Duncan MacLeod rolled over to his right side. Even deep in blessed slumber some more vigilant portion of his mind took stock of his surroundings. A blind, obsessive accountant constantly ticked off his strategic placement in the scheme of things, in the way of the world, the tenor of the game, the rotation of the spheres.          The inner MacLeod which never slept felt his left knuckles hit wood as he turned. He was sleeping close to the floor, which meant the couch. He was home in Seacouver, in the fifth-floor loft. He could smell this and feel this without ever opening his eyes, without ever waking. There was some other smell here...          Ah, blood. No wonder he was so blissfully laid upon the sofa in a wondrous drape of complete fatigue and absolute ease. He'd been wounded or killed and he was healing. And his internal partner painted the loft in all its morning colors, reading the warmth on his left cheek and shoulder, gauging the orange glow just beyond his lids. Duncan luxuriated in the slow waking, listening to the sound of the shower behind him a door away. In the eye of his mind he saw the warm morning sun filtering through his high windows, softening the scene in amiable shades of dust motes and amber.

         Ah, blood. No wonder he was so blissfully laid upon the sofa in a wondrous drape of complete fatigue and absolute ease. He'd been wounded or killed and he was healing. And his internal partner painted the loft in all its morning colors, reading the warmth on his left cheek and shoulder, gauging the orange glow just beyond his lids. Duncan luxuriated in the slow waking, listening to the sound of the shower behind him a door away. In the eye of his mind he saw the warm morning sun filtering through his high windows, softening the scene in amiable shades of dust motes and amber. He had always loved the morning light of his one-room flat, five stories above ground floor Seacouver and the dojo. It had the quality of a favored monk's clerestory, a blessed early morning scriptorium for beginning the day's sacred recordings. A place with enough warmth to thaw the fingers, enough light to ease the eyes.

         And the shower running in the background made the whole scene and the muddle of his wits one lucid and liquid wave which floated him more deeply asleep, in a contentment which had become a rarity of late.

         The silent sentinel jolted him awake suddenly. He was off the couch and over to the lift in three strides. "Oh, no you don't,” he warned in a sleep-burnished growl.

         "Oh, no I don't what?" Ram stood by the lift trying to break the number code on the locking mechanism. Her face was all fresh-scrubbed innocence but her knees bent slightly and her weight centered as she faded back from the lift.

         She would never come to me out of the alley as Carlisle had done, Duncan mused. No, Ram would be more than a matter of patience and skill. You could never count on this one to err. Already she was moving ever so smoothly towards his weaker side. He came round to counter, keeping between her and the lift. "Well, I cannot say I know you well, Shield Brother, but I've heard of yer ways...here now, you'll not be disappearing on us again and put Old Joe to all that bother."

         "Do you consider Joe old?" she glanced past his shoulder at the softly snoring bartender asleep on Duncan's ample bed. At the same time she feinted toward that shoulder and slipped sideways towards the spiral emergency stair beyond the lift casement, neatly ducking beneath his parrying arm at the same time she stepped lithely over his bracing leg. Quick as a cat she was ten steps down and out of sight.

         But Duncan was nothing if not resourceful and his resources were as deep and as boundless as his keen ability to measure his foe's weaknesses. Duncan threw himself forward on the wood planking of the loft floor and brought his fist down with a sickening thud.

         "Oh, God Damn it!" he cried out in a perfect similitude of pain.

         The steps on the metal stair stopped suddenly. There was a momentary pause and then they restarted. Damnation, Duncan thought. The rattle of the stair's sound was receding. They stopped again.

         Duncan moaned, just loudly enough to carry down the round drop of the stair's well.

         And back she came, as he knew she must.

         As he would have done, despite his best judgment to the contrary.

         Ram stood over him, her lean arms crossed over her chest, a wry smile teasing the corner of her mouth. "Well?"

         "I'm not badly hurt," Duncan pushed up slowly from the floor.

         Ram's green eyes rolled heavenward. "If you promise not to throw yourself about the apartment again, I shall give you exactly one hour's conversation, explanation..."

         "You mean 'audience,'" Duncan supplied and indicated the couch.

         When he was settled with his bare feet on the coffee table, Ram brought him a glass of Orange juice and one for herself. Nor did it escape his notice when she took the high ground, ensconced on the couch arm as if it were a dais, sipping the juice as if it were sacramental wine in the finest golden goblet. He had not overstated. This would certainly be an audience with the... Hmmm? Perhaps that was the best place to start, but her posture, the elegance of her placement in the morning light, some internal call to a respectful caution, made Duncan move slightly away from the main question, to put him in position to attack by degrees.

         "You seem to be a warrior," he began.

         "Perhaps I do," she said softly, imperiously. Then she leaned her long back forward and placed the glass upon the altar.

         ...table, Duncan reminded himself, table, table. He found he had drawn away from the intensity of her grey-green stare.

         Ram sat up straight and smiled calmly, like a mother who has just counted a bloodless coup on an errant child. There was a moment more of the electric silence and then she spoke again as if nothing had happened. "What is your pleasure?"

         Well, really, Duncan reminded himself, nothing had happened after all. But he knew better, if only by the will it took for him to move to his original position on the couch again. Not a common soldier this one. Not a bloated tactician, nor an effete ambassador. "You were Field Marshall," he guessed again, going up higher in rank, ability, and bravery.

         "I had many fine Marshalls," her smile saddened slightly. "but I was not one of them."

          Wrong again, but closer. Duncan looked again. Higher than a Field Marshall? With the bearing of a bishop and the verbal skills of Privy Counsel. "You occupied a position very close to the Monarchy of your people," he stated.

          Ram laughed quietly. "There was no one closer," she said finally.

          Duncan had walked himself straight into a corner. If she were Queen, then he could not name her consort. If the reverse were true, then he would have shown himself overwhelmed by her presence enough to make such a mistake as to place her higher than her station. Damn!

         "And if she were neither?" Ram asked. "And that is all I have to say on the subject, Lord Leod, because it means nothing. Whatever I was last month and the five millennia preceding, I am nothing now."

         "and you have wasted a quarter of your hour," she added.

         Duncan handed over the information to his silent sentinel for later perusal and turned back to gathering more. "Why were you going to leave without a word? One might think you were retreating, that you were fleeing the battle."

         Kaboom! Direct hit. Duncan tried to assume that comely, "I can be gracious in victory," attitude that Ram had perfected some century long ago.

         And Ram came very close to falling backward off the couch arm. Nor would she even consider his helpful and gracious offer of an arm for her to grab. "You are so very clever, war meat!" She began with a fury and evaporated into a cold and sad solitude which was so familiar to Duncan it made him ache.

         "You understand how it is," she leaned forward again, this time in a way that drew him in. She slipped off the arm and sat cross-legged beside him. "You are a clan chieftan..." Ram raised her palm to silence Duncan's protest to the contrary. "I know you never got a chance to be officially in that station but you were raised to be so and so you are. You are the measure of your clan, incarnate, the pillar of your friends. Their solace and their shield, their judge and their comfort..."

         Ram spoke to his heart. Whatever she had been, she had known command. "...but there is one of your flock whom you are forever slighting. The One who never knows your counsel, your tenderness, The One who is forever being chided, never being praised, ever being ignored. The One who takes the full brunt of your invariable anger, your unmitigated rages. The One who will one day rise up from your impossible oppression, your unreasonable despite, and utterly destroy you."

         Duncan's mouth slacked open. "There is no such one!" he protested. "I am an honorable Knight!" The words slipped out before he could temper them to a more modern expression.

         "And so you are, Dear Duncan," Ram ran the edge of her index nail along the granite hard line of his jaw. "And so, I like to think, am I," she continued, "but I too have such a One of my kingdom...the only One left, in fact. And it is for the sake of the One that I need to run from you, and from Watcher Dawson, and from Methos," Ram's head tipped down and she folded her hands in her lap. "If I don't do this, I shall just recreate the situation as it was before. I will rebuild my kingdom and The One, the slave of my empire, will remain, as before, a slave still."

          Duncan felt as if he understood what she was saying, or at least that she spoke the truth, whichever truth...but in his case, she was wrong. Except for the Dark Quickening there was no cruelty in him. And it was surely cruelty which formed the essence of this discourse about The One. "But how will you live?" he asked.

          "Alone," she answered as if this were obvious. Then her face relaxed into a gentle grin, and she began a resumé suitable for his approval, as if she'd known it might come to this given his nature. "I start work at a new job this morning. I leased a flat when I first came here. I thought I might move here if Adam stayed. I'd already applied at the Watchers' Network for a transfer. In any case, I shall be all right..." Ram paused.

         "Except?" Duncan took both her hands in his. They were cold as bone. A conspicuous blush crawled up her cheeks. She did not wear embarrassment well.

         "This is so stupid," Ram shook her head and retreated from his gaze. "I can't remember the address of my apartment."

         "But Dawson said you were ideitic," Duncan reached under her chin and tipped her face back up.

         "Shield Brother," she began.

         Oh, so it wasn't war meat, anymore, Duncan congratulated himself.

         "...the address seems to be linked in my mind to something I cannot," Ram shook her short, dark curls. "No, I am afraid to remember. I have done something so horrendous, that I cannot..." her velvet alto went tight and flat. "Or something happened...No, I can't seem to remember it at all. And it's too close to the place in my mind where I put the address. So after work tonight, I shall be on the street unless I can remember."

          Duncan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I shouldn't tell you, because then you might be persuaded to accept my hospitality....?"

         "No," Ram replied so rapidly, Duncan was convinced she would rather sleep in the gutter than return.

         "Well, now," he paused for effect, "just how badly do you want to know your address?"

          Her brows furrowed , "You know it?" He could see her planning to move immediately...if she could only remember where from.

         "No, Ram. But I do know the other thing you can't remember."

         This did not seem to please her either, but her attention was completely his.

         "First," Duncan took full advantage. He reckoned this would not be happening often with this woman. "Tell me exactly what your plans are and what I am going to tell Dawson when he awakes. And then you can tell me who and what you are and who The One is. And after that..."

         Ram rose from the couch. "The hour is over. I have to get to work. No good to be late the first day..."

         "Ram, Ram," Duncan hurried after her. "Wait. You really don't want another global Watcher search..."

          She halted at the lift. "Look, Chieftan Leod, I have neither the time, nor the energy to engage in petty squabbling with you. Usually an audience with me is more worth while. I apologize that I allowed the meeting to deteriorate. It is not our habit to allow..."

          Duncan's silent sentinel heard the plural as the last clue in the problem it had been given towards the beginning of the hour and it shot back an answer. "Oh, my God!" Duncan grabbed her by the shoulders. "You're the King!"

         "I was," she said with a wounded dignity beyond believing.

         "And you were deposed because of how you treated The One, the scapegoat," Duncan added. "And that is why you feel you are not fit to remain around friends."

         Ram turned her back to him and began keying in combinations to the lift.

         Duncan reached around her and disengaged the lock. "I can keep Dawson from starting another search, but I can't prevent his heart from breaking. You do know he is quite smitten with you."

          She turned around and stared at the Watcher's somnolent carcass adrift on the counterpanes and quilts. "Yes, I know how he feels. It is one more reason I must go."

         "Because you do not care for him?" Duncan unlatched the door and slid it sideways.

         "Because I have not had the luxury to let The One feel anything at all if it were not the concern of the Monarchy, the people, the kingdom. The One has forgotten how to feel at all. That is why I must take The One away to be free."

         "The One?" Duncan had thought he understood.

         "If you give yourself to your people, Duncan, then at some point in time there is nothing that remains of yourself. That is The One whom you treat as you would not treat the lowliest of your subjects. That is The One whom you torture to death," Ram turned towards Duncan waiting for the words to find their mark. "And for all the outward trappings of glorious martyrdom..." She reached outside of his arms and gripped his shoulders. "...Despite appearances of bravery and honor, Duncan, this is the basest profanity, the most vile cruelty, without excuse, without a single redeeming feature in the balance of that..." the words caught in her throat and then erupted on a wave of uncharacteristic passion. "Waste!"

         "And being fellow sinners, Lord Leod, we see this in each other. In our ways, we are both Fathers, both Mothers of a very ancient breed. Like the Simurgh we burn ourselves alive for our progeny. But what good does it, when they are orphans all?"

         Like the business with Carlisle, she was drawing him into a revelation for which Duncan had no defense. No defense except that she exposed herself unmercifully as well. He kept seeing the night beneath the bridge when Adam held Duncan's blade against his neck, offering his five thousand years to Duncan. Offering his life. Another profanity? A holy sacrifice?

         Or was there any difference? And where in all the world was there a way through this, a path of rightness?

         "I do not know either, Duncan," her voice drew him back to the morning. "I will remain in Seacouver, if you don't come after me. You can contact me through Crane. I will arrange to have him be my Watcher. I have set myself aside for so long, I do not know if ever I can be whole again. But I mean to try..."

          "And I hope you will respect my privacy," she put her long fingers up to his lips as he began to protest. "I promise to return--and you can tell Watcher Dawson this--in two seasons. I have to find myself. Hell," she began to laugh "It will probably take me that long to find my apartment..."

          "No," Duncan pulled her hand down from his face and turned it palm up. He placed his index finger into the missing spot of the Watcher's tattoo on the inside of her left wrist. "Here."

          It was his turn to draw her into revelation as he watched her grace desert her momentarily and then return, lambent and brave.

          "Well," she sighed, "at least I won't have to sleep in the street again."

          "Or spend your days feeding ducks that aren't there," Duncan surrendered to the urge to gather her in his arms. "Be well, Brother."

          She entered the lift and turned round to say fare well. "Wait," Duncan thought of something as she started to descend. "What about sword lessons?"

          "But I thought you were the finest swordsman in The Project," she called back.

          A moment later there was loud laughter echoing up the shaft. "Oh, you meant you would teach me."

North and east of Seacouver where the trappings of civilized Man dwindled down to a lonely road midst the forest and foothills, there gathered this night an unusual circus. Bright lights of cobalt and viridian spun and whirled, casting out shards of illumination into the darkening eve. Bean Shees' wails howled forth and then squelched, then howled again, keening the death of the brave warrior, but nowhere could they be spied washing out the shrouds of the dead.        An eerie group had gathered near their brightly painted conveyances, queued up in knots of threes and fours, speaking to each other, to their cellular phones, to the coming night. Speaking their disbelief and horror, their wonder and disgust, their weariness and high excitement, they were trying to tame the wild experience above them on the rise, trying to diminish and contain it, in much the same way as their uniforms contained the irregularities of their all-too-human natures beneath the trappings of order and dignity.

        ...beneath the trappings of a bravery most did not own as they moved into the coming night, made brothers by the terror on the hill.

       A dark car joined the waiting celebrants bringing with it the night. Here and there the spots and floods came alive lighting the killing ground in a pseudo-sunrise of cadaverous green, the perfect counterpoint to the glaring, gibbous moon above.

       Three men disembarked from the black vehicle and advanced on the circus at the base of the hill path.

       "Dawson," one of the men called out to them.

       Joseph Dawson, bartender, Watcher, and this night, sleuth, acknowledged the man in the brown suit and introduced his fellows, "Hello, Crane. You know Adam Piersen and Duncan MacLeod."

       "Yes," Crane answered somewhat sheepishly. The last time he'd seen them, he'd made a terrible mistake and shot a friend of theirs. An Immortal friend, as it turned out, and it was at the behest of Duncan MacLeod, and it probably did save a lot of trouble...nonetheless it was one of those things which forever puts a person at disadvantage. Or so Crane thought. Nor did it change things that he was now that Immortal's Watcher, her guardian, as it were. "We have met," he offered his hand to MacLeod.

       And to Joe, he answered the ever-present though unasked question that had existed between them these past five months. "Ram is well." That was all he was allowed to report. Sometimes he wondered whether he worked for The Watchers or for Ram herself, who was no longer a Watcher, but still acted like a big wig from Paris HQ Central.

       "Well, while you gentlemen chat," Adam threw a long arm 'round Joe's shoulders, "I'm off to have a look at this mess." Off he sauntered up the path as if there were a midnight picnic awaiting him and not the hideous scene they had all been called to witness and measure and divine, each in his own field of augury.

       One of the policemen made a move to turn Adam back, but Crane waved him on. One of the advantages to having law enforcement as a day job. It made him a most useful Watcher, not including the incident with killing Ram. He followed the young researcher's course a third of the way up the path where it disappeared round an elder, crippled pine holding at an impossible angle to a cleft in the outcrop. As Adam made the bend, he stepped back and sideways to allow a trio of officers by him. They were so heedless of their surroundings, Crane wondered that they had not fallen the descent. As it was they nearly ran poor Adam over.

       Their faces were pallid in the lights, mouths slack like drunks who were bound to spew soon, and their gazes mirrored a glimpse into something obscene, evil.

       Beside Crane, Duncan and Joe--both seasoned soldiers of divers and disparate wars exchanged knowing glances, saying without words that they both knew the horrors of the real fields of battle, where these young men only knew the terror of the odd bandit.

       Prior to this night, anyway. Duncan knew such a horror dwelt above them. Even the hundred yards up the path, round the stone, and farther up still, out of site, he could smell the dreadful stink of war, fetor and feces and fire...

       ...and the acrid, rancid fat odor of the frightened and the dying, when it stops being sweat that issues from your pores, and begins to be Life itself scattering away from you, loosening the last tether between the man and the mire. Duncan had smelled like that himself on several occasions. It was never a pleasant recollection, but he used it like a weapon to steel his nerve.

       Duncan left Joe and followed after the path Adam had taken.

       "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?" Joe spoke to Crane as he watched the Highlander's broad back disappearing up the dark path.

        Crane shook his head, "There has been a murder. It looks like one of ours."

       "Who?"

       Crane watched the M.E.'s van pull up. "Oh...What? We don't know who. We can't tell."

       Joe chewed on this. "An unrecorded Immortal?"

       "No way of knowing...Ah, Dr. Lindsey," Crane stepped forward to greet the coroner's assistant, Anne Lindsey, a friend of Duncan MacLeod's, one of the non-Watcher mortals who knew about the Immortals. This was an unexpected bit of luck. The former ER physician had returned to a residency in pathology, anticipating the need for the more normal work hours of a lab setting. Her two year old was outrunning live-in nannies faster than Ann could interview them. Pathology would give her a nine-to-five occupation in medicine so she could arrange day care.

        Once she got past her rotation in forensics. "Hello, Lieutenant Crane. Joe," she acknowledged the Watcher also. "What have we got here?" Ann tilted her head and squinted up the hill lit in a ghostly halo of halogen lights. She pulled out a notebook and laid a form on top, clicking her pen. "Height?"

       Crane shrugged, "Approximately...hell, it's anybody's guess."

       Both Joe and Ann stared at the lieutenant.

      "You can't tell," he answered defensively.

      "Okay," Ann continued, "Apparent cause of death."

      "We can assume that was the beheading," Crane answered.

      "Oh, I see," Ann filled in 'traumatic decollation.' "Gender?"

      Crane started to shift nervously, "We think male."

      "Crane, when did this happen?" Joe interjected.

      "This evening," Crane answered promptly, glad to have a question he could answer. "Look the body's been...." he cast about for a proper term, "severely altered."

       Ann read down the form, "Race? Color of skin?"

      Crane just shook his head.

     "Crane!" Joe nearly whined.

     "It just isn't there any more! I don't know what color it was!" Crane lowered his voice as the other officers began to stare in his direction. "I do not know...wait until you have seen the site..." he hissed.

     "Color of eyes?" Ann thought this might at least give them a clue as to the missing skin's color.

     "When we find the head..."Crane began. He gazed past Joe and Ann up the path where Adam and MacLeod had reappeared. "Perhaps they can do a better job of answering your questions...Or, you can yourself when you've seen the site. Nothing has been....disturbed." He nearly choked this last word out. Everything had been disturbed, including himself and his officers.

      As the two men approached, Joe tried to read their faces for clues to the what had happened, seeing Crane was going to be no help and he was not going to get up that path to see for himself.

      MacLeod's face was set in a grim determination, shadowed round his dark eyes, his attention drawn inward until he spied Ann. "Ann! I thought forensics wasn't until...Come with me," he led her aside and took both her hands in his. "You're going to need a little preparation for this. Then I'll go up with you."

      Adam's long legs collapsed and deposited him, sitting, on the ground at their feet. He opened his mouth to add to the conversation, but was caught in some momentary paroxysm which shook him knees to nose. MacLeod's left leg shot out sideways and caught Adam mid ribs.

      "Shhh!" Duncan hissed. "Ann, there has been a particularly nasty bit of mutilation done this victim..."

      Adam started in again. Both his large hands flew up to cover his mouth and his mirth.

      My God, Joe thought. Piersen was laughing!

       MacLeod leaned over the hysterical researcher. "I told you to shut up!" He turned back to Ann. "Have you ever been hunting for deer?"

       The question puzzled Ann. "Yes, when I was a kid. With my dad."

       "And have you ever seen anyone field dress a deer?" he asked.

       Adam bent over double, holding his ribs. MacLeod kicked him over sideways.

      "Adam is a bit..." Duncan paused, "undone by this. Anyway, you skin the carcass, open it, throat to belly, gut the beast, split the pelvis, and hang it upside down by the hocks in a tree, minus the trophy head of course, which you set aside."

       "Trophy," Adam mumbled and rolled over in another fit of laughter, this time well out of the reach of Duncan's disagreeable feet. He levered up on his elbows, "And Duncan hasn't told you the best part, Dr. Lindsey. The whole piece has been smoked like the finest side of beef. Done to a perfect, crisp..."

       "Adam!" MacLeod moved towards the irreverent young/old man and Piersen was immediately on his feet and over to join Crane and Joe.

       "Is this true," Joe asked.

       "Oh," Adam began to giggle again. Not a pleasant sound, that. "Every bit of it."

       Joe shivered inwardly. This went against the general chivalry of The Gathering. To mutilate the corpse of your opponent...it meant there was some very sick Immortal, or, God help them, another rogue Watcher, out there.

       "I'll take you up," Duncan was saying softly to the coroner's resident with whom he'd had a brief, if intense, affair following the death of Tessa.

        MacLeod looked over at Adam.

        "No thanks," Adam sighed. "I'll be driving Joe back. I'm sure our charming pathologist here will see you home."

        "Do let me know if they find the trophy," he added.

         Lt. Crane joined the Highlander and the doctor, glad to be leaving the obscenely gleeful and thoroughly demented young watcher. No wonder they kept Dr. Piersen on historical research. He wasn't safe out in the field.

        Then again, with whatever psychotic mind had set this abomination loose upon the world, none of them were going to be safe.

       Two days later, they found another corpse, done in the same hideous fashion, this time, by the pond in Stanley Park. In the city, under their very noses for gods sake!

      And the next day after that they found the first head. Or, more correctly, it found them.

      The discovery announced itself to Joe Dawson via a midnight call from HQ Central in Paris and the inimitable James, the new chief of field operations and European Archives.

      "Slow down," Dawson mumbled trying to wake up. The past week had been exhausting and he had been well into what was to be his first night's full sleep. Damn, but James had an accent that would sauté shoe leather. "What is that noise? I can't hear a word....Oh."

       The noise turned out to be James' secretary screaming at a pitch to shatter glass in the background. Once she had been escorted out of the room, James started again. Evidently, a box packed in dry ice had arrived at the center.

       The head was inside, but that wasn't the worst of it.

       "What do you mean?" Joe asked. How did the French learn to gargle their "R's" so easily? Why? "What could be worse?"

        James told him. Joe took the receiver away from the side of his head and let the wave of nausea pass while he gathered his breath into a more even cadence. Damn! "Yes? No, I'm still here. Worse? What?"

       "Jesus!" Joe knew he wouldn't be sleeping the rest of this night. "No, that's okay," he heard himself saying. "We won't be sharing this with the authorities. See to the cremation and register the information in the data base. I'll be sending Dr. Piersen back to Paris to help you with the investigation in Europe."

        Joe didn't need to know much French to sense James was not happy with the offer. Adam could be a pain, but he was the best they had for the truly difficult mysteries. And this was surely that.

        "Yes," Joe finished, "I think it's one of us. This last one in the park...there was no Quickening observed, nor any sign of one at the scene. And your parcel seems to confirm that. He knows where we live. He knows what we do. We have to find him. He's putting everything in danger, our whole operation, the Immortals, a few more of these and they'll bring in the Bureau. If they haven't already."

        Joe fumbled with the phone finally cradling it to rest backward on its base.

        The head was that of a Georgian Immortal, Ivan...Tsoltapevsky, something like that. He would have to look it up, his Russian being worse than his French, which in Joe's case was atrocious. What he was doing in Seacouver was anyone's guess. As far as Central knew, he'd not been out of Europe all of his two centuries of life, now ended.

        They knew this now because they had the head. They had...

        Joe knew that it takes the brain several minutes to die after its blood supply had been cut off. That was the principle behind resuscitation after the heart stopped. He just hadn't actually considered that the Immortals remained conscious after their beheadings. Poor Ivan had done so. The expression etched upon his face, as described by James, was evidence that he had survived long enough to witness at least the beginnings of his own corpse's mutilation.

       What kind of pure depravity, abject evil, had they fallen into here, what hellish and bottomless pit had opened its rabid jaws?

       Joe could not help wondering about James' last observation, though he wished all of this would just go away and let him rest. Was Ivan still sentient when the monster had incised and pulled away the skin of his forehead to carve the Immortal's name upon the skull itself along with birthdate, deathdate, and Watcher Archival serial number? Dear God, it was one of them.

       And no one would be safe. No one.

       In the next instant, Joe was back on the phone, this time to Crane. "I need to get a message to Ram. Now!"

      And despite himself, Joe was grateful for the crisis. If it did nothing else, it would make Ram return. The irony cheered him.

      What was more appropriate to Crisis if it wasn't Chaos?
 

---

Six weeks into the siege, and six Immortals had been taken and mutilated in Greater Seacouver itself and the surrounding environs. All of them killed in a fashion similar to the first and all of them had traveled to Seacouver from great distances. And all of their heads, duly labeled, had been air-mailed, packed in ice, to Paris HQ Central.        Except that the sixth had not arrived yet, though none doubted it would. The entire grizzly business had set all of Seacouver on edge. As Joe had predicted, the Bureau made its appearance with the third murder. The entire Seacouver police force was pulling double shifts and fighting with the Bureau over turf and jurisdiction. Seacouver made the national news and more than its share of the tabloids and talking heads and Most Wanted and the whole city closed up tighter than a fist.        Which put the Northwest Watchers group in the unenviable position of dodging the Immortals, and the Bureau, and the police, and every Seacouverian who was suddenly suspicious of anything which even hinted at stalking--which was the main occupation of their field work. Not that any of Joe's troops would have traded places with the Paris office.

      It was bad enough to view what was left of the bodies. No one desired to confirm the vision each had in his mind about the heads. And when they couldn't keep the images at bay, they made jokes, dreadful, tasteless bits about barbecues and tree-trimmings. Adam had merely been ahead (so to speak) of the curve in his reaction to the abomination. The murderer had no identity save as the "Knacker," referring to the man with the mallet who sends steers to the hereafter--probably because Ripper and Butcher and Hannibal the Cannibal had already been taken.

       And the Knacker's sixth victim had stirred them worse than the rest. The first five had been male Immortals. Six was a woman.

       Six was a woman and Ram's whereabouts were as yet unknown.

       Six was a woman and Lieutenant Crane wouldn't return Dawson's frantic calls.

       Six was a woman and Joe was near to losing his sanity.

       This was Duncan's impression as he walked into Joe's bar with little Mary Lindsey straddling his left hip and teething on his shirt. He hadn't heard about the sixth body yet, so the sight of Joe tilted against the bar and arguing loudly in something that almost sounded like French surprised him.

       Dawson turned around and traded the phone for the toddler. Mary had become a regular patron of late. Momma Ann had chosen the worst moment in Seacouver history to be rotating through forensic pathology on her way to a less hectic branch of medicine. Joe and Mac had been taking turns baby- sitting. Adam had left for Paris three weeks earlier to manage the investigation from the European front and the Watchers' extensive archives.

      Duncan looked at the phone and then at Joe.

      "It's Jim," Joe said by way of explanation.

      "And?" Duncan waved the cellular phone at the bartender. Mary started waving her hands, reaching for the antenna, ever on the lookout for good teething materials.

       "Just say what I say," Joe leaned over the bar and retrieved a clean bar rag. "Tell Jim the sixth body..."

       Duncan's eyes rounded and he mouthed an expletive. He conveyed the message as Joe dictated.

       "The sixth body is a woman," Joe flipped the towel down on the bartop and began twisting and folding, "We still haven't located Ram..." One more twist and a flip and Mary's favorite bar rabbit appeared, long, floppy ears and all.

       "...and Jim needs to make sure that Adam is NOT in the office for the next several days..." he made the bunny dance for Mary and she kicked her chubby legs and squealed in delight.

       Duncan put his palm up and took over the conversation from there, making sure James understood the importance, if not the reason, that Dr. Piersen should be absent on the arrival of the next grim parcel. James sounded as if he hardly needed a reason to send Adam off, say, to Lyons and the Secondary Archives, which would take the required four days. The head would surely arrive before then.

       Damn! thought Duncan, could it possibly be Ram? Could Amanda have slipped into the city unnoticed? Had Grace returned? Let it be none of them, let it be none of our number. He thought about what Ram had said. Let it be none of My Clan. He punched the power button off and laid the phone on the bar. "'Keep," he began and then sighed, "I believe I'm in need of a drink. If ye kin leave off with that sweet servin wench there."

       Duncan gathered Mary up in his arms and she batted him on the nose while he waited for Joe to set em up. And wouldn't the dear man be so clever as to bypass the cheap stuff and go straight for the sacred Jamesons?

       "What do you think?" he asked Joe. Of course, Mary wanted some, but Ann would be furious, so Duncan put the brew down carefully and dug into Mary's enormous--he could keep his katana in it--baby bag for a bottle of juice.

       "Buddy? Oh, you mean about Adam's impending bereavement?"

       "God, do you really think...?"

       The corners of the toddler's mouth turned down mirroring Duncan's expression and she started to cry. Whereupon the Highlander gathered her close to his chest and went dancing across the room, singing a song about a wee highland lassie and the coming of dawn, or something like.

       Then whirling in faster and faster circles, Mary laughing with joy and excitement, he sped her away from her sadness till she was exhausted and fell asleep in his arms, the juice bottle clutched like a favored stuffed bear in the circle of her baby-dimpled embrace. He deposited her in the pillow-lined wicker basket they had started keeping behind the bar for just such times as these and motioned to Joe to follow him over to a far booth.

       When they were settled with the Jamesons, Joe remarked, "You would make somebody a fine Pa, Mac."

       The Immortal's countenance darkened as if a storm had suddenly rolled in. "One of Life's many little ironies," he said with much less levity than he might have wished.

       "You've got it bad, Mac."

       "What?"

        "The baby lust, me boy," Joe said, softly tilting his chin toward the bar where Mary lay.

        "Well, and ye're no slouch either, Granpa." Duncan set his jaw in square lines of granite and steel, "It is a fool's wish after all, seeing that Ram is very likely dead."

        Joe thought he must have misunderstood. "What are you saying?"

       "Where do you think baby Immortals come from, anyway, Joe?"

       "I'm sure I don't know, Buddy."

        "Well, where did Methos come from?"

        Joe did not follow. He did not want to follow. At some level of his consciousness, he had somehow considered Ram belonged to him. That he believed this, or why this was so, had not yet occurred to him, though Mac's words made him angry and possessive nonetheless.

        "And if Methos is not one of 'the people,'" Duncan continued, "then he must be a hybrid of either mortal and 'people' or Immortal and 'people.'"

       Joe took a too-large swallow of the golden elixir and choked.

       "I choose to believe the latter," Duncan finished after Joe stopped coughing.

       Obviously Mac had given this some thought. Joe chose not to think about why his friend might be absorbed in such ruminations. Some tiny corner of the Watcher's mind shouted all the while, "How dare he!"

       "What does Crane say?" Duncan asked.

      Joe scratched the itchy spot on his chin underneath his beard. "Same as always. Ram's Well. No, she won't come. Dammit, Mac. She said six months. It's been six months and then some! Why does she stay hidden, scaring us to death like this?"

      Duncan sited sideways on his Watcher friend. He wasn't the only one dealing with lust these days it seemed. The passion in Joe's voice strayed far outside the patiently weary tones Duncan was used to hearing, the "smoky joe blues sound," as he thought of it. Which explained why the barkeep's back was up about the discussion of Methos' origins. Duncan chided himself on being so unobservant. He would have to be more circumspect when discussing Ram around Joe.

       Duncan bent forward towards his friend and laid his hand on Joe's shoulder, "Joe, you look quite ill..." he began.

       "No," Joe stared back. "I just haven't been doing a lot of sleeping."

       "Noooo," Duncan started in again. "You are nearly sick to death. You just said so didn't you?"

       "Well, I," the light dawned, "Ooooh. Yes, definitely. They'd stick me in the hospital..."

       Duncan shook his head.

       "...but I'm so stubborn, I won't go..."

      The Highlander grinned.

       "...and," Joe thought for a moment, "so, I'm staying over at your loft where you can take care of me...and Ann can look in on me after work...and..."

       Duncan nodded enthusiastically, "and then when she shows up, I'll put it to her that she needs to stay in a little closer until we can deal with this knacker business. I'll convince Ram that it is in her best interest to stay with one of us. The fact that she gives off no aura is not going to protect her against someone who knows Watcher serial numbers."

        Mac had spoken clearly enough, but Joe translated the plan to mean that Ram was going to stay with him here, above the bar. He mentally rearranged the room down the hall from his where he kept the old sound system components and the odd bit of broken bar paraphernalia.

       And all the while, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, was becoming preoccupied with the notion that the sixth body was not Ram's and that, whatever it took, he was damned if he was going to be the last of his line.

       Damned if he let this last, this only, chance pass him by.

---

Duncan MacLeod, foster son of the Highlands, puttered round his loft gathering up teething rings and nerf balls, spit rags, and one very ugly-looking bottle of formula which had rolled, unnoticed under the bed, a full week ago by the smell of it. He had sent most of Mary's things off with Joe earlier in the afternoon, pulled out his best linen, given the entire place a thorough scrub top to bottom.         That done, Duncan pulled off his clothes and wadded them into the dirty clothes drawer, reminding himself he was overdue a trip to the laundry. Ah, he mused as he steeped in the oversize bath he'd installed off the main room of the studio, no more pretty laundresses to take care of such for less than a penny and a tip of one sort or another.         While he dressed, he mentally ticked off the long list he'd gathered for this campaign: the steaks, the wine, the peaches , the salad, the pillows, the towels...

       The pin! Where the hell? Several irritating minutes later, and all the drawers pulled out and dumped over the floor, he remembered he'd pinned it to one of the curtains, so he wouldn't lose it while he was straightening up. Cursing a bloody blue streak in an ancient Gaelic tongue, he put the drawers back aright and went to the third window to retrieve the penannular broach which had held his clan plaid once upon a time, a very long time ago. Said to be an old Nordic piece at the time when it was newly given him some four centuries earlier.

        It was the oldest thing which he owned and it gave him no brief pause to think it wasn't half as old as the woman who was coming to visit, the King of the Five Millennia Reign, Setanem, who probably watched them plan the pyramids...

       Ram.

       For whom all of this was preparation.

       If only indirectly.

       And all of this carried for Duncan the weight of liturgical ritual. Everything must be perfect, and if not, then made so by his very will, and any other thing which would serve.

       Because never in his life had he ever attempted anything like this, an act no less daring than reaching into the heavens themselves and turning back the great crystal spheres which spun the ways of worlds and men, of time and fate.

        Duncan set the steaks on the counter and pulled the wine bottle out of the frig. Deftly peeling the foil from the cork, he wandered over to the table, retrieved the corkscrew, two twists and then...

        Maybe this was the one wrong thing in his plan. Yes, he didn't really have an answer for this part of the plan. Officially out of bounds. Yes. This was the point of commitment He would go to hell for this one. Ram would see to it.

        Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod took one slow and heavy inspiration. This was that important. If it was to hell, then so be it.

       He dug into the drawer in the kitchen island and pulled out a small brown bottle. He counted out five pills, thought a moment, then added two more, put the lot into the crystal goblet with the gold rim and poured the wine over them watching the white tablets dissolve in a treacherous fizz.

       Then he heard the lift engage and the course was set for good or ill.

       Or, hell.

       "Hello, Lord Leod, Shield Brother, and dastardly knave," Ram stepped off the lift in high spirits, giving the room an acute, rapid appraisal. "You must have been at this all day."

        "Watcher Dawson sends his best," she added. "As does little Mary. What does she call you?"

       Duncan mumbled something and reached back in his pocket, retrieving two more tabs which he added to the same goblet while Ram strolled over to the book shelf and pulled out an interesting tome. "Pardon?"

       "Unka Dunk," Duncan replied more distinctly. He had not fooled her one whit with this plan of his. Pray God the rest went better than this initial foray was going. Badly at best...for him.

       "Yes," Ram grinned wickedly, "I know. I just had to hear you say it."

        As she turned back towards him and looked up from the book he noted the incredible transformation she had undergone since their last discussion, the "audience" in this very room. She was dressed in cobalt blue denims, the five button variety, simple leather shoes, no socks, and a thin, long-sleeved Erin sweater with ten buttons down the front, the top two unbuttoned. Grey-green eyes, a shock of jet black curls framed her angular face, and a new pair of wire rims perched on the bridge of her aristocratic beak.

       She tipped her chin down and stared over the top of the gold rims, "I take it you approve, Brother."

       "Well, you've gained some weight," Duncan could have bit his tongue off. What could he be thinking? That was the last thing you ever told a woman. That would have even set Tessa sulking and Tessa was not a brooding sort at all.

       "I thought I would care for myself in all ways, including eating more regularly. Thank you for noticing."

       That was the difference of course, she looked tended, bathed and brushed and pampered and as self- satisfied as the proverbial cat with the feathers in its teeth. He watched her move to the couch reading the book as she went. The balanced tread, the sure, spare movement still recalled the wariness of a seasoned soldier though. She did not so much sit as perch on the couch, ready to move in any direction should the need arise.

       Duncan wondered she had not come armed.

       "Dawson lost my sword," she announced, never looking up from book. It was Dante's Inferno, in Italian. "He says someone broke in and stole it. He posted Adam to send another. But I had already given those three back to their owners." She turned the page and traced the lithograph with her index finger. "You wouldn't know anything about that?"

       "Of course not," Duncan poured the second glass of wine and brought them both over to the couch. "What use would I have for that hand-anvil?" Damnation, could he not even be civil with this woman who was every bit as aggravating as her son?

       He handed her the glass with the gold rim and she took it without looking up. For the first time this day, he thought of Methos. He had not even figured his friend into the equation.

       Ram took a tentative sip and turned to the next page.

      "What do you think?" he toasted her direction with his wine.

      "It's all right, I suppose." She took another drink, set the book aside, and rolled the glass between both her hands. "So why did you try to trick me into coming here, Duncan? And why all this fuss," she glanced over to the table, immaculately set in china and crystal, candles and flowers, "and bother?"

       Good, one point in his favor, Duncan thought, at least she knows nothing about wines. He had purposefully picked an all too dry vintage with an overbearing fruity bouquet. The better to cover the drug which had a subtle bitter aftertaste. She would be none the wiser until this was decided.

       One way or the other.

       "You have heard about the 'Knacker'?" Duncan began.

       "One hardly hears of anything else in Seacouver, Duncan."

       "Well, the victims have all been Immortals, Ram."

       "I suspected as much." She sited on him through the pale garnet liquid in her glass.

       Duncan reached behind him and brought the bottle round to fill her glass and his own. "You mean you don't know?"

       "I made a complicated bargain with Crane, one of the stipulations being that I stay out of the Watchers' network. There was no way I could know for sure," Ram finished her glass. "You know, this isn't such a bad bit of grape after all," she commented, holding out her glass.

       Duncan obliged. "Well, Ram, there is a fairly simple bargain I wish to strike with you."

       "Oh?" Ram tipped her head too fast and the buzz reeled her back into the cushions of the couch. Her eyes fogged for a moment and then she pushed up a little straighter and went right on drinking the wine.

       "Yes," Duncan braced himself. Here goes. "There are desperate times which sometimes call for desperate measures."

        Well, this set her off in high gales of laughter and Duncan was once again minded of Adam and his peculiar sense of humor.

        "Oh, pullease," Ram said between gasps for breath, "as if you knew anything at all about true desper-," she gulped, "desperation. As if..."

       My God, Duncan thought, she's already drunk as a deacon. The smooth smoky tones were descending into a fetchingly deep purr and she had already assumed the limp drape like her son's way of addressing furniture.

       "You know nothing. Nothing!" she took her glasses off and they slipped from her hand to the floor. She paid them no attention.

       As Duncan leaned forward to retrieve them, she stabbed him in the middle of his forehead with her long index finger. "My people are extinct," she announced quietly. "No matter what we are or what we may ever do, we can never change that fact. No new member of my species has graced this planet in the past five millennia."

       "We are extinct."

        Duncan heard her repeat the tragic truth which, sober, she might never have revealed. The wine and the pills had loosed the cool reserve which were her shield and her mantle.

        "We are only still here because we do not die. But as more time passes, more of us give up and the Danaans will soon be gone I fear. Nor no amount of wailing or suffering or sacrifice can abate this curse," Ram stopped and broke into deep, wrenching sobs filled with as much rage as woe.

       "And nothing, not all my power, nor all my caring, nor all my wit avails. I could not save my people."

       Duncan wanted to hold or to comfort her, but he did not dare. Danaans? "You are the Tuatha de Danann? The People of Danae?"

       Ram stopped sobbing and fixed him in a glare as if he'd said something utterly obscene. "Do I look like an elf?"

       Well, actually, both she and Methos had an elfen quality about them, but Duncan knew better than to say that aloud. "I was thinking more on the order of Tolkein's elven lords."

        "Yeah," Ram rubbed her eyes as the first wave of inebriation lightened and some control returned. "More like J.R.R.'s Ents."

        "The tree men who lost all their wives?" Duncan asked. What was she talking about?

        "Well, the genders are reversed, but otherwise..."

         Duncan slipped to the floor by her feet and leaned sideways against the couch as she continued. She certainly made an eloquent drunk.

        "A very long time ago," she had begun, "long before Adam was born or even a matter of consideration..." Her long fingers wove the air as she spoke, gently lighting on his shoulders and then taking flight again adding an airy substance to the melody and the moment of her words.

          As if she were speaking the language of ether, the quintessence, the fifth element of all things, by which all things were lightened, Duncan found himself woven into the somber tapestry of the Danaan's history. That is what it is about her, he thought, she has the ancient glamorye. By God, she is an elf.

         The Danaans had, some five millennia ago, come to a tragedy from which proceeded their extinction. This much Duncan understood, but the exact nature of that tragedy was unclear. Ram glanced by it twice in the narrative, then a third time.

         "But what happened, Ram?" Duncan thought it would be better to ask or they would be all night with the history lecture and he had more important things planned.

         "What? Oh," she took a deep breath in and let it out slowly in a sonorous sigh. "You remember with Carlisle?"

          He was not likely ever to forget. Duncan nodded and rested his hands on her thigh. She rested hers on top of his and continued.

          "You came a short way with me down that path and still you had some difficulty getting back." Her sensitive fingers combed through his hair and her unfocused gaze shone down on his upturned face. "You know, Brother Leod," she said as if it came as a complete surprise to her, "you are very fair to look upon."

           Duncan did not blush, but it was more his swarthy skin than his will that made this so.

           "Well, that path may be taken much, much further, and then further still. I have myself been a great long way down..." her voice drifted off to silence.

           "Because of the diminishment?" Duncan took her left hand and turned it over. "What happened to the tattoo?" It was gone. Completely.

           "Crane made me have it removed. It was part of the bargain," she pulled her hand back.

           "You went to a doctor?" Duncan asked.

           "No," she replied in a way that made it clear they would say nothing more about the bothersome tattoo. "How do you know about the diminishment?"

           "Adam told me," he needed to turn the direction of this around. He was in no mood to discuss what had happened in the course of her becoming Immortal, though it was always the first thing which came to mind when he thought of her, just as she was the first thing that came to his mind each new victim the knacker left hanging in the trees. "So what happened to the Danae?"

          "Our husbands, our children," the threnody tones, the sad tenderness with which she named these made Duncan's throat knot, "they were the dreamers, the searchers after light."

          "We," and this was said with the harshest deprecation, "we washed the clothes and saw to the food and kept the histories and wove and cleaned and brooded our families, like a flock of busy little hens. We made sport of their dreaming in the best of our moods," she breathed raggedly, "we damned them for their sloth, when we were weary of the work."

          "And all the while they met together and quickened together and went further down that road..." Ram pushed back and rubbed her palms roughly over her face. Then she leaned forward again, "That day, that day which was the End of the World."

          "That day was like any other, I swear, like any other day. The goats had gotten out of the pen. Some of the children had upended the stew pot in the middle of the cottage floor. Three fires had gone out and smoked the rooms. Ten babies had the colic...all a thousand and a thousand times repeated over the entire Weir. And once again, we were rising up weary to take up the matters of the people, to see to the endless businesses of life."

         "And the Men, the Fools, took their breakfast as on countless other mornings. Without a 'thank you,' without a 'fare you well, Beloved,' they were off to their damn meetings at the henge."

         "Well, there was one awful difference this morning," Ram bit her lip until it bled. "We had decided to meet the night before. We had had enough. The Women, I mean. Enough!"

         The tears welled up in her eyes and Duncan thought he might just have preferred to talk about the diminishment rather than to know this sad tale.

         "We decided, Oh, yes, we de-ci-ded," a viper at Hell's gate did not hiss with such a wicked sound. "they should at least have the care of the children, if they were going to play all day themselves anyway. And we bundled them off with their Pa's."

          "Even the babes, even the babes...We thought they'd at least have to come back when the infants grew hungry and that would break up their entire day of doing nothing while we did all the work."

         "But the morning went by and they did not return. The afternoon rolled on and they did not come back, and our breasts grew heavy and began to ache."

         Ram's hands had begun telling the story again. Her hands floated up to her chest and then settled back in fists on her lap. "I was the wife of the King. It fell to me to go see what The Fools were doing."

         Her grey eyes cast beyond Duncan back the eons to The End of the World.

         "They were all dead, of course. All the men, all the children. Every one of them...gone. Two thousand five hundred forty three...all of them."

         Duncan could see her scrambling through the throng, saw the pale, long fingers touch each one, confirming the worst. And he also saw the incredible strength of this woman, the fire-tempered metal at her core, her essential and unassailable might. He understood how it was possible for her to survive hanging from the barn's beam, two full turns of the sun.

         She touched his jaw gently and Duncan took her hand and held it against the side of his face, constant and cool and still. He had no words for her.

        "So," she said, "I returned to the Weir and I gathered them all before the Throne and I sat down thereon."

        "And my first order of Office was to tell them the most whopping fine lie I could devise. And that I did, in spades."

        Duncan drew back, trying to decide what he was seeing--whether it was strength, or heartlessness, whether she was at all honorable in the highest, or the lowest degree. "You lied to them?"

         "I told them that the Men, unknown to us, had been daily embarking on an ever-lengthening quest to reach Heaven's Gate...to cross over and return. They had been struggling with a spiritual journey to God Himself."

          "And it was the innocence and the power of the children which made it finally possible to attain their goal. I followed them to The Gate Itself..."

         Duncan felt a shiver climb up his shoulders to the base of his skull.

         Ram sat like a King on the new couch, shoulders square, chin raised. She spoke as if she were again in that moment, as if she would ever be in that day which was The End of the World. "And at The Gate, Sisters of My Heart, Dearest Ones of All My Days, there came a Great Wind and a Great Star and a Great Wave, and a sound that took the ground and moved it like water."

        "He said to me, 'You may not come here now. For your faithlessness and your pettiness and your meanness and all the profligate ways which have demeaned and destroyed you, you must remain upon the earth. You must remain outside The Gate. You may not trod upon Holy Ground ever again."

        "And the time of your penance is both long and hard, but when you have learned the lessons you have mocked and when you have come to the true understanding of all that you have wasted, then may you return."

         He understood what she had done. How she had turned the unbearable tragedy. How she had given her people a reason to live.

         And how she had taken the entire bereavement secretly within, to share with no one. Duncan knew he had no business with this woman. There was nothing between them remotely alike, despite her allusion to his "clan."

         "And I was sent back to you, Dearest Ones," she finished, "to see to the path we must now take alone."

         Another wave of the wine and the chloral settled her back against the pillows. "It was a godawful mess, I can tell you. I do not know how we managed, but we did. Well, no..." she shrugged. "We lost one in four in the next few months, and it looked as if we'd all be gone by winter, and no one left to bury us as we had done our husbands and our children. But I finished taking power from the rest and finally had sufficient strength to steady them and tend them and we stopped losing any more."

         She laid forward on her thighs, burying her head on her knees. "You said you knew desperation. In our desperation, we decided to breed with the beastes, some of us, in the interests of preserving and perhaps in some fashion recreating our line. Little more than cavemen you were then, and the children..."

         Duncan lifted her head up. "What about the children?"

         "They were many of them so feral we could not manage them. We just left them in the herd. They were impossibly violent and stupid. We had not given enough thought to the differences in the beastes. We did not see them as individuals. We were soon corrected on this point by the differences in the children we bore."

          "We were exceedingly fortunate that they were sterile or we might have bred a race of monsters. As it was they were monster enough for the mortals whom they assailed."

           A very different sort of shudder built up Duncan's shoulders. He could so easily despise this woman and her monstrous cronies.

           "We kept the sons who were promising and bred with them when they were of age..."

           He could learn to hate her.

          "But we hadn't counted on the others whom we'd left behind with their beaste fathers...

          So easily wring her aristocratic swan's neck.

          "Our sons could not control the Quickening Minor. They leaked their power constantly, like a beacon to the monsters we had abandoned. And they came after us and our sons. To save them. To save ourselves, we scattered them among the more enlightened of the herds."

          Her white throat was just a breath away from his hands...

          "And so have we continued to do, though we take greater care with the placements and we watch over our sons through the network, the Watchers, and we have over the years developed the rules and the Gathering. And we maintain, or have till now, our..." she thought a moment, "invisibl..ty," she slurred over the word, tried it again, shook her head and went on. "One of our number told her son about Holy Ground and that sort of developed on its own, first as Sanctuary, then as neutr," three more times she attempted "neutrality," but she never achieved the pronunciation. Deep in her cups, she was.

         And Duncan felt himself getting in deep, too deep, but not in his cups.
 

---

 

Ram had fallen asleep on the couch. Duncan puttered about cooking the steaks, tossing the salad, thinking about all that she had said.        So, he had been correct in thinking that the Danae were mating with the Immortals, that he was not--as he had been led most of his long life to believe-- sterile.        That it was possible for him to have a child of his own...but with this woman?        Then again, when was he ever going to meet another of her kind?         Or know them if he met them?        He could still turn back, Duncan thought as he finished setting dinner on the table. He retrieved the book she'd been reading earlier and replaced it on the shelf. Danté, how appropriate. Well, he was still ten rings from Lucifer, two from Cheron, seven from the ring where the violent go.

       Duncan felt his resolve feathering away from him on the night wind and he went to waken the creature on the couch, not human, not Immortal...

       If my soul is in the balance here, he thought, then it will be the price for my son's ransom. "Ram," he called softly as he lowered himself to the floor beside the couch. He carefully brushed an errant lock from her forehead.

       She woke up in slow motion, stretching like some large cat. "Oh," she rolled over on her stomach and levered up on her elbows. "I don't usually..." Ram dropped her chin and stretched her shoulders. She looked down at Duncan as if had appeared out of thin air, or as if she wondered why he was still here.

       "Ram," he began when he gauged she was as alert as she was going to be, "I spoke about a bargain before..."

       Her eyes were very green as they widened in the candlelight from the table.

       "I had said we needed to talk about a simple bargain between you and me."

       She nodded. "And this is?"

       "I will give you my property and my wealth, my protection and my constancy, all that I have and all that I am..."

       "Wait," she said chuckling, "I don't think I even want to know what this is going to cost. You sound like a wedding vow."

       The look on his face silenced her.

       "You do not think I am suitable to consider as husband or father?"

       "You would make a wonderful father, Unka Dunk. Even Mary says so."

       Duncan's dark eyes waited on her words and she turned away from their sudden, piercing attention. Ram pushed up to sitting, but she was far too gone 'neath the sway of the drink and the drug to attain a legitimate posture of fortitude. "Duncan," she began tenderly, "soon enough the crown will weigh heavy upon my successor, soon enough they will begin to miss all those qualities in their sovereign which they took for granted over the millennia. In time, they will begin to bend the rules of the banishment and come to me for this or that...and I shall accumulate their indebtedness to me and gradually build back a measure of my power, a portion of my troups, my friends."

        "Then we will find you a suitable mate, Brother Leod. Mayhap we shall even set precedent and let you raise your son, rather than waiting until the children are full grown and leading them back to their Dads for training."

       Duncan missed the implication entirely in the imperatives of the moment though it would come back to haunt him later. "And how long a time do you anticipate this will be, Ram?"

       "Not long," she lay down on her side and stroked his head. "I should imagine some time this next century."

       "I should live so long," Duncan said with an edge of bitterness that curdled the very air. "I have only one more thing to ask of you, Ram."

       She traced his ear and smiled, "and that?"

       "Are you my mother?"

       Ram rolled over on her back and utterly dissolved in a seizure of kicking legs and raucous laughter, holding her sides and gasping between gales. When she finally got her breath again and some modicum of reason, she replied, "No, Duncan, I am not. And should you ever find yourself before the present Danaan Lord, be very careful not to let her know you asked me that..." she broke off in laughter again. "She is a wondrous woman, but a bit humorless. She surely would be insulted that you thought you might be MY son." That was all she could say before she went off again, bending over double.

      She was not laughing a moment later when Duncan picked her up and took her cross the room to set her down on the bed, propped up in a roughly seated posture against a bank of pillows beneath