Highlander: Shadow of Obsession

by Rebecca Neason

  He turned off the ignition and slipped the keys into his pocket. Then, pausing long enough for one final centering breath, he opened the car door and stepped out.

  All the way up the walk and onto the porch he waited for the sensation that would tell him that Cynthia was here. It did not come—yet the warning voice grew louder with each step.

  Duncan rang the doorbell. Once. Twice. He waited briefly, then he put his hand to the knob. The door opened easily to his touch, almost as if the house was willing him to enter.

  “Victor,” he called as he pushed the door open farther and stepped into the short hall. “Victor, it’s Duncan MacLeod.”

  Duncan thought he heard a noise and he called again. Yes—it was faint but unmistakable. MacLeod hurried toward the sound.

  Down the hall and to the left, into the living room where just yesterday he had tried to warn Victor Paulus of his possible danger; it was only a few steps, but it might as well have been miles for all the help his presence could give Victor now.

  Duncan found him on the floor, lying in a pool of his own blood. The sword thrust that had left him there had not been a clean, swift kill. MacLeod had had such a wound and he knew how much the man had suffered as he lay there waiting for death to come.

  And for Paulus there would be death, final and complete. Duncan could not stop that now. But he could make certain Paulus did not die alone and abandoned.

  He knelt by Victor’s side. The smell of blood, with its cloying metallic-sweetness, filled his nose and raked the back of his throat. So much blood from one man, one life.

  “Victor,” MacLeod said softly. He took Paulus’s hand into his own. It was so cold now, and MacLeod wanted Paulus to feel the comfort of a warm human touch. From experience Duncan knew how important that comfort could be.

  He said Victor’s name again. Slowly, Paulus turned his head a fraction and his eyes fluttered open. Although he had little time or strength left, the expression in his eyes was lucid and full of recognition.

  MacLeod did not have to ask who did this, and Paulus knew that he knew. There was no need to waste those words when the few he had were precious.

  “Victor,” MacLeod said. “I’m sorry. I wish I had—”

  “No,” Paulus stopped him. His voice was weak, straining with the effort of speech. “Couldn’t have stopped… anything. Just sorry I won’t finish… my work… still so much… to do.”

  “The work will go on, Victor. It’s too important to stop. You’ve given it enough momentum that others can shoulder the burden now.”‘

  “Darius—” Victor began.

  “His words, his teachings, will go on too,” MacLeod finished for him. “Darius would be so proud of you and all you’ve done. He always was.”

  Paulus gave a weak smile. It made MacLeod’s heart ache to see it.

  Victor closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them again and looked at Duncan. Macleod saw there was no rancor in those eyes, only peace and, somehow, a tender compassion. For a moment, it was like looking into Darius’s eyes too—so full of timeless wisdom and infinite love.

  “Cynthia…” Paulus said. His voice was even weaker now. “Loved her… so much… it was good… to love that much.”

  “She won’t get away with this, Victor,” MacLeod said. His voice was hard and cold. “I promise you. she won’t.”

  “No… vengeance… Duncan,” Paulus said, struggling to make his words heard though his life was ebbing away. “No… vengeance… only feeds the hate… hate must stop… if world… to survive.”

  MacLeod was not going to argue with Paulus. Not now—and there was too much he did not know. But even with death so very close, Victor Paulus was a perceptive man. He knew MacLeod was not someone to stand aside. And he saw the anger stirring in Duncan’s eyes.

  “Let police…” he said. “Not you… find peace, Duncan… live forgiveness… live peace. My death… doesn’t matter… only peace… matters… for you… for the world.”

  Again, the presence of Darius was strong in the room. It was as if, in these final moments, the teacher and the student had merged into one spirit.

  Paulus’s breath had begun to rattle softly in his chest. Duncan recognized the sound. There would be only a few breaths more. MacLeod searched for something, anything, to say—but the lump that had risen in his throat would not let any sound come out.

  Paulus’s eyes were clouding over. His lips moved; Duncan leaned close to hear him.

  “Peace be with you, Duncan MacLeod,” he whispered. It was Paulus’s voice; it was Darius’s voice.

  The rattling breath stopped.

  “And with you, Victor,” MacLeod said softly, knowing the benediction was unnecessary. He was at peace now, in that place where nothing else abides.

  Duncan did not move. He let his grief well up, wash over and through him—grief for the death of this good, good man, grief for the world that was an emptier place without him.

  The sound of the telephone jarred through the room like an explosion. MacLeod knew who it would be as surely as he knew whose hand had ended Victor’s life. Duncan answered it on the second ring.

  “Ah, MacLeod,” her voice purred in response to his tight hello. “Did you find the present I left you? Oh, of course you did. I hope you had time for a good-bye; I tried to make sure he couldn’t die too soon. Were his last words poignant? Victor did have a gift for that.”

  MacLeod’s anger boiled and he did not stop it. Not this time. It rolled, up and up, like a tidal wave on the ocean drawing strength from the depths. It crashed in on him, destroying any hope of peace.

  “Where?” he said, tight-lipped with fury.

  On the other end of the phone, Cynthia laughed. “You’re an intelligent man, MacLeod. You’ll know where. Come at sunset. I’ll be waiting.”

  The sound of her laugher was the last thing MacLeod heard as she hung up on him. He turned and looked again at Paulus’s body. The blood beneath him was congealing now that there was no life to give it warmth. Yet, in spite of his slashed body, the blood that stained his clothes and soaked the carpet beneath him, Victor Paulus looked serene. It was as if he had absorbed all of the hate that caused his death and somehow—somehow—transformed it. He answered it with love.

  There were still miracles.

  But not for Duncan MacLeod. “This isn’t vengeance, Victor,” he assured the spirit of the man on the floor. “This is justice. Immortal justice.”

  Judge and executioner—it was a role MacLeod resisted when he could. But not today. With an utter surety of purpose, he turned on his heel and walked toward the door.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The stark yellow of the sulfur piles stood in bright contrast to the deep purple-black of the mountain silhouettes that rose as a majestic backdrop toward the lighter dusk of the sky. It looked like a scene by Salvador Dalí, beautiful and surreal.

  But this was no painting. The smell of the sulfur hung like a living thing, a dragon with yellow breath that stained the air with each exhalation. Cynthia had arrived long before MacLeod, when the work crews were just leaving for the day, and she wandered through the area trying to sense how Grayson had fought and where he had died.

  Showers that had fallen intermittently throughout the afternoon had left puddles of yellow water. Cynthia walked through them heedlessly, not caring how they ruined her fine leather shoes. Her thoughts were here, and yet they were on a hundred different times and places where she and Grayson had been together through the centuries.

  Somehow, being at the place of his death made his life with her seem more real, more intense, than it had ever felt while he lived. Memories cascaded over her—of his smile, of his laughter, of his touch. She knew the way his mind worked so well, she could almost picture him standing beside her, almost hear his voice telling her the history of sulfur and gunpowder.

  She missed him. Over fifteen centuries of his presence in her life, and MacLeod had robbed her of that one constant. At four hundred years of
age, he was still a child by her reckoning. How could he understand what an emptiness Grayson’s death had caused in her?

  Well, it did not matter that he understand, only that he died. Here. Today. By her hand.

  She turned toward the sulfur, toward the mountains, and raised her hand to the sky. It was an act of reverence. She knew, and the three great goddesses that had always guided her knew, that in this simple act she embraced their gift.

  Her destiny.

  Was that the clicking of their needles she heard, as they wove the threads of time? Or was it the beating of her own heart?

  Was there a difference?

  Then she felt it, felt him. “MacLeod,” she screamed into the gathering night. It was a war cry, the name of her enemy.

  “Right behind you,” came his answering voice.

  Duncan, too, had thought about Grayson as he walked among the sulfur. Being here again was like entering, waking, into the nightmare he had dreamt so often. One way or the other, today’s battle would end that dream. But would it only replace it with another?

  Then Duncan thought about Victor Paulus lying in his own blood, struck down by the woman he had loved. It was worth any sleeping nightmare to end the waking one that was Cynthia VanDervane.

  MacLeod accepted the burden of that death upon the strong shoulders of his spirit. He knew that if he had not let Cynthia walk away from that first encounter, Paulus would still be alive.

  “They all stay with you,” he had once told Richie. “Every one you’ve ever loved and every one you’ve ever killed.” MacLeod accepted that, knew it to be true, and would not let it turn his hand from what he knew he now must do.

  I tried it your way, Darius, he thought, and Victor is dead. Now I do it my way.

  He raised his sword to his opponent.

  Cynthia laughed at him and brought out her own. Once again, she carried the Kris broadsword that was the match of Grayson’s.

  “So eager to die, Duncan MacLeod?” she asked. “No time for a little conversation? No pleasantries before we start our Game?”

  “I think we’ve said it all,” MacLeod answered.

  “Have we? I wonder.”

  She swung her sword easily, round and round. But for all the nonchalance of the movement, Duncan recognized it for what it was—an exercise to warm up her wrists; he had done it a million times himself.

  Cynthia began to walk around him. Duncan saw the little stretches she could not quite conceal from his practiced eye. Achilles tendon, calf muscles, right shoulder, left; she had no doubt grown cold and a little stiff in the time she had awaited him. He let her have her movements, let her think she fooled him. His own muscles, loosened by his morning routine of kata, were warmed and eager for the fray, and the heat of his rage had long turned to icy calculation.

  As she walked, she kept talking. “What—no questions, MacLeod? No lectures on the immorality of what I’ve done? You are different from Darius. He would have had plenty to say.”

  “And you would not have listened to any of it,” MacLeod countered, watching the length of her stride, where she put the balance on her foot. It was heavier on her right heel; that was her power leg, then.

  “I listened once. I gave him everything I had, everything I was—oh, but you know all this. Tell me, MacLeod, did it ever strike you as ironic that Darius was killed by a mortal—after centuries of caring for them? Grayson would have called it cosmic justice, and oh, how it would have delighted his sense of humor. Do you have a sense of humor, MacLeod?”

  “Not about death,” Duncan answered, still watching, still measuring. She was almost ready to make her play. He could see it in the way her steps had begun to shorten and how her balance had shifted forward.

  “Death, life, love, hate—they’re the only things worth laughing about. We’re all just playthings for the gods.”

  Her attack was sudden. She turned on her left heel; her right leg lunged while her sword arced sideways toward MacLeod’s head, carried by the force of her body’s turn. It was a good move, strong and sure; if MacLeod’s perceptions had been a fraction slower, he could have lost his head at the first blow.

  But his katana was there to stop her. The clash of the two blades rang in the still evening air. Cynthia stepped back as quickly as she had darted in. spun, and attacked from the other side.

  Once more, MacLeod’s katana was there. Cynthia laughed as they met, steel upon steel. Was that the biting edge of madness he heard within her laughter, madness born in that place where hatred crossed the line into obsession? Could an obsession that had been carried for so long leave room for sanity?

  A part of MacLeod wanted to feel compassion. At another time and another place, he might have let that pity grow. But not now—not if he chose life.

  And he did; life for himself, life for the world that Darius—and Paulus—had loved. It was his world, too, and all the people, mortal and Immortal—especially the mortals, who knew nothing of The Game—were the clan he had been raised to protect. He was still the chieftain’s son. He raised his sword again.

  Cynthia’s attacks were like a stinging insect, buzzing all around him, darting in and out, trying to get past his guard. She aimed for his extremities first: biceps, hamstring, knee, forearm—trying to wound and weaken him. MacLeod felt like a lumbering bear swatting at a hornet.

  He went on the offensive and began to attack. Cynthia was no match for his strength and for the power in his sleek, well-trained muscles. But she was good, fifteen centuries good, and more than once she spun away just under his blow. Nor did Cynthia forget the other weapons her body possessed. Hands, feet, knees, elbows—they were all part of her human arsenal.

  She aimed a stomp-kick at MacLeod’s right knee; he dropped and turned slightly, taking the blow on his thigh. The blow was a good one, full of power, that would have shattered his kneecap had it connected. As it was, it stunned his quadricep, making his leg feel numb and lame.

  But these were tactics MacLeod knew well—and Immortal muscles heal quickly. Within seconds, he countered her attack with one of his own. Her sword came in with a thrust angled to slide between his ribs and up into his heart. He parried her blade to one side and drove the elbow of his other arm into her face. MacLeod felt bones and cartilage smash.

  Cynthia wheeled back and to the right, shaking off the worst of the blood and the pain. She, too, would heal—if she lived.

  Despite the blood pouring down her face, despite the split lip and flattened nose, she smiled at him again. Then she raised her blade in the briefest salute.

  “Well done, MacLeod,” she said. Her tone had a mocking edge, as if she played at being the teacher to an awkward student. “But is that the best you can do? I’ve had worse—and survived the battle. After all, what’s a little pain… between friends?”

  “I’m not your friend,” MacLeod countered, “and there’s much, much more.”

  The blood had stopped flowing from Cynthia’s mouth and nose. MacLeod could almost see the bones knitting back into place, flesh pulled closed and new. Immortality at work.

  Cynthia laughed as she drew the back of her forearm across her face to wipe the remaining blood away. “Oh, MacLeod,” she said, “so fierce in your righteousness. You are fun. Too bad you have to die.”

  With that, she attacked again. The waves of her blade whistled through the evening air as it arced toward MacLeod’s stomach.

  MacLeod stepped just in time to parry. He turned; his katana sliced—at empty air. Cynthia had dropped, rolled, and now came to her feet behind him.

  The battle continued, breath upon breath, heartbeat upon heartbeat long, as slashes and nicks began to appear on both their bodies where the tip of a blade or the final inch of a slice connected. MacLeod could not remember who had drawn first blood. It did not matter; only the last blow mattered.

  Then MacLeod saw it—Cynthia was beginning to tire. The constant quick dashes, the slicing spins, the ducks and turns and sidesteps were taking their toll. She was not u
sed to fighting an opponent who could counter her quickness for long. Silently, MacLeod thanked the spirit of May Ling Shen for her training in the White Crane system of Kung Fu. Without that training, and the others that had followed, MacLeod knew he might well have been dead by now.

  Cynthia’s spins were getting slower, her thrusts less sure. The smile on her face had faded into a grimace. It was MacLeod’s turn to smile. Internally: don’t let your opponent know what you know.

  There: the waver in her hand as she lunged toward his mid-section. The tip of her sword wanted to drop. MacLeod moved, showing her the full extent of his own speed—speed he had kept partly hidden until now.

  He parried and turned, spinning past her guard. As tired as she was, she could not pull back fast enough to stop him. His katana came down on her hand, slicing through nerves and tendons, biting into bone. She screamed as the sword dropped from her bloody fingers.

  Then MacLeod’s katana was at her throat. She looked up with eyes as blue as cornflowers in the summer sun, deep as the fields of time itself. He steeled his heart; nothing would stop him this time.

  And she knew it. A small, sardonic smile tugged at the corners of her full red lips.

  “Send me to them,” she said. “We’ve been apart too long.”

  Duncan did not have to ask whom she meant. His sword moved.

  Cynthia’s Quickening swirled like a mist of charged ions around his feet. It rose, encircling his legs, shooting tiny shafts of power deep into his muscles. They contracted and jerked as the mist thickened. The power gathered and grew. It became lightning that flashed from him to the cloud-decked sky and back again. His katana stabbed the air overhead. His other arm flew out to his side, counterweight, to keep him on his feet and he opened his soul for what was to come.

  Cynthia… Callestina… and a hundred other names she had used throughout the centuries; he knew them all, wore them all, felt all the people she had been. The all that was only one.

  He felt the sunshine and laughter and the long twilight snows of her childhood years of mortality that had passed so quickly. He knew in his own soul the innocent she had once been.