***** Chapter Four *****
Memories are poor weapons
When grief lays naked and awake
~~~~~~~~
***** London *****
It was bloody freezing. A cold wind seemed to pass right through his clothing, but Frank refused to back down. He didn’t really know where to start, Jonas seemed to have vanished in thin air. And London was big. He could walk forever without ever finding them.
Faith. He had to have faith. He would find her.
“Excuse me?” An old man came walking up to him, somewhat limping. “Frank Holloway?”
“Do I know you?”
“I’m Joe. I’m looking for Henry Adams.”
“Who?”
“A member of an organization of mine. I believe he’s looking for your friend.”
“For Rachel?” The air was still. The wind seemed to have died, all Frank could hear were his own breath, in short, quick puffs.
“Yes. Savoy hotel, room 422. Tell Amanda I hoped everything worked out.”
“Amanda?” Even as he asked, Joe was starting to walk away, not even turning as he replied.
“Henry will find them.”
And though every instinct in him screamed for him to question the old man further, Frank let him walk away. He had a sickening feeling in his stomach urging him to hurry. Why, he wasn’t quite sure, but he had been a cop long enough not to ignore it. He’d had the same feeling when those drug dealers had kidnapped Rachel and they had driven off with her, and he had be right then.
And somehow.. he trusted this man.
Pausing a bit further down the street, Joe turned and watched Frank head off. As head of the Watchers, he’d seemed the ripples Immortals had caused just appearing in people’s lives for a brief second. This man loved an Immortal. He could use all the help he got.
And he had a task to do, Joe reminded himself. Henry Adams had betrayed the Watchers and gone after an Immortal to find eternal life. Immortals going after Immortals, like Jonas was going after Amanda and Nick, he could not really interfere with, but Henry was a former watcher. He had violated the code.
Continuing towards his car, Joe threw a look up at the sky. The rain had stopped, and the clouds were scattering. The blue sky was beginning to show, and it seemed lighter than in a long time. It promised that spring was approaching.
*****
In the darkness of sleep, there were no dreams, only memories.
She remembers..
Jack. Yelling at him for being a jerk, yelling at him for being sweet and yelling at him for being attractive. She remembers kissing him, letting his arms encircle her. She remembers.. dying in his arms.
She remembers..
Walking around in Sydney, feeling more lost than she ever had before. Wanting to go home and forget it all. She remembers meeting Jonas, who spoke gently and told her the truth. A horrible truth.
She remembers..
Frank. The look on absolute surprise on his face as she walked up to him. She fell into his arms, and told him not to ask.
He never had. She half-wishes he had, that he had forced the truth out of her. Maybe it would have caused the hard lump in her chest to disappear. He had softened her heart, he could have softened the pain too.
She remembers..
The words. “You are Immortal.”
She is Immortal. Rachel Goldstein is dead.
***** Lauren’s room *****
“Dad?” Lauren strained to see him in the dark room, but all she could see where the light from the fish tank. He’d bought it for her to give her a “taste of the ocean”, as he called it, but she could barely stand to look at it. The fish were prisoners in the little glass cage. So was she.
“Dad?” she called again, lifting the bed cover. She felt hot, the heat had been turned all the way up again. She almost missed the hospital, but daddy had told her they needed to move. At last there her room had been cool. He seemed to think she would freeze here, and turned up the heat despite her insistence otherwise.
It felt wonderful to stand again, even though her legs were shaking from the strain. One step, two steps, three and she reached the door. It opened soundlessly.
The hallway was empty, but she could hear voices now, mumbling from beneath her. As she approached the stairway, they became clearer.
“They’re here.”
“Yes,” she heard her father reply, as her feet collapsed under her and she sat down on the first step of the stairway.
“Good. It’s been nice doing business with you, Henry. We should do this more often.”
Silence ensued for a while, and she almost thought they had both walked off, when she heard the other male voice again.
“I should warn you, the Immortal is not very co-operative. I don’t think she knows how she became Immortal.”
“I will find out.”
“In any case, that’s not my problem. Where are Amanda and Nick?”
“The Savoy. Room 422. It’s not holy ground, and everything has been set up as we discussed.”
“Good. You will have the Immortal once you have taken me there.”
“That was not the agreement!” Her father sounded angry, his voice was rising.
“I changed it. You’re lucky I‘m bothering to honour it at all. Mortals die so easily, and you come in such numbers.”
“Let’s get this over with.”
The door slammed behind them.
Lauren felt cold. Summoning her last strength, she walked back to her room and fell on top of the covers. There she cried, not for herself, but for her father and the memory of who he had once been.
Her father was dying with her.
***** The Savoy Hotel, 3 a.m. *****
The elevator door opened with an almost silent hiss, and Frank stepped into the hallway. As he began walking towards room 422, the hiss grew. He turned around, but it wasn’t coming from the elevator. In fact, it grew as he continued down the hall.
It sounded like a snake, yet not quite. It had a mechanical quality to it, somehow. Like air pushing through a pipe, or..
The elevator door hissed open again, and Frank had barely time to duck behind a corner as he saw one of the men stepping out of the elevator. Rachel’s killer. Or attempted killer, for she had to be alive. She had to be.
Footsteps came towards him, and he made a dive for room 422. The door wasn’t shut, something had been stuck in the doorframe to keep it open.
He observed a bed, two lifeless bodies on it and a small container as the source of the hissing before he dived behind the couch. Moments later, the door barged open again. He heard the familiar voice he had heard over and over again in his nightmares.
“You deliver as promised. Sedated, and unarmed. It would be easy to take their heads here and now. But we have so much to talk about.”
Peaking over the side of the couch, Frank saw one of the men pick up the canister, which was still smoking.
“You’re a genius, Henry. Sedating them with gas yourself so my Presence wouldn’t alarm them. I’ll have my friends bring the Immortal to you. Do with her as you like.”
Frank heard the dialling of a phone and a quick conversation in a language he couldn’t understand. He thought he heard Rachel’s name, and his breath quickened.
“You have what you want now. I will wait downstairs.”
“That’s your flaw, Henry. You have no stomach for blood.”
“And you have too much taste for it, Jonas,” Henry spat at him, before walking out.
Frank hesitated. There was only one left in the room, but he didn’t know if “Jonas” was armed. Crawling soundlessly to the end of the couch, he took in the situation.
Jonas was holding a sword while cuffing one of the people in the bed to the bedpost. A blonde female, the other one was..
“Nick,” Frank breathed in surprise, getting a glimpse of the man’s face. Nick Wolfe. What the hell was he doing here? At the same time, Jonas turned, obviously having heard something.
Their eyes locked, Jonas raising the sword, Frank lurching onto him. Jonas was a second faster, the sword slashed through flesh, before Frank managed to knock it free and it flied through the air.
“You again!” It was a snarl more than anything else, as Jonas lost balance and fell. Frank was on him in a matter of seconds, anger fuelling his every move.
“Where’s Rachel??!!”
He got only laughter in reply as they wrestled on the floor, both reaching for the sword.
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with!” Jonas shot back, trying to wriggle his fingers the needed centimetres to grab hold of the sword’s hilt. Frank had no breath to reply, as he felt his fingers close on something. He struck out with it, only realising it was a gun when it made contact with Jonas’s neck.
The man went limp on top of him, and Frank pushed himself up, holding onto the gun. It had been lying by the bed, so it had to have been Nick’s. Looking down at the floor, he saw blood dripping from his side.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, feeling his legs collapse under him as the floor came crashing upwards.
***** Chapter Five *****
And you die so slowly you think you still live
~~~~~~~~
Nick awoke slowly to the worst headache of his life. His head seemed to pound with pain, and he clutched it as the room came into view. Would it be just as painful to wake up beside an Immortal every time? He found himself wondering, before he suddenly realised he was feeling the Presence of two Immortals.
“What the..” he muttered, glancing over at Amanda, who for some reason was cuffed to the bed, and not by his doing. His gaze wandered to the floor, where two men were passed out.
“Amanda!” he hissed, as he got up, quickly getting his pants on. His confusion grew as he saw whom the men were.
“Jonas Sanderson?” Last time he had seen the bastard, was being hauled off to prison, screaming curses and promising revenge. And..
“Frank Holloway?” The Australian cop he’d met on Hawaii, getting quite drunk with. What the hell was he doing here?
“Hmmmpppff..” Amanda muttered, “what the..?” She bolted upwards, or tried to anyway. The handcuffs stopped her midair.
“Nick!”
“Not my doing, however tempting,” he replied, picking up the sword and throwing it at the bed, then taking the gun from Frank. The Australian was bleeding rather badly, and he tried applying some pressure to stop it.
“Jonas?” Amanda asked surprised, getting a glimpse of their guests.
“How the hell do you know Jonas Sanderson?”
“I.. How do you know him?” she shot back, fiddling with her handcuffs.
“I arrested him.”
“I killed his wife.”
They exchanged glances as she managed to open the handcuffs.
“We better get him to a hospital,” Nick muttered, concentrating on Frank again, at the same time as Jonas stirred.
“Nick!” Amanda warned, and he span around, taking hold of the sword on the way. Jonas was already up, and heading for the door.
“Take care of Frank!” Nick snapped, chasing after.
“Frank?” she muttered as she grabbed the phone.
“We need an ambulance!” she told the hotel receptionist, and hung up without bothering to wait for a reply
“Rachel?” the man began to mutter, “Rachel??”
“Shh,” she said quietly, holding the shirt Nick had used as a bandage against the wound. It was bleeding rather badly, but it was in the shoulder and didn’t seem fatal.
With dread she looked at the door where Nick had disappeared, remembering just how good a sword fighter Jonas was. She had barely escaped with her life last time she’d met him, only a decade ago in Paris.
“You’re Amanda?” She felt strong blue eyes on her, and looked down to see that Frank was conscious.
“Joe told me you would be here,” he continued, wincing at the pain when she lost her grip on his arm in surprise.
“Shit! I need your help..”
***** The Savoy, the reception *****
Henry waited. Something inside him was screaming, screaming in Emily’s voice. Sweet Emily, who had given him Lauren and love beyond reason. He couldn’t listen to her now. He’d grieved her for 10 years, and was still grieving, and her voice was so sweet, but it was too late.
His conscience could take any voice it wanted, he wouldn’t listen. Emily would understand. She had told him to take care of their daughter.
The door opened. Stepping into the room was woman, and he knew it was her. Two men, thugs hired by Jonas no doubt, accompanied her. He was about to identify himself, when Amanda came running into the room.
Rachel saw her chance as the two men froze in surprise. The sedatives were wearing off, and if she ever was to escape, this could be her chance. She pushed the fellow to her right, and punched the one to her right. At the corner of her eye she saw someone else enter the room, but didn’t have time to notice who.
Groaning in pain, her opponent tried to grab hold of her wrists. She kicked him hard on the leg. The receptionist behind her gasped, taking cover behind the desk.
She was alive. As Frank staggered into the lobby, he saw Rachel punching the lights out of some thug. Amanda was going at the other one, but all he had eyes for were Rachel.
With a solid blow to the jaw, she knocked out the idiot she was facing, and turned towards him. Their eyes locked.
She froze.
“Frank!” Amanda shouted, handing him the gun. “Watch them!”
She pointed towards the men, both lying groaning on the floor, before charging up the stairs. He hardly noticed. And neither noticed Henry quietly slipping out, or the receptionist fearfully running into his office and calling the police.
“Rachel..”
She was alive.
“You’re alive,” he whispered, taking a step towards her and reaching out to touch her. She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding as he did. He winced as he did, the wound on his shoulder burning with pain. He ignored it, holding onto the gun with his well arm.
“I hoped.. I wished.. I wanted to believe, but.. how..?” his face was a mixture of joy and confusion as his hand traced the outline of her cheek.
“I died, Frank.“ He winced at the worlds, but didn’t protest.
“I know. I saw you die. And.. I talked to Helen, and she said..”
“That I died a year ago,” she finished. “I did die. But I woke up again. Frank.. I’m Immortal. I can’t die from bullets or by natural causes.”
He didn’t seem taken aback by her word, just thoughtful.
“But you can die?”
“Yes. By decapitating by head.” He raised an eyebrow, but realised it did explain the swords
“Why didn’t you tell Helen you were alive, or David for that matter?”
“They thought I was dead!” Tears were forming in her eyes, as she remembered watching her own funeral at a distance, seeing David, Jack, Helen, and Jeff..
“But you can tell me?!?”
“You came chasing after me to London!”
“And if I hadn’t, you would have let me think you dead?”
“Yes!” she shouted at him with all the anger she could muster, “Yes, I would have!”
“Why?”
“The Rachel you knew died. I don’t feel like I am her anymore. I..” All the strength vanished from her limbs, and fell against the wall, feeling Frank’s eyes on her. “I died,” she repeated, flatly.
The door flew open as the paramedics and police came charging in, and the receptionist let out a sigh of relief.
*****
“Shit!” Nick muttered, as he turned the corner, and realised the hallway was empty. He couldn’t have lost the guy, the head start had only been a few seconds.
There was a door at the end of the hallway, and he approached it with caution, nudging it open. It led to the fire escape, and looking upwards he caught a glimpse of a fleeing shadow. Taking the stairs two steps at a time, he son reached the roof and saw Jonas’s still figure greeting him.
“I always carry an extra!” Jonas called out, whipping up his sword and charging at Nick.
Steel met steel in the faint moonlight.
“I knew you were an Immortal when I met you. I hoped I would be the one to get your head!”
“All this because I arrested you?!” Nick shot back, ducking a blow that went only centimetres above him.
“You and that blonde bitch keep screwing up my life!” Dodging Nick’s sword, Jonas took a few steps to the left, trying to get out of Nick’s line of sight. The two eyed each other carefully, looking for an opening.
Jonas suddenly charged, attacking fast, Nick was barely fast enough to block a upward swing, then one from the left, right, right again, left.. Both were breathing heavily when Jonas took a few steps backwards to assess the situation.
Nick followed him, taking a quick swing towards the feet. Trying to avoid the blow, Jonas tripped, momentarily out of balance.
And suddenly, Nick’s sword flew through the air, encountering Jonas’s neck on the way. Even before the sword had come full circle, Nick felt the energy begin to build within him and the sky turned black over him.
The Quickening. He’d seen it happen to Amanda when she beheaded another Immortal, and now it was happening to him. Sparks flew. Lifting his arms up, lightning seemed to strike him and surge through his body. He felt strangely alive and exhausted at the same time. As he fell to his knees, he heard his name being called.
“Nick!”
Amanda stood by the stairs, straining to see who had won. He could imagine her agony – he had felt it often enough when she was the one fighting.
One last lightning hit him, and then Amanda came running, all the time crying out his name.
***** Chapter Six *****
Time sees all and hears all – and reveals all secrets
~~~~~~~~
***** Morning *****
It was a misty morning, the fog hugging the ground like a blanket of greyness. The sun was up, but it was hard to tell. The daylight was bleak. The greyness seemed to catch on to the houses, the cars and the people. It was all a grey haze.
Frank felt himself slowly begin to reach consciousness. His mind felt foggy, it took him a while to reason it had to be medication. He couldn’t feel his arm, which was probably a good thing. There was a smell surrounding him he couldn’t quite distinguish. Sort of sweet, sickly sweet, and clean. Voices began to penetrate the fog, like a radio turned on with the volume slowly increasing.
“This is all your fault!”
“My fault? As I recall, you were the one who went running off to London!”
“And you followed me!”
“Well, excuse me for being concerned! What was I supposed to do Nick, sit around and wait for you to die?”
“I can take care of myself, Amanda!”
Blinking, he tried to adjust his eyes to the bright white light. A hospital. Definitely a hospital.
“Frank?”
Rachel’s face came into view, and for a moment he revelled in it. He tried to smile reassuringly, but his smile turned into a grimace as he could finally feel his arm.
“Ouch!”
“How’s the arm?” Nick came into view, and shortly after, his blonde companion.
“Sore.”
“No wonder, you needed 27 stitches,” Nick informed him, “but you’ll survive.”
“The police..” Frank began, then gulped as he tried to swallow the gigantic piece of cotton in his throat.
“We told them you were mugged. The two we knocked out refuse to talk, so no one has contradicted the story. We conveniently let it slip you were a cop,” Amanda smiled.
“You let it conveniently slip,” Nick corrected her. “Frank, this Amanda Montrose. We’re..”
“Partners,” she shot in, giving him a look that he returned.
“What happened to Jonas?” Frank interrupted their staring match, casting a glance at Rachel. She seemed unusually quiet and still, sitting by the foot of his bed.
“As we were telling Rachel, he won’t be bothering us anymore.”
“Yes, before you started insisting it was all my fault.”
Just as Frank thought the two would start the argument all over again, the nurse entered, sending everyone in the room a displeased look.
“I’ll have to ask you all to wait in the hallway while I look to this patient.”
Rachel sent Frank a comforting smile as she exited, breathing a sigh of relief as she did. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him, she just..
“You’re just afraid he’ll ask the questions you want to ignore,” a little voice inside her whispered treacherously.
“Shut up!” she told it firmly. It was for the best. She was dead. What could she have done, walked up to her son and told him she could survive a stabbing, a gun shot, even a plane crash? That everyone who thought her dead had been wrong?
In the corner of her eye, she noticed Amanda waving Nick off insistently. He seemed rather hesitant to leave, but did eventually trot off down the corridor. Moments later, the blonde Immortal was by her side, smiling.
“Wanna talk about it?”
And even though talking about it was the last thing on Rachel’s mind, she found herself nodding.
Silence hadn’t kept the memories away.
***** Sydney, a year ago *****
“Be strong,” Rachel told herself, but no part of her body or min seem to listen. It was all she could do just to stand up.
Jack. She could see him from across the field, talking to David by her graveside. Two of the men of her lives, standing there together, mourning her. She could see that David was wearing his brave face, more than anything she wanted to see it replaced by a grin.
“They won’t understand, you know,” Jonas had told her, “You are Immortal. You will scare them.” She’d refused to believe him, wanting to run straight to David and hug him forever. But as she stood there, frozen in the shadows, watching them, she realised she couldn’t.
“David,” she muttered, watching him walk away in the other direction. Every fibre of her body wanted to run. Yet she didn’t. She stood still and watched her old life walk away from her.
“David..” When he was out of sight, she finally broke down, tears running freely. She cried and cried until there were no tears, and then she cried even more. But eventually a strange calm came over her, and she sat down on the grass. She sat like that, quietly, in the sun for a long time.
After all, she had plenty of time. It was all she had.
***** Lauren’s room *****
Henry slept. He’d come home late, barely speaking to her at all. She’d wanted to talk to him, tell him she felt the time coming, and that she wanted him there. But as he’d fallen asleep by her bedside, exhausted, writing on his laptop, she’d realised he was beyond her reach.
He didn’t even look peaceful in his sleep, just haunted. Carefully, she managed to edge the laptop from him and into her hands. The password was easy enough. `Emily`.
It was all there. As she read it, a strange calm fell over her. He wanted to take a life to gain one, but it wasn’t his to give.
“The key lays in the Immortal Quickening,” she read, “a phenomena caused by the death of an Immortal. Under controlled circumstances..”
Closing her eyes, she felt her mother emerge again. It seemed to happen more often now, as she stepped closer to death, her mother felt closer too. Sometimes she spoke, sometimes she would sing, and sometimes she was just there. Lauren felt comforted by her presence
Do you remember Ulysses, honey?
“Yes, mom.”
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Her mother fell silent again, but Lauren could still feel her, building strength. Her father had been strong for a long time. It was time for her to be strong now, and not to yield.
***** London Hospital, the present *****
“Some cannot handle the transition from mortal life,” Amanda told Rachel, having listened to her tale. “Old lives can be hard to leave behind.”
A small silence fell, enabling them to hear Nick pace the hallway further down.
“How long have you been Immortal?” Rachel finally asked.
“1,200 years. Give or take.”
“And Nick?”
“About four weeks.” She smiled sadly. “My doing, I’m afraid. I knew he was pre-Immortal before he died. He was poisoned. A slow death like that wouldn’t trigger his Immortality. I couldn’t let him die, so I shot him. He woke up later, less than pleased.”
“So you can tell.. if someone is to become an Immortal?”
“Yes.”
“You just feel it?”
“More or less.”
“What about..” Rachel hesitated, “Frank? Is he..?”
Amanda looked down. “It’s hard to say. You have spent more time with him. Do you feel he’s an pre-Immortal?”
“No,” Rachel whispered, feeling a cold shiver down her spine. “Frank, David, Jack.. They’ll all die before me. But David.. he hasn’t inherited Immortality from me, has he?”
“Inherited? He’s.. he’s your birth son?”
“Yes,” Rachel replied, slightly puzzled at Amanda’s apparent surprise.
“I thought he was your adopted son. You gave birth to him?!”
“Amanda?” Nick came walking up, “we have an appointment to keep, remember? Watchers to bug for answers an all that.”
“Yes, Nick,” she said in the voice he’d come to recognise as mocking. “We’re off to find out who our mysterious watcher is. If he’s name really is Henry.”
“And find out why he wants me,” Rachel said quietly.
“We’ll stop by later,” Nick said after a moment’s tense silence. “Better keep Frank away from the nurses!”
She smiled, despite the joke being cheesy. He winked at her as he and Amanda walked off.
After the two exited, Rachel felt her headache return. The strong Presence of two Immortals in her head seemed to have pushed the headache away. Here it came back, twice as strong.
Immortal healing didn’t include headaches, it would seem.
She sighed. Dying really complicated your life. But what worried her most was David. Jonas had mentioned him, something about “Immortals not having kids”, and then Amanda’s surprised reaction. Jonas seemed to have thought the fact that she had a kid important enough to take her. But why? Didn’t Immortals have kids?
“Shit!” she cursed to herself, then got up and walked towards Frank’s room. She wanted to yell at him, for complicating her life, for making her feel comfortable, for.. for being there. Yell at him for anything, and nothing.
As she approached the room, someone walked in. She got but a brief look of a man’s back, but for some reason it filled her with dread. She stopped dead.
“Frank!” she heard a familiar voice call out. Her knees threatened to buckle, her feet threatened to give in under her, and she clung desperately to the wall for support. It couldn’t be.. Not here.. Not now..
“Jack!” she heard Frank reply, and the world went momentarily black. She couldn’t feel her breath anymore.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Frank continued, and she could hear the surprise in his voice.
“You reported Rachel’s death in New Zealand. But Rachel died a year ago. So what the hell is going on? What are you doing in London?”
She took one step forward and looked into the room. It was Jack. She would recognise that back anywhere. She had no sense of what she was doing as she stumbled away, terrified he would turn and see her, but hoping he would.
“Frank?” Jack asked again.
The silence lasted forever
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