Title: "Chasing Shadows"
Author: Rebecca Bradstreet
Rated: NC-17
Archive: Sure.
Summary: TJ follows an Old One for Grayson.
Warning: Blood, death, and sex.
Disclaimer/Notes: This is my version of the Highlander: The Series timeline set forth in the series episodes "To Be" and "Not to Be". In it Grayson has taken Darius' Light Quickening and he fights a desperate battle to save The Game from Horton and his Hunters. I don't own Grayson, Kronos, or Methos which I'd like to, I also don't own Horton and his Hunters for which I'm grateful. Most of the characters and concepts here are borrowed from Panzer/Davis, but I do own T.J. "the Terror" Grey, and some of her contacts. I am using // as thoughts, and ** as emphasis.
Special Thanks to: JoLN who beta'd this for me.
"Chasing Shadows"
By Rebecca Bradstreet (c) 2000Bucharest 1995,
TJ was tense. She could feel the anticipation in her stomach, between her shoulder blades, covering her in sweat. TJ'd been following him off and on for weeks. He was hunting Horton's Hunters. If he was interested in hunting them, he *might* be interested in her help. Then again he might only be interested in taking her head. She hadn't managed to learn his name yet, though she had a handful of his aliases. She *had* learned he was looking for someone in particular.
"Watch him, stay close to him, but don't make direct contact. We don't know what he's about, and I'm sure he's an Old One even if I don't know his name." Grayson had warned her before he sent her out. TJ "the Terror" Grey trusted Grayson's assessment of the Old Man's age, but she hated being warned to stay away from anyone. Tonight she was going to meet with the scar-faced Old Man even if he killed her.
He'd finished wiping out the Hunter patrol that had made the mistake of trying to interfere with his hunt, but something was still bothering him. TJ didn't think he'd noticed her. If her presence was going to bother him it would have happened weeks before. She'd seen his hunt end in frustrating dead ends twice now, first in the Ukrainian woods, and now in a Romanian insane asylum.
//Who are you looking for Old Man, and can I help you find him?// TJ slipped down off the ledge she had perched on to watch him take the Hunters apart, and moved slowly towards where he stood scowling at one of the dead ones.
"Well, well, child, I was beginning to wonder when you'd introduce yourself." He turned, smiling at her, and addressing her in his deadly purr.
"Oh, I was waiting until your Hunter kills started to match my own." TJ knew her reputation as a hunter of Hunters was well known to most Immortals.
"Your Hunter kills? You mean you're the Terror?" The question was asked in a mocking tone with laughter in his eyes.
"Mm-hmm." She pulled her sword from her jacket and held it so he could see all of it in the moonlight.
"That is the blade in most of the descriptions of the Terror. She's described as having long brown hair too, but you're rather short for the Terror and you haven't killed a Hunter in weeks. I know. You've been busy following me." He didn't bother to produce his own blade, didn't even point his Uzi at her. He simply strolled towards her, the Uzi hanging at his side on its strap.
"Grayson's orders were to follow you, stay close to you, but to avoid making direct contact. Killing any Hunters in recent weeks would have meant making direct contact. You've been getting to all of them first." TJ put her sword back up and matched his strolling pace with her own, closing the last of the distance between them.
"They kept getting in the way." He reached out and touched some of her long brown hair.
"They do seem to make that mistake. Grayson's name doesn't spark any interest?" She was afraid to ask, but more afraid to leave that unpursued. She was breaking orders talking to him, and maybe even risking her life. But she'd try and get a few answers from him before he took her head.
"Poor Grayson, he had so much potential before he took Darius' head. Now he spends all his time fighting Horton, and doesn't take any pleasure in his kills." The Old Man shook his head, and leaned in to take a quick taste of her lips.
"He wants the prize. He doesn't want Horton to decide who gets it. He's a business before pleasure kind of guy." TJ took her turn, running her fingers lightly down the scar on his face, and watching the continuing gleam of amusement in his blue eyes.
"And you? You're breaking his rules. Pleasure before business?" He caught her hand and kissed her finger tips.
"Whatever my company likes. Hunters are all business. If you try and draw it out into pleasure they go and commit suicide on you." She spat in disgust at the slipperiness of Horton's Hunters.
"And if I choose business?" He showed her where his sword was with his free hand.
"Then we fight, but we can always do business later. If we do it first there might not be much time for pleasure." TJ ignored the gun and the sword, sliding her hands inside his black leather jacket, exploring the skin under his shirt and waiting for him to decide what he wanted first.
He let go of her hand and grabbed her face with both of his, holding her face in a bruising grip, "You think I can't take pleasure after business?"
"Did I say that? No. Remember, I've been watching you for weeks. I know how you kill. Sometimes it's very creative, and other times it's just business. The Hunters in Vienna and St Petersburg were business. The hunters in the Ukrainians woods, and these... they were pleasure. What makes that difference, I wonder." Bruising as his grip on her face was, she pressed herself into it, kept her eyes locked with his blue ones that had narrowed to angry slits, and dragged her fingernails down his chest.
"The difference was who they'd killed. Hunters don't have the sense to respect any of their elders. They'd killed two of my brothers. I took pleasure in killing them. I don't think you've enough knowledge yet to be a pleasure to kill." He let go of her face, only to put his hands around her.
If TJ had been a different Immortal she might have frozen as he moved his hands, afraid of him going for his sword or hers, but she didn't care anymore. Killing or being killed. She knew they went hand in hand. Horton had put a bounty on her head, if she lost it tonight to the Old Man her Q would stay in the Game. Better an Immortal than Horton.
"I *am* 800 hundred years old. I've done my share of head hunting, there is just a special pleasure to hunting Horton and his Hunters." TJ ran her hands along the top of his black leather pants.
"800? Child, child, child, I remember when Grayson was a promising young one, so don't try to be cute." He tore her jacket off and threw it over the nearest Hunter's body. TJ let her eyes linger on it, watching the Hunter's blood soak into it, remembering how he'd screamed while the Old Man had cut him down to size.
"I _don't_do_cute!" She growled, sliding the Uzi off his shoulder, and holding it between them for a moment.
He knocked the Uzi from her hands with her sword. TJ studied her reflection in the blade as he held it between them.
"The eternal question: kill her, then kiss her. Or kiss her, then kill her?" She left no possibility of her survival in the options. She didn't know this Old One well, but she had been alternately fighting and fucking with Grayson most of her 800 years. This one liked to kill. He might let her live if he thought it would be a surprise to her. Even killing machines were occasionally given to grand gestures of magnanimity. Let them think you didn't care if you lived or died, or worse still make them think you expected them to let you live, and they'd kill you slow and painful.
He ran her through with her own sword, but he didn't take her head. He hovered over her watching her die and whispered, "Kill her, then kiss her."
TJ died. It wasn't a first, and to her surprise it proved not to be her last. She woke slowly. He hadn't left her dead on the asylum grounds. The mattress under her and the ceiling over her were part of a complex somewhere else. Her sword was still missing, of course, and the rest of her clothes had joined it. She was lying on the mattress in a dress that was little more than a hospital smock.
"Awake little one?" He stood smiling in the doorway. His clothing might have been a fresh change from the night before but it looked no different.
"I seem to be alive for the moment, though weaponless, and talking to the man who killed me how long before?" She climbed up off the mattress and stood in front of him. She was his until he let her go now. She'd learn whatever he'd teach her.
"Alive, for the moment. You can have this back if you want it." He once more held her sword between them. She was tempted to run herself up it. It would kill her again, but it would also be reclaiming her sword without a word. She remembered her thoughts of the night before. //Don't let him think you don't care if you live or die. It takes away from his fun.//
She backed away from him. "I think you've given *that* to me enough for the time being." She ran her hands along her sides suggesting other things he might give her without words.
He set her sword out in the hall, and stepped into her little "guest" room. "Are there some other things you'd like me to give you?"
He asked the question letting her hear in his voice and see in his eyes some of the other things he was considering giving her.
"Oh, you could start with your name, or your dearly departed brothers, or maybe the brother you're still looking for." She surprised herself with the conclusion she hadn't realized she'd reached. It *was* what had still been bothering him after he'd wiped out the Hunters at the asylum. The Hunters had killed two of his brothers before he could find them. He wanted to find the third ahead of the Hunters -- before the Hunters could kill him.
He grabbed her throat and snarled, "What do you know of Methos? Has Horton killed him already? And what do you want with my name?"
Methos... the oldest Immortal was *real* and this Old One counted him as a brother. If Horton had found Methos... found him and guessed what he had, he'd have let every Immortal in the world know it. Of course if he'd killed him without knowing it, then Methos could just be another casualty of Horton's hunt.
"I only know Methos is suppose to be the world's oldest Immortal. I didn't know he was a brother to you. I want to know your name because I want to know what Immortal counts himself a brother to Methos." TJ grabbed his wrists with both of her hands, not fighting him, not trying to peel his hands from her throat, *just* making the contact reminding him he was once more holding her life in his hands.
He tossed her onto the mattress she'd climbed up off of. "I am Kronos -- The End of Time, Terror."
The smirk he gave her, as he used her epithet after his own, tempted her to laugh or growl. She asked, "The End of Time? For Horton and his Hunters or the world?"
Kronos dropped down on her, pinning her to the mattress, "Whatever I want to end, whenever I want it."
TJ pressed her lips to his hard. She half expected him to bite her tongue, but he only met it with his own. Pinned under him she couldn't move her legs around him and couldn't get good leverage to press herself to him, but she could grab his arms with her hands and press her lips to his.
When Kronos tired of her kiss, he sat back up, pulling his arms from her hands keeping her legs pinned beneath him. "Grayson sent you to watch me, when he doesn't know anything about me. Why did he bother? I'm certainly killing Hunters."
She let herself shiver just a little and let her mind picture him peeling her skin from her flesh in small strips before she even tried answering him, "He knows you're an Old One. If there was no Horton in the world he might have come to challenge you, but right now he wants to know if you hunt Hunters for business or pleasure. If it's business you won't let a Hunter live, if it's only pleasure he might have to send hunters to hunt on your ground."
Kronos nodded and ripped open the dress he'd put her in. He grabbed one of her breasts and squeezed it until she moaned. "No one hunts on my grounds but me. You've shown good sense about it. How can you fuck a man that doesn't have that kind of sense?"
Though her reputation as the Terror was new, a gift from Horton, she'd been Grayson's whore since she first started taking heads. Kronos had teased her about who she was and wasn't, but he clearly knew who she was. TJ couldn't move her legs under his weight, he'd shaken off her arms, the only thing she had left was her mouth. She leaned forward and kissed the hand he'd crushed her breast with.
Kronos sat perfectly still watching her kiss his hand, feeling her touch each knuckle with her tongue. He took his jacket of with his other hand, and covered her face with it. Kronos didn't press the jacket over her head to smother her he simply held her still with it while he took of his shirt as well. Then he lifted both the jacket from her face and his weight from her legs.
TJ lay there perfectly still for a moment meeting his blue eyes with her grey ones. He stood looking down at her in only his pants and boots. She was torn -- part of her wanted to knock him over, get her sword, and get the Hell out, and the other wanted to crawl on her hands and knees to him and beg him to fuck her blind. She stood stretching her legs, and ignoring how the torn dress fluttered leaving her breasts exposed to him.
"Fucking isn't about sense, it's about sensation. I *like* the sensations I get from Grayson." She stepped toward Kronos, careful to keep the mattress behind her anticipating the moment he'd knock her down again.
"He give you a few before he sent you out to follow me?" Kronos closed the distance between them. He didn't knock her back down. He pulled her to him with one hand, reached up her skirt with his other hand and pinched her cunt.
TJ yowled, pulled her body away from his hands. Kronos held on tight to her body. She gasped and stilled. "A few. I don't know where Methos is, but I might know somebody to give you a lead on him."
He moved his hands to her waist, pressed her body tight against his. TJ could feel the excitement he was holding in. //If he doesn't do something more soon he'll exploded.//
"Oh? You're going to give this someone to me right?" Kronos' hold progressed from tight to crushing. TJ wasn't ready to give him a name. She wanted more from him. She began to open his pants.
Kronos did toss her back on the mattress then. TJ was ready this time she spread her legs before he fell on them. He shoved her skirt up under her breasts, opened his pants, and pressed his dick between her legs. She pressed herself to him, making sure his dick was all the way in.
"Man's a Watcher out of the European HQ. It's his job to study the Chronicles of Methos. Name's Adam Pierson." TJ grunted as he began the rhythm. She found it hard to breathe with the torn dress gathered around her chest, but she wasn't about to be just a mount. She wrapped her legs around him, and scratched her nails down his back.
They rocked in unison. Their mouths hovered close together, not kissing not biting, just breathing each in the others face. When their rocking reached its pitch TJ tightened her leg hold. Kronos crushed her shoulders to the mattress. They voiced their pleasure as deep growls, threat and thank you. Then they were relaxing. TJ unwound her legs. Kronos brushed his hands over her breasts.
As Kronos leaned back off of her pulled out of her, he whispered, "Adam Pierson."
Kronos pulled a dagger from his boot and killed her a second time. Surely TJ was dead this time. She'd given up Adam, and been a fun lay, what other use could he have for her? Well, whether it was the magnanimity TJ had guessed him subject to, or some scheme she couldn't yet guess at he'd let her keep her head again. She came to amongst a field of dead Hunters. In fact as she began to examine herself she found a note taped to her chest.
"Twice dead, two strikes, three strikes and you're out." TJ wasn't certain but she thought the note might be written in her own blood. If it wasn't hers it was undoubtedly one of the dead Hunters. She stood. She was dressed more or less in the clothes she'd first introduced herself in. Kronos had replaced the jacket he'd left with the previous batch of dead Hunters, and the shirt he'd bloodied with her sword and her blood. She had quite a lot of information to give Grayson even if she didn't mention the fucking.