room. "I always assumed, well, after all our years together, Grant--forgive me, but I never thought you didn't, you hadn't seen me work before. Do you disapprove?" Thomas felt a shiver of apprehension run his diminutive mahogany frame from scalp to stern. "What did you feel about that? What did you think?" he asked with all the bravery that his love would allow.

        Grant looked from the sky to the ground and shook his head. "I don't honestly know, Thomas. I have never seen you like that before. I always just assumed you did this because of your history as a slave, a way to overcome and control a time in your life when you had been, yourself, helpless and beaten."

        Thomas looked slowly round at his friend and his mouth slacked open. Grant never said all this many words together in the same sentence--in the same day, for that matter.

        "Frankly, Sir," Grant tightened his cross-armed grip on the broad barrel of his chest, "It frightened me."

        In another circumstance, Thomas might have laughed, but in this instant, he felt more like weeping. He grabbed the tall man by both shoulders and spun him around. "Grant! You know me! You know I would never hurt you!"

        Grant slowly unfolded his arms and reached down for Thomas' shoulders. "I know that, Thomas. I didn't mean I was afraid of you. I was afraid for you. I thought you, you--" He shook his head and leaned his forehead down on Cross'. "I felt that each blow took something precious from you and gave it to Dr. Piersen. I thought if it went on much longer you would disappear. It was so very different from what I had expected, so--"

        To Thomas' utter amazement, Grant's entire frame began to tremble.

        "Oh, Love," Thomas reached his arms around the solid torso, "You are the one and only person who ever, ever understood. Why should it surprise me? The Father of Horses must have made you for me. Nowhere is there such a splendid lover and friend. No other person on the Earth is so blessed as I am blessed with you."

        The giant man more or less melted before him. He was so obviously perplexed and embarrassed by the compliment, that Thomas almost apologized for it.

        "Sir?" Grant said softly.

        "Yes, Grant," Thomas bent over to look up at Grant's dear face. He reached out to graze a dark knuckle against the hard jaw.

        "If you ever walz off like Dr. Piersen did to Mr. MacLeod--" the deep, baso tones acquired a chill foreboding.

        "Yes, Grant?"

        "The sun won't rise on either of us ever again," Grant murmurred.

        "Are you threatening me, Grant?" Thomas could not believe that possible of his friend.

        "More in the nature of a vow, Sir," Grant said, placing his broad palm on his own heart and then on Thomas'.

        Then he straightened up. Grant was taller than Adam and he literally towered over Cross. He cleared his throat, re-centered his tie and walked calmly back to the car, holding the back door open for Cross to arrange himself beneath the exhausted Adam Piersen.

        Grant headed them off down the street again, in search of the Beresford Arms where Adam had procured a deluxe suite, three rooms, three queen beds, a kitchen, a living room, and an enormous jacuzzi--if they could only find the blessed place.

        "Grant?"

        The driver's shoulders stiffened in anticipation of another round of back seat suggestions.

        "I think you should watch me more often," Cross said lightly, stroking Adam's short, sweat-salted curls, easing him back to a deeper sleep.

        "Sir?"

        "It imbues you with a loquaicious and passionate spark, Grant. Very fetching, I must say," Thomas remarked.

        The wide shoulders lifted and settled with a sigh. "If you say so, Sir."

        "Postenjonez, postenjonez," Adam mumbled.

        Grant turned into the alleyway and then down into the parking garage beneath the tall, semi- Victorian domain of the Arms. "We're there," Grant announced. There might have been just a whisper of vindication beneath the simple announcement, but Thomas couldn't quite tell.

        "I shall take Dr. Piersen up the service lift if you will see to his things, Sir," Grant handed back the hotel reservation. "And if you will register for us," he handed back the slate with the address keyed in.

        While Grant pulled the slack-limbed Immortal from the car and folded him over his shoulder, Thomas registered them and reported back the room number, tenth floor. "Oh," he said.

        "Sir?" Grant turned back.

        "The hotel sits on the corner of Post and Jones," Thomas explained. "That's what Adam has been trying to tell us."

        Going up the lift, Thomas thought better of taking advantage, thinking Grant might just drop Adam. His wicked plans were further delayed as Grant washed Adam's wounds and tucked him into the second bed, and Thomas cooked them a scrumptuous late dinner.

        Thomas fell asleep in the jacuzzi and only his near death by drowning roused him enough to take his sore muscles from the soothing water and pad back into the bedroom where Grant lay sleeping, sitting up by Adam, where he'd been watching over him. Bad dream or something, Thomas thought. Grant was such a mother.

        Ah, well, Cross tucked a comforter around Grant and propped his head back against a pillow, kissing his wide forehead lightly between snores. There would be other nights, many other nights. It pleased him enough just that Grant existed in the world and that they had found each other.

        Thomas Cross crawled into the bed on the other side of Adam, put his hand over Grant's over Adam's heart, and fell dreamlessly, blissfully, asleep.

        And when he woke again, in Grant's arms, Thomas was a long time realizing that Adam was no longer between them, that the Immortal had once again disappeared. It was longer still before he left Grant and padded over to the slate to tell the Watchers and the Facets that the search was unsuccessful.

        Then he keyed in Room Service and slipped back into bed to occupy the hour it would take for breakfast to arrive.

        "Shouldn't we be going after him?" Grant suggested half-heartedly.

        "Oh, probably," Cross agreed, "but we can't very well starve ourselves." He snuggled in more closely to the rock hard chest which was his softest comfort in the whole of creation.

        "That would not be prudent, Sir," Grant moved his arm under Thomas' head and traced his fingers over the golden features.

        "Or very much fun, either," Thomas agreed, catching Grant's fingers between his soft lips.
 
 

---