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"I have the information you wanted."
On the other end of the line, Owain hissed in frustration. The ringing phone had woken him from a sound sleep, and even a night owl disliked 3:45 AM if he hadn't stayed awake for it. The one-time Welsh noble voice managed to irritated and ominous even when sleepy. "Then give it. You owe me."
"I admit the debt," came the implacable reply. "Cynthia's alive."
"I knew that. Where?"
"She was at Connor MacLeod's party last night."
He was waking quickly now, and Owain could almost hear the other man conceal something; he purred dangerously, "There can be no secrets between us -- not in this. Or do you want to lose your head, yet?"
"If you thought you could take it, you'd have tried. Be grateful I owe you, bastard border lord." Before Owain could respond to that, his contact evaded along carefully pre-planned lines of misdirection. "She's sleeping with the younger MacLeod."
"Impossible, she never.... That little bitch. I'd have found her five months ago if I thought she would change that." Owain forcibly interrupted his own musings, furious to have admitted such a thing to an informant and all too aware that the early morning call had certainly been deliberate, to force exactly such slips.
For a brief moment, he debated inwardly over whether his source was greedy enough to challenge Cynthia simply because she was hunted by another. No, he knows I've wanted her dead for years. He'd have no reason to think there is anything else. But still.... That knowledge colored his voice as he warned, "Don't touch her. Don't challenge her. Cynthia is mine."
The grim man in New York said viciously, "I assure you, I wouldn't dream of it. We're even, Rhys-Tewdor."
"We're even when I say we're--"
"Fair value received for favors given," came the uncompromising reply, and the voice twisted the word 'favors' to make it an obscenity. "This number is being disconnected now."
In Melbourne, the dial tone sounded in Owain's ear and he shrugged, not seeing the overcast, humid night outside his window despite the direction of his gaze. "Better than I had ever hoped to get from you," he whispered to the glass. "I had always thought you useless for my purposes. Perhaps before she dies I'll tell Cynthia who finally betrayed her to me." A soft chuckle roiled the air as he turned over to go back to sleep for a few hours yet. "I wonder if I should send the traditional thirty pieces of silver?"
In New York, the immortal contact studied the curios on the shelves around him. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face as he contemplated the chess game in motion and contemplated his next playing piece, the next twist of his strategy. He rather hoped that someone did trace the phone call to the office where he was deliberately early for an appointment. He had never forgiven the assistant curator for trying to foist a Picasso forgery off on him. Admittedly, it had been a very well-done one, but still.... Owain Rhys-Tewdor had never cared for laws he hadn't dictated personally; the odds were very good that he was still involved in illegal activity. A call to him was a stick of dynamite with a fuse of questionable quality... but worth lighting nonetheless.
And too, Rhys-Tewdor had orchestrated Holly Curtis' death. The informant controlled a scowl at the memories this game evoked. The young immortal had been his lover for only a year when she was challenged and killed at the Welshman's orders. Finding that out had taken several long years of patient research, but the challenge had seemed too abrupt, too unlikely to be taken at face value, even in the uncertain times of the first World War.
"You always were a fool, Owain. You've never stopped to wonder.... If I'll repay a debt to you, who else might I repay? You never asked who I owe in this Game of quid pro quo. Or who owes me? FitzCairn, you drunken reprobate, we're quits now, even if you are dead. I kept Edana's current name from him for you. And tomorrow I'll see that Damien receives fair value for that little matter he handled for me last year. Holly, amator, revenge won't bring you back... but Edana will send him to you in the underworld."
Damien moved the table out into the hallway and walked back into the ballroom to help move the chairs as well. Duncan passed him on the way out, muttering, "Have you noticed that the women have vanished?"
A sarcastic voice from the stairs said, "No, Highlander, we aren't that lucky." Methos sauntered in, carrying a carton of cold bottles. "Have a beer."
Connor reached out and grabbed one. "Homeowner's privilege. So where are the women?"
Methos looked at Rich Ryan, who was standing on a ladder vacuuming window drapes. "We don't really want Aidan on a ladder, do we?"
Marcus Constantine paused by the door, vase in hands. "What is this about Aidan and ladders?"
"She falls off them when Duncan's around," Connor chuckled. "We don't understand it."
"And lands on her back?" Constantine asked.
Duncan turned on his old friend, no little annoyed by the coarse words. "Excuse me?"
"MacLeod, you three are nearly glowing. It's about time she gave up that foolishness."
"Soul of tact as ever," Methos shrugged. "No wonder you stayed out on campaign, Marcus."
"Do you know, I'm not the one who didn't make it as a political advisor," Constantine returned placidly. "Why do I remember something about a crucifixion?"
"Nancy Reagan had no idea what can happen when you 'just say no,' " Methos groused. "In any case, stay up here, gentlemen. The kitchen is not safe, right now."
Connor turned to stare. "Is Amanda cooking or did Aidan break the good china?"
"Or Stormy's in a mood?" Damiano asked.
"Aidan is cooking, and in a mood," Methos said bluntly. "Amanda hasn't shown up yet and I get the impression she had promised to bring some ingredients. World War II was safer, gentlemen. I'm almost ready to call Sol and ask him to come over so that someone can safely make beer and coffee runs."
"From our few meetings, I must agree. No woman would harm Sol; he appears too fragile," Marcus commented, amused. "That bad, old friend?" he asked, glancing at Adam.
"That's my kitchen," Connor pointed out, interrupting their commiseration.
"Yesterday, Connor, it was your kitchen. Later tonight, when there are dishes to do, it may be your kitchen again. Right now, possession is nine-tenths of the law and there are two immortal women down there and two mortals, one of whom, from what I've seen, is a true Southern belle. Stay out. It's safer."
"Aidan, Kyra, and who?" Connor asked, then glanced up as a new immortal presence intruded on them. Several heads turned to see Robert de Valicourt shaking his head in apparent consternation.
The former pirate baron studied the partially-removed furniture from the doorway and mused, "I am not entirely certain that this is any safer than the kitchen. But the kitchen count is now three immortals women and two mortal, so I came to be of assistance here."
"You're staying out of Gina's way," Methos interpreted, grinning.
"Been married once or twice, old chap? I notice Aithnea is down there and you're up here. They had enough hands down there, and I thought mine would be of more use up here." Robert held up both hands, displaying another two cartons of beer. "So am I welcome or not?"
Constantine held up his pocket-knife, already open to the bottle-cap opener. "The man with the beer is always welcome, Robert, it's a tenet of civilization. When will it be safe to go back downstairs, do you think?"
"I was told that dinner was at six and that anyone raiding cookies would draw back a stump. I'm not quite sure who that was intended for," the French baron said, frowning slightly and missing the innocent look Adam gave two glaring Scotsmen. "But Aithnea seemed quite... serious about it. She was having trouble with some bread dough, and I believe she may actually have been hungover."
Rich grinned at that. "You're kidding, right?"
"I am not going back in that kitchen until they call us," Robert said firmly.
"Three centuries with Gina have taught you a few things," Duncan commented, grinning slyly at his old friend. "Smart man. Although I see you still can't get a lady's name right."
"I don't see you heading for the kitchen, either. I suspect a few months with Aithnea have taught you some things, as well. And she was Aithnea years before she was ever Aidan."
"Robert, if you force her to change identities before she's ready, Aidan may kill you a few times. In addition," Constantine added when that threat wasn't getting through, "you're being rude. Always call a lady by whichever name she requests."
"Oh, very well. I'll call her Aidan. For now. All right, MacLeod, now what?"
"You, I trust with my crystal," Connor growled. "Duncan will show you where to put things."
Robert considered the rapidly-emptying ballroom. "You know, Connor, other people hire help with things like this."
"Other people don't keep swords all over the house," was the dry reply. "Come on, Robert, time you remembered what honest work is."
Duncan snorted. "Right, like he ever knew. Emerald mine, hmm, Robert?"
"It was a bloody profitable one, Duncan, and she'd have never noticed."
"She'd have taken your head," the younger Scot scoffed. "And the lower one at that. Don't be an idiot, Robert. Did you truly want Aidan and Gina to fight? Come on, bring the crystal."
Damien ushered Nick Wolfe in, both of them grinning over something. The redhead waited through the greetings until Duncan was safely in the hall, then told Connor, "The plans for Duncan's birthday party are in full gear, but stay out of the kitchen. Amanda really is late, and she really did promise to bring some ingredients for dinner. Aidan's absolutely furious."
"That sums it up," Nick Wolfe said agreeably. "I left when the conversation slid out of any languages and insults I knew, but I did get the impression that Amanda and I were supposed to be here an hour or so ago. What help do you need, Connor?"
"Move furniture; keep Duncan up here; don't piss off the women," the Scot counted off on his fingers as he glanced up at the newest arrival. "And what kept you? Amanda I understand; she always runs late."
"Got it," came the laconic reply. "And I'm late because we're in one car, and she forgot to tell me we had to make a few stops for Aidan. But I made sure Amanda remembered everything," he added as Duncan came back in. "Right. Next."
The men cleared all the furniture out of the ballroom, stripped the wax off the floor with buffers and wet-vac, applied new wax, and buffed it again. That chore done, they settled onto the floor of the hallway and onto stairs, studiously discussing the important question: how to get more beer safely.
Rich said cheerfully, "No problem. Aidan's used to me wandering in and out of her kitchen."
"Better yet," Connor offered. "We could call Sol."
"Is she allowed to be grumpy at Midwinter's Eve?"
"Do you want to ask her that?" Methos asked Duncan curiously. "I thought you wanted to survive a while yet, Highlander."
"Now that you mention it," he sighed. "I have a better idea, actually."
Nick Wolfe studied Duncan, then smiled, eyes lighting with pleasure and mischief. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That just about anywhere else would be safer right now? Yes. Connor, where's that bar you like?"
Rich laughed and answered for him. "Somewhere far away! Road trip!"
Dark curls shot with silver fell across his forehead as Owain bent over the filing cabinet, hunting for one particular folder. An immortal moved into range, and he straightened, sword immediately in hand, until the rhythmic knock on the office door told him the identity of his visitor. "Johannes. Come in."
The tall, permanently balding South African stepped in, cool hazel eyes studying his partner and former teacher. "You've found her."
"A source of mine finally came through with an intriguing possibility. Where is the folder on the younger MacLeod? I want to see the photo of his lover."
Johannes brushed past him and dipped into the cabinet, almost immediately locating the correct drawer. "Here it is. What about her?"
Rage and glee warred across Owain's face, finally melding into an expression of obscene pleasure. "The leopard changed her spots. That, Johannes, is Cynthia Torriani. Find her."
"Her?" the taller man asked, startled. "You must be joking."
"Oh, no, Johannes, I'm not joking at all. That is Cynthia."
"She killed Gwydion? Well, well," came the considering growl. "How very... interesting. Shall I fax the photo to Jirina, see if this is the female they ran in Paris?"
"That would be wise," Owain said softly. "Well, well, Cynthia, you finally learned to spread your legs to one of us. Johannes -- make sure we leave Duncan MacLeod alive for the line-war. I don't want his support removed from her until the last moment."
"He's one of the strongest members of that line," Johannes pointed out calmly, still memorizing the face of the obviously contented woman in the picture who stood wrapped in MacLeod's arms. Shorter than he was by a head, which made her perhaps 5'7" or 5'8", and young-appearing. "How old is she?"
"At least a millennium," Owain said pleasantly. "I think it likely that she's approaching two thousand. And Johannes? She's mine. I am not, however, a greedy man. I fully expect you'll get one of the MacLeods."
Johannes pulled up a chair without asking -- one of the comfortable ones from the small table for conferences, not the too-rigid audience chairs designed to 'encourage' unwanted guests to leave. "All right, Owain, now that you've found her, who do you expect to see in the line war? Since we finally know that you can start it."
"She's from the line of Ramirez," Owain shrugged. "Very few of his students are left; the Kurgan killed several. That rather limits her options for assistance."
"We've helped a few on their way, too," the tall man pointed out. "Gwydion killed Diego de Grenada, and you took Pyotr Rodenko's head. But it's always looked like all of Ramirez' students trained at least a couple immortals before they lost their heads; it seems to be a tradition with them. That line draws students the way a corpse attracts buzzards."
"True. But some of them are in seclusion. Both MacLeods will certainly be there; I hadn't been sure of the older one, but if Duncan is sleeping with her, then Connor will come to try to protect his cousin's woman." Owain shrugged, cold and calculating. "The two of them, and Terrence Coventry. Mandisa, as well, and where she goes, Navarro goes. Damien and his old student, Andrew. That Spartan bitch, Kyra."
"Andrew? I thought he was dead."
"Oh, no," Owain said quietly. "Hiding from the Game, certainly. But not dead. Merely married to a mortal."
"So how are you going to get him into this?" Johannes asked.
"We won't have to do a thing. Damien will." Owain smiled at nothing. "We should let the other side do something in this, after all."
The only reply to that was a sardonic snort of laughter, before Johannes pulled over one of the files on Owain's desk and turned his concentration to their other joint projects.
Duncan sighed, eyes closed, and propped his sock-covered feet on the coffee table with a complete disregard for which of his kinsman's possessions might already be there. Rich's laughing voice commented, "You know, when I do that, my feet hit the floor with a thud."
"It's his birthday," Connor answered. "This once, I suppose he can act the mannerless lout."
"When you do it, Rich, you're still wearing shoes. I'll polish the table in the morning if it needs it. But it's my birthday. I've eaten too much, drunk too much, and if one more person had said 'Surprise!' I'd have run screaming through the window."
"If one more person had come into the kitchen to 'help' with your dinner," Aidan answered companionably from a nearby chair, "I'd have joined you and we could have screamed in harmony on the way down."
"It was wonderful, though," Duncan told her, well aware that if he wasn't careful, he'd fall asleep. I'll get up and get some coffee in a minute....
The younger Highlander felt someone scoop his feet off of the table and swing him sideways on the couch, pulling at his legs so that Duncan ended up sprawled down the length of the couch, his head tucked at an uncomfortable angle into the corner. Before he could gather the energy to protest, a pillow was tucked under his head. A heartfelt groan of relief escaped him as strong hands began to rub out his feet. "God, Methos, you have all night to stop that."
Aidan chuckled again. "Me next?"
Connor settled onto the ottoman in front of her and said pleasantly, "Feet, lass."
"You can rub my feet next," Duncan agreed without ever opening his eyes.
"Greedy," she scolded him, as she lifted a foot up to Connor's lap. "Dhonnchaidh, I gave you homemade trifle for desert; what more do you want?"
"Did you need the list, Edana, or were you going to draw it up yourself?" Methos queried, seeing the smirk on Duncan's face.
"I'll remember this at my own birthday, you do realize," she answered. "Oh, Gods, Connor, right there."
Rich snorted into his beer. "You know, this conversation sounds really interesting if you're not watching what people are doing."
"No, Rich, the conversation in the next tent at one in the morning, was interesting," Connor told him idly. "Remember, sister?"
"Bright Lady, Connor, who could forget? That Scottish Games a few years back?"
"That was the one. '94, wasn't it?"
"So tell the damn story already," Methos protested. "Rich, you're not busy; grab some more beers."
"None for me," Duncan said firmly.
"Right, Mac," Rich answered absently, already pouring the Scot a snifter of Connor's best brandy, and another for the cook.
"There we were, Rich, playing in the Highland Games near Albany -- "
"Including Games I, for one, never saw played in the Highlands," Aidan broke in, gratefully taking the glass from Rich and swirling it to aerate the strong liqueur.
"Hush, I'm telling this, sister. We had fair weather all morning for the events, but in the afternoon it drizzled and misted and finally rained for real." Connor paused and took a sip as Aidan held out her brandy for him. "Amazing the things you'll do to keep a man rubbing your feet," he chuckled.
"Anyway, that night people were in their beds early, especially considering how late it usually is when the ceilidh shuts down. Now, Aidan and I didn't go back to our tent until the last set of bards gave up on the fires, which wasn't until the last patrons, namely us, ran out of drinks for the singers." Connor paused, seeing the look on Rich's face, and then asked him, "What, nephew, never seen a tent with more than one room?"
"So there we are," Aidan picked up the story, "more than a little drunk -- him on Scotch whiskey, me on Irish -- both of us having been arguing over which song had been worst, and we start hearing the most interesting noises from the tent a few feet away."
"You had to be there," Connor chuckled reminiscently, hands momentarily motionless on Aidan's feet. He resumed his work when she whinged at him, and took the story back up. "The most interesting combination of huffing, and squeaking, and that wind-whispering rustle of hair on nylon."
"And groans, and curses," Aidan giggled. "And a very... insistent woman's voice saying things like 'Pump it up, pump it up! Harder, harder! Faster, faster!' "
Connor grinned at his cousin, seeing Duncan trying not to laugh on the couch, his mouth full of brandy, and Methos smiling himself. The oldest immortal asked wryly, "So why was this so memorable, MacLeod? Surely you've heard such sentiments before in your checkered life?"
Rich snorted, having watched Connor's inexplicable success with women. Of course, that wicked smile told the young redhead that Connor wasn't through with the story, either.
"It wasn't until she's still chanting 'Faster, faster,' and we heard him saying, 'Oh, no, hurry, it's still going down,' that we finally realized they're discussing the air mattress...."
The burly redheaded immortal closed the connecting door gently behind him so that not even a click of the latch would wake Stormy from her sleep. He sat down at the desk, unselfconscious in his nudity, and contemplated the blank hotel-issued stationery in front of him without really seeing it.
Right. What do I know? Johannes, that mercenary piece of shit, hired Crystal to spy on me. Probably to sleep with me, for that matter, and Damien sighed tiredly. Vasili Kropotkin tried to set me on Rich Ryan. We traced all the rumors back to him or his student. Now, last I remember, and Constantine confirmed it at the party, Vasili made his fortune back in one of the East Indian trading companies with Gwydion ap Idrys. Gwydion studied with Owain, and got along with him even after he was trained, rare as that seems to be. Maybe it's the Welsh blood.
Someone hired professionals to... what? Kidnap Stormy? Kill her? Who knows? We never will; the two Stormy left alive didn't last out their second night in jail. I find it hard to believe that a man with a broken collarbone managed to hang himself in his jail cell. Uh-uh, Johannes. You want me, you come get me. Leave the children and mortals out of it. Damien snarled and stood up again, pacing out some of his agitation, absently aware that Stormy would be indignant that he had this much energy left after two nights of parties and passion. She had yet to learn that his temper gave him more than enough stamina for both her love and his rage.
Fuck it, he finally decided, smiling viciously, a feral light in dark green eyes. If Johannes wants trouble, I'll damn well give him trouble.
The laptop flipped open all too easily, his strength only marginally on its leash. It was the work of a few quick seconds to access MCI's Internet service provider and log onto a familiar chat room under his usual moniker of 'Hothead'. He scanned the list of nicknames quickly, then grinned and began typing a private message to 'E. Warren.'
<Subtle, guys, real subtle. Come on, every conspiracy buff on the planet knows Earl Warren was the Justice who headed up that committee.>
{Look, just because *you* remember everything doesn't mean the rest of the world does.}
<Just because it's his name on the report...? What's the complaint tonight?>
{Which one? We're hot on the heels of a corrupt Treasury official.}
<So? Every treasury in the world has mice. Goes back to the thefts from the storerooms in Sumeria. What's so important this time?>
{So this guy's managed to get hold of blank currency stock for tens. Need we say more?}
<You realize this form of communication isn't exactly secure?>
{You realize we're yanking your mouse? What's up, Volcano? Ready to trade that firewall virus we want?}
<What, Instant Sand? Yeah, I think so. Let's haggle it out. Call me at the usual satellite number, but double the number of relays. We need to talk.>
{*Double* them? What did you stumble into, a Mob hit? Right, we'll call. Out.}
Damien logged back off and pulled out his satellite phone. Two minutes later, it rang. "Appesard."
"Hey, Hothead, what the hell kind of trouble are you in?"
"Is the line secure, Frohike?"
"My grandmother already knows how to suck eggs," Langly said acerbically.
"Hey, Langly. Is Byers on the line too?" the immortal asked, fairly certain from the quality of the sound that they were on speaker phone.
"Certainly," Byers' voice came in. "You do realize that we're trying to get the next issue out to press, though, Damien?"
"Yeah, and if you'll quit fussing over your story, we're done," Langly pointed out.
"You guys still want Instant Sand?"
"No, Appesard, we called you at midnight for nothing. Where are you, anyway?"
"NYC, Frohike. Look, I need a trade."
Now Langly sounded interested. "You need our help? For what?"
"Because as soon as you get me everything you can on this man and his company, I'm taking him out -- hard and dirty."
Byers said thoughtfully, "Why?"
"He tried to kill a woman for investigating him, and I'm taking it personally. She was working for me."
Frohike whistled in amazement. "And he's still alive? Are you losing your touch, Hothead?"
"He's alive for the moment. The name he's using is Jan Urquhart, of F&J Importers, Melbourne, Australia. I need everything you can get me. Be very, very careful, guys."
"Why us?" Langly pushed.
"Because for this," Damien admitted without a qualm of pride, "you're better than I am. How much groveling do you want, Langly?"
"Just remember you said it," the lanky blond said contentedly. "Right. We find this guy for you, and you send us the firewall code. When can we get it?"
"I'll put it out there and send you the URL when I get the information. Look, guys, assume you're going to have to find a hole for a week or so when you finish, okay?"
"They'll never know who investigated them," Frohike promised. "We've learned some new and interesting tricks."
"Don't end up like the Thinker, Frohike. Who else would sit up all night and drink cheap beer with me?"
"Damien," Byers said thoughtfully, "why did you ask this woman to investigate Urquhart?"
"I didn't," Damien told him in a dangerous, husky voice. "She was investigating my last lover. Urquhart was making regular deposits to Crystal's bank account."
Silence from the other end of the line answered that statement, then Frohike said bluntly, "Right. Crystal's last name?"
"Beauchard." The immortal spelled it out patiently.
"And the investigator?" Byers reminded him.
"Sylvana Storm, of S&S Investigations, based in Charleston, South Carolina."
"How much do you know about Urquhart?"
"He's unprincipled, unpredictable, well-funded, and ruthless. What I don't know is where he's vulnerable, Langly. That's why I'm trading with you three," Damien answered in the same harsh, implacable voice, a raspy growl menacing as a fault line trembling on the edge of an earthquake.
Byers asked a bit nervously, "Damien, are you going to take him on by yourself?"
"Oh, I'll take back-up. Let me worry about that, guys. Call me when you have the information."
"Will do," Frohike told him. "And Appesard? Be careful, all right?"
"I'll watch my head," came the rumbling answer.
"Idiot," Langly snapped at the dial tone. "It's your back we're worried about."
Gina de Valicourt stretched lazily under the comforter, and giggled when her husband's practiced hand caught her mid-stretch and began tickling. "Robert! Quit that!"
"We, my dear, do not have to be anywhere until our afternoon appointment with the investment broker. What else did you have in mind for the next four hours?" He leered at her, and with his fingertips began to trace a very distracting pattern along her ribs.
"Robert, we're supposed to meet Cory at Jackson Square in an hour and a half, remember?"
"Is that today?" he asked, startled. "I thought that was next week."
"No, Robert, it's today. Honestly, you made the arrangements for it."
"Yes, well, you're very distracting in the mornings, cara mia." With a disgusted sigh, he pushed back the blankets and sat up. "Why are we meeting Cory, by the way?"
"Because you wanted to talk to him about Vasili Kropotkin, I believe you said. And because it would be a shame to come to the States for Connor's party and go straight home again." Gina shrugged, sitting up herself and finishing her interrupted stretching.
"Oh, yes. That blighter I killed for lying to you, the one who was trying to get Damien to kill young Richard. Well, Cory fenced a few things with him over the years, and as Cory is in the South and we haven't been to New Orleans in decades...." The former pirate shrugged as well, completely unconcerned.
"And you have adored New Orleans ever since you were a pirate selling cargo here, Robert. Don't deny it," his wife laughed. "Shall we go meet that laughing idiot and see where he wants us to invest some money?"
"Aren't you confusing our appointments?"
Gina tossed a mischievous look over her shoulder as she walked toward the shower. "Somehow, Robert, I don't think so. This is Cory, after all."
The dark-skinned woman walked up to the house as if she belonged there and fiddled with the door while cursing audibly about a bent house key. As soon as the door opened to her lock picks, Mandisa walked in, slung her backpack under the coat rack, and looked around for the phone. She dialed the number in Caracas from memory.
"Navarro -- I'm here."
"Sangre de Christo, what took you so long?"
"Yes, well, it took a while to get to Barcelona."
"It must have, Mandisa. Surely you could have called me? When he and I last talked, my old friend had almost given up on you."
Mandisa only said, "There were complications. Have you found our teacher?"
"Not yet. Alex and Xan haven't talked to Shahar in so long they weren't even sure if she's in the Game; they had no idea what name she might be using this decade. And Darius can't help us; he's dead."
"Darius?" Mandisa asked sharply. "How? Who?"
"The rumor is that it was done by mortals," came the furious reply.
"Damn them," she whispered. "Damn them to hell. What of Adrianna?"
"Also out of the Game," Navarro told her, surprised. "Sister, that was a good fourteen years ago; have you been gone that long?"
"I suppose I have. What happened to her, Var?"
"Someone set fire to the convent. Some of the nuns were found dead, not from flame, and there was a lightning storm. Adrianna was found buried under rubble. Supposedly a structural support fell so as to sever her neck."
"Was she on the grounds?"
"No," Var said tiredly. "Under what was left of the barn. Off Holy Ground."
"Dragged, or blackmailed," Mandisa said grimly. "All right. Perhaps Sean Burns?"
"Dead. Lost to a Dark Quickening, according to Gina de Valicourt."
"They're real? Great Mother, is the Gathering beginning?" Mandisa sagged down into a large overstuffed easy chair, suddenly feeling every day of her long trip. I've only been running since September, she groaned inwardly. Three months to make it from Ethiopia to this house; I could have done it more quickly than that even a hundred years ago, without having to have as much paperwork! Three challenges faced, and only one of them an accident -- maybe. I'm so tired.
As if in answer to her thoughts, Var told her, "It's not the Gathering yet, sister, but I wonder if all this modern technology won't bring it upon us at last. How many hunts did we make in years past where the prey fled ahead, somehow sensing our intent? Now there is no time to realize one is doomed. The plane lands; the car approaches; and the hunters are there and another of us is dead."
"What if the Gathering is real, Var? What do we do then?"
Silence was her only answer from the other side of the line. The quiet lasted so long that Mandisa only started awake when her head slumped against the side of the chair. "Var? Are you still there?"
"I don't have your answer, sister," he said softly. "I don't know. Maybe we follow Shahar, follow Darius... and play another Game. We have fought so many souls, held to ourselves through the long years, and longer fights with sword and mind.... Why do we believe some outside Force will make us duel in the end? Who started this Game?"
"I don't know, Navarro. I don't know," she sighed. "I have to sleep, brother. I'll call you later."
"You'd better," he told her. "I'll keep looking for Shahar, sister. We'll find her, or someone who knows where she is. Maybe she's hiding a new sibling from the Game."
"She would. Hunt well, Var."
"And you, Mandisa."
The tall, rangy woman settled deeper into the chair for just a moment, curling herself within her own coat, tugging down the throw blanket on the back of the chair against the cool, humid draft. Just for a moment. I'll just rest for a moment. She was snoring within a minute, sliding down into an exhausted sleep that acknowledged only the barest need for caution, and cared not at all that the front door was still unlocked.
Why is it, Damien fumed, that you only find other immortals when you don't want to fight? Damn it! His house alarm had sent a signal to his pager and notified him of a break-in, so he wasn't exactly driving slowly. As a result, the car had coasted into his opponent's presence before he could hit the brakes. What infuriated him even more than the break-in was the fact that the immortal was obviously still inside his house!
Damn fool, does he think I'm easy prey? Or did no one tell you that you never corner a predator?
The advantage to being inclined to electronics and engineering, he'd realized decades ago, lay in the fact that you tended to stay very, very up to date. The remote access for his house unlocked the backdoor, and he never broke stride as he came in, his sword angled to deflect away any attack at his vulnerable neck or torso. Instead he saw a tall, thin, dark shape in the gloom of the hallway, and the dim flash of the computer power supply reflected off a slender blade. Then a near-baritone, yet unmistakably female, voice asked, "Damiano?"
He stopped abruptly, momentum thrown off as his mind scrabbled desperately to access the memory, and then Damien laughed, as joyful as he'd been furious earlier. "Mandisa!"
"I admit I broke into your house, brother, but are you after my head, too?"
"Too?" He frowned then, all quicksilver moods and temper. "No, Mandisa, I'm not. Come into the kitchen; I'll make coffee and we can talk. Do you still take cinnamon in it?"
That drew a soft sound, almost a laugh. "You always remember. Do you have any mace?"
"For you? We'll find some. Come in, sit down. Who's after-- When did you last eat?" The burly redhead frowned at the sight in front of him. Granted, she was no thinner than usual; Mandisa was built like a whippet, all long bones, and wiry muscle, and tendons prominent under midnight-dark skin. But she looked almost fragile at the moment, as if some essential element had been slowly leached from her, leaving a paled, desiccated, husk behind, easily fractured.
"The airline fed me something," Mandisa shrugged. "They claimed it was food. I'd almost rather they admit that the things are cardboard, not food. But the oatmeal raisin cookie was passable. I would kill for Shahar's soda bread right now, and fresh butter to slather on it."
"Sorry, none on hand. How about pizza?"
"Anything," she husked. "Beer?"
Damien saw a shiver repressed, and said softly, "Var would kill me if I didn't take care of you, Disa. Here." He pulled his sweater over his head and bundled it onto her spare frame. It hung appallingly loosely around her hips, but his lingering body heat began to warm her immediately. Long practice had a pot of coffee brewing within a minute, and the oven on to re-heat pizza. He got Mandisa settled into one of the kitchen chairs, feet tucked up on another, and went to get her a blanket, warm sweatpants and socks, and another sweater for himself. When he got back, she was half-asleep at the table, watching the coffee drip down into the pot with the focused fascination of exhaustion.
Damien wrapped the blanket around her legs and dug into the fridge to find salad makings. He first set a large glass of water with lemon slices in front of Mandisa and was not surprised to find it empty when he turned back from cutting carrots. By the second glass she seemed a bit more human, and he fixed a large mug of coffee for her, laced with cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg, brown sugar and milk and whiskey.
"That's almost a meal," was her soft-spoken comment after a cautious sip.
"Enough nutmeg? I'm out of mace."
"It's good, Damiano, but your coffee always is. Remember that time Var scorched the beans, roasting them? I thought you were going to take his head, until he promised to make dinner."
That got a soft chuckle. "And he nearly burned dinner, too. How is Navarro?"
"Busy. He's an executive with a transportation company in Caracas. Brother... there's trouble."
"I know," Damien told her simply. "It's been here already, and we're not done yet. Johannes Engeles is involved."
"You should have killed him," was the stark reply.
"If I could have, I would. I'm working on it, Disa. The scouts are stalking his spoor as we speak, sister, and I'll hear from them soon. Are you all right?"
"Three heads in three months, brother. I'm only very, very tired."
He nodded at that, chopping red cabbage with an unthinking precision. "Do you want to talk now or in the morning?"
"Morning," Mandisa told him. "I'll forget things if I talk tonight. Do you want help?"
He gave her a disbelieving look. With that same careful, gentle patience that his abrupt sister always seemed to call forth in him, Damien pointed out, "You never could cook, Mandisa, and I don't want blood in the salad. Sit. Drink your coffee. Get warm. Dinner soon, and then you can sleep safely, sister. We'll talk in the morning."
She nodded absently, and turned her attention to the book of poetry lying on the table where Damien had been re-reading it earlier. Soon enough Mandisa had vanished into the intricacies of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, chin propped on one palm and the other hand buried in the folds of her borrowed sweater unless she had to turn a page. Damien placed hot pizza and salad in front of her and watched the food seemingly sublimate into thin air: visible and then gone to her ravenous need for real food, real contact, real safety.
He pushed his own plate in front of her and watched in amusement as she ate all three slices of pizza before she finally realized that there were now two plates there. Rather than feel guilty, Mandisa glanced up at him and said gravely, "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Come on; you can run the hot water out in the shower while I make up the spare bed." Mandisa flashed him a brief grin, white teeth startling against now properly-black skin.
"You never were as prepared as some of the rest of us," she chuckled. "I don't suppose you have an extra toothbrush?"
"That from the woman who may not even have a house this decade? I think I can manage," he told her, annoyance tingeing his voice. Rather than argue, she went.
Damien dug into her frame pack by the door, wrinkling his nose at the way the clothes smelled. He dumped them into the kitchen to run through the washing machine, and went to make the bed. Mandisa eventually abandoned the hot water, climbed into the heavy sweats and socks he'd left her, and turned into a stretched-out lump under blankets.
Damien heated a can of soup for himself, and killed the last of the salad and a beer, all the while tracing the necessary next steps of his problems. "Wait for the Gunmen. Wait for Disa to wake up. Wait to call Var for information because I don't have his number right now." Then he stopped and groaned, loudly. "Oh, fuck. And start thinking immediately about how I explain Disa to Stormy...."
Terrence paused in the rhythmic, soothing strokes of stone over steel. His chin came up, the tilt of his head strangely imperious for a man sitting in an overstuffed chair in a sun-filled living room. The presence of another immortal washed over him, and Coventry put down the whetstone he'd been using. His longsword hung comfortably in his hand as he walked out the French doors to the frost-covered lawn.
Alex and Xan are supposed to come up from Sacramento for Christmas, but I thought Alex said they would be here tonight, not this morning.... "Alex? Xan? Is that you?"
"'Fraid not, old chap," came the mocking reply. "Surely you haven't mistaken me for some Greek catamite?" The dark-skinned man stepped into view, flamberge silhouetted in his hand against the bay behind him. The long wavy blade spun sunlight back across the bricks of the patio and he smiled, crooked teeth visible.
"No," Coventry drawled, "you look like something that floated up from one of the Bengali ports. Or were you with the press-gangs in Calcutta?" A scornful eye raked over the other man's crimson silk shirt, black vest, black trousers, and... Snakeskin cowboy boots? Oh, good Lord. How thoroughly gauche. And he had the gall to complain about Xan and Alex?!
"Ah, the fabled English superiority. What a pity it isn't used to defend something worth the trouble." He studied Terrence in return, his contempt for the other man all too obvious. Where Terrence's perpetually greying brown hair was curly, cut short in an attempt to contain it, the other man had a sleek black mane, mustache and beard. Where Coventry wore casual khakis and a deceptively simple wool fisherman's knit sweater, the other man wore expensive fabrics and cuts. And the English bard's longsword was a good six inches shorter than the Indian's flamberge.
"Do you have a name? Or shall we simply trade insults until one of us runs out of breath or scorn?" Coventry swung his sword in effortless circles, loosening his wrist for the upcoming fight. He had no doubt that this was going to end up in a challenge.
"My name, Inglesi, is Rohan Singh. Enough of this, Terrence Coventry. I've come for your head. Will you fight? Or has the taste for combat and conquest faded from you as it has from your degenerate motherland?"
Pale hazel eyes hooded and Coventry said softly, "Why are you hunting me?"
"It's the Game, Coventry. There can be only one, remember?" Sunlight splashed across a thin scar, pale against the dark skin. Rohan brought up his flamberge and laughed softly. "It's a fine morning to lose your head. Cool and pleasant, and the sun is out to watch and judge between us. Fight, Inglesi, your dharma calls you."
"If you insist," and Terrence lunged as he spoke. The longsword twisted, a slight, flicking motion, which knocked the flamberge out of line.
Rohan stopped back, pulling his blade into a more defensive position, and sneered. "Can you do no better than that?"
Coventry shrugged and said pleasantly, "Well, I am still here." With a quick step, he slid his blade along the flamberge and in, then pulled it back again before Rohan could try to trap his sword. On its return path, the back of the blade laid open the inside of the Indian's arm, cutting the gripping tendons.
Rohan swore in Sindhi, hastily switching the flamberge to his left hand.
Coventry pressed in again as his opponent backpedaled and repeated the strike to the left arm this time, his own left hand up for balance. The seemingly foppish, affected gesture infuriated Singh, who now held his blade in both hands. The tendons in his right arm were healing, but too slowly for this; it would take both hands to balance and use the tip-heavy sword effectively. Usually his shoulders and arms were strong enough to make full use of the flamberge's weight; now the balance of the blade worked against him.
Terrence sighed dramatically and said, "Do you know, I'd still let you go if you should leave now." His sword dropped out of guard, wrist relaxing in a negligent curve to let the blade point forward.
"And I'll still take your head," Rohan snapped as he stepped forward. They were the last words of his life as the fop in front of him twisted his blade up and around in a 270 degree arc, snapping it down with all his wiry strength. The blow drove Rohan's blade toward the ground, away from his defense, and instinctively the darker immortal fought to lift it. Coventry used the force of his opponent's arms to snap his own two-edged blade up and in across the neck, decapitating the Indian.
The British immortal carefully set his sword out of the way on the patio and had time for one rueful thought before the quickening hit. Damn, I hate getting blood out of wool....
"It's morning. Why am I awake?"
"Because it's Christmas?" Aidan replied, passing him a mug of coffee.
"Says the pagan," Methos groused. "It's only eight o'clock. What's wrong with sleeping in?"
"He's young, Magister, let him enjoy himself. He'll get old soon enough," she laughed softly, unsure if she was talking about Rich or Duncan. Both of them were studying the wrapped presents under the tree and obviously did not think breakfast took priority.
Connor laughed. "One present, Rich, then we eat."
"Oh, come on, Connor," Rich pleaded. "Breakfast?"
Aidan chuckled as she moved through the kitchen. "Yes, Rich, breakfast. It'll be ready in five minutes, too. This is why I did as much as possible last night while the rest of you were at Midnight Mass."
Rich sighed and started setting the table. "Breakfast. Got it. Put all these gifts in front of a guy, and I have to eat first."
"This is rare," Methos observed sardonically. "You, turning down food."
"Kind of like you passing up beer?" Rich shrugged. "Hey, I like opening presents. It's different, okay? On the other hand, I know Aidan or Duncan will feed me. So what's for breakfast?"
"Your choice of cinnamon coffee cake, cranberry-orange walnut bread, cheese, fresh bread with honey, steak, and sliced apples. I was trying for something which could be assembled quickly." Aidan pulled open the oven, flipped the steaks, scooped more marinade over them, and shoved the shallow pan back under the broiler. "And the packages won't vanish, Rich, truly."
"I love your idea of breakfast," Duncan laughed. "One present apiece, hmm?" He shrugged and said, "Come on, Rich, pick a package. Aidan, any preference?"
"First one with my name on it under the tree?" she suggested, slicing hot bread with a quick efficiency. "Gods, I love this bread machine, Connor. I may break down and buy one when I get home."
"That's a good one," he agreed, busily sectioning apples. "Duncan, open that blue package first."
"Still giving orders, kinsman?" the taller Scot asked, but he shrugged. "Got it."
Aidan laughed softly. "Quit arguing, Dhonnchaidh." She padded over to the tree, barefoot and wearing only thermal leggings and an oversized sweatshirt which said, 'Si hoc legere scis, nimium eruditiones habes.'
Connor snorted when he read it. "Nice, sister. And I do not."
"That would depend upon your definition of 'too much,' I would suppose." She passed Methos a package, grinning wickedly. "Here, Magister."
"No, I think I'll pick mine," he said calmly. "This will do nicely." He pulled out a gaily wrapped package from Rich. Rich, meanwhile, pulled out a gold-paper box that Methos had given him.
Aidan purred when her gift from Rachel turned out to be Ancient Gold: The Wealth of the Thracians, the coffee table book from a recent exhibition, and promptly spread it open on the table next to her plate. Rich and Methos had given each other the same present: sweatshirts with the slogan 'Age & Treachery Will Overcome Youth & Skill Every Time.' Everyone laughed when they both pulled them on immediately.
Connor's present to Duncan turned out to be a deep blue and saffron sweater which Methos immediately started plotting to 'borrow.' Duncan reached over without looking and swatted his hand. "Mine. Leave it alone."
"Of course, Mac," he complained, donning his best 'innocent and misunderstood' look.
The older Highlander shook his head when he received a certificate from Damien for a different import brandy each month. "Well, at least it isn't Scotch."
Breakfast vanished much more quickly than the quality of food warranted. Rich frankly bolted his, and grinned when even Aidan and Connor brought the last of their bread and coffee to the tree to start opening gifts. Although several of the presents had been mailed out or picked up during Duncan's party, there were still a sizable number of packages piled in gaily colored drifts under the tree.
Some of the gifts were purely jokes. Methos received refrigerator magnets of Michelangelo's David, along with other magnets to 'dress' the statue with. Duncan got several videos for the anime series Ranma ½. Connor gave Aidan bottles of assorted dyes to put temporary streaks of purple, or blue, or pink in her hair.
Others, however, were more useful. Aidan gave Rich storage bags for his motorcycle, already equipped with inconspicuous sheaths to let him access his saber or a knife. Duncan finally got the sword harness she had promised him months ago, so that he wouldn't have to go jogging unarmed again. Connor gave her a bread machine and only laughed when she indignantly pointed out it was sheer luck she hadn't already bought one.
"The one I want to see opened," Duncan told Methos, "is this one. What in the world did Amanda get you? It feels like the box is full of lead weights. If I didn't know that she doesn't usually give swords...."
Aidan glanced over hastily. "Wait. That says it's from Amanda?"
Hazel eyes met hers in amused understanding. "I take it that it isn't?" Methos asked.
"I suppose," his former student said begrudgingly, "that it's from the both of us. That wench."
"She acquired it and you paid for it?"
"Something like. Open it, Magister."
Duncan pushed another, much larger box over. "This one, alanna, says it's from you to Methos -- but Amanda wrote the card."
"You'd know her handwriting," Connor agreed amiably. "Come on, old man, open them."
Methos deliberately took his time, breaking tape and folding paper neatly away, simply to drive Edana half-crazy. Not, mind, that I don't want to find out what she got me that required Amanda's assistance... but it won't hurt her to remember I don't take orders well. Then he opened the wooden box and simply stared in surprise.
The sheathed sword on the velvet could have been any knight's broadsword from the 12th century. Plainly made, with no grand embellishments, no jewel set in the pommel or into the hilt, it had nothing obvious to distinguish it. But there was a gouge in the crosspiece, smoothed down but never quite filled in, which Methos remembered vividly, and the intricately woven wire handle was still familiar to his palms when he hefted the blade out of the box.
A slow smile crossed his face as he turned to Aidan. "Where did you find this?"
"Merry Christmas, Methos," she said simply and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "Open your other present."
"What's the provenance on it?" Connor asked curiously as Methos tore into the second box much less patiently.
"Made in 1143 -- "
"1145," Methos corrected her absently.
"That can't be right," she told him indignantly. "Thierry made it the year before you married Chantal, and eight months after that we both went on Crusade to get out of Europe. Remember? Haresh was furious with us for fighting for France, although he did admit Eleanor was impressive."
Rich glanced at Methos whose hands had fallen still as he looked at something that wasn't there. "You got married and then got out of Europe?"
"She died in childbirth," Methos said softly, to no one in particular. "There was no reason to stay in France, then, and every reason to head into Islam. Bathhouses, and coffee, and the books of Avicenna, the translated works of the Greek and Roman writers...." Duncan briefly clasped his shoulder, chocolate eyes shaded even darker with concern and sympathy.
Aidan nodded slowly. "And you ended up training Salim."
"Yes, and you ended up with Mandisa, from what I recall."
Rich said cautiously, "I thought we couldn't have children." When Methos' only response was a sardonic look, the young man muttered, "Oh. Sorry."
"It's all right, Ryan. I knew she was pregnant when I married her. Her lover had died too soon, and she was a good friend of mine. One of the few sensible women who came to court."
Aidan smiled reminiscently. "Magnificent hair she had. Thicker than mine, and sun-striped in gold and red over oak brown that summer, glorious scandal that that was. A braid as thick as my wrist, and as long as Methos' arm. And she was so pleased to be pregnant."
"What was the scandal?"
"Chantal was a noble's daughter, Rich. She should never have been out in the sun, consorting with the peasants," Methos told him bluntly. "A minor knight, granted, and his younger daughter, but it was still a scandal. Edana, how many times did she ask you about freckle remedies?"
"Enough times for it to be a joke between us," Aidan smiled. "I remember that now. I'd forgotten."
"What happened?" Rich asked curiously.
Methos said impassively, "I away on rounds with Louis' court anyway. Louis wanted more soldiers, and land-owners had certain obligations -- such as providing men or funds. I hadn't been knighted, but it was known that I could fight, and I had brought the men at arms required, so I had to travel with them. In those days, each minor lord or noble generally commanded his own forces if there wasn't a war, and sometimes even when there was.
"We were visiting estates to 'show forth the royal presence,' so that everyone knew that the army was still strong and they should contribute to the coming Crusade. Edana was one of Eleanor's ladies, so she had to come along as well. Chantal wasn't due for another month, we thought. The child thought otherwise, and he was too large, and she too small."
Aidan added quietly, "From a few things the midwife babbled, trying to escape blame, he was a transverse presentation, too." At Rich's blank look, she explained, "The child was turned sideways when the contractions started, Rich, and the midwife couldn't rotate him to face downward quickly enough. Chantal exhausted herself in the labor before they could turn the child. By the time they did... she just couldn't hold on for long enough for us to get home. She died of child-fever, meaning the tearing became infected."
"And the child?" Duncan asked.
"He'd gotten tangled in the umbilical cord. He was dead before he was ever born." She sounded more resigned than angry.
"Both of them?" Rich looked stunned by the double loss.
Connor shook his head, unsurprised by the younger immortal's reaction. Rich simply wasn't old enough or well-educated enough yet to know what things had been like. Modern antibiotics and modern medicine had made caesarians survivable, but without pain killers to ease shock, clamps to halt bleeding, and antibiotics to fight off infection, caesarians were an option only the desperate contemplated. Too, in those days the Church didn't sanction bodily mutilation in anything except war. "Medicine has come a very long way since I was born, Rich. I can remember when people bought posies of violets to ward off the Plague. They thought it was carried in a noxious gas, so they constantly sniffed the flowers to prevent the sickness."
"Did it work?"
Aidan shook her head. "No. Nothing did, really. Methos, open the other box."
He nodded, recognizing her desire to change the subject on Christmas morning, and tore paper off in strips, throwing it at Rich and leaving the young redhead festooned in silver and green. "So what else did you... I'd forgotten this thing. What in hell am I supposed to do with a shield, Edana?" But he was already standing up, hefting the weighty thing easily and settling it into place on his arm.
"Add to the ambiance at Shakespeare and Company? Leave it for me to re-enamel the device for you? Both?"
He laughed and set it back in the box. "I'll let you enamel it and then we'll see. I've got a fireplace in Paris that would suit it."
"That would work. Pity I don't know how to get in touch with Francois. She had the most gorgeous touch for this kind of detail work...."
Methos turned on his one-time student, an outraged look on his face. "She? Edana, do you mean you knew about Francois?"
Connor asked casually, "Am I missing something here? Francois is a man's name, the last time I looked."
"Yes, well, 'Francois' wasn't a man. Did you know, then?"
Aidan's bewilderment gave way to the knowledge that she was about to be held responsible for not pointing out the obvious. "You didn't. Oh, Mothers."
"Imagine my surprise a few centuries later to find 'Francois' using the name Vanora. She was running a tavern in Oxford, and reading any book that didn't run fast enough. You mean you knew all along that Eleanor's page boy was a woman?"
"Magister, how did you miss it? Did you simply never look at her face?"
"Yes, I looked," he insisted, irritated. "Of course she looked like a boy. That was rather the point, now, wasn't it? And if you couldn't hear all those obscure details in everyone's presence -- and one of these days I'm going to catch you being wrong -- you would have thought that she was a he, too."
Duncan laughed. "Methos, you're barely making sense. Aidan, you all met a female immortal passing for male, who was named Francois?"
"Mmm-hmm," she agreed digging through the packages under the tree and pulling out the next one labeled for 'Adam.' "She was one of Sean Burns' students. Wonderful woman, and devoted to Eleanor. Here, Magister, open this and quit complaining. It's from Joe. Speaking of whom, is he coming over later, or is he spending the day with Sol?"
"He said something about if you were making dinner, rather than sleeping...." Connor grinned when she sputtered in outrage. "Actually, I promised venison stew and they're both coming, and some of Sol's grandsons. Pull out your new bread machine. I want soda bread."
Aidan flicked a thumbnail between her front teeth at him and Connor commented teasingly, "Aren't you too old to know what that means? Go turn on the parade, why don't you? I'm going to finish opening presents."
Langly shook his head and said, "You call him, Frohike. You've known him longest."
"You're the one who wanted him to admit we could do it. You call him."
Byers dialed the number and stuck the phone in Frohike's hand, knowing the other man would hold on to it without thought. Meantime, John Fitzgerald Byers turned back to his own computer where he was busily tracking spring water distributors for government agencies. The latest hot rumor whispered of a variant of ergotaminehystamine, the paranoia drug that had brought the Gunmen together, being slipped into the federal employees' water supply. A possible attempt to speed up the erosion of the public's faith in the government? We've certainly seen stranger things, Byers shrugged mentally. And that just might work, after all.
Frohike stared at the phone in his hand, currently giving off tinny rings, then simultaneously surrendered to the inevitable and added it to the list of things he'd get even for.
"Appesard," came the gravelly Southern voice.
"Buddy, when you pick enemies you don't do small, do you?" he grouched.
"Hey, Frohike. What did you find?" Damien's voice immediately sounded more pleasant, if also more intent.
"What ever happened to 'How are you?' "
A muffled snort of laughter answered him. "Try it sometime and maybe you'll get the same courtesy. Spit it out, paranoid. It must be bad if Langly didn't call to gloat."
"I'll tell him you said so," Frohike said dryly. "We have the first batch of info on your stalker, but we need Instant Sand to get the real dirt."
"Really? What have you got?"
"Appesard.... Look, Hothead, do you know how far in you're getting? This bastard is a bona fide serial killer." Frohike frowned when that didn't get a reaction. "Are you listening to me? The man flies into a town and boom! Someone is dead, Appesard. I mean on the table, 'y' incision in torso, dead. And he likes dismantling his toys. Heads on the ground. Do you get this?"
"Frohike," Damien said quietly, "I already knew that. Why do you think I told you three to be so careful? I'd have never involved Stormy if I'd had any clue that Urquhart was at the end of the trail. I'll take care of him. Now, what have you got for me?"
Light flashed off Langly's glasses as he turned to watch Frohike pace the limits of the phone cord, swearing in agitated, vicious words at Urquhart and Damien impartially. Byers reached over with one hand and hit the 'speaker' button. "Damien, what's going on?"
"Hey, Byers. Guys, I told you when I made the offer that Urquhart had tried to have Stormy killed. Why else did I tell you to get ready to run? What's Frohike's problem?"
Byers sighed. "Damien, you're big, and you're mean, but this man is a killer."
"So am I," Damien pointed out to him quietly. "If the Thinker had come to me, he might still be alive."
"They'd have killed you, too, for the MJ tape," Langly said irritably.
"Look, guys, this isn't a pissing contest. You're better hackers than I am. But I can and will take Urquhart out, because I'm good at it. Now, what have you got for me?"
"I take it we shouldn't notify Australia's finest?" Frohike finally snapped.
Damien said immediately, "No, Frohike. They'd never take him out. Look, send me what you have, would you? Have you got my Hotmail address?"
"Not the one at Bellsouth.net?" Langly asked him.
"Not for this one, guys. Frohike.... My word on my breath: Urquhart won't live to see next Christmas."
"The files just went out," Byers said levelly. "What's the URL for the firewall code, Damien?"
"www.muspelheim.com/lorica/buiochas/sand.shtml." He paused for a moment, then cheerfully began to spell the Gaelic for them.
"What's that acronym, Volcano?"
"What acronym, Frohike? A 'lorica' is an enchanted piece of armor, and 'buiochas' is Irish for thank you. Guys -- be careful. Since it obviously didn't sink in the first time I told you."
"Right, Appesard. You didn't tell us we were looking for a mass murderer, either," Frohike snapped.
"You aren't," Damien said calmly. "Urquhart is usually very precise. The password for the code is 'magic bullet,' two words. Let me know when you have the rest of the info. And thanks, guys."
Byers turned away from his computer when the dial tone indicated that Damien had hung up. "You know, I looked up that word once, when he set up his home page. Muspelheim was the realm of the giants in Norse mythology. The ruler, Surt, is associated with the fire that will be unleashed at Ragnarok, the end of the world."
Langly looked quizzically at Byers. "That's not the question. The question is, how many deaths are in Damien's past?"
Frohike interrupted them. "The code's out there. And the real question is, do we look?"
They traded glances across the over-bright room, redolent as it was with caffeine and scorched plastic, and the faint scent of pizza which had lingered longer than the leftovers had. A mutual understanding arrived at, comprehended, and passed among them... all in one swift exchange.
"Right," Langly said calmly. "Later."
"And we don't let him find out," Frohike emphasized. "Damien's useful. And I'd rather trust that hothead than most of the people we know."
Byers nodded. "I'll start working on F&J Importers now that we've got the Sand program. Ringo -- "
"Pass me the phone records as soon as you have them," Langly muttered. "I'm going to try getting into Urquhart's email again."
Frohike went to the kitchen to start more coffee. It looked like another busy night lay ahead.
"Exquisite, as always," he told her languorously, unwilling to move just yet. The brunette nodded once, but said nothing as she pulled her clothes on again. A year's experience with this client had taught her his unspoken rules: Don't rush, don't argue, and afterwards don't talk and don't stay. But he paid well, and Lucy Eddison wasn't fool enough to expect anything more from what was, after all, a business arrangement. FitzAlan had paid her earlier, slipping the envelope into her coat pocket when he draped the light jacket over the coat rack. So she dressed carefully, glanced around to make sure she'd left nothing, and closed the door quietly behind herself as she left.
Owain stretched finally, enjoying the burn of taxed muscles released, and the satiation that 'Satin' always provided. Of course it wasn't her real name, but quite bluntly, he didn't give a damn what her family called her or her friends, only that she was, as always, available, skilled, willing, and... amenable. So long as he left no permanent marks, almost anything was permissible. Some acts more expensive than others, but everything was available.
What he enjoyed most, though, was the slow erosion of her spirit. Eventually she would bore him and he would have to find someone new. But for now, it was the occasional flash of defiance in her eyes, in the tensed muscles of her back, that enthralled him, the rush of sheer power as he watched her push down the reactions to satisfy him, that made Satin worth the cost.
And by the time she is no longer of interest, I'll have Cynthia in my bed instead. The chains will add an interesting fillip to the sex. Does she scream when she comes? Or shall I simply make the bitch scream until I come? Oh, this promises to be rare sport indeed. An immortal to break, again, and Cynthia is both stubborn and proud. It will make her eventual defeat even more delightful.
I wonder which name is truly hers, though? She's used more than most. Dacey, Danika, Clarissa, Yelena, Shahar... who is she? Sooner or later I'll find out.
Thoroughly awake again, he rolled out of bed, and moved to the shower. A few minutes quick work removed all traces of the prostitute from his skin and body. He stripped and remade the bed as quickly, then walked into his library, looking for diversion. The newest Ludlum novel offered just that, and Owain laughed softly as he read about spies, and intrigue, and international politics gone awry. It amused him to think that no one in their right mind would write about immortals: the strategies and machinations of the Game were both too fantastic and simultaneously too real to be comfortable reading.
"Speaking of strategies," he murmured and reached into a hidden drawer in his desk to pull out a small journal, bound in red leather. He flipped through pages, until he found the name he wanted, then dialed.
It took three rings, but eventually he received an answer.
"Henslowe."
"Christopher, it's Owain." The older immortal let his voice take on the clipped cadence of an officer expecting a report from a subordinate.
"He's almost ready," came the casual reply, as the man on the other side of the phone slipped easily into Welsh. "I assume you have my payment?"
"Of course. Ten million dollars American in a Swiss bank account. I'll hand over the bank book when you hand over Cynthia."
"Have you found her, then? And when shall I throw Marcus into the lion's den?"
"Soon, Chris. Will the brat think he's ready in another month?"
"Make it six weeks," was the calm reply. "I'll need to lay some groundwork for this. But a thought had occurred to me. Would it help you if I make her think she's killed an innocent?"
"Well, as to that," Owain chuckled, "I had a few ideas...."
Langly copied files with reckless abandon, enjoying the certainty that Damien's program had convinced F&J's computers that it was FitzAlan accessing the site. The Gunmen were nominally investigating Jan Urquhart, but his partner, John FitzAlan, was beginning to look every bit as interesting. Actually, the entire damn company reeked with a subtle odor composed of equal parts subterfuge, misdirection, and bullshit.
At another terminal, Byers was muttering a continuous complaint composed of 'darn,' 'blast,' and 'fudge' as he hacked his way into the computer system of S&S Investigations. They probably could have gotten access to the files, but this was good practice. Besides, Sylvana Storm might not have been too pleased that her investigation had essentially been turned over to someone else.
Frohike had been working his way through the website for F&J, trying to track down just what, exactly, the import/export company admitted to doing. As soon as he got the files Langly was hacking, he'd start correlating that to what they actually did. But in the meantime, his occasional muttered comments, when they didn't involve requests for more caffeine, varied between insulting the web designer and bitching that 'Oh, come on, Nixon came up with better lies than that!'
The last file safely downloaded, Langly copied the accounting files onto a zip disk and wordlessly passed them to Frohike. He pulled up the phone records himself, dumping them over to a custom spreadsheet program where his macros would start sorting the data in different ways per sheet. The calculations and arrangements took a few minutes, but shortly thereafter Langly was frowning at the screen. Where had he seen that country code before...?
"Byers, didn't you get the home phone records for Urquhart and FitzAlan?"
A disk was pushed over to him. "Here. And their frequent flyer mile records are on there, too."
"Thanks," was the absent reply as Langly swiveled on his stool and pulled the phone records up on the next terminal. He glanced back and forth between the screens, surprised, then pulled up the plane records as well.
"Frohike, come look at this."
The shorter man glanced over, then moved to stand behind Langly's shoulder, drawn by the urgency in the blond's voice. "What have you got?"
"Regular phone calls to Hong Kong, France, Brazil -- "
"F&J is an import business," Byers pointed out reasonably enough from his position at Langly's other shoulder.
"Yeah, well, who in the hell exports out of Latvia? From the Baltic to Australia? Not real damn likely. And besides, most of these calls are from FitzAlan's home phone number. Frohike, there's some kind of pattern here, but I can't find it yet."
"Admitting there's something you can't do?" Frohike grumbled, but it was only a half-hearted snipe. "Yeah, give me the sorted copies. Where in hell did I put that world map?"
Twenty minutes later the shortest Lone Gunman looked up and said curtly, "Langly, didn't you once hack the Swedish phone exchange?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Hack Latvia. I need the phone records on this number."
"So what are you doing?" was the automatic complaint, but the blond stretched, flexing his back before cracking his knuckles as he got ready to attack another computer system.
"Breaking into the computers at the Guggenheim museum," Frohike snapped. "Just try, all right?"
"Got it," Langly muttered.
A slow, steady breath drawn in, she automatically let her focus encompass the target and nothing else. The exhale was just as measured and her finger tightened smoothly on the trigger, body braced against the rifle's kick as her bullet took off the top right arm of the target's 'x.' Stormy sank into the disciplines of target shooting, paying attention to the black and white image, to her gun, to her own breathing, but only marginally to anything else.
When she had finished her last grouping, she pushed the button to reel the target back in. Out of old habit, she pulled a quarter out of her pocket and laid it over each cluster of holes in turn. The edge of a hole showed on the second batch of chest shots and she frowned at that. "Knew I should have come in last week," she complained softly. "Right. One more target on rifle, and then I do my penance with the pistol, too."
"Still talking to yourself, Stormy?"
Without turning, she said cheerfully, "Of course, Major. How else is a woman supposed to get good conversation?"
"At a shooting range, who's trying to talk?"
It was an old and comfortable joke between them, and she ritually double-checked that the safety was engaged on her gun before turning to shake his hand. "How are you, sir?"
"When are you going to remember I'm retired?" he asked her, pointedly tapping the lapels of a decidedly civilian red golf shirt. The short grey and brown pony-tail spilling over his collar made it even more obvious that he was no longer a member of the armed services, much less the head of a Special Forces team.
"When you act retired and quit creeping up on a woman, sir," she told him.
"You know, Stormy, for a woman who practices six hours a week, religiously, I don't see you entered in many of the competitions," he pointed out calmly, thumbs hooked in his pockets. "What was it you said after the Junior Olympics? You were retiring on your laurels?"
"They were bronze, not laurels," she muttered, unwilling to discuss it.
"Mmm-hmm, sure were, young lady. Bronze on pistol, and bronze on rifle because of one flubbed shot. You had the gold until then, and a sure spot at the Barcelona Olympics. You ever gonna talk about it, Stormy?"
She glared at him. "It's not open for discussion, Major."
Randy Spata just looked at her from under thin, raised eyebrows. "Fair enough, kiddo. One of these days, though, I'll buy the beer, all right?"
"Maybe," was the quieter answer. "Just stopping by to say good morning, or was it something else?"
"This new guy you're seeing, Appesard -- does he know you shoot?"
"He knows I can use a gun, Randy. Or didn't you hear?"
"About your break-in? The whole range knows about it."
"Too many cops shoot here," Stormy muttered, taking down her pony tail, smoothing the hair, and then restlessly putting it back up.
"They're just worried about you," he told her, leaning against the side of the stall. "He a client or a boyfriend?"
"Started as one, ended up the other. And don't tell me that's bad business, I know that," she warned him.
"We both know that, and we both know people do it, too. But did you know that some whispers out of the karate schools suggest he's one of the best martial artists in the city?"
She blinked up at him, startled. "I'm not surprised. I've seen a little bit of his fighting. What are you worried about?"
"Stormy, you're one of the best shots I've seen in years, and you're smart enough to know when to shoot, or you'd have been arrested for that disaster in your house -- or dead. But you're still a woman, and you're tiny, and you're in a dangerous profession."
"Randy, I do background checks," she pointed out irritably. "I track missing children. Every now and then I follow the trail of missing money. But I don't even do domestic disputes, because one pissed-off mistress could probably stomp me flat. I've known since I was ten years old that everyone was going to be bigger than I am."
"Damien Appesard moves like a trained killer," said the former leader of government-trained killers. "And your life has gotten much more dangerous since you met him. People don't hang themselves in Charleston jail, Stormy."
She caught his eyes with her own and said softly, "Spit it out, Major. What have you heard?"
He murmured, "That someone paid the door guard to take a cigarette break. What have you gotten into?"
"I don't know," she told him honestly, thinking of the confusion that still revolved around the Game. "But he's only dangerous to people who start things, Major."
"He won't start it but he might finish it?"
"Somethin' lahk that," she drawled deliberately, trying to defuse his mood.
"Make sure he cleans up when he's through, then," the former major told her gently. "Or that you're nowhere around. Rumor has it that an FBI agent was asking questions about him. And you."
"Who?" she demanded indignantly.
"Man named Matthew McCormick. He's out of VCU, the Violent Crimes Unit, has a reputation for playing things straight. Deadly polite Southerner was what I heard him called a few years ago, and he may have been assigned to a domestic organized crime team. So you be careful, young lady. Call me if you need me, Stormy. And make sure you do it early enough that I don't have to explain to your father how you got hurt. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," she snapped, furious at the order and at the implication that she couldn't handle herself.
"Get your temper down," he told her calmly. "You Storms, always blazing lightning just when you should be pulling up the hoods on your raincoats."
"You're mixing metaphors."
"You're dodging practice," he pointed out. "I'll let you know if I hear anything else about McCormick or Appesard. You're serious about him, aren't you?"
She sighed and turned back to her rifle, clipping a new target into place and sending it wheeling down the lane before answering. "Yeah, I think so. He's got as bad a temper as I do. And we get along real well." I must like him; I believed him about why Mandisa answered his phone. Funny thing is, I like her, too. And I'd better hurry; we're supposed to get lunch and go shopping this afternoon.
A gentle hand ran through her hair, smoothing the pony tail out of the way of her rifle stock. "Try to remember not to go to bed mad, then. Call me this week and we'll set up dinner, all right? Laura wants to meet him."
That got a quick laugh. "I'll call. I swear, bad enough he's gonna have to meet my family, I've got to introduce him to you and Aunt Laura, too?"
"She's your godmother," Randy Spata pointed out, amused. "Live with it."
"Thanks so much. Can I finish practicing now?"
He laughed and called out, "Oh, by the way, I paid your entrance fee into the competition next month, and I've got a case of Sam Adams riding on you. Make sure you show up."
Her curses floated down the range after him, punctuated by a steady rhythm of shots.
"I don't need a birthday party," Connor pointed out mildly.
His kinsman leaned against the kitchen island, grinning wickedly. "I had to put up with it, cousin." He took a sip of his coffee before adding, "Besides, the menu is already planned."
"Aidan shouldn't have to cook for a second party." Connor thought the argument had merit.
So did Duncan. "That's why I'm cooking. And I haven't poisoned you yet in four centuries."
"You came close that first year. Besides, on New Year's Day no one will be awake... or sober," came the next reasonable rebuttal.
"That's why we scheduled it for one in the afternoon. Try again."
"Wait, you're only doing a lunch?"
The outraged question drew a grin from the taller Scot, quickly concealed by his coffee mug. "Everyone's off work on the 1st and you know it. That's late enough that anyone who tied one on will have sobered up, and even Adam will be awake." He and Connor exchanged a flash of amusement before Duncan went on, "And it's early enough that people can call you all day and interrupt. That's traditional."
"The only way the calls will interrupt something is if I send them to your room," came the sarcastic reply.
"Shall we hire someone for you for the afternoon?"
Connor considered some of the parties they'd attended together, and the light in his cousin's eyes, and decided not to call that challenge. "Who's coming?"
"A few people here and there," Duncan told him mildly. "Sol. Rachel. Joe. Rich, if we can pry him away the girl he's seeing. I think her name's Ginger."
"It is," Aidan mentioned as she came in to get some coffee. "And I invited her. It seemed the best way to get Rich here. She works nights and can't stay long, but said she'd come. Kyra's catching the train up from DC again. I promised her a couch at the least."
"Grace Chandel sent you a present, and an apology. Oh, and a friend of Joe's is in town."
Connor eyed his cousin thoughtfully. "Talk, Duncan. We're still sparring this afternoon, remember?"
"You and I are sparring this morning," Aidan pointed out pleasantly. "And you'll meet the lady in a day or so when she and Joe surface again."
"Why didn't you say the lady had the good taste to be dating Dawson?" Connor asked. "Of course she's welcome. What, Aidan, you just kept inviting people because Duncan was cooking?"
"Something like," she agreed, unruffled. "I did get him a sous-chef, mind. What more was I to do?"
"Who?" came the suspicious demand.
"Methos," Aidan smiled wickedly. "But I'm taking you out for breakfast and ice skating, brother, so that they can bicker in peace and quiet before the party."
"Aidan," Duncan broke in, ignoring the slight on his ability to work amiably with Methos, "that's an odd number of people."
"It is," she laughed, "one of the odder assortments assembled at one party in ages, Dhonnchaidh. What of it?"
"No, Aidan. Look. Me and Adam -- two. You and Connor -- four. Joe, his lady, and Sol -- seven. Rich and Ginger -- nine. Kyra and Rachel -- eleven. The mystery guests, though, make it thirteen."
"Who, cousin, are these mystery guests?"
"Old friends," Aidan told Connor. "Hush."
"It's my party, woman."
"And I'm planning it, man."
"Last time you invited vampires, remember?" he pointed out.
"Quit arguing, Connor. You'll like this."
"How old are these friends?" was the next suspicious question.
"Younger than I am," she told him blandly.
"And that narrows it down?" Connor scoffed. "That only eliminates the blanket thief upstairs, and maybe one or two others."
"I did not invite some of the other old ones," Aidan snorted. "I might kill one or two of them myself. Look on the bright side, brother, it's not like I extended an invitation to anyone who'll abscond with your good silver from downstairs."
"Well, that lets out Cory Raines, Benny Carbassa, Willie Kingsley, Kit O'Brady -- "
"Kit's a con-artist and a gambler, but not a thief," Duncan interrupted his cousin. "Now Amanda might, or Michelle Webster -- "
"Who's Michelle Webster?"
"Amanda's latest student. She was a spoiled 18 year old when Amanda got her and I doubt she's much better now."
Aidan laughed softly. "Don't bet on that. Amanda unloaded her onto Ceirdwyn. Michelle's learned manners by now, and Ceirdwyn needed something to think about besides grief."
"Michelle was plenty of grief," Duncan snorted.
"That leaves Annie Devlin out," Connor added. "Her activities always need funding."
"Who?" Aidan turned around, one eyebrow raised. "I've not heard of her, I don't think."
"That's because you haven't been back to Ireland," Connor told her. "She studied with Hugh O'Neill."
"Still training fools for his 'Cause,' is he?" Aidan said softly. "I'd heard he trained another IRA terrorist or two, but never heard names. I'll add it to my list."
"Which list would that be?" Duncan asked.
"If I see her, I'll most likely challenge. I've no use for the IRA, Dhonnchaidh, and no more would you."
"She lost her foster-mother in a Protestant bombing," he told her softly. "She's been working for the Catholic cause ever since."
"There was a time when the IRA went after military targets, MacLeod, and I could accept that. But of late they think nothing of taking out women, children, or old men to make their point, and for what? The Irish couldn't agree on a government if they got the British and the Protestants out, and what would be the point if they did? Some of those 'Anglo-Irish' families have been in Ireland so long that they're more Irish than the Irish. There comes a time to put down a fight, to look for new goals or at least new routes of attack. The IRA won't see that. She should worry about people trying to kill her for the Game, not a skirmish set off by a Pope who had no idea what he was doing and didn't live to see the results. Those people make me ashamed to be from Eire."
"I know," Duncan told her, grabbing her hands. "And I agree. But you wouldn't challenge a mortal for being in the IRA...." His hands tightened on hers as she started to pull back and draw breath to argue. "You wouldn't, Aidan, and we both know it. It's not cause enough to challenge Annie, either."
Connor took advantage of her momentary silence to say, "Sister, if you're going to wave your hands around, leave the coffee on the counter. And he's right. You don't usually headhunt, and if Devlin's not doing things like walking innocent soldiers into the bombs, knowing she can walk out and they can't...."
"In other words, if she's not willfully using her immortality to endanger mortals?" Aidan sighed, seeing that she was outnumbered.
"Aye, lass. Don't start headhunting over something like that. Even if you challenged her, even if you won... someone else would stand up to take her place, another bomber, another shooter. And you know it. It's not worth changing who you are just to take Annie Devlin out. How long has she been with the IRA, Duncan?"
"Eighty years, under half a dozen names."
"Sooner or later, sister, either she'll be arrested and one of us will have to kill her, to keep immortality a secret... or she'll face a challenge and die. She's too unbalanced, too intent on her holy 'Cause,' " and Connor's scornful voice told Aidan that he agreed with her opinion of the IRA. "She's not worth it."
Aidan looked from one to the other, then sighed and gave in to reason. "You're right. It's not grounds to challenge her. But do you know how much I hate what the IRA have made of my home?"
"They had help," Duncan pointed out quietly. "It's not any one thing that's caused the troubles in Ireland. And they may yet sort it out."
"True enough. Have done, the both of you, you've convinced me." She shrugged and said, "It's not as if I've nothing else to do."
"Good," Connor smiled wickedly. "Then you can explain to me how the sleeping reprobate upstairs turned out a student like Ramirez."
"Ramesen was always like that," Aidan laughed, letting her brother change the subject. "He was a merry handful of mischief even before he drowned."
"He drowned?!"
"Well, he didn't swim very well, he told me, and...." She paused, staring at her youngest brother, then pounded forcibly on his shoulders. "No, Connor, breathe air, not coffee. You should have that right at your age. What is so funny?"
"No wonder he threw me in the loch!" And the older Highlander started laughing again, remembering a long, and irritated, walk across the bottom of a very deep lake indeed. With fish falling out of the folds of his kilt even after he got himself to dry land....
"He did what?" Aidan laughed herself. "Ramesen would have, wouldn't he? He had the gall to dump me in the middle of the desert to learn to cope with heat, fimineach that he was."
"Hypocrite?" Duncan grinned. "Why?"
"You should have heard the howls of complaint when I dragged him into the bitter, cold North. I took him to Ireland in the fall and you'd have thought it was Iceland at Midwinter."
Connor was laughing himself sick again. "Do you know what I'd have given for this kind of blackmail while he was training me?"
"Not half what we'd give to have him here still," she agreed, smiling. "Now, as long as we're asking questions this morning?"
"What?" Connor asked, half-feeling Ramirez stir in the back of his mind. Damn. In almost five hundred years, and more quickenings than I can count, only one of them has ever been 'noisy.' It just had to be you, didn't it, you Spanish peacock? Could you at least speak up if you're going to grumble?
For just a moment, he wondered if he was losing his mind. He thought he heard a familiar baritone complain, It could have been worse, brother. It could have been the Kurgan.
Aidan saw Connor's distraction and tried to divert Duncan by asking, "Duncan, how in the world did you end up in a romance novel?"
"Damn it, who loaned you that book?" he groaned. "Aidan, it's not my.... Wait, this is your student's fault, muirnin, I think I'll take it up with you."
"Wait, how is this my fault?" The Irish woman started backing hastily away. "Duncan, I'm sure we can resolve this -- " She swerved around the table to evade a quick grab. "Connor, whose side are you on in this?"
"My kinsman or my sister? It may take a few mugs of coffee to sort this one out, sister; I'll let you know."
Aidan threw a reproachful, offended look at him, then ran for the bedrooms. Maybe a sleeping Methos would distract the younger Scot....
"You know," Frohike said softly, "I'm really wondering how many of its imports F&J declares."
Langly looked up immediately. That note in Frohike's voice usually meant the smallest Gunman had just gotten his hands wrapped firmly around someone's balls. "The Latvian records paid off?"
"And then some. Come look at this." The lanky blond had already rolled over to study the terminal and the spread out maps. "Get this -- calls from Riga, Latvia, to Marseilles, France, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil."
"This isn't one of F&J's agents, is it?" Byers asked.
"F&J doesn't have an office in Latvia," Frohike said with no small satisfaction. "I checked the payroll records. Now, the man in Marseilles also got phone calls from FitzAlan, but the lady in Rio didn't. Calls, I might add, from both the office and from home. Interesting, I thought."
"So what have we got?"
"We've got a connection between F&J and two of the bigger smuggling ports in Europe," Frohike nearly purred. "And then we get to the real fun. See these numbers, here and here and here?" He pointed to several high-lighted extensions on the Latvian records Langly had 'liberated.'
"Yeah, what are they?"
"Phone calls to Leo Stankov, Cyril Drakokhrust, and Vladimir Aksakov. Interpol had records and conjectures a mile long on those names: they're Russian Mafia. This Jirina Petesceu had some interesting emails, too, in her cache. Now, unless I just can't read a dictionary, some of those emails are talking about oil, and China. I'm still tracking a few things on Marseilles, but I'm betting he's got underworld connections, too."
Byers glanced over. "What are you going to do with this?"
"It gets better. This Hong Kong number, the one that FitzAlan and Petesceu both called?"
"Lim Mahn?" Langly asked. "What about him?"
"He's got a helluva lot of calls to Taiwan. Specifically, a General Lee Moy. Byers, you want to see what you can find out about him?"
"Spell it." Byers turned back to his own terminal, then he asked thoughtfully, "What are we going to do, though? Damien can't take on all this by himself. He'll be killed."
Langly grinned, a particularly nasty smile which had made more than a few D&D players very, very nervous. "I had a few ideas on that.
Frohike smiled. "So did I. What have you got?"
"Look, we're all agreed there is something really crooked going on with F&J Importers, right? I'm not even counting the fact that Urquhart hired those hit men. We're agreed the company is rotten," Langly stated.
Byers nodded slowly. "Yes. It is. They're keeping two sets of books."
"Yeah," Langly snorted in disgust, "and they're dumb enough to keep both sets on the same computer!"
"Well, let's do a couple of things here," Frohike suggested. "Langly, can you set FitzAlan's email to blind carbon copy everything he does to one of his competitors? Say, Cook Trading? They lost a couple of bids to F&J lately."
"Oh, yeah, I can do that. Urquhart, too. And I'm sure Australian Customs would be interested in the Russian Mafia connections, and the Taiwan military might want to know that China is getting oil from someplace new."
Byers suggested diffidently, "We should send this to Interpol, you know."
Frohike grinned viciously. "What do you think about having FitzAlan give notice on his office building lease, and electricity, by email?"
"Hey, do Russian Mafiosi have email? We could send this stuff to them."
"Taiwanese generals do," Frohike laughed.
Then Byers offered the final blow. "Um... F&J is exporting goods, too, aren't they? Shouldn't we tell the IRS about this?"
"You mean send both sets of books to the IRS and Australia's finest vampires, I mean revenue people?" Frohike grinned. "You know, I think we should give everyone an equal opportunity here. Let's do it."
Byers diffidently pointed out, "You know, F&J has an office in Los Angeles. I think the state of California's Department of Revenue might be interested, too."
All three Gunmen looked at each other and then they nodded. "Well," Langly said cheerfully, hands already dancing over the keys, "by the time all of this hits, Urquhart will be too busy to bother Damien."
Frohike called over his shoulder, "I think we should set up a pool on who gets F&J first. My bet's on the IRS."
Byers said thoughtfully, "Actually? The Russian Mafia should have a better response time. They have to get across borders, but they don't have nearly as much red tape."
Langly shook his head. "Nah. Australian Customs will shut them down in Melbourne, 'pending investigation' until Interpol can stick its nose in. So how much are we betting?"
"Happy Birthday, Connor. Gonna live through the party?"
"It's still going on," came the sardonic reply. "I may have to lock my own bedroom door to get some sleep."
"Bitch, bitch, bitch, MacLeod," Damien laughed, stretching in his computer chair. "Seriously, is Aidan available? I need to talk to her."
"She's in a conversation with Sol, Erin, and Adam at the moment. How important is this?"
"Fairly. Could you tell her Mandisa's here and we need to talk to her?"
In New York Connor blinked. "Mandisa? The sister you and Aidan mentioned?"
"The tall one in the family, yeah. She's over here ignoring me with every evidence of dignity."
"I'll get Aidan for you," Connor chuckled.
For the next minute or so, Damien listened to party noises in the background: music, conversation, laughter, and the start of a disagreement between two voices. At last, though, Aidan's light, cheerful tones came over the phone. "Damiano, what's this about Mandisa's there?"
"I'm going to put her on the extension, Aidan, hold on." Mandisa nodded and put her book down.
"Shahar, at last."
"Disa, how are you? It's been decades."
"There's trouble, teacher. Is this line safe, or shall we change languages?"
Aidan switched to Arabic, a frown almost visible in her tone. "Will this do?"
Damien muttered, "I knew I was getting rusty in something. Don't be surprised if we have to switch to Dutch."
Mandisa interrupted his grumbling to say, "Shahar, I was hunted eighty, a hundred miles outside of Addis Ababa by a man who was looking for me, I think. Another man attacked me in Alexandria, calling me by my old name. A third ambushed me before I could make it to Barcelona."
Aidan drew a hissing breath in through her teeth, then asked, "What information do you have on them? Did they give names? Lines? Anything?"
"No, they didn't. The one in Ethiopia gave no name at all; the one in Alexandria called himself Ahmed--"
"Oh, lovely. Why didn't he call himself John Smith?"
"He was Caucasian. He should have," Mandisa chuckled quietly and started to relax as her teacher's mind turned to the problem. "In any case, the foolish bitch in Marseilles called herself Renee, but didn't give a last name or a teacher's name."
"Are you all right?" Aidan asked more gently, apparently hearing something worrisome in her old student's voice.
"She's worn to the bone, Aidan," Damien interrupted, glaring at Mandisa when she tried to object, "and short on food and sleep. They hounded her. Navarro had to call in some old favors to get her to me."
"Shahar, what is going on? Have you heard anything?"
"Damien was set on someone else in our line in early October. Apparently by Vasili Kropotkin," the Irish immortal conceded quietly.
In Charleston, the burly redhead and the streamlined black woman glanced back and forth at each other. Damien growled into the phone, "Remember Stormy, Magistra?"
"How could I not? She tried to frighten grey into my hair, Damiano. What about her?"
"She's the private investigator who looked into Crystal for me. Aidan... Johannes Engeles was paying Crystal a monthly sum."
"And one of Enrique Alba's students was looking for me about the same time. Johannes and Enrique both? And we think that Jirina Petesceu was in Paris in November, pack hunting with someone."
"Kropotkin was friendly with Gwydion ap Ydris, too. Gwydion, Johannes, Enrique, and Jirina. Rhys-Tewdor's students," Damien murmured. "Fuck. Aidan, are you two shadow-boxing again?"
"Not that I knew. It's not as if those were the only challenges that we've dealt with of late, but still.... If it weren't that Jirina had been in Paris, I'd wonder if this were Johannes after you," she murmured. "Ah, Gods. All right. Are you going to stay in Charleston for a while, Mandisa?"
"I think so," the tall black woman answered her. "For a few months in any case. Stormy has a few things I can help her with, and Damiano has offered his guest room."
"Take him up on it. Get word to Var to watch his back. For that matter, has Var been having any unusual trouble? Where is he these days?"
"Carracas, Shahar. And if there has been trouble, he's not mentioned it to me."
"Well, that's a relief then. Damien, how much trouble have you had lately?"
Burly shoulders bunched in a shrug, and the worried, angry expression on his face matched his voice. "No more than usual, Magistra, which isn't much. Immortals don't seem to notice Charleston or Savannah."
"I'll keep that in mind for my next identity, then. Although it's damnably hot down there to carry concealed weapons.... So be it. Damiano, start spreading the word to your students to watch their heads. Give my name and number where it's needed. I'll start working from my end."
Mandisa sighed and said, "We knew that if we talked to you, the pieces would come together. But Shahar, why did you never kill him?"
"Because I could never prove enough, Disa, and Owain's too dangerous for me to challenge him lightly. This is... I don't know what he's doing. He hasn't challenged me. But if his students were going to start something like this on their own, I would think it would have happened decades ago."
"Shahar, maybe he can't find you to challenge you. It's taken me three months to get here, and Var never did find you. Damien simply knew where you were."
"And that was by accident," the redhead pointed out. "I didn't expect you to be at MacLeod's party, Aidan."
"Neither did I," Aidan murmured. "All right. Pass the word to anyone in our line, or for that matter, let's bump this up a step and pass the storm warnings to the entire line of Ramirez. Watch your heads, and call me with anything else you find out. I can't imagine what Owain would be doing, but it certainly looks like someone is trying to speed up the Gathering."
"You watch your head, too," Mandisa replied acerbically. "No one in Owain's line truly holds a grudge against me, or so I had thought. Rhys-Tewdor would cheerfully gut you if he could, I think, and Damien and Johannes together are sparks in a powder factory."
"Kyra's here, Damien, I'll pass word to her. And I'll call Terence Coventry tonight. Can one of you warn Navarro, as I don't have his number?"
"I'll handle that," Mandisa told her. "You knew I would. However, do you want his number for your records?"
"Yes, please. And thank you, Disa."
"Why are you thanking her? She's going to be calling them on my phone bill," Damien grumbled. "He's at 58-2-555-4877. I'll start calling my students, as soon as Disa's off the phone. Who's going to call Rabi?"
"I'll handle that," Aidan told him. "I trained her. I'll pass the word to the rest of your brothers and sisters. Thank you for calling him, Mandisa; I appreciate it."
"Are you two still arguing? That was a century ago, Shahar!"
"I know," she sighed. "But he still disagrees and I'm not going to apologize for thinking a country was wrong. Navarro hasn't even lived in Spain in two centuries. I should apologize for supporting the United States during the Spanish-American war? Sweet Gods, why?"
"Could I tell him you agree to disagree and it's time to bury this?"
"Would you?" Aidan asked wistfully. "I don't have so many students that I want to be reliving a quarrel with him every time we talk."
Damien laughed. "Disa, tell him if he doesn't drop this, we'll let Grace Chandel mediate. He'll agree. No one argues with that woman for long."
"All right. Pass the word. Tell everyone to call if they find out anything. Gods, I miss Darius. He would have been trying to defuse this from Paris, but I can't even figure out what to defuse!"
"Watch your head, teacher. Tell the MacLeods to watch theirs. And tell Ryan that if he gets tired of the lovebird routine in Seacouver, he can come stay with me for a while in Charleston. I'll teach him to hack the Pentagon, no problem."
Aidan groaned at the idea of the two redheaded immortals in close proximity for too long. "I knew there was a reason you and Amanda got along too well. I am not letting you corrupt him any farther. He's over eighteen, Damien, they'd lock him away this time. No."
Mandisa chuckled throatily. "Lovebirds? Shahar, who have you taken up with?"
"Duncan MacLeod," her teacher sighed.
"Finally, one of us? About time."
"No," Damien laughed. "Two of us. Or have you gotten tired of supporting Matthew's beer habit?"
"It's Adam this decade, and I make him buy his own beer. And Mandisa, I don't want to hear it. I seem to remember once or twice when you threatened to take the same oath. Call me when you need to, old friends, students mine. I'll be here with Connor 'til the 3rd, and back in Seacouver after that."
"Oh, I'm sure you will," Mandisa laughed. "And these men of yours?"
"I don't know. I think Adam has to go back to Paris on business, at least for a while, but I don't know about Duncan. I'm getting off of this call before I admit anything else incriminating. Call me on the 4th, one of you, and give me the latest update."
"Magistra, I have some friends working on this for us, and your Gods only know what they'll manage to turn up or do. They're a bit... unprincipled. And erratic."
"Damien, why does that worry me, coming from you?"
"It should," he muttered. "I'll introduce you to them some day. Frohike will love you. But I'll call when I have any more news. Tell Connor happy birthday again."
"I will."
Aidan waited for the dial tone before she hung up the phone. Even after her hand was empty, though, she stood there studying the air, trying to wrap her mind around what they had told her, what she wasn't quite hearing. The Sight drew at her, spinning half-sensed images in the periphery of her vision, but never quite letting her get a clear look. Soon, she promised herself. Soon. After I get the visitors bedded down for the night, I think a cushion and a candle and I have an appointment to look at this.
That decided, she turned her mind back to the party and swiveled her body towards it as well... only to stop cold when she saw Connor blocking her path, shoulder against the doorframe. If she didn't look at his face, he was the image of lazy nonchalance. Unfortunately, Aidan could see his eyes, cold and dark within his stony expression. The same look he wore at a challenge, as she knew too well.
"That was an interesting conversation," he commented softly. "Very interesting. Storm warnings about what? Why are you going to tell your students and the line of Ramirez to watch their heads? And who was Damien set on? Time to 'fess up, sister. I think you've neglected to tell me some things."
"More that I hadn't put them together," she conceded immediately, making a mental note to remember that Connor spoke Arabic. "It took Damien's call to make me suspicious, and I still don't know quite what's going on. Are we down to immortals yet?"
"The only ones who've left are Rich and Ginger. The three Watchers are still here, and Kate's mortal husband. Nice surprise, by the way. I've not seen her in years. Come and talk, Aidan. I'll get you an anesthetic, but confession's good for the soul. Come get shriven."
She raised a sarcastic eyebrow. "My faith never did go in for confession, Connor, but I had intended to 'tell all' after I finished my calls. So be it. We'll let my other students wait an hour or so. Get me a glass of Scotch, brother, and let's do this."
Connor lightly clasped her arm just above the elbow. While it looked a friendly gesture, it was meant to hold her to her promise and they both knew it. "By all means. How much anesthetic do you need?"
"Oh, three or four fingers," she told him dryly. "I don't think Dhonnchaidh is going to be any happier with me than you are."
Kate Sutherland looked up when they came back in, gold-highlighted brown hair swinging around her face, mouth twitching with unspoken words as she took in the body language between them. What finally came out was, "What did you do this time, Aidan?"
"Kept my mouth shut, I think," came the almost amused reply. "Kate, may I safely assume the lodge is tyled?" Connor settled her apparently solicitously on the couch and moved to the bar to get the Scotch and several glasses.
Kate glanced at her husband, Nick, then nodded slowly. Nick Sutherland straightened from his relaxed slouch on the couch and ran a hand through sandy brown hair, rumpling it back out of his eyes in an old habit from nights of stakeouts and surveillance. Kate, on the other hand, leaned back into the couch and propped her feet up on coffee table, mobile face relaxing as she settled herself to listen and think. "From my end, certainly. I can't speak for the others...."
"I can," Aidan told her. "All right, ladies, gentlemen, pull up chairs and gather round. I have a problem and require assistance and advice."
Methos walked over to where Aidan sat and checked her forehead. "No, no fever. Are you feeling well? I could almost swear you just asked for help with something."
"Old friend, sit down and shut up for now," she said, her voice too level to suit him. "This is serious."
"That bad?" he asked, heading for the beer.
"Thank you for dropping the sarcasm. Quite possibly, yes. Joe, Erin, Sol.... This will need to be confidential. If that would be a problem, then I'll need to convince Connor to let this rest until you've gone home for the night."
Nick Sutherland sprawled back into his chair again. "Oh, a problem. Is that all? So much for a vacation. Connor, pass me some of that Scotch. Thanks for not worrying about me, Aidan. How bad is this going to get?"
"I don't know," Aidan sighed. "Gentlemen, lady, your decision?"
Sol said slowly, "This is immortal business?"
"It is that, my friend," she told him gently. "And it may get very bad indeed."
"And Connor is involved?"
"I don't know. Possibly."
Connor interrupted her coldly. "I'm line of Ramirez last I looked, Aidan. I'm involved."
Erin's red hair caught the lamplight as she turned to consider Adam's lover. She still didn't know if the young-looking Irish woman was immortal, but from the conversation, it seemed likely. On the other hand, Nick Sutherland is as mortal as I am. I'm a Watcher until May, damn it. Come on, Adam, give me a clue here! Do I stay, do I go? What's going on? But her old friend never turned from the refrigerator, seemingly engrossed in the beer options. Finally Erin nodded slowly. "Somehow, I think this might be something I'm better off not knowing. If you need to tell me later... tell me later."
Joe glanced between her and Duncan, obviously torn. The Scot told him, "Go on, Joe. Like the lady said, if you need to know, I'll tell you." A wry grin twisted his lips for a moment, mischief in his eyes, as he commented, "Wouldn't be the first time, after all."
That drew a laugh and the bluesman said, "No problem, MacLeod. Sol, come on. Let them sort things out and agree on the official version."
Sol accepted Connor's arm to pull himself up from the chair. "Well enough. Good night, all. Connor, happy birthday again." Walking slowly toward the door, he paused next to Aidan and stroked a lock of hair back behind her ear, smoothing the mass into place as she leaned her head against his hand for a moment. "Be well, my dear."
"I try, old friend."
Rachel stood and said firmly, "I think I'll head home as well. Good night, everyone."
The leave-taking took a few minutes, but finally all the immortals and Nick had settled back into their places, most of them with a drink. Nick glanced over at Aidan and grinned. "Sol acts like you're his granddaughter. You're how old?"
"Two thousand and some." She studied her whiskey for a moment, a fond smile on her face. "I enjoy having a grandfather. It's soothing. And it lets me pamper him outrageously, too."
"In the right light, the right clothes and makeup, you might look twenty-six, twenty-eight. And you've got almost that many centuries under your belt?"
Aidan met Kate's eyes, both of them amused, before she shrugged as if it were of no real consequence. "Nick, if I'm not careful, I get carded," she complained mildly. "And that's about right, yes."
"Enough, sister. Explain. What's going on?" Connor demanded.
Methos fell across the couch in a boneless sprawl that nevertheless did not spill so much as a drop of the wine he'd finally settled on, and asked mildly, "Damien called? Who did he start a war with this time? That lovely little blonde of his would just shoot him, I think."
"Damien called because Mandisa's in town. She was hounded from Ethiopia to Barcelona -- three separate challenges. No last names, no lines. This started in September. At approximately the same time, Vasili Kropotkin and his student, Stanislaus Pushkarev, started spreading rumors that Rich had challenged Damien."
"That he what?!" Duncan interrupted her.
"That was about my reaction," Aidan told him grimly. "Amanda came through Seacouver in early October to warn us about it and see what was going on. She hadn't known I trained Damien. We... talked; Damien accepted my word that it was a blatant lie, and started looking into the matter from his end. Amanda had heard it from Gina de Valicourt, and Robert told me that he would 'take care of the matter.' He did. Vasili didn't last the month. Stanislaus is still hiding, for a little while."
"You haven't talked to Alex Raven lately, have you? Stanislaus ran into her last month," Kyra told her. "He was a little offensive about a woman's ability to use a sword. He's not a problem anymore."
Duncan's mouth twitched. "I imagine he isn't. Aidan, why didn't you or Rich mention this to anyone?"
"Because, Duncan, either of those two redheaded, hot-tempered immortals could easily have annoyed Kropotkin to the point that he simply wanted to be rid of them. Vasili changed names more than I do; they might not have known whom they had rankled. And... I could never prove anything."
"But you didn't tell anyone?" he repeated, angry that he'd been left out.
"Dhonnchaidh, you were in Paris! Rich was in the States; Damien was in the States. Robert said it would be dealt with. What was I to do? Tell you that someone had tried to get Rich or Damien killed? That was Rich's to tell you, not mine. It wasn't my head being threatened."
Connor said in an apparently mild voice, "And it wasn't worth mentioning?"
"Gods, Connor, if it had been the only challenge in those months it would assuredly have been mentioned. And yes, it was odd that someone set them at each other... until I found out it was Kropotkin! He'd have sent word to the winner to make clear the kinship and thus twist the knife that last tiniest bit."
"So how many challenges have you had since September, Edana?" Kyra asked.
"Oh, Mothers. Let's see. Ned White was in August. Those two idiots chased me in Paris in November. Benny Carbassa came through Seacouver in September looking for a financial backer but I sent him on his merry way." Duncan groaned, anger easing at the image of that confrontation. "Grace stopped by looking for Duncan. Kit O'Brady came through hoping for a poker game."
Aidan paused to tally up a roster, then said, "Actually, counting the two in Paris, I've seen eight immortals. But Rich took both of the challenges that came up in Seacouver, and neither of them could I link to Kropotkin. One of Mako's old students came looking for Rich, and there was a Pakistani woman who said she'd been trained by Kiem Sun looking for you, Dhonnchaidh. Something about threatening her teacher?"
Duncan shrugged. "I suggested he'd be better off on Holy Ground... and without armies."
"Armies, hmm?" Connor asked his kinsmen. "Thinks that with enough mortals he can win the Game?"
"Enough drugged mortals, yeah," Duncan commented. "But the drug he's been working on kills them. Causes internal hemorrhage of the brain, and they die in agony. I was a little upset with his testing methods."
Duncan shrugged, dismissing that subject for now, and pointed out, "Connor, I've taken five challenges since I went back to Paris. And I don't usually call you to tell you about it. I come by the trait honestly, clansman," he pointed out at Connor's frown. "How many have you taken since September?"
"How many suicides, Connor?" Kate chuckled. "That's about what challenging you is."
"Three. Most immortals don't come to New York to fight. It's not healthy. What about you, Kate?"
"An infant in challenged me in East St. Louis. Plenty of attitude, not a lot of skill. And I finally got Bartholomew."
"Hey, we agreed in Fiji that we weren't mentioning that name," Nick pointed out. "You remember? 'No Bartholomew, no tan lines?' That was the deal."
"Sorry, Nick."
Kyra poured more merlot in Kate and Nick's glasses. "To the death of he who shall not be named. About time, Kate."
Glasses clinked over at the couch and without looking up from his empty wine glass, Methos pointed out, "Connor, you don't always tell everyone everything either."
"Slan Quince, the Kurgan, that little redhead in Helsinki?" Duncan reminded his teacher. "He's right, kinsman. Let's get back to the subject. Was there any reason not to think the threat ended, Aidan?"
She sighed. "Not that I could find. And believe me, I looked. Someone set two members of my line after each other... but I couldn't find anything past Kropotkin."
Methos never looked up from the label he was peeling off a beer bottle. "Not exactly, Edana. What were you doing in the late 1600s?"
She paused, thinking about that, then said slowly, "I lost touch with you in 1638, and went back to North America. I worked my way down through the Appalachians and across the Mississippi, and followed the mountains south into what's now Central America. I spent a few decades traveling there and then back up into the western half of North America. I seem to remember I was over in the Sierra Madres and Rockies for a while, accumulated some gemstones and some very interesting herbal recipes. I also gained, and almost immediately lost, a student. Why?"
"Because in 1668 the East India Company gained control of Bombay," he told her. "Vasili Kropotkin and Gwydion ap Ydris invested in that together. And in the Royal African Company a few years later."
"Did they?" the Irish woman murmured. "Damien told me just now that Vasili and Gwydion were friends, but I hadn't known that they were business partners as well."
"Interesting. But get to the point, sister," Connor told her bluntly. "Who was looking for you in October?"
"LaCroix called me," she told him. "A young immortal named Rafferty Conlan, only thirty-four--"
"Thirty-four years in the Game, or thirty-four years old?" Kate asked.
"The latter," Aidan clarified. "He's probably been in the Game for less than a decade. He came to the Raven looking for me, at the request of his teacher's teacher."
"LaCroix told you that?" Duncan asked. "How did he find out?"
At the same time, Connor said bluntly, "Who were the teachers?"
"Enrique Alba of Cadiz." She paused for a moment and then said quietly, "And Owain Rhys-Tewdor trained Enrique."
"Owain also trained Gwydion and that little bitch Jirina," Kyra pointed out coldly, and it was obvious that her mind had never been too far off the problem despite the toast.
"Do you people always remember these little details?" Nick Sutherland asked, scribbling notes on Rachel's canasta score pad.
"It keeps us alive," Kate told him absently. "Jirina doesn't have an 'e' in it, Nick. And Enrique studied with Owain, not Rafferty. Didn't Owain train Lim Mahn, too?"
"I don't know that name," Kyra said. "Who is he?"
"Over in Hong Kong these days. He's an... expeditor. He finds things for people, for a cost. Quick, tricky... very, very fast, and fights two-handed, I hear. Unscrupulous, but we did say he'd been trained by Owain."
"Jirina Petesceu is one of the ones that we think chased you in Paris, Aidan," Duncan reminded her when Kate fell silent. "Amanda confirmed that she always used that signal."
Kyra asked thoughtfully, "You said Mandisa was chased by unknown immortals?" At Aidan's nod, the slender blonde continued, "I was hounded in November. I finally had him arrested by consular security for loitering. A tall Swede who gave his name as Erik Olafson."
"And that's the only trouble you've had?" Nick asked.
"It's Washington," she shrugged. "You can find private places to fight, but it's difficult. You have to leave the immediate metro area and head into the outskirts. Most immortals come through, do their business, and leave. I've probably seen four of us since September, counting this idiot."
The female immortals traded looks, then nodded. "We'll look into this tomorrow," Kate offered. "I haven't had any real trouble, other than the brave young gentleman in Illinois, but I'm not out of your line, either."
"What about the idiot from East St. Louis?" Connor asked.
Nick grinned. "Ask anyone from Missouri, Connor. East St. Louis is in Illinois, and they're grateful for it."
"Anyone else?" Duncan asked bluntly, dragging the discussion back to its purpose. "As long as we're clearing the air?"
"Apparently," Connor told him, "I have a wife."
"Excuse me?" Nick asked.
At the same time that Duncan gave his kinsman a kicked puppy look, and said, "Clansman, I'm hurt. And you didn't ask me to be best man?"
They traded grins, then Connor said, "I found out because 'she' hired a private investigator to shadow me. He wasn't very good."
Nick grinned at the feral smile on Connor's face. "They should have hired me. I'd have taken their money, given them a very good report, and sent a copy to you for your records." Kate leaned in and kissed him, murmuring something that gave a wicked twist to his grin.
"You might have at that," Connor agreed. "The address for my wife was a dead drop. No leads. The three 'suicides' have already been mentioned. So. Anyone else having problems? Adam?"
"Not a thing," Methos commented, "but then, everyone seems to go for the two trouble-magnets first."
"Shield man again, and me not even male," Aidan lamented. "The shame of it all, being mistaken for a man again. I'll never hold up my head in a temple again."
"Given the condition of the roofs in most of those temples, Edana, ducking would be a better idea. Falling rubble does hurt," Kate interrupted her. "I know you've been making jokes on battlefields for centuries and it's a habit now, but let's be serious, shall we? Kyra's had a stalker; you have; Connor has; Duncan has. Damien and Rich have had some very personal trouble, and so has Mandisa. Some of this would be normal for the Game, but it sounds as though the line of Ramirez is having a lot of problems lately. How much of this traces back to Rhys-Tewdor?"
Methos cut in quietly. "Edana... she's right."
Aidan sighed and straightened her shoulders, then reported as concisely as she would have on a battlefield. "To answer your question, Kate, Damien said that he'd traced one of his problems back to Johannes Engeles. There is a possible link between Johannes and the rumors about Damien and Rich. He thought Johannes might be behind some of the trouble the rest of us were having. Adam, this sounds like...."
Kyra spoke up when her teacher hesitated. "It sounds like we could have a line war, Edana. You were Ramirez' oldest student, and you're the one Owain loathes. Has anyone sent you a challenge? Either Engeles or Rhys-Tewdor?" The three youngest in the room, Nick Sutherland, Connor, and Duncan, all looked puzzled. The two MacLeods were racking their minds for the reference, aware that this was important.
"No one, Kyra," Aidan said honestly. "And it's not like the invitations are easily missed."
"Explain these invitations," Connor snapped. "You said this involves our line, sister. I want to know what's going on."
Kate and Kyra both turned to look at him in surprise, then Kyra nodded. "There are times I forget you're only a few hundred years old, Connor."
Beside her, Nick set his glass down and also leaned in. "Whoa, whoa. Someone explain this 'line war' thing to me, because I've never heard that one before." Connor and Duncan both sat a little straighter, listening for an explanation of the mine field they were apparently walking in.
"They're supposed to be archaic," Kate told him irritably. "The last time someone held a line war, Nick, Jerusalem had a king."
"Put a date on that for those of us who didn't live through it."
"Call it... oh, 1118, wasn't it?"
"Something like," Kyra agreed. "I remember hearing about that one. Steshka of Kiev and three of her students challenged Marcus Constantine and three of his. I seem to remember he turned up with Ceirdwyn, Alex Raven, and Sudala. Needless to say, Marcus won."
"Yes," Duncan said patiently, "but what is it?"
"No one told you?" Kyra asked him in surprise.
"Ramirez had less than a year with me," Connor pointed out calmly, "and this is the first time the subject has come up while I've been talking to someone old enough to know what it is. So what's a line war?"
"It's... a way to speed up the Gathering, I suppose," Aidan sighed. " 'Line war' is a title with delusions of grandeur. Every now and then, you would have lines that loathed each other so much that they had to try and wipe the other out. So Rebecca, and Graham, and a few of the older immortals tried to put some basic rules around it, to keep it from getting out of hand. Mostly, it worked."
"Be honest, Edana," Kyra snapped. "The rules were made to keep it from happening too often. And it still happened more than anyone wanted to admit, sometimes very informally."
Kate glanced at Adam and when he stayed silent, she took up the explanation. "It's fairly simple, unfortunately. The challenger sends an... invitation to the challenged, usually a very vivid one. I seem to remember the one for Constantine was left on his wife's pillow, tied with one of her hair ribbons that she had 'lost' a week or so earlier."
"They'd been following her," Duncan stated flatly.
"And they wanted Marcus to know. To make the point of what would happen if he didn't fight," Connor agreed equally coldly.
"Or if he simply didn't show up," Kate agreed. "Yes. So. The note specified when, and how many people. Marcus pinned it back up in the market square with a location to fight in. In those days, you usually agreed on a date a year down the road or so, just to give people time to get the sides together. Four on each side was a large 'war.' Usually it was three on each side, although with modern travel and communications, you could damn near call down the Gathering with one of these things."
Adam casually mentioned, "Marcus told me about that one. Now, back to the rules. The challenged picks the terrain, and who fights against who. Steshka decided what order her students were fighting in, but Marcus got to choose who opposed them. He fought her as the last battle."
"So it is one on one, then. I was starting to wonder," Duncan commented.
"It is, Highlander, and it isn't," his male lover said bluntly. "It's one on one, all right. Unless someone from the side that was challenged loses. If one of Constantine's students had died, he'd have had the right to challenge the victor as soon as they stood up from the Quickening."
"I take it the 'war' isn't over until the last pair fights?" Connor asked, passing the bottle of whiskey around.
"The war is over when the challenged party dies, brother," Aidan told him gently. "Using the same example, if Marcus had died--"
"If you die, you mean," Duncan said grimly.
She paused, then nodded once, acknowledging that this was probably directed against her. "If I die avenging one of my own, then the war is over. If I don't, I fight the last battle against whomever is left."
"Whoever Rhys-Tewdor leaves for last, you mean. Probably himself," Connor disagreed.
"No, brother. I fight last. If it comes down to two left on his side, himself and one other, I choose who fights who, out of the two on his side, myself, and whoever hasn't fought yet on my side. That's the rule. One person, one fight... except for the challenged, who may or may not try to avenge their own losses."
"If you don't have to fight Owain... what happens if he dies?" Duncan asked. "Does it stop then?"
"I suppose it would," she said thoughtfully. "I'm not sure it's ever happened. Usually the challenger goes out last, so that he can fight the person challenged."
"Why not start there?" Nick asked, feeling both guilty and grateful that Kate was apparently not going to have to fight in this thing.
"It would make sense," Aidan agreed quietly. "Except that the immortals willing to come to such a thing would likely start a more informal war against any survivors if it weren't settled already."
"So, if this were a line war, you'd have received a challenge by now, with a date and a dance card to fill," Connor said caustically. "What about attacking you on the way there?"
"There's a week's truce before and after between the two lines," Kate told him. "No sense going to the trouble, and in those days travel was a real pain in the ass, and then not holding the fight."
Duncan traded a look with his cousin, and then asked, "Is this only against people directly from your line, Aidan, or anyone from your line?"
She blinked. "Well, that was clear. Could you try again, Dhonnachaidh?"
"You trained Kyra, so she can go to this thing if she wants. Ceirdwyn took Alex, so I'm assuming Kyra's students can go. But what about Ramirez if he were alive? Or other students Ramirez trained? Does it have to start directly with you, or does it go back, and over, and down?"
"Oh. Anyone from my line, Dhonnachaidh. My teacher, his students, their students, what have you. I don't have to be in direct line with them, no."
Kyra glanced up and mentioned, "And it's voluntary. It almost has to be. Oh, I suppose you could blackmail people into fighting, but you'd never be sure they wouldn't go over to the other side. Think of this as a small-scale feud with some rules."
"It's been so long since this has happened," Connor snorted, "that who'd know if the rules were broken?"
"There are more old immortals out there than you think," Kate said gravely, exchanging glances with Kyra and Aidan. The three of them were some of the oldest women still in the Game, she knew, none of them less than two thousand. "Someone just might."
"Anything else?" Nick asked his wife quietly. One of these days I'm going to find out something about immortality that's going to be a pleasant surprise. Right. And Chicago will elect an honest politician.
"Minor things. It's traditional that the challenged fight the challenger, although it's not a rule. Probably should have been, mind," Methos said. "Let's see. Truce before and after: check. Challenger sets time, number, and order of his attackers: check. Challenged sets place, choice of opponents, and gets to avenge his or her own: check." His light, caustic tone kept the MacLeods from interrupting. "Challenged must fight last, whether the last battle or because they died attempting vengeance: check. Yes, I think that's all."
"You missed something," Kate pointed out calmly. "The fighters must be from the lines involved. No friends. No enemies. Teachers and students. And they have to give their first name and their line before they fight."
Aidan said tiredly, "No, he missed two things. The fights don't have to be to the death."
"What?!"
Nick glanced at Connor. "I happen to agree with that question. All that time and effort," and now he was looking at his wife again, "and they don't have to kill each other after all? Has it ever happened?"
"Not that I know of," Kate told him, pushing her hair back with one hand and picking up her Scotch with the other. "But Rebecca insisted on putting that in the rules. She said it should be an option, just in case someone came for loyalty and lost."
"I'd forgotten that one," Methos admitted. "I don't remember ever hearing of it happening, either."
Aidan explained, "Well, let's face it, Adam, you'd have to actually like someone on the other side to let them live. You'd also have to trust them not to come after your head a few years later. The only person out of Owain's line worth the time to bury him is Farrell Jameson, and I don't think he'll come to fight me."
Connor turned to study her. "Farrell Jameson of New Zealand? Owain trained him?"
"Mmm-hmm. I tried my best to get him to stay away from Owain, but he insisted he was indebted. Why do I get along so well with the honorable ones?"
Duncan chuckled and tugged gently on her hair. "Because we're cute?"
"Any rules on weapons?" Nick asked, trying yet again to pull the discussion back on track.
"Same as for any other fight, really," Kyra answered. "Nothing projectile or missile; no poison. That's about it."
"You think a line war is coming, don't you?" Connor asked his sister. "And soon."
"I think it's a very definite possibility. Perhaps Rhys-Tewdor doesn't know where I am," she told him quietly. "If I could keep you out of this, brother, I would. But... I can't."
"Because I studied with Ramirez?"
"Yes," Aidan said simply, not flinching from his gaze. "Because of that."
"If he's going to declare a line war, why go to this trouble?" Nick asked. "I mean, why bother all of these people? Some of you are some nasty fighters, I suspect."
Adam pointed out calmly, "And by the time you've watched some of your own people drop, you may be furious and out of control, or your own morale may be slipping. And if he is declaring a line war, Owain needs an incentive for his own people to come. Powerful, demoralized immortals could be a very palatable offer."
Nick studied the cold, rational expression that Adam was hiding behind and nodded slowly. "Okay. I can see that. But keep in mind, this is assuming he's behind all of this. You're not sure. But if the grudge between you two is that bad, wouldn't he want to kill you personally?"
Old memories flashed across Duncan's mind, images of running from Martin Hyde, when all the time Martin wanted Connor. Regretfully, he stopped playing with her hair. "Because he can't find her himself," he told the mortal. "So he'll hunt her students, and her friends, and her line-brothers until someone, somewhere, finds her and asks for help. He's shaking the tree to see what falls out."
"Yes," Aidan agreed, still too quiet to suit any of them. "I think he is."
"Going to hide?" Methos asked blandly.
"No point," Connor cut in. "She can't hide all of us. Why don't we challenge Rhys-Tewdor first?"
Aidan pointed out gently, "Because I can't prove he's involved. Damien could challenge Johannes to a line war and I would go and fight with him... and probably still end up against Owain," she sighed.
"Wait," Connor said, seeing a possible loophole. "Does he have to challenge the oldest member of the line?"
Kyra laughed, a harsh unpleasant chuckle devoid of joy. "He'd have to know who it was, Connor. Ramirez is dead, remember? Who knows who his oldest student is? Who even knows if Ramirez' teacher is dead? And who'd tell Owain if they knew?" she added sweetly.
He raised one eyebrow, then murmured, "You have a point. I wouldn't."
Aidan pointed out, "But I have no absolute evidence of even Jirina's involvement."
"Do you need it?" Methos asked casually, studying the shelves. "I think we're rapidly getting to the 'kill or be killed' point, here."
"Are we?" Nick Sutherland countered. "Speaking as an uninvolved spectator, I don't know that you are. Okay, this Conlan was looking for Aidan for Rhys-Tewdor. That part is definitely established, if your source is good."
"He is," Aidan said calmly.
"All right. But he didn't kill or challenge anyone, right?"
"He challenged a pre-immortal, until my source explained the errors in that plan. But he was under orders not to challenge anyone," she said, sliding off the couch to sit on the floor next to the coffee table. "Where are you going with this, Nick?"
"Just... hear me out. All right. Damien and Rich had problems with Vasili Kropotkin, and they both have short tempers."
"All three," Kyra snorted. "Vasili was an idiot."
"Okay. Kyra, you were stalked, but never challenged?"
"Yes," she said, beginning to see where he was going. "Duncan... did you all actually see Jirina?"
"No, just a female immortal using her recognition symbols." The tall Scot nodded. "You're saying we don't know who's doing this."
Aidan sighed. "Damien said that there is a definite link between his last lover and Johannes' bank account. And Owain is looking for me. Other than that... nothing is sure. Lovely."
Kyra and Kate glanced at each other and shrugged. "So we look into it," the lanky blonde told her former teacher. "Should be interesting. I'll call in some favors."
Nick Sutherland traded grins with his wife. "We'll look, too. Beats divorces."
"Nick, you two don't handle divorces," Aidan pointed out.
"Damn straight. We find things like this instead."
The Irish woman chuckled. "All right, then. Let's attack the problem, beat it into the ground--"
Connor smiled nastily. "And then hurt it a bit more for good measure. Damien's the computer expert. Is he investigating it from his end?"
Aidan thought back over the conversation, then remembered his parting comments. "He said some erratic and unprincipled friends were helping out on this, and that he'd tell me more as he found it out."
"Damien called someone erratic?" Methos asked in astonishment. "This from the man who changed sides three times in the Seven Years War?"
"That was the word he used," Aidan admitted. "And he distinctly said 'unprincipled.' "
All the immortals exchanged looks, slow, nasty smiles spreading across many of the faces.
Nick, who hadn't met Damien, asked, "So what does that mean? Coming from Damien," he specified.
"It means there may not be a problem left," Kyra chuckled. "Damien used to sleep with Amanda. He also helped Cory Raines with a few jobs here and there."
Nick Sutherland considered what he knew of Amanda, what he knew of Cory Raines, and what those facts said about Damien. A feral smile of his own tugged at the corners of his mouth. "And he's calling someone else unprincipled? You know, Kate, we may have to ask for the synopsis later. Maybe they know some tricks we can use."
Erin Shea had admired all the artwork, studied all the antiques, and had even noted down the titles of a few books she wanted to borrow. A stray spider web on one wall had been dusted away, and the dishes were done. Diversions concluded and chores done, she turned on Joe and in a very matter of fact voice pointed out, "I've been extremely patient, Joe."
The bluesman sighed. "Darlin'... just ask, okay?"
"Is Aidan an immortal?"
"I never asked. Nick Sutherland isn't."
"Well, I knew that, Joe."
Sol sat peaceably in his chair and waited. Erin glanced over at him. "All right, Sol. What has she told the 'old man' who knows nothing?"
"Officially, my dear? Nothing. Now, if this conversation is 'off the record,' so to speak, then there is a great deal more."
Erin glared at him, then sat down abruptly. "If you could bottle that harmless routine, Sol, you'd be monstrously rich. All right, off the record it is."
Instead of discussing the Irish woman, Sol asked, "Were you aware that vampires are quite real?"
Blue-grey eyes widened. "You're serious. How did you find that out?"
"There were three at Connor's party, my dear. Very interesting gentlemen. Quite... ruthless, the oldest was. Very human, the younger two. But they fit in smoothly among the other guests."
A swarm of questions flashed through Erin's mind immediately -- How old do they look? Were they immediately noticeable as vampires? Do holy symbols really work? Do the eyes glow? Can they change shape? Can they fly? Do they have preferences on blood type? Are they allergic to sunlight, or is it anathema? -- and she batted them down deliberately. "Sol, you're trying to distract me."
"Of course, my dear. I was rather hoping it would work." He smiled at her until Erin had to give up and smile back.
"They will tell us what they tell us... and we will find out what we can by other means," Sol told her placidly. "So. In the morning I will call Mordecai and ask him to give me a list of the students of Ramirez, and their students, and their students as far down as he can find."
"Sol.... What are you up to?"
A guileless shrug and he told her, "Indulging an old man's curiosity, my dear. They will retire me from the Watchers soon. Only the fact that some of my children and grandchildren are Watchers, and that Connor is very difficult to follow, has kept me on so long. But first I will get all the information I can, for my grandsons and for me."
Erin pushed down the twinge that came from the thought of the Watchers bereft of Sol's cheerful, gentle wisdom, and stuck to the subject. "Why all the students?"
"Because, my dear, we all heard Connor say he was involved because he was 'line of Ramirez.' So we will look into that, hmm? And perhaps we are investigating for no reason, and this will be pure research. And perhaps it is not, and we will be able to anticipate some problem. But there is most assuredly a problem, or Aidan would not be asking for help."
Joe suggested, "Or maybe Amanda's just trying to get her in trouble again."
"Again, Joseph? What is this?"
" 'Manda came through in October, and no surprise, a museum lost a few items...."
Erin dropped out of the conversation for a few minutes, slowly fitting together details and trying to remember exact wordings. But careful contemplation of Aidan's immortality as if it were a logic puzzle brought her to a conclusion. "Joe," she finally said, interrupting the masculine discussion of the women at the various parties, "Aidan is an immortal, isn't she?"
"Darlin'- "
"You said you never asked. Fine, but has she ever told you, or let it slip? Because it would take an immortal to tell the two MacLeods that something was immortal business and take over the party. And she knows about Watchers, about the three of us and Adam. If it's an immortal problem, and she's involved, Adam needs to know, but we don't... at least from their point of view," she added wryly.
Joe looked at Erin more closely and sighed in mingled regret, and exasperation, and relief, too. He'd already decided that he wasn't going to answer questions... but logic he could confirm. Helluva thing. I thought it was bad enough being pulled between Mac and the Watchers. Pulled between those three and Erin, though, has been worse. Sorry, guys, and he mentally saluted his three immortal friends, but this one I can't dodge. "Yeah, she's immortal, Erin." That said, he braced himself for Erin's temper.
Instead his redheaded lover glanced at him, more tolerant than he had figured he had an right to expect. "So you can confirm, will not deny, and I'm going to have to figure things out for myself?" She laid a finger across Joe's lips when he started to say something, whether protest or apology. "It's all right, Joe. You got caught between them and me. And I'm sorry for that, too. Right. I'll ask you questions occasionally as I come up with supporting logic. Headquarters doesn't know about Aidan, do they?"
Joe shook his head and saw Sol lean forward to answer that one. All yours, old buddy.
"No," Sol told her. "They do not. I was never certain when she first visited Connor. And then, for many years, she visited only rarely, and never when I could be sure of seeing her. I did not know whether she was aging or not." The elderly man shrugged and took a sip of his tea. "Then when I did see her again, and was quite sure she must be immortal, she was traveling with Duncan and Adam, and Joseph, here. And so I bowed to my old friend's wisdom and thought he must surely be Watching her. But I have not told Headquarters, either."
"Joe, why haven't you told them?"
"Erin...." Joe shook his head, pushing up off the chair and walking to Sol's counter to pour himself a shot of whiskey. "The Tribunal was gonna shoot me for associating with Immortals." One hand went up, forestalling her comments. "I know, I know, I took the oath. And I held to it, too. Mac would have taken me with him when he broke out, but I wouldn't let him. But damn it, Erin, they were gonna kill the immortals, too, starting with Mac."
Erin tried to interrupt, but he kept right on going, words he'd wanted to say for ages boiling out of him to a sympathetic audience. "Duncan MacLeod never swore a Watcher's oath. I don't care what that idiot Shapiro thought, or what the current Tribunal thinks, we are fair game for immortals. Always have been. We don't have some God-given right to study their lives without their permission, to follow them around. We do it because we don't think they should vanish like they'd never been, and since public exposure would endanger them, we do everything secretly. But the fact is, we're deliberately invading the privacy of people who kill to stay alive, and who have every reason to fear being burned at the stake."
Erin moved to stand behind him, one hand rubbing at Joe's shoulders. "Joe... it's always been like this."
"No, darlin', it hasn't. We didn't always try to kill them."
"Galati," she sighed.
"Hey, go farther back. Don't start with Jacob Galati and Mac. Start with Darius. And Thackeray, and all the others the Hunters killed... or tried to. A Hunter tried to kill Carl Robinson, a few months after Horton ran the first time. The Tribunal wasn't going to kill me for breaking my oath and talking to Mac, Erin. They were gonna put a bullet in my head because Watcher deaths had gone through the ceiling after I started talking to Mac."
"They what?!?" Erin stared at him. "That is sure as hell not the version that got around, Joe! Come sit down and talk to us where we can see you."
"Of course it isn't what they told anyone, same way they don't like to admit that Jacob Galati killed half of the Watcher Regional Directors because James Horton killed his wife, Irena. Or that Jack Shapiro took Jacob's head, and was going to kill Mac, too. The truth, darlin', is that I didn't start talking to Mac until after Horton's people killed Thackeray. None of the Watchers who were killed had anything to do with Mac or his friends. Hell, I'd lay good money that a lot of them were Hunters. But the Tribunal decided that since the increase in deaths mostly matched my blowing our cover...." The angry, sardonic expression on his face told Erin volumes.
"They were going to make you a scapegoat," she whispered, shocked despite herself at the betrayal. "For Horton? Because he was your brother-in-law?"
"Because Jack Shapiro had lost his son to death and held immortals accountable," Sol suggested more gently. "A man is not rational when his child's body is brought to him, my dear." Hard-won knowledge shone in his eyes, and the other Watchers remembered that Solomon Goldberg had been a young man in Europe when the Nazis were in power. "It was not right. But it was understandable. And after young Galati killed so many of Shapiro's friends and associates, it is not surprising that Jack Shapiro wished to destroy the immortal who had forced him to face his own mortality."
An uneasy silence spread among them before Erin finally asked slowly, "Joe? What does all this have to do with Aidan?"
"I want there to be one immortal who knows about the Watchers that the Watchers don't necessarily know about. Just one. But I'm pickin' one who has friends, and skills, and money, and a ruthless streak. What's the old saying? Who guards the guardians? Well, I want to know who Watches the Watchers, 'cause after that fuck-up I think someone damn well should."
"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies?" Erin murmured absently, as she contemplated Joe's suggestion. "Juvenal, I think. Joe... let's think about this? Then talk about it? Maybe we should find a way to get me assigned as Aidan's Watcher if they ever find out about her."
"You, my dear, are going into academia, remember?" Sol pointed out. "Not that I do not find your idea very interesting, Joseph, but I agree. We must think on this. Then we must act," he added before Joe could erupt. "I am not patronizing you, old friend, or placating you. I, too, think it is necessary. But it will require careful planning, and I wish to get some sleep before calling Mordecai."
"That," Erin said firmly, drawing Joe with her out of the living room, "is a wonderful idea. A bed is definitely on my list of things to do. Good night, Sol."
The elderly man controlled his smile until they were out of the room. "Ah, Joseph, I think perhaps you two are good for each other." He moved slowly around the living room, checking the locks and turning out the lights.
"And we will find a way over the next weeks to make this work. For he is right. The Tribunal has gotten too powerful, and far too blind. They do not see what the field does to us, and what the advantages would be in talking with those immortals who could be trusted. They see only tradition, and the lure for young agents of doing undercover work. I am amazed," he murmured to himself, "that more of us have not gotten arrested for stalking and peeping in windows as young Mr. Wolfe threatened to do. Hmmph. I do wonder if perhaps Erin could talk the researchers into supporting us...."
It was a long time before plans quit moving through his mind and allowed him to sleep.
The wiry, golden-skinned man growled an obscenity in Thai, repeated it in Malay for good measure, and grabbed the annoying phone off the headboard. "Jarunsuk."
"Still practicing spear forms, coz?"
The deep, Southern-accented man's voice coupled with the friendly insult told the immortal immediately who had called. "Hothead. How are you? Do you know what time it is here?"
"I'm a programmer. Time is that thing everyone else pays attention to.... Oh, fuck. Sorry, Jarunsuk, I didn't look."
The Thai immortal shrugged, accepted that he was awake for the day at one in the morning, which was, granted, only a few hours early for him, and sat up. "Spilled milk. What's so urgent?"
"I need a favor. Do you remember Johannes Engles?"
"Farrell Jameson's brother?"
"Yeah, well, unlike Farrell--"
"--this one should be challenged for something other than first blood. I remember the man you mean. Tall bald bastard, wields a longsword. With his height, you'd think he'd try bastard sword. What about him?"
"Can you look into one or two of his companies?"
"This sounds interesting." Jarunsuk pulled a pad off the night table, uncapped the pen, and said, "Shoot."
"F&J Importers, which doesn't seem to be on the Australian Exchange: no surprise, there. But he owns a significant part of the stock in Bryce Pharmaceutical Research, which is based out of--"
"Damien, that's traded on NASDAQ. They're located in Phoenix, Arizona, and Chicago, Illinois with corporate headquarters in Richmond, California." Jarunsuk couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice.
"How in hell did you know that off the top of your head?"
"Because I've been researching them for a week. That stock is about to move, coz, you might want to get in on it." He paused. "How significant a part?"
"Would you call twenty percent significant?"
"Right up there with the shooting of Kennedy," Jarunsuk agreed. "Under his own name? I didn't run into that during the stockholder reports, and he should have been listed separately."
"Look under Jan Urquhart, Ian McDermod, Giannes Zographos, Evan Pentreath, and Jehan Chirac. They each own four percent, but they're all Johannes."
"Huh. He's smart enough to dodge the forms for the SEC, then. I'll look into the rumors on Bryce, too. Are you still in Charleston, nephew?"
"Look, I don't mind cousin. But I don't care if you and Magistra are line-sibs, which, by the way, no one has ever explained? You're five hundred years younger than I am and I'm not calling you 'uncle.' "
"Needing explanations? Getting to be an old man," Jarunsuk teased. "Can't even show proper respect for the financial wunderkind of the family."
"You're investing how much of my money for me? For a nice commission, as I remember. And yeah, I'm still in Charleston."
"Knowing you, maybe a tenth of your assets. You need to move out on the West Coast. You could make a fortune as a freelance programmer. Everyone is desperate. And with the stricter regulations on the banks after the Savings and Loan debacle, financial programmers in particular are commanding some very nice fees. Your computer skills and my financial knowledge could do very well together."
"I'll keep that in mind. I do need to move sometime in the next year or three, but I'll have to talk to Stormy about it. Hmm. Maybe a side venture in independent auditing? She minored in Economics...."
"Ah, the current lady? Better than the last one I hope?" Jarunsuk shook his head, aware that his impetuous kinsman wouldn't see it. Damien's bad luck with lovers was legendary throughout the extended lines of Ramirez and Methos. After the time one of Jirina's escapades nearly lost him a hand, and turning up broke in Kingston once because of a sweet young thing who was neither.... "Wasn't it Haresh Clay who got you out of trouble that time in Jamaica?"
"No, it was Carter. I always got along better with him. And this one even has Magistra's approval. Did you want her phone number to check?" came the sarcastic offer. The responding silence from San Francisco went on so long that Damien frowned. "Cousin? You there?"
"Did you just say that Edana approves of this one?"
"What, it's that unlikely?" The burly redhead drew a deep breath to be offended.
"I had heard years ago that she was out of the Game, Damien. She isn't?"
Those slow, careful words shocked him into an answer. "No. I saw her two weeks ago in New York. Who the hell told you she was dead?"
"A... reliable source. I'll find out what's going on. This should actually be fairly entertaining. He's going to feel like a very relieved idiot. Maybe I should set up cameras."
"Oh, it's a friend. Good."
"We do have a few," Jarunsuk pointed out acerbically. "Now, why would you think this was a set up?"
"Because someone tried to get me to challenge one of Duncan MacLeod's students... without letting me know he was line of Ramirez."
"Good thing I'm not line of Ramirez, then," came the calm reply. "I'll call you tonight with some information, Damien. Watch your head."
"You, too. It's getting unhealthy out there."
"Isn't it always?"
Damien stared at the list of people still to call and scratched down the question he was going to ask Aidan when they talked on the 4th. Who trained Jarunsuk? And for that matter... who trained Magistra?
In San Francisco, Jarunsuk hung up the phone, threw back the sheet, and went to stretch out and run before logging onto the brokerage system and investigating the two companies. Sometime today he'd have to start tracking down Methos, too, and tell him about Edana. But first came Damien's hunt.
This could get interesting. It's been ages since I hunted for tigers ....
Frohike stretched until every joint above the knees had popped, and his knees were thinking about it too. For almost a week, the Gunmen had been working until they had to sleep, sacking out for a little while, and then getting back up and going back to the terminals. The results had that inspired, surreal quality that always seemed to erupt after days on end of seeing 4 AM through three pots of coffee.
Interpol had received both sets of books for F&J Importers, and some very interesting ledger entries for Petesceu Ltd. in Riga, Latvia, also. The attached email, which had been routed through three different servers, all of them stripping off addresses as they went, mentioned almost as an aside that it might be worth looking at White Dove Warehouses in Marseilles.
Stankov, Drakokhrust, and Aksakov had received letters posted from various corners of the globe warning them in carefully worded messages that Jirina Petesceu was skimming the take on the shipments into China she was 'facilitating.' Enough details were there to make it believable that it had come from someone involved with the deal, but the letters were non-committal enough that the Mafiosi should have a hell of a time figuring out who. Byers had been very smug about the innocuous phrasing.
Colonel Sung Hsueh-Liang of the Taiwanese Army's Internal Affairs had received a warning to check his sources for information about new supplies of oil coming into China. An attachment to the email held details of times, dates, and durations of phone calls between General Lee Moy and Lim Mahn of Hong Kong. Mahn was on the payroll of three different companies in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Formosa as a commission agent seeking out new products and customers. Interestingly enough, two of the companies were in fairly direct competition with each other.
The Charleston, SC police got an email detailing bank transactions between a Swiss account and an account in the Cayman Islands. The Cayman account had promptly transferred half the money to a Fort Lauderdale account. Said account, interestingly enough, belonged to one of the assassins found dead in Sylvana Storm's living room. The DEA had been copied on the email, in hopes they'd presume it was drug money and try to investigate all the way back to the originating bank in Zurich.
Australian Customs and the US Internal Revenue Service both received an email citing a URL where they could find file copies of the two sets of books from F&J Importers. No explanation, no comments, just a company name and two electronic ledgers. That upload had been done under more satellite transfers and switches than Langly had arranged for anything in years. No way was he messing with the IRS, though!
They had just been starting to close it down and type a summary for Damien, when inspiration struck Byers at two in the morning.
While Frohike and Langly were holding a friendly row over different encryption options, Byers had been investigating to see if there was any way to somehow add some crowning touch to Urquhart's misery. He had been getting ready to settle for the fact that, starting Monday morning, the head of Cook Trading was receiving an automatic blind carbon of all emails sent by Jan Urquhart and John FitzAlan.
Except... F&J is in the process of buying out a bulk freight consolidation company in San Pedro. And an international transaction for any company publicly listed on a US stock exchange has to be registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission or it can't go through....
"Frohike, don't you have a contact who did some of the programming for EDGAR?"
"Edgar who?" came the tired answer.
Langly turned, a dangerous mischief in his eyes. "Johnny, are you talking about the SEC's EDGAR filing system?"
"Yeah. Because, F&J wants to buy this company south of L.A., and if their EDGAR filings were to disappear so that the transaction wasn't registered with the SEC...."
Frohike glanced over. "What exactly will that do, Byers?"
"Well, they had to file paper copies, too, but the SEC will have to look for them. It'll slow down the buy-out, possibly prompt a drop in stock prices for the US company, and the international tax lawyers will start looking at it more closely. It's sort of like alerting the IRS, only a bit worse, because it will cause questions over just when, exactly, the LA branch goes from being a US company to an Australian-owned subsidiary, and what taxes go to whom. It would make their lives very difficult," Byers added with his usual apparent diffidence.
Frohike yawned, then nodded once and pulled up an email account. "My contact retired three years ago, but what the hell, I'll try to track him down. He'd love this...."
Rich watched the flight to Paris taxi towards the runway, one arm around Aidan's shoulders. "Ready to go? Our flight's gonna start boarding in about twenty minutes."
Aidan chuckled. "That's not enough time to get coffee, and barely time to make it to the concourse. Did I say thank you for digging that dress out of storage for me?"
"Yeah, you did." He let go and they headed for their own flight to Seattle. "I don't get it. The three of you are an item, but they're going to Paris and you're headed to Seacouver. Why?"
"Well," she teased him, "for one thing, I borrowed this student who's heading back to the race circuit in March, and I thought he might like some of my time." That drew a flashing grin. "For another," she continued, "I have a contract to fulfill, which means my historical novel on Charlemagne needs to get underway."
"Charlemagne... Aidan, did you get your publishers to pay for your ticket?"
"No, but my income tax deductions this year are going to be very interesting. And extensive." She laughed again at the look on Rich's face. "I didn't make money by wasting it, Rich. And for a third, Duncan will be back in February, and Adam will probably be with him. He claims that he intends to have business interests in Seacouver. The mind simply boggles. Now, then, were you serious about wanting to set up an apartment in the basement?"
"Yeah, well, it's like this. The front door of your house is out of range from the kitchen, right?"
Aidan stared at him from level grey eyes. "Rich. You mean that from my bed I can't feel one of us coming in the door in the wee hours of the morning." She left him on the hook for a few seconds, trying to come up with a way out of that, then reached over and tickled him as they walked, carry-on bags rolling behind. Rich danced out of the way, pacing her just out of arm's reach until the crowds forced them back together.
"Wretch." Aidan grinned at him, looking no older than he did for a moment, with her hair in a casual pony tail down her back and over the ski jacket. "Did you think I never needed to sneak around on Adam or Ramirez? No, you won't disturb me coming and going from the basement. Is that all you were worried about?"
"You keep thinking you're going to get a student soon," he shrugged. "I mean, you saw snow on the doorstep at Joe's in that... whatever it was last night. Do you always fade out like that?"
"Almost never," she sighed. "But the really bad ones do that, and they always make me dive for food afterwards. The things are exhausting. Trying to pull coherency from a powerful vision is like trying control a stallion from the ground instead of his back. My arms ache afterwards from where I've been trying to physically confine it for long enough to See everything, and my legs and feet hurt from straining to stay in contact with something, anything, to brace myself. I end up feeling as if I've been working in the fields all day, pulling at something or swinging a hoe. And sometimes I've a miserable headache on top of it."
Rich glanced at her, light glinting across the freckles on his face. "That doesn't sound like a gift. Sounds like it sucks royally. Do these visions ever happen around other...? I mean, that sounds like a quick way to...." His index finger traced the collar of his indigo sweater.
"It would be," she agreed. "Fortunately, it's never happened. I have to be a bit... distracted, I suppose, to See things. Others of us rarely relax me so."
He ducked his head in agreement and contained mirth. "Yeah, I guess not!"
"And sometimes I enjoy being able to See things, and sometimes I hate it. Of late, I've not been unhappy. At least I'm seeing something pleasant this time. I have to admit, I rather like training students."
"Yeah, I got that impression," he chortled. "Connor said you were making calls all over the globe the other night. How many students have you trained?"
"Well, if you don't count Alexandrias and Xenokrates, and truly, I can't; Adam did most of the work on them. Of course, I can't count you, either, or Darius' student, Nolan...." She thought about it as they walked. "All told, Rich? Twenty-five. Nine of them are dead, now."
"Twenty-five? Aidan, that's one a century," he hissed.
"No, frequently it was two," she chuckled. "Kyra was my first student and I was almost three hundred. Sometimes I was too disgusted with them, or had other commitments, and foisted them off on brothers or friends. Other times it seemed as if I finished with one and not ten years later picked up another. Actually, that did happen once, Damiano and Ishtvan it was. And you're the first student I've really taught in about one hundred and fifty years."
"Really?"
"Really, Rich." She ruffled his hair, smiling at him. "The last three I trained are all dead. Neither Esperanza nor Running Wolf made it through their first decade. Holly had gotten past her first century, and I had finally quit worrying, when I heard through Darius that she had lost a challenge in London. I was fretting over what I was doing wrong. No, Rich, I very badly needed a good swift kick, and some days you are unquestionably that."
"But in a good way, right?" he grinned, knowing she didn't mind training him.
"Oh, yes. Definitely. All right, if we're going to set up the basement for you, we'll need to do some plumbing work, and ducting. Do you want it to stay open except for support beams, or are we getting into drywall, too? And who's paying for supplies, by the way?" she jibed as they turned into the concourse terminal, headed home again.
~ ~ ~ finis 4/99 ~ ~ ~
Comments, Commentary, and the Inevitable Digressions:
1 - For the non-Christians, thirty pieces of silver is the amount Judas accepted to betray Christ to the Romans.
2 - For the curious who've been keeping track? Yes, Holly Curtis is the immortal whose sword Rebecca sent to Aidan in 1949. Yes, she was Aidan's last student. And who was she sleeping with? Brownie points to you if you can figure it out. There are enough clues. Truly.
3 - Methos, crucifixion, and 'just say no' -- right. This info is per the novel Zealot, which I use solely for background info. (Sorry, I'm not killing Marcus Constantine. I can't buy the way they had him lose his head. Email me if you just have to know the story there.) In Caligula's day Methos was a slave in Rome, and was acting as political advisor to his senator. Unfortunately, the senator's wife propositioned him. Equally unfortunately, she hadn't just been beaten with an ugly stick, she had flogged herself with it. He said no; she cried rape; he got crucified. End of story. (Well, Marcus Constantine got him down.... Somebody had to.)
4 - Aidan? Hit someone for stealing cookies? Did you read Crystalline Patterns? Nearly stolen emerald mines? That story is in The Gathering Darkness.
5 - Ummm. About the tent story? It wasn't a Highland Games. And no names are given to protect the guilty. But oh, yes. It's true. You have no idea how distracting a conversation like that can be at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning....
6 - Whinge: a fine Irish verb meaning whining and wussing and being a general sulky nuisance.
7 - The attack on Stormy took place in Explanations. If BDSM bothers you, just page down. I won't be offended. In some ways, I think the whole sub-story with Damien & Stormy may be the best part of that one.
8 - Okay, for those of you who read the whole thing with Frohike, Langly, and Byers and said, 'Who? What?' Earl Warren was in charge of the commission that investigated JFK's assassination. The multi-volume report which essentially said he was killed by one man (pardon the author while she laughs herself sick. Okay, I feel better now.) is referred to as the Warren Report. And Frohike, Langly, and Byers are collectively known as the Lone Gunmen, of X-Files fame. Thanks, guys, someone had to keep Krycek away from my hard drive!
9 - Yes, Gina and Robert are on good terms with Cory Raines (the laughing bank robber from the episode "Money No Object"). No, I have no idea if this is relevant to the ongoing series. They haven't told me in English and I don't speak Italian. Spaking of which, cara mia is Italian for 'my dear.'
10 - As a matter of record, Damien's recipe for coffee does work. Go *very* easy on the cardamom. A bare shake for a full pot of coffee, less than 1/8 tsp. cinnamon, and a shake of the nutmeg a bit heavier than the cardamom, but not by much. Cardamom has been used in coffee by the Arabs since they found out that roasted coffee beans brewed well. Coffee shops are not a modern invention. And Var's profanity of Sangre de Christo translates as 'Christ's blood!'
11 - Terrence Coventry is from the episode "Dramatic License," also known as the romance novel episode. See the later reference to Duncan being in said novel. I decided Aidan had trained Terrence before I ever got the new Watcher Chronicles. The same applies Kyra, who is in fact from the fourth century BC and originated in Sparta. She died during an athletic competition, possibly at the instigation of a rival. Kyra is from the sixth season episode "Patient Number Seven," which is definitely worth watching when it comes out on SciFi channel. As for dharma? Karma may be the ledger on which your life is weighed when the time comes for your next incarnation to be decided, but dharma is your life's purpose in the world/other people's lives. Sorry, that's off the top of my head; if I have it wrong, please contact me and let me know!
12 - Hmmm. One of my beta readers said she wanted to know about the press-gangs in Calcutta. My oops; I keep forgetting that history majors accumulate odd tidbits of information and then assume everyone knows them. The 'black hole of Calcutta' was actually a small cell in which 64 Europeans were imprisoned during the Seven Year War; only 21 people emerged alive. However, it is in my memory from one lecture or another that Calcutta as a whole kept that name because people went in and were never seen again. The press gangs, informal recruiters, or shanghai experts, were thick on the docks there in the Crown Jewel of the British Empire (India, not Calcutta in specific). I do know such events are the reason the city of Shanghai lends its name as a verb meaning 'to enroll a sailor for unscrupulous means by force.'
13 - Aidan's sweatshirt? Public Television is (was? This was 13 years ago…) selling it. 'Si hoc legere scis, nimium educationes habes' -- literally, 'If this you know to read, an excess of education you have.' The Thracian gold exhibition just went through my hometown and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's absolutely amazing what kind of work was being done when the ROG was still mortal! As for the Age & Treachery shirts? I had that Christmas present planned before I ever heard about the presentation at Access Con to Peter Wingfield. My friends and I tend to get them at appropriate birthdays.... I'm dreading 40.
14 - Amanda... retrieved, yeah, that's the word, the sword and shield in When First We Practice.
15 - Yes, the historical data on the Crusade, Eleanor's Amazons, the infant mortality, a noble woman's proper behavior, and the Black Plague are as accurate as I can make them.
16 - Flicking a thumbnail between your teeth is a gesture which roughly means, 'You're not even worth the trouble of eating. Too stringy.' Consider it a cannibal's insult and let's leave it at that. (I got that information from Robert Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars. Argue with him. I'll pay good money to watch.) Or to a Brit or an Italian, it means you're prone to premature ejaculation....
17 - The Thinker and the MJ tape. In X-Files canon, the Thinker was a demi-god of Hackdom, and he hacked the Department of Defense, gaining access to the MJ tape, which was a detailed account of every government cover up of UFOs and extraterrestrial life. The Thinker was assassinated shortly after he got the information, but the tape didn't die with him. And yes, the drug in the episode "Unusual Suspects" was in fact ergotominehistamine.
18 - Matthew McCormick, by the way, is an immortal FBI agent from the fifth season episode, "Manhunt." Should I be worried that he's looking into Stormy? Yeah, probably.
19 - Grace Chandel dates back to the first season episode "Saving Grace." One of the truly likeable immortals.
20 - Benny Carbazza, Willie Kingsley, Kit O'Brady, Michelle Webster, Annie Devlin, and Ceirdwyn are from, respectively: "Vendetta" - Benny, "Diplomatic Immunity" - Willie, "Double Eagle" - Kit, "Rite of Passage" - Michelle, "An Eye For an Eye" - Annie, and "Take Back the Night" - Ceirdwyn. And yes, per canon (i.e., the new Watcher Chronicles) Hugh O'Niall trained Annie Devlin. He also trained Liam O'Rourke.... And as one of my readers pointed out? Ireland does in fact *have* a female Taoiseach; Aidan, however, is from Northern Ireland and was referring to it.
21 - The Irish words? (Yes, I finally got a dictionary.) Fimineach is in fact hypocrite. Muirnin is darling, sweetheart, or beloved. If the vocative in Irish is significantly different from the nominative, and someone can correct my Irish, I will be happy to update the pages.
22 - Mandisa is 6' 3" -- the tall one in the family indeed.
23 - The stalkings and set-ups run through most of the line war stories, which start with Prelude to the Storm and will run through Sirocco.
24 - Kate and Nick Sutherland are from the sixth season episode "Two of Hearts." Great, great episode. Bartholomew died in that same episode. He was an old enemy of Kate's.
25 - 'Tyled' -- yes, that is spelled correctly. In various secret societies, during the meetings someone guards the door to prevent unwanted/unwarranted intrusion. Such a person is called a 'tyler' and the usual question during the ceremonies is, "Is the lodge tyled?" meaning "Are we secure?"
26 - Yes, those are the rules for line wars. A more coherent chart can be found here.
27 - Kiem Sun is from the first season episode "The Road Not Taken" and Mako was Rich's first head in "Under Color of Authority."
28 - Lucien LaCroix, mentioned here in passing, is from the show Forever Knight and I have no copy rights to him. See the earlier disclaimer about not making money off this.
29 - Apologies to anyone I've offended in Chicago, but Nick lives there. I don't.
30 - Martin Hyde hounded Duncan looking for Connor in the episode "Prodigal Son."
31 - In my stories, one of the Watcher researchers named Mordecai is the unofficial expert on Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez of Spain and Egypt, as well as all his students.
32 - The whole mess with Galati and Joe's near death are found in "Judgment Day" and "One Minute To Midnight." I've always wondered why they never showed any of the fall-out from that. But Joe's right: the deaths of Darius, Thackeray, and Fitz' other friend (whose name I can't recall) all pre-date Joe talking to Duncan. And I've always assumed that the Watcher who tried to kill Carl Robinson in "Run For Your Life" was one of Horton's Hunters. Makes you wonder how many of the others died trying to commit murder. Or who was simply careless around the wrong immortal, as happened in the episode "Methos."
33 - Haresh Clay and Carter Wellan are from the episode "The End of Innocence."
34 - Methos did tell some of his students that Aidan was dead; he thought the Kurgan took her head in 1638. He hasn't remembered to inform all of them that the reports of her death were greatly exaggerated, not to mention incorrect.
35 - Kudos and beer go to the Lone Gunmen. The plot was trying to accelerate too quickly for me to get Aidan's new student to her. They spiked everyone's plans very, very efficiently. Thanks, guys!
36 - Aidan has the Sight, the an-da-shalla, the gift of Seeing things not normally visible or things in times past or present. Usually, she hates it. It's rarely applicable, doesn't tell her things she really wanted to know, and doesn't always come true. See Quarrels of All Kinds for an example of a time when it was less than explicit.