Invisible Darkness
by Vi and Parda (December 2001)
June 23, 2008
Monastery Beach
Carmel, California
/!Carajo! Fire! I'm on fire!/
/The pain is absolute-every burning atom of my body is stretched to the limit, like on the rack. I always want to crawl into a hole and die, die quickly, and never come back, because I can't ever stand this pain. I can still see the light, burning my eyes even through tightly-closed lids, night turned into day, darkness into brilliance./
/Then the invasion, the violation, as Gavin Stuart-the damned drunken Scot who followed me from the hospital and just would not take no for an answer-fills me, looking for a fight. I scream during the unique aloneness-cum-fusion that is the Quickening./
/But I won! I'm alive! His life, my life-it doesn't matter. Light and life and laughter fill me, drown me, bubble forth from me, a fountain more brilliant than the lightning of before. Surely, there's enough life in me, and enough energy and enough power, to light a small city. Will the corpses in the churchyard cemetery across the street suddenly burst forth from their graves and scream their own joy at being alive?/
Elena Duran's legs folded completely, limp and useless, her strong legs which had kept her dancing close enough to cut Gavin Stuart, dancing-mostly-out of the reach of his sharp blade, her legs which had kept her upright during the Quickening, until now. She sank farther, right into the ground, pummeled again and again by his energy, by his entity, by those brilliant bolts of searing rage.
Elena lay face down on the cold sand of Monastery Beach, reduced to a whimpering mass of bruised and bleeding flesh and bone as his psyche sliced through her mind, just as his sword had sliced through her body. This second battle was always harder. She was so tired, and she hurt so much. She couldn't even cry out with the pain; she just lay there squirming, a beetle pinned to a board.
And he wanted his revenge. Damn it, no, Gavin Stuart wanted to live! He was reaching into her brain, holding her heart in his hand, squeezing her very existence out and trying to replace it with his own. He wanted her.
No, not again! Elena could see them, all those she had killed during her four hundred years of fighting and living and dying. A crowd of men and women gibbered at her feet, their hands clutching at her, clawing at her, their long-boned fingers groping blindly into her soul. Robert Trent was there, darkly smiling, for he had hacked out a home inside her, taken her over, bent her to his will. And Stuart there, on the top of the pile, still strong, and if even one of the others touched her, Stuart would have a handhold, and he'd be able to pull himself up, slither up all along her own body until he was face to face with her. And then ...
No. Elena closed her eyes and concentrated on ... on being herself. On pushing him and the others out of her head, on grinding her teeth together, as though that would make any difference. Stuart was a man of strong character. Damn him! Why couldn't she be the one who culled the herd and got only the easy ones? Why did she always get challenged by strong-willed, expert fencers?
/Maybe I look like an easy kill./
Sweat broke out all over her body, and her breathing hadn't slowed down yet. No! No, it would not happen again, as it had with Robert Trent. It wouldn't happen again because she had won! Stuart hadn't been strong enough with the sword, and he wasn't strong enough now.
/I am Mariaelena Conchita Duran y Agramonte, and I've beaten you, pendejo, and you can't have me./
Time flows invisibly in darkness.
Elena had fainted, but she didn't know when. Her face lay in a hollow in the ground, and she could taste the salty tang of sea air, feel the cool caress of a heavy summer fog on her back. Sand grated under her cheek, but it was still much better than cold concrete or the harsh gravel of pavement. She opened her eyes and lifted her head, then rolled over onto her back, closing up that gash in her ribs, easing the hurt in her right knee, the light taking the place of the pain and of the hollow feeling, and leaving her full of herself. Herself, not him. And not the others.
/Just myself, thank you very much./
/You're very welcome./
She giggled, and it turned into a laugh. She was alive, and the headless Mr. Gavin Stuart a few meters away was not. Fuck him. Her mind drifted for a moment, for there was, in fact, someone else she'd like to fuck. Duncan MacLeod was supposed to be entertaining their guests in her ocean-side home. But Amanda, Methos, Richie, and Connor and his current lady-love Shannon (a redhead of ample proportions) could find something else to do: play Scrabble or poker or something. Maybe more music. There was still plenty of food. They'd all come into town a few days ago to hear Joe Dawson play in the Monterey Blues Festival yesterday, and afterwards Amanda and Methos had displayed unexpected musical talent, Amanda being quite the chanteuse while Methos accompanied her on the guitar. They'd obviously made music together before, probably in a variety of ways.
Elena was ready to make some music with Duncan. She didn't think Duncan would be worried about her just yet; it wasn't even midnight yet, and she'd only been gone a few hours. Her housekeeper, Marta Fernandez, had collapsed earlier that night in the caretakers' apartment at Elena's house, giving Arturo, Marta's husband of thirty-seven years, quite a shock. Elena had followed the ambulance to make sure Marta would be well-taken care of.
Earlier that night
Arturo's hand was bony and cold in Elena's when she squeezed it and said, "Remember, your salary continues and your jobs are secure, both of you, whenever you're ready to come back."
"You are very generous, Elena, as you always have been," Marta said softly from her hospital bed, and Arturo nodded vigorously, his once-black mustache salt and pepper now. Elena kissed Marta on the cheek and bade the couple goodnight, then quickly walked out of the hospital. All hospitals smelled the same, even this one with its lovely paintings on the walls and its ornamental fish pond in the lobby near the gift shop. The elegant trappings couldn't hide the fact that hospitals were places where mortals went to die.
Two weeks ago, in a hospital in Argentina, Elena had leaned over another, older woman, Carmela Onioco, and kissed her cheek for the last time. Carmela had been the housekeeper - house manager, really - of Elena's estancia in Argentina, and Carmela had also been one of her best friends - one of the few mortals who knew Elena's secret. "I was at her mother's bedside when Carmela was born eighty years ago, Duncan," Elena had told Duncan when he called later that day. "Carmela's mother died at childbirth, and I held the newborn inside my shirt for a few hours, giving her my warmth while they scrambled to find a nursemaid for her. I've never forgotten that, and I won't forget her."
"Nor should you," Duncan had said. "Do you want me to come down there to be with you for the funeral?"
"No. No, I'll be fine. Thank you."
"Still coming to California on the eighteenth?"
"Duncan, I'm not in the mood for that, not now."
"Carmela would want you to go," Duncan had urged her, and Elena knew he was right. "You've got tickets for the Blues Festival," Duncan had continued with his reasons, "and you've already invited a houseful of people. Joe Dawson has gotten better with age, and you'll enjoy it, you know."
And Duncan had been right again. Elena had enjoyed the three-day festival, a lot. And she did enjoy having people who knew and appreciated each other in her home, the light and laughter and love.
Outside the hospital, Elena stood on the steps, breathing deeply of the cool evening air, catching hints of sweet jasmine and the sharper scent of pine. Wisps of fog wreathed the dark branches, and the long summer day was fading into twilight. Marta would recover, the doctors had said. It was hypertension, easily controlled with medication. She would be fine.
Of course, someday, Marta would die.
Elena took another breath, then headed for her Mercedes in the visitor section of the parking lot. She'd left the top down, and the seats were moist with the evening fog. As she opened the car door she sensed the Immortal. Elena shrugged and slipped inside the car. "Not tonight, dear," she called out and then muttered to herself, "I have a headache and I'm depressed as hell."
The other Immortal's presence faded when she pulled out of the parking lot, but she didn't relax until she was down the hill and past the town of Carmel, past the traffic lights and traffic jams. She drove down the two-lane highway, ignoring the dramatic sunset over the ocean off to her right, and she stopped at the Carmelite Monastery to pray.
Unfortunately, that Immortal, obnoxious and insistent, was waiting for her when she came off Holy Ground, and so she sighed and crossed the highway on foot to fight him on the windswept seashore, hidden from view of passing cars by sand dunes and the gathering darkness. Then she took his head.
Now that Gavin Stuart was dead, Elena wanted to go home. If Duncan had started to fret, she could put him right at ease. Or put him right in bed. Elena did a pushup to get to a sitting position, then stood, feeling her strength coursing back. She picked up her sword and her coat, then trudged through the sand back to the highway, where she paused to look both ways for cars. People drove like maniacs on this stretch of road, and the darkness was nearly complete, this far from town. The moon wouldn't be up for another hour or so.
No cars were coming, but what the hell was that? A noise, or just a bad feeling? Or paranoia? Her Watcher, the blond-haired man with the glasses? Or her imagination? No. Elena never ignored feelings like these, and she didn't think she was just being silly. Adrenaline started pumping as she gripped the handle of her sword and looked around sharply, listening, staring off into the night, her one eye straining to see ...
She heard nothing. But she saw it, that flash of light streaking toward her before the darkness took her again, before the bullets slammed into her chest and through her, shattering her ribs. She actually felt her heart tremble and stop, so that she died again, by the sea this time, close to a convent and to a cemetery full of somber corpses, not so far from an already-beheaded man.
Elena revived, but there was no sand against her cheek this time, no smell of the sea. A cold metal chair, cold shudders through her body ... cold, so cold, and she couldn't move, couldn't move at all! She was tied down, strapped down, tight metal bands at her waist and ankles and wrists, and oh my God, NO! Not him! Not this. Not again!
She started to scream, but her chest hurt; Bethel must have shot her or stabbed her, and she couldn't get the words out. Gasping, trying to scream-but she knew it wouldn't help. It never helped. He never listened, never stopped. Bethel had her; he'd trapped her again and strapped her to that cold metal chair in his basement, his torture basement, her torture chair ...
"I'm going to break you."
Madre de Dios, NO! He was right there, whispering in her ear, and he was going to break her, she knew it. He was going to break her again, he was going to hurt her, he was going to break her bones and fuck her and burn her and rape her and cut her and fuck her again and again, GodohGod no!
Her chest started to heal, but she continued to thrash and struggle in fear and agony, knowing it was hopeless. Knowing she was hopeless. She knew what would happen, what he'd do to her, now that he'd caught her again. Not again! Now that she could talk, she screamed out, "!No, os lo pido, tened piedad, no por favor, os lo suplico, no! No, no me quemeis, noooo!"
"What toy shall we use today, Elena?"
That voice again, close by her ear, amused, cold, vicious. She started begging now, whimpering, not even trying to escape anymore. "!No! !No, Bethel, por el amor de Dios, no! !Matame de una vez, os lo suplico! Just kill me, please!" she screamed impotently.
The empty space in her eye socket throbbed with remembered agony as she pleaded, alone and naked in the cold and dark. "!No, por favor, no me quemeis, Bethel, no, matame!" she finally whispered brokenly, knowing it wouldn't do any good, knowing she was completely helpless, knowing he would torture her anyway, no matter what she said or did.
"I'm going to turn out the lights, Elena, so you will know what being in total darkness is really like."
She knew. !Carajo!, she knew. In the dark, there is no time. In the dark, there is no hope. Only pain and fear, and despair-total blind despair.
Except ...
Except, it wasn't dark. Dim fluorescent bulbs flickered above, and a small high window glowed silver with moonlight. A window? There weren't any windows in Bethel's basement, so she couldn't be there. And ... and she wasn't in the metal chair, either. She was sitting on a cold, concrete floor, and that was duct tape on her wrists, not metal straps. She even had her clothes on. She wasn't naked.
But she also wasn't alone.
"Elena Duran." It was a woman's voice, a woman standing in front of her, calling her by name.
Not an Immortal, Elena felt no sensation of one of her kind nearby. She slowed her mind down a little, just a little, gasping now in relief instead of terror, because Bethel wasn't there. Bethel was dead, she remembered that now. It couldn't be Bethel, Bethel was dead. Completely and permanently. Elena had buried his head in her garden, nearly a dozen years ago. Connor had given the head to her as a present, and Bethel was dead.
/No B-Bethel, no Bethel, my God! He's - no, he's dead. It's not him, and I'm not chained in his torture chamber, in his basement, and he can't hurt me anymore! Bethel is dead, !gracias a Dios!/
She needed to catch her breath. Deep breathing, in through the nose, out through the nose. Calm. Pain. Peace. Breathing into the belly. But Bethel had worked with a mortal, she thought suddenly, and the cold panic and the cold sweats started again ... But no! It wasn't Bethel, it couldn't be Bethel. Bethel was dead. Dead.
But Elena was still frightened, because the woman knew Elena's name, and Elena was completely helpless at her feet. The healing was almost finished, and Elena clamped down on the moans of pain she was making - a little late, Elena! - and then she focused on the woman standing impassively before her. The moonlight from the tiny window slanted across her face, highlighting a snub nose and firm chin. Moonlight? Elena shook her head in confusion. For the moon to be that high, it had to be two, maybe three in the morning. Had this woman kept her dead for hours? Why?
Elena went back to evaluating her captor: mid-forties, slender, maybe a head shorter than Elena herself, tendrils of blonde hair escaping from a pony tail, a flowered print dress under a beige coat. But Elena didn't have her coat on anymore. She didn't have her sword, either; it was lying on the floor, next to the blonde's feet. The woman's blue eyes were searing into Elena with rage, just as Gavin Stuart's lightning had done.
Who the hell was she? Why was she so angry? Elena had never seen her before in her life, so why had the woman shot her? Elena looked around slowly, allowing the last remnants of panic and pain to leave her, taking those long abdominal breaths, assessing her situation. The walls of the building were horizontal wooden planks, the floor cold concrete, and a musty smell of animals and a moldy smell of old hay lingered in the air. The scattered pieces of a tractor or a car or something lay in the far corner. Maybe a barn or a storage shed of some kind? Elena was tied - strapped, actually, with duct tape - to some metal pipes that ran down the side of the wall. Had the woman dragged her in here? She didn't look strong enough.
What the hell was going on? The woman stood rigidly, jaw tensed, then carefully took a gun out of her coat pocket, holding it almost gingerly in her right hand. Angry, yes, but nervous - and scared. Definitely not a professional killer. That didn't make Elena feel a hell of a lot better. Elena shifted, trying to get comfortable, but her right elbow throbbed with a steady, sharp beat. Everything else had healed but that.
The woman began, "You-"
"Who are you?" Elena interrupted, staring right at her captor. It was as good a question as any, and Elena wanted to take the initiative, to get some answers and some measure of control over the situation. Her right elbow was twisted funny and hurt like hell, probably dislocated, but Elena didn't think the woman knew or would care. Elena would just have to ignore the pain. She'd done that before. But it wasn't Bethel, thank God. Anyone, anything was better than that.
But then the woman lifted the gun and pointed it at her, and Elena saw the hated circular tattoo on the woman's wrist. /!Madre de Dios! A Hunter. Carajo, I'm fucked./
"Who am I?" the woman repeated, her voice thin and trembling a bit with anger - or maybe with fear? "I am your worst nightmare, Elena Duran."
Elena almost burst into semi-hysterical laughter at the high campiness of it, the laugh you laugh after you've just escaped a horrible, terrible fate. She would have laughed, too, except she figured it would be a quick way to suicide. The woman would probably behead her anyway - that's what Hunters did - behead her with her own sword in a dirty shed, while Elena was helpless, strapped to metal pipes, not even fighting another Immortal. Duncan would never know, and her essence would be lost to murdering Hunters.
But ... the woman hadn't killed her yet. Did she want to gloat? Why? Elena took yet another cleansing breath and focused on the woman again. Maybe she could live through this after all. "I've had bad nightmares before," Elena answered as calmly as she could, trying not to move her elbow. "Some of them were even real." She started asking questions again. "What do you want from me? And why don't you tell me your name, since you know mine."
The gun didn't waver. "Pamela Johnson, not that it would mean anything to you."
"You are right; the name means nothing to me," Elena said, still controlled, but she was cursing to herself, because the use of a name meant a lot to her. It meant that Pamela Johnson was indeed going to kill her, otherwise she wouldn't have given Elena her name and risked having Elena find her later. !Carajo! Elena forcibly calmed herself, let the peace take over her mind and spirit. Keep Pamela talking. The more she talked, the more chance Elena had of surviving. Maybe.
Of course, dying - even permanently - was not, Elena absolutely knew, the worst thing that could happen to her. "Who are you, Pamela Johnson?" she asked, again as calmly as possible.
Pamela's eyes flashed with renewed anger. "Who did you think I was before, when you were begging and pleading for your life? Bethel? He tortured you, didn't he? He got you sobbing, 'No, please don't hurt me!' My Spanish is rusty, but terror is the same in any language," Pamela said maliciously, staring down at Elena.
Oh, yeah. Elena had provided Pamela Johnson with quite a show, hadn't she? All unknowingly, Pamela had tapped into Elena's greatest fear. Perfect, just perfect, Elena thought in disgust, then reminded herself to keep cool. Never lose your temper in a duel. And this was definitely a duel, a duel to the death, and Elena's only weapon was words.
Elena tilted her head to one side, considering her best approach, her most effective attack. Pamela was obviously determined-obsessed-for some reason, and Elena had to find out why. But Elena decided to risk having Pamela erupt into more violence by trying to make the Watcher see she was out of her element. And first, Elena had to answer Pamela's question, to prove her own strength.
Casually, Elena said, "You reminded me of ... a situation I was in, with someone, but he's dead. He was an Immortal. You are not. He was a monster and a sadist, who refined the art of torture over decades of hurting people for fun, and he hurt me, a lot."
"You think I can't torture you?" Pamela challenged.
Elena smiled ruefully. Torture was definitely not something Pamela had done before, no matter how much she hated Immortals, even if she was a Hunter. There was bravado in Pamela's words and in her stance, in the gun she was gripping as a lifeline, or for protection. Elena pulled experimentally against her bonds, left hand only, and found that the claims of duct tape manufacturers were completely true. No escaping that way. However, the pipe her left hand was strapped to seemed loose, looser than the right. It came further away from the wall, and although Elena didn't dare turn her head to examine it, maybe she could pull it off in one hard yank, if she got her legs under her and if - a big if - Pamela didn't notice, and if Pamela let her guard down and didn't just shoot her the minute Elena tried anything.
It was still worth a try. She wrapped her hand around the pipe and carefully, surreptitiously, began to apply pressure against it, back and forth. Meanwhile, more words were called for. Elena countered with a question of her own. "Is that why you didn't take my head after you shot me? So you could torture me?"
Pamela started to answer, and Elena cut in again, with a mixture of conviction and dismissal, "No. Not you. Very few people are capable of deliberately inflicting pain on another person like that, and enjoying it." Elena's voice was cool and sure, all trace of her panic vanished. "You are not one of them, and you know it."
"You're right," Pamela agreed, sharp and brittle, the nervousness swallowed by anger once again. "But I also know that you are a torturer and a murderer, Elena Duran, and that is why I am going to kill you."
Elena almost shrugged. She was used to being thought of as a monster by some mortals-especially Hunters. She could hardly deny being a murderer. As for being a torturer - dammit, she had done that too. So she did not even bother to deny the accusations. They were, after all, true. Elena moved on to the next phase of her attack: finding out why they were here. "I didn't think Hunters needed any reason to destroy us 'unnatural' creatures from hell,'" Elena goaded. She pulled some more at the pipe; it felt looser.
"Hunters?" Pamela repeated in bewilderment. "I don't know what you're talking about. This is about you, Duran, not any Hunters."
"No?" Elena asked skeptically. Hell, of course it was Hunters! she thought. Who else could it be? But ... if Pamela was not a Hunter - and yet why deny it, because, in Elena's experience Hunters were very proud of their killings - then why did Pamela want Elena dead? It must be personal; Elena had probably killed someone Pamela loved. But Elena had never "tortured" any Immortals, not like Bethel had tortured her. Played a bit with one or two of them during a fight, perhaps, cruelly, like a cat with a mouse, but that was just part of the Game. She shook her head to clear it of those memories, and then continued with the duel. Time to undermine the opposition's anger, time to make nice. "May I call you Pamela? Am I supposed to know you? Johnson?"
"My husband was Kevin Johnson," Pamela said, her voice still trembling, but with anger now. Definitely anger. Perhaps even rage.
So much for the idea of making "friends," Elena thought resignedly.
"You took him from our home in San Diego," Pamela continued, reciting a litany of vendetta. "You took him from our bed in the middle of the night, on the seventeenth of February in 1995. You took my husband away, and you tied him to a chair. Then you broke his leg, hurt him, tortured him - I don't know for how long. And then you murdered him by running him through with your sword. This sword," she said, pointing to Elena's blade on the floor.
But it couldn't have been that sword, Elena thought in confusion. She had lost her original sword, the one her father had made for her. Bethel had broken it, like he'd broken her.
Pamela stepped closer and pointed the gun straight at Elena's forehead, right between the eyes. "Do you remember the name Johnson now?" Pamela demanded. "Do you remember him? Or do you even bother to remember who you kill?"
/!Madre de Dios!/ Elena suddenly had trouble catching her breath again, but it wasn't from being threatened with a gun or from any wound. All the calming techniques in the world wouldn't help her now, and there could be no escape, because Elena remembered that night. She remembered Kevin Johnson, too.
"What, no more comebacks, Senorita Know-it-all?" Pamela asked venomously, but before Elena could even begin to answer, Pamela demanded, "Why?" Tears of rage and wild grief gathered in the corners of her eyes, and her voice was hoarse with rage. "I want to know why, Duran."
And that was why they were here. Elena forced herself to meet Pamela's eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how to begin, searching for words of explanation instead of words of attack, but Pamela spoke first, slowly, as if she were piecing a puzzle together, "For thirteen years, I never knew your name. I had no idea how to find you. But I recognized you tonight after you beheaded Gavin Stuart. And it was you, wasn't it, Duran? You were killing Watchers all up the West Coast, hunting us like you hunt each other-"
"Yes," Elena replied, wanting - needing - to explain. But there was more to it than that, dammit! "But you have it the wrong way around. It was you Watchers, your Hunters, who were killing Immortals. And anyone who got near us. Anyone that we cared about."
Pamela shook her head in denial then said, "All right, let's say these Hunters did exist. There were some stories about Hunters, yes, at one time, back in the early '90s," she admitted.
"What?" Elena interrupted incredulously, furious enough to forget all about choosing her words with care. "Are you ignorant or just plain stupid? They weren't just stories, and the Hunters sure the hell existed!" Elena cried out, heedless of the consequences, straining against her bonds, jerking her whole body towards Pamela so suddenly that the Watcher jumped back.
"They were real," Elena snarled, "and they shot at me, and later on they shot me and captured me. They stripped me, chained me, and broke my bones. With a sledgehammer! They tried to lure a friend of mine to his death by using me as bait. And worse - Hunters murdered my friend, a sweet girl who -"
"There was never any killing of Immortals or their 'friends' by any Watchers!" Pamela shouted back, furious in her own right, her blue eyes blazing. "If there had been any Hunters killing Immortals, we Watchers would have taken care of it ourselves, internally. And I would have known about it!"
Elena forced herself to back off, back down. "Well, the Watchers didn't take care of it. And maybe they didn't tell you what was happening, Pamela. They didn't tell you who killed your husband, did they?" She watched Pamela's reaction, tried to gauge what the other woman was thinking, then added, "Hunters machine-gunned my friend Maria, who was pregnant, and obviously not an Immortal!"
"That's a lie," Pamela said, her hot rage gone into a much more dangerous cold certainty. The gun was once again pointed straight at Elena's head. Light glimmered off the barrel; the hole of the muzzle was a pit of empty black. "You're a liar, on top of everything else. I know you can't die this way, but I can hurt you. And if you lie again, I will shoot you."
For a long moment the two women stared at each other. Elena knew Pamela wasn't a torturer, but she'd already shot Elena several times, and Elena was damn sure Pamela could do it again. Elena didn't think it was a bluff, not this time. "Yes, you can hurt me, Pamela," she admitted, staying calm, staying cool, trying to take back control. "You even know how to kill me."
And that didn't make it easy to stay cool, either. But Elena needed Pamela to understand. Elena summoned all of her sincerity and let her grief at Maria's death show through. "But I'm not lying. I didn't lie to you about your husband. I have not lied to you at all, Pamela Johnson. My pregnant friend Maria was hunted down and murdered by Hunters in Argentina on the eighth of November, 1993. It was after midnight, and they burst into my house. We tried to run, but they hunted us down like animals. They could see she was pregnant - eight months pregnant, Pamela! - but they shot her, and they tried really hard to shoot me. That is how I found out about Watchers, and that is why I hunted them."
"Watchers don't kill Immortals!" Pamela repeated, practically shouting, but Elena could tell that the volume was just Pamela's way of trying to convince herself. "And even if some did," Pamela added in a rush, "even if these Hunters really exist, my husband Kevin was not one of them. Didn't you find that out when you tortured him?"
Elena was out of words, defenseless now. It was true, she'd tortured him. It was true, she'd found out he wasn't a Hunter. It was true - and she'd killed him anyway. The silence stretched between them, until Elena finally admitted it, finally faced what she had done. "Yes."
Now Pamela was speechless. She opened and closed her mouth several times, so flabbergasted that she forgot about the automatic and lowered her hand to her side. "You knew -" She shook her head slowly, her breath catching in her throat, and when she finally spoke, her words came through choked tears, "You knew he was innocent, and you killed him anyway?"
Elena closed her eye, opened it again. She had to face this, dammit. She owed Pamela Johnson the damn truth, no excuses. It was a matter of honor. And right now, Elena needed all the honor she could get. "I knew he was innocent of being a Hunter," Elena said, but she couldn't help adding in her own defense, "You're a Watcher, but I didn't kill you. I promised him if he cooperated I wouldn't hurt his family, and I didn't-"
"Wouldn't hurt-?" Pamela interrupted. "Wouldn't hurt his family?" she repeated, furious and incredulous again. "Did you think that making his children orphans and his wife a widow wouldn't hurt his family?"
To this Elena said nothing.
Pamela stood there, shaking her head, the whirling confusion in her mind reflected on her face. Then Pamela asked her original question all over again, a simple heartfelt plea, "Why him? Why my Kevin?"
Elena tried not to shrug. Because he was the next one in line. Because he was there. No good reason, but Pamela deserved an answer. "I wanted to kill them all, all the Watchers and all the Hunters," Elena explained. "I got his name from another Watcher."
"From Claire?" Pamela asked sharply. "Claire Carruthers?"
"I think so, yes," Elena answered after a moment, because there'd been so many, and she tried not to remember those days. "I was ... on a rampage, out for blood. I was out of control."
Pamela sucked air. "You were out of control," she echoed, unbelieving, and the flatness of those words stripped away the pretense of any possible excuse, any possible forgiveness. "You had an Immortal tantrum," Pamela continued. "And you murdered-" She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, then went on in a light, controlled voice, "They adored their father, you know. Our two little girls. Caitlyn and Emily thought he was the most wonderful daddy ... But it's been thirteen years, and Emily was only seven. She barely remembers him now, and I-" Her voice broke, and she turned away, but not before Elena saw the bright tears dimming Pamela's eyes.
Elena's eyes filled in sympathy. And empathy. And sorrow. And not a little guilt. Oh, God. She remembered Kevin Johnson, and she remembered his children, too.
Continued in Part 2