Chapter 4
Paris
When Duncan returned to the barge, his senses told him that Methos was still there. He climbed the gangplank and opened the door to the living quarters just as the elder immortal was turning off his cell phone. Methos stared at the phone a moment, shook his head, then laid it on the table.
"Any news?" Duncan asked.
"Joe's been moved to a private room. His condition's been upgraded to stable." Methos rubbed his eyes... then returned to his computer. On it he continued to flash through a number of scanned documents... seeking a key to their relationship. He'd been at it almost non-stop since MacLeod had left to retrieve the bag of old runestones from the museum. But... Methos was getting nowhere. The early success he and Derrick had when they had first put the disk into the computer had stalled. Methos didn't know if it was because he just no longer saw relationships between the words, symbols and drawings... or if it was because Derrick was no longer with him. "Did you get the stones?" he asked as he shifted another document to another row... then shook his head and returned it to where it had been.
"Yeah..." Duncan murmured as he poured the runestones from the leather pouch onto a table and started moving them around... trying to see if there was a message there. Finally he shook his head. "Well... if Darius left me a message in this group of stones... I'm not seeing it." There had been no guarantee anything would be there... but they had hoped. Darius had evidently left one stone behind for Ellie to find and that one had meant student. Since Duncan might have been considered a student... and he had cleared some of Darius' personal belongings from his cell at the church after Darius' death ten years prior... Ellie and Methos had hoped that, in the stones Duncan had kept, there might be a clue as to where the murdered priest had hidden the original research that he had scanned onto a disk for them to use... The research he had spent centuries on... the research that might offer them clues to their own immortal beginnings.
"Anyone could have cleared his quarters... I doubt he would have left a clue there." Methos shook his head and leaned back in his chair. He reached forward and closed the laptop. He absently rubbed his right shoulder... massaging it while he closed his eyes and tilted his head. His thoughts were of Eleanor...
"Now you tell me." Duncan chuckled.
Methos started and then said, "Well... I did say it was a long shot. But we had to try."
Duncan crossed to the refrigerator and opened it. "Beer?" he asked as he pulled one out for himself.
"That'd be nice," Methos replied and caught the one Duncan tossed at him. He opened it and took a long drink... then set it down and picked up the cell phone to make another call.
Duncan settled on the sofa and tried to decide just what they needed to do now. The runestone likely led to someone in Paris. But the student might have been a mortal... or someone who had worked for Darius. And there was the entire business of the priest getting everything onto disk. He had never used a computer as far as Methos knew... Darius had not seemed at all interested in them. How had he known to do this... why had he done it?
Duncan had been trying to reconcile his personal memories of Darius with the additional information he'd gotten from Methos concerning Darius and his reasons for remaining in Paris. He had always known that while he was a priest, Darius had not necessarily been a Christian. He had studied many faiths and had held many beliefs in his almost two thousand years. Darius had believed he could best promote peace among both mortals and immortals alike from holy ground... by remaining there and teaching and showing by example that a peaceful co-existence was possible. What Duncan had never realized was that Darius apparently had also been seeking answers to the immortals' past and had worked with Methos and Eleanor in his attempts to gather information.
Duncan shook his head slightly, there were still many things he didn't know... and some things he likely would never know. Methos had told him, though, that Darius was very much as he had seemed... there had been no lies in what he was... there was just more to him than Duncan had ever realized. Perhaps the priest might have told him more if he had remained with him as his student... but that path was not one Duncan could easily follow at that time. He was too much the warrior... and while he could appreciate that Darius had given up that life... the Highlander was still too much Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod... champion for the people.
Darius had been saddened when he'd left... and always glad to see him... but whatever he might have told Duncan if the Highlander had remained... went unsaid. Now... after Duncan's battles with the demon Ahriman and his strange dreams of what life might have been like for his friends if he had never been... Duncan felt he might now be more willing to give Darius' point of view a new look. Even though his friend was dead... it did not mean he had been wrong. Duncan had placed all of this so far behind him... that when he'd met young Derrick a few months earlier... it had been an eerie sensation seeing and hearing reminders of Darius from a ten-year old. And then of course... there was the enigmatic Ellie.
The impish green-eyed immortal seemed to be the focus of everything that was happening now. It was she who had found the boy... she who gathered the research for Darius over the centuries... and she who seemed to have some hold over Methos himself.
Methos turned off the cell phone and held it dejectedly against his forehead as though lost in thought.
"Tim?" asked Duncan... thinking of the other Watcher who'd been injured. Duncan hadn't known the young man... but Joe and Methos had. He had been Methos' field Watcher in London and the victim of a vicious knife attack by the immortal Peter Taylor who had instigated the carnage that had thrown all of their lives into chaos recently. Methos had taken Taylor's head... but there had been a dark edge to him afterwards. It seemed as if he had revisited that time of his life when he'd willingly killed for sport and had enjoyed it.
"Tim's fine... but he's got a long recovery ahead. His vocal chords were so badly damaged the doctors are looking into a synthetic voicebox for him."
"It wasn't your fault... You do know that," Duncan offered.
"I know that... and it's not guilt so much as just a great weariness over everything that's happening. In my rather long life..." he winked at MacLeod, "I've always noticed that major events seem to happen in spurts and I have this rather horrible feeling that something else is going to happen."
"Yeah... you might have to buy me dinner." Duncan smirked, wanting to lighten the atmosphere somewhat. "And you do feel guilty my friend," he thought soberly, "You just don't want to admit it... afraid someone might think you actually care about all of us."
Methos turned as if to make a reply but stopped short of saying anything. He glanced at the port side of the barge, the one against the wharf. Duncan felt it too. Someone had stepped onto the barge and was likely outside listening. The Highlander nodded at Methos and rose to check on just who was hanging about the barge. The older immortal remained where he was... out of sight... and hopefully... out of sensory range of whoever it was.
Duncan emerged into the late afternoon sun. Already the shadows were lengthening and a crisp breeze had sprung up along the river. Clouds were beginning to roll in and there was the feel of impending rain in the air.
He saw no one at first. Perhaps he'd been mistaken. A man walking a dog was passing by on the wharf... a young couple holding hands were on the nearby bridge... and yet... Duncan walked about on the barge... he still felt that someone was nearby. When he reached the gangplank... he paused... trying to clearly sense just who and what he felt.
There was a slight shuffle behind him. Swiftly Duncan turned in a defensive move... his arms up... and then froze. Hiding in the shadows on the barge was a schoolgirl. Duncan dropped his arms and, raising one eyebrow quizzically, asked, "Can I help you?"
"Are you Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod?" the dark-haired girl asked as she struggled to her feet. She wore a plaid skirt, knee socks, a rust colored school blazer over a white blouse, and she carried a backpack. When Duncan nodded, she smiled, her gray eyes gleamed. "Then you are just the man I have been looking for!" She stepped forward out of the shadows and handed him a tattered paperback novel.
Duncan groaned inwardly as he realized it was Carolyn Marsh's trashy novel. "Not another one!" he thought. Then he smiled at the obviously smitten face of yet another fan. "How may I be of service?" he said and bowed gallantly.
The girl squealed a bit in excitement and Duncan thought for the thousandth time since that damned book had come out that he wished he could have bought and burned every last copy.
