Title: Legacy (part XIII)
Author: BELOVEDbyWAR
Rating: PG-13
TV verse: Blood Ties
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money.
Summary: Power & Instinct.
AN: Thanks to luvinmike for beta-reading!
WK: 1542

Part 13:

After a much needed shower, Mike dragged his exhausted and battered body to the living room to wish the others an early good night just in time to overhear them talking to someone via speaker.

"-…I tell you, Mac, better get outa there quick! Those friends of his, they've already started digging. They suspect something and that young guy of Betty's… Well, there is something fishy about him."

"Joe, you know I respect your advice, but first and foremost, Mike has a right to know who he was and should be given the opportunity to at least grab some mementos to take with him when he starts his new life. Sooner or later he will remember, and he will want to have something to remind him of his previous life. I'll not risk bringing him here again so soon after…WHAT!"

"You are a sentimental fool, you know that?" a dry voice remarked.

"Methos!" Mac whined, exasperated.

"How often do I have to remind you? Ad-am! You never know who might hear!"

"Yeah, yeah. ADAM. So, Joe, you said he was a cop?"

"Homicide to be exact and that woman, the PI, she was his partner before she quit."

"In more ways than one," Adam cut in.

"Huh?" Joe asked.

"Oh, really! Why else would he storm head on into a building full of armed gangsters?"

"See? More the reason to get out quick! It's too risky. They are on to something and I bet they will have someone on the lookout," Joe insisted.

"You're right. What about his parents? Do they still live?" Mac asked.

Mike listened to the man talk about his family. He had a sister and a little nephew. Both parents were still living, even his grandmother. Without waiting for the conversation to end, he made a decision.

He would go to his parents. No matter what the others said, he couldn't live with that lie!

He memorized the address Joe gave Mac and Adam and quickly slipped outside.

Luck was on his side. He didn't have to wait for a cab, because someone just arrived home in one at the building next door.

***

Henry had a mind to walk into the station and force answers from Crowley herself, but thought better of it. Rash actions wouldn't help. Instead he thought about what Mike would do.

First, he went to the detective's home, but there was no sign of him being there recently. Vicki's building was just as much a dead end as the morgue had been because of all the people surrounding the murder scene. So where would Mike go?

It finally hit him like a thunderbolt. His family. Of course! While the blond was a hard headed, irritating, unnerving SOB, he also was a strong family man.

Henry quickly turned his car in the opposite direction and drove to the suburb where Celluci's parents lived.

***

Mike stared at the beautiful, inviting-looking house he found at the given address. He had hoped that he would remember something after seeing it, but again he was to be disappointed. Furthermore, there was a tension in the air, a feeling of wrongness, of impending doom.

Looking around, he searched for the source of those feelings, but nobody was there. He kept to the shadows, careful not to be seen.

Just when he was about to question his own sanity, a dark figure crept to the home's wooden gate. He was shocked upon closer inspection to discover the figure was actually no figure at all! It was an almost transparent outline that merged effortlessly into the darkness of the night.

He blinked frantically, but his eyes were not deceiving him. The thing in his parents' garden was neither human nor animal.

Summoning his courage, he took a step in its direction only to be hauled back behind the relative protection of a big oak's trunk. Furious grey eyes practically pinned him against it, before an angry voice hissed at him:

"Are you insane? Even YOU cannot be dense enough to walk headfirst into an ambush!"

Mike looked closely at his captor. He seemed somehow familiar: smaller than himself, wavy longish brown hair, he guessed about 23, and quite handsome. Still the attitude sucked!

"Do I know you?" he whispered back, frowning.

The eyes widened at hearing this, and the man looked as if he had suddenly realized something. Iron fists previously holding him up against the tree unclenched. Elegant hands now rested against his chest and the smaller body almost swayed as if it had lost its balance. Mike quickly grabbed the leather-clad shoulders to steady the man, feeling somehow that it should be the other way around.

"Hey! Are you alright?"

Almost regrettably, the younger man seemed to collect himself and straightened to a regal posture, nodding once before he stepped back and directed his grey glance back to the garden.

"We should leave. The shadow walker in your parents' garden is a hired assassin. I doubt he is here for them or they would be dead already."

"How do you know that?"

"I am somewhat of an expert where these things are concerned."

"And how do I know I can trust you?" Mike asked more to irk the too-sure-of-himself young guy than to really get an answer.

"Vicki trusts me. That seemed to mean something to you once," the man replied defiantly.

"Vicki… How is she?"

"So you do remember?"

Mike heard the silent 'You remember her, but not me' that went unspoken. Why did the man sound almost hurt?

Mike shook his head to both negate the statement and clear his head of so strange a notion.

"Only figments here and there. That's why I'm here. I can't live like this. And they deserve to know I'm not dead. Perhaps seeing them will trigger some memories."

His companion sighed, exasperated.

"That will have to wait. You are no match for the demon! Let's go!"

Without waiting for an answer, the stranger dragged him away with inhuman strength toward a beautiful black Jaguar. Knowing that he wouldn't get another chance, Mike fought as hard as he could, but there was no escape. Then suddenly his head started to throb and he felt the presence of another immortal. Before he knew it, the now all-too-familiar blade of a Katana was poised at the young man's neck and the resonant voice of one angry Scot growled:

"Let him go!"

***

tbc