Chapter Two: The Confessor

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        Sean MacLeod pushed the elder electric buggy up a cobblestone byway, near the wharf on the south edge of Couver Bay. Except that the water was on the wrong side, he would be two blocks from the dojo. He cursed and pulled Kyle Dawson's pitiful little "town car" over and banged open the  glove compartment. He dug out the city map palm screen and keyed in the dojo's address on Cambie, peering out into the dark dawn shadows of the alley, trying to make heads or tails out of his present position. There--he'd turned too fast, got headed north on Seymor and traversed the tiny peninsula before he got turned back. Then he hadn't turned back all the way, and a couple of jogs and jigs later, he'd turned north again. Damnation!

        Well, three blocks over and he could connect with Cambie on this side of the isle and follow it back south to the dojo. Sean threw the map back into the compartment and turned Kyle's heap back on. You would think the Mayor could afford a better vehicle for his one and only beloved son. Then again, Sean himself was a Prince of the Universe and, except for Kyle's little put-putter, he would be afoot.

        The sky lightened, a glowing golden hemisphere on the eastern edge of the earth. The city was still asleep except for the fishermen far behind him, wending their way along the Burard Inlet and out to the open swells of the great sea, oddly named "Peace."  They had ordinary lives, Sean thought glumly.

        He thought much the same thing as he passed the garbage collection crew two blocks later.

        By the time he passed the tiny park and the empty tennis court, he was spinning ever downward in a maelstrom of discontent. Someone had stupidly left up the net and it was now hung with crystalline icicles, shimmering in the morning.

        "If not for all the rest of this mess,"  Sean murmurred aloud, "that's what I'd be doing with my life now. I'd be in Europe and not stinky old 'Couver. I'd be waking up in some sophisticated bedroom on the Rue de Whatever, calling down to room service for croiscants and," he nudged an invisible bed partner, lying in the rough vicinity of the passenger seat. "What will you be having, My Dear? No, I'll have a light brunch myself, Beloved. Finals, you know. Have to stay lean and mean, but we'll have a blowout celebration after."

        Well, all right, maybe he'd just been Junior Champion of Overlook, but no one could touch him for speed and strength. So he didn't have a passing shot. His version of passing was to drive the ball straight down his opponent's throat. He had the moves. He had the nerve. He could have been a contender on the circuit.

        Problem was, he also had a father who was dead set against it. Sean still remembered the day he'd been sanctioned for, for--what was that? Bouncing! Not really, but might as well have been. Something about his juggling his racket while the other player fell apart trying to get his serve over, and not into, the net. He'd expected Pops to come to his defense, but instead Father MacLeod had withdrawn him from the tournament, just when the pro was coming up to woo him for the college team. Some college team. For the life of him, Sean couldn't seem to remember which one, he was so devastated by the fatherly lecture which followed on the dismal ride home to the Fortress of Solitude, his name for the cliff Abbey where they'd lived for as long as he could remember.

        Pops had explained how Sean's life was not his own, that even at the ripe old age of fifteen, and not yet immortal, he was expected to turn away from such things as fame and glory in the mortal world. That was not to be Sean's path. Duncan had made it clear such a course would be both foolhardy and destructive. Sean had argued, but Pops stood firm.

        It hadn't made any sense then. It didn't make any sense now, five years later. Hadn't Pops taken him, dutifully, down to the Overlook Country Club, every day of the summer, from the time Sean was twelve? Hadn't Sean become the fine player Duncan wanted him to be? They were a killer doubles pair. No one at the club would play them after a while. Didn't he have a devastating net game, and serve, and volley? Weren't his reflexes stellar, his strength superb? Couldn't he put enough "English" on the ball that you never knew where it was bound?

        There. Sean's thoughts returned to the present. The sun was just beginning to show itself, spilling its warm light to the doorway of the reclaimed dojo. He pulled into an alley across the street and shut the car down.

        And what was it all for, Pops? Sean wondered, as he pawed into his pocket and came up with the scrap of paper Ram had given him. Why did you spend so much time teaching me to be that good, when you only meant to forbid my ever using the skill? Well, maybe now that we're on the outs, he thought, sadly. After I'm done with rescuing Molly--maybe then I'll see about taking up my tennis again.

        The scrap of paper had an address, not the numbers of the lock. Oh, right, Sean shook his head, the cannery where Molly is. She didn't want me to get lost. Just as well. He turned the paper over and started keying in the lock numbers, feeling like a thief, mysterious and dark and not a little excited.

        The door yielded quietly and Sean stuffed the paper back down in his coat pocket, slipping into the dark room.

        So this was Pops' old haunt. Not much to look at, just a bare large room with barbells and weight benches and such. A low-class old gym. None of the puterized geometric tensioners, nor any treads or cardiomonitors. Still, it had a certain style, an ancient feel of sweat and stubbornness. He could see why his dad liked it.

        Couldn't see Dahm in a place like this, though.

        Sean tried to slink across the hardwood floor, but his innate bounce rather ruined the effect. Bouncing and theivery just didn't seem to go together very well. He might be a tennis pro someday, but he would surely never make a burgler.

        Across the room lay the office Ram had mentioned. She had said he would find a proper sword in there. Good, the door was ajar and hardly creaked as he entered. He was a little diverted being so near both his parents. They were so "loud" and so alike lately, they stormed his sensitivities like a bludgeon.

        Just enough light washed through the high window that Sean did not have to stumble through the office to make the far wall, where the swords were displayed around a drawing that he recognized from their two decades at the Abbey. Pops must have brought it from his study. Well, it's too late to teach me all the names of the ginzus, Pops. Samurai Sean is going to have to fake this one battle of his soon-to-be-over warriorship.
 

        Sean lifted down one of the blades at random and wrapped his hand around the hilt. No, it didn't feel right. He replaced it and tried another, and another, and a fourth. What had Ram said?

        He dropped the fourth as the overhead light flipped on and an-all-too-familiar voice greeted him, "Nay, Lad. That one has no likin' fer yer hand."

        Sean leaned over, picked up the sword, and replaced it on the wall. "I'm sorry, Father," he mumbled.

        "Try this one," Duncan reached around his son's right shoulder and waited for Sean to reach up and take the sword.

        "Oh," Sean exclaimed. "Yes, like that." He curled his fingers around the knobby hilt, just the right texture, just the right width and weight. He turned around to thank his father, wondering what punishment would come.

        None did. Duncan acted as if their fight, now three days' cold, had never been.

        "Oh, my God!" Sean took his first real look at the blade. "Oh, Pops, I couldn't. Not after--No." He lifted the blade reverently and offered it back.

        "You do not need to worry about its temper, Son," Duncan said softly. "After Connor's sword, I thought to have ours tested for flaws, deteriorations of tensile moment, other things which would tell us they were safe to use. Dahm had to send his to Spain to have the blade redone, but this one is so wonderfully young in its spring and substance that it will serve you probably as many years as it has served me."

        Sean's gaze darted nervously around, trying to avoid his father's face and the miserable fit of weeping he felt sure that such a sight would engender. His eyes caught on the bundle by the door. His racket and a suitcase, doubtless full of his clothes, and a Christmas present, left over from their very odd celebration, three days before. "You packed my things," he said.

        "I tried to pick the things you would want. I'll send the rest when you are settled, Son," the Highlander sounded awkward and embarrassed. Each word had been studied and practiced.

        Sean felt so sorry he had brought the clan chief to this pass. He didn't really know what to say, what to do, standing there with his father's sword in his hand and feeling too young to be a man just yet. "The present was for you, Pops. Just a gag gift I had made the last time I was in Couver, visiting Kyle." Oh, that was surely stupid, Sean thought, wishing to bring the words back and start over again. How could he have offered that sorry gift in proximity to this wealth which filled his grasp? My father's own sword, he kept saying to himself, over and over again, as if to make the miracle understandable, or even the slightest bit real.

        "Can I open it?" Duncan asked, reaching for the present.

        "Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, Pops."

        Sean's ears buried themselves between his shoulders. His father was going to despise him for this. Here Duncan MacLeod had given his troublesome and traitorous son his most prized possession, and what had Sean given in return?

        There was a momentary silence as Duncan tore the wrapping and lifted out the simple cotton undershirt. He unfolded it before him looking at the front, and then the back. He burst into great gouts of happy laughter. "Oh, Sean! It's perfect! You are just g0ing to have to prepare yourself to be hugged."

        "You liked it?"  Sean gasped, incredulously, tipping the sword down and to the side, out of his father's way.

        "Oh, I do. I do. It's so you, Sean," Duncan chuckled, holding the shirt up and reading:
 

I walked through hell, unarmed,
I defeated Ahriman all by myself,
I saved the world for the new millennium...

And all I got was
this lousy T-shirt.
 

        "...and this wonderful son," Duncan finished with a line of his own.

        "Why aren't you angry at me?" Sean wiggled back out of Duncan's second hug in as many minutes.

        "I am," Duncan said evenly. "And maybe later we will argue again, but right now something more important needs to be done, and angry or no, I always love you, Sean."

        "Well, unless you want to teach me how to fight with a sword in ten minutes or less," Sean snorted, trying to cover his terrible and sudden feeling of tenderness. "I am out of here. I have a deed to do."

        "I am sure there is nothing more I can teach you, Son."

        "Yeah. My own fault, really. I should have let you teach me back when I was twelve, Pops. To0 late to be a swordsman now."

        "But you already are, Sean. Doesn't that sword feel familiar?"

        Now that Pops mentioned it, Sean thought, it does at that. He fingered the hilt, trying to think of what it reminded him. He flipped it up the other way with the grinning dragon pointed up towards the ceiling. Wrapping his fingers round the hilt, he brushed his thumb lightly over the dragon's chin. Surely his father didn't mean...

        "Oh, Sean...God but I am going to miss you," Duncan sighed. "No, that's not what I meant. Amazing. I never noticed that particular similarity before. Dahm will bust his belly over that one. No, Son, you don't have to be taught anything. You are already a fine swordsman. The very best student I ever taught."

        "Huh?" Sean replaced his hand, more properly on the sword and followed his father out into the main room. "What are you saying? Past that first time you tried to get me to work with the wooden swords, I have never had a sword lesson in my life."

        Duncan did not answer. He'd retrieved a long, thin can from Sean's things at the office door. Swooosh, the can sang as the Highlander pulled open its tab. "Heads up!" he shouted and turned suddenly towards his son.

        The flourescent yellow ball came looping towards him in a high arc. Without really thinking, Sean met it with the flat of his racket--except it wasn't his racket, but the blade, which met the ball and it exploded with a little puffft, which might have driven him back. Sean, the tennis-pro wannabe never stepped back. His game was attack, attack, and attack, in that order. The sword flipped over and he backhanded the second ball, taking out the third and final ball with a deadly overhand smash.

        Before he quite knew what had happened, Sean stood in the middle of three pitiful little yellow husks.

        And before him stood his father, an enormous Claymore extending from his hand as if it had grown there.

        "Time to come up to the net, Sean," Duncan said, moving forward.

        The katana wooshed as Sean automatically cocked it for the answering two-handed back.

        His father was right.

        It was time.

        Sean kicked the tennis ball remnants away and moved in to engage "at the net." They always tried to drive him back, to keep him deep in the court, even the adults. It was the only way they had a chance against him on the court. When Sean came to the net, it was all over. That was where the bounce found its reason. You couldn't drive anything past him or over him, and everything he returned would be right down your throat and fast as most folks served.

        Both men were soon laughing with glee as they tested and teased and felt each other's mettle and metal.

        A goodly portion of the hour had passed and the sun come fully risen before they just stopped and shook each other's hands.  Sean went to pick up his things while Duncan put Sean's new sword, his old, into the sheath that had known it since its birth.

        "Goodby, Sean," Duncan handed him the sword at the front door. "Good luck."

        "Thanks to you," Sean surrendered to yet another hug. "I will have more than good luck to go with me, Duncan."

        "You will always have that," Duncan agreed, giving him one final squeeze.

        Duncan stood staring at the closed front door long after Sean had left. He did not turn around as his lanky paramour sauntered up behind him.

        "Love the shirt," Adam commented.

        "Yeah," Duncan answered, his eyes never leaving the door.

        "Did you do it?" Adam asked, so close to his ear, the Highlander could feel the Old Man's breath on his neck.

        Duncan's whole frame slumped. He didn't answer aloud. He lifted his hand up, so Adam could see.

        Between the index and middle fingers was prisoned a tiny scrap of paper, with Ram's writing on it, the numbers to the dojo lock and the address where Sean was headed.

        "Oh, tell me you're not going to feel guilty about this," Adam sneered.

        "Right after we follow him and see he doesn't get himself killed," Duncan replied. Then he added,

        "Right after I get over how strange it was to hear him call me 'Duncan.' "

        While the rest of the compound was out beating the bounds for the wayward Facet Molly, Lady-in-Waiting Mary MacLeod strolled leisurely into the sultry temple, part solarium, part reflecting pool, which Thomas Cross called "The Library." Fashioned like a Roman bath, tiers and marble pillars and clerestory, it was a tropical haven from the depth of winter, and Mary's favorite place to nap after breakfast.

        She curled her gravid frame against a warm marble wall and drifted away on the heavy, moist air and the soft burbling of the aerator.

        "You seem weary, Beloved," Malak's pale arms enfolded her and the anxious flutter of his wings strobed the sunlight.

        "Easy, Malak," Mary yawned. "I'm just feeling---." She thought a moment. "Placid. I'm feeling fat and lazy and placid as a pregnant sloth."

        "Ah, you've been conversing with the Sweet One," Malak observed. He had grown very fond of the Mayor's wife and her pithy metaphors.

        "Not lately, Malak," Mary sighed. "Lately, no one seems to want to slow down, and I can't seem to speed up. They just all go rushing by me. I know they will regret that when I'm gone, but I can't help it. I want them to understand there's not much more time left, but I don't have the heart to frighten them. Though I doubt they would believe me, in any case."

        "What are those?" The great wings furled and Malak laid his cheek against Mary's, remarking on the tiny, bright globes which floated in the air before them.

        "Oh, Silly, you did those to go with--" Mary looked around. They were in a forest, deep and cool, bedded in soft moss, with a tiny crystal stream running off into the shadows. "Oh," she said. "They don't really go at all." Malak went to such trouble to fashion these romantic backgrounds, she really ought to pay more attention, she reminded herself. So long as he was there, though, it really didn't matter where she was.

        "Oh, I know," Mary said suddenly. "Of course! Those are the fishermen's floats Ram gave me for Christmas. I just opened them last night. She left them on my pillow. I suppose they are toys for the children."

        Malak reached his lovely hand forward and let one of the globes float on his upraised palm. "Fishermen's floats?"

        "Yes, Bird. They're blown glass hollow spheres used to float the edges of the nets. Very old. I don't think they are made anymore. They're very expensive. You know Mr. MacLeod banished Ram."

        "I was there, Beloved," Malak's melodious voice reminded her.

        "Of course," Mary sighed. "You should be pregnant once, Malak. You would understand how fuzzy my brains are these days."

        "I was, Beloved," Malak set the globe down in the stream and it floated away, the other four following.

        "Really?" Mary craned around to stare. "Oh, yes, Dr. Piersen."

        The wide white wings drooped a bit and Malak's fair face slanted downward, but he said nothing.

        "I am sorry, Bird," Mary snuggled close to his chest, on the left side of the deep wing keel, near his heart. "And Sean, too," she added. "It breaks my heart that you could not have known--that is, that someone dear and tender--that someone who took great care with you--that--" Mary's stammering dissolved into little gulps of sympathetic sorrow. It seemed so unfair that Malak's introduction to sex had been so violent and hurtful, while hers, in his kind hands, had been a gentle and exquisite bliss.

        "Oh, but I did know," Malak stroked her pale hair and leaned over her protectively. "I did, Little Mary.

        "I was there."

---

Here's tae us.
Wha's like us?
Damn few
And they're a' deid.

                          -Scottish toast

        "Mary?"

        Mary snuggled more deeply into the old bathrobe that Master Xavier had loaned her, softest flannel.

        "Mary, please," the voice repeated.

        "What is it?" Mary asked a little sharply, leaving her dear Bird behind her and reluctantly making her way back into the waking world. "Yes? Oh, Mother," she said. "What? My but you're dressed up. Did I miss something?"

        Anne leaned forward and patted Mary's pale hands awkwardly. "We're leaving, Honey. I wanted to say goodbye."

        "Leaving?" Mary blinked her eyes and sat up as straight as her gravidity would allow. "But I thought--"

        "I'm sorry, Mary," Dr. Lindsey, now Stoner, sighed softly and unbuttoned her suit jacket. "I thought so too, but I can't stay. I just can't. I know we haven't gotten along as--," Anne shook her grey-peppered curls. "No, I didn't come to apologize. I raised you the best I knew how to. I know you missed your father. I did too. I just wanted to wish you all the best with--with your new family, Dear, and, well, and--if you need anything--um, Stoner will leave a number where--."

        "It's all right, Mom," Mary smiled and took Anne's thin hands in her own. "I know you love me. If you can't stay, then you can't. I'm glad you have Tony to be with you, Mom. Really. I know Dad is. He is always saying--"

        The sudden  disgust which drew across Anne's features silenced Mary's gentle offerings.

        "You could just think of me as another crazy pregnant lady," Mary suggested. She felt a momentary pang of sadness to see the great care with which her mother had applied just a little too much makeup to her aging features. While everyone else in this place was younger looking than they actually were, poor Anne seemed older than her fifty-some years. Much older. The dreadful uneasiness between them only made it worse.

        Beloved. Malak whispered, Ask her.

        "Mother?" Mary couldn't help reaching up and smoothing her hand through her mother's hair.

        "Yes?" Anne drew back and straightened her hair where her daughter had mussed it.

        As easily as that, Mary thought, they will wipe away any trace of my being here, and they will do it without conciousness or will, just reflex. They will wonder very soon just exactly how I looked or what my voice sounded like. Very soon after that, they won't even wonder any more. "Mother? Why did you refuse the covenant with Ram?"

        Anne stood up nervously, flapping the front of her jacket. "This place is so hot," she complained.

        "Why, Mom?"

        "Don't ask me, Mary," Anne stood over Mary, lined in the glare of the clerestory windows, all featureless shadow.

        "Please," Mary said, settling her hands together in her lap and staring down at them.

        "I don't want our last conversation to be an argument, Mary Lindsey MacLeod."

        "Then just tell me, and I'll promise to be still and not argue at all," Mary replied, trying not to giggle at the invocation of all three names.

        "I can't stay here," Anne panted. "It's too hot. All right then, Honey. It's this: I fought--you cannot know how hard I fought--to have a normal life. And I did. For a while. For a while," she repeated wistfully. "Then Mark and Duncan, and--" Anne shook her head. "I had stepped into the middle of a terrible nightmare. Monsters everywhere."

        "Even me," Mary filled in for Anne. "That must have been frightening."

        "I did not refuse to--the covenant, as you put it," Anne paused and gasped for breath as if she would never continue again. Then she finished. "It was the price of your life, Mary. When Malak awoke to save you, that time when you were so ill and everything we did was killing you. Malak went to hell. That was his price for your life. I gave up my chance for immortality."

        "Oh, Mother!" Mary levered her arms behind her, trying to rise.

        Anne's hands lifted palm forward. "I didn't want it anyway, Mary. All of my life has been about dying. It would have destroyed what I was to have that taken from me. It would have been like dying." Anne leaned over and caught her breath. "Too hot to stay. Good luck, Honey."

        "Say goodbye to Judge Stoner for me," Mary spoke quietly, finally getting the leverage she needed to rise. She accompanied her mother to the door and out into the bracing winter afternoon, where she stood at the entry and watched her mother struggle her way across the garden. "Thank you for saving me, Mom," she said.

        Mary watched her mother stop and begin coughing. Stoner rushed across the garden, but Anne waved him off and she took several deep breaths.

        When Dr. Lindsey was composed again, she returned to her daughter.

        "I was watching you sleep, Mary," Anne said. "I thought how much I wished it had been different between us. I wanted you to know how very precious you are to me, not for any other reason, but that you knew how much you meant. I have done many things in my life, Mary, but--" Anne was as near to crying as Mary had ever seen her.

        It was a little frightening. She'd always thought of her mother as indomitable.

        "--when I had you, Mary," Anne continued, "I knew," she laughed and started coughing again. "In the middle of that crumbled building, with Duncan MacLeod as midwife. Oh, dear. Even then I think I knew that I had finally done that thing which I was meant for..."

        "...you."

        Judge Stoner kept a respectful distance, midway across the garden, as Mother and Daughter embraced in the ethereal cloud of the balneary's steam as it layered across the pristine snow. A testament to his considerable will that he did not rush to Anne's side, lift her up and carry her away from this place.

          All this time after the fact, Molly still did not know how to think of that part of her life, the portion before she had entered into covenant with the Dragon's Crystal. She did not even have a proper term for how she had chosen to live her life then. Now, she was a Facet. Then--well, she had been something of a vocational slave, she thought, a "sub," but not a sleek and steely denizen of the deep, no. Sub for submissive, a power broker in the game of relationships, a power broker on the wrong side of the trade.

        Another person, Molly thought, a whole life ago. Who would have thought it might benefit me so far into the future, or ever, for that matter. Slave, she had been, by her own design, or lack thereof--a very, very skilled slave. Those skills served her well now. Little Molly was in control.

        Simply because this old man with the thick accent was such an incompetent master.

        Simply because she could be such a consummate slave.

        Molly exercised her fingers. That was almost true. True enough, if one did not count the fact that she was only bait, and not the reason this old man had caught her at MacLeod's cabin and dragged her back to Seacouver, to this dingy cell someplace on the stinking bay front. This old man, Nicolae Breslaw, he said he was, wanted the Highland Chieftain, not this mousy little foot soldier.

        Oh, he had tried to frighten her in the beginning, but he had no heart for it. Molly's silent obedience seemed to unnerve him. She was so reminded of her old life that she hardly heard his questions past the initial "What are you to Duncan MacLeod?"

        There was something about an Ingid and something else about a skinhead who'd been killed by one of his own, back in the nineties. He had cut her once, not very deeply, on her left arm. Then he had waited several minutes, watching her bleed, and then he had bound her wound with a terse efficiency that bespoke disappointment.

        The old man, Breslaw, had not touched her since.

        Aside from the very thick--Germanic, she thought--accent, his questions made no sense, and he droned them on endlessly, lulling her back into the past, to her first days as Facet when she went to live with the Master of Cross Estates, the owner of The Drieg.

        Molly could see now that had been a time of recovery and withdrawal. All she could see then was that Thomas Cross, whom they also called Xavier, was the stupidest master she had ever known. For someone supposedly so knowing in the ways of discipline and mastery, Thomas did not seem to have a clue. She had to pretend he had ordered this or that, when he had said nothing, pretend he had threatened, when he had not so much as raised one of those diminutive mahogany hands of his. She had to kneel in the corner on her own volition because he did not bind her, nor set her on a "stay."

        It had been awful. The energy entailed in trying to maintain him as her Master had been almost more than little Molly could manage. He just never could seem to take control. Time and again, she would have to remind Master Thomas of his place in her scheme of things. She would act out this or that infraction, just to get his attention, but he never seemed to notice. Molly had left her old master to join the Facets. She loved the computers and the hours upon hours of work that seemed tedious to the others, helping out Thomas as he sorted through what was then only remnants of the Watchers' Network.

        Molly couldn't remember the exact day it had happened. Morning, very early, she was sure of that. Deep beneath the Cross Estate compound, of this she was also sure. All else was as imprecisely recorded as the Network Chronicles had been, scattered hither and yon in the HQ Central printer caches.

        She had looked up from her keyboard, rubbed her eyes, and demanded Thomas bring her some coffee if he expected to get the third century data base done before noon.

        And Thomas, bless his heart, had done just exactly that, laughing the whole while.

        Now, twenty years later, Molly could so easily see how he had lead her into a more insidious slavery, bound her in unbreakable chains from which she would never be free, nor ever want to be. She could see now how awesomely commanding he had really been.

        But all Molly had known then was her abject longing for a truly excellent Master, like a knight who seeks after The Grail.

        She only knew she had found it that day, the Master of Masters.

        Herself.

        "Merry Christmas, Molly." Smooth, cool fingers pressed lightly over Molly's tired eyes and her thoughts scudded back to the present.

        "Ram?" Molly instantly lost her feeling of command. She knew Breslaw wouldn't hurt her, so long as she was useful to him. Ram, on the other hand, had vowed to kill Molly if  she ever got within her line of site again. Well, the order to stay away had been definite enough. The penalty was only assumed.

        "Lord?" Even Molly's voice trembled.

        "Oh, Molly," the somber, low tones moaned solicitously, "What has this fiend done to you?"

        Molly couldn't open her eyes even after the slender hands had left them to undo the straps at her wrists. Ram had said something about their being within eyesight of each other, that that was never to happen again. Maybe if she couldn't see Ram, at least half of the promise could be kept and she would get off with a beating. All Molly could see behind her own lids was the vision of Ram, manifest, as she had been at the Drieg Tower, the day of the covenant--leathern wings, gild scales.

        Those claws, Molly thought suddenly, Those terrible, terrible claws.

        "Molly? Honey?" the words called out so tenderly that Molly opened her eyes.

        "Yes?" Molly asked. "Oh, Ram, I am so, so sorry. I never meant--I only--I really didn't want to--"

        "Molly, Molly," her name made a song of absolution and strong arms pulled her down off the chair to cradle her on the Dragon's thighs.

        Facet Molly curled in against the slow thudding of the Dragon's heart and wept for the first time since her kidnapping.

        "I am sorry I frightened you, Molly," Ram rocked gently, running her long fingers through Molly's fair tangles. "I suppose I am no one's idea of an heroic rescue."

        Molly shuddered and sniffed loudly. "But I am seeing you and you are seeing me, and you said--."

        Ram's hawkish nose brushed Molly's forehead. "I was quite a grump that day, for certain and sure, Molly. I hope you did not take it too seriously. You know how dragons can be."

        No, I don't, Molly said silently to herself, and, praise God, I hope I never shall. "I am all right, Ram," she said aloud. "The man who kidnapped me--"

        "Breslaw. Yes, I know, Molly. You are sure he didn't hurt you? Can you stand?"

        "Of course I can," Molly said indignantly as she climbed off Ram's knees and proceeded to demonstrate.

        "I brought you a change of clothes," Ram said lightly. "As soon as you can get them on, we need to make tracks, as Sweet would say."

        While Molly changed, they chatted about how Kyle was doing as the newest Facet, and how Joe's bar was faring in the hands of Dragon and Margaret and Molly herself. Ram related the good news about Duncan and Adam coming back together without killing each other...

        Gentle, happy banter and gossip, as if they had been friends from birth.

        As if they were in some pink powder room of a posh hotel and not the stark and moldy cement of this cold prison.

        As if the particulars of their conversation and situation were not odd beyond belief.

---



        Sean MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod found the warehouse building, even though he couldn't seem to find the paper Ram had given him. A block down the street from The Drieg, she had said--not a difficult location to remember. There it stood, an ancient cement slab, rising from the filthy snow, five--no, six--stories.

        No, seven stories, Sean thought. The seventh being his own tale, The Rescue of the Facet Molly and Sean's Great Feat of Daring Do. Had a nice ring, at that--something to tell Mary's child when he was older. Or Mary's children, he corrected himself. Maybe she was carrying twins.

        He surely wouldn't be telling the tikes about this part. Just at the moment, Sean was busy driving down the long bayside road and left, up the alley, and then over on the cross-street, down the one-way, and back onto the bayside street again, in a seemingly endless repetitive loop. It had sounded like such a splendid idea, a fearless rescue, his chance to be, finally, a noble warrior, in the tradition of his father, and his grandfather, before him. The Rescue of Molly, a fine deed, a hero's quest perilous...

        Left, up the alley.

        Sean patted the katana, nestled on the seat beside him, his trusty sword, the sword of his father, Duncan.

        Left, down the backstreet.

        It had just never occurred to him there would be such a mundane thing like planning involved. Sean really didn't have a clue how he was going to get into the building, let alone find little Molly, and get them both out without any serious harm to either of them, though he was willing enough to take the blows if it came to that. Well, maybe willing was a stretch. Sean supposed he could stand being hurt. He tried to remember what it had felt like at the wedding, when Malak had thrown the short blade that pierced his lung, the same blade Robert had removed and replaced in his heart. Sean tried to recall his First Death, but it all seemed a blurred pane of profound emotional wrenchings and his stubborn focus on Dahm's incantation at the altar. By the time the knife entered him the second time, Sean was already so heart-wounded, he had hardly felt it.

        All well and good, Sean thought as he parked Kyle's little electric at the backstreet curb, All well and good to have learned how to play tennis so well. He did have a killer game at that, but they didn't come over the net after you with any other intention but to shake your hand. What if he died doing this?

        He cut back down the alley on foot, looking for some way to get into the silent grey mausoleum. He tucked the katana through his belt and reached high above him, where he caught an edge of the molding that circled the building. With no little bit of huffing and cursing--all in a whisper, as if he hadn't more than announced his intentions, circling the building several dozen times--Sean struggled up onto the narrow ledge and began side-stepping towards the deep seam in the cement face.

        What if he died doing this?

        Worse, what if he got hurt badly? Except for the wedding, not six months ago, his entire life had been all but painless. He wasn't sure how he'd react outside of the singular circumstance where he was distracted by a stolen bride and his own murderous plans for retribution.

        Sean surveyed the vertical gap between the cement slabs that mantled the warehouse. It was a four inch trench of shadow and dust. Somewhere deep at the building's old empty heart there was still enough warmth to keep the trench free of ice, even on this cold morning. Sean curled his fingers and sank them into the trench, bringing them slowly into a tight fist. Yes, the width was right. He could fist his way up the side of the building if he were very careful and he didn't cramp halfway up. The Abbey stronghold of his childhood had not afforded many pastimes, but rock climbing there had been prime--the times he could slip away from his parents and go clambering up the sheer rock face of his old home.

        Repositioning the katana through one of his back belt loops, he reached above him, engaged his fist and lifted, bracing his feet against the crack and beginning his rise up the stony steep side. The yammering uncertainties quieted as his mind focused on each placement, each purchase,  up and up, away from the world, out of himself.

        Halfway up the monolith, Sean came back to himself enough to remember to quiet his "aura," the signature power surge which would announce his presence to any other Immortals in the near vicinity. A faint image of a cookie went drifting past his consciousness, as it always did when he "quieted down." He supposed that was how Dahm had taught him the trick. Sean might have wished for a more noble trigger, but he'd had no say in it at the time, and it was now too late to change.

        He was still fussing over the "cookie trick" when he topped out on the snow-drifted roof and looked back to survey the city of  'Couver, laid out in a certain grimy splendor of old snow, sparkling ice, and morning glow. He retrieved the katana from his belt and lifted it a few inches from its sheath, just to make sure it would come free easily. It flowed into his hand as if it were happy to be out in the air. The bright edged flashed in his eyes and Sean's heart was suddenly gripped with a terror that dropped him to his knees and drove his breath out in a dense, vaporous cloud.

        The fear had no form, nor reason, nor even any apparent point of origin, but it made him tremble all over so badly that Sean wondered he had not wet his pants. He only thanked the Dear Lord that he was alone...

        ...so terribly alone.

---

        Adam lowered the digital binocs. "Well, I think he's stopped circling the building," he announced to Duncan MacLeod's back, currently bent over the trunk of the ancient T-bird, and muttering in muffled Gaelic tones of nervousness and ire.

        "Oh, there," Adam peered again through the virtual lenses. "Damn!"

        "What?" Duncan spun round. "What?" he repeated, more urgently.

        "Hey!" Adam lurched forward into the Highlander's chest as the binocs lifted to the solemn brown eyes and the leather strap, still round the Elder Immortal's thin neck, jerked him up against Sean's anxious father.

        The binocs were just as suddenly released and Adam righted himself. "You're welcome," he snorted, rubbing his neck.

        Mac shook his head and returned to sorting out the artillery in the T's trunk. "Maybe he'll fall half way up and we can  scoop him off the sidewalk and go back to the loft for a toddy."

        "Not that mountain goat," Adam contradicted. "I wonder if he knows what he'll do when he gets up to the roof?"

        Mac secreted his claymore beneath his long coat, squirming around until the cross portion of the hilt settled more comfortably under his arm. "Here," he handed the bastard behind him to the Real Old Bastard of the Bunch, as he had baptized his consort, when he first gave Adam the substitute for the gild affair he usually sported. The Lochinvar, or whatever it was, fussy jeweled hilt and all, was still in Europe being fitted for a new blade.

        "What do you suppose he'll find on the roof anyway?" Adam asked, squinting his eyes as he tried to focus on the roof of the old warehouse, across the bay. "Maybe an unlocked door?"

        "Then, Old Man," Duncan slipped in behind the steering wheel and flourished towards the empty passenger seat. "We had better get down there and unlock one for him."

        "Why does that sound oh so easy," Adam sighed, as he folded his long legs into the T and just barely got the door shut before the old black car whined its tires into the ice, found bedrock and spun off down the road, towards the field of battle.

---

        Ram berated herself once again. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." The words rang round her skull even as she tidily ticked off all the other responsibilities which she should be seeing to this day:

        Sean was on the roof of the warehouse. Poor child, she thought lovingly, wishing she could help him through the fear, knowing all the while it was best she stand aside.

        Or, in this instance, lie aside.

        Adam and the Chieftain were speeding towards the warehouse through the empty early morning streets of Seacouver's secondary wharf. There, they had just passed Thomas' Drieg Tower leather palace, closed down for the holidays, locked up tight as a dragon clad in iron.

        As I am clad, if only because these restraints are reinforced with steel meshwork.

        Sweet Mary, sound asleep in the balneary. Rest, Beloved. I will soon return.

        This very day, in fact. Just as soon as I am done with this stupid, stupid mistake.

        And Molly safe--for the moment--as safe as anyone ever was who lay in the arms of Chaos.

        Well, not this arm. Not now. Not with it laid out its limits on the tilted steel table that still smelled of the countless dead fish who had lost their heads and entrails here. Not with the myriad pins and prods mapped out across the brachial plexus like a fisher's net, floating on a sea of deepest red. Ram still could not decide whether they had merely guessed she was left-handed and begun the vivisection on her left arm out of a greater cruelty, or whether they meant some meager kindness and had chosen not to injure what they might have thought was the dominant extremity.

        Either answer seemed ridiculous beyond believing.

        Neither answer would be relevant in any case, seeing she was ambidextrous, but, like the grizzled man who stood before her, half-disgusted by what his henchmen had done so far, it was another mystery, something into which her quick mind could sink its very pointy teeth.

        She watched him dismiss the others, turn off the electrodes, and pull a dingy sheet over her as if he were tucking in a child.

"You are very strange," the man said, turning away to close the door.         Ram considered his words. He was foolish to have said them, but no matter. Though he did not fully understand what a precarious position he held, still he was keen enough of wit to sense danger. "You look for something with as much diligence and industry as you have shown, Detective Breslaw, you cannot expect that it will be ordinary when you find it."         The grey brows raised as he turned back towards her. "You know my name then? More and more strange. You think you know what I am looking for, yes?"         "I am what you seek, Detective," Ram grimaced as she shifted her weight rightward, away from the carved and flayed extremity, hanging more of her weight on the uninjured arm.         He leaned very low over the end of the table and whispered near her ear, "You do know we will kill you before this is done?"         Ram could only be grateful he stood behind her and could not see her heroic struggle to keep from laughing aloud. If you could do that, Nicolae, Old Man, I should bless you all your days, she thought. Aloud she said, "No, Nicolae, you will more likely be dead, if you do not pay attention. I have decided you are too valuable an asset to waste..."

        "Be still!" the voice blew over her face in a strained hissing. "Tell me where MacLeod is, and, if you know, what he is, and I will end this gently for you. There will be no more pain, no more testing."

        "My results being too confusing in any case," Ram finished helpfully, or so she intended. "Why are you so interested in MacLeod?" Having refused to even speak his name before now, despite Breslaw's persuasive hacks and their dissections, the sound of the Highlander's name on the scrawny woman's dry lips rang in the Detective's ears like a choir.

        "Let me tell you a story," he began...

        "Oh, not if it's that bit of drek about your poet father in Bavaria, or--How does that go again?" Ram yawned.

        "You are insane," Breslaw pronounced with the same certainty he might have said the sun had just risen, not as judgment, or even as commentary, but only as simple fact.

        "And you never had a father," Ram said in the exact same tone of truth, "poet or otherwise. Your accent sounds like Czechoslovak--lowly born, at that."

        Breslaw might have bristled at the slur, but the years had exhausted even that response and he only sighed quietly. "Perhaps," he acceded.  "I was with Interpol, two decades ago, now. They gave me an award for dying in action. I was shot, you see...but I did not die. Friends are so strange when they think you are dead and you come back to them. There was a man I had worked with...when I approached him, he tried to shoot me again, he was so frightened. After that, I moved away. For a very long time, I could make no sense of what had happened to me..."

        Ram's attention drifted away from the pain, from his sonorous tale and the delicate way his thin lips struggled with a language he had learned too late in his childhood. He wasn't actually speaking to her, but more to himself, chronicling aloud the long journey he had taken trying to discover what he was, whence he had come, and why. It was clear he had brought all of his considerable skills as a detective to bear on this most important search.

        And Seacouver by the Bay had emerged as the center of the search, the big red "X" on the map of his missing identity, and MacLeod, the treasure therein.

        Mary still slept.

        Sean had found an unlocked door on the roof of the warehouse.

        MacLeod had found a convenient door off the warehouse alley, and Adam had picked the lock.

        Mayor and 'Couver First Lady Dawson were just now waking and making arrangements to drive into town, to fit up Joe's old bar--now Striker's--for a Blues Reunion and New Year's celebration there, to be held after the more suitable ball at the Mayor's manse. Striker had brought them breakfast in bed and was even now offering to drive them into Seacouver, just as soon as they were ready.

        The Stoners were already speeding southward towards the Bay Town.

        Thomas Cross and Grant, Margaret and Hello Allen, the former Drieg Tender at Bar, were all headed for the Drieg Tower, down the block from the warehouse. The coffee would be on, and a wonderful breakfast for the heroes, when they returned from their rescue.

        Molly was beginning to wonder what was taking Sean so long, but she was otherwise well.

        And Nicolae Breslaw was still going on about Henning and the Knacker and all the strange doings in 'Couver and Paris which seemed to revolve around the Chieftain, MacLeod, and his motley gathering of very odd folk. Then he launched into the list of Immortals he had stalked and caught, tested and killed--or, more correctly, arranged to have killed. After the first Quickening, he had thought better of personally participating in the assasinations. He had amassed a wealth of information, from the Immortals themselves, as they understood themselves to be.

        From their flesh, he had gathered all sorts of information regarding  the time required for regeneration, if not the exact mechanism for this. Currently Breslaw was involved with observing those tissues which healed over the longest time frame, the nervous system, trying to establish, by observation, some clue to the overall process.

        His central purpose, then, Ram mused, had not been torture. On the other hand, Breslaw had not failed to enrich his knowledge base by the tormented babblings of the unfortunate Immortals whom he had captured over the years.

        Of course, Ram thought, My arrival has thrown all his careful observations into the proverbial cocked hat. I survived the shooting spree when Molly got away, so I must be an Immortal, but I don't buzz, so I must be a peculiar Immortal, and then all these tests are going nowhere. I haven't regenerated an iota since they started carving. I'm making them all nervous because I don't cry out or scream or beg when they hurt me.

        And that spell of laughing, when the younger one slipped and cut himself, about undid them all.

        I could try to explain it to them, Ram thought. They would really think me insane then. Hell was so hard to describe and Men were so immune to the delight of the Darker Comedies, the Dragon's Iron. Besides, she had more important things to discuss with this lost Immortal son of the long-dead Danae.

        "Breslaw," she interrupted a seemingly homey tale about destiny or something. "There is very little time, so just listen to me. I choose to overlook your deeds of the past several decades, in favor of your keen mind and what used to be your sense of honor, in the days when you still thought you knew what the world was about. No, just listen. I want to offer--."

        Breslaw gripped her maimed arm through the sheet.

        Your choice, Ram decided silently as she tried to muster some semblance of an appropriate howl.

        Considering how frustrated Ram was with her inability to make anything go right this day, it wasn't all that difficult.

---

        Sean wrapped himself in his arms and tried to stop the shivering that had nothing to do with his kneeling, hip-deep in the snow on the old warehouse roof, six stories above the wharf. The flash of his father's blade in the rising sun had so unnerved him, he could not even breathe properly. Every inspiration was a raspy, shuddering mess. He had always taken his father's courage for granted, but now he saw it in terrible, glaring clarity.

        And his brother, Dahm, as well, walking straight into the hail of bullets to free the barge and take Sean to safety.

        He had just assumed that was what his family did. They grew to manhood and the bravery was part of the whole process, like shaving, and wet dreams, and all the other grownup stuff. He had thought marriage would make him a husband, but that hadn't been so, either. Nobody had told him it would be this awful.

        Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. All those long walks with Ram on the beach this summer past, those edgy commentaries on this or that bothersome exigency. He'd more or less blown them off like the snow zephyrs of this lofty perch blowing now round his very cold ears and across his tear-strewn cheeks.

        It had fallen to Sean's mother to tell him the hard-hearted ways of the world. If he'd only listened.

        Sean couldn't help it. Some visceral connection between the blade's edge and a time, five winters back, when he had cut his tongue on an old-fashioned envelope, trying to fashion a real birthday letter for his father. He'd spit blood the rest of the afternoon, so much, he had a fleeting sensation he might die from it. An absurd fear, to be sure, but it had been real to him at the time.

        He was going to be cut. He was going to be hurt. He might even be killed--everything he was and everything he loved stolen away in an instant.

        And this was how they felt, Duncan and Dahm? How in God's Name did they do this?

        They do it because it has to be done, he told himself. They do it for me and for all those whom they defend, not because they are without this same fear, but in spite of it.

        Sean bent forward and picked his father's sword up from where he'd dropped it. He struggled up to standing and drew his first deep breath since coming to this windblown eyrie. He wanted to will himself to be strong, to be brave, but the sting across his tongue, even in memory, still made him wince when he tried to bring the blade back out of its sheath. Ram had said something about this. If only he could remember.

        Yes, that joke she had made about the knights and their favored blades. How did it go?

        Ye ken neither wench nor weapon, till ye've been properly kissed--wench before bed, blade before battle.

        Sean pulled the katana free and held it up before his eyes, staring at his face in the polish of its length.

        "Kiss me," he spoke to the blade in a tremulous whisper.

        Then he closed his eyes tightly shut and stuck his tongue out and drew the razor edge across its surface.

        It hurt.

        His mouth filled with blood and sparkles.

        It was only pain, only that, and the moment it was real, the sensation lost its terror.

        The blood bubbled from his lips, warmed by the electric healing of his singular heritage.

        He sorted through the snow for some cleaner portion deeper in the drift and rinsed out his mouth.

        Sean pulled his sleeve forward over his hand and used it to clean the blade. The tremor had vanished.

        A stroll across the roof brought him to a service door, hiding in a stand of steel pipes and exhaust vents. It was unlocked.

        Sean stepped through, gauging the level of his fear.

        Still there, but with a difference, he thought.

        I know you now, he mused.

        I own you now...

        ...and not the other way round.

---

Adam held back slightly as he followed the Highlander into the deserted building. He watched Duncan's nostrils begin to flare, sinking the sides of his nose, emphasizing its charmingly bulbed tip. He saw the strong hand dig in an inside pocket of the greatcoat, watched the other hand join it at the nape of Duncan's sinewy neck where they gathered his mane before diving back beneath the coat and pulling forth the impressive claymore.         The bronzed, broad features settled into an expression which might be mistaken in the uninitiated as benign, but Adam saw the bands writhing beneath the dark skin of his lover's jaw. He saw the glint of  the low light flashing from the dark orbs as the pupils dilated, in a different passion than Adam was used to beholding. The full lips were pressed thinner as the corners of Duncan's mouth began to curl, ever so slightly, in a parody of mirth.         And God Help you, Adam thought, if you are ever in a fight with this one and he shows you his teeth.         It was not a smile many men had survived.         Adam waited until the full fury had settled on the Highlander, lengthening the deliberate, stalking stride, like nothing so much as the tread of a great cat.         The Eldest Immortal envied his young friend the seamless grace with which he ascended as a true Prince of the Universe.          Adam was painfully reminded that he would never be such a prince, even though he was born out of the King of Chaos.

        He would never enter battle in this state of passion, this maddeningly sensual purpose of the primal hunter, limbs and senses alight with the First Fire.

        Adam let the last taste of Duncan's ascension linger on the shared palate of their unique bonding and then, when he was sure the Highlander could not feel it happening, he tore himself away.

        The sudden, gaping wound toppled the Elder Immortal against the nearest cement wall, driving his forehead into the cold, fish-stinking slab.

        As his lean frame crumpled and bent under the weight of his self-enforced division, Adam couldn't help appreciating the irony that such a dreadful reaving as this should be accompanied so blatantly by the smell of one of Sean's cookies.

---

Sean made his way silently down three levels of steel grate stairway before he felt the hair bristle up the back of his scalp with the signature of another Immortal, one level below him. With exquisite care, he slipped the katana from its sheath and held it away from his body, down at an angle in his right hand as he slipped out the stairwell door onto the catwalk of the third level. Sidling against the wall he made his way down the length of the old building, towards the open inside stair.         He was halfway down the walk before it struck him that the signature was neither fading nor increasing, another few steps before it occurred to him why this was. The Immortal was on a catwalk above him or below, just keeping pace with him.         Sean hadn't kept up the "quiet," and it was too late to turn off his aura now.         The katana danced little nervous circles in his hand as he gazed across the great open central area of the factory, measuring how far down the next catwalk was placed, by estimating its twin on the far wall.          Sean reasoned that if the man were above him, the disadvantage was too great for him to try to climb up for the engagement and it would be best for him to retreat a level. If the man were below...

        ...well, then, the battle was joined.

        He braced his left hand on the catwalk railing and bounded over, katana raised, his long coat billowing in a great, flying cape. He landed on the next walk down, in a deep, soundless flex, ready to spring.

        Before Sean could decide if he were lucky or no--having guessed rightly that the man was here on the second level catwalk--he caught sight of Molly, huddled behind the very large Immortal with the even larger sword, standing in the deep shadows. Sean wanted to demand that the brigand release little Molly, but he found his throat tightening in an unfamiliar rage and he was unable to speak. So he lifted the katana, two-handed, high above his right shoulder, tucked his chin down and focused all his attention at the place where the Immortal's eyes would appear, just as soon as the man moved forward, out of the shadows.

        Molly screeched and the man pushed her back against the wall with one hand while he pushed off his back foot and raised his gigantic sword in the other, advancing on Sean.

        Sean ducked under the overhand stroke and dove for Molly, pushing her farther down the walk, motioning for her to flee, but she seemed too stunned to move. He wheeled just in time to block the next stroke and the swords rang a brilliant, clanging harmony which echoed back and forth through the empty building, showering sparks and stirring the mote rays in eddies of light. Again and again, the blades met and rang, with no other counterpoint than the occasional grunt of the combatants, and little Molly, screeching.

        Sean reminded himself to flex his wrists between the blows, but they were beginning to cramp anyway, and his arms hurt all the way up to his shoulders. Like spending an entire afternoon returning near ace serves, one right after the other, with no rest at all. The Immortal just kept coming with remarkable speed for such a heavy sword. Twice now, Sean had managed to work his way back to Molly, to get her behind him, but each time the large Immortal had maneuvered her back, and the battle began to look more like  a tug of war.

        Sean was so focused, or exhausted, or both, that he did not at first sense the second Immortal, coming up behind him. When he did realize this, he dismissed it. There were rules to the Game, after all. Two Immortals engaged in combat were off limits to a third. Little comfort, though, Sean began to doubt his strength would last through this first encounter. He doubted he'd be able to fight another, not even counting whatever happened with the Quickening.

        He was still matching blow for blow and he'd yet to be wounded, but...

        Damnation! Sean lurched forward into the first Immortal as the second Immortal, babbling on nonstop, whacked him across the beam with the flat of his sword.

        Of all the impertinent--! Sean whirled quicker than thought and sliced into the second Immortal's thigh. There was a loud yelp, Molly screeched even louder, and the second man went down in a thrashing heap, all flailing legs and arms and indignant roarings.

        Sean bent down double just as a lateral blow whistled over his back. He spun towards the first Immortal, saw all that expanse of unprotected middle, and drove up with the katana, skewering the man clean through. His father's fine blade was so sharp it came back out just as easily as it had gone in. God Damn! He was going to win this thing after all!

        The large Immortal had dropped forward, the large blade clattering across the metal walk. Sean raised the katana above his head, trying to aim for a clean cut across the back of...

        Two things struck him simultaneously then:

        The hair tie at the back of the large Immortal's head was very like...

        The click and pop behind him was very like...

        His father's and a small caliber gunshot, in that order.

        And then the third thing struck him like a large fist somewhere deep in the middle of his chest.

        Before he could actually get his mind around the idea he'd been shot, let alone the idea that he'd almost killed his dad, Sean MacLeod had tipped forward, dead as dirt, onto the corpse of Duncan MacLeod.

---

Duncan MacLeod "woke" first and rolled Sean, unceremoniously, off his back, as he sucked the chill, fishy air deep into his lungs. That taken care of, he turned towards the still-dead Immortal. He recognized his katana almost before he recognized his son. "Sean!" He scooped the lad up onto his lap, rocking and saying his name over and over, in tones of comfort and apology, edged with a terror at how close they had both come to tragedy.         Sean struggled awake, still fighting, but his father's tears shocked him into stillness. He pushed off Duncan's lap and sat quietly on the floor before him. "I'm sorry, Pops. I didn't--."         In their mutual embarrassment, their gazes drifted laterally and the two MacLeods diverted their attention to Molly and Adam, three strides away from them.         The lanky Old Man was doing his best imitation of stoic patience while little Molly fussed and fretted, tending the wound in his thigh which was nearly healed already.         "Adam?" Duncan called out.         Adam gasped softly and Molly petted and doted even more solicitously. Then the Eldest Immortal squared his shoulders bravely and spoke, but he did not so much as glance in their direction.

        "Molly and I are not speaking to you," Adam announced.

        "Why didn't you tell me it was Sean?" Duncan demanded angrily.

        Adam stared at Molly and they both shook their heads and gazed towards the snow-glazed skylights.

        "You see what I mean," Adam sighed. "There is some congenital MacLeod density that manifests at the most inopportune times. As if you and I could have yelled that very fact any louder."

        Sean did remember Molly screeching, but he didn't think he'd heard what she was saying. Neither of them had heard Adam at all.

        "Beastes," Adam exhaled, "nothing but bloodthirsty beasties, blind, deaf, and dumb. And here I was admiring their battle fervor. Give me the well-thought-out tactic any day."

        "Dahm!" Sean's face scrunched into a frown. "You shot me!"

        "Du-uh," Molly and Adam said in unison.

        "It did seem the prudent next step after smacking your backside was getting us nowhere," Adam answered to the air, moaning just a little as he shifted his wounded leg.

        "But I might have killed him," Duncan complained, meaning he might have taken Sean's head after Adam's interference had diverted his attention.

        "I had more than one bullet," Adam snorted.

        Molly began to giggle.

        "You may tell him, Molly, that I was more afraid for you than I ever was for either of them," Adam intoned.

        "But we came to rescue you," Sean whined.

        Molly, who was not known for her loquaciousness, took her turn in the game, thereby taking the round. "You could tell them, Dr. Piersen," she began timidly, "that I feared,  for a moment there, that they would be rescuing me to death."

        Whereupon the two MacLeods helped each other up and retreated from the field, trying to look as if they knew how to wear defeat with any dignity at all.