Dark Quickening:
Juan Zandar vs Michael De Lioncourt
Written by Cameron Dial
May 14, 2001
Edited by Greg Masterson for the Highlander Role Playing Game
This Story is Rated PG-13
"Want to come in?" Caroline asked. She leaned into Thomas Dalton's arms, reaching over his shoulders to toy playfully with the blond ponytail he'd tied his hair into, and he was treated to a close up view of her startlingly green eyes. He'd have said yes to the invitation any other time--any other time, that is, that he wasn't reasonably sure there was another Immortal in the neighborhood, based on the prickling sensation crawling up the back of his neck.
Not tonight, honey, I've got a headache, Dalton thought, the old joke of an excuse popping unbidden into his mind, but the headache he felt coming on had nothing to do with wanting to avoid intimate contact with Caroline Hewitt. In fact, if there was anything he wanted more at that moment, Dalton really couldn't think what it was, except, of course, to send the other Immortal packing so he could be alone with Caroline and get on with his life outside of the game.
"Tomorrow," he said. "I'll pick you up in time for the parade and we'll have the whole day together. If you'd like, we can get a hotel room--some place really topnotch. You pick. We'll make it a weekend of it if you want to."
"Four Seasons Olympic?" she asked, a teasing tone in her voice.
"Absolutely."
"Tom! You can't be serious. It's three hundred a night!"
"Not the suite I have in mind," he said. In fact, the suite he had in mind was closer to eight hundred a night, but he wasn't going to tell her that. Not yet, anyway. Caroline's schoolteacher's pocketbook was usually closed to luxuries, and Dalton enjoyed seeing the look on her face when he was able to surprise her with something outrageous. It was one of the joys of having squirreled away enough money over several centuries to enjoy some of life's finer things. It was also one of the joys, he realized, of being in love.
The thought surprised him momentarily. They'd only known each other a few weeks and he'd only spent the night with her once, upstairs in her one bedroom, one bathroom apartment, within walking distance of the elementary school she taught at. Fifth grade, he remembered suddenly, smiling.
Yes, ma'am, Ms. Hewitt. You can be my teacher any day. Did it really matter how quickly love came, he wondered, as long as you recognized it when it arrived?
"Tom, you don't have to impress me by getting a suite at the Olympic--"
He stopped her with a kiss before too much sensibility could set in and spoil their impromptu weekend. "Lady," he said, "I intend to impress you in every way possible, and if it starts with a suite at the Olympic, then so be it."
"Thomas Dalton--"
"That's my name," he agreed. "Now, kiss me good night and let me scoot. Otherwise, tomorrow may never get here."
"You're sure you won't come up?"
He grinned. "Tomorrow," he said. "I promise." And with that he was gone, finding him way to the ground floor and then out the double doors to the cement landing and the stairs fronting the small apartment complex. Eight apartments, he remembered, none of them large, the building itself small enough to be neighborly without being either nosey or noisy. Smiling, he stood on the top step. It sounded just like her.
The sensation that another Immortal was nearby was stronger outside, but there was no one in sight. It was cloudy overhead--not too surprising for Seattle--with just enough of a breeze that his lightweight raincoat felt good. The fact that it concealed the Ravenna sword tucked against his left side was an added benefit, and Dalton shifted, letting the blade shift freely inside his coat without taking it from its leather sheath.
Whoever the other Immortal was, he stayed out of sight, lingering in shade or shadow, just within sensing range, and Dalton frowned, annoyed. If the man wanted a fight, he thought, he might just as well show himself and have done with it.
"All right," Dalton called. "If you want me, I suppose you can find me easily enough!"
There was, after all, seldom anything to be gained by putting off a fight. If it was going to happen, though, Dalton wanted to be sure if happened far from Caroline's sight and hearing. With that in mind, he moved rapidly down the few steps to the sidewalk below and away from Caroline's building, determined to lead anyone who might be following him well away from her.
*****
The next afternoon, Thomas Dalton rounded the corner onto Caroline's street, whistling a Rolling Stones tune and carrying a bouquet of spring wildflowers that he tapped against his blue jean clad leg as he walked. He was two--no, three--doors down from her apartment when he felt it again and pulled up short, scanning the covey of two and three story houses across the way, as well as the alleys and miniature, manicured lawns separating them.
Damn. He could be almost anywhere.
"Dalton! Hey, Dalton! What are you, deaf?"
"I should be so lucky," Thomas Dalton muttered to himself. He dragged his attention off the unseen Immortal, realizing the beefy plainclothesman bellowing from the top of the stairs was in fact bellowing at him. Detective Alan Lewcasey raised a hand in greeting and headed toward the street, plainly headed Dalton's way. Since there was no graceful way out of the encounter, Dalton pasted on a benign smile and stood his ground, consciously willing himself to stop slapping the bouquet of flowers he'd bought for Caroline against his thigh.
"You know you're interfering with a crime scene, don't you?" Lewcasey asked. He bit the end off of the cigar he'd pulled from the inside pocket of his wind breaker and shoved it into his mouth to be chewed, not smoked.
It was, Thomas Dalton thought, one of the most disgusting habits he encountered in 500-plus years, and it further distracted him from whatever it was Lewcasey was trying to tell him. "What?" Dalton asked, forcing himself to focus.
The heavier man jerked one thumb over his shoulder, indicating the scene behind him. "Crime scene," Lewcasey repeated. He chuckled. "Man, you really are out of it today, aren't you, Dalton? What you got?" he asked, eying the flowers. "A heavy date?"
Dalton blinked, shifting focus from Lewcasey's heavy-jowled face to the scene around them, realizing only then he'd been so busy planning his extended weekend with Caroline and then trying to spot the other Immortal that he had, indeed, almost blundered unseeing into the kind of scene one normally encountered only on cop shows or the evening news.
An ambulance and two Seattle police cars were parked at rakish angles in the street in front of Caroline's apartment building, and a uniformed cop was busy roping off the front of the building with bright yellow tape forbidding civilian entry into the area. If it hadn't been for Lewcasey, Dalton realized, he'd have run into quite a different greeting from the police by now, and it wouldn't have been nearly so welcoming. As he and Lewcasey watched, the double doors leading to the apartment building opened and more police emerged, accompanying ambulance personnel and a medical gurney burdened with a body bag.
"A friend of mine lives here--" Dalton said as they watched the men lift the gurney off its wheels and manhandle it down the stairs to the sidewalk. In fact, Caroline lived right here, in the building the ambulance attendants were coming out of. Dalton's voice seemed to stop of its own accord.
"Dalton?"
"Who is it?" Dalton asked, and something in his tone made Lewcasey take another look at him.
"A murder," Lewcasey said. "School teacher over at Adams School on Twenty-fourth--"
"Caroline Hewitt," Dalton said.
Surprised, Lewcasey looked from the ambulance crew to Dalton. "Yeah," he said. Then: "Oh, shit. You knew her? Hell, Dalton, I'm sorry." As brusque as he could be at times, even Lewcasey wouldn't have been that crass deliberately. "You were . . . what? You had a date with her?" Lewcasey asked. His eyes dropped to the bouquet Dalton was carrying, but before Lewcasey could say anything more Dalton dropped the flowers to the sidewalk and dashed forward.
Realizing an instant too late what Dalton was doing, Lewcasey lunged for him, grabbing only the empty space Dalton had occupied the moment before.
Too late, too, for any of the ambulance attendants or uniformed officers to stop him as Dalton barreled his way among them and forced the body bag's zipper open, exposing the contents.
There was blood everywhere, soaking the thin, summery stuff of the blouse he had last seen her in, a blouse that had been pierced through from repeated stabbings. Worse still, though, was the gaping slice that had severed her head from her neck. Bizarrely, Dalton felt an obscene laughter struggling up and out of him, tinged with the sick taste of bile. After the medical examiner had finished his on-site examination of the murder scene, a well-meaning someone or other had placed the severed head back on the stem of the neck, probably out of a sense of violated human decency.
Decency, Dalton thought. As if decency had anything to do with the scene in front of him now.
Someone had hold of him then, Dalton realized, and his lungs suddenly seemed too large for his chest to contain them. They were stumbling, falling, then, and he went down on one knee, vomiting and gasping for air. Awkwardly, Lewcasey kept one hand on Dalton's shoulder, offering whatever comfort he could, one man to another. Dalton was suddenly aware of the grass in close up and of the palms of his hands in the grass, resting on either side of his own vomit. He hardly knew it when Lewcasey eased him to sit on the sidewalk, but he could feel the other man's stare on him, aware that he was standing over him, staring down at him in pity and doubt and curiosity, policeman's brain no doubt ticking into overtime.
*****
Juan Zandar leaned against the side of the building, sick again, wiping a thin line of vomit and the sheen of sweat from his mouth with the back of his hand. He turned, placing his thin back against the alley's brick wall, and stared up at the open third-floor window, just visible from this angle across the street and through a tangle of branches filled with spring's bright green leaves.
He'd been in that apartment the night before, he knew, though he had no real recollection of it--just flashes, really, like scenes from a movie, insubstantial and flickering, and likely to fade before he could truly focus on them. The apartment had been roped off since he'd been there last: "Police Line Do Not Cross," read the bright yellow tape. The police, he thought. That, too, was a puzzle. The police car's door was marked with the name of the city, Seattle, though he had no memory of ever being in Seattle in the two and a half centuries he'd walked the American continent as an Immortal. He knew it was true, though, since he'd glimpsed the Space Needle, possibly Seattle's most famous landmark, in his wanderings today.
Vaguely, he wondered how long it had been since he'd last slept in a bed or eaten a decent meal or even taken a bath. Glancing down at himself, he realized he had no idea if he owned a change of clothing, or where he lived. He'd slept the night before . . . where? Dimly, he realized he didn't know, and that it hadn't seemed important until that moment. It didn't occur to him that he didn't know where he would sleep that night. In fact, he was rarely coherent long enough to follow one thought into the other these days, but even that realization was beyond him. What he did know was that there was dried blood smeared across the front of his shirt, and across the front of the coat concealing . . . what?
A sword, slung beneath his left arm. A sword with a curved blade and a heavy, jeweled grip, wrapped round with what looked like gold wire. Not his sword, he realized. His sword was--the thought slipped away, but not before he got a quick, fleeting image of another sword--straight bladed, with a longer grip, long enough to accommodate both his hands--a Gothic bastard sword, a gift from someone whose face he had forgotten. Someone without a name. A friend? A teacher, perhaps? He didn't know. There was a riot inside his brain, a babbling of voices that gave him a headache. Tired, he leaned toward the ground from the waist, palms of his hands pressed momentarily to his ears, as if he could shut out the cacophony of internal sound.
And then, it stopped. He blinked, half surprised. For weeks, possibly months now, the sound had been there, spilling as if from a watershed too full to contain it all, and with the increase in sound had come an increased desire to kill, to hunt down not just Immortals, but anyone, anyone whose blood might spill, whose agony might drown out his own for a time. There had been a lot of killing of late, he thought, and somewhere along the way he had lost his own sword and come into possession of this.
Intrigued, he pulled the strange sword from beneath his coat. The blade was sharp, sharp enough to slice open his thumb with the least pressure. He jumped at the pain, slight as it was, and instinctively pushed his thumb into his mouth. For a moment there was blood, its metallic tang warm on his tongue. Then, nothing--or no blood, at least, though much of the dirt and grime was there still. He pulled his thumb from his mouth, watched the open gash of his thumb neatly close, with a spark of blue lightning dancing over the surface. There was something else behind the Quickening, though, a kind of phosphorescence, a shifting glow, like when a child colored outside the lines. It was as if whatever was inside him was too much and ready to overflow. And then it was gone again.
It was as much a mystery as how he'd come to be in Seattle, a city he'd heard of often enough, but never visited in his life. He remembered other places, other climates, other cities, other times--places outside his own experience, and that, too, was a mystery. Almost, he thought, as much a mystery as what had occurred in that apartment the night before. Almost, for he knew the dried blood on the blade was not his, and he could very nearly conjure the image of the woman who had lived across the way.
Lived--and died--for no reason Zandar could name, save that the man she had been with, the Immortal she had called Thomas Dalton, had stirred him to a fury that had demanded it, a fury that could be expressed in only one way since Dalton himself had eluded him.
"If you want me, I suppose you can find me easily enough!"
Dalton's words stayed with him still, dovetailing and echoing in memory like a challenge so thinking of them was enough to infuriate Zandar again. The problem, Zandar knew, was that he didn't know how to find the man, and in this city he was a stranger, adrift and without resources, fair game for any Immortal who might care to come calling.
Abruptly, Zandar's head snapped up, skin beginning to crawl. Straightening against the wall, he whirled, his stomach clenching in on itself momentarily. There, across the street, just rounding the corner, was the man called Thomas Dalton, a bouquet of colorful wildflowers held nonchalantly in one hand. He'd no sooner rounded the corner when he hesitated, then stopped still, obviously sensing Zandar just as Zandar had sensed him.
For a moment Zandar's heart soared. So, luck was still with him, he thought, tucking the unfamiliar sword away and sidling along the wall until he could no longer feel the other's presence. He trotted along the alley's length, emerging on the opposite side of the row of houses, still out of sensing range but where he could glimpse Dalton from a distance. He watched as Dalton rushed toward the gurney being brought out of the apartment house, laughter threatening in his throat as Dalton drew back the zipper on the body bag. He was too far away to watch the horror transform the other man's face, but he knew it was there, and that was something--and then the wash of riotous sound started in Zandar's ears and head again and he pressed his hands to his ears, forcing it back, forcing it down to a roar he could live with. When he looked again, Dalton was down on his hands and knees in the grass, another man standing beside him. Comforting him? Zandar's eyes narrowed as he watched the ambulance crew load the wheeled gurney. The unknown man--a detective, perhaps--corralled Dalton and got him into the passenger seat of a gray compact. Together, they drove away, leaving Dalton's bouquet of flowers scattered on the sidewalk in front of the woman's apartment house.
A police station, Zandar thought. They would be going to a police station. He grinned. Perhaps, just perhaps, Dalton had just become a suspect in his woman's murder. The grin turned into a chuckle. For all the frustrations and confusions of the last few days, it did seem that things were working out after all, and for whatever reason, Zandar found himself laughing out loud, feeling better than he had since he could last remember.
*****
"You put me in one hell of an awkward spot, you know that, Dalton?" Lewcasey grumbled several hours later. He poured coffee for himself, offering some to Dalton, who shook his head wearily. Sipping coffee, Lewcasey made a face. "The lieutenant's about ready to pull my ass off this case," he snapped suddenly. "She's not too hot on the fact that I know the vic's boyfriend, you know? Shit--why'd you have to come along and screw things up anyway?"
"You act like he planned it, Irv." It was Cassidy, Lewcasey's partner, standing next to the vending machine in the police break room, shoving quarters into the coin slot. D-3, Dalton noticed. A Baby Ruth plunked into the bottom of the candy machine and Cassidy fished it out.
"Hell of a dinner, huh, Dalton?" he asked, starting to unwrap the candy bar. "Maybe I'll top it off with something caffeinated." He made a face, then added, "You want something?"
"No, thank you."
Surprising, really, how calm his voice sounded, Dalton thought. No. Not calm, he realized. Dead, like Caroline.
"Hell," groused Lewcasey. "There've been four murders in three weeks, Dalton, and I've got one of the latest vic's neighbors telling me she heard you on the steps last night, making threats."
Threats, Dalton thought. "If you want me," he'd shouted, "I suppose you can find me easily enough!" Well, that had been true enough, hadn't it? He shook his head. "I wasn't talking to . . . to Caroline," he said, forcing himself to say her name normally.
"Says you--"
"So, what?" Cassidy interrupted. "You were just standing on the stairs, yelling at nobody in particular?"
You could say that. "Look," Dalton said wearily, "I'm not under arrest, so tell me. Do I need a lawyer, or what? You charging me with murder?"
"No, we're not charging you with murder," Lewcasey said, "but I gotta tell you, Dalton, it looks awfully damn suspicious."
"You sure you didn't know any of the other victims?" Cassidy asked.
"No," Dalton said. "No, I didn't know any of the others." He sat there another minute, and Cassidy and Lewcasey exchanged looks. "If you're not charging me with anything and I'm not under arrest, I'm going home."
"I don't guess we have to tell you not to leave the city without notifying us," Lewcasey said.
"No," Dalton said. He pushed up out of the naugahyde-covered chair and swayed briefly on his feet before heading for the door. "No," he repeated. "You don't have to tell me that."
Not that it mattered, he thought, but the one thing he most certainly wouldn't be doing was leaving town.
The sun was just setting, which left Dalton more hours to fill than he cared for. He could, he supposed, always play tourist in his own town, but he couldn't think of anyplace of anything that wouldn't make him think of Caroline, so he boarded the Seattle/Mercer Island ferry and spent several hours simply cruising back and forth, reading the same newspaper until it was too dark to see. It was on the last scheduled trip back to the Seattle side of the lake that the sense of another Immortal's presence brushed against him and he moved to the lighted top deck, taking his time. Not ten minutes later he found the other leaning leisurely against the outward rail, smiling lazily as he watched the ferry's docking crew preparing them to return to dock.
"Thomas Dalton," Zandar said. He smiled a bit, pulling out of habit at the goatee adorning his thin cheeks and chin.
"Do I know you?"
Thin lips pulled back over a grin marked with yellow, nicotine-stained teeth. "Not that I'm aware of," Zandar said. "Just think of me as the man who took your lady's head. Or the man who's going to take your head, if you prefer."
"I prefer to keep my head where it is, but I'll take the challenge."
"Here?" Zandar asked on a chuckle. "It's a bit public, don't you think?"
"A bit," Dalton agreed. He was still, then shifted to stare out at the lights of Mercer Island across the narrow stretch that was Lake Washington. "My town, my rules," he said.
"Rules?" There was laughter behind the single word.
"That's the Homer M. Hadley bridge," Dalton said, lifting his chin to indicate the three-quarter mile long stretch of floating concrete that linked Mercer Island to Seattle. "And that's the Lacey V. Murrow bridge--they're floating concrete, both of them, one and three quarters of a mile long each, and considered engineering marvels," he continued conversationally. "Pick one. I'll meet you at two a.m. and we can settle this."
"Two a.m.?" Zandar echoed him. "You're sure we won't draw a crowd at such an hour?" He shrugged. "I imagine one will do as well as the other," he drawled. "You pick, Dalton. After all, as you said, it is your town. I'll give you the home advantage."
Dalton tapped his rolled-up newspaper against the palm of one hand and studied the smaller man as the ferry's porters made their last sweep of the boat, herding all passengers toward the dock. "All right," he said. "Murrow bridge at two." A smile flickered across his mouth. "What the hell," he said. "It might stand up under a Quickening. I mean . . . it's been at least a decade or so since the damn thing sunk. And if not, so what? We get a little wet."
Predictably, Zandar's face shifted from archly amused to uncertainty to outright confusion, followed in a flash by an equally predictable attempt at straight-faced neutrality. Without another word, Dalton brushed past him, joining the straggling passengers as they made their way to shore.
*****
Two a.m. on a weeknight and Murrow bridge was deserted, as was the Hadley bridge beside it. Seattle and the major areas surrounding its hilly heights were, for the most part, dark, with Lake Washington lapping audibly at the cement pontoons that kept Murrow and its neighbor afloat.
As Dalton absorbed the shock and slash of Zandar's curved blade crashing down on his own Ravenna it occurred to him there was a certain advantage to fighting on a bridge. While you chanced the occasionally unlooked-for passerby it was unlikely at this hour, but more than that there was an exhilarating simplicity to it. Murrow's four lanes presented no uneven ground beneath one's feet, no unexpected obstacles to stumble over, no damned stairs to trip one up or alter the angle of one's attack--and being situated over water made the necessary clean up easier since all one had to do at the end of the fight was dump corpse and head overboard and let the tide take care of the rest. Admirably simple, assuming of course, that one survived.
They closed again and Zandar got in beneath his defense, landing a wicked upward slash on Dalton's left forearm, coupled with a kick to the stomach that sent Dalton sprawling away from him, rolling to put still more distance between them. He was up then, barely in time to put the Ravenna between himself and Zandar's overhead blow, the shock of it tingling up Dalton's arms and into his shoulders, where his muscles bunched in response. Catching the curved edge of the scimitar on his own blade, Dalton ducked, throwing his arms--and Zandar's, on top of his--up as hard as he could, meaning to use the Ravenna's tip to slice the little bastard open from gut to rib cage. With maddening strength, though, Zandar held his weight down on their joined blades and all Dalton was able to do was to throw himself free of the smaller man, who came at him furiously, landing a fist in Dalton's face. Blood spurted from Dalton's nose and he shook his head, spraying the blood on his clothing and snorting to clear his breathing.
Zandar laughed, charging straight in and Dalton threw himself back. Kicking high, Dalton slammed the heel of his right boot into Zandar's face and had the privilege of seeing the little rat go down with his own bloodied nose, sprawling to the surface of the bridge before he could catch himself. He lost his sword but only momentarily, snatching it before it could clatter too far away and swinging viciously to keep Dalton back as he crawled quickly to his knees and then to his feet. He was barely upright when Dalton slammed into him full force, driving him back against the chainlink fence and guardrail that marked the bridge's edge. They struggled, Dalton pressing his greater weight against the smaller, wily man's body, swords sliding blade against blade, sparking the blue light that was so similar to the fire of the Quickening. Zandar escaped him at last, ducking beneath Dalton's furious swing, rolling and springing up again half a dozen feet away, blade up and out before him, waving in challenge.
Zandar charged, head low and butting upward. Backing to meet the charge, Dalton's feet went out from under him and he found himself suddenly on his back, winded, with Zandar nearly on top of him. He rolled, parrying, flipping Zandar over his shoulder, sending the smaller man sprawling on the surface of the bridge. They were both upright, then, both charging head on, both slashing hard, and in that moment Zandar's blade connected.
Surprisingly, there was no pain. Quite simply, it happened too quickly for Dalton to register anything, and then there was nothing to register. His knees buckled, crashing to the bridge, and his head--with an oh, so surprised look on the face--wobbled to an unsteady stop near Zandar's instep. Looking down at the face, Zandar could have sworn he saw the surprised Dalton blink once.
Then the cacophony of voices was back in Zandar's ears, mocking him, warning him, jeering at him, and Dalton's Quickening was rising like steam, swirling around Zandar as if taunting him, knowing the cup was too full, knowing Zandar had already had one too many Quickenings and could hold no more and remain Zandar and Zandar alone. Terrified, Zandar threw himself toward the bridge's guardrail, knowing even as he tried that there was no escape. In over 250 years Zandar had killed without pity, without remorse, often without cause, and he had absorbed Quickening after Quickening, revelling in each, welcoming each for the added strength it lent him. The more vile the killer, the more he had welcomed the Quickening, for in the end all Immortals were killers, and he had been determined to be the worst of a bad crop.
There can be only one!
His voice or Dalton's? Zandar no longer knew, and as the rising steam of Dalton's Quickening changed into trickling streams of energy and lifted him off his feet, he no longer knew if there was any difference. A chorus of voices raged within him, each echoing the other, struggling for control, and he was drowning in a sea of unfamiliar images that threatened to rip him apart. As the dark Quickening stilled, Zandar landed hard, dropping to hands and knees on the Murrow bridge, irresistably recalling the illusion of Dalton's decapitated head, blinking as it stared sightlessly up at him.
Eyes dry, he blinked repeatedly, staring out over the expanse of the Murrow bridge, Seattle on one hand, Mercer Island on the other. Pushing to his feet, he blinked down at Dalton's head, still rocking gently at his feet. He frowned, trying in one breath to remember the man's name; in the next, his own. By the time he blinked again, he'd forgotten that it might ever have mattered. What he found himself remembering instead was that he'd killed five times in the last few weeks, and it wasn't nearly enough to satisfy the hunger inside. Glancing down, he booted the decapitated head over the edge of the bridge and turned toward Mercer Island. It would feel good to stretch his legs, he thought, and then it would be time to feed the hunger again.