Connor MacLeod was in bed, naked between the sheets after a round of lustful sex with Lillian. He remembered the moment they had met. Brenda had left a year ago. He was alone at the bar of a Dublin pub with a glass of Glenmorangie when she appeared. She asked for a double Scotch. She wore tight red trousers and a loose black tee shirt. She finished her drink and asked for another. Another one followed that one.
"You will go drunk." Connor warned.
"I can take care of myself, lad!" she replied not in the least amicably. She downed her drink and burst into tears almost as if the drink had capped her capacity and she needed to shed out liquid. Connor moved nearer.
"Doesn't look like. I should walk you home."
She stared at him, first with distrust, then with confidence. He thought she was too drunk to realise between a helpful man, and a man who wanted to get in bed with her. Let alone would she identify a blend of both, but he had remained mostly helpful and exchanged phone numbers with her. Connor was not ready yet for another relation. She had lost her husband to cancer recently. A date followed, then another, and so on.
On their first date-only anniversary, they had dinner at her apartment. Lillian wore a black dress with a more than inviting cleavage that revealed most of her rounded breasts. Her waist was extremely well marked, and her back totally uncovered. After a tasty turkey and a couple of bottles of wine, both of them were too drunk. They went to her bedroom, where he took off her dress, revealing her perfect body. A night of sex followed...
-----
"Thinking of something?" Lillian, wearing a small red sleeping dress that hardly covered her privates, made Connor return to the present reality. "You look absent."
"I was just thinking."
"Of what? All that people you say you beheaded?" she said, staring meltingly.
Connor had told the truth to her after the anniversary date. She had laughed and asked if he told that to all the women he slept with. She could not believe Connor was more than 450 years old, that he had wandered around the world that long, taking heads and being hit by "electrical storms", until 1985, when he won some Prize. On second thoughts, who could?
They had been living together for two years and a half. Lillian was scarcely thirty, an age not so far away from the twenty-seven Connor looked like. He was 18 when the Kurgan killed him. He had looked 18 for longer than 400 years, until the Prize was won, and he began to age. Of course 18 were not the same in 1536 as in 1993. Then, there were grown men already at that age, whereas now most kids were either skinny nerds or piles of muscles and steroids with no brain whatsoever.
The telephone rang. He turned to it.
"Don't answer it."
"What if it's something important?"
"What if it's not?" she asked.
"MacLeod Antique Shop." Connor uttered, after picking up the tube. They had moved to Glasgow and reopened the shop. They lived in the back part, where there was enough room to make a comfortable home.
"Connor MacLeod of the clan MacLeod?" a low, rasping male voice uttered. "You must leave your place now. Your life is at risk."
"Heh-heh. Really funny, pal." Connor hung up.
"Who was it?" Lillian asked.
"Some wacko claiming I was in danger..."
Lillian headed to the front part of the shop, apparently disturbed by the call. It was not fun to receive calls like those. Something startled him. The clan. How in hell the prankster knew about it?
Something was smashed in the shop. Then something else. Lillian was probably angry. But why? And how in hell did she manage to make so much noise alone? And why was she breaking things? They were really expensive. Then he heard a machine gun being fired.
-----
Connor jumped out of bed and took a 9-mm from one of the wardrobe drawers. He looked for the box of bullets. Where were they? He had never moved them from there.
A man dressed in black with a mask on his head appeared and aimed a machine gun at him. Connor grabbed a decorative knife he kept next to the gun, never certain of where to put it. He ducked and threw it at the intruder, who got his throat stabbed.
He crawled to the bed, where he grasped a large box that was piling dust thereunder. Taking a deep breath, he opened, and produced his more than a thousand years-old katana. Bitter memories pervaded his mind, but he blew them away. Carefully, he treaded towards the shop. Another masked man appeared and fired a pistol at point blank. Somehow the shot was missed. He thrust the man hardly, and then removed the mask. It was no one he knew. He dropped the body. The shop was on fire.
He moved forward, where another two men were, and hid behind the counter. Smoke was beginning to thicken. He could hardly see anything. The two men were near the door, and there was something at their feet. Someone. Connor recognised Lillian's red dress and cursed out loud. The bastards had killed her.
One of the men, having heard Connor's voice, moved in his direction, past him. Connor stood up to finish him, but tripped on something. The man heard him and turned quickly, aiming the gun. Connor froze, knowing himself dead. The intruder stared and put the gun down.
"Where's MacLeod, Hayes?"
Who in hell was Hayes? Why was this guy mistaking him, if they were there for him? It did not matter.
"Here!" the reply was followed by his stabbing the bastard, who never knew what hit him, until he saw a chunk of the blade in his chest. The sword was immediately removed and the man fell lifeless over him.
"Hayes!" he heard the other man call. Connor turned, facing a tall masked man, and wondering why in hell everyone mistook him for whoever Hayes was. "Holy s---." The man that seemed to be the leader blurted out upon seeing the just-dead body. "Where is MacLeod?"
"I..." Connor mumbled. His voice sounded different. "Dead. I've just finished him. There's the body." He pointed inside the house, where the body of the unmasked man lay, barely visible due to the growing smoke.
"Take the sword. I'll cover our tracks and meet you there."
Connor nodded and moved out, taking one last glance at Lillian's body. He stepped onto the street and walked away casually, containing the pain, as if nothing had happened. Then he wondered. When had he put the black outfit he was wearing on?
Two streets from there, he stopped at the window of a shop, where a camera was filming the street and the image was displayed on a television. He was there, but he was not there. There was somebody else. The crook he had killed and unmasked. Right then, his face shone dimly and changed. Now his face was his again. Perturbed and feeling great exhaustion, he moved away.