Well, they could, but they probably wouldn’t threaten him with sharp implements.  At least not seriously.  Well, probably not.

The door opened, and instead of a disgruntled Immortal holding a pointy object, it was a woman with big sleepy eyes and long, dark, thoroughly mussed hair.  Shit.  Joe had hoped that MacLeod’s world-class libido would have given way to common sense, at least when it came to someone as potentially deadly as the Witchblade Wielder.  But evidently not. 

“Well, hel--lo,” he smiled at the lovely lady.  At least being Duncan MacLeod’s Watcher was never boring.

“Yeah?” she said, pushing her hair back from her face.  The silver bracelet entwined around her wrist caught Joe's attention and he had to force his eyes away.

“Sorry if I interrupted anything important,” he said, “But is MacLeod decent?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she answered, responding to his smile with a wry twist of her full mouth.

Well, well, well.  That was interesting.  Surely it wasn't Methos who had taken Sara Pezzini to his bed.  Or was it?  There was a rustle behind her and she looked back into the room, looked again at Joe, raising an expressive eyebrow and tilting her head as she did, then swung open the door.

MacLeod was standing in a far doorway, tying a hotel robe over dark silk pajama bottoms.

“Joe? What the hell are you doing here?” Mac asked, his voice still rough with sleep. 

The woman gestured for Joe to enter the room.  “I guess it’s nice to know not everyone you know is out to kill you,” she said to MacLeod in a tone both amused and ironic.  Joe was having a hard time keeping his eyes off her face as it shifted like quicksilver through a remarkable array of expressions.  Fascinating.  And the written reports and photographs he had seen just didn’t do her justice.  She was breathtaking, and with a presence that rivaled MacLeod's.

Mac cocked a desultory eyebrow at Sara, but didn’t respond to the implied insult.  Instead, he went to a phone, dialed room service and ordered up some breakfast, including two large pots of coffee.

“Sit, Joe.” He gestured to a chair, then reached to fold up a blanket that had been wadded up on the couch, where an extra pillow helped to explain where the young lady had spent the night.  Joe was more relieved than he expected.  Mac had been somewhat reticent about any serious emotional involvements since the death of his long-time love, Tessa Noel, and since Connor MacLeod’s suicide on Mac’s blade over a year ago, romantic entanglements had been non-existent.  For someone whose sexual exploits over the centuries had become the stuff of legend, it had marked a dramatic change in his lifestyle and outlook.

“You look worn out, Joe.  Did you take the redeye?” Mac sighed, sitting heavily on the couch and running his hands through his sleep-tousled hair, then he smiled tiredly.  “Were you really that worried about a challenge?  I may be avoiding fights these days, but I keep in shape, and after Kell…,” He scrubbed his face with a frown, looking at least as worn out as he claimed Joe appeared.  “Oh. Sara Pezzini, Joe Dawson,” he added, making belated introductions.

“Miss Pezzini,” Joe reached out a hand.  Once he sat, it would be a while before he was up again, and he always liked to meet a beautiful woman on his feet.

“Dawson,” she acknowledged, taking his hand with a firm, hard grip. 

He felt her watch him as he maneuvered to a chair, levered his weight with his cane and folded his artificial legs underneath him, sitting with a heavy thump.  He was resigned to the curious stares but could never really get used to them, especially not from someone as lovely as Sara Pezzini.

“I wasn’t that worried about Singh, Mac.  I came because I knew there might be…complications,” Joe replied, sending MacLeod a look he hoped conveyed that he needed to know just how aware Pezzini was of what was going on.

“It’s all right, Joe.  Miss Pezzini got an eyeful last night.”

“Yes, she did,” Sara remarked dryly, and sank down onto the other end of the couch.  “So, am I the only one who doesn’t know about this ‘other’ race that goes around threatening each other with swords and occasionally rising from the dead?” she asked, looking at MacLeod with an expression that brooked no obfuscation.  Then her gaze turned back to Joe.  “And not to be rude or anything, Dawson, but isn’t sword fighting a little tricky with artificial legs?  Or are those going to grow back after a while?”  Her questioning smile softened the harsh words a little, but Joe still took in a slightly shocked breath at her audacity.

But his surprise turned into a laugh when Mac looked like he had just accidentally swallowed a fly.  It was not that easy to startle Duncan MacLeod  “No, darlin’,” Joe answered with a grin.  “They aren’t going to grow back, and if anybody comes at me with a sword, I’ll just crack their head with my cane and let Mac here take care of ‘em.”  Then he chuckled some more as Mac’s mouth gradually twitched into a reluctant smile.

“Joe isn’t like Adam or me, Sara.  He’s just a friend,” Mac insisted.  “And he knows because…damn,” he sighed again, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes.  “I was hoping Adam had explained enough last night so we wouldn’t have to go into this.”

“Pierson didn’t actually explain a hell of a lot,” Sara replied, with a look of annoyed frustration.  “I didn’t realize it until this morning, but the man is quite good at talking a lot and saying very little.”

Mac looked over at Joe with a raised eyebrow, and Joe had to chuckle again.  “Yeah, well, that’s our boy,” he had to agree.

“Boy?” Sara asked with a short laugh.  “I don’t know what he is, but he is no boy.” She drilled MacLeod with a piercing gaze.  “He just said you were long-lived, but never exactly said how that works.  He even….” she looked down at her bracelet and her mouth shut with a snap, leaving Joe with the impression that something had happened involving the Witchblade.  But of course Pezzini would not talk about that in front of someone who allegedly didn’t know of its existence.  “I know he's older than he looks, and, by implication, so are you, MacLeod.  I want to….” Her eyes suddenly widened.  “Shit!” she whispered, and jumped up and looked around the room, spying and grabbing her leather jacket from the floor near the door.  She rummaged in her pockets while Mac looked at Joe and shrugged.  Finally, she yanked a piece of paper out and carefully unfolded it, moving to the window to examine it in daylight.

She looked up.  “It isn’t your uncle, is it?” she asked softly, crossing the room and handing Mac the paper.  “It’s you.  That makes you, what, a hundred years old, for God’s sake?” 

Mac took the paper and looked at it for a moment, frowning.  “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

“I’m a detective,” she answered with a smug smile.  “It’s my job to find things out about people.”

Mac leaned across and handed the paper to Joe.  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Mac replied.

“I don’t need to answer your question,” Sara answered softly, leaning forward, putting her hands on the couch on either side of MacLeod's head so their faces were only inches apart.  Joe was fascinated.  He couldn't remember seeing any woman ever attempt to physically intimidate MacLeod.  “I want an answer to my question.  Is that you, or isn’t it?”

Mac leaned back with a sigh and a nod of his head.  “Yes, Sara.  That is me, in Berlin, in 1942, dancing with Elizabeth Bronte.”

Joe carefully folded the picture and slipped it into his coat pocket.  He had seen similar photos before, but this one would go into the archives, along with whatever report he wrote up for this particular encounter, which was going to create quite a stir back at Paris Headquarters.

Sara pushed herself upright and paced in front of the windows, her eyes wide and unfocused.  Finally she stopped and put one palm to her forehead, as though she was trying to quell whatever turmoil her thoughts were in by sheer physical force.  “And what about those criminals you knew?  Were they…like you and Pierson?” she asked.  “Did you kill them?”

“What criminals?”

Sara was pacing again, gesturing with her hands.  “Hyde, Kuyler, St. Cloud…”

“Oh.  They were….” Mac shifted uncomfortably.  “They were a danger to…people, and yes, I challenged them.  And I won.”

“That’s it?” Sara demanded.  “'I challenged them and I won?'” she repeated flippantly.  “And exactly how did you do that, MacLeod?  Because it looked to me like you won last night, but then the guy just got up and walked away, pretty pissed off, but otherwise right as rain, as far as I could tell.”

Mac groaned, leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  Joe could well imagine he was internally cursing Methos ten ways from Sunday for not warning him that he had left so many unanswered questions with a woman who appeared to be just as stubborn and bullheaded as the famously stubborn and bullheaded Highlander.

Just then a knock on the door sounded, along with a call of “Room Service!”  Mac looked relieved at the interruption, and pushed himself to his feet to let the waiter in.  A moment later, he was pouring coffee for everyone and bringing Joe a plate of fruit and croissants, playing the gracious host while Sara gulped down a cup of black coffee and glowered at them both.

“Is that coffee I smell?” a sleep-fogged voice asked, and Methos appeared in another doorway, running his fingers through his short-cropped hair, wrapped in his own hotel robe, but with just hairy legs and bare feet showing below.

“Ah, the prince awakens,” Mac said, with a sardonic smile.  “Nice of you to join us.”

“Mmm,” Methos murmured, wandering over to the breakfast cart and poking around at the selection until he found an English muffin toasted to his satisfaction.  “Given that I got exactly three hours sleep last night, I thought I was doing well to get up any time before noon.”  He yawned hugely, poured himself a cup of coffee with his free hand, passed the cup under his ample nose for a long sniff, then sipped, closing his eyes in pleasure.  “Ahh, that’s better.  Always travel with MacLeod, Joseph,” he advised his Watcher friend.  “The amenities are almost worth it.”

“And Adam is always such a gracious guest,” Mac observed wryly, watching Methos with a tolerant smile.  He sat down again, nursing his coffee.  “You are just in time to explain to Sara all the questions you left unanswered last night.”

Methos just munched on his muffin, sipped his coffee and shuffled over to sit at the desk against the far wall.  “I answered all the important questions,” he finally announced around a mouthful of bread, then waved a muffin-filled hand.  “I figured you could handle the rest.”  To which statement all three of the room’s other occupants responded with various derisive noises. 

Jake McCartey pretended to be busy reviewing reports and going through files, but every few minutes he would glance up to glimpse through the open blinds on the windows of Captain Bruno Dante’s office.  Twice he caught Dante staring pointedly at Sara’s empty chair, and finally the precinct captain caught his eye and crooked his finger at him.  With an internal groan, Jake stood and sauntered slowly to the Cap’s door. 

“Where’s your partner, McCartey?” Dante asked, his semi-bald head shining in the glare of the unflattering overhead fluorescent lights.  “She decide to spend the morning at Bloomingdales?”

Jake made himself give the captain a half-smile.  The man belonged in a museum somewhere, but then most police precincts were out-of-date bastions of unrepentant male chauvinism.  “She probably got caught in traffic, Cap.  I’m sure she’ll be in shortly.”

“Yeah?  I’m not.”  Bruno handed him a pink telephone message slip.  “While you’re waiting on Princess Pezzini, see if you can track down anything on the report of a killing last night near the Turtle Pond in Central Park.  No body was found but there was a report of some guy in a turban stabbed by at least two others.  Need to know the identity of the towel-head.”

McCartey looked at the message, but it contained no return number, no real information at all.  “Uh, Cap, if there was no body, and the call was anonymous, why are we…?”

Dante stopped his questioning with a small, glacial smile.  “Because I said so?”

Jake let a beat of silence go by as he absorbed the captain’s cold stare.  “Sure, Cap.  Whatever you say.”

Dante's smile softened a bit, but still didn’t reach his eyes.  “That’s my boy,” he assured him.  “I always knew you would figure out how to get along around here.  And close the door on your way out.”

Dante pulled his cell phone out of his coat pocket and dialed.  After a moment, he turned towards his outside window, and said softly, “I’ve got someone on it, and I’ll report back as soon as I have anything.”

He snapped the phone shut and tucked it back into his pocket.  It irked him to be at Irons' beck and call, but the man had been there since his earliest days as a rookie, making sure he met the right people, was in the right place at the right time.  Important busts practically fell into his lap, and promotions came quickly.  At each critical juncture, Irons let it be known that he was responsible.

All the man required was absolute loyalty and the occasional favor.  That was okay, so long as it didn’t interfere with Bruno’s own reach for power, for control of his squad and of his streets.  But this protection of Sara Pezzini was a pain in the ass.  She was looking far too closely at some of the ways he had gained control of the local criminal elements, including this recent “murder” of a pimp who had objected to keeping the wheels of commerce greased by paying a minor gratuity to the local constabulary. 

And Pezzini was sniffing around the investigation as though she knew it was more than just one low-life killing another.  Self-righteous bitch.  In order to stop them, sometimes you had to act like them, even become them, and if it profited himself and a few of his most trusted men, who was she to get in their way?

And Irons knew that, knew that Sara was a threat to Dante's operation, but still he kept that Nottingham weirdo trailing around, protecting her.  Dante had been trying to figure Irons out for almost twenty years, and so far he hadn’t even come close.

Jake stared at the useless piece of paper in his hand.  Damn Sara for leaving that enigmatic voicemail message that she would be delayed.  Who knew what kind of trouble she had gotten herself into?  And now he was supposed to go wander around in Central Park, asking people if they’d seen a guy in a turban get stabbed in the middle of the night last night?  That was going to be a really great use of his time.

With a low growl, he grabbed his phone and dialed Sara’s number…and got her answering machine.  He hung up, drumming his fingers on the desk, his mind working in circles.  Then, more hesitantly, he dialed *69 to get the number of the last caller – when Sara left her message.

“Sherry Netherlands Hotel, how may I direct your call?” a friendly voice asked.

“Uh….” Jake’s mind went blank, then leapt ahead to guess who Sara knew who just might be staying at a fancy hotel.  She wouldn’t, would she? 

“Sir?  How may I direct your call?” the voice became a little impatient.

“Duncan MacLeod, please,” he finally managed to say.

There were a few clicks and beeps on the line.  He quickly hung up before the call went through, then sat back in his chair, staring blankly at the phone.

Half an hour later, he was standing in front of the door of an upper level suite of one of New York’s more posh hotels, his palms damp with nervous sweat.  Sara was either in trouble, or…not, and if not, she would probably kill him for this.  On the other hand, it would certainly teach her to keep him in the loop when she went after characters like MacLeod.

He knocked.  The murmur of low voices inside quieted, and the door opened.  Jake found himself straightening his spine, broadening his shoulders.  Somehow MacLeod seemed larger and more intimidating in person than he had in the photos Jake had seen.

“Yes?” the man said with a neutral smile, but accompanied with hard look that belied the minor indignity of tousled hair and bathrobe.

Jake pulled his wallet out from his back pocket and flipped it open to show his badge.  “Detective Jake McCartey, NYPD.  I’m here to….” The door was jerked open the rest of the way, and Sara glared at him.

 “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she growled at him.

“My job!” Jake snapped. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Since when is your job following me around like some kind of stalker, McCartey?”

“Since you decided you were personally going to….” Jake glanced up at MacLeod, who was leaning against the doorframe, watching the two of them with undisguised fascination.  “Excuse us?” he said pointedly to MacLeod.

“Tell you what,” MacLeod said with a gracious smile.  “You and Miss Pezzini obviously have important things to discuss.”  He walked over towards the windows and picked Sara’s jacket up off the floor.  McCartey spotted two other figures in the large suite, but the glimpse was too fast to get much of an impression.  MacLeod brought the jacket over and held it up for Sara to put on.

“MacLeod, there are some questions you still haven’t answered,” Sara snapped.

Uh, oh.  It would seem that Jake’s timing had been less than perfect.

“And some that you haven’t answered, as well, Miss Pezzini.  Perhaps we can do lunch sometime and discuss them,” MacLeod said with a smooth smile as he slipped Sara’s jacket over her shoulders, moving her further out the door in the process.  “In the meantime, I’m sure you and Detective…McCartey is it?”  Jake nodded numbly.  “In the meantime, you and Detective McCartey obviously have important police business to take care of.  Nice to meet you, Detective,” MacLeod smiled, and shut the door, leaving Jake and Sara standing in the hallway.

If looks could kill, Jake would have been dismembered, flayed, and his head stuck on a pike as a lesson to the masses.  Sara turned on her heel and was halfway to the elevators before Jake caught up to her.

“Sara, I’m sorry, but…”

“Yeah, sorry really helps, McCartey.  I was just on the verge of getting some answers out of the man and you bumble in, mucking everything up.  I don’t know when I’ll ever get another chance to question those three.”

“Three?”

Sara leaned on the elevator button, closed her eyes and shook her head.  “It’s too complicated to try to explain.”

“Now, wait just a minute, Pez!  You have me do research on this guy that shows a very suspicious background, then you tell me to back off.  Now you end up obviously spending the night in his hotel room, and then accuse me of interfering in your investigation when I show up to find out what the hell my partner is doing.  And now it’s too complicated to explain?  You have to do better than that, Pezzini.”  The elevator arrived and the two of them were tensely silent as they rode down over thirty floors with various guests and bellhops.

Mac closed the door with a sigh of relief, and found Methos and Joe watching him with bemused smiles.

“If you think that’s going to get rid of Sara Pezzini, MacLeod, I fear you are in for a disappointment,” Methos remarked.  “She is almost as stubborn as you are.”

“God forbid,” Joe said, almost under his breath.

Mac frowned at his two friends, and retrieved his coffee, sitting with a sigh.  “Well, I didn’t see either of you coming up with any better ideas.  At least I bought us a little time.  And you never said what the hell you were doing here, Joe.  Something about complications?"  Mac eyed his two friends closely, then shook his head with a frown and put his cup down a little too hard, almost sloshing its contents.  "That call at dinner last night was you, wasn't it?  Let me guess.  Talking about Sara Pezzini and her appearance yesterday in the lobby while Mr. Singh and I had our little tete a tete?"

Methos and Joe looked at each other blandly, but Mac could read enough in their expressions to know the truth.  “Lord save me from protective ‘friends’,” he grumbled. 

“Wasn’t my idea to keep it from you, Mac,” Joe insisted, giving Methos a meaningful glare.  “You had your phone turned off so all I got was Mr. Smart Mouth here.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask exactly how the Watchers knew about Sara Pezzini,” Methos inserted quickly, in an obvious change of subject.

Joe silently sipped his coffee, avoiding the curious stares of his two Immortal companions.

“Well?” Mac persisted.

“Well, what?” Joe responded.

“How and what do the Watchers know about Pezzini?”

Joe shrugged.  “We’ve been around for a long time.”

“Oh, come on, Joe!” Mac insisted.  “You can’t first call to warn me, then unexpectedly show up at my doorstep, then disclaim the importance of what and who she is.”

“I’m not disclaiming anything,” Joe snapped.

“Then let me guess,” Methos inserted, leaning back in his chair, stretching his legs out and wiggling his toes as he smiled and cast his eyes to the ceiling.  “Over the centuries, the Watchers discovered an odd phenomenon, in that whoever was seen wearing a particular piece of jewelry ended up the focus of all kinds of strange events.  Some clever person decided to assign a Watcher directly to whoever owned and used that bracelet, and voila!  Its fate is followed through the centuries.”

Joe sipped his coffee in studied silence.

“So,” Mac continued Methos’ speculations.  “The Witchblade has a Watcher, and when our paths crossed, you were notified, and you called Methos when you couldn’t reach me,” he glared at the man in question, “and he decided to ‘protect’ me by keeping me in the dark.  And as a result, we had a mortal nearly killed, and Sara witnessed one of us miraculously healing.  Great planning, Methos.”

“I was going to distract Pezzini, since I knew warning her off would do no good,” Methos tried to explain airily.  “It would have worked, too, if your friend Nottingham hadn’t shown up.”

“How is Nottingham, by the way?” asked Joe.  “My guys said he was cut up pretty badly.”

“Oh, you know who he is, too?” Mac finally surged to his feet to pace in front of the windows.  “Does he have a Watcher as well?  Hell, why don't you just put a Watcher on every person I meet on the streets while you're at it?  It’d be great for the unemployment rate.”

“Calm down, Mac,” Methos said soothingly.  “It's probably not about you at all.  If the Watchers have been tracking the Witchblade for centuries, then they obviously know that Irons has a connection with it, and Nottingham is Irons’ lapdog.”

“He is not!" Mac insisted.  "He…he has a mind of his own and a will of his own.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Mac,” Joe inserted into the odd silence and the mysterious look of angry tension that passed between the two Immortals.  “My guy said you took him to a loft in the Village to patch him up.”

Methos snorted, but quickly schooled his features when Mac glared at him.  Then Mac crossed his arms and turned away, looking out the window.  “He’s okay,” Mac insisted.  He felt irrationally protective of Nottingham’s privacy, especially from the Watchers, who were such an unwelcome intrusion into his own life, no matter his personal friendship with Dawson.  But he could feel the tension behind him, and knew Joe’s inveterate curiosity was unlikely to allow the subject to drop.  Sure enough, he heard Joe’s snort of disbelief.

“Evidently Nottingham has an ability to heal that is quite remarkable,” Methos provided softly.

“He’s one of you guys?!” Joe sat forward with a start.

Mac sighed tiredly.  “No.”  He knew that talking about this was inevitable, but he didn’t have to like it.  “But he’s faster, stronger, more intuitive than any mortal fighter I’ve ever seen.  And he heals at twice the normal rate.”

“Whoa,” Joe breathed.  “I knew Irons had done some weird shit, but this confirms some things we had long suspected.”

“All right, Joe,” Mac moved back to the couch and sat, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees.  “Out with it.  Exactly what do you guys know about Irons and Nottingham and their connection to the Witchblade?”

Joe swallowed and scratched his beard tiredly, thinking.  While he owed his allegiance to the Watchers and had kept their secrets all his life, the direct interaction between the Wielder and Immortals – especially these two Immortals – was fraught with unknown and potentially dire consequences. 

And his knowledge was somewhat limited to what the Tribunal felt he needed to know, so it could easily be full of critical holes.  A Watcher was apprised of the existence of the Witchblade only if the Wielder appeared to have come into contact with an Immortal in his or her territory.  Consequently, there had been whole generations of Watchers that had never even known of the Witchblade’s existence.

But this last century the Witchblade had become active once more, and Joe had learned of its existence and history when he had been assigned to Duncan MacLeod.  Each Watcher’s first task was to read all of his Immortal’s existing Chronicles.  When he had discovered one portion of MacLeod’s Chronicles from the 1940’s had been marked “Confidential,” he probed further, and after stubbornly taking his request all the way to the Tribunal, had eventually been shown at least some of the more recent Witchblade Chronicles.

But both MacLeod and Methos obviously already knew of the Witchblade’s existence.  Not only might Joe learn more about the Witchblade if he shared his own information, his friends needed to hear more than a cautionary ‘be careful’ if they got drawn into Kenneth Irons’ malevolent orbit.

He took a long breath and sat back.

“Irons sought out Elizabeth Bronte right after the war.  He either already knew about the Witchblade, or she told him about it, because it has since seemed to become the focus of his life.  He was rich and handsome and swept Bronte off her feet, and the two of them became inseparable.  The Chronicles say he pressured her to let him wear the Blade, but she refused.  Then…” he looked up at MacLeod.  “Mac, I’m sorry.  You may not want to hear this.  I know you and Elizabeth Bronte were….” He shrugged uncomfortably.

“It’s okay, Joe,” Mac said sadly.  “It was a long time ago.”

“Anyway, the two of them were exploring some caves in Botswana when Bronte was caught in an earth slide and killed.  Irons was frantic, trying to dig her out, but….” Joe shook his head in disgust.  “He was really more concerned about getting the Blade.  It wouldn’t leave her wrist even in death and finally he had to…cut it off.”  He shuddered at the thought, but Mac’s lips just tightened a little. 

“The first thing he did was to put it on,” Joe continued, but neither Mac nor Methos looked particularly surprised.  “You knew that?”

“He has a telltale mark on his hand,” Methos said.  “And there’s a…feel about him.  I can’t really describe it, but I figured it was because he had tried to wear the Witchblade at some point.”

“Yeah,” Joe’s mouth twisted, remembering the gruesome details of the Chronicle that had recorded Irons’ reaction to wearing the Blade.  “Well, he found out the hard way that the Blade chooses who wears it, not the other way around.  Even so, all he wanted to do was to find another Wielder, hopefully this time one he could completely control.”

“That would make Irons at least 80 or 90 years old,” Mac observed.

Joe nodded.  “We speculate that even his brief contact with the Blade slowed his aging, as it does with the Wielder, but even so, with just that one contact, he should have started to show some evidence of age by now.”  Joe shook his head.  “The best we can guess is that he has found some way of extending his life using the preserved remains of Elizabeth Bronte’s body, which he had put on ice and shipped back to the states.  We do know his laboratories are some of the most advanced in the world, and their work is top secret.  We also suspect that he experimented with cloning decades before anyone else, and that Nottingham might be a product of that research.”

“Ian is a clone?” Mac asked sharply.

“We’re not sure.” Joe shrugged.  “But he was born and raised in the environment of Irons’ research laboratories, and intensively trained from birth to enhance his fighting skills.  Completely privately tutored, he’s never had any kind of life outside of Irons’ direct control and has been at Irons’ side for years, doing his bidding.”

Mac looked a little pale, and stood, going to the window and staring out again as Joe wound up his story.

“I can’t say it surprises me that he heals more quickly than normal, given he was probably created with deliberately manipulated DNA.  And I sure as hell wouldn’t trust him.  He’s a killer on command, Mac.  Irons has used him to eliminate his competition, to do all of his dirty work.  He’s Irons’ man, one hundred percent,” Joe stated flatly.

“Thank you, Joe,” Methos said, and Joe caught his eye and smiled as the old Immortal nodded his head in acknowledgement of the trust the Watcher had shown in sharing so much information.  “Mac, Joe is right.  You need to be careful around Nottingham.  As a matter of fact,” he put down his coffee cup and brushed crumbs out of his lap.  “I think it would be best if we headed back to England as soon as possible.”

“A good idea,” Mac said flatly.  “You can probably change your ticket to a flight that leaves tonight.”

“I believe I said “we”, MacLeod,” Methos replied impatiently.

Mac turned away from the window, his arms crossed and his jaw set in that stubborn square that Joe knew all too well.  “I have some unfinished business here.  I’ll come as soon as I’ve dealt with it.”

Methos stood and Joe automatically went very still.  When two Immortals got hostile, it was best for Watchers to disappear.

“You mean Singh?” Methos snapped.  “Or are you still thinking you can rescue Nottingham from Irons’ evil clutches?” he sneered.  “The man is an assassin, a killer without conscience and with loyalty only to Irons.”

“You don’t know him, Methos,” Mac replied, his voice low and tense.  “He wants to free himself, he’s just not sure he can do it.  He just needs someone to believe in him, so he can believe in himself.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mac, you are not Mother Teresa!  You do not have to rescue every lost soul that crosses your path.  Ian Nottingham is a…a construct…a thing, not even really human!”

“Oh?” Mac crossed the room until he and Methos were only inches apart.  "And because he’s not entirely human, he can’t change, can’t leave behind an ugly past and become something different?  Something better?"  Mac asked quietly.  “What does that say about me, Methos?” he added coldly.  “What does that say about you?”

The silence in the room was charged, and Joe could feel the hairs on the backs of his arms rise.

“Touché,” Methos finally broke the crystalline quiet, and his mobile lips twisted in a wry smile.

Jake’s complaints about being kept in the dark fell on deaf ears as Sara just kept walking at a speed that required him to almost trot beside her.  But when he told Sara about the unexpected assignment Dante had given him, she suddenly stopped, turned and looked at him like he had grown horns.  She demanded to look at the paper Dante provided, but wadded it up in irritation when it provided no useful information.  Jake was left standing on the street corner at 61st and Fifth Avenue, pedestrian traffic swarming around them, watching her stare off into space, her lips pursed in deep thought.

This was getting ridiculous, Jake decided, and it was time for desperate measures.  “Sara?” he finally prompted.

“Yeah,” she answered distractedly.

“I'm going to ask for reassignment to a different partner,” he stated.

It took a second, but finally she turned her head towards him, her eyes large, her dark eyebrows furrowed.  “What did you say?”

“I said I'm going to ask for assignment to someone else.  You’re keeping important information from me, operating independently and without backup in dangerous situations.  That’s not how I work.”

“Not how you work?” Her mouth twisted in a half smile.  “You’re a rookie, McCartey.  You work however I tell you to work.”

“No.  I may have less experience on the streets than you do, but I know that this is not how partners are supposed to deal with each other.”  Jake’s mouth was dry with nervousness.  His bluff could easily backfire on him.

Sara sighed and shook her head, running her fingers through her long hair.  “Yeah,” she whispered.  “I gotta give you that, Jake.  It’s just that there are things I can’t tell you, things you wouldn’t believe even if I did,” she almost laughed, but it was a sad sound, and her shoulders slumped as though the weight of the world had settled there.

“Try me,” Jake insisted, stepping closer.  He was suddenly struck by how much he towered over her.  Sara Pezzini had never seemed the slightest bit frail, but his urge to protect her was almost overwhelming.

She turned her head, looking up into his eyes, studying him closely and he made himself hold her intense gaze.  Finally, she took his arm and pulled him close to the wall of the nearest building, out of the way of passersby.

“Can I trust you, Jake McCartey?  With my life?  With even more than my life?” she asked softly.

“Yes, Sara,” he said in the same tone.

She closed her eyes and shook her head and he didn’t know whether she believed him or not.  “The best thing for you to do, then, is to find the man Dante is looking for, but if you do, don’t tell the Captain.  Tell me, and no one else,” she insisted.

“But Sara, why…?”

“Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer, Jake,” she snapped.  “I don’t want to lie to you.  Not any more, but there are things about this whole mess that don’t make any sense, even to me, and I couldn’t possibly explain them to you.”

“But what about MacLeod?  Who is he after?  You spent the night in his hotel room, you must have learned something.  Is he an assassin?  An agent?  And who was in there with him?”

“Stop!” Sara held up her hand.  “MacLeod isn’t anything you think he is.  Frankly, I’m not sure exactly what he is, but if he is after anyone, it may have something to do with the man the Captain wants you to identify.  The question is, why is Dante interested?”

“Maybe it isn’t Dante, but someone who is giving him orders,” Jake suggested, and Sara looked up at him speculatively, and nodded.

“I guess you aren’t just a surfer boy after all,” she said, a real smile finally warming her face.  “The last name of the guy in the park is Singh.  Yeah, I know that’s probably not a big help, but he’s about 6 feet, short beard and mustache, well dressed, probably staying at a hotel within a 10-block radius of the Sherry Netherlands.  And he carries a scimitar around in his coat, and he knows how to use it, so be careful.”  She met Jake’s questioning look with one of her own that said, ‘don’t ask,’ so he kept his mouth shut as he jotted in his notebook.  If she was going to start trusting him even with small bits of information, then he would take it and not complain – at least not yet.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Me?” she looked surprised at the question, and pushed her hair out of her eyes again.  “I’m going to do a little historical research.”  She swirled and sauntered off with that long stride of hers that ate up the distance, turned the corner, and was gone.

Ian Nottingham slipped into a shadowed doorway, watching Sara walk away from Detective McCartey.  His mind was in more turmoil than he could ever recall.  He had spent most of his life with his purpose clear, his goals firmly understood, his priorities unquestioningly set by Kenneth Irons, who had guided every aspect of his life from the moment of his birth.

But ever since he had started watching Sara Pezzini, things had started to change.  At first it had been just little things.  His instructions were to keep Sara alive, to occasionally arrange for her to come to Irons, but to otherwise stay out of sight.  But he had made a few split second decisions that had eroded the distance between himself and the Wielder and had consistently left little things out of his reports to Irons in the process.  He had stepped in to warn her of impending danger more than once, and even found himself giving her veiled warnings about Kenneth Irons. 

He had never intended that things go as far as they had, but once he had allowed himself to see that Irons' actions might not always be in Sara's best interests, his view of the man who had been his father, his teacher, his lover, his employer, his…creator, slowly began to shift and change, as though he was viewing his entire life through a slowly turning kaleidoscope, giving new and completely altered meanings to it.

For Sara was not just the Wielder.  She was part of him.  Almost like family, formed of the same genetic patterns.  And she was strong, and caring, and more courageous than anyone Ian had ever known.  So to whom did Ian owe his greatest loyalty?  It had been gradually eating away at him, at his confidence, at his very identity, and then he met Duncan MacLeod.

A warrior, like himself.  Someone who did not always operate within the rules set by man to protect himself from barbarism.  A man who had found the strength to let his own wisdom and conscience guide his actions.  This was what Ian Nottingham had always wanted, who he had always wanted to be. 

And then he had tracked Sara to MacLeod’s hotel room, and a few discrete inquiries had made it clear that she had spent the night there.  So MacLeod had gone directly from Ian’s, only to take Sara to his bed?  Or perhaps she had been with Pierson?  No, that seemed less likely.  Ian had seen the way Sara looked at MacLeod that first night at the reception.

Ian followed Sara as she headed uptown, analyzing the unfamiliar and uncomfortable feelings that made his chest hurt and his fists clench.  Jealousy?  Could that be what this was?  But of whom? 

He stopped short and shook himself, shuddering off the almost painful distress that crept across his shoulders.  He couldn't function effectively like this.  He could not get emotionally involved.  Not with either of them.  Emotional entanglements were a distraction to the goals Irons had set.  Irons was the one who kept things clear and understandable.   He was the master and Ian the servant.  It was the way things had always been, and the way they would always be.

Ian took a deep breath and stepped out again, hurrying to catch up to Sara. 

Sara had been sitting at a research terminal at the New York Public Library for over three hours and her eyes were burning with fatigue.  A headache was throbbing behind her eyes, and she knew she couldn't keep this up much longer.  So far, she had found dozens of historical references to various Duncan MacLeods, both in the United States and Europe, but they led nowhere.

"Who the hell are you?" Sara whispered to herself tiredly.  It was more than just curiosity driving her.  The Witchblade was being surprisingly unforthcoming when it came to MacLeod, even though it seemed to come alive in his proximity, prompting all kinds of ridiculously inappropriate reactions on Sara's part and making her feel like a sex-starved schoolgirl.  As for the Blade's usual intuitive insights, except for that one macabre glimpse of…something, when she first met Pierson, there had been nothing, as though the bracelet were being deliberately silent.

And that in itself was troubling.  Was Pierson right?  Did the Witchblade simply choose not to interact with…whatever Pierson and MacLeod were?  And who was Joe Dawson and how did he know about them?

She rubbed absently at her temple as she clicked on a random newspaper archives link, hoping to trace the name of Duncan MacLeod back further in time than his appearance might suggest.  Long lived?  The picture of him in 1939 would put him at almost 100 years old.  The thought still made her shiver. 

Unfortunately, Duncan MacLeod was not a terribly uncommon name, and when she looked in the various Scottish family archives, she saw the name a number of times, but found nothing to link any of those records to the man she had met only two days before.  She did find a Duncan MacLeod who published a paper in the U.S. Northwest Territories in the years after the Gold Rush, but that seemed awfully far-fetched. 

This was going nowhere.  She sat back with a sigh, and closed her eyes, letting them rest for a moment.

Ian sat slumped behind a terminal several rows behind Sara Pezzini.  It appeared she was trying to see if MacLeod was significantly older than he appeared, but she didn’t seem to be finding any substantive information, much less any real proof. 

Given Kenneth Irons’ obsessive, and largely successful efforts to extend his own life and youthful appearance, and having been exposed to the powers of the Witchblade from an early age, Ian had long ago recognized that there were phenomena in the world that defied any attempt at rational, scientific explanations – phenomena like instantly healing from a serious wound, or being faster and more expertly trained in a larger variety of self-defense forms than one lifetime might rationally encompass.  Perhaps Sara was still thinking too conservatively. 

Ian stared at his own terminal for a moment, then signed on to the internet.

A touch on her shoulder brought Sara awake with a startled jerk.

"I'm sorry miss, but you had fallen asleep, and there are others waiting to use these terminals."

Sara smiled apologetically at the teenager who probably had little to do all day except police the street people who came into the library to get out of the weather and find a little peace and quiet.

"Sorry," she whispered.  "I think I'm pretty much done anyway."

She turned to sign-off of her terminal, and froze.  It was not the same display that had been there before, and she quickly glanced around the room, but saw only the usual library patrons and staff.  She turned back to the screen, examining an image of a painting.  The portrait was not particularly well done, the colors too strident, the composition amateurish, but there was no question about the subject.  The hair was longer, brushing his shoulders in dark waves, but the eyes were strikingly familiar, as well as a soft, smiling mouth.  Sara leaned forward, touching the screen as though she might be able to feel the pattern of the deep blue damask coat, or the frothy lace at his throat.

She clicked back one link, and found herself in an archive listing in French.  She wrote down the words in the link to the painting so she could have it translated, but her hand paused at the date at the end.  1793. 

She sat back, staring blankly into space, feeling like all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room.

Ian laid the print of the picture on Irons' desk and stepped back.  His mentor picked it up and studied it, then leaned forward, holding the paper closer to the light.  "Is this who I think it is?" Irons asked.

"I believe so," Ian answered.  “It is a portrait by a minor French artist sponsored by the LeMartin family.  It was donated to a small museum in Monte Carlo a few years ago.  Its provenance is not in doubt, and the year the painting was completed is in the corner.”

It was most unusual to see pink in Irons' cheeks, but the pale skin was flushed with color and his eyes were bright with eagerness as he stood and came around the desk, and in a totally uncharacteristic gesture, hugged Ian.  Ian froze in surprise, but after a second found himself leaning into Irons' shoulder, breathing in his subtle, expensive cologne.

"This may be the answer," Irons said exultantly.  "I'll be able to bring Pezzini along more slowly, to keep her close, to win her trust gradually, to finally get real control of the Witchblade, and in the meantime, I'll have MacLeod." 

“Master, there is something else I need to tell you.”

Irons briefly tightened his embrace before he held Ian away from him to look him in the eye.  “Yes?”

“Pierson was at the park, as well as MacLeod, and he also carried a sword.  It seemed as though he was there to watch MacLeod’s back. I’m sorry, master.  I should have told you before.  I was…distracted and not thinking clearly.”  Ian ducked his head, half expecting a blow, either physical or verbal.

“Ah, the enigmatic Dr. Pierson also carries a sword, does he?” Irons whispered, and Ian dared look up, only to find Irons’ looking outward, smiling slightly, an intrigued gleam in his eye.  “A fascinating and attractive man.  He may be expendable, though, if he gets in our way.”

Ian nodded, relieved Irons’ good mood had distracted him from his servant’s oversight. 

Irons touched him under the chin and Ian lifted his head to look into those hard, knowing blue eyes.  “You’ve been holding things back from me for awhile, my boy,” he whispered with a lifted eyebrow.  “You should know you can't hide the truth from me, and I’m glad you have realized your error without my having to correct you. That would have been very painful for us both.”  Ian felt Irons’ smooth lips press gently to his forehead.  "I am very proud of you, Ian.  You have done very well, indeed."

Ian felt his mouth stretch into a shy smile at the rare praise.  He felt so much better now, having distanced himself from MacLeod, from Sara, from all those things that had created distractions from the goals Irons had established.  "Thank you, master," he whispered.