Chapter Twelve

Sweeping, desert landscape…a humble nomad clan…the screaming, the fleeing…the buzz…horses' hooves, making too little sound for the intensity of force as they furiously pound the sand…fearsome riders burning with the white-hot lust for power and blood…the buzz…terror thick in the arid air…the buzz, the buzz!

Methos surfaced from the dream damp all over, convinced he was being restrained. In fact, he had simply become entangled in the sheet. Usually, he slept quietly, with little movement.

Releasing himself from the bedding, he grabbed the Ivanhoe from beneath his pillow and silently crept toward the door of his apartment, the motion chilling his chest, arms, and shoulders as air caressed him through the sweat. He could feel the other immortal just on the other side of the door, quiet and motionless. Stealing a quick look through the peephole told him nothing. Whoever it was, they were carefully standing outside of its range.

Screw the waiting game, he thought irritably. Knock, kick in the door, or get the hell out of here. I'm tired.

After several minutes, his lungs aching from instinctively holding his breath, Methos could wait no longer. Turning the locks as silently as possible, he twisted the knob and pulled open the door. Stepping through it cautiously, he was startled into a near coronary failure as Cassandra whirled from her place against the wall and into his path.

Slouching back against the doorjamb, he closed his eyes, first noting that her sword was not drawn. "What the hell are you doing, lurking out here?"

"Did I wake you?" she smirked. Without waiting for the clever retort he might eventually think of, she walked into his apartment uninvited. He rested his head against the doorjamb, cursing silently, and followed her.

She was taking stock of his living area, making the rounds as though cataloging his possessions for insurance purposes. Rubbing his eyes, he propped himself against the back of the armchair and folded his arms, standing in his boxers and still holding the sword loosely. He wondered how she had found out where he lived. As angry as he was with Methos, MacLeod would not have given her the address.

"Cassandra, what do you want?"

She turned, and he noted now the hastily donned old sweater and jeans, the limpness of her long hair, and especially her eyes – the dark circles, the redness where white should be. She was here because she could not rest.

"You know, that's the first time you've ever said that to me."

"Said what?"

"What do I want?" She continued to move around the room, touching his things, picking them up, handling them. "That was never much of a concern for you, was it, Methos?"

He sighed impatiently. No. No ghost hunts, not tonight. Nothing could change their past, but emotional turmoil could certainly impact their immediate future. "Go home, Cassandra. There's too much at stake tomorrow for this."

Cassandra looked at him inscrutably, setting down a small figurine she'd picked up. Looking across the room, she walked toward a bookcase and ran her finger along the spines, stroking them as though for pleasure. Noticing Methos' nervous shifting of weight, she correctly surmised that knick-knacks were one thing, but books were quite another.

Finding a volume that looked especially ancient and fragile, she pulled it from the shelf and began to leaf through it quickly, carelessly. He crossed the room, extending his hand to take the book away, but she quickly thrust it behind her, placing her body between it and him, daring him to go after it. Concerned for the book's welfare, Methos attempted to reach around her. She turned enough to keep him from getting to the book, and he reached with the other hand, shifting the sword he'd forgotten he held. She laughed at him, at her success in forcing him to play this game.

He stopped, willing his hands to his sides. "Give me the book."

"Take it from me."

Frustrated, he demanded again, "What is it you want?"

She glanced down at his hand. "Am I so formidable that you need to keep your sword handy?"

"I find it's best to maintain a cautious stance with unannounced late-night visitors." He kept the tone light and in character, but his face told a different story as he stepped back a tiny pace.

Cassandra leaned toward him unexpectedly, caressing the sword with her fingers. "You're very careful not to touch me. Who is it you don't trust here, Methos? Me…or yourself?"

"Stop this right now," he said harshly. He'd been aiming for authoritative but managed only desperate. As he said it, he turned away, anxious for some distance. To his shock, she gave a forceful shove to his upper arm and shoulder, propelling him in his chosen direction, and swung one leg to pull his feet out from under him. He hit the floor hard, his sword bouncing out of his grasp, and momentarily had the wind sucked from his lungs.

There was no time to process this incomprehensible turn of events, as she was now straddling him, flipping him onto his back and forcing his shoulders down against the carpeted floor. "Remember our first time, Methos? Master?" The mask of the dangerous seductress had slipped away now, revealing a face etched by centuries of remembered humiliation and subjugation.

"Get off," he gasped, trying to re-inflate lungs now constricted by her weight. Shocking him again, Cassandra slapped him with all her strength and he tasted blood as his teeth cut into his cheek.

In his mind, he felt the two of them exchanging places, he over her now, teaching her what he expected from his humble servant. Using methods and teaching aids that would be frowned upon in most educational systems today – slaps, arm-twisting, hair-yanking, knives and other implements of pain and fear…and death…

In her face he could see equal parts terror and hatred, both of which pleased him, because the conquest was less exciting when it went unchallenged. Kronos had been the one to open up this particular field of interest for him. Before the Horsemen, Methos had had little firsthand experience with the deliberate creation of fear in another person. Then Kronos had taught him not only how to open the floodgates of personal terror in another, but to bathe in it, revel in it, drink it in deeply – to savor it like the coolest fresh water or the sweetest of wine…

With a violent, anguished moan, Methos threw his hands to his forehead, wishing to force away these memories from an existence long trussed up tightly and tucked away, mummy-like, into the depths of his soul. Cassandra beat his arms away from his face, slapped him viciously again (drawing more blood), and gripped his wrists tightly, pinning them to the floor on either side of his shoulders.

"I want you to look at me!" she cried, voice harsh and almost unrecognizable. "Face me! Face what you are!"

"I'm not!" His voice was low and choked. "I'm not that! Not anymore!"

"You are! I see it in your eyes. You've always lied to everyone else, Methos, but when did you start lying to yourself?"

He closed his eyes to her expression, which was at once filled with excitement, unquenched need, and bottomless rage. He knew his body had the necessary power to throw her off, but his muscles seemed limp and useless to him. "Please…" It came out as a whisper. To his unimaginable horror, he realized he was near tears.

The plea and his apparent helplessness only nourished her wrath, and she began to slap him again, this time not as hard, intending to goad him, provoke him. "Come on, you should never be this willing to take your punishment! Where's that famous sense of sport I remember so well? Pinching, remember the pinching? You used it to punch things up a bit if I wasn't feeling particularly combative, didn't you?"

By way of demonstration, Cassandra proceeded to pinch him – on the arms, the chest, the neck – again daring him to react. She escalated it, pinching harder and harder until she got what she wanted: that first reluctant batting at her hand as his resentment took hold.

"Yes, that's it. Very good. Feel the anger, just as you made me feel it, night after night." She continued the pinching, quickening it, leaving livid red marks, until his slapping became more impatient and less tentative, progressing to wild blows with hands closed. Finally, Methos pushed her with his right arm as he lifted his right hip, dislodging her from her perch atop him. With a growling cry, he rolled up to a sitting position and trapped her beneath him, now grinding her wrists against the floor.

Cassandra's face was a roiling pool of molten emotion, swirling, mixing; each second bringing a different feeling to the surface. Sitting on her, not caring that his full weight was bearing down on her, he watched the display, fascinated. He saw them all – anger, fear, self-recrimination, pain. Triumph kept making a repeat appearance, bringing home to him again and again that he – the great manipulator – had been masterfully played.

"This!" he snarled. "Is this more to your liking? Have you got what you're after now?" He felt ready – eager, even – to live up to her expectations now, and adjusted his position slightly in preparation.

The visible vortex of her emotional state swirled ever faster at that, and now a new player showed itself, bringing him up short. He watched her face, uncertain that he'd really seen it.

There it was, yes. Desire. There in the midst of her hatred, her terror, her disgust. After two thousand years, there still lived in Cassandra a browbeaten girl convinced that his attentions – however brutal – might somehow ease her pain, her loss, her fear. Maybe even, just possibly, make them both whole.

The transition from rage to astonishment created the sensation of a roller coaster making a sudden sharp turn at full speed, and in his disorientation he realized that once, all those millennia ago, he had secretly harbored a similar hope.

Reeling from this unexpected revelation, Methos entertained what minutes ago would have seemed ludicrous: Maybe she was right. Maybe they could achieve together what they had not accomplished apart.

The flood waters of his anger receding, he loosened his grip on her wrists until he was only holding rather than restraining, shifting his weight to stop crushing her. He wasn't aware of his thumbs gently caressing the pulse in each of her wrists. Their eyes were locked and unblinking.

"Cassandra?" It was a question, full of hope and limitless depths of need, offered in a broken, honest voice seldom heard by anyone in 5000 years.

They were both breathing hard, from physical and emotional exertion. He continued to stare into her face, mesmerized by the unabated ebb and flow of feelings playing across it. She seemed to be searching her very soul for her answer to his almost subliminal question.

He could see her decision as it came, when desire rose to the top and maintained its position, fighting back all others that strove to prevail. But it came with a partner, a barely acknowledged and ruthlessly cowed subordinate that nevertheless captured his attention and chilled his heart.

It was shame he saw in her eyes, even as she recognized and accepted her longing.

So linked were they, so fully intertwined, that they shared these thoughts as they occurred. It was a moment of total communication and unspeakable intimacy, the like of which neither had ever experienced, nor likely would again.

He pulled away, rolling lethargically off of Cassandra and crawling a few feet to lean heavily against a wall, completely spent. She continued to lie as he'd left her, eyes closed, for some time. Methos finally forced himself into a sitting position, back to the wall, folding his legs up toward his chest and hugging them, resting his spinning head on his knees.

At last he heard her stirring and, lifting his head, saw her get to her feet. She seemed less imposing, as though she had grown shorter since her arrival; she looked somehow lost within her sweater. Her clothes and hair were in disarray and she made no effort to tidy them. She did not look at him, and he said nothing as she walked wordlessly across the room and out of the apartment.

There was silence in the room, but Methos could hear the rushing of the blood through his brain.