No one in Africa calls me Richie. I haven't used that name in at least eight years. Chow calls me Richie but he knows more than what's good for him - he's a Watcher. Not mine. He keeps me informed about other Immortals. He manages a rock'n'roll bar in Old Singapore smack in the middle of the Eastern Region and is also the Regional Manager. The first Watcher I ever met was also a Regional Manager, and he ran a blues bar in Seacouver, but the parallels between Chow and Joe Dawson end there. Chow is seven feet tall, two hundred seventy pounds of pure muscle, bald as a newborn baby, and speaks six languages. How he ever watched any Immortal without being noticed beats the hell out of me.

Chow sent me an encoded I-mail this morning. "Richie," he says from a hologram rotating on my desk, "Amanda Darieux bought it three weeks ago in Yemen."

He never has had any tact. I sit back in my chair, suddenly cold despite the intense heat of the day coming like waves through the open windows and skylights. My Tanzanian lodge is not air-conditioned. The tourists find that quaint and old-fashioned until the first night, when they're lying on sweat-stained sheets and can't sleep because of the heat. Then the shit hits our antique electric fans. Let's just say my best clients are those who appreciate not having every whim catered to, who like the rugged life, who come to Africa to do something other than buy souvenir rugs, masks and postcards.

On the window ledge, Ronnie bats playfully at an insect caught against the screen. She's a fat, content little ball of white fur who doesn't have to kill for her meals. She's a house cat, one we don't dare let roam outside for fear she'd be gobbled up by the natural wildlife. She licks at the insect, lets it limp away, then rips off a wing with her teeth. Life and death on the Dark Continent.

The lodge has thirty bamboo bungalows for guests and one old Victorian plantation house for meals, offices, staff quarters, and gatherings. We don't have any animals skins, rugs or body parts. We do have Masai beaded jewelry, stoned-carved animals, and the largest collection of modern African paintings this side of Lake Victoria. I still have a hard time telling movements and art crap apart but I know that the oils seem to vibrate in your vision, the colors more real and more tactile than anywhere else on the planet. Rosenne finds the paintings, I buy them. The money's all mine anyway. We've been married two years, which just might be one year too many. Rosenne never knew Amanda. I don't think they would have liked each other.

Amanda.

I met her when I was mortal and she was the most glamorous woman I'd ever laid eyes on. She had a way of walking into a room and instantly capturing the attention of every man's groin. I had a crush on her for three years, during which she could reduce me to a flustered wreck just by running her hands across my chest. By the time we finally hooked up together, for a few blissful weeks in San Francisco, I was as Immortal as she was, better with a sword, and an equal admirer of her brains and guts as well as her other skills. The last time we saw each other was about eight years ago in Johannesburg.

That was also the last time I saw Mac.

Mac.

The hologram spins lazily in circles. I don't think I want to hear the rest of what Chow is going to tell me. I'm right.

"Best bet is that Duncan MacLeod took her head," Chow continues, once I release pause control.

Once upon a time I would have said no way Mac would ever take Amanda's head. Of course, once upon a time I would have never believed he would try to take mine. We've only talked about that incident once in the seventy-nine years since he sent me to my knees on a dojo floor. I know, I *know,* that Mac was under the influence of a Dark Quickening that he later overthrew. It's a wound that festered and was then cleaned a long time ago.

But there've been rumors in the last year or so that Mac's not himself anymore. That he's been headhunting. The Watchers are having a hard time keeping track of him, but his trail and a list of missing Immortals coincide through Montreal, Victoria B.C., New Seoul City, Katmandu, the Delhi Republic, and now Yemen. All the Immortals killed were friends of Mac's.

Connor came to see me three months ago. We sat out on the porch beneath a thousand stars, drinking beer and reliving old times. We could hear the far night sounds of wildebeests, elephants and other animals across the Serengeti Plain. Connor studiously kept from mentioning Duncan's name until the very end, when we both tap-danced around the fear that somehow that Dark Quickening had caught up with Mac again. Maybe it had never gone away, but merely submerged deep into his soul to come out years and years later, like a cancer.

When Connor left me - no weepy farewells for him, he just said my name and gave me a little smile - he was on his way to track Duncan down and put the question to the test.

I haven't heard from Connor since.

Chow says he lost his Watcher in New Seoul City.

He's presumed dead.

Connor, now Amanda. Dead bodies piling up on Duncan's path. I look at the double-edged sword hanging on my wall. Connor and I sparred when he was here. I'm pretty good, but Connor is still better. He left me flat on my ass in the middle of the practice hall, blood streaming from a dozen wounds, a grin and twinkle in his eyes as he handed me a towel.

Maybe I should have gone with Connor. Maybe I should have left the lodge the minute I heard he was missing. But I don't think I have to.

A simple look on the map tells me that Duncan is heading this way.

***

The relentless sun beats everything into submission - the staff, the tourists, the flies, the very earth itself. Blistering light made worse by the depletion of the ozone layers sinks into my arms and face as I make a tour of the grounds just after lunch. Not even the slightest breeze disturbs the long summer grass, dry bushes, or willowy trees. I have the distinct feeling of eyes watching me, but sense no Immortal buzz. Instead I find a lioness draped over a white-hot rock near the dry creek that fills only with the spring runoffs.

She looks mild and peaceful, like many deadly things do. She blinks at me lazily without the slightest flex of muscle beneath her thick golden coat. That she could be a distant relative of our house cat Ronnie is a trick only nature could dream up. I sit a hundred feet away beneath the meager shade of a cypress tree, ease the hat back from my sweaty forehead and drink deeply from a bladder canteen. Maybe it has been a mistake to come out into the light and heat, but a part of me can only center itself outdoors, out here in the heart of the world.

In Johannesburg, Amanda had told me she found it interesting that a city rat like me would fall in love with Africa. Mac had smiled over the rim of his beer, which had been served icy cold by the smooth, silent waiters of the Alexandra Hotel bar. I remember the bar as dark, gleaming, full of polished brass and the smell of old money.

"Yeah, Rich," Duncan agreed. "Not a lot of concrete on the Serengeti, is there?"

I knew they were teasing me, trying to pull me from my black and bitter mood. I'd lost a student just two weeks earlier. Paolo had been my third protege, a bright-eyed sixteen-year old initially killed in a transport accident. I felt a specially affinity for him, remembering how I was thrust into my Immortality at nineteen, and took his death to a roaming headhunter very personally. Paolo might never have lasted long anyway - his arms were like spaghetti, no matter how many weights he lifted - but damn it, he'd barely begun to live. Smart, funny, a natural comedian, a horrible swordsman. He'd wanted to be an architect. Not bad for a street rat. The headhunter who took him down lived for exactly four minutes after I found her, but the trajectory of her disembodied head down a bloody alley didn't bring Paolo back.

After Amanda left that afternoon Mac and I went on a drinking spree that took us to every bar within a half mile radius of the Rand Afrikaans University. Trust me, that's a lot of bars. By midnight we were both so drunk we could barely stumble back to the hotel. By two a.m. we were arguing loud enough to cause the neighbors to bang on the wall. I can't to this day remember what started the fight, but it might have been an ill- timed, misinterpreted crack Duncan made about Paolo and my teaching abilities. Whatever the cause, suffice it to say that I didn't stay at the hotel that night, and that was the last time I came face-to-face with Duncan. We've talked on vids in the eight years since, mostly at holidays, and we've never mentioned that fight.

I know that Duncan's coming to me. He's bringing with him doom and thunderclouds and pain, like a dark bride and her bridal train down the aisle of Holy Ground. When I see him, I'm going to have to look past the handsome features and perfect olive skin to see the devil inside and deal with him better than I did the last time.

My head hurts. Immortal healing powers do not cure physical symptoms of grief.

The lioness just yawns.

****

In my dreams Rosenne comes to me, her Nordic-blonde hair spread like a fan across the crisp linen of our marriage bed, her blue eyes deep and solemn in the porcelain-pale face inherited from her Dutch ancestors. I wake hot and disoriented on the plain to find her sitting beside me, her hair pinned beneath a hat, her hands protected by gloves. She's been staring at my face, and impulsively she reaches down to kiss me. She smells like sweet pineapples and freshly ground coffee.

"I thought you were going to sleep all day," she says.

I struggle upright. "How did you know where to find me?"

Rosenne lifts her right shoulder and drops it again. "It's one of your favorite places."

The shimmering white ball of the sun has sunk low into the western sky. I'm very thirsty, and Rosenne passes me the canteen. The lioness is nowhere to be seen. "The social worker from Mwanza called," Rosenne says. "She didn't have anything for us."

For *us.* For Rosenne. Rosenne wants children. She knew when we married that I couldn't give her babies, and at the time seemed fine with it.

But in the last year she's been pushing me to seek medical treatment, or for us to try fertilization, or for adoption from the orphanages in Mwanza. Rosenne's growing desire and my ambivalence have created a rift between us, but it's not one I really blame her for. She didn't want children; now she does. I want children, but am afraid of them being used as bait in the Game.

Problem is, I've never told Rosenne what I am.

Immortality just hasn't come up in casual conversation. She graduated college at the age most kids do these days, seventeen, and is now twenty- two. She thinks I'm twenty-one and look young for my age.

To my knowledge, the only women Mac ever told were Tessa and Anne. Methos, who now lives in Australia, told me he's never revealed his age or Immortality to any of his seventy wives. Too much trouble, he said. I wonder if it's really too much trouble to tell Rosenne, or if at some level I don't trust her.

"I'm sorry," I tell Rosenne, although I'm not, not truly; we both know it, and it widens the rift. What I am sorry for is the distance between us. I hold her hand and she squeezes my fingers, understanding at least that part.

For several minutes we sit in the quiet afternoon, watching a pair of giraffes cross the grasslands side-by-side. "We have dinner to host," Rosenne says abruptly some time later, and I pull her to her feet. Back at the lodge Keesha and Sammy will have already started the mammoth pots of stew, plates of bread, and selection of grilled vegetables for our guests returning from a day trip to Olduvai Gorge. Keesha and Sammy both don't know what to make of me, the brash young American who bought the place from an old tour operator and spent amazing amounts of money restoring it. They don't know that I've lived in Africa for twenty years, and speak Swahili better than they do.

Rosenne and I walk back side by side, like the giraffes, saying nothing. Only when we are fifteen paces from the plantation house's porch do I feel the distinct shivers down my spine that signal another Immortal's presence.

My sword is on the wall of my office. I've gotten lazy in the last two years, and carrying it around the grounds often brought too many weird glances from the guests.

The sword is too far, the Immortal too near.

He steps out from the house and onto the porch, dressed in khaki and boots and a hunter's hat, his hands empty, his gaze a little unfocused. Beneath his jacket I can see the very faint outlines of where his katana is.

"Hello," he says.

Duncan MacLeod, come at last.

They say nervousness produces butterflies in your stomach. My stomach is full of tiny Bell 222 helicopters, like the kind I used to fly to oil rigs in the North Sea fifty years ago. But I force down the choppers, cross to the porch, and offer Duncan my hand with a smile that doesn't even feel genuine to me. "Mac," I say, "Good to see you."

He looks lost. He looks tired and dusty and lost, as if he's not sure who he is anymore. It is not a good first impression.

"Good to be here," he says. He pulls me into a stilted, awkward hug. We've never been good at expressing affection, he and I. I think the first time he ever hugged me was standing outside the barge in Paris after Darius' death, as he went off to face the Hunters who'd captured Fitzcairn. Old enemies. Old griefs.

"You must introduce me to your friend, Chris," Rosenne says, climbing the stairs.

"This is my old friend Duncan MacLeod," I say automatically. "Mac, my wife, Rosenne."

"Pleased to meet you," he says. Mac has always been polite. He lifts an eyebrow towards me and offers a small, almost painful smile. "Chris didn't tell me he'd gotten married."

It must have slipped my mind.

Rosenne says, "You look like you've traveled a long way, Mr. MacLeod."

"Please, call me Duncan," he answers, shifting his gaze away.

"I didn't know you were coming," I say, probing the waters.

His eyes lift to me. I can't read much in them. His answer is, "I didn't know either."

Okay, so he's possessed again. He doesn't know what he's doing, how he got here, why he came. It doesn't take a rocket scientist - that's an old term, nobody launches rockets anymore - to figure it out. My sword is still too far away.

A minute later the fear is kicked out of my head by doubt and shame. This is Duncan MacLeod, my oldest friend, the man who shaped my Immortality those first fragile years. He saved me from myself when I was just a teenager and whatever mistakes we've made with each other, we've usually made with the best of intentions. He once told me he's not my father, not my guardian angel, but I don't know which one of us believes that less. "Let's get you settled," I offer. "You look real tired."

"You don't look so hot yourself," he retorts, but follows me inside the house. His merchant marine seabag, torn from heavy travel, sits on the hardwood floor. I grab it by the handle, which is still sweaty from Duncan's grip. "Give me one of the open bungalows," I tell Sammy's daughter Omana, who is working the desk. When Connor stayed with us, I gave him a room in the big house. Mac doesn't have to know this. I walk him back outside and down to the very nice quarters he can occupy far from my bedroom. More hardwood floors, an antique dresser, a porcelain wash bowl and pitcher for show, a canopy bed, mosquito netting. Duncan doesn't look impressed. He drops onto the mattress as if all the strength he ever had has run out of his body.

"I'm tired," he mutters, eyes squeezed shut. "God, Rich, I'm so tired."

"Tell me."

He shakes his head. "It's a long story."

"We've got time," I answer. His breathing is slowing, evening out. I wonder when he cut his hair short again. His safari hat has fallen askew, and I take it from the pillow and toss it on the dresser. After a moment's consideration I start undoing the thick, worn laces of his shoes.

"Huh?" he asks, lifting his head, squinting dazedly.

"Relax," I say. "I'll do it."

His feet are swollen. I wonder if he walked all the way up to the plantation from the transport stop on the road to Mwanza. That's about five miles, no easy feat in the summer sun. He could have called for a ride, but I don't chide him.

"Are you hungry?"

A mumbled answer I can't make out. I take it as a yes. "I have to have dinner with the guests. We do it every night. I'll send Keesha down with a tray of food and come by later, okay?"

No answer. He's sound asleep, or so I think. His voice stops me at the doorway. "Richie?"

"Yes, Mac?"

"Thanks."

He's thanking me, and all I've done so far is take off his boots and doubt his sanity. "Get some rest," I tell him.

By the time I finish washing up in my room and donning a fresh shirt and trousers, the dinner bell downstairs is ringing. Dinner is a big deal around here. Rosenne, myself and the rest of the staff do most of our interaction with the guests - listening with polite interest to their adventures, answering the same questions over and over, and going for that authentic "African experience." We have a very large table that seats forty when the lodge is full. I take one end, Rosenne the other. With me tonight are Holby Endicott, a rather robust Englishman; twin Arab sisters Naseem and Silar Hosri; a sharp elderly American woman named Christine Tovery; and Josef Crow, a sullen South American businessman.

They had all spent the day at the Olduvai Gorge, where Mary and Louis Leakey conducted several archeological digs and once dug up a two million year old precursor of modern humans. There's been a flurry of new digs in the gorge, and I sometimes wonder what it would mean if someone unearthed a two-million year old beheaded fossil with a sword in his hand. How do you say "There can be only one" in caveman grunts? Tomorrow the group is heading towards Ngorongoro Crater, an old collapsed volcano that is one of most spectacular places in the world to spot wildlife. After that they'll go east, to Mt. Kilimanjaro, and new tourists will take their places, all of them interchangeable. Touring Africa is the fashionable thing to do this decade, but maybe only one in fifty actually appreciates the continent for what it is.

I spend most of the meal listening to the Arab sisters discuss anthropology and thinking about Mac. I need to know what's going on with him. I need to know if he killed Connor, Amanda, and all the others. I need to keep my own head if what I suspect is true, and help him if I can.

As soon as dinner is over I go down to his bungalow. It's empty. He's nowhere to be seen. His bag is half unpacked across his bed; there's no sign of his katana. The dinner tray is untouched.

Night has fallen, and everything beyond the small glow of the lodge buildings is black. No stars tonight, just a high thin layer of clouds. The wind whips up dust from the road as I circle the grounds, trying to sense him. The air carries night sounds clearly - insects, rustling leaves, nocturnal animals. I hear a big cat cry out very far away and stop, knowing it's the lioness, wondering what she is hunting and whether or not she'll be successful.

I'm almost afraid to go to sleep - what if Mac comes for my head during the night? But it's been a long day and my head is pounding as I climb the stairs to my room. I roll my head from side to side, trying to ease out the tension, but it doesn't work. I strip off my clothes and scrub my face in the bathroom that links my bedroom with Rosenne's. The door is closed. It's been closed for a long time. I'm tempted to listen, to strain for the sound of her mattress squeaking or soft murmured voices, but she continues to be very discreet. She and Sammy have no idea I know they're sleeping together.

I leave the fan off, because I want to be able to hear any strange sounds. The linen sheets on the bed feel cool against my legs and arms but do nothing for my stomach. Like the North Sea I used to fly over, it churns and boils with too many bad thoughts. Sleep comes fitfully, with fragments of old nightmares mixed with new ones. I'm in the middle of a swordfight with Rosenne of all people when the buzz hits, dragging me upright.

A man in the doorway, silhouetted against the hall lights. He is still, unmoving, and could just be a figment of my imagination.

"Mac?" I ask, my voice croaking.

"Yes," he says. He is real. "You asleep?"

"Not now." I turn on the light, momentarily blinded by the glare. It would have been a great time for him to take my head. But all he does is come in and sit down in the bamboo chair near my bed.

"I should let you sleep," he says. "You look awful."

"Nightmares," I say. I don't say they included him. My vision is slightly blurry, and I rub at my eyes. "What's going on?"

"Amanda's . . . dead."

Hearing him say it is like getting kicked in the gut all over again. "I know. Who did it?"

Mac sighs. "I don't know. I'd gone to see her in Yemen. She owned a palace in San'a', near the Salt Market. She loved having her own palace, you know?"

I know. Amanda always did enjoy being treated like royalty. Crowns and jewels suited her. I think that when she first died she was a muddy, starving, illiterate thief in a medieval French city. She should have been a queen.

"What a place she had. Marble everywhere you looked - red marble, yellow marble, blue marble, black marble. Everything cool and smooth. She had a whole indoor forest growing in one wing - fig trees and ferns, and an indoor stream that circulated through the rooms. Chimes everywhere, so the air always stirred with music. And male servants dressed in the skimpiest clothes you've ever seen."

I almost smile.

Mac's face darkens. "One afternoon I was taking a nap, and I woke up to see a Quickening ripping across the courtyard. By the time I arrived it was all over. She was . . . gone. And I don't know who did it. I don't know what bastard did it, but when I find him I'm going to force his guts down his throat before I cut off his head."

I can't imagine how horrible it must have been for him to find Amanda's lovely, bloody, decapitated head. My stomach does a violent flip-flop, and I realize I'm in a cold sweat.

"The Watchers think you did it," I say before I can stop myself. "Amanda and a bunch of others."

Mac stares at me blankly for a minute. "Me?"

"Where's Connor?"

"How should I know?"

"He went to go find you in New Seoul City. I haven't heard from him since."

"And you think I killed him?" Mac's voice takes on a high note of equal parts indignation, disbelief, and hurt.

"I think - " I start to say, and then stop. I'm going to be wretchedly, horribly sick. It takes about eight steps to cross to my bathroom from the bed. My knees go out around step three, sending me pitching to the floor. Mac catches me just before I hit, shifts my weight, drags me towards the cool tile and porcelain bowl. Most of dinner lands on the floor. More retching ends up in the bowl as my insides spasm with an agony I've never felt before.

Mac asks me a couple of questions but I can't make out what he's saying. He props me up against the toilet and comes back with cold cloths for my neck and face. It's my stomach, I want to tell him, not my neck or face, but all I can do is curl up against the pain, and vomit again and again into the mess the toilet is becoming.

When it's all done I'm cold, shivering, helpless. Another good time to take my head. But Mac hauls me back to the bed and gets me under the sheets. There are no blankets to be found - who needs blankets in July in Africa? - so he snatches up the matted area rug near the door and throws it on top of me as well. After awhile the shivers ease away and my insides settle down into a low aching rumble. I blink open my eyes and find him sitting on the mattress beside me, worriedly sponging my face. I may be one hundred years old but he certainly knows how to make me feel like a kid.

"Sorry," I offer. "Nerves."

Both of his eyebrows shoot up. "Nerves? You think that's what made you sick?"

Bewildered, I nod.

"Richie, you don't get that sick from nerves. You were made sick. If you were mortal you'd probably be dead by now.'

For a minute it's my turn to stare at him blankly. "Poison?"

"Poison," he agrees. "Feeling better now?"

Who the hell would want to poison me? Unless it's Mac himself, playing dirty to take my head. I'm still too miserable to care much, let him have it. "You . . . didn't kill Amanda. Or Connor."

"Richie, I'll forgive you at the moment because you're obviously sick, but why in the world would you think I would kill them? What have I ever done to make you think that?"

Wearily, dredging forth the words and facts as best I can, I tell him about Chow's reports from Singapore. I tell him the rumors of the Dark Quickening returning. He winces at that, but keeps silent. I tell him Connor heard the same things, from a Watcher girlfriend he keeps in Tangiers. Voicing the words aloud to Mac himself makes me realize something. He says it for me.

"You've been manipulated," Mac says quietly. "And I'm being framed."

"By the Watchers," I add.

"Or someone pulling their strings."

"They never did like you." I'm feeling much better physically now, but I'm ashamed of what I've been thinking about Mac. I can think of six nasty things to do to Chow right off the top of my head. "Mac, I'm sorry."

He dismisses the apology. "Here. Drink this."

Cool, clear water. My insides calm down immensely. I'm too tired to do much but sink back into the pillows as he muses, "Even if I am being framed by the Watchers, who poisoned you? Do you have any enemies?"

"Richie Ryan has a lot of enemies. But Chris Howe doesn't, unless you count business rivals. I've been Chris for twenty years."

"What about that lovely wife of yours? The spouse is always the first suspect, Rich."

"Mmmm." I don't like the thought at all. Rosenne a murderess? It's a thought that will have to wait until morning, because I can barely keep my eyes open. Mac sees that and gets off the mattress. He putters around in the bathroom for a few minutes, cleaning up the mess, and then comes back to turn the light down but not off.

"What are you doing?" I ask as he sits down in the chair.

"Keeping an eye on you."

"Mac, I feel much better."

He rolls his eyes. "I know that. I'm thinking whoever did it might come to collect your body in the middle of the night, or finish the job."

"You're dead tired yourself."

"I'll worry about that."

I pat the other side of the mattress. "Why don't you lie down here. They won't do anything if they see the two of us."

He thinks about it for a minute. He's either going to fall asleep on the bed or in that chair, and we both know it. "You have to sleep sometime," I say. "Come on." "You sure your reputation can bear it?"

This strikes me as funny. "It might actually improve it. Rosenne and I haven't slept together in about seven months. She's making it with the groundskeeper."

Mac studies me, as if I would lie about this. Grumbling, he pulls off his boots and strips to his underwear. He stretches out on the side Rosenne used to take. I push the rug off my body - it's far too warm now - and give him his own sheet. We lay quietly, wrapped in different thoughts, slipping towards darkness, and then he says, "It's funny in a way."

"What?"

"We're both being hunted, and we both didn't realize it."

"Talk to me tomorrow," I say, and fall fast asleep.

Footsteps, the door easing open. I wake up two seconds before Duncan's hand presses against my thigh, warning me to be silent. I feign sleep and hear Duncan say, "Good morning."

"Oh." Rosenne's voice. She sounds stunned. "I didn't expect - "

She doesn't finish. I wonder what the expression is on her face. I wonder what the expression on *Mac's* face is. He has the ability to look completely innocent when he wants to. Rosenne clears her throat. "I didn't know," she said.

For some reason I want to giggle. Mac senses it, and his hand presses at me more firmly. I fight to keep quiet.

"I'll see you later," Rosenne says. The door closes. I start shaking with laughter, and Mac hits me with a pillow.

"What's that for?" I ask, struggling up past a flurry of synthetic feathers. It's morning, and sunlight streams through the windows. Another day in Africa. Ronnie has slipped into the room, and rubs her back against the rocking chair in the corner with a small meow that demands affection. Duncan sits up against the headboard, his sheet wrapped rather demurely around his waist.

"You snore."

"So do you." For some reason I feel great this morning. Mac's not possessed, Connor might not be dead, and I still have my head. All the last traces of poison seem to be gone from my body. I think about the poisoning while Mac is in the bathroom.

"When did you start feeling sick?" he asks, appearing with shaving cream on his face.

Ronnie leaps up onto the bed. I scratch her neck. "I didn't feel well yesterday afternoon, but I thought that was just the news of Amanda's death. The worst was after dinner."

"You might have been poisoned at lunch. Definitely at dinner."

I curl around the cool pillows left on the bed. Ronnie circles up against my thigh and purrs. "But by dinner Rosenne knew you were here. She wouldn't want to risk anything with a friend of mine around."

"Maybe it was too late to stop whatever she'd done by the time I showed up," he suggests. I hear a muffled oath as he nicks himself with the old fashioned razor. Immortal shaving cuts heal almost instantly, though, and when he reappears there's not even a trace of blood on his face. "Maybe she's got a partner."

"Sammy," I say.

I think about it for awhile. Mac towels off and then reaches for his clothes. I say, "Mac, I'm sorry."

"About?"

"Listening to the Watchers. Almost believing them."

He shakes his head. "No. Don't apologize for that. Who knows what might happen in the future. Maybe I'll take the wrong head and it will come back. Maybe something will happen . . . Rich, you learned the lesson a long time ago. You always have to be prepared. Whether it's me, or Connor, or Aman - "

He stops. He almost said Amanda, as if she were still alive. His eyes darken with pain.

"You're not alone," I say. "You know that, don't you?"

He meets my gaze squarely. Slowly he nods. "I know it now."

It's my turn for the bathroom. I dislodge Ronnie, who squints at me in protest. Mac says, "There's another reason you shouldn't apologize."

"Which is?"

"I knew I was being chased. I'm responsible for Amanda's death. I'm endangering you."

This is important news. I go to look at him. His face is tight, his eyes focused on something outside the window.

"Tell me," I say.

"Victoria, Katmandu, New Seoul - I'd no sooner arrive than someone would kill my friends there. I had no idea who was doing it, I couldn't find any clues, I just kept running. In Delhi I found the man I thought was responsible, and took his head. I only went to Amanda because I thought it was safe. For two weeks it was. And then someone killed her too." "You could have mentioned this when you first showed up, Mac," I say.

"I was going to tell you last night, but you had other things on your mind."

Once, a long time ago, our positions had been reversed. I was the one being hunted. I was the one who went to him, frayed and exhausted and at the end of my rope. He'd taken care of me and killed the Immortal responsible.

"There's only the two of us, the staff, and the tourists," I finally tell him. "It's kind of hard to sneak up on someone in the middle of nowhere. If he comes, we'll catch him."

"If he isn't already here," Mac reminds me. "Or she."

"You don't think it's an Immortal?"

"It could be a mortal Watcher."

The Watchers again. I regret, now, that Mac and Methos didn't take the opportunity to destroy their organization so many decades ago. It's a horrible thought - I've loved Watchers, and Joe Dawson was like a father to me for a long, long time - but they've proven again to be more trouble than they're worth, at least from an Immortal perspective.

Mac turns back from the window. "Hungry?"

"Starving," I confess. "Let's go face the music."

Rosenne is eating breakfast with Sammy at a corner table when Mac and I enter the dining room. It's just after seven a.m., and the remains of the breakfast buffet lay scattered around the room. The tourists have been on their transport to Ngorongoro Crater for a half hour. Rosenne's tea cup clinks loudly when we come in, and she fixes on me with a slight blush to her cheeks. She does not look pleased.

"Good morning," Mac says cheerfully as he piles croissants on a plate.

"Hi," I add.

"Good morning," Rosenne mutters. Sammy, his deep eyes expressing humor in his dark face, smiles with a flash of pearly white teeth.

"Sleep well?" he asks.

"Wonderfully," Mac says.

I take three helpings of fruit salad and a donut. We sit with Rosenne and Sammy. Her eyes follow my every move. I wonder what she thinks of the concept of me and Mac being bed partners. I wonder what she thinks of me not being dead.

"You look a little tired, Chris," she says.

"Nah," I say around a mouthful of fruit salad. "I feel fine. What's on today's schedule?"

Sammy obligingly launches into a run down of the tourist itineraries, staff tasks, scheduled maintenance, even the weather forecast. Mac keeps silent through it all, methodically eating his breakfast and drinking two cups of coffee. When he reaches for another roll, his hand brushes against mine. Likewise for the sugar. I have no doubt he's having a lot of fun with these innuendoes.

Rosenne sees everything he does, sees my increasing blush, but says nothing.

"What did you have planned for today, Mr. MacLeod?" Sammy asks Mac.

"Nothing special," Mac answers. "See the sights. Enjoy the scenery. You don't mind if I borrow a transport, do you? I haven't been to the Serengeti for years."

This surprises me - that he intends to go out today. We still don't know who is hunting him. Maybe he wants to act normally, so we don't tip our hand. He says, "You want to come, Chris?"

"I think I'll stay here, thanks," I say. "I need to get the accounts caught up."

What I really want to do is call Chow and ask him some tough questions. To go through the records of the current guests, to see if any might have Watcher connections. Josef Crow, the South American businessman, looks like he might be a Watcher. And he's been here two weeks already. But Mac is insistent, and Rosenne volunteers to do the books. Mac and I take a basket lunch and one of the transports out towards the Serengeti. We take our swords, hoping to get in a little sparring practice during the day.

"Serengeti" in Masai roughly means "endless plains." It's a great grassland savanna, over five thousand square miles in area, that extends up into the United States of Kenya. We see huge herds of zebra, antelope and wildebeest moving under the morning sun. Mac is entranced by the sight - there are no zebras in the Highlands, after all. We stop for lunch by the river. I'm careful with the food, but nothing tastes funny.

"They're probably still wondering why you didn't drop dead last night," Mac says. "They have to think about how to kill you next."

It's not a happy thought. Mac asks me how I met Rosenne. She accompanied her father and his friends on a photo safari from Cape Town. The first night we dined together I knew I was in love. It has occurred to me over the last two years that maybe she married me for my money. That's also not a happy thought, but it wouldn't be the first time in the history of the world.

What I like about Africa is the wide open sky. I did most of my growing up in the city, where concrete substituted for grass and the streets of exhaust and melting tars were the principal rivers. I knew plenty of wild animals back then - men who preyed on young boys, teens who hunted each other for drugs and money. In Africa the animals are easier to spot and avoid, and the buildings don't block the sky, and there's plenty of fresh air to breathe. All these thoughts run through my head as I lean back on the blanket from the transport and fold my arms beneath my head to watch the clouds above.

"I'm worried about Connor," I confess.

Mac picks over the remains of lunch. "Don't worry about him. He can take care of himself."

"But he hasn't called in three months. He should know I worry."

"When you don't hear from someone in fifty years," Mac smiles, "then you can start worrying."

I've eaten too much, and am feeling sleepy. "Why now?" I yawn. "The Watchers, I mean. Why are they moving against you now?"

"Ask them."

"It's not like anyone's still alive in their organization who still bears you a grudge."

"I don't know," Mac says. "It's just part of the puzzle."

It's hot out here, maybe a hundred degrees. Even in the shade of an old camphor tree I'm sweating. I'm almost asleep when a shadow crosses my face. I open my eyes to see Mac's katana slicing towards my neck, and throw myself aside barely in time to keep my head.

"What the hell - " I scream at him, but his katana cuts across in another arc, ripping open my chest from one side to the other and sending me bleeding into the dust.

"Say goodbye, Richie," he says, grinning.

My broadsword is in the transport. I have nothing to block him with, nothing to use as a weapon except for a handful of dust I throw into his eyes as I scramble away.

I lunge towards the transport while Mac is momentarily blinded. I whip out my sword and whirl barely in time to stop a blow that could have separated my arm from my shoulder. Mac's katana, always a natural extension of his arms and keen mind, flashes in the sunlight as we battle across the dry grass. I feel slow compared to him, and always have, but I'm not a gawky, inexperienced kid anymore and we both know it.

I remember watching Mac and Connor practice through the broken window of Mac's old warehouse, overcome by awe at their strength and skill and swiftness. There's no denying that a good healthy fight brings out the adrenaline in most of my kind, heightening senses and charging the air. When it's a fight to the death, like this one, the Quickenings are so super-charged that electricity dances down the sword blades with tongues of blue and gold.

"Did you kill Connor?" I demand.

He smiles. "Yes."

"Amanda?"

"She went begging, you know."

I hate him. I hate him for taking away my best friend in the world, for letting him fool me. I *wanted* to believe he wasn't responsible for Connor or Amanda. Rage clouds my vision, makes my heart double its pounding.

"Why the poison?" I ask, going for a minute opening, missing it. He swipes across my right arm, ripping open flesh and muscle and nicking an artery. I switch my grip to my left hand. No time to staunch the bleeding. If I pass out, I'll die.

"I couldn't very well take your head with all those people in the house," he says. He isn't even gasping for air. He's in the best shape of his life, probably, and fortified by the awesome darkness that's taken over his heart and soul. "I was waiting for you to die so I could just haul your sorry ass out here and do it in the middle of the night. Be gone by morning, no one would ever find your body."

Poisons don't have to be ingested, after all. They can be transmitted by the shake of the hand, by the damp handle of a duffel bag. Too late I remember a lesson I should have learned from Ronnie yesterday - that sometimes animals kill their victims right away, and sometimes they play with them first.

Mac's next blow drives me to me knees. Then he delivers a powerful, shattering stroke that pierces my stomach and severs my spinal column. I fall to the ground, unable to protect myself, unable to lift a hand, paralyzed, terrified, as he raises the katana to deliver the killing blow.

"Better late than never," he says.

A roar shatters the shimmering hot air with the deepest, most primitive rage I've ever heard. For a second I think it's Mac. Then the lioness springs on him. Mac goes down under her awesome force, a scream ripped out of him. He tries to defend himself with the katana but she rips at his throat, her claws raking his face and chest, and blood spews everywhere. I can barely see from my angle, but his body spasms a few times before going limp beneath her fierce jaws.

My tear ducts are not paralyzed. Even though it's not Mac who came for my head, it's his body beneath the lioness' paws. Mac, my friend and surrogate father, crushed beneath her weight. By the time I drag myself upright I can barely see, and the sobs coming out of my chest burn worse than the searing sunlight ever could. Part of it is the release of fear, part of it is pain, most of it is loss and sorrow. The lioness raises her head from Mac's body and lets out a loud, low roar of triumph. Then she turns to me. Animals don't wear human expressions but hers looks oddly like compassion, and maybe even sympathy. With a toss of her mane she leaves Mac and slinks off back into the bush where she belongs.

I know what I have to do. There might be a shred of the Mac I love left in this torn, bloody shell, but I'll never know. Even if he's in there, tiny and powerless, he's obviously not in control. The one in control murdered Amanda and Connor and will rise against me the minute he gasps his way back to life. I risk myself, my wife, my staff, my guests and all my Immortal friends if I let him live.

And if I take his head, I risk falling to the same darkness he did.

It's a chance I have to take.

It takes several minutes for my hands to stop shaking long enough to raise my sword. I can't see for the tears in my eyes, but it's not a difficult stroke to complete. I wonder if Mac felt this same choking grief and almost paralyzing fear when he killed Jim Coltec.

I wish that Mac and I could have said our goodbyes.

He begins to stir, his Immortality returning, and I slice off his head.

It's the worst Quickening I've ever taken. Mostly because I don't want it. I fight the inrush of his memories and those of every Immortal he's ever taken. I don't want to remember Tessa as he does, the sensations of her hands running down my flesh; I don't want Kalas inside me, his gashed voice howling screams through my throat; I don't want the darkness that starts in the pit of my bowels and works its way to the top of my skull with the iciness of winter in Antarctica -

But the darkness is here. The darkness is me.

When I lift my head the sun is black, beating down on a blistered land all mine for the taking.

I heft my sword.

I have to go now. I will leave the plantation to Rosenne and her lover, with a few scars thrown in because I'm a sentimental old fool. I'll leave the tourists to their petty quests for photographs, leave Africa and its tamed savagery. I know true savagery, I can feel it pulse through my veins, and there are so many lush, lovely ways to inflict it on the world that I don't know where to start.

Not true.

I know exactly where to start.

Methos, in Australia.

He's next.

THE END