|
Hope Triumphant II SISTER |
|
Chapter
4 |
Chapter
7 |
|
|
Chapter
2 |
||
|
Read other stories |
Chronological Listing of all the stories in the Hope-Highlander Universe. |
|
CHAPTER 1 (World population: 6.65 billion) |
THE MANIPULATOR
======================
October 2006
Geraldine,
New
Zealand
======================
"So, Alex, are you ready for us to start changing the world?" Cassandra asked as the two women stood on the top of a high mountain, looking down.
"Yes," Alex said, for they had spoken of this before, and she had merely been waiting for Cass to finish healing the traumas from her long and sometimes bitter life. Apparently, Cass had decided she was done. Alex asked carefully, "Was it Methos being here at Duncan's wedding that …?"
"In part, yes," Cass answered. "I'll never be able to forget what Methos did to me—what he was to me—but seeing him these last few days … It's helped me to realize that he's not the only one to have changed. So have I. I'm done with the past now; I'm ready to look to the future." She turned to Alex and smiled, brilliant, beautiful, and utterly determined. "I'm ready to change the world."
They looked out upon the patchwork of New Zealand farmland and grassland, and out farther to the silver edge of the sea, that seemingly limitless expanse of wave and wind, while Cass spoke of their shared dream. "We could have a world where children are protected, where women are safe, a better world for men, too."
"In time," Alex said. "I won't live to see it completed, but you will."
"I might," Cass said. "Then again, it could take a thousand years."
"You've lived three thousand already; what's one more?" Alex asked, because Cassandra (like Duncan and Methos and like Alex's husband, Connor MacLeod) was an Immortal, a strange off-shoot or mutation or God-knows-what of humanity who healed almost instantly and never aged. Alex hadn't believed it when she'd first learned of Immortals' existence nearly fourteen years ago, but after watching Connor take a sword thrust through the shoulder and then heal, and after discovering that he'd been born in 1518 and had wandered the world ever since, Alex had had no choice but to believe.
"Even if I can't live in that world," Alex said, "I want my children and their children, and their children, to have the chance."
Cass nodded, the sunshine brightening her long auburn hair to red and gold, a halo of flame. "Then let's begin," she said, and they started down. When they reached the road that led to Duncan and Susan's farmhouse, Cass said, "We're going to need help, Alex. You and I can't do this alone."
"So that's why you're going on the cruise with Elena and then the tour with Amanda."
"That, and other reasons." Cass's smile held a more than a glint of mischief. "I think it'll be fun. But yes, they're promising recruits. We'll see."
"What about Methos?"
"I don't want him involved in any way," Cass declared. "Not interfering, not helping. I don't trust him, and I don't want him anywhere near me." She stared straight ahead as they walked down the road. "That man sends shivers down my spine."
Alex knew very well that not all of the sparks flying between Cass and Methos this last week had been angry ones. "Do you mean that in a bad way?" Alex asked. "Or a good way?"
Her lips thinned, and the word came out as a whisper: "Both."
Alex let out a silent whoosh of realization. This wasn't just about not trusting Methos; Cassandra didn't trust herself, not where her former master-lover-nemesis was concerned. It seemed she wasn't completely done healing those traumas after all.
~~~~~
"And off she goes and she's gone," Methos said, coming onto the farmhouse porch later that afternoon. He and Alex watched Cass's car disappear down the dusty road. "Hong Kong, didn't she say?" Methos asked.
"She did," Alex replied, but Cass hadn't said anything to Methos about the cruise with Elena next week, so Alex didn't either.
Methos had leaned both elbows on the porch railing and was looking sidelong at Alex with his changeable hazel eyes. Alex turned to look straight at him. Methos was attractive, witty, and charming … and an Immortal who'd spent at least one thousand of his five thousand years butchering or enslaving people, Cassandra among them. Back in the Bronze Age, he'd been one of a band of raiders called the Four Horsemen, and he'd "tamed" Cassandra to his will. She'd spent over a year servicing his every whim before she'd run away. Methos had changed since then, Duncan insisted, and it seemed to be true. Alex had actually enjoyed Methos's company this last week, but she didn't trust him. Neither did Connor, and neither, of course, did Cass.
Methos looked back out at the road. "And later this month she's going to meet Amanda." He sounded as if he didn't quite believe it.
Earlier this morning at breakfast, Amanda's announcement had surprised Alex, too. "After I leave here in a few days and take care of a little business deal in Australia," Amanda had said cheerfully, "Cassandra and I are going to tour the Mediterranean together." Beyond their immortality (Amanda was over twelve hundred), Cass and Amanda didn't seem to have anything in common—at least not yet. They would see. But Alex wasn't about to volunteer any information to Methos, so she seated herself on the porch swing and said merely, "Cass hasn't had a vacation in a long time."
"She could certainly use some R&R," Methos observed. "She's seemed a bit tense."
"Oh, come now, Methos," Alex said. "She didn't try to take your head even once."
"Miss Manners would be so pleased," Methos said, the dry wit sharpening to sarcasm. "Beheading one of the groomsmen at a friend's wedding is often considered rude." He turned around and leaned his back against the railing, looking at Alex again. "You like Cassandra, don't you?"
"We're best friends," Alex replied and went inside before he could ask her anything more.
=====
"Do you like her?" Methos asked Amanda that evening, as they lay on the floor of the guest cottage near MacLeod's farmhouse.
Amanda rolled over onto her stomach, taking most of the blanket with her and leaving Methos's backside bare. "Who?"
"Cassandra."
"Oh." Amanda yawned, an enticingly delicate motion that involved the tip of her tongue and her very white, very sharp teeth. "Her." Amanda shrugged. "She's interesting, she's going to show me places that Rebecca lived in, and she's older than I am. I think I could learn a lot from Cassandra."
Which was not, Methos reflected, a good thing. Amanda already knew entirely too much about entirely too many things.
"What about you?" Amanda asked, propping her chin on her hands and, in doing so, making a most intriguing display of her breasts. "Do you like her?"
"Who?"
Amanda clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Cassandra."
"Oh. Her." Methos dragged his attention up to Amanda's face. He shrugged. "She seems interesting."
Amanda smiled knowingly and said, "She doesn't like you." Methos shrugged again. Amanda smiled again and said, "But I know she did like you—sometime." Her fingers started stroking the outline of the bicep on his sword-arm. "When did you two meet?"
"Years ago."
Amanda wrinkled her nose at him, because of course, that answer could mean anything for an Immortal. Her fingers danced their way along his collarbone and down to his chest. "How did you meet?"
He'd slaughtered Cassandra's family, her friends, and her. Then he'd taken her to his tent, strangled her to death to teach her to behave, stripped her, staked her out spread-eagled on the ground, and waited for her to revive before he raped her. That had been the first day. It had gotten worse.
Methos shrugged once more and let his fingers start doing a dance of their own, starting at Amanda's spine and working up to the nape of her neck. "Oh, you know," he said casually. "People run into each other here and there." He smiled in invitation and ran his fingers up into her dark hair. "Let's not talk about her now."
"No?" Amanda asked, all wide-eyed innocence, while her fingers did wickedly knowing things.
"No," Methos said, his fingers traveling back down her spine and then farther down, and after that neither of them was interested in discussion of any kind.
~~~~~
The next day, their last together in New Zealand, Amanda brought up the topic of Cassandra again … and again and again and again. Methos didn't answer, no matter what Amanda tried, and she tried an amazing variety of techniques. Methos decided to frustrate Amanda's curiosity more often in the future. He hadn't had such fun in years.
"How many times have you been married, Amanda?" Methos asked after dinner, by way of changing the subject yet again.
"Enough to know I'm a single girl at heart," she said, smiling at him under lowered lashes. "You?"
"Sixty-eight."
An elegant eyebrow was raised as her mouth quirked in amusement. "Really. Looks like the next one should be a lot of fun." She curled up on a corner of the couch and tucked her feet under her, sipping at her wine and looking out the window at the enormous totora tree in the back yard. "Duncan seems happy with Susan."
"He does," Methos agreed, sitting in a nearby chair. These days, most marriages started out happy. Not very many finished that way. And between a mortal and an Immortal … Methos reached for his beer. "Till death do us part" sounded all very fine, and he had no doubt that both Connor MacLeod and Duncan MacLeod planned to live up to their vows, but Methos had yet to see a relationship between a mortal and an Immortal that didn't disintegrate after twenty years: not parenthood, not friendship, and most definitely not marriage.
The two pairs of MacLeods—Duncan and Susan, and Connor and Alex—were in for a very rough ride. Alex, Methos knew, was going to be hit hardest of all, since her husband's former (and immortal) lover was currently her best friend. That wouldn't last very long.
"That's it!" Amanda said, snapping her fingers and snapping Methos out of his thoughts of Mrs. Alex MacLeod. Methos turned to see Amanda looking upon him rather the way a cat looks upon a bird. "When she's around you," Amanda said, "Cassandra acts just like an ex-wife."
"I've never married an Immortal," Methos replied easily. "So I've never had to divorce one, either." He finished his beer and changed the subject again, picking a topic he knew Amanda didn't want to discuss. "What's in Australia, Amanda?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "A man with a camel."
"I've had camels," Methos said. He'd had horses, too, but Amanda didn't know about his time with the Horsemen. Not yet, anyway. Amanda was an inquisitive creature, and Cassandra had plenty of reason to share what she knew. Methos shrugged mentally. He certainly couldn't forbid them to spend time together, and no power on earth could stop women from talking; he'd learned that millennia ago. But even if Cassandra did tell her, Amanda was neither innocent nor naïve. She wasn't easily shocked, and Methos had done his best these last few days to make sure Amanda was solidly on his side.
Speaking of which … they had one more night left. He stood and moved behind Amanda, his fingertips massaging her shoulders. She purred and leaned her head forward, and Methos gently took the wine glass from her hand then placed a kiss on the nape of her neck. "Ready for bed?" he asked.
"I was thinking … the table."
"The table."
"For dessert."
======================
The Next Day
Hong Kong
======================
In the lobby of an office high-rise in Hong Kong, Cassandra double-checked the name and address Amanda had given her two days before. "Chuan Li and I are in the same business," Amanda had explained during an early morning run the day after Duncan's wedding, "but he hasn't been interested in doing business with me. I was hoping you could be more … persuasive."
"I'll try," Cassandra had promised, and since the cruise with Elena didn't start until Friday, Cassandra had flown to Hong Kong to do a favor for a potential friend—and a possible ally. She entered the elevator, an ornately decorated cubicle painted in gold and jade.
"Going far?" asked a Chinese business man in a gray suit and pink-striped tie.
"All the way," Cassandra answered. However long it took, and wherever it might lead.
DUENDE
======================
7
October 2006
The
Silver Star Cruise Ship
Mediterranean Sea
======================
Methos loved cruises.
Not that he liked boats. He still didn't like boats. But these modern cruise ships didn't feel like boats. They were floating hotels with restaurants and ballrooms and bathrooms, and lots of people interested in enjoying themselves, in all sorts of ways. The sun was warm, the gentle breeze from the Mediterranean was cooling, his margarita was cold, and the five women lounging on the deck chairs in front of him were mostly naked. He stretched out on his own chair and sighed in complete contentment, watching as the women applied suntan lotion to themselves. Two of them took off their bikini tops.
Yes, Methos loved cruises.
He had just gotten himself another margarita and settled back in his chair when the woman made her presence known. Tall, graceful, with long lean muscles in thighs and calves, perfectly defined abs and ass, strong shoulders and arms, but with enough smoothness there to still be feminine, breasts which were definitely feminine (yes, definitely), high cheekbones, skin the color of cafe au lait, long black hair cascading past her shoulders—she was dressed in a pair of sunglasses and a tiny red bikini.
Methos wasn't the only one watching as the woman walked around the edge of the pool. No, not walked. Not sauntered, either. Prowled. She wasn't waiting for the men to come after her. She was hunting on her own. And Methos knew what she was hunting for, because she had a presence in more ways than one: the woman was an Immortal. Methos wasn't worried; they were in public and his sword was by his side, hidden under a towel. Her sword had to be in the large straw bag she carried. She obviously had no place to hide a weapon on her body. As she came closer, he took another long, careful look just to be sure. Nope, no sword there.
She stopped about three meters away from him and looked him up and down, her expression unreadable behind the dark glasses, her body relaxed but ready, every muscle coiled. "Viejo," she greeted him in Spanish: Old Man. Methos supposed he qualified for that epithet. Her voice was carefully neutral, neither friendly nor aggressive.
Methos lifted his margarita in salute. "Elena Duran." He motioned to the empty deck chair by his side and responded in the same language, "Care to join me?"
Elena smiled then, a brilliant flash of white teeth. She stretched out on the chair while Methos watched in appreciation. "So," she said, crossing her long legs at the ankles, "how was Duncan's wedding in New Zealand last weekend?"
"Good," Methos said. "Good. Lovely ceremony, beautiful flowers, great food. Amanda danced the tango at the reception, and Connor and I tossed Duncan in the pool." Elena laughed aloud, but sobered too quickly. Elena and MacLeod had once been a couple, but after that messy business of Richie Ryan's death a decade or so ago, MacLeod had sought refuge on Holy Ground. When he'd returned after a year of solitude, he'd been quiet and withdrawn. Not even Elena's exuberance had been able to break through his depression, and at his request, she'd finally given up and bidden her lover a tearful goodbye.
"I told her I wasn't good for her right now," MacLeod had explained to Methos. "I need some time alone."
Methos had nodded, understanding all too well. A week later, he hadn't really been surprised when MacLeod had walked away again, retreating from all Immortal contact and hiding from the Game. Methos had done that in his time, and he knew he would again, someday. The invitation to MacLeod's wedding had been expected, the inevitable consequence of MacLeod's sabbatical in normality, a requisite change of partners in their tentative dance.
"Sorry you couldn't come to New Zealand," Methos told Elena sincerely.
Elena shrugged. "When my goddaughter was six, I promised her I would dance at her wedding, and she picked the same date. Also … I doubt Duncan's bride would have appreciated yet another of Duncan's lovers being there. Amanda's enough."
"More than enough," Methos agreed, deciding not to mention Amanda's naked dive into the pool or the rest of the evening. MacLeod's wedding reception had turned out to be one hell of a party for Methos, in several different ways. "She invited herself, I believe."
"She does that," Elena observed then changed the subject with a delightfully suggestive smile. "Are you traveling alone?"
"Yes. And you?" Methos asked hopefully. Methos wished MacLeod well, sincerely, but that didn't mean Methos couldn't also appreciate his newly expanded options with the now-available women. Except … Joe Dawson had shared some gossip at MacLeod's bachelor party last week, and the plain gold ring on Elena's left hand confirmed it. "Your husband isn't with you?" Methos asked.
"Oh, of course," she said, her smile disappearing in a resigned sigh, "you know I'm married. Well, my husband's Italian. You know about Italians?" Methos nodded. "You know about Italian men?" she persisted. He nodded again, and "Of course," she said again. "You know about everything."
Methos didn't see any reason to disabuse her of the notion.
"When Lorenzo decides he wants me and only me, I'll go back to him," Elena declared.
Well, variety was the spice of life, but Methos didn't say it. Nor did he suggest to Elena Duran that she might not be easy to live with, day in and day out, no matter how passionate and beautiful she was. "And until then?" he inquired pointedly. He could do without a jealous Italian husband on his trail.
She shrugged. "Until then, we are apart. I do what I want." She smiled seductively and wiggled her toes, making the rest of her move in various subtle and intriguing ways. "Anything I want."
Didn't she always? But they were at sea, far from home, and what Lorenzo didn't know couldn't hurt Methos. He saluted Elena once more with his drink and smiled back, remembering a certain wild time in Miami Beach some years ago. She'd been wearing red that night, too—for a while.
He loved cruises.
~~~~~
Methos looked for Elena at dinner, but she didn't appear. When he went back to his cabin, he found a note from her.
| Fell
asleep from the jetlag after the flight from Buenos
Aires.
I'm awake now, though. Interested in helping me explore the
ship? Ever since I saw the movie Titanic I've had this
fascination with decks. The stern of the ship, deck nine, |
Methos folded the note then lay down to take a short nap. He wanted to get all the sleep he could before he met Elena.
~~~~~
At four minutes before three in the morning, the stern of the ship was deserted. Perfect. Methos waited near the railing, enjoying the breeze and the magnificent stars overhead. Ten minutes later, he turned at the approach of an Immortal. Elena was climbing the last few stairs from the deck below, a few minutes late, normal for her. She was still carrying her straw bag, of course—Elena never went anywhere without her sword—and she was still in red, but this time there was a bit more of it. Only a bit. The dress dipped low in the front and much lower in the back and skimmed the tops of her thighs. She was in sandals instead of bare feet, and the sunglasses were gone, revealing the black patch she wore over her missing right eye. An Immortal named Bethel had captured Elena and gouged the eye out "for fun" a decade ago, then proceeded to torture her in other various and inventive ways. Elena had barely escaped with her life—and her sanity. Bethel hadn't escaped; Connor MacLeod had hunted Bethel down and killed him, then given the head to Elena as a present, neatly wrapped in a hatbox. A nice touch, that, though when he'd heard the tale, Methos had wondered at Connor's unusual magnanimousness.
Methos's smile widened as Elena neared him, because she was smiling just for him. "Viejo," she greeted him again.
Even as Methos was murmuring, "Buenos dias, nina," she had set down her bag and was in his arms.
"I love shipboard romances, don't you?" she asked.
"Mmm," Methos answered, but more words didn't seem necessary, and the next instant, they weren't possible. She was panting into his mouth. Elena tasted of coffee and chocolate, and she smelled of jasmine, her favorite perfume. Her tongue was doing an intricate little dance on his lower lip, the fingers of her right hand were tracing the edge of his ear, while her left hand (and Elena was left-handed) was firmly massaging his ass.
Damn, perhaps MacLeod should get married more often, if all of his former lovers were going to throw themselves at Methos with this kind of abandon. Methos joined in whole-heartedly, with both his hands on her ass and his tongue tracing the pulse that throbbed at the base of her throat.
"You're poking me," Elena said softly with a sigh.
"Isn't that the general idea?" Methos answered absently, distracted by her still-moving hands and the warmth of her breasts pressed against his chest.
Elena giggled, a delightful sound with delightful movements to match. "I meant your sword."
"Oh." Methos let go of her and backed up just enough to remove his sword from under his jacket and place it on the deck next to her bag. "There."
"Here," she corrected him, grabbing his hands and putting them back where they belonged. Her hands started undoing the buttons on his shirt, and they started kissing again.
Then another Immortal arrived. Methos and Elena both immediately pulled back and let go, and Methos turned to see Cassandra, just reaching the top step. She strode towards them with determination, the skirt of her long black dress swirling about her legs. Methos swore under his breath, wondering how the hell—and why—Cassandra had tracked him down.
Or had she? Elena didn't seem surprised to see Cassandra, just annoyed, with her hands on her hips and her left foot tapping in irritation, the sandaled toe clicking on the teak wood deck. Maybe Elena wasn't traveling alone. He'd never let her answer that question, had he? And when Cassandra had announced she was leaving for Hong Kong the day after Duncan's wedding and meeting Amanda in Athens two weeks later, Methos hadn't inquired about Cassandra's plans in between. Methos's lips tightened in annoyance. Damn the woman, anyway. All he'd wanted was a week of sunshine, good food, a little relaxation, maybe some sex … Was that so much to ask?
"Elena, como me has podido traicionar de esta manera?" Cassandra began when she was about four paces away, ignoring Methos completely as she shook her head in sorrow and confusion.
Methos was confused, too. Elena had betrayed Cassandra? How?
Cassandra stepped forward, her hands out, almost pleading. "We planned this trip so we could be together, just the two of us. Remember, mi amor?"
Methos snapped his mouth shut and took another step away from Elena as he remembered the Watcher Chronicles: the reports of Elena's lovers both male and female, Cassandra's long-standing aversion to men … Oh, good God.
Elena flipped her hair back with a proud toss of her head. "I told you, as I told Lorenzo: I do what I want. Anything I want."
"You promised me it would be different this time!"
Elena laughed aloud, and Cassandra's eyes narrowed in fury. Bad move, Elena, Methos thought. Cassandra didn't like to be betrayed, and a jealous Italian husband was nothing compared to Cassandra in a rage.
"No wonder Lorenzo left you," Cassandra said, sniffing with disgust as she looked Elena up and down.
"I left him!" Elena shot back, quick and angry, her Latina blood already aroused.
"It was only a matter of time," Cassandra said dismissively. "You're a slut, Elena," Cassandra accused, and Methos blinked at the harshness of the word. Not that it wasn't true, but still …
Elena apparently didn't like it, either. Her sword was in her hand. "I choose my own lovers, and I fight my own battles. I'm not a whore and a coward like you!"
Methos clicked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head, because that was another low—and truthful—blow. Then Elena demanded, "How many men have you fucked so they'll do your killing for you?" and at that insult, Cassandra pulled her blade. The two of them stepped towards each other, swords high, tips aimed at the eyes.
"Ladies!" Methos called in warning and alarm, because sword fights were damnably loud, and they were on a ship with hundreds of passengers and crew. They both turned to him, looking surprised, and Methos thought he knew why. "Haven't been called that in a while, have you?" Now the two women just looked annoyed. He rubbed his hands together briskly and put on an engaging grin. "Look, um … this isn't the time or the place for this, and maybe you two could talk. Work this out, enjoy the rest of the cruise together, I mean—"
"He's right, you know," Elena broke in.
"He is," Cassandra agreed. "And he's not worth fighting over."
"No, he's not," Elena chimed in immediately.
Methos didn't think she'd needed to agree quite that fast.
"But he'd be worth killing," Cassandra purred, and both women turned to stare at him with predatory smiles and glittering eyes, their blades bright and deadly in their hands.
Methos swallowed, his mouth suddenly gone dry. Elena was standing between him and his sword.
"But, as he said, this is neither the time nor the place," Cassandra said thoughtfully, and she tucked her sword into some hidden pocket in the folds of her skirt.
"No," Elena agreed again, not fast enough this time in Methos's opinion, but she, too, put away her sword. "Ready for bed, chica?" she asked Cassandra, picking up her bag and extending the crook of her arm.
"Ready," Cassandra replied, and the two women linked arms and headed for the stairs, giggling all the way.
Well … damn.
Methos strolled over to the edge of the deck where it overlooked the circular stairwell, and Elena's voice floated up to him. "I still say we should have thrown him overboard."
"He does look very good when he's dripping wet," Cassandra replied, "but I don't think he enjoys drowning." She looked up and waved at him cheerily, and Elena looked up and grinned, her white teeth flashing in the dimness. The two women disappeared into the hallway beneath his feet, still laughing.
"Bitch," Methos swore, but he was grinning even as he said the word.
~~~~~
"Quite the show last night, Cassandra," Methos greeted her just after sunrise, as she lay lounging on a chair by the otherwise deserted swimming pool. A few early-morning exercise enthusiasts were briskly walking the deck overhead, and three maids in black dresses and white aprons hurried by with towels in their arms, but other than that, Cassandra and he were alone.
Cassandra finished adjusting the knot of her belt over her robe of blue and green batik before she looked up at him and smiled, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Unlike Elena, Cassandra didn’t seem to be working on an all-body tan. Her robe was long-sleeved and reached past her knees. Only her calves and feet were bare. Nice calves they were, too: shapely, muscular, slightly golden from the sun …
"Yes, Elena and I thought you performed quite well," Cassandra said, still smiling up at him.
No doubt.
"Just taking the chance for some fun, Methos," Cassandra added, sliding her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and looking at him over the dark lenses, her green eyes merry and amused. "You and I haven't had much of that."
Fun at his expense. But Cassandra had been right; he didn't enjoy drowning, and at least they had spared him that. Methos took her words as an invitation and perched on a deck chair, but not the one right next to her. "So, where is the Argentine fireball?"
Cassandra pushed her glasses back on and glanced at the sun, another fireball just above the horizon off the port side. "Elena is not an early riser, and she prefers her coffee in bed."
Methos knew that, but he'd been wondering exactly how much Cassandra knew of Elena's early morning habits, and how much of last night had been an act. "You two known each other long?"
"I met her before she became an Immortal, not quite four hundred years ago. This cruise is our ten-year anniversary."
"Anniversary of what?" Methos asked, because he also knew Cassandra and Elena hadn't been lovers ten years ago. Elena had been very busy escaping from that madman Bethel and into Duncan MacLeod's loving arms, while Cassandra—
"Freedom," she replied succinctly.
—while Cassandra had been very busy chasing after Kronos. Methos nodded, seeing it now. Bethel and the Horsemen had all lost their heads in November of 1996, almost exactly ten years ago.
"Freedom from them, and from our nightmares of them," Cassandra added. "Elena and I helped each other through some of that, so we thought we'd celebrate. And here we are."
"And here I am." Methos shrugged, half in apology, half in amusement. "Didn't mean to crash the party."
Cassandra shrugged in return. "Somehow … I think you belong."
And somehow, he did. Methos decided not to jump ship tomorrow in Minorca, after all. This cruise might still turn out to be fun.
She had taken off her sunglasses and was watching him with unblinking green eyes, but more a kitten-stare of curiosity than a cat-stare of disdain. "You were never an early riser, either. Or has that changed, too?"
"I never went back to bed."
"Bad dreams?" she asked quietly, with the sympathy of one who knows. "The voices?"
"Nah." Not lately, anyway. "Just thinking."
Cassandra slipped her sunglasses into the brightly embroidered canvas bag leaning against her chair, her long auburn hair slipping down over her arms and hands as she moved. "Penny for your thoughts?" she offered, leaning back in her chair again and tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear.
"Why is it that people think their own opinions are worth two cents, but they're only willing to pay a penny to hear what others have to say?" Methos asked, as he had often wondered.
"Two cents then," Cassandra agreed, and she reached for her bag again then offered him a pair of shiny silver coins.
Methos leaned forward and held out his hand. Cassandra dropped the money into his palm, with no chance of skin touching skin. "These are ten-cent pieces," he announced, looking at the Maori carving of a head, souvenirs of their recent trip down under.
She shrugged. "Inflation. New Zealand doesn't make one-cent or five-cent pieces any more."
He closed his fingers, the coins cool and light in his fist. "What do you want from me, Cassandra?" he asked simply.
She looked away then, off to the sea and the sky, then back again, eyes wide and hopeful, apparently sincere. "A truce?"
"Not peace?" he countered, and this time her gaze slid down and away to the deck. "Sara says you don't like me," Methos reported, because a few hours before MacLeod's wedding, Connor's ferociously precocious nine-year-old daughter had confronted Methos with those words in the library of MacLeod's farmhouse. Connor had set down his book to listen to the exchange.
"And what did you tell Sara?" Cassandra asked.
"That you don't know me."
"Nobody knows you," Connor had put in, joining the conversation uninvited and then beckoning to his daughter. Sara had gone to Connor immediately and climbed onto his lap, staring solemnly at Methos from the safety of her father's arms. Over her head, Connor's stare had mixed cold suspicion and deadly warning in equal portions, with just a hint of disdain.
Almost eight years before, Duncan MacLeod had told Methos the same thing: "I don't know who or what you are, Methos."
Nobody did. It was safer that way, and safety meant survival, and survival was the most important thing of all. At least, it used to be.
Cassandra was nodding slowly. "You're right," she said, looking him in the eye. "I don't know you. But someday, I think I'd like to."
"But not yet."
She shook her head, her lips pressed together. "Not yet," she agreed with a rueful smile. "I think my little tantrum last week was more than enough proof that I'm not ready."
Methos snorted in agreement, because a few hours before MacLeod's wedding, Cassandra had seemed ready to declare war.
======================
The Week Before
Geraldine,
New
Zealand
======================
Methos was enjoying a recuperative nap in the comfortable hammock on the front porch of the old farmhouse (Connor threw a mean bachelor party), when the approach of an Immortal went humming down his spine and jerked him awake: Cassandra and Alex were returning from the hairdressers. Methos evaluated the results as he stretched his arms over his head. "I like your hair that way," he called to the women when they came up the stairs, a sincere compliment for them both, and an attempt at reconciliation for Cassandra.
Alex smiled and waved, but Cassandra stopped walking and examined him as if he were a specimen of ruffled tree fungus, then slowly and deliberately removed every single hairpin and dropped them on the steps. She tossed her head once and ran her fingers through her hair, leaving the long curls loose around her shoulders and down her back, completely destroying what must have been an hour's worth of work and a sizeable amount of money at the beauty salon.
Methos only said approvingly, "It looks good that way, too." And so it did, and so did she, staring at him with her long hair wild and untamed, a ferocious lioness with a glorious mane.
With absolutely no expression on her face, Cassandra reached back and started plaiting her hair into a tight braid. Alex made an odd muffled sound, either amusement or shock or distress, but Methos was getting tired of this little game. "I suppose if I tell you I like your hair long, you'd get a pair of scissors," he said. "And if I tell you I like your hair short, you'd shave your head."
Cassandra's fingers moved rapidly, finishing the end of her braid, then she flipped it over her shoulder so that it hung down her back. "I don't live my life to make you happy, Methos," she informed him icily. "Not anymore."
Methos swung himself out of the hammock. "Fine," he replied, just as coldly. "I don't want you to. Not any more, and not ever again." He walked over to her, too close for comfort, but she stood her ground impassively while he looked her over, and she met his gaze straight on when he finally looked into her eyes. Eyes of a cold unblinking green, cat's eyes, mocking, disdainful—hungry.
And alone. Methos said quietly, "I just think it's a damn shame that you live your life making yourself miserable."
She blinked once, flinching from the truth; then she spun on her heel and walked away. But she was polite to him an hour later, sat nearby at the wedding, talked to him at the reception, even smiled at him a few times. The next day after lunch, near the garden behind the farmhouse, he asked her why.
This time, she wouldn't meet his eyes. "When you would go riding with your brothers, I would wait in your tent for your return," she said, staring at the distant snow-topped hills. "I would spend hours on my hair, combing and braiding it different ways, hoping that when you came back to me, you would say, 'I like your hair.'"
Methos stared at those same far-off hills. "I didn't know." Not yesterday, not three thousand years ago.
"I know," she said, but there was no anger in her now. "But I didn't mind, because sometimes you did notice, and you would smile at me. That was all I needed to make me happy." She left him then, and Methos didn't watch her go.
======================
The Mediterranean Sea
======================
"I am trying, Methos," she told him by the poolside, tossing her head a little to move her hair from her eyes, that long, glorious hair so soft to the touch, so silken on the skin, the strands whispering caresses over his chest, shoulders, belly, thighs, while her voice whispered other caresses, and her hands and lips and tongue touched him in other ways. Methos remembered.
"But when I look at you," Cassandra went on, obviously remembering other, less pleasant things, "I see ghosts, even now. I need more time to put those ghosts behind me, so I can see you as you really are."
Methos nodded as he leaned back on the deck chair. Time, at least, was something Immortals had plenty of. Too much sometimes, Methos thought, watching a pink and orange cloud as it touched the edge of the sun. Too damn much.
"I would like peace between us," Cassandra said, hopeful again. "And I'm ready for that now."
"Peace then," Methos agreed, smiling at her with complete and utter charm until she smiled back, a brilliant blaze of happiness, a smile he hadn't seen from her in over three thousand years.
A smile he didn't trust at all, probably no more than she trusted his. He couldn't make her happy that easily anymore. It was an armed and wary peace between them, with always the chance for war. A truce, just as Cassandra had said. Besides, he still owed her for that little joke of hers last night. She wasn't getting off that easy. Neither was Elena.
"Time for a swim," Cassandra announced, and Methos watched as she stood and tossed her robe aside. She was wearing even less than Elena had the day before, the bottom half only of a bikini, dark green to match her eyes, though Methos doubted many men managed to make that connection. There were too many distractions along the way. He'd been wrong about her all-body tan; every single inch of her was golden from the sun. She was leaner than Elena, long-limbed and slender, the muscles flowing with a dancer's grace instead of rippling with solid strength. And where Elena was always seductive, no matter what she was or wasn't wearing, Cassandra somehow gave the impression of being remote and untouchable, even as she stood there almost completely unclothed. It wasn't just because of him, either. She'd been that way at the wedding reception when she'd been dancing with MacLeod.
Cassandra walked sedately toward the pool, no sauntering, no prowling, no self-consciousness or posturing in her stride. She might have been completely alone. But she stopped and looked at him before she dove into the water, and she smiled once again. The entire walk had been a deliberate flaunting of both her body and her newfound confidence, staged and performed just for him. Methos watched her swim for a few strokes, her hair afloat around her, a bewitching siren who knew his true name, who knew him better than he wanted to admit. Some of those ghosts she saw were real.
Methos checked his watch. They'd be serving breakfast soon, but he still had time to take a shower and shave. He strolled off whistling before Cassandra reached the other side of the pool.
=====
"Ahi esta Methos!" Elena exclaimed when she felt the approach of an Immortal during dinner on the last night of the cruise, though who else could it be? There were only three Immortals on the ship, and Cassandra was sitting right across from her. Elena waved one hand high in the air, and Cassandra turned around to see. From the doorway of the busy restaurant, Methos nodded in return, unable to wave because of the utterly gorgeous blonde clinging to his right arm and the equally stunning redhead possessively stroking his left. Fashion models from Milan, Methos had told Elena three days ago, when she had asked.
That threesome was being pretty obvious, Elena thought. Not that Methos wasn't absolutely charming, very funny, and technically the best lover she had ever— Elena shook her head and stopped those memories cold. That night in Miami Beach had been once, only once, under a specific set of … circumstances. And now Elena was married. By the Catholic Church. And in spite of everything, Elena Duran did not betray the vows she made to her husbands and before God, not even if her current husband did run off and have an affair with a mousy little hairdresser only nine months after the wedding and—
Elena took a deep breath, turned her attention back to her meal, and sawed the last of her filet mignon in half, then popped one of the pieces of dark pink meat into her mouth and chewed. Eventually, she swallowed the meat and sighed. It had been a Quickening, ese maldito juego inmortal. She'd explained it all to Lorenzo before they'd gotten married, of course, but seeing the beheading and the lightning had startled him, maybe scared him, and that, in turn, had humiliated him. There were certain disadvantages to being with the kind of strong, macho man she favored.
But there were also definite advantages. Lorenzo was tall, blond, rich, a fearsome opponent on the polo field, un semental in the bedroom. Elena sighed once more, remembering his warm brown eyes, his loving touch, his laughter … Lorenzo made her laugh, and she deserved to laugh, damn it! Perhaps she shouldn't have stormed off quite so quickly. Perhaps she might answer his email after all. Elena ate the last bite of her meat.
Methos and his companions had seated themselves on the other side of the room, and the two women together offered Methos a strawberry from the platter of appetizers on the table. Methos allowed them to feed him, bite by succulent bite. Elena smiled as she imagined Methos dressed in a toga in Rome being fed by slaves … until she remembered Cassandra. Elena sobered before she glanced at her companion, but Cassandra was smiling, too, amused and tolerant.
"Looks like he's the cruise champion at more than just table tennis," Cassandra observed as she lifted a spoonful of wild rice from her plate.
"Doubles, no less," Elena added, but she was glad to see Methos hadn't spent all of his nights—or afternoons—alone. Those three had been together almost constantly these last four days. It was good for Methos to be content; it kept him out of mischief. It had also kept him busy enough not to get back at her for that little scene she and Cassandra had staged—yet. Elena grinned; for once, she'd been one step ahead of His Deviousness. The look on his face for that one split instant had been worth … well, whatever plot he was devising in his little head. She hoped. Cassandra probably hoped so, too, though she hadn't said much about Methos during the entire cruise. Elena dangled some bait, hoping to find out more. "You don't hate him anymore," Elena ventured.
Cassandra's smile widened as she speared her last bite of salmon with her fork. "I have better things to do."
That was good to hear. "Do you think you two will ever be friends?"
Cassandra set down her food untasted. "I trust my friends. I'll never trust him."
"Ever?"
Cassandra was completely serious now. "Do you?"
Elena thought about it for a minute. "I don't think he'd deliberately hunt me—but if he felt he had a good reason, I believe he would kill me. And the truth is, I'm not convinced that I could stop him." She shook her head. "No. He is not on the short list of Immortals I trust." She lifted her wine glass in salute to Cassandra and said earnestly, "But you are, mi amiga."
Cassandra's smile came back, a happy one this time, and she lifted her glass in return. "And you are on mine."
They clinked the glasses and drank, but then Elena rolled the wine around in her glass and watched the liquid swirl. When she'd first met Cassandra, Elena had been only twenty-six, not even an Immortal. She hadn't liked the perfectly composed and eternally watchful woman at all. Nearly a century later, they'd met again, on a shipboard crossing from Buenos Aires to Capetown. Elena had been running from the Inquisition, who had already burned her at the stake once, and she'd had no hair, no hope, and no trust left for anyone. But Cassandra had listened, eternally patient that time, and Elena had come to appreciate that. Then ten years ago, after Bethel … Elena put a hand to her missing right eye. She and Cassandra had been through hell, but they'd come a long way, both of them, and they'd traveled some of that road together, bringing that closeness that comes only from shared suffering. Elena had come to trust Cassandra ten years ago, and Elena still did—even now that she knew about the Voice. She drained her glass and poured herself more wine from the bottle.
Cassandra waved a graceful hand at their elegant surroundings. "You were right, Elena. Traveling by sea is different than the first trip we took together, nearly three hundred years ago. Very different."
Elena looked around at the paneled walls, the crystal chandeliers, the black-jacketed waiters carrying platters of food, and she leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. "The good old days were only good to those who didn't have to live them, eh? Remember the rats? And the worms in the food?"
Cassandra chimed in. "The green beer. The chamber pots tipping over in a storm. Being seasick."
Elena shuddered, remembering that smell: pungent urine mixed with sickly sweet vomit, usually several days old. No wonder everybody got sick. "I like modern times—especially hot and cold running water, especially on a boat."
"So do I," Cassandra agreed fervently.
"And you and I are different, too, mi vida," Elena said, leaning forward now. "We're stronger. We're not running anymore, either one of us."
"No," Cassandra agreed, her gaze now gone dark and inward. "Never again." She reached for a shrimp and peeled it with her nails, then dipped it in cocktail sauce and ate it in three neat bites. "So," she said cheerfully, "are you going back to Argentina, Elena? Or staying here in Italy?"
"Lorenzo knows the cruise schedule. If he's waiting for me at the dock with a dozen roses in his hand, maybe I'll stay. If he's not …" Elena shrugged, but she wasn't really sure what she would do. What if he wasn't waiting for her on the dock? What if—?
"He'll be there," Cassandra said, and she sounded very sure.
Elena lifted her eyebrows in amusement, even as she hoped it was true. "Is that a prophecy?"
"No," she said with a small smile. "Just experience. Most men aren't hard to predict."
Elena nodded knowingly, because that was definitely true. Most men thought with their cocks, and that was never hard to predict. Cassandra now … she wasn't so obvious. "Are you meeting Amanda in Rome tomorrow?" Elena asked, still slightly surprised by that partnership. Elena hadn't thought the sex kitten Amanda and the sexually repressed Cassandra would get along very well. Maybe opposites did attract.
"No, we're meeting in Athens on Tuesday," Cassandra answered. "I thought I'd do some sightseeing in Rome for a few days, do some shopping, see a movie or two."
"I like the one that came out this summer about Simon Bolivar!" Elena mimicked a saber thrust with her steak knife as best she could sitting down. "Great action, and a true hero! Just like Jose de San Martin, the general I fought under during one of the never-ending Latin American wars of independence against the Spanish. I had to wear men's clothes, of course."
"Of course," Cassandra murmured.
"It's too bad they never made a movie about Dona Encarnacion," Elena continued. "She was a female caudillo and led a montonera, a group of women …, " she paused, looking for the right word, "… guerillas."
Cassandra shook her head. "I've never heard of Dona Encarnacion."
"She was crazy!" Elena smiled fondly, remembering the energetic, dark-haired woman in her late thirties—old by the standards of those days, but what a leader! "Oh, those were happy times, but hard, too. I had to be careful of the soldiers in both armies; I rode with Dona Encarnacion for protection against the Argentine men!" Elena said, laughing. "Hey, we were women's libbers way back in the nineteenth century, and we fought just as hard as the men! The authorities called us bandidos, but we thought of ourselves as patriots, fighting for our people, our land. Then after the Spaniards were defeated, her husband, Juan Manuel de Rosas, took power and became a tyrant. He turned against the Indios. But she never did, and even her husband didn't dare cross her."
"A female Argentine Robin Hood," Cassandra said, smiling back. "You're right; that would make a great movie."
"Maybe. Or maybe they'd ruin it the way they ruined the story of Vercingetorix five years ago, or Joan of Arc the year before that." Elena took a drink of her red wine, pensive now. Battles and fighting involved lots of bloodletting, and they didn't always turn out well. Anyway, she should be the last person to romanticize war. "Como han pasado anos," she murmured. So many years.
And even more years for Cassandra, and the last few hundred had been bad. Elena studied her ancient friend. Dark-red hair down to the middle of her back—worn loose like that it was very sensual. So were those green eyes. And at last she was dressing to show off her figure, in a clinging white dress of soft angora wool. Why the hell work out so hard and then cover your "assets" with long, loose, flowing clothes? Cassandra had wasted a lot of time. Not anymore, Elena decided. "You should get a boyfriend," Elena told her. "Someone to go to dinner with, go dancing with …" She grinned and lowered her voice suggestively. "Go to bed with."
Cassandra pushed her empty plate aside. "Elena—"
"You haven't, have you? Not once in the last ten years." And, except for one night with Duncan MacLeod, not for three hundred sixty-six years before that. Being raped by Silas, Kronos, and that other bastard didn't count.
"No, I haven't," Cassandra replied evenly. "I have not been … good company these last ten years, Elena. I couldn't inflict myself and my moods on anyone. Except my therapist, and I pay her to put up with me."
"Still?" Elena had never gone to a therapist, and her nightmares had not completely stopped, but they were less intense—and she suspected most Immortals had nightmares, anyway. Time did heal most wounds.
Cassandra shrugged. "Not so often now, maybe two or three times a year. I think I go mostly just to talk. I'd been silent so long."
Elena reached across the table and touched her hand. "You can always talk to me, amiga. Always."
Cassandra squeezed Elena's fingers lightly. "Gracias, che."
Elena squeezed back and smiled as they let go, but she wasn't done yet. "What about that cute Swede?" Elena prodded. "You know, the one who's been smiling at you all week? The one who's looking at you right now?" She waved and smiled at the tall young man with the crewcut near the entrance, and he waved and smiled back.
Cassandra didn't turn around this time. "Elena …"
"Oh, go on, Cassi," Elena encouraged. "Last night on board! Sex is good for you; it's good exercise! Give someone your body, and your heart will follow. And if it doesn't—well, at least your body had fun!"
"Yes, but … it doesn't work that way for me, not anymore." Cassandra swirled her wine glass, watching the liquid flow in circles inside. "I've tried." She drained the last of her wine, but kept staring at the empty glass in her hand. "I miss it," she admitted. "The freedom, the joy." She grinned across the table, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, her eyebrows raised and her voice lowered. "The power."
"!Claro que si, m'hija!" Elena agreed, letting the last word become a growl. To bring a strong, powerful man, no matter how great a warrior, to the point where he was begging you for release—that was sweet victory indeed … and even sweeter surrender. "But you will want to again, someday," Elena reassured her.
"Someday," Cassandra agreed but then set her glass down firmly on the table and announced, "And I'm going to start now. Dinner's over, but perhaps Lars would like to join us for dessert."
"And dancing?" Elena suggested.
Cassandra smiled. "Perhaps."
Elena pushed some more. "And then …?"
This time Cassandra laughed. "I remember the first thing I heard your father say to you, Elena, before you were an Immortal. Do you?"
Elena smiled softly, a little abashed. As much love as there had been between them, memories of her father always brought forth a little bit of a sense of unworthiness on her part. "Oh, yes. I heard it a lot. He said: 'Slow down.'"
Cassandra added gently, "He also said you had more heart and guts than anyone he'd ever met, man or woman."
Elena asked in a hushed voice, "He really said that about me?"
"He did. He was very proud of you." Cassandra reached over and touched Elena's hand. "And he would be very proud of you now."
Her father had admired courage above all other qualities. Elena grinned, too pleased to even speak. Don Alvaro had never told her in so many words that he was proud of her. Her eye glistening, she basked in that glory for a luxurious moment.
"And now, if you'll excuse me," Cassandra said, rising from her chair, "I'm going to talk to Lars."
Elena shifted to the right side of her chair so she could see better past the bald head of the man at the next table. Lars straightened up and self-consciously ran his hand through his hair as Cassandra neared him. He had a dazzling smile in that bronzed Viking face, and his eyes were a bright blue. He looked much like Lorenzo, although a bit taller and leaner … now he was laughing at something Cassi had said, good for her! She deserved to laugh, too.
Elena's gaze wandered, and she noticed Methos looking at the couple. El viejo didn't miss much, did he? Then, as if he could read her mind, as usual, Methos caught Elena's glance, smiled, and raised his glass. Elena did the same, drinking a toast to Cassandra's future and bidding a farewell to the past. Then Elena drank again, looking forward to her own future, and to seeing her husband again.
======================
Rome,
Italy
======================
After the cruise ship had docked at the
Methos avoided the ruins of the colosseum and the Forum, but otherwise wandered with no particular plan. At lunchtime, he stopped in a bar for a crackling roast pork sandwich and a beer. Then he bought a newspaper and sat in the sunshine on a park bench to read. Floods in Bangladesh, killer termites in New Orleans, hem lines going down, cloning of sheep dogs as well as of sheep, a bank failure in London and another in Sao Paulo, peace talks in Israel, a virulent strain of influenza sweeping through Japan—fifteen thousand dead so far. Gasoline was up to six dollars a gallon in the U.S. "We can't even afford summer vacations," consumers complained. The president insisted that conservation was not the answer. "National parks are national resources. Resources are meant to be exploited." California was taxing water, and Ecuadorian flowers were selling very well in Holland. Methos decided to call his broker soon: time to invest in farming supplies.
He folded the paper and started to walk again, browsing among the stalls of a craft fair near the Piazza Navona, and watching the multitude of cats who paraded in solitary sereneness along the streets and alleys of Rome. Just before sunset he ordered ice cream at a gelaterie then sat near the Fontana della Tartarughe to enjoy the smooth dessert. In the fountain in front of him, four bronze statues of youths stood on the heads of stone dolphins. Each youth was helping a stone tortoise climb into the overhead pool.
"What now?" Methos murmured when he had finished eating, but he wasn't thinking about more food. The erring and contrite Lorenzo had met Elena at the dock with two dozen red roses in his hand and a ruby necklace in his pocket, so Elena was back with her husband. MacLeod would be busy raising sheep in New Zealand for the next half-century or so, and Joe Dawson and his wife were expecting their second child in about six weeks. They didn't need Methos dragging the Game into their lives. Besides, they'd probably expect him to change diapers if he visited, and Methos was in the mood for some wild-ass, hair-raising escapades, like the kind he and Ramirez had enjoyed with the delectably insatiable Serena nearly sixteen centuries ago. Methos grinned; that woman would have kept even Byron on his toes, in several different ways. But Ramirez had been dead for nearly five hundred years, and Methos hadn't seen Serena since the Sun King had sat on the throne of France. The Watchers' last entry on her had been in 1782. Dead, probably, like so many others through the years—Rebecca, Timon, Aganesthes, Constantine, Haresh, Byron …
And of those who were alive: Amanda was "seeing a man about a camel," Grace was entirely too serious, Kit O'Brady was busy with his casino, and Cassandra (though she did show some surprising potential) was still sleeping with her ghosts. So, who did that leave?
Himself. As always. He'd find someone
along the way, or maybe
they'd find him. But which way to go? Methos
rummaged in the pocket
of his trousers and found the
Methos tossed the other coin into the water, an offering to the gods. Time to move on.
=====
At sunset, Cassandra climbed the worn steps to the Pantheon then passed through the columned portico, between the great bronze doors and to the circular shrine within. Bright geometric patterns of colored marble lay underfoot; blind windows lined the upper part of the wall. The only light entered from the oculus high above, a round eye designed to be open to the sky, so that rain might enter and smoke might rise. Cassandra walked slowly past the alcoves, following the curve of the wall. The temple was a pantheon no longer; the ancient statues of the deities she remembered had been removed, replaced by figures of modern human kings and queens. Save one, a Madonna and Child, standing over Raphael's tomb. As it should be. Always, the Mother prevailed.
Cassandra knelt on the floor before the statue, and the few remaining tourists in the Pantheon shuffled around her in slow silence with questioning stares. For once, she did not care. The mortals might wonder all they wished; they could never understand, and they would never imagine what she saw. She lowered her head to the cool marble, her arms outstretched before her, a more formal obeisance to the Goddess.
When the shadows had deepened and the murmurs of visitors had subsided, she rose to her feet and walked to the center of the room, then looked straight up to the deep blue of the sky. Darkness would come soon.
Cassandra left the temple, her footsteps swift and sure. Amanda was next on the list. It was time to continue this first step of the plan.
THICK AS THIEVES
======================
The Hotel Ilissos
in Athens,
Greece
======================
Amanda's stiletto heels clicked as she walked across the eight-pointed black star emblazoned in the white tile floor of the lobby of the Hotel Ilissos. In the plate-glass windows that revealed the busy traffic of Athens, she caught a glimpse of her reflection floating ghostlike over the cars: short, black skirt above long, trim legs, a sleeveless white sweater that showed off her tan—and her bust. Her reddish-blonde curls framed her face and just touched her shoulders. Not too shabby.
She paused at the doorway of the hotel bar, giving herself time to look over everyone in the bar—and giving everyone in the bar time to look at her. The three businessmen in suits and ties sitting on the low couches near the windows broke off their conversation to look and admire. The two handsome ones were French, probably, or Italian. English and German wouldn't be so appreciative, and they never dressed that well. The third simply had to be an American, a pudgy fellow in a badly-cut brown suit. The couple holding hands in the booth to her right stopped talking, too. Honeymooners, no doubt. The cute black-haired bartender nodded and smiled, but the woman seated at the bar didn't even turn around.
Amanda proceeded down the length of the narrow room, giving the businessmen a sweeping glance from under her lashes and bestowing a dazzling smile upon the man in the booth. His wife glared, first at Amanda, then at him. Amanda swept on by.
She slid onto the barstool next to the woman, whose auburn hair was a bit darker and much longer than her own, but whose green leather skirt was equally as short, and whose heels were equally as high. She had a good tan, too. Apparently, the dowdy look was over. "How was Hong Kong?" Amanda asked.
"Crowded," Cassandra answered, but said nothing more, for the bartender was standing right in front of them, smiling. "Ari, this is Amanda, from Paris," Cassandra introduced them, and Ari's smile grew wider still.
Amanda smiled back at the charming boy, appreciating the well-muscled body under the tight blue shirt and snug white trousers. He had just the perfect amount of curl to his thick, black hair. A pity she and Cassandra were staying in Athens for only two days. "Martini, please," Amanda told him. Cassandra already had her drink, something with orange juice and a cherry. Ari nodded and went to comply. "Well?" Amanda asked, turning to Cassandra. "Did you find anything of interest in Hong Kong?"
"Hong Kong is always interesting," Cassandra answered. "And sometimes," she added, retrieving a pack of cigarettes from her purse and laying it on the bar, "it's worthwhile."
"You got it," Amanda breathed in excitement and relief. "Chuan Li …?"
"… is a most accommodating gentleman," Cassandra finished.
Amanda sniffed as she reached for the pack, because Chuan Li had never been accommodating for her, or indeed for most women. But then, most women didn't have the Voice of Command. "You know, you could be really good at this," Amanda said, speculating on the possibilities as she picked up the pack, which was heavier than any pack of cigarettes ought to be.
The witch smiled. "I am really good at this."
Amanda drew in a breath to reply, but Ari returned with her drink then noticed what she held in her hand. "Would you care for a light?" Ari offered, his English heavily accented with his native Greek. He started to reach for a cigarette lighter that lay near a pile of paper napkins.
"No, thank you," Amanda answered as she tucked the "cigarette pack" into her purse, but holding his eyes with her own. "Not for cigarettes." He blushed then started to speak, only to be called to the end of the bar by the overweight American. Amanda sighed and leaned her chin on her hand. "A sweet boy," she observed, watching Ari from afar.
"Mmmm," her companion whole-heartedly agreed. "However, before you make plans, perhaps you should know that Claude and Thierry have asked us to join them for dinner tonight." She nodded at the American, who was irritatedly tapping his fingers on the bar. "Their business associate will be dining with his wife."
"Claude and Thierry?" Amanda repeated, turning slightly on her stool for a better view of the two debonair Frenchmen. They were already watching her. "A nice-looking pair," she said, turning back to the bar.
"They're brothers," Cassandra explained. "Their father was Pierre Malin. He died last year."
"Of Malin house of fashion?" Amanda asked. "And Malin perfumeries?"
Cassandra nodded. "And Malin jewelry design."
Amanda's eyebrows went up, and then so did the corners of her mouth. Ari saw it and smiled at her, but Amanda had other things on her mind now. She was a businesswoman, after all, and she did have bills to pay. Pity. He was such a sweet boy. Perhaps tomorrow …
======================
Ephesus,
Turkey
======================
"So, why don't you?" Amanda asked Cassandra three days later in Ephesus as the two women walked between the empty marble plinths that lined the ancient road on either side. "Steal?"
"Why do you?" Cassandra countered, adjusting her broad-brimmed hat and stepping over a puddle. It had rained last night, but the morning sky was deep blue, and the weathered paving stones were warm underfoot.
Amanda settled her sunglasses more firmly on the bridge of her nose and squinted against the glare of the sun off broken columns. "Oh, well." She shrugged. "Money."
"And …," Cassandra prompted knowingly.
Amanda did two things exceedingly well—sex and stealing—and sometimes she did them for the same reasons: money, yes, and the satisfaction of being the best, but equally important … "It's fun!" Ari had indeed proven to be a lovely young man.
"Exactly," Cassandra said. "There's no thrill to it when you can just order people around."
"Sometimes there is," Amanda said archly.
Cassandra actually laughed. "Indeed there is."
Oh, now this was interesting. Maybe the Ice Queen wasn't quite so cold as she appeared, even if she had gone back to screamingly boring clothes: a loose cotton shirt of blue and baggy shorts of beige. At least she wasn't wearing sneakers. Amanda smoothed a tiny wrinkle from the very short skirt of her own green dress, then wiggled the toes of her left foot to shake a pebble loose from her sandal. "And …?" she prompted Cassandra.
Cassandra flashed her a hungry smile, teeth white against red lips and delicately probing tongue. "I'm really good at that."
Now that went beyond interesting and straight to unnerving. With the Voice, you could make a man do absolutely anything in bed. Amanda stopped walking. Hmm …
Cassandra had stopped, too. She was standing in front of the remains of a waist-high wall, turning her head slowly from side to side. "Somewhere over there," she said, pointing down the hill and past the ruins of the baths, "in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, there was a brothel called the House of the Pomegranate. One taste, one bite"—and there was that ferociously salacious smile again, under that ridiculously floppy hat—"and a man simply had to return."
"And you worked in it."
"At first." Cassandra picked up a fragment of stone from between her feet and turned it this way and that. "Eventually, I bought the brothel with my earnings and ran it myself." She set the fragment down and dusted off her hands. "Good business, too. I bought one girl …" Cassandra half-smiled as she shook her head. "Oh, she had them panting. We called her Eurydice."
"After Orpheus's wife?"
Cassandra nodded. "Men would do anything for her, even walk into hell."
"And your name?"
The smile slipped away. "They called me Circe." Cassandra started walking again, quickly this time.
Circe, the sorceress who turned men into animals with a wave of her magic wand. "Of course," Amanda murmured and caught up to Cassandra. They joined the other tourists walking down the steep hill to the Celsus library, where wide stairs led to the reconstructed two-story marble façade. The great doors now led only to the empty space behind.
A group of Japanese posed for a photograph on the yellowed stone steps. A girl of about five in a pink shirt and blue trousers pointed to the statues in the niches between the doors. "Who are those ladies, Mama?" she asked in German.
"The patronesses of Wisdom, Character, Judgement, and Skill," her mother read from a brochure. "This was a library, a place for people to learn. The old statues are in a museum now. Those are copies."
"Why?"
"So they don't get rained on anymore. The stone was starting to melt."
"Why?" the girl asked again, and the mother started explaining acid rain.
Amanda and Cassandra moved to the welcome shade of a nearby arched gateway. Cassandra took off her hat and fanned herself. Amanda leaned against the cool stone wall and spoke quietly because of the tourists wandering by. "Rebecca told me she'd heard rumors that the Voice was taught in the temples of Artemis, but she never saw anyone use it, and she wasn't sure it was real."
Cassandra nodded. "We kept it secret, and there were never very many of us who knew it. When I joined, we had a small outpost here in Ephesus, though the town—village, really— was called Apasus then. The Sisterhood began on Crete about four thousand years ago, then moved its main temple to Lesbos and continued to spread from there. We had a network that reached from Ireland to Anatolia, from beyond the Rhine to the upper reaches of the Nile."
We, thought Amanda in some bemusement. We.
"But by the time Rebecca and I were five hundred or so," Cassandra said, "all the temple-schools of the sisterhood had been destroyed. The temples were built and rebuilt, of course, and we started schools here and there throughout the centuries. I started a dozen or so myself, in Potidaea, in Alexandria, near Masallia in Gaul, one in Britain just before the Romans left, then one in Ireland, and another in Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella were on the throne."
"Any since then?" Amanda asked.
"No." Cassandra put her hat back on, and she and Amanda went through the gateway and past a Latin inscription that read: "Whoever urinates here will be punished." Amanda smiled to herself; some things never changed. They paused at the edge of the agora, a large square surrounded on three sides by the remains of columned porticos, with many doorways that had once led to stores—the original shopping mall.
"But we never recovered our strength after that first wave of destruction," Cassandra continued, heading for the gate ahead of them that led to the theater. "The schools were isolated, the sisters few. Wars came, empires rose and fell, and the world changed. So many were killed." They went past three more empty doorways. "So much was lost."
Amanda fingered the crystal which hung from the chain around her neck, hidden beneath her dress. There are things older than Immortals, Rebecca had said when she'd given Amanda the crystal, all those years ago. Older and greater—and maddeningly unknown. "Did you ever hear stories or tales about things of power?" Amanda asked.
Cassandra turned to look at her, and Amanda let go of the crystal, camouflaging the movement as an adjustment of her purse strap. "You mean like the Holy Grail?" Cassandra asked, smiling. "A magic sword, a spear of light. A magic gauntlet with a sword, a shield to paralyze your enemies, silver sandals to help you fly. Oh yes, many stories. Some of them may well be true, but we of the Sisterhood didn't use things."
So much for that idea, Amanda thought in annoyance. That was the main reason she'd agreed to this trip, and then the witch didn't even know. Well, maybe she could get something else. "So, what did you use?" Amanda inquired when they reached the great semi-circle of the theater, its rows of tiered seats climbing the hill.
"Plants for dyes and medicines, of course," Cassandra said as she and Amanda started up the steps. "We studied astronomy, brewing, healing, weaving, all the useful arts. But for the magic, we used our visions and our dreams, and we raised our voices in song."
"Song," Amanda repeated in flat disbelief. "But that's just sound."
"And a laser beam is just light," Cassandra retorted. "Focus it, concentrate it, and there is energy to bend to your will." She slowed in her climb, and her voice slowed, too. "When we sang together, all the Sisterhood gathered, waves drumming on the beach, sunshine humming in the air, the flame of the sacred fires dancing in time … Oh, and we could make the very Earth come alive, and she would listen to our prayer …"
They had stopped, the both of them, Cassandra staring unseeing down the valley of the silted river, Amanda staring at her. Sunshine hummed in the air, and the stones about them whispered of ancient times.
A boy at the top of the hill shouted a cheerful greeting to his friend at the base, and Cassandra blinked and came aware. "Well," she said with finality, climbing again. "That's all gone now."
"All except for you," Amanda pointed out, pushing for more.
Cassandra shrugged. "I survived."
"To teach Roland."
That got her. Cassandra froze, rigid as those stone statues on the library wall. But she only commented mildly, "Students … can be disappointing."
Amanda knew that already, from both sides. "Oh, Amanda," Rebecca had often said, with a sorrowful shake of her head, and "Oh, Kenneth," Amanda had whispered, after she'd realized what he'd become.
"And sometimes," Cassandra continued, "we disappoint them."
Amanda knew that, too. This time she was the one to start moving, and Cassandra the one to catch up. "Did you teach anyone else the Voice?" Amanda asked, after they reached the top of the hill and began following the circle to the center aisle.
"Not after him."
"Could you teach me?"
Cassandra shot her a sharp look from underneath the hat. "Do you need it?"
"Well," Amanda drawled with an enticing smile, "it could be useful."
"Oh, it is," she agreed lightly. "But if people know you have it, they will never really trust you, and they're likely to decide they'd be safer with you dead. So you hide what you are, and what you can do. You lie, all the time."
She stopped walking and turned to watch the little figures of people far below. Amanda turned, too. Bright spots of color blazed here and there among the more sedate brown and blue. The girl with the pink shirt was hopping from bench to bench. Her mother sat nearby.
"It makes for a lonely life," Cassandra said.
Amanda was used to all of that.
"The Voice is also—addicting."
So was stealing. Amanda didn't steal only for the money or the satisfaction or the fun. Being a thief wasn't just what she did; it was what she was.
Cassandra seated herself upon a stone bench, still looking straight ahead. Amanda sat down nearby and stretched her legs, propping her feet up on the stone of the next row down. "The Voice is so tempting, so seductive," Cassandra explained. "Just a little bit, you think, just this once, just for now. And the occasional suggestion to a stranger, the persuasion to get an answer to a question, you can use it that way, from time to time.
"But to use the Voice more than that, to go deeper …" She shook her head and sighed. "There was a man I liked, long ago, and I wanted him to like me. It seemed simple enough—a few words here and there, a suggestion, an encouragement. But when he told me he cared for me, I looked into his eyes and realized I didn't know if he truly felt that way or not." She sighed again, almost soundless, a whimper of regret. "And neither did he. I had destroyed the very thing I wanted."
Nick, Amanda thought with piercing sorrow, silently whispering a name she hadn't had reason to say in over five years, and would never have a chance to say again. Oh, Nick.
Cassandra shrugged and crossed her arms, her hands placed just above the elbows, a defensive pose, a huddling of pain. "Using the Voice is like squeezing water. What you try to hold onto slips through your fingers, and you are left with nothing."
Amanda pounced. "What have you done with it, that scares you so much?"
Cassandra turned with startled eyes, then gave a rueful laugh. "You are so much like Rebecca."
"Me?" Amanda asked, startled in her turn. "Oh, no. She was brave, generous … honest. She was wonderful."
"You see straight into the heart," Cassandra said, "and so did she. You are very like her: brave, generous, honest—about yourself, even if not about things—a good person. You are wonderful, too." Amanda blinked in surprise, but Cassandra wasn't finished yet. "Duncan and Methos both love you, and they are not stupid men."
"No, they aren't," Amanda murmured, holding that close, the thought making her heart glad. And Methos and Duncan were why she trusted Cassandra, even with the Voice, wasn't it? Both of them—and Connor, too—knew about Cassandra's power, and not one of them seemed to consider her a threat.
But Amanda wasn't satisfied yet. "What about the Voice scares you, Cassandra?" she repeated.
"What about it scares you?"
"Being controlled, being powerless."
Cassandra nodded. "It's the same for me, only inside out. No one controls me, but I'm afraid I won't be able to control myself. It's overwhelming power, instead of none at all. The Voice destroys when it controls, and when I used it that way, I destroyed myself as well. You see … not all the men returned to the House of the Pomegranate, because some of them never left." Cassandra was staring at her splayed fingers, apparently inspecting her long, polished nails. "They put themselves in my hands, and I crushed them between pleasure and pain." She turned her hands over partway, her palms cupped as if she were holding an invisible sphere. "I became death."
Make that cradling a skull. Amanda grimaced in distaste. She liked a little variety in bed herself, but she'd never gone that far. "So, what happened?"
The hands relaxed, the voice lightened. "Oh, I got careless, arrogant. Greedy." Cassandra slid Amanda a sideways glance as she shared that common fault. "As I said, it's an addiction. People noticed. They dragged me out and stoned me to death, then threw me in the river. I needed that," she concluded briskly. "I couldn't have stopped myself."
"Couldn't you?" she challenged.
"I didn't want to," Cassandra replied tartly. "I liked it. And I know a part of me still does."
And this was downright terrifying. Talk about being a black widow. "Why are you telling me all this?" Amanda asked her.
Cassandra turned on the bench to face her fully, eye to eye. "Because I want you to believe me when I tell you that I never want to be that … person … again, and so I swore an oath to use the Voice only when there is great danger or great need. And unless you try for my head, I swear that I will never use the Voice on you."
Amanda licked her lips slowly, considering. "Do the MacLeods know about the brothel?"
Cassandra shook her head decisively. "No. I shared other stories to convince them. Methos would probably understand, but I haven't told him, either."
"Do you have a lot of stories like that?"
"Yes," she said bleakly. "But that's the worst of them."
Which meant the worst of Cassandra, too. If, that is, she were telling the truth about her past. If not … well, what of it? Rebecca had had skeletons in her closet, and so did Methos and Duncan, and Amanda did, too. But Cassandra wasn't after her head now, Amanda felt sure, and that was what mattered today.
That and one or two other little things. "So, what's between you and Connor?" Amanda asked curiously. "Besides his wife?"
That got her a cold glare and the firm statement: "Alex is my best friend."
"Mm-hmm," Amanda murmured. "But you're obviously planning ahead."
Cassandra tried for another glare then gave it up for a helpless shrug. "We're Immortal," she said. "How can we not?"
That was true enough, and Cassandra wasn't the only one waiting. "So, you and Connor …?" Amanda asked again.
"Are friends," Cassandra answered, firmly again, then turned it around. "So, you and Methos …?"
"Are friends. And you and Methos?" Amanda asked, because she needed to know, and in New Zealand Methos had flatly refused to discuss the witch, no matter what Amanda had tried.
Cassandra's mouth twisted in a wry grin. "Methos and I are non-combatants. After Duncan's wedding, we agreed on a truce, with a clearly defined neutral zone. He stays away from me; I stay away from him."
Amanda was wondering just how long that little arrangement would last, when Cassandra asked, "And you and I, Amanda?"
"You and I …" Amanda curved her lips into a delightfully wicked smile, remembering the scene from the musical Evita, when Eva Duarte and Colonel Peron had first met. "You and I could be surprisingly good for each other."
Cassandra smiled back in just the same way. "Yes, we could."
"As long as we understand each other," Amanda warned.
"Absolutely. And trust each other."
"Of course." But only so far. She leaned back on her elbows and considered the older woman. "So, you didn't use the Voice on Chuan Li?"
Cassandra stretched out her legs. "Actually, I did."
"And what was all that lovely story you just told me about never using the Voice unless there was 'great danger' or 'great need'?"
"You had need."
Amanda blinked, unused to having people do things for her with such amazing generosity.
"And I have need of you," Cassandra added.
Ah, now that was much more believable. "To do what?"
"A few small things, here and there, now and then."
"Why don't you just take care of them with the Voice?"
"The Voice isn't appropriate for every situation, nor is it safe for me. 'A woman's got to know her limitations,'" Cassandra said, misquoting Clint Eastwood. She added grimly, "I learned mine."
Amanda decided she'd rather not take the chance of finding her own. She didn't really need the Voice, anyway. There were other ways to convince people, and she was good at them all.
"For a long time, I didn't use any of my powers," Cassandra said. "They frightened me. I frightened myself. I didn't feel as if I had control." She turned to Amanda and blinked once, slowly, like a cat lazing in the sun. "Now I do."
Amanda studied that long, limber form, and wondered again if she should trust the witch. Duncan and Methos both did. Connor had practically made her a member of his family. But they were all men, and what did men know about women? On the other hand, Rebecca had spoken of Cassandra with respect, and Elena did, too. Alex MacLeod and Rachel Ellenstein both liked Cassandra; Amanda had seen that at Duncan's wedding. And Connor's daughter, who was one sharp little cookie, liked her "Aunt Cass" a lot.
Oh, why not? Amanda decided suddenly. Cassandra was potentially deadly, but then what Immortal wasn't? Amanda would be careful, naturally; she always was, but she could use an accomplice from time to time, and Cassandra had proven herself willing and more than able. This could be a very profitable relationship, for both of them. For more than just money, Amanda decided charitably. Cassandra was a bit of stick, and she definitely needed to lighten up, do something outrageous, and (Amanda tried not to wince as she looked over that outfit) go shopping. Amanda stretched luxuriously, already making plans. The rest of the trip could be great fun.
When she looked at the stage area far below, the pink-shirted girl was gone. "Ready to walk to the Artemision?" Amanda suggested, and she and Cassandra started down.
The walk to the ruined temple was dusty, long, and hot. Amanda took the bottle of water from her purse and drank. Cassandra did the same with hers. "It's hard to believe this was one of the seven wonders of the world," Amanda commented when they finally reached the ruins. Tumbled blocks of marble lay half-hidden in the grass, sketching outlines of walls. A single crooked column still stood, but it held up nothing. A bird had made her nest on the top stone. A medieval-looking fortress with crenelated walls crowned the adjacent hill, and low modern buildings stood nearby. "Were you here when the Goths burned it?" she asked Cassandra.
"No, I'd been gone for a century or more. I was in … Athens, I think. Or had I already left for Hispania?" Cassandra shrugged one shoulder. "It's been a while."
"Rebecca told me she'd always remember hearing about the burning of the earlier temple, when Alexander the Great was born. She'd just arrived in Jerusalem for the Holy Days, and everyone was talking about it." The wind blew hot and dry around them, and Amanda drank again.
"Did she convert to Judaism?" Cassandra asked.
"Yes. During the Ionian revolt, King Darius destroyed the city of Miletus and enslaved all its inhabitants, but a Jewish family in a nearby town helped her hide from the soldiers."
Or, at least, they'd tried. "I knew I shouldn't stay," Rebecca had confided on a winter evening in an abbey now destroyed, on a winter evening when Amanda had idly asked Rebecca about her name. "But Maryam insisted, and my companion Aristicho had been wounded. He needed attention, hot food, rest. Just for the night, I thought. We'll move on in the morning. But the soldiers came before dawn." Her embroidery had lain forgotten in her hands, and tears had meandered down her cheeks. "They came for me and Aristicho, but they killed us all. Even the children, from eleven-year-old Benjamin, down to the two-week-old baby, a little girl named Rebecca. When I revived, she was the first one I saw." Amanda had blinked away tears of her own, the stinging sorrow hot and unfamiliar in her eyes. She hadn't cried in years, not for anyone, not even for herself. "That was when I chose my name and my religion," Rebecca had continued, "and I will keep them—forever."
But Amanda wasn't going to tell Cassandra about any of that. "When I met Rebecca in Normandy," Amanda said, "she would light the candles before dinner every Sabbath, and she told me the most wonderful stories, about Esther and David and the Rebecca who married Isaac. A few centuries later, when the French started persecuting the Jews, she started going to mass, just like everybody else." Amanda wrinkled her nose. "She made me go, too, whenever I visited her. She said Immortals were already different enough, and we had to blend, not just to protect ourselves, but to protect all of those who knew us. But she soon left Europe for the Moslem countries, where she didn't have to pretend."
Cassandra was looking at her closely. "You weren't raised a Christian," she stated.
"I wasn't raised at all," Amanda retorted and walked away to the only tree among the ruins, its branches spreading wide, but there were flickers of other candles in her memories, glimpses of another woman, dark-haired and laughing, a bearded man with strong arms, gifts of food set under an oak tree, the scent of baking bread, laughter and love. Then … nothing.
Amanda blinked fiercely and shut those memories away. She'd been on the streets—mud paths, back then—since she was five. She knew how to take care of herself just fine, then and now.
Cassandra's footsteps came nearer, swishing through the grass, and Amanda turned with a bright smile. "It's so quiet," she said, waving a hand at the tumbled walls. "So deserted. I'd love to see what it was like, long ago."
"Would you?" Cassandra murmured, and when Amanda nodded, the wind suddenly shifted, and the ancient stones no longer whispered. They sang.
Other voices were singing, too, thousands of them, from the deep tones of men to the shrill piping of children, as the people made their way along that long and dusty road. Great drums pounded, a booming insistent beat, with a faster, syncopated rhythm from smaller drums superimposed. Women danced past in bright scarves and fringed skirts, long hair whipping over their faces, eyes laughing, bells tinkling on fingers and toes. Men in turbans and bright gold jewelry laughed and called out encouragement and lewd suggestions; the women called back equally lewd propositions of their own. The people murmured in a babble of different tongues, and hair color ranged from bright yellow to flaming red to all the shades of brown. Black-skinned Nubians stood beside pale-skinned Gauls. Roman soldiers walked in pairs among the crowd, scarlet capes flashing, but no one seemed to care. Young children sat in the branches of the many trees that lined the processional and waved long ribbons of green and white. The scents of roasted meat and incense came from the temple, bright-white and many-columned, enormous, majestic and serene.
The wind shifted again and the temple blurred, then realigned itself on a slightly smaller scale. Bronze statues lined the temple steps, and the Roman soldiers were gone. The crowd was smaller; the languages took on mostly Greek cadences and tones. The children's ribbons were scarlet, but they still sat in the branches of trees, and still the drums pounded loud. The women and the men danced side by side.
Then the temple wavered and split into two, one to the west and one to the east, and the sky went black save for the silver coin of the moon. "Kybele!" the people shouted. "Kybele!" And still the drumming went on, only the deep tones now, slower, steady …
… an irresistible heartbeat, a summoning to yet another temple, much smaller than the others, flat-roofed, its base dark green instead of gleaming white. The night was gone. Bound captives knelt in the grass before the temple. A snake-dance of women swirled by in white robes with red ribbons fluttering in their hands. Men watched in rapt silence, swaying with the beat of the drums. The black-haired priestess welcoming them at the top of the temple steps stood with her arms upraised, and she wore nothing at all.
"Rebecca!" Amanda called to a woman in the parade, but the woman danced on by, her long golden hair gleaming red in the light of the rising sun, the ribbons twining about her body as she twirled. "Rebecca!" Amanda called again, because she knew it was her, but Rebecca was beyond her, ascending the temple steps, and then, suddenly, that temple was gone …
… into yet another temple. A piglet squealed as men laid it on the altar, and knife of the black-robed priestess came flashing down. Blood spurted, into the air and onto the ground, and the people shouted above the drumming, a wordless cry that curled into …
… an eerie keening, swallowed by the grove of trees which stood dark and majestic, their branches a living roof over an altar built of stones. A bound man was laid upon the altar, and again the knife came flashing down. A young woman knelt beneath the sacrifice, catching the blood in a basin of gold. Children beat the drums, and men shouted …
… men and women stood silent, watching, as drums beat softly and the ceremony among the trees happened once more, but now the man was unbound. Young and handsome, naked and erect, he strode forward and lay down—not upon a cold slab of stone—but upon the living body of a woman, who welcomed him with upraised arms. The crowd swayed in rhythm with the couple entwined on the forest floor, panting, gasping, the women erupting in short sharp cries, the men in deeper groans. The drumming pulsed, quickened, thundered … died. Then came a moment of panting silence, until the man stood, waiting. An aged priestess in white stepped forward with the sacred knife in her upraised hand. Amanda cried out in horror and protest, but the sound was swallowed in the triumphant roar of the crowd, and the man's arcing blood painted scarlet ribbons all around. The pale body of the naked woman lay still upon her bed of dark leaves, as his drained body crumpled by her side. The white-robed priestess stroked the bodies—alive and dead—with a branch, painting green leaves with red, an autumn come too soon. She turned and flicked the branch toward the watching crowd. Scarlet droplets spattered, warm and sticky, and Amanda lifted her hand to wipe her cheek …
… and saw Cassandra doing the same. They stood among broken ruins in bright sunshine, near a single column of crooked stone. A jet flew high overhead, and a young man in a white tank top and baggy purple trousers boogied by, dancing to the beat of drums only he could hear, his headphones putting him in another world.
Cassandra's hand slid from her cheek to her lips, and her fingers lingered there, as if she were tasting ancient blood. Then she dropped her hand and said with half a smile, "Whoever said church was dull?"
"How did you do that?" Amanda asked, still trying to make sense of the images, the sounds.
"I'm a witch," Cassandra replied matter-of-factly, as if she were saying she was an accountant or a real estate agent. "I see the future; I listen to the past."
When a sacrifice required blood. Amanda shuddered delicately, glad to be in the here and now. "How far back did we see?"
"I'm not sure. Strabon said seven temples were built on this site, and archeologists have found evidence people lived here at least five thousand years ago, probably more."
Surfing history instead of surfing the web. Hmm. "Could you teach me?"
"To see the future?" Cassandra shook her head. "That's not a skill; it's a gift. Listening to the past?" She considered Amanda carefully and then smiled. "We can try."
Amanda hummed happily as they walked among the ruins, remembering the magnificent jewelry some of the ancient Ephesians had worn. In her new job as a consultant for the Malin brothers, this little skill should be very useful, indeed.
======================
Jerusalem,
Israel
======================
Cassandra pulled on the loose trousers of gold silk, gave a final tug to the hem of the embroidered tunic, then came out of the dressing room and executed a slow fashion model's twirl for Amanda, who clapped her hands in delight. "I just knew that brocade would be stunning on you!" Amanda exclaimed. "You should wear gold and bright colors more often, instead of always green or black. And the lines … yes, very elegant. You look like a queen. Now for the jewelry." She stepped back to examine, head tilted and eyes narrowed in thought. "Gold, of course, with rubies … or maybe jade, to match the embroidery. And shoes. You definitely need shoes." She turned to the shopkeeper, and he bowed agreeably and led her to the far side of the boutique.
Cassandra examined herself in the tri-fold mirror. Amanda had an excellent eye. The trousers flowed with Cassandra as she moved, like harem pants of old. The tunic was tailored to emphasis all her curves: padded shoulders, full breasts, narrow waist, and a slight flaring over the hips that gave the appearance of a short skirt. The purple satin was almost hidden beneath the gold, crimson, and emerald flowers that covered her from neck to thigh—a Byzantine opulence that Cassandra hadn't dared in centuries. Something else she hadn't dared …
When Amanda and the shopkeeper returned (Amanda carrying the jewelry and the shopkeeper holding the gold-strapped sandals), Amanda stopped and said, "Oh, my," in admiration and amusement. The shopkeeper stood there blinking. "Nice legs," Amanda said, and Cassandra smiled back and took another look in the mirror. She had taken off the trousers, and now wore only black nylons and the tunic, which did indeed make a short skirt. Very short. "I guess that's legal," Amanda said, "but, then—"
"Who cares?" Cassandra said, at the exact same time as Amanda, and they smiled again, Amanda with approval, Cassandra with a delightful sense of coming home. "Girlfriends are important," Cassandra had said to young Sara a month ago at Duncan's wedding, and it was true. Over the centuries, Cassandra had missed that most of all: the comfortable companionship of other women, the confidences and the laughter, the late-night chats about children and men, the knowledge that even your bitchiness would be understood—and sometimes shared—by your friends. Amanda was a treasure, in many ways.
Not that Alex hadn't been a wonderful friend to Cassandra these last ten years, but she was a mortal, and there were things she and Cassandra simply could not share. Elena, though Immortal, was only four hundred years old, and she still had growing up to do. Amanda, with twelve centuries, was less of a little sister. Even so …
Cassandra knew very well she was searching not just for sisters, but for older sisters, a wise counselor, a Lady of the Temple … a mother. She also knew she wasn't likely to find one. "Rebecca was the oldest female Immortal, as far as I know," Amanda had said at dinner a few nights before. "Duncan told me he'd met an Egyptian woman who was about the same age, but she lost her head over ten years ago." Amanda had lifted her glass in an ironic toast to Cassandra. "Looks like you're the oldest now, you and Methos."
"What a pair," Cassandra had murmured, wishing once again that Rebecca were still alive.
But she wasn't. That was the way of the Game, no point in thinking about it. Move on. Rebecca's student was still alive, and Cassandra was thoroughly enjoying this tour with Amanda, as she had enjoyed her cruise with Elena. Cassandra had desperately needed some youthful exuberance to break her free of her cautious and stodgy ways, and Amanda and Elena both excelled at doing that. They both knew how to offer mothering, too. Cassandra knew she was lucky to have met them, and luckier still to be able to think of them as friends. They would also be valuable allies, and Cassandra was going to need all the help she could get in the years to come.
"Try these earrings," Amanda said, holding out a pair of pendants made of emerald and gold. "They're paste, but they'll do for now." Cassandra clipped them on, twisted her hair up on top of her head, then turned to Amanda for approval. "Perfect," Amanda declared.
"Now," Cassandra said, "I'm going to find something for you."
|
CHAPTER 2 (World population: 6.65 billion) |
GLORY DAYS
Once back home in the Highlands, Alex and her family settled into the routine of work and school. A letter from Cass was waiting. "Hong Kong proved profitable, and the Mediterranean cruise is great. Elena and I now have all-around tans." Connor lifted an eyebrow at that, and Alex quickly moved on to the next part of the letter. "Cass says after the cruise is over she's going to spend a few days in Rome; then she's meeting Amanda in Athens on the seventeenth of October." Letters and postcards started arriving every few days, from different places every time. Sara and Colin kept track of Cassandra's travels with colored pins on a map, and they raided Alex's history books to read about places like Jerash and Antioch.
Sara read one of the letters aloud after dinner one night. "Cassandra says that Amanda won the belly-dancing contest in the restaurant. She was on top of a table."
"Who else was in the contest?" Colin wanted to know.
"Just Cassandra," Sara answered, and this time Connor lifted both eyebrows.
"Was she on a table, too?" Colin asked.
"No," Sara said, disappointed. "Just the floor. Cass says she's going to practice, though, so next time she can win." Sara looked up from the letter, excited now. "I'm going to ask her to teach me!" Alex decided to ask Cass to teach her, too.
It was early November when Cass wrote to say the joint tour was over. Amanda was going to Alexandria to view a new museum exhibit, and Cass was heading off to Crete. "View," Connor repeated with a disbelieving snort. "Case the joint, more likely." He sat down on the edge of the bed to take off his socks. "Those two lasted longer than I thought they would."
"Three weeks traveling together is quite a feat," Alex agreed. "But Cass and Amanda are both reasonable adults." Connor gave another snort, this one of heartfelt derision. "What?" Alex demanded. "Did you really think they'd kill each other?"
Connor paused on his way to the bathroom, his voice serious but his eyes amused. "How do you know they didn't?"
Alex didn't know, and when Cass returned to the Highlands in mid-December, Alex didn't ask. "Let's go skiing, just the two of us!" Cass suggested, and on a beautifully cold day the week before Christmas, she and Alex hit the slopes.
"Still up for changing the world, Alex?" Cass asked as the two women stood on the top of another high mountain.
"Sure," Alex said. She took a deep breath of the crisp air and looked up at the flawless blue sky, miraculously clear of clouds. "But after we're done skiing, OK?"
"OK," Cass agreed, and with a tug on her dark green hat and an adjustment of Alex's sunglasses, they were off. Alex headed for the moguls for her warm-up run, weaving among the hillocks and taking to the air now and again. Cass chose a smoother path off to the side. After three more runs, Alex tried to convince Cass to give the more challenging routes on the Back Corrie a try.
"Perhaps tomorrow," Cass said. "I'm still getting warmed up."
"Oh, come on," Alex urged. "The weather might be bad tomorrow, and it's glorious today. Besides, what's the worst that can happen? You'll break a leg and have to wait five minutes for it to heal?"
That did it. Cass stood there with her mouth open, then smiled even as she shook her head and sighed. "Right," she admitted, and they headed for the lift that would carry them to the back side of the mountain.
"How'd the recruiting go?" Alex said as they waited in line.
"Excellent," Cass replied. "When I was in Crete, I met some women on a Goddess tour, and last week in Barcelona I talked to an artist. Elena Duran said she'd bankroll at least one movie, an action/adventure film about a freedom fighter named Dona Encarnacion. I also want movies about Joan of Arc, Boudicca, Frances Harper, Nellie Bly, Helen of Troy … So many women's stories have never been told, and our culture desperately needs heroines."
"We'll start our own film company, maybe even make some money at it." Alex twisted the tip of her pole deeper into the snow. "And Amanda? How did you two get along on your Mediterranean tour?"
"Oh, Amanda!" Cass said with a laughing shake of her head, in just the same way Rachel would say, "Oh, Brenda!" whenever there was mention of Connor's second wife.
No one had ever—or would ever—describe Alex in that way, she knew.
"Amanda certainly likes to have fun," Cass continued, still smiling at the mention of the twelve-hundred-year-old Immortal whom Alex had heard described by various people as a thief, an amazing and admirable woman, a snarkety queen of snippiness, and a mischievous imp with the morals of an unspayed cat.
"Is she too flighty?" Alex asked, watching as the pair of teenage boys in front of them hopped onto a lift chair.
"No," Cass said, considering now. "No, there's depth there, and dependability."
Alex lifted an eyebrow. "Connor doesn't think so."
The boys were up and away, setting their chair to swaying with shouts of glee, and Cass was cheerful too as she said, "Being underestimated can be a great advantage."
Alex and Cass moved into place, waiting until their chair arrived and caught them at thigh level. It swung them back with a jerk then lifted them smoothly into the sky. They wiggled backwards until they could lean against the seatback. "Did you tell Amanda what we're planning to do?" Alex asked, knocking the snow off one of her skis with the other.
"Just hints, plus reason to come back for more." Cass pulled her hat down more snugly over her ears. "Like most of us, she's lonely and looking for a sense of purpose. She'll ask soon enough."
Alex nodded and huddled into her parka. The wind was bitter up here, exposed as they were. "And what shall we tell her then?"
"Some, not all. She's signed on with the Malin brothers as a fashion consultant, which we'll need, and her other talents are certainly useful, too, but she's too close to Methos to bring her in all the way."
"And Elena?"
Cass shook her head. "Also too close to Methos. It's not that I don't trust Elena and Amanda," Cass explained, "but keeping secrets from Methos isn't easy, and even though Elena's married now, she and Amanda both spend time with him."
"Keeping secrets from anyone isn't easy," Alex pointed out.
"You're right. We should do this on a need-to-know basis. Not everyone needs the big picture."
"Do you really think Methos would interfere?"
The line of her jaw tightened, and she stared unseeing at the chair ahead of them. "I'm not taking that chance."
Alex sighed in exasperation. "Cass—"
"Yes, all right, I'm paranoid about him," Cass admitted, turning to face Alex so abruptly that the chair swayed, and Alex clutched at the cold metal arm. "I don't want him near me," Cass said, as she had said often before, then added in satisfaction, "I think I neutralized that threat of Methos on the cruise."
"He was on the cruise?"
Cass nodded. "Quite a coincidence, isn't it?"
"I thought you didn't believe in coincidences."
"I don't."
Alex twisted in her seat to face Cass. "What did you mean 'neutralize'? You didn't take his head, did you?"
"No." She heaved a theatrically mournful sigh. "Not that time either." She smiled ruefully. "I don't want his head, Alex. Having his Quickening inside me would give me nightmares, and I've had quite enough of those. He and I came to a truce. I told him I needed more time away from him, and he agreed. He won't come near me for a decade or so, and I certainly won't go near him."
"Do you keep track of where he is?"
"Always," she drawled. "I feel safer that way. He's been in Berlin these last two months; I ordered my Watcher to keep me informed."
"The Voice comes in handy, doesn't it?" Alex observed.
"Very," Cass said, and now her tone was dry. "I'm sure Methos has his own methods to keep track of me, and probably other people, as well."
Alex wouldn't want Methos to keep track of her.
"Methos will find out what we're doing eventually," Cass said. "I know that. Probably, he'll shrug and go away, perhaps he'll try to stop us, perhaps he might even offer to help. By then, I hope I'll be able to deal with him, but for now …"
"Fine," Alex agreed, not seeing any reason to push, not in this, and anyway, they had reached the end of the line. She and Cass wiggled forward to the edge of the seat and lifted the tips of their skis. "Here we go!" Alex called, and the two of them hopped off the chair. They banked to the left to get out of the way of the next pair of skiers, then lined up side by side on the steep slope, skis turned sideways to hold them in place.
"Oh my," Cass breathed when they stood at the crest, looking down over the white expanse, broken here and there with great, jagged ridges of gray and black rock.
Alex grinned. "We could have started all the way at the top," she said, motioning to the trails still higher up the hill. Cass gave her a dirty look, and Alex said, unrepentant, "It's the only the first bit that's tricky. It gets easier."
"You mean it goes from Very Difficult to Difficult," Cass corrected. "I can read the signs."
"You can do it," Alex said cheerfully, and with a quick shove of her poles, she was off, knees bent and arms tucked for even greater speed, skimming over the snow, flying sometimes, exulting in the combination of glorious freedom and demanding control.
Alex waited at the bottom. Cass arrived some minutes later, covered with spangles of snow. Her sunglasses seemed a little bent. "Fun?" Alex inquired brightly.
"Oh, yes," Cass agreed, brushing off her legs and then ruefully regarding her knee. "I think it was only a sprain." She looked up at Alex and grinned. "But you were right. It was fun. I'm ready for more!"
They skied at a more sedate pace to a different chair lift, and once they were riding up the hill again, Alex went back to their project. "We need a name, Cass. I'm tired of thinking of it as 'the project,' and it will turn into a corporation, eventually."
"With different divisions," Cass agreed. "Medical research, public relations, media, orphanages, schools, women's shelters, city planning, architecture firms, the music industry, political lobbies, hospitals …"
"Phoenix Corporation," Alex said suddenly. "It's perfect."
Cass's eyebrows went up, high enough to be seen above her sunglasses. "Because it's the name of my cat?"
"Don't be silly," Alex said reprovingly. "You didn't name your cat Phoenix just because she was orange. It's the whole 'rising from the ashes and rebirth' motif. Of course, we'd have to spell it differently. I'm sure Phoenix is taken."
"Phi, the Greek letter," Cass said.
"I thought that was pronounced 'fie,' not 'fee.'"
"Either way. Fee, fie—"
"Fo, fum," Alex finished with a grin.
"Please," Cass groaned. "Fee works for me. Anyway, in mathematics, phi is the limit of the ratio of sequential terms in the Fibonacci numbers, equal to approximately 1.618, the Golden Mean."
Alex stared at her. "Where on earth do you get these things?"
Cass shrugged. "I read a lot."
Alex did, too, just not things like that. "The second syllable can be Nyx, the goddess of night," she suggested, because at least she knew her mythology.
"The Golden Mean of Night," Cass said. "Light and darkness, life and death. Phinyx Corporation."
"Or maybe the Phinyx Foundation, so it sounds more like a charitable organization," Alex said.
"Yes." Cass nodded slowly. "I like it."
"Good. Let's hope no one else has taken the name yet."
"Do you know anything about starting an international corporation?"
"Not really, but Connor does. I've talked to him about the project already, and he said he can put us in touch with the people we need, lawyers and financial advisors and such."
"We still have a lot of recruiting to do," Cass said. "Some of my former students from Rousby Hall are good prospects; they're bright, well-connected, and several of them are quite wealthy."
"That would be nice," Alex said. Right now, she was the only venture capitalist investing in Phinyx, and she wouldn't mind some help.
"We'll look for other sources of capital," Cass reassured her. "I'm going to call Jennifer this week and ask her if she'd like to work with us."
"Your therapist?" Alex asked, making sure, because Cass had mentioned her therapist by name only a few times, even though Cass been going to her for nearly ten years.
Cass nodded. "She's a wise woman. She helped me quite a bit." Cass grinned suddenly. "But then, I needed quite a bit of help."
Alex couldn't argue with that. Cass had been a mess a decade ago: oversensitive, defensive, obsessive, compulsive, self-destructive, and a host of other words ending in "ive." Jennifer—and Cass!—had done an amazing job in turning Cass around. "We'll need a whole staff of therapists and psychologists," Alex said. "We also need much better techniques in healing mental problems. Psychology is still an art, the way basic medicine used to be a few centuries ago. It needs to be a science."
"You're right. The Phinyx Foundation will have to give out research grants. We can't stay only in Europe, either. We need to go to other continents, include other cultures …"
Alex nodded, her fingers tapping impatiently on her knee. There were so many things they needed to do.
"This will be a slow beginning, Alex," Cass reminded her.
"I know." She also knew she wouldn't live to see the work completed, anymore than she would live to see the seedlings she had planted on some of those far-off slopes grow into mighty trees. But someday, the great Caledonian forest would exist again, and someday was good enough for her. It had to be.
The chair dipped lower, and Cass and Alex disembarked again, skiing over to the top of the run. The wind blew cold, fresh and exhilarating. Alex reached into her parka pocket and pulled out a Chap Stick to moisten her lips. She offered it to Cass, who shook her head and kept studying the terrain. "This isn't so bad," Cass said, sounding relieved.
"It's only difficult, instead of very." Alex pointed to the right. "How about Allison's Route, between those rocks?"
"How about it?" Cass muttered, not sounding very happy now.
"Wimp," Alex declared.
Cass gave her another dirty look. "I'll race you," she challenged.
Alex smiled. Cassandra might be undeniably gorgeous, psychically gifted, musically talented, and eternally Immortal, but Alex could beat her any day on skis, and Alex enjoyed that for all it was worth. "Sure," she said and counted, "One, two, three!" and was off. Alex won the race, and every other race that afternoon, too. It was a glorious day.
AVENGING ANGEL
======================
Winter and Spring 2008
The Highlands
of Scotland
======================
All in all, the first few years of Phinyx were great, too—or at least better than what came after. Though there were problems from time to time. In the long rainy winter of Colin and Sara's eleventh year, a serial rapist stalked the hills near the MacLeods' home.
"I never thought it would happen here," Alex said to Connor one morning after breakfast, while she leaned her head against his shoulder and tried to relax in the comfort of his arms. "New York, London, L.A., yes, even smaller cities—Cass said she heard about a serial rapist down in Brighton about ten years ago—but here? In the Highlands?"
"All it takes is one maniac, Alex," her husband replied.
"I know," she said, but she didn't want to know. She didn't want the imagined circle of protection she had drawn around her children to be shattered, popped as easily as a soap bubble when it touches a single blade of grass. She didn't want to know that the circle had never really existed at all. When she'd been growing up she'd heard about rapists, murderers, and thieves, but they had been city problems or rare events in other towns. Now her children were growing up with a rapist-murderer in the neighborhood, and hearing about biological warfare, chemical attacks, and bombs on the news every day.
"What do we do about him?" Alex asked Cass the next Saturday afternoon, as they sat in the dining room with cups of tea.
Cass shook her head. "Not you. Me."
"I am not a child, Cass," Alex said impatiently.
"No, but you do have children, Alex," Cass replied. "And a husband. They need you. You can't take the chance of something going wrong."
Alex set her spoon on the table with a clang. "I'm not helpless."
Cass lifted an eyebrow. "Neither am I."
Of course not. Cass had a sword. She had chopped off Immortals' heads—seven of them, to be precise. She had killed people in various other ways—Alex wasn't sure how many, and she didn't want to ask. Cassandra also had the Voice. She could make the rapist sit up and beg, or roll over and die.
"He doesn't take heads," Cass pointed out. "Whatever happens, I'll survive." She pushed back her chair. "I think I'll go for a stroll."
Sara had come into the room in time to hear those last words. "By yourself?" Sara asked, and Cass nodded and stood. "But, Cassandra," Sara said in horror, "Dad says any woman alone is a walking target."
"And every man alive is a loaded weapon," she retorted, sharp and swift, and Sara physically shrank back from Cass's rage. Alex gave Cass a hard stare. Sara didn't need this, especially not now.
Cass shut her eyes and took a deep breath then sat back down on her chair. "I'm sorry, Sara." Her eyes sought Alex's forgiveness, too. "You see, it's happened to me before."
"Oh," Sara said, and the word was still and small.
"I didn't stop it then. I'm going to stop it now."
"How?" Sara asked.
"I'm not a target. I'm the bait." Cassandra's eyes glowed green. "And the trap."
~~~~~
Six weeks, two rapes, and one murder later, the man was finally caught. Connor told Alex what he'd heard in town that evening at the karate dojo. "He was a delivery man who didn't live around here, which is why the police missed him with the gene-printing. But he turned himself in. Said an angel in white with fiery hair told him to." Connor told her a few other things, too, and the next morning after breakfast, Alex drove to Rousby Hall to have a talk with the Witch of Donan Woods. Cass saw her drive up and walked across the grassy quadrangle to Alex's car. In the light from the morning sun, Cass's long hair shimmered red and gold atop her white wool cloak, an angel in white, an ancient witch with fiery hair.
"What did you do to him?" Alex demanded as soon as Cass got close enough to hear.
Two passing students slowed to listen, their eyes avid and their ears sharp. Cass waved them off to class, watched them go, then shrugged. "I told him to stop."
Alex knew that already. She started walking, away from the stone-walled school buildings and down the hill. Cass caught up to her, and they walked in silence across an athletic field toward the grove of oak trees ahead. The spring breeze carried the scent of new grass. "What else did you do?" Alex asked when she and Cass were halfway across the field.
"I told him he had sinned, against the women, against himself, and against God, and he should look in his heart to know what he should do."
Apparently, he'd known the Bible by heart. Alex quoted from the book of Matthew: "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off."
Cass added the next verse. "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out."
Except it wasn't his eye he'd been plucking at, and it wasn't his hand he'd been trying to remove. "Constable Barnes said he was 'picking' at himself," Connor had reported while he and Alex had been getting ready for bed the night before.
"You mean …"
Connor had shrugged, but his mouth had been a thin tight line. "Yeah." He'd tossed his shirt across the room into the laundry basket. "There are quicker ways to castrate yourself."
"I heard they had to put him in a strait-jacket," Alex told Cass. "Then they had to sedate him to keep him from beating his brains out against a wall." Cassandra made a small "hmph" of surprise, but her stride didn't falter, and Alex kept going, too. "How long are you going to leave him like that?" she demanded.
"'Leave him'?" Cass repeated. "Alex, I didn't put him there. I never told him to do that. He's done it to himself." She walked around a patch of mud. "I'll go talk to him and tell him to stop."
"And that's it."
"What do want me to do, Alex? Apologize to him? Feel sorry for him because he's spent two days feeling guilty? Over the last two years, he's raped ten women and murdered five." She looked away, swallowing as if there were something disgusting on her tongue. "He told me about them all."
Alex didn't feel all that sorry for him, either, but it wasn't only the rapist's mental health she was worried about. "Are you avenging those women, or yourself?"
Cass stopped walking. "It's not about revenge."
"Isn't it?"
"No. It's about stopping it from happening again. It seems this one has a conscience; there's hope for him." She sounded almost pleased.
"And if there wasn't?"
"What do farmers do with a dog that's taken to killing sheep?"
Often, they shot it, sometimes with savage hatred, sometimes with relentless pity. But sometimes … "They send the dog to a place without sheep."
"And what place is without women?"
"Jail."
"Ah yes. Jail. If he's caught, and if he's convicted, then he might go to jail, maybe even have counseling, and then … you know what? They let him go. Do you know what the repeat offense rate is for serial rapists?"
Too high.
"Do you know how many are out there?" Cass asked next. "How many serial rapists have you heard about, just in your lifetime, just in your corner of the world?"
Too many. But— "This one," Cassandra had said. What about the other one? Or other ones? "What happened to that serial rapist in Brighton ten years ago, Cassandra?" Alex asked. Cass stared back and didn't answer, but Alex immediately recognized the flat cold stare of a killer. She'd seen it often enough at home. "Is this what you plan to teach in the schools we start?" Alex demanded. "And is this your solution to rape? Death or insanity for the rapist?"
After a moment, Cass closed her eyes briefly and sighed. "You're right, Alex. Death isn't a good solution, and insanity certainly doesn't help. Eventually, I hope we can have the facilities world-wide to cure this problem, to help them and to keep everyone else safe. Eventually, I hope we won't see this behavior at all. But right now—"
"Right now," Alex interrupted dryly, "this is war."
"No," she said slowly, shaking her head. "It's triage. We're trying to heal society, not conquer it. It's like in MASH, the TV show about the doctors in the Korean War, remember?"
Alex nodded; she'd grown up watching that show.
"The doctors had dozens of patients, with more coming in every hour. They didn't have time to do complicated repair jobs on crushed limbs, so sometimes they'd amputate. Sometimes, they'd let one person die so they could keep four or five others alive."
"I know about triage; my mother's a nurse," Alex reminded her. "I understand the necessity of it, Cass, but one person can't be judge and jury and executioner. Sooner or later, they go too far. We need—you especially need—checks and balances, other people's opinions, a rule of law. You know that."
Cass turned and began walking across the field, heading for the oak trees again. Acorns rolled under their feet as they approached the largest of the trees, and Cass laid one hand on the trunk and closed her eyes. "Yes," she admitted finally, looking at Alex again. "I do know that."
Alex let out a silent sigh, relieved that she wouldn't have to ask Connor to step in, as he'd offered to do. Insisted, actually, but Alex had convinced him to give her a chance to talk to Cass first.
"The council of nine, perhaps?" Cass suggested, her fanciful name for the board of directors they planned to have for Phinyx in a few years.
"I think it would be better to rely on a court of law."
"Checks and balances," Cass repeated.
"Exactly. We do have laws now, Cass," Alex reminded her. "And police and judges and jails."
Cass clicked her teeth in irritation. "For all the good they do."
"They do some good, and as things change, they'll do more. As for right now …"
"I'll go to the prison today," Cass promised.
"Good." Alex laid her hand on Cass's arm. "Don't take all this onto yourself, Cass. You're not alone now."
"No," Cass said, with a slow smile that blossomed into beauty. "I'm not. And soon, there will be more of us." She leaned her head back and looked up to the thousands of leaves overhead, still reddish tinted from springtime. "Many more."
Alex nodded and they started walking again, back up the hill. "So," Alex said, when they'd almost returned to her car, "what's next?"
"We've almost done with planning the women's shelter. We need to choose a building site."
"Near
"I was thinking Edinburgh," Cass said.
It was Alex who stopped this time. "I thought you were going to be working at the shelter."
"I am." Alex shook her head in confusion, and Cass explained, "Alex, I've been in the Highlands for over eleven years. I can't stay much longer; people are starting to talk."
"Right." Alex looked across the grassy year, where her gaze was caught by the bright yellow of roses climbing up a trellised wall. During her fourteen years in the Highlands, she had planted over a thousand daffodils around her home. In the spring her yard shimmered with rivers of yellow, gold, orange, and white.
"Has Connor said anything about moving?" Cass asked.
"No." But there had been comments on Connor's youthful appearance now and again; Alex just hadn't wanted to hear. Cass was right; it was time to move on, maybe next year when the kids were done with primary school. They would have to leave the daffodils behind. "Edinburgh, then," Alex agreed, opening her car door. "I'll talk to Connor today. And you?"
"I'll go to the prison," Cass promised again.
"Good."
=====
After lunch, Cassandra went to the prison, smiled sweetly at the guards, and asked to be left alone with the prisoner. They did as she asked, of course. The Voice left them no choice, or rather, she had left them no choice. Cassandra didn't worry about that; it was a minor compliance, soon forgotten and of no import, benign. Now to remove a malignancy of the soul.
The rapist had made horrific choices in the past, and because she had gotten involved, it was her responsibility to ensure he had choices for his future. Their talk left them both sweating and in tears, but after two hours Cassandra left him sleeping peacefully on his bunk in the cell. The official justice system had him now, and it was out of her hands. She returned home, showered and scrubbed herself thoroughly, then went running across the hills, still awash in the man's ferocious anguish and bewildered rage, so exactly like her own, not so long ago.
When her run was over, she scrubbed herself clean again and then bathed, a long soaking in a very hot tub, lying back with her eyes closed and letting everything float away. That helped. Cassandra ate a light dinner then sat staring at a candle flame with Phoenix purring on her lap. She stroked the soft fur and remembered once more a lesson she had learned and then forgotten somewhere during the years: It was simpler to kill than it was to heal.
But it wasn't easier, not as time went on.
"Whoever said this was going to be
easy?"
Cassandra murmured. Phoenix
looked up with unblinking eyes and meowed. Cassandra blew out
the candle,
and she and Phoenix
went to bed.
UNDER COLOR OF AUTHORITY
======================
Autumn 2009
Edinburgh,
Scotland
======================
Cass had been right; more people came, although at first Alex had
difficulty in
finding even one. "How do we convince people to join us?"
Alex
asked, after a disappointing talk with a teacher about school reform.
"We don't," Cass replied. "We join with them."
"Ah," Alex said, seeing it now. "We find out what their
interests are, and, if they agree with our goals, we encourage them."
"Exactly. There are those who like to join, of course, to be
the
followers in a group, and we do need them, but in these early days
we're
looking for leaders, and leaders do best if they're working towards
their own
goals. They don't need to know there's a larger plan."
"But we will tell them."
"Oh, some of them, yes."
"But not Amanda or Elena," Alex said.
Cass shrugged one shoulder. "Not yet."
Because of Methos, Alex knew. "Don't wait too long, Cass,"
she
warned. "People don't like to feel used."
Cass looked up at that then nodded. "I know."
"You should."
Alex's next conversation went better, and over the next few years
Phinyx
Foundation grew and diversified, sponsoring women's shelters and
counseling
services (Jennifer had said no, but other people joined), lecture
tours,
self-defense classes, films (the movie about Nelly Bly even won an
award), and
a research center for birth control (Alex had asked her friend Grace,
another Immortal,
to be in charge of that). They made contacts in advertising,
fashion
design (Amanda helped there), schools, the Vatican, Greenpeace,
newspapers, Red
Hatted women of a certain age, the International Monetary Fund,
hospitals
… even in the Watchers, an ancient organization that tracked
the Immortal
players of the Game.
"Cass, is that wise?" Alex asked, stopping with her running shoe only half-tied. An autumn wind snaked over the garden wall, and Alex shivered a little. The wind wasn't as strong here in Edinburgh as it was in the Highlands (she and Connor and the twins had moved to their townhouse that summer; Cassandra had moved the year before), but it was still damp and chill. Alex pushed her hair away from her eyes. "The Watchers take oaths. They're practically fanatics. They shoot people who break their rules. Connor told me they put Joe Dawson in front of a firing squad for helping Duncan."
Cass waved that away before she started swinging her arms in large circles, her fingers almost grazing the branches of the old apple tree. "That was thirteen years ago; the Watchers aren't as rigid now. I understand Dawson has made some changes in their training policies since he joined the council as Tribune of the Guild."
"What a title," Alex said with a shake of her head. "It must have been centuries since they were organized as a guild."
"Watchers are keen on tradition," Cass replied. "And with reason. People like to do things the way things have always been done."
"That's both a weakness and a strength," Alex pointed out.
"Very true. We should remember that." Her arms went the other direction as she went back to the earlier topic. "Dawson was hardly discreet; Demiko knows how to be. And so do I. I'm Pauline Johnson to her, she has no idea that I'm Immortal."
"Won't she figure that out when she sees a picture of you in their records?"
"No," Cassandra said with a smile, that smile Alex hated, the small smirk of conscious power with the hint of cruelty in the eyes. Connor did it, too, but only rarely, only sometimes. He wasn't really like that. Alex had to believe that was true.
"She's agreed to let me hide her memories," Cassandra said. "They won't be able to get anything out of her, I promise you that."
That Voice again. Alex never wanted Cass to use the Voice on her. She finished tying her shoe.
"And besides," Cass went on, "Demiko isn't a field agent; she's in research. She won't have to do anything, just pass along information to us or make a few suggestions here and there."
"Passing information to you is aiding an Immortal and interfering in the Game. That's exactly what Dawson got in trouble for."
Cass waved that away too. "I'm not interested in the Game." She leaned over to touch her toes.
"Oh, like the Watchers will believe that." Alex set both hands against the side of the house and stretched her calves, first the right, then the left. "You're going to ask her to keep track of Methos for you, aren't you?"
"Yes," Cass said. "And other Immortals, too." She crossed her ankles and placed her palms flat on the ground, holding the position for a count of fifteen before she looked up from under her curtain of hair. "I have to avoid them, Alex. I can't absorb Quickenings; I hear their voices inside my head for years." She straightened and dusted off her hands then joined Alex at the wall. "But keeping track of Immortals isn't the only thing Watchers do. Think of all the history they've accumulated over the last three or four thousand years. If we could tap into that, not just the Chronicles of the Immortals, but the history, the details of the way they lived their lives, the names of their towns, their religions, their politics …"
"Yes," Alex murmured, imagining the wealth of information there, the primary sources from around the world and across the ages. That would be worth preserving. "Does Demiko know the risks if she's found out?"
"She knows," Cass said, taking it seriously now. "She thinks the risks of discovery are slight, and she believes what we're trying to do is worth it."
Alex stretched from side to side, then did a few toe-touches herself. "I guess we have been working on putting key people in other corporations instead of us having to build everything from the ground up."
"Exactly," Cass agreed. "This is a great opportunity for us. The Watchers have an extensive intelligence network and operatives all over the planet. We need networks of our own, of course, but we can also tap into theirs, maybe even borrow some of their organizational techniques."
"We're going to be a lot like the Watchers, aren't we?" Alex said. "We'll have corporations fronting for a world-wide organization, dedicated to a secret purpose that stretches over the millennia."
Cass nodded. "We'll just have to make our oaths more binding than theirs, and I know several ways to do that." She smiled. Alex looked away. Cass tightened her ponytail with a quick twist of one hand and asked, "Ready to run?"
"Sure," Alex said, although she wouldn't have minded more time to stretch. She wasn't as limber as she used to be.
She wasn't as young as she used to be, either, and her children weren't children anymore; they were teens—and they had more than just the normal stormy angst of adolescence to weather. Psychic dreams arrived in the spring of Colin and Sara's thirteenth year. That wasn't a surprise; Cassandra had warned Alex and Connor years before.
"I think Sara and Colin have psychic powers," Cassandra had said in the farmhouse kitchen on the twins' seventh birthday, a cold and snowy day.
A muttered oath was Connor's first response; Alex felt an urge to giggle, and then an urge to cry. She did neither. "Right," Connor said next, sarcasm dripping from all four syllables he managed to pull out of that one word.
Cass wasn't laughing. "There's something there, Connor. I can sense it." Connor shook his head and leaned backwards in his chair, denying it all without words. "Sara can hear the heartbeat of a tree," Cass said next, and that froze him, shook him—frightened him a little, maybe. Alex saw it in the stillness of his hands and the tense line of his jaw.
"And Colin?" Alex asked, already starting to believe, because, after all, she'd married an Immortal, and they had a witch sitting in their kitchen right now. Duncan had defeated a Zoroastrian demon, and Alex herself had had a run-in with an immortal sorcerer named Kane. After all of that, what was a little psychic power among friends?
"Not yet. Maybe never." Cass paused, gathering her words. "Sara's a chattering brook, bright on the surface, quick and flowing. Colin's quieter, more like still water. But he's deeper, perhaps even stronger in the end. If the power wakens."
"It might not," Connor said, seizing on that.
"It might not," Cass agreed, but with no belief behind the words, and sure enough, the power came. Alex watched as Cassandra, once the Witch of Donan Woods and now a witch of everywhere, led Sara and Colin into places Alex could never go.
"What are you teaching them?" Alex asked, soon after the dreams began.
"How to listen, both to themselves and to others. How to remember. How to name. How to see the connections among all things." Cass shrugged. "It sounds vague, I know. The training techniques at this stage aren't specific, because we can't know what final form the power will take for them. The techniques simply teach the mind discipline, which is always useful, come what may."
"They're growing up so fast," Alex said, trying to remember where the years had gone. "I just … I want Colin and Sara to be happy."
"And safe and warm and loved, I know," Cass quietly finished for her. "That's a mother's job."
Alex had always prided herself on doing a good job, and she knew there was more to it than that. "So is letting go."
"When it's time," Cass agreed.
And time always moved on.
|
CHAPTER 3 (World population: 7.05 billion) |
ARMAGEDDON
Watcher Headquarters,
France
======================
"Oh, my God." Joe Dawson stared horrified at the TV screen in
the staff lounge at Watcher HQ. "Oh
my God,
no." He groped for the edge of the table,
suddenly needing
help to stand. No one noticed; they were all staring at the
TV. Pierre,
head of research, was frozen halfway through the act of sitting
down. His
executive assistant, Demiko, was sitting next to Marie on the
sofa. They
were holding hands, and both women had tears glistening on their
cheeks.
Rhee, Tribune of the Guard, was standing near a wall, feet apart, hands
braced
behind his back, like a soldier at parade rest.
"—exploded at
The image shifted to a satellite photo of a sickly green-white blob encircled in red. The snaking lines of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers had been colored blue. "The radiation zone extends to the capital beltway," said the announcer. "The population of the metropolitan area is estimated to be …" In that awful pause, the thirteen Watchers in the room made no movement, no sound. "… to be over one million."
"Sweet Jesus," Joe breathed. Marie whimpered, and from his post near the window, Pablo Rosacra, chief of travel, gave a half-hysterical bark of incredulous laughter, full of pain. The mushroom cloud image reappeared, and Pierre finally finished sitting down.
"Survival within a two-mile radius of the center is … unlikely."
Joe translated that into plain English: One million people had just been killed. Vaporized. Blown to hell.
"Radiation poisoning may eventually kill thousands more; we
don't
know—" The announcer broke off, his voice choked
with
tears. "I repeat," he said, nearly strangling on the words,
"at
"Goddamned terrorists," Joe swore. "Goddamned fucking war." His eyes met Rhee's, and the other man nodded. It was time.
Rhee turned to Marie. "I am convening an emergency Executive Council, the five council tribunes and all ten divisional tribunes. The teleconference should begin within two hours."
She didn't move, so Joe said sharply, "Marie?" She looked at him blankly, and Joe realized she hadn't heard a word that Rhee had said.
"I'll do it, Tribunes," Demiko offered before either man could say anything more. She glanced at her supervisor, who was still staring at the TV. "I don't think anyone's going to be doing research tonight."
"Go," Rhee said. She nodded and left the room, and Joe turned back to the TV screen.
The fires were still burning.
~~~~~
"Ten minutes until the conference, Tribunes," Demiko said as she wheeled the cart bearing drinks and paper and pens into the first of the teleconference rooms.
Marissa Olenskaya nodded and smoothed back her already perfect
raven
hair. Bjorn Wildorfer's thin lips wrinkled into a moue of
irritation
under his graying mustache as he checked his watch, an almost
paper-thin
rectangular face on a brown leather band. Joe Dawson studied
the spidery
black lines, wondering why it was so hard for him to figure out the
time.
He'd read watch hands upside-down before.
"I heard you requested the attendance of the Keeper of the Chronicles," Olenskaya said, smiling at Joe with one of her perfect smiles.
"That's right," Joe answered.
"Such a request should have come from me. I am the Tribune of the Chronicles; the Keeper comes under my authority."
"That's how the table of organization has it," Joe agreed with a cheerful smile of his own before he reminded her of the rules. "For an Emergency meeting, any tribune is empowered to request the attendance of any Watcher."
"Quite right," said Wildorfer. "I requested the Chief of Security to attend."
Joe felt his smile slipping, but he said casually, "I don't think we'll need her. The Tribune of the Guard is here."
"We are all concerned with security today; I thought she might have added insight. Just as you wanted more historical insight and so asked the Keeper."
Olenskaya gave Wildorfer a dirty look, but didn't dare complain. She was a whiz at computers and at organizing people and information, which was what her job required, but everybody knew she didn't know an Albigensian from a Pomeranian.
Demiko emerged from the First Tribune's room and went into the room labeled "Tribune of the Guard." Rhee was already in there, talking on his cellphone; Joe caught a burst of rapid-fire Korean when the door opened. Joe checked his own watch, relieved to have easy-to-read digital numbers. Five fifty-two. Jules Kananga appeared in the windowless hallway, nodded once, then entered the First Tribune's room and shut the door. Kananga had never been much for chit-chat, and right now, Joe was glad.
Olenskaya was eyeing the row of doors with distaste. "I dislike these basement cubicles."
Wildorfer, Tribune of the Exchequer, gave his customary little sniff. "Teleconferencing is efficient and inexpensive."
"The five of us are here," Olenskaya pointed out. "We at least could sit in the conference room."
Wildorfer shook his head. "We tried that when the system was first put in. We looked at each other, and those on monitors could not see. This is more equitable."
You could always depend on Wildorfer to count the beans, Joe thought.
"I heard South America
won't be with us,"
Wildorfer said next. "He is somewhere in the Amazon
"I spoke with Pacifica and East Asia before I came down," Olenskaya said. "So they are awake, and I think everyone else is available."
"A good turnout, for such short notice."
Yeah, Joe thought with a silent snort, it was downright neighborly of them to roust themselves out of bed for an atomic bomb. Demiko was starting on the fourth room, so Joe left Wildorfer and Olenskaya nattering in the hall and opened the door labeled "Tribune of the Guild." An archaic title, maybe, a reminder of the days before the Watcher academies had been built, but Joe liked it. A guild was more than just a school, anyway; it provided security, support, education … a family.
Joe shut the door and got settled in the comfortable chair. In front of him was a small desk, clear except for a cup of steaming coffee (black and unsweetened, the way he liked it), a computer screen and keyboard, and a pad of lined paper with a pen laid precisely at its side. The monitors on the opposite wall stared at him with blind eyes, four rows of five, like the composite eye of some legless bug. Yet another wonder of modern technology, Joe thought sourly as he looked at display. Each monitor was capable of featuring a different head from a different corner of the globe. No place was out of touch these days.
No place was safe.
A death toll of one million … an initial
death toll of one
million … Joe's hands started shaking
again, and he rubbed
them briskly on his thighs, clearing his throat and blinking
hard. The
dark scent of coffee rose lazily, and he fiercely wanted a slug of the
bitter
brew, but it wouldn't do to face an Executive Council with coffee
slopped all
over his shirt. Joe took a deep breath and squeezed his hands
into fists,
relaxed them, then squeezed again.
He reached for his cup then drank as he stared at the wall of monitors. Ollie Garrido, tribune for the Central America Division, liked her display in alphabetical order, but Joe had put the five council tribunes on the top row (except his own screen would stay blank, because Joe hated looking at himself when he was talking). The next two rows set the divisional tribunes almost like they were on a map, with North and South America on the leftmost column, Western Europe and Central America in the next column, then Eastern Europe and Africa in the middle. Central Asia and Western Asia took the fourth, and Pacifica and the Subcontinent got the right-hand side. The five remaining screens on the bottom row were for guest speakers and the like. The Keeper of the Chronicles would get one today. So would Sharon Seligman, Head of Security. Damn. Joe admired and respected the woman, but the former Mossad agent wasn't known for her patience or for her tact.
"Hey, Rhee," Joe typed on the keyboard. "Tell Sharon to stay cool at this meeting, OK?"
Less than a minute later, the computer cheeped quietly and the message from Rhee appeared: "I have done so already."
Joe sighed, rubbing a hand across his beard. The monitors were still blank, though sixteen of the "active" lights showed green. Sure enough, South America wasn't going to be on. Probably everybody else was straightening ties or combing hair or doodling, and didn't want to be seen. Joe wasn't in the mood for talking, but he missed the settling in of a real-time meeting, when people shuffled papers and pulled out chairs and either ignored each other or talked about fishing or the game. He didn't need to listen to Wildorfer and Olenskaya—he saw them all the time—but he wasn't so sure of the divisional tribs. The five-year term had finished in June, and almost half of them were new. This TV stuff just started Wham! and you couldn't get any sense of how the land lay ahead of time.
Speaking of time … Joe set down his coffee, cleared his throat, and stared at the clock on the wall, silently counting down. Seven seconds to go. Kananga always started on time.
At
"Duty, burden, honor," repeated the Watchers, affirming once again that ancient oath. All the monitors brightened as all the Watchers spoke. "These are ours, down through the ages."
Kananga rapped the gavel again then laid it down. "Watcher Sun Myung Rhee, Tribune of the Guard, has summoned this Executive Council, but before I yield the floor to him, I will speak of this day's events." He steepled his fingers together, tip to tip, a favorite pose with him. Underneath his cap of tiny white curls, the fine lines on his blue-black skin seemed gray. "As with many capital cities, Washington was an international attraction and an informational resource. In addition to the Watchers of Immortals, we had three historians at the Library of Congress, two media contacts, seven operatives in various government or international agencies—"
Agencies that included, Joe suddenly remembered, the center for the International Monetary Fund. Halloo, global economic downturn. God, what a mess.
"—and three traveling Watchers permanently based there. The names are on your screens."
"Damn," Joe muttered, looking at the list on the computer screen at his desk. Other monitors flickered into brief brightness as other people swore or exclaimed.
"Our CIA operative may still be active; their headquarters was outside the blast zone," Kananga continued. "We have been unable to establish communication at this time." He paused to sip at his tea. "In addition to the twenty-two Watchers permanently based in Washington, a report was filed by Sayyid Rastogi twelve minutes before the explosion. She stated that Immortal Mykhaltso Demidas was entering the Hirschorn Art Gallery on the Mall. Tribune Rastogi," Kananga said, addressing the Subcontinent Tribune, "please know that you have our deepest condolences on the death of your granddaughter." Rastogi bowed her head slightly in acknowledgment, and Joe looked away from the grief etched there.
Kananga's hands were clasped together now, and he took a deep breath before he spoke. "The bells will be rung at the chapel in Geneva at sunset; the gongs will be struck at the temple in Goa at dawn. We will remember."
"We will remember," repeated the Watchers in a ragged chorus. Joe suspected he'd be hearing that phrase a lot in the days to come.
They were all silent for a few moments, until Ollie asked, "Who were the Immortals?"
The North American monitor lit up as Mary Hammond answered. "Kirin, who used to be Kage, Keith Boyer, Reagan Cole, and Gianni Fabiano. We had one solo Watcher and three double-teams on them, so that's seven of us right there. From the reports filed between twelve and two hours before the explosion, it's likely all four Immortals were within city limits."
"No loss on Fabiano," muttered Western Europe, a Brit by the name of John Bancroft, Ian's second cousin once removed.
"But are we completely sure they're dead?" asked the Keeper of the Chronicles. "Immortals have lived through explosions before."
"Temperatures at the center of an atomic blast of that size will vaporize metal," stated Sharon Seligman. She leaned forward, her dark eyes grim. "Immortal Yamazaki Yukari was in Nagasaki in '45, and she was never heard from again." Sharon shook her head. "Those Immortals are not only headless, they're bodiless, too."
Sato Hasegawa, the new Tribune of Pacifica, spoke next. "In the light of atoms, people leave behind only their shadows—and their shades."
A pause followed this observation; then Kananga rapped the gavel again. "Tribune Rhee," he said formally, "you have called us together in council. Speak."
It was a count of five before Rhee said anything. "Five Immortals, twenty-three Watchers, and perhaps as many as one million people—dead."
As Rhee's measured words came forth, Joe looked at each face in turn: grave faces, tired faces, faces ranging from alabaster to dusky brown to jet black, faces from all over the globe. One big family, even if not very happy. They were all in this together now.
"Terrorism is nothing new," Rhee continued. "We have seen it before, in many places, in many times. Read the chronicles; you will see it all through history. But this takes us beyond where we have been before." He paused again, giving everyone time to think about that. "As Tribune of the Guard," Rhee said, "I propose that a new department of Watcher security be formed: a department of global security, whose purpose will be the gathering and analyzing of intelligence on terrorist activities, all across the planet."
Ibn al Muamar, Tribune of Western Asia, was tapping his pen on the table. "And then?"
"The information would be disseminated to the United Nations anti-terrorist task force, with proper controls and anonymity, of course," Rhee said. "Watcher secrecy would be preserved."
"Tell me, Tribune," Olenskaya asked, "have you discussed this plan with anyone else? Tribune Dawson, perhaps?"
"Since he is in charge of all Watchers and Watcher training, he and I discussed the feasibility of it."
The Central America monitor lit up as Ollie asked, "And just how feasible is it? I do not know any Watchers named James Bond. We are not trained for this, Joseph."
"I'm not saying that field Watchers should go looking for this kind of thing," Joe explained. "But there are some Immortals who are into arms dealing or smuggling. Sometimes, their Watchers hear things. And sometimes our researchers put information together. We can't just do nothing."
"We have shared such information before," Rhee said. "The truckload of bio-bombs this summer, the train derailments last year."
The Keeper added, "There are other precedents. Watchers were involved in the fall of Troy and in the Crusades."
"For?" Hasegawa asked pointedly. "Or against?"
Olenskaya was almost smiling. "The unbelievable arrogance of you Americans. You want the Watchers to become spies for your country."
"Not my country," Joe denied. "The United Nations."
Ibn al Muamar waved that away. "We all know the Americans simply take what they want from the U.N., while giving nothing in return, including their dues."
"Over one and a half billion dollars owed now, isn't it?" Olenskaya asked. "And of course, the United States does not sign international treaties."
Joe plowed on ahead, trying to get the conversation back on track. "Nuclear weapons affect the entire planet. These attacks hurt us all."
"But the U.S. has been a prime target of late," Olenskaya observed.
"Yeah, the U.S. is taking a lot of the hits," Joe said, wondering if Olenskaya hadn't ever gotten the news about the Cold War being over and done. "The U.S. is fighting a lot of this war. The U.S. is the one protecting the shipping lanes, they're keeping—"
"The U.S. is the one destabilizing governments," broke in Ibn al Muamar. "The U.S. is the one who set the Shah on the throne of Iran and ignored his excesses. The U.S. fought the 'Gulf War' to protect its access to oil and to keep other countries from gaining control. The U.S. supported the Taliban in their fight against its enemy the Soviets, and then did nothing for years to protect the people of Afghanistan from the monster it had helped to create, not until the Taliban turned on them." He flipped his pen back and forth, tapping each end on the table. "Panama in 1989, Grenada in 1983, the Nicaraguan Contra affair, Chile …" The pen stopped. "Vietnam." The pen started flipping again. "And there are many more; the list goes back through the years. The United States has created its own dilemma, Tribune Dawson."
That pen was still going click-click-click, and Joe wanted to rip it from Muamar's hand and stick it where the sun didn't shine. Muamar knew damn well that Joe had lost his legs in Vietnam. Tact, Joe reminded himself forcefully. Diplomacy. This was no time to get sucked into an argument. Roll with it and move on. "Look," Joe said, pulling out his earnest aw-shucks kind of charm, "my country's made some mistakes, yeah. I admit that. I know that. What country hasn't? And the U.S. is a big country; sometimes the mistakes have been pretty big, too." Muamar was blinking a little in confusion, and Joe smiled to himself. Nothing like having an opponent publicly agree with you than to bewilder a man.
Joe dropped the charm and spoke earnestly. "But we're not talking about the U.S. We're not talking about war. We're talking about terrorism. We're talking about fringe groups and rogue states and gangs of thugs with guns. And we're talking about the Watchers, about what we Watchers can do to help keep the world safe, for everybody."
"I must ask, Tribune Dawson," said Ibn al Muamar, "exactly who you define these terrorists to be?"
Joe gritted his teeth as he held onto his temper. "You know, the ones who blow up hospitals, airports, pizza parlors, schools?"
"The ones who fly airplanes into buildings," Mary Hammond added, and Joe could tell by the tightness around her jaw that she was gritting her teeth too. "The ones who explode atomic bombs," she continued, getting hotter by the syllable. "The ones who kill women and children—"
"There were women and children in Baghdad in 1990," Muamar said. "And in 2004." 1
"And in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945," Hasegawa said. "Your country was the first to use atomic weapons."
"We were at war!"
He lifted a slim eyebrow at her. "And you are at war now. Your last president declared it a war nearly a decade ago. What did you think? No one on your team would be allowed to die?"
"God damn it—," Joe started, but Rastogi was talking, so Joe shut up, and he was relieved when Mary shut up, too. The council needed to hear from someone who wasn't an American.
"Bombings are horrific and tragic, whatever their scale," Rastogi said, the gentle rise and fall of her Indian accent only underscoring the firmness of her tone. "Still, we must acknowledge that all countries wage war. None is innocent. But violence leads to violence. An aggressive 'war on terrorism' breeds more terror, and terror breeds more terrorists. Witness the decades-long conflicts in Palestine, in Ireland, in the Balkans, in America."
"In Pakistan?" Muamar inquired.
Rastogi bowed her head. "Even so."
The Eastern Europe monitor lit up. "Terrorism strikes at us all," Witkowski said. "It follows no rules, no patterns. It is chaos. We have lived with it—and died with it—for decades. It rips apart the fabric of our lives. It eats at our hearts. The civilized peoples of the world must—"
"Civilized?" Kwame Nkruma, Tribune of Africa, repeated with an air of puzzlement. "Civilized," he said again, this time in disgust. "I am tired," he said, "of this equating of 'industrialized' with 'civilized.' I am tired of being told that I live in 'the third world.' There is but one world, and you do not own it. I am tired of my country being looted for its minerals so that 'first-worlders' may have two computers and three television sets in every home, while my people share one radio in a village. I am tired of my country's trees being logged so that Americans can build expansive decking with hot tubs, while my people live in cardboard shacks with no fires to cook what little food they have. I speak not only to America, but to Europe, Japan, Australia … all you 'civilized peoples.' You have so much, and yet you always want more. And then you are surprised that the other peoples of the world resent you, and you are shocked beyond words that they hate you."
"Those are corporations doing that," Wildorfer objected.
"They are ecological terrorists who profit from their aggression!" Nkruma snapped. "They do not explode bombs, but where they have mined, the land is poisoned. They do not shoot guns, but where they have taken the trees, the soil bleeds out into the seas. They take what they want, and they leave us behind. Our farms are barren. Our wells are dry. The animals have disappeared and the fish are gone. The people die by the thousands, by the millions, and not one of you 'civilized people' cares." His mouth twisted in a bitter grimace, and he waved a hand at the monitors. "And here I sit, wearing synthetic clothes at a plastic table, talking into an electronic box, while my grandfathers hunted lions. There are no lions now."
Kananga said something short and soothing, and Nkruma subsided. "This discussion," Kananga said to everyone, "has drifted out to sea. We are discussing Watcher business here. But first, I must say—Tribune Dawson, Tribune Hammond—we sympathize with you and with all your countrymen, in this time of tragedy. To lose so many, so much … The Watchers—all the Watchers—grieve with you."
"Thank you," Joe said, somewhat stiffly, and Mary Hammond nodded before wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
Kananga leaned back and gave a slight wave of his hand, permitting the discussion to continue. Olenskaya jumped right in. "Indeed, Tribune Dawson, Tribune Hammond, we all agree that such violent acts are terribly destructive. However, that does not mean that everyone agrees with the way in which your country has chosen to stop them, or chosen to try to stop them," she added with a patronizing smile. "The Watchers were not formed to assist the United States in its aggrandizement—or in its aggression."
"The United States is not out to take over the world!" Mary snapped.
"You dominate it," Ibn al Muamar said. "I have no wish to live under a 'Pax Americana.'"
"You prefer war?" Bancroft demanded. "You prefer riots, chaos, blood in the streets? Because that is what we will have, all over the world, if the terrorists are not stopped."
Wildorfer was stroking his mustache with one finger. "Throughout the centuries, the Watchers have always maintained a policy of neutrality in war."
"Like the Swiss bankers?" Sharon Seligman asked venomously. "Like the Pope?"
Ibn al Muamar smiled at her with malignant dismissal. "The Watchers took no stand during World War II."
"And millions upon millions of people died, in the battlefields, in the cities, in the ovens!" Sharon was on her feet, and her voice was raised, too. "We Watchers swear not to interfere in the Game, but this is no game! We have to stop the terrorists!"
"Agreed," Ollie said firmly. "Otherwise, we will have World War III."
"We already do," Joe said, but he didn't think anybody had heard.
Ibn al Muamar was standing, too. "If the Watchers collect information on the military activities of one side in a conflict, then they should collect information on them all. I propose that all information about American military activities be forwarded to their current opponents."
Sharon was standing in front of her desk now. "You can't—"
"And—," Muamar cut in loudly, "I propose that all information about Israeli activities be sent to the Palestinian liberation groups."
Sharon said something to him that sounded particularly nasty, and Joe wanted to bury his head in his hands. He'd been afraid this would happen. Sharon and Muamar couldn't wait to spit on each other's graves. Her fists were clenched, her back was ramrod straight, and she was fighting mad. "The Israeli military," she bit out in precise, bullet-loaded words, "is not a terrorist organization."
"Try living in Palestine as a Palestinian for a few weeks," Ibn al Muamar said coldly. "Maybe the bombs and the raids would give you a different perspective. Uniform or no uniform, a terrorist is still a terrorist. I believe the Irish and the British came to that conclusion about each other some time ago, eh, Tribune Bancroft?"
"It's not the same."
"It never is. But what one side calls a terrorist or a rebel, the other side calls a freedom fighter or a patriot. The lines are not always clear." He shrugged magnanimously then grew serious. "But one thing is clear to me, and should be very clear to all of you. If the Watchers vote to do this thing, then Watchers will also be collecting information to eliminate all terrorists, both the ones in uniform who are already sponsored by their homelands, and the ones who have no uniforms and no homeland—yet—to sponsor them."
The silence was broken by the slap of Olenskaya's hands on the table. "This," she said, "is why the Watchers are neutral. This is why we observe, we record, and we never interfere."
"That is when we watch Immortals!" Ollie said.
"And that is a Watcher's job," Hasegawa stated. "That is our purpose, our only purpose. I do not think that the Watchers, as an organization, should gather or supply information. However, each of us is still a citizen of a country. A Watcher oath does not preclude us from serving our countries as we see fit."
"But can we serve both?" Wildorfer asked, two fingers on his mustache now. He seemed genuinely curious, even if in an abstract sort of way, reminding Joe of a math professor he'd known years ago. "We have Watchers in many countries' armed forces now, do we not, Tribune Dawson?"
"We do."
"If a Watcher-soldier knows his country is planning to attack a city, and he knows that other Watchers are in that city, should he warn them and in so doing, break his country's secrecy?"
"That would be treason," Sharon said immediately, and Joe had the same gut response.
"Then he should say nothing and let them die?" Wildorfer probed. "He should participate in the attack? Kill a fellow Watcher?"
"He should—," Sharon began, but then she fell silent, and in the matrix of monitors, the Watchers watched each other, saying nothing.
Kananga, First Tribune of the Watchers, had the last word. "We are Watchers," he proclaimed. "We watch Immortals. We observe and we record. I, too, am sickened by the bloodshed. I, too, wish to see peace in this world. But what you propose, Tribune Rhee, would splinter the Watchers and shatter our brotherhood, as we have seen here today."
The proposal was defeated, by a vote of nine to five.
~~~~~
Joe headed for home right after the meeting. The streets seemed quiet; a lot of TV sets were on. Joe could see blue flickers in almost every window. His wife met him at the door with a hug that lasted a lot longer than usual, and still wasn't long enough. "Hey," he said finally, reaching up a hand to fix her hair, so that the short brown curl went in instead of out. "I love you, Emory."
Her smile was beautiful, even though he could tell by the redness around her eyes that she'd been crying earlier. "I love you, too, Joe."
"The kids asleep?" he asked, still holding on to her.
"Mm-hmm, about an hour ago." They went into the living room, hand in hand, and sat on the couch. "How did it go?" Emory asked right away, because he'd told her about the meeting when he'd called a few hours ago.
Joe couldn't manage even an ironic smile. "They voted it down. Once Kananga said no, that was the end of it. He said it would splinter the Watchers, and he's right, I can see that, but … Jesus, Em. Something's got to stop this." She held his hand and nodded, but didn't say anything, not right now. Em was good at listening when she knew he needed to talk. "I can see why they voted that way," Joe said, "but at the meeting it was like 'beat up on America' day. Olenskaya, Hasegawa, Muamar—they were all taking shots. Like the bomb wasn't enough." Joe shook his head, still surprised by the intensity the others had shown. "They seemed so angry at us, so glad to see us down."
"That's probably part of it," Emory said. "But they're also frightened that it might happen to them."
"So am I," Joe said grimly. He got to his feet. "Come on. I need to see the kids."
Ian was sound asleep, lying on his side with his thumb half in his mouth. Haylie lay sprawled on her back, arms and legs every which way, taking up the whole bed. "She's getting so tall," Joe said in amazement. It was like he hadn't looked at her in months.
"She's almost six," Emory said. "And Ian just turned four." Emory slipped her arm around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. "What kind of world are we giving our children, Joe?"
"I don't know, Em," Joe said, wishing to God he had a better answer. But Methos had said he would visit right after Christmas, and Joe was hoping to get some tips from the old man.
"Let's
go to bed,
Joe," Emory said. "I'm cold." He could feel her
shivering, or maybe it was trembling. Joe kissed his children
goodnight then
tucked them in carefully and kissed them goodnight again.
Once in bed
with Emory, he wrapped his arms around her, trying to keep her
warm—and
hoping desperately to keep her safe, even when he knew that nowhere was
safe,
not anymore.
METHOS
======================
December 2010
The
Dawson
Home, France
======================
"Methos!" Joe exclaimed, opening wide the door to his home.
"What a great surprise! We weren't expecting you until next
week." He turned around and called, "Hey, Em! Guess
who's
here?"
Methos set his suitcase down next to the door and found himself enveloped in Joe's arms. The man had a powerful hug. Methos returned it, with a thump on the back for good measure, then took off his coat and rubbed his hands together for warmth. Paris in the middle of December wasn't as frigid as Berlin, but it was still bloody cold. "Amanda had a sudden change of plans," Methos said, but it wasn't much of an explanation for either him or for Joe. Methos was still curious about what she had gotten in the mail that had made her pick up and leave the next day, but Amanda hadn't been talking, no matter what Methos had tried.
"She does that," Joe said. "She sure is something, isn't she?" he added with a wink.
Methos checked to make sure Joe's wife wasn't in sight—or earshot—yet, then winked back and said, "You should know."
Joe cleared his throat and dropped the subject. He hung up Methos's coat in the closet, then turned to smile at his wife, who was skipping down the hall, holding hands with a child on either side.
"Dadam! Dadam!" called the little boy, and he let go of her mother's hand and abandoned skipping for running. His sister ran too, her ridiculously—and endearingly—short brown pigtails flopping up and down with each stride. The children flung themselves at Methos's knees. "Dadam! You're here!" repeated the boy.
"Ian!" Methos replied. "Ian, you're here!" He scooped the child into his arms, then turned him upside down. Ian shrieked in glee and shrieked again when Methos pretended to drop him. Haylie was shrieking, too, and jumping up and down. Methos carried Ian into the living room and then really did drop him, bouncing him on the couch. Then he grabbed Haylie and did the same to her. "And now you're there!" he told them. The kids giggled and rolled off the couch onto the floor, then kept rolling until they almost bumped into the stacks of presents under the Christmas tree.
Methos turned to greet the mother, who had been waiting with her toe tapping this whole time. "Emory," he said, with a kiss on the cheek and an embrace, warm and affectionate, but not nearly so vigorous as Joe's.
"It's good to see you again, Adam," Emory said. "I'm glad you're here."
"Me, too," Methos said, holding onto her for just a moment more, noting with approval the new hairstyle of short brown curls that framed but didn't overwhelm her delicate features, the dark blue of a cotton sweater that accented the blue in her uniquely blue-green-gray eyes, the gray wool slacks instead of baggy, ripped jeans. Quite a difference between this confident, lovely woman and the shy, self-effacing girl of twenty-four he'd first met ten years ago. She'd grown up, in a lot of ways, and it was good to see. "You're beautiful," he told her, and Emory flushed slightly and half-opened her mouth as if to argue with him. That would never change, Methos was sure, and he was glad of that, too. But that didn't mean he wanted to listen to it right now.
"You're a lucky man, Joe," Methos said cheerfully, letting go of Emory and turning to his friend, who had also changed since Methos had first met him over twenty years ago. Joe's hair was pure white now, instead of black only lightly sprinkled with gray. He was going to be sixty-three this May.
"And don't I know it," Joe answered, and he and Emory smiled at each and would have kept smiling at each other had not Haylie and Ian intervened.
"Drop us again, Adam!" she demanded, jumping up and down on the couch. "Drop us again!"
"No jumping on the furniture, Haylie," Emory commanded. "You too, Ian."
Haylie and Ian obligingly jumped off, only to start jumping up and down on the floor. "Drop me again, Dadam!" Ian said. "Drop me again!"
"Hey, sit down," Joe invited with a wave of his hand. "Can I get you a beer?"
"Later," Methos said. "First, I need to teach these little monsters a thing or two." Haylie shrieked and started to giggle as Methos picked her up and dropped her. Then he dropped Ian, and then he dropped them both again.
After dinner came the children's bedtime. Methos assisted in the ritual of bathing, bed-time storying, teeth-brushing, and some more exuberant "drop-me-agains" for Haylie and Ian. When the children were tucked in their beds, Joe and Methos sat down in the living room with their beers. Emory had hot chocolate. That hadn't changed, either.
"How do you like being in a band, Adam?" Emory asked.
"It's good. Three years and they haven't found a different drummer to march to yet, so I guess they like me all right, too." Especially when Amanda had offered to sing with them. Attendance at their gigs had gone up steadily these last four months. "We have fun."
"We should play sometime while you're here," Joe said. "I know a couple of guys; we get together on the weekends, nothing too demanding, just some fun."
"I'd like that," Methos said, glad to get this chance to play with his old friend. "It's good to see work isn't taking up all of your time."
"I'll always have time for the blues."
Wouldn't they all, Methos thought. He turned to Emory. "You're about done with college, aren't you, Emory?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed, one clenched fist raised in triumph. "Only one more class and then I start on my dissertation! It's taken me years because of the kids, but Ian starts school fulltime next year, so I can do school fulltime, too."
"Doctor Emory," Methos said with approval.
"I like the sound of that!" Joe said, lifting his beer in salute, and Emory nearly blushed but looked pleased.
"I don't know that you need the title, though," Methos teased. "You already seem to know how to read people's minds."
Emory rolled her eyes and laughed. "I don't want to read their minds," she complained. "I want change their minds."
"Or make their minds give you change?"
"I want a heck of a lot more than change," Emory retorted. "I'm not even licensed yet, and I'm already afraid to tell people what I'm studying! The last time I told someone I was studying psychology, the guy started telling me all about his dreams and asking if I knew any good hypno-therapists. Only it took another five minutes for me to understand 'hypno-therapist' because they aren't called that in French!" Emory crossed her arms and looked disgusted. "Sometimes I don't know if I should be studying for a degree, or if I should just buy a rattle and an African mask."
Methos half-opened his mouth as the vision of a fetchingly-clad Emory—dressed solely in a scanty grass skirt and a necklace of beads and shells, plus the afore-mentioned mask and rattle, and with black lightning bolts painted on her cheeks—came to his mind. But he decided not to mention this in front of Joe and instead asked, "Are you going to be licensed in the U.S. or in France?"
Emory looked at Joe before answering, and from the set of Joe's jaw, Methos sensed an unfinished "discussion" between the two. "I was looking into the U.S. license," she said, "but now …"
"I was going to give up my seat on the council when my six-year term was up," Joe explained. "Move back home, then go into research or teaching until I retire, something that wouldn't take so much time. I've given over forty years of my life to the Watchers; I wanted to give the next forty to Em. We were going to raise the kids on hot dogs and baseball instead of on brioche and 'le football.' But what with the war—" He broke off, rolling the beer bottle between his hands and staring at the junction of the floor and the wall. "I'm no good as a soldier, but this war is being fought with intelligence, too. I can do more to stop the terrorists as a Tribune of the Watchers than I could on my own. We all have to do something," he said, with the angry guilt of a survivor. "All those people …"
Over half a million dead at last count (the initial estimates had been overblown, thankfully, but it was still sickeningly high), and nothing to be done for any of them. There was plenty of work to be done, though, and there'd be plenty of sick people in the years to come. Methos suspected he'd be hearing about the clean-up for the next century or so. Nagasaki and Hiroshima had taken decades.
"Goddamn religious fanatics," Joe muttered. "Fucking terrorists. Cowards, the lot of them." He picked up his cane and headed to the bathroom down the hall.
Emory watched Joe until he disappeared from sight. "I guess this sounds stupid to you, Adam," she said, "but I never believed anything like this could happen to America, even after what happened to the Towers nine years ago. I mean, I never dreamed I would wake up one morning and find out that our greatest American symbols would be gone. We lost the national monuments, the Smithsonian, the Capitol, the White House … to say nothing of all the people who were killed." Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "How can people do such things?"
I killed ten thousand, Methos didn't say. There was nothing he could do for any of them, either. He took a long pull on his beer and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Emory was watching him. "I don't think it sounds stupid," he told her. "No one ever expects their world to change."
"But it always does."
"Yeah," he agreed. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Long ago, he'd thought he could make a difference in the great scheme of things. He'd worked for kings and princes, helped build empires and temples, written treaties, planned mighty aqueducts and canals. Everything he'd done had crumbled to dust, and everything he'd been a part of had been forgotten or destroyed.
"My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Shelley had gotten the tone right, even if his facts had been wrong. Methos and Emory sat in silence until Joe returned. "How're the Watchers doing, Joe?" Methos asked, choosing a safer topic of discussion.
"Eh, you know," Joe answered, calmer now. "Recruits are hard to find, department squabbles, Research thinks they're more important than field Watchers, field Watchers think Research exists only to hand them information, paperwork, admin, insurance … the usual hassles. Now I know why Emile was always bitching about being on the Tribunal Council."
"Tribune Dawson," Methos said with admiration, leaning back and shaking his head. "Tribune of the Guild."
Joe shrugged in embarrassment. "That's been the title for seven hundred years. Tradition, you know."
"Oh, I know," Methos said tellingly. He reached for his beer and took a welcome swallow. A man needed a drink to tell a proper tale. "I knew a Roman tribune once, fellow by the name of Marcus. Great chariot racer, but he died of dyspepsia after downing too many spiced hummingbird tongues."
"Hummingbird tongues?" Joe shook his head dolefully. "A terrible waste of Trochilidae. Such a beautiful bird." He leaned forward, ingenuously curious. "Tell me … would that be the North American hummingbird, or the South American hummingbird?"
"Damn," Methos swore. Joe's eyes held a feral gleam of satisfaction, and Methos had to laugh. "Your personnel file does not mention ornithology."
"That's because my Great Aunt Tildy was the ornithologist,
back in the Windy
Emory was grinning from ear to ear. "Fibber," she proclaimed. "I'm not going to trust any of your stories from now on."
Methos toasted her with his beer. "Wise woman. I don't trust my stories, either."
"Guess I'd better go recheck the chronicles," Joe said. "More work to do. At least you Immortals are easier to keep track of now, with photographs and computers and IDs and all."
Methos nodded. He'd noticed the same thing. Time to disappear completely, if he still could. "And the geneticist recruiting?"
"Good, but still too slow. Thirty-five years since that program started, and we just can't keep up. The Guard is trying set a Watcher in every gene-bank in the world, to change the records on Immortals or to stop police from identifying people who use swords, but people keep building more databases, even in places like Katmandu."
So much for his idea of going to Nepal. Maybe the Andes would work. Or maybe the Ukraine. He hadn't been a farmer in years, and with gasoline and machine parts so scarce—and going to be a lot scarcer soon—the people there needed help in the old ways, and Methos remembered lots of those. A couple of decades of farming might be just the thing … disappear from view, work with his hands, be useful to a community … He needed that. Maybe he'd get married again. Everybody else was doing it: Joe and Emory, both the MacLeods, Elena Duran with her Lorenzo …
"Our job of keeping track of Immortals hasn't changed," Joe was saying, "but with the war on terrorists getting so ugly, I was hoping we could help there."
Methos should have known they'd be back to that topic. Everyone was talking about it.
Joe leaned forward, his elbows braced on his thighs. "Right after the bomb, Rhee and I put together a proposal to collect information all across the globe, but the council voted it down. They said it would splinter the Watchers."
"It would."
"I know." His snort was almost a laugh. "Ibn al Muamar said if we did that, the Watchers would have to work against the American 'terrorists,' too." Joe's earnestness was almost a plea. "We're just defending ourselves."
Methos had heard the same reasoning countless times over the centuries, with lots of pretty names: lebensraum, freedom, protecting our interests, homeland uber alles. The reasons came from both sides, and both sides believed they were right. Both sides died.
Emory's fingers were picking at the corner of the pillow she held in her lap, and she wasn't looking at Joe anymore. Methos figured this was another "discussion" she and Joe had had. Maybe it was time for him to join in. "Twenty-five hundred years ago, when I was in Athens," Methos said casually, and Joe—ever the Watcher—perked up his ears. Good. Maybe he'd actually listen. Methos continued, "I heard Socrates say: 'One should never do wrong in return, nor injure any man, whatever injury one has suffered at his hands.'"
"So what are we supposed to do?" Joe demanded. "Nothing?"
"He didn't say do nothing, Joe," Methos said mildly. "He said, 'Don't do wrong in return.' Violence isn't the only response to violence."
"Turn the other cheek?" Emory put in, quoting another famous man.
Her husband wasn't buying it. "Yeah, well … sometimes you gotta fight. I saw that often enough when I was watching MacLeod."
Too often, Methos thought, but Joe was right. Sometimes, you did have to fight. The problem was, too many people liked to. "Maybe Muamar's suggestion wasn't all that far off."
"What do you mean?" Emory asked.
"Maybe stopping everybody from fighting is the answer."
Joe snorted again. "Like that will ever happen."
True enough, Methos thought, finishing off his beer. World peace was never a likely proposition, and especially not now. The death throes of the wounded giant would affect the entire globe. Time to disappear—and fast.
~~~~~
Methos said goodbye to Joe and Emory the day after Christmas. "You're really going, aren't you?" Emory said. "For good."
Methos looked out the window to the small garden behind the house. A sparrow was hopping along a trellis festooned with dry brown leaves. "Too many Watchers know about me, Emory. And in the current political climate, governments don't take kindly to secret multi-national organizations that have hidden agendas." They wouldn't take kindly to Immortals running around and chopping heads off, either.
Joe was nodding, looking grim. "We know," he said. "We're taking precautions."
"Do me a favor?" Methos asked. "Erase my pictures from all the Chronicles and the Watcher records, including old in-house newsletters."
"I'll try. We've already started removing all the pictures from the Chronicles," Joe said. "We're going to keep them stashed, but even I don't know where."
"Good." He hugged Emory and kissed her on the cheek, then got a solid hug from Joe. "I'll be in touch," Methos promised. "But don't look for me."
SONG OF THE EXECUTIONER
Winter 2011
Scotland
======================
For her children's sake,
Alex had tried to salvage
something of the holiday season of 2010, but it was hard.
"The U.S.
is calling its citizens home, Alex," Connor had said the week before
Christmas. "Do you want to go?"
She did, but— "My home is with you," she'd told her husband, a decision she had made when she had decided to marry an Immortal years ago. They might have to pick up and move at any time. But the Game wasn't the only thing to worry about now. "Peace on Earth" had never seemed so remote, and the new year wasn't much better than the old.
"Bombing!" the newscasters announced. The locations varied: Palestine, Ireland, Sierra Leone, Japan, San Francisco … anywhere. When the stock markets finally reopened in the first week of January, economies collapsed and entire fortunes disappeared. Methos disappeared, too. Demiko reported that the Watchers had lost sight of him somewhere in Prague. "Hardly a surprise," Cass said, even as her fingers tapped a frustrated tattoo. "Methos always was a survivor, and disappearing in times of trouble is not a bad idea."
Times of trouble indeed. Her native country a war-zone, half a million people dead, the entire planet erupting in riots and unrest … Alex found herself biting into her lip again, and she clamped her teeth together to stop it. "What's going to happen, Cass?"
"Nothing that wouldn't have happened anyway. Disruption of trade, social upheaval, shifting of national boundaries, wars, the collapse of the global economy. Things will simply move faster or in different directions than before."
Alex stared. "You mean the bomb won't make a difference?"
"In the long run?" Cass said, though Alex knew that Cass always looked at "the long run" of things. She could afford to. "Not really. And in the short run, the U.S. will survive this. They're holding elections next month, and they've already starting building a new capitol. They may emerge even stronger, although more paranoid. That will need watching."
"You mean influencing," Alex said, and when Cass nodded Alex asked, "With the Voice?"
"If need be. The U.S. can still do great damage, either by what they do or what they choose not to do. We don't have the time or the resources to completely rebuild, though the coming global depression should make it easier to convince people that extreme capitalism isn't a good way to run the world. Once the so-called 'cheap' energy is gone and our industries collapse, that's when the true dark ages will begin."
"Like after the fall of Rome."
"Yes, but worse. We've lost so much knowledge in the last few hundred years. We've forgotten what it's like to live by firelight."
Cass left the next day on a flight for New York City, where the Republican convention was going to be held. A week later, she was in Kansas City with the Democrats. She came back after the new Congress had been sworn in. "They're perhaps too isolationist," she reported, "but I don't think the majority of this Congress will support an all-out war, not yet. They're still bleeding from the last one. It would be different if they knew who to blame."
Not knowing was harder, like being swarmed by mosquitoes and not knowing which way to turn. The latest reports said the bomb (an old Soviet model from the Cold War) had been set in a basement and detonated by remote control. Any one of a dozen groups could have done it; any one of two or three hundred would have wanted to. For now, the U.S. seemed to be licking its wounds and biding its time.
Alex was relieved. There were enough wars already. Their little corner of the world seemed to be holding on (except for steadily rising prices and shortages), but Connor put in greenhouses in their Edinburgh home and at the farm, and made plans to plant potatoes, wheat, and barley in the spring instead of letting the fields go to grass. Duncan emailed from New Zealand to say he was teaching his children wilderness survival skills and how to pluck chickens and butcher hogs, and from the gleam in Connor's eyes, Alex suspected her family would soon learn the same. Cass added "classes on age-old traditions" to the list of things for Phinyx to do.
The headlines painted stark pictures in black and white.
- Cannibalistic Cult Cites Scripture as Justification
- U.S.
Closes
Borders, Navy to Patrol Domestic Waters
- Global Warming Causes Blizzards, Heat Waves
- Attwater Prairie Chicken Extinct
- China
Annexes
Taiwan
- Cod Catch Plummets: Goodbye Fish and Chips
- Piracy Increases on High Seas
- Hypercane Gloria Sweeps New Orleans
Out to Sea, 250000 Dead
- Food Riots in Buenos Aires,
Water Wars in Peru
World-wide depression, inflation, trade disruption, food shortages, food contamination, internet sabotage, droughts, floods, fires, fuel shortages, bank failures, riots, wars …
Plague.
"I want to find cures for disease instead of developing birth control," Grace announced in her Edinburgh hotel room. She was in town for a medical convention, and she'd asked Alex and Cass to meet her.
"Ah," Cass said, a wordless sound that held no surprise. She poured wine for them all at the small table in the corner of the room. "You've done excellent work these last four years. We'll be very sorry to see you go. Can you recommend someone to take your place at the Phinyx medical center?"
"I didn't say I wanted to leave," Grace said, pushing her dark hair from her forehead with a quick hand. "The center could do disease research, too."
Alex and Cass exchanged glances, for they had discussed this a few months before. "The Phinyx Foundation funds research on birth control," Alex said.
"But not on death control?" Grace challenged. "Influenza killed nearly a million last year, tuberculosis another five. The plague in Palestine has spread to four countries now. Forty-seven million people have AIDS. If we don't cure those diseases, do you know how many people will die?"
"All of them," Cass said bluntly. "Even if those diseases are cured, all of them will die. Every single one."
Herself included, Alex knew. If not from disease, then from old age. Death was not an option for people like her; it was simply a matter of when and how. She picked up her wine glass and studied the rim, listening to the Immortals talk about how other people died.
"Have you seen someone die of AIDS?" Grace demanded.
"Yes," Cass replied. "Have you seen someone die of starvation?"
"Yes."
"Have you seen thousands die of starvation? Entire villages emptied, entire countrysides stripped of food, even to the blades of grass?"
Grace's dark eyes were bleak with memory. "Yes."
Cass wasn't finished yet. "Have you seen people kill for a handful of grain? Seen them dig up frozen feces for food? Have you seen them eat each other? Eat their parents? Eat their children?"
This time Grace looked away. "Yes," she finally answered.
Alex wondered just how old those memories were. Grace was not quite seven hundred; was she remembering the Black Death or the Hundred Years War? Or perhaps something much more recent? Or perhaps something happening right now. Parts of Africa hadn't seen rain in three years, and a fungus had destroyed the rice crop (all one genetically identical strain) in Indonesia. The Irish potato famine couldn't even begin to compare.
"Other people are already working on disease," Cass said. "Hardly anyone is working on birth control. Can you guarantee that you would be able to find any cures?"
"No," Grace admitted. "But they may not either. More people mean more chances."
"More people mean more deaths." Cass leaned forward, and Alex recognized what she had long-ago dubbed, "Cass's lecture mode." It wasn't hard to pick out; Cass used it often enough on her. "In 1960, there were three billion people on the Earth," Cass said. "In 2000, there were six billion. Assuming that growth rate stays constant, what will the population be in the year 2120?"
When Alex had researched this topic, she'd had to look up the rules on geometric growth. There would be time enough for three doublings in one hundred twenty years. Double the initial number, then double the resulting number, then double the next number yet again: 3, 6, 12 … The numbers marched on.
"Forty-eight billion," Grace answered right away; no doubt all her work with bacteria in petri dishes helped. "But the growth rate isn't constant," she objected. "We won't reach that number. They're projecting a leveling off at ten or twelve billion by the end of the century."
"Twelve billion, or even ten billion, is too many for this planet to sustain," Alex said, for she had done research on this as well. "It's true that hunger has been reduced in some areas that have returned to organic farming, and the people who've switched from growing all 'cash crops' for export to growing their own food are doing better, even when they live on farms only a few acres in size. But they still need those few acres, and the earth isn't getting any bigger."
"In a closed system, infinite growth—even so-called 'sustainable growth'—is an impossibility," Cass said. "In any system, uncontrolled growth is cancer. That's what we humans have become."
Grace's mouth twisted. "Not a pleasant analogy."
"You're right," Alex agreed. "But we've already pushed out or eliminated thousands of other species, and unless we restrict our population growth to zero, eventually we will destroy nearly everything else on this planet: the animals, the plants, the fish in the sea." She decided not to mention Harrison Brown's description of overpopulation: the earth covered completely with a writhing mass of human beings, much as a dead cow is covered with a pulsating mass of maggots.
"We're scraping the living flesh off this planet, strip by bloody strip," Cass said, "and people need more than just food. When we burn fuel, we add carbon dioxide to the air. When we mine or cut timber, we leave open, ulcerating wounds. Infection and gangrene have already set in. We are making the earth into a desert, and those few humans who do survive will find it desolate … and lonely."
"The earth will recover," Grace said.
"Yes, she will. But I don't think even we Immortals will live to see it. I knew Babylon when it was surrounded by endless fields of barley," Cassandra said, with her usual penchant for painting a picture with words. "I saw the seas gleaming silver with fish. I heard the rushing of thousands of wings. My hands touched the cedars of Lebanon and the groves of Delphi. Now the seas are empty, the skies are silent, and those places are barren rock and blowing sand, as they have been for hundreds of years."
"We're facing mass extinction on a global scale," Alex said. "For the earth to fully recover will take an entire new cycle of evolution, millions of years."
"I have dreamed," Cassandra said, her words slow, her eyes unfocused, and Alex shuddered when she saw the "prophecy mode" coming on. "The hunger of all those people will skin the earth alive," Cassandra went on, with an eerie sing-song tone. "When she is a carcass picked clean to dry bones, almost all of those billions of people—and the billions of other creatures of this world—will starve to death."
Alex set down her glass, careful to hide the tremors in her hands. She hated to hear Cassandra prophesy. Grace stood abruptly, then went to the window and looked out to the lights of the city. From her seat at the table, Alex could see the dark sweeping curve of the water beyond, lit here and there by the tiny lights of boats.
"The pang of famine fed upon all entrails," Grace said slowly. "Men died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, Even dogs assail'd their masters."
Alex recognized Byron's words. He was better at poetry than Cass. One of the lights on the harbor winked out, and then another and then a third. The lights of the city gleamed on, but the darkness stretched forever, into the night sky, to the planets, the entire universe.
Grace wrapped her arms around herself and turned from the window with a shiver, then came back to the table and sat down. "So that's why you want Phinyx to fund birth control, not death control."
"In the long run," Cass said quietly, "birth control is death control."
~~~~~
But birth control by itself wasn't enough. "We need to move faster, Alex," Cass said as she and Alex walked in the field behind the farmhouse, huddling into their coats against the brisk wind and squinting against the glare of a low afternoon sun. Spring had officially started last week, but it hadn't arrived in the Highlands yet.
"I know," Alex agreed. "The bomb in D.C., the terrorist war, the plague zones, the fuel riots in Berlin …"
"Yes, it's bad and getting worse, but humans have always been like that. If it were only us …" She shook her head. "But it's not. The last cheetah died a month ago, and half the Mediterranean is empty of fish. Even before the bomb, the oysters were gone from the Chesapeake Bay. Frogs are disappearing all over the world, the coral reefs are dying, and the trees are being slaughtered." They opened the gate in the fence, went through, and latched it behind them before starting up the hill. "I had hoped we could be cautious and slow, but we're running out of time."
Alex nodded. She knew that feeling well. She'd started dyeing her hair this last year, to hide the white and the gray. She hadn't mentioned that to Connor, though he'd been dyeing his hair for years. But he was using gray so he could look older, while Alex was trying to stay young.
Cassandra looked about thirty-five. Cassandra would always look about thirty five, and her hair—and her beauty—would never fade. "Schools are the key," Cass was saying, as she had said many times before, and Alex pushed all thoughts of aging aside, as she had done many times before. Though the thoughts seemed to come more often these days, and they were harder to ignore.
"We need to train the next generation and then send them out to train more," Cass said to her.
"We've got one school under construction, and three more planned," Alex replied, summoning an interested tone. "Plus Ceirdwyn has eleven pre-Immortals at her ranch in Canada now."
"It's a start," Cass agreed, "but we need more. There is power in numbers."
And in information. "Heard from Demiko lately?"
"Methos is still missing. Demiko says some people are still arguing about whether Watchers should do more than just watch, but the council issued a strongly-worded non-intervention directive, so their official policy is clear. Dawson has said he wants another six-year term on the Watcher Council, and he's ordered the Guild to start five new academies. There'll be one on every continent instead of only in Europe and India."
"You don't sound pleased."
"As you told me before, keeping secrets isn't easy," Cass said. "We don't need them training more Watchers; they have too many already. If the secret gets out … " She shuddered. "I have no wish to spend hundreds of years in a cage, or being sent on fatal missions, or being experimented on. I suppose they might just decide to behead us all, but I'd rather not have that happen, either."
"Demiko's taken your pictures out of the chronicles, hasn't she?"
"Yes, and Connor's pictures, as you asked. She was going to do the same for Duncan, but pictures of him were already gone."
"Joe Dawson's been busy."
"No doubt. The photo files went into secret storage last month. We need to find out where; I want that cache destroyed. But even without photos, once people know what to look for, a simple scratch test will give us away." She tightened her scarf. "It's bad enough being wary of every Immortal I meet; I don't want to have to be cautious of all the mortals, too."
Alex didn't want Connor and Duncan to have to live that way, either, never having anyone to trust, or possibly spending centuries in a cell. "We could eliminate the Watchers."
Cass shot her a glance but kept climbing. The two of them made their way steadily up the hill. "We could," Cass agreed finally, "but it would be difficult. And they do have their uses."
"Risk versus gain," Alex reminded her.
"I know." Cass tightened her scarf again. "Let's think about it for a while."
"All right," Alex agreed, biding her time but planning on bringing it up again soon. Even though she liked Joe Dawson, she despised the organization he worked for, and she detested being spied on. And as the bomb had proved, none of this was a game. If the Watchers were found out, her husband would be, too, and her children might be targeted as well. Alex wasn't playing around anymore. "Anything else from Demiko?" Alex asked.
"Not much. Oh, she said she likes Joe's wife, Emory. They invited Demiko to their house for dinner a few weeks ago."
"I like Emory, too," Alex said. "We had a good time at Duncan's wedding."
"Yes, she and I talked about babies at the reception; she was pregnant at the time. We should keep in touch with her; we need more therapists, and she should be finishing her schooling soon. Would you mind seeing to it? I would, but I don't think Dawson would care to have me spending time with his wife."
"Probably not," Alex agreed, and put "keeping in touch with Emory" on her lengthy list of things to do. They reached the top of the small rise then stopped at the tumble of gray boulders, patched white and lighter gray with lichen here and there, then moved between two of the larger rocks to shelter from the wind. "Phinyx is going to take a long time, Cass," Alex warned. "And it won't be easy."
"I know," Cass replied. "But it needs to be done, and soon. We've drifted too long."
Alex looked across the shining ribbon of the loch to the ancient hills beyond, thinking of the billions of lives that had been—and were being—stunted, crippled, and slaughtered by the juggernaut of society that humans had created for themselves. "O brave new world," she quoted softly from Shakespeare, "that has such people in it."
Cass came back with the first part of Miranda's line in The Tempest: "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!"
"'Tis old to thee," Alex misquoted, for Cass's voice—that exquisitely trained Voice—had dripped bitter sarcasm into a larger wellspring of hope. "Are we taking on too much, Cass?" Alex asked suddenly. "Should we even try?" She looked from those ancient time-worn peaks to her ancient friend. "What gives us the right to think we can change the world?"
"We have as much right as anyone else, Alex. We exist." She pushed her mirrored sunglasses farther up on the bridge of her nose. "And also, I don't think we have much choice about it anymore, not if we want to keep existing. Things have got to change, and soon, or the Earth won't be a home for us anymore."
Alex nodded and leaned her back against the stone, feeling the hard coldness of it even through her coat. "So, what's next?"
"I'm going to start a religion." The sunshine reflected off the polished mirrors covering Cassandra's eyes, a blinding glare. "It shouldn't take long. The seeds are already sown."
|
CHAPTER 4 (World population: 7.28 billion) |
SO SHALL YOU REAP
Edinburgh,
Scotland
======================
"Are you certain this is the right address?" Jennifer asked,
peering out the dirty window of the cab at the three-story brick
building
painted in swirls of white and blue, an anomaly in this city of gray
stone. A large sign over the front doors proclaimed it to be
the "
"It's the address you gave me," the driver replied, sounding bored.
Jennifer had just opened her handbag to hunt for the paper with the address so she could check when Cassandra appeared at the front door of the building and waved. By the time Jennifer had paid the driver (an enormous amount—the prices of things these days!), Cassandra was opening the car door. "I thought you said this was a women's shelter," Jennifer said, climbing out of the cab.
"It is," Cassandra said with a smile, and just at that moment two women with babies in prams came by, said "Good morning, Cathy," and pushed the prams up the ramp to go inside.
"Cathy?" Jennifer questioned.
"I'm going by Cathy Pelton now," Cassandra explained. "I'd been Sandra Grant for nearly twenty years."
"Yes, of course," Jennifer murmured. She should have realized.
"Come on in!" Cassandra urged with a shiver, and Jennifer belatedly saw that Cassandra hadn't put on a coat to come outside; she was wearing one of those new-fashioned flowing tunics in a collage of colors, mostly green and white with silver circles overtop it all, and a belt of silver circlets, too. Jennifer didn't mind the style so much on the women, but the men were starting to wear them, and the ones who weren't in tunics were in kilts. Business men, too, not just the younger set. And the capes! Everybody seemed to be wearing capes these days, ever since that movie about Boudicca came out last year. They were rainbow colored, too. Well, at least clothes were some spot of brightness in people's lives.
Jennifer followed Cassandra to the door then held onto the railing as she went up the stairs, just in case of ice. She wasn't reduced to needing ramps, not yet. "Are those two women here for counseling, or for classes on infant care?" Jennifer asked.
"Counseling sessions are usually in the afternoon, though we take emergency cases at any time. Infant-care class is tomorrow morning, and they'll be back then," Cassandra said as she opened the left-hand door, which was painted (Jennifer couldn't help but notice) with one-half of the earth as seen from space, a black background with more swirls of white and blue, and then a gold bar near the bottom sticking down and to the left. The right door held the other half of the globe, along with the top of the tilted gold axis pole. In the center of the large square entry hall was a shallow pool with a trickling fountain, and a fifteen-foot high painting of a tree on each of the side walls. Beyond the pool stood another pair of large doors. Those were decorated with a large yellow sun and an equally large silver moon.
"The toddler play-group is on Friday morning," Cassandra continued, shutting the earth-door behind them and coming all the way in. "The teens are here nearly every afternoon, and sometimes in the evenings when there's a football game to watch—their fathers come then, too—and of course the young people show up for the weekly Saturday night dance. But Mairie and Michelle are here for belly-dancing classes this morning. That's very popular with new mothers."
Jennifer stopped. "The sign outside said this was a church."
Cassandra smiled again. "It is."
It certainly didn't seem anything like the quiet respectable church Jennifer had attended all her days. She switched to something easier, giving herself some time. "You're looking wonderful, Cassandra," she said, and it was true. Cassandra had continued to let her hair grow, and it was down to her waist, gathered in a loose braid. She seemed relaxed and confident; at ease with her body and herself, not at all the stiffly held and emotionally disturbed woman Jennifer had met sixteen years ago. "Those are lovely earrings," Jennifer said. The concentric hoops of silver slowly twirled inside each other, and Jennifer noticed that they matched the silver circles of the belt. Her necklace was a silver circle, too, with a tilted bar dividing it in half. The earth's axis again, Jennifer realized. Or maybe the Greek letter phi. "And a lovely outfit."
"Thank you! Alex bought me both the outfit and the earrings for my birthday last year."
"Your birthday? When is that?"
"I have no idea," she admitted cheerfully. "But Alex pointed out that I must have had one, and years ago she told me to pick a day and we would celebrate. So, I picked the next Saturday, March third, and ever since then, she's remembered."
"Alex is very considerate, isn't she?"
"Oh yes," Cassandra agreed. "She's a wonderful friend."
"I'm glad I got to finally meet her," Jennifer said. "Even if …" She shook her head and shrugged helplessly. "There are so many MacLeods in Edinburgh that it never even occurred to me that 'the MacLeod fellow' my husband had met was the Connor MacLeod you know—I thought Connor was in the Highlands—so Tom and I went off to the New Year's Eve party, and then …"
And then Jennifer had chatted away happily with "Mrs. MacLeod," until she'd seen Cassandra across the room and abruptly realized just whose house it was. Jennifer couldn't deny that it had been fascinating to finally meet some of the people she knew from Cassandra's descriptions in therapy sessions, and to see Connor and Alex and Duncan and the twins in person. Even the older son John and his wife, Gina, had been in town. A pity Methos hadn't been there.
But it had also been extremely awkward, to accept the hospitality of people who had no idea that you knew the intimate details of their lives, so Jennifer had pleaded a headache and left soon after realizing where she was. "Well, no harm done," Jennifer said. "At least Alex doesn't know who I am."
"Actually," Cassandra said, "she does."
"Cassandra!"
"I didn't tell her. She saw us talking as you were on your way out the door. Later she said, 'So, that's your Jennifer.'" Cass shrugged just as helplessly as Jennifer had. "I couldn't lie."
"No," Jennifer murmured. She and Cassandra had worked for years on not-lying.
"No harm done," Cassandra repeated, and Jennifer supposed that was true, even if Alex—and now Cassandra, too—knew her as Mrs. Thomas MacDonald, instead of only by her professional name of Jennifer Corans. But then, Jennifer had retired from being a therapist over five years ago, when she'd turned sixty, and she'd never have reason to see Alex again. No harm done, Jennifer thought once more.
"Alex knows you weren't there deliberately," Cassandra added, "and she asked me to give you her regards. She's been curious about you for years, and she was glad you came to the party. And so am I. It's been a long time since we've talked. I've missed it."
"Have you?" Jennifer said dryly.
"No," Cassandra admitted with a smile. "You're right; I haven't missed therapy sessions. But I have missed you."
"I've missed you, too," Jennifer said, and it was at least partly true. Cassandra had been exasperating and often annoying, but fascinating in a variety of ways, and Jennifer was curious to see how far Cassandra had come in the last seven years. Letters just weren't the same. So, at the party two nights ago when Cassandra had once again issued her oft repeated invitation to "stop on by," Jennifer had finally agreed.
And here she was, in a building that didn't look like any shelter—or any church—she'd ever seen.
"This was originally a school," Cassandra was saying. "We bought it a year and a half ago. Would you like to see the sanctuary?" Cassandra motioned to the doors with the sun and the moon.
Jennifer could think of no good reason to refuse. She braced herself for a rainbow or a zodiac, but instead found an enormous circular room devoid of any decorations and lit only with skylights from above. It was completely empty of chairs or pews.
"That's so we can all go dancing," Cassandra explained then took Jennifer for a tour of the kitchen facilities (busy with lunch preparations), the child-care room (full of infants), the playground out back (full of preschool children playing in the snow), the greenhouse, the classrooms (Mairie and Michelle and seventeen others were undulating away, but still decently clothed, Jennifer was relieved to see), and the dormitory rooms upstairs. Three families were staying there, and there was room for five more.
After all of that, Jennifer was ready to sit down. Cassandra took them to a small room with a round table and six chairs on the second floor. "No one will disturb us here," Cassandra said as she pulled up a chair. "The poker game doesn't start until eight."
"This is quite a facility, Cassandra," Jennifer said. She couldn't bring herself to call it a church.
"We're building a community here, and communities need to be available to everyone, everyday."
"It's … very colorful."
"Yes, that paint is good advertising."
Jennifer hadn't been talking about only the paint. She took a moment to choose unaccusing words and a non-judgmental tone. "I'm a little confused, Cassandra. I thought you and Alex were going to start a network of women's shelters."
"We have," Cassandra said. "This church does offer counseling and has a few rooms, but Alex and I started 'secular' shelters four years ago. There are five of them now. I thought of meeting you at the Edinburgh shelter, but I had work to do here this morning, and you're leaving town soon, and … I also wanted to show this to you."
Cassandra's eager words reminded Jennifer of a school-child bringing home a finger-painting for mother to see and approve and then hang on the refrigerator door. "You've obviously put a lot of work and thought into it," Jennifer said, giving praise where she could.
Cassandra beamed. "Yes, I've been dreaming of it for years."
"Really." Jennifer hadn't known that. "What about the shelters? Why not put all your efforts there?"
"Women's shelters are important, but they're like a bandage on a chronic ulcer. They may slow a little of the bleeding, but they can't cure the disease. A church can do more. The whole family can come here."
"And do what?"
"Learn, play, heal—any day of the week."
"Do you have Sunday services?"
"Yes, people expect that," Cassandra said. "We light candles, maybe have a sermon, sing songs."
"And dance."
Cassandra smiled again. "Sometimes."
"What kind of a church is this?" Jennifer asked. "When I saw the statue outside, I thought it might be Catholic, but …"
This time Cassandra laughed. "Oh, no. We're not Catholic. We're not any form of Christian, though Christians are welcome here, and some stay. It's as the sign says: a church for the children of the lady of the wanderers. It's for people who are searching for a church, a community, a home."
"Do you preach?"
"No. I teach classes now and again, but I don't go in front of crowds."
"Because you're an Immortal, and you have to be discreet," Jennifer guessed, and Cassandra nodded with yet another smile, this one almost sad. Jennifer understood that sadness, but still she leaned forward to ask: "Cassandra … why? Why a church? Why this …" She searched for a polite word and gave up. "Why this kind of church?"
Cassandra leaned forward, too. "This is my kind of church, Jennifer. This is something like what my church used to be. I've been lonely and afraid, and I haven't worshipped in community for centuries. I'm tired of hiding what I am and what I believe. I want sisters. I want friends."
Jennifer nodded, understanding better now. One of her lesbian clients had said almost the same thing when she'd decided not to pretend to be straight anymore. No wonder this church had been a part of Cassandra's dreams.
"And also," Cassandra said, leaning back in her chair, "religion can be a powerful instrument of change."
"And what do you want to change, Cassandra?" Jennifer asked, slipping easily into therapist mode.
"The world."
"Cassandra—," Jennifer began, shocked by the urge to power laid bare by the intensity of those two words.
"Would you say that the world is perfect now the way it is?"
"No, of course not, but—" Jennifer found herself hunting for words again. "Religion has no place in politics. Look at Ireland. Look at Palestine."
"Religion is part of being human," Cassandra replied. "We can no more eliminate it than we can eliminate fire. It's always in politics, sometimes with good results, sometimes with bad. Religion was one of the main impetuses behind the anti-slavery movement in the United States before their civil war."
"And you think your religion will give good results."
"I think it's worth a try." She added, almost to herself, "I think we have to try."
"And what do you want out of it, Cassandra? Do you see yourself as pope? High priestess? God?"
"I've been a high priestess," Cassandra said. "And a queen, and I've been worshipped as a goddess, too. They're really not that fulfilling as vocations. No. As I said, I don't go in front of crowds. I don't want to rule the world, Jennifer; I want to change it, just as you changed me."
"You changed yourself," Jennifer corrected. "I only helped show you the way."
"Exactly," Cassandra agreed. "Change doesn't work well when mandated from on high. The most effective change comes from within. And paths to change can be taught in schools and in churches, by stories and by song."
"And by dancing?"
"It worked for the Shakers, and for the Roman Catholics not so long ago. King David danced before the Lord."
Well, perhaps that was so, but still … "Football games?"
"The Olympics were originally a religious festival." Cassandra was leaning forward again. "Church doesn't have to be boring, Jennifer. It can be fun."
"I suppose," Jennifer said, trying to take a larger view. There was nothing wrong with starting a church, even if it did have dancing. And poker. And flashy colors and sports events and statues in the front yard. But Jennifer supposed she shouldn't be surprised by Cassandra's interest in religion; Cassandra had spent centuries as a priestess or a nun—a Roman Catholic nun, Jennifer remembered, and those people had always had outlandish ways.
"We're here to serve," Cassandra said quietly, "not to rule."
That sounded more like the churches Jennifer knew. And Cassandra's church was active in the community, and heaven knows good works were always in short supply, especially with the way things were nowadays, what with food costs up again and heating oil so dear and people standing about with no jobs to do. But still … Jennifer shook her head and admitted, "It's not for me."
Cassandra didn't seem to mind. "It's not for a lot of people. But there are many paths to change."
~~~~~
Jennifer left soon after, though Cassandra invited her to stay
for
lunch. "Tom's waiting for me," Jennifer explained.
"We're taking the train home to
"So, have you had any boyfriends?" Jennifer asked, curious to see how far Cassandra had come in other ways.
"I've done some dating," Cassandra said. "And I'm seeing Mark now. We go dancing every weekend, and he's a lot of fun. But no serious relationships, not yet." Then she smiled wryly and shared what Jennifer really wanted to know. "No sex."
"Ah," Jennifer said.
"I am interested, and I am looking," Cassandra said. "I just haven't found the right person yet. But I will. Someday."
"Good," Jennifer said with fierce satisfaction. "I'm glad."
Cassandra reached out to her, and with some surprise, Jennifer took the offered hand. Cassandra wasn't much for touching. "Thank you, Jennifer," Cassandra said, her eyes bright with tears, her grip tight almost to the point of pain. "I had buried myself alive, and you helped me climb out of that grave. I couldn't have done it alone, and I'm so glad, and so grateful, that you stayed with me all those years."
"So am I," Jennifer said, and that was true now, though it hadn't always been. On many mornings, Jennifer had simply wanted to stay home, dreading the afternoon session with Cassandra, and on many evenings, Jennifer had left her office feeling rather ill, wishing she had never met the immortal woman at all. Cassandra had confessed to feeling the same way about her, a common enough reaction. Therapy wasn't pleasant, and clients often resented the therapists who "forced" them to go through with it, or who kept "taking their money," or who suggested that perhaps the clients themselves might be, in whole or in part, responsible for the difficulties in their lives. But she and Cassandra had persevered, and it had been worth it, in the end. Oh, Jennifer knew that Cassandra wasn't completely healed (was anyone?), but she was strong enough now to work through her problems on her own instead of needing a guide. She seemed in control of her life, busy and doing well, and Jennifer was pleased.
"Here's your cab," Cassandra said, looking out the window. Outside the building, with a parting hug, she and Jennifer said goodbye.
Cassandra watched until Jennifer's cab disappeared around a corner, then said softly, "Farewell, my friend." A cold winter wind tugged at her clothes and her hair, and Cassandra went back to her church. She ate lunch quickly then joined her first afternoon class, a group of eight young women who had responded to Cassandra's advertisements in the local colleges and coffeehouses about a class on "Matriarchal Prehistory." They were chatting about the film with Lalita Mero as Joan of Arc when Cassandra arrived.
"Why do people still go to the cinema?" Cassandra asked, joining them on the floor. "Why not download them at home?"
"I like the big screen," Allison said, running a hand through her bright blue hair then examining the toe ring on her big toe. "The picture's bigger, the sound's all around you … You're drawn into it."
"And the sitting quiet before," Terya joined in. Her hair was dark green. "In the dark, waiting. People you don't know, people you do, all about to be taken into another world."
"It's like church," quiet Roxanne said suddenly from her corner. Most of the others laughed, but Cassandra nodded encouragingly, and Roxanne went on, "My grandmother took me once, a stone cathedral on Christmas Eve, and there were candles and shadows, and everybody waited, without talking." She stopped, her eyes darting from face to listening face, then concluded self-consciously, "It was nice."
"Sacred space," Cassandra said, drawing all eyes back to her. "The use of light and dark, silence and sound. The ancients understood it well." She opened one of the books she had brought along. "Let's talk of Crete and some of the buildings there." They ended the class with the agreement to look for other sacred spaces in the modern world, and then go visit them as a group.
At three, Cassandra worked with the missionaries, training them to start churches in other towns and other lands. At four-thirty, she called her contact in the Vatican, to see how the campaign in favor of birth control was going there.
When Cassandra got home that evening, Phoenix greeted her with a flurry of leg-twining, head-nuzzling, and chirruping, and Cassandra picked the cat up then rubbed noses and chirruped back. When she sat down on the cushion in front of the computer, Phoenix curled up in her lap, kneaded her thigh with both front paws, and purred herself to sleep while Cassandra stroked her from head to tail. When Phoenix was totally relaxed, Cassandra turned on her computer to deal with the correspondence that had accumulated over the holidays.
Grace reported that the birth control trials looked very promising, and they might even be able to move into full-scale testing next year, if all went well. Had Cassandra thought more about distribution?
Amanda's chain of upscale boutiques had posted record profits for the year. She was planning on opening another store in the States, probably Dallas, and was considering starting a chain of medium-priced stores to reach a wider market. After three years at a loss, the four men's stores had finally broken even. The advertising campaign Henriette had orchestrated had worked wonders; thanks for recommending her! And with Marcus Andrew wearing their clothes in his last movie and at his wedding to Lalita Mero, Amanda was sure business would pick up soon. Capes continued to sell well, especially in the British Isles and Seattle. In the meantime, she was going to go to Rio for some research—and some fun. Would Cassandra like to come along? The dancing would be even better than it had been in Venice right before Christmas the year before.
Liana, one of Cassandra's former students from Rousby Hall, wanted to know if Miss Grant would be coming for her annual visit to the orphanages in Argentina in March, and how was little Enrico doing, way up north in Canada, living at the school Senora Duran-Ponti had suggested a few years ago? In a timely coincidence, Ceirdwyn had written from British Columbia to say that Martinique and Enrico's lessons (both sword and regular school) were progressing well, and if Cassandra found any other pre-Immortals, send them along; there was plenty of room at the ranch. Oh, and a former student of Ceirdwyn's, Matthew McCormick, would be joining them as an instructor next month.
Sister Bernadette had forwarded the quarterly newsletter from the Celtic Christian Church of Ireland—negotiations with Rome had stalled again on the issue of the ordination of women, but four nuns were studying for the priesthood even so. "We're trusting in the Lord and in his Holy Mother," said Sister Mairi of the Brigidines. "We pray every day that He will open the hearts of the cardinals and his Holiness. The time will come."
Elena Duran-Ponti's missive contained a detailed and amusing report of her children's antics during the filming of the movie about Helen of Troy, in which Elena had played a non-speaking, supporting role (a masked Amazon on a horse), one of the benefits she had claimed as sponsor's right. The movie would be coming out next summer; they were still trying to decide on a name. She and Lorenzo would be moving from Rome to Naples in the spring, to take over a branch of the family shipping business.
Mark had sent a quick question about which club to go dancing at on Saturday night, and did Cathy want to go out to dinner, too?
Cassandra answered all the posts, one after another—encouraging, congratulating, confirming dates and times, chatting, suggesting. Then she wrote to some people she hadn't heard from in a while: the wife of a Baptist minister in Tennessee, a city planner in Japan, a member of the Holdeen Endowment in India, a Catholic priest with the land settlement movement in Brazil, and the leader of the Garden Project in California.
As Cassandra reconnected to the Web and posted them, another letter arrived, this one from Christina, another student from Rousby Hall, class of '01. Christina had just been made a junior partner in a law firm in New Washington, and she was dating Rob Hartman, a Republican congressman from Ohio. Prospects looked good. "I heard from Tracy last month," Christina wrote in her final paragraph. "She's pregnant again, and still a stay-at-home. She says she's happy enough, and she's doing volunteer work with some breastfeeding group or other in York, but it seems such a waste. I always thought she'd go far, and that she and I would always be friends. We don't seem to have much to say to each other now. Debra just got promoted, though. She's vice-president at Trithea, in charge of their educational supplies. We're going to tour Egypt together in April." Christina ended with her usual cheery "Weave the Web!"
Cassandra went to the breastfeeding group's website for its statistics: nearly half a million women contacted every month, meetings in sixty-eight countries, help available in thirty-four languages. There was a meeting of a local group in Edinburgh next Tuesday morning. Cassandra put that on her schedule, then wrote to Tracy right away, suggesting that they meet for lunch soon and have a nice, long chat. The children, too, of course—she'd love to see them. Children were such an important part of life, didn't Tracy agree?
Weave the web.
Cassandra checked the news services next. Border disputes, riots, looting … the usual. That sort of thing happened when people were hungry, angry, or scared. Millions of people were all three. On the isle of Britain, at least, everyday services hadn't broken down. Yet. The schools would need to be as self-sufficient as possible if they were to survive.
She turned off the computer, and Phoenix looked up and blinked lazily. She hadn't once tried to pounce on Cassandra's moving fingers. "Not a kitten anymore, are you?" Cassandra asked then stroked the soft golden fur and scratched just so under the chin. Phoenix tilted her head back and purred, and she kept purring as Cassandra scooped her up and carried her into the kitchen area. The cat sat on the counter and watched intently as Cassandra prepared their dinner, and after they had eaten, Phoenix washed her paws and whiskers while Cassandra brushed her teeth. The two of them slept on the futon in their nest of pillows, side by side.
ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT
Watcher HQ, France
======================
Joe had turned the sound off after the first two times, before Rhee had come in. Joe didn't need to hear the commands of "Ready, Aim, Fire!" (in whatever language that was) to know what was going on. He didn't need to hear the rattle of the guns. Joe watched as the kneeling figures crumpled, and the rifles went back up with military crispness, one by one. The soldiers marched away. The picture stayed on the pile of bodies for another thirty seconds, then went black.
"Two of our people were in that group, executed for the crime of espionage," Rhee explained, as if Joe hadn't already read the report. Those two field Watchers had been spying, yes, but on Immortals, not for "espionage." But Joe knew Rhee needed to talk it out, too. As Tribune of the Guild, Joe was in charge of all Watchers. Those had been his men, two Watchers just doing their jobs, sworn to observe and record. But Rhee was Tribune of the Guard; those men had been his to protect.
Both tribunes knew damn well that they had failed.
"They broke curfew," Rhee said, tapping the ash off his cigarette into a white ceramic tray. "The military police arrested them that night and shot them the next day. Which," he said, pausing to take a drag and then slowly exhale, "is fortunate. For the rest of us."
Joe grunted, because he didn't want to agree with that, even though he knew it was true. Eventually the men would have cracked under torture or drugs, but their government (whoever was in charge right now; it changed from day to day) hadn't cared about details; they'd just hauled the men out and shot them at dawn.
Rhee tapped off the last of the ash. The cigarette was burned down to the filter. "The Watchers have been unbelievably lucky that the secret of immortality has not yet been revealed."
Joe pressed replay again, but Rhee clicked off the monitor. "Ironic, is it not?" Rhee began. "It is two years since the bombing of Washington, and we have had five Watchers executed for espionage, and yet not one has been 'spying' as you and I suggested they do."
"I know." Damned if they do, and damned if they don't. "Immortals aren't the only ones playing a dangerous game."
"But the stakes are getting too high, and our luck will not hold." Rhee crushed out his cigarette, twisting it round and round. "For centuries, Joseph, we have relied on poor communication and on people not believing the impossible. One person tells a story of immortality, he is obviously mad. Even two or three, they must be deluded. No one would submit such a tale to his superiors. And if he did—a report in China, a rumor in Australia, decades apart—no one could put the pieces together. But now …" Rhee shook his head. "At the council meeting next week, I am suggesting that the Watchers stop."
"Stop? What do you mean, 'stop'?"
"Stop the chronicles. Stop Watching. Stop. Perhaps even disband."
"You can't be serious!"
"But I am. Deadly so."
"We've been Watching for thousands of years!" Joe had given forty-four years of his life to the cause. "We can't just turn it off."
Rhee was unmoved. "If we do not stop, we will be discovered. It is only a matter of time. Our entire organization—and the Immortals—will be exposed. All our chronicles will be taken away. We will have nothing. It is likely we may all be killed or imprisoned for the secrets we hold. If we stop, then perhaps in five or ten years it will be safe to go on. The Immortals will still be there."
"Not if the Gathering happens."
Rhee laughed, a thin high sound. "If the Gathering happens and the Prize is won, the Watchers will have no reason to exist. We will simply have anticipated the event."
"Maybe this mess the world is in is what the Prize is for," Joe said slowly, putting into words something he'd been wondering about more and more these last few years. "Maybe the winner can make everything right."
"Perhaps," Rhee allowed. "But more likely not. I am not a Christian; I have no faith in the second coming. We cannot depend on the Gathering and the Prize, and we should not depend on the Immortals. We must take care of ourselves. It is true we will have gaps in the records if we stop, but we have gaps now. We have gone quiet before, Joseph. During Stalin's purges, the Spanish Inquisition."
"Yeah, but not all over the planet! Not all at once."
"Globalization. It affects us all." He leaned forward, his dark eyes earnest. "Even if we stop for fifty years, or a hundred, if a nucleus of the Watchers survives we will be able to start again." Rhee's faint smile did not reach his eyes. "As you know. The seven academies could provide seven nuclei, not just one."
Joe added a shrug to his grin. "Yeah, I was thinking of that, but also, like I told the council, travel may not always be easy. And in the meantime, the exchange program between the seven Watcher academies helps us all. People are loyal to people they know—their family, their buddies … their school friends. If we all see the big picture, stop looking just in our own backyard, then we can work together and maybe help stop some of these wars."
Rhee sank back in his chair, looking tired. "Your idea has merit, Joseph," he said finally, "but too many know too much. The exchange program, while good in other ways, merely increases the risk. As long as we are active, we are too easy to find. I cannot protect us. No one can."
He sighed, and Joe suddenly wondered when his friend's hair had gone from mostly gray to mostly white. He'd never see Rhee so down. "Rhee," Joe said, trying to reach him, "those two Watchers … it was bad luck, and bad times. You can't protect every operative. Hell, our losses aren't even half what they were in the nineties. You're doing a good job!"
"The nineties was the decade of the Hunters," Rhee said dismissively. "Bad enough that they killed Immortals, yes, but they also killed fellow Watchers, and—most deadly—they led Immortals to our door." He coughed once, a dry hacking, a smoker's cough, then picked up his pack of cigarettes anyway. Joe had given up trying to convince Rhee to quit smoking years ago.
"Duran and Galati slaughtered dozens before they were stopped," Rhee said as he extracted a cigarette. He met Joe's eyes. "The younger MacLeod has also taken his share."
Joe wasn't going to back down, not here. "He was saving my life."
"I know, Joseph. And though some of the guards he killed were my comrades, I am glad."
"He stopped Elena Duran, too."
"Yes," Rhee agreed. "But he has told his kinsman, Connor MacLeod, of us, has he not? And the incomparable Amanda. And of course, Methos knows. Duran knows. How many have they told? How many know?"
Joe thought about that. Methos had reason to keep quiet. Elena Duran … that one was unpredictable at the best of times, and a murderous harpy when she was angry. Joe massaged his fingers, absently rubbing where Duran had snapped the bones, and considered the MacLeods. Connor had always been close-mouthed, and Duncan hadn't taken any students since Richie—God, had that really been twenty years ago? But the MacLeods did have friends: Grace, the de Valincourts, Ceirdwyn … Damn. Probably all of them knew, and all of them had friends, too. Amanda had told Nick Wolfe, but he'd lost his head within a few months after becoming an Immortal, so he wouldn't have had time to tell many others. Joe could only pray that Amanda hadn't told that goofball Cory Raines. Cassandra knew; she'd been breathing down Joe's neck while he looked for the Horsemen in the database. God only knew who that witch would tell.
"At least a dozen know," Joe concluded. "More likely two."
"More likely three or four." Rhee was holding his cigarette—still unlit—between the two middle fingers of his right hand. "More information leaks, and the possibility of a two-fronted war. A government may decide to go through us to find the Immortals; an Immortal may decide to eliminate us to protect their secret, or to use us to find other Immortals." Rhee was looking tired again. "I leave my successor an impossible job. As do you."
"It seems that way some days," Joe said. Recruitment was way down, Immortals were going to ground, Watchers were going off to war (either on their own or being dragged), the gene-prints and IDs cards and retinal scans were making it harder for everybody—Watcher and Immortal—to move about or to hide, and the part in the Watcher Oath about "thou shalt not interfere" seemed to get harder every day. Rhee's idea of disbanding the Watchers would sure help take care of deciding whose side you were on.
But disbanding completely … No way in hell would the tribunes agree to that, Joe knew. But if Rhee proposed it, then Joe's idea of giving each academy more autonomy would look that much better by comparison. The Watchers had too much bureaucracy anyway, too much paperwork. Maybe they should just shut down HQ. Not yet, but in a couple of years, after the new academies were better established, after all the Chronicles had been copied and stored in secure places. The Assistant Keeper of the Chronicles was due to retire this summer, and Joe decided to recommend Demiko for the job; she'd done great work in Research, and she really knew her stuff. Plus, she was a friend; she'd keep him up-to-date on what was going on after he retired. And after—
Rhee interrupted Joe's planning by asking, "Have you chosen your successor?"
"Not yet."
"Joseph," Rhee said in rebuke. "We are old, you and I. We can die at any time."
Anybody could. But Rhee was right. When their term ended in another five and a half years, Joe would be seventy-one and Rhee would be sixty-nine. Not that Joe planned on staying that long; Emory would kill him. "I just need to put some things in order, Emory; then I'll go," he had promised her last summer when he had taken another term. "You'd better," she warned. "I want my husband home at nights, and Haylie and Ian need their dad." Joe wanted to be home on time every night, too, and in another year or two, he would be. He just needed to finish a few things first.
"We cannot leave this to chance," Rhee said firmly. "Choose your successor and have the council approve him." He grinned evilly. "Do you want them to select Trier?"
Joe shuddered. Trier followed directions perfectly, to the letter, but the man couldn't blow his nose without a manual. Definitely not the person to put at the helm in the midst of a storm. "No."
"Then pick your successor and train him—now."
"I will," Joe promised.
Rhee nodded, mollified, then took out a match. "Sometimes," he said, lighting the match off the sole of his shoe, "after watching them for so many years, it is hard to remember that we are not immortal, too." He lit his cigarette, blew out the match, then leaned back in his chair. Smoke curled between them, dusty blue gray.
BLOODLINES
Spring and Summer
2013
Edinburgh,
Scotland
======================
The days sped by, busy with work and play, and Cassandra kept a close eye on the twins. They were sixteen now, and their powers were coming to the fore. Even so, she wasn't prepared for Alex's abrupt announcement when she stopped by Cassandra's flat one bleak spring day.
"Colin's leaving."
Cassandra stopped with their tea half-poured. "Where?"
"Oregon. He'll be staying with John and Gina."
Cassandra nodded as she finished pouring the tea. John had spent a year with Duncan, soon after he'd turned seventeen. Connor wasn't the most easy-going of fathers, especially with his teenage sons. Cassandra carried the tray to the Japanese knee-high table in the center of the room, then knelt down. "This summer, after school's out?"
Alex reached for her tea, wrapping her fingers around the cup. "Tomorrow. He'll have to go through Canada, of course, since we couldn't get a travel permit so quickly, it not being an 'approved emergency,' but John will meet him in Vancouver then escort him across the border."
Cassandra pushed her tea aside. "Alex?"
Alex's cup went back down, a nervous rattle of china, and Alex got up from her cushion then went to a window and stared out at the rain pouring down. "Connor took a head two nights ago," Alex explained. "He's not hearing voices from the Quickening, but Colin is. All of them. All the Quickenings through the years."
Cassandra closed her eyes in dismay. The psychic backlash of multiple Quickenings was excruciating, and Colin had always been the more perceptive and more sensitive of the twins. "I'm sorry."
Alex swung around. "Why? It's not your fault Colin has this 'talent.'" She made it sound like a curse. "I'm the one who picked a sperm donor with a history of psychic ability in his family. I'm the one who married an Immortal who's taken more than two hundred heads. I'm the one who had—"
She stopped, biting her lip, and Cassandra offered, "I could come over, maybe help him to—"
"Colin doesn't want you near him," Alex interrupted bluntly. "You have voices, too."
Cassandra nodded slowly. "So I do."
Alex was near tears. "Connor went to stay in a hotel yesterday. He can't even tell Colin goodbye."
Cassandra went to stand by her friend, tried to touch her, but Alex pulled away. "I'm sorry," Cassandra said again.
"Did you foresee this?" Alex demanded. "In your dreams?"
"No. I've never dreamed of Colin."
Alex had never been slow. "But you have dreamed of Sara."
"Yes," Cassandra said. "A few years ago. But nothing of her powers, I would have told you. I only saw her, grown and standing next to me, with her daughter at her side."
Alex crossed her arms, hugging herself, her fingers digging into her flesh. "I take it I wasn't in that vision."
"No, but neither was Connor or Colin. That doesn't mean—"
"That we're dead?" Alex interrupted.
Cassandra didn't answer, and she didn't look away.
After a moment, Alex rubbed a hand over her face and sighed. "That's why you never mention your visions, isn't it?"
She shrugged helplessly. "The questions are often worse than the answers."
Alex's nod was a controlled jerk of the head. "And that's why I didn't want my children to have any of this at all." Her laugh sounded more like a sob. "Well, it's too late for that. I suppose I should be thankful that Sara can hear only trees." Alex fixed Cassandra with a suspicious stare. "So far."
"I don't know what's going to happen, Alex. I only wish I could help."
"Thank you." Alex walked across the room and picked up her coat and her purse from the hook near the door. "I think you've done quite enough."
Cassandra started to follow. "Alex—"
"I have to go."
~~~~~
It was two weeks before Alex spoke to Cassandra again. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was … upset."
"I understand," Cassandra said immediately, and she did. "You had cause. How is he?" she asked, still hoping to help, if only by offering to listen to her friend.
"John took Colin camping, and they talked," Alex said. "Colin's answering our letters now, so he's doing better, which means Connor and I are, too. I think, in time, Colin will come home."
It was nearly five months before Colin returned, just before the fall school term began. "I don't want it," he told Cassandra on the phone. "My dad's more important to me than anything I could ever get from this 'talent.' Help me make it go away." Sara, on the other hand, had decided to be a witch.
"She doesn't know what she's getting into, Cassandra," Alex said, pacing back and forth in front of the wall of windows in Cassandra's flat. "She has no idea."
"I have warned her of the dangers, Alex."
Alex stopped walking to give Cassandra a measuring stare. "So she said."
Cassandra returned the stare without a blink. "And it's true."
After a moment, Alex sighed then joined Cassandra at the table. "We had a 'family conference' yesterday afternoon."
Cassandra knew that already. Sara had called her as soon as it was over, to say that her parents had given her permission and that she wanted to get started right away. Cassandra didn't tell Alex that Sara had called.
Alex sighed again. "She wants to be special, to have magic powers, to be a hero. She always has."
"Most children do."
"Yes. But my children have the option to make that fantasy real. And they see their father and their uncle walking in a world of magic and swords, and then … there's you."
"The Witch of Donan Woods," Cassandra said wryly. "I know." She had crafted that persona to appeal to a different adolescent in a different time, but it still held considerable charm, and the twins had grown up hearing the tales. Cassandra had also known this decision was coming; she'd been preparing Sara and Colin for years.
Alex's smile was an unhappy mix of admiration and concern. "She's bright, she's determined, and she wants to be able to do as much as she possibly can. Just like her father."
"And just like you," Cassandra pointed out.
Alex looked up in surprise, then her smile softened to one of fond pride. "I suppose." She tapped her fingers on the table, just once. "I know I have to let go," Alex said. "Somehow, I thought I'd have more time. But I won't hold her back. Connor and I have decided that you can teach her how to use her powers, but not the Voice."
"Never," Cassandra agreed. She hadn't been about to in any case, but she also knew that Connor would be keeping a very close watch on his daughter—and on her. And indeed, Connor came with his children to Cassandra's flat so he could observe. He stopped after the first two lessons, but Cassandra knew he would never be far away.
Sara came on Wednesdays, right after school. "Can we look at the tarot cards today?" Sara asked in the second week of September, so Cassandra untied the white ribbon and unwrapped the green silk, and Sara spread out the deck. They spent half an hour on the cards then discussed Sara's most recent dream. Cassandra promised to start showing Sara how to scry next week. "And now for the enchanting part of magic," Sara said, going over to the harp, which was a joke between the two of them from years ago.
"I can never be a witch," ten-year-old Sara had said glumly, a failed spelling test crumpled in her hand. "What good is a witch who can't do spells?" Cassandra had sat by her side and taken the spelling test away then told her, "To enchant means to sing." Sara had brightened immediately and declared, "Music has to be easier than spelling, so that means enchantments have to be easier than spells!" Cassandra had been teaching Sara music for the last six years, all according to plan.
After Sara went home, Cassandra lit a candle then laid a reading of tarot cards on the floor. Three of the four suits were evenly represented—three cups, three wands, two pentacles—but the only sword showing was in the hand of Justice. The Sun and the Wheel were the two other major arcana, and they both spoke of things to come: accomplishment and happiness in the near future, and the inevitable changes of life in the final outcome.
Cassandra used the tip of her little finger to slide the three center cards apart, then picked up the Three of Pentacles from its place as the seeker, frowning slightly. She hadn't shuffled the deck before she'd done the spread—the cards had been just as Sara had left them—but the seeker wasn't Sara, as Cassandra had hoped. This seeker was herself: a white-haired craftsman carving wings out of stone. She'd laid out this card only once before, over sixteen years ago with Richie Ryan, the month before he died.
Overall though, Cassandra decided as she laid the card back down, almost all of the cards were positive ones. The covering card was the Ten of Cups (a happy family: mother, father, daughter, son). The Ace of Pentacles (a well-tended garden) was at the base, with Justice (balance and forethought) in the recent past, the Queen of Wands as the goal, and the Sun shining in the future. The Three of Cups was the card of influences: three young women dancing joyously in a meadow under a blue sky, representing past, present and future … the ideal of the Sisterhood, perhaps? The position of hopes and fears was filled by the Two of Wands: a young person looking out to sea with a globe in one hand and a staff in the other, carrying the meaning of watch and wait, almost always good advice.
At the base of the rod was the Four of Cups, the role of the Seeker in the current situation. The card showed a man staring discontentedly at three cups while a fourth hovered unnoticed just beside him. Cassandra reached for the guide book that had come with the cards. "Discontent with materialism," it read. "Introspection and contemplation. Solitude. Start of self-awareness."
That didn't sound too bad. But that crossing card … Cassandra studied the Ten of Wands: a man carrying a too-heavy burden of ten wands, trudging head down—walking blindly—to a distant town. Not good. The crossing card was sometimes called the challenge card, and it could be either a block to progress or a bridge across difficulties, but Cassandra knew a warning when she saw one. She'd been busy shaping things—and people—to her own ends, yet she didn't know where she was going, and she was still carrying a heavy load. Cassandra looked again at the Two of Wands, at the world balanced carefully in one hand.
So. She'd been doing too much, going too fast. The waiting wasn't over yet, and she apparently had more lessons to learn. No surprises there. She knew she was going too fast, but the world was careening with no one at the helm. All of the paths led to pain.
|
CHAPTER 5 (World population: 7.35 billion) |
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
September 2013
Edinburgh,
Scotland
======================
"A new family came to the shelter last night," Maureen told Cathy at their usual Thursday morning meeting. "A mother with three: twelve, seven, and a baby."
Cathy looked up from watering the ivy plant that sat on the top of the filing cabinet. The plant had sent out runners into every corner of the room: across the window frame, over the bookshelves, looped through a water pipe, even making a great leap to the light in the middle of the ceiling. The ivy had grown hugely these last four years, when Cathy had first brought in a tiny three-leaved sprout. The women's shelter had grown too, sixteen rooms and eight suites now, almost all of them filled all of the time, and the drop-in nursery busy as well. The shelters in Glasgow and York were filled up, too. Good thing they were building more.
Cathy nodded, flipping her long braid over her shoulder so that it hung down her back, all the way to her waist. Maureen gave a silent sigh of envy. She had always wanted really long hair.
Cathy put the watering can down then turned to open the blinds on the single, narrow window in the small room as she asked, "What are their names?"
Maureen checked her clipboard. "Dottie Tilton's the mother. Her boy's Ned—he's the eldest, and a big lad he is, too—the girl's Jessie, and the baby's Ross. Five months old."
Cathy pulled out the hard wooden chair at the desk and sat down, back perfectly straight and both feet on the floor, as always, just like the nuns had always said to do in school, and like Maureen never had. "I had determined teachers," Cathy had said when Maureen had mentioned it three years back, and Maureen had laughed and said, "So had I. But I was determined, too." Which was why she was working at the shelter, wasn't it?
"Which suite are they in?" Cathy asked, taking out a pen from the center drawer.
Maureen didn't need to glance at her clipboard again. She'd settled them in herself just last night. "They're in the elephant suite." The rooms had numbers, too, but each door was decorated with a fanciful animal so that the younger children could find their way, and Maureen liked the animals better than saying 2C or 3A. "The giraffe suite would have been better, with the three bedrooms instead of two, seeing as there's the baby, but Mrs. Quincy and her six kids need the space even more."
"Yes, that's fine," Cathy said, making a mark on her schedule for the day. "I'll stop by and see her now; I have a meeting with the staff therapist at ten. Mrs. Tilton had the usual reasons, I suppose?"
"The usual," Maureen agreed, stretching out sideways on the much more comfortable easy chair near the door, with her head leaning against one arm and her feet hanging over the side of the other. "The drink, the dole … the dumps."
Cathy rubbed a hand across her eyes and sighed. "Is she worried about him coming here?"
"She wouldn't say it—kept insisting he was a nice fellow, you know?—but yeah, I think she is."
Cathy flipped shut her calendar and stood. "I'll go talk to her."
"Going to have a talk with the husband, too?"
"If need be."
"Like usual?" Maureen said, wondering for the hundredth time exactly what Cathy said to those fellows, because after the first angry husband had thrown a rock through a window and broken down a door trying to get at his wife, Cathy had started going to have a talk with some of the men, and the shelter hadn't had any trouble since then.
"Like usual," Cathy agreed then disappeared down the hall with her graceful dancer's stride.
That afternoon, Maureen joined Cathy for lunch in the courtyard, sitting on a bench near the flower/vegetable garden set right in the middle of the odd-shaped space, away from the shade of buildings and walls and the one bedraggled tree. Cathy was crackers about plants, and people who came to the shelter were expected to help out with the garden. Most of them grumbled at first, but after a while pretty much everybody got to like it, or not to mind. The kids had fun with the dirt, if nothing else. Some of the shelter's food came from their own garden, the tomatoes and peppers mixed right in with the marigolds and petunias. Not for much longer, though, not outside. Autumn was almost here. That wouldn't stop them next year; Cathy was planning a greenhouse on the roof.
"Dottie Tilton got Jessie a kitten this morning," Cathy announced.
Maureen shook her head as she unwrapped her burrito. "Another animal?" She took a bite of the spicy beans and rice.
"Kittens aren't much work, not like puppies," Cathy said, stirring her noodles with a chopstick. "Mrs. Tilton loves cats, too. When I left their suite they were picking out a name."
Maureen looked up, only just remembering to close her mouth with all the food half-chewed. Cathy's table manners were always perfect, like her nails and her hair. Not that Cathy was lah-di-dah fancy or gave herself airs, she was just … neat. Maureen wanted to be neat. The nuns had wanted that, too, but try as she might, Maureen could never get her mop of black curls to do anything else but stand up every which way, and her clothes never seemed to hang right, and her feet always looked too big. Maureen had given up on that sort of thing a long time ago. She finished her chewing and swallowed hastily. "Cath …"
"Mr. Tilton wouldn't let them have one," Cathy said. "They're trying to start a new life. And we've had animals here before. We can't ask people to leave their pets behind."
"I know," Maureen said. She'd taken her goldfish with her when she'd left Johnny, because she didn't trust him not to set it out in the sun to watch it die. "I'm just remembering Mrs. Glennor's dog."
"This is a two-pound kitten, not an Irish wolfhound."
"All right," Maureen said, dipping her burrito in the salsa dish. "Only don't expect me to take care of it."
She didn't take care of it, but a few days later in the children's lounge she did play with it a bit. The gray tiger-striped kitten was chasing a piece of paper that Jessie had tied to a string, and Maureen stopped to talk to the little girl and admire the ball of fluff. "Her name is Fiona, because of her white paws," announced Jessie then scooped the kitten into her arms. "She's mine. My mum picked the name. Want to pet her?" Maureen let the kitten sniff her fingers then stroked under the furry chin, getting a contented purr from the kitten and a delighted giggle from the girl.
"The Tiltons are settling down," Maureen said to Cathy that Thursday in the office. "Jessie loves her kitten, Ned was playing with the toddlers in the nursery, and Dottie actually smiled at me the other day. We need to have the baby looked at by the nurse, though. I don't know as it's gotten all its shots."
"I'll put that on the public health nurse's schedule for her visit on Monday," Cathy said, making notes on her calendar. "The older children, too. I hope Mrs. Tilton's ready to be looked at now. She said no last week."
"The bruises were too fresh," Maureen said.
"And she didn't want to be seen that way," Cathy said. "I know."
Maureen did too, only she'd never let it get that bad, or go on so long. "Dottie said he'd been beating on her for thirteen years—started when she got pregnant, as usual. Last week, he started in on the boy, and that's when she decided it was time to go."
"A good reason to leave." Cassandra capped the pen tightly and set it down, then stood and went to the window, staring out across the alley at the grimy brick wall. "But why did she stay?"
"The usual," Maureen answered, even though it sounded like Cathy had been talking to herself. "Not a bad fellow when he wasn't drunk, she said, and the sex was hot. That's part why I stayed with John."
Cathy turned around so fast her braid swung, too, the tip of it slapping her on the arm. "You stayed because the sex was hot?"
"Oh, and it was!" Maureen said, a smile already on her face. "He was something, was my Johnny. He could make me climb the walls and beg for more." She nearly laughed aloud, remembering the squeaky bed in their first tiny flat, and the way Mrs. Hennesey had pounded on her ceiling with her broomstick from the floor below. She'd stopped that soon enough, when Johnny started bellowing filthy lyrics and humping in time to the beat. Maureen had giggled so hard she'd fallen out of bed. But Johnny had gotten angry when Mrs. Hennesey had called the landlady, and when Maureen had tried to calm him down, he'd gotten angry with her, too. "Even after he—" Maureen stopped herself from remembering that part and shrugged. "It was good then, too, afterwards. Sweet. He'd be so sweet." Six years it had been, since she'd smacked him in the head with a spanner and walked away. She missed him sometimes, and a part of her loved him still. "What part was good for you, Cathy?"
"What?" Cathy said, like she hadn't heard the question at all.
"What part did you like?" Maureen asked. "When you were with your fellow?"
"I …" She shook her head. "There wasn't. None."
"Ah, come on! You must have liked some part of it, else you wouldn't have stayed."
"No." Cathy shook her head again, folding her arms across her chest. "No."
"All right then," Maureen said, shrugging it off. She stood and stretched her arms high over her head, then let them flop down. "I'm off to check the kitchen. That Quincy boy never does get all the pans cleaned, and the girls keep breaking the crockery. You'd think they were raised in a barn."
"Yes," Cathy murmured.
"But, they need to learn and we need the help," Maureen said cheerfully. "You said you were going to have Jessie and Ned go with you to pick some vegetables for lunch today, right?"
"I … No. No, I'm not." Cathy flipped her calendar shut and tucked it into her bag. "Maureen, I need to leave."
"Leave?"
"Yes," she said, already picking up her cape—blue and purple and green, like a peacock's tail—from the coat stand in the corner. "I'll be back."
Maureen stared, bewildered. "When?"
Cathy paused at the door, one hand gripping the frame. She started to speak then stopped and shook her head instead. "I'll be back," she said again, and she was gone.
======================
Autumnal Equinox, 2013
The North
Atlantic
======================
Before she'd left, Cassandra had called Alex and asked her to take care of Phoenix. "Yes, of course, I'll go to your flat and feed her, or ask Sara or Colin to go," Alex had said then asked carefully, "Cass … is this business?"; business being Connor and Alex's code word for "Pardon me, but I have to go chop off somebody's head."
"No," Cassandra had answered. "It's just me. Again." She trying to hold on, but she could feel the foundations of her life cracking, the earth splitting open beneath her feet. She needed to get to holy ground, her kind of holy ground, and she needed to be there alone. She had a history of trying to kill people when she was in this kind of mood. "I'll be back."
"When?"
Cassandra didn't know. She wasn't even sure of where she was going. Her first thought had been to go back to her therapist, but halfway through dialing Jennifer's number, Cassandra had clicked off the phone and decided to deal with this on her own. She was at least going to try. She could always call Jennifer later, if need be.
Cassandra's ticket read Inverness—she'd punched that button almost automatically as the computer screen flashed "Destination Please" and the people behind her waited impatiently in line—but Cassandra didn't want to stay in Inverness: too many memories from centuries past, and too many changes in the last few years. And entirely too many oil derricks in the North Sea. She hadn't come this far to look at those.
She bought another ticket and took the coach to Ullapool on
the west coast
of Scotland,
found that too busy and so went south to the
With the summer season over and most of the tourists gone, Cassandra soon found a room. "And how long will you be staying?" asked the desk clerk at the long two-story hotel built of sand-colored stone.
"I don't know," Cassandra said. She went to the beach to watch the sun disappear into the western waves, while the perfect circle of a harvest moon rose from behind the hills.
~~~~~
The next morning she woke early and went back outside, watching not the sunrise in the eastern hills, but the setting of the moon and the changing of the light upon the slow swells of the sea. About an hour after dawn, when the moon had gone and the light was clear, she started to walk. She walked all morning—along beaches of pale pink sand, over surf-pitted and wet-blackened rocks, across grassy dunes, and sometimes into the sea itself, cold and surging around her knees, all the while listening to the eldritch cries of gulls and the hypnotic hush of waves, and thinking about why she had stayed.
At the beginning, of course, she hadn't had a choice. Roland had either kept her in a locked room or chained or surrounded by deaf guards. Oh, she had managed to escape, and more than once, but Roland always found her again, sometimes right away, sometimes not for years. He hadn't liked for her to run away.
But even without that, she had stayed. During the ten years of therapy, Jennifer had asked her why, many times and in many ways. Cassandra had come up with a whole host of reasons to satisfy Jennifer, and to satisfy herself. The "I was brainwashed" justification was a classic, and she had used that to explain her time with Methos and Roland both. The "He made me feel worthless and so I was lacking in self-confidence" was another good one. The list went on. "I was afraid. I felt embarrassed … lonely … ashamed … guilty … I didn't have any money. It was illegal to leave; the slave-catchers were waiting. He would have hurt other people if I had left. I wanted to help him. I didn't think anybody else would want me. I cared about him and he cared about me. We had good times. He wasn't really that bad, not all of the time, and he needed me. I needed him." And, of course, the final stamp upon it all: "He loved me, and I loved him."
Each of those reasons was true, but it wasn't the truth.
"What part did you like?"
"None of it," she had told Maureen, but that was a lie.
"What part did you like, that made you stay?"
Jennifer had never asked her that. Not once. Not once in ten years. She should have. She should have asked. She should have known; it was her job to know … This was her fault—
Cassandra slammed to a halt, all of her, feet and brain, stopping that thought right there. She knew this insidious little ploy. She'd seen it thousands of times over the years. Avoid the truth by getting angry and then putting the blame on someone else. She wasn't going to do that anymore. Cassandra started walking again, slowly, concentrating on the squish of cold sand up between her toes, and trying to think again.
"What part did you like?"
It hadn't been the sex. Cassandra was sure of that. The sex had been good, no doubt about that, sometimes even great, but she'd never enjoyed mingling sex and pain, and memories of punishment had haunted their bed.
It hadn't been the money. Roland had liked to live well, and his homes had always been luxurious, but Cassandra knew what it was to own a duchy or to be without a single rag. She wasn't afraid of poverty, and she wasn't addicted to wealth.
The punishments? No. She wasn't a masochist. How about the flip-side of that, the relief from tension and pain that had flooded her with obscene joy when he was finally done? No. Physical-emotional roller coasters like that were addicting, but the physical part wasn't that good, not for her. Some people played at sadomasochistic games on the weekends, enjoying the spicy taste of fantasy submission or control, but she and Roland had lived that way, every day for years, and they hadn't been acting out roles.
So, what was it that she had liked? And maybe still did? Cassandra scrambled up a great black sentinel of rock, half in the sand and half in the waves, scrabbling for handholds and toeholds and scraping her knees, until finally she reached a knobby wind-worn top. She perched there, her chin on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs with the wind tugging at her hair, and she stared out to sea until she stopped lying to herself and the answer came clear.
Power.
Power and vindication.
Methos hadn't wanted her, but Roland certainly had. He'd been obsessed with her for centuries, followed her across oceans and continents, killed hundreds to be by her side. "Roland would do anything for me," she'd once boasted to Jennifer, and it had been true. And wasn't that kind of devotion flattering, in a sick and twisted way? After the bruises had faded and the broken bones had healed (and she was immortal; that never took long), hadn't she liked it when Roland had come crawling to her to apologize, weeping, pleading with her to love him, begging her not to leave?
Just as she'd begged Methos, long ago.
Oh yes, she had liked having the man kneel before her and beg, for a change. She had reveled in knowing that she was in control, in knowing that he wanted her. There'd been times she'd even goaded Roland into beating her, just so they could "reconcile" and she could get the reassurance she craved. She'd done it to Connor, too, on a smaller scale, and even to Duncan in a way, being subtly obnoxious, using overtones of the Voice to annoy, until he got angry enough to snap at her, then later accepting his apology with gracious aplomb. Some of her anger and irritation had been honest, but some of it had been a ploy to make him "prove" that he still cared. She'd done the same thing with other people through the years.
Cassandra buried her face on her knees, her shoulders shaking with laughter of bitter despair. She had thought she knew all the possible ways to lie, and yet here was one more, opening the door to a thousand more. Just how much of what she remembered of her life—what she thought she remembered of her life—was a lie? Joe Dawson had once called her delusional, and maybe he was right. Maybe the horror and abuse she remembered were exaggerations, justifications for her own warped soul.
Or maybe nothing she remembered was real.
Cassandra jumped from the rock onto the sand, falling to her knees when she landed, then getting up and starting to run. The sand was hard packed near the water's edge, and Cassandra ran all afternoon. The next day, she went hiking in the hills, and the day after that she walked on the shore again.
That evening found her where she'd been the first night, sitting on the beach in front of the hotel and watching the sun set into the western waves, but calmer now. That tarot card about "the start of self-awareness" had been dead-on, and she felt ready to start setting down the load she'd been carrying for so long, piece by piece, the good and the bad.
The ten pebbles she'd gathered over the last few days lay in a pile in front of her, and Cassandra picked up the rounded pink one on the top and laid it in the palm of her hand. First: she wasn't delusional. Her memories were real; those things had happened to her. She had been a slave, a priestess, a whore, a queen, all of those and many more. She'd traveled, lived, loved, and died, over and over again. Methos had broken her fingers, and Roland had abused her through the years. Her memories were true.
But they weren't the truth, not all of it. Even the tale of the brothel that she'd told to Amanda had been subtly rearranged. Cassandra had spoken of killing some of the men who had patronized her brothel, of crushing them in her hands between pleasure and pain, but she'd conveniently avoided mentioning—or even thinking—of what she had done to the women in her employ. No, not "in her employ." The women under her control. The memories she'd allowed herself to remember had been edited and biased, rearranged and cut to fit, seen through a haze of self-pity and the desperate need to justify and excuse.
Which took her to pebble number two, a gray oblong with a crack along one side. It clicked against the pink stone already in her palm. Cassandra squeezed them in her fist as she thought about the many ways to lie. "Be honest with me," Connor and Jennifer had often demanded, and Cassandra had sincerely tried. She'd told the truth as she remembered it, and what else could anyone do? No two people ever remembered a story in exactly the same way, or remembered it the same from day to day. "What really happened isn't so important to you as what you think happened," Jennifer had told her on a winter afternoon over a decade ago. "You react to your memories. You feel because of your memories. They're real to you, and so that's what we need to talk about today."
Cassandra hadn't told "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but she had been honest in telling her truth, as she had seen the truth in those days. She was seeing things differently now. For centuries, she had been convinced that she deserved to be punished, that Roland was justified, that it was all her fault he abused her so. Then, she'd spent a decade in therapy, convincing herself that it was all his fault, that she was not at all to blame.
Neither of those beliefs was true.
Onto pebble number three, a small black one that had been polished by the waves. Cassandra faced this ugly truth head-on: Roland wasn't the only one to blame. Yes, he'd been sick and twisted and pathologically obsessed, but so had she. She'd hurt him, too. Their relationship had warped them both, and they had fed off each other, trading roles of parasite and prey.
But Roland had started it, not her, and he'd been the one to track her down through the years. With a sigh of enormous relief, Cassandra picked up a fourth pebble, a white lozenge of stone, and laid the blame for Roland's initial obsession squarely on Kronos where it belonged. Kronos had been the one to pervert her son, not her, and the Horsemen had been the first to betray. She'd made mistakes as a mother, yes—who didn't?—but she had truly done the best she could.
Or at least, she had when he'd been young. Cassandra picked up pebble number five, its fractured edges sharp against her fingertips, a clouded crystal of quartz. When Roland had been older, when they'd been wallowing in that cesspit of their mutually inflicted pain, she'd listened to his pleas for help and she had done nothing, silently gloating over his impotence with malicious glee.
"I don't want to hurt you, Cassandra," he'd often said, his eyes bewildered and full of despair once the rage had gone. Cassandra had seen that same look in three-year-old Colin's eyes, after a full-bore screaming tantrum of stomping feet and flailing arms. Alex had held him down—sat on him, actually—through the screams, telling him matter-of-factly: "No, you can't have your purple dinosaur shirt; it's dirty right now, and also, you may not behave this way." Then she'd rocked him while he sobbed, all the while murmuring "I love you" over and over again. He'd fallen asleep in her arms and woken up two hours later, his usual cheerful self. Colin had been a child, and Roland a full-grown man, but Cassandra could see now that she'd withheld—subconsciously, perhaps, but still deliberately—the calm, authoritative guidance Roland had craved, because to help him learn self-control was to give up her own control over him.
Malicious mothering at its worst. Power and control … and revenge.
That was what she had liked. That was why she had stayed. Maureen's artless question had sliced straight to the center and shredded the protective shroud of half-truths and delusions that Cassandra had woven into and throughout her life. Now her hand was full of pebbles, as her heart had been full of stones.
It was time to start anew. Cassandra stood and walked to the water's edge, then went deeper in, breast-high, shuddering at the cold. With a sweep of her outstretched arm, she cast those stones into the sea. The pebbles disappeared, their circles of ripples merging and spreading before being swallowed by the ocean's larger waves. The next wave caught her and lifted her feet from the ground. Cassandra let it carry her, floated with her head back so she could watch the moon. It wasn't full now, but Cassandra knew that in a few weeks time it would be full again, then new, then full, as it always had been and ever would be, always changing and always the same.
When
her feet touched bottom,
she dove under the surface and swam for shore. Five pebbles
of the
original ten remained, questions for her future instead of issues from
her
past. On the train ride back to Edinburgh
the next day, Cassandra sewed a tiny pouch then tucked the five pebbles
inside. She hung the pouch on a string around her neck, held
close to her
heart, next to the necklace of the triple crescents that Alex had given
to her
nearly seventeen years ago. The Five of Wands in the tarot
meant
unfinished struggle, and Cassandra knew she wasn't done yet.
DEAD ON ARRIVAL
September 2013
Edinburgh, Scotland
======================
"That's OK," Sara said. "We have a huge calculus test on Friday anyway, so we need to study for that."
"Is your mom there?"
"She's making a salad for dinner. Should I get her on the phone?"
"No," Cassandra said. "Just ask her if I can stop by tonight." She desperately wanted to talk, and she knew she needed advice.
"Mom says welcome back, and that around eight would be fine," Sara reported a moment later. "And she'll tell Dad you're coming."
Which meant Cassandra wouldn't have to worry about being met at the door by a sword. She and Connor had surprised each other before. "Thank you," Cassandra said. "I'll see you tonight."
"Great!"
But when Cassandra went to the MacLeod home that evening, Colin was the one to answer the door, and Sara was nowhere in sight. "She and Dad are in the exercise room in the attic," Colin explained, a bowl heaped high with strawberry ice cream in one hand. "Mom's in the library on the phone." He loped his way upstairs, all long legs and floppy hair.
Alex was sitting on the sofa in front of the fireplace with the phone still in her hand, though she wasn't talking anymore. When Cassandra came in the room, Alex didn't get up or even say hello.
"Alex?"
"My brother just called," Alex said, the words dull and evenly spaced. "His daughter died today."
"Oh, Alex, no," Cassandra sat down by her side.
"It was pneumonia, that new strain." Alex turned her head slowly to fasten on Cassandra, a blindly accusing stare. "One of those diseases Grace wanted to cure. Elaine was fine a few days ago, and just yesterday morning they thought it was only a cold. She was thirty-two." She stared straight ahead again. "I got married when I was thirty-two." She added softly, "Nineteen years ago."
"I'm sorry," Cassandra said and took Alex's hand.
Alex pulled her hand away. "Are you?"
Cassandra closed her eyes and silently swore. Not this again. Not now. But death was never convenient, and she'd known this confrontation was coming for years. It always did, whenever a mortal realized just how unfair dying really was. "I'd never met Elaine," Cassandra explained gently, "so no, I don't feel grief for her, but I am sorry for your family's loss, and for you."
Alex didn't seem to hear. "You've done it so often," she said. "Buried someone you love. Aren't you used to it by now?"
Cassandra had heard that before, from other people in other times. "How do you keep going, after so much loss, so much pain? How can you love me, when you've had so many other loves before? How do you manage to feel?"
How do you stay human, during all your years?
You didn't. Or at least, Cassandra hadn't managed to. She'd lost touch with her humanity for centuries at a time. She hadn't cared whether she—or anyone else—lived or died. But she knew why she'd suffered that deadness of the soul: she hadn't dared to love.
She loved now. She had friends, even though she knew that one day she would have to say goodbye. Cassandra tried to explain what it was to keep living while all those around you died. "Alex, burying a loved one is like … giving birth. No matter how many times you've done it before, it always hurts."
"And just how," Alex asked, with devastating accuracy and fine-honed rage, "would you know anything at all about that?"
~~~~~
Alex was grieving, Cassandra reminded herself as she walked rapidly away, out into the cool night air. All the books said that anger was one of the first stages of grief. Alex was hurt, she was angry, she was feeling guilty, and she was afraid.
She was being a bitch.
Cassandra stopped walking and gripped the square bars of a black iron fence that bordered an immaculately manicured lawn. The edges of the cold metal cut into her palms, but they didn't cut nearly as deeply as Alex's words.
"I've always wanted to bear a child," Cassandra had confessed to Alex years before, sharing her most cherished dream, cautiously daring to open her soul to another, after she'd kept her true-self locked away and hidden for so long. "I've always wanted to be able to give birth, to give life to another living soul." Alex had taken her hand and held it, a warm and human touch. "You already are a mother, Cass," Alex had reassured her. "Even if you can't give life that way, you do give love."
Cassandra tilted her head to look up to the sky and saw no stars and no moon, only thick clouds. "My best friend," Cassandra said softly, not really surprised, but aching all the same. After a moment, she let go of the bars and started walking again.
~~~~~
"Mom's at the American embassy to get travel permits to go to the funeral," Colin said when Cassandra called the next morning, so Cassandra went to work at the Phinyx school. She called again that afternoon, but Alex wasn't home. She left the country without returning Cassandra's calls.
On Thursday, Cassandra went back to the shelter again. "Cathy!" Maureen called, with her usual glad smile, and Cassandra found herself smiling in return. Maureen was always so solid, so real. No pretensions or airs, no squeamishness or delusions. No lies. Cassandra treasured that honesty most of all.
"Are you all right now?" Maureen asked. "I've been worried since you left so fast last week."
"I'm fine," Cassandra reassured her. "I'm sorry; I should have called. I just … I realized there was something I needed to do."
Maureen rolled her eyes in sympathy. "There's always something that needs to be done, isn't there? We had the gutters cleaned on Monday, and then the man said the roof had a leak, out on the south side. Come along, I'll show you."
They were in the stairwell when they heard the shouting, a woman's shrill voice. "East corner," Maureen said, her head cocked to the sound. "Second floor."
"The Tiltons," Cassandra said, and they both started running for the stairs. Cassandra passed Maureen halfway up. On the landing, she rapped on the door marked 2A and decorated with a purple elephant lower down.
There was no answer, but that wasn't surprising. The television was on, the woman was still shouting, and now Cassandra could hear a child crying and a baby's wails. Cassandra tried the knob. It didn't budge, and she got out her keys.
The door finally opened, and she and Maureen burst through. The baby was wailing in the cot in the corner, and the television was blaring some nonsense about better sleeping pillows for dogs. Maureen snapped off the TV on her way to check on the baby, while Cassandra looked in the two small bedrooms and found no one there. The woman's shouting suddenly stopped, but the sobs of the child went on.
The water closet. Cassandra stepped over a heap of laundry and kicked aside a box of toys to get to the door. It was locked too. "Open it, Mrs. Tilton," Cassandra ordered.
"Go away," Dottie Tilton said then snarled, "Hush up, you!" The sobbing went on, and the command was followed by a slap, and then a frantic giggle. The baby was now held securely in Maureen's arms, but it was still wailing, a thin ululating screech that grated on the nerves.
Cassandra pulled out her keys again. Privacy was a privilege at the shelter, not a right. All kinds of hell could happen behind locked doors, in walled estates, in private homes, in sacrosanct bedrooms, in places secure from outside eyes. Secure, but not safe, not for those who weren't permitted the keys.
Cassandra unlocked the door. It opened easily; at least they weren't trying to hold it closed. All three of them were in there, in a room not much bigger than a closet. Dottie Tilton stood glaring defiantly between the toilet and the sink, arms crossed, wisps of graying hair straggling across her face. Her pink sweatshirt and faded blue jeans were splashed darker with water, and her feet were bare. Ned was standing in the far corner, his hands in his pockets, a large-boned, hefty boy. His lopsided grin didn't match his darting eyes.
Jessie, now … Jessie was the one who had been crying. Jessie was the one who had been slapped. Her face was streaked with tears, and her cheek bore the bright pink outline of a palm. She hiccuped and gulped back a sob.
"What's wrong?" Cassandra asked, keeping her tones soothing, not going to comfort the girl as she wanted to do. It might be something simple. Maybe Jessie hadn't wanted to wash her hands or brush her hair. Cassandra had seen worse flare-ups over smaller things.
"My—," Jessie started, then went immediately silent at her mother's sharp movement and glare.
Behind Cassandra, Maureen had finally gotten the baby to stop crying, and instead of a wail there was only a "Hush, now. Hush."
"Mrs. Tilton?" Cassandra prompted.
"It's not your concern," Mrs. Tilton declared. "They're my children." She smoothed back her hair with one hand. A single strand flopped forward again. Ned giggled, a high nervous sound.
"Yes," Cassandra agreed, but flipped the possessive around. "You are their mother." She turned to the girl. "Jessie, can you tell me what's wrong?"
Jessie looked at the toilet, and now she was crying again, large silent tears. Cassandra took a step into the room so she could see.
And there it was, a limp bundle of gray, floating in the bowl. Dirty socks or perhaps a towel, Cassandra hoped for one hopeless fraction of a second, but she knew already what it was. One white paw was waving slowly, and a tiny triangle of an ear poked up above the surface. Cassandra gently retrieved the dead kitten from the toilet. Thin circles of ribs made ridges under the wet matted fur. She picked up a towel from the shelf above the toilet and wrapped the kitten close and warm, then knelt to hand it to the girl. "I'm sorry, Jessie," Cassandra whispered, and she was crying too, with the same silent tears.
Ned giggled again, that familiar mocking laugh, and Cassandra rose and whirled, her hand already raised to strike. He shrank from her, his eyes suddenly widening with fear, but his back was against the wall and he had nowhere to go. Cassandra moved forward, savoring the moment. He was hers.
"What are you doing?" the mother cried, grabbing Cassandra's arm from behind. "Leave him be!"
Cassandra turned on her, knocking her hand aside. " Did you get here too late?" Cassandra demanded, her voice cold with rage. "Or did you stand by and watch him drown the kitten in front of your daughter's eyes?"
"It wasn't him that did it," she said scornfully.
Not him? But— An accident? Then why the shouting, why the locked door? Why—
"It was me," the Tilton woman announced, a proud tilt to her chin.
Cassandra had to blink twice before she could breathe. "You?"
"I told Jessie to keep it away from the baby. I told her, and she didn't. It's her fault."
"Her fault?" Cassandra repeated, and the taste of ashes came with each word. "Her fault?" Dimly, Cassandra heard someone calling for Cathy in the distance, and then someone was pulling hard on her arm. Cassandra shoved the person away.
"Cathy!" The tugging turned into a yank. "Cath!"
"What?" Cassandra snapped then turned to see Maureen, black eyes only inches from her own.
"Get out of there," Maureen said. "Get out." Cassandra looked back at the woman, and Maureen ordered, "Look at Jessie. Look at Jessie now."
Cassandra looked and there was Jessie, standing right by her mother's side, with the dead kitten still clutched in her arms. "Don't hurt my mother," Jessie pleaded. "No more hitting. Please."
Cassandra let Maureen pull her from the room. The Tilton woman came out, too, then went straight to the cot where Maureen had put the baby down. "See here!" the woman demanded, picking up the baby and pulling back the blanket to reveal a red line half an inch long. "See here! It scratched him. It hurt my baby. I've enough to take care of without adding a mewling cat to our lives."
"You wanted the kitten," Cassandra said coldly. "You helped pick out the name."
"I agreed to marry that good-for-nothing louse of a husband of mine, too," she snapped back. "I even picked out his ring." She tossed her head, a girlishly impudent gesture in a woman with graying hair. "People can change their minds."
"That doesn't give you the right—"
"Right? Right? What would you know about right? You!" she spat. "You with your fancy clothes and snooty airs, filling my daughter's head with crazy dreams, making her go 'Miss Pelton this' and 'Miss Pelton that.' I'm her mother, not you." She snatched up another blanket from the back of the sofa. "Ned! Jessie! Get your shoes on. Pack your things! We're not staying here."
"That's for certain," Cassandra said grimly, then once again found herself being propelled through a door.
"Get out of here," Maureen ordered, blocking the way back into the room. "Take a walk. Take a three-hour hike."
"I—"
"Go. You need to calm down, Cathy. You're not doing anybody any good here."
She wasn't doing good at all. Cassandra nodded stiffly and walked away.
~~~~~
After ninety minutes of running, Cassandra had burned off most
of her
immediate rage. At the top of a hill in the Princes
Street
"It was her fault."
Her fault.
Cassandra knew better than to entrust an animal to a family that had lived with abuse for years. But Jessie had been so delighted, and the mother had seemed so enthusiastic, and what reason could Cassandra have given to take the kitten away?
"Progressing normally," the therapist's second evaluation of Dottie Tilton had read, but "normal" in abuse cases did not mean "good." It was normal to be hypersensitive, normal to wake screaming from nightmares, normal to lash out in rage. As Cassandra, of all people, should know.
And going after the boy … Just what had she been thinking?
Nothing, Cassandra realized sourly. She hadn't been thinking at all. She'd blamed him, automatically and unthinkingly, because—and only because—he was male. That, and the smile. Roland had smiled.
Cassandra started running again, but not so fast nor so furious as before. After a few miles, she stopped at the base of an old willow tree and leaned her forehead against the bark, closing her eyes. When her breathing had slowed to a normal rate, she turned around and sat at the base of the tree, then took out the pouch and poured the five tiny stones into her hand. Four went back in, and she held the fifth—an irregular nugget that resembled a broken tooth—in her hand.
This was a lesson she had forgotten again and again. She had to remember that men weren't the only ones who caused pain. Women could be—and were—just as bad. And that included herself.
Cassandra didn't cast this pebble into the sea. It went back into the pouch, to be carried for the rest of her life.
=====
After lunch, Maureen started to keep watch for Cathy's
return. She
came back about
Maureen opened the gate for her, and Cathy came inside. "I sent the Tiltons to the shelter across town," Maureen told her.
Cathy nodded but didn't say anything until they had walked halfway across the yard. "I would have liked to have seen Jessie before she left," Cathy said, which didn't surprise Maureen, but then Cathy added, "And Mrs. Tilton and Ned, too."
"To take their heads off?" Maureen asked, because she'd been certain that Cathy had been ready to kill the boy.
"To tell them I understand." Cathy opened the door to the office and went to sit behind the desk, back straight, feet together, just as perfect as before.
Only she wasn't. Maureen could see that now, when all these years she'd thought Cathy was so strong. Maureen stood in the doorway, waiting.
"What?" Cathy asked, looking up.
Maureen came into the room and shut the door behind her, then half-sat on the arm of the chair and kept watching. "I've never seen you get that angry before. I've never seen you get angry at all." Not once in four years, not even when Janna Mackenzie had beaten her infant son black and blue because, as she later explained, "it cried." Maureen had wanted to have the woman keelhauled, but Cathy, though she'd been saddened and sickened, hadn't been angry even then. She'd simply called the doctor, notified the therapist, and ordered that the mother never, under any circumstances, be left alone with the child. "That boy should be taken from her," Maureen had said after they'd left the room. "It may come to that," Cathy had replied, "but while Janna's here at the shelter, we'll give her the chance to learn how to love." Janna had stayed for two years, learning, and now she came back once a month to help in therapy sessions for women who abused their children, just like she had once done.
Cathy took her time in putting the cap back on a pen that Maureen had used earlier that day, then set it down just so. She put her hands in her lap, under the desktop, out of view. "I don't get angry much," Cathy said, looking down. "Not anymore."
Maureen nodded. "He hurt your cat, didn't he?" No need to say who "he" was, and anyway, Cathy had never once mentioned his name. But it didn't matter. "He" said it all.
Cathy's lips were two tight lines. "It was a long time ago."
"But it still hurts."
Cathy shoved back her chair and went to the window, turning her back on Maureen.
Maureen wasn't giving up that easy. "What color was your cat?" Cathy was taking deep shuddering breaths trying to hold it in; Maureen could see her shoulders tremble.
"Gray," Cathy said finally. "With white paws and a white chest. It was barely two months old."
Maureen got off the chair, moving closer. "What was its name?"
Cathy started shaking her head. "I hadn't yet named it. I'd found it only three days before. He wasn't there. I thought it was safe, but … I wanted to stop him, but … he …" She shrugged, quick and desperate, and the next words were hard to hear. "I didn't. I didn't do anything, except watch." Her head went back, her face all twisted, and Maureen was right there to catch her when the tears finally came.
"Hush," Maureen said, holding Cathy tight. They sank to the floor, and Maureen held her all the while as she cried. It took a long time. "Hush now," Maureen said again when it was over, gently stroking Cathy's long beautiful hair.
"Oh, Maureen," Cathy said, almost like a sigh, close against Maureen's shoulder. "Thank you."
"I'm glad I was here," Maureen said, and she was. She'd never thought Cathy would need her. But now—after today and after last week, when Cathy had just up and left, obviously bothered—Maureen knew that Cathy was really just a normal person, no matter how beautiful and organized she was. "I've never seen you cry before, either," Maureen said.
Cathy sniffled, just a little, and Maureen found herself smiling, because even Cathy's sniffles were neat. That much hadn't changed. "I haven't," Cathy said. "Not about that, not for years and years."
"This was good then," Maureen said. "We need to cry."
"We do," she agreed. After a few moments Cathy sat back a little, and they faced each other, sitting on the floor and scrunched in between the desk and the wall. "I must look a fright," Cathy said with a rueful smile, and Maureen had to laugh, because it was true. Cathy's hair was all wispy on top, and her mascara had left purplish-black fringes under her red-rimmed eyes.
Maureen reached out to wipe at the smudges and let her fingers brush away the tears on Cathy's cheek. Then Cathy turned her head, leaning into Maureen's palm, almost like a cat pushed against your hand when it wanted to be petted, and Maureen found her touch turning into a caress. Cathy's eyes were gold on green, like the leaves on a summer tree with the sun shining down. Maureen had never noticed them being so gold before, gleaming, like liquid fire.
"Cathy?" Maureen asked carefully, stopping her hand but not pulling away, because she'd never once suspected this, and she knew the signs.
"I'm sorry," Cathy said immediately, pulling back and looking down.
"Wait, Cath—" Maureen reached out and grabbed her hand before Cathy could run. "Wait!"
Cathy had stopped, half up on one knee, but she pulled her hand away and said again, "I'm sorry, Maureen. I'm … not myself right now."
"No?" Maureen was pretty sure that Cathy was more herself right now than she had ever let Maureen see before. "You don't have to hide, Cathy," Maureen said. "Not from me."
Cathy opened her mouth to answer, then slowly settled back down on the floor. "Oh, Maureen," she said again with the same kind of sigh as before. Her smile seemed sad. "It's not so simple as it seems."
It never was, not at first. But it got easier as you went on. "I've been with a woman," Maureen offered, making it clear right up front so Cathy would know and maybe feel more comfortable talking about herself.
It didn't take her long. "So have I," Cathy admitted. "But not for a long time." She looked at her hands, held loose in her lap. "Not with anyone."
"What about Mark?"
"He's fun to dance with, but we're friends, nothing more."
"And Arch, last year?"
"He liked paintings, and so do I. We went to shows."
"And Michael? John? Ed?" Maureen couldn't even remember all their names.
"Fun to date, but nothing serious. I've been trying to get comfortable again," Cathy explained, and that made sense. "What about you?" she asked.
"There was Johnny, of course, since I was nineteen. Then Denise. She was great. She's the one who introduced me to 'another way.' But she and her ex shared custody of the kids, and when he got a job in England, she moved right after I got the job here, and … well." She shrugged.
Cathy tilted her head to one side. "Are you seeing anyone now, Maureen?"
"Me? Oh no," Maureen said with a laugh. She'd been looking, now and again these last few years, but the men she met at the shelter weren't the kind any woman in her right mind would want, and the decent men she did meet were either already spoken for or not interested in her. She'd tried a few lesbian places (even though she wasn't lesbian, and she only barely qualified as bi), and she'd gone out on a few dates. But none of the women she'd met were anything like Denise, and Maureen had given up on that scene over a year ago. "No. I figured when the time was right I'd find someone."
"And here I've been thinking the same, while you and I have known each other for years," Cathy said. Then she smiled, happy this time, and the sunshine came back to her eyes. "Would you like to go out with me?"
|
CHAPTER 6 (World population: 7.36 billion) |
THE BEAST BELOW
Autumn 2013
Edinburgh, Scotland
======================
The dark young woman from the shelter opened the door. "Oh hullo, Alex," she said cheerfully. Her hair was braided into cornrows with yellow and blue beads, and she wore Cass's green silk dressing gown over a white T-shirt and purple sweatpants. Her feet were bare. Her toenails were blue with white and yellow daisies painted on each one.
It took Alex a moment to remember the girl's name. "Maureen. Good morning."
"I expect you're looking for Cathy," Maureen said. "She went out to buy eggs so we could have crepes for breakfast, but she'll be back soon." Maureen opened the door wide. "Come on in!"
Alex did, but kept her coat on.
"Tea?" Maureen offered, already heading for the kitchen area against the far wall. "It's a bit chilly out still."
It was chilly inside, too. "Please," Alex said, though she would have preferred coffee. But she couldn't ask Maureen for it; coffee—like heating oil—was expensive these days. She found her gaze going to the sleeping futon off to her right, a rumple of sheets and blankets, with Phoenix curled in the exact center. The cat opened her golden eyes briefly, stared at Alex, then went back to sleep. Two pillows were at the head of the bed. On the left pillow lay a few long hairs of golden-bronze; on the right pillow lay hairs of curly black.
"Here you are!" Maureen announced. She set a tray with two steaming mugs, a sugar bowl, and a pitcher of milk on the knee-high table. She flopped down onto a cushion and started ladling sugar into her mug.
Alex lowered herself carefully to the other cushion, keeping her face impassive when her joints protested, and wishing once again that Cassandra would buy some chairs. "Furniture needs to be dusted," Cass had said when Alex had mentioned it a few years ago. "Besides, it's a small flat, and I like open space." Aside from the wall of bookshelves and the sleeping futon, the table was the only piece of furniture in the room.
That, and the harp that Connor had given to Cassandra as a Christmas gift, seventeen years ago. It stood in a place of honor near the door.
Alex added milk, but no sugar, to her tea, and then smiled at Maureen. Maureen smiled back, completely at ease. "I've been out of town," Alex began.
Maureen nodded. "Cathy mentioned."
Alex kept smiling, even though Cassandra had never mentioned anything about Maureen to her. But then, Alex hadn't exactly been communicative herself lately, had she? And that was why she was here. "I didn't realize you and she were …"
"Such 'close friends'?" Maureen said, grinning now. "We haven't been, until two weeks ago. And we aren't. But we might. I hope. Right now, we're taking it slow."
Alex blinked, trying to make sense of all that. "Are … are you dating?"
This time Maureen absolutely beamed. "Yes. I couldn't believe it when Cathy asked me out."
Alex was having some trouble believing it, too. Not that she hadn't known that Cass had been with women, but that had been centuries ago. For the first ten years Alex had known her, Cass hadn't shown interest in sex of any kind, not even (Cass had mentioned it once) with herself. These last three or four years she'd dated a variety of people, but not one had progressed from "going out together" to "staying in."
It seemed things had changed.
"I mean, she's just gorgeous," Maureen was going on. "Like a film star. And as for me …" She laughed. "My feet are huge, my teeth are crooked, and my backside's as broad as a bus!"
"Oh, no," Alex protested, because while Maureen was solidly built and maybe a little on the plump side, she certainly wasn't fat. "You're very attractive."
"Thanks!" Maureen said. "Don't get me wrong. I like myself fine, but I know I'm not in Cathy's league. But she's not stuck on looks, not like some women are."
Alex reached for her cup again. Cassandra didn't need to worry about her looks.
"So," Maureen said, blissfully sharing the story of her budding romance, "Cath and I are still just dating, to see how we like each other. Last night we were watching a movie, and then it started to rain, so I stayed. We went through a pitcherful of daiquiris and got kind of loopy. I braided her hair, and she painted my toenails for me." Maureen stuck out her foot to admire the decorations.
"She's quite an artist," Alex said. Her tea was nearly half gone, and Alex took two more large swallows then got up to leave, breathing out slowly as her knees creaked in protest. "Would you tell her that I stopped by?"
Maureen hopped to her feet. "Oh, you don't have to go. She should be back soon."
"I have some errands to run," Alex said. "But please do tell her I'd like to see her again. Soon."
~~~~~
"Cassandra called," Colin said when Alex walked in the kitchen door.
Alex called her back right away. "How about a walk in the Botanic Garden?" Alex suggested. She knew Cass loved to spend time there. "And then I can take you out to lunch?"
"I'd like that," Cass answered, and they met at the West Gate at eleven. The day had warmed, and Cass wore white sandals and a flowing dress with great splashes of pink on white. She had beads braided into her waist-long hair, and her toenails had pink and white flowers on blue. All she needed was a peace sign painted on her cheek to be a flower child from fifty years ago.
"I'm sorry, Cass," Alex said, as they walked in the shade of tall pines. "I really don't know what came over me."
"I do," Cass said. "Death often makes us angry, and even more so with people who don't have to die."
A brutally frank reason, but true enough. Alex could see that now. It made sense. She stepped carefully around the puddle in the center of the path, a reminder of last night's heavy rain. "Not much surprises you, does it?"
Cass crossed the puddle with one easy stride. "Not anymore, no."
Not after three thousand and some years. "Cass," Alex said, stopping and turning to her friend. "What I said, that last part …" She was relieved when Cass nodded; Alex didn't want to have to repeat that nasty comment about not knowing anything about giving birth. "It was unkind—and also untrue. I'm sorry. I'd take it back, if only I could."
"I understand," Cass said, just as warm and sympathetic as she had been six months before, when Alex had lashed out at her over Colin hearing the voices in his head—and hearing other things, too.
"I always thought you just … put up with it," Colin had said to Alex the morning after Connor had taken the Immortal's head. "What Dad had to do." Colin's gaze had dropped to the marks at her throat, those pale red tracks on even paler skin, evidence of the urgent and demanding passion from the night before. Alex had pulled her bathrobe closer around her, feeling exposed and naked in front of her son. Other marks and even a few faint bruises had suddenly throbbed beneath her gown. "But you get off on it," Colin had said in horrified disgust. "It turns you on when he kills."
Alex had realized then that the voices weren't the only things Colin had heard—and felt—inside his head after Connor had come home. It wasn't like that, not really, she'd tried to explain, first in words and then in her letters when Colin had gone so far from home, but it was a horribly awkward business between a mother and a sixteen-year-old son, and Colin had retreated into embarrassed silence, saying finally, "I still love you, Mom, but I don't want to talk about this anymore."
Alex hadn't wanted to talk about it, either, certainly not to Cassandra, and not to Connor. He'd had enough on his mind. And Colin was home now; everything was fine. Everything would be fine.
"Believe me," Cass was saying with a rueful smile, "I know all about wishing I could undo things I've done. Let's put this behind us, shall we?"
"Yes," Alex agreed immediately, but she noticed Cass hadn't said "Let's forget this." But then neither of them was likely to forget it any time soon, and Cass was a stickler for telling the truth. She'd learned that lesson the hard way.
"What happened, Cass?" Alex asked, ready to listen now, but Cass looked at her blankly, so Alex added, "When you left town so suddenly three weeks ago and then came over to the house to talk after you got back?"
"Oh, yes. That. I'm fine now. I talked with Maureen."
"Oh."
"It was about Roland," Cass explained. "Maureen understands abusive relationships. She helped me."
"Oh," Alex said again. "That's good."
"It is."
Alex and Cass started walking again. "So, what's this with you and Maureen?" Alex asked. "That's new, isn't it?"
"Yes," Cass said, looking radiant now, and very much a woman in love. "New and sudden. It took us both by surprise, I think, but—oh, Maureen's wonderful! I've known that for years, as a friend and a colleague, but now …" The radiance softened into misty-eyed love. Alex had seen that look on Cass's face only a few times before, when she'd held the infant Sara in her arms.
"Maureen's sweet, yet tough," Cass went on. "She's so beautiful, so strong in who she is. And she's funny, with a good sense of humor. Innocent, and by that I mean clear-eyed. She sees things." Cass stepped across another puddle. "She's good for me." Cass bent to pick up a pine cone from the ground then stroked the brown triangular bracts with her thumbs. "I hope I'll be good for her."
"Have you told her?" Alex asked. "About your 'age'?"
Cass turned the pine cone around and around, following the spiraling path from the tip of the cone to the stem. "Not yet. But soon. Certainly before we become lovers." She gazed straight ahead to where the path led uphill, a spot of brightness between the darkness of pines. "I won't have lies in my bed, not anymore."
"I think that's wise."
Cass met her gaze sidelong with a rueful grin. "I may not be surprised often, but I definitely can't claim to be wise. It's taken me centuries to figure that one out. Do you know," she said, stooping to set the pine cone back down, "except for Methos, I think I have hidden things and lied to every single person I have ever slept with?"
Cassandra had certainly lied to Connor, and hidden things too, when she had taken him as her lover over four hundred years ago. Connor still carried the scars. Not as deep now, and not as painful, but always there. Alex had worked hard at helping her husband heal. Not one of them would ever forget that, either, even though they had put it behind them and moved on.
"What about your husbands?" Alex asked. "Didn't you tell them?"
"Oh, they knew about immortality, but not about my time with Methos. I never even told my first husband, not all of it. And I never told anyone the truth about Roland. I was always lying, always hiding and pretending. With Methos, the relationship wasn't honest, but I was. I hid nothing from him. I gave him everything."
"You didn't have much of a choice," Alex noted.
"No. But I do now, and I'm not going to hide or pretend anymore," Cass declared.
"I hope it works out, Cass," Alex said sincerely. "It's been a long time for you."
"Yes, it has," Cass agreed, then by unspoken consent they dropped that subject immediately, for Cassandra's last relationship had been with Alex's husband. Connor and Cass were friends now, that was all; Alex had absolutely no doubts about her husband's love. Connor had made himself abundantly clear on that topic, and Cass never visited the MacLeods unless Alex was home.
They reached the top of the hill and came out into the sunshine of a brilliant October day. The stands of maple and beech glowed red and gold, and Alex and Cass stood for a moment, admiring the view. "The rock garden?" Cass suggested next, and they followed the winding paths to where gentians formed blue pools among gray rocks. The heathers were fading nearby.
"I'm hungry," Alex announced after they had strolled through the Chinese garden on the south side of the hill. "Where would you like to go for lunch?"
Cass chose a vegetarian place a few minutes walk away, and they took their seats at a small, round table. A tree stood in the center of the octagonal conservatory, and it branches provided a leafy ceiling for the entire room. "How was your visit in the States, Alex?" Cass asked, unfolding her napkin.
"The funeral was hard, but it was good to see Mom and Pete again. They're holding up. Lara was drinking a lot, but Pete says that's not usual for her, so she'll probably be all right after a while." Alex had seen Connor drink more, and with less reason than the death of a child. "I saw some friends, and I spent last week with my mom. I stopped by our old place." That had been hard, too, to see the barn and house her father had worked on so neglected, to see her mother's garden so overgrown. "It's been empty for nearly two years, and hardly anyone farms in the valley now. Even the Hogeweides are gone, and they've been there since before the Revolution."
"Radiation?"
"No, it's upwind and upstream of D.C. Just … no interest. Family farms don't make any money, it's not near any main roads, and there are no jobs left there."
"Is much of the land in the valley for sale?"
"I suppose. Probably cheap, too, what with the depression. It's beautiful, especially now with the autumn colors on the hills. And in the winter with the snow …" Alex fell silent, remembering long treks through the woods with her father, playing catch in the summer evenings with Pete in the back yard, early morning horseback rides across the fields …
"Sounds like a good place for one of our schools," Cass said.
"Yes," Alex said, now envisioning the house and the barn busy again, with people laughing in the kitchen and horses running in the pastures. "It would be." She set her napkin on her lap. "I'll get that started right away."
Their waitress arrived, and Cass greeted her by name. They chatted like old friends, until Cass finally ordered a grilled tomato sandwich. Alex decided to try the vegetarian haggis, just so she could mention it to Connor later today and see the look on his face. She was also looking forward to seeing his expression when she told him that Cassandra had found herself a girlfriend. Rachel would be very interested, too.
Cass poured them tea, and Alex closed her eyes as she sipped at the hot lemon-flavored brew. After lunch, she was going home to take a nap. She didn't handle jet lag well anymore.
"What are things like over there?" Cass asked.
"Strange." Alex set down her tea. "Daily life goes on, although a lot of people are out of work, and things are scarce. Bananas are impossible to find. But it doesn't look like a war's on. Except in a very few places, there is no destruction or bombed buildings, no tanks rusting on the roads. You could almost think nothing's changed, that it was just a bad recession. Except flags are absolutely everywhere, and everybody wears color-coded bracelets, all the time."
The customs authority at the airport had snapped one on Alex's wrist before he would let her through the gate. The slim plastic band was red with narrow white and blue stripes.
"That's because you've been out of the country for a long time," explained her mother, who had come to the airport to vouch for Alex's identity. Mom's bracelet was mostly white with red and blue. "Members of the armed forces or emergency services are mostly blue, but every citizen wears the red, white, and blue. Foreign nationals have green."
"No yellow stars?" Alex had asked.
"It's not like that, Alex," Mom had said with gentle reproof. "We don't discriminate. We're all Americans, no matter what our color or creed. And the bracelets have our medical chips in them and our IDs, too. A lot of lives have been saved with these, and when they put the program in last year, a lot of lost children were found."
Evann, an "old" friend of Connor's, wore a bracelet that was mostly blue, since she was currently known as Captain Evann Hennessy, 9th Air Intelligence Wing, United States Air Force. "No, they're not that easy to counterfeit," she had said when Alex had asked during a quick visit to Evann and Sean Hennessy's home. "And they're not easy to take off. They were originally developed for tracking prisoners on parole. When we put the program in we found a lot of wanted criminals, people with expired visas, illegal aliens, that sort of thing."
Alex wasn't used to thinking of the United States as one huge jail. "It's different now," Alex told Cass. "Very … insular."
Cass didn't seem surprised. "Even though they're turning inward, the U.S. is still a dominant force in the world. Their movies and music reach millions, and stories and songs have changed worlds before. I'll be moving there soon." She turned her head, the beads clicking in her hair. "Here comes our food!"
~~~~~
After lunch was over, they went back outside into the crisp fall air. "Would you like to go running together tomorrow afternoon, Alex?" Cass asked.
"I can't," Alex replied. "Connor and the kids and I are going sailing, our last outing for the season."
"Some other time," Cass suggested.
"That would be nice," Alex said, but she knew running hills with Cass wasn't likely, not anymore. Alex would only slow her down.
"Arthritis," was the cheerful diagnosis when Alex went to the doctor later that month. "Not at all uncommon at your age. But don't worry. We'll fix you up with some pills." The next diagnosis was another footfall on her grave. "Those fibroids are still growing," the doctor said with a grave shake of the head. "A hysterectomy would get rid of them all. You're into menopause now, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, we'll keep on eye on them and see. If they don't give you any problems, come back next year!"
The years went by faster all the time.
RELUCTANT HEROES
October 2013
Arkansas, United States
======================
George edged his way around the grain silo, hoping for a better view. Lightning splintered the cloudy sky, giving a glimpse of harvested cornstalks standing in rows like little black teeth, and slamming into the taller black silhouette of the winner Immortal. More lightning raced down the metal wall of the silo. George hastily moved away, over to a concrete wall, then watched the rest of the show with oohs and aahs.
After his Immortal had gotten rid of the body, taken the extra sword, and left the scene, George started to compose his report in his head. Regulation 01-13a stated that nothing was to be written down or recorded in any way in the field.
He was halfway to his car, trying to decide between "valiant" or "courageous," when the men with the machine guns arrived.
~~~~~
"I'm not a spy," George protested yet again, nervously aware of the two military police on either side of him, and painfully aware of the aches in various places that he knew would be ugly bruises very soon.
The balding Air Force major seated behind the desk glanced up from his computer. "Then why were you on the perimeter of a military facility in the middle of the night, Mr. Baker?"
Regulation 01-01a: Preserve the secret of Immortals. Never divulge any information about Quickenings, the Game, or the Prize. Guard these secrets with your life. Death before dishonor. All Watchers everywhere depend on you.
George told the truth. "I didn't know there was a military facility anywhere around here."
"Uh-huh," the major said slowly. "OK. Then why were you in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of the night?"
"Uh … astronomy is a hobby of mine," George said, and it had been, back when he'd been a boy, for a couple of months anyway. "I was looking at stars, away from bright lights."
One of the MPs snickered; the major said, "Uh-hunh" this time. "The ceiling's at twelve hundred feet," he observed dryly. "Not many stars to be seen."
"I meant …" George licked dry lips, trying to calm down. He could still talk himself out of this. He didn't have to try to kill himself tonight, and at least he didn't have to explain one of those wrist tattoos some of the older Watchers still wore. All he'd had was a signet ring, and he'd ditched that in the field as soon as he'd seen the guns. This would work out OK. "I meant I was looking for a good place to look at stars on another night. Someplace with some shelter, out of the wind. You know Orion will be visible soon, with winter coming on," he added, trying to sound excited about that.
The major just looked at him. "Uh-hunh. Is that why you set those fires out there?"
"What?" he said, confused by the change of topic.
"Were you cold?"
"No, I—" The Quickening, George realized. Lightning, scorch marks, burns. "I didn't set any fires."
"Uh-hunh." He turned back to his computer and scrolled through the bio of one George Washington Baker (SSN 608-34-1578) displayed there. "I see you were in Europe a few years ago, going to a school in Geneva."
George hastily reviewed his cover story. "Yes, that's right."
"Why?"
"I wanted to see some sights after college, before I got a regular job, and they had a work-scholarship program."
"And what did they teach at that school?"
Watchering 101. "History, mostly," George said. "It's a lot like a big library. I did some translating and transcribing and got classes in return."
"What languages?"
"French."
The major leaned back in his gun-metal gray chair, making it creak, then studied George. George decided not to smile and tried for innocently helpful instead. "Isn't French one of the official languages of Switzerland?" asked the major.
"Yes," George said then added a "Sir" to that, hoping to put the major in a better mood.
"Seems to me like they could find some French speakers of their own. Don't you think?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"Then why'd they bring an American over?"
"It's … an exchange program with a sister company over here."
"Really." The major peered at his monitor. "And yet now, you're an orderly in a hospital in Arkansas. Much French at that hospital?"
"Some," he answered truthfully. "People from Louisiana."
"Any history there? Any transcribing duties?"
George shook his head. "I decided history wasn't for me."
"Let me see if I've got this right," the major said, leaning his elbows on his desk. "This 'school' sponsored you to live in Europe for two years, trained you, and then you come back here and don't even work for them, or for their 'sister company.' Doesn't sound like they got their money's worth." His eyes went cold. "Or maybe they did. Lock him up," he ordered the MPs.
"Wait!" George protested as the MPs grabbed his arms. "I'm an American citizen; when can I talk to a lawyer?"
The major was already typing at his computer. He sounded bored as he said, "Traitors automatically forfeit all rights of citizenship."
George knew that. Everybody knew that. But that was only for convicted traitors, and he hadn't been convicted of anything … yet. "Don't I at least get a phone call?"
The major stopped typing. He came over to where George was standing. "A phone call?" he repeated with sarcastic disbelief. "So you can contact the other members of your organization?"
George had been hoping to do just that.
"The people in D.C. didn't get any phone calls," the major continued with quiet menace.
"I know," George said quietly. "My brother was there."
"So was my wife," the major said coldly. "While you, Mr. George Washington Baker, were in a foreign country, going to 'school.' And now here you are, betraying the memory of your own flesh and blood."
George started shaking his head, wondering how it all gotten so bad so fast. He should never have broken Regulation 01-02a. He should have tried harder to run away. He should have come up with better lies.
"You're a traitor as well as a spy," the major accused.
"No, I—"
"A terrorist then."
"No!"
"The Homeland Security Agency will make that decision," the major said, returning to his chair. "They're going to want to talk to you."
George gulped. He'd heard about "talks" with the HSA. Suddenly, trying to kill himself tonight sounded like a really good idea.
~~~~~
Death before dishonor, George reminded himself for about the hundredth time the next morning as he sat wedged in between two HSA agents in the back of a car, and it was only nine a.m. But then his day had started three hours earlier, and it hadn't started out well. The guard had tossed a bucket of icy water into his face to wake him up, then followed that with the snarled command: "Get up, spy."
"I'm not a spy," George had protested, after he could breathe.
"Shut up, spy," the guard had ordered and shoved a tray with food into the cell.
As he'd eaten the lumpy oatmeal and sipped at the lukewarm water (no luxuries like coffee or tea were wasted on prisoners), George had considered possible means of suicide. They'd taken his belt and his shoelaces, and there weren't any blankets or sheets in the cell. There wasn't enough water in the toilet to drown himself. He'd read of falling on a sword, but falling on the plastic four-inch sfork they'd given him with his breakfast seemed unlikely to do the trick.
Being shot while trying to escape was probably his best bet, he'd decided, but when he'd tried to make a run for it as soon as they got outside, the guards hadn't used their rifles. They'd used their fists, adding fresh bruises and new blood on top of the old. He'd been too dizzy after that to even walk, and they'd dragged him to the car.
And so, at
His wish was granted at
Back came the answer almost immediately: "Acknowledged." A few minutes later, a company bulletin arrived: "Some holiday bonuses will be given early this year."
The driver strode off whistling, looking forward to the extra cash.
======================
Watcher HQ, France
======================
Rhee shattered the usual tedium of the Watcher Council's Monday morning meeting by arriving late to the conference room and announcing: "Immediately after a Quickening on Saturday evening, a Watcher was arrested by the United States military near an Air Force base."
Jesus God, thought Joe, feeling sick. Not again. "Who?" he rasped, breaking the tense silence around the dark table.
"George W. Baker, graduated from the Geneva academy in 2011, assigned to Gregory Powers."
"Where is Baker now?" Joe asked.
"He was killed on Sunday afternoon, as he was being transported for interrogation."
Olenskaya lifted an eyebrow and said to Rhee, "Your section is most efficient. Impressive work."
Too bad somebody didn't give Olenskaya a real up-close and personal example of that kind of efficiency, Joe thought viciously. Impressive work, his ass. She was talking about murdering one of their own!
"The Guard did not kill him," Rhee corrected. "It was a traffic accident."
Joe let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. That was bad, yeah, terrible even, but not quite as bad as he'd feared. He hadn't known the boy, didn't even recognize the name, but he'd do something. Write a letter to the next of kin, make sure the family was taken care of … something.
"We were fortunate," Rhee said, as he had said about those two Watchers in that firing line ten months ago. "But next time …" He leaned forward. "I say this again: we have to stop Watching. Now."
"We've already scaled way back," Joe protested.
"Only in the field," Wildorfer said tartly. "Building three new training centers in addition to the seven academies was ill-advised."
"Nobody wanted to be left out," Joe explained with a "what else could I do?" kind of shrug. "This way each of the ten divisions has something."
Wildorfer was patting at his moustache again. "Such duplication is unnecessary, inefficient, and expensive."
Joe didn't answer. He'd heard it all before, and not just once, either. Besides, Joe had already given Central America, Eastern Europe, and Western Asia his firm promise to upgrade the centers to full-fledged academies soon, or at least before he retired next year. "Speaking of duplication," Joe said to Olenskaya, "how's the Chronicle project coming?"
"Transcribing so many files takes time," she replied with a window-dressing smile. "We must be precise and thorough, so as not to lose any detail of our histories. It is our legacy." She looked at Wildorfer, and her smile disappeared. "Our scanning technology is not of the best."
"The one you requested has been classified as secret by three governments," Wildorfer said. "It is inaccessible. In any case, you have already exceeded your budget for the year."
"Because of this project! We are working overtime—"
"I know," Wildorfer broke in, and Joe looked at him in surprise. Wildorfer never interrupted anybody. He was already trying to back-peddle, giving everybody an apologetic smile and spreading his hands helplessly. "You must understand, all of you, that with the global disruptions our finances are not the best. And recently, some of our investments have … not done well," he admitted, biting his lip in shame. He looked around the table. "I am trying to conserve our capital, to prepare us for the difficult times ahead, so that the Watchers will continue for centuries to come, but … you … you cannot keep spending money this way! All of you! The Guard always has to have more guns, more training, more men, more security cameras! The Guild builds and builds and buys and buys, and Chronicles never keeps a computer more than a month! And all of you always want more, and I cannot—" He broke off there, seemed about to weep. Joe looked away.
Kananga finally spoke up. "We are all seeking to ensure the future of the Watchers, each in our own way. The Guard protects us, the Guild instructs us, the Chronicles preserve our knowledge. So it has been through the ages; so it will be for ages to come."
Joe wondered if Kananga had been watching Yul Brynner in "The Ten Commandments" again. "So let it be written; so let it be done" sure sounded good, but Joe had never found that things worked out that easily around the Guild hall. Maybe he needed to be a pharaoh instead of a tribune, get one of those chariots, a scepter …
Damn. He needed to get real. He needed coffee. Joe poured himself a cup and started paying attention again.
"Yet without the work of the Exchequer, none of us can do our jobs," Kananga was saying, and that was true enough. Joe resolved to listen more to Wildorfer from now on, instead of just getting irritated with the little bean-counter. "And our job is watching Immortals," Kananga went on. "It is a sacred trust, from those who have gone before. We must not betray them." He stood and headed for the door.
"First Tribune Kananga!" Rhee called after him in frustration.
"No more today," he ordered without stopping.
"We must—"
Kananga turned around. "What you ask is a matter for the full executive council to decide. Our quarterly meeting is in two weeks. You may submit it for the agenda, if you wish. Again. Though I doubt you will find any more success than you had the last three times." He left the room with Wildorfer and Olenskaya trailing in his wake.
Rhee and Joe remained behind, staring at each other across the table. Rhee was drumming his fingers in frustration, those fingers that could find every single pressure point in a human body in about two seconds flat and knew exactly how to inflict excruciating pain. In the training sessions over at the Guard hall, Joe had watched Rhee take down opponents twice his size and half his age. He was facing a different kind of opponent now. "Kananga never used to be so hard to talk to," Joe said.
"That heart attack this spring," Rhee said. "Now he is afraid to move, afraid of change. He thinks he can cling to the old ways and find safety there."
"At least you got him to shut down the in-house newsletters and get rid of the mailing lists. And the tattoos are gone. Even mine," Joe said, rubbing his thumb over the shiny circle of smooth skin on his wrist where the laser had taken off the decades-old tattoo. He still missed it. Truth to tell, he'd been one of the last holdouts. He'd earned that damn tattoo. Twice. But in the end, he'd caved. Rhee was right. A permanent mark like that was hard to deny or explain. Joe rarely wore the heavy signet ring with the Watcher emblem that had replaced the tattoos—it wrecked his fingering on the guitar and was a downright menace on the climbing wall at the gym. So he left it at home in a drawer. Everybody at HQ knew he was a Watcher anyway.
"Tattoos," Rhee said with disdain. "Newsletters. There is so much more that we cannot hide." He pushed his chair back and started to pace. "I am their expert on security, and yet they do not listen when I tell them we are exposed!"
"So don't tell them," Joe suggested, remembering the words his high-school English teacher had often written across the top of papers in red. "Show 'em instead."
Rhee abruptly stopped his pacing. Then he sat down in Kananga's chair. "Joseph, if I propose at the next executive council that the Watchers go quiet, will I have your true support?"
"Damn, Rhee," Joe said. "You're asking me to put all my people out of work."
"They have other jobs."
"Rhee …" Joe rubbed a hand through his hair. "I know Kananga's being a hard ass right now, but he's got a point. Watching Immortals isn't just a job; it's our calling. It's our duty." Joe tried to be accommodating. "Look, I'll have my people scale back even farther, use more long-range devices, take more precautions, that sort of thing. OK?"
Rhee looked at him for a long moment,
then
nodded. "OK."
ROAD NOT TAKEN
Winter 2013-2014
Edinburgh, Scotland
======================
The first time Maureen said, "I love you, Cathy," Cassandra knew she'd waited too long. She answered, after only the smallest of hesitations, "I love you, too, Maureen." Then they kissed, their first kiss, lips petal soft, cool and gentle, then slowly blossoming, opening to the warmth of the fire within.
"Wow," Maureen said with a shaky laugh. She ran a
gentle
finger down the
"So would I," Cassandra said, but she knew that it couldn't happen yet, and it might never happen if Maureen decided to leave her. But there was no way around it. The lies couldn't go on.
That evening Cassandra went to Maureen's place to tell her the truth. The two-room flat was unpretentious and cheerfully messy, just like Maureen. Christmas lights festooned the fish tank in the corner, and posters of tropical flowers decorated the walls. Cassandra would have liked to spend the majority of her evenings there, but Phoenix got bored spending so long by herself, so Maureen came to Cassandra's flat most of the time. Cassandra moved a pile of Sandman comic books from the sofa to the floor so she could sit down, then let Maureen bring her tea and biscuits. Maureen liked being the hostess in her own home.
"So," Maureen said when she finally sat down. The mugs of tea were steaming on the floor, with the plate of biscuits between them. "What's up, Cathy? When you called you said we needed to talk."
"I need to tell you some things. About me."
Maureen picked up a biscuit and munched it in one bite. "Go."
Cassandra started with the easy part. "My real name isn't Cathy Pelton. It's Cassandra."
Maureen blinked but nodded after only a moment. "So Alex did call you Cass. I thought I just didn't hear her saying 'Cath' right that time. Cassandra," she said, trying out the name. "It's pretty. Like you."
She offered Cassandra her hand, and Cassandra took it, holding on, knowing they had a lot further to go. "I love you, Maureen," she said, because she needed Maureen to know that part was true.
"And I love you." She grinned. "Cass."
"I like hearing you say my name," Cassandra said. "I needed to hear you say my name."
Maureen squeezed her hand. "I understand. Names are real. Did you change it because you didn't want him to find you?"
"I have changed my name because of that, but not this time. He's dead."
"Oh." Maureen blinked again. "When?"
Now it started getting harder. "Seventeen years ago."
"Sevente—" She stopped and stared, a wrinkle between her eyes. "God, what were you, twelve when you met him?" She stopped again, looking horrified. "He wasn't your father, was he?"
"No," Cassandra said softly then took a deep breath. There was no turning back now. "Roland was my son."
It took nearly half an hour to explain. "So, you're … how old?" Maureen said, now standing on the other side of the room. Cassandra hadn't moved from her seat on the sofa. The mugs of tea were untouched and stone-cold.
"I'm not sure exactly," Cassandra said. "I was at the fall of Troy."
"Troy. Like Helen of Troy? Like in that film we went to this summer? So, that's what? Three thousand years?"
Cassandra nodded. "A little more, maybe a century or two."
"A century." Maureen blinked, like she'd just woken up. "Or two. Right." She ran both hands through her thick black curls. "Geez, Cathy, I— No, wait. It's not Cathy. You're not Cathy. You're Cassandra. Right?"
"Yes."
Maureen started looking worried again. "Not the Cassandra? The one who told everybody what was going to happen and nobody believed?"
"No."
"Good."
No hiding. No pretending. Not anymore. Cassandra took a deep breath. "But I do prophesy. I have visions and dreams."
"Right."
"I'm sorry, Maureen. I wasn't trying to trick you, but I have to hide what I am, all the time." She looked straight at Maureen and admitted, "I lie."
"No shit," Maureen said. "Like when you told me that your parents were missionaries in India. Like you being 'home-schooled.' Like you being married four times, not just once. Like you saying stuff like 'I was younger than I am now' whenever I ask you when something happened or how old you are." Her hands were on her hips, and she was standing right in front of Cassandra now, staring down. "No shit, you lie."
"I'm sorry," Cassandra said again, looking up at Maureen. "I'm sorry I lied to you. But I'm not lying now, and I don't want to lie to you, ever again. That's why I'm here now, tonight, telling you these things."
"Almost three months we've been going out," she accused. "You sure took your time about it."
"You took almost six months before you told your grandmother about your relationship with Denise."
"Yeah, well … Gran's old," Maureen said defensively. "I didn't think she'd understand." She stared at Cass then abruptly sat down on the arm of the sofa. "Shit. You didn't think I'd understand about this immortality stuff, either, did you?"
"I know how hard it is, Maureen." Tears came into her eyes, another opening of a door, and Cassandra let them fall. "But I don't want to hide from you, not anymore."
Maureen ran her hands through her hair again then looked at Cassandra warily. "I guess I said you didn't have to, didn't I?"
"You did," Cassandra agreed, smiling a little as she remembered that moment, when Maureen had so easily opened the door that Cassandra had kept locked all these years. "And I said it wasn't so simple as it seemed."
"And that was no lie," Maureen muttered, and somehow that struck both of them as funny, and they smiled at the bizarreness of it all; then Cassandra held out her hand.
"I love you, Maureen," Cassandra said again. "And that is no lie."
Maureen slid slowly from the arm of the sofa to the seat cushion, then took Cassandra's hand between her own, but cautiously, almost afraid. "I fell in love with Cathy," Maureen said. "I don't know who you are. Cassandra." Then she grinned, and the door swung open wide. "Not yet. I'd like to."
~~~~~
The next three weeks whipped by, filled with shopping and holiday parties, with questions and answers and stories of times long ago. They still weren't lovers; they had agreed to take it slow, to give Maureen a chance to get used to the idea that Cassandra had lived for thousands of years, to give Cassandra a chance to get rid of the lies. Maureen loved hearing about Cassandra's past lives, the history, the clothes, the food, the fun part of being immortal.
Other parts weren't fun. "I've been a slave," Cassandra told Maureen a few days before Christmas.
Maureen opened her mouth, shut it, then blinked a few times. "I guess you must have been. Things were different a long time ago, weren't they?"
"In some ways."
"Was it bad?"
"Some times. Other times, no. It could even be good. As a slave, I had a home, a protector, legal standing in the community, no responsibilities, no decisions. There were times that I wanted to be owned. I even sought out masters and put myself into their hands."
"You sold yourself?" Maureen said in horror.
"I traded my freedom for security. But don't we all? In some way?"
"Yeah, but … not that far. Not like that. That's like staying with the guy who beats on you just because he pays the bills. It's being dependent in the worst way. It's sick."
Cassandra nodded. "Yes, it is. But so was I."
"Because of Roland? And Methos?"
"They certainly reinforced that behavior in me." She could even smile about that now, if only a little, painful and ironic. "But so did the cultures I lived in. And so did I. It was a survival strategy that worked for me, and so I repeated it, time and time again."
"And now?"
"I'm breaking that habit. I'm not looking for someone to tell me what to do anymore."
"You trying to be a take-no-shit kind of woman, Cass?"
Cassandra returned Maureen's smile. "Just like you."
After Christmas, Cassandra brought up the other side of that coin. "I've owned slaves," she told Maureen. "I've bought and sold people on the block."
Maureen pulled away, got up and walked around the room. "Things were different then, weren't they," she said finally, as she had said the week before.
"In some ways."
"Were … were you kind?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes, I was very cruel."
Maureen stood looking at her, then shook her head and walked out the door. Two hours later she called and asked Cassandra to meet her in the park. "Gran's told me stories, you know," Maureen said, while she and Cassandra walked on faded grass beneath bare branches of trees. "Of the old days, back in Jamaica, when her family still lived like slaves. They used to actually be slaves."
"I know."
"But so were you. Lots of times."
"Yes."
Maureen picked up a small twig from the ground, worried it with her fingers. "Right after I walked out, I was thinking: 'If you knew how bad it was to be a slave, how could you be cruel?' And then I thought: It's just like at the shelter. The abuse is passed along, like a disease."
Cassandra nodded. "Once given power, a victim can easily become a batterer."
They walked up the hill. "Have you ever killed anyone, Cass?" Maureen asked next.
She'd been expecting this one, dreading it. "Yes."
Maureen didn't seem too surprised, but then Cassandra had been carefully paving the way for weeks by mentioning battles and raids. "How many?"
"By my own hands, thirty-two."
Maureen twisted the twig until it broke into two pieces. "Why?"
"Self-defense, often. Protecting others, sometimes." Cassandra forced herself to go on. No more hiding. No more lies. "The rest …" She'd once told Methos that she didn't enjoy killing, had never enjoyed killing, but that was yet another of those lies she'd been telling herself for years. She had no justification for hating Methos; she was more like him than she had ever wanted to know. "The rest were because I wanted to. Because it was fun."
Maureen stopped walking. "That's sick."
"I know."
They stood there, facing each other, under the stippled shadow of trees, until Maureen asked, carefully, "How long ago was it, that you thought it was fun?"
Cassandra had to think about that. The most recent time, she'd been in a brothel, and Romans had been around. After Aurelius's reign? Yes. But before Constantine took the throne, and definitely before she'd met Tak-Ne again. Sometime in there, anyway. "About seventeen hundred years."
Maureen started to laugh, an almost hysterical, disbelieving sound. "Seventeen hundred frigging years." She tossed the pieces of twig away, shaking her head. "None of this seems real."
This was not a good time, Cassandra decided, to mention the Game or the Prize. Or the Voice. Or the Watchers. Or the time she had tortured a man to death with honey and leather thongs and exquisitely sharp knives. He'd come to the brothel and asked to be "tamed." Cassandra had smiled and volunteered for the job. It had taken her three days.
"Let's just not talk about this for a while, OK?" Maureen asked. "We've got that big dinner-dance party at the MacLeods on New Year's Eve tomorrow; let's just go and have some fun."
"Fine by me," Cassandra agreed with relief, but she knew the respite couldn't last. She hadn't realized she had so much to tell.
"I love your hair," Maureen said the day after the party, after they had finally woken up, eaten a lazy breakfast and then taken a nap. They had stayed out dancing at the MacLeods' till dawn. Cassandra sat in front of a mirror while Maureen stood behind her, using long sweeping strokes of the brush. "Have you always worn it this long?"
"No," Cassandra said, remembering a time when slave-sellers had hacked off her knee-length hair, then stripped her naked and paraded her in front of the buyers. A merchant had paid two silver coins for her. A wigmaker had bought her hair for three.
Should she share that with Maureen, or should she gloss over it and move on? The truth, Cassandra told herself firmly, but the truth didn't have to include every depressing detail. Nobody wanted to deal with all of that, and besides, it got boring after a while. "When I was a slave, they usually kept my hair short," Cassandra said, keeping the words casual. "The owners didn't want people wasting time on their hair, and besides, almost everybody had lice."
"Euuuw!"
Cassandra laughed at the expression of disgust she saw in the mirror. "Soap was a luxury for the rich. Or worse, in some times and places, even rich people didn't bathe."
"I'm glad I live now."
"So am I," Cassandra agreed. Maureen lifted the hair to brush the underside, and Cassandra shuddered at the sudden whisper touch of cold air at the nape of her neck. Roland had hacked off her hair, too. She didn't want to remember that. She didn't want to remember him. She didn't want to tell Maureen. She didn't want to deal with immortality now; she just wanted a chance to have a normal life for a while, to laugh together, to live … to love.
Green eyes stared at her from the mirror, from a face both familiar and unknown. "I belong to myself now," Cassandra declared. "So I'm growing my hair long."
Maureen leaned over and placed a kiss on the top of her head. "I'm glad. I love your hair."
But there were other things Maureen didn't love. "You're going to a meeting? Again?" She shoved her dinner plate aside. "I thought we could go out tonight."
"It's important," Cassandra explained.
"You've been to 'important' meetings every night this week. Last weekend you were out of town."
"I was teaching a class at the music convention. It was scheduled back in July."
"Yeah. I know. You told me." She got up from the table and started shoving her sweater into her bag.
"I invited you to come."
Maureen shrugged. "Not much for me to do, except listen to other people talk about pedal technique and 'modal progression,' whatever that is."
"It's when—"
"I'm not into music, Cassandra," Maureen interrupted. "I can't tell Bach from a bongo. We both know that."
At the use of her full name (Maureen always called her Cass; she'd said it sounded more like Cath), Cassandra stopped offering excuses and started listening—really listening—instead. "You feel as if you're not important to me."
Maureen dropped her bag on the floor and faced Cassandra full on. "Damn right."
Cassandra admitted what she'd done wrong. "I've been ignoring you."
"You sure have!"
Cassandra didn't deny it, and after a moment, Maureen sighed then came over to sit next to Cassandra on the floor. "You're always gone, Cass," she said, now sounding wistful instead of accusing. They held hands, and Maureen leaned against her side. "I miss you."
"I miss you, too," Cassandra said, stroking Maureen's beautiful hair. The black curls clung around her fingers, twining in soft tangles. "But my job with Phinyx takes up a lot of time."
"No shit," Maureen muttered, and Cassandra smiled at that familiar phrase even as sudden tears came to her eyes.
"Let's go away this weekend," Cassandra suggested, wanting to make things right between them. "Maybe a whole week. Just you and I. We could go to a romantic place near the sea."
"Romantic?" Maureen started to smile. "You mean …"
Cassandra leaned forward to kiss her, the lips honey sweet, then warming to fire under her own. "Want to stop taking it slow?"
~~~~~
The cottage was cozy, the sea and the sky immense. The surge of the surf beat in their blood. The days were honey, stingless; the nights were wine-dark with love. Cassandra had forgotten what it was to touch, to be touched, to love. Maureen taught her anew.
When they returned to Edinburgh the magic continued, every day, every night. Cassandra had not been so happy in centuries. Until one evening, lounging on the sofa and watching a movie set in the west coast of Ireland, Maureen said, "Isn't it gorgeous there, Cass? We could have a little cottage by the sea, like that one we stayed in last month. Plant a garden, keep sheep, raise a family."
Cassandra's hand stopped its lazy caress of Maureen's back.
Maureen flipped over, lying with her head on Cassandra's lap, looking up. "I know you can't get pregnant, but I could. The same way your friend Alex did. We might even have twins! Wouldn't that be great?"
"Maureen …"
"I know you love kids," the eager chatter went on. "I've seen you with them at the shelter. I've heard you talk about Sara and Colin for hours on end. I've seen the look in your eyes when you hold a baby." She took Cassandra's hand and kissed the palm. "I want to share that with you, Cass. I want to give you that."
A gift unbidden, a gift from the heart. A gift Cassandra could not accept. Not now. Goddess, not now! "I do want children, and I would love to have them with you, Maureen, but …" Cassandra bit into her lip before she said, the words nearly a whisper, "Not now."
Maureen blinked, confused but not hurt. Not yet. "Why not?"
"I'm not ready. I still need to heal."
"You're doing fine!" came the loyal protest.
"I'm doing better," Cassandra corrected. "I don't feel ready to mother a child, Maureen."
"I'll help."
"I know you would, but children need both parents fully committed and involved. I can't give that. Not yet."
"All right. In a couple of years—"
"That's not the only reason, Maureen. Children take so much time. There—"
"'So much time'?" Maureen repeated, sitting up and facing her. "What do you mean 'so much time'? I get decades. You get centuries."
Cassandra tried to explain. "It's true I don't age. I do have time. But the world doesn't. Things are getting worse all the time, going too fast. I need to be able to focus on the work and put my energy there. A family would—"
"Get in the way," Maureen supplied, the anger coming now and showing in cold, precise words.
"Tear me in two," Cassandra corrected quietly. She took Maureen's hands in her own. They lay there flaccid, with no response, but at least Maureen wasn't pulling away. "If we had children, Maureen, I would want us to live as a family. I would want to wake up with them and go to sleep with them, and with you, every day and every night. I wouldn't want to miss an instant. But these next few decades are critical. If Phinyx doesn't work, the entire global ecosystem may collapse. I don't want any child to have to live in that kind of world, especially not our child."
"So your work with Phinyx comes first."
"It has to."
She nodded slowly, then took her hands out of Cassandra's grasp. "I've already seen how it comes before me."
"Maureen—"
She was already off the sofa. "You live forever. Can't you spare forty or fifty years for me?"
Cassandra let out a slow breath. "I do want to be with you, Maureen. I want us to be together for a long time."
"Really? How?"
Cassandra didn't have a ready answer, and Maureen didn't give her much time. "You don't want a partner, Cassandra," she accused. "You want a lover. A fuck-buddy."
That's not true! Cassandra started to say, but Maureen's dark, angry eyes challenged those unspoken words and forced her to examine her heart. What did she want? Love. Companionship. Passion. Acceptance. Someone to come home to. Someone to make a home for.
But had she? Had she nurtured Maureen as much as Maureen had nurtured her? Who cooked? Who compromised? Who waited at home for the other to come home from work? Who was 'the wife'?
Cassandra closed her eyes in dismay. Such an age-old trap, so easy, so ingrained. "I didn't—" She wiped away tears and tried again. "I didn't mean to use you, Maureen. Truly. I do love you. When I'm with you, I feel more alive than I have in centuries. You make me so happy, and I want to make you happy, too. I thought …"
"What?" Maureen said, but more curious than angry now. She sat down again, at the far end of the sofa. "Where did you think we were going, you and me?"
"Going?" Cassandra shook her head helplessly. "I haven't thought that far. I've been going day to day, Maureen, just enjoying what we have. But also, I'm afraid, every day."
"Why?"
"Because every time I tell you of things I've done, I wonder if that's the day you'll decide to leave."
"I don't scare that easy," Maureen said stoutly.
The blind courage of the ignorant. Cassandra had barely begun to tell of evil deeds.
"Maybe you Immortals can afford to live without thinking of the future," Maureen was saying, "but I can't. I'm almost thirty-two. I want a family, Cass. I want children. That's what I want in my life."
Cassandra nodded, knowing that desire from centuries of aching need, knowing how deep that craving went. They should have had this conversation months ago. They should have taken things slow. Except … she had been, hadn't she? Slow to trust, slow to commit, slow to realize that she was still hiding who she was.
Cassandra took Maureen's hand and kissed it, then pressed her cheek against the palm. Then she let go. "I'm sorry, Maureen," she said softly. "I can't share that kind of life with you."
=====
Alex set their tea on the kitchen table. "Cass, for your birthday next week …"
Cass looked up from a Phinyx finance report. "Yes?"
"I usually take you out to dinner. This year I was wondering if you'd like Maureen to come with us? Or do you and she have other plans? You and I could pick another day."
"The third would be fine, and just you and me," Cass said. "Maureen and I don't have any plans, not for anything." She closed the report and set it aside. "We broke up last night."
"Oh, Cass, I'm so sorry."
"So am I." Cass reached for her tea but only swirled the liquid round in her cup. "She was good for me, but I wasn't good for her. But she'll find someone else." She smiled, but with no brightness there. "It's best this way."
Alex nodded, remembering the time during their courtship when Connor had decided to leave her, wanting to keep her safe. She hadn't let him go. "The Game isn't easy to live with."
Cass looked up. "Yes, the Game." She set her cup down. "And Phinyx, too. Maureen wanted more from me than I can give to anyone right now." Cass stood and went to the window, looking out at the rain on the garden. "But even without that, I don't know if it would have worked. There were so many things from my past."
"Cass, do you have to tell everything? Is the past that important?"
Cass turned around, leaning her back against the wall. "I hope someday it won't be. But it's not in the past for me. There's so much that still hurts, Alex, so much that I need to be able to talk about with my partner. There was too much. I couldn't dump all that plus immortality and the Game on Maureen."
Alex nodded, even as she was wondering if Cass would ever find a partner, because someone who could handle immortality—and handle Cassandra—would have to be a very special person indeed.
"Maybe I'll call Grace," Cass said, half-joking. "She's used to the Game. She's been in an abusive relationship."
Both she and Alex smiled at the outrageousness of that idea. Grace and Cass made an unlikely pair. "How about Amanda?" Alex suggested next.
Cass assumed an expression of fear. "Oh, no! Amanda is more than I can handle."
"Elena?"
"Even worse! Besides, she's married now." Cass turned to look out the window again, sounding serious this time. "Maybe I'll give Ceirdwyn a call."
Alex wasn't smiling either, not anymore. "You should," Alex replied then stood and left the room. In the hallway, she caught a glimpse of herself in the round mirror on the wall. A familiar face—same blue eyes, same high cheekbones, still beautiful … but with graying hair and wrinkles, and with more wrinkles yet to come.
Connor was married, too. Now.
|
CHAPTER 7 (World population: 7.44 billion) |
UNHOLY ALLIANCE I
Saturday Night,
Watcher HQ, France
======================
"Joseph."
Joe looked up from the pile of papers on his desk to see Rhee standing in the doorway, hunched down into himself somehow, not taking up very much room. "Evening, Rhee."
Rhee didn't smile or return the greeting. "I did not know you were here."
"Em took the kids to see Spiderman IV yet again. So I thought I'd come in and get some work done. You know, last minute things. I've only got two weeks left before the big day!"
"Ah yes. Your retirement ceremony."
"And yours is the month after that. Come on in, my friend!" Joe said, beckoning with one hand. "Pull up a chair. It's late; you must be tired." Rhee sure looked it: thin, sallow, dark bags under his eyes. Good thing they were getting out. Rhee came in and sat down while Joe leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. "What are you doing here on a Saturday night?"
Rhee shrugged. "Home is a quiet place."
"Yeah," Joe muttered. He remembered those kinds of nights—long hours of silence, walls that moved in on you when you weren't looking, the meager meal from the microwave, the lone plate that needed washing. Rhee's wife had passed away last year. "Want a drink?" Joe offered.
"Yes."
Joe got out the vodka from the freezer of his compact refrigerator in the corner of the room. He got himself a beer. Joe settled in the chair by the window and lifted his bottle in a toast. "Cheers!"
Rhee paused, murmured something, then knocked back his drink at one go. "You should go home, Joseph," he said, pouring himself another.
Joe checked the clock on the wall—nine twenty-five. "Pretty soon." But not right away. He wasn't about to leave Rhee like this. The man obviously needed a buddy. They sat, looking out the window at the courtyard below. The gray stone walls looked almost white in the floodlights' glare. A sentry moved from the light into deep shadow and disappeared.
Joe was glad to see that Rhee was taking his second drink slower than the first. They chatted easily about rock climbing and the latest info on who had beheaded who. "Let me drive you home," Joe suggested when their drinks were gone.
"No. Thank you. I am waiting for an overseas call, and I need to be at my desk in an hour. I will wait." He smiled with knowing amusement. "But you, I think, have a curfew and must be home before then."
"Yeah, you're right about that," Joe admitted. It was nearly ten. "Time to go." He put away the papers and secured his office, while Rhee put the vodka back in the fridge and tossed the beer bottle in the recycling bin.
"You all right?" Joe asked at the door.
"I am fine," Rhee said firmly. He smiled, a real smile, the dark eyes creasing at the corners, just the way they used to do, back before he and Joe had been tribunes, back before the bomb. "And thank you. Now go home, my friend."
"I'm on my way," Joe said then remembered an e-mail he'd promised to send. "Damn." He went back to turn on his computer.
"Joseph …," Rhee said in reproach.
"In a minute, in a minute …" Joe sent the message, then checked his mail. One more to answer. And then one more. When Joe finally looked up, Rhee was gone, so Joe downloaded the news. Not much good there.
It was almost ten-thirty before Joe shut down the computer. He went to the elevator in the hall then leaned his head against the box for the retinal scan. When it cheeped OK he punched in the access code. The security computer cheeped again, confirming he had clearance for that floor, then finally opened the damn elevator door. Friedanir, Rhee's second-in-command, had been talking adding about Voice Recognition technology, too. "Why not just make everybody whistle Dixie?" Joe had suggested, then regretted it immediately when a gleam had come into Friedanir's eyes. Too many damn bells and whistles around, Joe thought. It was definitely time to leave.
He had one foot in the elevator when all the lights in the building went out. Even the little red emergency lights near the floor were gone. Joe blinked in the total darkness. There'd been a few brownouts and even a blackout or two in the city in the last couple of years, but Watcher HQ had its own generators. Several of them. In several different places on the grounds. They couldn't all have gone bad, just like that.
Which meant that something was very wrong. Joe took out his phone and punched in Rhee's code. It was answered after the first ring. "Hey, Rhee," he said, speaking softly.
"Yes, Joseph?"
"The power's out on the second floor of HQ."
"You are still here?" Rhee said, sounding shocked.
"Yeah, I had some mail, so—"
"Where are you?" Rhee interrupted.
"Standing in front of the elevator near my office."
"Do not move," came the quick command. "I am on my way to escort you out."
"But—" Too late. Joe was talking to a dead phone. Rhee hadn't sounded surprised about the lights; the power was probably out on his floor, too. He hadn't sounded worried, either; maybe this was some kind of security drill. Joe shrugged, then called home and left a message, telling Em he might be a little bit late. He had just put the phone back in his pocket when the sound of gunfire erupted outside.
Joe hit the deck.
"Damn," he muttered, flat on the floor with his nose in the rug, breathing in the stale smell of "carpet freshener." This was one hell of a security drill. Those rounds had sounded live, just like the MP-5s Joe had heard last month on a visit with Rhee to the training grounds.
Joe had just gotten to his feet when he heard the shuffle of footsteps on the carpeted floor. "Joseph," Rhee's voice said out of the darkness, off to Joe's right, near the stairs.
"Rhee," Joe replied, keeping his voice low. "How the hell can you see where you're going?"
"Night vision goggles." The voice was closer now.
"You keep those at your desk?"
"Always. I have a gas mask, too."
Paranoia was a wonderful thing. "What the hell is going on out there?" Another quick burst of gunfire sounded in the courtyard outside, followed by a hoarse yell of command. Spanish maybe, Joe wasn't sure. "Damn, Rhee, I know I said 'Show, don't tell' to convince the council, but isn't staging this kind of thing overkill?"
Rhee had reached him now. Joe felt a light touch on his arm, heard the quick breathing of the other man. He could almost make out the shadow of a figure next to him. Rhee's words were barely audible. "Joseph … this is not a drill."
"What?"
"Those are not my men. We are under attack."
"Jesus," Joe half-prayed and half-swore, automatically turning to look out the window, then thinking the better of it and flattening himself against a wall. Besides, it was too dark to see anything anyway. He listened, heard nothing, not right now. "Government?"
The sound of a single shot was followed by a gurgling scream, muffled by the intervening walls. "Doubtful," came Rhee's dry reply. "It seems they are not taking prisoners."
"An Immortal," Joe guessed sourly. "Like you said: one of them decided to eliminate the evidence and silence us—permanently." A window shattered somewhere on the other side of the building. Rhee put a hand on Joe's elbow and started guiding him down the hall, away from the elevator. "You brought me a gun, right?" Joe asked.
"Yes." Rhee pressed the cold metal into his hand; Joe closed his fingers around the grip, taking comfort in the solid feel of it. "But it is for defense only. You and I must leave."
"Leave?" Joe stopped where he was, planting his cane. "What about the Chronicles? If an Immortal gets those—"
"Then he will hunt and find other Immortals, just as they already do now. Besides, we have our own copies at the ten Watcher schools, thanks to you. But if an Immortal gets us … From the reports coming in, there are at least thirty attackers, Joseph, and tribunes make valuable prisoners, especially you and I. We know too much."
"So we run?" Joe said in disgust. The gun had already grown warmer in his tight grasp. "I'm at least taking a couple of them out first."
"First?" Rhee said, impatience adding bite to his sarcasm, angry words hissed in the dark. "And second? Will you run and hide after you've revealed our position by shooting? Will you leap across a stairwell in the dark?"
Joe felt his grip tighten even more with rage. "That's—"
"I am sorry, Joseph," Rhee interrupted then sighed. "But—"
"But I'm not exactly quick on my feet," Joe finished for him, cursing for about the nine millionth time the land mine that had exploded underneath his feet and blasted his legs, all those years ago. Rhee was right, damn it. Rhee was right.
"We are old men, you and I. The Guard is trained for this. They die to save us, to save the Watchers." His voice was fast and low, agonized. "We cannot waste their lives." Rhee's hand was bruisingly tight on Joe's arm. "Hurry!"
Joe swore but went. Rhee was on his left, guiding him again. Joe's right shoulder brushed up every now and then against the wall. Too bad Rhee hadn't had an extra set of NVGs along with the extra gun. Joe hated being blind. "Where are we going?" Joe asked, keeping his voice low as they turned a corner.
"Service shaft," Rhee whispered back, going faster. The gunfire was inside the building now, on the first floor. There were more screams, louder now, then a door slammed somewhere above them.
Booted footsteps came up the stairs. A man's voice, possibly Australian, called, "Start taking prisoners! There's a tribune's car parked outside; orders are to take them alive." The footsteps kept climbing and disappeared.
"Jesus," Joe muttered again and hurried along. "You've called for reinforcements, right?" The guardsmen couldn't call; after one fellow had been caught chatting with his girlfriend, cellphones had been forbidden on duty. They used handheld radios instead.
"Of course," Rhee said impatiently. "Friedanir knows. But it will take time for him and the others to arrive. Time we don't have." A moment later Rhee let go of Joe's arm. Metal squealed and then came a clanging sound, quickly dampened. The heartfelt curse in Korean that followed was hotter than kimchee. Joe froze in the darkness, not breathing, sensing that Rhee had frozen too.
No one came down the hall to investigate, and after a moment, Rhee started moving again. A rustle, a clink, and a soft scraping of rope. Joe knew the sounds well from many afternoons at the climbing wall in the gym. Rhee was tying a knot. "Don't tell me you keep climbing gear in your desk, too," Joe said incredulously. He could have sworn he heard Rhee smile.
"No. The gear was in my gym bag." Rhee gave clipped instructions as the knot-tying and rigging went on. "The shaft is 17 meters long, with a bend to the right two-thirds down. At the bottom of the shaft, you will find an electric torch, water, and food. Follow the tunnel for 1.3 kilometers. There are no side exits."
"I never heard about this tunnel before," Joe said, his anger at his helplessness turning the words into an accusation.
"Need to know," Rhee replied with no apology, and after a moment Joe grunted in assent. "The tunnel opens in the cellar of a house," Rhee explained.
"Whose house?"
"One of ours." Metal clinked as the carabiner rings were locked in place. More noise came from above: an occasional bullet or yell, scraping sounds, repeated echoing thumps and booms. "It sounds as if the Guard is blocking the stairways with furniture," Rhee said. "That should delay the attackers for some time."
He sounded sadly proud. Joe reached out and found Rhee's shoulder, gripped there. "They're good men. You trained them well."
"And now they die."
"They're soldiers. They knew the drill when they signed up for the job."
"Yes. And so did we." There came a final click, and Rhee said, "You are first."
"But—"
"I can climb in by myself," Rhee said bluntly. "You can not."
Rhee was right again. Joe tucked the gun into a pocket, then lifted his arms so that Rhee could help buckle the climbing harness on him. Getting in through the hatch was a tight squeeze, and Rhee had to give Joe a fearsome shove. From the burning in his shoulder, Joe figured he'd lost his shirt and at least four layers of skin. He shifted in the harness, getting comfortable, then automatically looked down. He saw nothing but blackness. Well, at least he wouldn't have to worry about fear of heights.
"Go!" Rhee urged, and Joe went, pushing back from the wall with one hand, controlling the speed of his descent with the other. Seven drops at two meters a go, then slower, more carefully, until his feet encountered solid ground. Joe steadied himself, stepped out of the harness, and gave the rope a double tug.
It came showering down around his head, coiling at his feet. Joe looked up, aghast. "Rhee?"
"Good-bye, my friend," came the softly echoing reply. "I will destroy the Chronicles if possible, and die with my men."
"Damn it, Rhee! You can't—"
"Stand back," came the order, and Joe scarcely had time to move before his cane came dropping down. "Get out of the tunnel quickly," Rhee continued. "The explosion may be fierce. Give my fondest regards to your wife and children, Joseph—and give them your love."
"Rhee!"
From far above came a squeal of metal and a clang, hiding the trail of the escape route, and then Rhee was gone.
"Son of a bitch," Joe said, over and over as he felt around for the flashlight Rhee had said would be there. Joe found it near the wall, along with the bottle of water and the food in a small pack. Rhee had everything organized. Everything prepared.
Rhee had deliberately stranded him down here, all the while planning on going back to die.
"You son of a bitch," Joe swore, heedless of the tears on his face, but Rhee's parting words gave Joe the reason why: "Your wife and children, Joseph—give them your love." And don't waste the lives of the Guard—including Rhee.
Joe shouldered the pack, picked up his cane, and started the long walk home.
=====
Rhee was leaving the library when a group of five from the assault force caught him. "Tribune Rhee," their leader greeted him, sounding pleased, then spoke to his men: "Take him to the commander." Rhee found himself being marched between two masked men dressed entirely in black. He made no attempt to escape; his work was complete. Two dead attackers lay in awkward poses on the stairs, red blood looking black on the white marble. Members of the Guard lay sprawled there, too: Pablo, Franz, Pierre.
His captors took him up another flight of stairs and down a long hall. He saw two more bodies of guardsmen on the way. Finally, the shorter of the masked men opened a door and motioned him through. Rhee walked into the tribunal conference room with detached amusement; this meeting should prove to be more decisive than the countless others he had attended here. Their commander arrived a few moments later, a tall lean figure, also masked and in black, rifle in hand.
"Leave," the commander ordered, and the two guards left the room. The commander peeled off the mask, revealing black hair caught in a clip at the nape of the neck, then sat down at the dark expanse of table. An Immortal, Rhee knew, seeing those ancient knowing eyes in a face still unlined.
Rhee sat down then took out a cigarette, pleased that his hands did not tremble. He offered one across the table, got back a shake of the head. "I know," Rhee said, pulling out a matchbook. "These things will kill me." They already had. Six months, the doctor had said. Maybe a year. The diagnosis had made certain decisions easier. Rhee coughed, then lit his cigarette and drew in a welcome breath of nicotine-laced air. He blew it out again, taking great enjoyment in the curls and eddies of the smoke. How beautiful. How intricate.
How deadly. "The attack went as planned," Rhee observed.
"Mostly. The five remaining guards have barricaded themselves on the top floor. I'm not calling in a helicopter attack, and it would take some time to dig them out. Time we don't have."
"True," Rhee agreed. He glanced at the clock on the wall: six minutes after eleven, thirty-four minutes since the attack had begun. This part of the attack, that is. Other parts had begun long before.
Rhee wished there were a window in the conference room. The moon would be rising soon, a silver crescent at the horizon, a waning light. He had always enjoyed watching the moon. "The Chronicles have already been destroyed," Rhee said, wanting the Immortal to know that there would be no loot from this raid.
A shrug was his answer. "I don't need help in the Game." And now the Immortal was pulling out a gun: a Sig-Sauer P226, a military handgun. A container of bullets came next.
All were pushed across the table to him. The condemned man's last request. Rhee took a deep drag on his cigarette then picked up the gun. He loaded it—all fifteen bullets in the magazine, though surely one or two would be enough—removed the safety, then primed the weapon with the slide, so that the fatal round was waiting in the chamber. Then he pointed the gun at the Immortal's head. "I could kill you," Rhee said. It seemed a novel idea.
"You could," came the even reply. "And then my men would kill you, and then I would revive. We'd leave your body here and blow up Watcher Headquarters, just as we planned. What would you gain by killing me?"
"The satisfaction of watching you die," Rhee answered. "The way my men have died tonight." Screaming, bleeding, fighting, desperately brave … Good men all. All dead. All mercifully dead. Rhee didn't want to have to look into any of their eyes.
"I took no satisfaction from that," the Immortal answered.
"And yet … they died."
The words emerged in a soft hiss: "As you planned."
Rhee nodded slowly, looking away. "Yes," he admitted. "As I planned." He had planned it all: seeking out this Immortal eight months ago, handing over complete plans of the defenses, turning off the electricity tonight, asking for his own death—all leading to the utter destruction of Watcher Command and Watcher Headquarters, a destruction so complete, so thorough, that the Watchers would see no option but to go to ground and hide.
And for this plan, for this desperate gamble to save the Watcher Organization in the centuries to come, he had sacrificed his men. A common enough military decision: sacrifice a few to save many. Sixteen Watcher deaths tonight. Mostly unmarried, only two with children. He had seen to that, adjusting the watch schedule these last six months, and he had managed to save Joseph Dawson. He hoped. It was truly unfortunate that this could not have waited until after Joseph's retirement, but certain other events had forced his hand.
The gun felt too heavy now. Rhee put the safety on and pushed it back across the table. As the Immortal prepared the weapon, Rhee reached for his cigarette again. He was watching the smoke curl, dusty blue-gray, when the bullet took him down.
Seventeen Watcher deaths tonight.
REASONABLE DOUBT
Later that night
The Dawson Home
======================
The phone rang at the Dawsons'
home at
But the Swedish voice on the phone wasn't Joe's. "May I speak to Joseph Dawson, please?" he asked.
"Who's calling, please?"
"Peter Friedanir. I'm employed by the security division of International Assets Corporation," he answered, using the alias for the Watcher Guard. "I believe we met at the company picnic two months ago, Mrs. Dawson."
"Oh, yes," Emory said, now remembering the tall, thin man. He'd had a fondness for dipping his potato chips in his Coke. What the hell was he doing, calling here at this hour? Emory couldn't wait until Joe finally retired in two weeks and they wouldn't have to deal with these obnoxious late-night calls anymore. None of the Watchers ever seemed to give a moment's consideration to Joe's privacy or personal time.
"May I speak to Mr. Dawson, please?" Friedanir asked again, sounding just as anxious as Ian did whenever he needed to go to the bathroom right now. "It's very important."
Emory sighed. Watcher business always was. Or at least the Watchers thought so. "He's not here," she said.
"Where can I reach him?"
"Try his cellphone." Emory had tried very hard not to snap. She was tired and getting cranky.
"I have," Friedanir said. "There's no answer."
That was odd. Joe almost never turned off his phone. "Then try at work."
It sounded like Friedanir actually gulped. "He's still at work?"
"Either there or on his way home." Emory sat up in bed. What was going on here, anyway?
"Mrs. Dawson …"
Emory did not like the sound of his tone. "Yes?" On the phone, she heard a siren wail somewhere nearby, then hoarse voices shouting.
"Mrs. Dawson …"
"What?" Emory did snap this time.
"There's been … an attack. On the corporate headquarters."
"What do you mean 'an attack'?"
"It looks like …" Friedanir gulped again. "It looks like the building has been bombed."
"No," Emory said automatically. This was unthinkable. "No."
"I'm at the site, Mrs. Dawson. It's burning."
"No," she said again, getting out of bed and going to the window to look in the direction of the "corporate headquarters," otherwise known as Watcher HQ. In the distance, the white haze of city lights had a faint red glow.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Sorry was what you said when someone had died. But Joe wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead. "When did the fire start?" Emory demanded. "When?"
"Five minutes ago. I heard the explosion as I was driving here."
And Joe had called home an hour ago. He'd had plenty of time to leave the building. He was fine. His cellphone battery had probably died, which was why he hadn't called. Or maybe he and Rhee were out having a drink and had lost track of time. Maybe he'd heard the explosion and gone back to help. Joe would either call soon or come home. Emory was sure.
"I'll tell him to call you when he gets here," Emory told Friedanir and turned off the phone. She had just sat down on the edge of the bed when the phone rang. Emory snatched it up.
"Mrs. Dawson?" It was Friedanir again.
"Mr. Friedanir, I want to keep this line clear so my husband can call," Emory explained none-too-patiently. And if Joe didn't call home soon, she swore she would club him to death with his cell phone when she saw him again. Damn it. Why didn't he call?
"Yes, ma'am," he agreed. "But before you hang up on me again, you should know that I'm sending security guards to your home."
"Guards? I don't want guards here. They'll scare the children. Why on earth would I want guards in my house?"
"Because you may not be safe where you are. If you don't want the guards, Mrs. Dawson, then I strongly recommend that you and the children move to another location immediately."
For the first time tonight, Peter Friedanir had Emory's undivided attention. "Why?"
"Ten minutes ago, Dr. Kananga was found in his kitchen, shot once in the heart and once in the head."
"The attackers went to his home?" Emory asked quietly, horror stealing over her in the ensuing pause. She got out of bed and went to the closet where Joe kept his gun. "Is Rhee there?" she asked. He would know what was going on. "I want to talk to Rhee." Emory pushed aside the clothes and started turning the dial on the safe.
"Mrs. Dawson …" Friedanir did that hesitating thing again. "Mr. Rhee was on duty tonight. In the building. He called me earlier when—" He choked up, the hesitation a full stop.
Was. He was on duty. "Oh." She took out the gun, then reached up for the locked box of ammunition on the top shelf. Joe wanted the gun easily accessible in case of an emergency; Emory wanted the gun completely inaccessible to the kids. This was their compromise.
"Mrs. Dawson, either you have to leave your house or let the guards in."
Emory dialed in another combination and took the bullets from the box. "I'm going to be here when my husband comes home. Send the guards."
"They're already on their way."
"Tell them to call before they knock on my door or I might shoot them. I'll tell Joe to call you," Emory said again and hung up. She loaded the gun; then she jammed the phone in her back pocket and made a tour through the house, checking each door and window, making sure that both of her children were asleep and not in any immediate danger. The guards arrived and, after a quick introduction, took up their posts: two outside, two inside.
Emory took a seat at the top of the staircase, gun at the ready. Except not too ready, she reminded herself. Shooting Joe would be a big mistake. Not that he didn't deserve it. She sat and waited for the phone to ring again or for the door to open wide.
She was still waiting when the sun rose.
Emory called Demiko, not caring that it was
"I'm on my way," Demiko said immediately. When she arrived twenty minutes later, she was carrying cups of hot chocolate and a bag of freshly-baked croissants. "Breakfast," she said, putting a cup and a croissant into Emory's hands.
Emory ate on her way to Watcher HQ. Or what had been Watcher HQ. She parked her car and walked to the tall iron gates in the wall that surrounded the park-like estate. Where once a gracious chateau had stood, there was now a charred heap of blackened stones. Flames leapt into the sky. Black oily smoke roiled in the wind. Her eyes stung. The firefighters were still there, working hard. Police were just inside the gate, keeping people out.
"Have they recovered any bodies yet?" Emory asked a tall policeman, planning on asking about prosthetics; those were distinctive, they would make it easy to tell a body wasn't Joe's …
"They can't get near," he answered. "The fire is still too hot."
Emory swallowed hard and stepped back. She wasn't the only one who had come to see. "That's thermite burning," one spectator informed her, a blond man who looked like he hadn't yet gone home from his bar-hopping the night before. "Teeth may be left when they put the flames out, but nothing else."
Emory sternly ordered herself not to retch.
"Israeli commandos like to use that," he continued, swaggering with all the self-importance of someone in the know. "That's who did this, you know. The corporation was selling arms to the Palestinians, so the Israelis took them out."
His companion, a thin woman with orange hair, looked with disappointment at the rubble. "Last year in Algeria was bigger. They used tanks then, and jets."
"They're careful and efficient," he explained. "And they had more room there. Here, they might have hit the wrong target, so they came in small."
It didn't look small to Emory. She walked over to Peter Friedanir, who was standing with two Watchers at the other side of the gate. "Mrs. Dawson," he greeted her solemnly. The others murmured hello. Emory nodded but didn't feel up to a reply. She turned her back on them to look at the fire, and after a moment they resumed their conversation, speaking in French in low tones.
"An Immortal, do you think?" the female Watcher asked.
"Who else?" That was Friedanir. "Not a government, or there would be arrests, too. Whoever did this wanted the secret protected, not exposed to the public eye."
"But who?"
"Someone with professional military training and resources," Friedanir answered.
"Or at least the money to buy them," put in the third Watcher, a deep-voiced man with a slight German accent to his French.
"I'd say he was in on the kill," Friedanir said. "One wouldn't leave this sort of thing to chance."
"So we assume it's an Immortal with military training, money, and the willingness to get his hands dirty," said the woman.
The German snorted. "They chop each other's heads off. They get their hands dirty all the time. Most of the older ones are rich, and nine out of ten has been in the military at some time." He snorted again, bitter gallows humor in his words. "Maybe you want to go in there and ask Tribune Olenskaya to cross-check the Chronicles for you to narrow the field?"
"Tribune Olenskaya?" the woman said. "But … she wasn't in the building."
"No," said Friedanir grimly. "She was shot in the
head
at
A low whistle followed that information. "Her and Kananga, too. If I were a tribune, I would seriously consider moving."
Emory already was. Should she take the kids to a nearby town? Or maybe Brussels? Not too far, in case Joe—
"We should all consider moving," the German said. "The schools—"
"Have been evacuated and closed," Friedanir cut in. "All field Watchers everywhere have been ordered to go quiet for the duration."
"And how long will this duration be, I wonder," the German said. No one answered. Emory had heard enough. And seen enough. She went back to the house and waited all day.
Joe never called. He never came home.
UNHOLY ALLIANCE II
The
MacLeod Home, Edinburgh
======================
"Who do you think did it?" Alex asked Connor, as she pulled out a
kitchen stool from under the counter and perched on it.
Connor shrugged and went on chopping onions for tonight's vegetable soup, intent on cutting them all to precisely the same size. "People with experience, from what Cassandra said on the phone," he said. "We'll know more when she gets here."
"But she doesn't know who it was, either."
Connor cut an onion in half and peeled off its skin. "That's why she's coming over, to give us the details she does have so that the three of us can discuss the possibilities."
Alex had never been patient. "Do you think it was an Immortal?"
Connor shrugged again. "Possibly."
"A quarrel within the Watchers themselves? Another band of Hunters?"
Connor smiled at her insistence and kept right on chopping. "Perhaps."
Alex breathed in then out, summoning patience and calm. That was Connor, refusing to speculate without data, just like Mr. Spock. Connor stepped back and blinked tears from his eyes, the sharp blade still in his hand, and Alex took deep satisfaction in knowing that even an Immortal could be undone by an onion.
Then Connor's head went up, his eyes instantly aware. Alex knew that look: another Immortal was near. "That was quick," she said in some surprise. "Maybe Cass wasn't calling from her home."
"Or maybe it's not Cassandra," Connor said. He'd already put down the knife to pick up his sword.
Alex immediately hopped off the stool and headed for the stairwell, shutting the door behind her and getting out of sight so that Connor could concentrate. Thank goodness Sara and Colin had gone sailing with friends today. From her post at the top of the stairs, Alex heard Connor go to the front door. It seemed the Immortal had good manners and didn't want to intrude.
Or perhaps the Immortal was luring Connor out of his home. Perhaps it was a trap. Perhaps the other Immortal had a gun and was shooting Connor—shooting him right now!—and then would drag Connor's lifeless body off to some place more private so that he could take Connor's head.
Or perhaps the Immortal wanted to torture Connor endlessly for days. For years. Cassandra had, on rare occasion, suggested that possibility, but never with words, only with silences, with averted eyes and things left unsaid, so that the very vagueness of it convinced Alex that the possibility was a probability, a certainty, and not just with Roland. Taking heads wasn't the only way Immortals could enjoy their kills.
Perhaps her last glimpse of Connor had been of him chopping onions. Perhaps she would never see her husband again. She would have to explain to Sara and Colin—and to Duncan and Rachel and John—how Connor had simply walked out of the house and never come home, while she had stood by in the darkness, trapped in silence at the top of the stairs, waiting.
Alex waited in the stairway for perhaps half a minute, forty-five seconds at the most. Connor returned to the kitchen, calling her name, sounding cheerful, and Alex put a smile on her face before she opened the door, walking casually as if she were just coming up from downstairs. Their unexpected guest stood in the doorway to the hall.
"Evann!" Alex exclaimed in delight, going over to the taller woman and holding out her hands. "We didn't know you were in Europe."
Evann greeted her with a smile and a brief hug. "Alex." But even smiling, even with the black sunglasses hiding her eyes, Evann looked tense and strained.
"How's Sean?" Alex asked immediately.
"Now that's a good question," came the quick, almost brittle, reply. "I guess I should call him. You got a phone?"
"Evann …" That from Connor—a warning, a question, and a reassurance all in one. Evann turned to him, one hand pulling out the band that held back her shoulder-length black hair, the other hand taking off her glasses. A desperate touch of wildness showed in her green eyes. Then she and Connor stood there, saying nothing.
Alex had been through this sort of thing before. She was about to excuse herself and leave the two of them to their Immortal "business" when they both suddenly looked to the kitchen windows, eyes alert, bodies tense. Alex looked, too. Cassandra was standing just outside the back gate in the garden wall, waiting to be let in.
"That's Cassandra," Connor told Evann then added pointedly, "She's a friend."
"Good," Evann replied. "I wouldn't want to have to mess up your house."
Connor's eyes narrowed, but he responded easily, "Considerate of you. We just had the place painted." Evann opened her mouth for another snippy reply, but Connor forestalled her by saying, "And we had the garden done, too."
Alex left them to their quibbling and went outside to talk to Cass. "We have unexpected company," Alex explained. "This isn't a good time for Connor, but you and I could go somewhere."
Cass grimaced unhappily. "I wanted Connor's opinion on this, too."
Before Alex could answer, she heard shoes crunching on the gravel walk. Connor—along with Evann, who had put her sunglasses back on—had come outside to say hi. A small, brown bird chirped from a branch of the apple tree. The shoes crunched some more. As Connor and Evann approached, the two Immortal women watched each other, wary, measuring, and to all appearances, completely unafraid. Not the kind of meeting Alex would have preferred, with the destruction of Watcher Headquarters still to be discussed and with Evann in her current cranky mood. Alex decided that Connor could deal with the introductions.
Which he did, immediately and with complete aplomb. "Evann, this is my old friend Cassandra. Cassandra, this is my old friend Evann."
They nodded to each other, not so cautious but still alert. Cass was just standing there, her waist-long hair moving slightly with the breeze, but Evann had planted her feet slightly apart and crossed her arms over her chest. Alex stifled the urge to tell them to shake hands and come out of their corners fighting at the sound of the bell. They'd heard of each other; Alex knew. She'd been the one to mention their names.
"Cassandra and Connor have known each other a long time," Alex had explained to Evann fifteen years ago, when Evann and her then-boyfriend Sean were visiting the MacLeod farm for the first time. Sara and Colin had mentioned their "Aunt Cass" frequently, and Evann had asked who that was.
"How long?" Evann wanted to know.
"Almost all his life. She's a good friend to us both, and to the twins."
"It's important to have friends," Evann said easily then gone on to talk of other things.
And: "Evann's an old friend of Connor's," Alex said to Cass, soon after Evann and Sean had gone back home to Chicago.
"Old as in age, or old as in known a long time?"
"Both. At least to me. They've known each other over one hundred fifty years. And Evann's …" Alex had to stop and think. "I don't know how old she is. Definitely older than Connor, maybe even as old as you. But she's not a friend of Duncan's."
"No?"
"No. He beheaded her husband."
Cass had lifted an eyebrow but left the topic there. Alex was glad of her discretion, because the term "friend" covered a lot of territory. On several occasions, Alex had requested Connor to clarify exactly what he meant by that. "And lovers, too?" she would ask.
When they'd been discussing Evann, his answer was a quick tilt of the head and a lift of the eyebrows, along with the endearingly modest admission of "Only once." With others, his answer had sometimes been "No," but more often "On occasion" or "For a while."
So Alex finally asked, "Should I simply assume that you've slept with every female Immortal you mention?" When he opened his mouth to protest his innocence, she added sweetly, "If only once?"
"Not at all," Connor replied with a grin. "I've never slept with Amanda. Or Ceirdwyn or Grace or Felice Martin or Gina de Valincourt or Kristen or—"
"Just Cassandra," Alex broke in. "And Rebecca. And Caroline. And Alex Raven. And Evann."
"Only once," he said again then pulled her onto his lap and held her tight. "Alex, Evann and I have been friends since the American Civil War. It was just …"
He trailed off there, but Alex knew he wanted to talk more, so she laid her head on his shoulder and asked, "How long ago?"
Connor sighed, a soft rumble against her ear. "Back in 1993, a few months after her husband was killed. For me, it'd been seven years since—"
—since Brenda had died, Alex finished silently when Connor stopped talking again. So, a night of comfort between two friends, each grieving for a lost love. She couldn't possibly begrudge either of them that.
"Evann left the next morning," Connor said. He put a gentle finger under her chin and lifted her head so that she could look into his eyes. "And a year later, I met you."
"And you haven't even looked at another woman since," Alex supplied, hiding a smile. He didn't answer that one, and she prompted with seeming innocence, "Connor?"
"Maybe looked," Connor admitted. "But only once."
"You've looked at only one woman? Or only once per each woman?"
Connor grinned, knowing what she wanted. "You're the only woman for me," he told her, and then carried her off to bed to prove it beyond any doubt.
Alex believed him, completely. And so, as she stood in the garden watching two of Connor's "old friends" eye each other like a pair of sphinxes carved in stone, she wasn't bothered by the fact that they were both Connor's old lovers, too, or that Connor was watching them. Another bird flew past and settled on the branch above the first, both chirping now. The late afternoon summer sunshine was very warm. "Shall we go inside?" Alex suggested. "It's more comfortable. More private."
"Do you think we'll even have Watchers today?" Connor asked Cass, but before she could answer he turned to Evann and explained, bringing her in on the secret right away, "Watcher Headquarters was destroyed last night, blown up in some sort of commando raid."
One eyebrow arched above the sunglasses, but that was the only sign of surprise that Alex saw. "I object to the word commando," Evann said, as if she were discussing the use of the pronunciation tomahto instead of tomato. "Highly trained professional operative sounds better."
"Yes," Cass agreed with a polite smile. "Just as courtesan sounds better than whore. But being politically correct or using pretty names doesn't change what really happens. People still get fucked, and people still die."
Alex winced. Cass's whole-hearted adoption of "honesty is the best policy" was occasionally refreshing, more often exasperating, and sometimes downright dangerous. Connor was keeping a straight face, but Alex knew he was hiding a smile.
Evann slowly removed her sunglasses. Ancient eyes met other ancient eyes, all unblinking green. The two birds on the apple tree flew away. Evann turned her back on Cassandra and headed toward the house. "And so speaks the voice of experience," she said on her way along the garden path.
It was then that Alex knew what had brought Evann to their door. Experience came in many forms.
Cassandra was smiling. "I like her," she said cheerfully to Connor.
"Evann's the one who did it," Alex said slowly then asked of Connor, "Isn't she?"
Connor's eyes had narrowed again, and he watched while Evann opened the kitchen door and disappeared inside the house. "Probably."
"And she didn't tell you beforehand?"
"No."
"And you had no idea?" Alex asked, turning to Cass.
"I just met the woman, Alex," Cass protested, but when Alex kept up a steady stare, Cass added, "As I said on the phone, I had no idea it was going to happen, and I don't know who did it. And we still don't, not for certain. Evann hasn't admitted to anything."
Yet. Despite the warm sunshine, Alex suddenly felt cold.
Evann admitted it right after all four of them had gathered in the kitchen. "Yes, it was me," she said, sounding only tired, not proud or defiant or regretful. Connor silently put ice in a glass, filled it to the top with vodka, and pressed it into Evann's hand. Evann didn't even sniff at it before she started drinking it down.
"Shall we go sit down?" Alex suggested after an awkward moment, and they filed into the wood-paneled dining room. Alex chose the window seat next to the fireplace, Connor leaned against the wall near the kitchen door, while Evann started pacing in front of the windows that looked out to the street, her glass in her hand. Cass seated herself at the center of the long mahogany table, equidistant from the other two Immortals in the room.
Alex didn't say anything, but her feelings must have been obvious on her face because Evann turned to her and said, "I thought you didn't like the Watchers, Alex."
"I don't, but—" Alex shifted, trying to get comfortable. "Was a full-scale assault really necessary?"
"Hello, am I the only one here who's bothered to study up on modern guerrilla warfare?" Evann demanded, on the defensive now. Connor's mouth quirked, but he didn't answer the question or interrupt Evann as she went on. "What did you expect me to do? Go in guns only half-blazing and maybe invite one or two of the Watcher guards—who were shooting at us, by the way—to have tea and play Scrabble while I set a few dozen packet charges and blew up their happy little headquarters? It doesn't work like that."
"I know that," Alex said, trying with only partial success not to sound irritated. "That's not what I meant. Once the decision is made to attack, yes, go and attack. Full-scale. Do the job. But was an assault of any kind necessary?"
"In my opinion? Yes. We had to scare the Watchers into shutting down. It's hard enough for Immortals to hide; we can't afford a bunch of amateurs running around. The Air Force caught some idiot Watcher near my base last fall, and then they handed him over to Homeland Security. Do you know what the HSA does nowadays to suspected terrorists?"
"We've heard about it," Connor said evenly.
"I've seen it," Evann said shortly. "That risk was eliminated, but …" She rattled her glass, looking at the melting ice. "I might not hear about it the next time, and I'm really not in the mood to be used for medical research."
"Neither am I," Cass said, finally joining the conversation. "Yet an armed assault is loud and conspicuous. None of us needs that kind of attention. The media—"
"—are already explaining the attack on the 'International Asset Corporation' as either insurance fraud or terrorism," Evann broke in. "One station suggested it was an extremely hostile takeover. Corporate violence isn't new, and it's more and more common these days. A lot of companies keep their own 'security' forces."
Including, if only on a small scale, the Phinyx Foundation. Alex was careful not to look at Cass just then.
"That's where you got the men?" Connor said to Evann. "J. C. Grayson Acquisitions?"
"Acquisitions isn't what it used to be," Evann said with a faint smile. "We merged a few years ago; it's the Grayson/Crown Corporation now. Each division of GCC has a team of counter-espionage agents."
"And a security force," Cass said.
Evann stopped pacing to look at her. "That's right." She took another large swallow of her drink.
"People will really believe the raid was part of a struggle for market share?" Alex asked incredulously.
"Everything is a struggle for market share now. And the GCC public relations department has been busy planting the appropriate information and misinformation for months." Evann finally sat down, taking the chair at the end of the table. "Some of it's even true: one of the subsidiaries of GCC really is preparing for a hostile takeover of the International Asset Corporation."
Connor gave a bark of laughter. "So you're who I've been bidding against." He pulled up a chair, too, facing Evann. "My bank said it looked like somebody else was buying up the IAC's loans."
"That's how Connor and I were trying to take the Watchers down," Alex explained to Evann. "Corporate downsizing, attrition … the money way, not the military way."
Evann nodded. "That's what I started with, too, and it'll work, in time. But that's time Immortals don't have."
"I appreciate what you've done, Evann," Cass said, sounding sincere. "I know it wasn't easy for you, but you were right; it was necessary."
"Someone still gets fucked," Evann said darkly, staring into what little was left of her drink. "And someone still dies." She downed the rest of the vodka, glanced at her watch, and stood. "I have to go."
"Stay the night," Connor said, and Alex and Cass exchanged glances. That hadn't been a suggestion; it was a command. She and Cass both sat back to watch how Evann the Immortal Soldier took to being ordered around. Alex put up with it from Connor only for Immortal business; Cass didn't put up with it at all. Not anymore.
"I've got tickets," Evann began, but Alex knew already that this wasn't a real contest of wills. Evann would have started with a flat-out no, and stuck to it all the way. Alex had seen Evann in an argument before.
"Change them," Connor said.
"I've got a meeting with the Board of Trustees tomorrow morning at nine."
"Reschedule it. You own the damn company, don't you?"
She sighed. "Connor—"
"Evann," Connor growled right back then pulled rank: "You didn't come by accident. Stay."
She sat down again and leaned back in her chair, watching Connor with cold, unreadable eyes. "Not until you tell me what you're making for dinner."
~~~~~
Later that night, Alex awoke in the darkness as Connor eased
himself into
their bed, finally back
from his
"After three." He pulled the cover back over her shoulder as he lay down next to her, moving close to get warm.
His hands and feet were cold, but Alex didn't complain. "Did Evann show up?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Was she having nightmares?"
"Mm-hmm."
Which was why Connor had been out there waiting for her. He had known. Alex laid her head more comfortably on his shoulder and wondered how soldiers—and Immortals—coped with having an occupation best described as "killer."
"She needed to talk it out," Connor said.
"And drink it out," Alex added. Evann had finished three of those iced vodkas before she'd crashed in a library chair.
"And run it out," Connor said, sounding amused. As soon as Evann had woken up, in the very late afternoon, Connor had taken her out for "a jog." They'd come back two hours later, both dripping with sweat and breathing hard. "She's doing better now."
"Good," Alex said. Evann had done pretty well at dinner, enthralling Sara and Colin with tales of harrowing Air Force helicopter rescues over the North Atlantic and not being snippy at all, but hints of that wildness had still been in her eyes, and she hadn't eaten much of her food.
"She finally called Sean," Connor said.
"Good," Alex said again. "For both of them." She kissed Connor on the cheek and closed her eyes. "Goodnight, love."
"Goodnight."
~~~~~
The next morning, Connor and the kids left early for a karate tournament. Cass stopped by around eight. "Coffee?" Alex offered.
"Please."
She poured them each a fresh cup; then they went outside. Evann was stretched out on a lounge chair in the garden near the vegetable bed, recuperating from the night—and the days—before.
When Evann saw Alex and Cass coming toward her on the graveled path, she swung her long legs over the side of the chair and sat up, taking off her sunglasses. "This is a beautiful garden, Alex," Evann said. "And a beautiful home."
"Thank you."
"Although, I think I like the farm better."
"So do I," Alex agreed, as she and Cass sat down in white wicker chairs. "But we'd been there thirteen years; we had to leave. And Edinburgh is a wonderful place to live. I teach archeology at the university, and the kids are in good schools. And we do go back to the Highlands now and then, for holidays, parts of the summer." She looked at the single dusty apple tree in its small square of grass, and thought of the rows of dark pines and the fields of wind-rippled hay near their Highland home. "I miss the horses," she confessed. "And the scent of the air."
"The Highlands are magnificent," Cass agreed, and there the conversation died. Cass and Evann were watching each other again. Alex had had enough of playing the gracious hostess; she leaned back in her chair and said nothing.
Evann went first. "You have a spy in the Watchers," she stated.
"As do you," Cass retorted.
A muscle twitched in Evann's jaw. "Not anymore."
Cass accepted that with a slow nod. "Then you might be interested to know that the copies of the Chronicles in all seven schools were destroyed this weekend. Was that you, or is there someone else after the Watchers, too?"
"That was me. Catching a Watcher would give them the secret of Immortality, but we might still be able to hide. Finding the Chronicles would give them all our names and pictures."
Alex shook her head in dismay. She could see the necessity of it, but still … "All that history," she murmured. "Gone."
"Not all of it," Evann told her. "I got a few things out before the building went up."
"I've heard that many of the objects in their museum had already been sent to the schools," Cass added. "And though the originals are gone, there is at least one copy of the Chronicles still in existence." She looked at Evann with a question in her eyes.
"Two copies," Evann confirmed then said to Alex, "One of my banks just repossessed some of the warehouses that belonged to IAC. I can see that you get a look at the contents, if you like."
"I would like. Very much," Alex replied.
Evann nodded. "I'll tell Charles to see that you get hired as a consulting archeologist."
"Good."
"So what should we do about the Watchers?" Cass asked, leaning back in her chair. "Let them continue on a reduced scale? Eliminate them completely? Let them grow again? They can be useful," she finished thoughtfully.
"They make a dangerous tool," Alex said. "I want them gone."
Evann shook her head. "Count me out."
"I didn't mean that, Evann," Alex said with a quick touch on Evann's hand. "I don't want them killed. Just let them … fade away."
"We'd have to get rid of the schools," Cass said. She was looking at the tree again, but her eyes were unfocused and far away. "Schools are the roots. Burn them to ashes, and the leaves wither and die. All of them, all over the world. Gone." The small, brown bird that had been sitting on the apple tree hopped over to them, then perched on Cass's chair. She blinked and saw it, then smiled and clicked at it with a trilling sound. It trilled back to her, and when she held out a finger, it hopped there. She smiled, lifted her hand, and the bird flew away. Cass turned to Alex and Evann again. "The teachers and senior staff would need to be discouraged. That's begun already, especially with so many of the Council Tribunes being gone."
"Who else besides the Tribune of the Guard?" Evann asked.
"The First Tribune and the Tribune of the Chronicles were both assassinated at their homes," Cass said. Evann was shaking her head, and Cass asked quickly, "That wasn't your team?"
"No." She shrugged. "It could very well have been my contact. He had access."
"But why?" Alex asked, totally mystified. "Why would your contact do that? And why did he help destroy the Watchers that way?"
"Because he knew what happens when a secret organization gets too big to effectively police." Evann picked up her coffee. "It stops being a secret."
"But to betray his people that way—"
"He thought he was saving his people," Evann interrupted. "A few died so that many could live. He wasn't a traitor."
"I doubt other Watchers will agree with that assessment," Cass observed dryly.
"No," Evann agreed. "But maybe in a hundred years they'll appreciate the sense of what he was trying to do."
"So, that's three of the five council Tribunes gone," Alex said.
"Four," Cass corrected, then met her eyes. "The Tribune of the Guild was working late on Saturday night. He hasn't been heard from since."
"No," Alex protested in a whisper. "Not Joe."
"That's a shame," Evann said, sounding as if she meant it. "My contact was supposed to handle that. He knew we'd be coming in hot, and he was supposed to make sure the HQ was as deserted as possible. He knew I wasn't going to be taking roll, and he knew I wasn't going to be taking prisoners, either. I did what I could to minimize the loss of life, but I have no control over who was and who wasn't in the building."
"It's only been thirty-six hours," Alex said, grasping at that. "Surely there's a chance he's in there, trapped somewhere, waiting. They're looking, aren't they?"
"They can't, Alex," Cass said, her voice gentle. "The fires are still burning."
Suddenly, the destruction of Watcher Headquarters was horribly real. People had died there. Bodies had burned. Some of them might have been burned alive. "I talked to Emory just last month," Alex said dully. "I talked to Joe. He answered the phone." And here she sat, drinking coffee with the person who had contributed to his death and arranged the destruction of twenty other people. "Excuse me," Alex murmured and fled inside.
Evann and Cassandra both leaned back with quiet, unhappy sighs. "She's never had to face this sort of thing before," Evann observed.
"No," Cassandra replied. "But she can. She's strong enough and practical enough to accept reality, even when she doesn't like it."
"That's obvious," Evann said. "She married Connor."
They shared a smile over that: Evann's faint and ironic, Cassandra's genuinely amused. Cassandra decided this was a good time to begin. Straight ahead was probably the best approach with this warrior-woman whom Connor had described as an "old friend." Exactly how old, Cassandra wasn't sure, but the order in which Connor had performed the introductions had made it clear that Evann was the elder. Cassandra also wasn't sure exactly what Connor had meant by "friend." Evann wasn't conventionally beautiful; her face was too angular for that, her figure too lean, but she was a striking woman, attractive in a quietly intense way, with an economy of motion that at times became grace. Connor was the type of man who could appreciate those qualities in a woman.
But age and relationships with Connor weren't important right now; Cassandra had other concerns. "Alex told me that you know Methos."
"You could say that," Evann allowed. "We go back a long way. You?"
"I met him the day I became an Immortal." Cassandra saw no need to go into the details.
Evann nodded slowly, looking her over. "He's never mentioned you."
"He wouldn't," she said serenely then kept right on going straight ahead. "There have been times," Cassandra confided to the older woman, "that I've wanted to take his head."
"Been there myself," Evann admitted, showing a larger smile now. Then all amusement disappeared, and the next words were a warning, almost a threat. "But I never would."
That was what Cassandra had wanted to know. "Neither will I," she promised. They held each other's gaze just as they'd done the day before—measuring, testing, and then finally, accepting. Or at least, not attacking, which was good. Evann might never be her friend, but Cassandra knew already that she never wanted Evann to be her enemy. Wariness was sufficient for now, and Cassandra held out hope for respect between them in the years to come.
Evann got up from her chair. "Alex likes time alone to think things through," Cassandra told her, and Evann nodded before she went inside.
Cassandra reached for her coffee and leaned back, pleased. That discussion had gone well. Perhaps other discussions would, too. The attack on the Watchers had been unexpected and distressingly deadly, but now there were new possibilities to be exploited, and new plans to be made. Evann looked to be a promising addition to the project, in several different ways.
=====
Soon after Alex had curled up on the window seat in the dining room, Sara's cat jumped onto her lap and started to purr. Alex stroked Catkin's golden fur and stared blindly at the people walking by on the sidewalk outside, all the while thinking of Joe.
About ten minutes later, Evann came into the room then sat down in one of the chairs nearby. "I'm sorry," Evann said, and once again she sounded sincere. "That wasn't supposed to happen."
"Collateral damage," Alex said. "Isn't that what they call it?" Another pretty name for an ugly thing.
"Giving it a name doesn't make it any easier to stomach."
That was certainly true. Alex tried to remember what she had said just the day before. Something about "Full-scale attack" and "Do the job." Such facile, unthinking words. Such an easy command to give when you have absolutely no idea what it really means.
But Evann knew. She'd spent centuries as a soldier. She knew, and she'd given the order anyway. She was talking about what it really meant right now. "It's always someone's husband, someone's father, someone's son," Alex heard Evann say.
"Then why do you do it?" Alex asked bluntly. "Why do you kill, when you know it causes pain?"
Catkin chose that moment to investigate the stranger. He leapt from Alex's lap onto the floor and stalked over to Evann. She offered her fingers for him to sniff, which he did. Deeming her acceptable, he rubbed against her hand and then jumped into her lap, turning around twice before curling up and making himself comfortable. Evann's long fingers rubbed him just so behind the ears, and Catkin rewarded her with loud purrs. "Sometimes," Evann said, answering Alex's question, "it's necessary."
"So you don't have a choice," Alex supplied. She'd heard that often enough before.
Evann shook her head and started scratching under Catkin's chin. He closed his eyes and stretched out his neck, still purring, blissfully happy. "There's always a choice," Evann said. "But sometimes, the alternative is worse."
"And just how do you know when that 'sometimes' is? Or what the alternative will be?"
Evann turned her head as if to look out the window, but her eyes were unfocused, no doubt seeing events from long ago. "Experience," she finally said, her eyes sad.
Yet another voice of. Alex looked out the window again. There were no people walking by now. When she turned back, Catkin had started kneading his front paws into Evann's thighs. She kept scratching under his chin, but put her other hand under his feet to stop the sharp claws from digging through her jeans. "Alex, if you want me to, I'll leave," Evann offered.
"No," Alex said quickly. "Connor will want to see you before you go; he'll be back at lunchtime."
"But what do you want, Alex?"
She wanted Joe Dawson to be alive. She wanted not to know who was responsible for the deaths of twenty men. She wanted not to have to wonder how in the name of God she was ever going to be able to look Emory in the eye again. She wanted none of this to have happened at all.
But it had happened, and she did know. Last night, she'd sat down to dinner with two trained killers instead of only one, and truth to tell, it hadn't bothered her at all. Yet those twenty men were just as dead now as they'd been twelve hours ago. That hadn't changed. Evann hadn't changed. And Alex had been an accessory to murder before, starting two decades ago when Connor had taken Kane's head, and every single time since then, and with Duncan, too. And Cassandra. How many had it been? At least a dozen or more, and not all of them had been Immortals. Not all the death had been caused by Immortals, either. Alex had blood on her hands, too. She ought to be used to the killing by now—and to the lies.
"I want you to stay, Evann," Alex said firmly. "You're a guest in our home. You're welcome here."
Evann nodded, even though she didn't look totally convinced of Alex's sincerity. Alex couldn't blame her. When she heard Cass come inside a moment later, Alex seized the opportunity to escape the dining room. Evann followed her into the kitchen, but luckily Cass was still there, standing by the door. Catkin paraded between them to reach his food bowl in the corner, where he settled down next to his sister, Callie. The two cats crouched with tails curled around their feet, crunching their food between needle-sharp teeth.
"Would you like to play racquetball with me this morning, Evann?" Cass asked. "Or perhaps go running? Or a walk? Edinburgh's gardens are lovely in the summer."
Evann flashed a rare grin. "I had enough running with Connor yesterday afternoon. Racquetball sounds good."
"Wonderful!" Cass said. "My clothes and equipment are at the gym; would you like to get changed here?"
"Sure," Evann said then disappeared down the stairs to the basement apartment.
Alex was guiltily glad to see Evann go, and also glad to get a few moments alone with Cass. "Do you really believe what you said yesterday?" Alex demanded. "That the attack was 'necessary'?"
"We all knew something had to be done. Something was. It's not a way I would have chosen, but I'm not trained as a soldier."
"But you are trained as a politician, which means you say things you don't mean."
Cass's sigh contained both a smile and a shrug. "It means that I try to understand other people's point of view, and that I'm willing to compromise and work with whatever comes my way."
"Including Evann."
"Oh, I think we definitely need to include her in our plans, don't you?" Cass asked, then added with a touch of exasperation, "Especially if she continues to blow things up."
That was certain. "We should have included her from the beginning," Alex said. "Or at least told her what we were doing. But she was on manuevers when we had our first meeting and then ... I forgot." There'd been so many things to keep track of these last few years. "Damn it," Alex swore, wishing there was something nearby she could smash to the floor. "I forgot."
"No one ever invites Eris." Cass picked up an apple from the bowl of fruit on the counter and turned it between her hands. "But the apple of discord always appears."
"There was no Helen this time," Alex said impatiently. "This wasn't the Trojan War."
"You're right," Cass said, setting the apple down. "It wasn't."
"Who do you think Evann's contact was, Cass?" Alex asked. She'd been wondering about that ever since Evann had mentioned the man.
Cass went still, thinking about that, then said, "Evann knew that the Tribune of the Guard was at the building on the night it was destroyed, and she said her 'contact' would have had access to the other tribunes. From what Evann and Connor were saying yesterday, it sounded as if the attack went almost precisely as planned. Attacks seldom work that well without inside help. That all points to someone in security, perhaps even Tribune Rhee himself."
Alex had heard that name before. "Didn't you meet Rhee?" she asked. "A few years ago?"
Cass nodded. "Demiko introduced us."
Alex didn't like where this was going. "Did you ask her to introduce you? Or did you order her to?"
Cassandra met her gaze squarely. "Neither. We met by accident at the cathedral in Chartres."
"All three of you just happened to be there. At the same time. On the same day. On Holy Ground."
"It's a common tourist destination, which is precisely why Demiko and I met there. It just so happened that Tribune Rhee had decided to go sightseeing that day, too." She pulled out a kitchen chair and then, with one graceful hand, she swept her hair out of her way as she sat down. When she took her hand away, the golden-brown strands lay pooled about her on the seat of the chair. Alex wondered if Cassandra practiced that, to arrange the hair just so.
Cassandra's eyes were unblinking dark green, beautiful and calm. Too calm. "Why are you so suspicious of me on this, Alex?" she asked, with more of that blunt honesty that left no room to hide or pretend.
Alex had nothing to hide, and she'd never been one to pretend. "Because you don't seem to care." She pulled out her own chair and sat down. She didn't have to move any hair out of the way. "Because I know what you're capable of," Alex continued, facing Cassandra across the table, "and because I know what you've done." To those two rapists, to Connor, and to others through the years. "What did you do to Rhee?"
"Nothing," Cassandra protested. "I did use the Voice on him so he wouldn't recognize me or remember me clearly, but other than that, we just talked. That's all."
"Talked about what?"
"Architecture, history, religion." Cassandra tossed off the words. Then she added, "Politics. Witch hunts. Pogroms. The dangers of being different, of being noticed."
"And you say that's nothing?" Alex demanded. "Are you telling me that you didn't have an ulterior motive in picking those topics?"
"Of course not. You and I had already agreed that the Watchers needed to be less conspicuous. And you're the one who wanted them eliminated—completely."
That was true. But not this way. Never this way.
"So, yes, I was trying to convince him that the Watchers should be more circumspect," Cassandra was saying, "but I never used the Voice on him for that."
"You don't have to, Cassandra!" Alex burst out. "That power is a part of you, all the time, just as a ballerina is always graceful, whether she's dancing on stage or just walking across a room. You always influence people."
Cassandra started to speak, then turned her head aside, looking away, looking inside herself. "I did not make him betray or kill his own people," she said finally, the words quiet, almost dull. "Even with the Voice, that takes immense control. You have to stand over them, order them again and again, tell them to—" She stopped abruptly and swallowed, a grimace of pain crossing her face. "They resist the commands, to the end."
"The voice of experience?" Alex sniped.
"Yes," Cassandra said, almost hissing the word, no longer calm. "But of watching, not doing. Roland took my children, ordered my husband to—" She was up and out of her chair, her hair swirling about her as she turned her back on Alex and stared out the window at the garden. Her shoulders trembled then rose and fell slowly with deep breaths. After a long silent moment, she declared, "I have never used the Voice that way." She turned to face Alex again. "And I never will."
After another silent moment, Alex said quietly, "I'm sorry."
Cass gave an abrupt nod then sat down again. When Alex finally looked up from the table, she was met by aged and weary eyes. "I do regret the deaths of those Watchers, Alex," Cass said, "but during my lifetime, billions have been born, and billions have died. I've had a great deal of experience in accepting death and then moving on."
"Yet you said it still hurts."
"Yes, if I love them, if they're my friends. If not …" She gave a tiny shrug.
"You don't care," Alex finished for her. But was that really surprising? Cass and Joe had spoken to each other … what? Three times in twenty years? And they had hardly been friends. Why should Cass pretend grief? Alex wasn't mourning, either. She was worrying about Duncan and empathizing with Emory, imagining what it would be like to be widowed with two young children, but Alex wasn't grieving for Joe. She hadn't known him very well. She didn't really care, not about him.
"Nearly two hundred thousand people died yesterday, Alex," Cass said. "Sixty million people will die this year. I can't possibly care about them all. Can you?"
"No," Alex agreed. "But their deaths have nothing to do with me. I don't know their names or where they lived or how they died. Or who made them die. This time, I do."
Cass leaned back in her chair, watching Alex closely. "Tell me, Alex," Cass began, "when you were in the States last October, what did you and Evann talk about?"
Alex realized then that she did have something to hide, after all. She'd been hiding it even from herself. This was what she cared about. This was why she was angry. "We talked about the Watchers," she admitted. "I told Evann I wanted them gone." She drew in a trembling breath. "Maybe if I hadn't— Maybe Joe—"
"Your comments did not force Evann to stage the attack," Cass interrupted firmly. "That was her decision, and hers alone."
"Just as Rhee's decisions were his?" she challenged.
"Yes. If indeed it was Rhee. We don't know that for certain."
Alex went back to staring at the table. "But we did influence them."
"Yes, but …" Cass shook her head. "It's as you said, Alex: all of us always influence people, whether we're trying to or not. Simply by existing, each of us changes the world. But one discussion won't force someone to do something. People make their own decisions. They chose their own paths."
"Maybe so," Alex allowed. "And maybe that was true here. But, Cass," Alex said, leaning forward now, "we are trying to influence people. We're trying to change the world. Phinyx is broadening some of those paths into roads."
"Yes," Cass agreed. "Roads are easier to follow."
"What are we paving those roads with, Cass? Good intentions?" Cass almost smiled, but it wasn't happy. Alex wasn't happy, either. She asked next: "And where do those roads lead?"
But Alex didn't get an answer, because just then Evann came up the stairs and into the kitchen, dressed in blue shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with an eagle, her black hair pulled back with a clip at the nape of her neck. "Ready?" she said to Cass.
"Let's go!" Cass answered, and the two Immortal women went off to the gym to smack a small rubber ball around an empty white room. Alex went for a walk in the gardens by herself, taking it slowly on the hills. Cassandra had been right; the gardens were lovely this time of year.
Alex got home around ten, picked up a book but couldn't read, turned on her laptop but couldn't write, turned on the TV but couldn't watch. She wound up making a batch of chocolate chip cookies and then scrubbing the kitchen cupboards instead.
Cass and Evann still weren't back when Connor and the kids came home, and so it was up to Alex to break the news to Connor about Joe, as soon as she got the chance. She listened to the kids' description of the karate tournament (Colin had won three of his bouts; Sara had won two), fed them all lunch (finished off with the cookies), then waited until the twins had gone upstairs and she and Connor were alone in the kitchen. "Joe Dawson was in the building on Saturday night," Alex said. "He hasn't been heard from since."
Connor paused briefly in reaching for
his glass of lemonade,
then picked it up and drank. He set it down with a muttered
curse and a
sigh.
Alex came back to her question again. "Do you think the
attack was
necessary?"
There was another pause, even longer this time. "Not
absolutely. But it's done."
And all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put things
together
again. "What do we tell Duncan?"
Alex asked next.
Connor shook his head. "If Dawson
is gone, that's for Emory to do, not us."
That wasn't what Alex had meant. "What do we tell Duncan about Evann?"
"Same as before. Evann would prefer her role in this be kept quiet. I respect that."
Alex had to say it. "She may have killed his friend."
"And Duncan killed her husband."
"That was the Game," Alex protested.
"And this was war."
"Was it?" Alex challenged. "Or has she just started one?"
"Evann won't do anything more, and the Watchers won't come after Immortals, not again, not after the Hunters and after Galati," Connor said flatly. "This won't escalate."
"Maybe not between them, but what about Duncan? Would he go after her, if he knew?"
Connor drank some more lemonade, thinking. "No," he said finally. "Even after Galati killed dozens of Watchers and gunned Dawson down, Duncan didn't want Galati's head. Duncan didn't go after Tessa's killer, either. And that was Duncan of twenty years ago; he's even less likely to go looking for revenge now. He's changed, plus he has a family to think of."
"So did Joe." Alex had to say that, too.
Connor met her gaze and nodded slowly, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. If Joe really was gone, no one could bring him back, no matter what they did or didn't do.
Alex left the table and went upstairs to her book-cluttered office, shutting the door behind her. She took out her favorite pen and a sheet of stationery. "Dear Emory," the letter of condolence began … and stopped. Alex didn't know where to go from there. Half an hour later, she heard Evann return from her jaunt with Cassandra. Alex went downstairs for a blessedly brief good-bye.
"Are you all right?" Connor asked her in concern after Evann had left for the airport and Cassandra had gone to work at the Phinyx school.
"Not really," Alex said. "But I'll deal with it, in time. Right now I have something I need to do upstairs." Maybe with Evann gone, it would be easier to find the words.
It wasn't. "Dear Emory," the letter began. The rest of the page stayed blank for days.
THE DARKNESS
Friday Night,
Le Blues Bar in Paris,
France
======================
All things considered, it wasn't a bad party, Emory decided.
Joe always had
been able to draw a crowd, and tonight at Le Blues Bar was no
exception.
Watchers, Immortals, musicians, random friends—they had all
come.
The large number of guests combined with the August heat made Emory
extremely
grateful for the luxury of efficient air-conditioning.
Yes. There were plenty of things she could still be grateful for.
There was, for example, plenty of food. Emory had ordered sandwiches, and most people had arrived with some dish or other in hand, as was customary for this sort of affair.
The live music was also working out nicely. The three-piece blues band was doing a good job of creating a pleasant ambiance without drowning out the conversation, as Emory had insisted to Joe when they had planned this months ago. People needed to be able to talk. The drummer was using only brushes, the stand-up bass player's amplifier was on its lowest setting, and the saxophonist was keeping the music soft and mellow.
No one was playing guitar.
But it was good that Joe had insisted on a live band for the occasion, because some people clearly weren't in any mood to talk. The music gave them something else to focus on, something to enjoy quietly while they nibbled on their sandwiches and drank their drinks. A few people were even dancing to the melancholy strains. Amanda was on the floor, swaying in time with a young man Emory recognized as one of Joe's musician friends, though she couldn't recall his name. But tonight, Amanda's perpetual sparkle and wit seemed to have disappeared. Now, she just looked inexpressibly sad.
Emory swallowed a lump in her throat and turned away from the dancers. At a table in the corner, Demiko and Marie were sharing a pitcher of margaritas. But the pitcher was almost empty and they were out of salt. Maybe she should say something to the waitress—
"Emory?"
Emory turned and saw Mike Barrett, one-time bartender at Joe's bar in Seacouver and one-time Watcher of Richie Ryan. Mike had lost some hair since the last time she had seen him, but he'd lost some weight, too. He looked good, fit and trim. She found herself smiling, despite everything. "Mike, I'm so glad to see you here," she welcomed him and gave him a hug, which he returned warmly.
"I'm glad I came, too," Mike said, pulling away then jamming his hands into his pockets. "Last week wasn't exactly … well … It wasn't about Joe. Or about anybody, really."
Emory felt her mouth twist in disgust. Last week's service had been horrible. "I know, Mike. I felt the same way." She tried to quash the swell of bitterness that accompanied the memory of the Watcher service, but wasn't completely successful. She'd waited her turn with everyone else while the intensive security checks and ID verification went on and on. Finally, she'd made it through that gauntlet, only to find herself in a ugly rented hall with bad acoustics, and confronted by an enormous picture of Watcher headquarters as it had been before the attack. The Watcher Emblem—those branching horns inside a circle with thirteen dots—had been hugely apparent: on the white banner across the top of the stage, on the podium (where the emblem was touched with gold trim), and on the programs that listed those being honored that day.
During the service, upper-level officials of the Watcher hierarchy gave dull, impersonal speeches that touted the grand history of the Watcher organization and made repeated glowing references to the four tribunes. "We will rebuild!" one of the speakers trumpeted, motioning to the picture of Watcher HQ, but Emory saw the doleful looks on other faces and Tribune Wildorfer's tight lips and shake of the head. They didn't have the money to rebuild, she knew. Wildorfer had told her that a few days before, along with other bad news.
"We're selling the schools," he'd said, nervously twisting a pen in his hands. "I thought it only right that you should know, Mrs. Dawson."
"Why?" Emory had demanded. Joe had poured his heart into those schools.
"We borrowed heavily to build them, and, with the current situation, they are not being used. Nor can they ever be used. Their locations are known. Also, we have additional expenses now. We—" He'd taken the cap off the pen and then put it back on. "To be blunt, Mrs. Dawson, we need the cash. And three companies have shown interest in the school facilities: Trithea Corporation, Phinyx Foundation, and Grayson/Crown. We may even get a bidding war."
Wildorfer had actually sounded pleased. Joe's life-work, what should have been his living memorial, sold off to the highest bidder, just to make ends meet. As Emory sat there, listening to gray men in gray suits droning on, she could think of only one thing: It had all been for nothing. For thousands of years, thousands of men and women had devoted their lives to keeping meticulous, invaluable, irreplaceable records of the lives of Immortals. And now the Chronicles were gone.
The destruction of Watcher headquarters was déjà vu all over again. She'd had the same sick, helpless sensation after the D.C. bomb. All those people dead, all that history erased … all gone. All those nights that Joe had spent typing feverishly at his keyboard to meet his deadline didn't matter. All those entries that Joe had written about Duncan MacLeod were gone. The schools Joe had worked so hard to create were going to be sold. Every sacrifice he had made, every compromise Emory had made to help him out, everything their family had done for the sake of Joe's job as Tribune of the Guild in the Watchers had been
for
nothing.
The last of the speakers finally sat down. The names of the four tribunes and the fifteen fallen guardsmen were read out. An honor guard marched with military precision across the stage with some flags. That was it. It was over. The numbered programs were collected on the way out the door. "Security sensitive material," one of the guardsmen explained.
Emory had fled for home, thanking god that she hadn't brought the children, though they'd wanted to go.
On an intellectual level, Emory understood that the service had been intended to remind everyone of the greatness of the Watcher organization, to try to reassure everyone that all was not lost. But in Emory's firm opinion, there was simply no place for political agendas or personal crusades in a memorial service. Rebuilding and re-establishing yourself and your life was important, certainly, but not when you were honoring the dead. A memorial service was meant to be a time and place for solace and healing. And those things had to come before the work and stress of rebuilding.
The only good thing that had come out of that service was to crystallize exactly what Emory did not want, under any circumstances, to happen tonight. And it wasn't happening. They were having a party, and although no one felt like celebrating, at least no one was being stifled with ceremony and overwhelmed with propaganda.
"Did you bring anyone with you?" she asked Mike. After the official Watcher service, Emory had gone out of her way to invite every Watcher she knew to this memorial service. Emory had also encouraged them to bring any friends who might want to come, known to her or not. Even if the Watchers couldn't be honest about their professional connection to Joe, at least they could be honest about their grief.
Mike shrugged and shook his head. "I wasn't even sure that I'd be coming," he admitted. A rueful smile touched his face. "But Demiko bullied me into it."
Emory smiled, genuinely pleased. "Good for her," she said firmly. She had always liked Demiko, and not just because the young woman was an angel of mercy who babysat the kids and brought over good food.
Mike snorted once and nodded in agreement. "And good for me. Thanks, Emory. This is good. With the schools closed, we can't do our usual ceremony, and we needed …" He trailed off.
Emory understood. "I know," she said sincerely, meeting Mike's troubled eyes. "I feel the same way. I think John Bancroft does, too," she said, nodding toward the man in the outmoded three-piece suit standing near the buffet. He'd been by himself most of the night, nursing a drink that could have been straight Coca-Cola, but probably wasn't. "Have you talked to him yet?" she asked Mike. "He's the only tribune who came, and …"
"And most of the Watchers here are lowly field agents who are too scared to talk to him," Mike finished. He grinned ruefully. "I know exactly how that feels. Nobody wants to talk me, either, ever since I became Chief of Internal Affairs." He took a step towards John, hesitated, and then turned back to Emory. And then, in a gesture that surprised and touched Emory more than she could say, Mike bent down and kissed her cheek. "Keep in touch, Emory," he said seriously. "We'll all miss you, te