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Part
1
There was something about the
two men who walked into the Haven that just made Kindred look
at them. Two Toreadors, one Gangrel and three Brujah all found
that they were watching the two walk towards the bar with more
than just a passing glance.
"Mac, will you stop following
me around," the younger, blond one of the two protested as
his companion sat down at the bar beside him. "You know I'm
perfectly capable of taking care of myself, so what the hell's
got into you this time."
"You're hunting a man who
used to be my friend, Richie," Mac said calmly, "I know
him better than you, and I want to know what changed him."
Now to most of the people in
the club, their conversation was inaudible, but of course to the
various groups of vampires, listening in was no challenge. The
word hunting caught most attentions.
"He's mine, MacLeod,"
the shorter man said evenly, but firmly, "I was the one he
tried to kill. It wasn't some game, Mac, this was like an attempt
to permanently terminate me. Now my information says he comes
here, and this is where I'm going to stay until I find the bastard."
The Highlander looked at his
young friend for a long moment and finally nodded. He had no right
to interfere. There had been a challenge and Damon had run off
when he failed to win. MacLeod had been trying to talk his protege
out of going after the older Immortal for three days now, following
him here had been a last resort.
"Okay," he said with
a resigned expression, "but at least let me buy you a drink.
It's just hard for me to believe what he has become, he used to
be such a good man."
"Sorry, Mac, but he's not
anymore," his companion replied.
That was the point in the conversation
when most of the listeners lost interest, it seemed that anything
worth hearing had already been said. A discussion about what to
drink was not going to hold anyone's attention for long. When
Frank walked into the bar, everything seemed to be perfectly normal.
Okay, so Kindred made him nervous,
but he was damned if he was going to stay away from them and play
the intimidated cop. His partner was one of them for a start,
and Sonny was an okay guy, in fact he seemed perfectly normal
most of the time. They were people, the young officer kept telling
himself, they just had a weird set of rules. He wanted to know
as much about them as possible: forewarned was forearmed, and
he realised this. Being angry at them most of the time did help
him hide the fact that he was anxious about being anywhere near
them. It was the Brujah that made him really edgy, but that had
a lot to do with him being a cop and them being the mob.
The officer noted an empty stool
by the bar next to a young looking man in a brown leather jacket,
and made a bee-line for it. For all he knew the guy he chose to
sit next to was a vampire, but what the hell. He didn't notice
the slight hiccup in the conversation as he sat down as the younger
of the two covered easily.
"So you know this place,"
the blond man was saying to his companion as Frank ordered a drink,
"how come?"
"I was friends with the
owner once," the dark man with the ponytail replied and gained
Frank's interest.
Now the police officer thought
that Lillie had owned the club for a very long time, the odds
on these two being Kindred was going up. Neither of them looked
old enough to quite fit how the taller of the two had said `once'.
The younger one of the pair had obviously picked up on the use
of the word as well.
"Oh," he said with
a half smile, "old, old friend or just old friend?"
That might have sounded like
a peculiar question, but the three people who were still listening
took it in their stride. The two Toreadors in the corner looked
at each other questioningly. Was it possible that these two were
vampires that had managed to fake humanity? They had heart beats
and they smelt human, but could it be some sort of trick? Was
it possible that they were Tremere cloaked in some form of illusion?
This was definitely something for which it was worth alerting
Lillie. One of them slipped out of their seat quickly.
"Just a passing acquaintance,"
Duncan told Richie with a smile, "and it was quite a while
ago. This place is a lot different from the one I knew."
Lillie had been expecting Julian
to turn up any time, so she was not pleased when there was a knock
on the door and it was not the Prince. It was, however, with her
habitual curiosity that she listened to her subordinate intently.
The description the young female Toreador gave her could have
been many people in the area, but the name rang a bell.
"I knew a MacLeod once,"
she said, half to herself, half to her companion, "but that
was sixty years ago, and he was mortal."
She looked at her subordinate
contemplatively for a few moments. The meeting with Julian could
be important, but could this turn out to be more interesting.
She was of course fighting the eternal Kindred curse: boredom.
Playing with a man who claimed to know her might be fun, and she
could always break off when Luna decided to show up.
"I'll be down in a few minutes,"
she told her companion, "keep an eye on them `til then."
"Of course," the woman
replied with a smile as she saw the glint in her Primogen's eyes.
"Oh, and the Prince's cop is downstairs as well, came in
a few minutes after the other two."
Lillie's red covered lips drew
into a smile to match her companion's, maybe there was more fun
to be had this evening than she had first thought.
When the head of the Toreador
clan walked across the floor of her club, she was at her most
devastating. Her ability to snare men was unequalled, and several
of the mortals around found their partners disapproving of the
attention they gave the stunning woman. Her Kindred minions smiled
approvingly as she passed, and those of other clans did their
best to ignore her without being rude. It was only as Lillie walked
through the see of parting bodies towards the bar and actually
laid eyes on the back of her quarry that she almost faltered.
The black hair and the square
set of the shoulders struck a chord in her that she could not
quite dismiss. The brief affair she had had with a dark eyed Scot
so many years ago had made an impression on the wild Toreador,
and something stirred within her. It was when she heard him speak
to his companion in a deep voice with the slightest hint of an
accent that her heart actually beat in her chest. Her reaction
actually caused her clan to stop in mid sentence as the situation
became suddenly interesting.
It was half way through a comment
to Richie that Duncan felt a slight tingling between his shoulder
blades. It was the most concrete feeling of being watched that
he'd ever experienced and he turned slowly. Two pairs of eyes
opened wide in complete shock.
"Duncan MacLeod?" Lillie's
voice was half questioning, half totally sure.
"Lillie?" the Highlander
sent back his own unresolved enquiry.
Now Duncan's hormones slipped
quite easily back into the total control they had held the last
time he had seen Lillie Langtry, and as for the vampire, her Toreador
blood came out full force. The two stared at each other in motionless
disbelief for just a second and then they both moved. Mac moved
forward and Lillie threw herself at the man she'd never thought
to see again. The two caught each other in a fierce irrational
embrace in the middle of a very public club. They clung to each
other as if their Immortal lives depended on it, but eventually
the spell had to break.
Both brains clicked in at the
same moment and they drew apart.
"But you're not," the
two of them started at exactly the same time.
Neither of them chose to finish
the sentence.
Richie and Frank were sat next
to each other, both slightly shocked by the incident. The pair
had never seen the half of the two other people they knew, react
in quite the same way to anyone else.
"I'd say they know each
other," the Immortal of the pair of men said with half a
smile on his face.
"Yeah," Frank agreed
in only the way a total stranger could.
Lillie became aware of her clan
responsibilities once more and smiled awkwardly.
"Lets go upstairs,"
she said with a smile and firmly refused to look at any of the
faces watching at her, "we can talk."
A not quite decided glance was
sent in Richie's direction by the Highlander as the club took
the hint and conversation started again. Now the division in those
eyes the younger Immortal understood completely.
"Go, Mac," he said
with a knowing grin, "I can drink alone."
He'd seen the Highlander under
Amanda's feminine spell before, but even she didn't quite have
the same effect as Lillie. A woman's wiles were no competition
for those of a vampire and Mac was one hundred percent caught.
Of course, the Toreador was as much at the mercy of her urges
as the man in her clutches, and she had no idea that his Immortal
physiology was affecting her.
"Don't get into trouble,"
was all the normally level headed Highlander managed before the
pair fled the public arena.
Richie found that hysterically
funny, considering who was being led across the floor in a total
daze. The young Immortal turned back to his drink as his friend
disappeared still chuckling. He noted the fact that the man sitting
next to him was trying not to appear interested in the whole thing,
and was immediately intrigued.
Ordinarily, the blond man would
have set to scoping out the local night life, but today he had
other things on his mind. He was waiting for an Immortal, and
a young lady on his arm when his quarry walked in would not be
the easiest thing with which to cope. Talking to the guy that
seemed to be interesting would be far more suitable.
"Don't you hate it when
that happens," Richie said chattily as Frank tried to pretend
he was purveying the local talent.
The smile was friendly, the tone
amiable, but the look in the Immortal's eyes warned the cop that
all was not quite as it seemed. What he appeared to be looking
at was a teenager drinking illegally in a night club, who had
just lost his older companion. Frank already knew that this man
was older than he looked when the bartender had checked his ID,
something to which he had seemed resigned. There was also something
about the way he held himself, an air that would have told rivals
that this man knew how to take care of himself. The brown haired
man was almost certain he was about to enter a conversation with
a Kindred.
"Par for the course around
here," Frank returned with a smile of his own.
Well if he wanted to know about
them, he was going to have to talk to more than Lillie and Julian.
"You from out of town?"
he enquired conversationally.
"Yep," the younger
looking of the two replied, "just in the area looking for
a business associate. San Francisco is a nice city, and it's warmer
down here than up north."
"Nights are shorter though,"
Frank decided to see what sort of reaction he could get.
To his surprise the man sitting
next to him just grinned and cast an eye around the room.
"Well you can't have everything,"
he said lightly.
Somehow, Richie realised that
he had said just the right thing to keep this conversation rolling,
but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what. There was
an undertone to the discourse that he was trying to figure out.
It was not sexual, of that much he was sure, but this guy wanted
something from him and he didn't know what that was.
"Richie," he introduced
suddenly and stuck out his hand.
"Frank," the other
returned almost automatically.
"Well since I seem to have
lost the only person I know in this town," the Immortal said
amiably, "can I buy you a drink, Frank? Then you can tell
where all the local hot spots are."
If it hadn't of been the Haven
and a den of vampires, it would have just been two guys getting
talking over a beer. As it was, it turned into quite an interesting
evening. Frank couldn't say anything open unless he was totally
sure of whom he had engaged in conversation, and Richie had no
idea what the subtle hints were all about.
Lillie planted a kiss on Duncan's
smiling lips almost before the door of the office closed. She
hadn't felt a need like the one cursing through her body at that
moment for quite some time, and she almost let it consume her.
The fact that her desire was more than mirrored in the eyes of
her companion did not help matters to be rational.
"Oh, Duncan," she said
as his hands ran up the back of her dress, "it's been so
long. You should be an old man, but you're still so ... alive."
It was partly a question, but
the Highlander was too busy nibbling at Lillie's neck to be interested.
All logic had been thrown out the window the moment he'd lain
eyes on the beautiful Toreador, and he wasn't even aware enough
of this to notice. The Primogen of her clan, however, had not
reached that position without a little self control and she pushed
her companion away just for a moment.
"What are you?" she
asked breathlessly.
He smiled at that, and ran her
fingers down the side of her face.
"I could ask the same thing,"
he returned as if it were the most sensible question in the universe,
"but you're not going to tell me, are you. Does it matter,
Lillie?" he send back an enquiry of his own. "I'm here,
you're here, let's just forget the details."
It was the elemental Duncan MacLeod
talking, and at his core, he really didn't care how it was that
his lover of so long ago was still alive. She wasn't Immortal
so she wasn't a threat, and yet she had not whithered and died
as he had seen so many others do. For the brief moment in time,
he let himself be happy and ignore all other factors.
There was only so much self control
that Lillie could exert, and staring into the Highlander's deep
brown eyes she found out where her limit was. With a smile of
total abandon she pulled him close.
"You're right," she
said seductively, "just don't tell my friends."
Several of his shirt buttons
were not up to the test of the Toreador's rather fast fingers.
Just about then, Lillie couldn't have cared if the Prince himself
was about to walk in, she had thoughts only for getting into Duncan's
trousers.
The trail of clothes stretched
from close to the door, half way across the room, at which point
the pair had given up trying to get any further and had opted
for the sheepskin rug on the floor. Mac had noted on his last
encounter with her, that Ms Langtry was a strong woman, but he
hadn't realised quite how strong until she flipped him onto the
rug and straddled him.
"You do things to me, I
can't explain," she said with a feral smile. "I like
that."
"Always happy to oblige,"
was the quick response, but he soon lost the ability to speak
as Lillie bent forward and started nibbling his torso.
Her nails made little red streaks
down his sides, and he couldn't help but respond. This was going
to be an experience he wasn't going to forget for a very
long time.
"Remember last time?"
she enquired with a mischievous glint in her eye, and pulled away
slightly.
"How could I forget?"
was the honest reply, and a large smile filled the Highlander's
features.
Amanda had her interesting quirks,
and so did Lillie. The couple had explored many of them last time
Duncan had been with her, but there was one that stuck in his
mind particularly. Staring into her face he knew that they had
the same idea in mind, and it was play time.
End
of Part 1
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