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.Duel	By : keithcompany Category: G through L > Highlander Views: 1431 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Highlander, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Fridays were reserved for additional details. Anything they'd done during the week that Lincoln felt she needed more work on. Which was usually combat.
She had glorious moments of stunning speed, but far too often, she kept unconsciously holding her back. It made a certain amount of sense. After seventy years of training, she was familiar with her body and her abilities.
She had a very firm idea of just how fast she should be able to spin around or raise a hand to block, and forced her body to comply with the ideal.
Lincoln didn't have that problem. Actually, he'd probably been pulling his own blows during the first few fights. Now he was trying to break her habits so he hit harder and faster.
She ran up and leapt, rising high enough to slash at the tendon above his kneecap.
He struck her aside with the flat of his blade, dislocating a shoulder. "Dammit, Eve! Get OVER your limitations."
"Yessir," she grunted, shifting her grip on the shortsword. She tried it again, but this time ducked instead of jumped. His damned kwang swished by overhead. She came out of a somersault slashing at his Achilles tendon.
This time she connected and he went down. Unfortunately, she didn't get out from under his shadow before he sat, heavily, upon her.
She just managed to twist the sword so that he impaled himself. Then the world went dark.
She woke in the kitchen beside a bowl of ice water. She was always thirsty after a resurrection.
Lincoln was making single serving lasagna in ramekins.
"What was your mistake?" he asked.
"I never told you I loathe ricotta," she said, gesturing at the bowl.
"No blasphemy," he said, still not looking up from folding the noodles. "Mistake?"
"If I'm going to sacrifice myself to wound you, it had better be a lethal wound," she said.
"Or, make sure an ally is close to finish the job," he said with a nod. She stared. What the hell was his actual agenda, here?
-------------
Saturdays were for chores. After another light workout, which in this house meant a scant 85% of a normal day's, then cleaning.
It took Eve back to East End. Weekend days spent industriously housekeeping. Dusting and mopping, straightening and laundering.
Sharpening the blades, polishing the handles, oiling the sheaths.
Adding paperwork traces to the alternate identities he was cultivating. (No ripped-off infant deaths for Lincoln. He had a legion of fake people apparently living quite lives in the cybersphere.)
And finally, sweeping out the cage with a broom made of goose feathers...
"This is not quite your mother's spring cleaning," she muttered. She tossed her trash bag to the floor and followed on the rope ladder.
"Anything else for the shopping list?" Lincoln asked.
"Platform shoes?" she suggested. He bent to grab her trash, winked, and walked out. She spent a couple of hours surfing the internet while he was gone.
One day she discovered the webcams. He had shortcuts to several on his browser.
She came to realize they were all in the neighborhood. Traffic cams at either end of the block, an ATM a block away, and more than a few he'd privately mounted.
This would tell her when he was returning! She thought... So she could... Um... Hmm. The only thing she could think of was lighting a fuse on an explosive. Then she realized she didn't know what Lincoln drove.
So she sat to study her environment. Master would be so proud of her initiative, she thought sourly.
---------
She was in the kitchen when he brought in the bags. She watched him sort and store. "So I thought ostentation drew attention?" she challenged him.
"It does," he replied slowly.
"Why do you drive a Porsche, then?"
He smiled, proud once more. "In this neighborhood? I'd draw more attention if I didn't."
"True," she admitted. "Of course, you don't have a maid, so that's attention-grabbing."
"But I do. On paper," he said. "I pay a cleaning service."
"Which you own," she guessed. He reached down to ruffle her hair. "I picked up a couple of movies," he said. "Popcorn and the Great Train Robbery?" He was glancing at the back of the movie case.
"I will NOT spend another night with you telling me everything that was wrong with Victorian England." She raised her nose and sniffed. "We are still British."
"Sean Connery stars as-"
"I'llmeltthebutter!" she shouted.
---------
And Sundays, he just let loose.
"Come again?" she asked. She was still in the dangling cage, looking out the door he'd opened.
"I don't want to get stuck in a rut. That's another lesson. Predictability is lethal. So, let's do something random."
"So...on Sundays you break your pattern," she said with a wry tone. He caught the tone but couldn't interpret it.
"Yes," he said.
"EVERY SUNDAY, you break out of your pattern," she insisted.
"Yeah," he said, getting a little angry.
"You mean, after six solid days of scripted living, upon the seventh day, your script reads: To be announced." He stared. "You're reliably unpredictable every seven days."
"Shut up," he said. "I was going to go to the aquarium."
"I like aquariums!" she said, dropping the irony of his patterned unpatterns. "Oh, but we can't..."
"Why not?" he asked.
----------
It was kind of like a fat suit. The padding she'd seen some actors wear to become heavyset characters in movies.
It rounded her features, hid her hair, altered her curves and turned her into an infant.
"WHY?" she moaned at the sight of the pink bonnet.
"Because I can't very well carry my dolly around, showing her the big pretty fishies," he said. "I'd look insane."
"It beats looking like I wear a diaper!" she insisted. He shrugged an stuffed her into the padding. She felt like an extra in the stage production of The Teddy Bear Picnic. Every dimension was padded except her face, and even there, her cheeks were puffed out.
She knew they were puffed out because every time someone looked at her suspiciously, 'Dada' smiled and pinched them.
And she had to giggle, without throwing up.
But it was worth it... Oh, Lord, the fish.
She'd always been amazed at sea life. Her dive next to a whale shark had been amazing. So big, so gentle, so graceful.
Now, everything was the size of a whale. The manta ray swimming past the glass looked like an alien spaceship. She sighed and stared.
Lincoln stepped slowly by, looking mostly into the exhibits, but keeping track of her interests. They probably spent twenty minutes just staring at jellyfish. The tank had a jet of water in the center that lifted them up, then they tumbled down the sizes.
Lights of changing colors illuminated the columns and it was like a seven-story lava lamp.
The only reason she turned away was to yank on his collar and whisper in his ear. "I gotta go to the little little girl's room."
"You're wearing a diaper," he pointed out.
"I am NOT she hissed. "That's part of the costume. This 'suit' is not anatomically correct!"
"Oh." He looked around and found the restroom. There was a handicapped stall with its own sink. He placed her on the edge, braced her with his hands and closed his eyes.
She managed to open the hidden fly and pulled the padding to the sides. Leaning her armpits on his hands was the only way to avoid peeing onto herself.
She reflected that she might not have been able to do this in a man's grip back in the 40's. But she'd traveled far and suffered much. Most of the Immortals she'd met had a common pragmatism. Life sucks, get on with it, next challenge.
And if nothing else, she could avoid being bothered by what they were doing by thinking about how she wasn't bothered by what they were doing.
"I'm done," she reported. He placed her on the floor to restore herself while he cleaned the sink. Then they were back and headed for the Penguins.
------------
They'd been at this for most of seven months when she finally won a round.
She'd made a half-hearted trap on Wednesday that he took apart while lecturing her on tensile strengths of her components.
Then she killed him on Saturday with The Death From Above attack. It took her several Wednesdays to climb up to the chandelier in the stairwell.
Once she secured her route there, it took a month to get the weighted awl in place, rigged and a counterweight lifted so the light would sit right.
Lincoln rose in the morning, dressed in gym shorts and stepped out. He paused at the top of the stairs, examining the piano wire stretched there. "This is juvenile, Eve. You did better than this your first... Ah. So it's a distraction."
He leaned way back and tapped the tripwire with a handy rapier. Nothing happened. He swung harder, ripping the wire free of the staples holding it in place. Nothing happened.
He spun around, eyes wide, wondering if she was sneaking up on him with something lethal. Nothing. No ambush, no assault, no moaning about the trap that didn't work.
"Huh." He rose, eyes moving constantly, but down at Eve-level.
When he passed under her position, she yanked the release.
The awl fell tip-down. She'd lifted a few pounds of lead up, an ounce at a time, gluing them onto the handle. And she stood on top of the extra weights.
It didn't fall any faster, but when it impacted his skull, it penetrated into his brain. She was hoping to paralyze him.
As the point was drilling in, he threw himself to the side. He took her over with him. They fell, twisting in the air. She scrambled to make sure she was going to remain on top of any impacts.
Landing on the stairs still hurt, and somewhere in the massive roll down to the landing, she broke both her legs.
But she didn't lose her grip on her sword. So she smiled through the pain, knowing it would heal.
She lay on the carpet, waiting for the bones to knit, watching Lincoln. She couldn't see much of him. He lay with his ass towards her, his torso hidden from her view.
But he didn't move.
"Yes!" she shouted. When she could stand to move, she rolled over and pulled herself along the carpet, heading towards his face.
As she rounded his feet, she was able to stand, then ran.
The awl had chiseled away part of his skull. He lay on his side, not moving, his throat open to any attack.
Unless he was playing possum... Well, she shrugged, he wouldn't kill her. And if he recovered because she hesitated, she'd never forgive herself.
Eve lifted her blade and ran forwards, swerving around his outstretched arm.
That's when she saw his face. It wasn't animated with his personality. Blank eyes stared in confusion and fear, coming to focus on her. She stopped dead. Without movement, the eyes were not attracted and flinched around some more.
He wasn't just defenseless. The Immortal had been reduced to an unthinking creature of reaction. He didn't know her, didn't know the danger he was in, didn't know that she should be kept away from his neck.
She lowered the sword. "There, there," she said, kneeling to pat his wrist. "You'll be okay. Eventually."
She couldn't kill him like this. She wanted the bastard to KNOW she'd won. And maybe a little pleading for his life. That would be nice.
She imagined the scene as she walked away. "Mercy? You make me jog through bacon grease, and you want- No. No, how about: You play dress-up with me like a doll, and you want me to grant mercy?
"Then the manical laughter..."
Behind her, the mindless creature's head wound slowly closed.
Eve heard him rise and stumble around as she slid dental floss through a cabinet handle. With that and a little leverage, she opened the door, then called to Lincoln. He followed her sound, stumbling a bit, one leg dragging.
"It's okay," she said in soothing tones. "You'll be okay. Come here, eat something." He followed her to the bread in the cabinet and started eating. She went to the sink and wrestled the faucet open. He drank by lowering his head to the stream and sucking.
He was a dripping mess of crumbs by the time she turned it off. "Now you need to sleep," she said. "Sleep? Go to bed? Neurological damage is the worst, I know." She walked slowly to the edge of the counter. Not sudden moves, no loud noises. Nothing to frighten him when he didn't remember the rules.
He followed her at a steady pace as she climbed the stairs. He even tried to go up them the way she did, on hands and knees.
She tried not to laugh. She did get him up three floors and over to the bed. He smiled at the sight of the furs and walked over.
She smiled as he climbed in, not even kicking off his shoes. Then he reached down to pick her up, cuddling her close to his chin and scooting under the furs.
"Hey!" she protested. "I'm not a teddy bear! I'm armed! Back off!"
Then she realized she was sleeping on furs. On a real bed. Next to...:yawn: a major heat source.
"Well, maybe a little," she mumbled. Then they slept.
She woke for one trip to the bathroom and another errand, then returned to the cuddle.
It was the best night's sleep since her sighting of the Loch Ness monster.
---------
Lincoln woke first. He was surprised to smell a woman in his bed. Then he felt the woman. His eyes popped open. What the hell?
Eve moaned and gently scoched closer to his chest, seeking heat against the chilly air he'd let in when he lifted his head. He tucked her back in and gently withdrew.
He had a headache, a rare condition and never a good sign. And he hadn't caged the girl last evening. And... He licked his teeth. And he hadn't brushed them before bed. He felt confused, dirty and scared.
There was nothing amiss in the bedroom that he could see, and the bathroom looked okay.
He grabbed the toothpaste and glanced in the mirror. 'Someone' had drawn a series of lines across his throat with a Magic Marker. He kept a few in the office. And there was writing.
Backwards. So it was clear in the mirror... "CUT ON DOTTED LINE."
"Dammit!" he shouted.
In the bed, Eve woke, smiling.
"What happened?"
"You were hurt," she explained. "Too hurt to really enjoy killing you."
"But you were okay with humiliating me!" he snapped. She just smiled. He lost a bit of his anger then, but rallied. "At what point did I say I wanted your mercy?"
"Mercy?" she asked, shocked. "I just don't think I'm completely ready to fight other immortals, not if the Quickening doesn't make me big again.
"So, I coaxed you into bed and made sure you got a lot of sleep to recover the head wound."
His hand shot to his temple and the tender spot he found there. "Oh. Head wound." He glanced out the door and saw the chandelier. Without the awl, the counterweight was causing it to list noticeably. His mind worked rapidly.
"Yes," she said. "And I calmed you with water, bread and cuddling." His glance shot back to her where she stood on his furs. Her hands came up, palms out. "Purely medicinal in nature," she said.
"I do not. Sleep. With a teddy bear," he growled.
"Nope," she said. "That would be humiliating for a big, strong man like you, sir."
"Stop smiling," he said wearily.
"Yes, sir. You're just lucky there's no makeup in the house." She walked over to jump down to the floor. He turned to go to the bathroom. "What's on today's schedule, sir?"
"First, I'm going to take some steel wool to my neck and get rid of this shit," he said. "Then I'm taking that DAMNED chandelier down to put in track lighting."
She smiled and skipped out the door. "And Eve's finally on the board," she narrated. "With one true kill under her belt..."
------------
Eve actually dreaded the next sparring contest. She feared that Lincoln would have something to prove.
Instead, they took a field trip.
"Get in the case," he said. He put an animal transport cage down on the floor.
"Yes, sir," she said. She hoped she was cooperating to avoid setting him off, not setting herself up. So without a question, she walked into the door of the case.
"And take your weapons," he added.
She turned around smartly and went to her weapon rack under the coffee table. "Which one, sir?"
"All of them," he said. She wheeled the rack over. He lifted it over the lip and shut the door behind her.
A dark mesh was spread around the inside, covering the door and the windows. She could see out, but no one could see her.
It was a bright, sunny day outside, perfect for... Well, anything that didn't involve a leash, she thought. He passed a few people on the street. She determined that giant children were extra cute and giant homeless were extra nasty.
Then he was into the small parking garage for the condos. She saw little except the inside of the Porsche for a long while. He disdained radio for a private playlist of eclectic selections. She recognized about a third of the songs. Some, she couldn't even identify the language.
"Inuit," was his clipped response to one question. She stopped asking.
They were in a residential neighborhood when he lifted her clear. He walked up a broken front walk to a dilapidated house and unlocked the door.
Inside, it looked like the setting for a Stephen King novel. Bare wood floors and cracked plaster walls were gloomily illuminated by weak sunlight through dirty windows.
She stepped out of the case and looked around. The furniture was old, moldy and covered with stains she'd rather not become familiar with.
It was arranged in a pattern she'd call 'signs of a struggle were present.'
Dust motes hung in the stale, dead air.
"I'll give you twenty minutes to get ready," he said, jingling his car keys. He pulled her rack out and placed it on the floor.
"Ready for what, sir?" she asked in respectful tones.
"A fight," he said, slightly surprised that she'd asked. "The house is condemned. The furniture's abandoned. The neighbors are out. We can do whatever we want and there's little chance of an investigation."
"But there's a Porsche on the curb," she pointed out.
"Well, there's a time limit," he admitted. Then he walked out.
She looked at the rack, wondering what to use. Whatever it was, she wasn't dumb enough to leave the rest in view. She wheeled the rack over to the sofa and out of sight.
And she settled on the long bow. She grabbed it and two quivers and took off running.
She was behind the only remaining curtain when he opened the door again. He had as short spear this time, a boar-hunting weapon.
He turned slowly as he entered, the weapon constantly pointed in the direction he was looking. She'd done the same thing in some combat courses. It saved that crucial half-second of bringing the weapon up to bear.
She remained very still on the windowsill, knowing the fabric was too thick to allow her shadow through.
And tracked him by footsteps on the creaking floor. When he got to the doorway into the hall, she knew he'd be facing away from the window. She stepped gently to the side, drawing and aiming in a smooth motion.
He heard the bow twang and turned in time to knock the arrow out of the air. "I told you that was a stupid weapon to make," he said. She jumped to the floor and let another one loose.
That was batted to the side. "It's simple physics," he said. "At you size, you simply can't make a bow powerful enough. The arrows fly too slowly and won't penetrate far. And that's aside from the fact that firing it gives me enough warning to dodge or block."
He ducked behind the couch. She heard him readying himself to jump out and stab at her. She drew a very specific arrow and pulled it all the way back to her ear.
"That depends," she called out.
"On what?" he asked.
"On what I made the bow out of!" She let adrenaline push her into speedster mode. His head rose into view and she let fly.
The foamed steel bow she'd made snapped so hard she thought she heard a sonic boom. Well, be fair, a sonic pop.
The Teflon coated missile was half a blink in traveling to the target. It pierced his eye and shot up the optic nerve to his brain. He screamed. His jump attack became a clumsy somersault, crumpling to the floor.
Eve shot him again, then moved. He chased her through the house, one hand over his ruined eye. His attacks were short jabs, always off-center and easily evaded.
She pelted him with arrows until both quivers were empty. He finally caught up to her and stabbed her through the gut.
Pinned to the wall by a giant blade, she was nearly cut in half. But her smile shone through the pain.
"If I owned a poison dart frog," she gasped, blood spraying out of her lips, "you'd be dead, now."
He yanked the weapon free, then lowered his hand. She watched him work his tongue and jaw around, then spat her arrow into his hand.
"I won't have those in the house," he said in conversational tones. "You'd have too much trouble controlling the bugs they feed on."
Lincoln pocketed the arrows that were extending from his skin. His healing power was clearing the body. Then he picked up his pet and examined her bow. "But we can grow plants to make curare out of, if you want," he mumbled. "Hey! Is this MY foamed steel?"
"Oh," she coughed. "Meant to tell you. That dagger in the foyer? I tripped over it and accidentally made a bow."
He shook his head and carried her to the case. She lay in his hand as he used a wet wipe to clean her up.
-----------
There were other changes following the 'cut on dotted line' incident. Lincoln unhooked her cage from the ceiling and moved it to the floor of his bedroom, under a bench by the window. And he removed the outside latch. She could come and go as she pleased. If he wasn't calling her or setting her a task, anyway.
With her arsenal mostly completed, Tuesdays shifted from making weapons to making poisons. Lincoln secured some [i]strychnos toxifera[/i] and built a little greenhouse.
There was a stairwell from the plants' levels to a lab where she cooked up curare. Her plan was still paralysis.
Eve spent every spare moment trying to increase the toxicity, as her delivery options were so small.
She spent a few of those spare moments crumpled in a heap. Lincoln would hear something clatter in the lab. Knowing Eve was a fastidious worker, there was only one explanation.
"Did you give yourself a toxic dose once more?" If there was no denial, he had his answer. "Gods, Eve, maybe we should just dip you in liquid insulation before each trip to the lab."
The first few times, he fished her out to lay her comfortably on a counter until she recovered. The next few times, he dropped her into the swimming pool until she could climb out. After that he figured she was a lost cause.
"Or allergic to the learning process," he muttered as the lab went silent yet again.
But despite such interruptions, she was making progress on her curare.
The drug affects voluntary muscles. The victim is paralyzed, including breathing. They collapse and die from asphyxiation. The lungs just sit there, not delivering air.
She got really excited when she read that it had been used as an experimental pain killer for surgery. The patients had reported that they'd felt all the pain of the scalpels, but they'd been unable to do bugger all about it.
The image of Lincoln totally aware as she sawed down to expose his trachea to the light of day made her do a happy dance every time she entered the lab.
Sometimes the happy dance got a little too happy.
THUNK-CLUNK!
"Eve? Eve!......AGAIN?"
--------
Her attack was on a Saturday. She spread arrows through the house, all carefully drugged. She didn't think she'd need more than three or so, but she had contingency plans for failure, and contingency plans for those plans to fail.
He came home, his hands full of bags of fruit. She didn't even wait for the door to shut. Three shots pierced his shirt and the belly beneath.
She wasn't sure how much toxin would be necessary to kill an Immortal, especially one as powerful as Lincoln. She hoped a localized delivery would suffocate him enough, for long enough, to work her way upon his throat.
He went down satisfyingly quickly. The legs gave out and he fell to his back. "The head," she intoned as she ran forward, "made a satisfying coconut like sound upon the hard wood floor."
She stood over his ribs and fired an entire quiver into him, right where the critical breathing muscle was.
There was gasping behind her. When she turned and drew her sword, he lay still, eyes upstaring. An orange escaped the bag and rolled by his head.
Eve saluted him with her weapon, then raised it for the first slash. She paused, so excited. She had to hope she wouldn’t orgasm while waist deep in gore. It might affect future relationships.
"Aw, fuck it," she said and started to bring the weapon down. The door slammed behind her. She spun around in time to see his foot fall back to the floor after kicking the entry shut. But that meant...
She turned back to his face. A flash from the side drew her attention, she raised her sword in a hopeless reflex to parry.
He stabbed her with the stiletto, pushing her off him, through the air, and pinned against the wall. She kicked, another futile reflex, as he sank back down to the floor. The edge severed a major vessel and she felt her belly filling with blood. And she died.
She was still pinned in place when she woke. Her feet were a good six inches off the ground. Every move tore her against the blade's edges. The metal ironically ran through her diaphragm, making it hard to talk, whimper or gasp.
Eve's first thought was that she wasn't sure which would piss Lincoln off more. The hole in the wall or the blood she'd leaked onto the wallpaper.
He was a few feet away, leaning on the back of the sofa. "How?" she managed to croak. She'd had him. She'd fucking HAD him, she knew it.
Lincoln shook his head sadly, disappointed in his pet. "Eve," he said, "we don't drown. We run around at the bottom of lakes. I've fought on the ocean bottom. And in a coal mine, long after we'd used up all the air.
"We don't suffocate, you silly little beast!"
Fuck, she thought. I knew that.
"AND, if you'd been successful, you'd have been bounced round by the quickening where anyone on the street could have seen you!" Ah. THAT was what made him mad. She dangled miserably as he lectured her, yet again, about the rules of keeping the fighting secret, the beheadings from public view.
"And," he snarled, "the ice cream has probably melted by now!" He stomped out, headed towards the garage.
Leaving her pinned like a butterfly.
"Sir?" she wheezed. "Help?"
------------
When she'd been his pet for one year, neither one remarked upon it out loud. But she was certainly aware of the date, and suspected he'd noticed.
He didn't make a cake, but for breakfast and lunch he made meals she'd been most enthusiastic about.
He stood her on his desk and measured her once more.   They'd done it weekly, then monthly.
There was no change. Not in height, width, girth, not for her body, her knuckles, her nose or her ear lobes.
"Okay," she said as he checked one last measurement against the ledger. "Okay. So it's not something I'll recover over time."
"It still might be too small to measure with the tools at hand," he said. "There are some differences..."
"Muscle mass and other signs that you work me like a recalcitrant mule in your torture chamber downstairs," she said dismissively. "Not bone length. Not cartilage." She suddenly felt weak and flopped down.
"No, come on, there're still some options," he said. "We're immortal! Give it another hundred years! By then we'll have laser calipers and-"
"I'd like to go to bed, now," she said. He flinched, though her tone was flat. "Please."
"Um, okay," he said. He glanced over at the door to the kitchen. She realized he probably had something special planned for dinner.
She realized she didn't really care.
"Okay," he said simply. She was swept up in his arms and lifted up the stairs.
At his bedroom, he gently undressed her. She sat still in his arms as he slid her nightshirt on.
But then he tucked her in to the furs on his bed. She passively let him. After a moment, he slid in beside her. They cuddled again. This time he seemed somehow supportive, more than frightened.
Eve lay wrapped in his fur, warmed by his body and, she had to admit, his presence.
He rubbed her back with the tips of two fingers, demonstrating an amazing knowledge of anatomy. She melted, her mind blank. Worries about being an Attack Barbie didn't go away, but she didn't dwell on them.
It was her best night's sleep since the Death From Above incident.
But when she woke, she found her self muttering, 'You did this to me.'
"Mmhmmrmm?" he sleepily responded.
"YOU DID THIS TO ME!" she screamed. She rose to her knees and started slapping Lincoln across the face.
His defensive reflexes made him reach for a weapon, any weapon.
He clubbed her over the head with a down pillow. Then he woke up fully. "Eve? Where are you?"
The pillow writhed before his face. He picked it up. Feathers exploded into his face. He didn't see Eve approaching through the downstorm.
She punched his nose with a doubled fist, then shoved her hands up each nostril to grab nose hairs and pull.
"YEOUCH!" he protested, rolling away from her. She knelt on his chest and stayed on his face. Her elbows found sensitive nerve points on his cheeks and beat them.
His reflexes were all aimed at larger aggressors and he kept swinging his arms through the space behind her. She bounced her forehead off of his nose, then kicked his Adams Apple.
He rolled again, going over the edge of the bed. She threw herself in the other direction, landing on the sleep-warm furs. Metal rasped as he drew a weapon from yet another hiding place.   She turned to run away, jumping down to the floor.
"Hey!" he shouted. He ran around the foot of the bed, aiming for the door. "Come back here! What's going on?"
Lincoln assumed she'd run out, though she actually crouched by a dresser. Eve timed it carefully...
She threw herself between his ankles as he stepped through the doorway. He went down, swearing in Greek. The sword flew out of his hands and stuck into the wall.
She stood just in time to be kicked by his heel. She slammed against a dresser, momentarily stunned. That was all he needed.
He slugged her, driving a knuckle into her gut. She fell across the back of his hand and puked on his wrist. And bit as much skin as she could reach, as forcibly as she could manage.
A wordless roar sounded, then she was lifted and swung. His grip wasn't great. Whatever he was going to do to her, she slipped away and sailed across the room.
She hit the hearth and slid into the ashes of a fire he'd burned four days ago.
"Shit!" he spat, running in her direction. She stood up behind the fire iron, covered in soot. She glared out at him, almost invisible in the back of the fire place. He started gingerly feeling through the ashes for her.
She saw him, noted that he'd slept in the nude. And he was...
"Oh, my God!" she coughed. "This crap EXCITES YOU?"
He froze for a second, then stepped back. "With, uh... With you, it does."
She started sneezing, coughing. "That's not... Ahuaggah! Not terribly romantic."
Gentle hands lifted her and took her to his bath. She was wordlessly stripped and soaped, rinsed and dried. Pampered like never before.
"We share something primal," he finally said. "How can that not be romantic?"
"I like flowers," she said. "Soft music. Not the sound of breaking bones or blood spattering on the wall! Especially if it's mine!"
"Ah. So... you're more of a girlie girl?"
She started to laugh. And found it hard to stop. Soon he was sprawled on the floor beside her, laughing his head off.
She gained enough control to pat his cheek. "You know what we could really use right now?"
"What?"
"A guillotine." She jumped up to kick his throat, then stormed out of the bathroom, looking for clothing.
She might have welcomed such attention if it could have led anywhere. Romancing a giant, though?
Who ever heard of that?
He was in the hallway by the time she was dressed and stomping out of the bedroom. The sword he'd lost had impaled the wall, next to the mounted rack for the lighting.
He glanced at her as he reached up to grab the handle.
Just as he did, there was a cracking snap and an electric spark in the gloom of the hall. The light nearest the sword flickered.
And Lincoln was thrown across the stairwell, smashing into the stairs.
Smoke rose from his hand and his foot as he lay, recovering from the electrocution.
Two steps up from his head, Eve was once more rolling on the floor with laughter.
"Bitch," he croaked. She laughed harder.
Then a bell sounded, one she couldn't recognize.
"What the hell is that?" Eve asked, a smile still on her lips though the laughter was stopped.
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls," he intoned in a deep voice. "It tolls for-" He started shivering then in reaction to the electricity. Little blue sparks radiated from his extremities as his body used the Quickening to shed the extra voltage.
"Well, you're pretty useless for right now," Eve said. She jumped out to land on his head, scurrying down over his chest and still-twitching leg.
Down in his office, the computer screen was flashing some sort of alarm. She acknowledged it and discovered he had a watchdog program set up.
Destiny had been reported missing by her boyfriend.
"Oh, no," she said softly. She dove into the 'net, scurrying over the keyboard. She took full advantage of Lincoln's hoarded internet resources and passwords.
She was deep into Destiny's last four months of life, trying to find evidence of the boyfriend when her owner came into the room. She spared him a glance. He'd healed, of course, and changed. And combed the shock out of his hair.
He tossed the fire-blackened sword in the trash and sat down behind her. She figured he knew what the bell was and updated him on her results.
"Des was always a love-'em-and-leave-'em girl," she said. "No boyfriend commitments. She actually preferred married men, fewer complications.
"So the chance that an adulterer would report her missing seems small."
"If he really cares about her, he might make an anonymous call," he suggested.
"These days? The cops'll trace the call, find the security video near the phone, show up at his office and ask what he knows about Miss Destiny Waller." She shook her head. "My money is on another trap."
"Mine, too," he said. "So what next?"
His tone was challenging. She glanced at him for a moment. "We... go look for her?"
"Of COURSE we will," he snapped. "I mean HOW?"
"Oh. Um... Search her apartment?" she said, ending lamely with, "for.... Clues?"
He laughed and gently lifted her away from the keyboard. She didn't quite follow what he did, he wasn't pausing to teach a lesson. Somehow that made her feel better. It seemed to indicate that he hadn't hired someone to do this, as an exercise for her.
Soon the screen was covered with security camera images. He flicked from one to the other, silent, his mind on his target. She waited at his elbow.
She recognized several views of streets near the apartment building and quite a few inside of it.
Then he expanded one. "This van has been parked within one block of Destiny's apartment building for a week. Guys enter it, and a few moments later different guys come out. Hours later, there's another relief."
"A surveillance team?" she guessed. "But that could be anyone. Cops doing a drug bust somewhere downtown. Feds after a stockbroker who's insider trading. Or heroic gentlemen thieves running a scam like on TV."
"True," he said. "But this face..." He tapped a frozen image of one of the reliefs. "Has been in the elevator, and stopped on Destiny's floor six times."
"I'll kill him," she said softly.
"Only if you can be packed and ready to go in ten minutes," he said. She ran off the end of the desk, jumping to scurry across the floor.
-------
He didn't use the airport closest to their home. And he didn't travel to the airport closest to their destination. She assumed it was his standard paranoia. And it left a lot of time for talking.
"So are these guys Immortals?" she asked.
"You seldom see more than two or three of our kind working together," he said. "And there are about eight in this group. I'd say they're all humans."
"Working for an Immortal?" she pressed. "I mean, if this is a trap for me, it only makes sense. Someone's trying to find me and take my head."
"There are human groups that know about us. Some just observe us for historical purposes," he said. "They're called Watchers." He glanced down to where she sat, perched on top of the cage. "Some, hunters, actively attempt to destroy us."
"Why?"
"Fear, jealousy, greed, power, religious interpretations of the conditions for the apocalypse, and sometimes manipulated by one of us."
He turned into the airport's parking garage. "I rather suspect Methos invented the Watchers, for example."
"Methos is apocryphal," she said. He raised an eyebrow. "He's not? A five thousand year old Immortal?"
"Yep.   The Kid," he said. She wasn't sure if he was joking. "Now, into the canister."
-------
She spent the trip inside a small tank of compressed air. Lincoln had medical identification that proved he needed supplemental oxygen. The tank passed all the right tests as it was a functional oxygen tank.
It just had a passenger inside. One suffering through pressure that would kill anything but a cockroach. And dreading the depressurization at their destination.
Lucky for her, the long car drive at the end allowed him to slowly vent it off. She just had to listen to the air whistle by for forty five minutes.
"I'd almost rather explode," she muttered, fingers plugged in her ears.
---------
The van was still there. Neither one felt the familiar presence of another Immortal's aura.
The watching teams had a pretty predictable schedule. Lincoln parked half a block from the van and watched for the relief team.
"Volkswagen," he said softly. "Four cars up." The two men got out and looked around, then hiked towards the van.
Lincoln was out in an instant, walking calmly up the sidewalk. It took him a moment to unlock the car door and thrust Eve inside.
She locked the door from within and hid under the driver's seat. As she climbed down, though, she noticed something on the floor of the back seat.
She wished there was some way to tell her partner that the men knew enough about their opposition to have swords at hand.
----------
The relieved crew used the car to clear the surveillance area. They didn't talk much. On TV they'd have shared useful intel.
But they'd been sitting together for eight hours and were probably tired of talking, especially to each other. She waited patiently, hands stroking the shaft of her bow.
They got drive through. She noticed the driver didn’t ask what his partner wanted. She also noticed they got a third meal, a vegetarian selection.
Destiny had been a vegetarian. She hoped it meant the girl was still alive.
If she wasn't, well, there were plenty of arrows in the quiver.
The drive was short, and included a lot of twisting turns. She assumed they were looking for a tail. Lincoln had predicted that, and a sweep for transmitters so he hadn't packed any.
She felt the very edge of his aura throughout the drive. She couldn't quite tell direction from the sensation, but Lincoln assured her he could.
Somewhere in the drive he got ahead of the hunters. She felt the aura get very strong, very rapidly. The driver of her car swerved and both men swore.
"What the fuck was his problem?" one asked.
"Who knows!? It was a rental. Fucking tourists." They were silent after that, but she knew they hadn't identified Lincoln.
When the car finally stopped, she heard a garage door closing. Lincoln had also predicted that. "Conspirators always use an attached garage," he'd said confidently. "Makes it easier to move captives or bodies or strange equipment."
"Or they use abandoned warehouses," she said.
"Yeah, in Spider-Man comics," he snorted.
"Well, this one time in Charleston, we were smuggling-"
"Amateur hour," he said dismissively.
"I won't shoot the driver," she'd replied in a dark tone. "But once you park, fucker..."
"Now you're going to make me drive over the pot holes," he'd replied. She'd smiled and pantomimed putting on in his eye socket. He'd smiled back and pretended to swerve violently. Then they'd lapsed into quiet for the rest of the drive.
She listened to the men get out, now. One called into the house as they entered it. "We got her the salad she whined about."
Bingo. She slid slowly out from hiding...
They had left the keys in the car. She climbed onto the seat to turn on the electrical system. She opened one of the back windows, on the side away from the door to the house, then turned the power off.
The garage was close to empty. So it was a disposable house, not a residence. She hoped that was a good sign.
There was no tickle of Lincoln's presence as she ran across the floor. She listened at the door. Voices spoke. Mundane stuff about the surveillance. No details, just jokes and insults about farts in the van.
Then other voices described the boredom of listening to Destiny insist she didn't know where Eve was. It was another turn over of responsibilities. Work the van, then babysit the captive, then a shift off?
Either way, she knew the door was about to open again.
But then, she'd be trying to enter the house while two giants went out the door. And two more might be watching casually. She needed a different plan.
And the light in the garage door machinery was still on.
Her arrow wasn't heavy enough to break the glass, she didn't think. But she managed to wedge the metal shaft into the socket at the base of bulb. Her second shot, but she wouldn't tell Lincoln how far the first had missed.
The bulb exploded. She smiled happily as she slipped behind the water heater and waited.
The conversation had stopped entirely at the pop. The door opened and three men looked out. Two had guns drawn and a third held a shortsword.
"What happened?" one asked.
"The bulb exploded."
"I can see that. What did it?"
"I'm sure," one said in a snarky tone, "that the Immortal Eve's first attack on the holders of her friend is to sneak in, take out the light bulb, and replace it with one that's about to blow." He holstered his gun.
"You guys get out, get dinner, get some sleep. We're going to be at this a while." He turned to go back inside. The other two looked at each other and stepped towards the car.
All three men had their backs to the swinging door as Eve ghosted through it.
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