The first experimental heft of the Inca statue sent a warning twinge up Duncan MacLeod's back and brought a muttered oath from the Immortal Scot. Richie was supposed to be helping, but he'd gotten bored early in the bidding and wandered off somewhere. Duncan had warned him not go far, but like a puppy loose from a leash Richie could be just about anywhere in the importer's warehouse. The bankruptcy auction in Victoria had netted Duncan a number of prize antiques that he would ship home, but the Inca statue would round out a collection he'd been commissioned to gather for a wealthy investor and he wanted to take it back today.

Duncan circled the inside of the warehouse, seeking a glimpse of Richie's curly blond hair or the tingle that he gave off as a pre-Immortal. A number of bidders still circulated through the wide aisles, the men in casual summer suits, the women in breezy dresses and hats. No sign of Richie. Duncan went back to the auction office, solicited the help of one of the workers there, and tipped the man ten dollars after they lugged the Inca statue to Duncan's Thunderbird.

"When I find you," Duncan muttered to the absent Richie, "that ten dollars is coming out of your pay."

The late June day had produced glorious weather, with a clear blue sky and pleasant salty breeze off the bay. Richie might have wandered down to the piers that lined the block of warehouses. Duncan walked down to the water's edge but didn't find the teenager. He returned to the warehouse, worry beginning to replace irritation, and found the crowd diminishing rapidly. He checked at the office in case Richie had returned there, but it wasn't until he went back to the car that he found any clue.

An auction brochure had been jammed against the dashboard, the words "1040 East ASAP" scribbled across it.

Duncan edged down his sunglasses and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. It didn't take a giant leap of the imagination to guess who might have kidnapped Richie, or why. The address led to the rusty hulk of an old cannery at the end of a dirt road five blocks from the auction warehouse. The moment Duncan stepped from the T-bird he felt the throb in his gut that indicated the presence of another Immortal. The fainter, more elusive sense of Richie was almost obliterated.

The Highlander pulled his katana from its well-tailored sheath and edged towards a set of open doors. He stepped inside cautiously, prepared to defend himself in the first few crucial seconds as his eyes adjusted to the diminished lighting. No attack came. Instead he heard a deep voice singing only slight off key, the echoes making it impossible to pinpoint its location.

"'I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral . . . I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical . . .from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical. . .'"

Duncan moved deeper inside the old building, wrinkling his nose at the smells of old fish and human waste. The wind in the rafters stirred up a flock of birds. He scanned the old plaster pillars, the abandoned cannery equipment and the recessed shadows.

"'I'm very good at integral and differential calculus. . .I know the scientific names of beings animalculous . . .In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral. . . . '" The singing broke off to be replaced by a challenge. "Do you know the rest?"

"'You are the very model of a modern Major-General,'" Duncan concluded. "Did you make me come here to fight or to listen to you sing Gilbert and Sullivan?"

"Guess!" An Immortal stepped out from behind a post, his arm wrapped around Richie's neck. Richie's wrists had been bound and his mouth. He looked angry, but aside from some bruises on his face he seemed essentially unharmed. The Immortal holding him had a filthy face, stringy gray hair, threadbare clothes fashionable fifty years earlier, and a rapier that gleamed with blinding brightness. He also wore a ridiculous hat befitting a British Major-General.

"Your young friend said you wouldn't come," the Immortal sneered. "How fortunate for him that you did."

"Who are you?" Duncan asked.

"Stanley Ewen, sir, of the Philadelphia Ewens, at your service."

"Let him go. He's not part of this."

"Not yet," Ewen smirked. Obviously, then, he could tell Richie was pre-Immortal. Not every one of their kind could. "I suppose you can have him. He's useless to me. He can't do acrostics, can't quote the crimes of Heliogabalus, and doesn't know the any facts about the square of a hypotenuse."

The Immortal loosened his grip and shoved Richie forward. The teenager stumbled off-balance. Duncan snagged him at the last minute to keep from crashing to the floor. Swiftly Duncan freed the cord holding Richie's bruised wrists together. Richie freed the gag himself.

Duncan asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." Richie gave Ewen a dirty look. "The guy's nuts, Mac. He's been singing crazy opera lyrics for hours."

Duncan decided the teenager's pride hurt worse than anything else. "Get out of here," he said. "Wait by the car."

"But what if - "

"Wait by the car," Duncan repeated sternly. "This should only take a few minutes."

Ewen's eyes lit up with a new glee. "Fancy yourself a good fighter, do you?" he asked, and lunged forward with surprising speed. Duncan shielded Richie from the rapier's slice and earned a slash across his left bicep as a reward. He retaliated with a series of blows that beat Ewen back across the dirty floor. Richie didn't move from where he stood watching the duel. At one time Ewen might have been a good fighter, but within seconds most of his blows degenerated into wild, crazed arcs that cut the air but not the Highlander.

"I am the very model of a modern Major-General!" Ewen sang out defiantly as Duncan forced him to his knees.

"I hate Gilbert and Sullivan," Duncan said, raising his katana for the killing blow.

"Of the Philadelphia Ewens," Ewen forced out, his eyes fixing on Duncan with a solemness that cut through whatever madness shrouded his mind. "Fare thee well, Duncan MacLeod."

For a second Duncan hesitated, but the Game never had been and never would be about compassion. With a smooth launch of his sword he severed Stanley Ewen's head from his neck. No sense of triumph came with the kill, just the weary acceptance of yet another addition to the long line of ghosts trailing Duncan through the centuries. The body pitched forward with a resounding thump, and a firestorm of blue and silver light began pouring out of the bloody stump that had been Ewen's neck.

Duncan didn't move as the light encircled his feet and began a slow climb toward his scalp. He'd long ago learned not to fight the static tingle that marked a Quickening's first tentative probe of his flesh. In the last few seconds left of peace he clung to the hope the pain would be offset by ecstasy. Sometimes all the supernatural phenomenon brought was pain. The first bolt of pure white pain ripped into his gut, then flashed away as if it had never been. A second bolt slammed past his teeth and down his throat, stripping the air from his lungs. The third bolt of Quickening sent him to his knees and wrapped him in a blinding white that tried to scissor his skin away from the meat underneath.

Over the blasting wind and zap of electricity Duncan heard a snatch of song - more Gilbert and Sullivan - and caught a brief glimpse of men and women strolling Philadelphia in Civil War era clothes. Then all sight and sound fell away in a blast of blue-hotness that propelled him out of his body into pure rapture.

Joy and pleasure poured into him. Duncan disintegrated beneath it, no longer aware that he even had a body. Time slowed, tilted, brought him to the past, propelled him into the future. He dove into a thousand sensations - the smooth glide of a lover's skin, the sucking nursing of a newborn infant, the sonorous ring of a bell, cold snow, dry Santa Ana winds, tangy cherry pie - and came back to himself with the impression of rain washing through every cell in his body.

The first few seconds after a Quickening always blurred for Duncan, but as his conscious mind gradually drifted back together he realized the rain wasn't just in his mind. The ancient sprinkler system in the cannery had torn loose beneath the onslaught of power, sending down a steady drizzle that soaked his clothes. He blinked at the rest of the building damage - the western windows had completely disintegrated, several overhead beams had caved in, and the floor had collapsed in a few places.

Someone called his name. It took a minute for Duncan to recognize who.

"Richie?" he asked. He staggered upright, weakness threatening to buckle his knees. "Where are you?"

"Mac! Get me out of here!" The teenager's voice held a frantic edge.

"Hold on," Duncan said. He followed Richie's plea through the debris to where part of the floor had fallen into the basement. Richie lay fifteen feet down, pinned face-down with water pooling precariously around his head. His legs and arms moved weakly, and as Duncan lowered himself down he hoped that meant his back wasn't broken.

Duncan put his hand on the side of Richie's wet head, hoping to calm him. "Just lay still for a moment. You're all right."

"Get me out," Richie begged. Blood from a forehead cut blinded his right eye. "It's crushing me- "

"No it's not," Duncan said firmly. He didn't want to encourage Richie's panic in the slightest. He freed one long strip of metal, flung it to the side, and wedged a broken steel rod against a chunk of concrete to use as a fulcrum. The water in the reserve tank on the roof ran out and the drizzle stopped. Duncan's first cautious lift brought a yelp from the trapped teenager, but Duncan adjusted the lever and after a few seconds freed the beam enough for the Richie to wriggle away.

"Are you hurt?" Duncan asked, forcing Richie to stay still while he patted down his legs and arms. Richie shivered and gasped, unable to say anything. After a minute or so Richie's color and breathing improved, and Duncan helped him sit up.

"Don't yell at me," Richie said.

Duncan had no idea what he was talking about. "Yell at you for what?"

"For not leaving. What if you needed help? I don't abandon my friends - "

"Richie, calm down. We'll talk about it later. Let's get out of here first."

Duncan would have liked to get rid of Ewen's body, but by the time he shimmied out of the hole and helped Richie up, he could hear sirens in the distance. Duncan helped Richie limp to the T-bird. They cleared the cannery road and drove two blocks east before Duncan saw the first fire engine in his rearview mirror. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and threw a critical glance towards Richie. The teen sat huddled under a blanket snatched from the back seat, bruised and scraped and still shaken, holding a wad of Burger King napkins to the cut on his forehead.

"Do you want to go to the hospital?" Duncan asked, hoping for a negative answer.

Richie shook his head. "Let's just go home."

Duncan stopped at a corner convenience store. He bought a large cup of hot sweetened tea and a souvenir T-shirt emblazoned with the Canadian maple leaf. The clerk raised an eyebrow at Duncan's wet clothes but said nothing. Back in the car Richie stripped off his wet jersey and pulled the T-shirt over his head stiffly. Duncan knew he would be even more stiff tomorrow.

"Drink this," Duncan said, handing him the large Styrofoam cup. "It'll help."

Richie swallowed the tea automatically. Twenty miles later he offered, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Duncan asked, pulling himself from private thoughts.

"For not leaving when you told me to."

"You wouldn't have been hurt if you did."

"I know. I should have gone."

"Well, next time you'll know better," Duncan said. "How did he get you?"

"I was just walking around outside, getting some fresh air, when he leaped out of nowhere with his sword like I was an Immortal or something. I told him he had the wrong guy. Then he got that look in his eye - the one you get sometimes - and demanded to know where my friend with the sword was. I said I didn't know, but he didn't believe me. Did you know he was at the warehouse?"

"No."

"How come he felt you, and you didn't feel him?"

"It varies," Duncan said, being deliberately vague. "Does your head hurt?"

"Not much."

They said very little more for the next two hours. By the time Duncan pulled into the alley behind the antique store, Richie was snoring. Duncan roused him and delivered him to Tessa, who put away her pottery work to fetch the first aid kit. Duncan knew she'd never had any formal medical training, but somehow, since Richie'd come to live with them, she'd become the very model of a nurse.

Unlike the very model of a modern Major-General, Duncan thought wearily. He needed a shower. He thought about unloading the Inca statue by himself and decided any thief dedicated enough to lift it deserved to have it. For a half hour he lingered under a steaming cascade of hot water with barely enough energy to run the soap bar down his arms and legs. Wrapped in a terry bathrobe, a towel catching the drops from his long dark hair, he settled into his favorite armchair in the living room with a snifter of brandy. Tessa found him there a half hour later, sitting in the dark.

"How is he?" Duncan asked.

Tessa removed the empty snifter from his hand and put it on the side table before settling into his lap and rest her head against his. "He's fine. Twisted his ankle, I think. But mostly he's just bruised and scared."

"Scared of what?"

"Of you being furious with him. What did you say in the car?"

"Nothing." Which was probably the problem, he thought. Still, he didn't have the energy or inclination to deal with it at the moment. Letting Richie sit and worry wouldn't hurt him.

"Was it a very bad fight?" Tessa asked, as her left hand slid beneath his robe and started making circles of his chest.

"No."

"But it bothers you."

"They all bother me, Tess. You know that." Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she thought he enjoyed fighting every day, took pleasure from the hot blood of strangers spilled at his feet. Once upon a time, in centuries long ground to dust, that might have been true. But he wasn't that Duncan MacLeod anymore.

"Come to bed," she urged. "Let me hold you."

He couldn't turn down an invitation like that. They lay for a long time in the quiet darkness, listening to each other breathe as the outside world spun in its noise and color and brutality. When Duncan finally fell asleep he suffered vivid nightmares of the cannery collapsing and burying Richie alive. Ewen pranced above, belting out more tongue-twisting refrains from "The Pirates of Penzance." The dream turned on itself until Duncan was actually in Penzance itself, stalked through the twisted streets by real pirates brandishing bloody cutlasses.

He tossed in the sheets for hours before finding dreamless solace. When he woke the clock read close to noon. On his way to the kitchen, with hunger and a need for caffeine both gnawing for attention in his stomach, he overheard Tessa and Richie talking about him in the workshop. He slowed to eavesdrop.

"He's really mad," Richie said.

"He's not really mad," Tessa answered. "You're just feeling guilty."

"If he's not mad, how come he wouldn't talk to me yesterday?"

"He was scared, not mad, Richie."

A moment's pause. "Scared of what?"

"Did you know that Duncan tried to leave me, right after Slan Quince?"

"No," Richie admitted.

"He wanted to go because he was afraid of something happening to me. But we talked it over, and he knows that it's choice that keeps me here. I'm afraid of other Immortals coming to kill him, maybe hurting you and me, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. We all sat down and talked about it last month, when you first moved in, and you agreed to live with those risks too. But yesterday you deliberately put yourself in danger."

Richie's voice rose slightly. "I didn't ask for that opera nut to grab me!"

"You didn't leave when you should have, did you? Before the Quickening. Duncan is upset because you could have been very badly hurt."

"But it wasn't his fault," Richie protested.

"He knows that, in his head. But not in his heart. He does all he can to protect us, and you jeopardize yourself by staying in the middle of explosions and lightning bolts."

"You've never seen a Quickening, have you, Tessa?"

"No," Tessa returned. Her voice, Duncan noted, sounded slightly envious.

"They're awesome to watch - kind of like being in the middle of the fourth of July fireworks, you know - but that's not why I stayed. I stayed because . . . "

Duncan listened harder.

"Because of what, Richie?"

"I don't know what to do with a sword. I don't know if I could have outrun that guy. But I knew if I went to the car, and Mac got killed - I want to be able to tell you I was there, Tessa. That he didn't die alone."

"Oh, Richie," Tessa said. Duncan heard the rustle of fabric, as if the two had embraced. She went on to say, "Even if you weren't there, Mac wouldn't die alone. He always has us in his heart." She laughed. "Besides, it shows an incredible lack of confidence. We don't want him to think we've lost our faith in him, do we?"

Duncan hurried to the kitchen and was filling up the coffeepot when Tessa and Richie came in.

"Good afternoon, sleepyhead." Tessa wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed the back of his neck. "How do you feel?"

"Fine." He turned and kissed her. He caught sight of Richie and felt his mouth open in surprise. "You look awful."

"Yeah, well," Richie said, coloring slightly, as he picked and polished an apple from the basket on the kitchen table. Tessa had neatly bandaged the cut on his forehead, but his left eye was puffed with angry dark bruises where Ewen must have hit him.

"How do you feel?"

"Okay." Richie met his gaze squarely. "Thank you for yesterday. And I'm sorry I didn't do what you told me to do."

"I know," Duncan said, putting one hand on Richie's shoulder and giving it a brief squeeze of understanding. Then he turned back to Tessa. "Am I the only one who's hungry around here?"

"No," Tessa smiled. "It is lunchtime, after all. What do you men want to eat?"

"You're going to cook?" Duncan asked.

Tessa reached for the phone directory. "No. I'm going to order food to be delivered."

Duncan said, "Richie and I will cook. We must have something to eat in this place."

They found mushrooms, onions and cheese in the refrigerator, along with some flour tortillas. A quick rummage through the cupboards produced refried beans that Richie heated on the stove while Duncan chopped the vegetables. Tessa watched the enterprise from the counter stool, offering helpful suggestions. In just a few minutes they sat down to sizzling quesadillas topped with sour cream and salsa, and spoke nothing of Immortals or killings.

It wasn't until the next day that the affair was formally settled, though. Duncan knew Tessa had taken Richie to the mall, but he didn't know why until he found a neatly wrapped silver package and envelope on his desk. He read the card and Richie's painstakingly neat handwriting.

"I, Richard Ryan, promise never to stick around for another Q. Unless I really, really can't help it." Richie's signature marked the paper below, followed by a postscript. "P.S. I hate Gilbert and Sullivan too. And I don't even know who they are."

Underneath the wrapping lay a jewel case of "The Pirates of Penzance" Broadway soundtrack. The CD inside had been hammered and drilled and half-burned in Tessa's workshop.

Duncan burst out laughing, and later mounted the disc on his study wall so that Richie could see it whenever he walked into the room. He didn't completely believe Richie's promise - somehow Richie Ryan always found an excuse - but that was one of the prices of having a hotheaded, impetuous, fiercely loyal teenage mortal in the house.

THE END