Danielle Armstrong awoke to the sound of the telephone ringing beside her bed. She opened one eye, hoping to glare it into silence, but it remained stubbornly indifferent to her need for sleep. She scowled and snatched up the receiver. This had better be good.

"Hello?" She barked the greeting, not caring who was at the other end. Did people really expect courtesy from a mass-murderer? It generally escaped her attention that most people failed to realise that this was what she was - but had she given it any thought at all, she would merely have concluded that that was their lookout. If they couldn't see the death in her eyes, maybe they needed spectacles.

"Danielle?" The voice of her bass player, a pale-skinned individual who looked as though he rarely went out in the harsh light of day, came to her down the phone lines. He was a characteristically soft-spoken person, who never seemed to get the hints she frequently threw at him, regarding the increase in volume that would have been so useful. Instead he carried on speaking as though they were trying to converse in a crowded room, whilst going unheard by the many other people present.

"Mark." She spoke his name as though it were a curse to inflict upon him. "What is it? I thought I told you not to call me so early in the morning?"

"I... I'm sorry." He sounded it too, which was one of the very irritating things about Mark, at least in her opinion. He never seemed to want to hurt anybody's feelings, which was an odd characteristic for a man who was employed as a key henchman to a violent killer. "I thought you'd want to know that the, er... people that you asked us to follow... that they're all together at the place where your, er... husband... spent the night." He hesitated, clearly expecting a sharp retort from her. She kept silent however, and heard the relief in the voice when he spoke again. "They seem quite casual."

"Did they get the flowers I ordered?" A spark of humour shone in her eyes as she asked the question, and he could imagine it even though she was far out of his sight. He knew just how her face would look, and just how her mouth would be curving into its favourite cruel smile. She didn't think that it was cruel. She thought that it made her look beautiful, and he was too scared to tell her otherwise. She wondered why nobody ever returned that particular smile, or reacted to it in the way that she had hoped, but the truth of it was that the only reaction it was likely to get was terror. Combined with the glints and gleams of her strangely deep eyes, the smile was positively bloodcurdling.

"They soon will do." He was watching a delivery boy now, standing in the foyer of the apartment block where one of them lived, struggling to hold a large bouquet of white orchids in his rather too small hands. A bespectacled old retainer, in a grey-blue uniform that highlighted every wrinkle in his pale, lined face, was apparently explaining which apartment that he wanted. Mark drew back under the cover of the telephone booth.

"The boy's just arrived. Looks like he's heading for their place now."

"Good." He couldn't understand her amusement. It was obvious that these people knew she was behind the delivery, and as far as he was concerned she was taking too many risks by sending them unnecessary messages. They might just track her down, with a bit of carefully applied sleuthing, and then where would she be, with her over-confidence and vast collections of flowers? She seemed to enjoy her game though, just as much as she enjoyed the part that came next. The killing part, when she combined those insidious little scraps of poetry with the deaths of innocent mortals. He was loath to suggest that she might think of foregoing any part of her entertainment, just for the sake of greater security. "Wait there Mark. Follow them when they leave. It won't be long now."

"Of course." He nodded even though she couldn't see. "Where will you be, if I need to contact you?"

"You won't." She smiled sweetly, and he could hear it in her voice. "But just in case some strange emergency should arise, I'll be making a delivery."

"Flowers?"

"Not just flowers, Mark. Orchids. I have a particularly creative display in mind. A floral sculpture, like the ones that we saw on the ship coming over here. Remember? A swan perhaps, or something similar. I thought a few words of Shelley's..."

"Then you've chosen the first?" He felt a thrill of excitement rush through him as he asked the question, even though in reality he was afraid. Afraid and slightly repulsed by what it was that she planned to do. She laughed, the sound music to his ears, caressing his consciousness, putting his fears and uncertainties to rest.

"A girl. Young, like always. I saw her at the club last night, sitting on her own at the back. She liked our music."

"Everybody likes our music." It was a discussion about the approaching death of a girl, and yet it sounded like ordinary light-hearted banter. If Mark was disturbed by this, he gave no sign of it, and in fact seemed buoyed up by the nature of the conversation. "Do I assume that this is the reason for the delivery our friends are about to receive?"

"I thought a clue or two was only sporting. This time at least." She toyed with the telephone's sky-blue flex. "Something that will let them think they can be in time to save a life." She shrugged. "I haven't decided on anything more than that yet, but I'll tell you when I do."

"And is there anything else I can do for you in the meantime?" He was eager to please, as ever. Anxious to do everything that she wanted, exactly the way that she wanted it done. That was part of the reason why she had chosen him; that and the fact that he had hardly flinched when she had told him what it was that she did.

"Just keep an eye on our friends for now. I doubt they'll all take up the trail I've laid, but that doesn't matter. I'll send somebody else to watch the apartment. I have a plan I want you to help me with... a subtle little something to give me more time to play in. I'll be in touch when I've finished with the young woman I'm on my way to see."

"I'm not much of one for subtlety, Danielle." He wondered what it was that she had in mind, and then wondered if he really wanted to know. She laughed, her mirth coming to his ears in little bubbles, like champagne dancing along the telephone lines.

"You're a bass player aren't you? Bass players are supposed to be the quiet and subtle ones, which makes you the perfect candidate. Anyway, I'm not asking you for anything major. Just a phone call."

"To anybody specific? " He smiled at the receiver, enjoying the way that her mind worked, already looking forward now to finding out what it was that she wanted him to do. These games were entertaining; exciting; even fulfilling. He liked to play them with her. It had given his life purpose again, when there had been nothing to live for at all. "Or haven't you decided yet?"

"Oh, I think so." She grinned so broadly, so warmly, that he could almost feel her smile's incendiary heat warming the ear piece held close to his head. "Just follow them carefully when they leave the building, and don't let them see you doing it. I'll speak to you soon, when I've... dealt with this other business. Ciao darling." She rang off. For a moment Mark stared at the redundant receiver, enjoying the gentle shiver that ran through him at the appreciably casual way she had spoken of her approaching act of violence; then he hung up and moved closer to the building. It was a joy to deal with such a master, and yet again he congratulated himself on having found her. It was nice to feel his hands quiver, with that mixture of excitement and revulsion. Little things, he told himself. It was always little things that excited one; that made a life worth living. Always little things that brought a life to its end. Little things like knives, and fingers, and stabbing, violent hands. Little things like orchid petals, and beautiful smiles, that lulled one into a fatal peace. Little things. Beautiful, beautiful, little things.

**********

It was still early morning, even though Methos thought that he had been up for hours. Just why had MacLeod and Amy gone to their own homes, if they had been planning all along to gatecrash his at such an ungodly hour? Old men needed their sleep, and despite the fact that he seemed to function best of all with very little rest, he enjoyed being lazy. Having spent so long sitting up and talking before his clock even chimed out eight am was positively uncivilised. Only wild nomads were this active when even the sun was still looking bleary-eyed.

"Do you have any food at all in this place?" Slamming yet another cupboard door shut, MacLeod gave up trying to scavenge for something edible. Methos had a kitchen bigger than some people's whole apartments, and yet the only comestible item within it appeared to be beer; that and a box of Weetabix. Quite why a man who refused to have anything to do with milk would choose to have a box of breakfast cereal in his kitchen cupboard was a question that the Highlander certainly would not bother asking. He didn't think that Methos drank orange juice either, or water, or any of the other alternatives to milk that one was supposed to have with breakfast cereal. Perhaps he just liked doing the puzzles on the back of the box.

"There's some bread somewhere." Disinterested in the talk of food, Methos was attempting to use the present lull in the conversation in order to catch up with Reece. They didn't see each other often, and when they did meet it was invariably when they were in the midst of some grave disaster, so it was nice to have a few minutes together when their own lives were not under immediate threat. He had hoped to draw Shade out of his brooding shell, but so far had not succeeded. Reece was obviously worried about him, and Amy had picked up on the gloomy atmosphere. It was like being trapped in a wake, with nothing at all to lighten the mood.

"Bread." MacLeod nodded, apparently satisfied. "Okay, good start. Where is it?"

"In the freezer. Top shelf I think." He turned back to his young friend. "I'm not saying that it's your fault, okay? I'm just saying that it seems like ages since we've had a proper chance to talk."

"In the freezer? Well what good's that? I don't want bread flavour ice cubes, old man. I want a sandwich."

"There's nothing to put in a sandwich. Except possibly some beer." He offered one of his careless smiles, along with a shrug that might have meant anything. MacLeod scowled. Reece just sighed.

"You know, I write to you at least once every two months. If you want to keep in touch, maybe you should try writing back every once in a while. You can do writing? The thing where you have a pen and a piece of paper?"

"I don't write letters." He leant back in his chair and folded his arms, momentarily perplexed by the sight of Duncan MacLeod trying to saw slices from a large frozen loaf. Reece shook his head.

"You're hopeless. All the same, if all you want is to know what I've been up to since we last met, there's not a great deal to tell. I put everything in the letters, I think - except maybe for the most recent events. Vienna, Paris, and then Monte Carlo. Been having a whole lot of fun there. Turns out I'm a natural at poker."

"Poker, huh." Methos, who had had plenty of experience in gaming parlours the world over, dating back to the days when Las Vegas had been nothing more than desert, did his best to look disapproving. "Nobody is a natural at poker. You just think you are."

"Nothing's a game purely of chance, old man. You once told me that."

"I tell all kinds of people all kinds of things. Not my fault if they believe it." His eyes were drawn once again to Duncan, who had successfully hacked his way through a good half of the bread, and was now trying to defrost it in the shiny new microwave. It had come with the apartment, as part of the fully-fitted kitchen, and so far Methos hadn't got around to using it. It wasn't even plugged in, although he didn't feel terribly inclined to point that out as yet. MacLeod was nearly four hundred, after all. He was supposed to be able to figure such things out for himself.

"Shouldn't we be listening to the news?" Clearly nervous, Amy kept casting sidelong glances at the television, clearly longing to turn it on. "Danielle might have killed somebody last night, after she left the club. She might have done something already this morning. We're not going to know unless--"

"We'll know." Kyle looked awkward, his immaculate appearance somehow clashing with his darkened mood, and the obvious strain that he was under. "She'll tell us."

"Then we should be looking for her. There has to be a way to find out where she's staying." She looked back to Methos. "I could ask back at the office?"

"I don't think that your... particular brand of research will be any use." He offered her a nondescript smile. She frowned.

"Then how do we find out where she is? How do we stop her? There has to be something that we can do. Duncan?"

"It's frustrating." He shrugged, somehow managing to look both helpless and comforting all at the same time. "I want to do something just as much as you do Amy, but it's not that simple. When she made that threat last night, about killing bystanders if we followed her, she really meant it; and until we can shake off the people she's sent to follow us we can't make any decisive moves. I won't take the risk that they'll do something as a form of retribution."

"What do you think they'll do? Open fire on a crowded street?"

"Possibly." He gave the slices of bread a violent burst of microwaves, as though using the shiny oven as a way of diverting his frustrations away from this latest Immortal enemy and onto the frozen loaf instead. "Do you want to have it on your conscience if they do?"

"No. Of course not. I just can't help thinking that if she murders anyone, the way Kyle said that she's done before, then we're going to have that on our consciences instead."

"I know." He threw the hot, wilting slices of bread onto a plate, and then turned his attention back to the kitchen cupboards. Being a man who favoured all of the comforts of a wealthy lifestyle, he found it impossible to understand how Methos managed to survive in this strangely under-stocked apartment. Being Methos, he probably ate out every day. What the hell had happened to not living beyond the means of your mortal alias?

"Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils." One of the old veils had come across Methos' eyes, turning his oddly young face into a surprisingly deep mask of venerability and experience. "Sometimes it's hard to decide which the lesser evil is; sometimes maybe there isn't one at all." He reached out and put a hand on Amy's shoulder, very briefly. For a second she leaned into his touch, but only MacLeod noticed. "When the time comes, we'll make our move on Danielle. We'll send MacLeod running in with his sword waving, doing the heroic bit. She won't know what's hit her."

"But how? If we're not even looking for her, how can we attack her?"

"Never underestimate us." His voice was soft, and so were his eyes; but his face was not soft at all. "There's more than one way to catch a killer. Between MacLeod and myself, I think we've got them all covered."

"Sometimes I forget." She looked at each of them in turn, thinking about the years that each face masked. "You've probably all encountered some pretty prolific criminals in the past. Danielle Armstrong is probably nothing in comparison."

"I wouldn't say that." Kyle didn't look up, and his soft voice was hard to catch. "She makes it all so personal. Warps everything she touches. Plus there's her mortal bodyguard."

"Disciples. All people with a mission have disciples." Methos was back to his previous off-hand manner, the guise of wise teacher forgotten. "I've had them myself in the past. Long time ago now of course."

"Disciples?" MacLeod laughed. "Don't tell me - you gave lectures on beer drinking, and one hundred and one ways to sprawl."

"At least I don't pace constantly, and annoy the hell out of everyone." Sitting up, as though trying surreptitiously to suggest that he hadn't just been sprawling in his arm chair, Methos folded his arms and glowered at the coffee table. "I'm going to talk to Reece now."

"Gee thanks." Reece grinned at him, and made a show of looking attentive. "So what do you want to talk about? The weather? The current album charts? Seen any good movies lately?"

"Methos is boycotting the cinema, ever since the makers of Gladiator refused to take him on as an historical adviser." Finally deciding that the bread would have to stay as just that, and not be embellished with anything even approaching a likely sandwich ingredient, MacLeod put the place of slices down on the coffee table, and then dropped into a nearby chair. He was grinning. Methos shot him a dirty look.

"One of these days, MacLeod..."

"You'll what? Look even more cross?"

"Play nicely children." Reece eyed the plate of bread without enthusiasm. "Does anybody else think that we should call out for pizza?"

"I'm not hungry." Kyle was beginning to look as though he was anxious to take up MacLeod's recently vacated position as agitated pacer. "What time is it?"

"Eight fifteen." Reece didn't need to look at his watch to answer, which suggested that he had been keeping a fairly close watch on the time himself. "Are you still expecting her to get in touch?"

"She's always made sure that I'll find out about her murders in the past. If her people are watching this place, and have told her that I'm in here and haven't left, then she'll find a way to get a message here to me. Once she's killed she'll be pretty anxious to crow about it." He jumped to his feet, and crossed to the nearest window. "I feel so helpless. So... so bloody helpless."

"You're really not responsible for any of this, Kyle." MacLeod's calm, measured voice could usually cool even the hottest head, but Kyle did not seem too affected by it now. "She's mad, and the chances are that she'd have cracked eventually whether you'd left her or not. I'm no psychologist, but I'm willing to bet that she was killing people even before she met you. She seems to have that sort of personality - totally detached. Empty almost, despite all that warmth. She just likes using you as a catalyst, because it gives her meaning."

"Yeah. Whatever." The black-clad Immortal turned back to face the room, eyes unreadable despite the usual openness of his face. "But I feel responsible, whether I am or not. I've had it with her, MacLeod. Turning up wherever I go, killing people when I can't do a damn thing to stop it. If something doesn't happen soon, I'm going after her. I'm sorry, but 'lesser evils' or not, I need to do something."

"Yeah." MacLeod tried to offer him a smile, but Shade did not appear to be interested. "I think you're probably right. If we haven't heard anything in the next hour, we'll see about making a move. Maybe we can take out the men she's got watching us. At least that way we can try a little damage limitation." Despite his misgivings he found that the mention of a workable plan made him feel much better. "Agreed?" His companions gave a slow assortment of ragged nods. "Fine. Then in that case, somebody better turn on the television. If something's going to happen, I want to know the minute it does. Maybe that way we can be ready for Danielle's messenger, whenever he comes. Maybe have a little surprise waiting for him."

"I thought you said that was too dangerous? That you don't want any innocent deaths on your conscience?" Amy sounded doubtful, even though she sympathised more readily with this new plan. MacLeod didn't answer. Methos did.

"Always be adaptable; even with your conscience." He frowned, and she thought at first that he was doing so in response to her evident discomfort with such a theory. Instead, however, he seemed to be diverting his attention to the door.

"Trouble?" Reece asked the question in a small voice, tailored to prevent him from disturbing the older man's concentration. Methos glanced back at MacLeod.

"Somebody's out in the corridor." He sounded casual, but his eyes were very bright and alert. MacLeod nodded slowly. He hadn't heard a thing, but he knew how well the old Immortal's senses were attuned to noise and intrusion. It was all a part of his impressive instinct for survival; the ability to always know when there was a chance that he might be at threat.

"Well one thing's for sure. It isn't Danielle." He stood up, moving towards the door without any apparent caution. His movements were silent all the same; as silent as they would have been had he crept slowly and stealthily, rather than moving so brazenly. Only when there came a sudden sharp knock upon the door did he pause; and then only in surprise, for he had been expecting a secretive intrusion. Glancing back at the others, shrugging at this new development, he pulled the door wide. Ten pairs of eyes stared, full of hostility, at the shape looming in the doorway.

It was a boy, probably no more than fourteen or fifteen years-old; thin, scrawny and standing as a testament to the angular awkwardness of early adolescence. He was dressed in a grey uniform, with a little hat on his head such as might have been worn by a bus boy in a faintly outmoded hotel. His thin brown face was almost hidden by the sizeable bunch of flowers that he held in his arms, but enough of it was visible to show his obvious trepidation at this unexpected welcome. Amy realised how harsh they were all looking; how violent MacLeod's opening of the door had been; and she tried to relax enough to dredge up a smile.

"I've er... I've got some flowers for you sir." The boy held out the bouquet; a large display of white orchids set in a rattan basket. MacLeod took the hefty burden, finally revealing the boy's uncertain face. He had large black eyes and the makings of a set of impressive looks; straight teeth, a good jaw line, high cheekbones. Currently his naturally dark skin was a shade paler than what appeared to be its normal tone, and his curious eyes were filled with trepidation.

"I don't suppose you have the address of the woman who ordered these?" MacLeod was asking through blind optimism, and the response was no more encouraging than he had expected it to be.

"There weren't many details sir. Just the delivery address. A-a name I suppose... but they didn't tell me that at the store."

"It doesn't matter." As always MacLeod was able to find a smile, infusing it was warmth despite his growing irritation. He was getting to dislike the sight of these flowers; to hate the sterility of the white blooms. Never one to forget the innocent in the midst of his troubles, he pulled a ten dollar bill from his pocket, and pushed it into the boy's hands. "Thanks. Sorry about the unfriendly welcome. We've had a hard night."

"Sure. No problem." The boy's eyes scanned the little group; the flamboyant Shade, sloppy looking Methos, genial Reece and vaguely perplexed Amy. "Whatever. Do you want to place an order before I leave?"

"No. Thanks anyway." The Highlander made his refusal into an obvious dismissal, and with rather a stiff nod and a clear measure of curiosity, the boy turned away. MacLeod waited until he had entered the lift and the doors had closed, before he pushed the front door shut and looked back at the others. They were all waiting expectantly, but before he could think about finding a card amidst the white flowers, Kyle had crossed the room and taken the basket from him. He tossed it onto the nearest table, rummaging through the display, showering white petals onto the floor.

"Is there anything?" Wheeling up alongside him, Reece looked up at his friend. Kyle held up a small white card.

"Looks like it." He hesitated, apparently unsure whether he really wanted to read the words on the card; then smiled and handed it to Reece. "So what does it say?"

"Just one line." Staring at the card, Reece read the words printed on it. "It says Wearing the white flower of a blameless life. Then there's an address. I think it's that cheap set of apartments near the university."

"A possible victim's address?" MacLeod took the card and glanced at it. "Advance warning, or a fait accompli?"

"I'd say the latter, dressed up to make us think that it's the former." Kyle was running the single line of poetry through his head, looking for anything within it that might suggest a reason for hope. He could find none. It was a line that strongly suggested a life already lost to Danielle. "Maybe we'd better get down there and find out."

"Not all of us. Just a couple, to have a look around. Any more might risk destroying any forensic evidence." MacLeod's eyes narrowed. "I'd suggest that the pair of us go, but I think you're too close to this, Kyle. You're not thinking straight anymore."

"I know." The older man gave him a faintly rueful smile. "Trouble is, she knows it too."

"Then stay here. Wait to see if she makes contact again. Stay by the phone, all three of you, and don't leave the apartment. We'll be back as soon as we can. Right Methos?"

"I see. I'm included in your little excursion am I?" Rising to his feet with the superior air of a member of royalty being asked to perform some boring and exhaustive task, Methos grabbed his sword and his jacket, and remembered at the last minute to slip on some shoes. "Just so that you know, I'd much rather stay here."

"Get moving." MacLeod dropped a heavy hand onto his shoulder, and propelled him through the door. "If you ever happen to win the Prize, old man, you'll try to get out of it because you'd rather stay home."

"Very funny." The oldest Immortal pushed past him, shrugging into his jacket as he left the apartment. "But if Danielle and her mad jazz band is waiting for us at that address, and we wind up with bouquets of our own, I'll be very unimpressed."

"So will I." MacLeod followed him out into the corridor, with a last wave back at his friends. "The last thing I want on my grave are white orchids. I'm sick of the bloody things."

**********

The door was open, although only a tiny crack of light showed through the gap. In the faint breeze it swung, gently clicking every time it was drawn to an almost close. MacLeod glanced at the nameplate pinned to the door. It read Rogers, Anne; the words written on a typewriter that was clearly old and unreliable. The capital 'A' had part of its lowercase self imprinted over it, as though the shift key didn't work properly, and the ink itself was faded. The sign didn't look old though. It looked recent, the paper not at all discoloured by the sunlight, which must have been in almost constant supply during the day. MacLeod found himself picturing a young person; perhaps a student; living in their first apartment, and eager to put their name on the door. Quite suddenly he didn't want to look inside the room.

"MacLeod." As usual Methos was looking everywhere at once, without seeming to look anywhere at all. MacLeod followed the direction of his apparently casual gaze, and saw a single white orchid lying beside the doormat. It had been weighted down by a stone, and the petals were beginning to wilt.

"I see it." He started to bend to pick up the flower, but changed his mind in the end. It might be a clue - might be something that the police could use to track Danielle down. If nothing else that might help to slow her, until he could get to her himself. "There's no sign of a note."

"Probably inside." Methos reached out for the door knob, one over-long sleeve hiding his hand to prevent leaving fingerprints. He pushed gently, watching as the door swung open with an almost dramatic lack of speed. Inside everything seemed normal, until the pair crossed the threshold. From inside the building it was obvious that the sense of calm was an illusion. At the far end of the room, a chair was overturned, a haphazard pile of cushions lying tumbled on the floor. There was a desk beside the chair, piled high with books and papers, a gaudy coloured timetable glued to the wall nearby. Definitely a student, then. MacLeod felt a pang of sorrow.

"Over here MacLeod." Methos had found the flowers; a sizeable bunch of white orchids; magnificently shaped into a great white bird, yet cold and heartless in their familiarity. There was a crisp white card stuck in amongst the blooms, tied to one of the stalks with a length of white ribbon. Methos took it, tossing the flowers to his companion with a nonchalance that was almost disturbing.

"What does the note say?" He didn't really want to know - it wouldn't help anyone, and it was unlikely to be at all meaningful. Methos glanced over the card.

"It's Shelley. The cold earth slept below/ Above the cold sky shone/ And all around/ With a chilling sound/ From caves of ice and fields of snow/ The breath of night like death did flow/ Beneath the sinking moon." He read it as though he was familiar with the words, which, given his past, he very likely was. Far from seeming affected by the atmosphere within the lyrical lines, however, something about his attitude spoke of a college professor teaching his students - detached; aloof; familiar with it all despite the circumstances. "Certainly can't fault her taste in poetry. I think I remember Percy writing this one."

"Give it here." Throwing aside the flowers, MacLeod snatched the card and read it through, not needing to look at the printed words in order to know them. Somehow Shelley's lines had acquired a newly threatening air that really did not suit them at all. "Damn it."

"Take it easy MacLeod. We were never going to be able to stop her from taking one or two victims." Methos knelt down beside the body, eyeing the pretty face beneath an unruly tumble of red-gold curls. The mortal's throat had been cut, never the most attractive method of death, and the bloodless gash in the skin made his own neck tingle. He reached out to close her eyes, but MacLeod stopped him, none too gently.

"Leave her. The police will come, eventually. Best that they find her the same way we did."

"We've interfered with the flowers and the verse. Why not with the body?" He moved away from it all the same, knowing when not to argue with the Highlander. "Are you really planning to let the police investigate this fully?"

"Why not? We can't let them deal with Danielle in the long run, but we can let them handle her for now, if necessary. Let them watch her, while she's busy getting her men to watch us. It'll slow her down, or maybe get her out of circulation for a while."

"For a while, maybe. Then what?"

"Then maybe we'll be waiting for her when she leaves the police station. Maybe we'll have been able to use the extra time to find her hotel, or wherever it is that she's staying. Have you tried to track her through her application to work at the club?"

"False address. I knew that before they turned up to play." He shrugged. "They're not the first though. Musicians often have lousy digs, or nowhere permanent at all. They use false addresses to make themselves sound more respectable, so they can get jobs in order to find somewhere proper to live. It's the business. I didn't give it a thought at the time."

"Great." The Highlander stared down at the dead girl, slumped and forlorn in her silent death. "So somebody has died, and we're still no closer to Danielle."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Shade warned us that it wasn't going to be easy. Maybe we should never have expected to save everybody. I know that sounds harsh, Highlander. Sometimes harsh is all we have."

"Now you sound like one of her blasted quotes." He threw the piece of white card onto the floor, wondering what the police would make of it. Would they look through their records, and maybe find a handful of similar murders, which according to Shade had occurred in California near to the turn of the century? Would they wonder who was now copying such an old case? It was probably more likely that they would put it down to a simple crank, or perhaps a jilted lover with poetic inclinations. They wouldn't be ready for the second such case, or the third. His mind wouldn't let him consider the possibility of a fourth, or a fifth, let alone a multiple case such as those that Shade had described. His probing, unhappy thoughts turned to that particular, haunted man - older than him, but in many ways so very much younger - and he found himself wondering how his fellow Immortal was holding it together now, watching these events happen all over again. He seemed to consider it to be such a personal torment; which was, of course, precisely what it was supposed to be. The Highlander's mind tracked back, to the last time he had met Shade. His impression then had been of an irritatingly cheerful man with a joke for every occasion, and not a worry to call his own. Nothing had seemed to faze him, or make him lose his ever-ready smile. Now, however, he seemed to have lost it permanently. MacLeod was glad that he had insisted the other man remain behind this time.

"We should be going." For the first time there was a trace of emotion in Methos' voice, although it seemed more a display of concern for MacLeod than of sorrow for the young victim. MacLeod considered making a sharp retort, but bit back his comments. What was the point? Methos felt things in his own way, and rarely shared them with others. It would be wrong to accuse him of being heartless when he was very likely just keeping it all to himself. On the other hand, just how much sorrow was he feeling? The old Immortal just didn't seem to understand that other people felt his cold front rather disturbing. Probably, of course, he didn't really care.

"Yeah. Sure." He thought about how he had stopped his companion from closing the poor kid's eyes, and wondered if perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing to do. The police would not really have their investigations hampered by a murder victim found with her eyes shut. What difference could it possibly make to their forensics teams, or their bands of determined thinkers? Since she had clearly died from loss of blood, closed eyes were not even an unlikely thing to find.

"MacLeod..."

"Yeah, alright. I'll be right with you." Couldn't the old fool see that he was trying to be sensitive? Methos glowered.

"No, MacLeod. Seriously. Can you hear something?"

"A car just drew up outside. Could be anything." Duncan's eyes travelled to the window, then back to the body. "Maybe we should call the police before we leave. I don't like the thought of her being here on her own all day."

"Very thoughtful." A single step sounded on the path just beyond the door; but that was all the warning that they had about the approach of a mortal man. They both looked up. A tall figure, stocky of build and wearing a rumpled grey suit, stood motionless in the doorway. He didn't need the glinting badge on his belt, or the gun that rested in a holster just next to it, to prove that he was a policeman. Something about his bearing made that very plain.

"Er..." It was as good as way as any to start a conversation, in Methos' opinion at least, and if nothing else was a good way to get himself a few extra seconds in which to search out an escape route. MacLeod waved a hand at him.

"Officer?" He voiced it as a question, even though there was no need for the inquiry. "We were just about to call the police. We found--"

"Save it for your lawyer. We have a witness who reported seeing the pair of you coming into the building more than an hour ago, and who also claims to have heard the sound of fighting." His eyes drifted to the body on the floor, and with a lazy stride he stepped towards it. Methos edged warily towards the door.

"Going somewhere?" There was another plainclothes man just outside, and at least three men in uniforms. A woman, also in uniform, was speaking into a radio, her eyes fixed all the while upon the man now looming in the doorway. Methos froze.

"Don't leave so soon sir." The first man, at present bent over the miserable shape of Anne Rogers, glanced up at the two uncomfortable Immortals. His tone was so studiously polite that it showed in no uncertain terms just how impolite he wished to be. "Are you in any particular hurry?"

"We didn't kill this woman." MacLeod stared down at the slumped form, decorated in its grim swirls and splashes of leaked blood. "She's been dead a lot longer than we've been here."

"Maybe." He gestured at the blood that soaked the carpet. "But there are footprints here than I'm willing to bet match your shoes, and until somebody comes up with some proof to the contrary, you're both looking like pretty likely suspects." He straightened up, reaching inside his jacket. "Name's Pollux. Lieutenant Bob Pollux. You two are under arrest."

"Don't be stupid." There was an impatient edge to Methos' voice that was in no way advisable. MacLeod might have winced, had his mind not been on other issues. The talk of a witness had disturbed him greatly, since it could only be a set up. One of Danielle's men almost certainly - or perhaps even Danielle herself. Was she hoping to divide the forces that were rallied against her, by getting some of them out of the way? Or was she just making a point? Methos' voice rose in volume, but still MacLeod paid little attention to it.

"We've got no blood on us. Whoever did this must have been coated in the stuff. Her throat's been slit! That's not exactly a neatly clinical procedure."

"Well you'd know sir, presumably." Pollux spoke mildly, something that Methos had long ago learned to be a danger sign with law enforcement agents. It usually meant that they were thinkers, which was definitely not encouraging. The lieutenant nodded at his men beyond the door, and the little troop of uniformed officers stepped over the threshold. One of them had drawn his gun; the others left their weapons holstered. Two, however, were already reaching for their handcuffs.

"Can we not talk about this?" Painfully aware of the sword hidden in his clothing; not to mention the dagger secreted inside his jacket, Methos glanced across at MacLeod. The Highlander was looking decidedly unhappy.

"We've been set up," he observed, his voice showing no indication that he had faith in being believed. Methos rolled his eyes.

"You don't say!"

"I hope you're planning to come quietly, gentlemen." Pollux sounded faintly as though he hoped that they were not - although that in itself was something that MacLeod understood. He wouldn't have been felt terribly friendly towards two men suspected of brutally murdering a young woman. His quick mind ran over the various aspects of his defence.

"If you ask around you're bound to find somebody who saw when we really came in here. It wasn't very long ago, and this girl has been dead at least three hours. Look at the clotting - at how so much of the blood on the floor has already dried. There's no way that--"

"Put your hands against the wall please sir." The woman officer, a sparkling set of handcuffs ready in her hands, was facing him with a stern look on her face. He sighed. Being arrested had ceased to have any novelty for him a long time before this youngster had first put on a uniform, and he certainly didn't feel much like going through with the motions now - not when Danielle had undoubtedly created this distraction to give her the time she needed to choose her next victim. With five people ranged against him, however, there seemed little chance of avoiding arrest without resorting to violence. Attacking one set of mortals in order to possibly save another seemed an impossible situation to resolve, so without another word in his own defence, he turned to the wall and pressed his hands up against it. It felt warm from the nearby radiator, and the fingers of his right hand slid along the shiny surface of a large and glossy poster. Some film star, highly regarded by Anne; a picture she had probably hung there when she had first moved into the apartment, enthusiastic and excited about her new life there. He cursed himself for his morbid thoughts, but didn't seem able to help it. It was always worse when one of his own kind was responsible for the terrible things that he saw. Somehow it made him feel a part of the responsibility himself; a definite sense that it was up to him to make amends. He was familiar with the feeling by now, and with the way that he responded to it; the desire to do something decisive, and confront his fellow Immortal. He didn't like the sensation he felt now; of hopelessness and helplessness, and the realisation that his opponent had just won an important round. He felt competent hands patting him down in the search for concealed weaponry, and wondered if it was too late to make a last ditch bid to avoid this. He already knew the answer.

"Sir?" The young officer who had performed the search was holding out MacLeod's katana, his hands gripping the weapon so gingerly that it appeared he was afraid of slicing his fingers on the handle of the thing, let alone the blade. Pollux raised his eyebrows, and even though MacLeod could not see his face, he knew the expression that resided there.

"There any trace of blood on that thing?" The uniformed officer holding the katana glanced over it, then shook his head.

"If it's the murder weapon it's been well cleaned. Maybe forensics can come up with something, but there's nothing visible to the naked eye."

"With good reason." Methos sounded as though his patience was rapidly fading. Under any other circumstances MacLeod might have found his colleague's frustration a source of amusement, for he knew how the older man hated to be in a situation that precluded any opportunity for him to make one of his famed retreats. Pollux turned his head, casual and slow, to face this unlikely looking rebel.

"Any exclamation of your innocence isn't really going to meet with my unquestioning belief." He folded his arms, smirking gently. "But go ahead and try."

"Look at the size of the blade. Compare it to the injury." Methos was trying to sound patient and calm, although it did not come easily. It was all too easy to become frustrated with enthusiastic defenders of the peace, particularly when one was being wrongfully accused. Pollux smiled.

"Well if that's not the murder weapon, maybe you can furnish us with a better candidate." He gestured to one of his officers, who in a demonstration of remarkable courtesy, ushered Methos to the wall as though offering him the choice of whether to be frisked or not. The Immortal considered his options, weighed up his chances, and had to conclude that there was really only one thing to do. He thought about his sword, and his carefully hidden dagger, and imagined trying to explain either to a judge. Moving very slowly, he spread his arms and leant against the wall. Somebody searched him; strong fingers moving ruthlessly, displaying an obvious belief that there was less need to be careful with his clothes than there had with MacLeod's expensive suit. He allowed himself a moment's speculation; perhaps they wouldn't find the sword; perhaps they would offer him a polite apology, and let him slip away out of the door back into the anonymity of the crowded Seacouver streets. Instead, however - rather predictably - the questing hands came up trumps. He felt his sword being slid from its concealed sheath and, moments later, his jacket was pulled aside. The same inquisitive hands produced his dagger, and he winced, rather visibly. Pollux took the weapon, an amused glint lighting his annoyingly intelligent eyes.

"Now this looks more like it." He held the blade up to the window, clearly looking for traces of blood. "You've cleaned it well."

"I haven't used it in ages." He thought back, wondering how well he had cleaned it since the last time. It might be possible to find old drops of blood on the blade, especially with the use of a powerful enough microscope; and even though it wouldn't match that of Anne Rogers, there was no telling what the upshot of it all would be. Pollux grinned at him.

"We'll decide that." He flicked his gaze from MacLeod back to Methos, and then finally to his waiting officers. "Cuff them. We'll finish this back at headquarters."

"But--" MacLeod's protestations were pointless, as he very well knew. Pollux eyed him sourly.

"I have a lot of work to do, Mr...?"

"MacLeod. Duncan MacLeod. Listen, I know several of the detectives in this city, and any one of them can--"

"Then you'll probably get a chance to talk to one of them later. In the mean time I have work to do. An investigative team to co-ordinate, witness statements to take, all manner of people to question. I'll talk to you later."

"Later?" He couldn't help wondering how much later. How long before Pollux finally got around to interrogating them? How much longer before the evidence at the scene of the crime proved them to be innocent? He knew from experience that that could take a long time, and Danielle could already be preparing to strike again. He was still no nearer to finding her, and was a good deal further away from getting the police to find her for him. He found himself resisting as his hands were pulled behind his back.

"You can't arrest us. I have to get out of here. I have every reason to suspect that another murder is going to be committed..."

"Really?" Pollux showed a very unfriendly kind of interest. "Then maybe I'm going to want to know how you come to be so well informed. If you're innocent, Mister MacLeod, there will be the opportunity for you to prove it. Until then I'd suggest that you do as you're told, and try not to annoy me any further."

"Yeah. Great one MacLeod. Let's annoy the nice policemen." Methos winced when his handcuffs were snapped rather too tight, and then scowled. Brilliant. The boy scout got these people angry, and he was the one to suffer as a result. Bloody typical. Maybe now was the time to try demanding his own cell.

"Get them out of here." His voice betraying his failing patience, Pollux waved a hand towards the door. Methos let the strong hands propel him out into the daylight, past the single white orchid on the doormat. Nobody had mentioned the flowers. Perhaps they thought that Anne had already been in possession of them. Pollux would never understand their significance so long as he saw the murder as a single occurrence; an isolated event. Perhaps he would feel the chill of the carefully chosen passage, although he couldn't possibly know how it related to the crime. It occurred to the Immortal that somebody should probably put the lieutenant straight; but he was not the sort to do that, and MacLeod seemed lost in thought. With nothing else to say, he let his escort hurry him to the nearest squad car. Above the sound of the breeze, and the approaching sirens, it was almost as though he could hear Danielle laughing.

**********

Claud and Paul Fletcher were identical twins. They had moved to Seacouver together, choosing a small flat together just yards from the simple building where Duncan MacLeod had spent so many happy hours with his old friend Charlie DeSalvo. They had enrolled in the university together, although Claud was to study maths, and Paul intended reading law. Blond-haired and green-eyed, they were tall young men, of an identical slim build, with a faintly delicate air about them, such as might have seemed well suited to the poets of certain latter years, or consumptives still clinging to a little of their former health. Danielle Armstrong had spotted them from the window of her apartment, wandering home together in the early afternoon, carrying grocery bags, and laughing about something. She had followed them from a distance; overtaken them at a pedestrian crossing; waited for them around a corner that seemed likely to be on their way. They had appeared moments later, still laughing, still chatting. She had stepped out in front of them, making a great show of 'accidentally' knocking the bag of groceries from Paul's pale hands. She had gasped, apologised, gasped again, wrung her hands - and then insisted on helping them to carry all that they could salvage back to their patchy little flat. It was tiny compared to her spacious apartment, with dulled white paint on the walls, and dusty lights clinging to the ceiling. A plain blue carpet was worn thin in the middle, but the whole was given a cheerful, friendly air by the many posters, and relics of student life. Danielle had followed them into the apartment, waited until Claud had taken the milk and other assorted items into the kitchen, in order to put them away in the refrigerator, and then had silently, swiftly, knifed Paul in the back. He had stiffened; looked surprised; tried to speak to her. He didn't seem to realise what she had done. Then he had fallen, hitting the floor with a thud. Claud had rushed out of the kitchen, clasping his back as though he had felt the knife thrust that his brother had not had the time to notice. He had frowned; looked surprised just as his brother had done; mirrored exactly the puckering of skin in the middle of his forehead, and the slight rounding of the half-opened mouth. She had thrown her blooded dagger at him, catching him full in the chest, the expertly thrown blade passing between the ribs as though they were not even there. Claud had gone down without a word.

She stayed in their flat for some time after that, choosing her words carefully from the many books of poetry that were stored in her head. She used their word processor; evidently second-hand, slightly battered, with a cream coloured casing decorated with rub-on transfers of Tom chasing Jerry with a rolling pin and a frying pan. Anybody else might have smiled at the pictures, but Danielle had no idea who Tom and Jerry were, and she had never seen a cartoon in her life. If she paused to look at the pictures at all, it was only to wonder what a rangy blue cat that stood upright was doing pursuing a cherubic orange mouse in such a fashion. After that she didn't give anything in the room another thought.

She typed her chosen quotation neatly and precisely; happy that the selection was right for the moment at least in her eyes, then called the nearest florist and asked for a bouquet of white orchids to be sent to the boys' quiet flat. She didn't ask for a message, since she already had her own ready and waiting, and had to persuade the woman who took her order that she had made no mistake, and that there really was no need to say who the flowers were from. She also made it clear that whoever delivered them would have to leave them outside the door, for Danielle herself did not intend to be present to take delivery. Her preparations made, she left quickly and calmly, and carried on walking the streets for the rest of the afternoon.

Rosemary Cochran was just leaving the tiny local Greenpeace office when she saw Danielle walking towards her. The blue-clad, middle-aged woman recognised the beautiful singer who had performed so brilliantly at the jazz club the previous night. She smiled in greeting, amazed by the good fortune of meeting the young woman on the street. Danielle, who was busy congratulating herself for her own brilliant timing, offered the 'older' woman a single white orchid from the small bunch she was carrying, before following her into her poky house a few hundred yards down the street. Rosemary chattered all of the way, in the fashion that lonely people who crave company do when suddenly presented with an unexpected, friendly face.

In the dingy little house, filled with its ageing momentoes of a long dead husband and son, Rosemary pottered about switching on the kettle, arranging cups and saucers, searching out nut cookies baked by some other lonely and ageing widow searching for something to do with her lengthy afternoons. Danielle watched her, all the while thinking of her beloved poetry, trying each one out in the back of her mind before finally settling on a few lines written in the eighteenth century. She didn't know why she had chosen them, for they were not especially indicative of the mood or the situation; it was just that, once she had thought of them, nothing else quite seemed to catch in her mind. She set aside her small bunch of orchids, rose to her feet, and slipped into the kitchen after Rosemary Cochran.

"Do you want sugar in your tea dear?" Rosemary's eagerness to please was an almost palpable thing; a strong, warm presence that filled the room. Danielle smiled at her.

"I'm not much of one for sweet things. Thankyou all the same."

"No sugar then." Smiling hugely, Rosemary turned back to her cluttered tray of tea things, happily lifting up the teapot to begin pouring the simmering brew. Danielle waited until the dark brown liquid began to fill the nearest of the two cups, then slipped her knife out from under her billowing white shirt, and stabbed the mortal woman in the back of the neck. She went rigid, blood mingling with the tea that flowed swiftly into the cup, the two liquids mixing and curdling and spilling onto the saucer and then the tray. Danielle felt the body before her go limp; watched the teapot fall to the counter, then roll onto the floor and smash. Tea stained the pale flooring tiles. Blood washed out and splashed across the nearby cupboard. Danielle pulled her knife free, and washed it at the kitchen sink.

When all of the blood was gone from her dagger and her hands, she fetched her little bunch of orchids, and scattered them over the motionless body on the floor. Using a pen that she found on the kitchen counter, she wrote the stanza she had selected on a piece of white card torn from the box that contained the broken nut cookies. She wrote in block capitals, each letter as neat and as perfect as the next; each line perfectly spaced. Afterwards she trimmed the jagged edges of the torn card with a pair of nail scissors taken from her pocket, and carefully put all of the cut pieces into the bin. The message she left on the floor, weighed down with one of the little china cups, spattered with a few drops of Rosemary's blood. The pattern looked beautiful she thought; the tiny splashes of red like little roses against the hand-painted forget-me-nots that some careful artist had painted long ago. Then she left, and walked with quietly purposeful steps all the way back to her apartment in the centre of town. Many people looked at her, for she had always stood out from a crowd. She didn't notice anybody, however. To her the streets were empty, and as silent as the grave.

**********

"How did you meet Anne Rogers?" Bob Pollux had an uncanny way of getting right to the point. Methos stared back at him over the chipped surface of a once shiny table, and put on his best expression of blatant boredom.

"The only time I ever met her was after she died." He smiled sardonically. "So it can't have been me that killed her, can it."

"Well it could..." Pollux returned the sardonic smile with one of his own. "If you're lying. Now, your friend is telling the same story you are, and he sounds honest. He tells a good tale. I'm inclined to believe him."

"People always say that about MacLeod. He has an honest face." Methos eyed the plastic cup of coffee sitting on the table before him. Trails of steam rose from the surface. The sergeant who had brought him into the interrogation room had offered him tea when he had heard his accent. Methos had not bothered smiling. He hadn't bothered answering either, and the sergeant was still glowering in the corner, as though personally affronted.

"Thing is, your friend MacLeod is easy to believe. He's a very respected man. Antiques dealer, shop owner... He's been involved in some dubious events over the years, but there are a lot of policemen in this city who trust him, and reckon that whatever he gets himself involved in, it's usually for the best. Turns out that there are a lot of people ready to speak up for him. You're a rather different matter though."

"Really." He kept his voice level, maintaining his usual charade of innocence and utter harmlessness. "I'm not sure that I understand what you mean, officer."

"I mean, how did you meet Anne Rogers? We know that you work at a jazz club, and the late Miss Rogers spent some time working there as a waitress a little while ago. Just for a few weeks. Apparently she couldn't stand all the late nights, with her college course going on. Still goes to the club though, occasionally. Strictly as a patron. Her friends say she was there last night. Did you speak to her?"

"No." He thought that he had got the bewildered look just right, but it was impossible to tell what Pollux was thinking. "I haven't been working at the club all that long, and I don't mix much with the other staff."

"According to my inquiries you've been working there for more than a year. You must be impressively antisocial if you managed not to get to know Miss Rogers."

Impressively antisocial. Methos almost smiled. He couldn't really have put it better himself. He chose not to respond though, and merely looked back into the steam rising from his coffee. Pollux raised an eyebrow.

"Do you have a passport Mr Pierson?" It was an unexpected question, and Methos glanced up in surprise.

"Of course I do."

"And a green card? Only there don't seem to be many official documents that mention you. You don't have any medical insurance for instance. You don't have a pension. All that you seem to have is a job at a jazz club, and some garbled reference to research work on your tax records. I'm interested. Did Anne Rogers find out that you're an illegal alien?"

"I'm not an illegal anything!" Indignation flooded the old Immortal's voice. If there was one thing that he was good at, it was building aliases; making everything fit, and making sure that it was all legal. He always covered all of the bases; and yet here was some upstart mortal claiming to have found some holes in his cover. It stung. "My green card was arranged by an... independent organisation that employed me in a research capacity."

"And this organisation is...?"

"Are you going somewhere with these questions, lieutenant?" He deliberately used the British pronunciation of the rank, and was somewhat gratified to see the policeman flinch in faint irritation. There was a lingering silence, before Pollux reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph, which he tossed onto the desk. Methos glanced down at it. A young man lay sprawled on a carpet, blood staining the floor around him. There was a large, ragged hole in his chest; a stab wound, clearly. Green eyes stared into the camera lens, almost as if the man was still alive, and was posing for the photographer. Methos glanced up.

"What's this?"

"Another guest at the jazz club last night, apparently. His name is - was - Claud Fletcher. He and his twin brother were murdered some time today. Their bodies were found by a florist who had been asked to deliver a bouquet to their address. She found the door open when she got there."

"A florist?"

"Delivering white orchids. A sizeable bunch of them was found in Anne Rogers' home. Wouldn't mean anything to you by any chance?"

"Do you have a time of death yet?"

"Answer the question Mr Pierson."

"I don't have to." Methos brought his rising temper back under control, and managed one of his innocent little smiles. "Look, I've been in custody here for most of the day. Pretty soon your people are going to tell you that these people were killed whilst I was sitting in your holding cell getting very cold and annoyed, and trying to avoid the attentions of a two hundred pound psychopath named Terence. Now I didn't see anybody at the jazz club last night. I was otherwise engaged."

"There was a message at the Fletcher's place, left with the bodies."

"Isn't there always a message with a bouquet of flowers?"

"This one didn't come with the flowers. It was a poem, very neatly presented, just like the one we found at Anne Rogers' place. There's a pattern emerging here, don't you think?"

"Which means you think that the same people did both killings. And once your coroner proves that I didn't kill the Fletchers, you're going to have to admit that I didn't kill Anne Rogers either." He took a sip of his coffee, feeling vaguely triumphant. "Can I go home now?"

"And I suppose none of this means anything to you?" Pollux felt in his pocket again, and produced a notebook, which he flipped open to a particular page. "How about these lines? The good die first/ And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust/ Burn to the socket. You didn't write that?"

"No, I didn't. Actually Wordsworth did, and I really don't think that you can accuse him of murdering Anne Rogers either." Methos shifted restlessly. Pollux looked decidedly unimpressed.

"Wordsworth." He glanced down at the notebook, and then back up at Methos. "The poet?"

"I would imagine so. Although there were a lot of rumours at the time that it was actually his sister who was--" He decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valour, and glanced back once again at his cooling coffee. "Look, I'm sorry, but I really don't know who these Fletchers are. And I've never met Anne Rogers."

"I'm beginning to believe you." In actuality Pollux was beginning to think that the man he had arrested was nothing more than a harmless nutcase; and the praise that various of his colleagues had heaped on Duncan MacLeod led him to suspect that his British friend was, at the very least, not a murderer. Whether he was entirely sane was a different question.

"Can I go yet?" An edge of restlessness crept into Methos' tone, and Pollux's right eyebrow cranked up a notch or two. He regarded the thin face, with its crafty eyes, and let his frown crawl back over his face.

"No. Not yet. What do you know about a woman called Rosemary Cochran?"

"Rosemary Cochran?" The name actually rang a bell, which was a little alarming. Methos ran it through his vast databank of names and faces, and happily concluded that it did not fit any Immortals; or ones that might be holding grudges against him, anyway. "Who's she?"

"Another regular at the club you work at." Pollux leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette, using a lazy manoeuvre he had always admired when performed by detectives on screen. Sam Spade had had a wonderful way with a cigarette lighter, and he was working on perfecting an imitation. "She was murdered earlier today; we think probably not long after the Fletcher brothers."

"And you think that the same person did it?"

"Stands to reason. White orchids, piece of poetry. She was found by a neighbour who had gone round for a weekly coffee and chat, apparently. If it had been a different day, she could have lain there undiscovered for as long as a week. Things like that don't tend to put me the best of moods."

"What was the poetry this time?" Methos was interested, despite his strong instincts. They wanted him to leave, but his mind was holding him in his place, asking for further information as though determined to thwart his desires to go home. Pollux regarded him thoughtfully for several moments, before reaching into his pocket once again, and taking out a small photograph. It was a colour shot, with a distinctive white border, indicating that it had been taken with a Polaroid camera. Methos picked it up off the table, seeing a mass of blood covering the head and shoulders of what appeared to be a middle-aged woman. She was lying face down, but there was something familiar about her attire, even with the covering of blood. He frowned at the shot, aware that he was not showing the revulsion or distress that Pollux might have been expecting. He wanted to fake them; to put on a display that would convince the detective that Adam Pierson was a harmless young man who would never hurt a soul; and yet something prevented him from slipping into character. Methos was exerting himself; the new Methos, or the old Methos, or whichever one it was that wanted to keep looking at the photograph, and examine it in detail.

"I know this woman." He was surprised to realise it even though he had thought that he recognised the name. After a while one generally encountered every name available to the population, and it stood to reason that some of them would sound familiar even when they belonged to complete strangers. There was something about this woman though. For some reason the memory was connected to a little gathering one quiet evening, and a discussion about war at a little table in the back of Joe's club. A tired woman, berating her own powerlessness; hating a long gone government over something that she didn't properly understand. Himself, making her feel better without really even realising that he was doing so, recalling occasions when he had gone into war; other places, other years, other names. He had left those details out of it of course, and had merely told her what an unexpected part of him had known that she had wanted to hear. Rosemary Cochran. The name came back to him then, like the sudden burning flash of another Immortal presence in his mind; a hot certainty, that made connections ignite themselves across his synapses. He glanced up from the photograph.

"She comes in a couple of times a week. I think she's retired; lives on her husband's army pension. Her son was killed in the Gulf and she's all alone now." Inwardly he glowered, berating himself for feeling such a powerful sense of loss. What did he care? What should he care? She was just some mortal woman he had probably only spoken to the once. He did care though, and that fact angered him nearly as much as the fact of her death. He threw the photograph down onto the desk, not nearly as capable of maintaining that sense of professional detachment when there was a name and a face and a personality attached to the piece of dead meat. "What was the poem? The one that the killer left?" Pollux was silent for a few moments, and Methos could practically read the thoughts in his eyes. The detective was wondering whether this was all just an act, and whether his curious prisoner really knew every detail about Rosemary's murder. He gave in eventually though, and once again flipped through the pages of his battered notebook.

"Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried/ The saint sustained it, but the woman died." He read it without emotion, his voice a little flat and empty. It might have been his professional demeanour, but it didn't do a lot for the poetry. Methos frowned.

"Pope, I think. His stuff always was a little overwrought. Lord Byron thought--" He broke off before an ill-advised anecdote could sink him into any deeper water than that in which he had already found himself. "She's well read, isn't she."

"She?" Pollux had snapped to attention in his chair, but Methos merely gave him a vague shrug.

"Psychologically speaking I'd say that the evidence points to a female killer, wouldn't you?" He hoped that his casual manner, added to the vaguely intelligent sounding comment, would cover his awkward slip. Pollux scowled, and then nodded.

"Yeah. Our profiler has suggested that it's a woman, by his initial diagnosis anyway; either that or it's a man who's been hurt recently. By somebody that he might have given flowers and love poetry to maybe."

"This is hardly love poetry, lieutenant." Methos remembered the lines that had been left with Anne Rogers. Definitely not love poetry there. "These are lines and verses chosen specifically for their imagery. The first killing - Anne Rogers? It was Shelley there; then we had Wordsworth. Probably be Byron next. Something chilling, or just coldly descriptive. Not that it helps us at all."

"That's just what your friend MacLeod said." Pollux stretched back in his chair, abandoning all pretence at mimicking the cooler, more collected detectives of the world of fiction. "He also said that we should let you both go. His exact words were a little more forceful, but the gist of it was that I should be out there looking for this person, rather than sitting here asking you both all these questions."

"I'd second that." The early adrenalin rush brought on by his overly active mind was now beginning to slow, and Methos could feel his familiar shell creeping back around him. He didn't like being in this room, with its dark corners and bright central light; with its cramped walls and distinct lack of cover or likely weaponry. None of the corners bore shadows that were large enough to hide in, and he was all too aware that his sword was in an evidence bag three floors up; and under the guard of a sergeant who looked as though he wrestled grizzly bears for fun. It was enough to make him long for the brightly lit streets outside, and for the genial - and safe - company that awaited him back home. He looked for the steam above his coffee, but the liquid had gone cold, and the steam had ceased to rise. Instead he watched the smoke curling from the detective's cigarette; and saw a thousand other plumes rising, from a thousand other pipes, cigars and cigarettes. One of them was Byron's, as he puffed on some noxious concoction, sharing jokes and barbed comments with young Percy Shelley. Methos remembered the young mortal's pale, pale face; his blood red lips and ghostly smile. So many terrible nightmares; so many haunted images behind his quiet eyes. It hurt to see some of those images twisted around now, used for purposes that would have chilled Percy Shelley to the core of his well-meaning heart.

"If you want to leave here, then I'm going to need a little more than praise from policemen friends of MacLeod's, and assurances from you that you didn't have a part in any of this. I'm going to need a reason to let you go."

"You're going to need a reason to keep us here, before very much longer. There's a limit to how long we can be held."

"There's quite some time yet before we reach that limit. It's nearly six p.m., so you haven't even been in custody eight hours yet. I don't think Amnesty International are going to come hammering on my door." His lips twitched into a curt little smile. "And don't roll your eyes, Mr Pierson. I have every reason to keep you here, even if it's just to satisfy myself that you're not an illegal immigrant."

"I have a passport." Thirteen actually.

"I'm sure that you do." An amused smile replaced its curt predecessor. "But I have to be sure about these things, so... Tell me what you know about this case?"

"Who says that I know anything?"

"A few little things that MacLeod let slip. A few things that you've said as well. Oh you're good, there's no denying that. You can hide what you're feeling better than any actor; better than any of the professional tough guys I've had through here in the past. But you know something."

"And if I do... and I don't tell you...?" Methos was wincing, albeit only on the inside. He had to be slipping. Nobody would have guessed his involvement in this a few decades back - even a few years back. Was there some kind of air pollution in Seacouver that affected composure and cool? He smiled to himself. Unlikely theories were not going to help him now.

"If you know something - and I'm going to take a lot of convincing that you don't - and you don't tell me about it, I'm going to transfer your case over to Immigration. Whether you're in this country legally or not, it's going to take a long time to prove it. I might just push for a refusal of bail, too, if there's a real danger you might run off back home to Britain."

"Seacouver is my home."

"So you say. You'll have to prove it, and I don't think you want to do that. You want out of here. You couldn't be more restless if your shoes were on fire."

Methos glowered. So much for the cool as a cucumber approach. He fingered the blue tattoo on his wrist, and wondered if the Watchers would be prepared to stand by him if it really did come to a court case. Would they admit that they had sponsored his work permit, after he had wandered back into the country without bothering to fill in any paperwork? Would the police realise that he had spent much of the past ten years living in France, without any legal paperwork at all, beyond the saving graces, yet again, of his Watcher employers? Chances were that head office would wash their hands of him, and deny that they had ever met the wolf in sheep's clothing that they had clutched to their bosom. He frowned. Was that a mixed metaphor? Did it matter? Maybe none of it would matter anyway, because Pollux would probably end up claiming that the Watcher tattoo suggested he was involved in some shady street gang, and he'd wind up getting interrogated by the Vice squad and the FBI on top of everything else. He scowled. Trust MacLeod to have chosen him to go on this morning's little jaunt. He had known all along that he should have stayed at home. At least then he could have enjoyed the sweetly admiring company of Amy Thomas.

"So?" There was a hint of unravelling patience in the detective's tone. Methos glared at him.

"This is blackmail."

"Yeah. But who are you going to tell about it? If you don't help me out here, you're not going to be in a position to talk to anybody very much, for at least the next sixteen hours. I can keep you for twenty-four, remember? I can even ask for an extension on that, and with a murder case like this one, that's not going to be too tough. You can sulk and glower and moan all you like, but I think my patience is going to hold out longer than yours is. So tell me what you know about this case."

"I want my sword back, and my dagger. No questions asked. If I tell you what I know, I want to be out of here within half an hour, with the weapons. That's the deal."

"And MacLeod?"

"MacLeod will be out before you've opened the seal on the evidence bag my sword is in. He's a rich man. Good lawyers. Law firms that his family has been doing business with for a century. A few years ago he was caught up in a hostage situation in one of the Courts, and he saved a lot of lives; lawyers and at least one judge included. The only reason he's not a public hero is because he's so bloody modest, but public or not, he certainly has his friends in the legal world."

Pollux smirked. "Doesn't seem to be doing you a lot of good."

"I'm not MacLeod. Usually I'd be very glad about that. So do we have a deal?"

"We have a deal, perhaps. With one or two minor modifications." The detective nodded slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes showing his intelligence and his thoughts. "Now talk."

"It's simple really. There's this woman. She married... a guy I used to know. He's dead now. Anyway, they didn't get along, the marriage didn't work out, and he left her. She took it badly, and went a little off the rails. She always had a thing for poetry and flowers, and when the first killing happened... a few months ago. In... Alexandria... well she was there at the time. Seen leaving the scene of the crime with blood on her hands." He rounded his eyes in innocence, mingling it with just enough regret to hint that he was sorry he had not spoken up earlier. Pollux looked entirely hooked.

"And she likes white orchids?"

"Yeah. Big bouquets. And like I said, she really loves poetry. All the big names, and especially the more flowery stuff. Coleridge, Byron, Shelley..."

"And now she's killing people. Any idea why?"

"No. But... she loves music as well as poetry. Jazz music especially. When I met her first, when she was married to that friend of mine I mentioned... well she was pretty screwy about how she couldn't get a job as a performer. It's a hard business to break into, and... well if she went off the rails, maybe she's taking it out on... jazz fans." That, as an adlib, was one of his worst yet, but Pollux seemed interested. He even looked practically convinced.

"And she told you that she had killed Anne Rogers?"

"She sent a bunch of orchids, with Anne Rogers' address attached. MacLeod and I went there hoping that we'd be in time to warn the poor kid. I'd guess that somebody was waiting for us to arrive and then called you. All part of some game, I'd imagine."

"It does look like it, yes. Could be why she's come to Seacouver, too - since you knew her former husband. Cases like these often have a point of focus like that, even if it seems entirely illogical to the rest of us." Pollux stared hard at Methos, the cigarette in his hand burning unnoticed, the glowing tip rapidly approaching his unprotected fingers. "What's her name?"

"Armstrong. She's been known to use aliases though."

"Where's she from?"

"I don't know. Her accent's... maybe French. Maybe Spanish. There's a hint of something else in there too though. Scandinavia perhaps."

"And you're not certain about her name."

"She's probably using Armstrong. Danielle Armstrong." A nasty, twisting feeling inside told him that he had said far too much - but there didn't seem to be anyway to stop now that he come this far.

"And you have actually seen her in Seacouver recently?"

"She was at the club last night."

"Good. Then I want a description. You can work with a police artist, or we'll put together a photo fit or something. Either way, I want her face circulated on the news."

"If you do that, this city will be turned into a bloodbath. Lieutenant I don't want the responsibility of all of this. Believe me, I'd much rather be sitting at home listening to some music, with a can of beer for company. But my dubious choice of so called friends means that I'm stuck in the middle of a situation that all of my instincts are telling me to run away from. You have to let MacLeod handle this... and me, maybe."

"And why would I do that? So that you can congratulate yourself on a job well done, and go right back out there and start killing more people?"

"I thought we were past that? You know I'm not the killer. Look, the truth is that she has some people working for her. Four of them I think. Men. She warned us last night that if we tried to get in her way, her men were under orders to start hurting people. They have weapons - automatic handguns. Large calibre stuff, very modern. If she sees her face on the news you'll be scraping the population of Seacouver up off the sidewalk within hours. Now I'd really love to leave all of this with you, and not have to think about it again, but the quickest and simplest way to stop this woman is to let me and MacLeod go, and to give us our swords back. It's a... religious thing with her. Swords might just scare her off. If you try to do this any other way, though, people are going to die. More people than are going to otherwise."

"Meaning that you think she'll kill again, whatever I do."

"She probably has already, and you just haven't found them yet." Breathing in through his teeth, Methos was silent for a moment, trying to decide upon the best way to convince this detective of the problems at hand. He didn't want to have to bother. He wanted to be able to rule the police lieutenant out of the equation altogether, and pretend that none of this had happened. Instead he seemed to be no more than a gnat's whisker away from a full scale investigation into his private life, headed by Immigration. That was the last thing that he needed, no matter how sure he was that all of the bases had been covered, and that his various stories and recent identities were watertight.

"Look." The words came to him in the end, seeming to slide out of his psyche, inspired by who knew what. "I know this is going to sound crazy to you, but you really don't know who you're dealing with. Leave it any longer before you let us go, and there's no telling how many people will die." He thought about his persona; the gawky grad student; innocent, harmless, and apparently helpless; and inwardly cringed. Without the armour and war paint of the old days, Methos was not the best of people to insist upon his own indispensability, especially in a fight against a mass murderer. He didn't look as though he could even be called upon to successfully outsmart Winnie the Pooh, and yet here he was insisting that he was of paramount important in the struggle against the White Orchid Killer. Nonetheless he persevered, trying to ignore the look of obvious amusement on the all-too intelligent face of Bob Pollux. "For the time being she's concentrating on people who have links with the jazz club. She must have chosen it as a... a focal point. Even though it's open to all the public, it is still a club. It has members, whose names and addresses are on a list. She could easily have broken in, and got hold of that list; chosen her victims through that. That doesn't mean that she won't kill anybody who gets in her way, and if you go after her without being extremely careful--"

"We will be. I certainly have no reason to suspect that you'd be any better placed to bring her in - or whatever it was that you and MacLeod were planning to - than I would. It certainly doesn't tell me why I should let you go. Far from it. I have legitimate suspicions concerning you."

"But no legitimate proof."

"No. Maybe not. Not yet, anyway." There was a silence, punctuated only by the restless shuffling of the uniformed guard's huge black shoes. "Okay, let's try it this way. Suppose we do let you go..."

"Just suppose?"

"Let me finish. I'm willing to let you walk out of here, Mr Pierson... but only if you agree to taking a wire with you. If you hear from this woman, I want to know what's going on. That way I can be there like a shot, and deal with this quick and simple. I won't make a move unless her men are there with her, so there shouldn't be any chance of it all going sour. I'll make sure that I pick them all up, so that nobody can carry out this threat of opening fire on innocent civilians. What do you say?"

"A wire?" He thought it through, imagining himself acting as some kind of a spy for the police force; imagining himself leading the police right to Danielle Armstrong and her ill-meaning jazz band. MacLeod would not be impressed; neither would Shade. He knew full well that the police were unlikely to be able to stop Danielle. So what if they arrested her, found proof against her. Then what? It would only mean a pause in her activities, not an end to them. Shade wanted something far more final, even if it meant taking his first Immortal head in years.

"Mr Pierson? Are you prepared to go out of here wearing a hidden microphone, so that if this woman should happen to go that jazz club again, we can listen in to everything she says to you? It's the best chance we've got of checking her out - finding out if she's really the person we're after."

"She is."

"So you say. But we really don't have any reason to believe that, do we. You could be grasping at straws in the hope of getting out of here, or you could just have some grudge against this woman. Rival club owner? Business woman trying to make a hostile take over bid? Maybe you just don't like the way she sings, Pierson. I don't know. But either way, if I'm going to take your word that this woman is the killer we're after, you'll have to prove it to me."

"And I don't get out of here unless I agree?"

"Not yet you don't. I'll hold you until my twenty-four hours are up, and I swear I'll find an excuse to hold you longer. I'll have investigators check you out from the moment you were born, and I'll find out why ever it is that you're so damned nervous about being held here, and why you don't seem to want people looking into your immigration details. Help me now though, and I'll let you walk on out of here, and I'll never so much as raise your name in official circles again."

"You won't take any other options?"

"You mean will I let you and your friends handle this yourselves, like you were so obviously planning to do? No, I won't. I won't stomach vigilante action in my town, Pierson. You've got two choices. Custody and investigation, or freedom with co-operation. Think about it."

"I have." Methos thought of Shade, and how betrayed he would be. How angry he would be that Danielle was almost certain to get away now, sooner or later. How certain she was to get the chance to continue her murders some other time, if she was just arrested and not beheaded. Then he thought about the holding cell, and about his sword being so far away from him. He thought about the investigation that might, somehow, find a discrepancy that he couldn't account for. He thought about the publicity of an investigation - the risk of having his face in the newspapers. Publicity had been his enemy in the past. That was how Kronos had found him, when he had still been trying to resurrect the days of the Apocalypse. It was probably how Morgan Walker had found him too, somehow. He sighed.

"Okay." His voice sounded as light and as inconsequential as he could make it, but to him it seemed heavy and hollow. Would Shade understand? More importantly, would Reece? He clenched his fists under the table, and hoped that he didn't care. Hoped that nobody would care. Hoped that somebody else would get to Danielle first, and knock that beautiful, mad head flying from her shoulders. "Okay, I'll wear your wire. I'll be your stooge. But I want my name kept out of it, if this gets to court."

"No problem." Pollux was smirking, looking about as smug as it was possible for a man to be. "I'll keep any number of you out of it, if I can. However many there are of you, getting together to discuss how best to deal with this woman, I'll make sure that you get to stay anonymous. But if this woman you mentioned really is the Orchid Killer, we've got to get her. Now. She's already killed four people that I know of. Four people, in less than twenty-four hours. Left any longer..."

"Yeah." Methos still couldn't help thinking of Kyle Shade. He had seen a lot more than four people dead by the hand of Danielle Armstrong, and if this all ended with an arrest rather than a beheading, he'd be guaranteed to see a whole lot more. Methos wanted out though. He wanted to be back out on the streets, with his sword by his side - and if that meant betraying Shade, then that was just hard luck. "But if she does come to the club, and you meet her there..."

"We'll be careful. No shooting unless it's necessary."

"She's good. Quick. Observant. She--"

"She won't get the chance to kill anybody. I promise."

"You do, huh." He couldn't believe that. Couldn't believe that the police could possibly arrest Danielle without her making somebody pay for it. Passers-by, cops, patrons of Joe's club... Somebody would die. They were sure to. Could he really agree to that kind of a deal?

But of course he could, because he was Methos. And so he reached across the table and shook the detective's hand, and consigned the whole lot of them to whatever might happen.

**********

Reece stared morosely at the collection of white flowers on the coffee table, and wished that there was something he could say to cheer his friend. Shade had been sitting in silence ever since Methos and MacLeod had first set out to discover whether Danielle had claimed her first victim within the confines of Seacouver. Amy had tried chatting about the weather, about current affairs, about history - had tried to coax Shade into a conversation about life in the sixteenth century - but it was all to no avail. He had barely acknowledged her efforts, leaving Reece smiling apologetically, whilst not quite knowing why. Amy seemed to understand though, or at the very least had not taken offence. Now she sat on a chair a little further away from the two Immortals, writing briskly in a hard-backed little notebook, and chewing occasionally on the end of her cheap blue Biro. A distant part of Reece's mind wondered what she was writing, but he was not terribly interested. Not having seen her tattoo, he had assumed that she was Methos' girlfriend, and therefore she might be just as much of an avid journal writer as was the old man himself. It seemed strange to write about events like this in something as cold and impersonal as a diary, however. Weird to think of others doing the same over the years and the centuries. Of many people involved in many tragedies, mixed up in many wrongs, jotting it all down in neat little rows of ink, testifying to the passage of history in all its inglorious ways.

"She knew. I never know how she does it, but she knew." When Kyle broke the silence he did so with such volume that Reece jumped and Amy dropped her pen. They both glanced up at him, confused by his comment.

"Who knew what?" Amy sounded timid as she asked the question, as though the force in Kyle's tone had made her worried of possible consequences. He shot her a hard, sharp look, and she saw his thoughts ticking and whirling behind his eyes.

"Her. Anna, Danielle, whatever she wants to call herself. She knew to be at the club last night. She knew that there was a chance I'd be there myself."

"Couldn't that have been coincidence?"

"Was it coincidence that she turned up with a band in tow, and that they'd arranged in advance to play there? There's no coincidence in that. There can't be." He frowned at her, but Amy felt her trepidation fade away. For all his sudden loudness of voice and brusqueness of manner, she detected a real gentleness in Shade. It complimented the more obvious placidity of Reece.

"She followed you to the States." Shrugging as though it were a manner of little importance, Reece reached for the mug of coffee he had made some half an hour previously, whilst in a fit of despondency and in need of some serious caffeine. After looking valiantly - and uselessly - for some milk, he had contemplated giving up on the coffee idea altogether, and just beginning on Methos' vast selection of beer instead. Common sense had won out in the end. He didn't want to be drunk when there was a mass murderer to apprehend.

"Precisely. Either that or she already knew we had friends here. She knew she'd provoke some kind of a reaction when she sent me those flowers, but it kind of... freaks me out that she knew I'd come here. Did she just follow us to the airport and then jump on the next plane over when she found out where we'd come? I'd like to believe that, but I can't. She must have known about you, and your links with the people here. She must have known all about the jazz club."

"How?"

"Precisely." He regarded his friend grimly, dark eyes bright and hot. "She had to have been watching us for a while, and maybe found out about us as she did so. For all we know, she could have been listening in on our conversations. She could have had the place bugged. Here in Seacouver, back in Monte Carlo, or even as far back as Paris before then - maybe all three."

"Don't you think that's bordering on paranoid?" Amy's voice was quiet and soothing, but although Reece appreciated it, it did not seem as though Kyle really did. He glanced up at her, impatience simmering close to the surface, blowing away all of that inner calm and gentility that earlier had made her feel so secure.

"Of course it's being paranoid. I know her, remember? She works by making me paranoid. By getting to me - close to me - closer than I'd ever think possible. The people that she kills all have some connection to me, you know, however vague - students I've worked with, people who were frequent visitors to my street shows back in the old days; anybody she's seen me talking to." He sighed, flopping back suddenly into the soft embrace of his chair. "Damn it. I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound so snappy."

"It's okay. If it helps, do what you like." She grinned. "But no throwing the furniture. Methos would probably be a little upset, and I hear that he's not nice to be around when he really loses his temper."

"She could be listening to us now." Kyle's voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. "Could be hearing what we're talking about. If so then she already knows who he is. The world's oldest Immortal, right here in Seacouver. What's to stop her going after him next?"

"I thought you said she was only interested in mortals?" Reece's tone was cold; an abrupt change of face that made Kyle frown.

"Who knows, really? She's only gone after mortals in the past, but that might well have been because there weren't any Immortals nearby - none that I knew, anyway. Maybe she's only gone for mortals because she knew that that would affect me more... But now that I have Immortal friends, perhaps she's prepared to try to kill them as well. She might even be deranged enough to think that there's no chance of them killing her before she can kill them. If so, there's no reason for her not to try to hurt Methos... or you."

"It's a possibility, but I'm sure that Methos and Duncan have already considered it. They're usually pretty aware of possible risks." Amy came over to join them, although Reece couldn't help noticing that she put away her notebook fairly securely, and did not merely leave it behind. Was she really that worried that they would look at it?

"Maybe they are." Kyle sat up straight again, hesitated as though considering standing up, and then seemed to change his mind. He fell back into the chair, sinking once again into its soft depths. "And maybe that's not going to matter, if she goes after one of you with four mortal friends to back her up. I don't know. I really don't."

"She's got you jumping at shadows, hasn't she." Reece moved closer to his friend, making Amy feel very like an intruder. She considered offering to leave, and then almost blushed. She was beginning to think of them like some devoted couple, and she still didn't even know if that was how they saw themselves. Besides, MacLeod had clearly wanted them all to stay together.

"Nobody knows her like I do." The bleakness of Kyle's voice shocked Reece, who was so used to his friend being the font of all good cheer. "She's crazy, but she's clever with it. Coming here to Seacouver. Finding the jazz club. Not everybody could have done that."

"Kyle--"

"No." He held up a hand. "In Vienna she hired this kid to follow me around - night and day - and report back to her on everything that I did. That way she'd always know the best time and place to put in an appearance. I didn't catch on at first. The kid worked at the stables where I kept my horse, so I figured it was chance. Actually I didn't even notice him at first, until somebody pointed it out to me. Later I thought maybe he was after a job, or some money or something. You remember--" He grinned. "You don't remember, do you. What it was like a few hundred years back. Kids begging everywhere, following you like lost sheep if there was any sign that you had money. Danielle told me herself in the end. She turned up at some exclusive society event that she'd wangled herself an invitation to, once her little spy had told her that I would be there. She came swanning up in the most incredible white and silver dress, and was a real hit with the people I was talking to. I tried to warn them, but they thought it was all such a wonderful joke. Twenty-four hours later two of them - a young couple just engaged - were dead. Danielle wove white orchids into their hair, and left some poem all about undying love. She'd written it on the notice of their engagement, which I guess had been put out all ready for the announcement the next morning. They were going to hang it from the gates of her father's house. He was famous. They all were."

"And you're assuming that, if it is still mortals that she's after, then going by past encounters like that one, she's going to be choosing her victims from the jazz club this time around." Reece thought back to the previous night, trying to remember whether Shade had spoken to any of the customers. He had been helping MacLeod to serve behind the bar at one point, so presumably he must at least have exchanged pleasantries with one or two of the many nameless mortals. Was that connection enough to make them targets of Danielle's, or was she more subtle than that? Would she just pick people at random?

"I should have thought more seriously about it before really. I suppose I was too busy thinking about... well you know. What a fool I am for letting this happen. Why I couldn't just have stayed married to her or something. About how many more people are going to die before I finally manage to stop her." He shrugged. "All the usual stuff."

"You mustn't let it get to you." Putting a firm hand on his friend's rigidly tense shoulder, Reece tried to catch the older man's eye. He had to give up in the end, for Shade seemed determined to stare at the coffee table, and at nothing else at all.

"I think it's a little late for that, Reece." His face warped by a particularly perverse grin, Kyle focussed on a tiny pinpoint drop of spilt coffee that stood in the centre of the coffee table's otherwise pristine surface. "I've been letting her get to me for two hundred years now, ever since I met her for the first time. She always swore it was love at first sight, but to be honest she got to me in a bad way even then. I was just too drunk most of the time for it to matter." He shook his head, finally glancing up from his perusal of the finer points of the coffee table. "Two hundred years looking over my shoulder. I wish I'd just beheaded the damn woman the first time I laid eyes on her. Even then it had been years since I'd had a good Quickening. I'd had a bad day, and a fight probably would have helped a lot more than the alcohol I had instead." His vaguely amiable smile turned bitter. "Would have helped a whole lot more, since it was the alcohol that made me get together with her in the first place."

"Two hundred years." It was too much for Reece to imagine for one lifetime, despite his closeness to several people who were very much older than that. He himself was still far short of a single century, and two of them seemed a very long time indeed. "That's one hell of a romance."

"There's nothing terribly romantic about all of this." Kyle managed a smile, albeit one that was decidedly wan and feeble. "Not unless you think it's a turn-on to have a deranged woman pursuing you through the centuries, going on killing sprees every time her path crosses with yours."

"Can't say as I do." Reece summoned up an encouraging smile. "Must be nice to be that wanted though."

"Then I'll tell you what, my overly enthusiastic friend; I'll introduce you, and you can be the one to be pursued through Time by a psychopath. How's that sound?"

"Much more like the Kyle Shade I know." Reece seemed cheered by the daft joke, despite the vaguely serious tone in which it had been uttered. "I know it sounds trite to say it, and I know I've been saying it all day, but you really mustn't let her get to you. It's what she wants."

"Yeah. I know." They shared another of their small smiles, making Amy feel even more like an outsider. She wasn't sure if she should even be listening in to their conversation, despite the fact that she really had little choice.

"It seems so incredible that she's been doing this to you for two hundred years." She tried to imagine what that must be like, but the best that she could compare it with was twenty years; the twenty years that she had fretted over her suspicions that her biological father, and the man who had raised her, had not been one and the same. It didn't really compare at all.

"Two hundred years, on the nose." Kyle leaned back, sprawling against the arm rest in a manner that would have made Methos proud. He had a good view of the ceiling in such a position, and stared on up at the impressive beams and plaster decorations. "Not to the exact month, maybe, but certainly the exact year. Since old Alex became Czar in 1801."

"And it was 1801 when you got married?"

"Possibly. Maybe, I don't know. I wasn't keeping time, and like I said, we wound up in Northern Africa for a while. It was certainly 1801 that we met though." He frowned, looking up at her with a new light in his eyes. "Well what do you know. I hadn't thought about it before, but this is the year of our anniversary." His smile became thin and hard, although for the first time in some while the lights in his eyes were positive. "Maybe I can give her a little something special in celebration."

"Fight her?" Reece did not sound enthusiastic. "It's been too long. She'd have too good a chance of winning, and you know it. The only proper workout you've had in years is that little tussle with that sect who were so anxious to murder the old man. You'd better let MacLeod handle this one."

"Maybe. And maybe it should be my responsibility." Kyle was staring at his hands now, as if trying to imagine them with a sword in their grip once again, ready to use the weapon against a fellow Immortal. Reece was right; it had been a long time. "I don't know. I don't even know how I'd find her, let alone get close enough to challenge her, without her jazz band doing something. They're not bound by the Rules, after all; and even if they were, they'd still be free to do whatever they wanted to any mortal within reach. They have guns, and they've already threatened to use them."

"We should wait for the others whatever you decide." Amy felt a natural inclination to defer to MacLeod, even though she was fairly certain that Shade was a good deal older than the Highlander. "It's possible that she's just trying to... to mess with your head. That she's not really planning to kill anybody at all. There's been nothing on the news..."

"The news doesn't mean anything. The authorities now are no different to those of a hundred years ago or more - they'll tell people what they think they need to know, and nothing else. If there's even an inkling of a serial killer, they'll hush it up as much as they're able. Anything else only causes panic, and that's something that no leader wants." Kyle reached out for the cold cup of coffee that Reece had made so long ago, and took a long, thoughtful sip. If the coldness or the lack of milk bothered him he gave no sign of it - in fact he hardly looked as though he had tasted it at all. "We're not going to learn anything from the news. Probably the only person who can tell us how many people she's killed is Danielle herself." He looked sour, which clearly was nothing to do with the coffee. "That's part of what makes it so damned hard. Not knowing. Not knowing how many people are dead, or where they are, or who they are... or were. There could be people lying around the city who won't be found for days, or weeks, or even months. It happens. Nobody any the wiser about what's happened to them, or who's responsible." He shook his head and drank some more coffee. "And that's no way for anybody to go."

"I'm sorry." Amy went to sit beside him, searching for a way to make him feel a little better, even though she felt sure that that would be impossible. "I keep forgetting how much experience you have with this. With her. I mean... it's all so weird. So creepy."

"Tell me about it." For a second he still sounded bitter; then quite abruptly he turned around and smiled at her. "I'm sorry. I usually try to be a little more cheerful than this."

"Don't worry about it." Reece reached out to put a hand on his friend's arm once again, and his voice slipped neatly into a tone of utterly false sincerity. "Actually, we kind of prefer you like this. Usually you're so damn happy you're a pain in the lower regions. I'd have called this Armstrong woman a long time ago if I'd known it'd stop you telling bad jokes every two minutes."

"Very funny - but just don't forget which one of us is the one with the sword." Shade smiled at him, then let out a long sigh, and drained the rest of the coffee. He paused afterwards, and frowned at the cup in evident confusion. "That was cold."

"Yep." Reece nodded, confirming that the coffee had indeed been rather on the chilly side.

"And it was black. I hate black coffee."

"Methos doesn't have any milk. He doesn't believe in it. Not unless it's fermented, anyway."

"Oh." Shade still looked a little confused, obviously wondering quite how he could have drunk so much cold, black coffee without realising it. "Oh well. What's the time?"

"Getting late. The others should be back soon." Amy crossed to the door, peering out into the corridor. "Can you feel anything yet?"

"No." Reece went over to the window, looking down into the streets for any sign of approaching friends or enemies. "There's nothing."

"We'll give them half an hour." There was a new kind of resolution in Kyle's tone; a firm certainty that something had to be done, and that it was time to start the ball rolling - even though he had no idea where exactly to roll it to.

"And then?" Amy sounded worried, as much by the suddenness of the change in Kyle as by the obvious imminence of some kind of decisive action on his part. She couldn't help being a little glad too, though, that there were signs of their long waiting finally coming to its end.

"Then we go looking for her." He shrugged apologetically, for as a plan of action it was not up to much. It beat sitting in Methos' apartment though, and it beat waiting endlessly, whilst elsewhere mortals were dying.

"Any idea where to start?" Reece's voice was hesitant; a voice of reason that wanted to be something else. Shade shook his head.

"Not a clue. Got to start somewhere though."

"Yeah." Reece turned back to the window, staring anxiously out in the hope that Methos and MacLeod would now be visible. They weren't, and his heart sank. "I guess we do."

**********

Gemma Eastwood had never seen herself as the marrying kind. Not when she was young and carefree, and every guy she ever met seemed to be the man of her dreams - even if it that feeling did only last for the first few weeks. She had never been able to imagine staying with one man, being happy with him; not wondering when the relationship would fizzle to a halt, and she'd be ready to go off and find Mr Right number seventeen. One grew used to a state of affairs, and even when it no longer seemed an ideal way of life, it was not always easy to turn over a new leaf. Which was why it had come as so much of a shock when she had met Clint.

He wasn't really called Clint of course. In point of fact the name on his birth certificate - and the name which he infinitely preferred - was Stefan. Trouble was that with a surname like Eastwood there was always going to be someone who called you Clint, and in Stefan's case the childhood nickname had stuck like glue. Even now, on the brink of thirty, he was unable to shake it off. It suited him even less now than it had when he had first picked it up, as a gangling, pale-faced beanpole of a boy, with little round glasses and a pudding bowl haircut. The pudding bowl was gone now, cut back to a far more suave looking arrangement, and he had long since turned in his glasses for a pair of contact lenses - but he still didn't look in the slightest bit like Clint Eastwood. Even without the glasses he still looked a lot more like Woody Allen.

They had met in the spring of 1999, when neither of them had been even remotely interested in the other. Gemma had just fallen headlong into the arms of Mr Right number whatever (she had long ago ceased to count) - and Stefan had been in the middle of a meeting of his film society. Gemma had seen them all up the other end of the bar, earnestly discussing Stanley Kubrick, and had decided that they were all very sad. She'd thought that Stefan had been cute, in a vaguely Woody Allenish sort of way - which wasn't very cute, admittedly - and had promptly put him straight out of her mind. She hadn't even noticed, really, when her new Mr Right had introduced the pair of them later, claiming that Woody Allen - or Clint as he had turned out to be called - was an old friend. Some months later, when that particular Mr Right had been only a vaguely lingering memory, Gemma had wandered out of the rain into a tiny cult cinema showing A Clockwork Orange, in tribute to its recently departed director. Her cold and rain-drenched mind had just dragged up the memory of that time in the pub, and the bunch of film society enthusiasts who had been talking about that very director, when she had realised that Clint was in the seat just in front of her. They'd wound up talking on the way out at the end of the film, and Gemma had managed to upset the entire film society by declaring that she thought the book had been much better. She'd tried to claw her way out of her hole by asking whether Malcolm McDowell had been in one of the Die Hard films, and had then decided that it was probably about time to run away and hide her head under a bush. Clint had laughed though, and had made her feel a good deal better, and they'd ended up spending the rest of the evening together. He'd corrected her eventually about his name, she'd apologised for confusing Malcolm McDowell with Alan Rickman - or possibly Jeremy Irons, she wasn't sure which it had been - and they seemed to have been together ever since. She'd even invited all the members of the film society to the wedding, and had let them talk themselves silly all night, until the entire guest list, from film fans to those who she was quite sure had never been to the cinema in their lives, were all busily arguing over whether the first, second or third version of The Prisoner Of Zenda was best, and why there hadn't been a decent Saint since George Sanders. She'd even heard her shy uncle Ellard lamenting the demise of the horror film. The film society had been quite impressed, and had seemed rather inclined to adopt him as a mascot.

All of which perhaps explained how, more than a year later, Gemma came to be waiting in her car beside yet another cinema, in order to drive Stefan back home after yet another showing of The Maltese Falcon. He must have seen it four hundred times just since the wedding, and she was sure he could probably chant the dialogue along with the actors. Whenever he went to see it he would spend the rest of the evening doing Peter Lorre impersonations, and giggling nervously. She still found it rather sweet.

She noticed the woman walking towards her just as she was beginning to think that she'd got the time wrong. A fairly tall, athletic looking shape wrapped in an extremely flattering black overcoat, and wearing a pair of remarkable heels that made her calves look like something that Gemma would cheerfully have killed for. She hadn't really been aware that she'd still been watching the woman, when suddenly the figure was waving at her in the wing mirror, and quickening her step. Gemma recognised her vaguely. A singer. Wasn't she a singer? She thought she remembered seeing her at the jazz club.

"Hi!" The woman slowed to a halt, and put her hand through the car window. "Danielle. I saw you at Joe's place."

"Er... hi." Gemma shook the hand without quite knowing why. It wasn't as if she knew the woman. "Um... Do you live near here?"

"I'm looking for somewhere, yes. Heard you were selling actually. Somebody must have mentioned it at the club. I was wondering..."

"You were?!" Gemma practically leapt out of the car window to hug the woman. "We've been trying to sell for months. That is... it's not like there's anything wrong with the place..."

Save that it was built into the back of a cinema that had spun its last reel sixty years before, and had been vacant ever since, and was now in the process of being turned into a night-club that showed every sign of being one of the noisiest places in the whole of the mainland United States. Danielle was nodding though, either not knowing or not caring about the possibility of living inside a giant juke box.

"I'd like to see the place." She was toying with a bag, that Gemma was half-convinced was filled with flowers. White ones, with long stems. "Are you going there now? If it's not too much trouble..."

"It's not." Desperation made Gemma firm and determined. "I'm just waiting for my husband, and then I'm going straight back there. You can look around as much as you like. Hop in."

"You're so kind." It was a curious accent. Gemma couldn't quite place it. She didn't like to ask though. People could get touchy about that kind of thing. The back door opened, and the tall, athletic figure slid inside. For some reason a cold shiver went up Gemma's back, but she put it down to the draught that had slipped in through the open door.

"Not at all. I'm just sorry about the wait. My husband has to say goodbye to every single member of the Sidney Greenstreet Appreciation Society before he's allowed home." She smiled into the rear view mirror, but Danielle didn't seem to have heard her. Instead she was fiddling about with something in her bag. A shower of petals fell onto the floor of the car, and Gemma realised with surprise that it really was flowers that had filled the bag. Countless white orchids, all packed in together like something from a horticultural nightmare. It made her want to sneeze.

"Your husband likes films then does he?" Whatever it was that Danielle had been looking for in her bag she had obviously found it. Her head popped back up again, and Gemma saw a pair of quite striking eyes watching her very closely. She smiled a little nervously.

"Yeah. He does. I prefer music myself."

"So do I." Danielle leaned a little closer, and Gemma felt something pressing against the back of the seat. It hurt, she realised distantly, and started to move aside. She couldn't.

"Music is so much better than film, don't you think?" Danielle's accent was stronger now. Gemma didn't really hear her. She was too busy trying to work out why she couldn't move. It didn't occur to her to look down at herself, and see what it was that was pinning her so uncomfortably to the seat. "Jazz music of course. It's incredible. The stuff of life you know." Danielle was laughing now, at some distant memory. "I remember, back in the nineteen twenties, there were so many of us. It became so popular, right up until the war, and there were so many wonderful musicians by then. Ellington, Gillespie... I remember the days when nobody had heard of either of them. Goodman too, with that damn silly smile--" She broke off, smiling at Gemma one again. "I'm sorry dear. I seem to have lost the thread. I thought-- I'm sorry dear but are you alright? You look a little pale."

"I - I can't--" Gemma tried to speak, and was transfixed by the sight of the blood that frothed out of her mouth and cascaded down her front. It soaked everything. Only then did she realise that there was something long and thin - something made of metal - protruding from her chest. She blinked at it, not quite understanding what it was, or how it came to be there. In the back of her mind she was aware that Danielle was still talking, about pop music mainly, and how it had come to usurp the position of jazz in the hearts of America's music loving millions. Some part of her brain told Gemma that Danielle was her only hope - that she had to get her to call for an ambulance. She started to try to ask, but the words wouldn't come.

"Don't fall on the horn. It makes a hell of a racket." The words came to her clearly, more clearly than anything else that Danielle had said to her so far. Gemma tried to turn her head, confused and afraid. What was going on? Couldn't this woman see that she was dying? She couldn't turn very far, but she could see enough of her back-seat passenger to realise that Danielle was throwing flowers all over the place. White ones. One with long stems and ones that were just disembodied heads. Little bundles of white petals that lay all over the seats and the floor, and fluttered up against the partly opened back windows. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers, or so it seemed. The scent of them was very clear; very crisp and strong and beautiful. It was the last thing that Gemma was aware of - that and the pain.

It was another ten minutes before Clint came out of the cinema. He was in a hurry, aware that he had kept his wife waiting, and he slid into the passenger seat without looking into the car at all. Only when he was closing the door behind him did he have cause to wonder why there were flowers all over the place - and why his wife was sitting in such an awkward position.

He saw the blood without quite realising what it was, part of his mind still lost in that place of suspension that always comes from a couple of hours spent before an absorbing, giant screen. He reached out a hand; touched warm wetness; heard a noise just behind him. He turned.

Danielle was sitting in the back seat, her figure a mass of flowers. They were strewn all over her, all over her body and her clothes, and were even twisted into her hair. He thought that she looked like a doll - an indescribably beautiful floral doll, with utterly mad eyes. She smiled at him, and the evil in the expression made the breath freeze in his lungs. He looked around again at the flowers; at the blood; at his dead wife with a huge, ragged hole in her chest. The scent of orchids mixed with the iron-heavy scent of blood. He didn't speak though. The long thin sword blade that drove itself through his throat and exited through the back of his skull pre-empted speech. He thought that he heard the windscreen break as the sword burst onwards along its path.

Cleaning the blade with scrupulous attention to detail, Danielle stowed it away beneath her tight, figure hugging overcoat, then climbed slowly and casually out of the car. She took something from her pocket as she left, and glanced at it - rereading the words printed so carefully onto the white card in black ink. It was a Gothic font. She had liked the look of it, even though it had cost extra. Reaching in through the driver's window, she used a sudden, surprisingly brutal force - a startling contrast to the careful, almost gentle ease with which she had murdered the couple - to stick the card to Gemma's forehead. The adhesive did its job immediately, and when she took her fingers away the card stayed firm. After that she walked away, and left the rest to fate.

**********

The police had let Duncan MacLeod go on the understanding that he didn't leave town for the next few days, and generally promised to be good. They'd looked a little overawed by him at the time, so he assumed that one or more of his various contacts in the legal world had painted a suitably impressive picture of his character. He was glad about that, for it gave him the chance to get out of the oppressive atmosphere of a police station in the grip of a particularly horrible new investigation, and back out onto the streets where he stood an infinitely greater chance of solving the case than the police did. They refused to give him back his sword though, and simply told him that, in a day or two, he would be welcome to go back and fetch it, always supposing that the forensic team hadn't found something interesting that linked it to one of their open investigations. In that case, presumably, he would be arrested again. That didn't bother him, for he knew without a shadow of a doubt that they wouldn't find anything, even with their newest and most impressive tests and procedures. He always cleaned the blade too well. What did bother him was the thought of being out there, in the middle of Seacouver, without the sword. It was bad enough on a normal occasion, but with Danielle Armstrong on the loose it made him very nervous indeed. He didn't like being nervous. Nervousness interfered with his thought processes. It cost him vital measures of his usual cool temperament. He was stuck with it now though. It didn't seem in the least bit inclined to leave him alone.

He headed for Methos' flat with a disturbing kind of urgency, and reached it just as a neatly uniformed young man in his early twenties arrived bearing a vast circlet of white orchids twisted into quite the most grim looking funeral wreath that MacLeod had ever seen. He gave the young man a sizeable tip and took the flowers, then spurned the lift and took the stairs at a run, eager to burn off a little of his lingering frustration. He arrived barely out of breath, which was one minor thing to be pleased about, and pounded out a rhythm on Methos' large door that made the corridor echo with impressive jolts and clatters. Somebody on the other side of the door rattled a chain, and drew back what sounded like a deadbolt.

"Methos?" Reece's incongruously young voice sounded eager, but to his credit he showed no sign of disappointment when he saw no one save MacLeod in the corridor. "Where have you been? We were only going to give you another few minutes. We thought we'd head for the club..."

"Nobody is leaving this apartment. Not just yet, anyway." MacLeod stepped past him, hurling the wreath like a Frisbee so that it landed with a thud on the nearest coffee table. "This just came. Special delivery."

"Is there a card?" Amy looked like she wanted to dash right over to have a look, but she wisely left that to Kyle. He came over rather more slowly, clearly not at all anxious to pick the flowers up.

"Of course there's a card." He didn't look for it though, and instead turned his head towards MacLeod. "Where's Methos?"

"We were arrested." MacLeod threw himself down into a chair, and tried to make himself relax, at least to some degree. "When we got to that address there was a girl there. She'd been murdered. Somebody made an anonymous tip off and we've been in custody ever since. I managed to pull a few strings, call in a few favours, but I couldn't do anything about the old man. He'll be along though. Eventually."

"She's good." Shade sounded almost as though he approved. "Tying up resources, slowing things down. She probably knew that the rest of us would sit here like lemons all day, waiting for you to come back."

"Kyle..." Reece sounded as though he was going to say something placatory, or just something to make his friend feel better about himself. In the end, though, all that he came out with was a simple request. "Read the card. See what it says."

"Yeah." Kyle turned away from all of them, and gently pulled a small white envelope from the centre of the magnificent wreath. He opened it carefully, as though what was inside was of the utmost importance to him, and he didn't want it spoilt. They all saw the small rectangle of white card, and the plain black type that, at a distance, looked like vague decorations with no meaning at all. He held it up, apparently admiring the text.

"I don't recognise it," he said finally. "Not that I've ever been a poetry fan. "It sounds overly-dramatic. Even threatening maybe. Here." He walked over to MacLeod and handed him the card, then headed for the nearest window. He could see nothing particularly inspiring out of it, but it at least gave him a good excuse not to look at any of the others. MacLeod read the message out loud, his natural gravitas lending the passage a sense of the dramatic that seemed to suit it somehow, and went well with the means of its delivery.

"For the sword out wears its sheath/ And the soul wears out the breast/ And the heart must pause to breathe/ And love itself have rest." He shrugged. "Likes her Romantics, doesn't she." He hadn't known what else to say, and even as he said it he realised that it sounded heartless; cold, like Methos when he was being pointedly detached. There seemed nothing that he could say to ease the moment, though, so he merely tossed the card aside, and tried to think of their next step. It didn't come easily.

"Do you think she'll go back to the club tonight?" Reece, giving up his attempts to make Shade look less depressed, seemed to be grabbing at the only straw that any of them could think of. MacLeod shrugged.

"I really don't know. She'd have no reason to... but then she had no real reason to go there in the first place. If she's in it just for the show, then there's a good chance she'll go. If Methos opens tonight, anyway."

"Then that's our chance isn't it. Our only chance. Get her at the club." Reece sounded patently unsure, which was the only way that a pacifist could sound, when he seemed to be caught up on a course of action that could only lead to a death. Maybe more than one death, if they were not very careful.

"Looks like it." MacLeod was staring at the floor, wishing that he could see something more than floating white orchids in front of his eyes. That and the pictures he had been shown whilst in custody. Pictures of the idenitical twins, Claud and Paul Fletcher. Pictures of Rosemary Cochran. Pictures of Anne Rogers, even though he had already known exactly how she had looked. How many more before the end of the day? How many more before night fell, and Danielle Armstrong went back to Joe's club, to charm a few more mortals, and choose a few more victims, and sink her poisoned dagger a little further into Kyle's heart? Looking up for just a moment, to where the dark-clad Immortal was standing, MacLeod could almost believe that Shade was at the end of his tether. His expression clearly said No more. Reece was right. It had to be the club. They couldn't give her another twenty-four hours.

"We have a few hours then." He tried to force himself to relax - to lean back into the chair and think of something other than Rosemary Cochran, and the conversation they had had the last time they had spoken. She had talked of her son, and he had talked of friends he had lost in Vietnam, and they had wound up laughing, and talking about far more cheerful subjects entirely. He had liked her. He didn't meet many people with that kind of dignity.

"You honestly think we should try to get some sleep?" Shade didn't sound derisive exactly, but the question was there anyway, bright within his words - How the hell are we supposed to sleep? MacLeod sympathised entirely, but there was nothing else to do until Methos came back from the precinct, and it came to the time when the club could be opened. To the time when Danielle might just wander back out of the dark places, ready to sing for them again.

"I think we have to try." He closed his eyes, looking past Rosemary Cochran, and Anne Rogers, and Danielle's mocking face; listening to the sounds of the city beyond voices chanting lines of old poetry. "What else can we do for the time being?"

"Nothing." Shade turned away, wandered to the nearest couch. He threw himself down onto it, hands folded behind his head, and stared up at the massive expanse of ceiling. "It's been a long day. I could probably do with the rest before I face her."

"It doesn't have to be you, Kyle." Long hours in police custody had made MacLeod sleepy, even though he didn't seem to feel especially tired. He didn't open his eyes, but even so was aware of Kyle suddenly turning his head, staring at him with those oddly intense eyes.

"Yes it does, MacLeod. No matter how many years it's been, or what I've tried to do with my life these last few hundred years... No matter how much I've hoped never to hurt anyone again... You know that it has to be me. Just like we both know that she has to die. There's no other way out of this."

"Yeah." MacLeod wondered at Reece's silence, and at Amy's unspoken uncertainty. Then he tried to think of nothing at all. As usual it didn't work. Could one think about nothing? Or was thinking about nothing by definition thinking of something? Either way it did him no good, and he was left thinking about Danielle. And Rosemary Cochran. And what Joe would say when he came back and found her gone. He sighed, and turned his attention instead to the funeral wreath. Perhaps he would find inspiration wrapped in those twisted boughs. So lost was he in contemplation of the neatly tangled stems that he didn't notice when his weariness began to creep up on him - and not until he awoke did he realise he had been asleep at all.

**********

Rather at a loss as to what else to do, Methos soon found himself heading back to the jazz club. He didn't feel much like going home, although he wasn't sure why. Reece would be there of course, and Kyle and Amy - probably MacLeod too by now. Maybe he didn't want to face them - except that that was stupid wasn't it? Why shouldn't he face them? Okay, so he had gone behind their backs; told a policeman everything and lost Shade the chance of dealing with Danielle his own way - but what reason was there to feel bad about that? Guilt didn't come into it - or shouldn't. He smiled at that. After all, who was he? A MacLeod, with an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong powering his every thought and movement? A man like Reece or Shade, who seemed to consider it their lives' work to bring a little righteousness and laughter to everybody that they met? No. He was Methos. All he had to do was do things his own way, and let everybody else look after themselves. And why the hell not?

None of which really explained quite why he felt so bad when he reached the club and went inside. It was dark of course, the place still looking much the same as it had when he had left it in the small hours. He remembered the weary set of MacLeod's shoulders as they had wandered together out of the door, and the lack of his usual surety as they had said their goodbyes, and headed off to their separate homes. He felt that same kind of weariness now, after an afternoon spent under police interrogation, followed by an hour spent wandering the streets alone, and trying to convince himself that he had nothing to feel guilty about. He wanted to go back to his flat, put on some music, and while away the rest of the night listening to his favourite artists sing his favourite songs, whilst Lieutenant Pollux and his policeman friends tried and failed to deal with Danielle Armstrong. Then when everything was over, and MacLeod had done his thing, or Danielle had merely escaped to spread a little more poetic death elsewhere, he could emerge from his cocoon and look innocent. Feign ignorance, and pretend that he hadn't sold everybody out for the sake of a get out of jail free card. He scowled at himself then. Damnably morose thinking of that sort never got anybody anywhere. He had nothing to feel guilty about. Absolutely nothing at all.

Shaking a little sense and sensibility back into his mind, he headed behind the bar and dug out the radio that Joe kept there, for listening to the baseball scores when he was working before opening. A little fiddling, a little delicate adjustment and a little bit of brute force and swearing, and the radio finally agreed to play him something other than wall to wall sports. He hit upon a rock music station, turned the volume up, and set to work. Perhaps he was feeling extra conscientious, but sweeping up only seemed to take a fraction of the time that it usually did, and in what appeared to be no time at all he had cleaned and polished the tables and the bar, set out the chairs, and removed the last of the rubbish. The place practically shone, which was something of a first for a night when he was in charge. He smiled to himself in satisfaction, made a vague stab at making himself look presentable, gave up, and went to open the doors. He even remembered to turn the radio off and restore it to its position behind the bar. It was a little early yet to expect many customers, but he might as well have things ready for them when they arrived. Always supposing that there were any of them left. Somehow he wouldn't have been at all surprised if Danielle turned out to have spent the day murdering most of them, which would be a hell of a thing to have to explain to Joe when he got back. He imagined himself trying to make excuses for the fact that the regular clientele had been liquidated in its entirety, and ran through his full stock of innocent expressions in an attempt to find a suitable one to wear for such an occasion. Say Joe, want to hear a funny story? Well there was this mad Immortal with a thing for poetry...

The first customers wandered in off the streets just a few minutes after he opened up. He tried to summon up a smile of welcome that didn't look too forced, and managed to pour them a couple of pints of beer without any major mishaps. Not that there were usually any mishaps when he worked behind the bar, but he a suspicion that on a day like today, if anything could possibly go wrong, it very likely would. As if to back up his rather pessimistic theory, people soon started to arrive by the barrel load. In very little time at all, far from being left alone in a club that had had all of its members murdered, he found himself drowning in the sheer mass of people who were packing themselves into the place. He stared around in disbelief, seeing faces both vaguely familiar and completely strange to him; people he had seen most nights since taking the job here, and people that he was equally certain he had never set eyes upon before. They were all clamouring for drinks, complaining in loud voices because he was not capable of moving at light speed, arguing amongst themselves about who was first in line to be served. He did the best he could without being swamped by the tide, and wondered why he was on his own. Where were the other people who worked at the club? The eager young students looking for extra cash to help them stay afloat? The few professionals who were always so affable and chatty when Joe was around, and who glowered sulkily whenever he wasn't? It was only as he pulled yet another pint, and tried desperately to remember who it was that had ordered the White Lady - not to mention what exactly a White Lady was - that he remembered he had told everybody to take a few days off. He seemed to remember announcing it the previous night, at MacLeod's instigation, after a hurried conference about possible courses of action. They had decided that they could not close the club, since it at least gave them a few hours in which to be sure that they could guard those people who seemed most likely to be chosen as potential victims - but by putting the staff on temporary leave they had hoped to keep a few of Joe's closest friends as safe as possible. After the murders that Methos had heard about today, he was inclined to think that such a precaution was entirely pointless, and would be of no use whatsoever - but it had seemed sound at the time. It did mean, however, that he was left in a packed bar without any kind of assistance. It didn't help knowing that all of these people had only come in the hope of listening to Danielle sing. Methos was fairly sure that she would not be coming to the club tonight. Not in the face of all that she had done that day, and knowing what sort of a reception might be awaiting her if she did turn up. Surely only a nut would make an appearance under those conditions? He winced at that thought, and in the event was not in the least surprised when he felt the sure presence of another Immortal.

She appeared in the doorway, the members of her band arrayed behind her like some absurd honour guard. The long thin box was in her hands again, glitteringly silver and somehow provocative, just as was everything else about the extraordinary woman who brandished it.

She was dressed in black - a skin tight black dress that reached to her ankle on her right side, but came to a premature end not far below her hip on the left. It was sleeveless on the left side too, whilst the right sleeve reached down past her elbow, melting into the smooth, tanned skin beyond it. Her hair was loose, falling about her shoulders and catching the muted lights of the club's interior, as well as the harsher lights outside the door. There were white orchids about her person again; a cluster of them fixed into her hair, and a bouquet of them tucked into the crook of one arm. It trailed a great deal of frothy green fern and white and silver ribbon, all of which hung down behind her as she walked. Each of the members of her band was wearing an identical flower in his buttonhole, too; chests puffed out as though there was some unlikely chance that Methos would miss seeing them otherwise. He smiled nervously, and wondered if he had time to dash to the phone and demand MacLeod's presence.

"It's Mr Pierson, isn't it." Danielle's voice was so polite, so gracious, that he couldn't help feeling that, not only had he been completely wrong about her, but also that he had somehow been sucked back in time to the nineteen twenties. His nervous smile flickered and slid, and he summoned up a businesslike courtesy that did not quite hide his unease.

"Yes. It's a pleasure to see you again Miss Armstrong. I'd been given to assume that you weren't coming in tonight."

"Oh?" She arched a perfect eyebrow, and her alluring accent deepened in surprise for just that one syllable. "Whatever gave you that idea? An artist never disappoints so charming an audience." She breezed closer to the bar, smiling indulgently at the various gawping members of the public that she passed on the way. "Is it alright if I set up? You haven't already hired somebody else have you?"

"No." He hadn't even thought about it, and wouldn't have done even if he hadn't spent so much of the day in police custody. "You're... welcome to set up."

"Thankyou." She beamed around at the customers clustered about the bar, all frozen in the act of clamouring for drinks. "You wouldn't mind if I borrowed your barman for just one tiny, weeny moment would you ladies and gentlemen? I know that you must all be terribly thirsty, but it should only take a little while." There was a chorus of nods and murmurs of assent, all jumbled together as everybody tried to be the first to show that it was no bother. "Thankyou so much. I really do appreciate it. I'll be as quick as I can... and Mr Pierson, please allow me to pay for a round of drinks for everybody as compensation."

"You're very kind." He made a fairly good job of sounding as though he meant it, and with nothing else to do he lifted up the flap on the bar and stepped out into the main room. Danielle hung close to him, her perfume - orchid scented, he was positive - drifting around him with every breath. "So, um... what can I do for you Miss Armstrong?"

"Over here darling." Her voice sank several decibels, and in doing so deepened perceptibly. For a moment she sounded almost like Eartha Kitt, complete with growling, bubbling laugh - then suddenly she was striding up onto the little stage, and leaning close to the instruments. He followed her lead, opening the piano's gleaming lid in order to make it appear that they were merely checking everything was tuned and ready. Her band loomed close, forming a barrier between the two Immortals and the many members of the public who seemed to be trying to get near to them. If Methos noticed an atmosphere of brewing hostility, he was apparently alone. Amongst the mortal club-goers there was almost a party atmosphere - a sharp sense of excitement over Danielle's coming performance.

"So what is it that you want?" Pitching himself at a volume that he knew would not carry further than necessary, Methos used his best capable voice; the one that suggested he did not want to get involved, but that he would if he had to. It tended to get better results than an outright confrontation, or the usual completely harmless approach of Adam Pierson. It suited him rather better, too.

"I want to sing." She smiled at him the way that a lover might smile at the object of her affections. "I like the audience here. They're so welcoming. So appreciative."

"They like good music." His eyes narrowed. "But I meant what did you want to talk to me about?"

"Oh. That." Her smile broadened, and a lively sparkle lit her eyes. He tried to remember the last time that he had encountered somebody who was so deadly, whilst yet being so tremendously attractive, but could only drag up half a name and no face at all, together with the vague date of 1000BC.

"So?" It wasn't too hard to ignore her flirtatious body language - a man didn't reach five thousand without being able to control some of his feelings some of the time - well, occasionally anyway. It was the threat that was hard to ignore; the evil that floated just beneath her words, like clouds drifting in front of the sun. It was invisible to everybody else, he was sure; but she directed it at him mixed in with the graciousness in a manner that was horribly disconcerting.

"Maybe I just wanted to be sure that you'd enjoyed your little trip downtown earlier." Her smile was quite irresistible, and he discovered a determined urge to punch it. Instead he dredged up yet another smile of his own, and wondered how Kyle had managed to put up with this woman for so long. Preferred avoidance of confrontation notwithstanding, Methos was sure that he would have found a way to knock the alluring, gorgeous head from its equally alluring and gorgeous shoulders many years ago if it had been him that she had taken a fancy to tormenting. There had always been hired assassins available, after all, whichever continent, or century, you were in.

"So it was you that made that call - or more likely one of your tame musicians. Clever. I hope it gave you enough of a head start to get your work done. How many was it today? Just the four, or have there been others since Rosemary Cochran?"

The question tumbled out, voicing itself from that streak of rashness and bitterness that it seemed everybody - even he - possessed within them. He didn't really expect her to answer, realising the futility of such a question even as he was snapping out the words. She smiled, and made a dismissive motion with one hand that spoke of carelessness and casualness and openness, as well as warnings and threats and ferocity.

"Who's counting? And quite frankly, who cares? There are flowers for everybody in the city, if need be. For you perhaps. How sorry would my Stephen - my Kyle - be if I were to leave a piece of poetry for you?" She eyed him appraisingly. "Which piece would suit you best, would you say? You don't look as though Wordsworth would fit you. There's Tennyson perhaps. He's good for hidden depths. Or Shelley. Your eyes are quiet, like his. Not that I ever knew him of course."

"You'd have terrified him." That much Methos could say with a certainty. "He had problems enough with imaginary monsters, without real ones turning up on his doorstep. He'd have written you poems about your beauty, and then gone mad trying to reconcile that with what you're really like." He caught the flicker of interest in her deeply intelligent eyes, and tried to look like a grad student again. "I wrote a dissertation on his works when I was an undergraduate."

"Oh." She didn't believe him, but she didn't care - about his words, his lies, or about anything else. She just smiled, and in the process infuriated him no end. He thought about Pollux and his colleagues, presumably listening to all of this, and wondered if there was some question that he was expected to ask to help them build their case. Nearby the hopeful members of the public were growing restless, anxious for the secretive chatter to end, so that the music could begin. He drew Danielle's attention to them, and she nodded, businesslike and patient and cold.

"Are the others coming here tonight?" He recognised a certain amount of yearning in her voice, and wondered just what kind of bragging she was hoping to do in front of Shade.

"I don't know." He hoped so, quite fervently, and wished that the door would open to admit them right away. There was no sign of their presence though, and aside from Danielle's aura his senses remained empty. "Is that all you wanted?"

"Not completely." She smiled at him, and put a hand on his chest, dangerously close to the little cluster of wires that linked everything that was said nearby to the listening equipment at police headquarters. "I wanted to get to know you. You're a friend of Kyle's. Tell me about that sweet little one who follows him about. When I first saw him I thought he was too good to be true, but he's not, is he. There's more there."

"Forget about him." This time Methos' voice was entirely level, but it carried enough ice to make even Danielle's eyes flicker, and she smiled in a strange kind of understanding.

"Don't worry. I don't usually touch our kind. Only when there's a... subtext there. Kyle is my husband, after all. Should I be jealous of your curly little friend?"

"I don't know. But do you really think you've got any chance of winning Kyle back now? I admit that I haven't known him very long, but I do know that he's not the kind to get turned on by a mass murderer. Violence isn't his style."

"True. It's a shame, but I've never been able to cure him of that little hang up." She smiled at him. "But maybe you'd be interested instead. I might be persuaded to leave dear Kyle to his new friend, and turn my attentions to you. What do you say? This club provides all the entertainment I could ever need. I sing to them by night, and I cut them to pieces by day. The perfect set up, for a week or two at least."

"You won't get the chance for that, and you know it." He hoped that Pollux was listening to this, even though it was probably getting them all in deep water by refuting his earlier stories about exactly who Danielle was. If nothing else the detective should be getting enough information to put her away for a long time, despite the obvious drawback that any life sentence she was given would never really mean as much to her. The authorities could keep her for a few years at least, until she managed to escape, or fake her own suicide or whatever. Give Kyle a little respite. Just a little time without this mad woman hanging over his shoulder. Knowing that he was to be responsible for ending things so uselessly, instead of properly and finally, was beginning to make Methos feel sick, but he swallowed his irritations and his anger, and continued to try to act the part of good host. He wanted to leave - to slip away and let her have the club to herself - but with Pollux listening he couldn't do that. Not without risking getting himself arrested by an irate lieutenant of detectives.

Time passed, and Danielle's almost amiable mood showed no signs of fading, even in the face of her fellow Immortal's sullen lack of cheer. She chatted to him for what seemed like hours, until the people crowded into the bar became restless, calling out to her to begin the show they had all come to see. They wanted her to sing, and were frustrated that she had not yet begun to do so. Methos sympathised. At least if she was singing then she couldn't be talking to him, making her little jokes and flirtatious comments, and leaving him wondering what the hell Pollux must be making of it all. Fortunately the risk of being overheard inside the club had stopped her making any mention of immortality, but he couldn't help thinking that if their conversation went on any longer, that luck would most certainly not hold.

"The peasants are revolting." Danielle was looking about her, her slightly widened eyes managing to be disdainful and beautiful at the same time. She smiled at him, and threw her cascading locks over her shoulders, giving a little shrug that suggested she was bored with the whole affair. "I suppose I should give them what they want, or they'll probably run riot and wreck the joint. We don't want that to happen, do we." She patted his arm, and he glared at her. She laughed. "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to meet the owner. I think I'd like him. He has such a wonderful club, and to have you working for him... Does he know? Who you are I mean?"

"Yes, he knows." Methos ran a few possible excuses through his head, in case Pollux thought to ask him about that one later. Always supposing that Pollux was alive to ask him about it later. "But he wouldn't want to meet you. He'd be very polite, but he really wouldn't like you at all."

"Then I really would like to meet him. Friendly people are so much less interesting than the nasty kind, don't you think?" She was practically fluttering her eyelashes now, the flirtation so obvious that she was almost as direct as a hooker standing on a street corner, trying to get herself picked up. "Don't you think I'm much more interesting than other women?"

"You mean do I like spending time with somebody who hacks innocent people to death as a hobby?" Actually, he had once spent most of his time with people who filled just that description, and indeed had been one of them himself - but he could hardly mention that when half the policemen in the state were listening in. Not unless murder was counted under the statute of limitations after thousands of years had passed. He almost scowled at himself. This was not the time for foolish voyages of the mind. Danielle was smiling at him again, her eyes bright and teasing, and quite astonishingly attractive.

"Everybody loves a mass murderer." She said it in the same tone that she might have used for making a similar observation about how everybody felt towards small cuddly puppy dogs, and she said it at nearly the sort of volume that would have been far more suitable for just such a comment. Nobody nearby seemed to hear, or at any rate to care.

"I think it's time you went on now." He nodded at the microphone, set up at the front of the stage by one of her faithful band members. They were all still gathered around, waiting to play their parts in the entertainment that was to follow. Front and centre was the mike, glittering in the smoky light of the club, shattering the shafts of light that hit it, and radiating a strange sort of brightness that was almost that of a cluster of perfect diamonds. The metal was so highly polished that it seemed astonishing, just like everything else that was connected with Danielle Armstrong. He felt that he didn't need a sword to deal with her, but rather that it would take a conjuror to complete that trick.

"Any requests?" Her deep voice was now just a whisper; throaty and musical and hypnotic. He found himself smiling back, and leant closer to her, playing along just for a moment, when he was sure that their voices would not carry to the wire hidden beneath his shirt.

"Yeah." His voice matched hers tone for tone; flirtation for flirtation; sinister undercurrent for sinister undercurrent. He felt her hand stiffen on his arm. "How about Murder Incorporated?"

"Springsteen?" She looked momentarily interested, smiling at the joke, then shook her head. "I don't think so. I've always preferred jazz." She shrugged, and let her hand trail its way up his arm, to stroke gently at his cheek. "I will sing you a song though. Something special, just for you. Don't go away."

"Where would I go?" He moved aside, stepping swiftly down off the back of the little stage as the lights changed, and sweeping, cool blue spotlights bathed the raised space in their glow. Danielle was moving, stepping towards the microphone in a fashion that was so exaggeratedly sexy that it was almost absurd. None amongst her mortal audience seemed to find it that way though, and as she made the short journey last far longer than it should reasonably have done, the local temperature in the room appeared to rise and rise. Methos turned back to watch, as soon as he was safely back behind the bar. Nobody was prepared to turn away from Danielle for long enough to order anything, and there was no reason for him not to stand and watch, just as the customers were doing.

She reached the microphone just when it seemed that the tension in the room was about to reach boiling point; when almost everyone in the room was leaning forward, staring at her with expectancy writ large upon every face. She was smiling, hopelessly innocent and exotically experienced; two conflicting personalities that both simmered in the warmth of her smile. She reached out for the microphone just as the band around her began to play; a heavy, sultry beat that seemed to thicken the cigarette smoke in the air, and raise the temperature still further. It was easy to see her, in that moment of sheer poetry in motion, as the perpetrator of the bloodthirsty crimes that had become her trademark over the centuries. To her such crimes were an art form as exact and well-accomplished as her performances on stage, the borrowed poetry that she left with the corpses taking the place of the borrowed words that she sung into that gleaming silver microphone. So lost was he in this realisation; so focussed was he upon the song that she had begun to sing, that he didn't notice the tingling in his mind until it had become so much more. He glanced back towards the door, seeing the shapes of MacLeod and Shade framed in the little rectangle of never-complete darkness that was the outside world. Behind them was Reece, just visible beyond the two much taller figures, and alongside a much slighter shape that could only be Amy Thomas.

"Adam." Not speaking until he was at the bar, MacLeod made the greeting into something casual and measured. Methos nodded at him.

"MacLeod."

"You didn't call. I was wondering what had happened to you." Sitting on the nearest unoccupied barstool - of which there were many now that Danielle's performance had started in earnest - MacLeod looked rather sharply at the older Immortal. "Did the police give you a rough time?"

"No more than usual." The murky green eyes of the oldest Immortal slid from one member of the little group to the next. Danielle's song had not missed a beat, despite the sudden arrival of so many likely enemies. She wasn't looking at any of them, ignoring even Shade, staring instead at a tall, red-headed kid of about nineteen. He looked like a schoolboy from some private establishment, escaped from an ivy-covered house of great repute for a first night of relative freedom. In a suit rather too big, with a tie tied with almost ridiculous precision, he was watching Danielle's swaying form through round, overlarge glasses resting beneath a pale, sweaty brow. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

"One of us goes home with that kid." Perhaps it surprised Duncan to hear Methos come up with such a comment, for his eyebrows arched slightly.

"Are you volunteering?"

"Volunteers are against my religion." The expression on the infuriatingly shadowy face did not alter for a second. "But the Orchid Queen has her eye on him. He's next for poetry corner, wouldn't you say?"

"Undoubtedly." The Highlander's eyes drifted back to Methos. "So when did she turn up?"

"A little while ago, not long after I opened. I came straight here from the police station. I'd have called, but there hasn't really been an opportunity." He turned away to serve a customer, one of the few who had managed to tear his eyes away from the stage long enough to place an order. Even so he tossed the money onto the counter without looking to where it might land, and groped equally blindly for his filled glass.

"What did the police say?" Amy was hushed, as though she were speaking in a cathedral. Methos glanced her way in his annoyingly unconcerned fashion, as blind to her presence as she was overly-conscious of his.

"The usual. They wanted to pin it all on me, but they couldn't find anything to prove it. They took a lot of persuading."

"If Adam Pierson's mysterious inheritance can pay for that incredible apartment, maybe it should also pay for a decent lawyer." MacLeod clicked his fingers. "Now how about some service barman? Beer all round I think."

"Yeah. Sure." Reaching for a clean glass, Methos glanced at his watch. By his reckoning it was nearly half an hour now since Danielle and her mad little friends had come into the bar, and so far there was no sign of any police presence. For a moment he hoped that they had decided to sit it out - to wait until she was leaving the club, or to follow her discreetly when she left. It wasn't as though they had any real proof of her guilt after all, not matter how much he had been able to tell them - all the stories and the fabrications and the outright lies. Anything to divert their attention away from himself, and onto a more worthy target. Surely with that sort of sketchy evidence behind them, they would be more sensible to hang around outside? He glanced at his watch again, as though expecting the time displayed upon it to be substantially different to before, then slowly filled up four glasses with beer, and passed them across the counter. MacLeod's eyebrows lifted once again.

"Only four?"

"I'm not thirsty." Methos glanced towards the door, wondering if he was hoping that it would open, or that it wouldn't.

"You're not thirsty?" Reece sounded as though he had just been told that the moon really was made of cheese. "Just how rough was that interrogation?!"

"Very funny." Methos glanced at his watch again, and unconsciously scratched his chest near to wear the wire was attached. Had something gone wrong with it? Did the aura of an Immortal render it useless? But that was stupid talk; he had used them before. So had MacLeod. Somewhere in the city Pollux was merely biding his time, listening to everything that was going on, and trying to decide when was the best time to make his move - whilst in the meantime his nervous Trojan Horse was left wondering what the hell he had got himself into. The old Immortal wondered if he was sweating visibly, and why exactly, if he was, he might happen to be doing so. Was he nervous, about the dangers of having a bar full of policemen with guns? About the likely conclusion to a confrontation here? And if he wasn't bothered about it all, why did he keep worrying about whether he was or not? He tried to hide his scowl, and turned to serve a couple of late arrivals. Whatever that damned persuasive detective did, perhaps it would be better if he did it soon. Otherwise he was probably going to walk straight into a vigilante beheading - and that most definitely wouldn't help any of them.

**********

Lieutenant Bob Pollux leaned back in his chair, staring at the banks of electronic equipment that filled the large black van he was sitting in. It was a recent acquisition, bought by the new mayor in a well-timed fit of law and order campaigning, which had resulted in one new van (for covert surveillance), two new operators for the switchboard, and rather a lot of potted plants for the precinct's recently painted reception area. Quite what the potted plants were supposed to do was anybody's guess, and both of the new switchboard operators had resigned almost immediately, claiming that Saturday night drunks were well beyond the limits of their job description. The van was useful though. It had nice new tyres and a coffee machine, and one of the many aerials festooning the roof was very obliging when it came to hasty manipulations to pick up the football. Tonight, though, Pollux was interested only in the more legitimate equipment.

"The game'll be starting in a few minutes." Harvey Stayte, the sergeant assigned to help out in the van on this particular evening, glanced at his watch in a rather obvious display of hopefulness. "If we set up the aerial now--"

"If we set up the aerial now we run the risk of losing the reception on Pierson's wire." Pollux turned up the volume a little more, and listened in to further inanities. The conversation between Pierson and MacLeod was going nowhere, although what he could hear of the singer in the background was well worth listening to. He remembered that those magical tones belonged the woman who was his prime suspect, and still couldn't quite bring himself to stop being impressed.

"You really think this is worth bothering with?" Stayte was restless and bored, the van not exactly being designed for a person of his considerable size, or notoriously short attention span. Not a fat man, Stayte was nonetheless extremely large, being close to seven feet in height, and with a proportionately large build that fitted his fondness for athletics just perfectly. Once he was in the back of the van, though, there was little enough room for anybody else, and if somebody else did insist on forcing themselves into the suddenly cramped space, Stayte soon found himself unable to stretch out his impressively long legs. This discomfort, added to his inability to sit still for much longer than five minutes at a time, made covert surveillance with his assistance into something rather like a van full of wriggling rodents attempting not to be seen. Once, or so young Detective Tom Walker said, a beat cop had come over to the van during a night time session, and had rapped rather smartly on the window, thinking that the vehicle's frantic rocking and creaking was evidence of something very improper going on in the back seat. Stayte had given him a very red-faced explanation about his inability to keep still, and the beat cop had gone away looking very unconvinced. The incident had encouraged Stayte to keep still for a while, anyway, but apparently he was past that stage now.

"We've got a chance to arrest the worst serial killer to hit this city in years, and you wonder if it's worth bothering with?" Wishing that the infernal sergeant would stop trying to stretch his legs in the cramped space, and cursing whatever god of circumstance had caused no other officers to be available to share the duty with him that night, Pollux adjusted his headphones and cast a quick, disbelieving glance in his colleague's direction. Stayte looked momentarily humbled, then obviously remembered what his original objection had been.

"Yeah sir, I see your point. It's just that I don't see why you believe this Pierson guy. What makes you think that he's telling the truth about this night-club singer being the person you want? What proof does he have?"

"Admittedly very little, at first." Pollux reached over and slapped Stayte's headphones, lying unused upon the desk. "But maybe if you used these a little more, and thought a bit less about football, you'd know why we're still listening in. She as good as confessed a few minutes before she started singing, and that's enough for us to go on for the time being."

"She confessed?" Stayte grabbed for the headphones and fitted them onto his large, ovoid head. "Then why are we still just listening? Why don't we do something?"

"It's a crowded place. Lots of civilians. No telling how many people might get hurt if we go in now." Pollux drummed nervously on the desk with the fingers of his left hand. "Besides, I'm not sure that it's enough. Not yet. They talked about how many people she'd killed, and she almost threatened Pierson himself. She spoke about the poetry and the white orchids, and none of this has made the news yet... But I just can't help thinking that it's not really enough to be sure of."

"It's enough to get her in an interrogation room. She might--"

"She's not the cracking kind, Harv. Listen to her sing. This is one almighty cool customer." Pollux shook his head. "Which is another thing that I'm worried about. What's to say she won't just breeze on out of there without a word of warning? By the time Pierson manages to pass it on to us, she could be several streets away, and finding her would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. She could vanish in an instant, and I only have a very hazy description of her."

"Then move in now." Stayte looked as though he was lost in the singing, conducting faintly with one hand, a vaguely silly smile plastered across his face. "If there's any justice in the world, mind, this woman is no more guilty than I am. Listen to her voice! It's the most incredible thing I've heard since-- well in a hell of a long time."

"I know." Pollux smiled, even though he was in no mood for levity. "I don't think I've ever heard anything like it."

"Seems a shame, almost, doesn't it." Stayte pulled the headphones off in the end, tossing them back onto the desk with a clatter. "I mean if we grab her, and her prints and DNA and the rest check out, who's going to hear her sing? A few people on Death Row maybe, or the attendants at the local secure ward."

"I've never heard artistic license being used as a reason not to convict somebody." Pollux cranked up the volume a little more, trying to work out what the people near to Pierson were saying. There was a young sounding woman who sounded as though she was hanging onto Pierson's every word like some love-sick teenager, and a pair of men, again young sounding, who appeared to have arrived at the same time as MacLeod. They were all talking together, and from the gist of things they knew all about the singer's homicidal tendencies. Pollux wondered if they were all connected to the case in some way - mixed up in the confused story that Pierson had told him earlier. The two other men who had arrived with MacLeod sounded as though they came from the same part of the world as Pierson, although that wasn't reason enough to think that they knew anything; but there was a faint bitterness just discernible in the voice of one, when once he spoke Danielle's name. Perhaps it might be worth forgetting his promise to Pierson, and pulling the whole group of them in later, for further questioning.

"So what do you want to do?" All trace of the earlier levity had gone from Harvey Stayte's voice, and Pollux could see a certain sympathy in his colleague's eyes. It was a difficult choice to make, and Stayte was obviously glad that the responsibility was not his. "Do we hang around here and risk losing her, or do we go in now, and probably risk causing trouble? Did your boy Pierson say anything about how she might react if we turn up?"

"I'm not sure I'm inclined to believe most of what he said. The guy knew all about her, and yet he only agreed to help when I threatened him with Immigration." Pollux shook his head. "I checked him out then, just to be sure, and the guy's totally on the level. There's not a piece of paperwork out of place; not a stamp or a signature missing. The guy reacted like I was really putting him on the hotspot too." He shrugged. "Still, no matter how legit he is, he wouldn't tell me a thing until I threatened to get tough with him. That's not the kind of guy I take advice from."

"Meaning he told you to wait?"

"Yeah, he told me to wait. Said that her band would shoot the place up if we went in. Said that everybody in the joint would be dead before we got within a dozen yards of the singer."

"Sounds a little far fetched. We're supposed to believe that some jazz band is in on this? That there's a whole bunch of them conspiring to murder people? Maybe the rhythm section beat people to death with the drumsticks."

"This isn't funny, Harv." Pollux rubbed his eyes with his hand, running back over his earlier conversation with the unwilling young man he had been attempting to interrogate. The words in his mind blurred with the ones that he was hearing afresh over the headphones, somehow helping to recall the curiously shady expressions, and the oddly unreadable eyes. It had all seemed convincing then - a woman, bewitchingly beautiful but morally corrupt; her talented band of jazz musicians, ready to protect her at a moment's notice. No hint of lies or jokes; just a perfectly feasible tale. Now, whether through the passage of time, the chance for thought, or just Harvey's own suspicion, it all seemed hugely unlikely. Still, Danielle did seem to have confessed. She just hadn't implicated her band.

"You're gonna have to make a decision, Bob." Putting his headphones back on, Stayte listened in for a while, coming into a conversation halfway through, and hearing something rather ambiguous about a murder that had happened in Swansea in 1851. Who were these people? Murder groupies? He heard something else too - a change in rhythm from the band; a low throaty chuckle from the singer. A tune that he recognised from the dark and smoky night-clubs of his own off-duty hours. Something about a killer, who stalked the streets of Boston, and terrified the citizens by grinning through their windows in the dead of night. He had heard it sung a million times before, but never with such an undercurrent of menace. Coming from the throat of Danielle Armstrong it sounded like a warning of evils to come.

"She's looking at you." The voice that Pollux had identified earlier as belonging to Duncan MacLeod sounded loud above the song, being so much closer to the hidden microphone.

"Yeah, I know." Pierson's voice. An indefinable edge to it. "She said before that she'd sing me a song."

"You must have made quite an impression." There was something about MacLeod's voice that Stayte liked; something about the calmness of it; the reason; the strength and the gentility of it. It contrasted with Pierson's voice, with its off-handedness and general lack of concern.

"Maybe I did. She offered me a poem and a bunch of white orchids, anyway." They both laughed, with a surprising amount of real humour. Somebody asked for a beer and a glass of red wine. Somebody else asked after someone called Dawson. The singing lifted a little, rising in volume. Stayte got the impression that the singer was moving around, prowling about amongst her audience in the manner so beloved of night-club singers the world over. Somebody's footsteps clicked. A saxophone went off into a lingering solo. Even seated where he was, in a cold van so far from the club, Stayte could feel the electricity of the tension in that room. It was a wonder that he couldn't hear the beating of Pierson's heart coming over the wire, for it certainly seemed that he could hear everybody else's, magnifying the beat of the drums. Only when Danielle's voice returned again, once more rising and falling in its bewitching and teasing little waves, did he realise that he had been holding his breath. He shook his head, feeling suddenly tired, and wondered if Pierson really was the next in line for an orchid display, and a weird piece of poetry.

"Do you think I should wait, and try to get her when she comes out of the club?" Pollux was asking the question as though he needed to discuss it with somebody. Stayte hesitated.

"We don't want to lose her."

"We don't want to hurt any innocent bystanders either."

"No... But at the moment she's distracted, and more so than she's ever likely to be otherwise when we go after her. On the street there's more chance that she'll see us coming, right?"

"Maybe." Pollux took a long drink of the coffee that he had made for himself when he had first got into the van - and had then promptly forgotten about. It was cold of course, but in his profession he was used to that. It no longer bothered him, the way it had when he had been a rookie.

"Do we really think this woman is guilty, Bob?" Stayte sounded as though he was going to press for a solution to their problem no matter how unready Pollux was. The lieutenant nodded mechanically, responding to some instinct within himself that he would never be able to explain. "And what about her band? Are the people in that jazz club in danger from the band? Are they killers too?"

"There was only evidence of one intruder at any of the crime scenes. One set of fingerprints. One set of footprints in the blood. I've never known serial killers to run in packs. They're solitary creatures."

"Then your guy was lying about the band?"

"I don't know." Pollux drained the rest of his cold coffee, then tore off the headphones and rose to his feet. "But I guess there's only one way to find out."

"Then we're going in?" Halfway to his feet Stayte paused, as though checking that he had not read the signs wrongly. Pollux nodded.

"Yeah, we're going in. I'm to get that woman if it kills me."

"You want me to call for reinforcements?"

"Yeah." Pollux sounded uncertain at first, but then he nodded his head and repeated the assertion, this time with more vibrancy. "Yeah. Get reinforcements. I want that band outnumbered just in case. I want powerful guns, to make sure that they've got no chance of taking down any civilians. No point in taking risks."

"Right." Stayte reached for the radio, his huge legs swinging around and making the floor rock alarmingly. Pollux was reminded unavoidably of Tom Walker, and his story of the beat cop who had got the wrong idea. He almost laughed, and then remembered how it had bothered him that MacLeod and Pierson had laughed earlier, when he had been listening in to their conversation. He sobered up immediately.

"At least two units." He said it quite out of the blue, but Stayte understood that it was a request for the minimum number of their reinforcements. He nodded curtly.

"She won't stand a chance."

"She'd better not." Pollux clambered over into the front of the van, and started up the engine. "This woman might be mad, but I don't think she's stupid. We're not going to get a second shot."

**********

The sounds of the sirens fitted in so perfectly with the rise and fall of the musical notes that at first nobody in the club noticed them. The abnormally large audience, packed in so tight and so close that any outside noise was dampened, were all listening to nothing save the singing, and MacLeod and the others were sunk into their own, joint sense of despondency. Only Danielle's voice cut through it; as it was wont to cut through anything, chilling and enchanting in the same breath, and bringing new life to so many old songs. It was only when Danielle's own eyes flickered towards the doors that the little group of Immortals and their Watcher companion realised that something might be up.

"Was that a siren?" Reece, as usual, addressed his question to Methos, who, as usual, was not the one to answer it.

"Yeah." Duncan's frown was serious indeed. "Cops. What are the chances that they're on their way here?"

"Here?" Knowing full well that there was every chance that the police were on their way to the club, and perfectly well aware as to why they would be doing so, Methos used his usual innocent façade to cover his words. "Why would they be coming here?"

"They might have staked the place out, since they know all the victims used to come here. Unless... Did you tell them that she's the one they're after?"

"MacLeod do you think I'm crazy? Of course I didn't tell them." Methos slammed his hand against the counter. "But they might have been watching us. Could they still think that we're the killers?"

"They'd never have let us go it they'd thought that." MacLeod shook his head. "Maybe they're not coming here. There are any number of other places they could be going to."

"Guess again." Kyle, from where he was standing, had a good view out of one of the windows, and he had seen three shining squad cars screech to a halt right outside the club. There was a large black van there as well, sleek and clean and new, with windows made of mirrored glass and a roof that bristled with aerials. "They're right outside."

"How many of them?" Not daring to take his eyes from Danielle, who was currently still playing it typically casual, MacLeod snapped the question in a manner that only began to hint at his concern.

"Two to a car. Plus however many are in that van." So far nobody had alighted from that particular conveyance, but it seemed of a size to contain at least two more late arrivals to the party.

"What do we do? They must suspect something. If they come in here..." Shooting nervous glances around her, Amy fancied that she could see the band's pale, stolid bass player eyeing them all with a look of open hatred. Beside him the swaying saxophonist bent backwards almost double under the influence of his compelling instrument, and his jacket fell open a small way. Even though she had been certain that the band were armed, the sight of the gleam of gunmetal beneath that perfectly tailored suit made cold fingers paint pictures on Amy's back.

"What can we do?" Kyle's voice was so low it was barely loud enough to qualify as a whisper, but it carried nonetheless. The song giving them all a soundtrack that they could well have done without rose a little as though to compete with their urgent speech, then abruptly drifted off into an instrumental break. Danielle was swaying, feet planted to the floor, eyes closed as though asleep or hypnotised. Kyle was watching her now, apparently transfixed by her moving image.

"Get to the door. Stop them before--" MacLeod broke off as the door to the club swung open, and a single, uniformed man wandered in. His gun was holstered, and there was nothing overtly hostile about his bearing, but his eyes flickered meaningfully towards the band. Amy gasped.

"They'll do it, won't they. Like they said they would if we tried anything." Her eyes were round and wide. "Duncan..."

"Yeah, they'll do it." Somehow his voice contrived to be faintly reassuring, even though he was not hiding the truth from her. "Dammit, what are these cops doing here? We have to get them to leave - all of them."

"That might be a little harder than you think." Methos nodded back towards the door, which had just swung open again. This time it was Bob Pollux who came in, accompanied by another plainclothes man, this one a veritable giant. "That's the guy that arrested us."

"Yeah. The one that's leading the investigation." MacLeod glared at the lieutenant, who apparently had failed to notice him. "He must know something. They must have found a witness, or got... I don't know... a fingerprint... anything."

"But to just come here? Don't they have to... to ask or something?" Reece was clutching at straws and he knew it. "They can't just come into a club when all these people are here. Can they?"

"Apparently they can." Kyle's voice dripped with disapproval. "But we can't let them get away with it. MacLeod, if they arrest her, I lose my chance of ending this."

"I know." MacLeod was watching Pollux very carefully, impressed by the casual manner in which the lieutenant had found his way to a table. He was sitting with his giant friend, apparently discussing something trivial and faintly amusing. Neither of them signalled that they wanted serving, and Methos at least had no intention of offering.

"Should we try to get the customers out?" Amy's voice showed the same tensions as Kyle's, but with different reasons. His main thought now was Danielle, whereas Amy's was for her fellow mortals, seated unsuspectingly in the middle of a potential fire-fight. "Could we sound the fire alarm or something? Fake a bomb alert?"

"That's not a bad idea." MacLeod turned back to look towards Danielle, gyrating sensuously on the very edge of the stage. It was clear that she was watching the policemen - Pollux and his companion, as well as the unformed man who had entered first. "Somebody's going to have to do something. She knows why they're here."

"She wouldn't just starting firing. Would she?" Amy was clinging to Methos' arm, even though they were on opposite sides of the bar. He stared back at her, apparently not noticing the physical contact, frowning as though he was wondering why she was there.

"Sound the fire alarm." MacLeod's decisive tone brought them all back down to earth, but none of them noticed that he was no longer standing with them. Instead he was moving away, trying and failing to look casual, heading towards Pollux with his usual long, lithe stride. The lieutenant looked up as he approached; and just as he did so the band's snaking, swaying saxophonist glanced up as well - and caught sight of the vista beyond the window. Three police cars, drawn up in a horseshoe shape, lights turned off, doors open, uniformed men crouching in the street with their guns drawn. He stopped playing. Danielle glanced back at him. The audience, and the band, froze as one.

It took the sound of the fire alarm filling the room to break the stand-off; the persistent ringing sound that awoke the procedure conditioned into every head. Make for the nearest exit. Move quickly and in an orderly fashion. Keep moving. Even the most deeply absorbed of the audience reacted, rising to their feet in an untidy jumble. They almost made it.

The sight of the doors opening, and a number of people bursting forth into the streets panicked the uniformed men outside the club, and they reacted at almost the same instant that the saxophonist, staring in horror at the squad cars outside, reacted in the only way he felt he could. He gave a roar of rage, throwing aside his saxophone and drawing his gun in a smooth and ferocious movement that might have impressed MacLeod, had he really been watching. He saw Pollux rising to his feet, apparently afraid that the fire alarm was a ruse to enable Danielle to escape, and he reached out, grabbing the lieutenant's arm.

"Get out of here." He tried to keep his voice even, but he couldn't stop the anger from showing. "You have to leave or--" But that was as far as he got. Just as Pollux was turning to look at him; just as Stayte was turning to push him away; the saxophonist opened fire, shooting out the window that separated him from the policemen outside. At the same moment the escaping customers began to erupt out into the street, panicking at the sounds of gunfire; panicking at the sight of the policemen lined up before them. Some of them tried to turn about and get back inside; and the policemen themselves, aware that their unseen quarry might be a part of that crowd, hurried forward to prevent the customers from returning to the club. There was a confused outbreak of scuffles; a few shouts; and a firm jam in the doorway. Somebody outside called for Pollux, but he didn't hear them.

"Get out of the way!" Pushing MacLeod aside as though he had been nothing more than a child, or even a doll, Stayte was already drawing his gun. The saxophonist saw the movement, identified it; pointed his gun towards it; just before a burst of gunfire from outside in the street sent him tumbling to the floor. His gun skidded away, crashing into the wall beneath the broken window. Behind him, still holding his instrument, staring at everything in frozen disbelief, the bass player let out a roar of rage. Hurling his guitar away from him he reached inside his suit and pulled out a gun, turning it on the crowd even as Stayte and Pollux were firing back at him. He ducked away, Danielle and the pianist leaping likewise, crashing to the ground on the other side of the stage. Only the drummer remained where he was, reaching down beneath his drums to produce his own weapon. He stood up, face an ugly shade of grey beneath its natural black.

"You had your warning." The words were directed at Kyle over by the bar, even though it was the policemen who had started things; policemen who had never been given the warning he was reminding them all of. He spat the words out anyway, waving the gun around, firing as though he had no control over the finger that gripped the trigger. Somebody screamed and fell. Somebody else fell without making a sound at all.

"Throw down your guns and surrender!" Grossly amplified, the voice of one of the uniformed men in the street echoed in the confined space. The people trapped in and around the doorway began to shout and scream, fighting against each other in their attempts to get out. The policemen trying to keep them from disappearing tried first to get them to remain still, then secondly to move slowly back out into the street. They did so, moving far too slowly to let those behind them get out of the line of fire.

"What the hell is going on here lieutenant?" Crouching down, wishing he had his gun or at the very least his sword, MacLeod tried to get near to Pollux. The detective did not look at him, being rather more focussed on the wildly firing drummer. Another customer fell, this time only wounded, as far as anybody could see. Somebody began to cry.

"We're here to arrest that woman." Stayte's voice was not nearly as big as his body, which gave him a strangely juvenile demeanour. MacLeod didn't notice.

"You're getting people killed. Pull back!"

"Keep out of this, Mr MacLeod." Manoeuvring into a better position, Pollux sent several shots in the direction of the drummer - only to be met by a volley of fire from the rest of the band. The pianist; well protected by the gleaming wooden instrument that Methos polished so lovingly almost every night, was shooting at random into the crowd of customers, all of them crammed together now over by the door. One or two of them tried to run, hurling themselves at the windows, only to be cut down before they could escape. it was Danielle herself who picked them off, shooting with brilliant accuracy, using a silver handgun that gleamed just as magnificently as her shining bright microphone. Over by the bar, Methos grabbed hold of Amy, dragging her over the shining wooden counter and onto the floor. Only seconds later a volley of shots from outside the building smashed a row of glass bottles into smithereens.

"You there Kyle?" Danielle's voice, raised almost to a shriek, still somehow managed to sound flirtatious and sensual. "I didn't expect this of you."

"Put the gun down!" He stepped out into the middle of the floor, utterly regardless of the flying bullets. "It's over. They obviously know what you've done."

"Who cares?" The edge of sophistication had gone from the usually smooth voice, and instead she sounded harsh and wild. "I told you what would happen if you tried to stop me. So what are you going to do now? Stand there until you get shot? Try to fight me? We all know you're not going to do that. All these years and you never so much as drew your sword. Why change now?"

"Maybe because two hundred years is long enough." He was moving towards her; was reaching for his weapon, when Stayte hurled himself like a whirlwind across the room, grabbing the Immortal and throwing him to the ground. There was a clatter of renewed gunfire. Reece fell, his chair toppling away from him, lying on its side with one wheel spinning.

"Keep down!" Stayte sounded furious, but Kyle was more angry still. He struggled hard, fighting against the much larger man with all of the strength in his immortal frame.

"What the hell is this? Are all you people crazy?" Pinned down by his table, still with Duncan MacLeod for company, Pollux was looking out at the scene before him with undisguised amazement. "Who is that guy?"

"Just a friend." MacLeod ducked as a bullet took a large chunk of wood out of the table just by his head. "Look lieutenant, we have to do something. Anything. You have to fall back before--"

"I am not falling back. That woman has murdered God only knows how many people. I have to stop her." He rose up momentarily, taking down the drummer with one quick shot just as the pinned down pianist fired back. A gangly looking kid with red hair went down in an explosion of blood, and MacLeod felt his head swim. He recognised the kid as the one he had been determined to save; the one that Danielle had so clearly chosen for her next victim. Enraged he turned on Pollux, but even as he did so the window just behind them exploded in a rain of tiny glass shards. A smoke grenade hit the ground nearby, sending clouds of choking greyness floating into the air. Somebody screamed again, and soon every customer in the building seemed to be joining in. In the distance more screeching sirens added to the din.

"We're getting cut to pieces here." Pollux fired again, but this time with less accuracy than before. At last the jam in the doorway was easing up as the policemen outside came to their senses, but even so there were too many civilians inside. The lieutenant couldn't help thinking of Methos' words of warning earlier in the day, when he had been so adamant in his assertions that the police should not try to arrest Danielle.

"MacLeod!" Methos' voice, as if on cue, rose up above the din for just a second. "What the hell's going on? I can't see a thing!"

"Just stay down!" MacLeod considered making his way back to the bar, where he knew that Joe kept a gun. He didn't want to risk getting shot down though; not in front of police witnesses. He liked Seacouver, and had no desire to have to leave it, and start up a whole new life somewhere else. As if to challenge this wish, a series of gunshots scarred the polished floor just beside him, causing him to duck back down behind the table. Pollux had ceased to fire now. Stayte, nearby, was lying motionless, and Kyle was using his stilled form as a shelter of sorts. His knees were sticky with the blood that had leaked from the mortal's body. Another window crashed out of existence, and this time it was the pianist who fell to the floor. MacLeod almost felt sorry - the man had had an extraordinary talent.

"You'll pay for that!" A male voice - clearly the one remaining mortal member of the band - rose above the rattle of the continued shooting, tearing through the smoke that hid him from view. As if to prove his words a burst of gunfire followed his voice. Stayte's body shivered and shook, and Kyle threw himself out of the way. MacLeod saw him disappear into the smoke, heading in the direction of Danielle's last certain position.

"Where the hell's he going?" No longer apparently willing to risk firing back, Pollux was lying flat on the ground, knuckles white against the black grip of his gun. MacLeod tried to see; tried to follow Kyle with his eyes; but it proved impossible. He cursed to himself, using a faint stream of Gaelic words that he kept strictly for moments like this; then he threw himself after the older Immortal, as gunshots hammered his hearing into submission.

Another burst of firing tore up the bar, and several chairs were blown apart into splinters. The civilians pressing at the door had ceased their fighting now; those that were going to escape had, and the rest were lying still. Methos, worming his way out through the side of the bar to check on Reece, wondered faintly how many of those sprawled bodies had ceased to breathe, and how many were just wounded, or lost in shock. He didn't like to guess. Was this really all his fault? The simple truth of the matter was that yes, of course it was. He didn't dwell on that though. What would be the point?

"Pierson!" Pollux focussed on him as a beacon; something that he knew and recognised in the midst of all the madness. Methos crawled over to him, swearing in no delicate terms when a bullet tore a bloody path through the sleeve of his favourite shirt. Pollux didn't seem to notice, which was probably just as well. He hadn't seemed to notice that Reece was starting to move again, either.

"Don't say I didn't warn you, lieutenant." Again he used the British pronunciation, in a fit of childishness which this time was not rewarded with a glimmer of irritation. Pollux was too busy sheltering from the gunfire to bother listening to the subtle dig.

"This is crazy! You said that she'd threatened to hurt people! You didn't say--"

"Yes I did. You just didn't listen to me." Another bullet came close enough to threaten to tear another hole through Methos' shirt, and he threw himself down onto the ground. "Where did MacLeod go?"

"After that other guy. The one who was talking to your orchid woman. Listen Pierson, I want to know what the hell they're planning to do. I won't settle for vigilante--"

"So you said." Methos dragged himself behind the rather insubstantial cover of a pair of fallen chairs, and wished that his arm would hurry up and heal. It hurt. "And ordinarily I'd listen to you, and take your point. But this is different. I can't tell you why, and I won't." He turned his head, letting the lieutenant get the full force of the patent-pending, five thousand years in the making, Leader of the Apocalypse stare. "Forget about that woman, lieutenant. Don't try to find out what happened to her."

"I--" He stopped, staring back at those five thousand year-old eyes, with their ridiculously powerful glow. "There'll be questions. She can't have just disapp--"

"She died in the fire fight." Methos was beginning to feel like Luke Skywalker, bending the wills of the various ne'er-do-wells who crossed his path. "And unless you want the same thing to happen to you, you'll pull out now."

"There's only two of them left. There's no more danger. There can't be." The detective glanced away as he made the claim, looking to where Stayte lay, sprawled and motionless; to where the young uniformed officer who had entered the club first lay staring sightlessly at the ceiling through a mask of drying blood. The red-headed kid that MacLeod had watched fall lay across the uniformed legs, one hand trailing in a pool of the policeman's blood. Smoke from the grenade wafted across them both, and threatened to hide them completely.

"So long as they still have guns, there's a danger." Methos glanced back towards Reece, awake again now, but sensible enough to remain still. He was looking about as well as he could without letting on that he had miraculously returned to life. Of Amy there was not a sign, but it seemed likely that she was okay.

"I want to know what's going on, Mr Pierson." Pollux sounded ashamed; although whether that was because of his inability to take command of the situation, or his unwillingness to try, Methos couldn't tell. "What are your two friends doing?"

"Don't ask, lieutenant." Another bullet smashed apart the chair behind which the greater part of Methos was sheltering. He felt it take a chunk of his skin with it as it flew away across the room, and found himself muttering imprecations that were directed at Danielle, her bass player, and jazz fans in general. "Like I said, just forget it. Make your excuses to whoever you have to explain yourself to, and don't think about this again."

"I want the truth, Pierson. We had a deal."

"Yeah." Methos thought about that very deal, and what exactly it had led to, and knew that Pollux was thinking the same thing. He wouldn't follow through with any of his earlier threats, concerning Immigration or further investigations or whatever. He couldn't. Not after everything that had happened here tonight. Nearby the sound of guns seemed to have become diminished, and although the same amount of bullets were still flying through the windows from the street outside, it seemed that Danielle and her bass player at least were no longer fighting back quite so fiercely. Methos wondered why, without really needing to know. There was only one explanation, and he would know about it soon enough, when the blue fire came.

Danielle heard Kyle coming long before she saw him. She didn't shoot him, even though the temptation was there. Mark fired at him, missing wildly, before turning his attention back to the officers outside, and the one still left alive inside the room, cowering behind an overturned table.

"Give it up Danielle." Kyle spoke quietly, not wanting his voice to carry to whoever else might happen to be nearby. She laughed at him, just as she had laughed when he had confronted her so many times in the past. He drew his sword, and she laughed at the shining, curved steel too, secure in the knowledge that he would never use it. It was clear by his face that he didn't want to; clear in the widened eyes and paled skin; in the sheen of sweat and the too-tight grip on the sword's ostentatious hilt. Mark, the mad-eyed bass player, turned to fire at him, and the bullet tore straight through one gleaming, polished boot. Kyle didn't flinch, his mind too far away to worry about pain and injury.

"Kyle?" Duncan's voice, low and intense, came to him through the smoke. "Are you sure about this?"

"Keep out of it, Duncan." Shade changed the grip on his sword, stepping closer to his wife through the twisting clouds. He could see MacLeod now, approaching from one direction, just opposite Mark and his waving, spitting gun. Danielle was smiling at them, gun held ready, clearly wondering whether or not to shoot them both.

"I'm just ready to offer, that's all." Coming up to stand alongside the other man, Duncan looked towards Danielle. She looked no less beautiful now than before; no less compelling; no less deranged. The white orchids were still in her hair, and they seemed to glow in the smoky light, apparently determined to be seen.

"I know you are." Shade didn't look at him, but merely stepped forwards, pointing his sword at the woman who had tormented him for so long. "But I don't need your offers, MacLeod. I'm challenging her. Are you ready Danielle?"

"Of course I am, darling." She smiled at him, eyes bright and cold; laughing and loving and hating and flashing, all in one incandescent stare. "I was always ready." And raising her gun she shot him down.

He hit the floor hard, distantly hearing the sound of Mark's laughter. Duncan's feet rushed towards him; strong hands tried to help him up. He pushed them aside, making it up to his knees; up to a crouch; and finally up onto his feet. The smoke didn't help his distinct loss of equilibrium, but he didn't let that get to him. Not now.

"I challenged you, Danielle." He was glaring at her, face paler than it had ever been before.

"And I shot you. Consider it a rebuff." She raised her gun again - and a flash of fire burst through the window opposite. Gunfire scuffed the wall; the piano; the wreck of Mark's bass abandoned nearby. Danielle gasped, and with a tiny exhalation of breath, she crumpled against her microphone stand. It wobbled under her unaccustomed weight, and she groaned in anger as a trail of her own blood ran down the shining silver metal, ruining the gleaming polish.

"Danielle!" Mark ran towards her, trying to catch her, aiming too wildly to have any chance of shooting either Kyle or MacLeod. Striding forward, Duncan caught him by the front of the shirt, tugging his gun away and punching him down. He fell, scrabbling after his fallen weapon. They let him look for it unhindered, no longer considering him a threat.

"What now Kyle?" Danielle's voice was faint and weak, and her eyes, as she turned to look at him, were far more pale than he had ever seen them. He took her arms, face set rigid and hard.

"You know what next. What else can I do?"

"Nothing, I suppose." She didn't struggle when he pulled her away from the microphone, and towards the office door. "Are we going outside?"

"Yeah." He pulled harder, anxious to get her away before Mark came after them. MacLeod was helping, aware perhaps more than was Shade himself, of the damage done by two recent bullets.

"Are we going to fight?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't think either of us is capable of that, do you?" It felt as though she was dying in his arms, and he was fairly certain that he was close to dying in hers. He stumbled on though, his own blood and hers both running together down the naked blade of his sword.

It was dark outside dark and surprisingly cold. The wind was powerful, and the only light came from a broken streetlamp above, and the whirlwind of illumination and smoke from the building behind. Duncan was helping to lay Danielle down, standing back then, and looking down at her pathetic form. He looked unwilling to take part in what was coming next, but he certainly couldn't be any more unwilling than was Kyle himself. His hands were shaking, as much from nervousness and self-loathing as from the loss of blood. Images kept dancing through his head; how much he hated what he was doing; how much he hated the rough justice it represented; how he had tried all his Immortal life to be better than the mob that had once ended his mortal existence. And through it all, one simple question filled his mind. What the hell else could he do? He couldn't answer that question; and he couldn't make himself feel any better about it.

"Kyle..." MacLeod wanted to do it differently too - to wait until she was recovered; to challenge her properly; to give her a sporting chance if nothing else. But the police would have broken through by then; they would have found them all; they would have taken Danielle away; and then, soon enough, the whole thing would begin again. He couldn't take that; couldn't live with it. Surely one Immortal death was better than so many mortal ones? He was all too aware that his head was shaking even more than were his hands. That was no excuse. No reason to strike. No such thing as a lesser evil. Never had been. Never would be.

And yet, at the end of the day, there was nothing else that he could do. He raised the sword a little higher, stared down at the hopelessly weakened form below him, and let more than a hundred and fifty years of peaceful, gentle living blast themselves into the cosmos with the fire of the Quickening. And after that was gone, he simply turned and stumbled away.

**********

It was a strange group that met in the quietness of a small stretch of grassland later that day. Kyle, still dressed in his customary black, had forsaken the glitter and sequins for a while, and looked almost like a different person entirely. Reece, his wheelchair still marked with the bloodstains of his earlier injuries in the crossfire might have presented the most peculiar spectacle to an onlooker - but there were no onlookers, for nobody came to this desolate place.

It was a graveyard, or had been once. In the early days of white settlement in the country, the small area had been consecrated, and one or two bodies buried far beneath the coarse green grass. The white settlers had not stayed there for long though, and those that had survived had moved on to other, newer towns, growing up in more hospitable surroundings. Their settlement had become a ghost town, their grave yard had been forgotten. It still existed though, lost on the edge of Seacouver, undeveloped for any number of reasons - and not least for the ghosts that were reputed to wander there. For that reason even if for no other, Shade had chosen it as the last resting place for his wife.

They buried her in a corner of the little green space, away from the crooked crosses that marked the graves of the long ago settlers. A tree, as crooked as the crosses and just as old and desolate in appearance, hung down over the grave, nodding sagely to itself throughout Kyle's short, uncertain speech. He hadn't known what to say, but he had wanted to say something - had needed to say something, to settle his own soul, let alone Danielle's. To have killed somebody after so long had left his head and his heart in a turmoil that of all of them only MacLeod could really understand. The Highlander hadn't said anything to him though. There were some things that couldn't be said, even when they needed to be.

"You okay?" Reece sounded as though he knew only too well what the answer to that question really was, and that it wouldn't be the answer he would get. Kyle glanced down at him, smiling a smile that was almost his usual one, save for the struggle that was so clear in his eyes.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just feels a little weird, you know? Being finally rid of her. No more looking over my shoulder. No more wondering when she's next going to turn up."

"You should take a holiday." MacLeod tried to make the only advice he was sure he could give sound like anything but real advice. Better that it should sound like a casual suggestion; a comment in passing. Something that he was thinking of doing himself.

"Yeah. Maybe. What do you think, Reece?"

"Definitely." The younger Immortal's eyes showed firm agreement. "Anywhere save Seacouver. No offence to you natives, but this place is dismal. Is it always so fraught here?"

"Pretty much." MacLeod smiled, wondering why Methos was being so quiet. "It attracts the seedier side of Immortal society; right old man?"

"Yeah, sure." Methos was staring at the ground, apparently thinking of other things. Kyle dragged his own mind back to the present, and tried to pass a little of his own, slowly returning cheer on to his former host.

"The club will be alright, Methos. Your friend is bound to be well insured."

"Won't bring the people back, will it." Joe's customers. His customers. People he himself had grown to know, even though he hadn't realised he was doing it. People he had served night after night, ever since taking the damned job, under coercion from Joe. He hadn't wanted to get close to those people. He hadn't wanted even to meet them. He had wound up killing them. It didn't settle well in his stomach.

"I wish we knew how those policemen knew Danielle was at the club." Reece shook his head, staring into the middle distance with a contemplative look on his face. "Struck lucky I guess. Maybe somebody saw something."

"Must have done. They didn't have any suspects at all when they let me go." MacLeod's eyes went nowhere near Methos, and the oldest Immortal knew that he didn't suspect a thing. Didn't imagine for a moment who it was that had told the police everything, and had all-but led them to the club; had let them barge in and start that bloodbath, knowing full well what the consequences would be. He himself had known exactly what would happen the moment that he had started answering questions, in that dingy little interrogation room at the police station. But for him there had never been any other choice. Not when it was so imperative to get out of custody, and regain possession of his sword. At the end of the day, those mortals - all those mortals he had known and befriended, in his distant, detached way - had been necessary sacrifices. Stepping stones to freedom. It still made his insides twist, but he knew that he didn't regret it. Not really. He forced a smile, and fell into step behind Reece, helping him with his chair over the uneven grass.

"I suppose Joe will be able to get things moving fairly quickly when he gets back. I just feel bad about him coming back from his holiday to such a mess, that's all. Still, it'll be a while before they can refurbish I suppose. I'll get a break. No more serving drinks for a week or two."

"Yeah. You can practice your lounging for a while instead." MacLeod smirked to himself. "Unless Amy has other ideas of course."

"Amy? What's she got to--" Methos caught the wicked look in his fellow Immortal's eyes and scowled. "She's a Watcher, MacLeod. And anyway, even if she was interested, I can't see Joe allowing it. He'd have her posted to Watch some second-rate Immortal in Outer Mongolia if he thought she was... And anyway, she's not."

"No. You go on thinking that." The problem is, thought MacLeod, as they progressed further across the field. With his social skills, he probably will. "Anyway, I want to get back to the club, get the insurance ball rolling before Joe comes home. Can we drop you two somewhere?"

"Us?" Kyle and Reece exchanged a look, then shook their heads in unison. "No thanks." It was Reece who had answered. "We're going to head straight for the airport. Pick a destination. Somewhere where they don't grow orchids."

"Fair enough." They paused on the outskirts of the isolated little patch of ground, taking a moment to shake hands and murmur their courteous goodbyes. After that it only took a minute for them to separate, and Methos and MacLeod, climing into the Highlander's powerful black car, cast their last look upon the two wanderers. Their last look until the next time, anyway, whenever that next time might turn out to be.

"Well that's that then. Another disturbance well and truly over. I'll just be glad when I can get my sword back from the police." Stretching out in the car, MacLeod let his hand fall to where the hilt of his weapon should have been. It wasn't there of course, for it was still in the possession of the Seacouver Police Department's overly enthusiastic forensic department. "What do you say old man? Feels weird, doesn't it."

"Yeah." Methos' hand fell to his own weapon, concealed as it always was beneath his clothing. He certainly wasn't going to tell MacLeod that he had been given it back in exchange for his co-operation over the bust at the club. Even though his own conscience was a changeable thing, Duncan MacLeod's certainly wasn't. Methos knew better than anyone when a secret should be kept, and when it could be shared - and there were some secrets that could never be shared at all. Not unless it was Kronos that he was speaking to; probably the only man in the whole world with a conscience less invasive than Methos' own. He remained silent as the car engine started up, then leaned back in his seat with his hands behind his head, contemplating, as usual, whether to see if he could get away with putting his feet up on the dashboard. He didn't try it, this time, but MacLeod watched him suspiciously all the same, peering out of the corner of one eye.

"Do you think they'll be okay?" He asked the question out of the blue, but MacLeod knew what he meant, and nodded his dark, pony-tailed head.

"Reece and Kyle? They'll be fine. They mightn't have been, if the police had managed to arrest Danielle. I think Kyle probably feels guilty about the mortals who died at the club, too... but he'll get over that. In time. She'll be just another memory, just like all the things that have happened to us. You know the way it works old man."

"Yeah." Methos knew better than most, but he didn't say anything. He didn't even try to call to mind a few of his own past encounters - things that had once affected him in just the way that Kyle's ex-wife had affected their curious friend. Instead he thought about that quiet, still piece of ground, secret and alone, with its fresh mound neatly disguised with carefully cut turf. They had left a bunch of flowers there, although they had not been white orchids. Instead they had been fuchsias, in shades of red and violet. Kyle's choice, as a marked contrast to Danielle's own floral trademark, and as a statement of his own taste and style. He had written a few lines on a piece of white card, too; a piece from somewhere, which he had apparently read once, or heard, or perhaps looked up specially for the occasion. None of the others had looked at it. That much at least was between Kyle and Danielle alone. The birds looked at it, as they scratched about on the ground, and the wind read it, as it blew through on its way to other places. The ghosts that haunted the place undoubtedly read it as well; Danielle's spirit amongst them perhaps; for ghosts there undoubtedly were in that strange and secluded place. If by chance there was an Immortal soul that wandered in their midst, she might have smiled to see Kyle's nod to her own modus operandi. She might even have approved of his choice of quotes. It was fitting enough - for neatly inscribed in Shade's careful, neat handwriting; the old fashioned calligraphy that he had never ceased to use; were a pair of lines that were the best he had been able to find, in memory of a time when his feelings towards Danielle had been different entirely -

And there I closed her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
The ancient pleasure dome decree
Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea - Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life - Idylls Of The King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The cold earth slept below
Above the cold sky shone
And all around
With a chilling sound
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon - Lines by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The good die first
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket - The Excursion by William Wordsworth

Heav'n, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;
The saint sustained it, but the woman died - Epitaph On Mrs Corbet, by Alexander Pope

For the sword out wears its sheath
And the soul wears out the breast
And the heart must pause to breathe
And love itself have rest - So We'll Go No More A Roving by Lord Byron

And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four - La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats

THE END