Date:         Fri, 16 Feb 1996 22:38:08 -0500
Reply-To:     Sandra1012@AOL.COM
Sender:       Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From:         Sandra McDonald <Sandra1012@AOL.COM>
Subject:      "The 11 O'Clock Head Snatching Cult" 2/2

*****

Awareness trickled back with the smash of a hammer, over and
over, inside the front of Richie's skull.  Each smash, in synch with the
surge of his blood through his Immortal heart, brought flashes of
searing white light against darkness.  The light show eventually
faded, leaving him with the smash, the darkness, a leaden pain in
his neck, and the curious inability to move his arms and legs.

He tried the last part over and over until his limbs finally
responded.  The clank of metal around his wrists and ankles told
him something, but he wasn't sure what.

"Richie?" Randi's voice asked.  Her frightened, angry voice.
"Richie, can you hear me?"

"Mmm," he managed.  He realized his very vulnerable neck hurt
because his head, pitched forward against his chest, was pulling at
all of his muscles.  He lifted his head with a monumental effort.
The darkness remained, whole and complete, and he decided he
was sitting in a chair.  His shoulders ached because his arms were
twisted and handcuffed behind his back; his thighs, knees and shins
hurt because his ankles had been similarly shackled separately to
the rear legs of the chair.

Now that he could focus, he realized a great deal of his body was
in a bad mood, and the awful smash of his headache was just one
note in an orchestra of pain.

"How long?" he asked, the words slurred in his own ears.

"What?"

"How long?" he forced out.  He tried rolling his head side to side,
but the darkness threatened to pull out from under him.

"About two hours."

"I've been out two hours?" he asked.  That was curious.  The rate at
which his body revived varied considerably given different
wounds, severity, and whether he was rested or not at the time of
injury.  Two hours for an electrical shock seemed excessive, unless
he'd died.

"You woke up once before," she said, and she sounded as if she
were struggling to keep her voice steady.  "In the van on the way
here.  He hit you on the back of the head with a wrench when you
tried to disarm him."

He didn't remember it, but didn't doubt the possibility.  Feeling
stronger by the minute, he began testing the handcuffs and chair
beneath him.  "Tell me everything," he ordered.

She sniffed and cleared her throat.  "The door must have been
rigged.  It threw you against the wall and knocked you
unconscious.  Condella forced me at gunpoint to help me dump
you into a television carton.  Then we went down to his van, and
he made me take the wheel.  You were still out cold.  I started
driving.  Maybe fifteen minutes later you woke up and tried to take
him, but he got the better of you."

"Or the worse," Richie grumbled.  The blindfold against his eyes
itched, and he tried unsuccessfully to rub it off against his
shoulder.  "Go on."

"When we got here, he took us downstairs.  I haven't seen him
since."

The last vestiges of his headache disappeared, along with the pain
in his neck.  The strain in his arms and legs remained, though, and
Richie tried to relax his arms.  "Describe where we are."

"It's a ranch house in Everett, not far from the Holiday Inn.  Set
back in the trees.  I don't think anyone saw him drag you in.   We're
in the finished basement.  It's about twenty feet by forty feet,
paneled, linoleum floor, lowered ceiling.  You're handcuffed to a
chair in the middle of the room.  I'm about twenty feet behind you,
on the floor, handcuffed to a metal link set in the wall stud."

She was, after all, a reporter.  Good with details.  Richie tried to
picture the room in his head.  "Where are the stairs?" he asked.

"Twenty feet ahead of you, to the left, there are two doors.  One is
to the stairs.  I don't know what the other one is to."  She stopped,
and he could almost hear the wheels turning in her head.  "Richie,
he hit you really hard.  How do you feel?"

"Like he hit me really hard," Richie said.  "The question is, Randi,
did you help him?

Silence. Then, indignantly, "You think I helped him?"

"I think there's a possibility," he said into the blackness.

"Richie Ryan, you're worse than anyone I know.  Do you trust
anybody?"

He trusted MacLeod.  He mostly trusted Joe Dawson.  He
definitely distrusted Amanda, no matter how much he liked her.
And he was on the fence when it came to Randi McFarland,
although he didn't say that now.

"I learned a long time ago not to trust people," he said to her.  "And
you fall into that general category until proven otherwise.  For all I
know, this was one big setup.  You and this guy think I know
something about your so-called satanic cult, and your friend
intends to beat or torture the truth out of me."

That was just one scenario.  He'd considered others while listening
to her describe the room.  He could have been kidnapped as bait for
MacLeod.  That had happened before.  He could have fallen prey
to an Immortal using Condella as a mortal henchman.  He could
have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and could have
avoided the whole mess if he'd just seen Randi off at the dojo with
a cheery wave.

"Richie, I swear I had nothing to do with this.  I would never have
gotten you involved if I thought it would end up like this.  I saw
where we are.  I could find it again.  He's going to have to kill me,
and probably you - "

She stopped at the sound of pounding footsteps.  A door swung
open.  "Stephen," Randi said loudly, "this is ridiculous.  You just
can't kidnap people and keep them in your basement!  Stop it
before it goes too far."

Stephen Condella, if it was indeed him, said nothing.  Richie kept
his body tense, although he strained his hearing and Immortal
senses.  Condella's footsteps came closer, and Richie had the
unnerving feeling he was being stared at.

"He's got nothing to do with this," Randi said desperately.  If she
were acting - and the voters were still out on that - she was doing a
good job."

"Then why was he carrying this sword?" Condella asked, his voice
calm and gentle, precise diction, a definitely educated man.

The razor-sharp edge of his own sword slid up against Richie's
neck.  His heart jumped into staccato rhythm in his chest as he
contemplated the idea of being beheaded like this, helpless,
handcuffed, at the hands of a mortal.

"Richie?" Randi asked.

"Why do you think?" Richie put out, stalling for time.  He had to
know if this man knew the truth, or only the half-baked blend of
wild exagerrations he wrote about.  It might be important, and it
would delay his own death.

"I think," Condella said patiently, "you're part of the cult.  You're
one of the Gatherers."

"People who cut off each other's heads?  That cult?"

"Yes."

"I'm not."  He paused for dramatic effect.  "But I know about it."

The sword edge shifted gradually as Condella circled around him.
Richie imagined he could feel the man's hot breath on his neck.
"What do you know?" he asked.

"If I tell you," Richie said carefully, "they'll come after you for
knowing their secrets."

"They're already after me," Condella announced, with firm
conviction.  "I've been running from them for years.  One city to
the other, always on the trail, always chasing the truth, always
being hunted because I know too much."

"Do you know any of their names?"  Richie asked.  "Maybe it's not
the same group of people."

Condella's tone turned bleak and bitter.  "They bugged my phones
and read my mail.  Every job I get, they make sure I get fired.
Every apartment or house I move into, they stake out.  They tell
my neighbors I'm a threat.  They frame me with the police, for
murders I don't commit."

The mention of murder set off alarms in Richie's head, but he kept
his voice steady. "I was framed once, too.  Why don't we sit down,
man to man, and compare notes?"

Fingers entwined in his hair and yanked his head backwards.
"Because you're one of them," Condella hissed.  "You have the
sword.  You have no bump on your head where I hit you.  You're
part of the conspiracy to win the Prize."

Richie thought of Mac.  Thought of Tessa, and Laura Daniels, and
Elizabeth Ryan, the only mother his childhood remembered.  <I'm
coming, ladies,> he thought frantically, and then heard Randi's
voice cut through the air in synch with the sword arcing towards
his throat.

"The eleven o'clock news!" she suddenly shouted.  "Stephen,
tonight's the night!  I can get you on the eleven o'clock news!"

Richie couldn't tell where the sword was, but he clearly imagined it
an inch from his neck.

"But if you kill him," she went on, strong and sure, "I won't have
any footage.  You have to make sure I get footage.  Then we can
get you national, worldwide coverage.  They won't be able to hurt
you anymore."

The sword whistled through the air as it fell.  Richie waited for the
sensation of his head rolling away from the rest of his body but it
didn't come.

"I need to call my editor," Randi was saying.  "But we have to
move quick.  It's nearly four.  I'll get the crew out here, we'll write
up the copy, get the footage, and get it all edited together."

Condella, his voice renewed with hope, said, "Maybe a live
remote."

"That's a good idea," Randi agreed.  "But we have to move now,
Stephen.  Leave him be down here until the cameras get here."

Richie listened to Condella free Randi.  Their footsteps moved past
him, across the room.
Then Condella turned back, and Richie braced himself too late.

Something struck him savagely hard across the temple, sending
him reeling back into senselessness that seemed to stretch as far
and wide as forever.

****

When he woke again, the cacophony in his skull was back.  It took
Richie several minutes to convince himself that he hadn't dreamed
the last interlude with Randi and Condella.  He was getting tired of
being handcuffed to the chair, and very angry at being repeatedly
hit over the head as if he were the punching bag he'd battered that
very morning.

Thinking of the punching bag and the dojo, he wondered when
MacLeod would start to worry about his absence.  A couple of
days, maybe.  Richie had the sneaking suspicion he didn't want to
spend that amount of time as Condella's guest.  He'd long ago
passed the point where he needed Mac to pull himself out of every
disastrous situation, but a little help on this one would not be
turned away.

Randi was good.  She'd saved his life.  Or so it seemed.  If she
were just playing a role, she'd earned herself an Oscar by now.
Richie wasn't yet up to giving her his full trust, but at least he still
had his head on his shoulders.

He rocked back and forth until he could slam backwards.  The
chair came apart, as did the bones in his shoulders and arms.  He
forced himself through a red barrier of agony to slip his cuffed
wrists and ankles free of the wood.   Dizzy, fighting faintness, he
hauled himself to his feet and staggered down the length of the
room.

Randi's description had been extremely accurate.  One door, edged
open a fraction of an inch, revealed stairs.  He closed it with his
hands still behind his back.  The second door, the one he was more
interested in, revealed the unfinished basement, with an oil tank,
furnace, workbench, stacks of junk, and a window set high in the
cement wall.

He closed the door and maneuvered an old rusty bicycle in front of
it.  His shoulders and his arms felt better.  Awkwardly, cursing his
own lack of flexibility, he got to the floor and stretched his wrists
around his ankles.  Then he stacked metal milk crates to the
window, climbed up, found it sealed with paint and caulking.  He
found a chisel in a tool box on the nearby work bench and began
quietly chipping at it.

Footsteps.  A shout.  A bang at the door.  Richie spared a moment
to move a dresser in front of the bicycle, fortifying his defense,
then abandoned the need for stealth and send one of the metal milk
crates crashing through the window.

"I'll kill her!" Condella shouted.  "Come out of there!"

Richie hauled himself up, slicing his hands open on shards of
glass.  He was betting that Condella wouldn't sever his one good
chance at the news, and still wasn't sure if they were in this
together anyway.

Randi screamed in the outside room.  Her scream sounded real
enough for him to hesitate.  He didn't like her, but he didn't want to
see her hurt or killed, either.

Condella rammed his way through the door.

Richie saw that he'd never squeeze out the window in time.  He
dropped to the floor and grabbed a three-foot long section of pipe.
Condella bullied his way around the dresser, Richie's sword in his
hand.  Randi half-sagged to the floor behind him.

"You think you can handle that?" Richie taunted him.  The blood
on his hands made it difficult to grasp the pipe firmly.  "You think
you're part of the cult?"

"You'll never get out of here alive," Condella said.  He was a tall
man, nearly fifty, stocky.  He had an intelligent look about him, as
if he might have been one of Richie's professors.  He didn't appear
insane, but the way he wielded the sword spoke of a firm desire to
lop off Richie's head.

Randi raced up the stairs.  Condella turned, as if to chase her, but
Richie taunted, "Come on, I'm the one you want.  She's just the
reporter.  You suckered her in with this fantasy of yours, but we
know it's not true.  Don't we, Stephen?"

Condella lunged at him.  Richie parried easily, only slightly
hampered by his handcuffed wrists.  He decided he was going to
get even more angry if Condella broke his blade, and shifted
strategy accordingly.

"You lost your jobs because your co-workers found out you were
psycho," he said, backing away, luring Condella in a turn around
the room, past junk, past the window.  "Your friends decided they
couldn't stand hearing your nonsense any more.  You probably had
a wife and kid who split because your half-assed writing didn't
even earn enough to feed the dog every week."

They dueled Into the finished section of the basement.  Condella
thrusted  ineffectively, his face sheening with sweat.  He might have
considered himself mentally proficient, but physically he was as
run down and out of shape as many men his age.  Richie was
breathing easy, feeling strong, confident he could beat the guy, but
worried about what to do with him when he did.  Kill him?  For
kidnapping, assault, and being convinced of his own delusions?

"There's no such thing as a head-snatching cult," Richie told him.
"Tell me you'll get some help, and we can stop this now."

"You're one of them," Condella growled.  "You're the one who
needs help."

"There's no great conspiracy, do you hear me?" Richie said.
"Whoever told you about the Gathering, the Prize, immortal people
- that person was just playing with you."

"Felicia wouldn't lie," Condella said.

"Felicia?" Richie asked.  Later, when he and MacLeod put it
together, they would come to the conclusion that it really had been
Richie's old nemesis Felicia Martins who'd toyed with this mortal,
driving him to madness with her games and deceptions as she used
him to kill one of his Immortal colleagues in a Midwestern
research lab.  But now, in surprise, he stumbled backwards on the
broken remains of the chair.  Condella drove the sword into his
diaphragm and through his body.  Barely pausing, the man yanked
the sword free and then swung down to lop off Richie's head.

Richie had lost the pipe, but his desperate fingers fixed around one
of the chair legs.  He felt as if a an all-consuming fire was
spreading through his center, bringing the too familiar taste of
death to his throat.  But in the few seconds he had left he blocked
Condella's blow, kicked out his feet from beneath him, and then
connected the wooden leg to the side of Condella's skull.

Richie slumped sideways, fire turning into ice, sickened by the
sound of Condella's mortal skull as it folded beneath his blow.  He
looked down at the floor and saw his own blood pooling on the
clean white linoleum.

Before he died, he wondered where Randi had gone.

*****

Richie came back to life with an adrenaline kick that brought him
bolting upright.  Firm hands grasped his shoulders.  "Easy," said a
familiar voice.  "You're all right."

"Mac?"  Richie squinted against the harsh light behind Duncan
MacLeod's head.  He resolved it into the overhead fluorescent bar
of Stephen Condella's basement.  One glance at Condella's body,
crumpled and lifeless on the floor, brought back a torrent of
memories.

"Oh," he managed in a small voice, and tried to lay back down
again.  MacLeod, kneeling beside him, wouldn't let him.

"Stay with me," MacLeod ordered firmly.  "We've got too much
work to do.":

"Then why don't you get these off me?" Richie asked, holding up
his handcuffed wrists, shaking the ones that still hung from his
ankles.

"I would," MacLeod said, with a hint of mischief in his voice, "but
it'll look better for the police report."

"Police?"

"Yes. Randi's upstairs, waiting for them.  We've got to get your
story straight."

Richie blinked in confusion.  "Randi called the police?"

MacLeod patted his hands reassuringly.  "I told her to, right after I
got here and found out what had happened."

"I don't get it."

"She called me a short time ago, telling me to get the cameras and
roll out to this address for a news story.  I had no idea what she
was talking about, but figured she was in trouble.  When I got here
you were both dead."

"Shit," Richie muttered.  "She knows everything, then."

MacLeod nodded, his eyes dark and unreadable.  "Yes."

"She'll tell the world."

"And be called a lunatic?" Randi's voice asked.  Richie focused on
her bleakly.  She stood at the foot of the stairs, her arms folded
across her chest.  She seemed pale and shaken, but in control of
herself.  "I don't relish the thought."

She came to them, her eyes darting between Richie, MacLeod and
the body.  "I already knew you were one of them, Richie.  One of .
. . the Immortals?  And it wasn't really hard to guess about
MacLeod, given his history around here."

"You didn't know," Richie protested.  "You couldn't have."

She gave him a skeptical look.  "Never forget I'm really good at
what I do.  There was one newspaper article in that folder I showed
you that I kept to myself.  I dug it up a few days ago."

Randi withdrew a folded copy of a newspaper article written in
French.  Richie didn't need to see more than the headline to realize
how sunk he actually was.

"And even if I didn't have this report of your death in Paris," she
said, tucking the paper back into her skirt pocket, "seeing you
recover after Condella bashed your skull in not once but twice was
pretty good substantiation."

Richie hung his head.  "Sorry, Mac.  I guess we're out of here."

"Where do you think you could go that the press wouldn't follow
you?" Randi asked calmly.

"If you're trying to get us to kill you," MacLeod warned, "it won't
work, Randi.  We're not like that.  Tell all, if you want.  It won't
change anything.  It won't be the first time, either.  But we'll
survive."

Randi nodded ever so slightly.  "It's kind of like your job, isn't it?"

Richie asked, "Just tell me one thing, okay?  Were you in on it
together?"

"No," she said, simply and clearly.  "Everything I told you was
true.  Everything I did was true."

The police arrived upstairs.  Randi turned to go and meet them.
MacLeod said, "Randi?" and she stopped at the bottom of the stairs
to appraise them both impassively.

"Trust me," she said.

Richie closed his eyes.  He felt MacLeod's strong hand squeeze his
shoulder, and looked up into his mentor's gaze.

"Do we?' Richie asked.

"Do we have a choice?" MacLeod returned, but worry didn't leave
his face.

*****

Richie hesitated when he reached for the knob.  Randi must have
seen him through the peephole, because she opened the door for
him.   The city, edging past dusk, was coming alive with golden
light in the vista from her living room windows. She had set a table
for two with candles and china, and was dressed in a short, shapely
black dress.

"Sorry I'm late," he said sheepishly.  "I wasn't sure if I really
wanted to come."

Randi studied him seriously.  "I wasn't sure I wanted you to."

"Then we're kind of equal," he said, and handed her a bouquet of
yellow and pink carnations that he'd hidden behind his back.

She smiled, led him inside, went in search of a vase.  "Kind of
equal?" she teased. "I'm 26, you're 20, I'll live to be maybe eighty,
you'll live forever."

"Not necessarily," he said.  "Not if someone takes my head.  I don't
think I thanked you for what you did."

She came back with the flowers in a vase and put them on a table.
The smile was gone, and in its place something contemplative and
sad.  "I got you into it, I got you out of it.  As much as I could.  Do
you . . . do you ever dream about the people you've killed?"

Richie shifted uncomfortably.   "I haven't killed that many," he
said.  "And yes, I do.  When I'm sleeping and sometimes when I'm
awake.  It's not a pleasant thing."

Randi went into the bedroom and came back with his sword.  "The
police released it today.  I had pull with a detective, told him I
wanted it as a souvenir.  Since Condella didn't have any relatives . .
. well, anyway.  It's yours.  MacLeod told me he gave it to you."

Richie took the sword gratefully.  "Thank you."

She shrugged.  "I know you only came over because I told you I'd
give it to you.  You don't have to stay for dinner if you don't want
to."

"I want to, " he insisted.

"Does it make you uncomfortable, knowing I know?  Thinking I
might tell?"

"You tell, I leave town.  Or something.  I hope you don't, Randi,
but it's your job, isn't it?"

"There's news, and then there's news," Randi said.  She sniffed the
air suspiciously.  "I think the food's done heating up."

"Heating up?  You mean, cooking?"

She gave him a bright and sassy smile.  "I ordered in.  Do I impress
you as the kind of girl who has time to cook?"

"No," Richie admitted, and then bashfully said, "You impress me
in other ways."

She put her hands on her hips.  Moved closer to him.  "In what
ways?" she asked, and in her voice he heard what he needed to
hear.  Encouragement.  His confidence, which had waxed and
waned several degrees on the ride over, returned full force.

"I thought we could discuss that later," he said.  "Depending on if
your roommates are home."

"Smart kid, aren't you?" she said.

"Annoying reporter, aren't you?" he shot back.

And as they kissed, Richie admitted to himself that maybe he liked
her, just a little.


THE END
=========================================================================