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Survivor Part 3 (2/8)
Kay Kelly (wilusa@EARTHLINK.NET)Wed, 4 Apr 2001 04:34:05 -0400
*** *Of course*, I told myself, Duncan would be able to defeat Jacob. Of course he wouldn't. Until the Sanctuary killings, I would have picked him as the winner in a fair fight. But now? Yes, he'd been strengthened by Connor's Quickening; but Jacob had Jin's to offset it. Even there, Jacob probably had the edge. Jin had been two thousand years old, Connor not five hundred. The real key to the outcome might be the powers of the Sanctuary Immortals. Those Quickenings would take longer to absorb, be harder to "digest"--especially, perhaps, for an unworthy foe who'd won them by murder. But I'd seen proof Jacob had begun to master them. If I'd killed Jacob when I had the chance--when he was weak after treacherously beheading my friends-- Duncan wouldn't be in this situation. Maybe he was looking that night. Would actually have seen the second Quickening and grasped what it meant. Wouldn't have been forced to kill Connor. //Duncan MacLeod is dying for my sins...// *** I was jolted out of my guilt trip by the last thing I expected to hear on a quiet Sunday evening. A volley of gunshots. Directly beneath me. In my building! I held my breath. But nothing else happened. A quick look through my binoculars showed the silhouettes of two Immortals still locked in combat. At their distance, they hadn't heard the shots. Apparently no one else had, either. I was unsure what to do, so I did nothing. Silence descended once again. *** In the silence, I heard the voice of a murdered friend. //"This guy's a threat to the world... Things have gone too far. Someone's gotta take a stand."// I cursed. Damn Carlos! Why did he have to be such a frigging hero? I wished I could see more through the damned cheap binoculars. In the darkness, ghosts were gathering round. All the men I'd failed to help, or avenge, or even bury. //Duncan MacLeod is dying for my sins...// *** At last light came to dispel the ghosts. It came in the form of a soul-shattering Quickening. *** //An Immortal is as weak as a baby for up to a half hour afterward...// *** I clutched my cutlass in one sweat-soaked hand and bolted for the elevator. When the doors opened on Ground, I burst out of it on the run. Lightning still flared and crackled as I raced out of the building and toward the Kathedral, ducking flying debris. *** //You take a terrible pounding, physical and mental. Sometimes you have to fight to hang onto your identity...// *** I was a survivor, damn it! That didn't have to translate into running away. I'd survive Jacob Kell's Quickening as I had everything else. *** //This guy's a threat to the world... Things have gone too far. Someone's gotta take a stand...// *** I told Carlos he'd made his point. He could shut up now. *** The lightning had tapered off by the time I barreled into the Kathedral, but I'd noted where it was centered. No roof there, not even much in the way of walls; the East River churning below. But it didn't lie far outside the area I knew. When I got close enough to sense the living Immortal, it was clear he hadn't moved from the site of the Quickening. I gritted my teeth and kept going. Made myself slow down, to avoid tumbles that would cost even more time. But I knew a quick-recovering Jacob might confront me at any moment, and my sword throbbed with a life of its own. At last I stepped onto a railed platform slick with blood. All my senses tingled. The very air seemed alive, battering me with stray tendrils of an essence beyond my imagining. Contempt, bitterness, anger, regret... despair. Crumpled at my feet lay a man who was bloody and bedraggled, limp as a rag doll, but very much alive. Duncan MacLeod.