Date: Thu, 16 Feb 1995 13:26:48 +0000 Reply-To: MB Overton Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: MB Overton Subject: "Box of Tricks" Part 6 HIGHLANDER "Box of Tricks" by Mark Overton Part 6 The Magician raised her eyebrows. "I hate to feel sidelined, you know," she remarked drily. Richie was staring at Alyson Carling, feeling blindly for something to say; she, for her part, was staring dumbfoundedly at him as if struck dumb, which she probably (and quite understandably) was. "Maybe I'll entertain you then," Marsden snarled angrily, the drink in his system encouraging the flames of his fury. He whirled aside and grabbed a sword off the wall, holding it ready towards the Magician. She remained where she was, undisturbed. Richie woke up suddenly. "No, Malcolm, don't - " "Quiet, Richie." Marsden seemed to have forgotten how much he had drunk, and the injury to his left leg. "You know what I have going with her. Maybe this is the one big chance." "With you like that? No way, man. Look, just - " The small explosion stopped them in mid-conversation and they both looked across the flat. The Magician moved away from the smoking remnants of the vase and smiled lightly. "I'll give you a choice," she said. "Malcolm there, or Richie. One of you can die tonight. Which one volunteers?" "The only one I'm planning on dying is you," Marsden snapped, starting to advance. The Magician sighed. "So melodramatic," she noted, then looked beyond him. "I'd remove the girl if I were you, Richie Ryan. She's not as...safe...as us." Richie gritted his teeth. He hated to leave Marsden alone in the room with the Magician, but the latter was right; Alyson was running a tremendous risk just by being in the room. He took hold of her arm. "Ally, come - " "You're really alive!" she murmured. Richie winced inwardly. This was going to take some explaining. "Come *on*," he insisted, dragging her out of the door and into the hallway as Marsden advanced on the Magician. Richie started to push Alyson towards the stairs, getting ready to go back into the flat. He knew the rules about one-on-one fighting, but he was planning to knock Marsden out somehow and take his place. Richie was not an experienced fighter, but he knew he had a better chance than Marsden. Duncan drove in silence, obviously thinking about something. Renee Delaney watched him from the car's passenger seat, just as obviously waiting impatiently for him to say something. "What's your next move?" she asked eventually, unable to keep quiet. Duncan barely glanced in her direction. "I don't know. I'll think of something. Maybe her connection with this firm, Greensight, has something to do with it all." "Maybe," Delaney nodded. "So you're going to..." "I don't know," Duncan repeated. "Are you holding out on me again, Duncan?" He sighed. "For once in your life, Renee, stop trying to be the good little CIA agent. I know they teach paranoia as a regular thing where you trained, but you don't have to practice it. I don't have anything planned right now." He shot her a sideways glance. "Do you?" "Oh...no." The reply was too studied, too casual. He could also tell by the way Delaney immediately stopped looking at him and concentrated on the road visible through the car windscreen. Duncan slammed his foot on the brakes and the car jerked to a sudden stop, both of them nearly going through the windscreen and then dropping back into the curves of their seats. "Jeez, Macleod, what was that for?" Delaney complained when she'd had a moment to catch her breath. "Did you run over a squirrel or something?" "Nope." Duncan undid his seatbelt and got out of the car, walked round to the passenger side, and opened her door. "You're holding out on me, now. What is it you've been planning?" "Nothing," she said in hopeful pseudo-innocence. Duncan reached across her and undid her seatbelt. With one swift moment, he pulled her out of the car and lifted her off her feet in a fireman's lift, over his shoulder. "Hey!" she protested. "You going to tell me what you're hiding?" "I'm not hiding anything!" Duncan shrugged, starting to grin. He closed the passenger door and walked off the road onto the grassy lawn affair beside it. Delaney thumped his back, hard. "What're you doing?" Duncan stopped moving suddenly. "See this?" "I can't see a thing." "It's a river. And you're going for a midnight swim unless you start being honest with me right now." "Don't you dare!" Duncan let her down, but retained tight hold of her arms. "Let's stop playing games, shall we? You've got something planned, I can see it in the way you're acting. What are you doing?" Delaney looked up at him. "Alright. Though God only knows how you found out." "Just good observation." "Just after that woman left, I went to the bathroom, right? I used the radio in my bag. She's being tailed." Duncan's face could have been set in stone. "Oh." "What? Why 'oh'?" "Because you've just killed whoever you sent to tail the Magician." Delaney blanched. Richie pushed open the door of the flat and started inside. "Jesus!" The epithet came instantly and naturally to his lips, probably with good cause as well. Apart from the fact that half the outside wall had been blown in by the Magician's spectacular entrance, several other explosions had now taken place, serving to completely trash the flat. Marsden, unbelievably, was still standing with his sword ready, but even from the door Richie could see the Englishman's arms were shaking violently and he was swaying on his feet. "Come to see the fun, Richie?" the Magician inquired composedly. Her hair was tangled and her evening dress slightly dusty from all the devastation caused in the flat, but she was acting as unbothered as ever. "Get out, Richie." Marsden's voice was hoarse but understandable. "Malcolm, you're going to lose!" Richie protested. "Let me - " "Everybody stay right where they are!" a male voice ordered. Richie felt a strong hand shove him between the shoulderblades; he stumbled, fell against a counter, then righted himself. A man in a grey trenchcoat, carrying a black pistol, warily watched the three of them. "Agent Paris of the CIA. Nobody move. I'm arresting all three of you." "I thought you weren't supposed to call mortals," the Magician observed, staring at Richie. "Wha - I didn't call him! I've never seen the guy before!" "Oh. My apologies." "Shut up!" Paris snapped. He reached into a pocket of his trenchcoat and took out a cellular phone, clicking it on. "This is Paris. Targets secure, arrests made. Trace this number and send backup." "Would you like me to get rid of him?" the Magician inquired delicately. "No!" Richie said instantly. "I said no talking," Paris snarled. Then he hesitated. "No, talk away. Try a confession or two." He thumbed back the safety catch on his pistol, making a nasty *snik-click* sound. "Yeah, confess what happened to you after you met Mac and Malcolm in Bristol," Richie suggested. The Magician looked blank for a moment, then smiled. "Oh, that. I fell into the River Severn and was washed downstream, deep into the Atlantic Ocean. Nine years later I was brought up by a fishing trawler, looking a complete wreck. Naturally, I recovered." She made a faint moue of disappointment. "Then I had to kill all the ship's crew...such an effort, I assure you." "More murders," Marsden growled heavily. She ignored him. "Then I reached the coast and disappeared. A new identity, a new life...there weren't many computer networks in 1976, it was easy to - " "What are you talking about?" Paris demanded. "Nine years from 1976? You would have been kids in 1967!" The Magician sighed. "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to do something about him." She flicked her left arm in Paris' direction, at the same time touching the base of her index finger with her thumb. A ring on her middle finger glowed and shot a pencil-thin beam of light directly towards the CIA agent, the tiny laser burning at his retina. With a cry, Paris clawed at his eyes, dropping the gun. The Magician moved a hand to her bracelet, picked out a tablet from where it seemed to have been embedded in the metal, and tossed it onto Paris. With a whoosh, the agent caught fire. Screaming in agony, Paris staggered forwards, his hair beginning to shrivel as his clothes melted themselves onto his skin. Unable to see, he crashed forwards over the rubble towards the balcony and pitched over the edge. His screams continued all the way down until he reached the bottom of the fire escapes. There was a stunned silence in the flat. The Magician smiled. Spinning round, she yanked Marsden's sword from his half-numbed hands. "There can be only one," she said, and spun in a full circle, the sword outstretched. "No!" Richie shouted as the *thunk* of a head hitting the floor echoed in the silent flat. Marsden's body began to glow with energy. A crackle of fire suddenly spat up and enveloped the Magician in a halo; she shivered convulsively, and a smile spread across her face. Richie's eyes widened in sudden panic, and he started for the door. A tendril of energy drifted almost lazily across the room and suddenly he was flying through the door, hitting the opposite wall with enough force to knock him unconscious. The full force of the Quickening roared up in the flat as Marsden's body lost its shape under the incandescent light as swirls of power wreathed themselves around the Magician, her hair streaming in the hurricane that seemed to have sprang out of nowhere, voices of nothingness echoing around her as the energy flared and soared around her body. Wine glasses on a table exploded as one and a bunch of flowers in a vase took off as the vase disintegrated into a million pottery fragments. Night lost its darkness, became day, the glow from the dead immortal and the fire wrapping around the live one blending to form a blinding intolerable sun, the roaring sound deafening and the wind almost taking her off her feet. The Magician was just barely visible amidst the tendrils of force curling around her body - - and then it stopped. The light faded, the sound quietened, and the wind dropped. There was just a headless body on the rubble of the wall, and the sound of the Magician's exhausted breathing. A smile slowly spread across her face; a tired smile, but an exultant one, one that was full of new life and new energy. She felt regenerated. The sound of a car engine outside brought her out of her reverie and she crossed to the window. Duncan Macleod again, with the woman he had been dating. They had stopped near the body of the CIA agent, Paris. Both ran inside via the main entrance. The Magician calmly began to descend from the fire escape, adjusting her dress where it had become disturbed in the battle and subsequent Quickening. The sun would be rising soon, she mused. =========================================================================