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Chapter Five: ALL THINGS HIDDEN
"If you would slow down a bit, Sean," Dragon suggested in his most soothing tones, his very best Caribbean sultry night voice. "I could answer your questions."
Sean just bounced down the Entry Gate sub-tunnel of the vast Cross Estates, spewing his worries and queries behind him like a wake. So he had done since the hover had deposited him at Thomas' front door. Sean hadn't even waited for Grant to fully land the hover before he'd bounced out and dashed for the front fence. Dragon had met him there and keyed open the impressive mechanical Gate, but that was the last time he'd managed to get within an arm's length of the excited MacLeod heir."I'm telling you--" Dragon tried again to answer Sean's concerns about Mary Palmer. "She is having a quiet nap in the library pool complex. See?" He reached over Sean's shoulder and punched up the monitor for the library.
"But why haven't you been answering?" Sean peered at the visual on the screen. Mary was curled up on some pillows at the side of the pool, Master Xavier's bathrobe snuggled around her, a smile on her sweet face. He saw something else also, but he did not register it at the level of consciousness.
"We are on a light crew here, Sean," Dragon ran his hair through the dark curls of his treasured mane. "I was doing perimeters all morning and the rest, except Kyle, where occupied with barn chores. "Everyone else went down to 'Couver to search for Facet Molly. I even sent Strike down--."
"We found Molly," Sean stopped watching Mary sleep and turned around to face Dragon.
"Oh, that's fantastic!" Dragon's dark face brightened as he listened to Sean's very-much-amended report. Then he pushed in beside Sean and started keying in the computer codes for the self-diagnostics. "I just don't understand it. We haven't had a single message for the past three hours. This system has never gone down that badly. Damn! Thank God, Thomas isn't here to--"
"He's on his way," Sean interjected. "He's driving up with Pops and Dahm. They should be here in an hour or so, the way Thomas drives."
"Well, I'll have this baby back up by then," Dragon vowed, running an ancillary perimeter check on the older system. "Look, everything is secure here, and this is going to take a while, Sean. Why don't you go have a dip with Kyle and I'll page you if you're needed, or if Mary wakes up."
Sean checked the library monitor once more, saw again the thing he didn't really see, and then slipped out of the control room and strolled down the stone tunnel, still bouncing. They were going to dun him mercilessly about this. The expectant father sounding a false alarm. Oh, well, he supposed they would put it on the list after "shiving your dad in the belly and freezing solid on the field of battle." Some wonderful excuse for manhood he was, all right.
A half-level down a wide and shallow stair led Sean into the hall behind the enormous pool where Brother Adam had swum his seemingly endless laps those months they had kept Sean's parents apart. He was glad the pool had been out of service, and Adam over in the grotto, when they finally got together again.
Sean wondered how long it was going to take to mend the gigantic hole in the pasture over the place where the grotto pool had been. It had taken the rest of the week just to put up enough fence around the chasm that they could let the horses run again.
In the week since Christmas, they'd finally finished the fittings for the main pool, though the greenery had yet to arrive from warmer climes. Sean stepped into the air baffle of the anteroom, tiny cobalt lights were set into a freeform metal meshwork. He had no appreciation for the curious admixture of ancient cavern and modern electronics, its being the ordinary background of his entire childhood.
"Aren't those Mary's?" Sean called from the pool's edge to Kyle who was floating out in the center of the bright blue water, playing with the glass floats that Ram had given Mary for Christmas. The young blond man swirled the floats lazily and laughed. "Come on in, Sean," he called back a friendly, somewhat disconnected invitation.
Sean shrugged and pealed off his shirt and jeans. Kyle was a little vague these days. He had been so long dying from the virus that, now he was healed, he really hadn't returned to the planet all the way. Sean wondered if his young friend were always going to be this drifty and ethereal, like a ghost, in the living world.
Sean slipped into the warm water and glided out towards Kyle, still playing with the floats. "Listen, Kyle. Dragon could use us doing afternoon perimeter rounds. Kyle?"
Joe Dawson's only son, Sweet Lucille's precious babe, just drifted away, swirling the floats with him and giggling. He had perhaps the stupidest look on his face that Sean had ever seen. It was that look that his own parents sometimes affected in the middle of what would seem to be a perfectly ordinary evening, the look which said he would soon be asked to leave.
Sean thought he knew how that look felt from the inside. He was sure that moony expression crossed his face whenever he thought of Mary. Mary, sleeping in the library, and--some other thing, over and over, that he could not quite bring into focus. Maybe a few laps.
"Hey!" Sean complained as one of the floats hit the back of his head. "Kyle!" he whined.
Kyle just smiled and started humming, that same stupid grin plastered ear-to-ear, as if God Himself had told him the funniest mystery.
Sean picked up the float and hurled it back towards Kyle. He swam for the pool edge. Enough of this childishness. There were man things to do. Just as he touched the rim, Sean spun, caught the globe a split second before it would have hit him again, and tossed it back. "Enough," he said, heaving up out of the pool. "You just stay here and play with your toys. I'm going up to the house, get something to eat, and then run the perimeter checks."
Kyle just shrugged and laughed some more, gathering all the floats in front of him and shepherding them down to the deep end of the double-Olympic size pool.
Kids! Sean thought. They just don't get it at all.
Mary thought Kyle was wonderful. She didn't mind his dreaminess, his--
Padding, barefoot, up the shallow stairs, the thing which Sean had seen, but not understood, came clearly and suddenly into focus, sending him on a mad dash back to the monitors and Dragon in the subterranean control center.
Sean pushed Dragon rudely aside and punched the library up on the central screen. "What is that?" he accused, more than asked.
"A bird, the shadow of a bird," Dragon squinted.
"And that?" Sean pointed again.
"Another--Oh, my God!" Dragon exclaimed as the third shadow crossed over the roof, exactly as the first two had. "Here, let me--" He shut the library system down entirely and keyed in the reboot sequence. After several seconds, and no other bird shadow appeared, Dragon let out a slow sigh. "It got caught in a loop when the rest of the system went down. It's back on real time now. No problem."
"Look again," Sean shook his head and started searching through the other monitors.
"What?" Dragon scanned the monitor picture from top to bottom, looking for any repetitions. There were none. "Oh, oh I see. Here," he moved Sean laterally and keyed in a new board, the sound-sensitive tactical readout.
After a minute had passed, Sean barked impatiently, "Well? Where is she?" The library, while no longer over-shadowed by the looping flight of the bird shadow, was also no longer occupied by Mary Palmer.
"All right, all right," Dragon put the headphones on and confirmed each blip. "That's the crew in the barn," he adjusted the dial, "and Kyle in the big pool, and," again he adjusted and banked the gain, "that's the pump room background, and," he smacked his palm down on the console. Dragon pointed out the door, roughly northward. "Up on the drive-level of the main house. She likes to nap in the sunny window by the Christmas tree. And it's close to the food. Second tunnel on the left," he called out, but when he turned the control room was empty.
"For God's Sake, Mac!" Thomas' voice exploded into the chill silence of the limo, wending its way northward, up into the foothills, an hour from the Estates. "What did you expect me to do? Hit the damn squirrel!"
Duncan MacLeod of the Glenfinnan Leods, the Harris branch, brooded like a distant mountain. He did not acknowledge the outburst. When the com started blinking on the dash, he lifted a broad hand off the steering wheel, retrieved the com, bringing it to his ear.
All the while the tiny black man in the passenger seat fumed and sputtered and began again to detail all the reasons why he, the estimable Master of Cross Estates, should still be driving the limo. So what if they'd had to winch the vehicle back up to the roadway after the unfortunate skid round the aforementioned squirrel. Nobody had been hurt...
...badly.
"You will be pleased to know," Duncan announced to the car's interior in general, and no one, in particular. "Mary Palmer is napping comfortably and Sean and Grant have reached the Estates without incident. The surveillance and communications systems are back up and running and the compound is secure."
An elegant hand snaked between the two men, over the seat back and took the phone.
"You're feeling better?" Mac glanced in the rearview mirror. He hoped the Old Man was feeling better than he looked. The snow had melted out of his shaggy locks and left wads of road dirt overlying the fading bruise on his forehead.
"Better than what?" Adam grumbled, signing out to Dragon and keying in the number for Joe's bar. "Yeah, Strike, put Dawson on. Well, where--? Stoner's where? Why? Oh, shit! Well, the number for John Feldon--. Oh, Papa Feldon went down himself. Well, they probably won't make any sense of the labwork and will have to toss it, if it comes to trial. Listen, when things settle, bring him up to the estate. Tell everybody that all's well to the north and I'll pass along the sad news. You okay? Good man. We're on the car com for the next hour or so, then call the compound after that."
Adam sighed and handed the phone forward. Then he melted into the shape of the back seat and crossed his long arms. "Duncan?" he said in such a even and disinterested tone that Thomas' head whipped around and the car slowed down by ten miles per hour. "I think you are going to want to pull over for a bit. Maybe let me drive," he added.
There was a brief squeal as the brakes engaged against the misaligned wheels and then Duncan lifted his foot and geared down a little more carefully, trying not to think what terrible thing he was about to hear. For the first time that day, the Highlander was grateful that they were no longer One, that he would have to await Adam's spoken revelation.
"All right, Old Man," Duncan put the car in neutral, set the brake, and twisted around. "What gives?"
"Sometime this morning," Adam sat up straight and leaned forward, putting both his hands on Duncan's forearm. "Anne Lindsey MacLeod Stoner succumbed to a coronary insufficiency and was pronounced dead." Adam squeezed lightly and was very quiet for a moment, then he added. "Stoner evidently had driven them just within site of 'Couver when her chest pain turned into--. He got her to General and they pulled out all the stops, but--," Adam shook his head slowly. "I'm so sorry, Duncan."
MacLeod shook off the grasp, kicked the door open, and stomped off into the snowy landscape.
Adam started to follow, but Thomas grabbed for his shoulder. "Give him some time," Cross counseled. "He will need to get this out of his system so he can break the news to Mary. How are you with this?" he asked.
"Me?" Adam brushed at the fringe of muddy bangs and winced a little. "Why would I feel anything? I hardly knew the woman, and I didn't much like what I knew."
"All right," Thomas grinned with all the conviction of carnie barker. "Why don't you tell me what's up with Stoner, and why Jack Feldon, the Elder, would be getting involved."
Adam pulled his hand up his sleeve and wiped the fog off the window. He stared out across the hills, spying the dark cloud of brooding Scot against the bright white background of the latest snow. "Evidently, Stoner went straight to Joe's after they pronounced Anne and proceeded to get drunk. He got into a fight with Joe and stomped out, after which he flattened a streetlight at the corner of Rivers and Tenth. He failed his breath test, even though he seemed to be very sober, and--. I guess he decked the officer and is cooling his heels in holding at the Second Couver Station while the police lab is trying to figure out why he's still alive. They're running a one-fifth dilution on his bloodwork and it's still running the results off the scale."
"Poor Stoner," Thomas turned back around and stared blindly out the windshield. "What a day this has been. Is anybody seeing to the arrangements?"
"Arrangements?" Adam wiped the window again. The Highlander hadn't moved. "Oh," he said, opening the door and stepping out. "Striker is seeing to the funeral arrangements, pending Mary's approval, and Stoner's, if he ever says a civil word again. I should think the Thomas Cross Recovery Unit for the Emotionally Battered will be full up for a while."
Thomas had the same thought as he watched the Eldest Immortal's long strides take him to the Highlander's side. He watched the two men come together in an embrace, as certain as it was desperate. Not a Quickening in the Immortal sense, not sex, in the mortal sense, but a conjugation of such splendid strength and tenderness that HorseMaster Cross felt blessed just to witness.
And he also felt so suddenly homesick that he called Grant up on the car phone.
"Are you all right, Sir?" the deep voice answered in his ear.
"Yes," Thomas sighed. "Fine. We'll be there soon."
"We await your--."
"Grant? GRANT!" Thomas screeched into the phone. There had been a concussive burst and then silence. He could hardly breathe.
"Sorry, Sir," Grant's voice returned. "The system is still malfunctioning. Dragon would appreciate your assistance."
He was lying. Thomas knew the giant too well to know otherwise. Something had happened at the compound.
Thomas Cross slid sideways behind the wheel and revved the engine, directing the wheels back towards the highway, and beeping an "all aboard."
The two other Immortals hadn't even time to get their respective doors closed before the Master of Cross Estates was speeding up the roadway, hell-bent for the homefront.
No other squirrels crossed his path, which was all to the good for the squirrels. In his current state of mind, Thomas would not have swerved again if a rhinoceros had crossed the road.
Duncan had his katana drawn as he slowly ascended the stream steps of Thomas Cross' main house, the faithful reproduction of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water masterpiece. Little wisps of smoke spilled down towards him from the upper floor, chilling in the winter afternoon and and condensing to black-speckled ice on the steps. The glassed entryway loomed above, a darkened maw emitting acrid smoke. Soot darkened the skylight above.
They had returned to the estate at breakneck speed along the icy mountain roads. Adam had charge of the bulletins over the car phone. At first, they thought one of the generators had blown, then it was clear an explosion had detonated on the main floor of the house. Subsequent reconnaissance revealed that the perimeter was still secure and everyone was accounted for. Then there was a flurry and an agonizing period of silence, following which Adam had announced that Mary and Sean were missing.
As far as anyone knew, both had been on the main floor when the explosion occurred.
Mercifully, that piece of information had reached them at the same time as the main gate came into view.
The Highlander dispersed the troops. He sent Thomas down into the tunnels to fetch Grant. He sent the rest out to run the perimeter checks again. He tried to send Adam down to see to the computer system, but the suggestion didn't even elicit an argument. The Old Man simply stepped off the road and started towards the house by the stream path.
By the time the Highlander reached the stairs, Adam had already disappeared up into the smoky darkness.
"Adam?" Duncan called as he stepped onto the main floor and peered through the haze.
"Over here," Adam answered.
Duncan could just make him out, a shadow crouched by the couch on the opposite wall. "You're getting careless, Old Man," he commented.
"Sean isn't here," Adam said, rising and opening the window.
An icy breeze blew the smoke past the Scot.
"She's dead," Adam said quietly.
As the smoke cleared, Duncan beheld the devastation clearly, with his sight, if not his understanding. They seemed to be standing in the aftermath of a firestorm. The stench was unbelievable, sulfurous and cloying. The Christmas tree and most of the furnishings were stacked against the north and east walls as if a tidal wave had swept them there. And everywhere were tiny, sparkling ornament shards and enormous scorched feathers, doubtless the source of the rotten-egg smell. Most of the glazing was surprisingly intact. The large window-wall to the left of the stair entry was burst outward at its center, a starburst crack webbed across its face, as if a large object had been thrown against the casement. The long pillowed couch which lined the wall beneath this window was undisturbed except that its seat cushions were halfway across the planking floor. The fine black dust was undisturbed except for Adam's footprints, so the fire, or explosion, or whatever had happened last.
Duncan's warrior wits registered all these features in the instant it took him to dash for the tiny body on the daybed by the main fireplace. His katana clattered to the floor. Without thinking he knelt down by the body, positioned the pale neck, and took a deep breath.
Adam pulled him back. "No," he said softly. "Mary is gone, Duncan. She has been for a time now. Rigor is beginning to set in."
The Highlander braced himself against his thighs. "How?" he said blankly.
Adam settled his long frame down behind Duncan and leaned against his back. "I don't know. There isn't a mark on her. The body is the only clean thing in this room except for that quilt she's tucked in. I can only think she was carried here after the explosion, but that hardly seems possible. The other possibility is that she was the source of the explosion, but that doesn't make sense, either.
"Sean isn't anywhere near," Adam added quickly. "There's no sign he was here, but we should take a look around."
Duncan reached up and touched his rough palm to the cold forehead. "God be with you, Mary," he said. Levering up from the floor, he pointed toward the dark well beyond. "I'll check the stairs down to the tunnels and you--What are you doing?"
Adam had wandered over to what was left of the kitchen alcove and was now rummaging through the cabinets. He produced a large kettle, Thomas' favorite pasta pot, and began to fill it with water.
"Adam!"
"Yes?" Adam poured some salt into his palm and dumped it into the pot. "Oh? This?" The tall Immortal stared at the pot, the water and shrugged. "I don't know," he said vaguely.
"Well, when you get finished with making soup," Duncan snorted. "See if you can't get down to the command room and work on that 'puter." The Scot had long ago given up trying to make sense of the Old Man. Even from the inside, Adam's thought processes were something of a Gordian knot to him.
Beyond the butler's pantry, which was relatively unscathed, Duncan entered the landing and punched the lift. It did not respond. He proceeded towards a glow at the top of the tunnel stairs. Evidently the lower level lights had not been affected. Halfway down the narrow flight, he could just make out a shadow. "Hello?" he called.
The rounded shadow elongated vertically several inches, and a soft alto answered him, "Duncan?"
"Ram!" Duncan descended and sat beside her.
She sank away from him, melting into the shadows, turning her back towards him. "Go away," she said.
"The banishment is over, Ram," Duncan said, reaching for her.
Ram's entire bare back shuddered beneath the touch. "Please," she spoke breathlessly. "Just go away."
"What in hell happened?" he asked.
"It was a wonderful day," Ram's voice bounced off the stone wall of the stairwell and drifted back towards him.
"Mary's dead!" Duncan's ire raised his tones an octave and punched the volume to full on.
"Yes," Ram answered with the same disconnected dreaminess. "Once she beheld Malak, she never looked back. There was no pain, no fear."
"Ram!" Duncan grabbed her by her shoulders and turned her towards him. "What happened!"
Ram shrank in his grasp as if she were no more substance than the shadow she appeared to be in the dim lighting of the well. "Oh, yes, of course," she said, almost to herself. "You need to know if there is any danger. No, Clan Chief, your tribe is safe. No one is in danger. All the rest has no meaning."
"Where is Sean?" Duncan's ire was fast deteriorating into fear.
"I-I don't know, Duncan. Somewhere around," her voice went flat and toneless. "I'm sure he will turn up soon."
"God Damn It, Ram! What happened?"
"I'm tired, Duncan," Ram pulled back from him, shivering. "I just want to remember this beautiful day. Do not be afraid for your kin, Highlander. All will be well. All will be--well."
Duncan lifted his sword from its place in his coat and then shucked off the heavy garment to wrap around Ram's shoulders. "Let's go downstairs and get you warm," he suggested, seeing this interrogation on the stair was going nowhere.
Behind them and above, Duncan heard Thomas Cross roaring for help. Then he felt Sean's presence and, without further ado, the Scot scooped up Ram and started back up the stone stairs.
Duncan reentered the ruined main floor just as the lights came on. The sudden glare blinded him for a moment and he had the sensation of walking into a mirror. As he refocused, Duncan saw the "mirror image" to be Grant, standing in the middle of main floor with Sean draped over his arm.
"Sean!" Duncan leaned down and put Ram on the floor where she curled up under his coat. He stepped over her and reached for his son. "What happened?" It seemed to be his only question, and still unanswered.
Sean stared at his father as if he were a stranger. He was naked and wet and cold.
"Let go, Grant," Duncan ordered the giant.
Grant slowly unbent his hands. Thomas' beloved was not naked, but he was every bit as wet and cold as Sean. Tiny icicles hung down from Grant's pale bangs. His expression was distorted, the large jaw opened widely, but the full lips pressed tightly shut.
Duncan decided against asking again for an explanation. He took his son from the giant. "It's okay, Son. We'll get you downstairs and warm and--. Leave her!" As he turned he spied the tiny black man bent over Mary, doing CPR.
The Highlander had to repeat the order twice more before Thomas looked up.
"She is gone," Duncan said coldly. "See to living."
Thomas stood up slowly and replaced the quilt over Mary's still form.
Grant brushed by Duncan and rushed for the strafed kitchen, straight for the pasta pot and the salted water which Adam had mixed. He opened his mouth and coughed into the water.
"Grant?" Thomas joined the giant. He pulled off the wet coat and traded it for his own, though the tinier garment hardly covered the frozen shoulders.
"Yes, Little Miss," Grant spoke to the large, black pasta pot with the white enamel speckles. "Yes, Little Miss. I will."
"Grant?" Thomas shook his friend by the left biceps. "What is it? Who are you--?"
Grant pointed at the pasta pot, but he looked at Duncan. "Lord, if you will. Little Miss says you are to take the young Master down to the pool. Yes, Little Miss," he patted the pot. "Now, she says. Lord, please," he added.
"Grant!" Thomas popped the giant's broad chest. "Stop this!"
The water began to boil in the pot, though it was sitting on the bar and not the stove. An opalescent globe shot straight up out of the water and Grant dove over the counter to catch it as it descended. He placed the tennis-ball-size orb back into the water, all the while crooning "Yes, Little Miss. As you wish, Little Miss."
Just at that moment, Adam bounded up the outer stairs. "What happened to the baby?" he said.
Duncan was sure he'd had quite enough Chaos for one day. "And your brother is alive and well, too," he snorted. "Thank you so much for asking."
Adam dismissed the Scot with a smirk. "I knew that already, Love," he said. "I didn't get this wet just on a whim. Mary isn't pregnant any longer. She must have delivered. Where is the child?"
"Yes, Little Miss," Grant repeated, nudging Thomas who hadn't stopped staring at his favorite pasta pot since the trick with the glass ball.
"I think," Thomas did not really know what to think. "If we take Sean down to the main pool, we shall have the answer."
Duncan decided they could sort this out later and the warm pool would certainly be the best way to thaw his son. He followed Thomas into the pantry, towards the stairway to the tunnels.
Grant carefully picked up the kettle and followed behind Duncan.
Adam surveyed the wreckage in the full light. He decided someone else could take care of Mary's corpse. The room and it's damage yielded no answers...yet. He just let his eyes wander over the scene, setting everything into his memory where he could pull it up and put it together at some time in the future when he had more information to go on. He wandered over to retrieve Duncan's coat.
"Ram!"
Ram rolled slowly onto her back. "Adam?"
"Oh, God, Mother!" Adam sank down beside her and stared, aghast. Her face was the mirror of this room, strafed and sooty, bloody and raw from her forehead to the top of her chest. "Where is he?"
"Who?" Ram opened her eyes and groaned. They were as burned across the orbs as were the rest of her features.
"The dragon who did this to you?" Adam explained, trying to ignore the sudden empathetic pain which struck his own eyes.
The Old Man's training kicked in and he chided himself for being so remiss, starting a real evaluation of Ram's injuries. Her left wrist was broken. He braced it with a splintered piece of Thomas' chair. "Can you tell me what happened, Ram?" he asked, continuing his evaluation. He didn't wait for an answer.
The progress of his exam had traveled below her waist and, as he lifted Duncan's coat to continue, he discovered that Ram was nearly done trying to bleed to death.
Adam bundled her up, coat and all, and dashed for the exit, beyond the pantry.
Duncan MacLeod hunched over the tiny table in Cross' underground galley. His wits had no more substance than the steam rising above Thomas' tea kettle. The whole day was a jumble of images, all grey, counterpointed with a collection of physical and emotional agonies that left him numb and defensive. He couldn't bring himself to concentrate on any one of them enough to number them or even bring them into focus. "Thomas?" Duncan heard his own voice, steady and certain, completely at odds with his disconnection. He felt wounded and exhausted and so thoroughly discouraged that he could not quite recall feeling otherwise.
"No, Duncan," Thomas poured a little of the boiling water into an exquisite teapot and swirled it around, warming the pot so it wouldn't crack when he filled it. "There really isn't anything for you to do except have some of Dr. Tom's most excellent herbal tea and then pack it in for a long rest."
"This doesn't look like Frank Lloyd Wright," Duncan heard the comment. He wondered why he had said this.
"Isn't," Thomas answered, setting the tea on the table and himself opposite the Highlander in the red leather booth. "Straight out of Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea.' I took Grant to the movies one night, a long while ago. Kirk Douglas, James Mason...gigantic octopus?" he added, when it was clear the Scot made no connection.
"Never been into movies much. Now opera--" Duncan lost his train of thought in the sudden inundation of this day's bloody opera.
"I got one of the set's when Disney had an auction fifty years ago. So much of it was ruined, but I did manage to salvage enough to fit out this galley, " Cross babbled on, giving MacLeod time to return to the present. "Maybe if I gave you the--what is it called?--the field report, Lord?"
Which comment had the effect of engaging Duncan's war skills and focusing his attention on something that was understandable. "Yes," he took the offered tea cup and sipped cautiously. "Report."
"You mustn't feel--" Thomas started awkwardly, "A lesser man than yourself would have bolted off, howling, half-way through this dismal day."
Duncan put his cup down and stared at the tiny black man. He neither needed, nor wanted, his judgment just then, nor did he need the Master of Cross Estates to state what must have been obvious. "Sometimes you get a little too familiar, Cross. Have you noticed that?"
Thomas smiled his apology. "Point taken, Lord," he said without a whisper of affront. "So many things have happened--Perhaps if I just took them in order of presentation:
"Molly is resting under Margaret's tender attentions at Joe's. She seems none the worse for wear and declined our invitation to join us here at the compound. I pulled a few men back from the "News" in 'Frisco and they will be standing guard over the bar and the mansion in 'Couver."
"Was that necessary?" Duncan played with the blue crystal sugar lumps and then popped one in his mouth.
"I got the idea from you, Lord," Thomas nodded towards the Highlander. "I believe your exact words were, 'If we can't be safe inside the Cross Armory and Water Park, then where?'
"I have taken measures to secure the perimeter and scan the grounds. No one else is within the gates, and each and every monitor and circuit has been thoroughly tested, reset, and retested. You have walked the grounds yourself and you know the tunnels are clear," Thomas added.
"The least I could do," Duncan snorted. He played "Mother" and poured them both another cup of tea.
"I think it is clear we have been attacked," Thomas continued, "by what or how is entirely a puzzle. Next in the report," he reminded himself to return to task, "Yes. I sent Dragon down to Seacouver to look for Judge Stoner and to help Striker with the funeral arrangements. We will bury them together in the garden beyond the library pool, when we are done with the post on Mary--"
Duncan winced.
"I'm sure Dr. Piersen will be most--,"
"I still can't believe he's doing the forensics," the Scot shook his head.
"Well, we can thank Mayor Dawson's connections, that and the fact that Seacouver's Med Examiner is a Watcher and knows Adam's qualifications better than he does himself.
"I mean, I don't know how you got Adam to agree to--,"
"Well," Thomas' white teeth split the dark mahogany of his fine features into two parts. "I just gave him a choice and he picked the less awful task."
Duncan tilted his head and waited for the punch line. When there was only silence, he asked, "What could possibly be worse?"
Thomas stood up and started clearing away the tea things. "Ram is badly hurt, Duncan."
The Highlander almost disagreed with him. He'd seen Ram, picked her up, carried her to the main floor. He'd spoken with her. She did not seem harmed at all...but he hadn't really seen her in the dark of the stairwell and his attention had been diverted either direction, first by Mary's death, then by his son's straits. "How?" he asked.
"And if I knew that--," Thomas set the tea things on the counter by the sink. "Adam thinks it is another dragon. I don't know. It is beyond me what could be more powerful than she is, but something nearly killed her, and I would have thought that was impossible..."
"No, Thomas," Duncan stood and followed the little man out of the galley and into the dark hallway, more tunnel, which formed with its brothers, the elaborate underground system of the Estates. "I meant how is she injured?"
"Her face is burned, to the third degree across her cheeks and she is blinded by the burns on the surface of her eyes. Her corneas are blistered and I am afraid they are going to scar, so I don't think her sight will be returning soon. Her left arm is broken, just proximal to the wrist, but we've got that reduced and splinted. We'll cast it in a few days when the swelling goes down--," Thomas paused as he turned right and descended a half-flight of stairs.
Duncan remembered the way. They were returning to the main pool where he'd left Sean with Grant and Kyle and Mary's very peculiar children. "Why can't she heal?" he asked.
"Oh, she will, slowly, like a mortal," Thomas answered. He stopped at the blue lit pump room, the anteway into the main pool. "So she says, anyway. It's the other injury worries me, Duncan. We were three liters of the flourocarbon oxygen transport IV before she stabilized and stopped bleeding. My guess is that she's going to need some sort of surgical repair. We don't have any blood for her. I doubt any other being on the planet would match hers. Dragon is going to send back one of Dr. Palmer's partners in the hover and then we'll know."
"Know what?" Duncan kept his voice down. Who knew what would stir up the five little ones next door.
"You asked what would be a worse task, Duncan," Thomas said, meaning to be too familiar. "Doing a pelvic on a dragon, that would be worse."
"Oh," Duncan breathed out in a long sigh. "She was raped?"
"And then some," Cross answered. "I couldn't see the exact extent of the damage. Ram can be most uncooperative, understandably, but still--"
"That's where the fire--it was a Quickening!" the Highlander's tired brain made a very old connection. "Ram isn't healing because she's pregnant and that would hurt the child--children--" or whatever she was brooding by whatever winged monster had broken into the compound and vanquished its most powerful citizen.
"What?" It was finally Thomas' turn to be confused. "How could there be a Quickening?"
"The same reason you've got a hole in the middle of your pasture," Duncan chuckled. "The same thing happened when Sean was conceived. It has to do with the transfer of the power, the spirit--when Sean Byrnes left me--" he couldn't explain something that didn't quite make sense to him, in any case.
"Duncan?" Thomas whispered. "Do you think Ahriman has returned?"
The Highland stepson, chieftan to this most peculiar and ever-expanding clan, made his way out of the dark hall into the fluid caustic-brightened lighting of the pool room. The waves' reflection across the simple concrete of the high walls was so compelling it made Duncan a little uncertain of balance, as if he couldn't find the sea legs to navigate this liquid depth.
Duncan MacLeod knew better than to correct Thomas Cross' concern about Ahriman, though he knew the question had no meaning. Ahriman could not return. Something cannot return if it does not first leave, and Ahriman had never truly left them. In the same way as any evil cannot be destroyed, Ahriman was not vanquished, and never would be, in the sense of absolute destruction. Evil could only be admitted and then understood and then controlled. As the Millennial Champion, Duncan had almost lost this most important battle, two decades earlier, simply because he had not understood that the first move in the battle would be to surrender to his own evil.
And even though the stalwart son of the Scots had come at last to victory, he was a long time coming back to sanity after his dire struggle against the "End of Time." Duncan knew he owed Sean Byrnes, and Joseph Dawson, and Adam Piersen, and Adam's peculiar mother, Ram, for his return to the land of the living two decades earlier.
He owed all those he loved, and who loved him. He owed the dear son of his heart and his flesh, who had come into the world when everything had told him that was impossible. This was the measure of Duncan's reality, his world, his answer to the central truth which he alone must carry into the next millennium--the truth that he was Ahriman, and that, as long as he knew and accepted this, the world in general, and his own world, in particular, would remain protected from the evil hidden safely in the broad vault of his heart.
Duncan had long since ceased to dwell on this, so it surprised him with its reappearance, as sudden and vivid as it had been the day of his victory. Perhaps Thomas' anxious query had summoned this, but the Highlander doubted that was so. More likely it was this awful day, or his sudden separation from Adam, but Duncan felt again that very unpleasant sensation, almost a soul-deep vertigo, amplified by the drifting, sinusoidal light of Thomas' enormous pool.
Duncan slipped off his slacks and lowered himself to sitting at the pool's edge, to watch the three, Grant and Kyle and his own dear Sean, playing with Mary's very odd offspring, the "gummy drop children." He really didn't like them, though he couldn't say exactly why that was. Duncan hadn't gotten close enough to the translucent fuzzy spheres to even see them clearly. He just had no desire to do so, though Grant had offered a lovely blue orb up for him to hold, earlier, when they'd brought Sean down here.
The blue one and the green one now orbited around Grant, tickling at his neck, until he deigned to toss them up, or dive after them to the bottom of the pool.
The gold and purple gumbies swirled lazily around Kyle, who was floating on his back and murmuring about this and that to them in a soft baby talk...
...that might have been charming, except that it wasn't at all. Duncan felt his teeth meet edge-to-edge. He couldn't say why the sound was so irritating.
It was odd, really. Usually he loved children. Maybe these were just too larval, too alien. Maybe having lost his first god-daughter this sad day, and her mother...
Yes, Duncan mused, running his calloused hands over his thighs, I used to have a wife and a daughter and a son. We lived in a lovely little house in the country and we had late night suppers around the kitchen table and talked about work and life and what we were going to do when the children were grown.
He'd had an affair and the whole thing had fallen apart a long time ago. He'd lost custody of the daughter to her real father, and they were only reunited this past year...
...and now she was dead.
And Anne was dead.
Except for Sean and himself, nothing was left of that brief bright moment in his life when he was as close to a human husband and father as he was ever likely to get. How very far he had come from that moment, step by step, and he only now began to understand it was gone forever. Death and time and circumstance had swept it away with only a bit of char and smoke to mark its passing.
What was this place? What was he doing in this underground waterworks, run by a black whips and chains master? How could he have gotten so involved with the oldest being in Creation? What were these animate jelly beans where real babes should be?
"You're more than a little glum there, Duncan, my lad," an old, familiar voice drifted up from his memory. A soothing, gentle humor washed over the Highlander and he felt himself relax from surface to marrow. "Clan duties weighing a bit heavy, then?"
Oh, they do, indeed, Sean, Duncan answered silently. But I do wish you were here. If ever I had need of your counsel--.
"Duncan, Duncan MacLeod," the voice repeated.
The Highlander shuddered back to the present and his eyes followed the voice down past his knees, to the brilliant blue waves of the subterranean pool. Sean stood there, up to mid-chest in the water, one of the gumbies, a red one, in his left hand, close to his heart, and the other hand reaching up towards the Scot. "Duncan?" he offered his hand more emphatically.
Duncan's legs shot up out of the water and he scrambled back as far from the pool edge as the surrounding wall would allow. His smoky brown eyes ringed white and their centers dilated to their limits. His lush lips stretched thin around his gaping mouth that seemed unable to draw enough breath.
"I should think I'd be the one anxious about shaking your hand again, Duncan," Sean laughed lightly. "I'm sorry, MacLeod. I did not mean to startle you."
Duncan found just enough air to rasp, "Stop it!"
"There, there, Little One. He won't hurt you. No, he won't hurt me, either," Sean crooned to the red orb which was beginning to glow a deeper scarlet. "Stop what, Duncan?"
Duncan felt his head swelling with the pressure. "Let--Sean--return," he managed between pants.
"Return from where, MacLeod?"
The monitor beeped softly somewhere to his left, along the wall, and Duncan was dimly aware of Master Cross' going to answer it. Duncan made himself go back to the pool's edge. He tried not to think about the fact that his mode of travel was a four-point crawl.
"I know you did this that last night on the barge, the night before the christening. You, you pushed me aside, so you could speak to Lucille and Anne and Adam. I know you are doing that now, Byrnes. Stop it."
"Apples and Oranges, my boy. Apples and oranges,"
"Just stop it," Duncan repeated leaning over his fists which were now clenched in rigor over the pool side.
"I am not doing anything at all, Lad, except for remembering. I am as I always was: Sean," Sean backed into the deeper water and scolded the red orb for splashing the nice man.
"But my son--" Duncan collapsed onto his stomach. He didn't even have the words to ask what his heart already understood.
"I could still call you 'Pops,' if that would help," Sean offered.
Duncan rolled over onto his back. His entire family had been wiped out in a single day. This last was the most cruel wounding of them all. The Scot felt in that moment as if he'd never had a son at all. He had only had the pretense of being a father, as with all the rest. No family, no family at all, but a cowardly wish to be something he was not.
His destiny was to hold Ahriman away from the world. He had no business in the ordinary doings of the normal folk. This circus of freaks and dragons and jelly babies was his rightful demesne, his kingdom of the grotesque.
Duncan felt the sodden weight of all the rock that stood between himself and the night far above him. Monsters surrounded him on every side and here he lay, at the center of the earth, more monstrous than all the rest.
"Thomas?" Adam tried ringing the pool room. "Anybody home?" His tapered hand lifted solicitously towards the harried Hello Allen, whom they now called "Doc."
The same "Doc" who was now pacing, non-stop, up and down the hallway outside of Ram's room, swearing and spitting, and just generally refusing to even contemplate the task for which he had been brought up to the Estates.
"Ah, Thomas. We've a bit of a problem up here," Adam spoke into the wall com. "Up" was only so in the comparative sense, being that the hall outside Ram's room was still two levels below ground.
In the twenty years since he'd become a Facet, Allen had never been in a more peculiar situation--not when he quit bartending and went back to school to be a psychiatrist, not when he changed residencies from psychiatry to ob-gyn, at Dr. Palmer's suggestion that catching babies was way more fun than treating the normalcy-impaired.
"Dragon sent Doc back in the hover to do the exam," there was a pause, and Adam's eyes squinted. "Everything all right there?" he asked. "Well, you might have broken it to him a little easier," Adam suggested. "Oh," he said and listened for another several seconds. "Yes, I expect you did try, Thomas. Duncan's tired and he probably wasn't listening. Get him someplace warm and cozy and then send us up about a gross of Diaze."
Adam leaned his long frame against the wall and listened to Thomas. "What? Yes, it would be dangerous to drug Ram. What are you talking about?
"Oh," he said, finally understanding, "No, no. The Diaze is for Doc.
"Sorry, Doc," Adam addressed the Facet, "but I know you're nervous about this and--"
"I'm not nervous at all, goddammit! I'm just friggin' not doin' it! And that, said the fat lady, is that! And you can take your Diaze and insert it--"
"I take your meaning," Adam said. "Look, Allen. She won't hurt you. She needs your help. There may even be some repair required. I'm really not skilled enough--"
"You know, Adam, Mark used to say it was a shame you didn't go back to med school and get credentialed again. He said you were one of the finest surgeons he ever--"
"Mark, rest his soul, was prone to exaggerate," Adam argued. "Dammit, Man! She's my mother! It was hard enough doing the post on Mary."
Allen crossed his arms over his ample belly. "I'll assist," he said, both by way of compromise and emphasis.
Adam's grey eyes closed in surrender and weariness. "All right, Doc. Whatever."
Adam took his time running double checks on the compound's securities, and then he made a call to town to see if the San Francisco crew had arrived at 'Couver International yet. He spent the next fifteen minutes with Mayor Dawson, reviewing the current status of the 'Couver contingent, the now missing Facet, Judge Stoner, who had skipped town within an hour of being bailed out of the pokie.
When he started to key in the numbers for Alexa Ryan's barn com in New Mexico, Doc's wide palm descended on the disconnect.
"Oh, all right," Adam grumbled. "You know, you could still do this, Doc. That bit with Thomas--she hardly hurt him at all."
Doc opened the door to Ram's room, grinned grimly and sketched a half-bow Adam's direction, indicating the Oldest Immortal should precede him into the Dragon's Den.
Adam scrunched up his considerable nose in a smirk of grand dimensions and stomped into the room.
Again he noted how unexpectedly light and airy this place was, despite the fact it was carved out of solid bedrock. Indirect lights above the many niches in the wall seemed to admit sunlight from skylights just out of sight. The appointments were all handwoven and carved, soft, organic shades of autumn colors, counterpointed with a bone white drapery which flowed from the ceiling to the floor, swathing the bed like a four poster hanging. Adam thought it gave the appearance of a hollow tree, just peeking out on a sunny day, where a caterpillar had decided to overwinter in the many veils of its cocoon.
"Mother?" Adam thought it best to warn Ram before he sat on the bed. She seemed to be sleeping, but her breathing was studied and measured, and he couldn't see most of her face for the cool gauze compresses he had placed earlier over the burns.
"What do you want?" Ram struggled to lever up on her right elbow.
Adam placed the flat of his palm against her sternum. "It's all right, Ram. You are still losing blood and we really don't have a proper replacement, unless you can come up with a magic broom I don't know about, we are going to have to repair whatever the damage is down there."
Ram smiled at the euphemism and then winced as her burns moved beneath the dressings.
"Here," Adam sighed and lifted off the dressings. He rummaged through a drawer in the soft walnut bedside stand and retrieved some eye ointment and burn gel. "Is that better?" he asked.
"Better than--? What? It's been a long day, Adam," Ram's weariness was evident in each word. "Just don't take too long and I promise I won't send you splatting up against the far wall as I did poor Horse."
"Doc is here," Adam said carefully. "He's just going to hand me things. He's--"
"Stop talking like I'm some sort of brain-damaged serial killer," Ram snorted. "I said I wouldn't hurt you. You are just going to have to trust me. I was nearly bled out and I couldn't think straight with Thomas and--and I thought--." There were no more words to the diatribe, but the expression on her ruined face spoke volumes, even beneath the thick blue burn gels.
"Well, you will warn me if you are going to drop me with a thought, now won't you?" Adam said pleasantly.
"Oh," Ram said softly. "Sean told you about that?"
Adam felt a sudden need to make a distinction between the Sean who had told him this and the one they had now, Psychiatrist Byrnes. It made his chest feel suddenly too small for his heart and raised a lump halfway up his long throat.
"Knowing your wit," Ram said in a throaty chuckle, "I hate to ask this, but how do you want me? What position?"
Adam moved the bed drapes aside. "Just move down to the end of the bed."
"How romantic," Ram gave it a try, but she couldn't manage, blinded and with only one arm to push.
"Sorry," Adam sorted and moved the IV lines and then scooped her up as gently as he could manage. "You must think me a dolt."
Ram was too concentrated on remaining placid. Moving, though it was only the two feet to the end of the bed, was not a pleasant endeavor even with such a solicitous aide.
"Now, just let your thighs relax to the side," Adam pulled over the chair from the simple vanity at the far wall by the bathroom archway. "Just bend your knees." He laid his gloved left hand lightly on her right ankle, so she would know where he was, and just to defuse what was an uncomfortable situation in anyone's ledger. "I'll take a few four-by's," Adam lifted his right hand up towards Allen.
"Doc?"
"Oh. Oh, excuse me, you asked for--?" Allen reached for the gauzes. "I'll break open a suture pack," he handed them to Adam, "I think I brought a full surgical pack," he amended. "I'll open that. What's you suture choice?"
"It's that bad a mess?" Ram jolted them just by speaking. Both physicians were too adept in the art of objectifying.
"Not if you're in the habit of playing leapfrog over fence posts and miss a few on a regular basis," Adam remarked dryly. "Allen, if you can't keep up here, I can call Thomas up to assist," he chided Doc, who was still cracking packs and muttering to himself.
"Don't get your scrubs in twist, Blade," Allen protested, calling Adam by the nickname of a general surgeon.
Adam didn't hear it. He was having enough trouble concentrating on a portion of his mother's anatomy which had hitherto been unknown to him, as far as he remembered. The problem was paying close enough attention to repair the area, without really seeing it. The exercise intrigued him on an intellectual level, and disgusted him on another.
"Ram," Adam was halfway through the next stack of gauze before he had the area cleaned enough to see the origin of the bleeding, an unexpectedly tiny "pumper" just inside the left labia. He lifted his right palm and Doc slapped a Kelly across it. "Mother, you are going to have to hold very still. There will be a little bit of a pinch--"
There erupted such a stream of purely arcane epithets as had not been heard on the planet for many ages, but Ram did not move.
"What the hell--?" Doc returned the instruments to the makeshift "back table" and retrieved a thin piece of synthetic suture. "Here," he draped it over Adam's palm and then positioned his hand over the Kelly, waiting for Adam to make the tie, so he could flash, and then remove, the hemostat.
"Done," Adam said, as surprised as Allen that there wasn't more to do. He took some gentle swabs, vaginal vault, rectal vault, and a superficial swab of the introitus and handed these off to Allen to set in the DNA tubes.
Doc finished cleaning up and then Adam lifted Ram to her original position on the bed. He retrieved a large, white T-shirt from the bureau and threaded the IV lines through the sleeves and then over Ram's good arm, and then the splinted arm, and then over her head, being careful not to touch her face.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?" he asked Ram when she was settled again under new sheets and clean comforter. He adjusted the IV flow rate slower.
"No," she replied, yawning.
"Well, maybe you could tell me who did the repair on what must have been a fourth degree rectal tear with lateral extensions, including most of the pelvic floor?" Adam replaced the burn gels and then held a glass of electrolyte replacement to her lips. "Drink."
Ram complied with the latter request only.
"Look," Adam sighed loudly. "Just tell me what we should do about this dragon. Are we, is the compound, in any danger? Is he still here?"
Ram opened her blood-red, blind eyes and turned them in his general direction. "Too many questions," she complained. "All the answers are 'no.' No, I won't tell you. No, there's no danger. No, there is no one to fear."
"I am no one's idea of a leader, Mother, but the Boy Scout is currently indisposed, so--"
"Hello Allen?" Ram called to the physician who was tidying up the instruments and bagging the trash.
"Yes," Doc answered cautiously.
"Goodbye, Allen," Ram said.
"Right," Doc bundled up the "surgery" and departed.
When the door closed, Ram reached out towards Adam--or where Adam had been. He'd moved down to the end of the bed, picking up some of the things which Allen had missed. She groped the empty air for a moment and then called his name.
"What?" Adam looked up and saw her reaching out to the thin air. He knew she was blinded by the burns, but until now the reality of her incapacity had not quite entered his perception. "Oh, I'm over here," he said. "I'm cleaning up the floor," he added. "Do you need something?"
"I need you to tell me what is wrong with MacLeod," Ram replied. Her hand drifted back awkwardly to rest on her belly.
"It's been an awful day for everyone, Mother," Adam headed for the adjacent bathroom, through a stone archway opposite the bed, at right angle to the entry door. "I'm going to get a wet towel to finish the floor," he called back.
"When you return," Ram raised her voice. "Answer my question."
"Oh, I see," Adam returned with a towel and went down on his knees at the foot of the bed, doing a poor imitation of cleaning lady. "You don't answer anything and I must now be the font of all information, just because you command it."
"Yes," Ram answered with all the authority of a monarch.
"No," Adam replied with equal authority.
A chill, silent wall erected itself in the air between them with such intensity that, even blind, Ram saw it clearly in the eyes of her mind.
"Perhaps there is some bargain we might strike," Ram finally made the first move.
"I'm listening," Adam called from the bathroom where he was scrubbing his hands.
"You answer my question," Ram paused and seemed to be choking, but Adam was not swayed.
"Yes?"
"I'll answer your question," Ram grudgingly agreed to terms.
"Truthfully," Adam returned to sit on the side of the bed as he finished drying his hands and setting the amendment to the terms.
"Oh, all right," Ram sighed. "My question first."
"Not on your very long and lustrous life," Adam laughed. "You were there the day I was born, Ram, and you know it wasn't yesterday."
"Ask," Ram said, with such a venomous hiss, that Adam started laughing again.
"Who did the surgical repair, Mother?"
Ram was silent.
"Then we do not have an agreement," Adam finally stated, rising to leave. "If there is nothing else."
"You won't believe me in any case," Ram sighed.
"Go on--"
"How many Danaan gynecologists do you know, Adam?"
"You're saying a ghost did this?" Adam asked, guessing the obvious and only answer, Mark Palmer.
"That's another question," Ram replied.
"I think I've been had," Adam snorted, "but, okay, your turn."
"The question on the table, about MacLeod," Ram reminded him.
"Thomas said he didn't handle Sean's--ummm--Sean's change very well, Mother."
"What change?" Ram struggled up to sitting.
"And that, I believe," Adam's grin was lost on his mother, "is another question."
"Who's having who?" Ram complained. "Go ahead."
Adam thought carefully about how to frame the question to best effect, but he could not think of an approach that didn't have too many holes. When he finally had the exact wording, he began, " Who--?"
Too late. Ram was fast asleep, snoring softly.
Adam slipped off his coat and his shoes as he entered the above-ground library pool. As with everything on the Cross Estates, this was an eclectic bit of architecture that had no place in this area of the world, but which was absolutely authentic in its execution. Thomas surely did like to engineer all manner of realities, both in stone and in the lives of those around him, human and horse, and others.
Adam thought the pool house a sunny bit of Greece smack dab in the middle of a Northwest Territory winter, a sultry oasis of columns and ferns and bright blue water. The truly clever twist--and there always was one, where Master Cross had built--was the collection of canals leading off of the main pool and down the many side halls, forming central rivers where ordinary tile floor had been before. Each hall was laden, floor to ceiling, with shelves of books. There were old-fashioned comics in plastic sealers, ancient first editions, common paper backs, and encyclopedias in every language, as well as more ordinary books in every color and binding and language.
Adam hoped the children would be kind to these books. He rather thought they would be.
It wasn't Bavil, but Cross Estates was as close as one might expect in these times. Mary's children would thrive here. Adam could see the days stretching ahead of them. It would certainly be an interesting time. He was almost looking forward to having children around again, now that Sean was...
...gone.
What a hellish day this had been. Time to sup and then a long winter's nap. He hadn't been this tired for a long while, very much the fatigue of a full flown field encounter. It would be good to sleep. Just as soon as he settled the Highlander down from whatever demon had bitten his ass this day of days.
Which endeavor had brought the Oldest Immortal to the pool house.
"Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," he called out in a jovial baritone to the draggled figure slumped in on itself at the shadowed corner of the pool side. "Rumor has it--," he began.
"Oh, shut up!" the growl barely formed words, it was so full of rage and sorrow.
Adam slowed down his long stride and advanced a little more cautiously. "Oh, dear. We are in a mood, though. Ran into Grant on the way back from Ram's room," Adam said lightly. "Seemed to be carrying a bit of baggage--"
"Shut the fuck up," Duncan started to uncurl the broad framework of his back.
"Poor Thomas is running two for four in the 'let's get beaten up by the MacLeod family' marathon," Adam stopped about a yard away from the Scot and then backed up one step as Duncan stood. "Thomas will soon be right and everything else is steady as she goes." Adam's hands smoothed the air between them. "How are you doing?" he added.
The dark eyes rolled and a deep, windy sigh emerged from somewhere deep below Duncan's heart. "I could even up the score for him, if you like," he suggested.
Adam backed up another step. "Thomas doesn't take it personally, Duncan. He says you warned him, but he was so concerned about--"
"I'm warning you," Duncan took a step forward towards Adam. "--and you don't seem to be listening, either."
"If you would stop this and just tell me what I can--" Adam made himself step forward, against all his better judgment.
Duncan came across Adam's mouth with the flat of his palm sending percussive reverberations round the library and jolting the elder's head sideways, bloodying his lower lip.
"Yes, well maybe that will shut you up," Duncan stammered out an answer to Adam's stunned expression, hand over mouth, moss grey eyes shiny and unfocused.
Adam's long limbs carried him, a little unsteadily, to the pool's side where he dipped up the water and rinsed out his mouth. He expected a chlorine taste, but all the liquid of the Cross water works was a slightly fishy saline now, being an above- and below-ground aquarium of many, many acres. The taste wakened some elder memory, deep in his past, some sensory record without word or reason, and it distracted Adam so thoroughly that he was caught entirely unawares by the sudden, barreling weight at his back which drove him into the pool.
The Oldest Immortal did not have even enough time to gasp in any air before he found himself completely submerged and fighting mindlessly against all the wet windings of his land clothes and the unrelenting grasp of Duncan's broad, strong hands. Opening his eyes, he could see the Highlander's shadow above him and beyond that, the surface, within reach, but impossibly far away.
The merciless hands had found his throat and their pressure made him him cough and choke in the pool water. Adam bid his flailing limbs to slack. He opened his eyes and stared beyond the shadow. Adam made his long neck surrender into the crushing grip. He made himself as dead as he soon would be, if this sham did not work.
It worked.
Duncan suddenly released him and Adam took the advantage, driving the long lever of his knee into the Scot's solar plexus so hard that it sent the Highlander down to the bottom of the pool in a flurry of bubbles from an exhalation that seemed never-ending.
Adam managed to make it to the poolside where he hooked his elbows on the edge and spent the next several minutes gasping and moaning and waiting for his strength to return and trying not to spew. He'd swallowed a lot of salt water.
He would have stayed there many minutes longer, but he heard Duncan rising from the bottom, like a breaching whale and that was enough stimulus to send him up out of the pool, sloshing and smacking, bare feet and wet canvas and a sweater that drooped practically down to his knees. Adam scrambled for the shadow where he'd first found Duncan brooding.
The heavy splash and tread made him turn to face his spouse. "Stay away from me, you sorry son of a Scot!" he rasped.
"Or you'll what, you lanky, light-loafered lolly?" Duncan continued to advance across the granite flooring.
Oh, dear, Adam thought, hearing the contemporary version of high hilltop satire. Not a good sign. Better forewar, than war, though, and if he could just get his voice back, he could probably best this dark Glenfinnan son in a battle of words. "Or--" he began, but the effort started him coughing, and the coughing made him gag, and the war was lost in a convulsive expulsion of a liter's worth of saline.
Which slowed Duncan's advance down, not one bit.
Adam spit, wiped his mouth with his left forearm and brought the Claymore up above his head with his right hand. He didn't have to say anything. Duncan's stunned expression was an ample enough understanding. Adam reached up with his left hand and snuggled it into his right, bringing the sword down in front of him in a solid, two-handed grip. His long legs settled apart and his knees bent into the very slight sway as his eyes fixed on the soft brown stare before him.
Adam set himself for Duncan's next move, but it was as unexpected as the dunk in the pool.
MacLeod just sat down in the middle of the drip-pool he'd made standing astonished at the sight of his own sword in Adam's hands, as if he couldn't believe they would both betray him. "You just can't understand what this is like, Old Man. You cannot possibly know."
"What?" Adam's gasping whisper had lost all his signature calm.
Duncan MacLeod's head lowered and he shook his tangled, sopping mane slowly side to side.
"You mean I don't know what it is like to lose Sean? To lose Mary? To lose a spouse?" He said this last so poignantly, that Duncan lifted his head up and began to wonder if he was wrong.
"It is different for you, Adam," the Scot said his first civil words since Adam had entered the pool library.
Adam's eyes blazed like a smoldering fire on the moors. "Let me guess," he smiled between heaving gasps. "Because you're really straight and you think I am not."
Duncan's expression darkened and reformed in a bemused look of surprise. Adam could not guess whether this was as a reaction in the negative or if the Scot were astonished that the Old Man had guessed rightly. No, Adam corrected himself, I am voicing something that he has not yet put into conscious form, but that is nonetheless too true to ignore. It was not, however, the essential driving force behind this current black mood.
Adam lowered the Claymore, resting its point on the slippery granite. He was beginning to chill in all this wet clothing and he detested the squishing sensation every time he shifted inside his salty, wet jeans and the ruined sweater. "No? Well, then, the Millenn--" he had not even finished the word before Duncan's expression visibly relaxed and the Scot's attention came upon the Oldest Immortal, full force, dead on. "--ial Champion situation.
"I see," Adam set the Claymore down and went to sit, out of arm's length, cross-legged on the damp pavement, in front of the Highlander. "You think no one can understand what that is like."
"No one can," Duncan looked down at his hands which were flexing, splayed to fist to splayed again.
Adam sighed, "Well, you are right. Most of the Millennial Champions are dead now. It must be difficult to be one of the very few who have to stay so close to evil all the time."
The soft brown eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How do you know there are any others? I thought I was--"
"I know what you thought, Duncan," Adam was relieved to have his voice hit some fairly respectable and authoritative notes. "But just as there have been many millennia, there were many champions."
"But the hermit--" the Highlander was clearly confused and not a little miffed that there were others.
"Yes, he was one," Adam nodded, assessing the wonderful man who sat before him, as splendid in his grief and distraction as ever he was in his more usual certainty. "Most of them ended as he did, on the sword of a successor. Some never made it through a single century before they succumbed to despair. Some few survived into the next millennia, a few survived for many ages after. Darius was one of these," Adam paused. "So much was lost with that priest. I think we will never know the full extent of that vile deed."
Duncan's hands curled into broad fists. "That priest? And will I just be 'that sodding Scot,' when I am gone?"
Adam's signature smirk curled lazily at the margins of his mouth. "Very likely," he joked, mistaking Duncan's sarcasm for a truer mirth.
"How many, Adam? If you are not lying about all of this."
"You mean, still living, now?"
"Yes, Adam. How many?"
"Well," Adam thought a moment. "Two," he said finally.
"Two others?"
"No, I meant--" Adam paused and then he smiled broadly and laughed aloud. "Yes, yes, Duncan, three in total, a perfect number, a mathematical definition of stability, a Sacred Triad. Of course," he muttered, almost to himself. "There is always a purpose, even when there seems to be only chaos," he recited, in some elder form of proto- Aramaic, a truth that was known even at the dawn of time.
"Who?" Duncan rolled up to his knees and arched a kink out of his back.
"Who?" Adam stalled, trying to think of a way to answer this that wouldn't backfire on him. He swiped idly at a droplet that had managed to roll all the way down his long nose and now hung from its tip. At the edge of his perceptions he saw MacLeod dive for the Claymore, gauged he would never beat the Scot to the prize, and pushed up and away, all without really thinking.
From twenty feet away and increasing the distance, backwards, as fast as he could manage on the wet granite, Adam called out, "I've been inside of you, MacLeod." He had not meant it to sound so sensual, but he found his longing slipped into his speech unbidden. He continued on anyway, as if there had been no innuendo, "I know about the monsters, Duncan." He back-peddled farther, parrying with his words, hoping their affection for one another would fit the difference between the disparate armaments.
As bad as this day had been, it would be far worse to lose his head at the end of it.
"Duncan," Adam dodged behind one of the tall marble columns. "Monsters and miracles are all the same thing."
"What are you talking about?" the faint trace of Scotland rendered the last word a little closer to 'boot'."
"They are both general terms that mortals use to describe things which they do not understand. If the thing is good for them, then it is magic or miracle. If they think it might harm them, then it is monstrous," Adam paused.
"Go on," Duncan's voice sounded nearer.
Adam sucked back, tight against the column, thinking his only escape would be a quick dive back into the pool. "It is my firm belief that the number of monsters in your world is indirectly proportional to your understanding, and that that is their only significance."
The Claymore was laid down on the granite near Adam's feet.
"All these years, Adam," Duncan reached across Adam's chest and rested his hand on the opposite shoulder. "And how do you always find some new way to tell me how stupid I am."
Adam's great relief folded his legs beneath him and slid him all the way down the column. "No, no. Not stupid, Duncan, not at all. You are just young and very new at this. You will learn. You do very well, Highlander."
Duncan slumped down beside him. "I hurt Thomas. I nearly drowned you. I don't see where there's anything noteworthy in that."
"Well, I don't see you going out and mowing down a quarter of the population for no other reason than that you can," Adam laughed as he started peeling out of his soggy sweater.
Duncan watched the elegant arms move up, heaving the soaked sweater over his head. His hand moved of its own accord to brush the broad palm lightly over Adam's wet chest. The Oldest Immortal pressed forward against his hand and made some muffled muttering as the sweater cleared the hook of his beak.
Then Duncan's mind replayed what Adam had said. "You?" he asked as soon as the question revealed itself to him.
"Me? Adam Piersen, nice to make your acquaintance," he tried to fold the sweater, but that was hopeless, so he just wadded into a more or less orderly pile.
"Adam!" Duncan's hand drifted threateningly close to one of Adam's sensitive nipples.
"Hey!" Adam cried in mock terror. "All right, all right. I am also Ahriman, Brother Champion."
"Oh," Duncan thought back two decades, when this had all begun, and a few questions naturally bobbed to the surface of his consciousness. "Why didn't you tell me what would happen? Why did you disappear just when I needed you? Why--?"
"I can counsel you, and so I did, or I can give you my head, and so I tried to do." Again the longing skewed the meaning. Adam stood up, retrieved the sweater wad and shook, first one leg, and then the other. "As I recall, you wouldn't take it, though I have to admit it looked as if you'd changed your mind this eve.
"Much as I would have liked to help you when the time came, that was not allowed. I did cheat a little and sent another young Immie into your sword at the raceway, but Richie disappeared and his sword was lying by the dead man's side, and--well, it was much later before I knew my plan had worked. It was you disappeared, Duncan. As you may recall, when you think on it, I was there through the first attack, when I really wasn't supposed to be."
"And the other?" Duncan asked.
"The experience marks us, Duncan. In a way we are very much alike: all very careful in our words and our tempers and our actions. I think it turns us into vigilant shepherds, something like that. Who else do you know, besides Darius, rest his soul, who acts in that fashion?" Adam started walking towards the middle hall which led, by an inside tunnel to the second floor down and a lovely bath that he was even now experiencing, if only in anticipation.
"You surely don't mean Joe," Duncan scrambled after him.
"Oh, Mac, but you are a caution," Adam leaned against the wall by the lift and laughed heartily.
"Who then? I don't know any--Wait a minute--but you said 'living' ." The door slid open and they stepped inside, making two confluent puddles on the floor. "You mean Sean Byrnes, don't you?"
"I do indeed," Adam answered, flicking the water off his fingers.
"But I killed Sean," Duncan protested.
"Yes, I know," Adam said softly. "Bath?" he gestured out the door towards the hallway. "I was there, Duncan. I thought there would be a very good chance I would have to stand alone between Ahriman and the World. Frankly," he paused in front of the bath's doorway and indicated the Scot should precede him. "I really didn't give the World much of a chance in that case."
"And when exactly did that occur to you?" Duncan lowered himself over the large marble tub and keyed on the taps to a setting that would make the water "a little too hot," Adam's favorite setting for a serious bath.
"I suppose," Adam slipped out of his wet jeans. "That would have been about the moment I was thinking of taking your head, right before you played toss the old man off the precipice."
"What a place this is," Duncan commented as he undressed. His gaze ran over the carved stone ledges with their many plants and glass jars of every color, pale violet lights and stacks of brilliant green towels in every size. From the array of bath salts and bubblebath, Duncan watched Adam pour first one and then another into the enormous square marble pond which Thomas called his "tub."
"You haven't been here before?" Adam drifted his hand through the water, mixing the suds to a froth.
Duncan lowered himself into the tub slowly, adjusting to Adam's too warm bath. "Oh," he said distantly. "Sean has returned and there are now three Champions. Is that what having a son was all about?"
"Oh, Love," Adam splashed in behind the Scot and wrapped him in a yard and a half of enthusiastic arms. "It was so much more than that. All sons must grow into the men that replace them in the world. Ours just did so a little more violently than most. We will be grateful that Byrnes is back with us, and we will mourn Sean, with Mary, and Anne, and all those who must go before us, while we stay behind and man the fortress against evil."
Duncan ducked his head and laughed. It was the first time he had felt warm all day, inside and out. "I know you, Adam," he said finally, "and I know you don't mean any of it, but thank you anyway for saying that."
When Adam didn't toss back his usual rejoinder, Duncan twisted around to see that at least the part about the mourning had been said in all seriousness.
