He stood there, contemplating his reflection in the mirror. The girl looked about 19...,
Reflection on Reflections.
by Dana Short
========================== ==========================
Turning onto the street, he headed away from Savannah and towards Atlanta. Somewhere there he could find a hotel where he could stop to sleep and regroup.
Three hours, and almost two hundred miles later, as the first crack of dawn began to show in his rearview mirror, he turned off of Highway 75, and headed for a Motel 6, its glowing sign proclaiming a Vacancy, and a $29.99 nightly rate.
Pulling into the parking lot, he got out of the car, pulling the jacket on, ostensibly against the damp chill early morning, but in reality to cover the blood. As it was, there was nothing to be done about the blood on the black jeans, but at lest the jacket would cover the bloodstained shredded top.
Approaching the window, he tapped to get the attention of the sleepy attendant.
"Uh, can I help you?" she asked, her muffled voice coming out from behind the thick security glass.
"Yes, I need a room. I was trying to get to Atlanta, but I am just too tired to go on." Eadgils responded.
"Ok, Smoking, or non-smoking? Just fill out this card" she said, sliding the registration out through the glass.
"Non-smoking, please. What is check-out time?"
"Eleven AM. If you want to stay longer than that, I'm afraid I'll have to charge you for two days."
"Lets make it two days then." He replied. "I doubt if I will be ready to resume driving in just five or six hours."
"Probably not. I wish I could give you an extended check out, but we are a new location and frankly the manager is a jerk about things like that."
"I understand. Uh, for the room charge, would cash be ok?" Eadgils asked, waving three $20 bills.
"Uh, sure. You will be in room 2152. That is around back, on the second floor. Just head out the door, and go all the way around to your left. Take the first set of stairs on the back, and it will be the sixth room, I believe."
"Thanks", Eadgils said, retrieving the change and the keycards, along with a little map and the printout of the registration.
"Have a nice night." The girl at the counter called out as Eadgils turned to head back to the car.
Ten minutes later, He had the laptop, Katana, knives, and the small bag of Sue's "Emergency Supplies" from the trunk transferred into his room.
He was finally able to settle down for a few moments, and gather his thoughts. Up until this time, he had been operating, not so much on "Auto-Pilot", but certainly in "Crisis Mode". Now he finally had a chance to evaluate the situation without the urgency of dealing with the immediate situation. He hadn't really had a chance to do so on the drive out here, having been hyper-alert in order to avoid the complications of a police stop, or any sort of traffic accident. For the last two hours, he also really had been fighting exhaustion, as well. Thus, he had been unable, or unwilling, to allow his mind to dwell on the circumstances of the situation. His focus had been entirely on getting through.
First things first though. He set the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the outside of the door, and closed and double locked the door, sliding on the security chain, before moving the room's chair up against the door, and placing the one of the two plastic cups upside down at the top of the chair, leaning against the door. He then filled the other glass half-way, and balanced it on top of the empty glass, with a sheet of paper in between. The idea was that anyone actually opening the door would disturb the chair, and topple the glasses; the water hitting the paper would make enough sound to wake him.
Not as secure as an electronic system, or even squeaky boards and threads strung with bells, but it was ample for the situation.
Pulling the curtains closed, he left the Katana on the dresser beside the TV, and carried Sue's Emergency Supply bag into the small bathroom.
Finally, he stood there, contemplating his reflection in the mirror.
This was really the first time he got a truly good look at The Girl. She was 19, as he had known, but she looked like she could be anywhere from 16 to mid 20s, depending on her expression. In the back of his mind were actual makeup tricks which he knew could make her appear as young as possibly 14, or as old as 30, depending on how it was applied and how she dressed.
She had long, dark hair, currently a matted mess, from the bloody water it had soaked in several hours earlier, and its lack of care since then. It was pulled back, however in a messy pony-tail, which reached a bit more than half-way down her back. Again from the back of his mind filtered out the information that untied, it would reach a bit past her waist, but not quite to her hips, in the back stopping just above her butt. It was longer than her instructors in physical combat had liked it at the Academy, but she had been growing it out all her life, and couldn't bear to cut it. They had warned her about the dangers of long hair in combat, but had let it go at that, although not without a few painful demonstrations of how it could be grabbed at any time and used as a tool to somewhat control her and her head.
Her eyes were a light green, her mouth full, and her nose rather small. He knew she thought her ears stuck out too far, but as far as he could see, they were perfect for her face, and added with her other features made her on the cute side of fetching, just short of gorgeous.
Her body was slender and athletic, but with plenty of curves. Again the information filtered out as he took in her frame. 5'6, and 130 pounds. Looking over the wide, full breasts he knew they were a 34C, while the narrow waist was 26 inches, to her hip's 35 inches.
Her legs were long and athletic, well toned from lots of running. All in all a very pretty girl in the fresh faced girl next door look as it was called these days.
But how could he be her. It didn't make any sense. He had been around for almost 4,000 years, and never in all that time had he heard of one Immortal somehow coming to possess another one. Such a thing should not be possible, and yet it had happened. Oh, if only Darius was still around. A sudden piece of information popped into his mind that Darius had been killed by Hunters. That was something he hadn't known. He had always wondered how it came to be that Darius could lose his head on Holy Ground. Much like his own situation, such a thing just didn't happen. Oh, some Immortals would occasionally break the one-on-one rule, but the proscription against fighting on Holy Ground - there was the rumor about Vesuvius as well to consider. It was said a fight had occurred on Holy Ground there, and rather than stop when they felt the warning they had continued to battle until the mountain itself exploded. He himself had once started a fight on Holy Ground, some forgotten shrine to some obscure roman god stolen from the Greeks. He had met some merchant who wanted his head, and wouldn't be dissuaded. Even the pain as they drew swords did not deter him. After the first two blows, both fighters had found themselves on the ground with massive headaches. Apparently that pain was the second warning a pair of Immortals would get for violating The Rule, the first being the ringing in the ears at the first drawing of weapons. The rumor went on that any attempt to continue combat without moving would result in some cataclysm, which would certainly stop the fight. He had never wanted to test that theory, the headache that one time had been enough of a lesson to last literally thousands of years.
So now he knew the truth about the death of Father Darius. He also now knew the Hunters responsible for that were supposedly dead themselves, executed by the Watchers. Well, the Hunters responsible for him were dead as well. But in both cases, there must be more to it. Someone still in the Watchers must be associated with the Hunters. Otherwise how could they have found him.
His mind again offered up a memory. Of Sue getting the page requesting her status/location an hour before his attack, and then the second, even more suspicious page, demanding her to report to HQ immediately before the Hunters showed up. Granted, if they were trying to get her out of the way, their timing was a bit off, however the more likely possibility was that they were trying to simply flush her out so they could kill her. But the identities or motivations of the other parties involved in his death and Sue's Quickening didn't really help him to answer the bigger question, namely how he could have ended up in her body?
Over the years, he had taken hundreds of Quickenings. Literally so many he could not count them all. One blurred into another, after so many. Oh, he could recall individual ones, but as far as providing a full accounting, no. One might as well ask a Mortal how many days they had worked two years before. They could possibly figure it out with the help of a journal, or a calendar, but off the top of their heads, an educated guess would be all most people could come up with.
Of those, he had on occasion had strong ones, ones which had impacted him in some way. After he fought Toshio, for example, his repertoire included several new moves, including many he had not seen in the fight, they just came to him. Also, after taking an Immortal's head, learning to speak a language spoken by that particular Immortal was usually much easier.
On one occasion, he had suddenly acquired a new appreciation for music. Or an almost rabid distaste for the Vikings, who before he could really not of cared less about, as long as they left him alone.
He knew of course about Darius's Quickening, wherein he took the head of the Defender of Pairs, a holy man, and abruptly resigned from his position as General to become a priest himself. A Light Quickening, as Darius had called it himself, describing the event as a true awakening, realizing how evil he had been his whole life, how much pain he had caused, and feeling a great need to atone for his actions.
He had also heard of Dark Quickenings, wherein a otherwise decent Immortal took someone's head, and promptly switched from being a passive participant to a more active participant in the "Game", actually seeking out other Immortals, and challenging them until someone took the new Headhunter's own head. But it usually stopped there. It wasn't like there was some overpowering force passing from Immortal to Immortal through the Quickening... The Quickening.
Suddenly, another memory jumped vividly to the forefront of his mind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July 2002, Watcher Academy, Outside Paris, France...
Sue sat in the class, listening to the discussion about the Quickening. Fortunately, this class was in English, not in French, as some of them were. If it hadn't been for her lifelong awareness of the subjects being taught, coupled with her already acquired first-hand experience with the procedure involved in Immortals and the Watching thereof, she would have been lost several times.
This time, however, she had another problem in following the class. A handsome young researcher named Adam Pierson, who was "Auditing" the class. Adam was apparently the Watcher assigned to the Methos Chronicles. Why he was sitting in on a class about the nature of Quickenings she was not sure. But she certainly didn't mind, as he was so easy on the eyes. Especially when he looked up at her and smiled.
Or maybe she did mind, she realized she had totally spaced on what the instructor was saying. Refocusing her attention and trying to ignore the hunk next to her, she tried to catch up.
"Now, we know from the environmental effects that the Quickening is some sort of electromagnetic phenomenon. It will cause many of the same destructive results as a lightning strike in many cases. While the brunt of the energy does discharge from the dead Immortal to the survivor, it definitely makes for a hazardous area to be in during the event.
"Often times any electronics in the area will simply overload and short out. It is also not unknown for any combustible material, including wood to ignite, or even explode. Pressure changes will almost always shatter any near-by glass, and St. Elmo's Fire will cover just about everything in the neighborhood.
"This is one of the reasons you never want to get too close to your subjects, especially when they are fighting. While the urge is to get a blow-by-blow description of the combat for the chronicle, the reality is that any Watcher who gets too close, will likely get shocked, or even killed by the Quickening."
One of the students in the front raised his hand.
"Yes, Stephen?" the instructor asked.
"Uh, do you mean some Watchers have been hit by Quickenings?"
"Some have. Most didn't survive. Those who did were usually burnt. As far as we could tell from the post-mortems on their bodies, they were killed the same as if they had been hit by lighting."
"Uh, did the ones who survived, uh, did they get any power or whatever from it? I don't mean like super-powers so they could see through walls or anything, but like I heard that Immortals get some sort of power from Quickenings."
"Power. Well, the Quickenings defiantly include power. The strength of a Quickening, for example, is a factor of the accumulated age of the given Immortal, AND the cumulative strength of all the Quickenings which that particular Immortal has collected over his life. So the Quickening of a thousand year Immortal may be equivalent to that of a two hundred year old one who has killed several others of his kind or even of a thirty year Immortal who has bested a fifteen hundred year old one.
"One thing we do know, is there is a loss of the Quickening with every transfer. Energy is lost creating the violent displays, shorting out electronics, lighting the sky, fusing the sand into glass, whatever. So that same thirty year old if he lost his head would not put on quite as good of a show as the original fifteen hundred year old Immortal did when he fell."
Another student raised her hand from where she sat on the other side of Adam.
"Yes Yvette?"
With a flirtatious glance at Adam, she asked "So what if Methos was around, and lost his head. I mean, he is supposedly like five thousand years old, and was a Headhunter for a long time. What kind of Quickening would he have?"
Adam sent the instructor an apologetic glance and buried his face in his arms on his desk, to hide his expression.
The instructor answered. "Well, again, since the Quickening is a function of both age, and accumulated other Quickening, it would be quite a show. Adam, Methos is really your project, what would you say?"
Adam unburied his head, took a breath, and said in a oddly accented voice, "Well, the lack of just such a display is the reason I believe Methos may still be out there somewhere, likely hiding on Holy Ground. I mean, any Immortal who successfully beat him, would have set off a show so big it would have been recorded SOMEWHERE, unless it was out in the middle of nowhere. But even then, when they lost their own head, the big show would have happened again, although to a lesser extent, unless it was also an old, or powerful Immortal involved."
"Thank you Adam. Now as far as other power, beyond electrical, we don't really know. We have seen that Quickenings can affect the personalities of our subjects, but to what extent we can't say."
A third student, somewhere behind Sue apparently raised their hand at this point, because the Instructor sighed, and said "Yes, Je n?"
"Est la perte, pardon, Is ze lost of energy from ze medua of ze transmission?"
"You mean is it a factor of how far away the other Immortal is, and what is around them? I believe so. I do know that the further away a victor is from the body of the loser, the less of the Quickening actually reaches them. Unfortunately, due to Father Darius, we also now know that in the case where there is no other Immortal nearby the energy will entirely dissipate environmentally. And as far as environmental conditions, we do know that the more metal in an area, the more it seems to distract, or divert the Quickening away from the remaining Immortal."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He was suddenly struck by two entirely unrelated realizations.
First, the condition of the alley, where he had lost his head, so to speak, was unlike the area of any previous Quickening he had encountered. There was no shattered glass, no smoldering fire, nothing to indicate a great release of energy. But also, unlike any Quickening he knew of, both participants were within inches of one another, laying totally still, and more importantly, both were partly submerged in dirty, even bloody water. Water which could have acted as a sort of conductor, it was certainly a better one than the air which was the usual medium of exchange for an Immortal's Quickening. In such a case, perhaps what happened was almost like a phone cable connecting two computers, allowing an almost perfect exchange of information, as opposed to a wireless connection, where damaged and lost packets have to be sent over and over before they arrived properly. The water may have allowed his entire Quickening to flow directly into The Girl. That was how he was here. But if that was the case, then where was The Girl?
The other realization was almost more important, at least it was to him. After almost 4,000 years, Death still lived. Now he had a name; Adam Pierson. More importantly, Death was associated with the Watchers. Which was where the Hunters came from. The Hunters who killed Darius, and who, after over 3,700 years, had finally finished the job Death had started one clear spring day of killing Eadgils, last speaker of the Flornlef tribe. For surely he was dead, however alive he thought he was. He had lost his head.
========================== ==========================
Comments
Am enjoying the story
a lot. However, I started to read on into a Act II, and am confused - the first chapter is numbered 16, and reads as if there really were a bunch more chapters before. Is there anywhere these can be found?
Act I
The first 15 chapters of Meeting of Minds are available on Classic BC. We are moving them here one chapter at a time. Chapter 4 will be posted tonight.
Commentator
Visit my Caption Blog: Dawn's Girly Site
Visit my Amazon Page: D R Jehs