VII

Paris, Ten Years Later.

Sitting in a seat in the back of a cinema located in the expensive part of Paris, Rachel was eating popcorn as she watched the movie adaptation of the life of Vercingetorix. The movie was dull and though she liked the lead actor, she felt he was stunningly miscast.

As she watched the hero encourage his men, her mind drifted over the events of the last ten years. Shortly after arriving in Paris, she had been left on her own. Duncan, Richie and Tessa returned to Seacouver. She stayed in the boat, where she led a calm and quiet life. A few immortals called in looking forward to challenge Duncan, but finding in Rachel an unworthy opponent, they went away.

Duncan returned eventually, with bad news: Tessa and Richie had been shot. Richie had become immortal, but she had died. He would be on an off over the years and many strange events would occur to him. During those events Sean and Richie would die by his sword. She lost the boat in an explosion, while she was away. Now she lived in a house she had been bequeathed as per the will of Russell Nash in 1985.

Duncan had been gone for four years now. Rachel had improved her skills under the tutelage of an immortal Duncan introduced her to. He was a man she felt she could not really trust. She found him cagey and opportunistic. But Adam Pierson had made her able to stand at least some fight.

She had taken only a head in all that time, and it was something she wished it had not happened. One night, a blond little boy came across her. He claimed he was unarmed, alone and new into immortality and Rachel fell victim of the maternal instinct all women have. They walked arm in arm until the kid suddenly made her trip and she fell roughly. He revealed a minute sword, but long enough to chop off her head. Rachel unsheathed the blade of her cane and swung it forward to scare him away. She did more than that. The kid's head fell before her eyes. The Quickening overwhelmed her. It felt so right, and so terribly wrong. The power and knowledge of the kid were passed on to her. His name was Kenneth, he looked 12 yet was 800. She sensed the bitterness and anger trapped behind his cherub face.

Her head sensed an immortal around. She gripped the cane strongly. She heard someone sitting right behind her. It was that immortal, whoever it was. She felt how that person leant in so close she could feel the breathing on her neck. He said her name with a neat Scottish accent that for a second made her believe it was Connor. But a second later, she realised the voice was filled with wickedness and evil. She shivered as she turned.

The bald hatted man was gazing at her too near for her comfort, only that the hat was not there anymore, and his brow glinted supernaturally in the darkness. His eyes were filled with a saturnine cold that gave her the creeps. He grinned knowingly. In the screen, Vercingetorix's troops stormed to battle. She heard the gasps of the wounded as her eyes struggled to hold the bald man's eyes. He blinked and laid back. She blinked, feeling tiredness after having endured a face to face with the eyes of Hell.

"It is a bad movie." He commented. Now the accent was strange, hard to decipher. No one would be able to tell where he came from. "Read the books about that French corpse."

"I'd still like to watch it." Rachel replied, feigning a hardness she was completely devoid of.

"Rachel... I'm trying to be nice." He said slowly, modulating every sound of the last word.

"Nice people introduce themselves."

"Oh, Rachel. You have so much of Connor's arrogance, but I feel that you're imitating it only." She shuddered at his words. "I'm Jacob Kell."

Rachel felt his heart being squeezed by angst. Jacob Kell, the name rang a bell. He had been Connor's friend before he became immortal. Years later, Kell had led the execution of Caiolin, Connor's mother, while the son was in a cell. He escaped just to see his mother die.

"Why...?"

"Why did I..." he grinned "kill you?" He seemed to chuckle as he looked for the words. "When I noticed you were going to become immortal, I realised Connor would suffer more with you being one of us, never knowing when you are to..." Kell balled his hand, put out his thumb, and made it run from side to side of his neck.

"You want to finish me? Do it!" she defied, this time truly, not pretending something she did not feel. A "shhh" came from somewhere in the audience. Cinemas are meant to watch films, not to chat, someone else yelled in French.

On the screen, Vercingetorix killed an enemy. She heard the gasp of the dead one as Kell smirked, savouring the scene. His eyes went from the screen to her. He opened his coat and showed the inside to Rachel. He was unarmed. She gripped her cane by the hilt, ready to draw.

"Take your shot. But you should look at your left." She glanced left. On the back too, but far from them, there were five people: a young woman, a Jamaican-looking man, a bald African-American man, an Asian shorthaired man, and a guy who was dressed in striking clothes, with his hair bleached. "If you muster up enough courage to unsheathe that rusty blade, you'd have me. But you'd do it, Rachel? Cold-blood murder? In front of a crowd? Expose immortals just to get rid of me? You would have to fight your way out of here against them. And if, by a cosmic decree of God, you were to survive the five of them, all the immortals in the world would seek you. And not even Connor and Duncan would be able to handle them all. Because once the rules are broken, the punishment is not by the rules." She released the cane and it fell noiselessly to the empty seat beside her. "I thought so. You're a coward. Connor's very image. You fear too much the others. I don't. I could take your head off now and glorify in your pitiful quickening. The others may come later. Because I don't fear them, you know why? Because I, I don't care about the Rules or about the Game. All I want is Connor MacLeod's head, and I will have it... in the very end."

"Why?" She managed to mutter. She felt breath-taken by the sourness this man exuded.

"Oh. I think you know why. Cowards think alike."

"He's not a coward."

"And why did he disappear when you became... like us?" Rachel looked away. "Because he is afraid of facing the truth: that he should have let you in an orphanage, or take your life when you were young, instead of letting you grow too old, under the belief that he was able to protect you. He doesn't want to watch you die. Unfortunately, he will."

"Connor's been missing for ten years now."

"I can wait, my dear. I have all the time in the world. Eventually he will come to see you die like a headless chicken."

She stirred, feeling another immortal. Somehow she had missed Kell's posse but this one was clear, so clear it was almost beseeching to be sensed. Kell glanced at his men in a split-second-lasting loss of control before returning to her. She noticed it and this time she smirked with an air of superiority.

"Perhaps it's Connor. Or maybe Duncan. Or maybe..." she looked to the roof, thinking not of a name, but of how she was subduing herself enough to mock this man she feared so much. "I don't know... El Zorro."

"Smile why you can, Rachel." Kell stood up, giving her another evil grin, before he moved away. She glanced at where his posse was. They were gone. She looked to see Kell's reaction, but Jacob had disappeared as well. All the emotions she had locked away inside during the talk broke free and she struggled to breathe, as her hands trembled uncontrollably. The air suddenly felt so heavy.

The immortal they had sensed was gone too. Whoever he or she was, had called in at a fine time. Kell's loss of grip granted her the opportunity to regain the control she had lost upon seeing him. She stood up and moved away, leaning on her cane. She knew Kell would not be around when she left. He would wait for Connor to appear, if he ever appeared. A gloomy feeling of dread embarked upon her as she left the cinema, foreseeing a dark horizon ahead of her and of all the people that she cared for. She had missed the end of the film, but she did not worry. Vercingetorix died in the end, as all mortals do. Of old, beheaded, poisoned... what difference did it make? He was dust, as all mortals eventually. Like she should have been, had not the immortal curse fallen upon her. She began her way home, realising immortality was a living pond. Who wants to live forever, dammit!