Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 15:11:46 +0100 Reply-To: MB Overton Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: MB Overton Subject: "Atlantic Games" Part 6 (of 8) "Atlantic Games" Part 6 by Mark Overton 20th July 1976 22:12 Consciousness slowly returned to Mandy Dallas in the same uncertain but remorseless way a bubble can be seen approaching the surface of water. She kept her eyes closed for a moment, not sure what was happening, and concentrated only on her other senses. The background hum of the trawler's engines echoed loudly in her ears. She could smell nothing. She couldn't feel anything unusual other than her clothes damp against her body, as if she'd been sweating. She could taste blood. Dallas opened her eyes warily. The first thing she saw was the dead woman, her dark hair tied back in a neat ponytail, wearing some of Dallas' spare clothing and watching her with equanimity. She had found a sharp knife from somewhere and was handling that carefully but expertly. "You let me live." Dallas licked her dry lips, tasting blood there as well. Memory suddenly returned in a rush and she looked down sharply. Where her blouse had been pulled aside, where she could have sworn she had been shot, there was a faint red mark and encrusted blood around it. Like a wound that had healed long ago. "A mystery, isn't it?" the Magician said, with a superior look on her face. Dallas reached round to her back. She could feel a bullet hole in the clothing, but her skin was untouched, though a little sore. She looked up at the Magician. "What did you do?" "I didn't do anything," the Magician shrugged. "Your own body did. Like me, you're an immortal." "An immortal?" Dallas said sceptically. "Live forever? Never die?" "That's what the word means," the Magician said sarcastically. "As you see." She indicated herself, reminding Dallas of the back-from- the-sea trick. "The moment I shot you, you died for the first time. Your immortality came into operation right away, began to repair the wound." Dallas levered herself up into a sitting position and the Magician waved the knife. "Careful. I've hidden the guns, but if I were you I wouldn't try too much just yet." "Immortal," Dallas murmured. "But how - " "How come you're one and the others weren't?" The Magician shrugged. "Luck of the draw." Dallas focussed on her. "How old are you, then? If you're immortal - " "Nine hundred and five," the Magician said matter-of-factly. She grimaced. "And I spent my nine hundredth birthday dead on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The twentieth century isn't shaping up to be my favourite this far, you know." Alexander Myles came back to consciousness with a painful snapping sensation as a wave broke over his head and filled his mouth with icy salt water. Spitting it out, Myles trod water and looked around dazedly, only half-conscious. Something bumped against him and he turned, to see the dead eyes of Victoria Waterfield staring at him accusedly. Myles yelped in shock and pushed the corpse away. It floated gently away, until the mouth filled with water and the body began to sink. Now his eyes had adjusted to the night, Myles could see the Blue Ribbon about half a mile away, moving slowly but surely on a course his instincts told him was away from England, probably towards America. Myles guessed that he and the other dead bodies must have been thrown overboard by the woman, who had presumed he was dead. He thanked the stars for his lucky escape, then hesitated. He was in the middle of the Atlantic. Alone. Death from exposure would come soon. "Why did you kill all the others?" Dallas sat against the wall of the walkway and looked away from where a dark red bloodstain marred the deckplates. Victoria or Myles, presumably. "Because they'd seen too much," the Magician answered. "A dead woman comes back to life after being dredged up from the Atlantic Ocean?" Her expression was one of regret. "Normally I don't like killing without a reason, but that had to be done." "You could have just asked them!" "Could I have depended on them?" the Magician shot back. "One of the things you have to learn is that none of us can ever - ever - reveal our existence to the mortal population. What would happen then? Think of the number of psychotics who would go around decapitating people. We need to keep ourselves secret." "And how many people have been killed in the name of secrecy?" Dallas asked dully. "As many as necessary," the Magician said casually. 23rd July 1976 15:30 "For the last time, leave me alone," Connor growled coldly. Myles, who had been following him about three steps behind, stopped as Connor abruptly swung round. The latter's face was set in a mask of grim determination, and there was something in his eyes that made Myles shiver. "I can't," he said simply. "You know something about this woman." He checked himself. "No, I know what it is. You're planning to do something about her, aren't you? To stop her?" "Something like that," Connor agreed reluctantly. "Look, captain, this is out of your league. Go back to your cabin, wait for the voyage to finish, and then go home. Forget what happened to your ship. Otherwise it might come back to haunt you." He paused for effect. "Literally." Myles bit his lip as Connor strode off, uncertainty showing on his face. Connor stepped into the nearest lift and punched the key for the lower residential deck, where his cabin - and sword - was. In the same tradition as the Magician, he had been down to the car decks and checked out the area, making sure everything was set up for the fight he planned to arrange that evening. Now he needed to check the sharpness of the katana and maybe even practice a little, though the cabin was a bit too small to swing the sword. The lift doors opened and Connor stepped out into a maroon-carpeted hallway, softly glowing lights at regular intervals on the pastel- coloured walls. He strode down the hallway until he reached his cabin, put a hand on the door-handle, then hesitated. A chill ran through him. Connor turned slowly, knowing who he would see. Leaning against one wall, the Magician smiled at him in welcome. "Hello, Connor." She looked no different from when he had last seen her, in wartorn Paris, other than that her hair was now dark and pulled back in a long ponytail. She was wearing a light-coloured sleeveless summer dress and a sun hat, the picture of an ordinary passenger. "Hi," Connor said warily. "This is a surprise." "Isn't it though?" The Magician didn't move from her position, but she shifted slightly to be more comfortable. "Here I am, walking down this corridor, and what should happen but I feel a buzz and it turns out to be you. I take it that's your cabin?" "It might be," Connor agreed. "You'll attract attention, won't you? An obviously well-off man using one of the smaller lower-class cabins. Looks like someone didn't teach you much about concealing your tracks." The Magician tutted and shook her head in mock disapproval. "You've been attracting a fair bit of attention yourself," Connor needled. "Oh, the trawler." The Magician inspected her fingernails modestly. "Well, I couldn't leave them alive. There'd be too much chatter. And blowing the ship up was the best way to stop any more investigation. I took the trawler radio and fixed a detonating signal through to a small spark generator I found that I put in the fuel bay. Boom." "Very inventive," Connor growled. "I thought so," she smiled. "Aren't you going to invite me in?" "Surprisingly, no," Connor said. "I was going to look for you soon anyway." "Me?" She affected surprise. "Why?" "To challenge you. The car decks, half past six. Preferably with a sword in your hand rather than any of your circus tricks." The Magician considered this. "You'll die, you know," she said with a smile. "Maybe. Maybe this time it'll be you." She shrugged. "Maybe." A light smile appeared on her face and she walked past him, calling the lift. "I'll see you at half six then, Connor dearest." Connor waited until she had stepped into the lift before opening his cabin door and going inside. Despite what the Magician had believed, the cabin was big enough for his needs and cheaper that way. Connor was just about to reach for his sword case when he paused and looked in the direction of the tiny bathroom; he could hear water running, as if someone was using his shower. He started towards it just as Flint appeared in the doorway. Connor relaxed with a sigh. "What are you doing?" "Preserving someone's modesty," Flint said. "This cruise liner's getting a bit crowded." "Crowded?" "You, me, the Magician, and now a young woman by the name of Mandy Dallas." Flint recounted to Connor how he had found her, and Dallas' story of being killed for the first time by the Magician. "Seems the Magician warned her about blowing up the trawler, so they both escaped," Flint concluded. He moved past Connor to the drinks table and poured himself an orange juice. "She's not exactly feeling comfortable right now." "Yeah." Connor sat down on the bed, then looked up. "How did you get in here, anyway?" "The Magician's not the only one good with a lockpick, and they don't make these cabins too secure in case of fire anyway," Flint shrugged. He looked up suddenly as a door thudded and Connor turned round in time to see a red-haired slightly weatherbeaten woman of thirty-four (he allowed himself a mental grin at Flint describing her as "young") wrapped in a towel appear in the bathroom door. She looked at him uncertainly. "This is Connor Macleod," Flint introduced them. "Connor, meet Mandy Dallas." "Hi." Her voice contained just the faintest trace of an Irish accent. "Flint's told me a bit about you." "Has he?" Connor looked sideways at Flint. "Only the bad bits," the older immortal shrugged. It was one of the most incongruous things about immortality; Dallas looked a couple of years older than Connor, who seemed to be at least a decade ahead of Flint, yet in reality their ages were reversed. Dallas was the youngest, then Connor, and finally the millenia-old Flint. "Only the bad bits," Connor repeated absently. He looked back to Dallas, who had seated herself on the edge of the bed. "So you're from the trawler?" She nodded silently. "Good. I need to know everything you can tell me about the Magician." Her expression darkened. "Why?" "Because in - " Connor checked his watch " - two and a half hours I have a rendezvous with her." "You spoke to her?" Flint asked. Connor nodded. "Car decks. A challenge." "To the death?" Dallas asked, nodding towards Connor's sword case. "To the death," he confirmed. Sitting in the bar, an untouched whisky in front of her, the Magician considered her situation. She was fairly certain that Dallas had got aboard the cruise liner before it had left the region of the Blue Ribbon's sinking, and with Connor Macleod as well that meant at least two immortals ranged against her. Possibly others, if Connor had not been travelling alone. Tricks or no tricks, she didn't like the odds of fighting against them in the limited space that the cruise liner offered. Besides, she felt she deserved a rest after the past three days. "Hi there." The man leaned on the bar beside her and the Magician looked round. He was in his late twenties, with a narrow face and weak chin, wearing a black polo neck sweater under a grey jacket and flared trousers. She decided she definitely didn't like the fashions of the 1970s. Maybe it was worth going back into the Atlantic for four years just to wait until the eighties and see if things changed. "Hello," she said shortly. "Buy you another drink?" "I've already got one." "That's why I said another. Just to demonstrate I'm kind-hearted. How about it?" She rested her chin on one hand. "Is it a purely altruistic action or are you asking for something in return?" "Just company," the man grinned. He held out his hand. "Ralph Summers." She shook the hand and picked a name she hadn't used for a couple of centuries. "Elizabeth Shore." "So where you from, Elizabeth?" "Originally Shropshire, in England," she said truthfully. "I travel around a lot, though. Yourself?" "Ah, I'm a London man." Their drinks arrived and Summers passed her the second whisky. The Magician picked both glasses up, poured one into the other, and then drank both. Summers whistled. "I'm impressed." "I'm glad to hear it." She put the glass back on the bar. "Another?" "Thank you, no." "Suit yourself." Summers looked round the bar with a grimace. "It's a bit noisy here, ain't it?" The Magician saw him coming a mile off. "Yes, it is," she agreed. "So you're about to ask why we don't go somewhere more private?" "Couldn't have put it better myself," Summers chuckled. "You're sharp, you know that?" "Thank you," she said, and stood up. "So where would you suggest?" "My place?" "Why not?" she smiled. As she followed Summers out of the bar, she began to work out in her head how she would kill him. ..to be continued.. =========================================================================