INFERNO
Sheffield, England, 21 October 2048
"I'm sorry," Duncan told Methos on the phone. "I won't be able to visit."
Methos was not surprised. Disappointed, yes (though he hid that), but not surprised. A date with Duncan MacLeod was much like the Holy Grail: long sought after yet forever out of reach. "Something come up?" Methos asked. "Or someone?"
"I'm going with Connor to North America to look for his son John."
Even in five thousand years, Methos didn't remember getting stood up for a volcanic eruption before. Thankfully, they were that rare. "Where's his son live?"
"Colorado."
Make that: where did his son die. Methos tried not to sigh. "Have you ever seen a volcanic eruption, MacLeod?"
Duncan got that stubborn expression on his face. "Connor just lost Sara. And now this. He needs me right now."
Methos had no doubt that Connor was reeling from the double blow. But it was a damn stupid idea all the same. "Was this fool's errand his idea?" Methos asked. "Or yours?" That brought out Duncan's tight jaw and angry eyebrows, his standard response to an insult to one of the clan.
"We're going together," Duncan said, closing ranks against an outsider.
"How?" Methos asked, for all flights to North American were grounded due to airborne volcanic ash.
"Connor chartered a ship. As soon as we get the relief supplies loaded, we'll go."
So, knights errant instead of a fool's errand. Connor was clearly desperate for something to do, and heroism was part of Duncan's charm. At least he wasn't going off to fight. "Well then," Methos said lightly, "bon voyage."
"I'll call you," Duncan promised. "When I get back."
They parted with quick nods and quicker smiles. Methos propped his chin on his hand and stared at the blank surface of the screen. "And what," he murmured to the emptiness there, "will we say then?"
Two weeks later, he got another call—voice only. "I'd like to talk with you," said Cassandra.
Methos leaned his backside against the edge of the lab bench. "So talk," he invited.
"In person," she clarified.
He turned slightly then took his time replacing the small cylinder of metglass into its padded container. Cassandra hadn't asked to see him in decades. Sara's death? Or something else? He might as well find out. "All right," he agreed, but he wasn't about to go out of his way this time. He didn't owe Cassandra anything anymore. "The peace garden in Sheffield," he told her.
"Fine."
"Saturday at two."
"This afternoon at four?" she countered.
That eager, was she? Or simply in the neighborhood? He would find that out, too. "Fine," he echoed and ended the call. He had work to do.
At three that afternoon, he finished the last of the particle beam scans on the sample. "Going well, Dr. Winston?" asked the graduate student at the other station. Her black hair was very short and stood out in tiny tufts, each tipped with purple.
"Very promising," Methos replied as he locked the metglass away. They might just get that spaceship finished. He put on his dark purple overcoat and picked up his cane. "See you tomorrow morning."
"Afternoon for me," she said. "Bonfires for Guy Fawkes tonight."
"Ah, yes," Methos said. "The fifth of November." Every culture needed a scapegoat to kill. As he walked along the streets in the warm afternoon sunshine, here and there he saw preparations for England's festival of fire.
He arrived at the peace garden early, yet still he felt the thrum of another immortal. It seemed Cassandra was earlier even than he. Or someone else was.
Methos paused near the head of one of the five narrow water courses that outlined the fan-shaped green patches and began to peruse the crowd for anyone who might be carrying a sword. No one was looking about suspiciously, but that meant nothing. The arrival of another immortal was easy enough to pretend to ignore.
Six old men were playing chess and chatting near the wall of the far building. They seemed unlikely threats, though one had a cane, much like his own. As usual these last two decades, there were no mothers out with babies, no children running about and making noise.
A few people in business attire were walking through the park on their way from one office to another, some striding seriously, others taking their time. A dozen or so university students loitered near the center fountain, brilliant as butterflies hovering over a bush. Their fashionable attire (bright tunic over patterned stockings with colored boots) was skimpy enough that hiding a long blade was unlikely.
Even so, Methos took his time in looking, for they were pleasant to look upon. He was wondering if the student in the green and purple paisley was male or female when the slender woman in the black-and-white-check minidress turned her head, revealing her profile.
Methos stopped looking for someone who was after his head. Cassandra continued listening to a conversation and pretending she didn't know he was there, so Methos took the opportunity to evaluate her latest makeover. She'd lost weight and was trying to look younger, perhaps twenty-five or so, judging from her companions and her modish clothes. Certainly Laina Garrison wouldn't have worn such virulently green striped stockings or such a bold pattern. Nor could Methos remember seeing Cassandra (in any incarnation) wear pink shoes.
Her gloriously long hair was gone. She wore her hair in the same tufted style as that graduate student's back in the lab, though Cassandra's very short locks were blonde with black tips. Punkish, it might have been called half a century ago. Methos believed the current term was grisly.
In a year or so, he would need to know the younger generation's slang. It was nearly time to say farewell to the aging professor Dr. Kyle Winston and become someone new.
But first, a conversation with Cassandra. She had picked up her orange backpack and headed in his direction, so Methos sat on a bench and laid his cane across his knees. Then he looked straight ahead, as if admiring the view of the small rivulet of water in front of a sparse row of cedar trees. She took up a position a few paces away from him and sat on the concrete ledge near the stream. She kept her gaze on the water as she said, "Thank you for coming."
He didn't feel like saying thank you, and meeting her wasn't his pleasure. So he shrugged and asked, "What do you want to talk about?"
She looked at him sidelong, over her left shoulder. "Can you still love?"
Definitely not a question he had been expecting. But she was serious, and he could see that the question wasn't so much about him as it was about her, a younger seeking advice from an elder, so he answered with equal gravity. "Yes."
She looked back down at the water and stretched a hand toward it. Her fingertips couldn't quite touch; the water rippled just out of reach. In the naked curve of her neck, he could see faint outlines of bones. "When they die, do you still grieve?" she asked in a small voice, still looking down.
"Yes," he answered immediately. If he closed his eyes, he could still see her. Every so often, he thought he heard her merry giggle. Sometimes, he woke from a dream of the touch of her hands.
But not lately. Not for years. Alexa was fading, as Sorcha had faded, as had dozens of others before. In a few hundred years, he would struggle to remember the color of Alexa's eyes. One day, he knew, he would not even remember her name.
But while he remembered, he could still grieve. "Oh, yes," he told Cassandra. "That's one thing that doesn't get easier with practice." He used his cane to get to his feet then came and sat on the ledge, a double arm's length away from her. "It hurts, every time."
"But it is different," Cassandra said. "We've done it before."
"It's not new," he agreed. So little was these days. "We know how it goes. And we know we'll survive."
Cassandra brought her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs, curling in on herself. "I hadn't done it for such a long time," she said. "I wasn't sure if I was doing it right. Or if even I could, anymore."
"Grieve?"
She lifted her head, her green eyes startled wide. "Love."
"Ah," he said softly, understanding now. Her younger lover was making her feel her age. Not very tactfully, either, Methos suspected. Connor MacLeod was hardly a diplomat at the best of times, and now… He must have shaken Cassandra badly, Methos knew, for her to seek him out, especially on such a topic. "Love is also different," he offered.
"Because we've done it before?" she asked, her words sharp-edged.
"Because we know that grief is the handmaiden of love," Methos told her. "Always." Every damn time. "So…"
"So we either walk away first," she finished, "or we learn to let go."
"Precisely." Easier to say than to do, of course, but that was the idea. Usually, sometimes for centuries at a time, Methos floated along, letting the currents take him. People and opportunities came into his life and then left again, as the wind and tides dictated. He didn't paddle furiously after them or fight the currents; he simply enjoyed whatever came, and then he let it go.
Sometimes, though, for certain people, he dove deep. He pursued and he cared, and if he was lucky, they danced and sometimes they fought and often they laughed and under the stars they made love.
In the end, they died, and then he grieved. And it was worth it, every damn time. But to have a companion through the ages, to partner with an immortal and never have to say goodbye, to stop hiding who and what he was… Methos missed that.
He missed it fiercely.
Cassandra sighed and rested her cheek on her knee. "I told Connor about letting go, years ago. He didn't want to leave his family."
Duncan hadn't either. Stubborn bastards, these MacLeods. And very young. "Connor's not ready for you, Cassandra," Methos said.
"I know." The words came out in a whisper. She shook her head slowly. "He was so angry…"
"Sara was his daughter, and she died in his arms," Methos pointed out. "It was his responsibility to protect her, and he failed. Or course he was angry."
"I know," she said again. "Then his own survivor's guilt made it worse."
"Yes," Methos agreed. When a mortal died, immortals got angry at immortals—including themselves. Which was why he stayed away from grieving immortals. They were an unpredictable lot, struggling with rage and sorrow and a double-edged death-wish (either for their own or someone else's), and they carried swords. "You and Sara both died of your wounds that day," Methos added. "You came back. She didn't. Not only was Connor angry at himself; he was angry at you."
"I know," Cassandra said, and this third time the phrase was painfully dry. She straightened her legs and sat up. "I did catch that."
He really had no interest in the gory details of their lover's spat. Time to segue. "A quickening found me that day, after the second explosion," Methos said. "Any idea who it might have been?"
Cassandra's eyebrows went up. "I didn't realize. I was dead then. So was Connor."
That explained why the lightning had come down the street to find him. "I think it was a woman. Not young."
"Grace," Cassandra said and briefly closed her eyes. "I haven't heard from her at all, and she said she would be at the reunion. She was using the name Lisette Curine."
"That name was on the list of the dead," Methos confirmed, and Cassandra sadly shook her head. "She was a doctor," Methos said, remembering a Watcher chronicle. "Pity. I had hoped to meet her."
"She is a great loss," Cassandra said. "To us all."
Silence fell between them, a moment of tribute to Grace. Methos pieced together some of the impressions he had gathered that day, putting a name and a face to them now. A bird cheeped from one of the cedar trees, and beside them, the water flowed by in its concrete channel.
"The sky," Cassandra murmured in wonder. To the west, the sun was wreathed in clouds the color of blood.
"Impressive," Methos said. "Sunsets will be like that for years to come." She looked at him in confusion, and he added, "Because of the ash." Still no comprehension, and he prompted, "From the volcano?" That produced yet another blank stare, and he asked in exasperation, "Where have you been these last two weeks, Cassandra? In a cave?"
"Yes," she replied with tart aplomb. "In the Highlands. I left this morning."
Whereupon she had immediately called him. That lover's spat must have been a doozey, because either she hadn't bothered to check for messages, or Connor hadn't even bothered to say goodbye. Methos didn't see why it should be his job to help her keep track of her lovers.
"Where?" she was asking. "Iceland?"
Methos shook his head. "Yellowstone."
She hissed slightly, drawing in a sharp breath, and turned back to look at the gathering sunset with alarm instead of wonder. "Darkness and fire," she said softly, as if quoting. "The death toll could reach one billion."
"Eventually," he agreed. Most of this year's harvest in the northern hemisphere was in, but summer wouldn't come again for years because of the ash in the upper atmosphere. Not to mention the sulfurous acid that would soon fall to earth to kill the crops, contaminate the water, and poison the land. Food would be scarce. But on the bright side (or rather, on the dim side), global warming would be slowed. He sighed, feeling unutterably weary. However it played out, they were all in for a rough ride.
"This civilization will collapse," she said next, echoing his own thoughts.
"Possibly." He hoped they could reach the stars first. They were so close to finishing the first ship. They'd learned so much. These last centuries had been absolutely amazing, and yet they might lose it all.
What a damn stupid waste. He'd cached information here and there, but there was too much to store, and anyway, he knew from bitter experience how little of such a cache would survive through the dark times to see the light of day. It could be burned for fuel or drowned by a tsunami or eaten by goats. It could be discovered only to languish unread or completely unreadable on a dusty shelf. The monasteries had kept scraps of learning alive in Europe for a thousand years after Rome fell, but Europe's churches had become museums.
The Gaians, however, had temples. More than seven thousand according to his last report. And Phinyx had hospitals and schools around the globe, not to mention a security force with training in everything from policing to surveillance to guerilla warfare. Cassandra's organization was (quite deliberately, he knew) poised to be become a power in a post-apocalyptic world.
A low slant of light from the setting sun highlighted each hair on the nape of Cassandra's neck and picked it out in gold. She was silent, obviously thinking.
"Plotting again?" he asked.
"I prefer to call it planning," she replied. "But events are happening too fast. It's going to be much messier than I had hoped." She tilted her head and contemplated him. "Do you plot? Or plan?"
"Not for the last few thousand years," he replied. Not much, anyway.
"John," she said suddenly then explained, "Connor's older son. He and his wife lived in Colorado."
"Colorado's under ash," Methos said. "So unless they were traveling…"
"No," Cassandra said, and she seemed very sure. "They died, in darkness and fire."
Methos didn't like the sound of that. "Another prophecy?"
She was staring at the water again. "Sara was having dreams. Last summer, she told John he should move. But she didn't take it seriously, and so neither did he. And even if she had…" She shrugged. "People don't listen."
"You're not the only Cassandra to say that," he noted.
Her gaze went inward, remembering. "At first, her mother said the gift was a blessing. Later, a curse."
"When you did first go to Troy?" Methos asked, taking the opportunity to find out more.
"At Hecuba's marriage. She had come to our temple as a girl, and she asked me to be her priestess. I was midwife when her daughter Cassandra was born." She looked at the ruin of the sky. "And I was in Troy when the city fell."
He'd heard about that sacking from soldiers who returned. A few centuries after, Roland had boasted of taking Cassandra's head before setting fire to the town. Another lie from that pathetic man.
"I met Helen," Methos commented. "Twenty years after Troy fell, I was a military advisor at the royal court in Sparta." He'd gotten a lot of practice there. That entire civilization had crumbled within two generations, hit by wave after wave of plagues, revolts, famines, and wars, aided by an earthquake here and there.
"On sabbatical from the Horsemen, to learn new ways to sack and pillage, Methos?" Cassandra asked with bloody-minded sweetness. But then she added: "Or just trying to get away from Caspian's cooking?"
It seemed her makeover had gone deeper than just clothes. He'd never thought to hear a joke about the Horsemen from her. "That," he agreed, "and away from Silas's snoring."
That almost got a smile. He decided to tell her after all. "The MacLeods took a supply ship to North America a week ago."
She nodded with understanding, but her lips were pressed tight. "Because of John. And to help."
"They're young, and idealistic."
"And yet you think Duncan's ready for you?" she asked, more in curiosity than confrontation. "He doesn't understand you, Methos."
Methos knew that. He wanted Duncan to have the chance to learn. He wanted a partner again. "Does Connor understand you?" Methos challenged.
"No," she said, almost in a whisper. She looked at the water but didn't even try to reach it this time. "And I begin to think he never will."
She stood abruptly, and he rose, too. "Thank you for meeting me," she said formally.
"Thank you for calling me," he said with a smile, hoping to encourage her to call again. He didn't have to pretend with her; she already knew what—and who—he was … and who he had been. "Shall we go have a drink?" he suggested, even though he was betting she would answer no.
"Thank you, but I have work to do."
Not a bet he had wanted to win, but she was right; they both had work to do. Cassandra had already picked up her screamingly orange backpack and was walking away. "I like your hair," he dared to call after her. Fifty years ago, she hadn't much cared for his compliments.
But this time, she just turned, stopped long enough to smile back at him, then went on her way. Methos left whistling. That had gone well.
That night, he walked the streets and watched the fires burn as Guy Fawkes was consigned to the flames. When he woke the next morning, the sunrise was the color of blood and covered half the sky.
Red sky at night: sailor's delight.
Red sky at morning: sailors take warning.
Gulf of Mexico, 10 November 2048
"I don't like the looks of that sky," Duncan said from the bridge of the ship.
Connor turned to look out the window to the east, where heavy grey clouds were turning black. "Big storm," he agreed. The wind had picked up these last ten miles, but nothing more where they were—no rain, no hail, no waterspouts. The alert on the weather scope on was glowing orange, not blinking red, and they were already heading northwest, away from the storm. "We'll get rain," Connor predicted, "but we'll make port before dark."
"And then we'll deal with customs, load the semi-trailers that your friend Evann sent, and drive north to Colorado," Duncan said. "We could be there by Friday morning."
"That's the plan," Connor agreed, once again wishing the ship were going faster. He needed to get to John.
But plans, however well-laid, "gang aft agley." The rain came sure enough, great sheets of gray water with a gritty feel and a rotten-egg smell, just as they entered Galveston Bay. But they had to wait until Thursday morning to be inspected, and the custom duties and import fees (aka bribes and taxes) took nearly a third of their cargo.
"They're relief supplies," Duncan explained to the customs officer with his best charming smile. "They're meant to go north."
"We've got ash-refugees here," the man replied. "And more coming every day."
"We're happy to help them," Connor said, signing the papers, even though he knew the goods would most likely be sold instead of given away. He didn't have time to argue; he just wanted to be on his way.
"The goods can't be transported past Oklahoma," the officer warned as he took the papers from Connor's hand. "The ash lands have been declared a no-go zone, and the roads are buried."
"Then we'll drive as far as Oklahoma," Connor said equitably. They could walk the rest of the way.
"You're coming in-country?" The officer looked them over with unfriendly eye. "Are you citizens of the Lone Star State?"
"We have US passports," Duncan said. "And travel permits, signed by the US consul in Edinburgh."
"That's federal." He spat off to one side. "You need a state permit to travel in Texas."
"And where," Connor asked, trying not to grit his teeth too obviously as he dredged up the last of his patience, "do we get those?"
Evann's workers loaded the trucks while Connor and Duncan spent two days navigating the bureaucratic maze. On Friday afternoon they finally started to drive north. The flat landscape was a dreary gray, everything dusted with a film of ash. The few people they saw outside wore filter masks. Traffic was light, and the wait to get through the checkpoints and tolls was short. "Good thing these trucks have the dark-energy motors," Duncan commented as they passed yet another gas station displaying a "NO GAS" sign.
"Evann's been refitting her entire fleet," Connor said. The DE motors were still too large for a single-family vehicle, but could fit in trucks and trains.
Duncan raised an eyebrow. "Quite an investment."
"Paying off sooner than she expected."
"Is she still running that paramilitary school in Vermont?" Duncan asked. "The Themis Institute?"
"Yes," Connor confirmed. He'd visited the institute a few times back when he was living with Rachel in New York, even taught a class or two. Companies paid a premium price to have a Themis graduate on their security force, and some governments sent their special ops teams there for advanced training. "Matthew McCormick is there, too."
Duncan nodded, then they both settled back to nap as the truck drove itself down the road.
Connor woke north of Denton, in a flat stretch between towns. This highway was busier; its tolls were actually used to keep it in repair. Their caravan of trucks had spread out along the road, with Connor and Duncan bringing up the rear. The sun had nearly set, and the thick black clouds gleamed with a sickly red sheen. Gusts of wind tugged at their truck, and it reduced its speed and set its windscreen wipers to fast as the blinding rain came down.
But not every vehicle had safety features, and not every driver was cautious. As they approached an overpass, Connor watched as the crash unfolded in eerie silence ahead of them: the green van in front of them sliding sideways on the slick road until it scraped along the guard rail, then spinning across two lanes as the driver overcorrected. The van collided with a small brown car, which flipped over and slid, crashing through the guardrail and coming to a stop with its front end hanging precariously out into the air. A bus plowed into side of the van then turned sharply, flattening the van against a concrete barricade.
"Damn," Duncan swore in horror.
Connor switched the truck to manual control and began to slow it down. Their other trucks, oblivious to the crash behind them, had already disappeared. Duncan rummaged in the truck's cab and came up with an emergency kit. The truck had barely stopped moving when he jumped out the door. "Bring rope!" he yelled over his shoulder as and began running to the mangled cars.
Connor finished parking the truck sideways on the road to block oncoming traffic, turned on all its flashers, and then tried to raise the other drivers on his phone as he dug through their supplies for rope. He got no reception, either for them or for emergency services, but the truck was broadcasting a distress call. Maybe that would get through. He snatched a hat, a coat, and a flashlight, shouldered the rope, then went to help Duncan save some lives.
As Connor ran past, he could see that green van was a total loss; its driver was a trail of smeared jelly on the wall. The people in the bus looked shaken but fine, which meant he and Duncan could concentrate on the brown car.
Duncan ran up to join him, streaks of dark hair plastered down by the heavy rain. Connor was already soaked, but at least the hat kept the water from dripping into his eyes.
"I can't get in there yet," Duncan said as they both ran toward the brown car. "We need the rope to stabilize the vehicle, or it could tip and take them all down. I told them to keep still."
"How many are in it?"
"Two. One's a kid."
"Shit," Connor muttered.
"And one of them is an immortal."
Fuck. Connor hoped to God that wasn't the kid. If so, the adult might not even know. Well, whichever it was, they should get the mortal out first, if possible, then it wouldn't matter if the car tipped over the side. As soon as the car came into view, Connor felt the prickling sensation of another immortal.
"My sword is still in the truck," Duncan admitted.
Connor didn't comment on that. "I have mine." The prickles were fading as the quickenings adjusted to each other, and he reached out, using the techniques he'd been practicing these last few years, trying to pinpoint exactly where the immortal was.
Instead he found another quickening, very faint, yet very nearby. "There's a pre-immortal in that car," he told Duncan.
Duncan let out a gusty sigh. "Let's hope it's the kid. And that the immortal is decent."
They should find out. Connor raised an eyebrow, and Duncan nodded. But first, they had to get them out. Connor picked out a stanchion and secured the end of the line, while Duncan carried the other end to the car. Connor joined him at the car and nodded approvingly at Duncan's choice of knots around the car's rear axle. "Pull it back from the edge?" Connor suggested, and they tried, but couldn't move it.
Duncan sat down beside the car, warned the occupants, and kicked out a broken back window with the heel of his boot. He laid his jacket over the jagged edges then called, "You can come out now."
"Are the police or the medics with you?" a woman responded. Her accent sounded non-descript American, and her voice seemed young.
"Not yet," Duncan said.
"We'll wait," she said.
Duncan and he exchanged a rueful glance. Obviously, they'd found the immortal. They were lucky she hadn't shot at them. Connor understood her caution, and if there hadn't been a pre-immortal kid in there, he would have walked away right then. Then the woman yelled, "Tomas, no!" just as a head with short, dark curls appeared at the window.
"Come on, wiggle through," Duncan encouraged, reaching out his hand. A small hand took it, and a boy about five years old emerged. "Chelle's stuck," the boy reported once he was out, still holding onto Duncan's hand. "She said she wasn't hurt, but I think she is."
That explained why she hadn't stopped the boy, or come charging out after him. She must be frantic right now. That is, if she cared.
"I'm glad you came out, Tomas," Duncan said with a smile, staying low so that he was still eye to eye with the boy. "My name's Justin, and this is my friend Mike."
Tomas looked at Connor dubiously, and Connor winked. That made him laugh.
"Are you hurt?" Duncan asked.
Tomas shook his head then wiped his nose with the back of his hand before admitting, "My leg is sore."
"Let's take a look," Duncan said. "I have a medical kit just over there."
"But what about Chelle?"
"I'll get her," Connor said. No need to give medics a reason to start asking questions about how she healed. He hung his hat and his coat (with sword) on a nearby sign post and handed the flashlight to Duncan.
The ground was wet and cold, slippery with wet ash and the grime that accumulated on the side of the road. The window was just barely big enough for him to squeeze through. Inside, everything was squashed and upside down, and sticky with some liquid that smelled nauseatingly cherry-sweet. In the dimness, he could see the flash of the wary eyes of the other Immortal, hanging upside down in her seat. "How is he?" she demanded.
"We don't hurt children," Connor said flatly. Left unspoken was the obvious corollary: they would hurt adults, especially ones with swords. "Truce?" he asked before he got any closer.
It took her a moment. "Truce," she agreed.
Not that she had a choice. They had her boy, and she was stuck in a car. And if she did anything stupid, Connor had a partner just outside. He crawled closer along the ceiling that was now the floor, using elbows and knees. The metal framework of the car creaked and groaned and shifted like a ship at sea.
"My right foot is pinned," she told him evenly, but each word was tight, like it came through gritted teeth. He rolled onto his back and reached up with both hands, working by feel. Her shoe was a sensible low-heeled trainer, her ankle was slender. He met more stickiness, a lot of it, but this had the coppery scent of blood. His fingers soon told him why.
A shard of metal had punched through both her foot and the car, skewering her like a dead beetle on a board. He couldn't reach the far end, but the near end had a tapered, jagged edge, bent in the shape of an ell. "I need to get closer to straighten it," he told her, because he didn't have any leverage with just his fingertips.
"Go," she said, and she braced her hands on the ceiling as Connor slowly maneuvered into position, his head and shoulders nearly in her lap. The car tilted and creaked as the rain drummed down outside, and Chelle clicked her teeth together and hissed with pain as the metal slowly yielded to the pressure of his hands. Finally, the shard was straight. But she was still impaled.
Connor moved away from her and reached out to feel for available space. Just barely. "I can yank you backwards and pull it all the way through your foot," he told her then warned, "It'll hurt."
"No, really?" she said with sarcasm that would do a teenager proud. She exhaled slowly. "Do it."
"Angle your upper body toward me," he said, and she shifted his way. He hooked his arms under her shoulders, his forearms brushing against the curve of her breasts. He turned his head to avoid a mouthful of soft hair, took a breath, then yanked.
She let out a yip then followed it with "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck," but she wasn't loose yet. Connor yanked again, cracking his elbow against the dashboard when she came free. Her steady stream of "fucks" turned into a deeply heartfelt, "Shit" before she started panting in pain.
"See you outside," Connor said and he wriggled backwards out the window into the rain. A strobe light near the bus signaled that the police had arrived. The cold raindrops flickered like fireflies in the pulsating white-blue light. Tomas was stomping in puddles near the side of the road, his leg obviously fine.
Connor put his hat on, but held his coat (with sword) over his arm, because Chelle was crawling out of the car head-first, and she was dragging a duffel bag long enough to hold a sword.
"Tomas?" she called before she'd finished extricating herself. He came splashing over as she got to her feet. As they hugged, she stomped her foot hard, and Connor could see her mouthing a silent and monotonous stream of curses above the boy's head as the bones settled into their proper places.
She took Tomas by the hand. "Thank you," she said to Connor and gave Duncan a nod. "I really do appreciate your help." She sounded sincere. "We'll be on our way now."
"How?" Connor asked pointedly, because her car was hopeless, and it was pouring rain and nearly dark.
"We'll be fine," she said, clearly wanting to get away from them.
"You can ride with us," Duncan offered and smiled persuasively at the boy. "It's a big truck. Tomas can sit up front and help drive."
Tomas said, "I can?" with great excitement, but Chelle's mouth twisted sardonically as she looked them over, because she obviously knew that no woman (mortal or immortal) should get into a truck with two strange men.
But then her gaze came to rest on his kinsman, and she peered through the rainy gloom. "Duncan?"
He peered back. "Michelle?" He took half a step forward. "Michelle Webster?"
"Just Chelle," she said. "And the last name's been Dominguez for a while now."
They were both smiling, and Connor realized he'd just rescued another one of Duncan's girlfriends.
Chelle turned to Connor, her smile fading into a pugnacious wariness. "You must be Connor."
Slimy with mud, sticky with cherry juice, and dripping wet, Connor tipped his hat to the former damsel in distress. "Ma'am."
"I knew her parents back in Seacouver," Duncan explained as he and Connor got cleaned up. They'd stopped at the first place that had electricity and water: a truck-stop just across the river that formed the border between Texas and Oklahoma. "Michelle crashed her car when she was eighteen," Duncan went on. "That was … fifty-four years ago. I explained the game; then Amanda took over."
"Amanda," Connor repeated flatly. "And how long did that last?"
"Six months," Duncan admitted. "Amanda took her to Ceirdwyn."
Connor held his tongue and pulled his tunic over his head. When he emerged, Duncan was waiting, looking weary and exasperated.
"What?" Duncan asked.
Since he asked… "Amanda made a better decision than you did."
"She often does," Duncan answered serenely.
That was patently untrue, and they both knew it. Connor took the hint and let it go. As he reached for his socks, he asked, "What was Chelle like before?"
"Surly. Rebellious. Didn't want to listen." Duncan shrugged. "She was bored."
People treated their offspring as children way too long these days. She had probably stopped being bored as soon as people starting hunting her for her head. Connor finished lacing his boots and stood. "What's she want with Tomas?"
Duncan gave the towel a snap before hanging it up to dry. "Let's find out."
"I'm taking Tomas to Ceirdwyn's school in Ohio," Chelle explained over a dinner of canned vegetable beef stew and stale rolls in the eating plaza of the truck-stop.
Even with the lousy food, the place was crowded with stranded, tired travelers. About a dozen were standing in front of a message board festooned with scraps of paper. Duncan had found a note from one of their drivers there, saying they were pushing on to Oklahoma City tonight. Between the ash still in the atmosphere, the ash toppling transmission towers, and the ash causing flashovers on electric lines, phone service was erratic enough to be useless.
Tomas was curled up asleep on the bench beside Chelle, his cheek pillowed on his hand, his dark curls shining against the faded red leather. Connor remembered John looking like that, years ago. In Morocco, they had often gone to the roof in the evening then fallen asleep looking at the stars, with John's small body curled against his for warmth.
Connor hadn't seen any stars since Florida, nearly six days ago.
"How is Ceirdwyn?" Duncan was asking Chelle.
"Good. Busy with the school."
Connor needed to be sure about Chelle before he let Tomas go with her. A lot could change in fifty years. "Anyone else at the school?"
"Besides the students?" she asked, with a tone that had mellowed over the years from surly to merely insolent.
Connor didn't answer, just waited, and Chelle didn't look to Duncan for help, just kept looking back. She'd braided her dark hair tightly, in a style too severe for her narrow face and delicate features, and her faded blue jacket was too big for her. Her eyes were dark gray, like the loch before a storm. She would be pretty, if she smiled.
Chelle held up a hand and began ticking off jobs. "The school has a gardener and a cook, who are also parents of students, a math teacher, and two security guards, both graduates of Themis Institute. Gregor Powers and Ceirdwyn are the other teachers, and they run the place. Matthew McCormick taught there for a few years, a decade ago."
Connor waited for more, because jobs and names alone weren't that hard to come by.
Her gaze slowly shifted from challenging to accepting, and she provided a bona fide: "Ceirdwyn said she met the two of you at a fair in Scotland, where Duncan was buying ribbons for the braids in his hair." She smiled at Duncan. "Ceirdwyn said the ribbons were a lovely blue."
"They were," Duncan agreed, smiling in return.
Chelle looked back at Connor. "I asked Matthew if you four were the 'immortal Celtic brigade' with three Macs and a warrior princess, but he said he was a Norman, Matthew of Salisbury, and that he didn't use the name McCormick until he came to America in 1762." She tilted her head, and the challenge was back in her eyes. "Need more?"
Connor ignored her question. "How'd you find the boy?"
"His name is Tomas," she said pointedly.
Connor acknowledged that with a nod, pleased with her response, though he didn't let that show.
"When someone reports a primmie to Ceirdwyn, I go check it out," she explained. "Usually, we just keep an eye on them, but if it's a bad family situation, we take the kid to the school. We like to use a mortal escort, because an immortal attracts attention from the wrong people, but things are weird now and travel's getting complicated, so Ceirdwyn asked me to bring in Tomas right away." She looked down at Tomas with a fond smile. "People think I'm his nanny."
"Why would immortals tell Ceirdwyn about pre-immortals?" Duncan asked.
"She pays a hefty finder's fee. It's not enough to stop the predators from killing primmies whenever they find them and then taking their Quickenings—no amount would be—but most people are happy to get the money."
"You get paid, too?" Connor asked.
"Yes, I do," Chelle answered evenly. "For my expenses and my time. Not everybody has centuries of investments to live off of. And working is better than stealing." Chelle turned to Duncan, "How's Amanda?"
"Good," Duncan answered. "I saw her a year ago, near Paris." He ate the last of his roll in one bite. "Why the name Dominguez?"
"From my third husband." Duncan looked askance at that, and she asked, "What? I'm too young?" Her teasing carried an edge of sharpness.
"No, I just…" He gave her the slow and appreciative smile that would make any woman forgive anything he'd said, no matter how clueless. "I haven't seen you in a while."
Chelle thawed some, but didn't melt completely, and Connor revised his earlier assumption. Duncan, though woefully bad at selecting a teacher, did have scruples; he wouldn't have taken an eighteen–year-old new immortal to his bed. Chelle and Duncan weren't lovers.
"Have many times have you been married, Duncan?" she asked.
"Once," Duncan replied.
Her dark eyebrows lifted in surprise, and her gaze wandered here and there, searching Duncan's face, lingering at his broad shoulders and his hands.
Connor revised his opinion again: those two weren't lovers yet.
Then she turned to Connor. "And you?"
"Three."
"But not now," Chelle observed, glancing at his left hand.
She wasn't wearing a wedding ring, either, but that was no concern of his. None of this was, he was relieved to see. Chelle did know Ceirdwyn and Matthew, and her story matched Cassandra's descriptions of the school. Most importantly, Chelle cared about Tomas, which meant that Connor and Duncan didn't have to delay anymore.
Their table's phone-reader was taped over with a sign that said "Ash-fucked", so Connor looked around for the waitress, caught her eye, and signaled for the bill.
"What brought you two to the great Lone Star State of Texas?" Chelle asked, mashing the epithets together with a careless disregard that would make any true Texan gnash their teeth or spit. "And why the big truck?"
Connor let Duncan say it.
"Connor's son John is in Colorado," Duncan explained. "We're going to go help."
"Help," she repeated flatly. "In Colorado." Her narrowed gaze flicked back and forth between them before she shook her head. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."
Duncan slouched down in his seat a bit and stared at the table, leaving this reply to Connor.
Connor shrugged.
"That plan is not just stupid," Chelle proclaimed. "It's galactically stupid."
Connor started stacking the bowls.
"The roads are buried," Chelle warned. "You truck won't get halfway through Kansas."
Connor shrugged again. "Then we'll walk."
"And eat what?" she asked. "Drink what?" She leaned forward, her voice quiet and intense, to ask: "Breathe what?"
"We're immortal," Connor reminded her.
"No shit," she said.
She had a mouth on her, that was for sure. Connor didn't care for women who swore, but right now, he just didn't care. He needed to get to John.
"I was in Montana when Yellowstone blew," Chelle was saying. "That's only the edge of the ashlands, and I barely made it out. Everything is dead: the birds, the plants, the animals. When you breathe ash, you suck ground glass into your lungs."
"It's been three weeks," Duncan pointed out. "The ash is settled now."
"Yeah," she agreed slowly. "And in some places, the ash has settled thirty feet deep. Colorado's in the blast zone, you know."
Connor knew. But John and Gina had a basement, stocked with emergency supplies. They could be holed up in there. His son could be depending on him, waiting for him.
Hoping for him.
The Ashlands
Somewhere in the ash field that used to be western Kansas, Connor woke up.
Rain slapped him in the face, cold and stinging. To the east shimmered the dim, gray light of dawn. Duncan woke, nodded good morning, then pulled his blanket farther over his head, so that only the tip of his nose appeared. Connor stood and stretched then walked through the rain to a pile of ash that was taller than the rest. Maybe it was on top of a hill. Maybe it was on top of a car. He couldn't tell.
Just to the north, the curved top of a silo poked up from the pale ash, like a spotted red mushroom in an early snowfall. Not far from him was a triangular hump of ash that marked a roof. Other than that, the place looked like the moon. Flat, featureless, gray, and dead. Yesterday, they hadn't even seen any carcasses. Just the ash.
He licked the rainwater off his lips, but the liquid was already gritty with the fine powder of pulverized ash. He and Duncan both looked as if they were wearing powdered wigs. The insides of their noses had cracked to bleeding a dozen times, and their eyes were red with irritation. The damn powder was everywhere, in every crevice, in every pore, and it itched.
Connor stripped to let the rain run over him and wash away the dust. The water was cold, but it was clean, and his skin drank up the moisture. He tilted his face to the sky and caught the raindrops directly on his tongue. The air played over his skin, and a shiver rippled from the nape of his neck down his spine as the quickening thrummed in his veins, seeking other life.
Ramirez had taught him of this, centuries ago, with the stag in the Highlands. The quickening let you touch the essence of another living creature, so that you were tasting grass, scenting the musk of another male, feeling the weight of antlers while your hooves pounded on the sand. Through the years, Connor had connected with other creatures: red deer, a rabbit, a fox, an eagle, even a dolphin as he sailed to the Sandwich Isles while the wind snapped the canvas sails.
Two years ago, in the Alps with Cassandra, he had touched the world.
"It's May Day," Connor said, looking into her eyes. "Come to the woods with me." She smiled and took his hand, and they climbed through dark pine forests to a meadow bright with sunshine and flowers. There they shed their clothes and joined with each other under the wide sky, in the ancient rite of spring.
After, as they lay side by side in the grass, a mouse wandered near, and Connor reached out to join with it, delighting in the quiver of whiskers and the wave of a tail. Then he reached deeper, into the earth, finding blind burrowing grubs in the soil between gnarled roots of trees. He followed their twisted pathways to the great trunks that rose straight and tall, all the way up to the leaves opening to the sun and the tiny insects that fluttered high.
He blinked and came back to himself, and Cassandra was there, smiling at him, holding his hand, crowned with sunshine in her hair. Impulsively, Connor reached out to her, a delicate tendril of connection, and she gasped as the dark of her green eyes grew wide, much as she had done earlier that afternoon when he had touched her in a different way.
But the immortal quickening between them was piercing in its brightness and painful in its spark, like juggling live coals, and they both snapped the connection, though she still held his hand.
"We'll need to prepare for that," she observed. "But today, I think you could go farther than you've ever done before."
He had felt the power, too, that sense of belonging, and the veil between the worlds was thin at Beltane. So Connor let his quickening flow out and deep and high, so that he touched fish and gnat and flower, and saw every blade of grass and touched every lichen on every stone, until his feet were the lodged in roots of the mountains and his eyes were of the sky, and his skin was the earth and his blood was the sea, and his heart beat with the tides.
Finally, he come back to himself, come back in himself, with a slow contented sigh, and the earth was warm beneath his back, and the air was soft on his skin, and he lay there just breathing, still amazed and awed, until he felt the gentle touch of Cassandra's lips upon his brow.
He opened his eyes to see her smiling down at him. "Welcome back," she said.
"Hey," he replied, smiling in return. Then he frowned, because the afternoon sun wasn't where it was supposed to be, and she had her clothes back on. Unlike himself. "How long was I…" He couldn't say "there" and he couldn't say "gone" because he'd been everywhere, with everything.
"It's nearly noon," she said.
"All night?" he asked in disbelief, sitting up. It had seemed like an hour. Or maybe a century.
"Sometimes, at the temple, we would spend days." Her smile was wistful. "That's the power of the quickening as I first learned it. To connect with life, not deal out death."
When he took a head, he felt that connection, the total awareness, but it was excruciating, like having your skin peeled off and your nerves set on fire. The aftermath was worse than a hangover, and could last for days. But now, he felt rested and alert and … well, fucking marvelous.
Cassandra apparently knew that, wise woman that she was, for she was already taking off her clothes. And the touch of her skin was like velvet and her hair was like silk, and it was fucking marvelous, in every way.
Afterwards, he was hungry. Cassandra handed him an apple. He munched away, sitting cross-legged and naked on the grass. The juice exploded with sweetness, and the rocks of the mountain spoke of the deeps of the oceans and of ancient fires, and the sky was a marvelous cerulean blue. An eagle was soaring above, and he shifted his wings so that his feathers could capture the wind, eagerly hunting for fresh meat—
Connor pulled back and bit his tongue, then tightened each finger and toe, resetting the limits of his body. He'd never connected that quickly before. It would be easy to get lost. "Did you … do something yesterday?" he asked Cassandra.
"I helped you open the door," she said. "You stepped through it on your own." She asked curiously, "What were you?"
"The world," he said simply.
"The world?" Cassandra repeated in awe then shook her head in wonder. "I never went that deep. The Lady would sometimes."
"It was … easy," Connor said. "Natural."
Her smile was wistful again. "I'm glad for you."
"Do you connect often?"
"We would hold the ritual every year, in the cave of the winds. But I haven't, not since I left." She reached for her clothes and started to dress.
She'd left the temple thirty-three hundred years ago. Connor leaned back on his elbows to watch her. Her movements were unhurried, and her face was calm. She was bothered. "Didn't you miss it?" he asked.
Her hands paused then she looked up to meet his eyes. "Yes," she said. "But it's not safe to do alone."
She'd been alone for a very long time. "I'll watch over you," Connor offered. "Like you watched over me."
Her smile started with her eyes. Then she leaned over and kissed him, and her hair brushed against his skin. Connor reached for her hand. "Thank you," she said, still close enough to kiss, so he did.
"Maybe on the solstice," he suggested, as he reached for his own clothes while she put on her shoes. "On Holy Ground."
"A good idea," she agreed. "Until then, we could work on connecting with each other. I'd like that."
Connor caught her hand and held it before saying, "So would I."
They never did. Connor connected easily with animals and learned to hear the heartbeats of trees, but mortals kept up a steady hum of thought, and it was like dodging four lanes of traffic to reach them. Immortals were easy to find and then to reach, but they burned.
"You're too hot to handle," Cassandra had said, making a jest of it even as she winced and pulled away. "Maybe we're too close?" she had suggested, so they had moved to different corners and then to different rooms, and then to different parts of the school.
They did learn to locate the immortal sensation more precisely and how to extend their range (which would be very useful in a hunt), but nothing more intimate. "We can still share in other ways," Cassandra had said with an inviting smile, and they did.
But she didn't want to share anything with him now. At Sara's grave, Cassandra had said she couldn't bear to near him. So he'd given her the space she'd asked for and walked away.
He'd kept walking. Now he stood a continent and an ocean away, upon a field of ash in a blasted land, on a quest to find his son. This trackless waste was more like hell than holy ground, but Duncan was near and no one else was. And Connor needed to find John.
Connor turned from the east to face the mountains in the west, with feet apart and arms spread wide, listening to the wind, tasting the rain, and feeling the gritty softness of ash between each toe and the flow of air between each finger. Then he opened himself to the world.
No creatures nearby, no tiny lives, no swaying trees or hunting hawks. Here was heat and fire and ash. He reached farther, across the plains to the mountains, to where the bones of the earth were laid bare. Red magma pulsated within the stony heart of the volcano, sometimes bursting forth in arterial spray, sometimes seeping slowly over the black and crusted scabs. But that lava would be stone itself in time. Stones told the story; stones carried their history within.
John had a stone from the Highlands, carefully placed into the wall that he and Connor had built years ago. Connor remembered that stone, the heft of it, the color in the sun, the feel of it in his hands. And so he reached for it, searching for the rock from the place of his own birth, the rock that was alien here, but home to him.
He found it, somehow, and from the stone he traced the wall, and from the wall he found John's house. And in the bedroom, side by side, John and Gina lay. But nothing moved there. Nothing lived. The ash was a brutal blanket, a shroud of gray that blocked out sun and sky and air.
John was dead.
Swiftly, as an arrow from a bow, Connor came back to himself, back to his body, down on its knees with head bowed, his hands outspread and reaching, but finding only ash and air.
"Ah, John," he whispered with scorching sorrow, but no surprise.
For he'd known—deep-down—for days. For weeks. But he hadn't wanted to let go. He hadn't wanted to give up. He simply could not bear to lose another child so soon.
Almost a month it had been now since Sara had died, and once again, Connor knelt in rain, and once again, it hurt to breathe.
When Connor came back to their camp that morning, Duncan was waiting for him, patient and steady, like a rock. Connor picked up his pack, nodded to his kinsman, and started to walk. Duncan hesitated for only a moment, then followed.
They went east, back the way they had come. Behind them, the volcano smoldered, brooding over its fields of ash and dust. The sun was rising.
London, England – December 2049
A year after the bombing, Cassandra had business in London, so she took advantage of the opportunity to go to the park and see the Pieto memorial, dedicated two months before. She had not expected to find Methos there.
"I like your hair," Methos told her in greeting.
"Thank you," she replied. "I like yours."
A smile flickered on his lips, and she knew it matched the smile flickering on hers: mostly ironic, a touch wistful, a little pleased. And definitely amused. Their hairstyles were nearly identical: the shoulder-length and slightly tousled style currently favored by the young. She was still blonde but no longer had black tips. He'd stopped adding gray and shaved his beard. At this meeting, they looked nearly the same age. Even their clothes were similar, though his were more colorful than hers. She'd come straight from the temple and was still in an acolyte's garb of green and gray.
The burned hotel had been razed, and the lot was still empty. They walked in silence with two other pilgrims along the path in the Grove of Remembrance, to the tree where Sara had died. The memorial was carved of white marble, but left unpolished, so that only the splash of scarlet gleamed. The sculptor had captured the essence of grief in the bowed head and empty, helpless hand, but wrought the faces and figures so they that were ageless and androgynous. They could be anyone.
They were everyone.
Flowers lay on the black granite base, hiding some of the words that had been etched in an endless circle: Friend – Child – Partner – Lover – Sibling - Colleague – Spouse – Sweetheart – Parent – Friend – Child…
Cassandra closed her eyes and remembered Sara, then silently named others she had loved in years gone by. When she opened her eyes, she saw an old man placing a red rose atop the word "Spouse." He paused a moment then moved on. A child knelt to trace the letters with a finger while his mother sat on the ground amid fallen leaves. The site worked well: a place of grief, a place of healing.
"This was well done," Methos commented.
Cassandra did not care to imagine what Connor would have had to say.
"Do you know the artist?" Methos asked.
"I've never met her." Cassandra answered. "She's from Finland." The artist had been moved by the bombing to offer her skills, and had recently announced she considered herself a Gaian. She wasn't alone. The volcano had prompted many to take Mother Earth seriously.
"Replicas of the sculpture are selling well," Methos commented. "I've seen them about."
"Yes," Cassandra murmured. Connor would have had something to say about that as well.
"Pity there's such a market for it," Methos said. "Any news on the bomber?"
"No," she agreed. No news.
He nodded. "Because your sisters are keeping it quiet."
She didn't bother to ask how he had heard. "Wouldn't you?"
"Oh, definitely. That story is ugly no matter how it's spun."
Erika's investigation had yielded bitter fruit. A young woman, raised from birth in a religion that preached women should be unseen and unheard, had been sent as a spy to infiltrate "the godless clutch of whores", then kept in line from afar by threats to her immortal soul … and more than threats to her mother and sister and infant son. She'd been told her death would bring them freedom.
"What is the Sisterhood doing about it?" Methos asked.
"Taking care of it quietly," Cassandra answered. The Guardians had rescued the family before the assassination team had gone in. The conversion effort would take a generation or more: infiltration, seduction, education, more assassination if necessary, relocation … all time-tested techniques.
A woman with hair the color of honey walked by, then stopped and turned back to look again. Cassandra bowed her head as if in prayer, a polite way to ignore her, and after a moment the woman moved on.
"Old friend?" Methos asked softly.
"Once." Giselle had been a colleague in London some years ago. A lifetime ago. "I keep hearing how greatly I resemble my Aunt Laina."
"You're treading the same ground, joining Gaian temples where people knew her." He examined her clothes. "Still only an acolyte? You've had over a year."
"First vows take a year," she explained. "The ceremony is on the solstice. Then I'll be joining the Reverend Mother's personal staff."
"Ah," he said, with a knowing nod. "The advisor behind the throne. Much safer."
"Yes," she agreed without irony then realized she hadn't spoken the truth so openly to anyone in more than a year. Methos was unnervingly easy to talk to. He was unshockable, and he seemed genuinely interested in her life. It was time to talk about him. "And are you captain of your spaceship yet, Methos?" she asked.
"I am a young and eager junior engineer. The work in India is going very well, and we plan to launch in a few years." He drew a deep breath. "Rather, we hope to launch. Power is erratic, and we've been scavenging old cars for the rare earths and metals we need."
People should have been doing that type of recycling all along.
"The edifice of civilization is undermined from beneath," he said. "The edges crumble. Then the center falls, with a suddenness that astounds."
That sounded like a quote, but she didn't recognize it. "I hear wolves are in the abandoned cities in the north," she said.
"It's when they're in the inhabited cities that we really have to worry," he said wryly.
"Like old times."
"Like old times," he agreed. "Back then I followed the sun." He looked up to the sky, milky blue between branches of the tree. "Now I follow the stars."
He really was an eager engineer. She hadn't realized he wanted this so badly. But why not? New worlds. New chances. New life. Even the Earth would not last forever. Cassandra looked up at the same pale sky. "I had a dream," she quoted softly, "which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space."
Methos hunched his shoulders, the start of a shrug, then started to walk.
Cassandra went with him. "Did you know Byron wrote that soon after Krakatau erupted?"
"Yes." He didn't seem interested, and Cassandra let it go. When they reached the road, Methos suggested, "Care for a drink?"
They'd had a drink together before, back in Brighton half a century ago. It was time. "Yes," she agreed, and their ironic smiles flickered once again. They went to the White Horse Inn, not far away. Cassandra paid for their beer. They talked of this and that, easily, with Cassandra telling stories of past students and Methos sharing a cautionary tale of the spiciness of Indian food.
Then they fell silent, and Cassandra found herself looking about and wondering how much longer people would be this civilized. When she looked at Methos, she saw he was doing the same. Their eyes met, and their smiles were rueful this time.
"How are the reports from North America?" he asked.
"Becoming less frequent. Communication is breaking down. The west is dead, except for some enclaves on the Pacific Coast, but they're isolated. The South seceded from the United States; then Texas destroyed the bridges to Oklahoma and to Louisiana, closing all their borders, and seceded from the South."
"Maybe San Antonio will secede from Texas," Methos suggested then lifted his beer and stared moodily at the dark liquid, shaking his head. "Tribalism again." Then he tilted his head to look at her. "And yet religion could unite us all."
"It has before," she said. "Religion is simply a bigger tribe, and it can span boundaries of nations and languages. Though our nations are shrinking, and the cities are, too. People are already leaving for the country and the small towns." Especially towns with schools, and Phinyx had four hundred thousand of those.
"That rural migration is happening in Europe, too," he said. He lifted his glass in an ironic half-toast. "But we're not eating each other."
Not here, at least. Not yet. There had been that one report from Kansas…
"Hungry?" he asked, and they ordered dinner from the limited options on the menu. They spoke only of books during the meal, nothing personal, nothing new.
When they left, it was full dark outside. As they stood just outside the doorway, adjusting gloves and hats, Methos asked, "Any news on the MacLeods?"
"No," she admitted, wishing again—for the thousandth time—that she had never told Connor to leave. "You?"
Methos shook his head. "Not a word."
Continued in "The Lamb" - in which immortality comes too soon