The Quick and the Dead
The Quick and the Dead
By Lady MoonHawke
Disclaimer: Here we go again. I do not own Joe Dawson, or the whole Immortal thing. Rysher/Panzer-Davis and Gaumont Television do, the lucky so-and-so's. No money involved here, just blood and sweat and so forth. Kelly and Kyle are still mine, however.
I was dozing on the sofa in Kyle’s office when the call came.
It had been a night for interruptions. Our attempt at a romantic evening had been plagued by frantic calls as a presentation seemed to circle the drain. Finally Kyle had sighed, offered me an apology, and we’d left the theatre before the start of the fourth act. I had offered to go in with him, arguing convincingly that the time would be better spent working than on the road, and I could at least keep him in coffee. I was worried as well. Whenever he was alone at night, I worried for him. 150 years seemed like a long time to me, but there was always someone older, stronger, more ruthless. There were times when I was terrified to Watch, but I was always more terrified that he would falter and I would be left without so much as those last minutes.
The sofa was lumpy, so true sleep was impossible. Of course, that could also be due to the glaring overhead light or the constant noise of fingers on the keyboard. I shifted a little, the fabric of my dress rustling softly.
The noise from the keyboard stopped. “I’m sorry, honey. If I’d known the project was this messed up, I would have taken you home despite what you said. Johnson and Burke made it sound minor. ‘Just a quick re-write,’ my sainted aunt.”
“Is she?” I asked. I must have been more tired than I thought, I usually kept those kind of questions to myself.
“Who?” he replied, frowning at the screen. The click of the keyboard resumed.
Oh, well. In for a penny. “Your aunt. Is she sainted?”
“I have no idea,” he replied absently. “Orphanage, remember?”
I did remember. Nineteenth century orphanages were something you never forgot, even if the tales were second-hand. His hollow voice and involuntary shivers as he related childhood horror stories had been enough to give me nightmares for a month. We had taken turns comforting each other.
The keyboard stopped again. “Where are they?”
“Johnson and Burke? I think they snuck out an hour ago.”
“Couldn’t hack it?”
“I don’t think they’d been home yet. It was just after 11 when I saw them last.”
“Hmph.” His tone was non-committal. “Well, I have maybe an hour’s worth of work left, at the most, so if you want to finish your snooze, go ahead.”
“You don’t mind?” I asked, already trying to find a comfortable position.
“Nah. I’ll talk your ear off later.”
I only grumbled softly in response. He wasn’t joking at all.
I was just drifting off again when the chirping of a cell-phone dragged me back to reality. I stared blankly for a moment, sitting bolt upright before I was really aware of my surroundings.
“It’s yours,” Kyle said quietly, meaning it was my official phone. My Watcher phone.
I fished it out of my purse, rising from the sofa and heading for the door. Kyle and I worked hard to maintain a degree of separation between our personal relationship and my position as his Watcher. And part of the deal was that I didn’t talk to other Watchers in front of him.
The outer office was dim, and I felt my way to the desk. “Kelly Anderson,” I said, sinking into the chair.
“You don’t know me, Miss Anderson, but my name is Carl Verdun. I believe we have a mutual friend. A Mr. Dawson?”
“Oh?” Joe’s name was almost a talisman; a password among Watcher’s. To be Joe’s friend meant that you probably didn’t follow the old-school policies; that you had crossed the line to contact or help your Immortal. I certainly had.
“There isn’t a lot of time, Miss Anderson, or I’d suggest you call him and verify what I’m saying. You’re just going to have to believe me. I Watch Kahldon currently.”
“If you tell me you’ve been helping scum like Kahldon, I’m hanging up.” I sincerely wished that I sounded more confident than I felt. Kahldon was on the “Watch with Extreme Caution” list and moving toward “UnWatchable.” There were worse Immortals, but not many.
“Just the opposite. Listen to me, please. I would explain more, but there is no time. Kahldon’s got some kind of list of Immortals he’s tracking down and killing, and Mr. Ross seems to be next. If there’s any way you can warn him, do it.”
“And have the Tribunal on my case? No, thank you.”
“The Tribunal can screw itself. Kahldon doesn’t play by the rules, and I’m sick of feeling responsible. I think he’s aware of where your Mr. Ross works. You have to convince Mr. Ross to avoid the building, to leave town if you can.” His voice was becoming rushed, desperate.
“You know it doesn’t work that way. If Kahldon Challenges…”
“Then Mr. Ross will be dead. Kahldon doesn’t Challenge. He’ll shoot from cover, take hostages, anything to win. He’s not playing the Game, Miss Anderson. He’s just a killer.” He broke off for a moment, muttering incoherently. “I have to go. He’s moving now. Please, Miss Anderson. I’m sick of this. Don’t let it happen if you can stop it.” There was a click and he was gone.
Lord, help us. If Kahldon was coming here, we had to get out. If he was heading for the house, staying here might be our best bet. Verdun had mentioned that Kahldon knew about work. I felt frozen for a moment. Damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. And I refused to be damned for something I didn’t do.
I burst back through the door to the inner office. “Kyle, we have to leave.”
He didn’t look up. “Just a few more minutes. I want to run through this again, make sure there are no glaring errors. Then I think we can pack it up for the night.”
“No, Kyle. We have to leave now.”
This time he did look up. “What’s bothering you?”
At moments like these, I felt strangled by the Oath. But the Oath wasn’t going to laugh at my bad jokes or send me flowers after a bad day. “There’s an Immortal in town, a headhunter. Word trickled down to me. He’s after you.” Gushed would be a better term than trickled, maybe, but I should try to protect Carl Verdun a little at least.
His mouth tightened down to a fine line. “Then when he Challenges me, we’ll do our thing,” he said at last.
“He won’t Challenge. That’s why I got the call. He’s gone rogue, and he’s apparently on the move right now. Kyle, you’ve got to get out of here.”
“Kelly, you’re over-react –“ He broke off suddenly, eyes sliding out of focus. They snapped back, and he was out of the chair and around the desk in a second. “Come on,” he ordered, reaching for my hand.
I slung my purse over my shoulder, hustling to keep up. “Is it him?”
“It’s someone, and I don’t want to wait around here for introductions.” He slid into his coat as we left the office, and I could almost see the shift, from Kyle Ross, ad executive to Kyle Ross, Immortal.
We paused for a moment in the corridor, and in a silent moment, I could hear the chime of the elevator off to the right. Kyle pushed me left, toward the stairs. “Go,” he whispered. “Down. I’ll be right behind you.”
I paused at the stairwell door long enough to be sure that he was coming, the bolted, high heels threatening to twist an ankle or throw me down completely. I reached the fourth floor landing and kicked them off, tossing them over the railing, down the central shaft to the ground floor. Maybe if I had a spare second there, I could retrieve them and break off the heels.
I could hear Kyle’s footsteps above me. “Keep moving,” he whispered harshly. “We can’t waste time.”
I scrambled down flight after flight of stairs, rough corners of linoleum picking holes in my stockings. I was seriously going to have to think about something a little more sober in a dress shoe for the future. If there was a future. Kyle brushed past me as I scooped up the heels, not bothering to modify them. My nylons were a lost cause already, so there was no point in wasting precious seconds to save them.
I followed Kyle out the door into the cool night air, glancing around. The stairwell door opened onto the back of the building, and I stopped for a second to get my bearings. Looking back, that may have been my biggest mistake. I stood paralyzed for a moment in the glow of a security light, scanning the darkness for some clue as to where Kyle had gone, when glass shattered somewhere above me, falling in a terrifying rain nearby. I started to run, and a grasped my wrist, yanking me back into a wall of flesh, something sharp and cold pricking my in the back.
“Hush up, girly. You might get to live through this.” His hand moved from my wrist to my chin, and he forced my face up and around until I could see him, pasty face lined with scars. “Maybe I’ll keep you around for a while.” The point of the dagger slid around, parting the fabric of my dress and leaving a thin line of blood on my skin. He pressed the hilt into my hand, then pulled my arm down to my side.
“You call your boyfriend over here, then stick that in him.” I tried to protest and he chocked my words off. “Listen. He’s dead no matter what you do. You worry about whether or not YOU’RE going to survive. Do what I say and you might wake up tomorrow morning.” He pushed me away a little. “Do it. And remember, you can die just as easily. Be a smart girly.”
I stepped forward a bit more, trying to get a good distance from him while a plan formed. If this idiot really thought I was going to disable Kyle for him, he was sorely mistaken. I would never give in that easily. But I had to give Kyle a fighting chance to take Kahldon if I could. I lifted one foot a bit. “Kyle,” I called. “Kyle! I think I twisted my ankle.“
He came around the corner to the right, sword in hand, eyes going from me to the figure behind me. I turned my wrist a bit, letting the light play off the blade of the dagger. His eyes flicked to it, and I knew he was aware of my dilemma. “Let her go, Kahldon. She’s not part of this.”
“That’s what you think. Remember what I told you, girly. Now go on.”
I looked into Kyle’s eyes, some ten feet away. Love you, I mouthed. He nodded, one corner of his mouth twitching in a grin I knew well. I closed my eyes for a moment, then whirled, dagger out thrust. I sank it into Kahldon’s torso and ripped it sideways, praying that I had hit something vital.
Kahldon roared, and I reeled as his fist crashed into my chin. I felt his hand close around my throat, then I was flying through the air. My flight ended abruptly as I crashed into the wall, and I could hear a wet crunching sound that I knew with clinical detachment had to be my skull. I slid limply to the ground, my bones seeming to offer no resistance to the obligatory call of gravity.
I don’t know if I moved; I don’t know if I breathed. I could only watch through tunnel-vision as they fought, until everything went black.
I woke to lightning spilling over me, my hair standing on end, energy seeming to pour from my fingers. Had I the breath, I would have screamed. My eyes flew open, and I could see the flash of the Quickening as it rained down, soaking into me though I didn’t understand how or why. I saw a headless body roll over and over in the pull of the storm, and I stared at it as bolts flew off, desperate to identify it.
Slowly, the light storm eased and the body settled to the ground and I pushed myself to my knees, hissing in pain as a bit of glass jabbed into my hand. I pulled it out, and watched in horror as the small wound drew closed in a tiny rush of blue flame. “Oh, no.” I wiped the blood away, looking for some sign of the injury, but there was only smooth skin to be seen.
I heard a sound on the pavement, and an itching feeling raced along my spine. Desperately I looked for a weapon, half afraid that even though I had wounded him, Kahldon had somehow survived and was coming to finish me off. I knew I was weak; an easy kill, but I didn’t want to go without a fight. Shattered fragments of glass surrounded me, nothing bigger than my hand, nothing useful. I pushed my way into the thin shrubbery, willing to hide if I couldn’t fight. Through the leaves, I could see legs in dark pants, and a familiar sword. The itching was worse, like biting ants on my spine marking territory, or whatever ants did.
“Kelly?” The voice was familiar, soothing, and I almost cried. “Kelly, it’s all right. You don’t have to come out yet. I’m going to get something from the car to deal with the body, but we can’t stay here long. I need you to be able to move soon, okay?” I saw him drop something on the ground. “You can put that on if you’re cold.” The he walked away, and the itching sensation eased.
I stood slowly, stepping out of the bushes and picking up the coat. It was warm and smelled wonderful; safe and familiar. I shrugged into it, pulling on the long sleeves until my hands were free. Looking at the ground, I spotted the knife I had used on Kahldon and picked it up, trying to decide what to do with it. The itching sensation flared again, and a moment later, Kyle appeared.
He must have sensed I was near hysterics. “Are you okay?”
“I thought – I thought it was too late.” I looked down, the rip across the front of my dress still gaping slightly. “I thought I was dead.”
His lip quirked in that familiar grin. “It’s never too late for you and me.” Then his expression turned serious. “You know what this means, right?”
I closed my eyes briefly and sighed. “Right now I feel like I don’t know anything.”
“That’s pretty normal.” He handed me a pair of latex gloves. “You’ll want to wear those to avoid leaving prints.” As I struggled with them, he manipulated the corpse and its head onto a tarp and expertly folded up the edges. Then he looked up at me. “Can you grab his feet?”
I moved into position and lifted my assigned end. “So the first lesson for new Immortals is clean-up?”
“No. You’re just precocious. You get to start the Game knowing the rules. You’re lucky.”
I stopped in my tracks, forcing him to stop as well. “Kyle, is it going to come down to the Game between us? Do we lose it all now?”
He studied me for a moment. “No. I won’t get into it against you. Even if you went completely off your rocker like this idiot, I don’t think I could kill you.”
“Okay,” I replied. After a minute, I added. “I won’t kill you either.”
“That’s very comforting.” He started walking again and I followed. “Let’s get moving, kiddo. We have a lot still to do tonight, and you left enough blood on the wall that people will be asking questions in the morning. We need to be long gone by then.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, heaving my end of the body into the trunk.
“Well, we have to find a nice dark hole for your friend back there, then clean anything out of the house we want. Then we head for New York, I think.”
“Why New York?”
“I have an old friend there,” Kyle replied, “ and I feel in the need of some friendly advice.”
Oh, my. I had a feeling I knew exactly who he was talking about. New York City, here I come.
The End
This story was originally written for a Highlander Lyric Wheel Challenge. Interested
in knowing more about the Lyric Wheel? Want to join in? Find more stories and
info at: The Lyric
Wheel Homepage. Loads of thanks to Pollyanna for the lyrics from the Brit
TV show, "Follyfoot."
The Lightning Tree
Written by Steven Francis
Performed by the Settlers
Down in the meadow where the wind blows free,
In the middle of a field stands a lightning tree.
It’s limbs all torn from the day it was born
For the tree was born in a lightning storm.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
It’s never too late for you and me;
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
Never give in too easily.
Down in the meadow where the wind blows light,
The lightning struck in the middle of the night.
Limbs stripped bare by the lightning flare
The lightning flare was a wild affair.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
It’s never too late for you and me;
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
Never give in too easily.
Down in the meadow where the wind blows cold,
The lightning tree stands stiff and old.
Branches rent when the lightning rent
The lightning rent from the firmament.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
It’s never too late for you and me;
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
Never give in too easily.
Down in the meadow with the wind in the west,
The lightning tree faced up to the test.
Its heart went snap when it took the rap,
the terrible rap of the thunder clap.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
It’s never too late for you and me;
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
Never give in too easily.
Down in the meadow when the wind blows free,
A whispering breeze in the lightning tree.
Dreams come true if you want them to
If you want them to, then it’s up to you.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
Never give in too easily.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
It’s never too late for you and me.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
Never give in too easily.
Grow, grow, the lightning tree,
It’s never too late for you and me.
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