Immortal Beloved

by C. E. Murphy

  The third man stepped out. Ghean’s heart gave a violent lurch, pain of the missed beat settling into her gut as she stared, smile fading away. His black hair was cropped short now, but the sharp cheekbones and thin, expressive lips were the same. The guy with the nose, the boy’s words came back to her. In the darkness, his deep-set eyes would be black, not entirely comfortable with the present situation. Ghean pressed up against the wall, steadying her breathing.

  Methos turned to close the door with a solid thud, and leaned against it a moment, rubbing long hands over his face. “Let’s find our hotel and hole up,” the ancient Immortal muttered, loud enough to be heard over the rain. “I’ve had just a little too much fun tonight. I want an expensive bottle of whisky and no more surprises.”

  Duncan clapped him on the shoulder. “And then you’ll tell us the rest of the story,” he prompted. Methos dropped his hands to give Duncan a dirty look.

  Ghean grinned so hard her teeth hurt from pressing them together. One more surprise, she thought gleefully, stepping out of the shadows. “One more surprise,” she repeated, aloud, and flared a grin at the man she was going to kill. “Hello, Methos.”

  Chapter 10

  Methos went utterly still, barely breathing, like a rabbit trying to avoid detection by a soaring eagle. The rain increased from a drizzle to a more enthusiastic downpour, and after several seconds, water beaded and dripped off the end of his nose. Duncan and Joe stood nearly as motionless, transfixed by the small woman who’d appeared in the alley.

  Ghean was even smaller in person than she’d appeared on stage, an easy two inches below five feet in height. Short, sharply bobbed hair was not quite long enough to tuck behind her ears, and damp threads swung forward to stick to her cheeks. Those threads highlighted brown eyes with a slight epicanthic fold and short eyelashes, eyes which were at the moment crinkled with a broad smile. Olive-toned skin appeared warm, even in the rain, the effect emphasized by a dark orange blazer, visible under her trenchcoat. The grin was so wide it looked painful.

  The silence drew out as they all stared at each other. When it appeared Methos would seize up entirely before speaking, Ghean, without losing her grin, asked, “Were we going to stand here in the rain all night, or is there a more pleasant place for this little reunion?”

  Methos flinched as though he’d been struck. Duncan, casting a glance at his friend, struggled with and lost to a grin, not quite as profound as Ghean’s. As he opened his mouth to speak, Methos cut him off.

  “How can you be alive?” It was an accusation. Joe and Duncan looked askance at the oldest Immortal. Some of the humour fled from Ghean’s face.

  “No one’s taken my head yet,” she said flatly, as deliberately obvious an answer as Methos’ question had been. “Really, Methos, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” She stepped forward to offer her hand to Duncan. Methos took two steps backwards. Ghean lifted an eyebrow at him, and spoke to Duncan. “He used to be considerably more polite, I’m almost sure of it. I’m — ”

  “Ghean.” Methos came forward again, scowling down through the rain at the tiny woman. “I saw the t–”

  Ghean cut him off with a quick gesture, tsking. “Don’t spoil the punchline,” she chided. “My guess is you’ve been telling them the whole story since you ran out of the auditorium.”

  “I did not run.”

  “You ran,” Joe and Mac chorused, and Duncan took Ghean’s hand, bowing slightly over it. “Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Do you prefer Dr. Kostani, Mary, Ghean … ?”

  Ghean smiled up at Duncan. “Ghean will do. Unlike my infamous husband here, nobody knows I exist.” She watched Duncan’s face, and nodded slightly. “I thought he’d have gotten that far.”

  “That’s ‘legendary’,” Methos muttered. “Not ‘infamous’.”

  “Ghean, then,” Duncan replied. “And this is Joe Dawson.”

  Joe stuck his hand out to shake Ghean’s. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too, Joe.” She studied the grey-haired man momentarily, and then asked, “I’m guessing we have no secrets here? You don’t know Methos under another name?”

  Joe gave Methos a sour look. “I met him as Adam Pierson, but no, I know his story. We go back a ways.”

  Ghean nodded. “It’s unusual company you keep, Joe Dawson. Do you suppose, now that introductions are over, we might go somewhere dry? Or are you so offended to find me alive that you intend to stay out in the rain all night?” Ghean arched her eyebrows at Methos. “Running the moment you saw me isn’t exactly the most charming way to greet your wife, Methos.”

  “I did not run.” Methos brushed water off his face, scowling. “A hotel? Where are you staying, Ghean?”

  “Actually, I have an apartment on campus. We could go back there, I suppose. It’s only a few blocks.”

  “Do you have any beer?” Methos rubbed water off his nose again.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “That’ll do, then.” Methos hunched his shoulders against the rain and stalked down the alley, kicking puddles. Ghean watched him, not moving until he reached the end of the alley and turned around impatiently, waiting for directions. Then she followed him up to the street, and took the lead.

  The walk to Ghean’s apartment was silent, the silence ranging from hostile and confused to outright curiosity as all four members of the group cast surreptitious looks at one another.

  Ghean was the most outwardly composed. A general amusement seemed to permeate her as she treaded through the rain, grinning frequently at Methos’ bunched shoulders. The sing-song, childlike chant ran through her mind: I know something you don’t know!

  He knows things we don’t know, too, the patient one reminded her. We should be careful around him.

  “I will be,” she murmured under her breath as she examined the man just ahead of her.

  Methos knew his entire body was expressing outraged tension, and didn’t care enough to shake it off. Dead Immortals are not supposed to crop up at seminars! Particularly, he thought grumpily, dead Immortals I’m married to are not supposed to crop up at seminars. Despite the fact that it is painfully obvious that it is not impossible. Only incredibly improbable. He dropped his shoulders in resignation. Rain trickled down the neck of his coat. With a grunt, he hunched up again, forging over the curb and into the middle of the street before catching sight of Duncan turning up the sidewalk Methos had just stepped off. He frowned and altered his course to follow the Highlander.

  Duncan trailed a few steps behind Ghean, keeping pace with Joe. Every block or so the one of them caught the other eyeing the other duo, and exchanged slightly abashed grins. “They’d better tell us the whole story,” Duncan said, under the sound of rain. Joe grinned, ducking his head to suppress laughter.

  “Right here,” Ghean said suddenly, and turned to climb up a short set of stairs, digging keys out of the pocket of her trenchcoat. The locks clicked open, and she herded the men inside to drip on her carpet. “Towels, anyone?”

  “Beer,” Methos said, shedding his coat.

  Ghean pursed her lips at him. “Perhaps it’s just fond memory, but I’m sure I remember you being a little more polite.”

  Methos, shortly, said, “People change.”

  Duncan frowned. “Methos, there’s no need to be rude.”

  Ghean opened a coat closet, reaching up for a hanger. “Why, thank you, Duncan. Do you make a habit of rescuing damsels who may or may not be in distress?” She hung up her coat, then turned to collect Methos’ and Joe’s coats.

  Duncan got his own hanger, smiling. “I’m afraid so. Methos thinks it’s a character flaw, but most of the damsels don’t seem to mind.”

  “I’m sure they don’t. The beer is in the fridge, Methos. Try not to drip too much on my carpets. The living room and kitchen are that way.” She pointed down the hall and jerked her thumb to the left. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.” She disappeared into a second door in the hall, tennie
s squeaking on the hardwood floor. Methos stalked down the hall in search of beer, leaving Duncan and Joe behind. After a moment, running his hand through wet hair, Joe followed, turning the corner into the living room.

  The room was elegantly decorated, primarily in creams. Bookcases, the top shelves no more than five and a half feet from the ground, were stuffed with textbooks of histories and languages. Knickknacks were settled on top of the bookcases: candle-holders of colored glass, a silver-framed photograph from the early twenties, of Ghean, and an accomplished wooden sculpture of the Sphinx. At the far end of one of the bookcases was a scarred white stone, wedge-shaped and out of place with the other graceful objects along the shelving. Halogen lamps bounced light off the ceiling and walls, the warm lighting clashing with the fluorescent light from the kitchen at the entrance end of the room.

  A pale cream rug with splashes of crimson covered most of the floor. Joe started guiltily as water dripped onto the rug, and stepped back the edge, dripping on the hardwood instead. Methos walked by him from the kitchen, carrying four beers by the necks in his long fingers. “College professors must be getting paid better these days than I remember.” Ignoring his squelching shoes, the ancient Immortal crossed the rug to sit on an overstuffed loveseat several shades darker than the rug. Three of the beers wet on a glass-topped oak table. The fourth he kept, twisting it open as Duncan came into the room, having discarded his shoes.

  “You left footprints,” Mac said disapprovingly.

  Methos tilted his beer back, shrugging his eyebrows. “You’re too refined, Mac. Water dries. Have a beer.”

  “You’re always very free with other people’s beer,” Duncan observed, but came in to seat himself on a couch matching the loveseat. “Too refined? Aren’t you the one who was calling me a barbarian a few days ago?” He reached for two of the beers, offering one to Joe as the Watcher came to sit on the couch as well.

  “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” Methos smiled faintly.

  “Isn’t there another one about rudeness being the last resort of the feeble-minded?” Duncan asked. “Why are you being so unpleasant?”

  “That’s sarcasm, not rudeness.”

  “That wasn’t the question I wanted answered, Methos.”

  “It’s in my nature.” Methos leaned forward to set his beer down, frowning at Duncan, who frowned back. “She should be dead,” he said softly. “I don’t like mysteries, MacLeod.”

  Duncan’s eyebrows shot up. “You?” he asked disbelievingly.

  “Not mysteries like this one.” Methos shook his head, picking his beer up again.

  “I can’t believe we have no record of her,” Joe said. “At least we have confirmed records of you, no matter how old the last ones are. I don’t know how somebody could get by for five millennia without the Watchers noticing.”

  “My mother did start the Watchers,” Ghean said, coming around the corner. “Maybe she told me all about them, and how to avoid them.” She was dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt now, and her hair had been rubbed dry. It stood out from her face, slightly fluffy. She tossed towels to each of the men, then stopped in front of Joe, turning the inside of her left wrist towards him. The Watcher tattoo, greatly faded, was barely visible against her olive skin. “Or maybe I infiltrated them, learned how to avoid them myself, and went on my way.”

  As Joe gaped, she went past him to curl up in the single chair left empty, a dark red recliner. “Or maybe someone there has known about me all along, and has kept the records very secret, at my request, because of this.” She pulled a black cord with a silver pendent out from under her shirt, handing it to Duncan and nodding towards Joe. She picked up her beer from the table as she settled back to watch the Watcher.

  Joe gave the pendent a perfunctory glance, looking back at Ghean. Then his gaze returned to the necklace, sharply, and he straightened, staring at the symbol in his hand.

  There could be little doubt that the Watchers’ symbol had been derived from the necklace he held. Where the tattoo Joe shared with Ghean and Methos was rounded and undetailed, the necklace was visibly a ram’s head, the horns’ curve exaggerated to emphasize the features. Etchings, still visible after thousands of years, segmented the horns and drew out eyes and nostrils within the animal’s face. In the encircling silver that surrounded the ram’s head were thirteen studs, unworn by time.

  Joe turned his wrist up to study the differences between the tattoo and necklace. Duncan leaned over to do the same, looking back and forth. Methos, elbows on knees and beer held in both hands, watched the pair of men, almost expressionless.

  “Or maybe,” Ghean concluded after a few moments of silence, “it’s none of those things at all. The necklace was my mother’s.”

  Joe looked up at Ghean, the necklace cradled protectively in his palm. “Why a ram? Do you have your mother’s records? They would be invaluable.”

  “They would be unintelligible. I do have them, but I’m the only one who could translate them. How would you know if I was doing so accurately?”

  Methos turned his head to lift an eyebrow at Ghean. Her lips pursed, and she inclined her head. “I stand corrected,” she acknowledged him. “A ram, Joe, was the symbol of my House. My mother considered the Watchers to be her children, as much as I was. In a way, by wearing that tattoo, you are of the last House of Atlantis. It makes you my brother, by Atlantean law, as it makes family of all the Watchers.”

  Silently, with a quirk of his mouth, Methos slid his arm forward to display his inner left wrist. “Sister-wife,” he said drolly. “A custom I thought the Atlanteans had forgone.”

  Ghean’s eyebrows arched, and she looked at Duncan with amusement. “Well?”

  Duncan grinned. “I’m afraid not. Just an ordinary Immortal. I don’t belong to any other secret societies.”

  Joe, reluctantly, offered the necklace back to Ghean. “I would love to read your mother’s files,” he said wistfully. “I wonder why we don’t have copies of them.”

  “Time, most probably,” Ghean answered. “Truly, Joe, the Watchers have done an astonishing job of maintaining the records. There are gaps, of course, but once I was done with the Methos Chronicles — ” She broke off as Methos straightened uncomfortably. “How else would I have found the necklace, Methos? I read everything the Watchers had on you. I had to learn new languages to do it.” She shook her head, and added, “They’re woefully incomplete, you know. There’s very little about you prior to about thirty-five hundred years ago. Even Mother’s records are sketchy, though you’re the first Immortal she talks about. You began the Watchers, you know. Without you, they wouldn’t exist.”

  Methos looked down at the beer in his hands, nodding. “I know. No more than they’d exist without Minyah. She was a remarkable woman. I’ve met very few people as dedicated to the preservation of history as she was.”

  Ghean smiled briefly, then returned her attention to Joe. “The oldest records I came across seemed to have been written about three thousand years ago, since they were in Greek, but many of them recorded events far older. I found nothing about Atlantis, nor my mother, so I can only believe that I have the only copies of her records, kept in a language no one else could know.”

  Methos shook his head. “You have her only copies in Atlantean,” he agreed. “It wasn’t really until Greece had a written language that there was another written tongue as elegant as Atlantean. She translated virtually all of her work and her students’ work into Greek not long before she died. I helped, some. The originals were in tatters.”

  “Greek,” Ghean said in a soft, dangerous voice, “didn’t come into existence for centuries after Atlantis drowned.”

  Methos shifted his shoulders, looking up to meet Ghean’s eyes. “The Fleece worked,” he said. “Your mother lived a very, very long time.”

  “Fleece?” Joe demanded.

  Methos turned his attention to Joe briefly. “Jason’s fleece. The golden one.”

  Joe snorted. “That’s mytholog
y.”

  “Most myths have some basis in reality. The myth lost the truth of the thing, somewhere along the way. It was one of the artifacts of the Atlantean Houses, like the Methuselah Stone. They worked the same way, rendering the wearer effectively indestructible. Apparently it included the ravages of age in that. It’s a lot of why I thought the Methuselah Stone would work for Alexa.” Methos sighed, setting his beer down and rubbing a hand over his face before looking up at Ghean.

  Her expression had not changed at all, nor had she moved. “How long did she live?” she asked hoarsely.

  Methos shrugged a shoulder. “About two thousand years.”

  Ghean shuddered. Betrayal upon betrayal. For nearly five thousand years I drowned and starved and was reborn, and Minyah survived through the centuries.

  There will be revenge, the patient one promised. Aloud, Ghean managed, “I have only fifty years of records. The Watcher records, none of them were written by my mother. I’d know her style, even in another language. You said you’d helped translate them, though.”

  Methos nodded slightly. “I did.”

  Joe’s eyebrows drew down. “You’re telling me the first Watcher lived two thousand years, and we have none of her records?”

  “Where are they?” Ghean demanded.

  “Safe,” Methos said. “Hidden.”

  Duncan finally spoke again. “You’re a scholar, Methos. Why didn’t you give the Watchers Minyah’s Greek translations?”

  The smile filtered across Methos’ face without touching dark eyes. “There’s far too much information about me in them.”

  Ghean’s face was incredulous. “You kept all that information from the Watchers to protect yourself?”

  Methos nodded, taking a sip of his beer.