Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 16:00:10 -0700 Reply-To: Eternal Ravenette Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Eternal Ravenette Subject: REVENGE AND REBIRTH I - The Dragon's Sword (part 2) BOSTON, MASS, UNITED STATES, SEPTEMBER, 1995 "I like it," Rebecca said. "I like it a _lot_." "If you don't mind me asking," the man beside her said, "where were you painting before?" "A room in the basement of our house on Beacon Hill." "Must've been pretty small." Rebecca nodded. "My husband said I could have the entire basement to myself because..." "Husband?" Rebecca nodded again. "That's too bad, because I was going to ask you out to dinner to seal the deal." Rebecca smiled and said, "I would really love to, Greg, but..." "I know, I know. You're in love. And I probably _should_ have noticed the ring. How long have you been married for?" "We've only been married a few months, but it seems like we've been together forever. We've known eachother most of our lives." "Childhood sweethearts?" "Something like that. Anyway, he said I could take over the entire basement because he was moving out his workout things. He's gone into business with a friend of his. They want to start this Martial Arts training hall. Fortunately we both have rich relatives who left us a bundle each when they died. Ghod knows I'm not gonna make any money regularly selling paintings, though this show I'm doing in November should bring _some_ money in." Greg waited for Rebecca to finish about the basement. When she didn't, he said, "You were saying... about the basement?" Rebecca laughed and said, "That's right. I decided against the basement because I have to get out of the house. She walked over to the window which looked out from the third floor loft and said, "Kenmore Square seems to be the place for us these days." She looked across the street and saw a young Chinese girl with a bandaged hand exit the Dojo. He's hacking mortals up already? she thought. She turned back to Greg and said, "I'll take it. Can I subdivide it if I find I don't need all this space?" "Absolutely. Just make sure I meet whoever you want to bring in. You have my card." He extended his hand and said, "Shake?" They shook. Rebecca loaded up her car with paintings and works-in-progress. She called an alarm company to install an alarm system, and put Patrick to work, since he had sobered considerably. Dieing seems to do that, he had said once, long ago. They were carrying a large canvas to his car. Rebecca was saying, "This girl saw you take Highsmith's head back in January. Did she report it to the police?" "Apparently," Patrick said, carefully placing the crated canvas on top of the others. "Joe managed to get that out of her. She saw some plainchothes cop named Frank D'Gornio." "Why is it that all Italian detectives are named Frank?" Rebecca said. "Weird, isn't it?" Patrick said. "Anyway, Joe and I did some digging after Elaine left the Dojo. This Detective D'Gornio is in his mid 40's, Italian, from an old North End family, and a good cop. But he doesn't take kindly to cranks." "Which means..." "Which means he didn't buy Elaine's story, something that was obvious from the start. But there _was_ one body recently that I didn't... that I _couldn't_ deal with." "Sam." "Yup. Fortunately that was Chelsea. If they even contacted Boston I doubt D'Gornio remembered Elaine's story," they walked back towards the porch and picked up another crated canvas. Patrick continued, "And even if he did, I doubt he gave it more than a second thought. There was no body found on the Common, there was none found in that warehouse where I took James Riley's head back when you first arrived, and there was no body up in Maine." "But if you didn't dispose of Sam's body... why wasn't it in the news?" "It was, actually," they placed the canvas in the car and went back to the porch for the last one. "There was a small blurb in the Globe in the Metro section. 'Headless Body Found Beneath Tobin Bridge,' or something like that. No ID, no matching fingerprints in any database, just a sword. There was a small follow-up as to the fact that they thought it may be the same person responsible for a decapitation in New York earlier in the year, but after that, nothing." "And," Rebecca said as she closed Patrick's door, "no way to connect you." "Right. I was a respectable college professor back then, and a hero besides." "I _still_ can't believe you were stupid enough to try to stop that Brink's robbery." "Hey," Patrick said, wrapping his arms around her waist and drawing her close, "you got off on it. Admit it." "Well... yeah, I did," Rebecca said, kissing him. Three teenaged boys stood in VonHoffer's office. They were dressed in gang colors. One of them was looking at the artifacts that VonHoffer had accumulated over seven and a half centuries. The other watched the door. The third, the oldest, stood in front of VonHoffer's desk. "It's simple, really," VonHoffer said. "I want you to watch a house on Beacon Hill and a dojo in Kenmore Square." "And you'll pay us," the oldest, obviously the gang's leader said. "Of course I'll pay you," VonHoffer said. "There's three targets." He took out three 8x10" black and white photos. "This is Patrick O'Brien." "He thinks he's a tough guy," the gang leader said. "This is his wife, Rebecca." "Lucky guy to be fucking a piece of ass like that." "And this is their ward, Nancy Peters." The leader looked closely at Nancy's picture and said, "Nice. Very nice, like a scared little kitten. I'll get her to purr." VonHoffer slammed his hand on his desk and said, "You will NOT touch any of them." "Not even to rough up Mr Tough Guy?" "Not even that. I hired you because the gangs know the streets better than anyone. I'm not _paying_ you to rough up, beat up, kill, or rape. I'm paying you to watch, to find out who they know and where they go. _I_ will kill you if you do otherwise." "Ok, but how're we supposed to hang out in the Common in our colors, huh? That's just asking for the cops attention." "Easy. Don't wear them." VonHoffer turned towards the gang leader and said, "Tell your friends to leave. You're safe here." Then he turned his chair towards the window. The leader looked at him for a full minute, then nodded towards his companions. They left the office. When he heard them leave, VonHoffer said, "What's your name?" "They call me Stink," he said. "Stink?" "Yeah. When I was a kid, I had real bad BO, and I couldn't aim a gun or throw a knife to save my life. So they called me Stink. It made me wanna get better than all of 'em, you know? So I did, an' I got so good that I killed the leader of our gang, who'd given me the name in the first place, and took his place and his girl." VonHoffer smiled at Stink's reflection in the glass and said, "I like you, Stink. You'll go places. I'm going to give you something far more valuable than the money and drugs that I promised your friends. I'm going to give you power, _real_ power. Power that'll enable you to take your North End gang into South Boston, Roxbury, Jamacia Plain, wherever you want, and _beat_ them all single-handed. You interested in _that_?" "'Course I am," Stink said. VonHoffer turned his chair back towards Stink and pointed a gun with a silencer attached to it at the gang leader. "Oh, man, _wait_! We can talk..." VonHoffer shot three times and Stink sank to the floor. "Thank God for stainmaster carpets," VonHoffer said. "Kurdt..." McKinley said. "_Why_?" "Why do you think, John. Use your brain." "Oh!!" "Yes. Remind me to congratulate Ramus on finding a pre-Immortal among the gangs." Stink came to on the floor, groaning. VonHoffer waited for him to recover. When he stood, he said, "What the _fuck_ did you do that for you son of a bitch!!" "Look at your chest." "Huh?" "_Look_." Stink obeyed. He lifted up his t-shirt and winced as he saw... "There's no wounds. Not even a scar." "Exactly," VonHoffer said. "You cannot die. We have _power_." He stood and pointed out the window at the city below and said, "_Their_ laws don't apply to us. We are on a quest for the ultimate power." "And the tough guy and the two chicks?" "There are some like us who, through delusions of benefiting _them_," he pointed again, "seek to keep from us what is rightfully ours _and_ theirs. They would rather pretend to be one of _them_ than have this power. We must eliminate them." "How? If we can't die..." "You can die only if you're decapitated." Stink gulped. "Relax, I don't intend on taking _your_ head. I _do_ intend on teaching you how to use a sword so _you_ can take heads. You will return to your gang, but you won't tell _anyone_ about this. Not even your girl. You will report here every morning to be taught how to fight with a sword, though you will tell your friends that you are on special assignments for me. Then, when you're ready, you'll go after _her_." He pointed to the picture of Nancy. "Do whatever you will with her, but be sure to take her head and bring it back to me. And make sure that none of the others do anything to any of the targets. I will see you tomorrow." Stink nodded, slightly dazed, and left. "He'll kill her," McKinley said after Stink closed the door. "No he won't." "He's bigger than her and has been killing probably since he was thirteen. He has no problem with it. Nancy Peters had lived a comfortable, suburban life before she became Immortal. He'll kill her and O'Brien will become enraged. Anger has been known to focus him in the past. _You_ of all people should know that. Remember your agent in China." "I _do_ remember my agent in China and don't intent on repeating the same mistake twice. I'll teach Stink just enough to be able to put up a fight, but that's it. Peters has had nearly a year's worth of experience and training, so she'll win easily. No, Stink and his friends are like Ramus and O'Riley. Expendable tools." "And if she doesn't beat him?" "I have plenty of other things planned for our friends to keep O'Brien occupied. Whatever the outcome, Nancy Peters will be out of the picture. You forget that she's taken one head. O'Brien couldn't _possibly_ break the rules further and keep her around after taking a second." "I've had some thoughts about that. O'Brien's taken three heads since taking Peters in. James Thomas Riley in March, Samuel Leonard in April, and Joshua Nabbis in May. Each was in Boston and each was witnessed by Bernard Willis, _except_ for Nabbis. That was in Maine and there were no witnesses except Peters. "That's it, then," VonHoffer said. McKinley nodded and said, "I've also done a little digging, and it seems that Willis and O'Brien are more than merely Watcher and Immortal, and our cardinal rule is that a Watcher and an Immortal can _not_ be friends." "Such as us," VonHoffer said. "Such as us," McKinley said. "That makes them 'no better' than us." "_Proof_, John, I need proof." "You've got it. Tons of it. While Peters was busy with Nabbis, Rebecca O'Brien, then known as DeJeniere, was busy with an Immortal named Seth Rightman." "So?" "So, Rightman's MO was silent stalking, just inside the buzz-zone. Only when ready to confront would he make himself known. Rebecca, however had tracked him to his Cambridge offices long before he was ready to show himself. The _only_ way she could have known was for someone with inside information to have given it to her. "I dug back even further," McKinley continued. "For the last fifteen years, Bernard Willis has been a street musician who's turf is the Common and Beacon Hill. For most of those fifteen years, he and O'Brien have had a casual friendship, O'Brien never suspecting that he was a Watcher. Well, apparently Samuel Leonard, who's head O'Brien took back in April was O'Brien's old Student who had gone insane and began killing the Watchers of friends of his in retaliation for the deaths of Daruis and Mei-Ling Shen. He had kidnapped Willis and tried to kill him. O'Brien rescued him and killed his own Student. Bernard seemingly feels he's in his debt and has been bending the rules ever since. "Good work, John. You've definitely earned your week's salary and then some." "No no... there's even more." "_More_?" McKinley nodded and said, "This is the clincher. This past June during the CDRom scare, O'Brien relocated to Ireland. Almost immediately after the scare ended, he was back in Boston. The only Immortals who were supposed to have known what was happening were Duncan MacLeod, Amanda, and Kalas." VonHoffer was silent, thinking. "Each individual case _could_ be wild co-incidences. O'Brien killed Leonard because he was going to harm a mortal and a friend, however casual. DeJeniere _could_ have seen Seth Rightman and somehow recognized him or followed him to his offices. But the last... there's no _way_ he could have known about the CDRom without inside information." VonHoffer, playing devil's advocate, said, "He could have just wanted to see the old homestead." But McKinley said, "Why then of all times? Why would Connor MacLeod suddenly show up? And why would Ammamoto, who was then an agent of Japanese Intelligence, suddenly call in his leave time and go to Ireland? No, the only _way_ everything fits is if O'Brien and Willis have a relationship similar to ours." "I want you to find out," VonHoffer said, "one way or the other. We've _got_ to have one hundred percent intelligence if we're going to use this against him." "Oh, rest assured I will. It's far past time I paid my old Mentor a visit." <<>> (c) 1995 Mabnesswords comments are, of course, most welcome! Jill Bradley, Ravenette As always, once she'd done what she'd had to, ravenjil@getnet.com Janette never looked back. member: Puppy Pack (Anniversary Song by Lisa Wolters) =========================================================================