PART 3: "People die, Methos. Immortals--die."

Round

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel,

Never ending or beginning, on an ever-spinning reel,

Like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon,

Like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon.

Like a clock, whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face,

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space,

Like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind.

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own,

Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone.

Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream

Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream.

Like a clock, whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face,

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space,

Like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind.

Keys that jingle in your pockets, words that jangle in your head.

Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said?

Lovers walk along the shore and leave their footprints in the sand.

Was the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?

Pictures hanging in a hallway or the fragment of a song.

Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?

When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware

That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair.

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel,

Never ending or beginning, on an ever-spinning reel,

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find,

In the windmills of your mind.

[THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND from The Tomas Crown Affair © 1968
Words and music by Alan Bergman & Michel Jean Legrand
Used without permission. No copyright infringement intended.]

Chapter 1

Stephen moved frantically through the dark streets. He knew that "he" was around here somewhere. He'd seen him here, pacing warily against the backdrop of the worst part of New York City. At least he had seen his image, although it had been completely by accident.

Stephen never looked at those huge billboard-sized video screens that had started popping up everywhere, throwing out sensational stories and sensational news from around the globe, and beyond. Those stories, those images, were for mortals, and since he wasn't mortal anymore, he never looked.

Stephen Drake was a tall, handsome man with broad shoulders and the dense, muscular physique of a natural athlete. His hair was dusty blond and very full, sweeping back from his forehead in waves that broke in curls around his collar. He had full, lush lips and soft brown eyes with the faintest lines at their corners that crinkled when he smiled. The same smile lines were repeated around his mouth. Stephen Drake looked like a man who smiled a great deal, and, despite the faint lines that decorated his face, carried the aura of a pleasant, youthful personality.

Stephen had been in his mid thirties when the yacht he was on mysteriously exploded, killing all on board. He woke up, floating on choppy seas, in the middle of the salvage operation. He thought he had died, he actually remembered the death, but nobody believed him. They thought his rants about being dead was a result of his trauma, or at least one of those near-death experiences. Stephen thought he had gone insane.

Being the only survivor on the yacht made him something of a celebrity. People were amazed that he had "walked" away without a scratch. He was also called a hero, since his survival helped the authorities to track down the group of terrorists who had been after the very wealthy, powerful owner of the boat. None of it helped Stephen, however. It didn't explain what had happened to him and what he had turned into. So he left his old life and started looking for answers.

Over the next 70 years, he found his answers, or at least enough answers to help him survive. He met other people like himself, all of them easily identified by that infernal "buzz" he felt when ever one of them got close. He hated that buzz. First of all, it hurt, then he never knew if it was someone who wanted to teach him or to kill him, or to just be a friend. The teachers and friends taught him about The Game, The Quickening and fighting with swords. The other ones made him use his new, deadly knowledge.

He found that it was best to keep moving. The world had become a very small place, and great strides were being made to pull humanity off the planet and into space. Every so often Stephen vaguely wondered if he would ever go there, but he didn't really care. Yes, the Earth was overpopulated and humanity needed more room, but that was the stuff for the vid screens and for mortals. Stephen was not part of that world anymore.

The day he saw the man, however, was different. He was in New Delhi, a strange and exotic place, and the noise blaring out of the screen in the center of the city was loud, much louder than it usually was. The talking head was telling the entire world about a failed housing project in the slums of New York City. New York. It had been decades since Stephen had been in New York. Against his usual practice, he stopped and looked up to listen to the story. New York had suffered a schism over the centuries. The city had gone from a monster of bustling cosmopolitanism to being divided between the "haves" and "have-nots." Half the city was beautiful and well maintained, a guide for all cities of the world to follow. The other half was degenerating into a pile of ruin, home to the poorest of the poor and the desperate of the world.

Someone was always trying to revive the worst part of the city, but it never seemed to work. It was as if the city itself resisted revitalization, that it wallowed in its own ruin. As the cameras panned over the shabby, broken-down tenements, Stephen saw him, the man of his dreams.

The swarming crowds around him receded as Stephen stood stock-still, staring open-mouthed at the screen. The booming voice of the talking head fell to a muted whisper as blood roared in his ears.

He watched the man he had seen in so many of his dreams pace along the decrepit sidewalk, caught by the camera just behind its main focus. The man was oblivious to the camera, the reporter, the whole thing, his stony gaze focused inward. His whole demeanor was one of "keep away!" and the black leather jacket and black clothes enhanced it. Almost everyone in the world was wearing bright, airy pastels, so someone in dark, heavy clothes was definitely a rebel, someone to keep away from.

The young immortal watched the man until he left the camera's range, memorizing everything he could. He took note of the dark, close-cropped hair, the pale sharp-planed features, the tight, whipcord strength of his movements. He took particular note of where he saw the man, the street he was on, the buildings behind him, the distance from the river sparkling in the distance.

Stephen was not concerned that he would forget the way the man looked. After all, he saw that man every night in his dreams.

The dreams had started almost two years before. It began with one that was vivid, almost visionary in its reality. In the dream, the man was on hill in the grip of a powerful Quickening. There was more to it, but it was only the first of many dreams. After a few weeks, Stephen had another dream about the man. This time, he had been challenged and was facing off with another immortal in an alleyway in a time that seemed like ancient history. Then barely a few weeks later, the first dream again, and some days after that, one with the man in a quiet, intimate conversation with someone looking out of Stephen's eyes. It puzzled Stephen because the person looking out of his eyes was a woman, a woman wearing a red robe sitting in a room lit with fire and burning lanterns.

The dreams kept coming, more and more often until Stephen was dreaming about that strange immortal every night, and it was making Stephen crazy. One night Stephen would dream about the man challenging a woman with madness in her eyes. Another night would find the immortal gripped by a Quickening in an obscure, ancient part of Paris. Yet another night and there he was standing in the middle of a dark place throbbing with music and filled with flashing lights and gyrating men, a place well beyond anything in Stephen's experience. Then the first dream would come, that battle at the top of a hill with the Quickening at the end. In between the dreams with sword fights and Quickenings, there were the quiet dreams. The one with the woman in the fire-lit room or one where the strange immortal was standing on a windy rooftop, his back to a strange city, his coat whipping around him, his hair tousled in the breeze and the saddest expression on his face. It was hard to reconcile the stony-faced man on the vid screen with the one Stephen had "seen" in his dreams.

The sight of the man on that huge screen in the middle of a New Delhi square galvanized the young immortal into action. It had been so frustrating for so long, one maddening dream after the other, night after night with the same man, but he had finally seen him. Maybe Stephen wasn't crazy after all. But what did it all mean?

There was only one way to find out. Stephen had to find him, to talk to him. He hadto have some answers. By the end of the next day, Stephen was in New York, and by nightfall, was already hunting for him in the part of town where he had been filmed.

Up one street, down another, Stephen looked for him, in one tavern then through another, one after the other after the other.

From what he remembered from history and his own memories, Stephen knew that he was in the West Village, although it was not called that anymore. Nobody of any consequence or means came to this part of New York. They stayed over by the other river, the safer river where there were tall, graceful towers, spidery and delicate, stretching toward the heavens. Over there, people traveled in soaring sky cars. There were no sky cars in this part of the city, by this river. Here they walked, braving, if they dared, the dark and dangerous streets that looked every minute of their 600 years.

The whole area had been abandoned, allowed to go to rot, or to seed. Every so often somebody, or some corporation, tried to fix it up and bring it into the twenty-third century, but it never worked. The end results of these efforts were usually gaps among the decaying buildings, vacant lots where newer structures, dying unborn, had disappeared into the dirt.

The buildings around these lots hung on despite the foreshadowing of their own doom. Stephen looked around, wondering about the kind of people that could live here in these places, dank with age, dark with sorrow, falling apart from neglect.

He braced himself as he moved on. The person he was looking for lived here, or at least passed through here, and he probably frequented the sordid pubs that lined the waterfront. Stephen was determined to go into each and every one until he found what he was looking for. He had already seen some of the faces of the men and women clutching onto their own survival by the skin of their teeth and so he had learned something of the kind of life lived here. He was about to learn more.

Stephen had just come out of an old greasy tavern and was walking down an empty sidewalk when he felt the "buzz." It brought him up short, his head swiveling in the direction it was coming from. The sidewalk that that he was on ran along an old, unused highway that was parallel to the river. Across the abandoned highway, a dead waterfront lined the river, slowly falling into the water as the river inexorably ate at supporting pylons. Although the river was invisible in the thick darkness, Stephen knew that it was the same river he had seen sparkling in the background on the screen in New Delhi.

Turning his back on the river and the highway, Stephen approached the bar from which the feeling of "presence" was emanating. It had to be him. It was just be too much of a coincidence to find two immortals in a place like this. Now, if this was the French Riviera--

Stephen examined the front of the bar, the insane buzz of "presence" pulling annoyingly at all of his nerves. The place was unnamed. The door was closed and very little warmth or invitation leaked through the dirt-encrusted windows that were on either side of it. From what he could tell, the bar, though it was only about two hundred years old, was as dark and dangerous as the rest of the street.

Slowly opening the door, Stephen went in. It was small, about 20 x 30 meters, with three or four tables and a bar that ran along the longest wall. It was poorly lit, and the decorations on the wall were obscured, their meanings lost to time, dust and neglect. The dirt-encrusted wooden floor, scuffed and gouged in many places, sloped from the door in several different directions. The tables, chairs, and bar stools were wooden like the floor, as scuffed and gouged, although slightly less dirt encrusted. The bar, however, was unlike anything else in the place. It was clean, bright and shiny, the only thing that eased the unremitting gloom.

A dozen or so people were scattered about the tiny space, including the bartender, so it was quiet, with only the sounds of muted conversation.

A few patrons spared the newcomer a brief glance but went right back to their conversations or their drinks. His bright, airy clothes marked him as a stranger to this place, an outsider who could be someplace else if he wanted to be, unlike the people who were here.

Like so many places Stephen had already been into, this place was a hangout for the lost and destitute, a perfect place for the drunk and desperate to call home. This place was different in one major respect, however. "He" was here.
 
 
 

At the bar, the man from Stephen's dreams was hunched over, staring into a glass clutched in both hands. His whole aura was mean and forbidding and made Stephen hesitate a long moment before he dared approach. The buzz of "presence" crackled and thrummed between them. Being immortal, the man had to feel the buzz, but he kept staring into the amber liquid as if there was no "presence," as if Stephen, hell, as if nobodywas anywhere near him.

As Stephen got closer, the man turned his head to look at him. Stephen's heart stopped at the sight of the face (that face!) that had haunted his dreams for so long. It was finally here, in his grasp. Perhaps now he would find out what it was all about.

Stephen's elation was short-lived, however. This was the man, all right, but he looked nothing like the man in his dreams. This man's face was an expressionless mask with eyes like hard, speckled stones without life, depth, or purpose. The man Stephen "knew" from his dreams expressed a myriad of emotions every night. Thatman brimmed with life, with love, anger, hate, lust, and bloodlust. This man was just dead inside.

The man looked away and with a quick, practiced movement, downed the drink. He tapped the glass gently on the bar and the bartender gave him a refill. Staring into the hypnotic depths of the drink, the man suddenly hitched his black leather jacket back off his shoulders so Stephen could clearly see the gleam of white neck below the dark, cropped hair. Stephen's lush mouth tightened at the sight of that exposed, vulnerable neck, the sight bringing back yet another dream.

Doubt and hesitation evaporating, Stephen went right up to him.

"Is that an invitation?" Stephen asked very quietly.

The man ignored him for so long, Stephen thought he was deaf. Then he spoke: "Take it as you will." The man's deep voice was as dead and purposeless as his face.

"I must talk to you," Stephen insisted.

"Take a number."

Stephen looked around the sad little place. "No one else seems dying for your attention right now," he said sardonically.

The man favored Stephen with another brief look. "So, you're in a hurry, eh?" he said with the same dead inflection. He shrugged listlessly. "Fine by me. Just let me finish my drink and we can go outside. Huh!" he added, almost to himself. "Are you in for a surprise."

"I don't want to go outside."

"You want to do it in here?" Faint surprise colored the man's lifeless voice.

"No! I don't want to do it anywhere."

Going back to his drink, the man said: "If you're not here to kill me, why are you here?"

"Like I said, I want to talk to you."

Shrugging, the man tapped his glass and got more amber liquor. "Okay, so talk."

"My name is Stephen Drake."

The man looked at Stephen's outstretched hand then looked away. "Uh huh."

Stephen leaned forward as the man rested both elbows on the bar with his drink cupped in both hands.

"And you are--?" Stephen prompted.

After a long moment, the man twisted on the stool, his gaze raking Stephen up and down, from head to foot, before returning to his glass. "Nick," he answered shortly.

Stephen waited for more but finally sighed and perched himself on the next stool.

"I've been dreaming about you."

"What?" There was no surprise in Nick's voice, just annoyance.

"Every night I have a dream, and every night, you're in it."

Tap, tap, went Nick's glass. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I. Then I saw a news report from this area and I saw you in the background, here, in this area, near this bar, so I came to New York to find you."

"Why?"

"I was hoping you could explain the dreams."

Nick finally looked back at Stephen. "How could I explain them? They're your dreams."

"But you're in them. You're in every one of them, and I don't know you. I've never met you, but there you are, every night."

Nick sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Look, sonny. I don't know you and I don't want to know you. Just wait 'em out, they'll go away eventually."

Stephen's lips tightened at the obvious voice of experience, but it wasn't enough. "Well, maybe you could tell me a bit about yourself and I'll be able to figure out what--"

"Bad idea, kid. Trust me, you do not want to know me."

"How do you know that? How can you say that?"

Nick turned those dead eyes on him. They were so lifeless, they sent a shiver down Stephen's back. In another life, they might have been hazel, but no longer.

"I'll kill you."

Stephen could not prevent the look of utter disbelief from crossing his face. This man did not look able to wield a sword, let alone use one well enough to kill him.

"Oh, really?" Stephen retorted, his doubt obvious.

"No me, you ass," Nick said, turning back to the bar and throwing the rest of the drink back. "Someone who's after me will kill you, or someone who doesn't like me, or someone who'll know you know me, and decide for some incomprehensible reason to finish you off." Getting up abruptly, he threw some money on the bar. "I'm outta here."

Taken aback by the long speech and the quickness of his departure, Stephen almost lost Nick in the maze that was the West Village at night.

He followed the immortal to another tenement building that looked like old apartments. He didn't dare go in after him, but he stood back and waited until he saw a light come on so he could pinpoint which room was Nick's. He had to talk to the man. It was obvious to Stephen that Nick was quite old. If he was around in some of the times that the dreams showed, he had to be very old. He had to talk to him!

As the light went out in the apartment, Stephen made a note of the address and the apartment before turning away with a sigh. He had to get back to his own hotel in the "nice" part of town and get some sleep. He was going to check out as early as he could to get back here. The man was not getting away that easily.

Cold, dead eyes watched through torn curtains as Stephen walked away. That young immortal raised as many questions as he wanted answered, but those questions, on both sides, were life altering, and he would have none of it. Those questions would raise too many other things; like pain, and guilt, and--

Turning from the window to the darkened room, thin lips set in a pale, sharp-featured face tightened. He was not ready for life. He didn't want it, and if that impulsive kid thought that he was going raise stuff in him that nothing was able to raise in the past 100 years, well--.

Falling onto the rickety bed fully clothed, he took a quick, mental inventory of what was in this hovel of a room. Perhaps it was time to leave New York. He scrubbed a hand over his face as the room spun from the enormous amount of alcohol he had consumed that night. His hand paused briefly on his nose, large, stately and Romanesque, but he pulled it away and with a muttered curse, turned onto his side and urged sleep to take him.

Yes, leaving New York was definitely the thing to do. There were many places in the world that had bars like the ones he frequented here in the West Village. There were many places with people like those that were here, people slowly drinking themselves into oblivion, slowly drinking themselves to death. Except for him, of course. He could try for oblivion, but no matter how much he drank he could never drink himself to death. That was his personal, private curse.

That's why the sudden "buzz" of an approaching immortal had sent a wave of anticipation and relief through him. The appearance of an immortal, at this time, in this place, was a gift he welcomed.

It was just his dumb luck that this immortal didn't want to take his head.