2001-03-25 at 02:01 p.m.

Highlander: Thy Will Be Done

Part 3: All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray

by the Vault

She was there the night it happened, the night the tension broke and the Watchers lost at last. It was late afternoon on a midsummer's day. Meggan sat on the balcony in a folding lawn chair, sipping out of a tall glass. Rachel had been the one to discover that orange juice seemed to help with the buzzing of premonition. It was what soothed her now.

She saw the motorcycles streaming down the road before her, kicking up dust, the low growling sound in her head filling in what details her eyes could not see. The Watcher at the front door and the leader of the ruffians exchanged some words. Then the shooting began.

Nice guns, she thought distractedly. What followed appeared on the surface to be a massacre. One by one the thugs were felled until only some sort of Chinese warrior remained. Then he too was dispatched, allowing it to happen with a flamboyant "eat shit and die" attitude. A cold chill passed over Meggan. She leaned over the rail to peer closely at a tall man dressed in black with short-cropped strawberry blond hair. White things on his heels... they were important. The buzzing increased and she saw -- three silver crucifixes pressed into the rubber heels of each boot.

She spat over the railing and made a sign of protection. You used to walk with God, Jakob Kell. What do you walk with now?

She shivered as she sat. The day faded in that way only summer afternoons have. She clutched the hilt of her sword for comfort. Even now he was striding downstairs into a huge cave she'd only seen her in her nightmares, examining the helpless living bodies like a butcher making his first selection.

And then the massacre truly began.

**********

"Connor MacLeod," the man said slowly, tasting each syllable as he descended the rough-hewn stairs. "How low the once mighty have fallen."

The man Jakob Kell by all rights should have been dead in the mid 1600's after a long and holy life as a son of the Church. Instead he still walked this earth, a dead soul in a living body, both blessed and cursed by a God that had been silent and distant all these years.

Jakob Kell was not a happy man. Yet his face was stretched in something you might call a smile, and there was a lilt in his accented voice when he spoke.

"Look at you," he sighed gravelly and rolled his eyes at the drugged immortals. "Trussed up like cattle… mounted like animals on display. What foolish pride. Did you think you could escape this hell that drives us all?"

He flipped up the first visor. The greasy, bearded face beneath was not familiar. Therefore, not important. His arm seemed to move of its own accord, his sword painting a line of life's blood across the newly severed throat.

"Go with God," Kell blessed, his smile twisting higher at the corners as he signed a backwards cross. Although the body crackled, the Quickening did not come. The very universe could sense that there was more.

Jakob continued silently. Two more died quickly, as nameless and defenseless as newborns. The shrieking energy earthed itself fitfully in the stainless steel of their restraints.

"There is no escape," he said at last, studying a broken-nosed face. "No escape and no mercy and no salvation. Only death."

Three more were sent into eternal darkness without ever seeing the light again. The last three twisted in their bonds.

Kell skipped delicately across a floor awash with blood, his short-cropped hair standing on end and crackling with the power.

"How stupid to think you could hide here in the earth, pale and bloated like slugssssssss..." A tenth head hit the floor. The tension built. Delicious. But he could endure just a few seconds more...

"You cannot hide from God. You cannot hide from Satan. You cannot hide from me." Eleven unknowns dead, and now Kell stood before the Judas in the flock at last revealed. The hated lines of his face, visible even beneath a long tangled beard, were tight with fear. MacLeod could feel his presence.

The air was alive with brilliant arcs of light and power. Kell bent lovingly close to the steel mask, near enough for the traitor's kiss. "Peekaboo...I see you..." he murmured, eyes glowing. The ineffable wave reached its panic peak and - held in check for far too long - began its resounding crash.

Kell spread his arms wide, locked his long fingers with those of the man he once knew as close as cousin. The best things in life really should be shared, he thought. The molecules of the air were screaming as the energy poured through Kell, into Connor and back again - the Quickening. Their bodies thrummed like harp strings; and in the throes of his dark and magnificent ecstasy Kell could see tears wet MacLeod's cheeks. Don't fight it, the roiling boil of overwhelming insanity inside Jakob Kell suggested silently within this intimate embrace. I've tried cocaine, mary-jane, LSD, PCP, and any other drug you can name across the years - but nothing I've found compares to satiating this hunger you gave me when you took my humanity. Give into this Black Mass. Give into what you've made me.

He leaned so close to Connor that they were cheek to cheek and nearly touching, his ears ringing, his throat sore from screaming, smelling the sweet pork smell as the flesh of their palms melted together and ran. So good, this pleasure and pain. Better than wine. Better than sex. Better than salvation even, and every time he felt this sinister completion Kell knew again he was damned.

Delightful... He noticed MacLeod writhed away from the pleasure, unable to stop it invading him and his most vulnerable places. He was manipulated by Jakob Kell, touched deeper than his flesh. Kell knew his taint filled Connor now, and nothing could make that taste go away.

Soon it was over, this raw and sexual thing. He held himself up on trembling arms and legs, panting, a captive of that sinful ache of release. His gang of henchmen were watching in apprehension, aroused but afraid. They didn't know the secret yet. They didn't understand... but that would come, and soon.

Breathing hard and deep in his chest he pried their hands apart, stared for a moment at the muscle and bone now visible through the charred mess of his palm. For the better part of an hour, perhaps, these would be fittings souvenirs.

"I've waited all my life for this, MacLeod," he sighed so only the other could hear it, noting the stream of thick white spittle leaking from the corner of Connor's lips. "Flee, little lamb. When the time comes for sacrifice, I will devour you."

They cut him down as he was leaving. The sound of MacLeod's body hitting the blood-soaked rock was strangely satisfying. Jakob set it as the happy thought of his day.

**********

The sky darkened and flickered with the power of Quickening. Meggan was suddenly with Connor MacLeod as if she stood inside his head, felt the agonizing stimulation of the power released on his flesh, felt him twist and writhe, scared with a subconscious animal terror. The glass of orange juice shattered on the tiles, unnoticed. Hold on, Connor, she begged silently.

She could feel his sickness, the churning of his stomach, the emotions of being violated so intimately. She entered into it with him and took it from him willingly; quivering with this tainted climax, she cleansed the power thus released and sent it back into the earth. At least some good would come of this - the land had been drained nearly dead after Rachel's illness...

There was a raw, rough huffing sound for a long time, as someone regained their breath. Kell. Eleven Quickenings at once? The sheer brutality, the needless waste, the wanton sensuality in death, the gluttony on pleasure and power made her sick.

Then hands were reaching and s/he shied away as they undid the cuffs that bound him, ripped loose the tubes and wires that had until now sustained. They left him then, in a puddle of blood on the floor, to awaken from his long sleep in a nightmarish pit of filth and gore.

But she couldn't go fetch him. Not yet -- she could still see the dust rising from the bikes and car as they rode away. Such fear undid her. It was embarrassing and degrading but a healthy dose of cowardice had kept her alive this long, no matter what anyone said about her magic words or her enchanted sword.

Then the coast was clear. She strode down the hill as she'd dreamed of doing millions of times, and went in through the front door. The carnage was awful, and Meggan found herself stepping over bodies all the way down the hall - human bodies. In her mind rose unbidden the floor plans she'd secured illegally. There was a room here, right before one descended into the Sanctuary proper. When she opened the door she found her suspicions proved true: the cubbyholes in the walls contained sets of ordinary clothing, forlorn-looking pairs of shoes - and to each cubby, a sword. She went to the one labeled "MacLeod" and removed his ancient katana. What marvelous workmanship.

"Go," she said, and passed her hand over his clothes, sending them with the power of her mind to lay neatly folded on her bedroom dresser. Then she slid his katana into the roomy sheath beside her own sword and steeled herself for what she would find below.

Even being a veteran of several hundred kills, Meggan had to clench her teeth as she carefully descended. The smell of blood and death was rife. Below it in hideous harmony was the dusty acrid smell of voided bowels and bladder. Covering it all was the mantle of years, the tang of unwashed bodies, the timeless scent of decades of dreams.

All of the bodies... below her and nearly indistinguishable from the dead was MacLeod, crouched on his hands and knees. The buzzing in her mind had become a shimmering bell-tone. She had no time to ponder this change for when he heard her step he shot upright with startling speed and bolted for the nearest tunnel.

"Connor, don't!" she shouted and followed after, slipping in the blood and landing on her knees in filth. Cursing broadly Meggan slid, then found traction again and got to her feet, following his bloody footprints. The cave lead to what had been a heavily guarded door. Now it was open, surrounded by bodies.

"Connor!" she called, once into the open air. The trees crowded around, a thick and tangled forest. In the distance she could hear his voice raised in terrified howls. His mind was nearly shattered, she knew. He would not heed reason now.

She felt to her knees on the grass, dug her hands in until she reached thick loam underneath the tangled roots. "Earth in my bones," she chanted.

"Water in my blood
Air in my lungs
Fire in my heart
Come to me now
Speed my feet, make great my strength
I will not falter until I find my quarry
Seek him now--
Yearn unto me, my flesh, as I yearn for you."

The air began a slow throbbing. She got to her feet and jogged into the forest. It was a game of hot and cold now. Whenever the pulse increased she turned towards it... whenever it faltered she stopped and reoriented.

She could feel him, terrified and half-mad, child-like and afraid. Meggan continued stretching out her mind, braiding it with his. In glimpses she could see through his eyes, feel his body as if it were her own. She could feel pervading filth, that deep sense of being unclean, the self-loathing, the anguish. He'd been raped, violated. He had stripped off his stained and dirty jump suit as he ran, had clawed at his naked body with his overgrown nails. Her hands were aching as she was with him… she could feel the hot lines of the cuts across her own skin.

And she knew she was going too deep. Already she had surpassed the profound and loving bond she'd held with Rachel - and even that had been dangerous. Now she was tied to him, knitted into this stranger's bones. She could not have stopped running now, not even if she'd died.

Now the earth began thrumming - he'd found a hollow in the tree roots and gone to ground. Now he could hear it too, could feel her pulse as she drew near, and when she topped a mossy rise in the forest he shot out from beneath her like a startled hind. She was one leap behind, a harmony in the air.

"Leave me alone!" he screamed without stopping, naked as any animal, covered with beard and hair growth of nearly ten years. His hands were scorched lumps of flesh, and Meggan saw he'd been physically sick on himself. Her heart ached.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she protested. "Connor, stop!"

She flung the force of her mind out at him as she ran. It missed him, breaking a small stand of saplings with the concussive force. Meggan inhaled the essence of life they released and was renewed while Connor at last began to tire, his footsteps faltering.

"Connor!" she screamed, and tried one more time. In midleap he was struck down and crumpled to the forest floor. Cautiously she approached.

He was whimpering like a wounded beast when she looked down into his face. "Just leave me alone," he whispered again, his liquid green eyes the only thing human in the tangled mass of greasy hair.

"I'm here to help you."

"I hurt people," he avowed in a broken voice, and began to cry softly, covering his face with his long-nailed, blackened fingers.

"No one's going to hurt tonight," she said firmly. And yet he still fought her magic, his muscles straining against his motionless bones. She knelt beside him, pressed his twisted form into a less painful position. His heartbeat was as fast as a rabbit's.

Meggan picked up one of his hands, examining the huge raw burn there. Later she would think that she should not have made herself so vulnerable... and later still she would decide it was the best she could have done; for at the sight of his horrible wound Connor fought the spell and broke it, drawing his sword from the sheath at her back in a lightning quick move. It was at her throat in the next instant.

She merely stared at him, closer to death than she'd ever been before, and yet she felt no fear. She was released to destiny... what could she do or say if this was finally her time? The ringing in her ears was louder, spiraling into the ether - but it did not tell her what would happen.

She looked at his palm, and he followed her gaze. She could feel his stomach rolling with nausea, his body tighten. Unclean, his mind repeated like a horrible mantra. This had been the site of his rape. This had been where he was broken and entered by Jakob Kell. This was his wound.

She threaded her fingers with his, closed her eyes and let the power rise in her slowly, a beautiful flower of fire. Meggan's flesh warmed. Beneath her palm she could feel the corrupted skin slough away, feel the ridges of exposed muscle and bone become shrouded in new skin. She felt him drop the sword, take her other hand.

Meggan healed him, feeling pleasure at the sensation as she siphoned the power from the earth and channeled it through her secret places. It was hers alone - she did not force it on him - and yet she felt him yearn towards it, questing. Gently she let him into her mind.

He relaxed slowly. Here was the comfort of silent growth, fed by an unemptying fountain. Here was the warm softness of a mother's bosom. Here was the freedom to be without memory, newborn. He could forget it all... just as he had always desired. Connor, she thought. I'm only here to help you. I owe it to Rachel, to the world... and I owe it to myself. The ringing sound died away until it was only a faint, sensual shimmer, a grounding to the sound of his slow, steady breathing. Never had she felt so wrapped up in another. This closeness felt wonderful, yet she was still relieved when she felt him drift away into sleep at last, natural and without drugs.

She opened her eyes to find herself half-straddling protectively over his supine body. His fingers were still knit with her own - she had to gently pry his grip loose, even as he slept. Poor beastie, she thought as she spoke a word and hefted his huge body into her arms, now just light enough for her to carry. He was filthy - the clothes she wore would definitely have to be destroyed, as would any sheets she laid him on. It was a petty and necessary loss.

She started up hill, knowing when she'd finally reached the beginning of her property: the trees were all without leaves even in high summer. Meggan slogged on to the front door that she had left open for just this reason. All this would have to be taken care of tomorrow night, and he would sleep until then. She had business to conduct beforehand, barely had enough time to clean herself up.

Thus it was that Connor MacLeod came home, nearly a decade late.

**********

Duncan MacLeod was walking rather quickly through London, the haunting images still in his head: of darkness and spilled blood, of flashing swords and motionless bodies, powerless to prevent their own deaths. What could this mean? And how could these strange flashes have startled him out of deep meditation? There was only one person he thought would know that he trusted to ask - the ancient and sly-witted Methos, veteran of over five thousand years of life and by far the oldest and most cunning of all the living immortals.

He was so intent on speaking with his friend that he did not hear the payphone's first ring, and almost decided to keep going on the second. Curiosity won, however, and he turned back and picked up the handset.

"Whatever you fear about Connor MacLeod," the cultured female voice said, "fear the worst."

"Who is this?" Duncan demanded.

"A friend. Don't bother trying to find me, Duncan," she said, and hung up. He cast a gaze around him surreptitiously, nonetheless, but saw no one he could recognize about. Still more perplexed and now deeply concerned, he hung up and continued on his away.

The slim brunette hung up her own payphone a few hundred feet away, turned around, and nearly ran full tilt into the graceful young woman standing behind her.

"You know," the girl said, "you've always pissed me off."

Faith staggered back a bit. The woman was blond, and wondrously dressed. Her hair was done in an intricate style, held back in bone hairpicks. Her makeup was perfect, immaculate - and cutting-edge stylish. Her eyes were a flashing, vibrant blue. She wore a black silk kimono with white cranes, open in the front to reveal her tiny white baby t-shirt and tight blue jeans. A pair of black "bitch" boots completed the outfit - an ensemble that was powerfully original, and fitted the girl in every way. Although perplexed, Faith with her relatively new skills could appreciate a mind with this much fashion sense, with this much insight into her own body and mind.

The sun was behind the stranger, dazzling. She seemed to glow and Faith was overwhelmed. This immortal had been right behind her all the time without her knowledge. She wore no sword - a mannerism that seemed inherently stupid - and yet power radiated from her. She was terrifying, ineffable and... glamorous.

"What do you mean?" Faith asked when she found her voice.

"You torture a man for nearly four hundred years straight," the glimmering girl continued in an irritated Scottish voice, "over one mistake. Damn, child, if I couldn't find a more worthwhile hobby, I'd kill myself out of sheer embarrassment."

"Who are you?" Faith demanded, stung.

"A messenger of Fortune," the girl replied. "First, find yourself a new toy, Kate. That 'boy scout' over there is not the demon you think he is. Back in that day your lovely ass would have been lucky to have made it to forty years old, or given birth to more than a few surviving children. You haven't missed all that much - the little ankle-biters."

"The name is 'Faith'."

"Second, don't lie to me. Smarter people than you have tried it. And third, get the hell away from Kell." The stranger took her wrist in a painful grip and pulled her nearer, her eyes deadly serious. "A very wise woman once told me never to trust a man that could use words like 'sheep' and 'flock' when speaking about the ones closest to him. Remember who has the mutton in the end."

Faith just stared.

"It's up to you, Kate. But Jakob Kell is a very sick and very powerful man. You know that as well as I do - and you may live just long enough to wish I'd slapped some sense into you when I had the chance."

Then she was gone, not merely lost in the crowd but vanished completely between one breath and the next. Faith shook off the spell that seemed to cloud her mind and started down the alleys that would take her back to Kell. Who was that bitch to try to interfere with her life? She was confident that she could withstand anything that Jakob Kell could do... and if not, he would just finish something that should have happened to her years and years ago.

Meggan woke up to her own body once more, parked in her Jaguar outside of Methos's palatial estate. She looked down at her jean-clad legs, at her white t-shirt, at her plain, functional, wrist-thick plait of hair. Her, glamorous? Ha! Only in her mind - but that was what mattered, wasn't it? Stepping out of the car and sliding the Ivyblade into its sheath across her back, Meggan let herself past all of the security measures and into Methos's garden.

On To Part Four