Pentimento

        Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea.
        That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conceptions, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

Lillian Hellman

       The deserted basement of the river dock warehouse belonged to one of Joe Dawson’s Watchers. It had gained, in retirement, a nobility it never had when in use. The former cement closet of commerce had attained the status of armory and on this night, prison.
       Crane had delegated the responsibilities of combat ground clearance, downloading, returning the van, and such to his underlings at the park. He had left his boss, Joe Dawson, to see to Richie and Duncan--when they “woke up”-- and find Adam. Crane was damned if he was going to miss out on questioning the psychotic Immortal, the Knacker, whom they’d been half a year tracking down and capturing.
       Donning his best air of authority as if it were a shiny suit of armor, Crane strode into the bare basement room to confront the demon chained at its center beneath a single dusty bulb. Crane walked up behind the Knacker and stood a stride away, just at arm’s length, from the fiend and took inventory.
       The man was not half as large as he'd seemed, looming in their imaginations like Satan, Himself, by dint of his deeds alone. The Knacker was shorter than Crane, not even five foot ten...well, barely. They had sat him down on a short stool at the room’s center and had manacled his hands to the top rungs on either side. Then they had chained the stool to a large drain in the floor. It was an odd binding, but it served, immobilizing the Immortal and bending even his short, slight frame forward at the shoulders. The fiend was still groggy from the Quickening and the subsequent beating when they’d ambushed him following the grizzly beheading. With his shaved head bent forward, chin on chest, the demon slept. His breathing had a curious whistling sound on the exhale as if the Knacker were whispering or hissing in his sleep.
       You aren’t so much, Crane thought as he walked round to face the nightmare head on. “Wake up!” he said meanly. “We have some questions and it will go better for you if you cooperate!”
       The head rose like a serpent on the long neck and the dull eyes unlidded. The Knacker looked out from under the black tattoo in Crane’s general direction. “What exactly is it that will go better, Lt. Crane?”
       Crane’s neck hairs rose like boar’s bristles. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling that this thing knew his name. “What do you mean? This of course!” he indicated the room, the men in the corner examining the Knacker’s satchel and rifle, and then he indicated the gun under his coat.
       “I do not see...” the way the man said his S’s would have sounded sibilant except for the sizzle with which they were delivered, that and the infuriating lack of fear. “I do not see how any of this is even your business.” The head floated slowly, first left and then right and the tongue flicked over the top lip, healing from a large split. There was a distinct air of saurian elegance about the creature.
       “Huh?” Crane thought the man was addled from the melee in the park.
        “I said,” dragon face leaned slowly forward toward the lieutenant. “What business have you got with me?” He seemed to be staring at Crane’s throat.
       “You’re a bloody murderer, fella!”
       “And YOU are not the bloody law, Crane. You are not even a detective. I have murdered no one.”
       Crane grabbed the man’s shoulders and shook him. He recited the seven names of the men the Knacker had killed and mutilated.
       The Knacker looked up at Crane’s flushed face and curled his mouth in a sinister grin which made the dragon tattoo’s flank twitch. Then the head continued its slow, greasy motion leftward as the mouth opened slightly and the dead eyes pointed hungrily at Crane’s wrist. The lieutenant drew his hands back abruptly.
       “I am hungry,” the Knacker said. “I was interrupted so rudely at dinner this eve. It’s made me peckish.”
       Crane held his face as expressionless as he could manage. He WAS eating them as Adam had suggested! Dear God in Heaven.
       “Be a little careful there, gentlemen,” the Knacker called to the men going over his things. “That is a very expensive rifle.”
        “.300 Winchester,” Crane supplied. “What does that run?”
        The Knacker grimaced as one of the Watchers cleaned the scope with his sleeve. “Less than that scope used to be worth,” he sighed patiently. “That near optical was a perfect Swiss lens before your man scratched it just now.”
        “Well,” Crane fought for some dominance in the situation. “You won’t be needing it for a good long while.”
        The Knacker did not react to the threat. His tones remained even and bored with the odd spitting S’s punctuating the quiet, patient phrasing. “Because you are going to kill me? I suspect I would bless you if you did. Or are we just waiting for the torturer to arrive and you are the opening act?”
       “I ask you again, Crane, why am I here. I am an Immortal. I kill other Immortals. I was born to do so and I shall die doing so. And your job is to write down the first and the last and not to interfere,” Knacker said this with a mild hint of laughter underneath, or derision. “Perhaps I misunderstand your purpose, Watcher Crane.”
        All the while, the pale, naked head drifted back and forth like a cobra in slow motion and never once did the eyes beneath the dragon’s claws look directly at him. For which Crane was supremely grateful. “What is your name, bastard?”
       “Being foundlings all, then we are all bastards. You might remind our dear Cousin Duncan of that some day, Crane. I am sure he would be just as understanding about the endearment as I am going to be.”
       Crane wasn’t sure what Knacker meant. He didn’t like the sound of it though. “What is your name?”
       “Dear Lieutenant,” Knacker said seductively. It made Crane’s skin creep and writhe. “When I do not answer a question, it is because I will not do so. Asking it again merely wastes both our time.”
       “Look here, you,” Crane had all the high ground and none of the advantage. “You’re our prisoner!”
       “Granted,” said the Knacker, almost kindly, “but now that you’ve got me, what do you accountants and historians and librarians think you’re going to do with me?”

       Joe Dawson descended in the ancient warehouse lift to the “armory.” The two Immortals, Duncan MacLeod and Methos (aka Adam Piersen, Watcher/ Researcher) accompanied him, one either side as he crossed the vast and empty main area and entered what used to be the shipping office. Cement block walls reeked of mold and age and dust and the single remaining bulb did not light the room well.
       Joe took stock as they entered. Crane appeared to be fidgeting in the center of the room around the prisoner, the Immortal they assumed was the Knacker. The look on the young lieutenant’s face reflected exasperation and defensiveness. The other men in the room, four Joe counted, had moved their operation of inspecting the prisoner’s possessions as far away from the man manacled at the room’s center as they could get without leaving.
       The two Immortals standing with Joe faded laterally and stood against the near wall just watching, their arms folded, but their sword hands tucked under the fold, rather than locked on the opposite elbow. They could reach their weapons without a single extra motion should the need arise. It was evident they thought it might.
       Joe took a deep breath. He knew a great deal about this man already and he had yet to see him. And all that he knew was most disturbing. Crane saw Joe and he visibly relaxed, making Joe feel like the cavalry coming over the rise at just the right moment.
       “We have some preliminary information...” Crane began.
       Dawson raised his hand. He really didn’t think anything Crane could tell him would be of use. Coming round to the front of the Knacker, Joe was first aware that they had not searched him--a serious breach of protocol, or at least common sense. His belt remained on and his shoes. Except for the fading bruise at the right cheek and the general disarray of his clothing, he did not appeared to have been touched. They probably had not touched him since they’d all piled on him after the Quickening and beat the living daylights out of him, even though the Knacker was fairly incapacitated at the time. They’d added a second set of cuffs after they brought him here...
       Joe was aware that most of the blood down the trouser legs and splashed up the dark shirt was Mondragon’s from the method of beheading, but he also noted that new blood, orange against brown, appeared at both wrists. The Knacker sat quietly, if somewhat cramped over, on the stool to which he was chained, and he seemed at complete ease with the situation. Nothing in his posture denoted anything but boredom.
       But all the while, thought Joe, you have been sawing at your fetters, without concern to pain or injury. The Knacker had scored both wrists so deeply, they were now bleeding continuously. The man was turning his hands within the steel cuffs so slowly that the motion had gone undetected.
      Joe looked last at the face of the man whose ferocious habits had rendered him a monster in the minds of the Watchers. He had left this for last, knowing it would be too distracting a place to start.
       As if the Knacker knew he was being observed he refocused out of his contemplative stare and lifted his gaze towards the grey-bearded man with the cane who stood before him.
       In the periphery of his vision, Joe caught the hands rotating in the cuffs. If we don’t get him out of those, and soon, he’s going to take his own hands off trying to get free. “Crane?”
       The man looked over from the far corner where he’d joined the men going through the fascinating collection of cutlery and weaponry which were the Knacker’s tool kit. “Yes?”
       “Give me the keys to these and take the men outside for a break,” Dawson ordered. Joe looked at the Knacker’s reaction to this. The man was staring straight at him...well, the Knacker looked at the spot where Joe was standing but they did not seem to see him at all. It was an effect, not of blindness, but as if Joe were invisible. The way the dead eyes fixed and focused, but did not react, was quite unnerving, almost as if the bright, orange eyes of the dragon tattoo did his seeing for him.
       Crane sputtered and argued, but Joe stood firm saying Duncan and Adam would be staying with him and he could ask for no better protection. Crane complained that the Knacker had already killed MacLeod once that evening, and by the way, where was Richie?
       Joe explained they’d left Ryan with Mike at the bar where he was indulging in liquid oral analgesic relief for his maimed legs, healing slower than the older Immortals’ two thick skulls had done. Joe didn’t add that Adam had likewise been taken out with one shot between the eyes by the self-same Knacker. Crane knew too much as it was.
       MacLeod moved away from the wall, headed for the center where the Knacker, Joe, and Crane occupied the ring of light, waiting silently for the other men to pack up and leave, waiting for the next act to begin. Adam slipped around into his path and engaged him in a heated whispering debate that the others could not hear well enough to make sense of.
       In the transition, Joe thought he would start a conversation with the man. “When did you come to Seacouver?” he asked.
       “Not very long ago, Watcher Dawson,” the Knacker replied. The way he said Joe’s name was a distortion produced by the hissing S run over a mispronounced ending of “sin.” “Not long before the first ‘barbecue,’ I believe you are calling them.”
       “Why have we never heard of you before?” Joe thought he would inch inside ways through the man’s pride.
       “I cannot answer for your shortcomings, Watcher. Either yours, or your entire shabby pretense of a boys’ club. Sad, really,” he added almost as if he were truly sad about the situation. “Overgrown boys playing at the Game of Men, when all they really want to do is stay in the safety of the dark and pursue the many splendored, if tame, pleasures of the voyeur.”
        Joe noted the Knacker had picked the same gambit and he strove to keep his anger at bay. Again the hands sawed round in the cuffs. Damnation, he needed to get the men out of here and...
       “How much of a Man’s Game is it to shoot from cover?” Joe made the next move. He could not read a reaction in the Knacker’s dead eyes, but the hand twisting stopped.
        “I admire you, Watcher Dawson,” the Knacker began a long counter offensive. “You, like myself, are a hunter.” He let the thought drift a moment as the last of Crane’s men left.
         Crane retrieved his heavy flashlight from the table and stood near the Knacker waiting to take his leave of Dawson.
        “You are very good at catching game, Dawson,” the Knacker circled in verbally. “But you do not seem to know what to do with it when you have it in your hands. Me, for example,” the Knacker paused just a brief moment. “Or Ram, for instance...I'd say you have more missing down there than just your legs, cripple,” the blow struck Joe visibly, just as Crane’s flashlight connected with the Knacker’s left side. There was a sickening pop as several ribs cracked and a sharp hissing intake of air as the Knacker collapsed forward over his knees in obvious pain.
        “You sorry, son--” Crane spit.
        Joe grabbed the lieutenant’s elbow, “Out! Get out! Now!”
        At the other end of the room, Adam was also grabbing elbows, “Wait,” was all he said to MacLeod whose brown eyes had developed a murderous glint. “Just wait until he goes,” Adam repeated, never releasing his grip on the Highlander’s bunched biceps.
       When Crane had left and closed the door behind him. Adam went over to the far wall, pushed aside some boxes stacked there and revealed a door into the next room. He opened it cautiously, indicated that the course was clear, and then walked over to Joe. “Listen, Dawson....” Adam looked down at his feet, “Uh, why don’t we just walk over here,” he held his hand out, palm up. Joe gave him the keys to the cuffs. “Duncan has something he needs...he thinks he needs,” Adam cast a glance back at the Scot, “Something he needs to do here.” He threw the keys to MacLeod and walked Joe away from the Knacker.
       Piersen seemed to know what he was doing, Joe thought. MacLeod didn’t look any too stable, though. He had that pre-berserker look, the first fire of the battle glint beginning in his eyes. What had he called that? Ah, yes, Joe remembered: the look when a warrior has committed to the kill. That’s why Adam was moving him back, to be out of the range of the Quickening.
       As Joe watched, the Highlander ran his broad hand over the Knacker’s back, talking in low tones to the man. Probably setting the terms of the challenge, Joe thought. Then MacLeod disengaged the cuffs, first from the rungs and then from the man’s scored and bleeding wrists.
       The Knacker sat upright slowly, wincing as the fractured ribs caught. His face seemed even paler beneath the black tattoo, if that were possible, and there was a blue pallor building round the mouth.
        “Put your hands out,” MacLeod said.
        The Knacker did so.
         “No,” MacLeod corrected, “straight out in front of you, palms up.”
         Again, the Knacker complied.
         Duncan drew out his sword from under his coat. It made a whirring swoosh in the air behind his head as he brought it up high.
        Adam gasped involuntarily.
       What the hell? Joe was completely perplexed. Then as the Knacker closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, he guessed what was about to happen. Duncan was going to take care of this madman, but he wasn’t going to kill him. Dear Lord!
       Down came Duncan’s beautiful dragon’s hilt sword. Joe couldn’t help squinting his eyes shut. After several moments and a soft thud, he steeled his nerve to look and was completely tipped off center by the very confusing scene before him.
       The sword was lying across the Knacker’s palms and Duncan MacLeod was kneeling on the cold floor before the man, speaking, as if to a student, in quiet instructive tones completely devoid of any of the emotion which would be expected, given their implications.
        Adam held his breath and his long fingers curled into tight fists.
        “This is a katana. It is not like your sword. It will not work well in a chopping maneuver. You must bring it across the direction of your stroke so that its keen edge can slice, otherwise the blade will chatter into the cut.” Duncan took the Knacker’s right hand and wrapped it round the ivory hilt. Then he sat back on his heels, lifted the collar of his coat and tucked it inside, clearing his neck. “It is your choice: lateral or vertical?”
        Joe heard and his body understood almost before he did. He lurched forward to stop this, but Adam’s long arm shot out in front of him. “They must decide this between themselves. We have no rights in this.” Adam was clearly as distressed as Joe.
       The Knacker's dazed affect cleared and the cold eyes stared down at the blade in a gradual com- prehension. The head shook, unbelieving, side to side. “Damn you, Duncan MacLeod!” The tones were higher, less breathy, more familiar.
       “I am sure,” he replied in an almost friendly fashion. “Nevertheless, I owe you my life--to keep you safe, to keep the child safe. With Mondragon’s Quickening and mine, you should have enough of your power back to survive.”
        Joe’s jaw slacked. Ram! “The Knacker is Ram!”
        “Duh,” replied Adam, his eyes never leaving his mother and his friend. He didn’t really breathe easily until he saw the sword dropped from her hand as if it were a red hot iron. “Get her out of here to some place safe,” he urged MacLeod.
        Duncan turned towards Adam just as Ram tipped forward, collapsing into his arms. Her breathing was becoming more rapid and ragged and she had begun to tremble.
        “I think Crane ruptured her spleen with that damn flashlight,” Adam rushed to crouch by them both, running his sensitive hands over the rib fractures. “This isn’t good. She might die.”
        MacLeod just stared. “So? She will wake again.”
        Adam's mouth formed into a smiling grimace, “Yes, but the child won’t.”
        MacLeod stood and lifted up the Knacker in his arms. She was rapidly losing consciousness. If the regeneration couldn’t keep up with the hemorrhaging, then she would go into shock and die, and his son with her. Adam ushered them into the next room and replaced the boxes.
        “We need a diversion,” Adam told Dawson. “Something to draw the men inhere so Duncan can get away. I could pretend to be knocked out.”
         Joe squinted, “Not with that blue stuff all over your chin. What is that?” Dawson spit on his left thumb and motioned Adam to lean forward.
         The Ancient Immortal did so and just as Joe swiped at his chin with the wet thumb, he decked him with a right. “Yes,” he said solicitously to the man on the floor, “You do unconscious very well.” Then he howled for his men and they rushed into the room. They all gathered around Adam as Joe went to close the door.
        “Gentlemen,” Joe said as he locked the door behind him and pulled his bar pistol out of his pocket. “We are going to be here for a while.”

       Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, Immortal and distaff Scot, propped up on his elbow in the sea of Lucille’s pale blue satin pillows and quilts and rested his head on his hand. He gazed down on the sleeping woman beside him and let his mind wander lazily in the first blush of dawn and the light breeze from the open glass terrace door.
       Sweet Lucille was currently next door in the spacious living room, but her presence was everywhere, from the faint scent of lavender to the pristine airy layout of her exquisite tastes. She was a collector of light it seemed, crystals and glass figures, mirrors of every size and shape, and the enormous fish tank which stood before the glass windows of the penthouse terrace, its metallic denizens flashing slowly through the liquid light of the coming morn.
       Duncan’s attention turned to the strange woman beside him. He was not even sure of her actual name. He had offered her his, but he doubted she would take him up on the offer. She was pregnant with his child. He would have been a great deal happier about this if he were more certain of her sanity.
       Just as he supposed Ram would be a great deal happier had she consented to mother this child in the first place. But in the very first moment of this new day Duncan felt unconcerned for the petty details and more inclined toward an expansive and floating perception of wonder.
       Ram had shaved her head, but the hair was already growing back in downy dark fuzz. Lying on her side facing away from him, she seemed very tiny and almost infantile, the long fingers of her right hand curled over her nose, not exactly with her thumb in her mouth, but resting her upper lip on the knuckle. Her sleep was profound and artless, an affect of the exhausting night, wherein she had tried mightily to die and the life of Duncan’s son had hung in the balance scales of the blind god.
       And if it wasn’t by Justice, Duncan thought, then it was surely by Mercy that they had prevailed.
       “Mmmmph,” Ram stirred and rolled his direction.
        Damn! Duncan thought, It seemed he had tarried too long and his luck was about to desert him. “It is okay, Ram, go back to sleep.”
        The sound of his voice jolted her up and she slammed her back against the headboard, cursing as she bumped the place where the ribs hadn’t quite healed. She sat there, blinking her eyes and trying to wake up enough to make sense of things.
       “Here,” Duncan leaned over and handed her one of Lucille’s robes.
       Only then did Ram notice she was naked. Her green eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms.
       Duncan laid the robe down and tucked a quilt around his waist. “Good morning, Ram,” he offered.
       “Oh, shut up,” she mumbled, grabbing the robe and slipping out of the bed.
       “Where are you going?”
       “I thought I’d take a bath,” she grumbled.
       “You just had one, not five hours ago.”
        She plopped back down on the bed and stretched her back. “How do you...” then she thought better of asking. “I don’t even want to know what this is all about. Not that I couldn’t guess. No...” she raised her hand as Duncan started to explain behind her. “I don’t want to hear you, or see you, or...”
        A very strange sound emanated from Lucille’s living room, an agonized moan of considerable volume. Ram’s eyes opened to their limits, “Adam!”
        She almost made the bedroom door before Duncan tackled her. Ram went limp under his weight but he could feel her seething on every surface of her being. He knew better than to take her pretense at sub- mission as real. “Ram, listen to me. Adam is only in danger of being mortally embarrassed if you go crashing in on him and Lucille.”
       Duncan did not so much see the blush as feel it starting somewhere in the middle of Ram’s belly and proceeding up her torso in a warming flush which pinked her face clear up into her scalp. He lifted off her and went around the bed to at least get his jeans on and stop tempting the Fates.
        Ram rolled over on her stomach and started laughing in near hysterics. It was several minutes before she caught her breath enough to speak. She got up off the floor and returned to the bed to retrieve the robe. Then she started making the bed and Duncan helped from the opposite side. When all the sheets and quilts and pillows and throws had been arranged, Ram got back on the bed, propped up against the headboard, and played idly with the tie of the terry robe, digging her toes into the bedding.
       “So,” she began, “I guess I do want to know...What happened last night?”
       So many things had happened, Duncan hardly knew where to begin. He picked the single most important event of the preceding night. “You didn’t die.”
       Ram licked her dry lips and considered if this were the answer, then what was the question?
       Duncan mentally kicked himself for not being a little more conscientious. He poured her a glass of ice water from the carafe at the bedside table. “Here, you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re bound to be dehydrated.”
       Ram shook her head, “I am bound to be a great deal more so if I start spewing.”
       Duncan’s look prompted an explanation.
       “Morning sickness, I think it’s called now...You know, bad humours.”
        Somehow Duncan just could not visualize Ram as getting morning sickness. But then, it was hard to visualize Ram at all. Earlier questions came floating up to his consciousness. “Are you the Knacker?”
        “Nobody is the Knacker, you cretin!” Ram rubbed her temples. She scooted off the bed and crossed the room to start digging in Lucille’s enormous mahogany chest of drawers. “I cannot believe how easy it is to make fools of you beastes!”
        Duncan had obviously hit a nerve. Well, as long as his foot was in his mouth... “Did you cannibalize those Immortals?”
        Ram paused in the middle of pulling on a pair of beige slacks. She thought a moment and then answered, “Yes.”
        “What!”
         “Why am I even talking to you?” she asked, more of herself than of the Scot. She fastened the slacks and pulled a black jersey over her head. Barefoot, she walked to the door and then hesitated.
        “Maybe you should wait a while longer,” Duncan suggested.
       Ram sighed like a deep winter wind and sat down on the floor, fuming.
       Duncan cautiously approached her and sat down an arm’s length away. “You wanted to know what happened last night?”
       “It doesn’t matter,” she said, never looking up from her hands, folded in her lap.
       “We weren’t...we didn’t...there was no...”
        “Would you feel more comfortable if I pretended to be drugged?” Ram’s very sharp tongue went straight to his heart.
        Duncan persisted, “We did not have sex last night.”
        “How very sad for you...” Ram’s vitriolic tones withered the air.
        “The reason...”
        “Look,” Ram cut him off and glared. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say,” she was becoming angrier the more awake she got. “But I do need to tell you a few things, so be still and listen. First, I will do my very best to see that this child is healthy and I will not be endangering it any further by continuing to hunt. Second, after the child is delivered, I shall arrange to have it brought to you. Third, I command that you raise this child to adulthood and that Adam be involved in the parenting also. I do not mean you are to hire a nanny, or send it off to boarding school. Do you understand?”
       “Yes, Ram, I understand,” Duncan could not imagine Adam as doting uncle, older half-brother, but something would be arranged. He noticed how the word “command” came to her so easily when she wasn’t paying particular attention. “And where will you be?” It would be better to discuss custodial issues up front. He could see all manner of difficulties arising between them given her obvious obsession with her first son.
        “What?” Ram stared at him.
        “I said, ‘where will you be going after the delivery?’”
         Ram’s face relaxed and she began to laugh softly. “That is a profound philosophical question you have posed there, war-meat. I am impressed.”
         Duncan couldn’t tell if she were making fun of him or not.
         “Where else for Chaos, but Pandemonium?” she replied.

The Virtues...prudence, faith, justice, fortitude

       Ram relinquished her base camp at the bedroom door and wandered out to the terrace. The sun was already up at the margin of the city where the ‘scrapers did not block the true horizon. It would be up here soon. She settled into one of the white wrought-iron chairs where Luz liked to take tea in the afternoon, or maybe breakfast and a newspaper. Ram couldn’t bring the place into her complete understanding.
       She didn’t care to. That would have meant encompassing the occupants as well. Ram could no longer afford to care about these beastes. They were killing her--had in fact, done so already. Each of these three had conspired to end her life. And it didn’t amend things that they’d no intentions of hurting her, that they-- each in their way--thought fondly of her. She was going to be dead nonetheless in ten lunar months, one of them nearly gone already.
        Her head hurt. Her stomach roiled. All she really wanted to do was get away, back to her cave--though she doubted that would be safe now. Perhaps there was no safe place remaining to her. She would have to find one or make one. She would have to get away from these dreadful creatures. It didn’t help her mood a bit that she could still hear Adam, rutting like a spring goat with the whore who owned this place, Ms.-tell-me- your-innermost-desires-Sweet, Ms. nothing-you-can-do-or- say-will- shock-me-Lucille.
        How many times had the Danaan Clave gathered before their sovereign and debated her romantic vision of Man and the World of Man and the Future of Man as equals to the Danaa? How strongly she had stood against their most intricate arguments and proofs. How stubbornly she had held her son out as the light in this fanciful forest of her imaginings, her ethnocentric notions about the potential of The Beaste. An enormous mistake, that.
       A fatal mistake, Ram mused wryly. How my sisters and the new monarch must be laughing now. Why did they not find a way to toss me off the throne ages ago? How could I have prevailed when I was such a Fool?
       Well, even Adam’s athletic ardor could not go on forever and then she would be away from this place, these...
        ...whatever they were...
        These...
        Men!
        What need for Pandemonium, when Earth will serve so well?

       “Perhaps we could start again, Ram,” MacLeod interrupted her solemn reverie to put a steaming cup of coffee and two pieces of toast, dry, with half a dozen peppermint candies on the side. “Start with the candies. Just let them melt on your tongue and the nausea will go away.”

       “That’s...” Ram whirled around in her chair and gazed back into the bedroom and the door to the living room which was still closed. “...really nice of you.” She looked sideways at him.
        “I snuck through to the kitchen in between sets,” Duncan said by way of explanation.
         Ram turned back and reluctantly tried one of the mints. Some stupid beaste remedy, she thought, when what I really need are my sisters ‘round me and one touch to set me right, as I will need them after the delivery...but no one will be there, and no amount of folksy pharmacopoeia is going to save my grits then.
        Duncan’s hand moved over to rest lightly on hers and she jerked. “Easy, Ram. I just thought you needed consoling.”
        “Why would you think that?”
        “Because you are weeping,” he reached for her face and she drew back.
        Ram ran her knuckle under her eye. He was right. She was doing just exactly that. This is not a good sign, she thought, not a good sign. Say something, she reminded herself. Tell the beaste to go away. Tell it to...But what language, not French. We have not been in Paris since...Since the time of Louis....No, that was the last sojourn. Something with the Watchers...I have to get out of here. Now!
         Duncan watched the liquid green gaze unfocus in a half-mad confusion. God Damn It, Adam, stop with the recreational activities already, and get in here. Ram is about to come apart in pieces and I can’t help her. “Ram?” he called her name softly. “Are you all right?”
         It is speaking at you, she thought. But what, Dear Lord, is it saying? It was a question, ending in upward tones. What...oh, yes, she remembered...it means an invitation to reply affirmatively. But if I can’t under- stand the question. Too dangerous just to guess...but then this one doesn’t know what “no” means either. “Yes,” she said, “yes.” Now maybe he would leave her alone.
        “No,” Duncan leaned forward and put his palm on her shoulder. “What is wrong, Ram?”
        It was speaking again. If she sat really still and closed her eyes maybe it would take its hand away.
       “Ram, can you hear me?” Duncan couldn’t decide whether to back away or to gather her in. If they hadn’t been on a terrace twenty plus stories from the pavement, he might have chosen the former.
        Duncan picked Ram up in his arms. She was spitting like a cat, kicking like a mule, as he went through the terrace doors and dropped her on the bed. Next he closed and latched the terrace doors, and went to pound on the door leading into the living room. “All right,” he roared, “Everybody out of the pool! Emergency!”
        Lucille came through the door looking like anything but the cavalry. Adam strolled in after, looking like the proverbial bird-stuffed cat. You could almost see the feathers at the corners of his grin. “What’s up, Duncan?”
        MacLeod just pointed to the bed where Ram lay curled in a ball, weeping.
        “Oh, damn!” Adam was immediately awake. “Okay,” he began, ordering his thoughts and approaching the bed. He sat his long frame down beside her. “I have been reading about this in the books I found in Lyons. It is a consequence of her...” he shot an angry look up at the Highlander, “her condition. What is it? Three almost four weeks? A bit early, but...”
        Duncan interrupted, “Is something wrong with the child?”
        “I don’t think so,” Adam shook his head. “Evidently, your line is prone to this. Your mother was mad as a hatter her entire confinement. Luz, no...!”
       But he was too late with the warning. Sweet Lucille had bent over Ram and reached to stroke her hair, to comfort her. Ram unwound like a spring and flew into Lucille like a rabid wolf, growling and spitting, her long hands contorted into talons or claws. Adam dove for Ram and Duncan caught Lucille just after she left the bed but before she contacted the floor. She didn’t protest as he bundled her back out to the safer harbor of the high vaulted living room.
      “Well?” Duncan returned to find Adam speaking quietly to Ram, his slender fingers arranged either side of her face. “Can anything be done?”
       “I called her back again, by her name, like that time in your loft...”
       “I remember, Adam. What can be done?”
       “I don’t know, Duncan. Come here,” Adam said, indicating the other side of the bed whence Lucille had so recently been tossed. “It will be all right. She’s coherent again.”
       Ram struggled up to sitting between the two Immortals, her face the picture of chagrin. “I am sorry,” she said with a little too much control, as if to prove everything was as it should be now. It was almost harder to see her slip into the habits of her prior station, like watching an old general try to fit into his uniform again. The solemn discipline of the monarch did nothing to conceal her precarious balance. “I have been overly tired of late,” even speaking the truth she sounded false. “And I am still recovering from the Quickening. You know how brutal that can be...”
       And she could have added getting beaten in the park and nearly killed by Crane, again, and the long recovery from her beating at Duncan’s hands...and all of it would not have explained what had happened.
       “It will not happen again,” she said imperiously as if it would be so just by dint of her command. “I am fine, really.”
       But neither man’s expression changed one iota.
       Ram wrapped herself in her arms, settled back against the pillows and waited for them to speak. When they didn’t, she merely waited some more. It quickly became a battle of silences, a triad of consummate wills, each warring with the other two and their own particular lack of grace in the art of surrender.
       The Highlander broke the silence, speaking bravely, cleanly, the one alternative he had thus far managed to keep at bay, even from himself. “This will not do, Ram. You are going to have to stop the pregnancy.” Even as he said it, he could not believe he was speaking the ultimate sentence on his own innocent son.
       “No,” Ram replied without thinking, without any ring of artifice, as true and crystalline as a bracing mountain spring.
        Duncan wondered if Adam heard that sound, the daunting, unassailable herald of a bell forged in the First Fire, in the steel and the bronze and the gold of the First Mother of Them All, the Earth. He wondered if any son ever heard the sound of the Center, the Beginning of Life, his own life and all that proceeded therefrom.
       “You know the problem with the MacLeod’s,” Adam began, knowing he could not change her mind, just as he knew he must try. “I think the Quickening made it worse.”
       “Are you saying we are mad?” Duncan was so distracted by this turn that he did not even notice how easily he had slipped into the idea of “we” and “my family line” and how ready he was to be part of the greater continuity in more than just his own singular immortality.
        “No, Duncan, no,” Ram answered quietly, touching him lightly on his hand mimicking his earlier attempt at consolation. “The baby is already too powerful. It confused me. I could not tell where my thoughts ended and the child’s began. Not that it actually has thoughts, just ways and waves and progressive attentions in paroxysms of primal waking. It was my mistake, Duncan. I thought I could take power from the Quickening as I have taken power from the Danaa, but it is too disruptive and all the other things which happened... I have done a stupid thing with this, but it will not happen again. Your son will be in no further danger.”
       Adam shook his head. “It is just going to get worse, and you know it, Ram.”
      “And just what exactly do you think I can do about this? Petition the Throne to dispense with my banishment? Return in time to the alley and let Beckard kill you? Kill the only sibling you will ever have? What?” Ram leaned forward towards Adam and the mirror of their profiles set MacLeod wondering what sort of a beak his son was going to have and whether he wouldn’t end up looking more like Adam’s son than his own.
       Adam had a very strange answer, “Alexa had much the same difficulty.”
       Ram stared at him.
       “It is the same, really,” Adam continued, ignoring their unspoken commentary on the state of his reason. “You have a terminal illness. You cannot come to terms with it. That, and the baby, are making you ill.”
       “Alexa told me the first time she really believed she was dying was the moment the tests came back from the first round of therapy and it hadn’t worked. I would say that is just exactly what’s happening now. She had thought she understood, thought she accepted that she might die, before, but at that particular moment, she actually felt it was true, believed it...”
       “...and she told me she was so frightened she thought she would die then and there from fear alone.”
       “Thank you, Adam,” Ram said. “Now if you have any other fairy stories, save them for later when I am in a more gullible mood. I’m crazy. I’m not stupid.”
       Adam had no reply.
        “She never said any such thing and I am not afraid,” Ram added. “And if you are planning to use me in some nefarious scheme to schlep off to BoraBora and wallow around in one of your infamous depressive fits, then you can just think again.”
         Despite himself, Duncan laughed, and then covered with a cough and his hand.
         Adam pulled himself up to his full height, wrapped himself in a fine fury, and stalked out of the room, trailing a stream of Aramaic and Egyptian that set Ram off in hysterics.
        “I would not have thought you could be so cruel to your own son,” Duncan commented after Adam had gone. “But I wouldn’t have believed you could be a torturer, either.”
        “What do you mean?” Ram pushed forward on her stomach, stretching out her long back and propping up on her elbows. “Oh, you mean the Knacker business. Surely you don’t...”
         “You admitted it,” he reminded her.
        “Well put your mind at ease, Brother,” she recalled their earlier vow which he had so blatantly broken. “All the alterations were post-mortem, the features were molded into those expressions as rigor set in and they were long dead before then believe me or the changes would not have been permanent. I’m surprised no one picked up on that. They, each of them, went down to Last Gate in much the same fashion as Carlisle did, and you witnessed that first hand and know it is a kind way to be killed.”
        “But you said...”
        “That I ate them? Well, yes, technically.”
        “Oh,” Duncan reached for the knotted place by her right shoulder and when she did not flinch, began to knead out the spasm there. “Just so it was technical.”
         “No, really,” Ram stretched her neck, “Oh, that does feel good. You are not old enough to know all the ways of war, Duncan. There is a very old tradition which involves consuming a portion of your worthy opponent so that you may share his power and honor his memory. It is a ritualistic...”
        “Ah, well,” Duncan moved to the other shoulder, “Just so it was traditional.”
        Ram stretched her arms out straight and laid her head down. “You don’t want to hear this, do you?”
       “Not particularly,” Duncan straightened out the shirt and moved into a better position to work on the rest of her back. “I guess I am more concerned about how you could be so callous about Alexa’s death.”
       Ram buried her head in the bedding. Her shoulders began to shake and Duncan cursed himself for making her weep again. He turned her over on her back preparatory to lifting her into a hug and found she was laughing silently.
       Duncan dropped her in disgust. Ram went right on laughing, drawing her knees up and beating the bed with her fists. He thought she must be the most demented creature upon the face of the planet. Without soul, without heart...what kind of monster was his son going to be?
       He walked over to the terrace windows and stared out intently at nothing at all. Ram’s touch on his shoulder turned him round suddenly. “Duncan, that would all be true if there was such a thing as Alexa’s death, but there is none such, and won’t be for a very long time. Adam does not know this and you must not tell him. He is far too attached to his grief to stand the truth of the matter.”
       Duncan tried to bring this strange being into focus, but he could hardly see her for the morning light rays and his own large shadow falling over her and her incredible complexities. “I don’t...”
       “Your comment about the grave and your child,” Ram began. “I had heard that before from Alexa when I told her the truth about my son--his immortality and his infertility. That was why she regretted dying, that they would die with her, not that she was afraid. And for all she loved Adam, and still does, she would not sacrifice her children to remain with him, though they did not yet exist.”
       “They do now,” Ram added. “Well, one in arms, and one on the way, the last I checked. I am telling you this to let you know I understand and I forgive you, Duncan MacLeod.”
       Much as Duncan had thought this would be the one thing to reconcile him with his former honor, it was surprisingly ineffective and made him feel all the worse somehow, like the moment he discovered she had only broken a replica of his katana and not the actual sword.
       “Sit,” Ram said pointing to the floor in front of the gurgling aquarium.
       Duncan had long since given up trying to understand what she was about. He lowered himself to the floor into the luminescence pouring through the ripples of Lucille’s tank. Ram crawled into his lap, sitting side- ways, wrapping his arms around her and nestling her head on his chest like a child.
       “Okay,” she said, “that didn’t work. Let’s try this...”
       Duncan bent his neck forward and brushed his cheek against the dark down on her head. “Why don’t we try this: I say ‘Be my wife, Ram,’ and you say ‘yes, thank you very much, I’d love to. How about Thursday?’”
       Ram punched him playfully. “Be serious. You feel you have lost your honor because of the unfortunate misunderstanding...”
        Duncan hooked his knuckle under her chin and tipped her head up so he could look her straight in the eyes. “I took you by force against your will. I raped you, Ram. I broke my bond to you to stand your back, to be your Shield. There is nothing to misunderstand.”
        Ram chewed on her bottom lip and studied him. “You didn’t break the bond. I did.”
       Duncan laid his forehead on hers, “Shhh,” was all he could think to say.
       “When we made the Shield bond, you asked me if I knew what that meant,” she tucked her chin back down and started sorting through the hairs on his chest. After he’d got the jeans on, things seemed to have gotten too busy to finish dressing somehow. “I said I knew what it meant, and I do.”
        She smiled wickedly and pulled ever so lightly on his hair.
        “Hey!”
        “Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention, Brother,” she explained. “The problem is: you don’t know what the vow means. I started to tell you what the tradition involved, but you cut me off...and it never really came up again. You do know the idea originated in Sparta?”
       “No, Ram, I didn’t,” Duncan said. She was right. He wasn’t paying any attention at all, except to the touch of her cool slender fingers on his warm chest.
       “And you know how the Spartans were?”
       “No, Ram, tell me how the Spartans were.” He leaned his back against the cold aquarium glass and let the vibrations of the bubbler shudder over him in waves.
       “Their armies were entirely composed of pairs of Shields, Brothers, by vow, who saw to each other’s safety and care and comfort, Brothers who fought ferociously to defend each other...”
       “...because they loved each other...” She tilted up her head and rested her chin on his sternum. “They vowed to stand each others’ Shield, but they also vowed to be each others’ lover. That is the meaning of the bond.”
       Duncan pushed her back and sat upright. “Sparta mounted an army of lovers?”
       Ram's face opened wide and her laughter flushed her cheeks. “Yes, I believe mounted is just exactly the right sense of it. Now, don’t you feel better?”
       MacLeod stared, “What?”
        “When you asked, I had already said ‘yes’ months before. I broke the shield bond by refusing, not the other way round.”
       It sank in very slowly. “Are you saying we are wed already?’ which was as close an understanding as Duncan could acquire.
       “No, Duncan. We are Brothers of the Shield. We are the mantle and the hearth. We are the chill of morning and the warm returning. We are the word between us when there is no word.”
       “And we are this son we have made whose fair features, both yours and Adam’s, will, when he is grown, mark the three of you brothers in the World of Men.”
        Duncan drew her closer and they sat in absolute stillness, saying the word that was no word between them.

       Just beyond the horizon of his consciousness, Adam Piersen heard a whirring sound and then a click, chink, some mechanism whirring again, and the tiniest ding. He sat up slowly, reoriented--Sweet Lucille’s living room, the big white couch--and looked in the direction of the noise just in time to see the light on the elevator blink off. What the...?
       Probably Duncan headed downstairs for breakfast, not wanting to disturb them by making too much noise in the kitchen.
       “Ram!” Duncan came bursting into the living room, howling like a timber wolf.
       So much for the theory about Duncan’s sense of decorum and not...Adam slid out of bed and grabbed for his pants, “The elevator just went down!”
       “Wake up Lucille,” MacLeod barked and grabbed for the phone. “Yeah, get me the desk. What do you mean, who is this?”
       Lucille’s hand reached up and took the receiver from him. “Giles?”
       Giles, yet.
       “Someone just left my apartment. Can you track the lift? Yes. And if you would be so kind to stop the party at the front. Yes. Well, she’s a homeless person I took pity on last night, and I’m afraid she’s snagged the silver, if you catch my drift. Yes.” Lucille keyed off the phone, replaced it in the computerized life- environment console. Then she raised her hands over her head in an elegant, languid stretch.
        “Well?” Duncan asked over his shoulder. He’d turned his back to her as soon as she emerged from the quilts. Adam was digging under the couch in search of some shoes he was sure he’d worn in here.
         Lucille pulled on a robe and sat on the side of the couch. “The lift is keyed down with three stops before it opens on the lobby: twelfth, fifth, and third floor. I told the concierge to stop her if she gets off at the lobby and to send the lift back here on express. Should be two minutes, max.”
         “All right,” Adam found his shoes and pulled them on. “I’ll take the fire stairs and start looking on twelve. You wait for the elevator, call Joe, and then you two split up three and five. After that, you take Stanley Park, Duncan, I’ll head for her the warehouse across from Richie’s, and Lucille can start looking any place the two of them found...secluded.” Adam grabbed his coat, sword and dashed for the back door beyond the kitchen. “Oh, and we’ll all meet at Joe’s in two hours.”
        “Who was that masked stranger?” Lucille joked softly. “Sounds as good a plan as any. Well, if you’re done in my bedroom...” she rose like wave and headed for the bath.” At the door, she stopped and turned back. “How did you let her get away?”
        Oh, he could have said Ram lowered his defenses and he’d mistakenly thought everything was settled and it was safe for him to leave her alone while he showered. But the simple point of fact was she was too wild, too different for anyone to keep long. It just wasn’t possible. She could not be kept any more than quicksilver could be held...the tighter the grasp, the faster it slipped through the gaps in your hands.
         “How did you?” he replied, knowing something had passed between these two women which he would probably never understand.

       Joe rubbed his eyes and tried to refocus. He couldn’t decide whether it was too early in the morning or merely too late at night. He did indeed look as if he’d been to a Stones’ concert and partied more than hardy. Bloodshot, swollen eyes, and coat on his tongue you could hide a sword in, and an ache and sting beneath his prosthetics harness that begged for a day or two in bed.
       Joe took another couple of Percodan and a shot of bourbon, and then poured himself some black coffee, the better to balance the down with the up...something he’d gotten entirely too skillful at in the preceding decades.
       Richie sat sideways in a booth at the far end of the bar, talking, as he had been for the past twenty minutes, on the phone with Adam. The young man had his knees pulled up almost to his chest, having found this to be the most comfortable position in which to heal from the deep slashes to his hamstrings which he’d been dealt the night before.
       Joe could still see Mondragon’s sword poised to take Richie’s head. It was an image burned in his mind’s eye, just as his first glimpse of the Knacker had been. And Joe had helped the Knacker escape. Needless to say, he was once again persona non grata with James and HQ Central. Hell, he’d held a gun on his own men, for God’s Sake! Crane had been elevated--sort of field-promoted, or long-distance- phone promoted--to NW Division Watcher Head.
        And Crane, who had more to him than Joe might have expected, had taken Joe aside and granted him clemency in exchange for his continuing to be silent head of northwest division, that and not telling anyone what a mess Crane had made of being Ram’s, the Knacker’s, Watcher. Crane knew he couldn’t manage the position alone and he’d learned the art of bargaining at the feet of a Master, Ram herself.
       “So,” Richie had finished his conversation with Adam and had hobbled over to the bar. “You want me to fill you in?” He poured himself some coffee and Joe added a little of the bourbon to the brew. “Yesss. Gosh, I feel just like a Watcher.”
       Joe tried to remember his regret when he thought Richie would be no more. “Just tell me what happened after Adam got to Lucille’s.”
       “Well, first, he said they’d all be here in the next hour and no one’s found anything at all about where Ram’s gotten to...”
       The door opened and the morning light momentarily blinded them. Dr. Lindsey walked in with Mary on her hip. Joe grimaced. This was NOT a good day for babysitting.
       “Don’t worry, Joe,” Anne read his face, if not his mind. “Adam told me to come over and look at some of his notes. He said you’d know which ones. Ummm, they have to do with The Project...he said it was Ram’s summary of the obstetrical...”
       “I’ll get them for you,” Joe watched little Mary’s pudgy hands reach for the bar and the toddler looked up at him imperiously. Dada Dawson had forgotten his manners. He reached for a clean bar rag, flipped, twisted and voila, one bar bunny for mademoiselle. Mary was delighted. Anne put her down on the floor to play and poured herself some coffee.
        “How are you doing, Richie,” she opened. “I haven’t seen you since....”
         “I think it was about the time you moved into the house,” Richie supplied. He indicated Mary, “She was still a little baby then.”
        “Yes,” Anne sighed, “they are such little clocks. You find yourself wondering where the time goes.”
        Richie was suddenly uncomfortable, like the sole survivor of a major disaster. He was still in the first stages of his Immortality when he felt guilty because people he knew didn’t share his undying nature.
       “I think these are all of them,” Joe returned and handed a thick stack of notebooks to Dr. Lindsey. She took them and gathered Mary up to retire to the booth Richie’d vacated. She spread the notebooks out over the table top and, sipping her coffee, she began to order them by date.
       Joe poured them both another cup, “So, tell me what happened.”
       “Oh, man, you are just...it’s about the funniest...I mean I can just see...”
       “Could we try complete sentences, oh Junior Watcher,” Joe interrupted.
       “Oh, sure, let’s see, well...” Richie proceeded to recount the Adam version of last night’s events, what had happened after he woke up from Joe’s round house and taken off to Lucille’s thinking she could tell him a likely place to find where Duncan had taken Ram.
       It seemed Adam had let himself in to Lucille’s penthouse only to be met by another Immortal, brandishing a sword in nothing but the moonlight and his very ill will, and calling challenge. Then Lucille had stepped around the brute likewise clad. except for the ill will and it was Adam’s turn to be furious. Adam’s description via Richie had even Anne laughing in the corner booth.
       When everyone had cooled down a bit, Adam was dissuaded from his imaginings about the situation and set right. Duncan had driven like the proverbial bat towards Lucille’s apartment, thinking, rightly, this would be the safest, nearest harbor at least for the moment. He woke Ram just enough to have her speak to Lucille on the car phone, judging Lucille might not be kindly disposed to him especially since he was bringing Ram in beaten and dying. Sweet might think he was at fault.
       But Ram had explained and Lucille had met them in the parking garage and taken them up to her eyrie. By the time they entered her penthouse, Ram was insensate, shaking with the adrenaline that was flooding her body in extremity. They couldn’t get her warm. Lucille took the damp bloody clothing off and they bathed her, but past removing the dirt and the tattoo, it did not improve her ever-descending core temperature.
       With nothing else to do for the progressive shock, they had bundled her into bed under a mountain of blankets and then, shedding their own clothes had bundled in with her. Duncan had described it like sleeping with a corpse, but slowly she warmed and the shaking stopped and the regeneration which was the hallmark of her Immortality gained pace against the hemorrhaging and Ram stabilized.
        “So,” Adam had said, “I have been laying on a cold floor with my jaw broken and you’ve been up here doing bubble baths and Ram sandwiches while I worried my head off?”
        Needless to say, Adam had required a maximum amount of consoling for his beat and bitten ego. Likewise, it went without saying that Lucille was more than up to the task. So, Duncan went back to being bedwarmer and Adam bedded down with Lucille in the living room and...
       “And you and I had a swell night of pain meds and bourbon and not a good leg to stand on between us,” Joe grumbled.
        “Yeah,” Richie agreed, “we sure didn’t get the better part of that deal.”
        There followed a moment of reverential silence to relish the image of Sweet Lucille and to hate Adam all to hell, lucky dog. What on earth did the gangly, big-nosed, oldest man in the world have that just knocked women over like a sledge?
       Richie finished the story up to the point where Ram disappeared. Joe had him repeat it three times, asking all sorts of seemingly irrelevant questions, most of which Richie didn’t have answers for. Then Joe pulled out a bar rag and began cleaning the bar, lost in thought. Just as suddenly, he stopped. He knew where she was, had to be, but this time he was not going to betray her.
       This time Joe was going to let her go.
       Joe went over to sit with Anne and make sure he had made the right decision. “Have you read enough yet to answer some questions?” he started.
       “I have read enough to give me nightmares for a while,” Anne replied, cross-referencing the first and fifth notebook. “Why is this all done in handwriting? Don’t you people own typewriters?”
       “It’s just a habit Adam got into a long while ago,” Joe explained.
        “Well, ummm, where would you like to start?” Anne asked.
        “Is there any chance that Ram will survive this?” Joe thought he might as well start with the problem head on.
        “No,” Dr. Lindsey answered without pause, “There is hardly a chance the child will survive either, Joe.”
        “Is there anything you can do?”
        “There is always something,” Anne said the bit of medical litany in the way that many people intone ‘Will of God.’ “A C-section done in the sixth month might produce a viable infant,” Anne shook her head. She clearly did not think this was a high percentage option. “If we did an in vitro transfer to a recipient host mother. That would work. A human mother would not be in danger, at least not as far as I can tell. But the survival of any particular fertilized ovum is less than thirty percent in such a transfer. As I understand it, Ram’s people have a death penalty for any action which knowingly endangers an unborn hybrid child. I am assuming the penalty is for the mother of such a child.”
        “How have any of the Immortals been born, then?” Joe asked.
        Anne ran her hands through her hair, “They are healers, Joe. They perform miracles. Usually Ram is in attendance with the expectant mother through the last one hundred days. The Quickening, or some power, or life force, or...” she shook her head. “I don’t understand that part at all. I’ve only seen that power as a consequence of...murder,” it was clear she did not want to call what Duncan did by that term, just as clear that for her there was no other, “I had no idea it could be used for healing.”
        “But what is there to heal? What is wrong with Ram? with the mothers? Why is this so dangerous for them?”
       “I tell you what, Joe,” Anne put her hand on Dawson’s arm. “If you get me two fingers worth of... ummm...whatever you’re drinking this morning, I’ll tell you.”
       Joe brought back two glasses and the bottle. Anne formed her description in the kindest terms possible, but it was a ghastly bit of imagery came to mind, like something out of “Aliens.”
       The Danaan gestational duration was three months shorter than the humans. Anne explained that even in normal human pregnancies the infant’s placental tissues invade the wall of the womb, gradually eroding the structure. The progress is slow and the uterine muscle thickens faster than the erosion up until the completion of the pregnancy. Were a human mother to remain pregnant longer, two or three months, the wall would be breached and ruptured and both infant and mother would succumb to the subsequent hemorrhage and sepsis, much in the same way as a ruptured appendix without emergency surgery would be fatal.
       As Anne understood from Adam’s translation of Ram’s medical notes, this would happen with the Danaan mothers during their last trimester were it not for the continuous transfer of the regenerative powers from sister Danaans.
      “But why can’t the mother heal herself?” Joe interrupted the grizzly medical descriptions rendered all the more awful by Anne’s even and objective tones.
      “Well,” Anne sorted through the books, “Here. It seems to be describing the infant as a, I don’t know, a power vacuum, an absence which draws unto itself,” she quoted. “The baby takes the mother’s power preferentially. I suppose like a human infant will take a mother’s calcium and deteriorate her bones even if the mother is low in calcium to begin with.”
       “And Adam told Richie the Quickening did not serve. Anyway, Ram can’t be taking heads into her ninth month.” The vision this evoked would have been comical in another situation. “So what will happen, exactly?” Joe did not really want to know this, but he asked anyway.
       “She will have all the regular changes of pregnancy--lethargy, nausea, swelling, weight gain, soreness, weakness,” Anne wondered how she, how anyone, got through it. “There is evidently also a reaction that the Danaa sometimes get because they are carrying a child that is interspecies, an incompatibility which manifests in some kind of intermittent delirium.”
       “She will go mad?”
       “Probably not. Very few have had this reaction, just some of the lines,” Anne flipped through the last text. “No, Adam hasn’t translated any of the names, just indicating them by numbers.”
        “So what will happen?” Joe asked again.
        “She will be pregnant normally, then sometime in the seventh month or a bit later, one day the baby will kick or turn, or she will move wrong, and...” Anne took a long sip of her bourbon and tried to think of a word to serve. Oh, hell, “Joe, I would surely like to sugar coat this, but the fact of the matter is: the baby will tear her apart inside. She will have pain and bleeding, blood-poisoning, fever, shock and death, for herself and the child. If she is lucky, the breach will be near enough one of the large lateral uterine veins, then she will bleed out in a matter of minutes and there will be a minimum of suffering,” Anne finished her drink. “Otherwise, as strong as she is, she might last two, maybe three days...I hope that isn’t the case.”
        “If we find her and confine her, then you could proceed with a surgery as soon as the rupture occurred,” Joe suggested.
       “If she tears a uterine vein, it’s over. If I am standing over her with a scalpel when it happens, I doubt I could save her. I could probably save the baby. Otherwise, yes it’s possible, but we could also just prolong her suffering. There is such a high incidence of amniotic embolus in such instances, she could easily end up spending weeks on a respirator and dialysis and every antibiotic know to man and still die. I can’t speak for Ram, but if I end up in such a situation, let me officially state...Pull the plug.”
       Anne poured herself another round. “There is also the problem with blood types. There is no way of knowing whether Immortals and Danaans and Humans have compatible blood types. If there is no donor for her, we are once again up the proverbial creek.”
       “Given this situation, Dr. Lindsey,” Joe began, “what would you do for Ram?”
       “Leave her alone to decide for herself,” Anne answered. “If there is any way out of this, she will know it. Being the King, she is the Prime Healer, or was, which makes her the world authority on this. If there is any way to save the child, she will do it. If she wants your help, she will ask. Otherwise, leave her alone.”
       It was the answer, of course, as much as Joe would have wished elsewise.
       As if on cue, Sweet Lucille arrived and charmed them all, including Mary. Joe swept up the notebooks and thanked Anne for her troubles on their behalf. His decision stood.
       Mac and Adam arrived together and they were both duly solicitous about their young friend’s recent war wounds, now almost healed.
       “Any luck?” Joe joined them.
       “We were hoping you could give us some ideas on where to look next,” Duncan said. He was obviously angry with himself for having let her get away. Joe knew the feeling all too well.
       He looked unblinking into the Highlander’s smoky glare and lied, “I am not in a position to mount a global search again. I am sorry, I have no idea where she could have gone.”
       But of course he knew where she was, at least for the moment. It would be his difficult task to let the moment pass unspoken, to let Ram decide for herself.

       The tall wardrobe, antique white and gold, trembled slightly in the corner of Lucille’s bedroom. Four long fingers draped over the edge of its high top and Ram looked down. They were definitely gone. They were not coming back soon. She lowered herself down to the thick white shag and went about gathering things which might be useful. Lucille’s little gun with the pearl handle in the bedside table.
       Some sensible shoes, well as sensible as Luz was prone to get. Sweaters,shirts...then off to the kitchen for food, some of which she ate--the nausea had eased up quite a bit--she’d have to remember Duncan’s trick with the peppermints. The rest of the food got sorted for portability and stuffed into a small briefcase.
       Then she cracked the safe and took out a few thousand dollars, writing a note of indebtedness to the lady of the manor. That done she sat down and wrote a short letter to Duncan and to Adam and to Joseph, inconsequential little tidings of hope and good cheer and the promise again about the child’s eventual custody arrangements. Ram put all this back into the safe and locked it again.
        She didn’t notice the change until she went to key in the computer for the lift. It had offered her no problems before. Now the numbers were fuzzy, or the logic did not connect or...
        The stupid beastes had ruined it in some way to trap her here! They meant to chain her in some dark place and...
        Adam was right. It would get worse this MacLeod line madness thing. Ram shook her head clear and walked over to Luz’s crystal gallery. I cannot do this, she thought, fixing her eyes on the crystal sphere with the ‘prisoned wyvern, I cannot do this if I am going crazy.
       Gently, she lifted up the globe and tried to focus on the baby dragon within, tried to close out the primal, dark rhythms of the child inside. Easy son, not a prison, but a warm and cozy bed where all is safe and where I stand watch.
       Her hands began to sweat with the effort to remain in the real world and out of the madness. The crystal slipped and crashed to the floor.
       And Ram crashed to the floor after it, howling and keening like a mad demon of the seventh ring. The crystal lay in glass shards like a carpet of fallen stars. She reached, sobbing and weeping, for the nearest piece, slicing her fingers deeply. Her fingers went instinctively for her mouth, blooding her lips.
       Everything came into sudden clarity, anchored on the pain of her lacerated hand. A widening of her lips, as they parted in something like a grin, revealed the bloody fore fangs in this marvelous revelation. Reaching out she gathered up the fallen shatters of the crystal and washed her hands in their light and her blood.
       And when her thoughts were once again lucid as the light, Ram was revealed a second blessing.
       Beyond the carpet of the icy shards, lay the wyvern teetering on its wings, not part of the crystal after all, but a rare, bright alloy. Ram bent forward like a postulant and picked up the dragon, setting it aright on the palm of her scored hand. Closing one emerald eye she lifted the wyvern up and sited down its long neck straight into the morning sun.