"Now I want you to listen to me very carefully," Grant said.
Jennifer sat across the breakfast table from the old Immortal, the mushroom and ham omelet in front of her little more than picked at. She had slept for sixteen hours straight and had only awakened when the aromatic smells of Grant making breakfast drifted in from the kitchen. She had sat down to breakfast readily enough but when she started to think back on the events of the previous day, her appetite faded. Besides, she hated mushrooms.
"I can't emphasize this part enough. You will never be able to communicate with your family or your friends again." He told her, waiting for the inevitable reaction.
Jennifer looked shocked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that you aren't the first person that this is ever happened to, Jennifer." Grant said, his face sympathetic, "And I don't know of anyone who hasn't been far worse for attempting to renew ties with their old life. You would only cause pain for both yourself and for your family. And then there's the risk to consider.
"Four hundred years ago, someone who came back to life would have been called a witch and then driven away. But here in the age of reason, if someone dies and comes back to life, people are going to want to question 'why'. And my dear, I know you are smart enough to understand what that could mean to all of us if our secret was suddenly revealed.
"This is part of the reason that many Immortals will not allow someone as young as you are to survive, many of them just think that you would be too dangerous to us. They think that someone so young is not able to keep our secret safe. "
Jennifer said nothing, her hands folded in her lap. She had started the morning thinking that she was beyond tears, but now she felt them starting to well up in her eyes again.
"I don't want to be immortal." Was all Jennifer said, her eyes welling up.
Grant sighed, shaking his head. "I don't think any of us do, my dear."
Jennifer looked up at him, but said nothing.
"No, Jennifer." Grant said, sensing the question before she could ask it. "Not even me.
"There have been many times over the centuries that I wish I had simply died during the Crusades. Our lives are not easy ones; they are lives of violence and sorrow. I will not lie to you about it, my dear; it hurts to watch those that you love grow old and die while you yourself stay as young as you ever were. But it's not all bad; I can't say that I have regretted my life and the people that I have known over the years.
"But when my death came, I understood that I had to start my life over again. I was taught by the immortal that found me the same way that I'm going to teach you and the way that you, God willing, may teach your own pupil one day. We don't get to decide our lot in life, my dear, all we can do is play that hand that we have been dealt."
Jennifer furrowed her eyebrows for a moment and then looked up at Grant inquisitively.
"You said that we are immortal, but then you also said that there are some people that wouldn't let me survive because of my age." She said. "But if I am going to live forever, how could I die?"
Grant signed and nodded. "That's the trick of it my dear. If left to our own devices we would survive until doomsday, but that's not the case. When an immortal is killed, they will come back to life as though the entire thing never happened. But if an immortal has their head separated from their body, they will stay dead forever. For this reason, you will very rarely see one of us not carrying a sword."
"Why?" Jennifer asked.
"Why?" Grant repeated.
Jennifer nodded.
"Because some immortals are evil, and some desire power." Grand told her. "You see, when one Immortal takes the head of another, he take from him all of his knowledge and power. Power can be a very seductive thing, Jennifer. Power has long had the ability to turn perfectly reasonable people into madmen. It's no different for us; I have had many friends over the years become swallowed by darkness through their own lust for power."
"And so they kill other Immortals?" Jennifer asked.
"Absolutely." Grant said, nodding. "And anyone else who happens to get in their way."
Jennifer looked a little shocked. Grant could see the intelligence in her eyes, he could see her brain rapidly processing all of the information that he was giving to her. He could see her starting to understand.
"How do you sleep at night?" She asked finally.
"You mean, knowing that someone could be coming to kill me?" Grant asked.
Jennifer nodded.
"Well, there are other things you need to keep in mind too. The first is that we know when others like us are around." Grant told her, then smiling he added: "Didn't you wonder how it was that I knew you were one of us?"
Jennifer considered it for a moment and then shook her head.
"No, I didn't even think about it." She said.
"Immortals always know, my dear. When two immortal get close to one another, both of them become immediately aware that another of our kind is around. The sense doesn't always tell us who it is, but it definitely gives us fair warning that one of us is close by. Didn't you feel it yourself, it's like you know that someone is nearby, you feel it coming from here." Grant said, putting his fingertip right over his solar plexus.
"I guess I did." Jennifer said. "It felt to me like someone was around. I just knew that you were going to be there before I even turned around and saw you standing behind me."
Grant nodded. "It's as easy as that Jennifer. There's something else though. Our little game of survival is not without its own set of rules. There are rules that all immortals, no matter how evil, will always follow. One of them is that we will never cross swords while standing on holy ground. Any place with strong spiritual significance is holy ground; it's not just defined by any single belief system."
"Right here." Jennifer said.
"Pardon?"
"Right here, this is holy ground isn't it?" She clarified.
Grant smiled slightly, impressed. The girl was incredibly sharp; it didn't even occur to him that she would have ferreted out one of his secrets so quickly. It also worried him a bit, because if she could shine the light so plainly on this item out of his own closet full of secrets, could she just as easily find all the others?
"Yes it is, my dear. This place used to be an old church. There was a village here, around three hundred years ago. Unfortunately, the entire village has long since gone to rot; everything except the bones of the old church that is. When I first came to this place I decided that I would make my home here. I repaired the church and that, as they say, is that."
"Couldn't they just wait right outside of the church for you to come out and then cut off your head?" Jennifer asked him.
If the girl was at all squeamish about such a concept, it didn't show at all. She sat with her elbows on the table, her breakfast forgotten. She seemed enraptured by all that Grant was telling her, at least distracted enough to not be thinking about the horror of her last twenty-four hours.
"I suppose they could. I mean, there's nothing stopping them. But at the same time, I don't make a big noise and I keep to myself most of the time. Just because I'm immortal doesn't mean that all the others automatically have some idea where I am. Most of those that do know of this place are my friends, or else they simply don't care.
"You see, there are really not all that many Immortal predators out there. They are out there, to be sure, killing other immortals for power or just for sport; but the majority of us are more reflective about our lives. I can use my sword, don't doubt that for a moment, but if given the choice…I would just as soon not have to use it." Grant explained.
"Your sword?" Jennifer inquired.
Grant said nothing but held one finger up and rushed out of the room. Jennifer looked toward the doorway after him, but he reemerged after only a moment. In his hand was a glittering sword with an ornate brass hilt that was polished to a mirror finish. The blade had been replaced times beyond counting over the ages. The hilt however, the hilt of the Templar's sword, was the same one that he carried with him to the Siege of Acre all those years earlier.
Grant placed it reverently, almost lovingly on the dining table in front of Jennifer. The blade reflected the young girl's image back at her. The rays of the sun scattered and heliographed as they struck the immaculate mixture of brass and steel. Age did not touch the sword, every single Latin letter that graced the crossbar, in a language that Jennifer did not comprehend, stood out as forcefully and brilliantly as they did on the day that it was first placed into Grant's hands.
"Grant, it's beautiful." Jennifer said simply.
Grant smiled at her. "This was given to me by a great warrior named Gerard de Ridefort in 1185. It was just a year or so before I left for the Holy Land, and I have carried it with me ever since."
"Are you going to teach me how to use it?" She asked him.
For a moment, Grant looked flustered. He opened his mouth to say something but then closed it. He instead looked down at the sword on the table and shook his head.
"No, my dear. Two-hundred years have come and passed since I have last lifted a sword in violence, and I'm not foreseeing a change to that any time in the near future. Instead it will be a friend of mine who will teach you how to fight. I sincerely hope though, that you will never have the need to put that particular skill to use."
Grant watched as the girl ran the tips of her fingers across the ancient weapon. There was a time that he would not have allowed anyone to touch that blade, but then there was a time that he believed any challenge could be solved with the tip of the sword. Those times were behind him now, he saw the storied weapon upon the table as nothing more than a tool now; a means to an end.
"Why?" The girl asked him.
"Why do I no longer fight?" Grant asked her.
The girl nodded, but didn't look up at him. Instead her fingers traced the hilt of the blade, her fingers running across the wire-wrapped handle and down to the pommel and the cross that was engraved upon it.
"It's a long story, my dear. But the truth is just that I lost my taste for it." Grant said. "I learned a long time ago that I much prefer the accumulation of knowledge to the accumulation of power."
Jennifer said nothing, her face unreadable as she looked down at the sword on the table. Grant was about to ask her what she found so interesting about the blade when he sensed someone nearby, even before he heard the sound of the car pulling up to the house.
Jennifer sensed it too and looked up at Grant in shock, unaware of what the sense was warning her of.
"Is there…" she started.
"Yes." Grant said, "Someone's here."