PROLOGUE

The young woman tossed and turned in her bed, the images in her dreams familiar yet strange. She saw a man on horseback, with long dark hair and an oddly-shaped mask covering his face. He wore a hooded cloak-like garment made of rough fabric. The cloak was pale in color, as was the horse on whose back he now sat. He gazed down at her, the eyes behind the mask barely discernible. And when he spoke, his voice sounded familiar, although a part of her knew she had never heard that voice before in her life.

His arm came out from beneath the cloak and he pointed directly at her, saying as he did, "You are mine, Catriona, mine…for all time. Never forget that. Ever." The voice was full of authority, somewhat demanding, one that was used to being obeyed. Then his arm reached out and pulled her to him, his body and hers mere inches apart. The dream scene shifted then, and his ancient attire fell away, the cloak, mask and long hair disappearing. In their place was a short, neat modern hairstyle, the color the same…jeans, hiking boots and a comfortable sweater adorning his lean body. His eyes, she now could see, were hazel in color, and glued to hers.

His arms wrapped around her slender body and lightning showered and encircled them, spiraling around them from head to toe. She felt the Quickening lance through his body and her own, and an ethereal voice rang out. "You are now joined for all time…no longer two souls, but one…and neither of you shall be happy until you have found the other. Beware…let none come between nor separate you, else you both shall die."

Then she began to slip from his grasp, feeling his fingers stroke her cheek as she fell away from him. Her mind screamed No! She suddenly did not want to be parted from him. Is this what the voice meant? Away from him and his presence she would be miserable? His eyes locked with hers, hazel joining with sapphire-blue, and he made her a dark promise. "Do not worry, Catriona MacLeod…I will find you. You belong to me now…and I will let no man have what is mine." Her eyes widened and his next words sent an odd mix of fear and anticipation fluttering through her being. "I am Methos…you are mine…always and forever…never forget that…or me."

Then she woke, bolting straight upright in bed, her light gown and bedcovers drenched in sweat. She glanced at her bedside alarm clock. It read 4:56 AM. What the hell? Methos is a myth…he isn't real, so how can I be dreaming about him…especially in such detail?

Positive now that she would not sleep, she rose and began her day. She took the bedcovers off her bed and tossed them into the laundry bin. After taking a shower and dressing, she made coffee and breakfast, pondering over the images from her dream, still not understanding them or the dream itself at all. At 7:00 AM, she figured her uncle would be stumbling towards wakefulness, and if he wasn't…what she had to talk to him about would wake him quicker than a fresh pot of coffee.

When his groggy voice came on the line a few minutes later, his first words almost made her laugh. "This had better be good, MacLeod," Joe Dawson grumbled sleepily.

"Oh I think it is, Uncle Joe," she replied and had to choke back her laughter at his sputtering.

"Gabrielle, what are you doing calling me at this hour?"

"I need to talk to you ASAP, Joe…I need to know everything you know about Methos," she told him.

"Why? You know as well as I do that Methos, the oldest living Immortal, is a myth," Joe replied, praying in the back of his mind that she would drop the subject soon.

"Oh really?" she asked, her tone disbelieving. "Then can you explain to me what the hell a myth was doing in my dreams last night, telling me I belonged to him and he would come find me? And how would this myth know my middle name?" she demanded, her tone turning a bit frosty.

That pronouncement woke Joe up, all right. "OK, OK," he grumbled, sitting up in his own bed. "Meet me at the bar in an hour and we'll talk." Joe suddenly got an eerie premonition that this day was going to be an extremely long and, knowing his niece's penchant for harassing the truth out of him, probably painful one as well.

Joe's…8:00 AM

Gabrielle MacLeod, daughter of Elder Highlander Connor, walked into Joe's at the appointed time, and headed straight for the bar. She sensed no other Immortals about, which was a relief. She wanted to talk to Joe in private. "Joe?" she called out, her voice echoing off the now-empty building's walls. "Be right out," her foster uncle called from the back, where his office was located. "Have a seat, have a drink, whatever…I'll be out in a minute, honey," Joe called to his niece. Gabrielle took him at his word, walking around behind the bar and busying herself making a pot of coffee. A large one.

Meanwhile…in Joe's office…

Joe Dawson could not believe his ears. His niece had called him at seven o'clock that morning and related bits of information about a strange dream she'd had last night, one prominently featuring Methos, the oldest living Immortal. An Immortal she herself believed, as did most other Immortals, was just a myth, an old wives' tale.

But Joe knew different. Joe Dawson knew Methos was real. He had the Old Man on the phone just at that moment, and the dream Methos was relating had a freaky resemblance to the minuscule amount of information Gabrielle had related to him concerning her own dream.

"Joe, I'm telling you, I have never had a dream like this in my entire life…and you know how long my life has been," Methos was saying.

"All right…tell it to me one more time," Joe requested, and he poised his fingers over his laptop's keyboard, preparing to take notes as Methos spoke.

"I was in my Horseman garb, pale rough hooded cloak, long hair, mask, pale horse, etc. and I was sitting on the horse looking down at a woman. I pointed to her and said 'You are mine, Catriona, mine…for all time. Never forget that. Ever.' Then the dream shifted, like a movie changing scenes, and I looked like I do now, and we seemed to be floating in mid-air, but I had my arms around her, like I was trying to keep her from falling." Methos paused and Joe could tell he'd probably taken a swig of beer. Then he continued.

"A Quickening shot through the both of us, gluing us to each other, as well as circling around us in a corkscrew-like shape. Then this otherworldly voice started talking to us and the things it said were really odd," Methos told the Watcher.

"Odd how?" Joe asked, typing furiously, thankful for the silent keys of the laptop. He didn't think Methos would appreciate him taking notes of his dream like this, but it sounded like his niece's dream and that was too strange for him to ignore.

"She…at least the voice sounded female said, 'You are now joined for all time…no longer two souls, but one…and neither of you shall be happy until you have found the other. Beware…let none come between nor separate you, else you both shall die.' Then the woman slipped from my arms and I heard her scream the word 'No'. God, Joe, it was the most awful sound I've ever heard. As she fell, I told her not to worry, that I will find her, that she belonged to me now and I wouldn't let another man have what I considered mine." Methos laughed and to Joe's ears it sounded a bit harsh for this hour of the morning. "I haven't behaved that way with a woman since I was a Horseman."

Joe dreaded the answer but he had to ask. "What did this woman look like? Does she have a name?"

"Yes, and this is another thing that struck me as weird. I called her Catriona MacLeod. She was petite, probably less than five feet tall, with sapphire eyes and red-gold hair." Methos shook his head and laughed again. "Ahhh…I've probably been spending too much time around Duncan."

"Listen, can I ask you a favor?" Joe asked, hoping his tone of voice sounded neutral enough not to betray his real reason for asking this.

"Sure, Joe, what do you need?" Methos replied.

"My niece had a weird dream last night too. She didn't tell me much about it, but what she did say sounds a lot like yours. Can you come over and talk to her about it? Don't worry, I'll tell her you're our Methos scholar, and you can convince her that you are just a myth, which is exactly what I told her." Then Joe chuckled. "She still wants to know how a myth knows her middle name."

Methos choked on a swallow of beer. "Your niece's middle name is really Catriona?"

"Actually it's one of her two middle names. Her full name is Gabrielle Alexandra Catriona MacLeod. What do you care?" Joe asked, getting nervous.

Methos' tone was abrupt and not to be argued with. "I'm coming over. I'll be there in thirty minutes." Then Joe heard a dial tone. Hanging up the phone on his end, he slowly stood and folded the laptop so he could carry it out front. "Damn, I don't like this," he muttered. "Don't like this at all."

Joe walked out to the bar and set his laptop down, smiling at his niece and the cup of freshly brewed coffee she'd left there waiting for him. "So, darlin' tell me about this dream of yours. You were saying the guy in it claimed he was Methos?" Joe asked, leaning against the bar and taking a drink of his coffee.

Gabrielle eyed him skeptically, her sapphire-colored eyes narrowing. "All right, Joseph…what gives? First you try to persuade me that Methos is just a myth and I get the feeling you want me to drop the subject…and now you want to know all about the dream? Come on…'fess up. Why the sudden curiosity?"

Joe shrugged and hoped Gabrielle bought his 'who, me…innocent' act. "I am a Watcher, you know. It's not often an Immortal comes to me and says 'I had this weird dream.'"

"And how many Immortals can you claim as family?" Gabrielle snorted. "OK, OK I know my mom was only your foster sister for a few years, but you still feel like a real uncle to me. So," she said, changing the subject, "you want to hear it all, huh?"

"Yes, if you don't mind," he answered, "and these notes I'm taking aren't going into anything but my own personal files. By the way, I invited a friend of mine over to talk to you, too," he began and flinched when, as he expected, she bristled like a cornered cat.

"What? Who…and more importantly…why?"

"Relax, honey…his name is Adam Pierson…he's a Watcher friend of mine and he's also our top Methos scholar and has been for years. I know a little bit about the myth of Methos, but he knows practically everything there is to know about the Old Man. I thought perhaps he might be of some help, since you said you wanted to know everything," Joe replied, wishing she'd calm down. He really did want to hear more about her dream and compare it to what Methos had shared about his own.

"Oh, alright, but I don't want him to say anything to anyone else about this. This is just between you, me and him, okay?"

"Don't worry…Adam is just about the most secretive SOB I know," Joe said, and realized that that was probably the only completely truthful thing he'd told her about Adam/Methos so far. "If you ask him to keep his mouth shut, he will."

"Good. Now…start typing," she said and began to tell him all about the strange dream she'd had just hours before.

Methos, known to most of the world as mild-mannered perpetual grad-student/Watcher Adam Pierson, had had lots of time to think on his walk to Joe's bar, and he was still clueless. Truth be told, not much interested him these days, but when Joe'd told him that his niece had dreamed about Methos last night…well, he got curious. At the very least, he wanted to hear about this girl's dream and find out how much of it was fantasy and how much, if any of it, bore resemblance to the truth.

He paused outside the door to the bar and let his hand drift inside his coat to the hilt of his hidden Ivanhoe. An Immortal inside, at this hour? It didn't feel like MacLeod, and Dawson hadn't mentioned anyone else being here but himself and the girl, Gabrielle MacLeod. He idly wondered which of the Highlanders had adopted her as he opened the door with his free hand, the other one still resting on the sword, more out of habit than fear of a possible fight.

"And that's when I woke up," Gabrielle finished as Joe poured her another cup of coffee. "It was almost five by then and I figured I couldn't go back to sleep, so I got up."

"Thanks for waiting until seven to call me," Joe said dryly.

"You're welcome," she laughed. "I did want to take a shower and look decent first, though." Her laughter stopped and her face took on a guarded expression, one that he recognized after having seen it countless times on the faces of his other Immortal friends. "Expecting anyone?" she quipped as she hopped down from her barstool, hand inside her coat gripping the hilt of the katana Duncan had given her at the start of her training years before.

The door to the bar opened cautiously and the early morning sunlight blinded her to the identity of the other Immortal but his Presence felt very powerful to Gabrielle. She looked around nervously to assess an easy pathway to the back exit. In case this stranger issued a Challenge, she wanted to avoid as much damage as possible to the bar that was Joe's pride and joy.