Followers and fans! I give you. . .chapter 31. Enjoy!
Belfeiro drew his own sword and screamed out in rage. The Kurgan blocked him easily enough and lunged brought his blade up from the bottom left. The Italian barely had time to deflect it, the force made his stumble back. Growling he grabbed the hil;t with both hands and looked up at the taller immortal. He screamed again and brought the sword over his head, trying to hit his opponent several times but failing.
The Kurgan used his brute strength and struck from both sides, often swinging upwards as that was Belfiero's weakness. He struggled to hold The Kurgan back as the brute dealt one heavy blow after another. He was furious, absolutely furious! He had spent years waiting for this opportunity, months for planning it, and even longer month s carrying it out. The Kurgan had taken her down in a matter of minutes. Then again it wasn't difficult, he should've known that. She was mentally mad, emotionally unstable, it wouldn't have been hard to unhinge her, no matter how much preparation he had put her through.
In his mind he shrugged, "Even if she hardly lasted a good fight at least I dealt her enough pain in the process of getting her to where they were now. That in itself gives me satisfaction enough satisfaction."
As the blows came down with increasing force from The Kurgan, the intruding Immortal glanced at Arielle and saw her starting to calm down from her fit. She seemed to be coming out of a daze and looked at them with uncertainty. He saw yet another opportune moment to strike, this time he hoped, it would give fatal consequences.
As The Kurgan lifted his sword for another blow, Belfiero dove and rolled towards the woman. He aimed his sword at her chest and reached out for her. He grabbed her and time slowed, he grabbed her and pulled them closer together. The blade in his hand sank into her side slowly, and deep. He bared his teeth in a grin and his eyes turned red with pleasure from the shock that appeared on her face. She held onto him for the life she had left and looked down to find that it had pierced her torso at a strange angle.
The Kurgan froze in place, his body locked from shock. It was a first for the ancient Immortal. His mouth slightly agape, his eyes blacker than night.
But his protégé wasn't going to let his get away with it so easily. She scowled and quickly grabbed the sword he had given her. She swung it back towards them and buried it through his arm, into his very side. There was a flop as the detached part of his arm fell to the ground. He looked at it in shock equal to The Kurgan's and let out a pain filled scream.
He jerked away from her, taking his sword in the process, and stumbled away from the both of them. Arielle gasped and held her chest when the sword left her, blood gushed through her fingers and she fell to the side. The Kurgan snapped back from his temporary paralysis and rushed towards his mate, abandoning the fight with Belfiero. He went to her and knelt down to look at the stab wound, her eyes fluttered open and closed as he held her up in his arms.
"Arielle," he growled.
She looked at him fully and he thought he saw the fire his true mate had. She didn't say anything, didn't do anything, and then. . .she went limp in his arms.
He shook her gently to wake her up and called her name, but there was no answer. A black fury crawled through his veins and heart, he carefully set her down. He stood up and slowly looked to where Blefeiro had been only to find him gone. He picked up his sword where it had fallen and began a hunt for the Italian Immortal. As he walked out of the courtyard an dinto the surrounding woods he could hear the cries of the servant woman who had befriended Arielle.
After the master left Mel had rushed forward and was leaning over the still body of her mistress. She sobbed heavily and held her as if Arielle was her own daughter. Her husband and son approached, the younger was shocked at the sight of the woman, the elder stared hard at the wound and then bent down to inspect it. He cut away her tunic to expose the stab wound and saw that it went through and through her entire body. His shoulders dropped as he gave up hope for her survival, he buried his face in his hands.
It was Eric, their young son, who could feel a lingering presence in the air about his mistress. Even through all the blood he swore he saw her breathing faintly. With his eyes glued to the lesion he spoke, "I think we should put her in her chambers."
His parents looked at him in hurt surprise. His father stood up and embraced his son. "The lass is gone son. We need to prepare her for burial."
"You can't father," Eric gently objected. "She's not dead. I-I can't explain it but she's. . . here. Don't make a pyre just yet."
With his parents stricken with grief, he knelt down and picked her up in his arms. She was light and fragile, her head hung limp. He carried her to her room and laid down before turning to her wound and binding it there on the spot.
The trail Belfiero left behind wasn't hard to follow. It was an obvious one and covered in blood, even in the thick underbrush. He was silent with only one thing on his mind; the death of Belfiero. Being an Immortal the man wouldn't die from his injury but he would be considerably weaker. He emerged into a glen, wrought with the signs of fall. He found his wounded target sitting hunched over a fallen log. He was shivering from the pain of his infliction.
He wasn't dying but he wished he was. Tears rolled down his tan cheeks and he looked up at the approaching reaper. He didn't try to defend himself, he didn't try to run. This was his end and he knew it. He looked up at his eminent harbinger of death, the angel of death more like it.
"It was mistake Kurgan," he said in a clear voice. "Bringing her here. And you know this."
The Kurgan stopped. "We are cosmic mates. We couldn't live without one another."
"I don't know how you became obsessed with a baby or how you even found her. But do you see now how dangerous it is for us, as Immortals, to have mates?" He panted for breath and took a moment to catch his breathing. "And you, bringing a human here from a different plane of existence? Blasphemy, even for our kind you bastard." He squeezed his stump and screamed, unashamed by it. "I've taught you a lesson that we all must learn, especially you. She isn't one of us and she never will be, so kill me now and avenge her death. You'll only be speeding my doom along while never getting her back."
The Kurgan glared at him with a cold stare, a stare that even unhinged Belfiero. The look took away any satisfaction the Italian Immortal could have gotten, it only showed his dark love of taking another's life, the seriousness he felt for it. He blade swiftly cut across air and split head from neck. The man who terrorized his mate was finally dead. The Kurgan stared at the body as the blue static crept along towards him. It lifted him into the air and he shouted as a powerful Quickening overpowered him, rushing through ever vein, filling his heart and shocking him, overtaking every sense in his brain.
That night, when he went back to his castle, he went to his chambers and was vaguely surprised to find his servants surrounding his bed. When he entered they parted to let him through and he found that it was a bedside vigil, led by none other the woman Mel and her small family. They bowed their heads respectfully as he walked through them and came to a stop by her side.
She looked peaceful, calm, half of her head was shaved but she was still beautiful. He was about to open his mouth to condemn them all to death for holding s vigil instead of fixing a pyre for her but there was subtle rise and fall of her chest. Like Eric he caught it and his blue eyes could only stare. Almand, who had lived through his ordeal with Moritz-but not without scars-, silently signaled the others to leave and everyone quietly filed out. Before she left, Mel placed a single candle on the writing desk. She looked at the master and then left.
All night he sat in a chair and watched her breathing. Even when the candle burned to a stub in the early hours of dawn he remained where he was. He hardly blinked and although he was nearing exhaustion from the riding, traveling, fighting and strain on his emotions and mind, he refused to sleep. Not until she woke up. Not until he saw her eyes the way he remembered them. For over a year and a half now he had been fighting to get the woman he brought here back, his true mate. There had been a look in her eyes before she appeared to die where he was sure her true self was back. While he believed in no god he demanded that whatever higher power existed to give her back to him, if they didn't he'd make the very cosmic balance between the planes of existence suffer.
Before finding her he had waited years, from his creation, the moment his character in the human plane was created, when he was portrayed by the other man. His life had been his own and he used it, afgter his defeat by MacLeod, to find another purpose in life. When he was killed by MacLeod he only came to the new world of Highlander, where they were now, the universe created by humans. He came here and lived the way he did, still lacking a core reason, he merely lived to kill for his own personal gain, not for any prize. And then one day like any other, his felt a buzzing in the back of his skull. An irritating, maddening feeling that drove him into periodic fits of rage.
Suddenly he found himself traverse through a black tunnel and emerged into a world he knew, the human world. He was unseen by everyone else of course but he was there all the same. For days he wondered why he had found this passage way and soon he found himself drawn to a hospital. Through the halls and a thin, red, string suddenly appeared tied to his left index finger.
In morbid curiousity he followed the string, and wound up staring at a woman giving birth. The string ended around the left index finger of the baby being born. A little girl came kicking and screaming into the world and something about her spirit drew The Kurgan, aroused him in areas in his heart and head that he didn't understand. It was at the moment of her birth, when he looked over the men who were attending to her, and he saw her naked, kicking, crying at the injustice of the way she was treated. She was his, belonged to him in every shape, way and form, and he knew this, right away.
He entered her dreams when she was a child, hide in the darkness of her mind where her thoughts didn't venture. He influenced her sexuality at a young age to get her ready for him, protected her from nightmares that would have killed her. He was always there, watching her, driving her, making her think perverted thoughts at an early age. In truth he was trying to get her to realize he was there but for some reason she never brought him out. Not until her brother, Charlie, died in a car crash protecting her.
Her emotional state was so depressed and broken that he was able to make his way out on his own. Yet she still had no idea why he was there. He spent many long weeks getting her to see that they were created side by side, only for the other. Despite the fact that by human standards he wasn't real and she was, they were mates. He fought for her three times now and would do it all over again in the same life time. Nothing would keep him from her, they were together in life and they would be together in death.
She was his toy, his pet, mate, possession. His, and his alone. Likewise he belonged to her but in his mind he owned her more than she owned him. It had been an awful mistake of the universe to create them whole universes apart but all that mattered was that he had found her, and he was not about to let go. The only woman he never grew old of, never got bored of, always craved and never had enough of.
Yes he would wait. Even when the sun began climbing up the sky form the horizon he waited. Of course he didn't have to wait long. With the sun came her life. She slowly sat up and looked around the room before looking at him. She rubbed her head and felt the half of it that was shaved off. She raised an eyebrow and then looked at him.
"Jesus Christ Kurgan. What happened?"
He grinned and chuckled darkly, "Do you really wish to know the entirety of it?"
She sighed and nodded. "What happened after I ran off and Derboth punched me? It's all. . .fuzzy after that." She looked at him with a look of sarcastic apology.
He grinned and instead of answering her crawled into bed and did the one thing he had wanted to for over a year and a half with his true mate.